decoded_text stringlengths 4.18k 47.6k |
|---|
vector y = np. array ( [ [ 3, 4, 8 ] ] ) augmented_matrix = Matrix ( np. concatenate ( ( X, y. T ), axis = 1 ) ) printltx ( r "Augmented Matrix =" + ltxmtx ( augmented_matrix ) ) printltx ( r "rref(Augemented Matrix) =" + ltxmtx ( augmented_matrix. rref ( ) [ 0 ] ) )
Augmented Matrix = $$\left[\begin{matrix}1.0 & 2.0 & 3.0\\1.0 & 7.0 & 4.0\\1.0 & 9.0 & 8.0\end{matrix}\right]$$
rref(Augemented Matrix) = $$\left[\begin{matrix}1.0 & 0 & 0\\0 & 1.0 & 0\\0 & 0 & 1.0\end{matrix}\right]$$
Look at the last row of rref(augmented matrix). This is saying that $0 = 1$ which is a contradiction! That’s the algorithm’s way of saying that the system of equations you made has no solution. In other words, you can’t find a fixed $\beta_0$ and $\beta_1$ that you could stick in the linear model you’re trying to build ($\beta_0 + \beta_1x = y$ which is just the equation for a line) that would satisfy all the x’s we have, $(2, 7, 9)$, and output all the $y$’s we have, $(3, 4, 8)$.
The below illustration shows that you can choose any $\beta_0$ and $\beta_1$, but it will always end up in the range of $X$ while never reaching $y = (3, 4, 8)$.
Estimate $\beta$ By Projecting $y$ Onto the Range of $X$
Since $y$ is not in the range of $X$, the best you can do is come up with a close version of $y$ that is in the range of $X$. You can do this by “projecting” $y$ onto the range of $X$ (which will end up being some point in the range of $X$ that is closest to $y$).
There are two ways you can do this:
the hard way orthogonalize your design matrix $X$ by using the Gram-Schmidt Algorithm
the projection of $y$ onto the range of $X$ is $\hat{y} = \frac{\langle y, x_1 \rangle}{\langle x_1, x_1 \rangle}x_1 + \dots + \frac{\langle y, x_p \rangle}{\langle x_p, x_p \rangle}x_p$
note that $\hat{y}$ is a target that can be hit
and $\hat{y}$ is most like $y$
solve $X \hat{\beta} = \hat{y}$ the easy way use the solutions of the normal equation, $(X’X) \hat{\beta} = X’y$, which is the least squares solution to $X \beta = y$
remember that $X \beta = y$ is what you were trying to solve earlier with the system of equations but couldn’t find a solution; the normal equation adjusts $y$ in the most minimal way as to give you an equation that will be solvable and leave you with $\hat{\beta}$s
notice that $\hat{\beta}$s are not the same as $\beta$s since $\beta$s are the true parameters that we couldn’t find before using the system of equations and $\hat{\beta}$s are estimates of the true parameters
There’s a couple things to notice here:
$\epsilon$, the residual vector, is perpendicular to $\hat{y}$ meaning that $\epsilon \perp \hat{y}$
$\hat{y} + \epsilon = y$
One can also see the use of Pythagorean’s theorem at play here.
$\epsilon \perp \hat{y} \implies ||y||^2 = ||\hat{y} + \epsilon||^2 = ||\hat{y}||^2 + ||\epsilon||^2$
$\epsilon$ is minimized with $\hat{\beta}$
For this regression model, you want to show that the residual vector, $\epsilon$, is minimized with $\hat{\beta}$. To show that, you need to minimize the sum of squared errors which translates to minimizing $||y – X \beta||^2$. But to show $\beta$ is our best candidate, you need to start with an arbitrary candidate for our sum of squared errors, $|| y – X \gamma||^2$.
Firstly, you know that $y – X \gamma = y – X \hat{\beta} + X(\hat{\beta} – \gamma)$ because:
$$
\begin{align}
y – X \gamma & = y – X \gamma + X \hat{\beta} – X \hat{\beta} \\
& = y – X \hat{\beta} + X \hat{\beta} – X \gamma \\
& = y – X \hat{\beta} + X(\hat{\beta} – \gamma) \\
\end{align}
$$
Since you know $\epsilon \perp X$ by definition, then you can say that $|| y – X \gamma||^2 = ||y – X \hat{\beta}||^2 + ||X(\hat{\beta} – \gamma)||^2$.
Secondly, you use this fact to show that $||y – X \gamma||^2$ is minimized when $\gamma = \hat{\beta}$.
If $\gamma = \hat{\beta}$ then $||y – X \gamma||^2 = || y – X \hat{\beta}||^2$. And if $\gamma
e \hat{\beta}$ then $||y – X \gamma||^2 = ||y – X \hat{\beta}||^2 + ||X(\hat{\beta} – \gamma)||^2$ which means $||y – X \hat{\beta}||^2 + ||X(\hat{\beta} – \gamma)||^2 \ge ||y – X \hat{\beta}||^2$.
So, $||y – X \gamma||^2$ is minimized when $\gamma = \hat{\beta}$.
Solving $X \hat{\beta} = \hat{y}$
Now we need to solve $X \hat{\beta} = \hat{y}$.
We know $\epsilon$ is orthogonal to every element in the range of $X$. So, we can say that $\epsilon \perp X \implies X \perp \epsilon \implies X’ \epsilon = 0$.
$X’ \epsilon = X'(y – X \hat{\beta}) = X’y – X’X \hat{\beta}$
So,
$$\begin{align}
X’y – X’X \hat{\beta} & = 0 \\
X’X \hat{\beta} & = X’y\ \mathrm{(this\ is\ the\ normal\ equation)} \\
\hat{\beta} & = (X’X)^{-1}X’y\ \mathrm{(the\ least\ squares\ solution)} \\
\end{align}$$
Conclusion
Now that we know how to get our $\hat{\beta}$’s, we can use the design matrix, X, and our observation vector, y, to find the betas for our example. Plugging in X and y into $\hat{\beta} = (X’X)^{-1}X’y$, we get $\hat{\beta} = (1.30769231, 0.61538462)$ as shown in the Python code below (remember to transpose y to make it a column vector):
beta_hat = np.linalg.inv((X.T.dot(X))).dot(X.T).dot(y.T) beta_hat 1 2 beta_hat = np. linalg. inv ( ( X. T. dot ( X ) ) ). dot ( X. T ). dot ( y. T ) beta_hat
And there you have it! $\hat{\beta}$ is the vector containing each of the coefficients you were trying to find for your linear model and represents the closest thing we can get to a perfect solution.Loading Video...
Runtime: 7:32
- Trouble in EV Land
- N.A. Production Up
- Bye-Bye Mulally
- Caddy Needs Another Decade
- Cadillac Teams with Saks 5th Ave.
- Nissan BladeGlider
- Will Chevy Offer a Mid-Engine ‘Vette?
Visit our sponsors to thank them for their support of Autoline Daily: Bridgestone and Dow Automotive Systems
»Subscribe to Podcast | | | | Listen on Phone |
Hello and thank you for joining us on Autoline Daily this November 11th, which is Veteran’s Day, and we want express our appreciation for all you veterans who are out there. Now to the news.
TROUBLE IN EV LAND
As we’ve been reporting here for over a year, sales of electric cars are nowhere near where the auto industry thought they’d be. Now the Obama Administration seems to be moving its support away from EVs and to fuel cell cars instead. In an interview with Autoline Daily in June of last year, then Secretary of Energy Stephen Chu admitted he needed to put less emphasis on EVs and more on fuel cells. The Administration has not offered any new EV funding since then. Now Bloomberg reports that the California Air Resources board is considering slashing the credits its gives to EV markers. Tesla could see its credits drop 40% in the next two years. In fact, Tesla is already seeing its income from credits drop. In the first quarter of this year Tesla earned $68 million in California credits. that fell to $58 million in the second quarter and to $10 million in the third.
NORTH AMERICAN PRODUCTION UP
Carmakers in North America are confident that sales are going to keep climbing. Wards reports that they’re increasing their production plans for the fourth quarter by 2.2%. That puts them on pace to build 4.1 million vehicles between October and December. For the year they’re on pace to build 16.5 million vehicles compared to 15.8 million last year.
BYE-BYE MULALLY
As you know, Microsoft is looking at Ford’s Alan Mulally to become CEO of the company. Now Reuters confirms that Ford’s Alan Mulally is officially on the short list. Earlier this summer, when the rumors first appeared I said that there was little chance Mulally would go to Microsoft. Now I’ve changed my mind. At several recent press conferences Alan Mulally has ducked the question when asked if he would go to Microsoft. In my experience, CEO’s don’t duck questions like that. They unequivocally deny they’re going to take a new job at another company. Also, Mulally does not have a formal contract with Ford, so there’s nothing that legally binds him to stay at the company. If I’m reading the tea leaves right, look for an announcement early next year.
CADDY NEEDS ANOTHER DECADE
It can take forever to change people’s perception of a brand. Cadillac relaunched its brand 14 years ago with its new styling look that it calls Art and Science and it’s made a lot of headway. But Cadillac’s new head of global marketing, Uwe Ellinghaus, says it’s going to take yet another decade before Cadillac can truly compete with the likes of Mercedes and BMW. He says that the brand has name recognition thanks to its history but most people don’t see Cadillac as relevant.
CADILLAC PARTNERS WITH SAKS 5th AVE.
And to help turn around its image, Cadillac just announced a partnership with Saks Fifth Avenue for a specially designed 2015 Cadillac Escalade which will be on display at the Saks’ store in New York City. Also, a 2014 special edition ELR will be offered in Saks’ holiday catalog.
EURO MUSTANG
The next-gen Ford Mustang will be officially offered in Europe for the first time since 1979 and a new survey suggests it will sell better than most people expected. Of the 75,000 Europeans polled by the website AutoScout24, 37% of them said the pony car is the top classic car they would like to own, beating out the BMW M1 and Volkswagen Beetle. What do you think? How well will the new Mustang sell in Europe? Let us know in the comments section below today’s show.
NISSAN BLADEGLIDER
Check out this wild-looking concept from Nissan, called the BladeGlider. It’s an electric vehicle that the company calls an exploratory prototype of an upcoming vehicle. Although not quite as radical, styling for the EV is clearly drawn from the DeltaWing racecar with its narrow front end and wide rear track. The concept adds in-wheel hub motors for propulsion, gullwing doors and seating for three. The BladeGlider will debut at the Tokyo Motor Show starting later this month.
Corvette enthusiasts have dreamed for decades about a mid-engined Corvette. But we’ve got bad news for you, and you can hear all the gory details right after this.
WILL WE SEE A MID-ENGINE ‘VETTE?
My guest on Autoline After Hours last week was Tadge Juechter, the chief engineer on the Corvette. During the Rapid Fire part of the show, which is where we take questions from you, our viewers, one of you wanted to know if we will ever see a mid-engined Corvette.
(Clip about if Chevy will offer a mid-engined Corvette can only be viewed in the video version of today’s show.)
By the way, there is a ton of information on the technology and development of the new ‘Vette in that show with Tadge Juechter. Check it out on our website at Autoline.tv or you can watch it on our YouTube channel, just look for the Autoline Network.
And also be sure to check out our LIVE coverage of the LA Auto Show on Wednesday, November 20th at 4PM eastern or 1PM Pacific with our signature sponsor Hyundai. I will be talking with top executives about what they brought to the show. Once again, that’s Wednesday November 20th at 4PM at our website Autoline.tv.
And that wraps up today’s report. Thanks for watching, we’ll see you tomorrow.Any time natural hair color is lifted or hair structure is permanently altered through chemical services, damage is done to the multiple bond structures that are responsible for the hairs strength, elasticity and manageability. Hair also experiences a continuous depletion of protein and moisture, leading to dry, brittle strands. Repeated chemical services add to this damage over time. In addition, the constant application of hot tools and environmental factors such as sun, salt water and chlorine can intensify this damage, to the extent that hair becomes increasingly fragile and compromised.
TRUEPLEX is an innovative hair repair system that drastically prevents and repairs damage caused by chemical, mechanical and environmental stress. TRUEPLEX can also reverse the damage caused by color, chemicals, hot tools and harsh environmental influences. TRUEPLEX can be used with any color, bleach or lightener; before any chemical, keratin or smoothing service or as a stand- alone intensive conditioning and repairing treatment. No adjustment to lighteners, timing or mixing ratios is needed.Item posted by Ludovic Courtès <civodul> on Wed 02 Mar 2016 04:18:02 PM UTC.
Yesterday, a new version of OpenSSL was released, addressing several serious vulnerabilities, some of which are nicknamed "DROWN". Like all free software distributions, we were waiting to deploy the fixes as soon as possible. This time though, we are happy to report that we were able to deploy it to users faster than before: an hour or so after disclosure. This was made possible by fixing our fast update deployment mechanism, which is based on grafts.
Updates in a functional package management framework
GNU Guix implements the functional package management discipline. What this means is that the the package graph in Guix is an immutable, persistent data structure—similar to a singly-linked list in a functional programming language, or to the object graph in the Git version control system.
A common difficulty with persistent data structures is the algorithmic complexity of updates—the computational cost of updating an arbitrary element of the data structure. For instance, to update the nth element of a singly-linked list, you first need to traverse and copy the n − 1 elements at the head of the list, then insert the new element and make it point to the tail of the list.
With the functional package management paradigm, the cost of updating a package is simple to understand: you need to rebuild the package itself, and all the packages that depend on it. This is nice in many ways: all packages must build from source, there is no way we can be using binaries that cannot be rebuilt from their Corresponding Source, breakage due to incompatible application binary interfaces (ABIs) is foreign to our users, we have a precise trail of the tools that produced binaries—that is, builds are “referentially transparent”, and as a bonus, we get features such as transactional upgrades and rollbacks, peaceful coexistence of different variants of the same package, and more.
But obviously, this update cost is very high when all you want is to deliver an important security update in a core package. Regarding yesterday’s update, guix refresh -l openssl shows that 2,115 packages depend on OpenSSL. On top of that, Guix supports 4 architectures, so needless to say, rebuilding everything that depends on OpenSSL would take time. Sure, users do not have to wait for pre-built binaries and can instead build just what they need locally; in practice, they’d better have a powerful machine, though.
Grafting important updates
A solution to this problem has been floating around for some time: the idea is to graft important package updates onto packages that depend on it. That way, we would rebuild OpenSSL, but all we need to do for packages that depend on OpenSSL is to substitute the reference to the “broken” OpenSSL with a reference to the security update, with the understanding that this substitution process is orders of magnitude cheaper than rebuilding packages, and faster than redownloading rebuilt packages.
Shea Levy had implemented a form of grafting in Nixpkgs in 2013, and Guix itself has provided the infrastructure for grafted updates since version 0.8 in 2014. With Guix, package developers simply have to define a replacement in the object representing the package that needs an update and the tools automatically pick the replacement and graft it onto packages as needed.
The problem is that these implementations had a severe limitation, described in this bug report: grafting was not recursive. When we provided a patched OpenSSL to be grafted, any package that directly depended on OpenSSL, would be appropriately grafted to refer to the new OpenSSL. However, if a package depended on libfoo, which in turn depended on OpenSSL, then that package would keep referring to the old libfoo, which refered to the old OpenSSL. That made grafts useless in most situations.
Good news!
This bug was finally addressed, just in time for yesterday’s OpenSSL update. We have identified things to improve, but overall, it has worked pretty well. It has worked so well that we even experienced our first ABI break like all real distros!
From now on, we have confidence that we can deliver important updates quickly using grafts, and happily rebuild the world in the background, whenever is convenient. This is an important improvement for functional package management to keep our users happy and safe.
About GNU Guix
GNU Guix is a functional package manager for the GNU system. The Guix System Distribution or GuixSD is an advanced distribution of the GNU system that relies on GNU Guix and respects the user's freedom.
In addition to standard package management features, Guix supports transactional upgrades and roll-backs, unprivileged package management, per-user profiles, and garbage collection. Guix uses low-level mechanisms from the Nix package manager, except that packages are defined as native Guile modules, using extensions to the Scheme language. GuixSD offers a declarative approach to operating system configuration management, and is highly customizable and hackable.
GuixSD can be used on an i686 or x86_64 machine. It is also possible to use Guix on top of an already installed GNU/Linux system, including on mips64el and armv7.How to Write Code that Operations Will Like
Editorial Note: I originally wrote this post for the Monitis blog. You can check out the original here, at their site. While you’re there, take a look around at the options you have for monitoring your production site and all of its supporting infrastructure.
In recent years, the DevOps movement has gained a significant amount of steam. Historically, organizations approached software creation and maintenance in the same way that they might with physical, mechanical process such as manufacturing. This meant carving the work into discrete components and then asking people to specialize in those components.
If you picture a factory floor, it becomes easy to picture. One person screws two components together over and over, while another person operates a drill press over and over. When you specialize this way, the entire process gains in efficiency. At least, so it goes with mechanical processes.
With knowledge work, we haven’t realized the same kind of benefit. In retrospect, this makes sense. It makes sense because, unlike mechanical work, knowledge work involves little true repeatability. It continually presents us with problems that differ at least somewhat.
As we’ve come to recognize that fact, we’ve begun to blend concerns together. Scrum teams blur the lines among QA, developers, and business analysts. And DevOps does the same with initial development and production operation of software. If you can, I wholeheartedly encourage you to embrace DevOps and to blend these concerns. Your entire work product will improve.
Unfortunately, not every shop can do this — at least not immediately. Progress goes slowly in these places because of regulatory and compliance concerns or perhaps because change can come slowly in the enterprise. But that shouldn’t stop you from making strides.
Even if development and operations remain separate, they can at least communicate and help each other. Today, I’d like to talk about how developers can write code that makes life easier for ops folks.
Ensure Predictable Performance
When you have a piece of software in front of users, you want it to perform well. If you have a website or offer a SaaS product, you want snappy page loads and quick request servicing. Perhaps you have a mobile app or a desktop product. In that case, you want responsiveness and no instances where the app “hangs.”
Everyone in the organization wants this, and operations presents no exception. But operations has an additional concern that most others don’t necessarily share quite as acutely. They want predictable performance.
If you have responsibility for monitoring and responding to user issues, you can, in a sense, live with sluggishness. “While we realize page load is a bit slow, our engineers know about the problem and have a fix in the works.” Not ideal, but workable.
Now imagine how they respond to an app randomly slowing to a crawl every now and then or to a site intermittently returning some 500 error after running out of memory. For operations folks, explanations and troubleshooting both become difficult.
So help them out. Keep an eye out for deadlock and race conditions and user performance profilers to help you detect memory leaks and other such insidious issues.
Generate Robust Logging
For folks in operations, log files can represent a lifeline. Amid a sea of questionable user claims and anecdotal evidence, logs provide a welcome source of objectivity. The log file does not lie.
Therefore, the more logging you do, the better. It gives them more to work with and they will thank you for it.
But they’ll only thank you for it if the information it contains actually helps. Fill the log files with detailed information, but make sure the information helps. It should provide basics like context, time-stamping, and log level. And, on top of that, you should take care to make the logs parsesable so that operations folks can use automated tools to search and filter.
Put some good thought into how you log in your application. The ops people will thank you for it.
Provide Good Hooks for Alerts and Escalation
Speaking of log files, you can demonstrate empathy for ops team members with mindfulness for how they work. Operations people need ways to structure their workflows, which means notifications of key events and escalation processes.
While they can accomplish some of this with purely external concerns, such as website monitoring, you can aid them in this cause. The log files offer an important means for doing this. If you do everything mentioned in the last section, you have a good start. But you can and should go further.
Ask the operations folks about their workflows and what they need to know. Incorporate their responses into outputs that come from your program. This might mean adding specific log entries that they can key off of. It might also come in the form of error codes returned from utilities, HTTP response codes, exception messages, events, and anything else you can think of. Make sure they have easy ways to inspect and respond to the running code.
Clean up Your Resources
Earlier, I mentioned using tools to keep code performance predictable. You want crisp and predictable performance. In a similar vein, you want to make sure your code cleans up after itself.
If you write code that leaves a file handle open or that opens database connections without closing them, you hand operations a ticking time bomb. They’ll start the thing and then, at some point, hours, days, or even weeks later, it will blow up. Because effect comes so much later than cause, troubleshooting code like this creates serious headaches.
Obviously good software practice dictates that you clean up after yourself. But the operations folks have more than professional pride at stake here.
Cohesive, Modular Code
As the last consideration, I’ll offer a slightly more philosophical suggestion. You want to write code with a high degree of cohesion and a low degree of bad coupling. As a software developer, this has the nice effect of making your code easier to maintain.
But for operations folks, it impacts their life in a slightly different way. Non-cohesive, inappropriate code tends to exhibit weird runtime behaviors. To provide an easier to visualize example, consider the metaphor of taking your car in to have the brakes fixed. Imagine if, when you left, the brakes worked, but the headlights wouldn’t turn on. Now imagine that the shop fixes the headlights, but now the stereo won’t play AM radio stations. After a few incidents like this, you’d probably stop visiting this particular shop.
Highly coupled, non-cohesive code causes your application to behave this way. Fixing one bug causes something to break in an unrelated module. It begins to feel like trying to clean your floor by pushing dirty mop water around.
Now, frustrating as it may seem for you to chase these things down, imagine being on the front lines. Imagine having to explain to users why changing the font of the login button somehow broke checking their funds balance. Don’t subject the operations people to this kind of nonsense.
General Empathy
Earlier in the post, I mentioned having empathy for the operations workers. Everything I’ve said here really falls under that heading, at the broadest level.
You’d have a hard time going wrong by developing and exhibiting empathy for your coworkers. But, as the DevOps movement shows us, operations and development have a uniquely intertwined and interdependent relationship. You all have responsibility for the successful creation, deployment, and operation of the software. Do your part to make their lives easier, and they’ll do their part not to wake you up at 3 AM on a Sunday.Have you been following the casting misadventures of Rodham, the upcoming film that follows Hillary Clinton’s early days as a staffer for the House Judiciary Committee? If so, you’re not the only one. Last week, Hollywood.com asked “Why Doesn’t Anybody Want to Play Hillary Clinton?” It’s a terrific question, although it’s a shame they didn’t bother to answer it. I think I can help.
First of all, here’s the recap. Months ago, word leaked that several Hollywood A-listers were being considered for the role, including Jessica Chastain and Scarlett Johansson. Neither seemed to be interested. Then last week, multiple sources reported that Carey Mulligan was the producers’ top choice for the role. The news was met with a collective shrug from the internet, and Mulligan supposedly has turned down the role.
I’m glad Mulligan bowed out. I’m a fan of her acting, but she’s wrong for the role. She’s far too fragile to play Hillary. But the question remains: why doesn’t anyone want this role? It’s an iconic part in what is said to be a very good script. If the film ends up being even slightly better than okay, it seems a lock for major acting awards or at least nominations. Look at how well Meryl Streep did with the not-so-good The Iron Lady.
But there is another angle to this story. Rodham will be the first instance I can think of when a film about a potential presidential candidate is released before their campaign. Most presidential candidates have not accomplished enough prior to their campaign to warrant a biopic; Hillary is the sole exception. The film has the potential to dramatically impact public opinion of her at a time when her handlers will likely be managing her every appearance and scripting every word she utters.
So why doesn’t anyone want to play Hillary Clinton? Maybe it’s because this movie will piss off the person who might just be the next leader of the free world. From the snippets of the script that have leaked, there is definite potential for damage to her image.
According to accounts from The Daily Beast, she is described early in the script as having an “awful haircut” and wearing a “hideous pair of Coke-bottle glasses.” Her overall look is “the valedictorian of the ‘look-like-shit school of feminism.” While some actresses would surely balk at playing ugly, most understand that playing ugly is a direct line to an Academy Award. See Theron, Charlize for a recent example.
So it’s not the physical ugliness that has got A-listers running away from Rodham. But it might have something to do with her character. The script’s version of Hillary begins with a character who is quite different than the glass-ceiling-breaker we know today. The character is initially emotionally and sexually submissive to her partner, a womanizing law professor named Bill. He flirts and – it is insinuated – fools around with girls behind Hillary’s back. In response to this, she engages in a serious flirtation with a colleague, although it’s not clear if they ever consummate the relationship. Overall, she is depicted as highly sexualized and is given to crude language. In one scene, Hillary tells Bill, “I fuckin’ love you. I mean that. I love you, and I want to fuck you.” She uses the word “motherfucking” quite a few times, as well.
This is all quite obviously going to be a problem for Hillary. If they start filming later this year, Rodham will likely be released in the fall of 2014, just when she is starting to raise money for a 2016 presidential run. It won’t turn off her staunch supporters, but if the film is successful, it could influence public opinion and permanently alter Hillary’s image, which could end up scaring off potential big-money fundraisers. Political consultants spend millions, doing extensive poll testing, to craft the image of their clients. Rodham could undo it all in a heartbeat.
The would-be candidate herself would obviously be non-too-pleased about all this. And if the film incurs Hillary’s wrath, then so will the actress chosen to depict her. Is a good role worth pissing off the next leader of the free world? Maybe it is for an unknown, but definitely not for an already-successful actress. I wouldn’t suggest that President Hillary would ever launch some kind of vengeful campaign of terror against whomever decides to take the role, but why take the chance? Do you really want a Clinton mad at you?
This situation is especially awkward because things are so good between Hollywood and national Democrats right now. Obama fostered an intimate relationship with power players in Hollywood that should pay dividends for future Democrats. Hillary will certainly rely on those connections to maximize her war chest, and if that’s the case, it would be an easy path to vengeance for Hillary. She would only need to call in a few favors with studio execs to make sure that whoever plays her never works in this town again.
It puts the producers in a tough spot. They can tone down the script to portray Hillary in a more positive light, but that would probably make for a less interesting movie. Or they could cast an unknown who is desperate for the spotlight in any form, but that will hurt the grosses. Either way, I’m sure that Hillary’s team is monitoring this situation quite closely. Because let’s face it: this could be the first movie that makes or breaks a presidential election.
AdvertisementsIn the wake of the mass shooting at a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida, people have taken to social media to share their grief and demand for stricter gun control legislation.
However, Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick tweeted something truly shocking on Sunday morning: an image that appeared to imply that the victims deserved the attack.
Long after national news outlets began reporting on the Orlando shooting, Patrick tweeted an image of a Bible quote saying, “Do not be deceived: God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows.”
Twitter
The response on Twitter was one of universal horror and disgust.
@DanPatrick You pervert Christianity in a way that would make Jesus cringe. Where is your compassion? — Chris Sacca (@sacca) June 12, 2016
Texas Lt. Gov. @DanPatrick wants the LGBT community to know that you deserved this. #ChristianLove — JoeMyGod (@JoeMyGod) June 12, 2016
If a man does reap what he sows, the vile @DanPatrick ‘s just deserts are long overdue. You’re not fit to serve Dan. — Joel Burns (@JoelBurns) June 12, 2016
Patrick is a vocal opponent of LGBT rights issues including marriage equality. As of this writing, the front page of his website is a petition titled “Keep boys out of girls’ restrooms,” championing the wave of anti-transgender “bathroom bills” sweeping the country this year.
Three hours after the tweet was posted, a spokesman for the lieutenant governor told Austin reporter Ken Herman that Patrick “approved the Sunday post several days ago,” indicating that it was a scheduled tweet. Another Sunday morning Bible quote was posted half an hour later.
Despite this, the original “man reaps what he sows” tweet stayed online and continued to provoke outrage from mourners until late Sunday morning.
Update 11:28am CT, June 12: This article has been updated to reflect when Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick’s tweet was deleted.Amazing designers and developers release new projects every day, that make us excited, inspired, and often more than a little impressed.
Today we’re continuing our monthly roundup of the best free resources for web designers, and there’s something for everybody, whether you’re a designer, a developer, or a bit of both. We’ve got UI kits, icon packs, mockups, themes, templates, and more tools than you can use in a month. So free up some hard drive space, then browse through these downloads, enjoy!
1450 Free Vector Icons
SmartIcons is a project that’s putting together thousands of useful icons into a smart icon system and giving them away for free.
Flatflow Icons for Sketch
A pretty cool set of icons in a flat style, editable with Sketch. Free for personal and commercial use.
Flat Web Design Icons
An awesome package of icons with a fresh flat design style, containing elements related to web and graphic design.
A3 Poster Frame Mockups
A clean set of mockups for you to test-drive your latest poster design. Make use of cool lighting effects and multiple perspectives.
Creative Poster Template
A good-looking poster design for creative people wanting to promote themselves or their events. It comes with a lot of icons and can be edited in Illustrator, Photoshop and InDesign.
A4 Landscape Brochure Mockup
A neat brochure mockup with multiple lighting effects, smart objects and transparent backgrounds.
Pebble Time Design Kit
The new Pebble Time has created quite a stir, and the design community is no different. Here’s a set of mockups for the upcoming gadget.
Adorable Flat Workspaces
Make cool desks by interchanging the elements on the table, using one of the three different color combinations available.
Pretty Vintage Text Effect
This Photoshop effect will bring up your texts by giving them an impressive 3D appearance, managing to truly highlight their importance.
500 Hipster Vector Designs
A rather hefty package of fully vector designs, all editable in Adobe Illustrator. They will allow you to create posters, badges and many other elements.
Apple Watch UI Kit for Sketch
An awesome set of carefully crafted design elements for the Apple Watch, editable only through Sketch 3.
iCollection UI Kit
Three app designs put together in one so you can take them apart and make your own creations based on them.
Smart UI Kit Lite
A complete set of clean interface elements for Sketch that you can use to set upyour own websites and applications.
Vector UI Components
A set of vector components composed of mostly graphs and charts, but also including other elements for media playback, weather and general use.
iOS 8 GUI Kit
A complete set of design elements for Apple’s latest iOS version. It’s all made up of vector shapes, editable with Illustrator.
Canaro Font
A modern-looking font that resulted from the exploration of geometrical type designs of the early 20th century.
Bough: Hand-Drawn Typeface
A cool hand-made font with an old school feel to it. It comes with alternate glyphs to achieve a different look each time you use it.
Streetwear Free Font
A fancy font with a hand-written and vintage feel that you can use for big designs such as posters, t-shirts or branding.
Moscú Free Font
An impressive typeface inspired by Russian constructivism featuring striking shapes and unexpected glyphs.
Muller Font
Meant to be the ultimate universal font, Muller works perfectly across all sizes and purposes.
Trekking Store PSD Template
A fantastic website template, mostly fit for e-commerce websites that want to feature a familiar, modern look. Editable with Adobe Photoshop.
Profile: Website PSD File
Profile started with a fantastic mountain image and developed into a top-class theme choice for any business website.
The Singhs: E-commerce |
your political alignment, from “Very Conservative” to “Very Liberal”.
Platforms – and traffic-hungry websites – have followed the behavioral lead of Facebook’s users. “News sources” – largely aggregators of video clips and interviews from other sites – that barely exist beyond the sharing economy of Facebook have arisen as major players in the site’s political news sphere.
Why millennials' age demographic is not the defining trait for how they'll vote Read more
Sites such as US Uncut, Occupy Democrats, Addicting Info, Make America Great and The Other 98% may barely have homepages, but their Facebook pages are rich with millions of followers and sky-high engagement – in many cases higher than many mainstream news outlets combined. Occupy Democrats, a far-left page popular with supporters of onetime Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, has 3.8 million likes on its Facebook page. MSNBC, another left-leaning outlet with far wider reach outside of Facebook, has a mere 1.6 million.
Not everyone sees the proliferation of openly ideological outlets that meet the needs of openly ideological friend circles as evidence that millennials are more extreme in their confirmation bias than prior generations.
“I don’t see sufficient evidence to buy the argument about siloing and confirmation bias,” Jeff Jarvis,a professor at the City University of New York’s graduate school of journalism said. “That is a presumption about the platforms – because we in media think we do this better. More important, such presumptions fundamentally insult young people. For too long, old media has assumed that young people don’t care about the world.”
Facebook is, after all, a reflection of its users’ wants and behavior – it’s not Mark Zuckerberg’s fault people seek out like-minded news sources to buttress their political beliefs. Before Facebook’s walled gardens came the cable news wars between left-leaning MSNBC and right-leaning Fox News, and before that, local newspapers that catered to the certain wings of a city’s population. (Think the Washington Post versus the Washington Times.)
“Newspapers, remember, came from the perspective of very few people: one editor, really,” Jarvis said. “Facebook comes with many perspectives and gives many; as Zuckerberg points out, no two people on Earth see the same Facebook.”
The onus, then may be on millennials – and all Facebook users – to proactively seek out news sources outside of their ideological comfort zone.
“Yes, Facebook shows us what our friends like,” Jarvis said. “But if you have smart friends, chances are they will send you to smart things. Further, arguments online show the existence of opposing views, so I don’t buy that young people are unaware of other sides.”
“Journalism’s job is to inform society. If society is ill-informed, it is our failure.”Skrillex will walk into the Grammy Awards a winner. In a pre-telecast ceremony Sunday (February 12), the multiple nominee nabbed Grammy gold for Best Dance/Electronica Album (Scary Monsters and Nice Sprites), Best Dance Recording ("Scary Monsters and Nice
Sprites") and Best Remixed Recording, Non-Classical ("Cinema"). It marks a big achievement for the rising EDM DJ/producer — and an even bigger achievement for the genre, which has shot through to the mainstream in the past year.
Before he took home the prizes, Skrill chatted with MTV News on our live-stream red carpet, opening up about his current status as EDM's "It" boy.
"You know what? I don't really think about that too much because I'm with these guys and I'm doing shows and you don't have much time to reflect when stuff [is] happening so quickly. But at the same time, it's a good thing because it's more, I'm really focused on my label and my music and touring and making great production," he explained. "We all live in the moment.
"I think EDM, like what you were saying before, what I was just thinking about, it's more of really a platform than a genre because it pulls and inspires and it resonates through all types of genres and all types of energy," he told MTV News' James Montgomery.
Skrillex is up for four more awards on Sunday, including Best New Artist. In addition to recognizing EDM throughout multiple categories, the show will also include a tribute to the musical movement.
"As DJs, we've been pushing new and interesting music for a long time and now people are paying attention. It's a sound and an energy," said A-Trak, Skrillex's fellow producer and a Grammy nominee.
"It is unusual," Diplo added on the red carpet, in a discussion of the current spotlight put on EDM. "I mean, I think we've all been a part of the music scene for a while. But it's kind of cool were getting the recognition."
Stick with MTV News all for all the Grammy red-carpet fashion, Grammy winners and Grammy news until the hangover wears off!By Andrei LankovThe last decade has seen the quiet collapse of Stalinism in North Korea. Yes, while the country's political structure still remains largely Stalinist, its economy has changed profoundly and perhaps irreversibly. This was not a result of some planned reforms: On the contrary, North Korea's 'economic Stalinism' died a natural death, being eaten away by the grass-roots capitalism which began to grow around 1990. But can we have a capitalist economy without capitalists? In the North, this process necessarily gave rise to a new class of black market capitalists.Of course, the North Korea of the 1960s or 1980s also had its rich and poor. But the affluent people were affluent either because the party-state bureaucracy chose them (officials and people who were allowed to work overseas and were paid in hard currency) or at least allowed them to be affluent (this was the case with the repatriates from Japan who received hard currency remittances). But this is not the case any more. People get rich, well, because they can get rich…The private market trade began to grow explosively around 1990, and this was when North Korean 'black capitalism' was conceived. In order to succeed, one had to have advantages since the competition was tough. In the late 1990s, the North Koreans used to say: ``There are only three types of people in [North] Korea: those who starve, those who beg, and those who trade''.Those successful early entrepreneurs usually came from a background that gave them advantages over others. Most of them were officials or managers of state-run enterprises who had manifold, if not strictly legal, ways to make an extra won.For example, in the 1990s a person who could command a truck easily made a fortune by moving merchandise around the country and using the large differences in prices between the regions. Managers of state enterprises often sold the production of their factories on the market.This was technically stealing, but in the increasingly corrupt and disorganized society there were fairly good chances of not getting caught. The retail personnel at all levels channeled the goods through the 'back doors' of their shops, away from the disintegrating public distribution system.The military and security personnel also had their advantages, since for decades they operated in what can be described as a'state-within-a-state' beyond even the most nominal control of outsiders.Finally, the 'hard currency earning' officials made a lot of money: They had been running quasi-market operations from the 1970s and had both the necessary expertise and resources. After 1990, they began to use these resources for their own ends.Apart from officials, generals, and police officers, there were other groups of people who found themselves in advantageous positions in those early stages of the North Korean capitalist revival. These included the repatriates from Japan, whose relatives back in the 'capitalist hell' have always been encouraged to transfer money to the North. The repatriates had money, and some of them retained a vestigial experience of operating in a market economy. Other groups included local Chinese, some of whom were Chinese citizens and Koreans who had close relatives in China. For decades they had been engaged in small-time cross-border commerce, and after the collapse of state control, they greatly increased the scale of their operations.Even some humbler professions found themselves in a relatively better position. Take, say, drivers who could earn money by moving passengers and merchandise _ especially after the quiet breakdown of the travel restriction system around 1997. They also augmented this money by selling and buying goods themselves. This same activity became a major source of income for train conductors. Of course, they had to share some of their profits with their supervisors.Fortunes were made in trade, but not in manufacturing, which remained under the control of the state. Money lending also provided good profits. In the late 1990s, private lenders charged their borrowers with a monthly interest of some 30 to 40 percent. The associated risks were high, too: These lenders had virtually no protection against the state, criminals or above all, bad debtors. They had to choose their clients carefully, frequently choosing prominent officials who were engaged in private commerce.Does the future of North Korea belong to these new capitalists? I doubt it, frankly. If the North continues to exist as a separate entity, these market adventurers will eventually have to compete with the heavyweights from the state oligarchy, who will sooner or later join the capitalist game (some of them probably have done so already). If the entire state collapses, to be reunited with the South, most of them will be pushed to the margins by the capital flowing from Seoul. But we'll have to wait for a while to learn those new stories.T.S. Eliot’s poem “The Waste Land” opens with the classic line “April is the cruellest month.” Loons fans have the poem memorized. A lousy opening four games had United playing from behind in the league standings the whole spring, and after a three-game winning streak put the team back in contention, United put more than a few points back in the bucket by giving up goals after the 75th minute on four consecutive occasions to close the season. The club finished the opening set with a painful loss in the final game of its most celebrated player, and in the confounding Ft. Lauderdale Strikers the Loons were shown fear in a handful of dust.
The Loons need better for the fall. It is difficult to write a fall preview that extends beyond simply referring to my spring review and saying “don’t do that.” So let me instead dive more deeply into tactics, the big stories, and promise you that if you have not been to Minnesota before, trust me, it’s beautiful in the fall.
What lineup will United likely field this fall?
Great question. United toyed early in the spring with several different assemblages of strikers and midfielders before settling on what probably is considered to be coach Manny Lagos’ favorite XI. They lined up roughly as so:
However, with Miguel Ibarra gone, the goalkeeper position in flux, and an inability to close out games, some re-evaluation will be necessary. How do you replace Ibarra, a talent so rare he was able to reach U.S. soccer’s biggest stage while toiling in the second division? The answer is simple: you don’t. Replace your tactics, not your player.
To answer the challenges of missing Ibarra, utilizing depth on the bench, and United’s penchant for letting games slip away, I propose the following lineup:
Let us work from the back and move forward, starting with N’Djock in goal. N’Djock is not the incredible goalkeeping presence it was hoped he would be. However, the major mental mistakes of the Cameroonian that appeared early in the season have been replaced by smaller issues such as communication with the back line. N’Djock has tempered his style, played more conservatively, and made some impressive saves along the way. Couple this with a mediocre showing by Mitch Hildebrandt, and there is no reason N’Djock shouldn’t be manning the pipes. He needs, however, to become a commander of his back line, confident and clear in communication, to excel in the spot.
One of the more important changes I would like to see is to have captain Aaron Pitchkolan playing in a more defensive position, as a true defensive midfielder shielding his back line. There are a few reasons for this. First, United’s outside backs, Kevin Venagas and Justin Davis, have a tendency to get up the field and support the offense (Venegas more than Davis). This limits the manpower on defense, especially if Pitchkolan is also pushing forward as he often did in the spring. All this forward movement leaves the team susceptible to counters or, at the very least, leaves them gassed after 70 minutes if they need to fall back to a defensive position quickly throughout the game. Add to that the United midfield’s lack of success with a high press and play defense in a forward position, and one can see how the team can be exploited on a lucky bounce or a quick counter.
Holding Pitchkolan back in a defensive position keeps things grounded on defense and allows the center backs to play more widely in the case of a fullback making an overlapping run. It also ensures we have a player through whom distribution can come, and Pitchkolan would become the pace setter for buildup. For what it’s worth, it is also a role Pitchkolan excels at.
This lineup also features Greg Jordan in a starting role, assuming he returns from a torn meniscus healthy and ready to contribute. Jordan has the ability to boss the midfield and win back the ball in an attacking position. He is an imperfect player, and clinical delivery would likely be a weakness. However, the connection between Daniel Mendes or Ibson and their attackers has been similarly middling this year, so I believe Jordan as a regular starter is a net gain.
The final significant change is the addition of Ramirez at the top of the midfield. Make no mistake, Ramirez is an out and out striker. But with Pablo Campos earning a respectable goal haul and Ramirez simply never gelling with the new midfield, Ramirez has limited opportunities to make an impact. That said, how can Ramirez gel with a midfield that is new, ever-changing, and without the proper minutes to do so? Positioning Ramirez in an attacking midfield role, and sending him forward on incisive runs as Pablo plays the target man and controls distribution from the top, could enable both Ramirez and Campos to complement each other’s styles while staying at home in their own strength. Campos is not going to make those darting runs as successfully, but an easy layoff to a running Ramirez or the choice to turn and shoot would have opposing goalkeepers quaking.
Finally, Alhassan has been United’s most consistent midfielder outside of Ibarra. He is not United’s best midfielder, but when he is on the field his distribution is consistent, his work rate is high, and his experience playing top flight soccer shows. It may be negative to return to the same well of stating “why not Alhassan if Mendes or Ibson aren’t working”. I am a negative person.
In closing, I want to clarify that I do not think Mendes or Ibson are pathetic by any means. Ibson spent significant time with an injury in the spring, and neither has looked awful. But United are in a position to want better than “not awful,” and Jordan and Alhassan have had a habit of making their presences known when they are on the field. I would like to see Lagos start with this formation, and if it isn’t working, he has two great midfielders on the bench.
United Will Succeed If:
My lineup recommendations belie an important point: United is not that bad. That the team gave back four consecutive leads in the dying embers suggests that the team is good enough to have put itself in winning positions, consistently. United will succeed simply if they can close games. I believe this will take more timely substitutions (fresh legs at 60′, not 75′), more emphasis on conditioning in training, and the choice to fall back into more defensive tactics at the close of games rather than applying greater pressure to put games away. Typically I would favor the “nail in the coffin” method, but United just haven’t found that hammer this year.
What does success look like? A Fall Season title, and nothing less.
United Will Fail If:
There is no replacing Miguel Ibarra. If United plays with tactics unchanged, they will be the worse for it. I want to see the team move speed to the middle of the field, spend more time with the ball at their feet rather than sending inswingers from the wings, and move Aaron Pitchkolan to a more defensive position to create less of a liability when fullbacks make overlapping runs. Most of my suggestions for the formation, and these suggestions as well, are about controlling play and not letting one poor moment be the teams ruin. In short, if they continue to apply an identical strategy in the fall without the attacking winger that made much of their success possible, it will not be better than the mediocre result achieved when that player was around.
Prediction For The Fall:
Second place finish. This is a good team, and second place is a good finish. The Cosmos are the league’s best team, but also benefited from a fair share of luck and some unsustainable rates of clutch moments. The Rowdies are talented but inconsistent. The Railhawks punched well above their weight with their spring finish. The road is paved for a strong Loons finish. But they, too, are an imperfect team, lacking the killer instinct to emerge as a sure contender. I look for the Cosmos to close the deal on the Fall, the shield, and to be on the front foot in the Championship. United need to focus on making the playoffs and hoping for two strong performances when they get there.A California man was arrested after beating a grocery store employee with a baguette.
SF Gate reports that Adam Kowarsh allegedly entered the Safeway in Fremont just before midnight Sunday “yelling and screaming.”
MCDONALD’S CUSTOMER JUMPS OVER COUNTER, PUNCHES EMPLOYEE IN THE FACE OVER FRY ORDER
According to a spokeswoman for the Fremont Police Department, Kowarsh stormed to the back of the store and started yelling at employees who told him he needed to pay for his items and leave.
After one employee attempted to calm him down, Kowarsh grabbed a loaf of French bread and began bludgeoning him in the face. While the victim did not obtain any injuries, he will be pressing charges.
FOLLOW US ON FACEBOOK FOR MORE FOX LIFESTYLE NEWS
When officers arrived on the scene, he refused to exit the store, according to the police report. They then arrested the suspect for battery and a probation violation.Bigelow Aerospace and United Launch Alliance announced on Tuesday that they’ll be sending their own inflatable habitat to lunar orbit by 2022. They’re calling it the Lunar Depot. Part laboratory, part hotel, the habitat will serve as a destination for anyone planning to visit the Moon.
Suddenly the Moon has become all the rage for anyone planning trips to space. Of course, SpaceX noted that their BFR (Big Freaking Rocket) should be capable of sending the BFR spaceship to land on the Moon and return. NASA was instructed by the Trump Administration to set a course for the Moon, before heading off to Mars. The Europeans are considering a lunar village on the surface of the Moon, and the logo for the Chinese Chang’e lunar exploration program has feet on the Moon.
According to a joint press release from ULA and Bigelow, the launch would send the B330 Expandable Module atop a ULA Vulcan 562 rocket, followed by more Vulcan launches to boost the habitat from low Earth orbit to its final lunar destination.
Bigelow Aerospace has been working on inflatable habitats for years now, sending up their own standalone Genesis 1 spacecraft in 2006. This proved that an inflatable habitat would function in space. It was supposed to last at least 5 years, but it’s still going. This was followed up by Genesis 2 in 2007, which is also still continuing to orbit the Earth. The Bigelow Expandable Activity Module (BEAM) was attached to the International Space Station in April 2016, carried to space aboard a SpaceX Dragon Capsule. Since then, NASA has been testing out its functionality as a module on the station, as well as its strength, radiation protection and how it responds to temperature changes. Earlier this month, NASA announced that the BEAM module was working well, and they’d keep it on the station at least through 2020, reviewing it each year.
The Bigelow B330 is a much larger inflatable habitat. It would be 14 meters long, and 6.7 metres in diameter when fully inflated. Its launch mass will be 20,000 kg, requiring a heavy lift vehicle to carry it out into a lunar orbit. It would have an internal volume of 330 cubic meters. For comparison, the International Space Station has an internal volume of 915 cubic meters, so, about a third of ISS. Pretty impressive for a single launch. Bigelow has yet to actually construct a B330, but they have some in construction, and previously committed to having two ready for 2020.
The Vulcan rocket is the new heavy lift vehicle in development by United Launch Alliance, the collaboration between Boeing and Lockheed Martin. Designed to compete with the newer launch companies, like SpaceX and Blue Origins, the Vulcan will have reusable rocket engines. After the Vulcan lifts off, the engines will detach and parachute back to Earth, caught by helicopters. According to ULA, the engines account for 70% of the cost of a rocket, so by catching them like this, they’ll be able to reuse the engines without the additional weight of fuel, steering and landing systems.
And just like Bigelow, ULA is planning to have their first Vulcan rocket ready for test launch by 2019.
If all goes as planned, a Vulcan 562 rocket would carry the B330 into a low Earth orbit, where it would be inflated, outfitted with equipment and fully tested over the course of a year. Every few months they would send additional supplies and change out the astronaut crew.
Once everything was in working order, another Vulcan rocket would launch carrying an Advanced Cryogenic Evolved Stage (ACES) into low Earth orbit. A second Vulcan ACES would be launched to dock with the first and transfer propellant. The fully fueled ACES would dock with the outpost, and push it out to its final low lunar orbit.
In its final location at the Moon, the Lunar Depot would serve as a destination for NASA’s Orion capsule which is capable of supporting astronauts in deep space. Or it could be visited by SpaceX BFR spaceships, transferring tourists for a space holiday.
The announcement of the Lunar Depot comes right at the point when the Trump Administration is directing its space exploration efforts at the Moon, so the timing is good. Of course, NASA is still working on its Deep Space Gateway, recently announcing that Russia would be contributing modules to the station.
For nearly 50 years human beings haven’t left low Earth orbit, let alone go back to the Moon. Suddenly there are multiple plans to send humans back to various orbiting colonies and ground missions. We’ll have to see how this all shakes out.
Source: ULA/Bigelow Press ReleaseA new report, the most extensive on illicit weapon flows in the Sahel in several years, confirms arms looted from huge Libyan stockpiles after the ouster of Colonel Moammar Gadhafi have fueled Islamist insurgencies in North and West Africa since 2012.
But jihadists and Tuareg fighters have diversified their supply chains and have added new sources as the outflow from Libya has decreased, due partly to interdiction efforts and a rising internal demand in Libya for weapons as the conflict there looks set to escalate.
Jihadists and other Islamist insurgents have plundered arms from inadequately secured national stockpiles in Mali, the Central African Republic, and Ivory Coast, according to a report by Conflict Armament Research, a London-based independent organization that tracks illicit weapon movements.
And jihadists in the Sahel are also using assault rifles that have their origin in Syria and Iraq, thanks to a supply chain from the Islamic State terror group, which likely seized the weapons from Syrian and Iraqi government forces as its militants advanced in 2014 and the early part of last year.
CAR’s report is alarming European counter-terrorism officials as much as their counterparts in the Sahel and West Africa. The study was funded by several EU governments, which fear weapons, including shoulder-launched surface-to-air missiles, could be smuggled into Europe along migrant routes and used for terror attacks in European capitals.
Weapon smuggling
In June, the U.N. Security Council authorized the interdiction of ships on international waters suspected of smuggling weapons into and out of Libya, hoping that would make it harder for jihadists and other insurgents to secure arms and to reduce the firepower of Islamists in the Sahel.
The United States and its European allies have been trying to stem the unregulated trade in Libyan arms, which have flooded the region since Gadhafi’s fall, an effort aimed at assisting hard-pressed governments in the Sahel as well as to reduce the chances of weapons being smuggled into Europe.
The report says various factions have access to a terrifying range of weapons including shoulder-launched guided missiles, anti-tank landmines and rocket propelled grenades.
The picture painted by CAR provides a glimpse of more complicated arms flows that have shifted and evolved during the past two years.
While high-seas interdiction by the European maritime force SOPHIA, whose main mission is to pursue smugglers ferrying refugees and migrants, may help to disrupt arms-smuggling into Europe, officials acknowledge it has no impact on weapon flows across the Sahel.
“Arms trafficking is highly organized and jihadists already have large stockpiles,” says a French counter-terrorism official told VOA. “We are going to start seeing those arms in Europe,” he fears.
Since 2011, research and media narratives about illicit weapon proliferation in the western Sahel have focused primarily on weapons originating in Libyan stockpiles or trafficked by Libyan armed groups,” notes CAR’s report. Such flows remain significant, but “they are diminishing and, in some cases, being reversed,” the researchers add.
“While these changes are partly due to border security enforcement and convoy interdiction by national and international forces, they also reflect rising internal Libyan demand, particularly in the southern areas of the country,” according to the study Investigating Cross-Border Weapon Transfers in the Sahel.
Complicated trafficking pattern
Armed violence in the Sahel region is being fueled now by weapon and ammunition flows originating outside Libya.
CAR found evidence of Sudanese small arms ammunition in circulation in southern Libya and Mali; recently manufactured Russian and Chinese ammunition in circulation in southern Libya; newer Chinese Type 56-1 assault rifles similar in type and year of production to rifles captured by Kurdish forces from IS militants in Kobane, Syria; and Iraqi-manufactured and imported assault rifles.
CAR researchers suspect that Islamist groups responsible for terror attacks attacks in the Sahel, including on international hotels, “have a common source of supply or constitute a single cell, and point tentatively to possible links or commonalities of supply sources between Islamist fighters in West Africa and those operating in Iraq and Syria.”
One of the most surprising discoveries of the study is the large number of arms originating from Côte d’Ivoire. “The prevalence of Ivorian-origin small arms across the region is a particularly unexpected finding of this investigation,” the researchers say.
Weapons plundered by Islamist militants and separatists from substantial stockpiles of the Malian security forces since 2012 are also being trafficked across the region.Extremely high levels of human-made pollutants have been found in the deepest ocean trenches on Earth, accumulating in marine life at levels comparable to those in the rivers draining some of the most intensely industrial areas of China and Japan.
Tiny crustaceans living at depths of up to 10,000m were found to contain high levels of chemicals banned in the 1970s, finds a study published in the journal Nature Ecology and Evolution. These chemicals, known as persistent organic pollutants (POPs), include PCBs, or polychlorinated biphenyls, used in dielectric fluids, and PBDEs, or polybrominated diphenyl ethers, used in flame retardants.
Incredible depths
Deep sea landers with baited traps were used to catch amphipod crustaceans on a range of deep-sea expeditions over the years. They were collected by landers sent down the Mariana Trench near Japan, which stretches to about 11,000m at its deepest measured point, and the Kermadec Trench near New Zealand, which is just over 10,000m at its deepest.
The researchers measured several species of crustaceans at depths of between 7,200 and 10,000m in Kermadec, and between 7,800 and 10,200m in the Mariana Trench. All of the crustaceans had PCBs and PBDEs concentrated in their fat layers, but there was no particular relationship between depth of the crustacean and the concentration of the POPs.
The POPs found in the crustaceans are endocrine disruptors, and have been shown to damage several species' reproductive health. Over multiple generations the expected effect of POPs are for populations to decrease.
"We're finding pollutants in an ecosystem we don't understand," study author Alan Jamieson of Newcastle University told IBTimes UK. "But the point is that they're there, they're detectable in everything we looked at, and they're at extremely high levels."
Crustaceans you really wouldn't want to eat
Making direct comparisons between shallow-water crustaceans, on which scientists have 100 years of data, and their largely mysterious deep-sea counterparts is difficult, he added, as so little is known about their biology.
As a ballpark figure, the scientists calculated that the deep-sea crustaceans in the Mariana Trench had PCB levels more than 50 times higher than those found in crabs from paddy fields by the Liaohe, one of the most polluted rivers in China. The Suruga Bay by Japan was the only site in the north-west Pacific with PCBs at comparable levels.
"A human being has done something on land to release these – they don't occur in natural world," said Jamieson.
One-way travel
However, it's not known how exactly these chemicals get down to such remote parts of the world, far from human habitation. The researchers suggest that plastics in the ocean act to concentrate the POPs. These chemicals are more attracted to plastics than to water, and so the plastics act to mop up the POPs before disintegrating or being eaten by marine life such as whales and fish. When the animals die, their bodies sink to the sea floor.
"Once in deep sea, there's nowhere else for it to go. When it goes into a trench and gets funnelled down into bottom, you can only add more to it, you can't take any way.
"Shape of the trench acts like a funnel and collects all the material. Normally that's good for the ecosystem, as it collects lots of food. But the problem is we've contaminated the food supply."
PCBs and PBDEs were the only two pollutants the researchers looked for in the deep trenches, but there were other signs of pollutants of human origin, such as higher than expected levels of mercury.
Ecotoxicologist Katherine Dafforn of the University of New South Wales in Australia said in an accompanying article in the journal that the results were disturbing.
"Concentrations of PCBs and PCBEs in these tiny crustaceans were higher than baseline levels and 50 times greater than in crabs from a highly polluted river system in China," wrote ecotoxicologist Katherine Dafforn of the University of New South Wales in Australia in an accompanying article in the journal.
"This is significant since the hadal trenches are many miles away from any industrial source and suggests that the delivery of these pollutants occurs over long distances despite regulation since the 1970s."A surprising job offer rolled in for former FBI Director James Comey on Tuesday afternoon, mere hours after President Donald Trump fired him without warning.
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange said he would be happy to consider Comey for a position at the organization’s Washington D.C. office, where the now unemployed bureau chief might continue his mission to “properly investigate the U.S. government.” (RELATED: Donald Trump Has Fired FBI Director James Comey)
WikiLeaks, a longtime thorn in the side of U.S. intelligence agencies for publishing leaked classified information, also offered to “help” Comey or any other FBI officials get to the bottom of why the former director was let go:
Assange’s offer is a surprising turnabout for Wikileaks, which claimed in March that Comey misled Congress about the organization’s release of Democratic Party emails during the 2016 presidential campaign.
Comey is no fan of WikiLeaks. He dismissed the group as “intelligence porn” that publishes sensitive information about sources and methods without regard to who the disclosure might affect. (RELATED: Comey: WikiLeaks Is ‘Intelligence Porn’ [VIDEO])
Despite the bitter history, the potential of working with a former government official with knowledge of America’s most sensitive secrets was apparently too much for Assange to resist. He predicted a trove of leaks about the Trump administration from friends and foes alike and even suggested that Comey could replace the man who fired him.
Whatever his plans for future employment, Comey is unlikely to take Assange up on his ironic offer given the intelligence community’s designation of WikiLeaks as a hostile intelligence service. CIA Director Mike Pompeo on April 13 declared Wikileaks a tool of U.S. adversaries bent on harming the American government.
“It’s time to call out WikiLeaks for what it really is: a non-state hostile intelligence service often abetted by state actors like Russia,” he told an audience at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
Former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper concurred with that assessment during his Senate testimony Monday. Clapper told Republican Sen. Ben Sasse of Nebraska that WikiLeaks is “absolutely” a “non-nation state intelligence service” and a known propaganda platform for Russia.
Follow Will on Twitter
Send tips to will@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.
Content created by The Daily Caller News Foundation is available without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a large audience. For licensing opportunities of our original content, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.African-Americans live in a world where the police can murder us and get away with it. Walter Scott proved that, for anybody who still had a lingering doubt. There is no justice for black people. And yet violently revolting against the system will get us nowhere.
Maybe it’s time for black people to use the same tool white people have been using to defy a system they do not consent to: jury nullification. White juries regularly refuse to convict or indict cops for murder. White juries refuse to convict vigilantes who murder black children. White juries refuse to convict other white people for property crimes. White juries act like the law is just a guideline and their personal morality (or lack thereof) should be controlling.
Maybe it’s time minorities got in the game?
Black people lucky enough to get on a jury could use that power to acquit any person charged with a crime against white men and white male institutions. It’s not about the race of the defendant, but if the alleged victim is a white guy, or his bank, or his position, or his authority: we could acquit. Assault? Acquit. Burglary? Acquit. Insider trading? Acquit.
Murder? … what the hell do you think is happening to black people out here? What the hell do you think we’re complaining about when your cops shoot us or choke us? Acquit. Don’t throw “murder” at me like it’s some kind of moral fault line where the risk of letting one go is too great. Black people ARE BEING MURDERED, and the system isn’t doing a damn thing to hold their killers accountable. Sorry I’m not sorry if this protest idea would put the shoe on the other foot for a change.
The most well-known recent proponent of black jury nullification is probably Georgetown University Law Professor Paul Butler. He’s written about jury nullification for defendants in drug cases. From an op-ed he wrote in the Washington Post:
Like a lot of African Americans, I am sick and tired of being sick and tired. I encourage any juror who thinks the police or prosecutors have crossed the line in a particular case to refuse to convict… Confronting the racial crisis in criminal justice, jury nullification gives jurors a special power to send the message that black lives matter. If they think that the police are treating African Americans unfairly — by engaging in racial profiling or using excessive force — they don’t have to convict, even if think the defendant is guilty.
You’ll note that Butler’s focus is with the defendant. If you think the defendant is being charged under an unfair law, or a law that is being applied unfairly, you should nullify that law by acquitting the defendant.
My issue is with the purported “victim.” Minorities are victims of police brutality in this country, and there aren’t enough white citizens willing to do a damn thing. I no longer see why minorities should be expected to help white victims achieve the justice they so regularly deny people of color.
There’s precedent for my view. Butler also notes that there is a richer and higher moral use of jury nullification. Here’s an interview he did with NPR:
It has a proud tradition, you know, slavery used to be legal. Jurors in the north, when slaves would be prosecuted for escaping or people who helped slaves escape were prosecuted — Northern jurors would say not guilty, even though technically those folks were guilty.
This is something that intellectual black people with legal training talk about. Honestly, what the hell do you expect us to do? How do white people think we’re supposed to react when we watch cops murder us and get away with it, over and over and over again? We’re just supposed to take it? Wait for America to produce nicer white people? The options for black America in the face of this state-sponsored injustice seem pretty limited.
Jury nullification at least has the benefit of being non-violent. Understand, when cops — when the armed forces of the state — can shoot me for no reason and get away with it, I am no longer living in a civil society. I’m living in the state of nature, and I have a natural right to defend myself by any means necessary. But I’m not here advocating a violent response to systematic injustice (because we’d lose). Violence has a tendency to be indiscriminate, anyway. Instead, jury nullification is more of a surgical strike on an illegitimate justice system that has failed us. And it can be accomplished without the protection of the Second Amendment (which is denied to black people anyway).
And white allies can join in too, if they feel so compelled. As we’ve learned, it only takes one person out of 12 to neuter the justice system. One person out of 12 who recognizes that the system itself is on trial, every trial, and it is guilty. White people have rendered |
around the world.
The building will adorn the colors of the country’s flag both Friday and Saturday nights, and Filipino followers of its Twitter feed couldn’t be happier.
‘I love this. Of course, made me cry. Beautiful!’ Tweeted @chenoite.
‘Maraming Salamat!I can see the lights ffrom Woodside,Queens! Cant help but shed tears for my countrymen,’ wrote one follower.
‘Thank you for the love, NYC!!!’ another follower replied.
Starving, without water: A large crowd gathers Saturday underneath a relief helicopter hovering over the small town of Salcedo, on hard-hit Samar Island
Fighting for their lives: The desperation of villagers in Salcedo fighting over relief kits is heart-wrenching
Decimated: A US Navy Sea Hawk helicopter flies over destroyed houses in the super typhoon devastated town of Mercedes, also on Samar Island
A quick glance at the lighting schedule posted to the tower's website shows it lighting in pink for breast cancer awareness, in all green for City Harvest and Earth Day and in all blue for World Autism Awareness Day.
The high-rise lights up in different colors each day to commemorate everything from sports teams to charities and other events.
Dozens of countries and companies have pitched in to the relief effort, but officials have pleaded for even more.
‘In a situation like this, nothing is fast enough,’ an official said during a press conference from the decimated city of Tacloban.
‘The need is massive, the need is immediate, and you can't reach everyone.’
Some estimates place the number of displaced over 600,000 and the injured over 12,000. Thousands more are missing and presumed dead.
They need more than just food and water: Typhoon Haiyan survivors stand on line Saturday in Tacloban to buy fuel
The smell of rotting flesh fills the air: A Filipino man covers his nose from the stench a dead body found in Tacloban
There's nothing left: A military aircraft flies over the obliterated village of Leyte Island, near Tacloban
Tales abound of tragedies, including one woman shown on CNN who gave birth just weeks before the storm only to have it take her husband from her as the storm surge raged through Tacloban.
CNN has reported seeing cadaver bags being washed and reused, as well as people surviving the storm only die of a terrible infection in the aftermath. Bodies are being buried in mass graves.
A sailor in the Philippine Navy who was helping clear bodies and debris from the city’s streets found his own mother slumped against the wall of a damaged building, according to CNN.
Getting out of Dodge: Displaced Filipino and other international personnel prepare for takeoff inside a US Navy C-17 bound for Manila
They used to play on these streets: Ships have washed ashore and sit among the rubble of Tacloban homes leveled by the powerful storm
Most survivors who stayed behind even as evacuation orders were given are no being flown out of Tacloban, which more resembles an apocalyptic movie scene than the bustling port city of more than 200,000 people it once was.
At its height, Haiyan battered the island nation with winds upwards of 200MPH, 30-foot storm surges and relentless rains.Once again, I have returned to talk about my wishes and predictions from our known upcoming Vanguard stuff. Also, once again, I would’ve gotten it done sooner but well…let’s just say I’ve been playing too much Injustice lately. But anyway, football season may be starting in a week, but every season is Gallows Ball season when you play Spike Brothers; and today, I will be discussing what I want/expect from this coming set.
My background is Spike Brothers is actually a lot higher than most clans, as it started mostly with me getting my butt handed to by Bloody End. After a while and the Tech Booster, I got into Rising Miracle, and now I wield Crazy Eights to full effect (and also play Bad End Frenzy on the side). So this time, I can go a lot more in-depth with my feelings about this clan.
Before I get into any of the usual stuff, I gotta start off with something a little different this time, given the state of Spike Brothers right now. Obviously, their situation is actually really good, as they have a powerful higher tier (maybe not tier 1 but still high) deck now, but its efficiency is greatly enhanced by one card to a point where if it was gone; the deck’s consistency would plummet.
The card I’m talking about of course…is our boy Mecha Trainer.
The Starter Situation; Mecha Trainer’s Fate
(A Mini-Article, Article-ception)
It’s basically a tradition at this point, and still a safe prediction at this point: Every time Spike Brothers gets a decent set of support, Mecha Trainer is put on the watch list of cards that can potentially get restricted. Of course, he never does. Will he be put on the watch list this time around? Likely. Will they actually do something about it this time around? That’s where it gets interesting to me.
Mecha Trainer has always been a very powerful card, matched only by Lizard Soldier, Conroe in terms of versatility as a starter. For the longest while, Conroe was restricted from being a starter due to him being too efficient for the meta. Recently though, he was freed and is allowed to be a starter.
What makes it so different than Mecha Trainer that he hasn’t been restricted and he isn’t? Well, it’s all about the deck itself and not so much about the starter. Conroe was restricted at the height of Nouvelle Vague being the main man of the meta, and Conroe was used to help ride efficiency. Now that the meta has made this drastic a change, freeing Conroe was a test to see if he is as bad now, and honestly…he’s really not as bad now. But once again, what makes Mecha Trainer so different? The deck itself.
Back after the release of G-BT09, Mecha Trainer was used very similarly to Conroe is now. He was used to search out a toolbox of Grade 1’s depending on situation, but any Grade 1 was basically up for grabs. Perfect Guards for defense, Acrobats so you could safely have a Rising Nova, or Frog Raider or Airforce Eliza to set up for combo turns. Honestly, that’s where I felt Mecha Trainer felt the best; used to help further your combo in a healthy manner. Hell, the Supernova build was my favorite Spikes variant. All was well….then the Fighter’s Collection dropped.
At first, I saw an actual quality g-guard with a heal to back him up, and a ridiculously powerful Stride option to close games out. I felt it was a good way to help me use my other stride options better; and it was. Miracle Ace felt stronger, Dirty Picaro net me an extra card in battle sooner, etc. I thought the idea to get Heal Triggers from Mecha was a good option, but it became apparent that it would slowly become the only option. Not only that, running more Mecha Trainers for that sole purpose started becoming a thing too. Of course, I run 3 Mecha Trainers right now (I refuse to add another right now), as it’s still powerful and very consistent but, this is where it’s getting to dangerous territory.
Being able to basically skip to Generation Break 8 by First-Second stride basically overrides any potential strides that come out, as they basically become that stride you use if you mess up somehow. Also, any new G-Guardian will only get 1 use, as the other one is needed for to flip (and massive shield). Obviously, they aren’t going to restrict heal triggers, because that would be messed up. But, there is still Mecha Trainer, as he basically makes this as efficient and scary as it is. Only reason Conroe isn’t likely to be on the chopping block next to it is because their GB8 sucks in comparison. Also, Conroe is used a lot more healthily compared at 1 compared to Mecha Trainer at 3-4, only searching heal triggers.
This is why for the first time, Mecha Trainer actually has fear of some sort of restriction.
Right now, there is one major question, hypothetically, if Mecha Trainer did take a hit; What the *** do you start with now? If Conroe was to take a hit, Kagero still has decent starter options these days. Dragon Knight, Sadegh (for Hand Trap), Lizard Hero, Undeux (for Overlords), Wyvernkid, Deidda (for Blademaster), Kagero has options for starters. Spike Brothers…doesn’t. They have starters they tried to push, but none of them have been that great. Mecha Coach, their last starter, is pretty much garbage. And you wonder why Spike Brothers players only run Mecha Trainer as a starter, even before Crazy Eights…it’s because it’s all they have.
The obvious fix is to drop a starter that actually has some sort of use in the deck. Not dangerously versatile to the point of Mecha Trainer, but not utter trash tier like Mecha Coach. Mecha Analyzer was close, but didn’t quite hit the mark to be worthy of starter level. I honestly would love to see a Cat Knight in High Boots-esque starter in Spikes with Charge that not only safely sets you up when you ride, but also can be justified main deck as you soul charge from hand. But that’s just my opinion of course.
Realistically, I don’t think Mecha Trainer would get hit, at least not right away, and not super hard. Honestly feel like an Odysseus level hit would be fine, but still allow him as a starter and keep some of the consistency. I honestly just want whatever cards to come this set to have a chance to shine and not be overshadowed by Crazy Eights. Not restricting him too hard gives them the opportunity to reissue him, if it comes to that. Speaking of which, and now back to the real article….
Reprints/Reissues
Mecha Trainer, if not hit, can definitely see potential reissue here. Grade 0 reissues are not uncommon, and he is definitely a prime candidate. Also…what Spike’s player doesn’t want a RRR alternate art Mecha Trainer to use? Exactly. Plus, he only has one print as opposed to Conroe’s additional reprint in the Kagero Extra Booster.
As for other reissues, Rising Nova is a high priority target given its rarity and importance, so he is likely possible. Liar Lips is likely too considering crits have been reissued too. Outside of the Rising build, depending on the support this set, Bad End Dragger has a decent shot too (as a Revival Collection reprint).
For regular rarity reprints, Acrobat Verdi has a good chance since Mighty Bolt and Branwen were reprinted last set. Frog Raider would also be a good card to reprint, while if they have Dudley’s, Dudley Mason would be a very safe reprint too.
Rising/Charge support
Before I go any further, I’m going to make this part pretty clear. During this set discussion, I will be referring to the main Rising/Charge build. I will not be discussing these mechanics/cards in reference to Crazy Eights. All that deck wants really is just more cards with charge itself, not necessarily anything else. Anywho….
Rising will likely have the main focus in this set, while Charge being the definite focus of this set. The Charge mechanic itself is pretty balanced and works pretty well in the main build. On the surface value, it retreats your attackers if it was superior called, and typically gives the unit a powerful skill. The only issue it has, that I can see, is that all these abilities are GB-restricted completely. Late game, these units have powerful, near godly skills, but if your opponent sticks around at a lower grade, the deck can potentially just shut down on you. If they have units that can get skills pre-GB, even if just partial skills, it would help them out immensely.
Spike Brothers have always been known as the deck that basically just ends the game in one suicidal blitz. If you can’t win that turn, you basically just lose. But it also has some decent mid-game pressure when done right, and doesn’t have to necessarily kill you the first stride to have an advantage.
Rising 2.0
Rising, much like most other Grade 3’s, is likely to have a new grade 3. Honestly, this alone makes the deck stronger as you never have that issue of Frog Raider being useless. A second Rising grade 3 of any quality improves consistency of the deck purely by name alone. Unlike Thavas, they would definitely be used in conjunction because of this fact. This time, Rising 2.0 will likely be a RRR-RR as per usual.
Realistically, this Rising will not top Rising Nova on the Vanguard circle, and will likely be a good deal weaker. Personally, I would like him to just overall not minus, maybe work like Dhampir Lily on stride as opposed to on hit. Would still be usable, but sometimes you need that on attack call to properly avoid control decks with Nova.
The real thing Rising 2.0 will need to be viable is Charge and a rear-guard skill. A good rear guard back-up will significantly improve the build from that alone, and it doesn’t need to do much. A neat thing they could do is make whatever its skill is either work on Vanguard or while Charging on rear-guard, so you have the extra option there. Likely? No, but that’s ok.
Rising Stride 2.0/G-Zone
Rising is one of those units that doesn’t have their second stride, so is likely to get a new version as well. My bet is that he’ll be a RRR, as my bets for GR’s will mainly be Kagero and Tachikaze (didn’t really mention that in my Kagero article but yea).
As for the Rising Stride, I would go with the Act Flip and a separate GB3 skill. Weirdly enough, there aren’t any generic strides that can call from deck at a basic level to set up charge outside of on-hits (Miracle Ace is situation-based, while Picaro and Hellhard are a bit extreme) so I feel like this can be the stride that finally gives your vanguard a way to call 1-2 units to add pressure. The GB3 could be something that allows it to act as a pseudo-finisher, perhaps beefing up your charging units in classic Spike Brothers style.
Spike Brothers don’t get the traditional finisher boss tactics such as crits, added drive checks or restands, as they are more meant to overwhelm the oppponent by sheer force alone.
With the addition of Terrible Linus, Rising has access to a powerful and fitting G-Guardian, yet can still use one that isn’t restricted to GB1 or flips. As for what it can do, I’ve had several ideas over the past year or so, but honestly right now, utility would probably be the safest bet this time around as opposed to another massive shield.
I swear to god if they make it an Adalaide…..
Charge Support
As I said earlier, if they make charge units that work pre-gb in some form, it’d be a good start. Obviously, their viability will be also tied to whether or not they have a viable enabler, but they don’t necessarily have to have only charge skills. When they started making charge units, they seemed to only do something while charging, but nothing else. Airforce Eliza came as an exception as she works without charging, but requires another charging unit to properly function. To fully be able to evolve further, Charge support needs to be able to do more outside of just charging. They just need to be able to do more while charging over when they aren’t.
Charge doesn’t necessarily need to many more enablers, just need maybe one decent one to do it right.
It’s very likely the set will also get a starter for the charge mechanic to be overshadowed by Mecha Trainer. Honestly, I hope this time around they come up with something cool and actually functional. Like I said earlier, Mecha Analyzer was a step in the right direction, but not quite where it needed to be. I don’t have high hopes that they’ll make something good, so instead I’ll just make my own for shits and giggles:
Mecha Coordinator
(Grade 0/Spike Brothers/Workeroid/Power 5000/Shield 10000)
[AUTO] Charge (During the turn this unit is placed on (RC) due to an effect, you may have it become charging. If you do, put it on the bottom of your deck at the end of its battle.)
[AUTO](Soul): During your turn, when your G-Unit Stride, you may call this card to an open (RC). If you do, Soul Charge (1).
[AUTO](SB1): When this charging unit is put into the deck from (RC), you may pay the cost. If you do, choose up to one card from your hand, and call it to an open (RC).
My main inspiration was cards like Cat Knight in High Boots and Enigmatic Assassin. It allows you to immediately have a Charging unit when you stride, while also acting as a Hive Maker while Charging. My main gripe was how these new starters didn’t have Charge, but that was probably because of Forerunner and being able to immediately charge your starter.
Obviously my idea won’t happen, but what ideas would you like to see as a starter for the Charge deck? Yes, you have to imagine Mecha Trainer either doesn’t exist or can’t be used in this case.
The Subclan(s)
Spike Brothers is one of the few clans that only has 1 subclan, officially speaking. That being Dudleys, and they have gotten support throughout the G-Era so far. However, there is another card that got G-Support that could potentially get more support, but to start…
Dudleys
Dudleys are a bit all over the place, but they are starting to gain a focus in the G-Era. The only issue is that you need to build a pure Dudley deck, which is sub-optimal due to most older Dudley cards being junk tier or less. They have the strides, and two grade 3 stride bosses, so they really don’t need any of that stuff this time around. What they need is proper main deck support. Decent grade 2-1’s, a better starter option, perhaps a critical trigger? They easily have the potential to improve greatly with the right units, maybe even having the strongest early game in Spikes with the right stuff. Really isn’t saying a lot…but still.
The reappearance of Dudley’s is likely, even if just to a smaller degree. But what about the extra stride slot if there is one? They’d probably get the slot but honestly, I would prefer to give that to my runner up variant.
Bad End Dragger
Bad End Dragger, as it is, only has itself as a very powerful Break Ride, a Stride that can set up a Break Ride turn (or even a Double Break Ride if you are clever), and a Grade One that improves consistency. It really isn’t much of an archetype, but it has its own deck with it as the focus. All it really needs is some extra support, potentially a grade 3 similar to Tachikaze’s Spinocommando, and an ok “Bad End” focused finish stride, and the deck is basically done. The generic-ness of the build would appeal much greater than that of the Dudley’s right now
It’s not as likely as more Dudley’s showing up, but it’s on my wishlist at least.
Summary/Conclusion
This was a bit more of a doozy considering my mini-article before the real stuff, but to sum things up (ignoring Crazy Eights as a build);
Mecha Trainer on watch list again, higher potential of getting hit than ever before
Lots of Potential Reissues
New Rising Grade 3 and Stride (which name alone improves consistency)
Charge is powerful, but needs more flexibility (stuff while not charging)
Dudley’s more likely to continue showing up, needs more core pieces than end game pieces
Bad End Dragger still a possibility for support, but not as likely.
Spikes are in a decent place in the meta right now, but the fact that it hinges on the existence of one card is dangerous territory. It can mean a serious Tier drop if they lose it, so they need to be able to hold their own without it. With this set and the potential support, it can make or break a non-Crazy Eights focused Rising Build.
Next time around, I’ll direct my focus towards that of Gold Paladin and what can be done with the power of the sun. Then I’ll decide whether to go into Murakumo or Angel Feather next. Anyway, until next time!
–Dax
AdvertisementsIntel's Medfield may still be a ways from breaking into the smartphone and tablet market, but we're finally starting to get some concrete details on its specs and capabilities. VR-Zone got the nitty gritty on Chipzilla's first true SoC and it looks almost ready to run with the big dogs. A reference tablet, running at 1.6GHz with 1GB of RAM (which also packs Bluetooth, WiFi and FM radio) was put through some Android benchmarks and held it's own against a Tegra 2 and a Snapdragon MSM8260 -- which pulled a 7,500 and 8,000 in Caffeinemark 3, respectively. The admittedly higher clocked Atom scored an impressive 10,500, though power consumption on the pre-production chips was a bit higher than anticipated. At idle, the fledgling Medfield was sucking down 2.6W and spiking to 3.6W under load. Ultimately Intel hopes to cut those numbers to 2W at idle and 2.6W while pushing out HD video -- not far off from current-gen ARM SoC. Lets not forget though, benchmarks only tell part of the story -- we'll be waiting to see working hardware before declaring a victor.AFTER training a network of telescopes stretching from Hawaii to Antarctica to Spain at the heart of our galaxy for five nights running, astronomers said Wednesday they may have snapped the first-ever picture of a black hole.
It will take months to develop the image, but if scientists succeed the results may help peel back mysteries about what the universe is made of and how it came into being.
“Instead of building a telescope so big that it would probably collapse under its own weight, we combined eight observatories like the pieces of a giant mirror,” said Michael Bremer, an astronomer at the International Research Institute for Radio Astronomy (IRAM) and a project manager for the Event Horizon Telescope.
“This gave us a virtual telescope as big as Earth — about 10,000 kilometres in diameter,” he said.
A new kind of black hole 1:00 Scientists have discovered a new size of black hole, vindicating earlier theories about their existence.
The bigger the telescope, the finer the resolution and level of detail. The targeted supermassive black hole is hidden in plain sight, lurking in the centre of the Milky Way in a region called the Sagittarius constellation, some 26,000 light years from Earth.
Dubbed Sagittarius A* (Sgr A* for short), the gravity and light-sucking monster weighs as much as four million suns.
Theoretical astronomy tells us when a black hole absorbs matter — planets, debris, anything that comes too close — a brief flash of light is visible.
NO GOING BACK
Black holes also have a boundary, called an event horizon.
The British astronomer Stephen Hawking has famously compared crossing this boundary to going over Niagara Falls in a canoe: if you are above the falls, it is still possible to escape if you paddle hard enough.
Once you tip over the edge, however, there’s no going back.
The Event Horizon Telescope radio-dish network is designed to detect the light cast-off when object disappear across that boundary.
“For the first time in our history, we have the technological capacity to observe black holes in detail,” said Bremer.
The virtual telescope trained on the middle of the Milky Way is powerful enough to spot a golf ball on the Moon, he said.
The 30-metre IRAM telescope, located in the Spanish Sierra Nevada mountains, is the only European observatory taking part in the international effort.
Other telescopes contributing to the project include the South Pole Telescope in Antarctica, the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope in Hawaii, and the Atacama Cosmology Telescope in the desert of northern Chile.
All the data — some 500 terabytes per station — will be collected and flown on jetliners to the MIT Haystack Observatory in Massachusetts, where it will be processed by supercomputers.
“The images will emerge as we combine all the data,” Bremer explained. “But we’re going to have to wait several months for the result.”Editor's note: This story was originally posted in the March 2004 issue, and has been reposted to highlight the long history of Nobelists publishing in Scientific American.
Most American and French citizens—indeed, those of democracies the world over—spend little time contemplating their voting systems. That preoccupation is usually left to political and electoral analysts. But in the past few years, a large segment of both these countries’ populations have found themselves utterly perplexed. People in France wondered how a politician well outside the political mainstream made it to the final two-candidate runoff in the presidential election of 2002. In the U.S., many voters asked why the most popular candidate lost the election of 2000.
We will leave discussions of hanging chads, butterfly ballots, the electoral college and the U.S. Supreme Court to political commentators. But based on research by ourselves and colleagues, we can address a more fundamental issue: What kinds of systems, be they for electing national leaders or student council presidents, go furthest toward truly representing the wishes of the voters? We argue that one particular system would be best in this sense—and it would be simple and practical to implement in the U.S., France and myriad other countries.
The Importance of Being Ranked
IN MOST NATIONAL presidential electoral systems, a voter chooses only his or her favorite candidate rather than ranking them all. If just two candidates compete, this limitation makes no difference. But with three or more candidates, it can matter a great deal. The French presidential election of 2002 provides a case in point. In the first round, voters could vote for one of nine candidates, the most prominent being the incumbent Jacques Chirac of the Gaullist party, the Socialist leader Lionel Jospin and the National Front candidate Jean-Marie Le Pen. The rules dictated that if no candidate obtained an outright majority, the two candidates with the largest numbers of votes would face each other in a runoff. Chirac finished first (with 19.9 percent of the vote). The real surprise, however, lay in second place: the far-right-winger Le Pen took it (with 16.9 percent), while Jospin—who, with Chirac, had been heavily favored to reach the runoff—finished third (with 16.2 percent). In the second round, Chirac handily defeated Le Pen.
Despite Jospin’s third-place finish, most available evidence suggests that in a one-to-one contest against Le Pen, he would have easily won. It is even plausible that he could have defeated Chirac had he made it to the second round. Yet by having voters submit only their top choice, the French electoral system cannot take account of such important information. Furthermore, it permits extremist candidates such as Le Pen—candidates who have no real chance of winning—to have an appreciable effect on the outcome.
The 2000 U.S. presidential election exposed similar shortcomings. To make this point most clearly, we will pretend that the election procedure was simpler than it actually was. We will consider just the four main candidates, and we will assume that there is no difference between the popular vote and the electoral college vote. (There have been many complaints about the electoral college, but even if it were replaced by popular vote, serious problems would remain.) We will also assume that there are only four kinds of voters: those who prefer Ralph Nader to Al Gore, Gore to George W. Bush, and Bush to Pat Buchanan (the “Nader” voters); those with the ranking Gore, Bush, Nader, Buchanan (the “Gore” voters); those with the ranking Bush, Buchanan, Gore, Nader (the “Bush” voters); and those with the ranking Buchanan, Bush, Gore, Nader (the “Buchanan” voters). To be concrete, suppose that 2 percent of the electorate are Nader voters, 49 percent Gore voters, 48 percent Bush voters, and 1 percent Buchanan voters. If voters each choose one candidate, Gore will receive 49 percent and Bush 48 percent of the total (the actual percentages were 48.4 percent and 47.9 percent, respectively). Given that no candidate receives a majority (that is, more than 50 percent), how is the winner to be determined? Gore receives a plurality (the most votes short of 50 percent), so perhaps he should win.
On the other hand, the American Constitution stipulates that, absent a majority of the electoral votes, the House of Representatives should determine the winner. With a Republican majority in 2000, the House would presumably have gone for Bush. Clearly, having U.S. voters name solely their favorite candidate does not result in an outcome that is obviously right. As in the French election, such ambiguity can be resolved by having voters submit complete rankings. Even though Gore is the favorite of only 49 percent of the electorate, the rankings show that a clear majority of 51 percent—the Gore and Nader voters combined—prefer Gore to either Bush or Buchanan. So Gore is the winner according to an electoral system called true majority rule (or simple majority rule), in which voters submit rankings of all the candidates and the winner is the one who beats each opponent in head-to-head competition based on these rankings.
Rankings can also be used in other electoral systems. Consider, for instance, “rank-order voting”—a procedure often used to elect committee officers that has been proposed to solve the problems inherent in the American and French presidential electoral systems. If four candidates are running, each voter assigns four points to his or her favorite, three to the next favorite, two to the next, and one to the least favorite. The winner is the candidate with the biggest total. The method appears to have been invented by Jean-Charles Borda, an 18th-century French engineer, and is sometimes known as the Borda count. Imagine that 100 million people vote in the U.S. election. Based on our earlier assumptions, we know that 49 million of them will rank Gore first. So Gore will receive 196 million points—that is, 49 million times four points—from the Gore voters. The Nader voters place him second, so he picks up six million points from them. Finally, the Bush and Buchanan voters place him third, for an additional 98 million points. His grand total is 300 million points. If we make the corresponding computations for the others, we find that Nader gets 155 million points and Buchanan 199 million. Strikingly, Bush gets 346 million, even though a majority of the electorate prefer Gore. Only 2 percent of the electorate ranks Bush lower than second place, which is good enough to elect him under rank-order voting.
Thus, true majority rule and rank-order voting result in dramatically different outcomes. Considering this sharp contrast, it may seem hard to say which method is better at capturing the essence of voters’ views. But we propose to do just that. We can evaluate these two systems—and any other—according to some fundamental principles that any electoral method should satisfy. Kenneth J. Arrow of Stanford University originated this axiomatic approach to voting theory in a 1951 monograph, a work that has profoundly shaped the voting literature.
Most voting analysts would agree that any good electoral method ought to satisfy several axioms. One is the consensus principle, often called the Pareto principle after Italian sociologist Vilfredo Pareto. It states that if everyone agrees that candidate A is better than B, then B will not be elected. This axiom does not help discriminate between true majority rule and rank-order voting, however, because both methods satisfy it— that is, both will end up with B losing. Moreover, the principle does not apply very often: in our U.S. election example, there is no unanimous preference for any one candidate over another.
Another important axiom holds that all voters should count equally—the “one-person, one-vote,” or equal-treatment, principle. Voting theorists call it the principle of anonymity: who you are should not determine your influence on the election. True majority rule and rank-order voting also both satisfy anonymity.
A third criterion, however, does differentiate between the two. Neutrality, as this axiom is called, has two components. The first is symmetry, which means that the electoral rules should not favor one candidate over the other. The second requires that the voters’ choice between candidates A and B should not depend on their views about some third candidate C. What would happen in our U.S. example if the Bush voters’ ranking shifted to become Bush, Gore, Buchanan, Nader (instead of Bush, Buchanan, Gore, Nader)? From the standpoint of true majority rule, nothing important would change: the majority still prefer Gore to Bush. But look at what happens under rankorder voting: Gore now receives 348 million points, while Bush’s total remains 346 million. Gore now wins instead of Bush.
Obviously, rank-order voting can violate neutrality. Voters’ preferences between Gore and Buchanan, a candidate who stands no chance of getting elected, determine the choice between Bush and Gore—and the outcome of the election. In contrast, true majority rule always satisfies neutrality. This last assertion may puzzle those readers who recall that in the actual election, discussion abounded about whether votes for Nader would affect the race between Bush and Gore. Indeed, in retrospect it appears that Nader—perhaps with help from the infamous butterfly ballot in Florida and even from Buchanan—may have siphoned off enough Gore votes to tip the election to Bush. But this effect was possible only because the U.S. election system is not actually true majority rule but its own unique system.
Majority Rule and the French Election
LET’S LOOK AT WHAT would happen to the French election of 2002 under true majority rule—which, for simplicity’s sake, we will henceforth refer to as majority rule. Imagine Chirac, Jospin and Le Pen are the only candidates, and the electorate divides into three groups. Everyone in the first group, 30 percent of voters, has the ranking Jospin, Chirac, Le Pen. In the second group, 36 percent of the electorate, the ranking is Chirac, Jospin, Le Pen. In the remaining 34 percent, voters rank Le Pen over Jospin over Chirac. Chirac and Le Pen—with 36 and 34 percent of the vote, respectively—would move forward into a runoff, where Chirac would easily prevail because 66 percent of voters prefer him to Le Pen.
The same outcome would result under yet another system, called instant-runoff voting (IRV), which is practiced in Ireland and Australia and which, like rank-order voting, has been advocated as an alternative to the French and U.S. systems. In IRV, simply put, rankings are used by election officials to successively eliminate the lowest-ranking candidates (and to incorporate their percentages into the voters’ next-ranked choices) until only two candidates remain.
But the French and IRV systems conflict with majority rule. If you examine the configuration of voters’ rankings, you see that Jospin actually commands an enormous majority: 64 percent of the electorate prefer him to Chirac, and 66 percent prefer him to Le Pen. Majority rule dictates that Jospin should win by a landslide.
Recall that under majority rule a voter can make a political statement without harming the chances of any electable candidate. Someone who preferred Jospin to Chirac and knew that Le Pen had no chance of winning but wished to rank him first as a gesture of protest could do so without fear of knocking Jospin out of the race. (Except, of course, in the highly unlikely event that a majority of other voters made the same gesture.) The analogous point can be made about a voter who preferred Gore to Bush but wished to lend symbolic support to Nader. Yet despite these virtues, majority rule has a flaw. It can violate another well-accepted voting principle: transitivity. Transitivity requires that if candidate A is chosen over B, and B is chosen over C, then A should be chosen over C. Now, ignoring Buchanan, pretend that 35 percent of the electorate prefer Gore to Bush to Nader, 33 percent rank Bush above Nader above Gore, and 32 percent go for Nader above Gore above Bush. Sixty- seven percent of voters rank Gore above Bush, 68 percent rank Bush above Nader, and 65 percent rank Nader above Gore. In other words, no matter which candidate is chosen, at least 65 percent of voters prefer somebody else! In this case, majority rule produces no winner.
This possibility, called the Condorcet paradox, was identified in the late 18th century by Marie-Jean-Antoine-Nicholas de Caritat, the Marquis de Condorcet, a colleague and archcritic of Borda. The three rankings—Gore over Bush over Nader, Bush over Nader over Gore, and Nader over Gore over Bush—are collectively called a Condorcet cycle. Our comparison of majority rule and rank-order voting appears to have resulted in a dead heat: majority rule satisfies every principle on our list except transitivity, and rank-order voting satisfies all but neutrality. This conundrum leads us to consider whether some other electoral system exists that satisfies all the principles. Arrow’s celebrated impossibility theorem says no. It holds that any electoral method must sometimes violate at least one principle [see “Rational Collective Choice,” by Douglas H. Blair and Robert A. Pollak; Scientific American, August 1983].
Beyond Impossibility
BUT ARROW’S THEOREM is unduly negative. It requires that an electoral method must satisfy a given axiom, no matter what voters’ rankings turn out to be. Yet some rankings are quite unlikely. In particular, the Condorcet paradox—the bugaboo of majority rule—may not always be a serious problem in practice. After all, voters’ rankings do not come out of thin air. They often derive from ideology.
To see what implications ideology holds for majority rule, think about each candidate’s position on a spectrum ranging from the political left to the right. If we move from left to right, we presumably encounter the 2000 presidential candidates in |
[38]
June 6, 2009: The first event is held at the stadium with country concert showcasing Lee Ann Womack, Blake Shelton, Reba McEntire, and George Strait
February 6, 2011: The 2010 NFL Season Super Bowl was hosted at the Cowboys Stadium, which saw the Green Bay Packers defeat the Pittsburgh Steelers in Super Bowl XLV.
July 25, 2013: Jerry Jones announced that the official name of the venue was changed to AT&T Stadium as part of a naming rights deal.
April 5–7, 2014: The stadium is home for the Final Four of the 2014 NCAA Men's Division I Basketball Tournament.
January 12, 2015: Served as host of the first Championship game in the College Football Playoff era. Ohio State defeated Oregon, 42-20.
April 19, 2015: Served as host of the 50th Annual Academy of Country Music Awards hosted by Blake Shelton and Luke Bryan.
April 3, 2016: Served as the host of WWE's WrestleMania 32.
September 26, 2016: The Stadium Club opened which was the first public five days a week restaurant and bar located within the AT&T Stadium.[39]
Opening [ edit ]
Naming [ edit ]
Although the stadium had yet to sell naming rights, many fans started referring to the project with various nicknames such as Jerry World,[38][48][49][50] the "Death Star",[51] "The Palace in Dallas" (for which announcer Bob Costas was criticized by the Arlington mayor[52]), "Cowboys Cathedral",[53] "Jerrassic Park" and others.[54] There was also a petition by some fans to have the stadium named after longtime Cowboys' coach Tom Landry.
On May 13, 2009, Jerry Jones announced the official name as Cowboys Stadium.[38]
On July 25, 2013, Jerry Jones announced that the Dallas Cowboys had agreed to grant naming rights to AT&T. The name change from Cowboys Stadium to AT&T Stadium took effect immediately.[55] The sponsorship deal was reported to be worth about $17–19 million per year.[56] Facility Solutions Group installed the "AT&T Stadium" letters on the top of the stadium. Signage includes two sets of letters 43 feet (13 m) tall stretching 385 feet (117 m). The letters are made of lightweight components and aluminum and are insulated and heated to melt ice and snow.[57]
This is AT&T's third major sports venue where it holds the naming rights. The others are AT&T Center in San Antonio, and Jones AT&T Stadium in Lubbock.
Video board [ edit ]
Guinness World Records was on hand at the September 28, 2009 game against the Carolina Panthers to award certificates to the Chairman of Mitsubishi Electric and Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones for the World's Largest High-Definition Video Display.[25] For basketball events played in Cowboys Stadium, such as the 2010 NBA All-Star Game, the video board is actually larger than the court. It has since been surpassed in size by the video boards at TIAA Bank Field.
During the debut preseason game of Cowboys Stadium on August 21, 2009, a punt by Tennessee Titans punter A. J. Trapasso hit the 175 feet (53.34 m) wide screen above the field. The punt deflected backwards and was ruled in-play until Titans coach Jeff Fisher informed the officials that the punt struck the scoreboard. By rule, the down was replayed. Jerry Jones believes that Trapasso was trying to hit the scoreboard, saying, "If you look at how you punt the football, unless you're trying to hit the scoreboard, you punt the ball to get downfield. You certainly want to get some hangtime, but you punt the ball to get downfield, and you sure don't punt the ball down the middle. You punt it off to the side."[58] Whether the screen would affect an opposing team's punting strategy has been debated. For teams with strategies centered on maximizing hang-time, physicist Christopher Moore of Longwood University has shown via computer simulation that well-kicked punts have the potential to hit the screen no matter the field position.[59] Trapasso disputed Jones' suggestion that he was intentionally trying to hit the board, and other NFL punters have suggested that the board may pose a problem for longer hang-time punts. The screen was retrofitted with 16 custom winches using 11,000 feet (3.35 km) of 1.5 inches (3.8 cm) domestic galvanized wire rope from Tway Lifting Products to accomplish the safe, efficient transport of the video board in time to make room for U2's massive set during their 360° Tour, and was moved back down after the concert.[citation needed] The video board is also the primary attachment point for up to 370,000 lb (168 metric tons) of concert and theatrical rigging.[citation needed]
On August 24, 2013, Cowboys punter Chris Jones became the second player to hit the scoreboard. He conceded a touchdown on the re-kick.[60]
Major events [ edit ]
NBA All-Star Weekend [ edit ]
On February 14, 2010, the stadium hosted the 2010 NBA All-Star Game. With an announced crowd of 108,713, the game became the highest-attended basketball game in history, setting a new Guinness World Record. The East squad prevailed with a 141–139 victory over the West.[61]
NFL [ edit ]
Cowboys playing at the stadium
Big 12 Championship Game [ edit ]
University of Texas marching band during the Big 12 Championship game
AT&T Stadium, then known as Cowboys Stadium, was the site of the 2009 and 2010 Big 12 Championship Games, the last two held prior to the 2010–13 Big 12 Conference realignment. On December 5, 2009, the Texas Longhorns defeated the Nebraska Cornhuskers 13–12 in the 2009 Big 12 Championship Game, the first to be held in the stadium with attendance announced at 76,211.[67] The following year, on December 4, 2010, the Oklahoma Sooners and Nebraska Cornhuskers rekindled their rivalry as the Sooners won 23–20 in the final Big 12 Championship game to date and will return starting with the 2017 season. The stadium was scheduled to host the games through the 2013 season, but the realignment of the Big 12 Conference to 10 teams meant they were not allowed to host a championship game because of NCAA rules requiring conferences to have at least 12 teams divided into two divisions in order to stage a championship game.[68][69]
Cotton Bowl Classic [ edit ]
Advocare Classic [ edit ]
September 5, 2009: The (20) Brigham Young University Cougars and (3) Oklahoma Sooners played the first college football game in the new stadium, with the Cougars upsetting the Sooners, 14–13, in front of 75,437 spectators. So BYU holds the distinction of being the first college team to win a game in the stadium, and the team to win the first (non-preseason) game in the stadium. [71]
September 4, 2010: (6) TCU defeated (24) Oregon State 30–21, before a crowd of 46,138, in a season-opening encounter between ranked teams. [72]
September 3, 2011: (4) LSU defeated (3) Oregon 40–27, before a crowd of 87,711 in the third installment of the Cowboys Classic.
September 1, 2012: Defending 2011 champion (2) Alabama defeated (8) Michigan 41-14, before a crowd of 90,413 in the fourth installment of the Cowboys Classic.
August 31, 2013: (12) LSU defeated (20) TCU 37-27, before a crowd of 80,230 in the fifth installment of the Cowboys Classic.
August 30, 2014: Defending 2013 champion (1) Florida State defeated unranked Oklahoma State 37-31, before a crowd of 61,521 in the sixth installment of the Cowboys Classic.
Southwest Classic [ edit ]
The Arkansas Razorbacks vs. Texas A&M Aggies football rivalry, which began in 1903, was renewed in 2009 as the Southwest Classic, and was played at Cowboys Stadium from 2009 through 2011. In 2012, Texas A&M joined Arkansas in the Southeastern Conference, and the series reverted to the schools' home fields, Kyle Field in College Station, Texas for the 2012 game and Donald W. Reynolds Razorback Stadium in Fayetteville, Arkansas in 2013. The Southwest Classic returned to AT&T Stadium in 2014 and will remain there through at least 2020.
October 3, 2009: Cowboys owner Jerry Jones watched his alma mater, the Arkansas Razorbacks, defeat the Texas A&M Aggies 47–19 in the first of ten games called the Southwest Classic to be played at the stadium. [73]
to be played at the stadium. October 9, 2010: The Arkansas Razorbacks jumped out to an early 21-7 lead, and held on to defeat the Texas A&M Aggies, 24-17. [74]
October 1, 2011: The Arkansas Razorbacks rallied from an 18-point halftime deficit to defeat the Texas A&M Aggies 41-38.
September 27, 2014: The Texas A&M Aggies rallied from a deficit to force overtime and then scored the only TD for the 35-28 win to defeat the Arkansas Razorbacks.
September 26, 2015: Texas A&M rallied from a fourth quarter deficit for the second straight year versus Arkansas, beating the Razorbacks 28-21 in OT.
September 24, 2016: After being tied at halftime, the Aggies dominated the second half to defeat the Razorbacks 45–24.
Texas Farm Bureau Insurance Shootout [ edit ]
In 2009, the Big 12 Conference game between the Baylor Bears and Texas Tech Red Raiders was held at Cowboys Stadium, the first time in the series the match-up was held on a neutral site. The game was the highest attended in the series' history, with 71,964 in attendance.[75]
After the 2010 game was held at the Cotton Bowl in Fair Park, Dallas during the State Fair of Texas, the series returned to AT&T Stadium for the 2011 and 2012 games. The series' neutral site contract at AT&T Stadium could continue until 2014.[76]
Basketball [ edit ]
The stadium being set up for Texas vs. North Carolina game
December 19, 2009: In the first college basketball game at the stadium, before a crowd of 38,052, the Texas Longhorns defeated the defending national champion North Carolina Tar Heels, 103–90. [77]
March 2013: 2013 NCAA Tournament South Regional featuring 3 games with the winner of the third going to the NCAA Men's Final Four [78]
2014: 2014 NCAA Men's Final Four[79]
Soccer [ edit ]
Boxing [ edit ]
The stadium has hosted three world championship boxing fights since its opening, as the large capacity and retractable roof make it an ideal venue for boxing events throughout the year. Two of the sports biggest stars in Manny Pacquiao and Saul "Canelo" Álvarez have headlined championship bouts there, with top level boxing set to return on March 16, 2019 when unbeaten champions Errol Spence Jr. and Mikey Garcia square off for the IBF Welterweight Championship.
September 17, 2016 – Before a crowd of 51,420, Canelo Álvarez defeated Liam Smith by knockout in round nine to win the WBO light middleweight title. The event broke the AT&T Stadium attendance record for boxing.[81]
WrestleMania 32 [ edit ]
AT&T Stadium hosted WWE's WrestleMania 32 on April 3, 2016. This marked the third WrestleMania to be hosted in Texas. The area also hosted activities throughout the region for the week-long celebration leading up to WrestleMania itself.[82] The attendance announced was 101,763 and it was said that they had broken the attendance record of the stadium.
Supercross [ edit ]
AT&T Stadium has hosted a round of the AMA Supercross Championship since 2010, replacing Texas Stadium which had been host since 1975.[83]
Concerts [ edit ]
Other events [ edit ]
Several participants walk at the 2013 DFW MDA Muscle Walk ; then known as Cowboys Stadium.
Concessions and merchandising [ edit ]
On October 20, 2008, Cowboys owner Jones and New York Yankees owner George Steinbrenner announced a joint business venture called Legends Hospitality Management LLC which would operate the concessions and merchandising sales at the new Cowboys stadium in Arlington, Texas, and at the new Yankee Stadium in the Bronx, New York, along with the stadiums of the Yankees' minor league affiliates. Former Pizza Hut President Michael Rawlings will run the company from its new headquarters in Newark, New Jersey. The company was also backed by Wall Street investment firm Goldman Sachs and Dallas private equity firm CIC Partners LP.[103][104][105]
Stadium art program [ edit ]
The Jones family commissioned 18 contemporary artists to create site-specific artworks for the stadium. The stadium features paintings, sculptures, and installations by Franz Ackerman, Doug Aitken, Ricci Albenda, Mel Bochner, Daniel Buren, Olafur Eliasson, Teresita Fernandez, Wayne Gonzales, Terry Haggerty, Trenton Doyle Hancock, Jacqueline Humphries, Jim Isermann, Annette Lawrence, Dave Muller, Gary Simmons, and Lawrence Weiner.[106]
Transportation [ edit ]
Parking [ edit ]
The fees for premium parking at Dallas Cowboys games are estimated at $75 per game, based on season ticket holder parking charges.[107] The fees to park at major concerts and other sporting events will be nearly $40 per space at the new stadium.[108] A shuttle operates between the T&P Station and Cowboys Stadium for all Cowboys regular season and postseason games and selected college football games,[109] which averages approximately 900 riders per game.[109] For special events like Super Bowl XLV parking prices can increase to as much as $990.[110]
Public transit [ edit ]
The stadium was only accessible via the Metro Arlington Xpress (MAX) bus system; a 0.4 mi (0.64 km) walk from the Collins and Andrews stop which connected with the Trinity Rail Express (TRE) station at CentrePort/DFW Airport. The bus system was an experimental program which commenced in April 2013 and was replaced by a ride-sharing service in December 2017.
See also [ edit ]Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov (R) and his counterpart from Saudi Arabia Adel al-Jubeir attend a news conference after the talks in Moscow, Russia, April 26, 2017. REUTERS/Sergei Karpukhin
MOSCOW (Reuters) - Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir discussed Syria’s future with his Russian counterpart in Moscow on Wednesday after which he said Riyadh still believed there was no political future for President Bashar al-Assad.
Al-Jubeir, after talks with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, also told a news conference that Riyadh wanted to end what he called Iran’s meddling in the Middle East.
The Saudi minister gave a positive assessment of Russian-backed Syrian peace talks in Kazakhstan, but said he thought there was no need to widen the list of participants in those talks, which are sponsored by Iran, Turkey and Russia.
Despite well known differences between Moscow and Riyadh over the role of Assad — Moscow has rejected calls for him to quit and says his future should be decided in elections — Lavrov said there were no insurmountable differences between the two when it came to finding a solution to the Syria crisis.by
Between the pseudo-fact that Russia is furtively running the USA, and keeping up with the shape-shifting of our newly seated President in Charge of Sales, the healthcare debate has remained on its burner and it’s getting hotter. With few exceptions, we know what the Democrats want and we know what the Republicans want. As usual, something is missing. What does everyone else want?
Members of our two ruling parties have a tightrope problem. How to balance obedience to party with valid representation of a majority of their constituents. If obedience seems too strong a word, it’s only a step up from adherence and since there is a clear price to be paid for violation of either one, the difference is trivial.
Much of this is unfair for what are we to expect beyond own-party support from a politician? To be even fairer, a politician aligns with a party in accordance with previously held convictions. But surely there is something unsettling to an outside observer when every decision, every vote, comes down to a party line vote. How many times can we hear the same refrain that the voting proceeded along party lines?
The problem can be stated this way. If every vote is basically a party line vote, how could it have taken into consideration the majority of the constituency? Since our two ruling parties share election results that do not vary greatly from 50/50, it’s plausible that vote totals in Congress would reflect this randomness with spillover votes being closer to 50/50 in both parties. Why is there so much order and so little randomness? The conclusion to be drawn is that party member votes cannot be consistent with both majority representation of a constituency and party line orthodoxy simultaneously.
About those politicians that align with a party in accordance with previously held convictions. Supposedly the donor class also aligns with parties according to its convictions. Or does it? There was a time when corporations could be criticized for making outsized contributions, say $800,000, to a particular party. What are you attempting to do, buy favor? The reply could be simply, no, we like them.
But then something else started happening. That corporation might give $800,000 to one party, and $500,000 to the other. That gave the game away, but it was too late.
Maybe what we need is “bi-partisan” support for an ongoing healthcare system. Oh, what a great term! How excited we are to hear it. It shows the system is working. The parties are putting aside their small differences and working for the greater good. Reaching across the aisle. And somehow the public is expected to relish this occasional dish.
This brings us back to the beginning. Small differences do exist — or how would we distinguish them — between parties that are themselves mere extensions of a dominant donor class representing big business. They’re two sides of the same coin getting tossed.
Worse, there’s never a need to change the coin. What the public really relishes, the dish of last resort, is the mirage of the next election. By the miracle of ballot rejection the little people can wring some democracy out of the system. It’s a fond delusion. Robot’s parts are easily interchangeable. The next fella or gal will be wearing the same red or blue. And don’t forget the flag lapel pin, costume jewelry worn to impress the terminally naive. The same will not be different.
Most people seem to want national healthcare, only they should say it that way. Single-payer is a poor term, a needlessly abstract piece of contractual jargon similar to terms like primary, secondary, co-pay, and co-insurance. Opponents of national healthcare should like the term single payer because of its lack of emotional appeal and explanatory value.
We find these corporate, political opponents wherever the giving of healthcare can result in a profit. Their accumulative profits, wrung out of a system of quasi-forced participation in sink or swim fashion, are put to use in preserving their industry with generous “incentives” awarded to both parties. Healthcare lobbyists have spent billions to influence Congress and federal agencies. Why would they do that?
They could claim they are uniquely positioned to provide for the health needs of the public, and merit the business by fulfilling those needs. Yes, this could be claimed but with thinking caps on the cross-purposes would be quickly caught out. Health industry profits come at a cost to someone, and it’s not them. It’s the end user. We’re all in life for the health but only a few are in it for the profit.
Indefensible at the social level, their’s is basically a “facts on the ground” counter argument to socialized medicine. It would be difficult and disruptive to dismantle the for-profit health industry. Yes, a lot of people work in the industry but many could transition to a new system.
Pharmaceuticals would still be around, as would hospitals. So would insurance, just not the health kind. Obama was one who used the word, disruptive. Before his election he said single-payer (that term again) was the way to go. We know how quickly that changed. After he took office single payer didn’t make the noise of a dropping pin. When pressed on the subject he made the somber assessment that single-payer would be worth pursuing if we were starting from scratch. That’s a remarkable statement!
According to Wikipedia, as of 2009 fifty-eight countries had universal healthcare. Did they all start from scratch? Hardly. Many of them enacted universal coverage in very recent years, others in fairly recent years. Some have universal coverage in combination with private coverage.
Monday’s New York Times reports the lament of Charles Krauthammer that Republicans have given up the idea of a purely free market healthcare system.
“They have sort of accepted the fact that the electorate sees healthcare as not just any commodity, like purchasing a steak or a car. It’s something now people have a sense the government ought to guarantee.”
Where did this sense come from? Might it have come, in part, from the unanimous agreement among all UN Member States to try to achieve universal health coverage by 2030, as part of the WHO’s Sustainable Development Goals? Or from the aforementioned 58 countries that already have it? Or from people’s common sense?
It’s not a question of government money because all 58 countries are less wealthy than the United States. It’s a question of where the money is directed. Some countries don’t find it essential to put a gun in everyone’s hand and send them around the world. Some countries consider healthcare to be a right that the state is obliged to provide. We all have our priorities.
A tactic used among national healthcare opponents is to tabulate the deficiencies in the systems of foreign countries that have adopted it, as if that mattered. This is misleading. It compares something “there” that isn’t “here”. It also isolates the worst features “there” without bringing into comparison the worst features “here”. What’s more is the unstated assumption that the worst features “there” are endemic to the system and would, of necessity, be present in one we could have here. Have they forgotten about American exceptionalism?
Our world-class dysfunctional and expensive healthcare system can never find itself in a crisis that would require its remaking the way Wall Street did, judging from the way they are handled. Wall Street’s disappeared in a week and all it took was trillions of dollars because the right people wanted it that way, and disruptive doesn’t even come close to describing what fell upon the little person. National healthcare remains outside of congressional choice because the right people do not want it. And who are the right people? They are our democracy, of course.Watch: Stunning aerial footage of Ireland's huge basking sharks
Last time we checked in with the Emerald Isle's famous basking sharks, they were getting airborne. And now, with a bit of help from BBC Two, our eyes are in the skies.
This gorgeous drone footage was captured during filming for the channel's upcoming series "Wild Ireland: The Edge of the World".
Second in size only to whale sharks, basking sharks are among the largest fish in the sea – they can reach an impressive 11 metres (33 ft)! And while slightly less gargantuan lengths of five to seven metres are the average, even a shark of that size is an impressive sight.
BBC host Colin Stafford-Johnson is correct in assuming the basking sharks aren't socialising in this clip. Instead, the most likely scenario is that they've met up in search of tasty plankton. Swimming with mouths wide open, the sharks filter the tiny crustaceans from the surrounding water. This so-called "ram" or "passive" filter-feeding tactic is shared by other ocean giants, including the rarely seen megamouth shark.
Nose-to-tail following and parallel swimming are also thought to be linked to courtship, but because these sharks are little studied we really don't know for sure.
Thanks to their docile nature and relatively slow cruising speed, basking sharks are easy to encounter on the water – which might also explain their link to stories of sea monsters. The traditional name for the lumbering creatures is Ainmhí Sheoil ("the beast with the sail"), and the name for known sighting hotspots – Gleann na bPéist – roughly translates to "valley of the sea serpent".
While paddling past the largest sharks in the North Atlantic sounds scary, these gentle giants are anything but.
__
Top header image: ShutterstockHuffington Post reporter Ryan Grim told CNN’s Brooke Baldwin on Tuesday that “something like 54 private jets” had arrived at an elite meeting of tech CEOs, GOP party insiders and big donors set on stopping Donald Trump before he wins the Republican nomination.
The meeting was the annual World Forum, an off-the-record conference hosted by the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), a leading Washington, D.C.-based conservative think tank. AEI has hosted the “secretive” event since 1982, but this year had a unique focus. Republican pundit Bill Kristol and former George W. Bush strategist Karl Rove were there, among others, including leaders of both the House and Senate.
Grim broke the story:
Billionaires, tech CEOs and top members of the Republican establishment flew to a private island resort off the coast of Georgia this weekend for the American Enterprise Institute’s annual World Forum, according to sources familiar with the secretive gathering. The main topic at the closed-to-the-press confab? How to stop Republican front-runner Donald Trump. Apple CEO Tim Cook, Google co-founder Larry Page, Napster creator and Facebook investor Sean Parker, and Tesla Motors and SpaceX honcho Elon Musk all attended. So did Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), political guru Karl Rove, House Speaker Paul Ryan, GOP Sens. Tom Cotton (Ark.), Cory Gardner (Colo.), Tim Scott (S.C.), Rob Portman (Ohio) and Ben Sasse (Neb.), who recently made news by saying he “cannot support Donald Trump.”
Grim added: “Federal Aviation Administration records available on FlightAware.com show that a fleet of private jets flew into and out of two small airports near Sea Island this weekend. Fifty-four planes flew out of the airport on St. Simons Island, Georgia, on Sunday — nearly four times as many as departed from the airport the previous Sunday.”
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News. His new e-book, Leadership Secrets of the Kings and Prophets: What the Bible’s Struggles Teach Us About Today, is on sale through Amazon Kindle Direct. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.At least three people have died and two people injured after a truck crashed through the doors of a Wal-Mart store in Pella, Iowa.
Images from the scene show a pickup truck inside the store with debris strewn about.
The driver of the truck has been transported to the hospital. The driver’s condition is unknown. Police say the incident does not appear to be intentional.
Wal-Mart released the following statement to WHO-TV.
“We’re heartbroken by what appears to be a tragic accident. Our focus right now is on our associates, customers and gathering information. We will continue working closely with law enforcement and emergency responders.”
IOWA: Injuries reported after truck crashes through Wal-Mart doors in Pella https://t.co/iow6hL6tUp pic.twitter.com/OmH4S1EiGt — Blue Alert (@BlueAlertUs) December 1, 2016
Alex Hider is a writer for the E.W. Scripps National Desk. Follow him on Twitter @alexhider.Don’t call it a crash, but many of this tech boom’s most well-known, highest-flying startups have recently seen their valuations sharply reduced.
For example:
The list goes on.
And while this isn’t great news for the people who set those peak valuations—though many have downside protection—it’s actually a good sign for the broader public. It means the market is working how it’s supposed to.
One of the most destructive parts of the 2000-era dotcom bust was its effect on individual investors. To oversimplify: Companies were going public way too early; there was no sense about what internet companies should be worth; everyone was chasing easy riches, and as a result, stocks shot up and collapsed with little reason behind the prices. Many shirts were lost.
It has been largely different this time. Companies have stayed private longer, fueled by an increasingly complex world of fundraising options that don’t require an IPO and the scrutiny that comes with being public.
This has also meant that valuations—even well into the billions of dollars for companies that have never even turned a quarterly profit—are often set by small committees of executives and professional investors, rather than a broader, public market. Hopefully, the numbers will be based on some sort of logic—not just a thirst to play in this hot market. And ideally, they will go up with each consecutive round. For many of today’s highly valued startups, they have.
But it’s also the case that these are immature, volatile companies, often run by inexperienced executives, operating in uncertain markets. In many cases, this is why they’re attractive. But over time, many firms—even the ones that were just looking great—will simply not be able to sustain their unprecedented growth, or turn their wildly popular products into wildly successful businesses. Valuations for unprofitable companies are inherently highly speculative. A deviation by a single key factor could throw off the whole calculus substantially. Thus, many of these corrections or down rounds.
Of course, stock prices go up and down on the public markets all the time. But because this billion-dollar startup concept still seems pretty new and a little crazy—and because the valuations were supposed to be assigned by professionals—it perhaps seems more surprising, or embarrassing, when it happens in private.
This tendency to stay private for longer has kept several soaring investment opportunities, such as six-year-old Uber—theoretically worth more than $50 billion—from the general public. But it has also limited the shirt-losing, in theory, to people and firms that can better afford it. So far, no large firm has imploded in a way that would affect a broad set of individual investors. And the recent corrections, while significant, are not overwhelming.
This is what we wanted, isn’t it?
Professional startup investors, meanwhile, have been placed into an interesting position. Many have substantial, unrealized gains in companies that they don’t want to see vaporize. (The IPO market, which has been particularly unfavorable for some time, has also taken away some control.) Some are using this as an opportunity to warn companies against unsustainable expenses, operating unprofitably, and the hidden costs of over-valuation. (And, of course, all would love to be able to buy into companies more cheaply.)
“I don’t think we will see less of these public markdowns,” writes Fred Wilson, the successful venture capitalist whose firm placed early bets on Twitter, Etsy, and Tumblr. “I think we will see more of them. And we VCs are now facing the choice of whether to markdown our portfolios in reaction to Fidelity’s markdowns or explain to our investors and auditors why we did not do that.”
Meanwhile, things are, of course, changing. Individuals are starting to gain access to crowdfunding for private companies, and new stock markets are emerging. “We are slowly witnessing the blurring of the lines between the public and private markets,” Wilson writes.
This will open new opportunities for startups and their investors, but it will also create new risks.Realtors Ask Feds for Reduction in Owner-Occupancy Ratio
The National Association of Realtors® (NAR) recently called on the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and the Federal Housing Finance Administration (FHFA) to reduce the owner-occupied ratio requirement for condominium complexes.
In letters to HUD Secretary Steven C. Preston and James B. Lockhart, III, Director of FHFA, NAR President Gaylord asked that the two agencies reduce the current requirement that 51 percent of individual units within a condo development be owner occupied for that unit to qualify for Freddie Mac, Fannie Mae, or Federal Housing Administration loans.
The Association also asked that bank-owned real estate resulting from foreclosures not be counted as non-owner occupied in calculating the 51 percent ratio.
The letters said that NAR recommends that the government sponsored enterprises (GSEs) reduce the occupancy ratio for GSE and FHA mortgages slightly "to a number below 50 percent for all condominium developments that have vacant units as a result of bank foreclosures. However, the number should not be reduced so much that it creates a development that is primarily investor-owned and harms the value or appreciation of owner-occupied units."
The loans meeting the rule of these agencies are generally the most accessible to borrowers and usually carry the lowest interest rates. Particularly in the current credit squeeze purchasers of condos may find it nearly impossible to arrange other types of funding.
Gaylord's letters said, "Amending the owner-occupancy rules for condominium developments for buyers with GSE or FHA mortgages will. Lenders will have the opportunity to move REO properties off their books because the units could be eligible for buyers with GSE or FHA mortgages. Further, individuals and families purchasing units in these developments with GSE or FHA loans will have access to more flexible and affordable financing opportunities." They "will have a wider choice of condominium developments. Finally, existing owners in these developments will benefit as vacant units are purchased and occupied and the owner-occupied ratio increases."
The last banking crisis in the late 1980s struck, at least in New England, on the heels of a frenzy of condominium conversions and construction which heavily targeted investors. Even the most upscale developments had investors who bought units (some costing over $350 per square foot) at pre-construction prices to hold for a few years and resell. On the lower end investors bought blocks of five, ten, or more units in older apartment buildings which were being "condominiumized." A common ploy was for the buildings' converters to offer the units for no money down, taking back what was often an illegal second mortgage equivalent to the downpayment. The profit margin on these conversions was so large that developers were not even particularly concerned about the junior liens being repaid.
When the crash came and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) became the owner of hundreds of condominium units throughout the region it found that very few of the foreclosed properties were in GSE or FHA approved developments because of the owner-occupancy ratio requirement. Many of the heavily investor-owned complexes, however, were virtually destroyed; unit prices had dropped to nearly nothing. One complex in Manchester, New Hampshire had been sold to investors in blocks of eight units for $54,000 per unit. A pre-foreclosure appraisal conducted for FDIC priced each unit between $5,400 and $7,000. Condo associations were unable to continue the most basic maintenance, and several complexes were so far-gone they were ultimately demolished.
The reduction of ratios requested by NAR are probably not so extreme as to cause these types of problems and may well encourage responsible investors to step up and take properties off of bank balance sheets. Getting individual units back into private ownership would also give condominium associations more control over collecting monthly fees which would stabilize building services and maintenance.
Perhaps, however, if HUD and FHFA do concede to NAR's request, they might consider making the reduction in owner-occupied ratio temporary, so as not to create a second wave of investor-generated nonsense eight or ten years down the road.Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke slammed Black Lives Matters for not having its priorities straight.
Clarke said he’s baffled that Black Lives Matter is protesting the Dakota Access Pipeline in North Dakota, when they should be in Chicago protesting the city’s record black homicide rates.
“Just heard Black LIES Matter is in North Dakota protesting Dakota Access Pipeline,” Clarke tweeted. “What the hell are they doing there? Should be in Chicago.”
Deranged Shepard Smith spews more anti-Trump hate: Renewed calls for him to be fired
Sheriff Clarke added: “Blacks in the ghetto want better schools, jobs and safer neighborhoods … Green is the new Black. Black LIES Matter has been forced to sell the left’s environmental agenda to stay relevant with the Democrat Party.”
Just heard Black LIES Matter is in North Dakota protesting Dakota Access Pipeline. What the hell are they doing there? Should be in Chicago. pic.twitter.com/dm9VkZy1Dl — David A. Clarke, Jr. (@SheriffClarke) March 9, 2017
Black LIES Matter is in North Dakota protesting Dakota Pipeline Access. Blacks in the ghetto want better schools, jobs & safer neighborhoods pic.twitter.com/xu1fYJiWs7 — David A. Clarke, Jr. (@SheriffClarke) March 10, 2017
Clarke’s Twitter followers agreed. “What does a pipeline have to do with Black lives matter? What a joke!” one person tweeted.
Another replied: “Nothing. They go where their boss pays them to go.”
Clarke and numerous Twitter users suggested that BLM is merely protesting the Dakota Access Pipeline because they’re being paid to, as operatives of leftist groups bankrolled by billionaire George Soros.
Soros gave $246 million to 100 anti-Trump groups behind this week’s “Day Without a Woman” protest, according to the Media Research Center. Soros is also reportedly financing many of the anti-Trump riots around the country.
George Soros should be arrested for insighting riots — GodBlessAmerica (@chattycathy317) March 9, 2017
what does a pipeline have to do with Black lives matter? What a joke! — Todd M Miller (@toadieti72) March 9, 2017
I wouldn't say they're 'earning' it exactly. But they're getting money from Soros & his ilk. — Joy Runzel (@joyrunzel) March 9, 2017
They are a Soros funded political attack group – should be investigated @jeffsessions sir! — Richard E Roberts (@docweiser01) March 10, 2017
@FriendlyJMC |
the British], a biscuit is a cookie,’” McKinney said. “I went to a KFC over there and asked for a two-piece and a biscuit, and they looked at me like I was crazy. I had to ship over Bisquick so we could make our biscuits from scratch.”
Once again, McKinney will be tasked with keeping the food preparations well within the players’ comfort zones. As an article in ESPN points out, she’s shipped food again and has this time secured a specific supplier for USDA beef — because the beef in London tastes different.
“We don’t want them going over there and not eating right because they aren’t used to the food,” McKinney-Banks told ESPN’s Kevin Seifert.
The hotel kitchen staff handling much of the food operations in London have been briefed on the recipes that the Vikings players are used to, though McKinney-Banks has a backup plan.
The hotel will provide a daily fresh fish, along with brown rice, and it has promised to set up a “sauté station” to prepare stir-fry daily.
“If there is nothing you like that day, you’re always going to have stir-fry,” she said. “We used it last time, and it worked out great. That man who was doing it was worn out. There was a line on some days.”
But even transmitting recipes is difficult; they use a different system of measurement than Americans do. While McKinney-Banks might be able to deal with small measurement errors that come from converting cups to milliliters (1 cup is 238.59 milliliters, if you were curious), other aspects of a football team’s operation may not.
As Bussell pointed out to me, those different standards can cause massive headaches without proper preparation. “We sent professional copiers to our hotels in London,” he explained, “because the coaches used both tablets and paper in binders for playbooks. Because we sent U.S. copiers, we had to send U.S. sized paper (and plenty of it) because of the conversion from standard to metric measurements meant different paper sizes. Same for laminators and sheets. Remember, it’s all about giving the coaches and players what they need so they can focus on what they need to for a win.”
And sending electrical equipment also means sending voltage converters — the United Kingdom uses a 230-volt system, while the United States uses 110 voltage power — outlet adapters, and so on. That also means that small repair parts, which are extremely local in nature, might also need to be shipped, from screws, screwdrivers and unique tools to each piece of equipment.
Sometimes, this may mean massive expense beforehand, including team-funded projects to upgrade the wiring at a hotel so it can handle the power load that an NFL team draws.
Not everything can be anticipated beforehand. Teams have police liaisons familiar with NFL teams as well as other forms of local logistical help. This isn’t too different from many other away games — teams have contacts in every NFL city to deal with emergencies. When copiers blow a fuse, for example, there needs to be a plan in place to print 3,000 pages of paper on short notice.
Teams will also plan out their routes beforehand. While road teams often travel 130 or so people to different cities around the United States, teams traveling to London may move an additional 150 for far longer. Every business they need to contact, every practice they want to conduct and each team promotional event will have routes planned out weeks in advance.
They’ll also encounter problems that can’t be solved by sending the right people or equipment, or with meticulous step-by-step travel planning. One of the most important operations for an NFL team involves its medical staff, a staff that will be incredibly restricted when traveling abroad.
As Bussell told me, “The other part that caught me off guard was how medicine and player care was handled. Team doctors are licensed to practice in the U.S. but not in another country. Even if they travel, they can’t administer medicine while in another country.
“Because of this, the NFL provides in-country physicians and trainers for each team. The shipment of medicine is also a major issue with customs. There are limits on what medicines and how much can be shipped before it has to be declared to customs. There is a lot of red tape around the medical aspects of a team traveling to another country.”
All of this work goes into maximizing environmental familiarity, which has a big impact on game outcomes. Some even theorize that familiarity — not the number of fans or unique quirks of the local stadium — drives homefield advantage.
That might explain why the Jacksonville Jaguars have had a 3-0 record in London over the past three years. They’ve played in London five times since 2007, when the NFL re-opened the London series, and though the Jaguars lost their first two games, they won their subsequent three games against teams that are typically much better than they are.
Those victories are over teams that collectively have been 19-18 outside of London, while the Jaguars have been 9-27. They beat the spread in each of those games, overachieving by a touchdown in 2015, four points in 2016 and by a whopping 40 points a month ago.
With all of this work trying to create as normal an environment in the most abnormal situation, is it worth it?
Bussell said it best: “It is if you win.”
RelatedIn a country that is more anti-American than Iran, one would expect overwhelming public, government support for Iran.
The waters of the Persian Gulf heated up sharply after Iran’s announcement last week that it is creating additional uranium enrichment facilities under a mountain, safe from airstrikes. Iran already has tens of thousands of centrifuges hidden deep underground in Natanz, and numerous other nuclear facilities around the country.
Iran has stood at the threshold to the Bomb for well over two years. In 2010 it had more than enough low enriched uranium (LEU, some 2,152 kilograms) to make its first bomb’s worth of weapons-grade uranium. Enhancement to the required quality could have been done in roughly 10 weeks if this LEU had been fed into the 4,186 centrifuges that it was then operating. But Iran furiously rejects allegations that it seeks the Bomb. It says the LEU is only for generating nuclear electricity.
America has probably guessed Iran’s intentions correctly. Why would Iran, a major exporter of gas and oil — but with very limited natural uranium resources — be willing to put its life on the line simply for the sake of nuclear electricity? During this American election year, things could boil over. Presidential aspirants are competing to out-macho one another over fighting a new war with Iran. President Obama, who retreated from his earlier promise for a Palestinian state, may now bow again before America’s pro-Israel lobby. He has announced new financial and commercial sanctions on companies dealing with Iran. The EU will decide this month whether to cooperate with the US and ban Iran’s oil exports.
But America’s moral position — and the tactics it uses to dissuade Iran — are morally indefensible. The US has given the green light to Israel’s campaign of secret assassination of Iranian nuclear scientists, injection of the Stuxnet virus, and periodically threatens to bomb Iran. While Iran has not attacked any other country in centuries, the United States overthrew Iran’s democracy in 1953 and installed a dictator who ensured that American corporations would have a near monopoly over Iranian oil. It supplied weapons to Saddam Hussain in his war against Iran, put Iran on the “axis of evil”, falsely blamed it for 9/11, flies drones over Iran, imposed sanctions, and provocatively sends its aircraft carriers up and down the Persian Gulf.
In my opinion, Iran’s quest for the bomb does it — and the world — no service. The world needs less nukes, not more. Yet, given the regime’s obstinate insistence, there appear to be only two possible outcomes. Continuing on its present path, Iran will likely become the world’s 10th nuclear state over the next few years. Bad as this would be, it would not be terrible. In all likelihood Iran would then moderate its dangerous rhetoric and, like other existing global nuclear rivalries, this one too could be managed.
On the other hand, an Israeli attack — whether aided or not by the US — would be truly terrible. The Middle East would become a permanent war zone. The third Gulf War would surely devastate Iran. But today it is in a position to inflict much greater damage on the US than were Iraq or Libya. The US would plunge into an economic crisis the likes of which it has not seen before. The last bits of its post-withdrawal strategy from Afghanistan would be shredded to pieces.
What about Pakistan? Where does it picture in a conflict shaping across its borders? In a country that is more anti-American than Iran, one would have expected overwhelming public and government support for Iran.
But Pakistan’s enthusiasm for Iran’s bomb has been subdued. The local media — which happily takes up anti-American causes — has been remarkably silent. Officially, Pakistan defends Iran’s right to nuclear technology. Further, as Iran acknowledges, Pakistan had secretly helped Iran’s nuclear weapon programme until the mid-1990s through the A Q Khan network. But, even at that time, voices within the Pakistani establishment spoke against giving nuclear support to Iran. US pressure was partly the reason but so was the discomfort with Iran, a Shi’ite state.
These suspicions were confirmed by confidential American cables revealed by Wikileaks. They detail Pakistan’s efforts to dissuade Iran from pursuing its weapons program. General Pervez Musharraf, prime minister Shaukat Aziz and foreign minister Khurshid Kasuri held at least seven meetings, whether face-to-face or by telephone, with the Iranians. There were 11 meetings with the Americans in 2006 alone. Pakistani officials also served as interlocutors between Iran and the US. Mr Kasuri provided a list of other reasons why Pakistan was so keen to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. “We are the only Muslim country [with such weapons],” he said, ‘“and don’t want anyone else to get it.”
Pakistan’s real dilemma comes not primarily because of America — with which it is now rapidly cutting off ties — but Saudi Arabia. It knows that if Iran chooses to cross the nuclear threshold, the Saudis would seek to follow suit. Pakistan would then have to choose sides between a Shia neighbour and a Sunni state that has been its benefactor. Former Saudi intelligence chief Prince Turki bin Sultan was on the mark when, speaking about Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, he said “It’s probably one of the closest relationships in the world between any two countries”. The Saudi opposition to Iranian nuclear weapons is intense. Again, thanks to WikLleaks, it is now well known that that King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia had repeatedly urged the US to destroy Iran’s nuclear program and “cut off the head of the snake” by launching military strikes. Last June, the influential former head of Saudi intelligence and ambassador in London and Washington, Prince Turki bin Faisal, spoke to an audience from the British and American military and security community at Molesworth air force base in England where he described “Iran as a paper tiger with steel claws”. He accused Iran of using these claws for its “meddling and destabilising efforts in countries with Shi’ite majorities”. After saying that “in a certain sense, Saudi Arabia and Iran are uniquely positioned to be at odds”, Faisal went on to warn that his country could embark on the path to nuclear weapons if Iran made them.
So what happens if Iran goes nuclear and Saudi Arabia wants to follow? What could be the Saudi path and what role is Pakistan likely to play? This shall be taken up next week.
Published in The Express Tribune, January 16th, 2012.
Read full storyTo pass the time. In other coaching news, Randy Carlyle spoke with the Sharks this week. Adam Oates is talking with Wilson today. — Darren Dreger (@DarrenDreger) May 20, 2015
It appears Adam Oates' days in New Jersey are numbered.Oates, who served as an assistant in the latter half of the 2014-15 season, is talking with an NHL team about their vacant head coaching position, and that team isn't New Jersey.The Sharks have interviewed a handful of coaches, and they want a second interview with Pete DeBoer, so I'd be surprised if Oates gets the gig. That said, I find it interesting that he's talking with San Jose.Ray Shero has been in charge of the Devils for a few weeks now and has surely had time to talk to Oates about his future with the organization.If Oates is talking to the Sharks that likely means Shero told him he won't be the next coach of the Devils.Oates has mentioned that he'd like to be the head guy in New Jersey so I doubt he'd be talking to other teams if he was still in the running.Whether he returns to New Jersey as an assistant or not remains to be seen, but it seems quite unlikely he'll be the team's next head coach.For friends who ask me where to start in the wide and sometimes wacky world of anime, I routinely point them to. Katsuhiro Otomo's 1988 epic (based on his own equally epic 1,000 page-plus manga) has so many of the archetypal themes and techniques of contemporary anime that it's a virtual thesaurus of the idiom. Of course the fact is thatpaved the way for these themes and techniques to a large degree, and all that has come after in the peculiar world of anime exists largely in's formidable wake. This has been one of the most requested titles to get a Blu-ray upgrade, and the result is both good and bad. While the film looks and sounds stupendous, obviously better than it ever has, Blu-ray's incredible resolution does reveal some very occasional flaws and damage in the source elements which fans may have missed in the previous SD-DVD releases.
Akira is such a potent prime example of anime for a some very good reasons. First of all, as so many classic animes do, it takes place in a dystopian future, in this case a post-apocalyptic Tokyo circa 2019 (30 years after World War III, which thankfully we seem to have missed). Akira also posits dysfunctional youth against an overly mechanized society, though in this case we have no transforming robots or other mecha. What we do have is roving gangs of motorcycle hooligans, all of whom speed their super-cool looking craft through the neon lit streets of "New Tokyo." Playing out against this gang warfare is a simultaneous story of the intellectual, spiritual, and ultimately physical mutation of mankind, as personified first by the title character, a supposedly now dead boy who, when alive, showed amazing psychic and telekinetic powers. Those same ubermenschian abilities are now showing up in various others, including a mysterious wizened child as well as Tetsuo, one of the motorcycle gang members.
What proceeds over Akira's two hour or so running time is a forceful and at times surprisingly funny look at alienated youth (and "alienated" can be taken in any of its meanings in Akira). New Tokyo is shown to be a glittering paradise from a distance which, once the camera delves beneath the surface, is a gritty and foul collection of street people, roving gangs and drug abuse. While the motorcycle gangs are tough and violent, they also come off at times as comedians, a la "Gee Officer Krupke" in West Side Story, with an impish sense of humor underlying their disaffected youth stance.
As the story begins, Tetsuo and his buddy Kaneda are involved in some motorcycle mayhem when Tetsuo has an accident. Kaneda arrives on the scene to see Tetsuo being spirited away, along with the mysterious old-looking child figure, by what appears to be governmental powers. We soon find out that the weird looking youngster and Tetsuo share the same psychic powers that the legendary Akira once possessed, powers which, it turns out, were what caused the nuclear holocaust that obliterated Tokyo. Kaneda then spends the bulk of the rest of the film attempting to infiltrate the secret government cabal that has captured his friend in order to free Tetsuo. Tetsuo, on the other hand, slowly becomes aware that with his newfound omnipotence, he doesn't really need rescuing all that badly, and he sets off to find Akira, who he is convinced is still alive and being kept at a "secret, undisclosed location" (yes, it occurs to me that Cheney may simply have been an extraordinarily lifelike anime character).
For those more used to mind blowing CGI effects, Akira may seem, well, quaint at times with its more traditional cel animation techniques. And yet there is incredible artistry and depth to this animation, with fully developed characters and an incredible care taken with layout, color design and some very nice "special effects." When the boys zoom their motorcycles through the dense cityscapes, notice how a beautiful trail of multicolored lights follows them, weaving serpentine bands of hues behind them. At the climax of the piece, when Tetsuo's "evolution" suddenly explodes out of control, notice how his transmogrification literally spills over the edge of the frame, as if the film itself can't contain his monstrous transformation. The one thing that is definitely not quaint about Akira, and certainly one of the things that made it so instantly popular with teenaged boys I would imagine, is its at times extremely graphic violence. Scenes of sexual predation and blood, gore and various guts are scattered throughout the film; there's a reason it has its deserved "R' rating, so parents concerned about their kids' viewing choices should be strongly cautioned about previewing Akira before sharing with any children younger than teenagers (if even them).
If the actual ending of Akira is a bit opaque, almost akin to 2001's iconic yet mysterious final images, the story leading up to that point is at once multidimensional while sustaining enough grounded elements to not be too hard to follow (a trap that some post-Akira animes fall into). The central issue of mutation and evolution, something that must haunt the Japanese soul post-Hiroshima, is well handled, if not exceptionally deeply so. But there's a wealth of other wonderful plot material here, some of it only in passing, including the aforementioned comedy elements, the friendship between Kaneda and Tetsuo, and the ultimate question of how those with newfound and potentially unfettered power choose to use it.
There's a reason Akira tops not only my personal anime list, but most ardent followers of the genre. This is quite simply one of the towering achievements of Japanese animated artistry, something akin to the Citizen Kane of its idiom. Those new to anime will find it an intriguing and exciting entrée into a new and often very strange world. Longtime fans of anime probably are already well ensconced in Akira's many charms, and will welcome this exciting new BD with open arms.
The Blu-ray
Video:
To state this as simply and succinctly as possible, Akira has never looked this good. With an AVC codec an 1.85:1 OAR, this BD offers an incredibly sharp and well defined picture. In fact, that's also about the only thing to complain about--the very sharpness and definition articulate occasional flaws in the source material. You'll notice very occasional registration issues and some very slight damage from time to time. Lower res VHS and DVD releases tended to bury these flaws in their lower quality reproductions, but everything is "out there," for better or worse, on this BD. Akira's handdrawn animation doesn't have the "gee whiz" awesomeness of some more recent anime's CGI, but, that said, there is extremely well defined color and contrast, with excellent black levels. Character outlines are always sharp with absolutely no artifacts.
Sound:
Both the original Japanese track, now in a stunning Dolby TrueHD 5.1 mix, as well as the similarly excellent English Dolby TrueHD 5.1 mix, offer pretty close to reference quality audio. Akira is a riot of sound effects, from the opening nuclear explosion, to motorcycles roaring between channels, to Tetsuo's ultimate frightening transformation. Both of these soundtracks offer incredible separation and clarity, with a wealth of LFE and other ambient effect scattered throughout the channels. Dialogue is always clear and directionally placed. Also offered are Japanese tracks in PCM 2.0 and DD 5.1. English and Japanese subtitles are available.
Extras:
The one real disappointment in this BD release is the dearth of extras, especially when the special edition DVD contained so many excellent ones. Here there is an informative, if awfully technical at times, booklet included covering various production elements. As far as the BD itself goes, you get five trailers and some of Otomo's original storyboards. Pretty meager, if you ask me.
Final Thoughts:
Akira remains the apex of handdrawn anime. With a virtual checklist of anime tropes, most of which Akira itself premiered, the film is a lush, if sometimes ultraviolent, trip through a humankind on the brink of enormous evolutionary change. Though this BD skimps somewhat on the extras, the sterling visual and especially audio quality of this release, as well as the film's historical importance, make this an easy entry into the DVD Talk Collector Series pantheon.
____________________________________________
"G-d made stars galore" & "Hey, what kind of a crappy fortune is this?" ZMK, modern prophet‘I make claymations that are NOT for children.’ The Leeds born-and-bred filmmaker Lee Hardcastle doesn’t lie. In 2011, the Northern Film School alumnus took to YouTube to showcase his dark, twisted creations; equipped only with a cheap laptop, a digital camera, some malleable clay and ambition by the bloodied bucket load. A few years later, his presence on the online broadcasting platform is as fearsome as the animations themselves, with audiences flocking in their millions to watch his music videos, humorous sketches, short films and movie parodies. Some are hilarious, some are disgusting, some are hyperviolent. All are brilliant. Tirelessly cultivating an audience online, Lee finally got his big break with the anthology horror film The ABCs of Death. Produced by Drafthouse Films, and in affiliation with Austin’s Fantastic Fest, the omnibus movie sees 26 up and coming genre-film directors bestowed with total creative freedom and a £5,000 budget to each produce a short film that explores one grisly demise. Hardcastle’s ‘T is for Toilet’ short is the best of the bunch; sticking to familiar black comedy tropes, whilst injecting a new source of clayed-up exuberance into the conventional horror genre. The Frame Loop were lucky enough to catch up with our man Lee to wax lyrical about his fastidious work routine, internet fame and hopes for the filmmaking future. Luke Richardson: What ignited your interest in claymation as a storytelling medium?
Lee Hardcastle: I had no money or crew to make the videos that I wanted to make, so using stop motion animation as a medium allowed me to chip away at a production in my own time as and when it pleased me.
There’s a DIY aesthetic to your work that recalls the likes of comedy duo Adam & Joe, or even a musician like Daniel Johnston. Do you consider your work to be personal, or has it always been intended for the big audiences you’ve quickly snapped up? Thanks, Adam & Joe were huge inspirations. The videos I make are purely for the audience, I want to entertain and wow the viewer. I focus on what worked in the last video and then attempt to amplify it in the next video.
Tell us a little bit about a regular working day in the life of Lee Hardcastle.
I usually dedicate days to writing, storyboarding and planning and then buying materials. Once everything is set and ready to go, I’ll start shooting in a dark room at 6 – 16 hours a day. It depends on if I’m happy with the amount of work I’ve done or if I need to push for deadlines. I listen to the radio while I work and interact with my audience on the social websites inbetween shots.
Some of your biggest YouTube successes have been parodies of classic movies, such as The Evil Dead and Die Hard. How do you decide what sacred cows to joust with?
It’s a mix of two things 1. If I think people will want to see the finished video. 2. If I feel something inside me that excites me to move forward with the project. Those rules applies to all my videos really.
What has the response been like from the filmmakers whose work you have paid homage to?
Really positive reactions! Which is very cool and an absolute joy for me and makes it all more worth the while. I did make one for Eli Roth’s Hostel which I thought was a clever joke but it back fired because Roth and another director I was poking fun at didn’t really respond with the pat on the back that I expected, which made things horribly awkward.
The release of genre film anthology movie The ABCs of Death will see you catapulted into cinemas worldwide. Do you think there’s a place for claymation on the big screen?
Almost definitely. There’s a bit of confusion what claymation is. ParaNorman, Coraline and Frankenweenie are pre-rendered models and puppets, which is fine, but to see a movie made out of clay would be something very special, and I love the reaction ‘T is for Toilet’ gets in the cinema. It’s just bonkers because the video was crudely made by one guy with clay, but audience accept the medium, forgive the flaws and engage in the story without hesitation and go along for the ride.
You’ve been able to do what so many before have tried and failed – use the internet to showcase your art and ignite your career path. What’s the secret to the success?
Don’t invest too much time and energy and money into your masterpeice then bang it online and expect people to flood in their thousands to watch it. It just doesn’t work like that I’m afraid. The secret is to keep producing content, keep pumping, keep throwing shit at the wall and see what sticks. Not everything you do is gonna gel with the internet audience but the stuff that does, take note and work with it.
Quitting your day job and going full-time leads me to believe that you’re not slowing down anytime soon. What’s next for you?
Same old throwing shit at the wall. Raising the bar, trying my damn hardest to blow your mind.
Witness the mordant majesty of Lee’s work yourself! Subscribe to his YouTube video feed and website here. The ABCs of Death is on limited cinema release across the UK from now, and available to rent and purchase from the iTunes store. Visit the studio website for more info.“His High Exaltedness, the great Jabba the Hutt, has decreed that you are to be terminated immediately.”
–C-3PO, Star Wars: Return of the Jedi
Fantasy Flight Games is proud to announce Scrap Metal, the fourth Force Pack in the Opposition cycle for Star Wars™: The Card Game!
Throughout the saga, Star Wars has been defined by rivalries and conflict. Luke Skywalker, hero of the Rebellion, is opposed by Darth Vader, one of the Dark Lords of the Sith. Han Solo, a smuggler from the Outer Rim, is tracked by Jabba the Hutt and his teams of bounty hunters. Princess Leia Organa is taunted and questioned by Grand Moff Tarkin. These enmities and threats bring the characters to life, and now, you can bring some of these rivalries into your games of Star Wars: The Card Game with Scrap Metal, the next Force Pack in the Opposition cycle.
Like the other Force Packs of the cycle, Scrap Metal comes with ten new objective sets (two copies each of five distinct sets), each challenging the way you view the battles between the factions of Star Wars: The Card Game. Here, you’ll find a host of new versions of iconic characters, including Jabba the Hutt, C-3PO, R2-D2, and Jek Porkins. With plenty of new fate cards to bring new tension to every edge battle, the rivalries that exist between factions are about to become more explosive and dangerous than ever before!
Crime Lord of Tatooine
Among the criminal elements of the Outer Rim, few command as much power as Jabba the Hutt. From his palace on Tatooine, Jabba can order a death mark on anyone in the galaxy, instantly dispatching dozens of professional hunters to fulfill the contract. Now, with a new version of Jabba the Hutt, you can orchestrate the rise of your Scum and Villainy from behind the scenes.
Most of the stats on the new Jabba the Hutt (Scrap Metal, 2011) are instantly recognizable from the earlier version of Jabba the Hutt (Edge of Darkness, 375). Across two versions, Jabba the Hutt has the same cost, damage capacity, combat icons, and the text, “This unit cannot be targeted by enemy events.” Still, the new version has gained the elite keyword, keeping him from being focused for long, and an ability that can give you a significant economic advantage: you automatically reduce the cost of the first Bounty Hunter unit or Scum and Villainy event you play each turn by two!
Imagine playing a powerful Bounty Hunter like Boba Fett (Between the Shadows, 666) for just two resources—or paying a single resource to play Captured (Edge of Darkness, 373) on any enemy unit. With Jabba the Hutt, you can easily save enough resources to make up for his cost, even as you use his tactics icons to control the battlefield. In fact, if you play Jabba the Hutt early enough, your resource superiority could give you a crippling advantage over the course of the game.
As you might expect, Jabba’s objective set comes with both another Bounty Hunter unit and a Scum and Villainy event to make use of his special ability. The Freelance Hunter (Scrap Metal, 667) can be played for free if you have Jabba in play, giving you another unit that’s well suited to attack an enemy objective. Or, you could play Hutt's Hospitality (Scrap Metal, 2014), an event that simply allows you to destroy any Character or Droid unit with a printed cost of two or lower. Best of all, this event has almost no restrictions on when it can be played, allowing you to potentially tip the balance of an engagement in your favor at a moment’s notice.
The crime lord of Tatooine has considerable resources at his disposal, and two of the other cards in this objective set give you ways to ensure you always have the events you need in your hand. Twi'lek Sycophant (Scrap Metal, 2012) allows you to search the top five cards of your deck for an event card and add it to your hand. Then, after you’ve played your events, you can bring them back to your hand with this set’s objective, His High Exaltedness (Scrap Metal, 2010). This objective reads, “Interrupt: When an objective is destroyed, return a Scum and Villainy event card from your discard pile to your hand.” Whether you’re recurring Threat Removal (Jump to Lightspeed, 837), Shadows of the Empire (Between the Shadows, 674), or Show of Force (Between the Shadows, 687), this objective can quickly prove worthwhile when it’s paired with Jabba the Hutt.
Once you’re playing most of your events for free with Jabba the Hutt, the biggest remaining downside to your Scum and Villainy events is the restrictions that come on each card. Fortunately, with Jabba’s criminal empire at your disposal, you can put a Death Mark (Scrap Metal, 2013) on anyone. This enhancement is attached to an enemy Character or Droid unit, and the enhanced unit now counts as matching the targeting requirements of all Scum and Villainy events. With Death Mark, you can now use Hutt’s Hospitality to destroy nearly any unit in the game, or Springing the Ambush (Lure of the Dark Side, 541) to quickly capture your enemies. No matter which events you use, a Death Mark makes your entire deck run more smoothly.
Build an Empire
Whether you support the Galactic Empire or seek to tear it down, you can find your place in the galaxy among the new objective sets from this Force Pack. Experience the rivalries and conflicts of the Star Wars galaxy with the newest expansion for Star Wars: The Card Game!
Look for Scrap Metal at your local retailer in the fourth quarter of 2016.TED and The Huffington Post are excited to bring you TEDWeekends, a curated weekend program that introduces a powerful "idea worth spreading" every Friday, anchored in an exceptional TEDTalk. This week's TEDTalk is accompanied by an original blog post from the featured speaker, along with new op-eds, thoughts and responses from the HuffPost community. Watch the talk above, read the blog post and tell us your thoughts below. Become part of the conversation!
Watch Beau Lotto's talk above on optical illusions and how information can differ depending on perception.
The year was 1943, and the Pentagon had a problem. They'd poured millions of dollars into a new voice encryption system -- dubbed the "X System" -- but no one was certain how secure it was. So the top brass called in Claude Shannon to analyze their code and -- if all went well -- to prove that it was mathematically unbreakable.
Shannon was a new breed of mathematician: A specialist in what's known today as information theory. To Shannon and his fellow theorists, information was something separate from the letters, numbers and facts it represented. Instead, it was something more abstract; more mathematical: in a word, it was non-redundancy.
As Beau Lotto explains in his presentation, we're hallucinating reality all the time -- but we only take notice when our hallucinations fail to make accurate predictions. -- Ben Thomas
Take, for example, the sequence of letters spelling out "Let's crack the codes." It's got a high level of redundancy -- not all its letters are essential for getting its message across. As long as you've got some practice reading English, you can look at a shorter, less-redundant sequence like "Lt's crck th cdes" and fill in the missing sounds. Along the same lines, Hebrew and Arabic speakers can read the vowel-free written forms of their languages just fine. Our brains are surprisingly talented at picking up patterns, filling in blanks, and ignoring redundant data -- only when we're uncertain about how to fill in a blank does information become... well, informative.
Shannon's non-redundancy idea isn't just handy for cracking codes, though -- today, it's responsible for most of what you see on the Internet. JPEG image compression, for instance, throws out most of an image's data, and we rarely notice anything's missing - our brains' visual system smooths out the rough spots. Same goes for MP3 compression, and for the Flash video encoding used on YouTube. Ever since Shannon's day, information theorists have been refining their techniques, drilling closer and closer to the bare minimum of information required to convince us we're not missing anything. (You might say those ancient Hebrew and Arabic scribes were a few thousand years ahead of their time.)
Data compression isn't just digital, either -- in fact, it's hardwired into our brains, from the neurons up. As Beau Lotto shows us in his TEDTalk above, every color we perceive is dependent on its context: What other colors surround it? Is it in light or in shadow? How's the light tinted? And what's true for light holds true for sound, too -- as I explain in this article, your brain gets so pumped up about rhythm that it actually hallucinates missing beats. Oh, and if you're in the mood for something extra weird today, check out Oliver Sacks' TEDTalk on Charles Bonnet syndrome -- a brain disorder that makes people hallucinate vivid scenes from tiny stray nerve signals.
In light of all this, it's hard to escape the inventor Ray Kurzweil's conclusion: "We don't actually see things [at all]; we hallucinate them in detail from low-resolution cues." As Beau Lotto explains in his presentation, we're hallucinating reality all the time -- but we only take notice when our hallucinations fail to make accurate predictions; when we think we're certain of something that's actually not so certain, and our brains have to hunt down new information in order to make better predictions.
Claude Shannon once said, "Information is the resolution of uncertainty." The more certain we are in our hallucinations, the less information we think we need -- and the less open to new information we become. Beau Lotto finishes his talk on a similar note. "Only through uncertainty," he says, "is there potential for understanding."
Luckily for the Allies in World War II, Shannon had just the right kind of understanding for the job. After proving the Pentagon's X System mathematically uncrackable, he helped lay the groundwork for the next generation of military codes. His most enduring legacy, though, isn't the codes he created, but the idea behind them: Only in uncertainty do we realize information's value.
Ideas are not set in stone. When exposed to thoughtful people, they morph and adapt into their most potent form. TEDWeekends will highlight some of today's most intriguing ideas and allow them to develop in real time through your voice! Tweet #TEDWeekends to share your perspective or email tedweekends@huffingtonpost.com to learn about future weekend's ideas to contribute as a writer.August 28, 2009 at 06:46 Tags Book reviews
Natural language processing (NLP) researchers and students who want a learn a solid programming tool to help them with their work. Python programmers who want to find out more about NLP. Newbies in both Python and NLP who just think the topic sounds cool and those whales on the cover are kinda cute.
There are three kinds of people who might think this book could be useful:In my opinion, the only kind that will find this book suitable and useful is (1). If you're familiar with Python and know no NLP it won't help you much, because it doesn't really teach NLP. It shows a few domains of this vast field, with nice code examples and all, but you should probably start with some introductory textbook on the subject or a course. You won't really learn NLP here. The book's focus is mostly on the NLTK library written in Python by the authors. This library implements many NLP algorithms and comes with lots of data for testing and training. Almost no algorithms are implemented in the book - some are explained, and the code always imports the required modules from NLTK and shows their usage. The Python code is well-written and clean. To |
in kinship care going to foster care. They're being shuffled around the state and there's an inconsistency in the treatment plan and the services the child is receiving,” said Hansch.
Further proving his concerns is this brief letter he received from one of Criner's teachers within Killeen ISD. The teacher asked that his identity be kept private.
Mick Criner, the student just arrested for murdering the UT student, was one of my students until a few days ago. He is extremely mentally ill but he was undiagnosed because he was bouncing around the foster child system. He was abused as a child and abused within the Texas foster care system. I don't know what help is available for Mick but he needs help. I had extensive conversations with him on an almost daily basis and he wrote about his past in some assignments in my class. Everyone is going to want to hang Mick but he is mentally ill and he wasn't being treated.
CPS would not discuss whether Criner was receiving treatment, but a spokesperson did point out the mandatory reporting law. Under that law teachers must report if they have cause to believe that a child has been adversely affected by abuse or neglect.
Hansch encouraged the teacher to file a report with CPS. Hansch plans to alert the National Association of Social Workers and Texas CASA.
"We do know there is a severe shortage of mental health professionals across the state particularly child psychiatrists and that could absolutely have been something that played into this situation. We don't know what mental health treatment plan he went through in his lifetime, but it's something that needs to be looked at for building that mental health workforce and making sure that people are getting what they need,” said Hansch.
Criner now has legal representation.
Hansch says prosecutors need to look at whether Criner can be held criminally responsible. He feels a possible verdict of reason by insanity might be on the table.Newly sworn-in White House Chief of Staff John Kelly look on during a Medal of Honor ceremony at the White House in Washington, DC, on July 31, 2017
Raised voices could be heard through the thick door to the Oval Office as John Kelly - then secretary of Homeland Security - offered some tough talk to President Donald Trump.
Kelly, a whip-cracking retired general who was sworn in as White House chief of staff on Monday, had demanded to speak to the president alone after Trump complained loudly that the U.S. was admitting travelers from countries he viewed as high risk.
Kelly first tried to explain to Trump that the admissions were standard - some people had legitimate reasons to visit the country - but the president insisted that it was making him look bad, according to an administration official familiar with the exchange about a month ago.
Kelly then demanded that other advisers leave the room so he could speak to the president frankly. Trump refused at first, but agreed when Kelly insisted.
It was an early indication that Kelly, a decorated retired Marine general who served three tours in Iraq, is not afraid to stand up to his commander-in-chief.
Tapped to bring order to a chaotic West Wing, Kelly began to make his mark immediately Monday, ousting newly appointed communications director Anthony Scaramucci and revising a dysfunctional command structure that has bred warring factions. From now on, said White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, all senior staffers - including the president's son-in-law Jared Kushner and chief strategist Steve Bannon - will report to Kelly instead of the president.
Sanders said Tuesday that Kelly had spent his first day on the job speaking with members of Congress, getting to know White House staffers and working to put new procedures in place.
Keep updated: Sign up to our newsletter Email * Please enter a valid email address Sign up Please wait… Thank you for signing up. We've got more newsletters we think you'll find interesting. Click here Oops. Something went wrong. Please try again later. Try again Thank you, The email address you have provided is already registered. Close
"It definitely has the fingerprints of a new sheriff in town," said Blain Rethmeier, who guided Kelly through the Senate confirmation process for the Homeland Security post. Rethmeier said that what stood out about Kelly during the time they worked together was the way Kelly commanded respect from everyone he encountered - and the way he respected others.
Kelly drew praise from lawmakers of both parties Tuesday.
Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., expressed confidence that Kelly can help restore order, saying on NBC's "Today" show that "the Marines have landed at the White House. They have a beachhead."
And Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois told CNN that Kelly "is in a position where he can stabilize this White House, that's good for this country. The president has to be part of that."
Jason Miller, a senior communications adviser during the Trump presidential campaign, predicted on CNN that Kelly's next move will be to put people in place that will help the president. He suggested Kelly should convince ousted press secretary Sean Spicer to stay on, at least through the tax overhaul effort.
Kelly fostered a reputation as an outspoken commander who didn't shy away from unpopular opinions during his military career. Rethmeier said that Kelly also respects authority deeply - "and that's something that Trump sort of smells out, if you respect him or not."
"If he disagrees with you, he'll disagree respectfully," Rethmeier said.
It was a point Kelly made clear during his confirmation hearing in January.
"I have never had a problem speaking truth to power, and I firmly believe that those in power deserve full candor and my honest assessment and recommendations. I also value people that work for me speaking truth to power," he said.
In April, Kelly bluntly challenged members of Congress critical of the Trump administration's aggressive approach to immigration enforcement to either change the laws or "shut up."
But after being confirmed as part of Trump's Cabinet, Kelly also tried to moderate some of the president's hard-line positions, even as he publicly defended them.
Kelly and Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, another retired general, were also said to have been deeply frustrated with the rollout of Trump's refugee and immigration ban, and made clear to associates that they were not involved in drafting it or aware of its details around the time that Trump signed the original order. Both moved swiftly to address gaps in the measure, with Mattis asking that Iraqis who helped U.S. troops be exempt and Kelly clarifying that green-card holders would not be affected.
Nonetheless, Kelly launched a particularly robust defense of the order to lawmakers and reporters, which was welcomed by the White House.
Mattis and Kelly also agreed in the earliest weeks of Trump's presidency that one of them should remain in the United States at all times to keep tabs on the orders rapidly emerging from the White House, according to a person familiar with the discussions. The official insisted on anonymity in order to discuss the administration's internal dynamics.
Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn, said Monday that he discussed Kelly's appointment with Trump and hopes Kelly "will do everything possible to bring the appropriate discipline and focus that needs to be at the White House there."
"I hope that Gen. Kelly will absolutely, forcefully clean the place up," Corker said. "And anybody who's been a violator, who's been a part of public backbiting, part of undermining, who's been part of feathering their own nest at other people's expense, I hope they'll all be gone."
David B. Cohen, a University of Akron political science professor writing a book on chiefs of staff, applauded Kelly for doing "things that should have been done on Day One of Reince Priebus's tenure." He said Scaramucci's removal sent a clear message "that going off-script and being undisciplined" would no longer be tolerated at the White House.
But Cohen wondered how long Trump would go before undermining Kelly.
"President Trump is his own worst enemy," he said. "He instinctively likes to be his own chief of staff and he's a pretty awful one."
Bill Galston, a former Clinton administration domestic policy adviser now at the Brookings Institution, said the ball is now in the president's court to help Kelly succeed.
"If the president is not prepared to accept an orderly policy process with all of the restraints on individual conduct and behavior, then the chief of staff will not have the power to implement policy," he said.Injuries are a daily reality in professional football. The Hamilton Tiger-Cats have been hit by a number of significant roster challenges before the first snap of the regular season. It would be understandable if the timing and severity of the injuries had everyone in the organization crying uncle.
There are no punchlines for Hamilton’s one- and six-game injured lists. They are sobering and long, peppered with marquee names like Brian Bulcke, Luke Tasker, Eric Norwood and C.J. Gable. Each injury is seemingly more bewildering than the last.
The team should probably be devastated, but instead there are signs of excitement and hope. The positivity displayed by Hamilton players in the face of adversity speaks to the character and composition of the 2015 Tiger-Cats. More specifically, it shows how a coach can affect a team’s mental disposition.
Head coach and general manager Kent Austin has shaped this team in his own image. He continually preaches the value of preparation, putting the team first and the meaningless nature of depth charts in the CFL game.
Reiterating the same message and tone over and over again has cost more than a few head coaches their jobs in professional sports, as players have a tendency to tune out. Austin’s has avoided becoming predictable and stale through his eternal optimism, and the team has followed suit.
The true measure of a coach’s ability to connect with players and shape a team’s identity cannot be quickly understood. It takes years to fully implement a culture and approach across an entire organization. Many coaches are not given the time to see their vision through, but there is no question Austin has the sway to make it happen in Hamilton.
He has taken a roster full of players signed by previous administrations to appearances in consecutive Grey Cups. Now in his third year, Austin continues to mould the team’s roster and ideology, aiming to get closer to the finished product he imagined when he took the job in December of 2012.
A vital part of that ideology is to understand football is a game predicated on the idea each and every player on the roster must be ready to play. As Austin stated Monday, “Our guys are good. They understand it’s next guy up, and the expectations for everybody that plays here are the same. We don't make excuses because of mishaps or bad things that occur in life or happen in football.”
Running backs C.J. Gable, Mossis Madu Jr., and Nic Grigsby all out injured? Ray ‘Buddy’ Holley to the rescue. Defensive linemen Hasan Hazime, Michael Atkinson and Brian Bulcke all hurt at the start of camp? Insert emerging sack master Adrian Tracy and play on.
Through the ups and downs of terrible injury news, Austin has kept his wits about him while supplying a sort of dry humour on the grave diagnoses.
“I may have said, ‘Are you kidding me?’ once or twice, then tried to laugh about it and moved on,” he said. “I don’t believe in being snake bitten. It is what it is. Welcome to the game of life, things happen.”
Austin’s realistic and well-natured approach to life and football doesn’t allow him to accept excuses. He lives in the now, which is exactly what this team needs to make it to a third straight Grey Cup.The Chiefs shockingly released Jeremy Maclin on Friday, giving a usage boost to all relevant pass catchers (Tyreek Hill, Travis Kelce, and Chris Conley)
Wolf’s Take
Welcome to the bandwagon, RotoWorld (and surely all other boneheaded experts like Matthew Berry, who had Hill down in the WR30 range). A little late to the party, but I guess that’s better than never. See, this news doesn’t mean all that much to me, seeing as I already had Hill up at WR17 in my “High Upside WR2” tier; thanks to even more touches, he’ll jump a couple spots ahead of Alshon Jeffery and possibly Davante Adams too.
But really, Hill was already going to be their number one. Andy Reid has already talked extensively about making Hill a full-time player and manufacturing more ways to get his incredibly explosive playmaker the ball. Perfect, because Alex Smith refuses to chuck the ball more than five yards. This was going to be a passing game that already funneled throw screens and bubble hitches to Hill — get him in space, and let him do his thing. Those who didn’t realize this ahead of Maclin’s release (re: pretty much everyone) should not be trusted.
So yes, the move does fully luck Hill into a starting role and will yield a few more targets his way. But to say he was a “risky WR3 / Flex” before the move is a complete misjudgment, and should leave you highly skeptical.
Meanwhile, Travis Kelce also sees a nice boost, and though he remains my TE3, last year’s top scoring tight end inches closer to the “Gronkowski / Reed” tier. Indeed, those two carry far higher ceilings, but Kelce is undoubtedly the highest floor option, having played in all 16 games over the past three years; RotoWorld does wisely note Kelce topped 100 yards in three of four games Maclin missed, and he should dominate the middle of the field. If no WRs or RBs are screaming to you in late round three, or definitely round four, Kelce is a great investment who’ll give you a weekly edge on nearly all other seam-stretchers.
One name not mentioned by RotoWorld is Chris Conley. Towering at 6’3″ and 205 pounds, Conley ran the fastest 40 (4.35 sec), posted the highest vertical (45 in.?) and broad jump (139 in.) in a class that included Amari Cooper. Indeed, none of this has translated to the field, likely due in equal measures to his lack of real usage and this offense’s reluctance to go deep. Nonetheless, athleticism this freakish ascending into more targets is always worth noting; so keep Conley on your “Penny Stock” radar, even if his surrounding situation will likely render him useless.
We are the ‘Watchers on the RotoWall,’ and indeed, the RotoWorld Blurbs can be dark and full of terrors (re: nonsense on backup right guards and their contract disputes). Instead, bookmark our Fantasy Football Stock Watch, and let us sift through the nonsense to bring you the blurbs that actually matter, with the in-depth analysis we’re known for. A Fantasy Wolf doesn’t miss a single stock market move, so don’t be a sheep. Follow the Stock Watch.Blood and Bone is a dark and gritty fantasy roleplaying game.
Play as a ragtag company of sellswords, a savage band of raiders, or a gang of outlaws and thieves in the unique and deadly world of Ossura.
Create rich characters, driven by human desires in stories fueled by war, intrigue, and exploration.
Mechanics:
The core mechanic is a simple, streamlined d20 based system -- easy to learn and easy to use.
Character customization is the heart of the system. There are no professions or classes, instead, characters define themselves through an expansive list of unique Traits.
Half the book is a campaign setting, which can be easily used with any other roleplaying system.
To get a free copy of the Quickplay rules, click here.
To get the Campaign Setting, click here.
This title includes:It’s the opening shot of 2017, fired by health advocates looking to advance a long-running fight against soda-makers.
A lawsuit filed Jan. 4 in federal court in California alleges that Coca-Cola and its trade group, the American Beverage Association, deceived and confused the public—including children—about science that links sugar-sweetened beverages to chronic illnesses.
For more news videos visit Yahoo View, available now on iOS and Android.
Filed by the Center for Science in the Public Interest, the lawsuit alleges that Big Soda used industry-funded reports and advertisements to shift blame for health troubles off its products and onto consumers’ exercise habits. Basically, the industry posited, if people atoned for their sugar consumption by exercising more, they’d be healthier.
“Coca-Cola and the ABA are misleading consumers about the health risks posed by sugar drinks, and claiming that there is no science linking sugar-sweetened beverages to obesity and related diseases,” the group said in a statement. “The campaign also led consumers to believe that all calories are the same, when science indicates that sugar drinks play a distinct role in the obesity epidemic.”
The human body digests and processes foods differently, the group says. For instance, digestion of one calorie from almonds is not identical to the digestion of one calorie from sugar. This idea was explored in-depth in the award-winning 2014 documentary, Fed Up.
The American Beverage Association and Coca-Cola acknowledged the lawsuit. A spokesman from Coca-Cola characterized it as “legally and factually meritless” in a statement to Quartz.
We take our consumers and their health very seriously and have been on a journey to become a more credible and helpful partner in helping consumers manage their sugar consumption. To that end, we have led the industry adopting clear, front-of-pack calorie labeling for all our beverages. We are innovating to expand low- and no-calorie products; offering and promoting more drinks in smaller sizes; reformulating products to reduce added sugars; transparently disclosing our funding of health and well-being scientific research and partnerships; and do not advertise to children under 12.
The suit comes after a year of defeats for the soda industry: Consumption is in decline in America, and several US cities have adopted soda-taxes policies. Those measures don’t look to be fizzling out either—word has it that a soda-tax proposal is imminent in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
Sign up for the Quartz Daily Brief, our free daily newsletter with the world’s most important and interesting news.
More stories from Quartz:A new species of mushroom that looks like a man has been discovered by the side of a road.
The fungus, found in Cockley Cley, Norfolk, has fleshy off-shoots that appear to resemble human heads, arms and legs.
The discovery was made by Jonathan Revett and the mushroom has now been classified as a new species in the world.
Fun guys: A new species of mushroom that looks like a man has been discovered by the side of a busy road
They have been named as geastrum britannicum to reflect them being unique to the UK.
Mr Revett, 49, said: 'They do look like little mushroom men.
'It's really strange how their shape makes them look like they have a head and arms. That's what drew my attention to them.'
Despite first spotting them in 2000, the fungus was dismissed as a species of earthstar fungi which is prevalent in Norfolk.
Having been interested in mycology - the study of fungus - for more than 40 years, Mr Revett sent them off to Kew Gardens for testing.
The fungus, found in Cockley Cley, Norfolk, has fleshy off-shoots that appear to resemble human heads, arms and legs
However, 15 years later, mycologists in Spain carried out DNA sequence analysis and have just confirmed they differ slightly.
Mr Revett - who runs the mycology website fenfungi.com - said: 'It felt brilliant knowing I'd found something new.
'I wouldn't normally question the experts but I just knew these were different.
'I go back to the site every year doing tours and they're always there.
Since Mr Revett's original find, three more specimens have been collected in Norfolk and the fungus has also been found in Hampshire and the Welsh Borders
'It's incredible to think I'd only gone out there to look at some big mushrooms I'd been tipped off about.'
Since Mr Revett's original find, three more specimens have been collected in Norfolk and the fungus has also been found in Hampshire and the Welsh Borders.
Carl Chapman, of Norfolk-based Wildlife Tours and Education, said: 'This is riveting stuff. This is not just a new species for Norfolk - this is a new species for the world.The latest development in the saga of the so-called "birther" challenges to Barack Obama’s presidency comes from Hawaii, Obama’s native state. Yesterday, Gov. Linda Lingle signed a law allowing state agencies to ignore requests for information if they determine the requests duplicate or are substantially similar to earlier ones. The law targets those who contend Obama wasn’t born in the U.S. and thus, under the Constitution, can’t be president; they still are sending 10 to 20 e-mails every week asking the state’s Health Department for verification of his birth certificate. Some file the same request even after receiving a response.
(As journalists, we wonder, "Since when has a government official needed a law to ignore a request for information?" But we assume Hawaii officials have their reasons.)
Hawaii officials tell requesters the same thing over and over: State law prohibits the release of a certified birth certificate to anyone who doesn’t have a tangible interest in the matter. For those coming in late, Obama requested and obtained a copy of his own birth certificate and released it publicly in 2008, after which we examined it and found all in order. The document is legal proof of citizenship, and it’s the only type of birth record the state issues. Nevertheless, some wanted more. So Dr. Chiyome Fukino, the state health director, issued a statement saying that she has seen the original vital records verifying that Obama was born in Hawaii and "is a natural-born American citizen." But that hasn’t stopped the inquiries.
Linda Lingle, we’d note, is a Republican, and stumped for Sen. John McCain in 2008.
In other news on this front, the Eleventh Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals has upheld a $20,000 sanction against Orly Taitz, the most visible of those pressing the Obama-as-foreigner theory. As we wrote in January, a lower court judge imposed the fine to punish Taitz’ "misconduct" in filing "frivolous" legal claims on behalf of an Army officer who didn’t want to deploy to Iraq on the grounds that Obama’s presidency was illegitimate:
Judge Clay D. Land, Oct. 13 2009: While the Court derives no pleasure from its imposition of sanctions upon counsel Orly Taitz, it likewise has no reservations about the necessity of doing so. A clearer case could not exist; a weaker message would not suffice.
Land was named to the bench by another Republican, former President George W. Bush.
Another lawsuit filed by Taitz on the subject was dismissed in April by no-nonsense federal Judge Royce Lamberth in Washington, D.C. "This court is not willing to go tilting at windmills with her," Lamberth said, referring to Taitz.
Taitz, undeterred, is hoping to capture the Republican nomination to be California’s secretary of state. In that race, she claims that her primary opponent is ineligible to run, though for different reasons than his place of birth. Taitz contends that Damon Dunn was too recently registered as a Democrat to be a candidate in the GOP primary.Two security guards hired to supervise students at a Mississauga high school as a result of work-to-rule action have been arrested on drug charges and are alleged to have been selling marijuana to students on school property. Peel Region police confirmed Tuesday that Kristijan Rados, 20, and Michael Wiszniewski, 19, were each charged with possession for the purpose of trafficking and breach of trust. Both men are from Mississauga.
Kristijan Rados, 20, has been charged with possession for the purposes of trafficking and breach of trust. Rados recently began working as a security guard supervising students at a Mississauga high school during the teacher work-to-rule action. ( Facebook )
Const. Erin Cooper said the two were arrested in a traffic stop off school property with a “large quantity” of marijuana. The arrests followed a complaint on Dec. 4 by the parent of a student at Clarkson Secondary School, said Peel District School Board spokeswoman Carla Pereira. The arrests were made the same day. The two men are “no longer placed in any Peel board school,” Pereira said Tuesday.
Article Continued Below
Pereira could not say whether the guards were still employed by security company Securitas Canada. When reached by phone Tuesday, Rados said he did not want to comment on the charges. “To be honest with you, I don’t really want to talk about it, other than innocent until proven guilty,” he said. “When the court date happens, you’ll know what actually happened.” When asked if he and Wiszniewski were still employed by the security company, Rados said, “Of course not.” Securitas Canada did not respond to repeated requests for comment.
The board brought in security guards at its high schools following labour action announced by the Ontario Secondary School Teachers’ Federation, Pereira said. As part of work-to-rule action, Ontario secondary school teachers were to withdraw from all voluntary activities by Dec. 10, arriving for classes no more than 15 minutes in advance and leaving after their final class, according to information posted by the OSSTF on their website.
Article Continued Below
In a letter sent to parents Nov. 23, Janet McDougald, chair of the school board and school trustee for Clarkson, said teachers had been directed not to supervise students outside of the classroom, apart from their professional responsibility to protect from reasonable risk or harm. “All available resources — including extra occasional teachers, board office staff and two security personnel — will be provided to secondary schools to help them remain open for as long as we can ensure student safety,” the letter said. Ken Coran, OSSTF president, called the situation in Peel unfortunate. He said he’d heard a number of boards were considering hiring security to help out in high schools in light of teachers’ job action. “A lot of times boards hire security personnel to make sure everything is safe, and that there are no problems with cars crossing picket lines and things of that nature, so it would not be uncommon,” Coran said. Pereira said two or three security guards have been in place at each of the board’s schools since Nov. 26. Guards were hired to supervise students on school grounds in areas where they gather outside classrooms, including cafeterias and bus pick-up and drop-off locations, she said. David Hyde, a security consultant with Toronto-based David Hyde & Associates, said licensed security guards in Ontario are legally required to undergo a criminal background check and complete a basic 40-hour training course. “Once they’ve gone through those steps, the company is not legally bound to do any more screening at all,” Hyde said. The Toronto District School Board said several of its schools have “school-based safety monitors” and that it does not require “security for supervision purposes during ongoing strike actions.” Pereira said it was a parent who made the complaint to Clarkson’s administration a little more than a week after the security guards were placed there, though police say it was actually a student that came forward. “A parent alleged the security personnel were selling drugs, but did not indicate that they were being sold to students,” Pereira said. “As soon as we were made aware, school administration contacted police, who immediately initiated an investigation.” Wiszniewski and Rados have been released with a promise to appear in court on Jan. 17. With files from Kris RushowySunday on Fox News Channel’s “America’s News HQ,” Lt. Governor Peter Kinder (R-MO) said Attorney General Eric Holder “on many occasions” seemed to “be inciting the mob.”
Kinder said, “He is sounding the right notes today, this afternoon. I just wish he had been more judicious and measured in his comments since the August 9. Because Mr. Holder came in and seemed on many occasions to be inciting the mob. He seemed to be putting his weight on the one side of the scales of justice and not backing up law enforcement. And if he is now, you know, backing up law enforcement mode, then I will be among those cheering him. And I hope that’s the way he is from now on.”
When asked if he had spoken to Mr. Holder directly, Kinder said, “No, no, no, he doesn’t bend to speak with people like me. He comes into town and meets with one side. He met with the family of Michael Brown, and that’s fine that he met with them. But, he did not meet with the family of officer Darren Wilson or with his brother and sister officers to say I’m backing you up. ”
Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNENImage copyright Getty Images Image caption Could the prime minister's in-out referendum on EU membership "backfire"?
Prime Minister David Cameron has promised an in-out referendum on the UK's membership of the European Union before the end of 2017.
Most business lobby groups seem to be broadly in favour of staying in a reformed EU, and their member surveys reflect this view.
But what is the reality of doing business with Europe? Is there too much red tape and bureaucracy? What effect could a Brexit - the inelegant short-hand for Britain leaving Europe - have on UK businesses?
The BBC canvassed a variety of businesses for their views.
Name: Tony Attard
Position: Group chief executive
Company: Panaz, based in Burnley, Lancashire
Size: £15m annual turnover; about 100 employees
Image copyright Charlotte Boothman Image caption Tony Attard says pulling out of Europe "would cost jobs without a doubt"
"We export about £3m of goods a year to Europe - it's an incredibly important market for us," says Tony Attard, boss of a 30-year-old company making textiles for hotels, hospitals and offices.
"If we pulled out and I lost £2m of business it would cost jobs without a doubt. It's a big threat."
Standard product testing and harmonisation of raw materials tariffs have been beneficial for his business, he says, as have pan-European trade agreements.
"It's a ridiculous thing to say that being out of Europe would make us more competitive and nimble. We shouldn't take if for granted that we would have access to an open market if we pulled out."
Regulatory red tape from Brussels is often cited as a frustration for business, particularly when it comes to employment law and health and safety issues.
But Mr Attard says: "UK business rates are more of an issue to us than the working time directive."
Image copyright PANAZ Image caption Panaz makes textile products for hotels, hospitals and offices
Name: John Mills
Position: Founder
Company: JML Group, London
Size: £100m annual turnover; 350 employees
Image copyright Andrew Crowley Image caption John Mills thinks a referendum on EU membership will help us make up our minds "once and for all"
"We really need a referendum to make up our minds once and for all whether we're going to be in Europe and make a go of it, or go our separate ways," says John Mills, founder of global consumer products company JML Group.
The Labour party donor and co-chairman of lobby group, Business for Britain, says: "I don't think it would make much difference economically if we were in or out, but I'm quite open minded on the issue.
"I just think we need to change our terms of membership and repatriate some powers from Brussels to Westminster. I don't think Britain wants to be part of a 'United States of Europe'."
The costs of membership, at £14bn-£15bn a year, are too high, he adds, while some of the regulations coming from Europe "can make business less competitive".
Name: Lesley Moody
Position: Managing director
Company: AES Digital Solutions, Billingham, Teesside
Size: Less than £1m annual turnover; seven employees
Image copyright AES DIGITAL SOLUTIONS Image caption Lesley Moody fears UK business being "drowned in EU red tape"
"I want to have my cake and eat it," admits Lesley Moody, boss of a digital media company developing software for local government and the food and beverage industry.
"I favour being involved in Europe, but I don't want to be drawn further in," she says.
With many of her customers based in Europe, she accepts that a single market is beneficial, but says: "I want us to be able to have a say but be able to opt out when they propose something that's not in our interests."
She fears being "drowned in EU red tape", and hopes that the proposed Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership being negotiated between the EU and the US could put some UK businesses at a competitive advantage.
Name: Tim Squires
Position: Commercial director
Company: Squires Gear & Engineering, Coventry
Size: £1.2m annual turnover; 16 employees
Image copyright SQUIRES GEAR & ENGINEERING Image caption Tim Squires says "this referendum could really backfire"
"This referendum could really backfire," says Tim Squires, commercial director of a family firm making machine parts for the automotive industry. "The lack of information has clouded a lot of people's judgement."
"Although we're not a huge exporter, a lot of our parts go into products that are then sold to Europe, so import duties would be a big issue if we left the EU."
But Mr Squires, along with many other smaller businesses, thinks the UK pays a lot into the EU but doesn't seem to get enough back in return. And he thinks there's too much confusion over which legislation comes from Brussels or Westminster.
That said, remaining part of the European club brings more benefits than disadvantages, he believes.
"The EU is our biggest trading partner and if we're not in that we're going to be left out in the cold."
Image copyright Squires gear & engineering Image caption Coventry-based Squires Gear & Engineering makes parts for the automotive industry
Name: Geoff Billington
Position: Sales director
Company: International Safety Products, Bootle/Birkenhead, Merseyside
Size: Less than £15m annual turnover; 120 employees
Image copyright International Safety Products Image caption Geoff Billington says curbing the free movement of labour would have a "negative impact"
For Geoff Billington, sales director for International Safety Products (ISP), one of the world's largest life jacket manufacturers, the new government's demands to curb EU immigration are a concern.
"Curbing free movement of labour could have a negative impact on our business and possibly make us less competitive," he says.
About a quarter of ISP's staff are immigrants from countries like Poland, Lithuania, Hungary and Romania, he says, and they are prized for their machine skills and work ethic. Not being able to employ such workers could also put the wage bill up, he believes.
ISP sells about 70% of its output to Europe, and the single market presents "no barriers to entry for us. If we left, we could suffer from protectionism."
Mr Billington would even be happy for the UK to join the euro to remove exchange rate risks, he says. But he does want reform - anything that can stabilise the exchange rate - and the UK's contribution to the EU pot to be reduced.
Image copyright International Safety Products Image caption International Safety Products makes life jackets and other safety equipment
Name: Nadeem Raza
Position: Chief executive
Company: Microlise, based near Nottingham
Size: £30m annual turnover; 300 employees
Image copyright Chris Frosin Image caption Nadeem Raza thinks the referendum introduces unnecessary risk for his business
"We would prefer the referendum not to be happening," says Nadeem Raza, boss of Microlise, a medium-sized business making the technology that monitors lorry fleets.
More than half its products are exported to Europe and other markets abroad.
"A lot of our contracts are four-to-seven years long, so we're committing to pricing and servicing levels now when we don't know what's going to happen after 2017. That's a lot of risk we could do without," he says.
"We'd rather things stay as they are until we have a really good reason to change it."
His customers, mostly supermarkets and delivery companies with large lorry fleets operating throughout Europe, would certainly benefit from greater pan-European standardisation, he believes.
Leaving Europe would make this much more difficult.Feb. 19 is the 75th anniversary of the signing of Executive Order 9066, which incarcerated about 120,000 Japanese Americans on the West Coast during World War II.
Over the years, I’ve had a troubled relationship with what we Japanese Americans call “the internment.”
Sometimes I have been tired of talking about it. The repeated stories of woe, hardship, lost businesses, lost family members, lost time.
We thought what happened to us could never happen again. But now we face a new executive order banning travel from seven predominantly Muslim countries and anti-Muslim sentiment becoming common in American political discourse. What happened to Japanese Americans in World War II has become even more relevant in 2017.
When I was growing up in Seattle in a Japanese American family and community, no one talked about those lost years of World War II — locked up behind barbed wire, living in temporary barracks, not knowing how long it would last. There was embarrassment, shame, depression.
Then in the 1970s, taking up the call from the Civil Rights movement, Asian American students, professors, and workers became activists. We were emboldened by our participation in the anti-war movement, the formation of ethnic studies and threats to Seattle’s International District, our historic home.
We wanted to know the truth about what happened before our time, so we created community-based media such as the Asian Family Affair and International Examiner newspapers. We pursued oral histories by the first and second generation Japanese Americans who had endured what we called “the camp experience.” We found artwork, poetry and photographs of the 10 internment camps.
We uncovered legal cases. Federal courts finally held that there had been no military necessity for the incarceration of 120,000 Japanese and Japanese Americans living on the West Coast. After all, there had not been a single case of espionage or spying for the government of Japan among them.
Building up to the executive order
President Franklin Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066 on Feb. 19, 1942, three months after the bombing of Pearl Harbor by the Empire of Japan on Dec. 7, 1941. Thousands of men, women and children of Japanese descent who lived on the West Coast were ordered from their homes and incarcerated in camps, limited to one suitcase each. There were no trials, nor any direct accusations of aiding the country that had attacked the United States.
But the executive order against Japanese immigrants and their American-born offspring did not come from out of the blue.
Japanese newcomers had been arriving in Pacific Northwest port cities and building lively communities for about 50 years. They first came to the United States to work on lumber and railroads, and then branched out to fishing and agriculture. Many settled in the surrounding areas of King, Pierce and Kitsap Counties. Japanese farmers worked hard to establish farms |
and the established comic-strip artist (whose work is currently appearing in 2000 AD and Strip Magazine) had been dabbling in a little thing called digital comics…
Russell Willis
It’s May 2009, you’re sitting at your drawing board in Belfast, Northern Ireland, and CNN and the world is talking about you… How did this all come about?
PJ Holden
It all happened within about a two-week period. I was talking to a software developer at a friend’s wedding and told him I wanted to do something with comics because I thought the iPhone would be a spectacular device for comics. This was because in the UK, especially, we have a tradition of different physical-sized comics which America doesn’t really have. I was thinking really of Commando comics, which is a kind of digest-sized comic where you get two panels per page. That’s it. There’s not room for much within that. I kind of reasoned that, well, if you treat each screen of the iPhone as its own page, you could have a comic. It ticks all the boxes in Scott McCloud’s definition of what a comic is. It’s sequential images juxtaposed against each other to tell a story.
The software developer from the wedding, Phil Orr, turned out to be an iPhone programmer at a time when there were very few iPhone programmers. He had wanted to do a children’s storybook. We sat down and I thrashed out a couple of ideas and we developed the software and I drew the comic.
It was a two-page comic – a proof of concept more than anything else. I had said to him and I said to a bunch of other people, look, we could do market research here. We could go and spend a fortune trying to figure out if this is the sort of thing that would sell or we could actually just do it and put it up there and see if it sells. I kind of reasoned that one would cost as much as the other. Oddly it cost less to actually just do it and put it out there than it would have cost for us the invest time and the effort to do the market research.
So it seemed like the most sensible thing to do was just to do it, and do a very, very simple proof of concept to see if this would work. And so we submitted Murderdrome. We sent it to Apple’s App Store and the great wait began…
Russell Willis
I understand that it was written by Al Ewing, is that right?
PJ Holden
That’s right, and the thing with Murderdrome was it was conceived as software and comic at almost exactly the same time. Unlike a lot of stuff that’s out there, Murderdrome the comic was drawn specifically for the iPhone. A lot of stuff that we did on it was only possible because we were doing it at the same time as developing the software.
One of the things that we did was this sort of multiple layers of having pencils, inks, and colours and so on, and to allow for multiple languages. You could have had multiple languages in the same comic with the same artwork because of how we built the software. At that time I think there were about five or six comics on the App Store. All of those were repurposed content, so what we were doing was a completely new thing. So we submitted this to Apple and the friend who had gone off to get married went on honeymoon. By the time he came back from honeymoon, we had just got word from Apple that they were rejecting the app.
Russell Willis
On what grounds?
PJ Holden
Essentially they were rejecting it because the content was too violent. And it was quite violent. But it was a very silly comic. It was essentially an exaggerated spoof of all the boys’ comics from the 70s that featured futuristic sports where people have to die in order to play. The Mean Arena in 2000 AD is a good example of it. There would be street battles and people would be shot with lasers and all sorts of craziness. Murderdrome was sort of an exaggeration of that. In order to score a goal in Murderdrome, you had to decapitate an opposing player and use their head as a ball. I think when you hear the idea about how to score a goal it’s instantly funny. It’s so over the top.
Russell Willis
Did Apple have their rating system sorted out? Because when you submit an app now you need to define how offensive it might be.
PJ Holden
I did a lot of interviews at the time and one of the things I said was that ‘if Apple introduced a proper rating system…’ because Apple had a rating system for games, but at that point had never considered or didn’t appear to have considered the idea that people would be trying to sell content.
As far as Apple was concerned, people were going to sell software, and so videogames needed a rating because that’s the sort of software that you need to have a rating on but nothing else would need it – you wouldn’t need a rating, for example, on an application that told you about astronomy or how to do your accounts. So Apple had a rating system but if you weren’t a videogame you had to have a PG rating, the thinking went. I also think that, frankly, if Apple’s American sensibilities were closer to British sensibilities, there’s a good chance they would have let us through: it was just a stupid and ridiculous spoof.
Russell Willis
Do you think they were also concerned because it was a comic, and ‘comics are for kids’ and therefore it would mislead kids into buying material that wasn’t suitable?
PJ Holden
Yeah, but I find that with Apple that the more you try to scrutinise them the more inscrutable they are.
Russell Willis
(Laughter) Very true.
PJ Holden
We got a two-line response saying if you simply tone down the content then you can resubmit, which looked like a form letter to me… The premise of it is that you decapitate a player to score a goal… I talked to friends about it afterwards and said, look – the thing is if you tone it down what you do is you actually make it worse, because by toning it down you remove the fact that it is really satire. Once you get rid of, say, the outrageous method of scoring a goal and replace it with something more realistic it just becomes utterly violent.
Russell Willis
Now it’s just nasty. Yeah.
PJ Holden
It just becomes nasty. That’s the thing. It’s like any joke, really. The more exaggerated that is, the funnier it becomes; and the less exaggerated it is, the more it becomes a statement rather than a joke. I enjoyed the fact that it was ridiculous and over the top and just very silly. There is a sequence in it where one character goes, ‘I killed them with my bare hands’, and the camera pulls up and you’re looking down at the guy shaking his fists. It only works because it’s deliberately over the top. It’s like saying to Monty Python about the Holy Grail: you can’t exaggerate anything. It has to be about a search for the Holy Grail, and then what have you got left?
Russell Willis
So you refused to tone it down and pleaded your case?
PJ Holden
Yeah, so we waited and waited and waited and Apple took a while but they eventually rejected it again.
Matt Johnston, the guy whose honeymoon it was, was always going to be the third partner along with myself and Phil. Matt had a good business head and had started up a couple of businesses and so we kind of sat down and we went, Matt, while you’ve been away we did this; and we sent it to Apple and they rejected it. Do you want to send out a press release? He went, yeah sure, I’ll send out a press release. I can’t emphasise enough how much things were done on a whim. Let’s do this, let’s try this. What about this? There was no plan in place.
So Matt went, yeah, I will send out a press release. I sent an email to Rich Johnston at the Bleeding Cool website. At the time, these rejections were making news. Apple had just rejected an app that was a photograph of a knife and when you made a stabbing motion with the phone, it would make the sound from Psycho… it was a joke app… it was clearly over the top; Apple rejected it. I am not quite sure on what grounds, but there was a big stink in the press. We’re talking the early days of apps. These were the first kind of apps that were coming out. Apple were rejecting one thing after another. Each of these things that was being rejected was getting a bit of press. At that point, Apple were rejecting things, and people were going, oh, freedom of speech, freedom of speech. With the Murderdrome app I felt that because Apple had rejected it, that in itself was enough for a little bit of coverage. Because Apple had rejected it on the grounds of content there was also a freedom of speech issue. You can squint at it and say it’s a freedom of speech issue.
I thought those two things would be enough to get a little bit of coverage and I thought that would do us no harm. We sent this stuff out… and it got phenomenal coverage. It got so much coverage that I can’t even begin to look at it without thinking: ‘Good grief!’ It was like – what was it like? I put a pebble in the water and it caused a tsunami. The reaction was so much bigger than the actual action and we were all reeling, the three of us were reeling.
At the time, I was working for a charity doing computer work. I had been there about nine years. I couldn’t justify leaving the job because it was so well paid. It was so easy. It was only three days a week and I could draw comics the rest of the time. There was just no way I could turn around and say I want to leave this brilliantly paid job that’s part-time. A job that let me spend so much time at home. I couldn’t say I wanted to leave that job for a badly paid job; a job that would mean I would have to work every single hour. Any rational person would look at it and say that I would be mad to drop such a great job… But we were getting international coverage… The story was all over the blogosphere and so on.
Russell Willis
The press were featuring images from the comics in their coverage?
PJ Holden
Yes, but it was just a two-page comic – I put a YouTube video on it out at the same time to show the app more, because no one had seen it. And it was hard to explain in words what the app was about. But when you saw the app and how it was used, it looked magical because again, this is pre-iPad, and this is sort of the early day of apps.
One of the things was the – I can explain it to you by saying ‘you swipe your finger down and the inks are replaced by pencils’, but what happened was when you swiped your finger down there was a magical sort of metamorphosis where the inks were replaced by pencils and the inks slowly disappeared over the lead pencils. If you are into art, into comic art, then that in itself is like this beautiful magical thing.
I did a silent video of me demonstrating the application. I put it on YouTube and we put the press release out at the same time. Within a week we had 40,000 views on YouTube. Now, if you sold 40,000 copies of a comic that would be a phenomenal sale. 40,000 views in a week on YouTube was like, oh, my!
The other thing we did – because Apple had rejected the app was… Well, they were opening an Apple Store in Belfast and I thought it’d be hilariously funny to print up some T-shirts with our logo on it from the game, from Murderdrome. It was like a skull and cross and two bones which was the tattoo from a character in it and it became part of the logo.
I thought, what we’ll do is go down to the Apple Store that’s opening and we’ll hand these T-shirts out whilst people are queueing. I reasoned that if we only do up five or six T-shirts and give them to the people in the front of the queue, what’s going to happen is that the BBC will be there to film the fact that there’s a queue there, but they’ll also be interested in the first few people going in. They wouldn’t film the tail end of it or the middle of it, they’ll only film the first few. That’s exactly what happened. If you ever see the video, it looks like every person in the queue has a Murderdrome T-shirt.
Then they interviewed one of the guys there, the BBC did an interview with him. He was wearing the T-shirt as well. It seemed like this sort of – it was like we were going through this period where everything we decided to do on a whim was working out in the best possible way.
It was strange. It was easily the strangest experience of my life. We did a couple of kids’ comics which instead of sort of using the PR from Murderdrome we just kind of went, no, we don’t want to associate with that because people will think of blood and death and these are kids’ comics so we don’t want to do that, which was maybe in hindsight a bit daft. We did those and I showed the apps off at a couple of comic conventions and we ended up fielding calls from senior editors at DC Comics, senior people at Marvel. Then we got an email out of the blue from Universal Studios in the States asking if we wanted to look at developing our app for their comics, for the TV series Heroes. We had a couple of conference calls with those guys and in the end that’s what we did. It was at that point that I chucked my job in.
I should say this was all within maybe two weeks of the app being rejected.
Russell Willis
That was a powerful press release!
PJ Holden
If you just happen to have the magic words in it – and at that time all eyes were on Apple, all eyes were on things being banned. Those were the things that made – I think it got picked up at one place, then another, then another, then another because it was a hot issue for a little while. The mistake I made, with hindsight, is clear – the mistake I made was thinking that those 40,000 views on YouTube meant something. What they really meant was that we were this week’s cat playing the piano. That’s all we were. But I thought this was it, this is it. Guys, we’ve reinvented comics for the iPhone. We have completely destroyed Diamond Distribution and print is dead. And I am going through a bit of a mad period because publicity about what we had done was everywhere.
Russell Willis
You were imagining that every person that viewed the YouTube video would buy an app…
PJ Holden
I just assumed. 40,000 views, that translates to – even for a pessimist – that translates to at least 30,000 people or 30,000 purchases, which is good money in comics. No matter what way you cut it… which of course was nonsense!
The important thing about the video was that it was seen by a couple of people at senior positions in NBC and DC and a few other places, that were then capable of turning around and saying, look, can we have a chat with you.
Russell Willis
And this was before Comixology, before Graphicly, before any of these major digital comics distributors had really got off the ground.
PJ Holden
I think the guy at iVerse had come to the same conclusion as me which was that digital comics were going to be big. It was the press coverage of Murderdrome that attracted all the attention to digital comics and I knew iVerse had seen it, and the head of iVerse then had to make a move which sort of prompted him to push a little bit faster I think. That was iVerse; Comixology ultimately came in and they realised that it wasn’t really about the technology, it was all about what publishers you established relationships with. It was about that. It was about whether you can get Marvel on board, whether you can get DC on board. Everything else is almost a secondary consideration.
In a space of two weeks we ended up with a big contract to write an application for Universal to do comics with them – and I left my job. I left the job thinking, I am going to go off now and do comics and I’m going to do digital comics. This is going to be awesome.
Russell Willis
What happened to the Heroes comic? Did that get published?
PJ Holden
Weirdly they limited it so it would only be on sale in the US. What we found was the bigger the company we were dealing with, the more people had to have their fingers in it. The more people that had their fingers in it, the less people wanted to do it. The NBC guy who really wanted to push this was their head of mobile application development. The people who really didn’t want to do it were the people who actually did the comics. One was pulling and the other one was pushing and in the end the comic was released – in a form nowhere near what we wanted to do with it. And it took longer because they kept changing their minds about what they wanted. It was only available in America. I can’t even download the thing to look at.
It was only me and one other guy involved in the programming of it. When I left everything was working but the moment Apple changed their devices they would have required him to update things and he would have had to do more development. Once I left to focus on drawing comics I – I wouldn’t say I cut ties, but I was moving forwards rather than backwards.
Russell Willis
The company name was Infurious, right? I think there is a sort of remnant of that website still around on there.
PJ Holden
We had enormous plans. One of the plans that we had was – in a way I am sorry it never really came about – was that we had planned that there’d be a comic reader and backend website that allowed anyone to submit comics, and the backend was going to allow you to submit material to it and press a button and it would be available on the comic reader.
I kind of came up with – we were going to call it Infurious Republic to push the idea that it’s for anyone. Anyone could submit their comics. It’s taken a while but Graphicly I think are doing the same sort of thing. We talked about that two or three years ago or whenever it was because I felt that the way to do it was to give people access, upload the stuff, possibly charging $10 or something for a joining fee and maybe $10 for uploading the thing because it was one of those things – in a gold rush the people making money are the people who sell picks – that kind of thing.
Russell Willis
As you had the contract with Universal for the Heroes comic, I assume you were planning to do something along those lines. What happened?
PJ Holden
I think we were just a little too early and at the same time all this stuff had swept over me, and I had found myself going from a part-time computer job to a full-time computer job and had even less time to draw. It didn’t quite work out the way that I had imagined. My younger son had just been born and then tragically my wife’s brother committed suicide and that completely – it pulled everything from under my family and it made me sort of re-evaluate exactly what was going on. I kind of thought: I really want to draw. All I want to do is draw.
Because of my wife Annette’s brother I kind of – I’ve lost some family of mine as well years and years ago, and every so often you lose a close family member and you think, what am I doing? Am I really doing something that I – if this is the last thing I do, will I be happy?
I realised I didn’t want to reinvent comics distribution on a digital platform. What I wanted to do was draw comics.0 Details released in alleged local plot targeting U.S. government
FLOYD COUNTY, Ga. - Three Floyd County men are facing federal firearm charges alleging involvement in a plot targeting the U.S government.
Channel 2 Action News was there as federal agents searched one of the suspects’ homes in Rome Saturday.
Terry Eugene Peace, 45, Brian Edward Cannon, 36, and Cory Williamson, 28, were arrested on federal firearms charges.
The FBI said they caught on to the plot after monitoring conversations online, including on a website called chatcrypt.com. The website claims it is a military-class encryption chat website.
The FBI said they intercepted a chat from a person using the moniker, “Chief,” that read:
“We will be using Guerilla style warfare tactics... I do not want kill or injure fellow Americans. So, at least for the guys with me, we will restrain the violence toward people and target infrastructure. Then respond to violence with reciprocal violence. “
The criminal affidavit, obtained exclusively by Channel 2 Action News claimed the men were part of a group planning to target the U.S. government, including “TSA, DHS, and non-emergency FEMA.” Agents also intercepted chats where members claimed they were planning to "strategically sabotage power grids, transfers station, and water treatment facilities.”
According to the affidavit, the FBI observed the suspects purchasing weapons, as well as a Vortex scope. The FBI said it also provided a confidential informant with 12 inactive pipe bombs that the group requested.
Channel 2 Action News has not heard back from the attorneys for the suspects.Back in May, when Charlie Baker was launching his run for governor of Massachusetts, a series of reports about potential violations of New Jersey’s strict pay-to-play rules prompted the state’s Investment Council to open an investigation. They were charged with examining Baker’s role in securing New Jersey pension money for a firm he served as “partner” and “Executive in Residence.” Officials promised the probe would take only a few weeks. Eight months later, after Baker had already won the closest gubernatorial election in Massachusetts in 50 years, the New Jersey State Investment Council finally released its report. It exonerated Baker of any violations.
(In September, before the election, the Chris Christie administration blocked the release of records related to the probe, saying it was still incomplete.)
Baker had argued to the Investment Council that he was not an investment management professional as defined by New Jersey’s pay-to-play law. The Council is appointed by Christie and oversees investment management for the State of New Jersey: In other words, the Council was investigating its own (and Baker’s) compliance with anti-corruption rules.
New Jersey’s pay-to-play rules ban the awarding of contracts to businesses whose owners or executives have made political contributions to candidates or to entities that support candidates with substantial influence over the awarding of such contracts.
Baker, listed as a partner at General Catalyst on both the firm’s website and on campaign filings, made a $10,000 donation to the New Jersey Republican Party in May 2011. In December 2011, Governor Christie’s Investment Council announced that it had made the decision to commit up to $25 million to General Catalyst. The Investment Council currently manages more than $8 million of General Catalyst funds.
Tom Byrne, the acting chair of the state Investment Council, said that the report indicated that Charlie Baker was "not an employee of General Catalyst," according to the Bergen County-based Record.
In fact, the report determined that Baker was indeed an investment management professional employed by General Catalyst, but that his services were not associated with the specific fund that the Investment Council was invested in. The report concluded that Baker was associated with General Catalyst’s Fund V, rather than Fund VI, which New Jersey pensioners are invested in.
But a report in May showed that New Jersey pension money in Fund VI had been directed to a health care company, Mulberry, on whose board Baker sat. The report did not discuss Mulberry, Baker’s board membership at Mulberry, or the fact that Group VI owned 2.6 percent of Mulberry.
Baker himself never said that he was working with one specific fund. Indeed, he told Boston Magazine that his goal at General Catalyst was “to work with the firm to identify potential investment opportunities.”October 4, 2011
“…health is not sacrosanct or free from vested interests. The traditional grandeur of the learned profession of medicine cannot be taken for granted. It has to be earned by every new generation of physicians.”[1]
Nephrologists are in the position of overseeing the health of patients with inflammatory kidney diseases of unknown origin, autoimmune disorders, and acute and chronic kidney diseases of many etiologies. A nephrologist is a specialist consultant and the patients we see are often referred by family doctors and internal medicine physicians. Several doctors who routinely refer patients to me have unquestioningly accepted the idea that “vaccines are safe for everyone” and the “benefit outweighs the small risk.” They inquired about my reasoning to withhold vaccinations in sick kidney patients.
Until I did my own research, I was also uninformed and accepted vaccines as safe and effective. Doctors do not receive any education on vaccine composition and the potential adverse effects. In medical training, we were told that patients should receive the vaccine schedule, and were assured that vaccines are safe and effective, except perhaps in a very small minority of people – maybe one in a million.
Information given to doctors about the 200-year history of vaccination is limited to carefully selected sound-bites that pre-empt any concerns. We were led to believe that vaccines are solely responsible for the eradication of infectious diseases such as smallpox. Most accepted, without question or personal study, that vaccines greatly reduced illnesses and are a benefit to overall human health. Few know that the mortality for “vaccine preventable diseases” had massively declined before the vaccine campaigns began. But it is painfully obvious from figure 1 (at end of document)[2] that the mortality for the major infectious diseases, including those for which no vaccines were ever created, had regressed to nearly undetectable levels in the population – long before vaccines were introduced.
Patients with acute and chronic illnesses are target groups to be heavily vaccinated even though vaccines have barely been tested for safety or long-term consequences in these populations. Most doctors and patients assume that vaccines are simply a solution of sterile saline and “dead” microorganisms. They are not aware of the manufacturing process to make a vaccine, the contents in the vial, or the potential risks of each component. Doctors wrongly assume that vaccines “protect” their patients from disease, without any adverse consequences on their health, and that vaccinated people won’t get that disease.
Other than vaccines, is there any other drug or biological, that is given across-the-board to all comers, without regard for health status, age, or risk of aggravating an existing illness? Given the conflict of interest among members of the major vaccine-promoting committees, vaccines fall into a category that deserves independent study by health care providers.
Every patient should be informed about the potential risks of vaccination and the lack of evidence that vaccines will not harm them over the long-term. Patients have a personal right to choose – and refuse. Their informed choices should be respected. But in order for them to be informed, the person informing them would have to be informed – and doctors are not informed.
Autoimmune and inflammatory considerations
Some of the causes of kidney disease are autoimmune, vasculitic (inflammation of blood vessels), and granulomatous (described below). There are many conditions labeled as “idiopathic”(cause unknown) in nephrology and many are inflammatory in nature. When will doctors make the connection between vaccination and these adverse events?
A mechanism called “molecular mimicry”[3] occurs when an antibody generated by a vaccine inadvertently recognizes and binds to healthy tissue in the body. The immune system then senses the antibody-healthy tissue complex as foreign and attacks it. As a result, the previously healthy tissue, such as kidney glomeruli (the tiny filters in the kidney) or small blood vessels in the kidney, can develop significant inflammation and disease. This is an autoimmune reaction (against self).
“There is, last but not least, a paucity of clinical and epidemiological data on the potential of vaccines to induce autoimmune hazards. These adverse events, whether they appear days, weeks or months following vaccination, might be frequently overlooked. The awareness of physicians and caregivers to these associations and reports such as the one described in this issue by Vainer-Mossel et al. might enable better assessment of post-vaccination complications as well as susceptibility and safety issues.”[4]
Vaccines are designed to create a state of inflammation, and raise LDL and CRP levels.[5] Why then would we give a vaccine to a patient who already has an inflammatory kidney or heart event? Why wouldn’t it be obvious that vaccination can make these conditions worse? With an understanding of the above and the absence of placebo-controlled, long-term follow up studies, we cannot reassure people that vaccines will not create or exacerbate an autoimmune disease. Vaccine-induced acute autoimmune reactions including Guillain-Barre syndrome, thrombotic thrombocytopenic purpura, vasculitis and nephritis[6] are well-described in the medical literature and often listed on vaccine package inserts. If patients were followed longer and if doctors took a more accurate vaccine administration history (of the vaccines given before the new medical problems occur), more vaccine-associated damage would become obvious.
“The rarity and subacute presentation of post-vaccination autoimmune phenomena means that ascertaining causality between these events can be difficult. Moreover, the latency period between vaccination and autoimmunity ranges from days to years.”[7]
A granuloma is a circumscribed nodular inflammation. Granulomas have a typical pattern when examined under a microscope and contain macrophage cells, lymphocytes, neutrophils, and eosinophils (allergy-related immune cells). Granulomas can be caused by a variety of biologic, chemical and physical irritants of tissue.
Some idiopathic (no known cause) renal diseases are granulomatous in nature, and may be caused by an allergic reaction.[8] Patients with granulomatous diseases often present with renal failure and can have allergic manifestations.[9] No cause is ever found for half[10] of all granulomatous interstitial nephritis – a specific granulomatous condition. Aluminum in vaccines is a documented cause of granuloma formation[11], and there is no certainty that aluminum in vaccines is not the cause of many occult or idiopathic kidney problems. Aluminum is in the following vaccines: DTP, DTaP, some Hib, Pneumococcal conjugate vaccine, Hepatitis B, all combination DTaP/Hib,Tdap or Hepatitis B vaccines, Hepatitis A, HPV, Anthrax and Rabies vaccines. Can patients be assured that their renal interstitial granulomatous or autoimmune illness is not due to an allergic reaction to a previous vaccination? Or that they will not develop an atypical allergy to a vaccine component? The answer, of course, is no.
Here is a partial list of diseases that are “granulomatous,” involve the kidney and more frequently than not, the underlying cause is never known:
*Wegener’s granulomatosis
*Churg-Strauss disease
*Sarcoidosis
*Granulomatous interstitial nephritis
These diagnoses often carry very poor prognoses, and their treatments are very unpleasant and dangerous. Given the likelihood that vaccines can cause disease in vulnerable patients it is impossible to predict safety across the board, and it is even more difficult to know which patients will suffer the consequences of a vaccine. The risk-benefit ratio is not necessarily one of favor for vaccination, and our inflamed kidney patients should not be reassured that the vaccine is necessary and safe. Most people would rather choose getting the flu with the miniscule risk of its complications, than develop a vaccine-induced kidney ailment. But for an unidentifiable part of the population this choice cannot be made. Vaccination is like a game of roulette. Some people seem to tolerate it (at least for the first few weeks, and thereafter nobody knows) while others could become case reports in medical literature.
Medical Center Experience
I witnessed multiple patients who were stable for years with chronic kidney disease (CKD) deteriorate or relapse rapidly after the flu and/or pneumonia vaccines. Other doctors just assume that deterioration is what you expect in a person with chronic disease, so when they see it, they don’t connect it with a vaccine. Yet given how often it happens, if doctors asked questions about vaccines when renal patients suddenly and rapidly decline, and saw that it happens repeatedly, you would think that they would make the link. But they don’t. It is a mysteriously huge blind spot.
In the Winter of 2009, I treated multiple adult patients who required dialysis after receiving both seasonal and H1N1 vaccines and/or pneumonia vaccines. No other cause for their renal failure could be identified. Some patients stated that they became ill after their flu shot. Two of these patients died and one remained on dialysis.
On the other hand no patients were dialyzed, in my eleven years of service at this hospital, simply after a case of influenza. We can see patients develop renal failure during flu-like illnesses – but almost exclusively only if they are prescribed and take large doses of NSAID pain medicine(e.g., ibuprophen), Angiotensin-Converting Enzyme Inhibitors (blood pressure drugs), Angiotensin Receptor Blockers, and/or they were severely volume depleted (dehydrated).
When recently-vaccinated people present to the doctor with acute kidney failure, have not taken any other nephrotoxin, and have no other cause for the kidney failure, the vaccine must be seriously considered as having precipitated the problem. Yet physicians will go out of their way to deny the vaccine as culprit even after they fail to find any other underlying cause. They have no problem admitting that other drugs cause kidney disease, but seem to have a reflex to deny a vaccine as problematic. Could this be from the sound-bites they have heard over and over – about vaccines being safe?
The CDC recommendations:[12]
“In general, vaccinations should be deferred when a precaution is present. However, a vaccination might be indicated in the presence of a precaution because the benefit of protection from the vaccine outweighs the risk for an adverse reaction. This is left to the healthcare provider to make a decision. The following are precautions for TIV:
Presence of a moderate or severe acute illness with or without a fever. Persons who were hospitalized with an acute illness but who are now well enough to be discharged from a hospital can be vaccinated.”
This recommendation leaves loopholes to vaccinate just about anyone, but is there any science to defend it? How could the benefit of vaccinating a severely-ill patient, or a patient who has organ impairment (and may not mount a significant antibody response anyway) outweigh the risk? Why is there such a rush to vaccinate all hospital patients even though any potential protection will not be present for weeks? Could it have more to do with medical policy and reimbursement than with what is in the best interest of a sick patient?
As doctors, this CDC recommendation isn’t adhered to, because before we evaluate a patient, vaccines have already been given by nurses and others who have no medical mandate. This often occurs on the first hospital-day, not when they are “well enough to be discharged.” My efforts to change the hospital vaccine policy to wait until discharge was categorically refused by the administration and hospital policy makers – at a meeting that I was not permitted to attend.
Patients are routinely given influenza and pneumonia vaccines on their first day of hospitalization; after a major surgical procedure; during an acute illness (like kidney failure, lymphoma, pneumonia, infections, auto-immune diseases, heart attacks) and often before a full diagnosis has been made.
In many cases, I would try to cancel or defer vaccinations using a written order, but was thwarted because a nurse had already injected the patient with a vaccine ordered by the pharmacist- via a standing hospital policy. I found this unacceptable, and my effort to adjust the inpatient vaccination policy of the hospital was futile.
These vaccines can harm patients who are already ill, especially renal patients. While the nephrologists are left trying to figure out the cause of the patient’s renal failure, any vaccine can make the inflammatory reactions already occurring in the kidney worse.
It is well-accepted that renal vulnerability to inflammatory and drug insults can stem from diabetes, concomitant kidney-toxic drugs, myeloma, recovering acute kidney injury, or an existing, but as yet undiagnosed renal disease. Giving vaccines as soon as a patient is admitted to the ward makes no logical scientific sense, and makes it much harder for doctors to diagnose the admitting problem. Needless vaccination is a liability issue for the doctor and the hospital that must be carefully reviewed.
Peer-Reviewed Literature
The literature is peppered with case reports of acute kidney injury, renal failure and vasculitis after vaccines.[13] In 2009, the BMC Nephrology published a case report that concluded, “Our case as well as previous anecdotal reports suggests that vaccination and the resulting stimulations of the immune system might cause Nephrotic Syndrome(MCNS) and other severe immune reactions. Increased awareness in that regard might help to expand the database of those cases.”[14]
Increased awareness will only happen if doctors and hospitals are open to the likelihood of vaccine reactions in their patients, and are taking an accurate vaccine history. They must consider the possibility of a vaccine reaction occurring weeks to months after a vaccine, since this time period is rational – and since vaccine events have not been studied for auto-immunity over such a time frame. The burden of proof still rests upon the vaccine manufacturers and advisory groups who have neglected to do long-term studies, yet still tout vaccines as an acceptable preventative in the chronically ill, based on limited scientific information.
I have spent the past few years reading much of the available literature on the safety of vaccines – both conventional and alternative. None of these studies can convincingly conclude that vaccines are safe or protective. None discuss the safety of injecting two vaccines on the same day into a patient with acute or chronic kidney disease. If a patient with new-onset kidney failure gets a vaccine and does not recover kidney function, how can anyone be certain that recovery would not have taken place without a vaccine? The assumption is always that the vaccine had nothing to do with the poor outcomes.
Placebo-controlled double blind studies using a saline placebo, with statistical power, and follow-up longer than a few weeks, demonstrating the efficacy and renal safety of any vaccine in the renal failure population, are lacking. Yet renal patients are constantly told that the benefit outweighs the risk; where does this come from? Extrapolation and “consensus opinion-based” recommendations of the MMWR.[15]
Immune-complex glomerulonephritis and renal vasculitis are very serious types of inflammatory disorders. They are difficult to treat, and the patients find the suppressive treatments very stressful, both physically and |
Z -> val) (r: Z -> val) (j: Z) := if zlt j i then Val.add (l j) (r j) else (l j). Definition add_spec := DECLARE _add WITH a0 : val, b0 : val, sh : share, orig_a : Z -> val, orig_b : Z -> val PRE [_a OF (tptr tint), _b OF (tptr tint)] PROP (writable_share sh; forall i, 0 <= i < 10 -> is_int (orig_a i); forall i, 0 <= i < 10 -> is_int (orig_b i); forall i, 0 <= i < 10 -> bound_int (orig_a i) 134217728; forall i, 0 <= i < 10 -> bound_int (orig_b i) 134217728) LOCAL (`(eq a0) (eval_id _a); `(eq b0) (eval_id _b); `isptr (eval_id _a); `isptr (eval_id _b)) SEP (`(array_at tint sh orig_a 0 10 a0); `(array_at tint sh orig_b 0 10 b0)) POST [ tvoid ] PROP () LOCAL () SEP (`(array_at tint sh (partial_add 10 orig_a orig_b) 0 10 a0); `(array_at tint sh orig_b 0 10 b0)).
The partial_add function implements a map that reflects the state of the a array at step i of the loop. I've written it like that so that it can also be used in the loop invariant.
And here's the proof: It is quite long, but at least half of that is because I've not used Coq before and I don't know what I'm doing. I wouldn't call it readable however.
Definition inv orig_a a0 orig_b b0 sh := EX i:Z, (PROP (0 <= i < 11; isptr a0; isptr b0) LOCAL (`(eq a0) (eval_id _a); `(eq b0) (eval_id _b); `(eq (Vint (Int.repr i))) (eval_id _i)) SEP (`(array_at tint sh (partial_add i orig_a orig_b) 0 10 a0); `(array_at tint sh orig_b 0 10 b0))). Lemma mod_nop : forall (i : Z) (m : Z), 0 <= i < m -> m > 0 -> i mod m = i. Proof. intros. rewrite Zdiv.Zmod_eq. assert(i/m=0). apply Zdiv_small. exact H. rewrite H1. omega. exact H0. Qed. Lemma body_sumarray: semax_body Vprog Gprog f_add add_spec. Proof. start_function. forward. forward_while (inv orig_a a0 orig_b b0 sh) ( PROP () LOCAL () SEP (`(array_at tint sh (partial_add 10 orig_a orig_b) 0 10 a0); `(array_at tint sh orig_b 0 10 b0))). apply exp_right with 0. entailer!. quick_typecheck. entailer. cancel. assert(i=10). omega. rewrite H7. cancel. forward. entailer!. unfold partial_add. assert(is_int (orig_a i)). auto. assert(is_int (orig_b i)). auto. if_tac. omega. exact H7. forward. entailer!. forward. entailer. apply prop_right. assert(Vint (Int.add _id1 _id) = partial_add (i+1) orig_a orig_b (Int.signed (Int.repr i))). Focus 2. symmetry in H9. apply H9. unfold partial_add. assert(Int.signed (Int.repr i) = i). rewrite Int.signed_repr. reflexivity. unfold Int.max_signed, Int.min_signed. simpl. omega. rewrite H9. if_tac. unfold Val.add. rewrite Int.signed_repr_eq in H7. rewrite mod_nop in H7. if_tac in H7. unfold partial_add in H7. if_tac in H7. omega. rewrite Int.signed_repr_eq in H6. rewrite mod_nop in H6. if_tac in H6. unfold Int.add, Int.unsigned, Int.intval, Int.repr. assert(bound_int (orig_a i) 134217728). auto. unfold bound_int in H12. symmetry in H7, H6. rewrite H7. rewrite H6. reflexivity. omega. assert(Int.modulus = 4294967296). auto. rewrite H13. omega. assert(Int.modulus = 4294967296). auto. omega. assert(i < Int.half_modulus). assert(Int.half_modulus = 2147483648). auto. rewrite H12. rewrite H12 in H11. omega. omega. assert(Int.modulus = 4294967296). auto. omega. assert(Int.modulus = 4294967296). auto. rewrite H11. omega. omega. forward. unfold inv. apply exp_right with (Zsucc i). entailer!. apply derives_refl'. apply equal_f. apply array_at_ext. intros. unfold upd. if_tac. rewrite H10. unfold Z.succ. reflexivity. unfold partial_add. if_tac. if_tac. reflexivity. omega. if_tac. omega. reflexivity. forward. Qed.
That's certainly quite a chunk! Practically you have to step through the proof in Proof General and see the state evolve to understand anything. Additionally, when in the proof, it would be very useful if subgoals has some sort of description like “show the loop invariant plus not the loop condition results in the loop post-condition” - it's very easy to get lost in the proof. But I do feel that, while it would be a lot of work, I could make progress with VST, while I don't (at the moment) feel with other systems. Prof. Appel recently did a formal verification of the SHA256 from OpenSSL.
However, there is no community around VST that I can find - no mailing list, wiki, etc. The Subversion repo is only accessible via HTTP - you can't clone it from what I can tell. I think I found a (completeness) bug in VST, but the only option would be to try emailing Prof. Appel. (I didn't; I'm probably wrong.)
Still, AutoCorres and especially VST leave me more optimistic than I was at the end of the last post!
Others
I didn't have time to look at everything that deserved attention. Cryptol is one. Cryptol is a tool written in Haskell designed for the specification and implementation of cryptographic code and can call out to SMT solvers to show certain properties. From its internal language it can export implementations to (at least) C.
Next, Frama-C, which I mentioned last time in relation to the Jessie plugin, has other plugins. One that's useful is the value analysis, which can be properly used to eliminate NULL derefs, array overruns etc. In fact, Polar SSL has been fully validated in certain configurations using that. That's certainly very valuable, and you can do it without that multi-page Coq proof! Although such analysis wouldn't have caught the carry bug in Ed25519 nor the reduction bug in Donna, not all code is going to be suitable for formal analysis.
Microsoft also have lots of things. There's Dafny, VCC (Verifier for Concurrent C), Boogie, Havoc, Z3 and others! I didn't look at them because I don't have a Windows box to hand this week (although I see that some are exposed via a web interface too). I was thinking that maybe I'd have time when a Windows box was to hand but, realistically, probably not. So I've updated this post to mention them here. If you are Windows based, you will probably do well to pay attention to them first.BY MEGAN VICK
Marvel‘s Captain America: Civil War won’t be out for another year yet, but the gloves are already off for Captain America himself, Chris Evans.
Evans—a long proclaimed New England Patriots supporter—took to Twitter to inform fellow Marvel star Chris Pratt, a diehard Seattle Seahawks fan, that they are enemies for the next two weeks until their respective football teams face off in Super Bowl XLIX.
Well, well, well @prattprattpratt, looks like our teams are going into battle. For the next 2 weeks, you are not my friend, you are my enemy — Chris Evans (@ChrisEvans) January 19, 2015
Do you think Star-Lord is going to take that unchallenged? Of course not. Pratt came back with an impressive level of sass, saying that the Seahawks’ quarterback Russell Wilson is the real the real Captain America.
@ChrisEvans We both know there’s only one Captain America and his name is Russell Wilson. #SuperBowlBound #LOB #Repeat — chris pratt (@prattprattpratt) January 19, 2015
Zap2it
The jab only proves to put Evans in more of a fighting mood. He’s now ready to make bets and has some questions about what a Seahawk is in the first place.
Pratt has yet to respond to Evans’ rebuttal but stay tuned. If Captain America and Star-Lord are going to face off you know it can only be epic.
Photo via Gage Skidmore/Flickr (CC BY SA 2.0)Barry Freundel, the once-influential Orthodox rabbi who pleaded guilty to secretly videotaping dozens of women as they prepared for a ritual bath, was sentenced Friday to 6 1 / 2 years in prison.
His punishment came at the conclusion of an hours-long hearing in D.C. Superior Court, where some of the victims described for Senior Judge Geoffrey Alprin the impact Freundel’s crimes have had on their lives.
“You repeatedly and secretly violated the trust your victims had in you, and you abused your power,” Alprin said in handing down the sentence.
Alprin also ordered Freundel, 63, to pay more than $13,000 in fines.
Freundel was arrested in October on charges that he videotaped six nude women at Kesher Israel synagogue in Georgetown. Prosecutors said a review of his computer equipment revealed that many more women had been recorded by Freundel as they prepared for the bath known as a mikvah, used as part of a purification ritual.
D.C. rabbi Barry Freundel was sentenced to 6 ½ years in prison after pleading guilty to secretly filming women as they prepared for ritual baths. (WUSA9)
Freundel ultimately pleaded guilty to videotaping 52 women, and the punishment translates to about six weeks per victim. Sentencing guidelines require that he serve 85 percent of his term.
The longtime rabbi had recorded about 100 additional women, prosecutors have said, but those alleged crimes occurred outside the three-year statute of limitations. The videotaping occurred between 2009 and 2014.
The sentencing brings to a close a criminal case that has reverberated throughout the global Orthodox community, where Freundel had been revered for his intellectual prowess and his status as one of the most authoritative and powerful Orthodox American rabbis in the area of conversion.
The case has prompted debate regionally, nationally and internationally — Freundel was a leader in key Jewish organizations at all levels — about the treatment of converts and about women’s leadership in Orthodox Judaism. In Orthodox Judaism, rabbis must be men.
[For those who revered him, D.C. rabbi’s sentencing for voyeurism will not bring closure.]
Before he was sentenced, Freundel apologized to his victims and said he was seeing a psychiatrist to understand the “source” of his behavior.
“I was wrong. I am sorry. I did terrible things. I make no bones about it. I was in a terrible place,” Freundel said, reading from prepared remarks.
Rabbi Barry Freundel. (Photo by Lloyd Wolf)
Prosecutors asked the judge to sentence Freundel to 17 years in prison. Freundel’s attorney, Jeffrey Harris, urged against prison and instead asked the judge for probation and to sentence Freundel to community service while his client continues his psychological treatment and work with Jewish students.
Harris petitioned the judge to sentence Freundel for the isolated charge of voyeurism, which would have resulted in a maximum sentence of one year, instead of basing the punishment on 52 separate acts.
“He has fallen as far as anyone can fall. He lost his job, he lost his family and he lives alone in a rental apartment,” Harris said.
But Assistant U.S. Attorney Amy Zubrensky argued that sentencing Freundel for the one charge would be the equivalent to a serial rapist being charged with one sexual assault, not multiple assaults against each victim.
Freundel served as a leader in the Rabbinical Council of America, the world’s biggest group of Modern Orthodox leaders, which has created an investigative committee aimed at improving the system for converts.
Two lawsuits have been filed against Kesher Israel, the Rabbinical Council of America and the National Capital Mikvah.
Some prominent Modern Orthodox rabbis have issued opinions about the ritual of conversion, suggesting that perhaps a woman could be a monitor or that the rabbis could simply listen for, but not watch, a woman submerging herself in the mikvah.
The anguish Freundel caused was in clear evidence during the three-hour hearing. More than 70 victims and family members crowded into the main courtroom, and an additional 30 or so people were in an overflow courtroom. Several of the women wore orange blouses, scarves and other items to signal their solidarity in advocating prison time for Freundel.
Before Freundel spoke, he sat next to his attorney, listening and watching as the women walked to the podium, some standing only feet from him while they angrily demanded answers and an apology. Freundel showed little emotion throughout the hearing. At times, he pulled out a handkerchief, wiping his face and blowing his nose.
Each victim who spoke was allotted five minutes. To ensure anonymity, the women were identified by letters or numbers.
Some victims broke down in tears, describing how they felt “betrayed” and “humiliated” by the man whom they trusted to lead them through one of the biggest and most spiritual decisions of their lives. The women spoke of how their faith — in their religion, their leaders and even in strangers — was destroyed. Many said they are now fearful of using public restrooms or locker rooms.
“We thought he was a knight in shining armor, but he was also an abusive rabbi,” one of the victims said.
One woman spoke of how she was unable to be intimate with her husband for months after learning that she was videotaped. Others talked of a sense of public shame.
“I could not bear my friends knowing my rabbi had seen me naked,” one victim said.
One African American woman who said she at times already felt like an outsider before converting described how becoming a victim made her feel even more isolalted. “I kept wondering, maybe I should have stayed a Christian,” she said.
Karin Bleeg, 32, a victim who permitted her name to be used, told the judge that Freundel encouraged her to use the mikvah when her grandmother died and then recorded her. “I’m relieved,” she said after hearing his sentence. “I think we were worried he would get off [with a lesser sentence], and we’re grateful it’s not just a year.”
Kate Bailey, 28, who also allowed her name to be used, told the judge that she had converted in 2008 but that in 2009, Freundel called her to say she needed to go in the mikvah again because there was a problem, one he couldn’t share and she shouldn’t tell anyone about it. She later found out that she had been recorded.
“I am happy, but I don’t think this is over,” she said after his sentencing. “I’m having a crisis of faith. Now I question how Orthodox I want to be.”PASSAIC COUNTY -- A lab technician for the State Police allegedly faked results in a drug case, and has drawn into question 7,827 criminal cases on which he worked, according to state officials.
Kamalkant Shah worked as a laboratory technician for the State Police laboratory in Little Falls and was found to have "dry labbed" suspected marijuana, according to a Feb. 29 memo to Public Defender Joseph Krakora from Deputy Public Defender Judy Fallon. Shah's essentially accused of making up data.
"Basically, he was observed writing 'test results' for suspected marijuana that was never tested," Fallon said in the memo.
The memo was released Tuesday on the New Jersey Municipal Court Law Update Service's website.
Shah was removed from lab work on Dec. 10 as soon as the problem was discovered, said Peter Aseltine, spokesman for the Office of the Attorney General. Shah, who received a salary of $101,039, was suspended without pay effective Jan 12, he said.
Shah has not been charged with any crime, and is believed to have retired, Aseltine said.
Elie Honig, director of the Division of Criminal Justice, said in Feb. 22 letter to county prosecutor's offices that Shah "failed to appropriately conduct laboratory analyses in a drug case." The letter advised prosecutors to disclose this information to defense counsel. The Attorney General's Office released a copy of the letter to NJ Advance Media Wednesday afternoon.
"Mr. Shah was observed in one case spending insufficient time analyzing a substance to determine if it was marijuana and recording an anticipated result without properly conducting the analysis," Honig said.
Aseltine told NJ Advance Media Wednesday there was only one instance in which Shah was observed improperly conducting a test.
"However, in an abundance of caution, we have identified every case that Shah worked on since he began working in the North Regional Lab Drug Unit in 2005, and we have notified the county prosecutors, advising them to alert defense attorneys in those cases," he said. "There are a total of 7,827 cases statewide, with the largest numbers being in Bergen, Essex, Morris and Passaic counties."
It's unclear what impact the disclosure will have on thousands of drugs convictions, but several attorneys who deal with criminal matters said Wednesday that it wouldn't likely affect the large number of defendants who pleaded guilty to drug possession.
Judge: We may need to let prisoners out over lab tech's faked results A lab tech who was caught faking results in drug case has thrown 7,827 criminal cases into question.
According to Fallon's memo, all of Shah's results have been called into question from his 10-year stint at the Little Falls lab. The Passaic County Prosecutor's Office has not yet "formulated a policy or protocol" to deal with these cases, and is still in the process of identifying cases potentially implicated by Shah's alleged conduct, per the memo.
"In Passaic County alone, the universe of cases possibly implicated in this conduct is 2,100," Fallon said in the memo.
Shah's Linkedin profile says he's worked as a forensic scientist for the past 27 years at various state agencies including the New Jersey State Police's Office of Forensic Science. He worked at the State Police's equine testing laboratory in East Rutherford from Oct. 1989 to March 2005 before heading to the Little Falls lab in April 2005, per his Linkedin profile.
The prosecutor's office's plan, Fallon said, "is to submit for retesting specimens from open cases. The larger, and unanswered, question is how this impacts already resolved cases, especially those where the specimens may have been destroyed."
Aseltine said the State Police are working with prosecutors to address any potential issues in connection with Shah's cases.
Kevin Walker, an assistant public defender, issued a statement on behalf of the Public Defender's Office Wednesday saying the office does not have "a practical mechanism for identifying all the cases involving" Shah.
"The prosecuting attorneys are going to have to do that, by reviewing the records from the Little Falls lab and cross-referencing them with their files," he said. "We assume the prosecutors will do that promptly. Pending that review, we are going to keep all our options on the table, including filing motions to vacate convictions in appropriate cases."
A spokesperson for the Passaic County Prosecutor's Office referred comment to the Attorney General's Office. A person who answered Shah's listed telephone number declined comment.
Staff writer S.P. Sullivan contributed to this report.
Justin Zaremba may be reached at jzaremba@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @JustinZarembaNJ. Find NJ.com on Facebook.The Town of Rockwell got its name from a mysterious wall hidden beneath the surface. Some refer to it as the Antediluvian wall of Texas, and some have gone as far as to suggest that the strange rock wall buried under the surface is the ultimate evidence of a Lost Civilization beneath Texas.
More than 100 years ago, a strange wall was discovered in Texas. Now, it turns out that the remains of this wall may have belonged to an antediluvian long lost civilization that inhabited the region in the distant past.
There is a town in Texas called Rockwall. Most people that live there have absolutely no idea from where the town got its name from. It turns out that the town was named after a strange wall was dug up together with a giant skull after people were searching for water.
According to reports, the Antediluvian map is a nearly perfect rectangle with 4 miles in width and 7 miles in lengths, with a total area of over 20 square miles.
It turns out that the top of the wall had a uniform elevation of 550 ft above sea level.
But how was the wall discovered?
The story goes back to three newcomers, early settlers that came to the region in the past. T.U. Wade, B.F. Boydston, and a Mr. Stevenson arrived to establish a farming community before anyone else.
In 18523, T.U. Wade and his family started construction on their house building it on the east side of the east fork of the Trinity River valley just outside the western edge of modern-day Rockwell.
During construction works, Mr. Wade came across a strange stone formation.
After additional excavations, Mr. Wade discovered a rock wall buried underground which ran across the are at an extended length.
Further digging revealed countless stacked stones that were too heavy for ordinary men to lift.
They abandoned the excavation at about thirty feet when they decided to stop trying to draw the stones out of the shaft. They decided to direct the rest of the shaft outside the wall in order to complete their well.
Then, at around thirty feet, the discovered what appeared to be a nearly perfect square opening in the wall, which has been called the window ever since.
The total depth of the shaft was around forty feet, but they did not go further and did not discover the bottom—if there is one—of the structure.
Years after, in 1949, Mr. Sanders of Forth Worth, Texas performed excavations at the wall. The digging resulted in four megalithic stones that were brought to the surface weighing several tons. One of the stones had peculiar inscriptions resembling what appeared to be pictographs.
Interestingly, there are reports of doorways or passages found in the wall thanks to excavations in the last one hundred years. The Dallas Morning News reported this discovery in 1967, “Back in the 1920’s, T.H. Meredith said a well was dug on his farm just east of the town of Rockwall, and Mr. Meredith declared that the digging went alongside a masonry wall which seemed to have an arch over a doorway or window.”
In addition to all of the above, excavations dug up curious metal rings composed of Tin, Titanium, and Iron EMBEDDED into the rock.
“The exposed wall is quite spectacular to see first hand and determining its origin, genesis, and age invokes some exciting research opportunities that can certainly advance our understanding of this type of phenomena.”
The most important fact, however, is the point that geologists actually do not know the precise processes that created this feature; and, therefore, a systematic and detailed study of a section of the wall has the potential to expand our knowledge and reveal new data not considered heretofore.”
Randall Moir Ph.D. Archaeologist – Dallas, Texas
“It is good when examples like Rockwall appear that test our abilities and cause us to question basic Newtonian Mechanistic assumptions that have not been modified for over 150 years. Physics had to abandon this approach at the turn of this century, opting instead for relativity and quantum mechanics in order to further their understanding of matter and the universe.
These two theories are currently undergoing radical revision behind the scenes because of new discoveries that do not fit that paradigm. We would do well to embrace the new physics to help us explain things that we have swept under the rug for too long before we lose all credibility.”
James (Bud) Shelton Geologist – New Orleans, La.
Further excavations are waiting to be done, and this is why Josh Reeves has started a fundraiser in an attempt to conduct his own independent archeological dig of the ancient wall in Rockwall, Texas. The goal is simple, dig out one or more sections of the wall and conduct a complete investigation documenting on film, every step of the process, in what may be the oldest civilization ever found.
Source:
RockwallFoundation
The Giant Skull of RockwallInstead of another boring lecture, last week my students at UC-Berkeley got quite a treat: a lively discussion with TechCrunch founder Mike Arrington. I once described Mike as a cross between Oprah Winfrey and Howard Stern; so I was ready for a little controversy. But he ended up lighting such a big fire, that I’ve been bombarded with questions from students about their education and careers. The questions aren’t just coming from Berkeley; after the discussion was posted on TechCrunch, students at Duke asked me to discuss this at a keynote I am giving at their entrepreneurship symposium on Wednesday; and students at other schools, from as far as India and Singapore, have asked for advice. So I’ll just respond here in the hope of quenching this fire.
At the UC-Berkeley Distinguished Innovator Lecture Series, last week, Mike and I discussed a variety of topics. We agreed on most subjects—except on the importance of education (and dearth of women in tech—which is a battle I’ll fight another day). When I brought up my TechCrunch post on the importance of MBA degrees, Arrington questioned why students needed to get any degree or go to college at all. He talked up the success of tech CEOs who had dropped out of college—Zuckerberg, Gates, and “countless high-profile entrepreneurs including Larry and Sergey” (Mike: Larry and Sergey both have undergraduate degrees and were completing PhD’s). Despite being interrupted by Berkeley professor Ikhlaq Sidhu (who I was afraid would come on stage and strangle Mike before he could finish his sentence), Arrington said that he didn’t learn much from college; gaining admittance to a Berkeley or Harvard is the only certification a student needs; dropping out from college doesn’t carry a stigma anymore; so “the best thing in the world is to go to Harvard for a year and drop out because everyone knows you were smart enough to get in”.
Arrington told students that the kind of person who wants to increase his chances of success by getting a masters degree isn’t an entrepreneur; older entrepreneurs have no chance of raising money (so they’re a lost cause); success means building a billion dollar business and making a lot of money—it’s not good enough to build a good lifestyle business that pays the bills and brings you happiness. So they should “ready-fire-aim” and go for the big prize rather than thinking small.
Here is the problem with Arrington’s logic: students may come up with great ideas and start a company, but they aren’t going to be able make it big unless they have the educational foundation. Maybe Zuckerberg lucked out by being at the right place at the right time, but he wasn’t born with the knowledge of how to grow a business. To build a business, you need to understand subjects like finance, marketing, intellectual property and corporate law. Until you have been in the business world for a while, you don’t know how to negotiate contracts, deal with people, manage and nurture employees, and sell to customers. Most importantly, if students don’t learn the importance of finishing what they start, they will never achieve success—this requires perseverance and determination. And by dropping out of college, they won’t have the alumni networks that they need to help them later in their careers and in business.
The harsh reality is that for every Zuckerberg, there are a thousand who drop out of college and fail. Many get discouraged after their failures and move to other professions which require less skill and education. Some universities do readmit students who dropped out for a short period of time, but most students end up burning through their savings and loans from friends and relatives, and can no longer afford their education. Some give up and look for jobs in big companies, but big companies don’t generally hire people without degrees—because they want employees who have the discipline to finish what they start; who won’t jump ship and chase every rainbow.
Plus, if you look at the backgrounds of the people who actually built Facebook—the executives and employees of the company—you’ll find that they aren’t college dropouts; they are highly educated. Facebook, Microsoft, and Apple—all started by college dropouts are the most selective in hiring; they are the most fussy about degrees.
My advice to students is to get all the education they can, while they can. Complete at least a bachelors and get a masters degree if you can. The degree doesn’t have to be from an elite college like Harvard or Stanford; any education will carry you far. As this chart shows (based on an analysis of the backgrounds of the founders of 652 successful technology companies), there is a huge difference in the size and revenue of companies founded by people with college degrees. But there is only a small difference between those with ivy-league degrees and the average (which includes all startups).
After you graduate, you should gain some practical work experience and learn the realities of the business world before making the plunge into entrepreneurship. Work for a big company for a few years; learn about how the corporate world works; get good at people management, project planning, and teamwork. Then join a startup—which will probably fail as most startups do. But you get to fail on someone else’s dime and learn all the valuable lessons.
In his talk, Mike Arrington said that he got little from his education. He also said that he wished he had gotten an MBA instead of a law degree. But what Mike didn’t seem to acknowledge was that he needed the law degree to become a lawyer; when he was a lawyer, he gained an in-depth knowledge about the tech world and its problems —which led to his startups; and this education gave him the knowledge to take on unethical companies and question unethical practices—all of which have helped make TechCrunch the world’s leading tech blog. Does anyone think that Mike would have been able to build TechCrunch if he was a college dropout?
In our discussion, Mike joked that instead of doing the law degree, he wishes he had learned to play the guitar in junior high—“maybe he would have become a rock star”. I have no idea if Mike has any musical talent, but a smaller proportion of guitarists become rock stars than techies who become CEOs.The 24th Annual Lake Tahoe Lacrosse Tournament is coming to Incline Village, Nev. on July 24-27. The Men’s Open Tournament will see 32 teams battle for the championship over three days. Play begins on July 25 at 9 AM and continue throughout the day.
An underdog to win the tourney, Yona Fury enters for the first time. Fury are a collection of players from the California Junior College Lacrosse Association (CJCLA). Adrenaline Tropics are the 3-time defending tournament champions.
Proceeds from the tournament benefit the Tahoe Truckee Lacrosse Association which promotes lacrosse in Northern Nevada.
July 25 1st Rd Schedule (at Village Green):
9 AM: Adrln Tropics vs Sin City | Chico vs Golden Gate
10 AM: Dub C vs Old Gaels | Salt Shakers vs SF
1 PM: Gamecocks vs O Club | Big Blue vs Tahoe Dawgs
2 PM: NW Nirvana vs West Sunset | Dodge Fathers vs Shooterz
July 25 1st Rd Schedule (at Incline Village HS):
9 AM: Barbary Coast vs Team Ruthless | Mountain Top vs Team Vegas
10 AM: Bay Bullets vs Scallywags | Palo Alto vs Ryquin
11 AM: Central California vs Clif Bar
1 PM: Cali Love vs Ventura County Bombers | Bigfoot vs Liv Lax
2 PM: Marin vs Yona Fury | Eastbay Athletics vs Sac BayAmaterasu
• Is able to switch weapons in the air again.
• Can no longer do instant overhead with jumping L canceled into Down-Forward + H in Glaive stance.
• Is able to switch weapons in the air again.• Can no longer do instant overhead with jumping L canceled into Down-Forward + H in Glaive stance.
Wesker
• Backwards air throw now throws the opponent further away, making followup OTG combos with Samurai Edge much more strict.
• Backwards air throw now throws the opponent further away, making followup OTG combos with Samurai Edge much more strict.
Iron Fist
• Iron Fist's Launcher has horrible range. The simple series L-M-H-S does not work. You're supposed to crumple them with the rekka series and then launch as they are falling.
• Fists of Fury has loads of invulnerability.
• Iron Fist's Level 3 does not OTG.
• Crescent Kick (QCB+S) OTGs
• Iron Fist's Launcher has horrible range. The simple series L-M-H-S does not work. You're supposed to crumple them with the rekka series and then launch as they are falling.• Fists of Fury has loads of invulnerability.• Iron Fist's Level 3 does not OTG.• Crescent Kick (QCB+S) OTGs
Dante
• Anti-Air M, H, (delay) S still works.
• No noticeable change to hitstun deterioration.
• Anti-Air M, H, (delay) S still works.• No noticeable change to hitstun deterioration.
Deadpool
• XF3 Quick Work infinite is still in, tested up to 4 loops.
• No noticeable addition to hitstun deterioration in his combos.
• Can teleport cancel off quick work and guns both on hit AND block.
• XF3 Quick Work infinite is still in, tested up to 4 loops.• No noticeable addition to hitstun deterioration in his combos.• Can teleport cancel off quick work and guns both on hit AND block.
Ryu
• Ryu's new Hadou-Shoryuken (DP + S) resembles Gene Splice in that you can mash S for more hits.
• The new chargeable Hadouken has no extra durability; only speed. A tester noted that Deadpool's guns beat the fireball every time.
• Denjin Mode carries over to assists.
• Ryu's new Hadou-Shoryuken (DP + S) resembles Gene Splice in that you can mash S for more hits.• The new chargeable Hadouken has no extra durability; only speed. A tester noted that Deadpool's guns beat the fireball every time.• Denjin Mode carries over to assists.
Haggar
• Lariat still drains his health.
• First 2 frames of Lariat are not invincible.
• Crouching H OTGs.
• Crouching H performs a hard knockdown.
• Lariat still drains his health.• First 2 frames of Lariat are not invincible.• Crouching H OTGs.• Crouching H performs a hard knockdown.
Zero
• Can charge his buster before the fight starts (before the announcer says "FIGHT")
• Shippuga loop no longer works, as the opponent gets pushed too high up for the combo to continue.
• Zero's jumping H and jumping Down + H both push the opponent farther away in combos.
• Can charge his buster before the fight starts (before the announcer says "FIGHT")• Shippuga loop no longer works, as the opponent gets pushed too high up for the combo to continue.• Zero's jumping H and jumping Down + H both push the opponent farther away in combos.
Dormammu
• Flame Carpet is still nerfed (post-OTG knocks the opponent very far away).
• Purification assist does OTG. This note was made to correct a misconception.
• Forward + H (Dark Matter) can be canceled into any special move.
• Flame Carpet is still nerfed (post-OTG knocks the opponent very far away).• Purification assist does OTG. This note was made to correct a misconception.• Forward + H (Dark Matter) can be canceled into any special move.
Phoenix
• Fireballs will disappear if she gets hit.
• Fireballs will disappear if she gets hit.
Doctor Doom
• Jumping S (after the ground bounce) can be canceled into Flight and go into Doom's M&M combos, either from a Jump or Super Jump state.
• Jumping S (after the ground bounce) can be canceled into Flight and go into Doom's M&M combos, either from a Jump or Super Jump state.
Vergil
• Round Trip is executed via charging buttons, like Zero's Buster.
• Forward + H (Stinger) does a wall bounce.
• Forward + H (Stinger) can be teleport cancelled (QCB motion).
• DP + H (OTG upward sword swing) can be canceled into teleport (by pressing H again).
• Cannot teleport in the air.
• Teleport is super cancelable.
• Normals seem to have a lot of frame disadvantage.
• H, S, H, S, H combo is possible.
• Devil trigger is extremely useful, makes him much faster and allows for a very nifty air dash.
• Tagging out with the swords super active will remove it.
• If you get hit while the swords super is active, the swords will disappear.
• He can combo after L Judgment Slash.
• Running Slash as an assist is not invincible.
• Round Trip is executed via charging buttons, like Zero's Buster.• Forward + H (Stinger) does a wall bounce.• Forward + H (Stinger) can be teleport cancelled (QCB motion).• DP + H (OTG upward sword swing) can be canceled into teleport (by pressing H again).• Cannot teleport in the air.• Teleport is super cancelable.• Normals seem to have a lot of frame disadvantage.• H, S, H, S, H combo is possible.• Devil trigger is extremely useful, makes him much faster and allows for a very nifty air dash.• Tagging out with the swords super active will remove it.• If you |
offsetWidth+scrollLeft) { for (i=0;i =0) { frames['frTabs'].scroll(g_rglTabX[iNextTab],0); return true; } else return false; } function fnFastScrollTabs(fDir) { if (c_lTabs>16) frames['frTabs'].scroll(g_rglTabX[fDir?c_lTabs-1:0],0); else if (fnScrollTabs(fDir)>0) window.setTimeout("fnFastScrollTabs("+fDir+");",5); } function fnSetTabProps(iTab,fActive) { var iCol=fnTabToCol(iTab); var i; if (iTab>=0) { with (frames['frTabs'].document.all) { with (tbTabs) { for (i=0;i<=4;i++) { with (rows[i]) { if (i==0) cells[iCol].style.background=c_rgszClr[fActive?0:2]; else if (i>0 && i<4) { if (fActive) { cells[iCol-1].style.background=c_rgszClr[2]; cells[iCol].style.background=c_rgszClr[0]; cells[iCol+1].style.background=c_rgszClr[2]; } else { if (i==1) { cells[iCol-1].style.background=c_rgszClr[2]; cells[iCol].style.background=c_rgszClr[1]; cells[iCol+1].style.background=c_rgszClr[2]; } else { cells[iCol-1].style.background=c_rgszClr[4]; cells[iCol].style.background=c_rgszClr[(i==2)?2:4]; cells[iCol+1].style.background=c_rgszClr[4]; } } } else cells[iCol].style.background=c_rgszClr[fActive?2:4]; } } } with (aTab[iTab].style) { cursor=(fActive?"default":"hand"); color=c_rgszClr[3]; } } } } function fnMouseOverScroll(iCtl) { frames['frScroll'].document.all.tdScroll[iCtl].style.color=c_rgszClr[5]; } function fnMouseOutScroll(iCtl) { frames['frScroll'].document.all.tdScroll[iCtl].style.color=c_rgszClr[2]; } function fnMouseOverTab(iTab) { if (iTab!=g_iShCur) { var iCol=fnTabToCol(iTab); with (frames['frTabs'].document.all) { tdTab[iTab].style.background=c_rgszClr[5]; } } } function fnMouseOutTab(iTab) { if (iTab>=0) { var elFrom=frames['frTabs'].event.srcElement; var elTo=frames['frTabs'].event.toElement; if ((!elTo) || (elFrom.tagName==elTo.tagName) || (elTo.tagName=="A" && elTo.parentElement!=elFrom) || (elFrom.tagName=="A" && elFrom.parentElement!=elTo)) { if (iTab!=g_iShCur) { with (frames['frTabs'].document.all) { tdTab[iTab].style.background=c_rgszClr[1]; } } } } } function fnSetActiveSheet(iSh) { if (iSh!=g_iShCur) { fnSetTabProps(g_iShCur,false); fnSetTabProps(iSh,true); g_iShCur=iSh; } } fnGetIEVer(); fnBuildFrameset(); //--> function fnInit() { if (parent.window.g_iIEVer>=4) { if (document.readyState=="complete" && frames['frTabs'].document.readyState=="complete") { g_rglTabX[0]=0; var i; for (i=1;i<=c_lTabs;i++) with (frames['frTabs'].document.all.tbTabs.rows[1].cells[fnTabToCol(i-1)]) g_rglTabX[i]=offsetLeft+offsetWidth-6; } else window.setTimeout("fnInit()",150); } } function fnGetIEVer() { var stzAgent=navigator.userAgent; var iVer=parseInt(navigator.appVersion); if (stzAgent.indexOf("MSIE")!=-1 && iVer<4) g_iIEVer=3; else if (stzAgent.indexOf("MSIE 4")!=-1) g_iIEVer=4; else g_iIEVer=5; } function fnTabToCol(iTab) { return 2*iTab+1; } function fnNextTab(fDir) { var iNextTab=-1; var i; with (frames['frTabs'].document.body) { if (fDir==0) { if (scrollLeft>0) { for (i=0;i offsetWidth+scrollLeft) { for (i=0;i =0) { frames['frTabs'].scroll(g_rglTabX[iNextTab],0); return true; } else return false; } function fnFastScrollTabs(fDir) { if (c_lTabs>16) frames['frTabs'].scroll(g_rglTabX[fDir?c_lTabs-1:0],0); else if (fnScrollTabs(fDir)>0) window.setTimeout("fnFastScrollTabs("+fDir+");",5); } function fnSetTabProps(iTab,fActive) { var iCol=fnTabToCol(iTab); var i; if (iTab>=0) { with (frames['frTabs'].document.all) { with (tbTabs) { for (i=0;i<=4;i++) { with (rows[i]) { if (i==0) cells[iCol].style.background=c_rgszClr[fActive?0:2]; else if (i>0 && i<4) { if (fActive) { cells[iCol-1].style.background=c_rgszClr[2]; cells[iCol].style.background=c_rgszClr[0]; cells[iCol+1].style.background=c_rgszClr[2]; } else { if (i==1) { cells[iCol-1].style.background=c_rgszClr[2]; cells[iCol].style.background=c_rgszClr[1]; cells[iCol+1].style.background=c_rgszClr[2]; } else { cells[iCol-1].style.background=c_rgszClr[4]; cells[iCol].style.background=c_rgszClr[(i==2)?2:4]; cells[iCol+1].style.background=c_rgszClr[4]; } } } else cells[iCol].style.background=c_rgszClr[fActive?2:4]; } } } with (aTab[iTab].style) { cursor=(fActive?"default":"hand"); color=c_rgszClr[3]; } } } } function fnMouseOverScroll(iCtl) { frames['frScroll'].document.all.tdScroll[iCtl].style.color=c_rgszClr[5]; } function fnMouseOutScroll(iCtl) { frames['frScroll'].document.all.tdScroll[iCtl].style.color=c_rgszClr[2]; } function fnMouseOverTab(iTab) { if (iTab!=g_iShCur) { var iCol=fnTabToCol(iTab); with (frames['frTabs'].document.all) { tdTab[iTab].style.background=c_rgszClr[5]; } } } function fnMouseOutTab(iTab) { if (iTab>=0) { var elFrom=frames['frTabs'].event.srcElement; var elTo=frames['frTabs'].event.toElement; if ((!elTo) || (elFrom.tagName==elTo.tagName) || (elTo.tagName=="A" && elTo.parentElement!=elFrom) || (elFrom.tagName=="A" && elFrom.parentElement!=elTo)) { if (iTab!=g_iShCur) { with (frames['frTabs'].document.all) { tdTab[iTab].style.background=c_rgszClr[1]; } } } } } function fnSetActiveSheet(iSh) { if (iSh!=g_iShCur) { fnSetTabProps(g_iShCur,false); fnSetTabProps(iSh,true); g_iShCur=iSh; } } fnGetIEVer(); fnBuildFrameset(); //--> function fnInit() { if (parent.window.g_iIEVer>=4) { if (document.readyState=="complete" && frames['frTabs'].document.readyState=="complete") { g_rglTabX[0]=0; var i; for (i=1;i<=c_lTabs;i++) with (frames['frTabs'].document.all.tbTabs.rows[1].cells[fnTabToCol(i-1)]) g_rglTabX[i]=offsetLeft+offsetWidth-6; } else window.setTimeout("fnInit()",150); } } function fnGetIEVer() { var stzAgent=navigator.userAgent; var iVer=parseInt(navigator.appVersion); if (stzAgent.indexOf("MSIE")!=-1 && iVer<4) g_iIEVer=3; else if (stzAgent.indexOf("MSIE 4")!=-1) g_iIEVer=4; else g_iIEVer=5; } function fnTabToCol(iTab) { return 2*iTab+1; } function fnNextTab(fDir) { var iNextTab=-1; var i; with (frames['frTabs'].document.body) { if (fDir==0) { if (scrollLeft>0) { for (i=0;i offsetWidth+scrollLeft) { for (i=0;i =0) { frames['frTabs'].scroll(g_rglTabX[iNextTab],0); return true; } else return false; } function fnFastScrollTabs(fDir) { if (c_lTabs>16) frames['frTabs'].scroll(g_rglTabX[fDir?c_lTabs-1:0],0); else if (fnScrollTabs(fDir)>0) window.setTimeout("fnFastScrollTabs("+fDir+");",5); } function fnSetTabProps(iTab,fActive) { var iCol=fnTabToCol(iTab); var i; if (iTab>=0) { with (frames['frTabs'].document.all) { with (tbTabs) { for (i=0;i<=4;i++) { with (rows[i]) { if (i==0) cells[iCol].style.background=c_rgszClr[fActive?0:2]; else if (i>0 && i<4) { if (fActive) { cells[iCol-1].style.background=c_rgszClr[2]; cells[iCol].style.background=c_rgszClr[0]; cells[iCol+1].style.background=c_rgszClr[2]; } else { if (i==1) { cells[iCol-1].style.background=c_rgszClr[2]; cells[iCol].style.background=c_rgszClr[1]; cells[iCol+1].style.background=c_rgszClr[2]; } else { cells[iCol-1].style.background=c_rgszClr[4]; cells[iCol].style.background=c_rgszClr[(i==2)?2:4]; cells[iCol+1].style.background=c_rgszClr[4]; } } } else cells[iCol].style.background=c_rgszClr[fActive?2:4]; } } } with (aTab[iTab].style) { cursor=(fActive?"default":"hand"); color=c_rgszClr[3]; } } } } function fnMouseOverScroll(iCtl) { frames['frScroll'].document.all.tdScroll[iCtl].style.color=c_rgszClr[5]; } function fnMouseOutScroll(iCtl) { frames['frScroll'].document.all.tdScroll[iCtl].style.color=c_rgszClr[2]; } function fnMouseOverTab(iTab) { if (iTab!=g_iShCur) { var iCol=fnTabToCol(iTab); with (frames['frTabs'].document.all) { tdTab[iTab].style.background=c_rgszClr[5]; } } } function fnMouseOutTab(iTab) { if (iTab>=0) { var elFrom=frames['frTabs'].event.srcElement; var elTo=frames['frTabs'].event.toElement; if ((!elTo) || (elFrom.tagName==elTo.tagName) || (elTo.tagName=="A" && elTo.parentElement!=elFrom) || (elFrom.tagName=="A" && elFrom.parentElement!=elTo)) { if (iTab!=g_iShCur) { with (frames['frTabs'].document.all) { tdTab[iTab].style.background=c_rgszClr[1]; } } } } } function fnSetActiveSheet(iSh) { if (iSh!=g_iShCur) { fnSetTabProps(g_iShCur,false); fnSetTabProps(iSh,true); g_iShCur=iSh; } } fnGetIEVer(); fnBuildFrameset(); //--> function fnInit() { if (parent.window.g_iIEVer>=4) { if (document.readyState=="complete" && frames['frTabs'].document.readyState=="complete") { g_rglTabX[0]=0; var i; for (i=1;i<=c_lTabs;i++) with (frames['frTabs'].document.all.tbTabs.rows[1].cells[fnTabToCol(i-1)]) g_rglTabX[i]=offsetLeft+offsetWidth-6; } else window.setTimeout("fnInit()",150); } } function fnGetIEVer() { var stzAgent=navigator.userAgent; var iVer=parseInt(navigator.appVersion); if (stzAgent.indexOf("MSIE")!=-1 && iVer<4) g_iIEVer=3; else if (stzAgent.indexOf("MSIE 4")!=-1) g_iIEVer=4; else g_iIEVer=5; } function fnTabToCol(iTab) { return 2*iTab+1; } function fnNextTab(fDir) { var iNextTab=-1; var i; with (frames['frTabs'].document.body) { if (fDir==0) { if (scrollLeft>0) { for (i=0;i offsetWidth+scrollLeft) { for (i=0;i =0) { frames['frTabs'].scroll(g_rglTabX[iNextTab],0); return true; } else return false; } function fnFastScrollTabs(fDir) { if (c_lTabs>16) frames['frTabs'].scroll(g_rglTabX[fDir?c_lTabs-1:0],0); else if (fnScrollTabs(fDir)>0) window.setTimeout("fnFastScrollTabs("+fDir+");",5); } function fnSetTabProps(iTab,fActive) { var iCol=fnTabToCol(iTab); var i; if (iTab>=0) { with (frames['frTabs'].document.all) { with (tbTabs) { for (i=0;i<=4;i++) { with (rows[i]) { if (i==0) cells[iCol].style.background=c_rgszClr[fActive?0:2]; else if (i>0 && i<4) { if (fActive) { cells[iCol-1].style.background=c_rgszClr[2]; cells[iCol].style.background=c_rgszClr[0]; cells[iCol+1].style.background=c_rgszClr[2]; } else { if (i==1) { cells[iCol-1].style.background=c_rgszClr[2]; cells[iCol].style.background=c_rgszClr[1]; cells[iCol+1].style.background=c_rgszClr[2]; } else { cells[iCol-1].style.background=c_rgszClr[4]; cells[iCol].style.background=c_rgszClr[(i==2)?2:4]; cells[iCol+1].style.background=c_rgszClr[4]; } } } else cells[iCol].style.background=c_rgszClr[fActive?2:4]; } } } with (aTab[iTab].style) { cursor=(fActive?"default":"hand"); color=c_rgszClr[3]; } } } } function fnMouseOverScroll(iCtl) { frames['frScroll'].document.all.tdScroll[iCtl].style.color=c_rgszClr[5]; } function fnMouseOutScroll(iCtl) { frames['frScroll'].document.all.tdScroll[iCtl].style.color=c_rgszClr[2]; } function fnMouseOverTab(iTab) { if (iTab!=g_iShCur) { var iCol=fnTabToCol(iTab); with (frames['frTabs'].document.all) { tdTab[iTab].style.background=c_rgszClr[5]; } } } function fnMouseOutTab(iTab) { if (iTab>=0) { var elFrom=frames['frTabs'].event.srcElement; var elTo=frames['frTabs'].event.toElement; if ((!elTo) || (elFrom.tagName==elTo.tagName) || (elTo.tagName=="A" && elTo.parentElement!=elFrom) || (elFrom.tagName=="A" && elFrom.parentElement!=elTo)) { if (iTab!=g_iShCur) { with (frames['frTabs'].document.all) { tdTab[iTab].style.background=c_rgszClr[1]; } } } } } function fnSetActiveSheet(iSh) { if (iSh!=g_iShCur) { fnSetTabProps(g_iShCur,false); fnSetTabProps(iSh,true); g_iShCur=iSh; } } fnGetIEVer(); fnBuildFrameset(); //--> function fnInit() { if (parent.window.g_iIEVer>=4) { if (document.readyState=="complete" && frames['frTabs'].document.readyState=="complete") { g_rglTabX[0]=0; var i; for (i=1;i<=c_lTabs;i++) with (frames['frTabs'].document.all.tbTabs.rows[1].cells[fnTabToCol(i-1)]) g_rglTabX[i]=offsetLeft+offsetWidth-6; } else window.setTimeout("fnInit()",150); } } function fnGetIEVer() { var stzAgent=navigator.userAgent; var iVer=parseInt(navigator.appVersion); if (stzAgent.indexOf("MSIE")!=-1 && iVer<4) g_iIEVer=3; else if (stzAgent.indexOf("MSIE 4")!=-1) g_iIEVer=4; else g_iIEVer=5; } function fnTabToCol(iTab) { return 2*iTab+1; } function fnNextTab(fDir) { var iNextTab=-1; var i; with (frames['frTabs'].document.body) { if (fDir==0) { if (scrollLeft>0) { for (i=0;i offsetWidth+scrollLeft) { for (i=0;i =0) { frames['frTabs'].scroll(g_rglTabX[iNextTab],0); return true; } else return false; } function fnFastScrollTabs(fDir) { if (c_lTabs>16) frames['frTabs'].scroll(g_rglTabX[fDir?c_lTabs-1:0],0); else if (fnScrollTabs(fDir)>0) window.setTimeout("fnFastScrollTabs("+fDir+");",5); } function fnSetTabProps(iTab,fActive) { var iCol=fnTabToCol(iTab); var i; if (iTab>=0) { with (frames['frTabs'].document.all) { with (tbTabs) { for (i=0;i<=4;i++) { with (rows[i]) { if (i==0) cells[iCol].style.background=c_rgszClr[fActive?0:2]; else if (i>0 && i<4) { if (fActive) { cells[iCol-1].style.background=c_rgszClr[2]; cells[iCol].style.background=c_rgszClr[0]; cells[iCol+1].style.background=c_rgszClr[2]; } else { if (i==1) { cells[iCol-1].style.background=c_rgszClr[2]; cells[iCol].style.background=c_rgszClr[1]; cells[iCol+1].style.background=c_rgszClr[2]; } else { cells[iCol-1].style.background=c_rgszClr[4]; cells[iCol].style.background=c_rgszClr[(i==2)?2:4]; cells[iCol+1].style.background=c_rgszClr[4]; } } } else cells[iCol].style.background=c_rgszClr[fActive?2:4]; } } } with (aTab[iTab].style) { cursor=(fActive?"default":"hand"); color=c_rgszClr[3]; } } } } function fnMouseOverScroll(iCtl) { frames['frScroll'].document.all.tdScroll[iCtl].style.color=c_rgszClr[5]; } function fnMouseOutScroll(iCtl) { frames['frScroll'].document.all.tdScroll[iCtl].style.color=c_rgszClr[2]; } function fnMouseOverTab(iTab) { if (iTab!=g_iShCur) { var iCol=fnTabToCol(iTab); with (frames['frTabs'].document.all) { tdTab[iTab].style.background=c_rgszClr[5]; } } } function fnMouseOutTab(iTab) { if (iTab>=0) { var elFrom=frames['frTabs'].event.srcElement; var elTo=frames['frTabs'].event.toElement; if ((!elTo) || (elFrom.tagName==elTo.tagName) || (elTo.tagName=="A" && elTo.parentElement!=elFrom) || (elFrom.tagName=="A" && elFrom.parentElement!=elTo)) { if (iTab!=g_iShCur) { with (frames['frTabs'].document.all) { tdTab[iTab].style.background=c_rgszClr[1]; } } } } } function fnSetActiveSheet(iSh) { if (iSh!=g_iShCur) { fnSetTabProps(g_iShCur,false); fnSetTabProps(iSh,true); g_iShCur=iSh; } } fnGetIEVer(); fnBuildFrameset(); //--> This page uses frames, but your browser doesn't support them.Something to remember: Palmer Luckey is 23 years old. I remember being 23, and it's not fun. Just watch Reality Bites. Just something to keep in mind when reading his responses to the frustration on the Oculus Rift subreddit surrounding the fact that all sorts of customers -- even some who ordered in the first few minutes the Rift was available -- have essentially no idea when they're getting their headsets. Luckey doesn't seem to know either, and he came off a little frustrated when he showed up on reddit to talk about it:
I am not going to wax poetic about this, since I have done so in the past, but bottom-line: I won't give in-depth updates on any situation without knowing it is solid, true, and finalized. Until I can do so, the best I can do is remind people that I will get them information as quickly as I can. On the rare occasions when things still change, even when they change for reasons out of my control, I get crucified anyway. Sometimes that means updates have to wait until things get locked down, and sometimes that means waiting a little longer to give everyone good info.
I imagine it's an infuriating situation, indeed: there are a whole lot of moving parts in any hardware launch, and someone in Luckey's position has control of approximately zero of them. That doesn't mean there isn't a problem, of course, just that it's complicated and unlikely to resolve particularly soon. Luckey seemed even testier in a later thread:
Imagine how much more different this sub would be 1000s of people had rifts instead of the handful now. Not very different, apparently, because there are already many thousands of Rifts out there even at this early point, with more arriving as we speak. Remember that this sub[reddit] is a tiny minority of the overall VR market - 70k is not even an accurate measure, considering how many subs are from old accounts or lurkers with no headset. The vast majority of people don’t care about posting pictures or reviews of their new toy to an internet enthusiast group.
Not a lot of answers here, obviously, but always interesting when a figure as public as Luckey seems to genuinely be communicating without a PR filter. I doubt anyone will remember this period at this time next year, but it's a frustrating moment while we're in it.
H/T KotakuAbout the Project
In 2016 we began a project in collaboration with the University's Centre for Anatomy & Human Identification to digitise specimens from the D’Arcy Thompson Zoology Museum. Smaller specimens were scanned using a Nikon XT H 225ST micro CT scanner, while larger specimens were captured using hand-held structured light scanners (Artec Eva and Artec Space Spider). The resulting 3D models are hosted online via Sketchfab and are available for viewing and downloading worldwide under a creative commons licence.
Click on any of the images below to be taken to a page containing the 3D model and information about the specimen.
?
Early life Edit
Music career Edit
Music style and image Edit
Franklin waiting to perform at the White House, in 2015 According to Richie Unterberger, Franklin was "one of the giants of soul music, and indeed of American pop as a whole. More than any other performer, she epitomized soul at its most gospel-charged".[1] She had often been described as a great singer and musician due to "vocal flexibility, interpretive intelligence, skillful piano-playing, her ear, her experience". Franklin's voice was described as being a "powerful mezzo-soprano voice". She was praised for her arrangements and interpretations of other artists' hit songs. According to David Remnick, what "distinguishes her is not merely the breadth of her catalogue or the cataract force of her vocal instrument; it's her musical intelligence, her way of singing behind the beat, of spraying a wash of notes over a single word or syllable, of constructing, moment by moment, the emotional power of a three-minute song. 'Respect' is as precise an artifact as a Ming vase".[83] Describing Franklin's voice as a youngster on her first album, Songs of Faith, released in 1956 when she was just 14, Jerry Wexler explained that it "was not that of a child but rather of an ecstatic hierophant". Critic Randy Lewis assessed her skills as a pianist as "magic" and "inspirational". Musicians and professionals alike such as Elton John, Keith Richards, Carole King, and Clive Davis were fans of her piano performances.[95]
Civil rights activism Edit
From her time growing up in the home of a prominent African-American preacher to the end of her life, Franklin was immersed and involved in the struggle for civil rights and women's rights. She provided money for civil rights groups, at times covering payroll, and performed at benefits and protests.[96] When Angela Davis was jailed in 1970, Franklin told Jet: "Angela Davis must go free... Black people will be free. I've been locked up (for disturbing the peace in Detroit) and I know you got to disturb the peace when you can't get no peace. Jail is hell to be in. I'm going to see her free if there is any justice in our courts, not because I believe in communism, but because she's a Black woman and she wants freedom for Black people".[96] Her songs "Respect" and "(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman" became anthems of these movements for social change.[97][98] Franklin and several other American icons declined to take part in performing at President Donald Trump's 2017 inauguration as a large-scale act of musical protest.[99] Franklin was also a strong supporter for Native American rights.[100] She quietly and without fanfare supported Indigenous Peoples' struggles worldwide, and numerous movements that supported Native American and First Nation cultural rights.[100]
Personal life Edit
Legacy and honors Edit
Discography Edit
Filmography Edit
See also Edit
References EditCutting state taxes to attract entrepreneurs is likely futile at best and self-defeating at worst, a new survey of founders of some of the country’s fastest-growing companies suggests. The study, which is consistent with other research, should be required reading for state policymakers — especially those in Michigan, Missouri, Nebraska, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, and Wisconsin who are pushing for large income tax cuts.
The 150 executives surveyed by Endeavor Insight, a research firm that examines how entrepreneurs contribute to job creation and long-term economic growth, said a skilled workforce and high quality of life were the main reasons why they founded their companies where they did; taxes weren’t a significant factor. This suggests that states that cut taxes and then address the revenue loss by letting their schools, parks, roads, and public safety deteriorate will become less attractive to the kinds of people who found high-growth companies. (Hat tip to urbanologist Richard Florida for calling attention to the study.)
As I wrote last year on why studies show state income tax cuts aren’t an effective way to boost small-business job creation, “Nascent entrepreneurs are not particularly mobile. Rather, they tend to create their businesses where they are, where they are familiar with local market conditions and have ties to local sources of finance, key employees, and other essential business inputs.”
I also argued that state tax cuts could be counterproductive, impairing states’ ability to provide high-quality services that make a state a place where highly skilled people want to live.
The new survey provides further evidence for these arguments. It found that:
“The most common reason cited by entrepreneurs for launching their business in a given city was that it was where they lived at the time. The entrepreneurs who cited this reason usually mentioned their personal connections to their city or specific quality of life factors, such as access to nature or local cultural attractions.”
“31% of founders cited access to talent as a factor in their decision on where to launch their company.... A number of founders also highlighted the link between the ability to attract talented employees and a city’s quality of life.”
“Only 5% of entrepreneurs cited low tax rates as a factor in deciding where to launch their company” and only 2% mentioned “business-friendly regulations” and other government policies. The report’s authors concluded, “We believe that the lack of discussion of these factors indicates that marginal differences in these areas at the state or municipal level have little influence on great entrepreneurs’ decision-making processes.”
Kansas, North Carolina, and Ohio have cut personal income taxes significantly in the last two years, and in each case the governor argued that it would give a big boost to creating or attracting new firms. This new study provides more compelling evidence that that’s the wrong approach. Let’s hope other states don’t start down the same dead-end path.Florence Li Tim-Oi (Chinese: 李添嬡 Cantonese Lei Tim'oi, Mandarin Li Tian'ai; 5 May 1907 in Hong Kong – 26 February 1992 in Toronto) was the first woman to be ordained to the priesthood in the Anglican Communion on 25 January 1944.
Biography [ edit ]
In 1931, Florence Li was present at the ordination of Deaconess Lucy Vincent at St. John's Cathedral in Hong Kong when the preacher had asked for women to give their lives to work for Christian ministry. Being inspired by this, Li would eventually go to Canton Union Theological College to receive her theological education before returning to Hong Kong in 1938. After working for two years in All Saints Church, in Kowloon, helping refugees in Hong Kong who fled mainland China in the midst of the Second Sino-Japanese War, Li was sent by Bishop Ronald Hall to help with refugees in Macau at the Macau Protestant Chapel. Six months into her new post, she returned to Hong Kong to be ordained as a deaconess on 22 May 1941 by Bishop Hall at St. John's Cathedral, where she received her first call.[1]
The Japanese occupation of Hong Kong and of parts of China had made it impossible for Anglican priests to get to neutral Macau, where there was no resident Anglican priest; Li was authorised by Hall and his assistant to give the sacraments to the Anglicans in these extenuating circumstances. Hall explained to the Archbishop of Canterbury at the time, William Temple: "I'm not an advocate for the ordination of women. I am, however, determined that no prejudices should prevent the congregations committed to my care having the sacraments of the Church."[2]
In January 1944, Li travelled through Japanese-occupied territory to the small town of Hsinxing, as yet unoccupied by the Japanese, to meet with Hall; from there they proceeded to Shaoqing where he regularised her administration of the sacraments by ordaining her as a priest on 25 January 1944.[3] William Temple confided to others his conflicting views but he felt compelled to take a public stand against it.[2] It was to be 30 years before any Anglican church regularised the ordination of women; to avoid further controversy she resigned her licence (though not her priest's orders) after the end of the war.[4][5]
When Hong Kong ordained two further women priests (Joyce M. Bennett and Jane Hwang) in 1971, she was officially recognised as a priest in the diocese.
She was appointed an honorary (nonstipendiary) assistant priest in Toronto in 1983, where she spent the remainder of her life.
Tributes [ edit ]
In 2003, the Episcopal Church fixed 24 January as her feast day in Lesser Feasts and Fasts, based on the eve of the anniversary of her ordination. In 2007, the Anglican Communion celebrated the centennial of her birth.[6] In 2018, she was made a permanent part of the Episcopal Church’s calendar of saints.[7]
She is also memorialized in the calendar of the Anglican Church of Canada with a feast day on February 26.
Her archives are held in the Lusi Wong Library at Renison University College, the Anglican college at the University of Waterloo.
See also [ edit ]
References [ edit ]In a recent interview with Billboard, Nicki Minaj admitted being "maybe too involved" with the forthcoming show Nicki, based on the rapper's pre-fame life. "I found one girl who I’m obsessed with who might play me," Minaj said at the time, "and someone who could rival her. So I’ve been coaching them both. I do a beat, let them rap. I do little dances with them. It has been magical… I narrate this show, like Chris Rock narrates Everybody Hates Chris. It was little differences that made that show stand out. I want to have those nuances. My first day, I said to the casting director: 'This will not be a clichéd black show.'"
ADVERTISEMENT
Today the star took to Instagram to share the final cast list. Ariana Neal, who also acted in the acclaimed film Fruitvale Station, will play a young Minaj. Selita Ebanks, will star as Minaj's mother on the show, and previously appeared in Kanye West's "Runaway" movie. Whoopi Goldberg has also signed on to portray the rapper's next-door neighbor, and Minaj promised that she will make appearances as well.
In a second post, Minaj said that she "literally cried" while watching Neal's audition tape.
Check out the full cast announcement above and read our Nicki Minaj cover story.It marks the latest award for Flaherty, who has also been recognized as the St. Louis Cardinals Minor League Pitcher of the Month for April and the Texas League Pitcher of the Week for April 17 - 23.
Flaherty, 21, has been the most dominant pitcher in the Texas League from the start of the season, beginning his first Double-A campaign with a 4-0 record and a miniscule 0.56 ERA through five starts in April. In a league-leading 32.1 total innings during the month, Flaherty allowed only two runs on 22 hits and four walks while striking out 28. He authored a 21.1 scoreless inning streak that lasted from the 4th inning on April 11 through the 4th inning on April 30, and included two scoreless starts in between.
The Burbank, California native has started May in similarly impressive fashion, matching a career high with 12 strikeouts through 7.0 one-run innings with only two hits allowed on May 5. Overall this season, he is 5-0 with a 0.69 ERA through six starts, leading the Texas League in wins, ERA, innings pitched (39.1), strikeouts (40) and WHIP (0.74), while ranking 2nd with a.174 average against.
Selected by St. Louis in the 1st round of the 2014 June Draft out of Harvard-Westlake High School in California, Flaherty entered the season ranked among the Cardinals top prospects by both MLB.com (#8) and Baseball America (#11).
Yadier Molina Bobblehead Theme Night Packages on sale to all fans on Wednesday, May 10
The Springfield Cardinals are excited to announce the first of a brand-new line of Theme Night Ticket Packages for the 2017 season, starting with the Yadier Molina Bobblehead Theme Night Ticket Package.
The Yadier Molina Bobblehead Theme Night Package includes one must-have Busch Stadium Exclusive Yadier Molina Bobblehead and one seat for the Friday, May 19 game at Hammons Field, all for just $15. That Friday also features AM Pyrotechnics Friday Night Fireworks featuring "Ohs," "Whoas," and other sounds.
As a special benefit, Season Ticket Holders have the first opportunity to order the Yadier Molina Bobblehead Theme Night Package before it goes on |
they believe Shen was the victim of a “random attack” and that “there have been no links made between this homicide and other reported acts of violence.”
Presser: IHIT confirm Marrisa Shen murder was random attack
She also said no suspect or suspects have been identified, although the investigation is still in its early stages.
A memorial to Shen was growing by the end of last week:
Memorial at Central Park for Marissa Shen. Crime scene tape has come down. @GlobalBC @GlobalBCMorning pic.twitter.com/VQAWx11RVA — Jordan Armstrong (@jarmstrongbc) July 21, 2017
Classmates of Shen’s at Moscrop Secondary School were stunned by her death.
“I was actually somewhere else and my Mom called me and she said someone died at Central Park and I said, ‘Oh, that’s bad’… and I check online and it’s her and I’m like, ‘Oh, my gosh’,” said Grade 8 student Devine Guerrero, who described Shen as very quiet.
Last week, police narrowed the timeline of Shen’s activities before she died. Police said the teen was home until dinnertime, and that at 5 p.m. she spoke to someone on the phone and was not in distress.
LISTEN: Police call Marrisa Shen’s murder a “random attack”
It is unknown if she was alone at this time. At 6 p.m. Shen left her home near Central Park, and by 11:30 p.m. her family had reported her missing to police.
Tragically, her body was found at 1:10 a.m. on Wednesday.
WATCH: Police release surveillance video of Marrisa Shen
Burnaby RCMP Supt. Chuck McDonald said in light of Shen’s death parents should “talk to your kids about taking measure to increase their personal safety.”
Burnaby RCMP are advising members of the public to:
– Not walk or jog early in the morning or late at night when streets are deserted
– Walk in pairs, if possible
– Be aware of their surroundings
– Stay visible and stick to well-lit areasWWE SIGNINGS UPDATE
As Steven Fernandes noted earlier tonight on PWInsider.com, Naomi will not be returning for the next season of Total Divas as a regular. PWInsider has confirmed that Tough Enough finalist Amanda Saccomanno has replaced her in the cast and is filming Total Divas material on the road.
PWInsider.com has also confirmed that WWE has signed longtime Northeastern independent talent Eddie "Bandido Jr." Orengo to a NXT deal that will see him working as a referee for the brand.
As previously noted here, there are other names floating around and being signed (some of which are totally incorrect) and as soon as PWInsider confirms that the talents in question have been officially signed, we will report.
If you enjoy PWInsider.com you can check out the AD-FREE PWInsider Elite section, which features exclusive audio updates, news, our critically acclaimed podcasts, interviews and more, right now for THREE DAYS free by clicking here!Update 12/16: Congrats to all our winners!
1st: vida44 (Lion King)
2nd: paxpox (Podracer)
3rd: linechan (The Shining)
Update 12/15: We're still in the process of picking winners! We've narrowed it down to about a dozen, but are still deliberating. We'll announce the winners tomorrow on 12/16. Sorry to make you guys wait!
Underdark is upon us! As Demogorgon attempts to destroy Neverwinter, we thought it fitting to bring some light into the situation. We’re hosting a photo battle contest where adventurers can flaunt their wit by making aspects of Underdark into humorous creations.
Photo Battle Begins: Monday, November 30 (Now!)
Photo Battle Ends: Monday, December 14 at 10am PST
It’s simple: we’ll provide you with three different images and it’s your task to use any editing software (even Paint) to paste them in hilarious or unlikely situations.
Click here for the three images to use!
If you’re looking for some inspiration, we’ve provided some examples:
Make sure to cite your sources if you’re using copyrighted material.
If you don’t have any editing software, Microsoft Paint is just as good for this contest! Here’s how you would paste an image into another on Paint:
Download the PNG files of the images provided.
Open the image you want to use in Microsoft Paint
Copy the image by hitting CTRL+A then CTRL+C
Now open the background image you want to put the cutout onto.
CRTL+V to paste the cutout on top of the image
Under Select, hit “Transparent selection”
This should remove all the white around the image.
Post all entries on our official forum thread here! This contest is for PC only, but Xbox players will have one in the near future.
We’ll choose three winners and announce them on December 15. The prizes are as follows:
1st: Dragonborn Legend Pack, Drow Mercenary and a Stronghold Promotional Pack
2nd: Dragonborn Legend Pack and your choice of a Drow Mercenary or Stronghold Promotional Pack
3rd: Your choice of a Drow Mercenary or Stronghold Promotional Pack
Submit your entries here!SPY SHOTS: Caught out! KTM’s 2018 790 Adventure spied testing on the road.
These are the first pictures of the upcoming 800cc Enduro bike from KTM.
The bike, which will be called the 790 Adventure, is scheduled to appear later on in 2017, there’s debate as to when the bike is actually going to go on sale but it is definite that this machine will be a major part of the 2018 model range.
Our spy snapper caught the bike during consumption testing out on the road. KTM is running the bike over road miles to get accurate mpg and oil consumption figures and varying speeds and terrain.
What is clear from the pictures is that the new 800 is going to have a much more serious level of off-road ability than anything in the very recent run of KTMs.
The bike gets what looks like 43mm WP forks and plenty of ground clearance (although the mudguard is low and close to the tyre which will have to be raised for any sort of real off-roading), braking is taken care off with two-piston radial Brembo calipers and the rear shock is mounted off-centre.
The bike gets a new, smaller face with a bracket fitted to the top that looks as though it will carry a screen – no screen was fitted to the prototype in our pictures though. The single headlight on the bike and the rear light small-cluster LEDs are clearly out of the factory’s parts bin. It’s unlikely that the finished article will look like this – especially given how every new KTM’s lights recently unveiled at Eicma in Milan were much more sharply styled and featured lines of LED lights.
There’s a rough-and-ready but not painted tubular fairing rail that runs around the top end of the forks and goes behind the plastic shoulder shrouds of the bike. The bike look small and purposeful overall but pillions are clearly factored into the 800 with a decent pillion seat and fairly low footrest visible on the prototype.
Hanging from underneath the seat is a bare seat-release cable that shows that the seat unit (and to a lesser extent, major components of the subframe architecture) has most likely been taken from a current bike, if this bike was more finished then the seat release cable would be routed to the key-lock as on finished motorcycles. So whilst this motorcycle has a pillion in place it’s not certain if the back end of the 800 will end up looking like we see in our pictures.
Get Motor Cycle Monthly delivered through your letterbox every month. 12 issues for £11.99. Click here for more information.After a slight delay, its finally here! Accel World vs Sword Art Online has arrived on PC! This is a game I have been waiting for since the first trailers came out for the PS4 edition. Who doesnt want to soar through the air fighting with Kirito and that pig dude from Accel world? I know I do, and this was a must have for me on Steam the moment I heard Bandai Namco were bringing it here.
BANDAI NAMCO Entertainment America Inc., the premier publisher of anime video games today announces that Accel World VS Sword Art Online Deluxe Edition is available now on Windows PC via Steam® for $49.99.
Accel World VS Sword Art Online Deluxe Edition includes the original game that offers an action RPG crossover experience spanning two of Reki Kawahara’s original series; SWORD ART ONLINE and ACCEL WORLD, as well as the ‘Castaway from Another World’ DLC which enables players access to additional playable characters, new weapons, and an Infinite Dungeon with new bosses to conquer. Players can play over 40 playable characters, team up in PvP and PvE modes to take on quests or challenge one another online.
Accel World VS Sword Art Online Deluxe Edition includes the following items:No More Free Parking At New Bethesda Garage, Starting Next Week
From Bethesda Now - By Aaron Kraut
The trial run at the new Capital Crescent Garage in downtown Bethesda is almost over.
The Montgomery County Department of Transportation will start charging drivers who park in the 960-space garage on Monday.
MCDOT and developer StonebridgeCarras opened the five-level garage under the Lot 31 project on Jan. 20. Parking has been free since “to give parkers time to become acquainted with the new garage,” according to the county.
County officials hope the facility will put to rest any complaints about a perceived lack of parking in Bethesda. The garage has a Bethesda Avenue and Woodmont Avenue entrance within walking distance of Bethesda Row.
The garage will have an 80-cents an hour rate from 7 a.m.-10 p.m. Monday through Friday, same as the other county garages in downtown Bethesda.
Unlike most other county garages, the Capital Crescent Garage doesn’t have meters. Parkers will be given a ticket upon entering, then pay that ticket before getting back in their vehicles at pay machines. Machines at the garage exits will also let drivers pay from their vehicles with a credit card.
If you make it to the garage before Monday, don’t be alarmed to see entrance and exit gates down. MCDOT said Wednesday that parking personnel will be testing the gates before fees are required on Monday.
If the gate arms are blocking the entrance to the garage, take a ticket and use the ticket to exit. There will be no charge.The big three browser makers have been busy. Last Tuesday, Google's Chrome 10 came out, with lots more speed, a new settings interface, and a more secure Flash implementation. Granted, a new Chrome version comes out every couple of months, and in this case it's been less than a month, so that's not exactly huge news. Then on Wednesday night, Mozilla announced the availability of the long awaited Firefox 4.0 as a release candidate (the final version is coming next Tuesday). The new Firefox version was in gestation for nearly a year, and is a significant break from its predecessor, bringing the browser into the fold of fast, minimalist-interface apps we've seen from the likes of Google and Opera. Finally, this past Monday, Microsoft announced at SXSW that Internet Explorer 9 was available in its "release to Web" final form. Like the Firefox product, IE9 is a huge advance on its predecessor, also bringing speed, user interface, and standards supportattributes where IE had trailed the likes of Chrome significantly.
So what's the result of this slew of releases? Three browsers that all sport a minimal interface, are nearly equally fast, and offer good support for HTML5. How do you choose? Below, I'll outline how the three new big-time browsers stack up in the major categories you should care about: Interface, Speed, Security and Privacy, Standards Support, and Extra features. Note that this piece considers only the three new browsers, as Chrome 10 has already beaten out Opera 11 and Safari 5 in our lab testing.
Interface
Google's Chrome started the trend of shaving the browser's interface down to the bare minimum, as part of the company's push towards making every app a Web app. It's Chrome OS is another move in this directionan operating system that isn't much more than a Web browseras is the Chrome Web Store, which mimic's Apple's App store for iOS, but instead of offering installable software, lets users "install" Web sites in the browser's tab bar.
Speaking of tabs, parity has pretty much been reached. Now all three browsers let you drag tabs out into their own windows and close background tabs. IE, which in version 8 offered colorized tab groups but little else, now has leapfrogged the competition in tab dragging: a page playing video or audio can be dragged out without missing a beat. And if you drag a tab to the side of the screen, it will obey Windows 7's Aero snap feature, filling exactly half the screen. Chrome offers a clunkier way to have a window fill half the screen, you must drag out a tab and drop it exactly into a page icon that shows up on the edge of its window if your cursor is in the right area.
Firefox's Panorama tab manager is a potentially powerful aid to browsing with oodles of tabs at your beck. It lets you organized them into visual groups for easier access. But Firefox lacks IE9 and Chrome's helpful new-tab page, which offer favorites and history, and in Chrome's case, "Web apps." Instead Firefox offers a blank white page.
Chrome and Firefox offer themes, letting you dress up the browser window in different colors, patterns, and images. IE9, however, dispenses with this frippery, instead letting sites affect the look of the browser. In that browser, you can "pin" sites, meaning they'll get a permanent button in the Windows 7 taskbar sporting jump lists to take you to frequently needed site sections. Pinned sites also adorn the browser with their own icon and predominant color. Chrome and Firefox both let you pin tabs for Web apps, but in their cases this means getting a smaller, persistent tab for the pinned site at the left of the tab barno Windows 7 goodies.Close your eyes, Twitter shareholders.
Costolo’s departure was applauded by fed-up investors who were sick of watching Twitter’s stock slide. And Dorsey’s appointment was greeted with hope that he would quickly turn around the product and, by association, the stock price.
But that has not happened. In the year since that announcement, Twitter has simply remained Twitter — a company plagued by a But that has not happened. In the year since that announcement, Twitter has simply remained Twitter — a company plagued by a lack of continuity on its executive roster, a failure to get its product into more consumer hands and an inability to tell a convincing story to Wall Street.
And that combo hasn’t helped the company’s stock.
Since Costolo announced he was stepping down, Twitter’s stock has fallen more than 60 percent, closing Friday near an all-time low at $14.02. Its market capitalization, which was roughly $23.5 billion the day Costolo announced his departure, is now below $10 billion. (That’s just a little more than half of Snapchat's latest valuation on the private markets.)
Here’s what Twitter’s stock slide looks like in chart form:
Twitter closing share price
Since Jack Dorsey replaced Dick Costolo as Twitter's CEO, shares are down 60%. 6/11/2015 6/12/2015 6/15/2015 6/16/2015 6/17/2015 6/18/2015 6/19/2015 6/22/2015 6/23/2015 6/24/2015 6/25/2015 6/26/2015 6/29/2015 6/30/2015 7/1/2015 7/2/2015 7/6/2015 7/7/2015 7/8/2015 7/9/2015 7/10/2015 7/13/2015 7/14/2015 7/15/2015 7/16/2015 7/17/2015 7/20/2015 7/21/2015 7/22/2015 7/23/2015 7/24/2015 7/27/2015 7/28/2015 7/29/2015 7/30/2015 7/31/2015 8/3/2015 8/4/2015 8/5/2015 8/6/2015 8/7/2015 8/10/2015 8/11/2015 8/12/2015 8/13/2015 8/14/2015 8/17/2015 8/18/2015 8/19/2015 8/20/2015 8/21/2015 8/24/2015 8/25/2015 8/26/2015 8/27/2015 8/28/2015 8/31/2015 9/1/2015 9/2/2015 9/3/2015 9/4/2015 9/8/2015 9/9/2015 9/10/2015 9/11/2015 9/14/2015 9/15/2015 9/16/2015 9/17/2015 9/18/2015 9/21/2015 9/22/2015 9/23/2015 9/24/2015 9/25/2015 9/28/2015 9/29/2015 9/30/2015 10/1/2015 10/2/2015 10/5/2015 10/6/2015 10/7/2015 10/8/2015 10/9/2015 10/12/2015 10/13/2015 10/14/2015 10/15/2015 10/16/2015 10/19/2015 10/20/2015 10/21/2015 10/22/2015 10/23/2015 10/26/2015 10/27/2015 10/28/2015 10/29/2015 10/30/2015 11/2/2015 11/3/2015 11/4/2015 11/5/2015 11/6/2015 11/9/2015 11/10/2015 11/11/2015 11/12/2015 11/13/2015 11/16/2015 11/17/2015 11/18/2015 11/19/2015 11/20/2015 11/23/2015 11/24/2015 11/25/2015 11/27/2015 11/30/2015 12/1/2015 12/2/2015 12/3/2015 12/4/2015 12/7/2015 12/8/2015 12/9/2015 12/10/2015 12/11/2015 12/14/2015 12/15/2015 12/16/2015 12/17/2015 12/18/2015 12/21/2015 12/22/2015 12/23/2015 12/24/2015 12/28/2015 12/29/2015 12/30/2015 12/31/2015 1/4/2016 1/5/2016 1/6/2016 1/7/2016 1/8/2016 1/11/2016 1/12/2016 1/13/2016 1/14/2016 1/15/2016 1/19/2016 1/20/2016 1/21/2016 1/22/2016 1/25/2016 1/26/2016 1/27/2016 1/28/2016 1/29/2016 2/1/2016 2/2/2016 2/3/2016 2/4/2016 2/5/2016 2/8/2016 2/9/2016 2/10/2016 2/11/2016 2/12/2016 2/16/2016 2/17/2016 2/18/2016 2/19/2016 2/22/2016 2/23/2016 2/24/2016 2/25/2016 2/26/2016 2/29/2016 3/1/2016 3/2/2016 3/3/2016 3/4/2016 3/7/2016 3/8/2016 3/9/2016 3/10/2016 3/11/2016 3/14/2016 3/15/2016 3/16/2016 3/17/2016 3/18/2016 3/21/2016 3/22/2016 3/23/2016 3/24/2016 3/28/2016 3/29/2016 3/30/2016 3/31/2016 4/1/2016 4/4/2016 4/5/2016 4/6/2016 4/7/2016 4/8/2016 4/11/2016 4/12/2016 4/13/2016 4/14/2016 4/15/2016 4/18/2016 4/19/2016 4/20/2016 4/21/2016 4/22/2016 4/25/2016 4/26/2016 4/27/2016 4/28/2016 4/29/2016 5/2/2016 5/3/2016 5/4/2016 5/5/2016 5/6/2016 5/9/2016 5/10/2016 5/11/2016 5/12/2016 5/13/2016 5/16/2016 5/17/2016 5/18/2016 5/19/2016 5/20/2016 5/23/2016 5/24/2016 5/25/2016 5/26/2016 5/27/2016 5/31/2016 6/1/2016 6/2/2016 6/3/2016 6/6/2016 6/7/2016 6/8/2016 6/9/2016 6/10/2016 $20 $30 $40 $0 $5 $10 $15 $25 $35 $16 $18 $20 $22 $24 $26 $28 $30 $32 $34 $36 $38 $40 6/11/2015 6/12/2015 6/15/2015 6/16/2015 6/17/2015 6/18/2015 6/19/2015 6/22/2015 6/23/2015 6/24/2015 6/25/2015 6/26/2015 6/29/2015 6/30/2015 7/1/2015 7/2/2015 7/6/2015 7/7/2015 7/8/2015 7/9/2015 7/10/2015 7/13/2015 7/14/2015 7/15/2015 7/16/2015 7/17/2015 7/20/2015 7/21/2015 7/22/2015 7/23/2015 7/24/2015 7/27/2015 7/28/2015 7/29/2015 7/30/2015 7/31/2015 8/3/2015 8/4/2015 8/5/2015 8/6/2015 8/7/2015 8/10/2015 8/11/2015 8/12/2015 8/13/2015 8/14/2015 8/17/2015 8/18/2015 8/19/2015 8/20/2015 8/21/2015 8/24/2015 8/25/2015 8/26/2015 8/27/2015 8/28/2015 8/31/2015 9/1/2015 9/2/2015 9/3/2015 9/4/2015 9/8/2015 9/9/2015 9/10/2015 9/11/2015 9/14/2015 9/15/2015 9/16/2015 9/17/2015 9/18/2015 9/21/2015 9/22/2015 9/23/2015 9/24/2015 9/25/2015 9/28/2015 9/29/2015 9/30/2015 10/1/2015 10/2/2015 10/5/2015 10/6/2015 10/7/2015 10/8/2015 10/9/2015 10/12/2015 10/13/2015 10/14/2015 10/15/2015 10/16/2015 10/19/2015 10/20/2015 10/21/2015 10/22/2015 10/23/2015 10/26/2015 10/27/2015 10/28/2015 10/29/2015 10/30/2015 11/2/2015 11/3/2015 11/4/2015 11/5/2015 11/6/2015 11/9/2015 11/10/2015 11/11/2015 11/12/2015 11/13/2015 11/16/2015 11/17/2015 11/18/2015 11/19/2015 11/20/2015 11/23/2015 11/24/2015 11/25/2015 11/27/2015 11/30/2015 12/1/2015 12/2/2015 12/3/2015 12/4/2015 12/7/2015 12/8/2015 12/9/2015 12/10/2015 12/11/2015 12/14/2015 12/15/2015 12/16/2015 12/17/2015 12/18/2015 12/21/2015 12/22/2015 12/23/2015 12/24/2015 12/28/2015 12/29/2015 12/30/2015 12/31/2015 1/4/2016 1/5/2016 1/6/2016 1/7/2016 1/8/2016 1/11/2016 1/12/2016 1/13/2016 1/14/2016 1/15/2016 1/19/2016 1/20/2016 1/21/2016 1/22/2016 1/25/2016 1/26/2016 1/27/2016 1/28/2016 1/29/2016 2/1/2016 2/2/2016 2/3/2016 2/4/2016 2/5/2016 2/8/2016 2/9/2016 2/10/2016 2/11/2016 2/12/2016 2/16/2016 2/17/2016 2/18/2016 2/19/2016 2/22/2016 2/23/2016 2/24/2016 2/25/2016 2/26/2016 2/29/2016 3/1/2016 3/2/2016 3/3/2016 3/4/2016 3/7/2016 3/8/2016 3/9/2016 3/10/2016 3/11/2016 3/14/2016 3/15/2016 3/16/2016 3/17/2016 3/18/2016 3/21/2016 3/22/2016 3/23/2016 3/24/2016 3/28/2016 3/29/2016 3/30/2016 3/31/2016 4/1/2016 4/4/2016 4/5/2016 4/6/2016 4/7/2016 4/8/2016 4/11/2016 4/12/2016 4/13/2016 4/14/2016 4/15/2016 4/18/2016 4/19/2016 4/20/2016 4/21/2016 4/22/2016 4/25/2016 4/26/2016 4/27/2016 4/28/2016 4/29/2016 5/2/2016 5/3/2016 5/4/2016 5/5/2016 5/6/2016 5/9/2016 5/10/2016 5/11/2016 5/12/2016 5/13/2016 5/16/2016 5/17/2016 5/18/2016 5/19/2016 5/20/2016 5/23/2016 5/24/2016 5/25/2016 5/26/2016 5/27/2016 5/31/2016 6/1/2016 6/2/2016 6/3/2016 6/6/2016 6/7/2016 6/8/2016 6/9/2016 6/10/2016 Twitter closing share price Credit: Yahoo Finance
Things don’t look immediately more promising, either. Twitter is Things don’t look immediately more promising, either. Twitter is without a head of consumer product, the first time we can recall a vacancy at what is one of the company’s most important positions. It’s fresh off a quarter of disappointing financial results. And there isn’t much — with the exception of an NFL streaming deal this fall — expected on the horizon.
Plus, Dorsey — as Twitter's creator, the de facto product leader — is still running the company part-time. At his other public company, Square, shares have dropped 30 percent since their first day of trading last November.
It’s been a tough year for Twitter’s new regime. Onto the next.The Star Wars sequels are on their way (Picture: Disney)
Disney have confirmed when they plan to put the two Star Wars sequels out.
Star Wars Episode 8 and Episode 9 have officially been greenlit and will be with us in within the next four years.
Episode VIII is scheduled for release in 2017 followed by Episode IX in 2019.
Disney’s CEO Bob Iger confirmed the plans in a Disney shareholder report seen by Star Wars Underworld. He also promised Star Wars fans that Episode 7 will be ‘worth the wait’.
An extract from his statement reads: ‘As one of the few people allowed to visit the set during filming….and one of the fewer who’s seen most of the footage…I can assure the millions of Star Wars fans who have spent the last decade hoping for a new movie this one will be worth the wait.
‘And it’s only the beginning of a new era of exceptional Star Wars storytelling; next year we’ll release our first standalone movie based on these characters, followed by Star Wars: Episode VIII in 2017, and we’ll finish this trilogy with Episode IX in 2019.’
Advertisement
Advertisement
Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens is out on December 18.
As well as the now-confirmed sequels, there are a couple of standalone spin off movies in the pipeline reportedly featuring Boba Fett and Han Solo.
Advertisement
Advertisement
MORE: These themed bedrooms will make the Star Wars fan in your life ridiculously happy
MORE: Ultimate Star Wars fan splashes out £18,000 on Boba Fett action figureFORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — To Arnold Abbot, feeding the homeless in a public park in South Florida was an act of charity.
But to the city of Fort Lauderdale, the 90-year-old man was committing a crime.
Abbott and two South Florida ministers were arrested last weekend as they handed out food. They were charged with breaking a new ordinance restricting public feeding of the homeless, and each faces up to 60 days in jail and a $500 fine.
“One of the police officers said, ‘Drop that plate right now,’ as if I were carrying a weapon,” Abbott said.
The conflict pits organizations with charitable intentions against residents and businesses who don’t want their neighborhoods to become magnets for the homeless.
Fort Lauderdale is the latest U.S. city to pass restrictions on feeding homeless people in public places. Advocates for the homeless say that the cities are fighting to control increasing homeless populations but that simply passing ordinances doesn’t work.
“Street feeding programs don’t work,” said Robert Marbut, a consultant and expert on homelessness in the U.S. “Outlawing it doesn’t work, either. … You’re never going to have a good day arresting a priest.”
In the past two years, more than 30 cities have tried to introduce laws similar to Fort Lauderdale’s. The efforts come as more veterans face homelessness and after two harsh winters drove homeless people south, especially to Florida, Marbut said.
In Fort Lauderdale, the arrests haven’t deterred Abbott, Dwayne Black and Mark Sims. The ministers were back at church Wednesday preparing meals for a feeding at a public park later that night.
Mayor Jack Seiler said he thinks the three have good intentions, but that the city can’t discriminate in enforcing the law.
ShareBoundless is proud to announce the release of OpenGeo Suite 4.1! Each new version of OpenGeo Suite includes numerous fixes and component upgrades as well as bringing many new features and improvements to the platform, including:
Improved enterprise packages. Whether developing applications on OSX or deploying a Windows production system, our packages are designed to help you use our software more effectively. Now enterprise customers benefit from other typical IT deployment options like supported deployments for Amazon Web Services and VMware.
Automated clustering. We’re continually improving our clustering features for those needing high availability or better scaling under load. These improvements make spinning up clusters even easier for systems administrators by providing new automation options.
New data sources. OpenGeo Suite can now publish from MongoDB and GeoPackage
New Boundless SDK templates that use a production-ready version of OpenLayers 3. These free templates make it easier and faster to deploy enterprise applications built using OpenGeo Suite.
QGIS installer. Dramatically increase the ease and affordability of desktop analysis and editing tools with our bundled QGIS that includes the OpenGeo Explorer plugin to publish maps and data directly to OpenGeo Suite.Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Jeremy Corbyn 'concerned' over voter exclusion claims
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn fears some of his supporters may have been "unfairly" barred from voting in the party's leadership election.
He has handed a list of names to party officials, saying he wants a "fair and open" contest, with all those eligible to take part able to do so.
Allies of Mr Corbyn have claimed there is a "rigged purge" of his supporters after a union leader was excluded.
Labour said it had a "robust" validation process in place.
The Labour Party has, meanwhile, announced it has signed up a security firm to cover its annual conference in Liverpool next month, ending fears the event would have to be cancelled.
The row over voting rights comes after Bakers' union leader Ronnie Draper was barred from voting in the leadership election or attending future meetings, including next month's party conference.
Mr Draper - who represents 20,000 members of the Bakers, Food and Allied Workers Union and who is backing Mr Corbyn in his fight for re-election against Owen Smith - claims his suspension was politically motivated.
He said all he had been told about the disciplinary action against him was it was related to an "unidentified tweet" he posted.
'Natural justice'
"I have not been given |
has been demonstrated through iron's role as a required cofactor for catecholamine synthesis and its regulatory inhibitory feedback [9,10]. This functional overlap may explain why high concentrations of both brain iron and DA are co-localized to the same basal ganglia regions [8,11], why aberrant dopaminergic features were found only in brain regions with atypical brain iron levels and were associated with ADHD-like deficits [7,8] which improved after psychostimulant treatment [12]. Evidence linking atypical brain iron levels with the dopaminergic system have also been observed in restless leg syndrome [13], a sensorimotor disorder that is highly comorbid with ADHD [2]. However, despite these connections, it is still unknown how the functional units of the dopaminergic system and brain iron homeostasis all relate to one another, let alone how each component adapts to disease or modulation by psychostimulants.
MRI: a noninvasive method for assessing brain iron
The brain has high concentrations of tissue iron relative to most other organs, particularly in deep gray matter regions such as the basal ganglia [11]. In contrast to the radioactive tracers required to measure DA biomarkers in molecular imaging, brain iron can be assessed noninvasively using MRI [14]. This is due to the strong magnetic properties of iron that can significantly affect MRI signal decay. Thus, brain iron may be regarded as a noninvasive, endogenous contrast agent [14]. The most conventional MRI methods used to assess brain iron are the transverse relaxation rates known commonly as R2, R2* and R2’. Unfortunately, the specificity of these relaxation rate measures for iron is less than adequate because these measures are also affected by other biophysical influences unrelated to iron [14]. Fortunately, the recent development of more advanced MRI methods, such as quantitative susceptibility mapping and magnetic field correlation (MFC) imaging, address these limitations and provide measurements with sensitivity and improved specificity for iron [14]. Although these advanced methods are still ‘works in progress’ and require further optimization, their clinical feasibility has been encouraging [5,15,16].
MRI assessment of brain iron: a potential biomarker of ADHD
Consistent with the only ADHD MRI study of brain iron [17], our own recent report [5] demonstrated that medication-naive ADHD patients had significantly lower MRI-based indices of brain iron in striatal and thalamic regions compared with either TDC or psychostimulant-medicated ADHD patients. Interestingly, psychostimulant-medicated ADHD patients and TDC did not differ statistically in any MRI-based brain iron index. These findings implicate reduced brain iron in ADHD pathophysiology – prior to medication – which appears to normalize with psychostimulant treatment. Moreover, unlike other neural correlates of ADHD [18], these brain iron findings were not confounded by ADHD comorbidity. Considering that psychostimulants reduce ADHD symptoms predominantly by increasing striatal DA [19,20] and that our results parallel prior molecular imaging findings of reduced striatal DA biomarkers in medication-naive ADHD patients and greater DA biomarkers in those treated with psychostimulants [21], it is possible that MRI-based indices of brain iron levels may indirectly reflect the disrupted dopaminergic pathway in ADHD [19,20]. However, there remains a need for validation studies in both animals and humans using multimodal MRI and molecular imaging approaches to examine correlations within the inter-related systems. Nonetheless, given that brain iron is fundamentally linked to the dopaminergic system, it is highly possible that brain iron homeostasis may also be disrupted in ADHD.
What are the harms of misdiagnosis?
Preventing the misdiagnosis of any disorder is as important as making a correct diagnosis. In the case of ADHD, making the correct diagnosis is particularly important since the first line of treatment usually involves prescribing psychostimulants that are Schedule II Controlled Substances due to their ‘high potential for abuse’ [22]. Although psychostimulants are successful in reducing inattentive and hyperactive/impulsive symptoms in up to 70% of ADHD cases [23], reported side effects for nonresponsive cases have been as severe as addiction or psychosis [22,24]. Along with the 42% increase in the rate of ADHD diagnosis within the past decade, rates of children and adolescents taking psychostimulants have also skyrocketed (28% increase between 2007 and 2011) [25]. While some have argued that improved public education and awareness have resulted in more patients seeking and obtaining medical treatment for ADHD, others have raised concerns that these statistics reflect a societal trend of liberally overdiagnosing ADHD. Indeed, reports of healthcare providers making the ADHD diagnosis without conducting a comprehensive battery of behavioral assessments and/or prescribing ADHD medications for non-ADHD symptoms (e.g., improve grades) are common [26]. Thus, while psychostimulants are effective when ADHD is properly diagnosed and may even be protective against substance use disorders in ADHD [27], the danger of prescribing psychostimulants to children and adolescents who are misdiagnosed with ADHD should not be underestimated. These risks underscore the need to identify ADHD biomarkers that may help to inform more accurate diagnosis.
Where do we go from here?
Several factors make brain iron an attractive ADHD biomarker candidate. Foremost, brain iron has a fundamental relationship to the dopaminergic system [7–10], which is known to be disrupted in ADHD and is a target of psychostimulant treatment [19,20]. Moreover, the ability to noninvasively assess brain iron levels in humans using MRI is a promising development in the study of ADHD, as it bypasses the use of radiation that is required for DA biomarkers [14]. Unfortunately, there remains a paucity of in vivo imaging studies examining brain iron in the disorder. To date there have been only two cross-sectional studies using relaxation rates and MFC measures [5,17]; this is simply not enough to confirm or dispute the potential of brain iron as a biomarker for ADHD. Although both studies support low brain iron as a biomarker for ADHD prior to medication, additional longitudinal studies examining brain iron levels pre- and postpsychostimulant medication are needed to corroborate these preliminary findings. Furthermore, future studies should utilize advanced MRI methods to ensure that negative results reflect biology rather than the limitations of the imaging tools. These studies must also account for several clinical demographics, including ADHD comorbidity and medication history, as these facets have been shown to affect the neural correlates of ADHD along with clinical symptoms and outcomes [1,5,18,28]. Although much more work is needed to validate the potential of brain iron as an ADHD biomarker, these promising preliminary findings coupled with the clinical feasibility of noninvasively assessing brain iron with MRI warrants moving forward in this line of research.DATE: Oct 30, 2012 | BY: David Wharton | Category: Sci-Fi
Looking for an excuse to revisit Ron Moore’s acclaimed Battlestar Galactica reboot? Maybe our call-to-arms about the languishing Blood and Chrome spinoff has you longing for the good old days of Adama and President Roslin and Number Six and Gaius Baltar. Sure, it’s been off the air and out of the pop cultural consciousness for a few years, but it’s still sitting there on your DVD shelf or Netflix, just waiting for you to return to the Colonial fleet for another voyage. And if you need a little extra encouragement to rewatch the series, you’d better sit down, because these pics from a new charity calendar featuring BSG actresses Tricia Helfer and Katee Sackhoff may leave you feeling weak in the knees.
Lest you feel guilty about hanging pictures of a pair of gorgeous women on your wall to help you weather the next year, fear not! The 13-month calendar was created for Acting Outlaws, Sackhoff and Helfer’s charity that helps to raise funds for various causes they believe in. Aside from Tricia and Katee still being stunning (duh), it’s really cool to see that they’re using their names and fame for a good cause. Good on ya, ladies!
You can order a copy of the calendar right here, for a mere $39.98. We’ve got some more of the pictures below, but fair warning: they get NSFW after the jump.CenturyLink's Investigation of Itself Finds no Billing Fraud Centurylink claims that an investigation it conducted into itself has found no evidence of billing fraud. Earlier this year, a CenturyLink whistleblower revealed that the company had a systemic practice of charging users for services and upgrades they never asked for. Heidi Heiser, who worked for CenturyLink as a customer service and sales agent from August 2015 until October 2016 has sued the company over the scheme, stating she was fired shortly after pointing it out to company CEO Glen Post.
After the whistleblower filed her lawsuit, numerous states followed with lawsuits of their own accusing CenturyLink of all manner of fraudulent billing behaviors. Centurylink responded to the problem by first insisting it was all simply a "coordinated negative media and PR campaign aimed at CenturyLink." But in an announcement made this week, the company says it also appointed a "special committee of independent board members" that has found no evidence of wrong doing by company management. According to CenturyLink, this committee dug through 9.7 million documents as well as 4.3 terabytes of billing data consisting of over 32 billion billing records -- as well as interviewing 200 current and former Company employees. Their finding? That CenturyLink management did nothing wrong, that "company management did not condone or encourage cramming," and that "evidence did not show that cramming was common at the Company." The self-investigation blames all of the problems cited in numerous lawsuits on some of the company's pricing and promotions, which the inquiry found were "complex and caused confusion." Granted, ISPs often intentionally make their billing confusing intentionally to prevent direct comparisons with competitors. ISPs also like to bury hidden, unnecessary fees (like CenturyLink's Internet Cost Recovery fee) to help them falsely advertise a lower rate, something the inquiry just floats right over. Quite miraculously, CenturyLink CEO Glen Post says the investigation confirms his belief CenturyLink management did nothing wrong. "The investigation confirmed my long-held belief that there was no fraud or wrongdoing at the Company and that cramming was neither widespread nor condoned," said Post. "However, we know there have been times when we haven't provided our customers the experience they deserve. We have identified a number of areas where we can improve the customer experience and have already made significant progress in addressing those areas." Again, that's a far cry from the systemic, intentional over-billing found by Again, that's a far cry from the systemic, intentional over-billing found by Minnesota’s attorney general Lori Swanson (pdf), or management's intentional overlooking of said over-billing alleged by whistleblowers. We'll have to see if the looming lawsuits and independent investigations mirror CenturyLink's own, internal inquiry.
News Jump Tuesday Morning Links Monday Morning Links TGI Friday Morning Links Thursday Morning Links Wednesday Morning Links Tuesday Morning Links Friday Morning Links Thursday Morning Links - Valentines Edition Wednesday Morning Links Tuesday Morning Links ---------------------- this week last week most discussed
Most recommended from 16 comments
Shamayim
Premium Member
join:2002-09-23 4 recommendations Shamayim Premium Member If Bernie Madoff had investigated himself he would have come to the same conclusion. rradina
join:2000-08-08
Chesterfield, MO 3 recommendations rradina Member Same Old Story said by linked article : While the committee found that CenturyLink’s management did not condone or encourage cramming, and the evidence did not show that cramming was common, the telco admitted that its "investment in consumer sales monitoring was not sufficiently effective in proactively detecting and quantifying potential cramming." A Few Good Men. They admit cramming occurs but it wasn't common. Then they admit that they don't have a good way to detect and quantify potential cramming. Doublespeak to make sure management isn't culpable. Everyone in jail is innocent.This sounds like a "code red" from. They admit cramming occursThen they admit that they don't have a good way to detect and quantify potential cramming. Doublespeak to make sure management isn't culpable. fkittred
join:2002-01-24
Biddeford, ME 3 recommendations fkittred Member Particularly bad when combined with this arstechnica.com/tech-pol ··· -hidden/
Anon6d337
@state.co.us 2 recommendations Anon6d337 Anon smh Door to door CenturyLink sales person almost got my parents. Even have them on my moms facebook messanger telling me that they would be signing up for Gigabyte fiber. When I stopped by, obviously, the paperwork reflected the truth. Had my mother call them up and cancel the order. sestrada
join:2012-11-05 2 recommendations sestrada Member Baited and switched I was shocked after having an online chat with CL about upgrading DSL.
Was told about $10/mo extra, in writing, from the chat transcript, along with the persons contact info.
At that time they even had a company advocate here on DSL reports that reviewed the quote and found it in order.
I upgraded.
My $70 bill shot up to over $200 with stuff I didnt order like office 365 they wouldnt take off.
It took 11 months and a complaint to the FCC to put me back the old way.
How do companies get away with stuff like that?How much do 20-somethings love gadgets? A lot.
According to Pew Research, 95% of Americans ages 18-34 own a cellphone and 70% own a laptop. Among that contingent of cellphone owners, 63% say they use their phone to access the Internet, while 52% report that they send and receive emails via mobile.
Twenty-somethings are attached to more devices than just their cellphones and laptops, however. Today, they're also streaming movies on their tablets, using their smartwatches to make reservations and tracking their diets via bracelets.
Here are 12 gadgets for the home and office that every 20-something should own.
TrackR bravo is being demoed at CES! #CES2015 pic.twitter.com/6LmYAml868 — The TrackR (@TheTrackR) January 8, 2015
What do 20-somethings love more than their devices? Finding their misplaced devices.
That shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone familiar with the college student who never knows where his iPhone is, or the busy young professional who's delayed every morning because they involuntarily have a house-key scavenger hunt.
The TrackR Bravo tracking device is able to find everything from your wallet and keys to your pet or bike. Before your keys inevitably slide under your couch cushions, slip the Bravo speaker onto your keychain.
The next time you're frantically searching for them, you'll be able to locate the keys by accessing the Bravo app from your iPhone or Android phone, and having it send a signal to your key tracker, which will emit a noise. Bravo also works in reverse: If you have your keychain with the Bravo widget, but not your phone, tap the Bravo and your phone will belt out a noise.
Though Bravo only works within 100 feet of your lost item, when you misplace an item at a park and another one of Bravo's 10,000+ users come within a mile of it, that user will receive a notification from the company that your device is nearby. Bravo users can also opt in for smartphone notifications when they walk more than 100 feet away from their keys or wallet.
Image: Mashable, Christina Ascani
Setting aside time to meditate is one thing; actually completing a relaxing session without being distracted is another.
MUSE, a brain-sensing headband, helps busy 20-somethings stay on track. The device, which is used in more than 50 hospitals and labs, works in conjunction with the companion smartphone app Calm to study your brain waves when you're meditating and remind you when you’re getting off-track.
MUSE users can choose sessions ranging from three to 20 minutes. The free app provides instant results and tracks long-term progress.
A photo posted by SmartMat Yoga (@smartmatyoga) on Sep 16, 2014 at 1:47pm PDT
While you may love yoga, you're probably not enthused about either spending hundreds (if not thousands) of dollars on classes or performing poses on your own without instruction and correction.
The SmartMat is part yoga fitness tracker and part personal instructor. The mat's software first calibrates your body's dimensions using sensors on the product's surface. Then, after you choose your workout, the mat guides you through a flow and corrects you if your posture is askew.
If you want a minimally invasive session, you can choose the SmartMat's zen mode, which only tracks your workout data and uploads it to your synced smartphone. If you're in a crowded setting and don't want to disturb anyone with the mat's audio instructions, you can receive visual cues on your smartphone.
The AirDog drone, designed for action sport enthusiasts, is a self-flying drone controlled by a wristband. Outfitted with holders for a GoPro or one of Sony’s action cameras, the AirDog drone follows and captures images of skiers, surfers, mountain bikers and others as they shred snow, hit waves and climb hills. The drone uses a gyroscope to stabilize video feeds and its users are able to pre-set the device to focus on certain angles.
Image: Q Designs
Forget about carrying around a charger or using a clunky battery pack that makes your phone look like a Game Boy. The QBracelet doubles as a stylish wrist accessory and a foldable smartphone charger. When your phone is running low on juice, unclasp the QBracelet and connect the two to generate a charge of up to 60%. The QBracelet holds its charge for 90 days, so you won't have to continually load it up with power.
Though some might have harsh things to say about the Selfie Stick, you can't knock the device's popularity or rapid rise to prominence in 2014. According to NBC News, more than 100,000 Selfie Sticks were sold before Christmas last year.
If you've been sightseeing recently, you can probably understand why the device is so popular. With the stick, users no longer have to ask strangers to snap a photo of them, nor do they have to settle for a poorly shot selfie that omits key details and, sometimes, parts of the people in the photo.
The Selfie Stick is collapsible and extends out more than four feet. It adapts to compact cameras in addition to smartphones.
3D printers don't come cheap, but as more of the devices hit the market, they're becoming increasingly affordable for consumers. They're also becoming more practical to own, capable of creating a wide variety of products made from other materials besides plastic.
The LulzBot Mini 3D Printer is all open-source; users can swap out and modify parts, as well as print with a variety of materials, such as polyester, nylon and filaments filled with copper, wood and bronze.
Because owners can tinker with the LulzBot, which begins shipping in January of 2015, it won't become passé as more 3D printers hit the market. Creative professionals can even take the compact device to work with them.
It's no secret that 20-somethings love their grooming. If you're sick of shaving pesky body hair or paying thousands of dollars for laser-based treatments, check out the Remington i-LIGHT Pro. The light-based hair removal device works for both men and women, and is FDA-approved, utilizing the same Intense Pulse Light (IPL) technology employed by dermatologists. The treatment removes hair for up to six months by attacking hair follicles at the root, not the surface.
Today is the last day to order online to receive our products in time for #MothersDay http://t.co/jX1VBznGUl pic.twitter.com/cmPVOP5uj6 — The Orange Chef Co. (@TheOrangeChefCo) May 5, 2014
Sticking to a diet is hard enough without having to guesstimate (sometimes incorrectly) the weight of the food you're consuming and its nutritional data. Despite your level of dedication, you might still be tempted to have four ounces of chocolate instead of two if it's just a matter of incorrectly eye-balling. Not to mention those office snacks...
Prep Pad doesn't let you off that easy.
The pad weighs all of the ingredients in your meal and syncs to an app on your iPad or iPhone where it loads that information into your diet plan via Bluetooth — and gives you an item-by-item nutritional breakdown. Too much saturated fat in your dinner? Prep Pad and its corresponding Countertop app tell you how much of a certain ingredient you should remove. All told, Prep Pad and Countertop contain nutritional information for 300,000 products, and you can even use Countertop to scan UPC codes from store-bought items.
A dark setting can help you sleep, but why not turn your bedroom into a placid planetarium?
The Thumbs Up! Moonlight Cushion is a battery operated pillow that lights up with soothing, alternating LED lights from a single tap on its plush fur surface. The pillow is both comfortable enough to be used as a couch decoration in a new apartment and dim enough to serve as a nightlight.
For some 20-somethings, the only way to play Sega Genesis, NES or Super Nintendo is to rifle through mom and dad's basement and unearth dusty cartridges tucked away next to antique Hummels.
If you're not a fan of dust and Hummels (why wouldn't you be?), the RetroDuo Portable Handheld console is the best way to transport yourself back to your younger years and play some Donkey Kong and Mario. The system is compatible with most NES and SNES games, and, with a separate adapter, can play many Genesis games. It's capable of eight hours of uninterrupted gaming, so it's perfect for flights or boring family functions.
Though the Apple Watch may finally be released in the upcoming months, the smart timepiece isn't the only name in wearables. At only $199, the Pebble Steel Smartwatch is a bargain and it's plenty reliable: Its battery can last for a week, it has thousands of apps in its app store and it looks great on your wrist — which isn't always the case with wearables.
What gadgets do the 20-somethings in your life always have on-hand? Tell us in the comments.$\begingroup$
I'll try to answer the intuition part. You know how a Möbius strip works with a piece of paper, right?
Visualize $\mathbb{R}\times [-1,1]$. This is the whole real line in the $x$-direction, and the interval $[-1,1]$.
Now, what parts of this does $\sim$ say are the same? When $y=0$, every $x$ is the same as every $x+n$ for any $n\in \mathbb{N}$. Now, move up a little bit in the $y$-direction, to some $a\in (0,1)$. Now any $(x,a)$ is identified with $(x+1,-a)$. So, if you just look at $A_1:=[-1,0]\times [-1,1]$ and $A_2:=[0,1]\times [-1,1]$, you see that the top of $A_1$ is identified with the bottom of $A_2$.
In fact, every $(x,y)$ is identified with $(x+1,-y)$, $(x+2,y)$, $(x+3,-y)$, etc. The top of each interval is identified with the bottom of its successor's. We can move down a path like this through points which will later be identified with one another - in the quotient, we would just be going through the same one interval long path over and over.
Before we take the quotient, the path going through the tops of the even intervals and the path going through the top of the odd intervals are different.
Here we can see how the paper Möbius strip corresponds to the mathematical one; before you twist and glue, it starts off with two sides. (EDIT: Don't be fooled by the ends of my sticky notes; this strip is supposed to be one interval long.)
Once we quotient out by $\sim$, we pull these identified points together according to the orientation given by this equivalence relation. The red and green paths show how the orientation 'flips' at the end of every interval. We are left with the Möbius strip.Donald Trump, already lagging behind Hillary Clinton in ground game organizing, is also facing a quantifiable talent gap in key battleground states, starting at the top.
And that’s according to his fellow Republicans.
Story Continued Below
Veteran Republican operatives and key leaders from several critical battleground states say that at best, they've never heard of Trump's state directors or have only limited familiarity with them — and at worst, they know them, and question their ability to do the job.
“The Clinton campaign is very strong in New Hampshire,” said Ryan Williams, who served as a longtime aide to 2012 GOP nominee Mitt Romney and has extensive experience working in New Hampshire. Of Trump’s New Hampshire state director, Matt Ciepielowski, he said, “I’ve been doing campaigns in New Hampshire since ’08, I haven’t come across him.”
Across the country, one Nevada Republican said of Trump’s state director there, Charles Munoz: “I’m actually surprised, being one of the few battleground states out there, that they don’t have a more seasoned professional running their operation, because Hillary Clinton has a remarkable team on the ground in Nevada, demonstrating how seriously she’s taking the state.”
Trump’s list of state directors is peppered with a mix of young people who have no presidential campaign experience, as well as Republican operatives who have been out of the spotlight for years. In contrast, Clinton is boosted by Democratic operatives who led marquee races and helped shepherd Barack Obama’s victories in 2008 and 2012.
In part, that’s a reflection of Trump’s outsider status: The Republican nominee, who has never held elected office and has upended just about every norm the Republican establishment holds dear, has attracted supporters and staffers who come from outside the GOP operative class.
In part, that disparity results from the refusal of many knowledgeable Republican operatives, including key Romney staffers from Williams to former chief strategist Stuart Stevens, to work for Trump. Even Trump’s Arizona state director, Brian Seitchik, was on the record as a Trump critic earlier this year before signing on with his team. In North Carolina, it took until this month for a more experienced hand to come in, following discontent with a previous state director, Earl Phillip, who is now the subject of a lawsuit that alleges he pulled a gun on another staffer.
And in part, it’s evidence of Trump’s haphazard interest in organizing state-level ground games: He initially ceded that effort to the Republican National Committee and the state parties—who, certainly, have capable staffers on the ground in key swing states. But last month Trump’s team did make an effort to show that they too were working in key states, rolling out a list of state directors and advisers.
Some of those state directors and advisers are well-respected and seasoned political professionals. But other state directors that Trump tapped and touted are still unknown quantities to the key players on the ground, in some cases clearly lacking the same kinds of networks and relationships that Clinton state directors are generally considered to possess.
Consider New Hampshire, where Ciepielowski has been serving as Trump’s state director for more than a year, following stints as a field director at Americans for Prosperity and as a Youth for Ron Paul regional coordinator in Louisiana.
“Matt who?” asked New Hampshire state Sen. Andy Sanborn, when asked if he knew Ciepielowski (who didn’t respond to requests for comment). After saying he was conducting a Google image search, the Republican lawmaker said, “I know Matt, his last name sent me for a loop.”
But he wasn’t aware that Ciepielowski was Trump’s New Hampshire state director.
“Your phone call is the first I’ve heard about him being an active participant in the Trump campaign,” Sanborn said, adding that he typically deals with Matt Mowers and Mike Biundo, respected operatives with deep New Hampshire knowledge, whom he praised—but who lack the state director title.
“I know who he is, doesn’t he work for the Trump campaign?” asked former New Hampshire House Speaker Bill O’Brien of Ciepielowski. O’Brien helped lead Ted Cruz’s grassroots-focused New Hampshire effort. “If we saw each other on the sidewalk I’d certainly say hi, but I don’t really know him that well.”
Meantime, Clinton’s New Hampshire state director, Mike Vlacich, is deeply wired in the state and has been for years, at one point serving as executive director of the state party. He also guided the re-election campaigns of Sen. Jeanne Shaheen and Gov. John Lynch.
Clinton lost the New Hampshire primary this year to Bernie Sanders, from neighboring Vermont, but both Clinton’s Democratic supporters and past detractors said that Vlacich is a serious operative who is well-respected and well-connected.
“I don’t think Secretary Clinton could have found a state director who knows the state better,” said Jay Surdukowski, a plugged-in New Hampshire Democrat who has criticized Clinton in the past.
Terry Shumaker, a longtime New Hampshire-based ally of the Clintons, said Vlacich was his “first choice” for the job, calling him “a seasoned veteran with good contacts throughout the political, governmental, educational and business sectors” of New Hampshire.
The two campaigns’ Virginia state directors are another study in contrasts.
Trump’s state director, Thomas Midanek, was until July managing the congressional campaign of Carl Domino in Florida, who in 2014 lost the Republican-leaning district by 20 percentage points. In Virginia, he has run or advised several House of Delegates races — including, notably, the primary campaign of longtime Speaker Bill Howell — and is known in northern Virginia, where one of the races was based.
But in other important parts of the state, including in GOP must-win regions, knowledgeable activists don’t know Midanek. “The name’s not ringing a bell to me,” said Eddie Whitlock, the GOP chair of Richmond-area Henrico County.
Trixie Averill, a vice chair of the Roanoke County GOP and a longtime GOP activist who like Whitlock spoke with POLITICO in an interview last week, was also unfamiliar: “No, I don’t even know who he is, so he definitely hasn’t reached out to me.”
Virginia GOP Chair John Whitbeck said he didn’t know why some of his state’s key players were unaware of Midanek, but praised the operative as “very organized, well-respected, has a great temperament, is patient. All the qualities you’re looking for in someone who’s got to lead a battleground state.”
He also noted that Corey Stewart, the Trump campaign chair in Virginia, sometimes has a more visible role as he travels and attends rallies.
Midanek didn’t respond to requests for comment.
Clinton’s Virginia state director is Brian Zuzenak, a well-wired Democratic operative who previously ran the political arm of Gov. Terry McAuliffe’s operation, giving him access to the governor’s statewide network of activists and donors. McAuliffe, a longtime ally of the Clinton family, was heavily involved in the statehouse races last cycle, requiring Zuzenak to develop relationships with key party leaders across Virginia.
“Gov. McAuliffe, he’s the leader of the party, he’s the top-ranked Democratic official statewide, so to be the governor’s political action committee director is the top position you can have,” said Clark Mercer, chief of staff to Virginia Lt. Gov. Ralph Northam. “It gives you credibility.”
Nationally, Trump started organizing much later than Clinton did—but certainly, a number of those state directors his campaign tapped do have extensive in-state experience.
For example, Ohio Sen. Rob Portman’s former campaign manager, Bob Paduchik, helped George W. Bush win the state and is a well-respected operative running Trump’s Ohio operation (though there are now reports that in perhaps the most critical county for Republicans in the state, the Trump operation is underwater). Rep. Sean Duffy’s former chief of staff, Pete Meachum, is helming Wisconsin.
And in several states, more seasoned advisers are heavily involved in Trump’s operations. In addition to Biundo and Mowers, David Urban, a former chief of staff to the late Sen. Arlen Specter, is a senior adviser in Pennsylvania. Further, Trump backers note, Trump won states like New Hampshire and Nevada in the primary despite the relative inexperience of his state directors there (though some veteran Republicans say he won because of his personality, not because of his organization).
Other Trump staffers have more dated experience: Colorado director Patrick Davis served as political director of the National Republican Senatorial Committee in 2004, and did push polling on behalf of Mike Huckabee in 2007, over the then-presidential candidate’s objections. In 2014 he led a super PAC that fell apart amid allegations of fraud (he denied wrongdoing).
In an interview, Davis batted down the notion that being out of the game for longer than his Clinton counterparts could be problematic.
“The teams Mr. Trump has put together, in Colorado and around the country, are older, more experienced, and they know what tomorrow looks like,” he said, noting his experience aiding the Bush-Quayle ticket in 1992, Bob Dole in 1996, as executive director of the South Dakota GOP, and Bush-Cheney in 2004 with his role at the NRSC. “In a campaign like this, to a person, this is not their first high-profile, high-pressure campaign.”
Emmy Ruiz, Clinton’s Colorado state director, ran Obama’s general election effort in Nevada in 2012—one of several Clinton state directors to have had high-level roles on the Obama campaign, a list that also includes Chris Wyant, who was general election director for Obama's successful effort in Ohio in 2012 and is now Clinton's state director there.
The lack of similar recent presidential experience among Trump’s state directors is troubling to some of his supporters, who want to see a more serious commitment to the ground game fight.
Trump’s point person in Nevada is Charles Munoz, who attended the University of Las Vegas-Nevada and is in his mid-twenties. Until recently, he was aided by Jimmy Stracner, a well-regarded conservative operative in activist circles, but Stracner was let go late last month, stoking concerns among some who think Munoz needs the help of a more experienced hand.
Like several other Trump state directors, and ex-Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski, Munoz’s background is with Americans for Prosperity. In college and after, Munoz worked as a field organizer for the group and made some contacts through that effort.
But the prominent Nevada Republican operative who expressed concerns about state organization suggested that experience wasn’t sufficient preparation to run a presidential campaign in a major battleground state, even though Trump won big in the Nevada caucuses with Munoz leading that effort.
“Obviously [Trump] had a resounding victory in our caucuses, but certainly, going up against Hillary Clinton’s machine…which is substantial, backed heavily by labor and a growing Hispanic population, you need all the help you can get,” the source said. “I would hope the Trump campaign will get a few more seasoned professionals in Nevada to help Munoz as we head into the general election.”
Clinton’s state director in Nevada is Jorge Neri, Obama’s 2012 Nevada field director who went on to serve as associate director of public engagement at the White House, where he focused on Latino outreach—a key constituency in Nevada. He and Ruiz helped Obama land 70 percent of the Latino vote in Nevada in 2012.
Heidi Wixom, a longtime activist in Nevada Republican circles who was heavily involved on behalf of Romney — and who is not currently supporting Trump or Clinton — asked for a spelling of Munoz’s name, when asked whether she was familiar with him.
“Oh, I do not know him at all,” she said. “No clue, nope, I don’t know him.”According to a new Kaiser Family Foundation survey, Trump supporters are divided down the middle on advisability of Obamacare repeal.
We are often informed that the dangerously self-destructive GOP-only process of “repealing and replacing” Obamacare is mandatory for congressional Republicans because “the base” demands it. Earlier this week a primarily anecdotal McLatchy report from Representative Mark Meadows’s district in North Carolina was headlined: “Republican base howls at prospect of congressional failure on Obamacare.” Here’s a sample:
Fed up with what they see as timidity to take action in Washington, many voters in Meadows’ district say they had hoped Donald Trump’s election in November would mean congressional Republicans would start to deliver.
“We sent Trump there to rattle their cages and it’s ridiculous it’s not happening,” said Katherine Allen, 65, who lives near the Pisgah National Forest. “I understand some of the senators are worried, but didn’t they make a promise?”
Anecdotes aside, there is empirical evidence that “the base” that is allegedly howling for an immediate partisan Obamacare repeal measure may be a bit of an exaggeration. The Kaiser Family Foundation’s health-care tracking poll is showing that given the choice of pursuing a “repeal and replace” strategy or of “working with Democrats to improve ACA,” 41 percent of self-identified Republicans want their caucus in Congress to take the latter approach, with a spare majority — 54 percent — favoring the former approach (the one the Republican Congress has been taking all this year). More amazing yet, self-identified “Trump supporters” split right down the middle, with 47 percent favoring “repeal and replace” and 46 percent the very different option of bipartisan action to fix Obamacare.
It is somewhat less surprising but equally important that independents overwhelmingly favor the “bipartisan fix” option — nearly as much as Democrats.
So in continuing down their current track, congressional Republicans are defying swing voters and dividing their own base. That’s generally not a recipe for political success.Over the weekend, Bill Cosby appeared on NPR’s Weekend Edition with his wife, Camille, to talk about the art exhibit at the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art, which features many pieces from their private collection. The interview turned to allegations of rape and sexual abuse directed at Cosby, accusations that have resurfaced recently and even grown over the weekend. After chatting about the art exhibit, host Scott Simon switched gears on Cosby and got serious: “This question gives me no pleasure, Mr. Cosby, but there have been serious allegations raised about you in recent days. You're shaking your |
to convince these economists that I was right and Pigou's analysis faulty." Coase had presented his paper in 1960 during a seminar in Chicago, to twenty senior economist including George Stigler and Milton Friedman. He gradually won over the usually skeptic audience, in what has later been considered a "paradigm-shifting moment" in the genesis of Chicago Law and Economics.[19] Coase would join the Chicago faculty four years later.
Published in the Journal of Law and Economics in 1960, while Coase was a member of the Economics department at the University of Virginia, "The Problem of Social Cost" provided the key insight that it is unclear where the blame for externalities lies. The example he gave was of a rancher whose cattle stray onto the cropland of his neighbour. If the rancher is made to restrict his cattle, he is harmed just as the farmer is if the cattle remain unrestrained.
Coase argued that without transaction costs the initial assignment of property rights makes no difference to whether or not the farmer and rancher can achieve the economically efficient outcome. If the cost of restraining cattle by, say, building a fence, is less than the cost of crop damage, the fence will be built. The initial assignment of property rights determines who builds the fence. If the farmer is responsible for the crop damage, the farmer will pay for the fence (as long the fence costs less than the crop damage). The allocation of property rights is primarily an equity issue, with consequences for the distribution of income and wealth, rather than an efficiency issue.
With sufficient transaction costs, initial property rights matter for both equity and efficiency. From the point of view of economic efficiency, property rights should be assigned such that the owner of the rights wants to take the economically efficient action. To elaborate, if it is efficient not to restrict the cattle, the rancher should be given the rights (so that cattle can move about freely), whereas if it is efficient to restrict the cattle, the farmer should be given the rights over the movement of the cattle (so the cattle are restricted).
This seminal argument forms the basis of the famous Coase theorem as labelled by Stigler.
Law and economics [ edit ]
Coase profile photo in 2003 (photo taken at and by University of Chicago Law School)
Though trained as an economist, Coase spent much of his career working in a law school. He is a central figure in the development of the subfield of law and economics. He viewed law and economics as having two parts, the first "using the economists' approach and concepts to analyze the working of the legal system, often called the economic analysis of the law"; and the second "a study of the influence of the legal system on the working of the economic system."[20] Coase said that the second part "is the part of law and economics in which I am most interested."
In his Simons Lecture celebrating the centennial of the University of Chicago, titled "Law and Economics at Chicago", Coase noted that he only accidentally wandered into the field:
It is generally agreed that this article has had an immense influence on legal scholarship, but this was no part of my intention. For me, "The Problem of Social Cost" was an essay in economics. It was aimed at economists. What I wanted to do was to improve our analysis of the working of the economic system. Law came into article because, in a regime of positive transaction costs, the character of the law becomes one of the main factors determining the performance of the economy. If transaction costs were zero (as is assumed in standard economic theory) we can imagine people contracting around the law whenever the value of production would be increased by a change in the legal position. But in a regime of positive transaction costs, such contracting would not occur whenever transaction costs were greater than the gain that such a redistribution of rights would bring. As a consequence the rights which individuals possess will commonly be those established by the law, which in these circumstances can be said to control the economy. As I have said, in "The Problem of Social Cost" I had no intention of making a contribution to legal scholarship. I referred to legal cases because they afforded examples of real situations as against the imaginary ones normally used by economists in their analysis. It was undoubtedly an economist who invented the widget. But in "The Problem of Social Cost" I did something else. I pointed out that the judges in their opinions often seemed to show a better understanding of the economic problem than did many economists even though their views were not always expressed in a very explicit fashion. I did this not to praise the judges but to shame economists.[21]
Despite wandering accidentally into law and economics, the opportunity to edit the Journal of Law and Economics was instrumental in bringing him to the University of Chicago:
[W]hen I was approached to fill Aaron Director's place on his retirement, what I found most attractive about coming to Chicago was the opportunity it gave me of editing the Journal. Indeed, it is probable that without the Journal I would not have come to Chicago. I knew nothing of the original aim of the Journal. What I wanted to do was to encourage the type of research which I had advocated in "The Problem of Social Cost," and I used my editorship of the Journal as a means of bringing this about.[21]
Coase believed that the University of Chicago was the intellectual center of law and economics. He concluded his Simons lecture by stating:
I am very much aware that, in concentrating in this lecture on law and economics at Chicago, I have neglected other significant contributions to the subject made elsewhere such as those by Guido Calabresi at Yale, by Donald Turner at Harvard, and by others. But it can hardly be denied that in the emergence of the subject of law and economics, Chicago has played a very significant part and one of which the University can be proud.[21]
Coase Conjecture [ edit ]
Another important contribution of Coase is the Coase conjecture, which states that an informal argument that durable-goods monopolists do not have market power because they are unable to commit to not lowering their prices in future periods.
Political views [ edit ]
When asked what he considered his politics to be, Coase stated,
I really don't know. I don't reject any policy without considering what its results are. If someone says there's going to be regulation, I don't say that regulation will be bad. Let's see. What we discover is that most regulation does produce, or has produced in recent times, a worse result. But I wouldn't like to say that all regulation would have this effect because one can think of circumstances in which it doesn't.[22]
Coase admitted that early in life, he aligned himself with socialism.
As a young man I was a Socialist. The first challenge to this belief came when, in 1931, 5 months before I took the final examinations for the B.Com. degree, I attended Arnold Plant's seminar at the London School of Economics (LSE). He introduced me to Adam Smith's invisible hand and to the advantages of a competitive system. He also pointed out that government schemes in the economic sphere were often ill-conceived and were introduced to placate special interests. I adopted many of Plant's positions but continued to regard myself as a Socialist. That this meant holding what could be considered, and were, inconsistent positions was not unusual at that time. Abba Lerner, a fellow student and a fine theorist, with whom I had a very friendly relation, also believed in the virtues of a competitive system but was even more attached to Socialism than I was.[20]
Guido Calabresi wrote that Coase's focus on transaction costs in The Nature of the Firm was the result of his socialist beliefs. Reflecting on this, Coase wrote: "It is very difficult to know where one's ideas come from but for all I know he may well be right." Coase continued:
My socialist sympathies gradually fell away and this process was accentuated as a result of being assigned in 1935 at LSE the course on the Economics of Public Utilities. I soon found out that very little was known about British public utilities and I set about making a series of historical studies on the water, gas, and electricity supply industries and of the Post Office and broadcasting. These researches taught me much about the public utility industries and they certainly made me aware of the defects of government operation of these industries, whether municipal or through nationalisation. These researches were interrupted by the war, when I joined the civil service, at first, for a short period, in the Forestry Commission, then responsible for timber production, and for the rest of the war, in the Central Statistical Office, one of the offices of the War Cabinet. This war-time experience did not significantly influence my views but I could not help noticing that, with the country in mortal danger and despite the leadership of Winston Churchill, government departments often seemed more concerned to defend their own interests than those of the country.[20]
The Ronald Coase Institute [ edit ]
Coase was research advisor to the Ronald Coase Institute, an organisation that promotes research on institutions and organizations – the laws, rules, customs, and norms – that govern real economic systems, with particular support for young scholars from developing and transitional countries.
The Coase-Sandor Institute for Law and Economics [ edit ]
Coase at a conference in 2008 with Richard Sandor in the background (from UChicago Law archives)
The University of Chicago Law School carries on the legacy of Ronald Coase through the mission of the Coase-Sandor Institute for Law and Economics. Each year, the University of Chicago Law School hosts the Coase Lecture, which was delivered in 2003 by Ronald Coase himself.[23]
Publications [ edit ]
See also [ edit ]
References [ edit ]Yesterday, we reported on a legal tussle over control of the country's top center of strawberry breeding, at the University of California, Davis. But there's a backstory to that battle. It involves the peculiar nature of the UC Davis strawberry program.
Basically, in the world of plant breeding, there are public programs at universities, there are private efforts at companies like DuPont or Monsanto. And then there's the UC Davis strawberry program, an ungainly hybrid of those two worlds.
Public breeders have traditionally made their work freely available to the public, and to each other. "We're a pretty family-type group," says Jim Hancock, a berry breeder at Michigan State University. "We like to work together. We like to share germplasm [the technical term for seeds or plant samples.] It's kind of in our genes, if you will."
Not the UC Davis strawberry breeders. Among public breeders "they are by far the most restrictive. No question. Hands down," says Hancock. "Not only will they not share material with you, they don't think you should use any of their varieties, which you can buy, in your breeding program."
The UC Davis strawberry breeders are faculty members in the university's Department of Plant Sciences. That normally involves teaching and knowledge-expanding research, yet their primary focus is creating commercial varieties that can be patented and licensed to strawberry growers.
They are remarkably successful at it. Most of the strawberries that we eat trace their ancestry to breeding plots at UC Davis. And because strawberries are a phenomenally valuable crop, these varieties earned the University of California $50 million in royalties from 2004 to 2013. This placed strawberries among the the UC system's top money-earning inventions. That revenue far exceeded the cost ($16 million over those years) of running the strawberry breeding program.
Roughly a third of those royalty payments, $18 million, went directly to the co-inventors of those varieties, the breeders Douglas Shaw and Kirk Larson. Shaw and Larson, in turn, shared some of that money with their co-workers.
Until recent years, no public plant breeder could have imagined earning such sums of money, and it's still mind-boggling for many.
Yet in an e-mail to NPR, Shaw sounded disgusted that he wasn't earning even more. "The University has done a poor job of commercialization and has not collected fair value for its product," he wrote.
California's strawberry growers don't pay full price for UC Davis varieties, for instance. The way Shaw sees it, those discounts amounted to money taken from him and the university, which means that "all the money to run this program since 2000.... came from [the university] and the strawberry breeders."
Money, however, wasn't Shaw's biggest problem. According to Shaw, he ran into increasing conflicts with university administrators who didn't value his commercially oriented program. This is what convinced him to leave the university, he wrote in an email. "We do not fit here any longer."
Some of Shaw's professional associates say that personality may also have played a role. They describe Shaw as highly skilled, but also opinionated and "polarizing."
Shaw and Larson now have decided to end their attempt to straddle both public and private worlds. They are setting up a private company to continue their work unconstrained by the university.
Many are now wondering how strawberry breeding at UC Davis will evolve in the future. This includes strawberry farmers, who are suing the university, hoping to force it to continue in something close to its current form.
The university has promised to hire a new strawberry breeder, but that breeder may not have Shaw's single-minded focus on new commercial varieties. Instead, the program may devote more effort to research that won't lead to immediate profits, such as searching for valuable genes in wild strawberry species.
Eventually, that could mean less revenue for the university. But the UC Davis program might rejoin that "family-type group" of public breeders who like to share plant materials with each other.By Liat Clark, Wired UK
A team of geneticists has announced that they have successfully bred fruit flies with the capacity to count.
[partner id="wireduk"] After repeatedly subjecting fruit flies to a stimulus designed to teach numerical skills, the evolutionary geneticists finally hit on a generation of flies that could count – it took 40 tries before the species' evolution occurred.
The findings, announced at the First Joint Congress on Evolutionary Biology in Canada, could lead to a better understanding of how we process numbers and the genetics behind dyscalculia – a learning disability that affects a person's ability to count and do basic arithmetic.
"The obvious next step is to see how [the flies'] neuro-architecture has changed," said geneticist Tristan Long, of Canada's Wilfrid Laurier University, who admits far more research is needed to delve into what the results actually mean. Primarily, this will involve comparing the genetic make-up of an evolved fruit fly with that of a standard test fly to pinpoint the mutation.
The research team, made up of geneticists from Wilfrid Laurier University in Canada and the University of California, repeatedly subjected test flies to a 20-minute mathematics training session. The flies were exposed to two, three or four flashes of light, with two or four flashes coinciding with a shake of the container the flies were kept in.
Following a pause, the flies were again subjected to the flashing light. None prepared themselves for a repeat of the shake since they could not discern a difference between two, three or four flashes – until, that is, the 40th generation of descendants were put to the test.
The findings back-up the theory that numerical skills such as mental arithmetic are ancient constructs. Some of the more unusual natural fans of numeracy include salamanders, newborn chicks and mongoose lemurs, all of which have demonstrated basic skills in the lab.
The humble fruit fly – which has been a popular experimental tool for geneticists since the early 1900s, its brief life span making it evolve faster – is the first example of a test subject gaining the skills through directed evolution, however.
Source: Wired.co.uk
Image: John Tann/FlickrA leading law firm is being investigated over claims that it bullied and harassed hundreds of people wrongly accused of illegal filesharing.
The Solicitors Regulation Authority, an industry watchdog, said it is investigating a complaint brought against Davenport Lyons, the London-based solicitors' firm that has led a number of prosecutions against illegal filesharers.
The consumer group Which? first made an official complaint in 2008, after a number of people contacted it to say that they had received letters from Davenport Lyons demanding payment for illegal downloads that were nothing to do with them.
Which? said that the letters - which usually threatened legal action if immediate payments of hundreds of pounds were not made - were "excessive" and often rested on little evidence of wrongdoing.
Earlier that year, the firm was instrumental in securing the country's record ruling against an alleged filesharer - a £16,000 judgment against a London woman accused of illegally downloading a pinball game worth £26.
Shortly afterwards, the company launched an anti-piracy campaign that involved sending letters to thousands of people accusing them of illegally downloading games, movies and pornography.
But the nature of that action was the subject of heavy criticism when many alleged downloaders said they were wrongly targeted.
The Guardian reported the case of a couple in their 60s who were accused of illegally downloading a pornographic film - despite the fact that they do not know how to do so, while the BBC also reported that similar accusations had left people feeling "upset, scared and angry".
Deborah Prince, the head of legal affairs at Which?, said that she was pleased by the investigation - even if the complaint has taken more than a year to come under consideration.
"We're pleased to see some action at last from the SRA and hope the tide is finally turning in favour of consumers," she said. "We now want to see some decisive action to stop these bully-boy tactics."
A representative of Davenport Lyons was unavailable for comment - but in the past, the firm has said that the accusations are "simply wrong".
The news comes as the House of Lords considers the hotly-contested digital economy bill - which could give ministers the power to disconnect alleged filesharers and let the courts block websites containing copyright-infringing material.
On Wednesday a series of changes were pushed through which turned up the pressure on the already-contentious bill. While the controversial clause 17 - which potentially gave parliament the right to change copyright law - was dropped, a new amendment was added which critics say could end up with major websites such as YouTube being unfairly blocked by internet service providers.
The music industry welcomed the move, which they said was a step in the right direction.
"We are pleased that parliament have recognised that legislation to tackle non-peer-to-peer piracy needs to be as robust as that planned to limit peer-to-peer," said a spokesman for the BPI, Britain's record industry association.
However the Internet Service Providers' Association said that it was "outraged" by the changes, which it said were "hastily constructed".
Under the new proposals, the high court could force ISPs to block websites containing "substantial" amounts of copyrighted material if the rights holder demands it - regardless of whether the website had any knowledge of the actions of its users.
"ISPA has been supportive of peers' excellent scrutiny of the bill to date," said Nicholas Lansman, the organisation's secretary general. "However, in this instance, our members are extremely concerned that the full implications of the amendment have not been understood and that the reasoning behind the amendment is wholly misguided."Snowboarder, Maisie Potter, is only 16 years old, but she has already been crowned the British Champion in Snowboardcross. She is one to watch for the 2018 winter Olympics. We caught up with her just as the season began.
Wales is not known for snow sports; how did you get into it?
No, it is not — haha. I had a birthday party at Plas Y Brenin dry ski slope when I was six but nothing to get me hooked. It was during a couple of family ski holidays to the Alps that I learnt to ski and finally, I moved to Chamonix, France at the age of eight which got me into skiing, then about a year later I started snowboarding.
How do you juggle school work with training?
I’m not entirely sure…You have to be super organised with time, which I am not, but I select training camps and competitions depending on my workload or exams. When I am away during a half term, I will slowly crack away at my homework in the evenings like everyone else. When I am training or competing during the school term, I negotiate with my teacher to provide me the work which they will be covering in class. I also have to catch up when I get home. I think you have to be OK with not necessarily excelling in school and going down the academic route.
What do your friends think of your snowboarding prowess?
Er, my friends at home don’t really get to see me snowboard so I think it’s hard for them but most of them are quite supportive, interested and excited. I tend to have a different relationship with my school friends because they can’t quite relate to snowboarding. If they ask, I just simplify my training into something they can easily picture in their head.
What do you do to train in the summer?
I’ve never had a specific summer training programme until now because my bones hadn’t fully grown and it’s much better to cross train in all areas for overall fitness and health. I always go out on the glacier for approximately 2 weeks each summer and the odd session in Chillfactor. Otherwise, I enjoy running, mountain biking, wild swimming, trekking and gymnastics stuff! It is also very important to stretch so yoga, pilates etc.
Favourite Mountain or resort?
My favourite resort has to be either Avoriaz or Laax.
Do you ever get scared when coming to large jumps or trying a new trick? If so how do you deal with that?
Yes. I find big jumps pretty scary but then if I don’t do it, I will regret it. Also, I like being pushed and having that relief and achievement feeling after. However, I’m quite good at judging whether it is the right run or day to try something new. If I am riding well and going for a new jump or trick then I will always have a “bubble moment” of calm. Then the best thing to do from there is commit 100% and get the first one out of the way (safe hopefully).
What competitions are you doing this year?
I will be doing FIS and EC Boardercross competitions in preparation for the Junior Worlds (SBX) in Valmalenco, Italy in March and possibly the Halfpipe British Championships.
When you are not snowboarding what do you like to do?
I like to have time to myself, as much I enjoy socialising. I love the fresh air and being active as I feel so much better! I am not an indoor or a screen person that’s for sure.
Do you have any top snowboarding tips?
Enjoy it, stay relaxed and look cool. Don’t over think things too much as it is an instinctual sport. However, spend time getting the basics/ technique right.
What do you hope for the future?
My long term goal is the 2018 Winter Olympics in Boardercross.It has been brought to the attention of the Lion Guard that saboteurs are plotting on facebook to attack Trump’s Arizona rally this Saturday. These braggarts are openly talking about infiltrating the rally and causing another cancellation. As MAGA patriots, we cannot allow this to happen. The time has come for all MAGA patriots to do everything in their power to prevent these brigands from causing any confrontation inside the rally.
How you can help?
Visit the facebook page for the plotters
Do your best to archive any post suggesting infiltration and disruption of the rally The priority are those plotters that affirmatively state they want to stop the event. The next priority are those giving likes or supportive comments to those plotters for their proposed sabotage, they might be conspirators and will show up as well. The next priority are those purchasing noise/smoke/disruptive devices. They might infiltrate the rally and use the devices to disperse the rally. Give lowest/no priority to people that merely want to outdoor protest, this is the USA, not the USSR (sorry BernOuts).
Take all threats you identify and share with @ lionsoftrump or lionsoftrump.net or the hashtag #lionguard. If you are going to the Arizona Rally, catalog the threats and expose these saboteurs to event security. Even if you are not going, but know someone who is going, share a catalog of the threats with the rally attendees you know, encourage them to see something and say something to event security.
lionsoftrump or lionsoftrump.net or the hashtag #lionguard. PROVISO If you discover any plans to harm Mr. Trump or any supporters at the Rally notify the Secret Service, the Maricopa County Sheriff’s office and the Trump Campaign immediately as well as any other law enforcement agency within the jurisdiction of the rally.
The Lion Guard needs all hands on deck to facilitate a safe and positive rally in Arizona this Saturday. Will you answer the call?
AdvertisementsOne humid afternoon in early August, a woman named Paulette Leaphart was walking through the streets of the Lower Ninth Ward in New Orleans. Leaphart passed a parked black Suburban and, seeing there were people inside, stopped to make conversation, quickly learning they were filmmakers. “I think someone should make a movie about me,” Leaphart said, lifting off her shirt to reveal two double mastectomy scars stitched across her chest. “I’m going to walk 1,000 miles to the White House, bare-chested.”
In 2014, Leaphart was diagnosed with an aggressive form of breast cancer. She soon learned she would need a double mastectomy, but was told there was no option for reconstructive surgery due to pre-existing health conditions. Following the surgery and several months of chemotherapy, Leaphart was finally cancer-free. But, survival was not enough. After a photo of her scarred chest went viral on Facebook, Leaphart was determined to find a way to help other survivors of trauma: she decided to walk across the country baring her scars.
After hearing Leaphart’s story last August, producer Sasha Solodukhina was inspired to document the journey. Since the project’s inception, Solodukhina partnered with director Emily Mackenzie to create Scar Story, a feature-length documentary chronicling Leaphart’s 1000-mile journey from Biloxi, Mississippi to the nation’s capital. The two filmmakers believe Leaphart’s story has the power to influence contemporary discourse regarding trauma and shame.
In recent years, much of American society has become better at talking about breast cancer. Today, there are pink ribbons on countless products and billboards, especially around Breast Cancer Awareness month each October. However, this phenomenon, sometimes known as “pinkwashing,” can sanitize the reality of the challenging illness that will affect one in eight U.S. women in their lifetimes and claim numerous lives.
“People are capitalizing off of a disease,” said director Emily Mackenzie. “It puts a big smiley face on something that is not cute or smiley.”
Despite heightening awareness, pinkwashing can also invalidate the struggles of breast cancer survivors and may promote a false message. “It turns something that is devastating into something palatable,” Mackenzie added, noting that this trend has roots in gender disparity and that breast cancer is the only disease that involves this style of marketing.
By telling her story, Leaphart is determined to change this narrative. “I don’t want to give them a pretty story wrapped up in a pretty pink bow,” Leaphart said. “Because that’s not what it is.”
In today’s society, women are often conditioned to believe that conventionally attractive physical bodies are tantamount to self worth. As a result, losing a body part regarded as essential to female beauty can be devastating for many women who undergo a double-mastectomy. This was the case for Leaphart, who experienced a crisis upon realizing she would no longer have breasts.
Before her surgery, Leaphart searched for images of other women who had lost their breasts to cancer, but her image search only yielded medicalized, postoperative photos. Leaphart’s inability to see herself in images of post-mastectomy bodies left her feeling hopeless. “Not only did she find out that she had cancer and had to go through this procedure,” Solodukhina says, “But she had so much trouble finding representation.
Though visibility has increased in the years since, Leaphart wants to use her body and experiences to bring topics of body positivity — particularly post-trauma — to the surface. “It is really important to show a woman with a body we are not normally allowed to see,” says Mackenzie.
Solodukhina notes that promoting realistic representations of breast cancer can also have an impact on early-identification and prevention. The portrayal of women’s bodies in the media often perpetuate taboos that can make some women uncomfortable talking about commonly sexualized body parts, such as breasts. Leaphart and her family felt the consequences of this reality. “When Paulette found out she had breast cancer several of her female family members had already died from it,” says Solodukhina. “And none of them talked about it.”
Throughout Leaphart’s journey, the two filmmakers also plan to collect scar stories, physical or otherwise, from people across the country for a multimedia mosaic of stories. “We all have our own traumas,” Solodukhina says. “Being able to connect can lead to questions of how we can make these experiences less isolating.”
The documentary also aims to increase political attention to health care policy. “There is no comprehensive federal regulation of known carcinogenic chemicals in daily products,” Mackenzie said. “Every day we are encountering these toxins that are known to give us cancer.”
Class and race can also play a role in determining the likelihood of exposure to chemicals associated with cancer, and racial and ethnic minorities in the United States are often exposed to higher levels of environmental pollutants.
Currently, a considerable portion of cancer research funding goes to pharmaceutical companies for treatment advancement. While many of these drugs give some a new lease on life, the high cost of development can also make them prohibitively expensive for individuals from lower socioeconomic backgrounds.
“The money raised by women walking for a cure goes into an industry that often cuts out women like Paulette who don’t have the resources to buy them,” said Mackenzie, noting that following her cancer treatment, Leaphart’s family was left in a precarious financial position. “A huge amount of money goes into researching treatment as opposed to looking at environmental causes of cancer and illness.”
On April 30, after over a year of physical training, Leaphart finally began her long walk to the White House. Yet, even as she commenced her formidable journey, Leaphart cultivated a fearless perseverance. “She has supreme confidence that she will be able to handle it physically and mentally,” said Solodukhina. “She’s not afraid of being hurt because she’s been there before.”
In the coming months, Mackenzie and Solodukhina hope Scar Story will help breast cancer survivors reclaim their stories while empowering all survivors of trauma. Leaphart’s journey is a powerful reminder that scars — whether physical or emotional — do not necessitate shame. “We are afraid of what people might say or how they’ll judge us,” Leaphart said. “I want to put an end to that.”Mauricio Pochettino’s side controlled most of the north London derby and Arsenal’s point came via an unlikely move from their manager
A late spell of pressure ensured Arsenal snatched a point, but Tottenham’s excellent organisation without the ball meant Mauricio Pochettino’s side dominated the midfield zone for long periods. Spurs were typically proactive and wonderfully cohesive in open play, with Arsenal’s best chances coming from the unlikely route of set-pieces and crosses.
Both teams were playing a 4‑2‑3‑1 formation, but the two coaches demanded different things from their attacking line of three. Arsène Wenger allowed Mesut Özil freedom to drift laterally into the channels, largely free from defensive duties, while Joel Campbell and Alexis Sánchez, converted forwards, took up aggressive positions high up against the opposition full-backs. At times, it looked like the home side were playing a 4-2-4.
Kieran Gibbs rescues point for Arsenal after Tottenham dominate derby Read more
Arsenal had plenty of attacking options but they left Francis Coquelin and Santi Cazorla exposed in the centre of midfield throughout the first half. Cazorla, in particular, endured an incredibly difficult game, repeatedly caught in possession by Tottenham’s midfielders – and he was substituted at half-time, with the midfield scrapper Mathieu Flamini introduced to provide much-needed steel.
Cazorla’s struggles were precisely because Pochettino took the opposite approach to Wenger, and Tottenham were excellent without the ball. His most advanced central midfielder, Mousa Dembélé, played an entirely different role from Özil, much closer to his two midfield colleagues and therefore in a position to close down, often starting the midfield pressure and setting an example to those behind. A high-tempo game based on pressing is perfect for the Belgian, who is physically impressive and capable of slaloming forward past opponents to launch attacks.
Crucially, Spurs’ wide players had strict instructions when they were attempting to regain possession. Érik Lamela and Christian Eriksen pushed inside, ensuring Spurs were capable of compressing Arsenal’s midfield space both vertically and laterally. Coquelin and Cazorla were often pressurised by two Spurs players, turning away from one opponent before encountering another immediately.
The central pressing of the wide players meant Spurs were often weak on the far side, and vulnerable to a switch of play out to the Arsenal full-backs. Even then, both Danny Rose and Kyle Walker boast tremendous acceleration and were happy to sprint forward to confront their opposite numbers, with the centre-backs Jan Vertonghen and Toby Alderweireld shifting across to take care of Sánchez or Campbell.
With such a congested midfield zone, both teams struggled to create chances from central positions. Arsenal’s creative options simply weren’t getting the ball – Ozil’s best passes were in the second half, from the flanks – while, going the other way, Dembélé and Dele Alli made poor decisions after dribbling forward to the edge of the Arsenal box.
That is typical in matches featuring heavy pressing, with midfielders tired from closing down and lacking confidence in possession, meaning longer balls are often more effective. However, in the absence of Theo Walcott, Arsenal could not go long in behind the defence – Olivier Giroud tried to make runs into the channels but simply didn’t have the speed. And this approach was precisely how Spurs took the lead – Rose’s curled ball into the channel wouldn’t have been anything more than a speculative pass, but Laurent Koscielny chased Harry Kane rather than attempting to play offside and it became a perfect assist.
Yet Arsenal battled back and dominated the final 20 minutes. While the substitute Kieran Gibbs was the unlikely hero in an unfamiliar left-wing position, equally crucial was Wenger’s decision to introduce Flamini for Cazorla. It was an atypical Wenger substitution – introducing a defensive midfielder for a playmaker when chasing the game – but he recognised the need to get hold of the midfield zone. Flamini helped shield the defence, and in turn ensured Arsenal’s attacking players were more justified in their advanced positioning. The fact he was forced into that change, though, demonstrated how much Arsenal had struggled against Spurs’ press.Image caption Police, fire and ambulance crews attended
Two men have been targeted in a suspected acid attack in east London
The Met Police said the men, thought to be in their late teens, flagged down officers in Bethnal Green at 19:00 BST on Tuesday.
Both men were taken to hospital. Police said it was still not known what liquid was thrown at them in Roman Road.
No arrests have been made. A Met Police spokesman said inquiries were ongoing and a crime scene remained in place in the area.
The condition of the two men is not yet known.
Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Two men are looked after by emergency services after an acid attack
Tower Hamlets police tweeted a "suspected acid attack" had taken place.
A video posted on Twitter by Chris Lennon appeared to show a man not wearing a top pouring water over his face and torso while being helped by paramedics.
In the footage, another man is seen sitting on the pavement, also receiving medical assistance.
BBC journalist Neil Brennan, who lives in the area, said the attack happened outside a corner shop, about two minutes from the Tube station and near police and fire stations.
He said people nearby told him two Asian men had been attacked.
"I saw firemen filling two large bottles with water from the fire truck and ferrying it back and forth to the victims," he said.
Image caption Firefighters filled bottles of water from their vehicleDENVER (CN) – Two Denver Broncos sued the NFL, challenging their suspensions, claiming the league’s testing process was “replete with violations of the steroid policy.”
Genos “D.J.” Williams, an eight-year linebacker, and Ryan McBean, a five-year defensive end, both starters, allege multiple mistakes, from “no chain of custody” for Williams’ urine specimen to “several departures from the NFL Specimen Collection Procedures” in handling McBean’s sample.
They ask the Denver County Court to enjoin their suspensions during court proceedings. Both say they were suspended for six games, without pay, for the 2012 season.
Williams claims that his urine sample went missing overnight.
McBean claims a document shows that his sample arrived at the testing lab 6 days before he produced the sample.
The men say the flaws were so evident that even the NFL official in charge of suspensions, Executive Vice President Harold Henderson, said there were “troubling” gaps in the chain of custody and “an environment of haste, rushing, confusion and short cuts.”
In a bizarre twist, both men claim they were suspended because the doctor serving as independent administrator of the league’s steroid policy decided that their urine was “not … a human specimen.”
But both men say that, in according with the league’s steroid-testing policy, the specimen collector had a “frontal view” of them as they produced the samples.
The complaint claims that the specimen-collector who took the urine samples was fired after the NFL reviewed how the samples were handled, citing his failure to “fulfill his duties and obligations … including with regard to the collection, handling and safeguarding of the Williams urine specimen and the McBean urine specimen.”
The men also say that Henderson overstepped his authority as the league’s chief of discipline in multiple ways, including delaying his decision beyond policy-specified limits and communicating with other NFL officials about the case. Because of Henderson’s delays, “the players were forced to live for months, rather than days, with the threat of a suspension hanging over their heads,” the complaint states.
The men cite Major League Baseball’s recent rescission of a suspension of National League MVP Ryan Braun, due to even fewer errors in the sample collection process.
The NFL players claim the delay in making a decision benefited the league because it was “riding a wave of publicity flowing from [Tim] Tebow’s rise |
loaned in from Napoli and Juventus respectfully; Insigne and Immobile as well as a midfielder promoted from within – Verratti, who hails from Pescara himself. Immobile earned the title “Capocannoniere” as top goal scorer with 28 on the season, Verratti and Insigne serving as his playmakers. They were an unstoppable side who tore opposition apart with their high-flying attack; Verratti served as their playmaker in a deep-lying role similar to Pirlo, Insigne as the tricky attacking midfielder to feed Immobile as their focal point.
Their chemistry still has not worn off. In the last warmup fixture before the World Cup, Italy’s projected reserves took on Brazillian outfit Fluminense, winning 5-3. Defensive woes aside, Immobile did enough to ensure Cesare Prandelli has selection headaches for days to come – he netted three and provided the assists on two, both scored by none other than Insigne. All of this before the 60th minute it must be noted.
Where will this trio slot into Prandelli’s side?
The Pescara Connection
Ciro Immobile:
The alternative striker to Mario Balotelli, he will most likely play the role of the substitute. If Balotelli falters in the first match against England, look for Immobile to start against Costa Rica in order to impress his coach and all those who doubt his pedigree at this level
Lorenzo Insigne:
Another substitute role, can slot anywhere in midfield offensively or on the wings. Will most likely not start unless of injury.
Marco Verratti:
Rumoured to be starting Italy’s first group stage match versus England as the replacement for Montolivo. If so, this will be a prime occasion for the youngster to demonstrate his talents on the big stage for the first time. It is not difficult to visualize him linking up with Pirlo in the engine room shielding the defenders as well as providing penetrative through balls to attackers.
For the latest sports injury news, check out our friends at Sports Injury Alert.
Thank you for reading. Please take a moment to follow me on Twitter – @Aldo_Calcio. Support LWOS by following us on Twitter – @LastWordOnSport – and “liking” our Facebook page.
Feel free to discuss this and other footy related articles with thousands of fans at r/football.
Main Photo:Europe is experiencing multiple crises. The influx of refugees and the terrorist attacks have created a framework in which core EU rights and freedoms are continuously challenged.
Major revisions of core EU policies seem possible as long as there is a promise for more security. Politicians seem to have forgotten that everything comes at a price.
Military forces on the streets and soldiers “guarding” the Christmas tree at the empty Grand Place brought fear, distrust and suspicion to anyone “different” in the heart of the EU. (Photo: Full-tactical)
Any restrictions on free movement, which is the most cherished EU right by the citizens, will be very costly for the EU not only in terms of rights and freedoms sacrificed but also in terms of money.
As EU citizens will be paying the entire bill for generations to come, they should know the “price”. It should be up to EU citizens to decide on the Europe they want their children to live in.
Lockdown
The tragic events in Paris two weeks ago were shocking.
So was the follow-up: the Brussels’ lockdown for a week with military forces on the streets and soldiers “guarding” the Christmas tree at the empty Grand Place brought fear, distrust and suspicion to anyone “different” in the heart of the EU.
The purpose of the extreme measures was not made clear to the citizens, nor was the outcome.
Many member states restored border control and the excessive checks at the external borders do not differentiate between EU citizens and third country nationals.
While one may argue that all those measures are temporary, necessary for the moment and will end soon, the EU policy response to the crises so far has not been more reaffirming.
Calls for re-designing Schengen into a mini-Schengen or even abolishing the agreement are stronger than ever and are gaining popularity.
Surveillance
The Passenger Name Record (PNR) Directive rejected in 2013 by the European Parliament for lack of proportionality of the proposed security measures versus citizen rights at the time is on the table again.
This time it even comes extended in scope: the exchange of passengers’ data will apply for intra-EU flights as well.
If adopted, any EU citizen could be prevented from boarding the plane he/she has bought a ticket for if considered to represent a “public security threat”.
As the latter is not defined in the directive, the discretion for deciding if one represents such a threat will be left to the relevant authorities with the risk of turning an exceptional preventive measure into a standard surveillance procedure.
Three steps
In turbulent times of crises when everything seems possible, it is of paramount importance to preserve our “common sense” especially with regard to the adoption of any policy or legislation which would re-shape the EU and change the life of its citizens for good.
Otherwise the good intentions might indeed be paving the road to hell.
Three steps seem essential in this respect:
1. Justify the purpose.
If the right of free movement is going to be restricted, there should be a very good reason for it and most importantly, EU citizens should know about it.
This involves also making sure that this very purpose could not be achieved in any other way and especially by optimising the use of the already existing instruments such as the Schengen information system (SIS) and by strengthening the cooperation within FRONTEX and EUROPOL.
2. Assess the cost of non-Schengen and any other rights’ restrictive measures.
In addition to the value-based assessment of jeopardising EU citizen rights and freedoms, hindering free movement in the EU will have a major impact on individual citizens, on European societies and on the EU economy as a whole:
• EU citizens cross borders for work, study, and love. Any discouragement of free movement may have an impact on employment, education, family re-unification in the short and long term.
• Restoring borders will have a direct impact on at least 700 000 frontier workers on a daily basis but moreover it will have serious economic consequences for the national economies due to their reliance on trade, transport and labor mobility.
• Europe-wide it will decrease the potential of free movement of workforce for absorbing asymmetric economic shocks within the EU. As labour mobility contributes to human capital development and innovation, restricting it will likely slow down the EU post-crises economic recovery and could diminish its overall global competitiveness.
3. Communicate honestly and openly to the EU citizens the outcomes.
In May this year Junker’s Commission adopted the EU’s Better Regulation agenda and Better Regulation Guidelines stating the EU institutions’ commitment to carry out high quality and transparent consultations with citizens and inception impact assessments of every important legislative act.
The time has come for EU decision-makers to prove to their citizens that they act on what they preach.
EU citizens should be the ones to choose whether to take the road leading to Europe of fewer rights and freedoms.
Assya Kavrakova is Director of The European Citizen Action Service (ECAS).Ever since my voice first cracked, depression became a major problem. At first, it was the acne, then my seemingly permanent braces, and finally, a vague, deepening feeling of insecurity. I was refugee skinny, my face was weak, and I would wake up every morning, stare at my mirror image, and think of all the structural changes that I wished my genetics had determined instead. A bit of bone here, a little less hair there, a smidgen more muscle everywhere. I was ugly. That was my view of myself, and it influenced everything about me.
But I made it through high school relatively unscathed, mostly because I pushed myself to be active in athletics, earned high marks in my classes, and developed a sense of humor that earned me friends enough that I was sure I was a person of value, even if I was physically unattractive. Importantly, I forced myself to discover and cultivate aspects of my personality that gave me a feeling of value as a human being.
Unfortunately, my depression was not left behind in high school. The unique pressures of college introduced new and even greater problems. In college, though my looks transformed – many even thought I was attractive (oh happy day!) – I found myself struggling with my social self-worth. I met great people and was part of a fun group, but I was no longer the center of attention, a role that I had grown used to in high school as the ‘clown’. My social anxiety and insecurity, however, was ultimately minor in comparison to new issues concerning my academics and career path, and what followed was the most severe, long-lasting depression of my life.
But let’s backtrack to the beginning of college.
When I first arrived, I knew I was going to be a doctor – a neurologist, to be precise. Thanks to a glitch in the computer system at a university summer program after my junior year of high school, I was accidentally placed in a health sciences career program. I wasn’t a science guy. That just wasn’t me. I was all about history, art, and literature, but I figured if I already knew what I liked, it wouldn’t hurt to try something different. So I took the course, enjoyed it thoroughly, and in the end, before the start of my senior year of high school, decided that I was going to be a neurologist, and that was that. My family – highly-educated Indian immigrants to the USA – who originally assumed that I would bounce between liberal arts majors in college until finally settling on some sort of stable, well-respected career, were astounded by my decision to pursue medicine. For the first time in my life, my decisions brought my family genuine happiness, and it was addictive.
Fast-forward to the second semester of my sophomore year of college. I was applying to the early-acceptance medical school program at my university. By this time I was very conflicted about my academic path. Though I enjoyed neuroscience well enough, I found the sciences meager satisfaction in comparison to the joys of history, philosophy, drawing, and other liberal arts, which I continued to pursue even while going through my pre-med studies. I remember looking at my early-acceptance medical school program application, half-filled.pdf on my computer screen, and being surprised by a sudden influx of anger. In that moment, I wanted more than anything to smash my screen and scream. Regardless, my family convinced me to apply – might as well, considering that I had worked so hard for it already, they told me – and several weeks later I was chosen to interview with the medical school, and several weeks after that, I was told that I had been preliminarily accepted. I was in. News of acceptance erased my mind of the conflicts that had once so thoroughly gripped my mind. Family and friends encouraged me, and I was genuinely excited. In the back of my mind, however, I was taking mental notes. I knew I didn’t really want to be a doctor, but I told myself it was okay. I told myself that I could write a book or do indie films on the side, especially with the steady, high income of a doctor, and maybe I would generate enough of a following eventually that I would be able to quit and pursue something creative full time.
That summer my grades slipped drastically. In the fall, I was thrown out of the medical school program. When I spoke with the medical school dean, it was apparent, however, that re-admission would be trivial. I would need to improve my grades, finish the pre-med track, and everything would be okay, just as how it was. I remember thinking at the time: this is my chance to say no. And for the next year, I said no. I said it over and over and over again. My depression deepened as my family’s disappointment increased. I began to delve into the creative arts, film in particular. I started taking classes, making short films and writing short scripts in my free time. The depression forced me to think. I decided that I wanted to be a filmmaker. I was obsessed, but it dawned on me that I was making very little progress and taking too much time. Senior year was fast approaching, and I had only a few badly lit comedy shorts, and two reasonably well made serious shorts, under my belt. Pretty soon, it was either medical school, or a 9-to-5 job, or some other graduate school, and my opportunity to explore the creative arts would be extinguished. I started to have suicidal thoughts. People told me to seek therapy and possibly medication, but I was convinced that White American therapists wouldn’t understand my Indian-American family and value systems, and they didn’t. Medication? I believe in the power of psychiatric medication, but I knew what my issues were, and in that moment, they were purely external. Depression is a complicated thing that depends very much on one’s personal circumstances. I learned not to rely on simple people to give me the answers I needed.
Long nights with my depression forced me to think and reflect even more. I realized by that point that the creative arts were my true passion – nevermind the medium – film, writing, drawing, whatever. I wanted to create. It explained why I bounced between so many potential careers from high school through college, and never settled on one. People tend to assume that indecision is an indication of lack of passion. That is completely untrue. Indecision is often a result of being forced to choose between a set of terrible answers.
Senior year rolled around. I had not taken the MCATs, and decided not to complete the pre-med track. I was locked out of the medical school program for good, now. My neuroscience degree from my university, graduating in a rough economy, was not going to get me a respectable job. My family pushed me to apply to law school. I figured that it wasn’t a horrible idea: I still very much enjoyed history, philosophy, and politics, and I thought of myself as an effective debater. Why not? My passions took a backseat, again. Just as I did with medicine, I imagined that I would be able to pursue writing or film or something similarly interesting while I was a lawyer, so everything would be okay. At some point, I could start living my dream. At some point.
The LSAT came quickly. Got my scores back. Was very pleased with my performance. Applied to my older brother’s Ivy League alma mater. Got in. I was conflicted, still, but excited. My family was proud of me again. My friends were encouraging. Everything was okay, for a time, and the depression subsided.
Fast-forward to law school. I hated it. I hated it more than an academic institution ought to be hated. I was upset at myself, my family, and the world. Myself, for not finding the courage enough to have pursued my dreams at the expense of short-term comforts like social respect and acceptance. My family, for pushing me down paths that I never wanted to pursue in the first place. And the world, for showing me people existed who had the courage I didn’t have, who had the determination I didn’t have, who had the talent that I had not cultivated. I sank into a deep depression. I began to have suicidal thoughts again.
And under this depressive spell, at the start of the summer between my first and second year, I came upon the most important epiphany of my life. If I was willing and ready to die, given all that I had and was on track to have, then none of it really mattered.
“It is only after we lose everything that we are free to do anything.”
– Tyler Durden, Fight Club
I was willing to throw away my entire existence because of the choices that I had made. It made no logical sense to continue to make the same choices, or to walk the path created by those choices.
I started to write. Furiously. I wrote and wrote. I wracked my mind for ideas and characters and stories. Entering my second year, I felt happy, truly and completely happy, for the first time in a long time. Yes, I was still in law school, but I still had time to make my dreams happen. I couldn’t give up yet. I stayed up long nights, skipped some useless classes, and by the end of my second year, I had written a full novel, upmarket general fiction, that I was proud of. Then, I took more risks. I was lined up for a New York City corporate law firm job, you know, suits and long workdays and shitty personalities. I told them no.
Enter this summer, coming quickly to an end as I type this. I have been trying to get agented, but have been reconsidering traditional publishing in lieu of self-publishing. Meanwhile, I’ve already started on a second book, fantasy this time. Things didn’t pan out the way I foresaw this summer. I figured that I would have an agent, that I would have publishing houses fighting with each other to give me a contract, and that I would be entering my third year a writing success. But I’ve figured out my shit. I’ve fought the skeletons in my closet and come out victorious. I’m not depressed anymore, beyond the occasional blues that everyone gets once in awhile. Why? Because despite my short-term failures, I know that I’m doing what I need to do.
I’m following my heart, and no matter the results, that’s what fucking matters in the end.
AdvertisementsThis article is from the archive of our partner.
Your mental image of Siberia is probably a snowy, wind-whipped expanse, perhaps with a cluster of buildings to house those banished from Russian society. Not this week. This week, Norilsk, the northernmost large city in the world, the second largest city north of the Arctic Circle, and the site of one of those gulags, hit a balmy 32 degrees Celsius — about 90 Fahrenheit. It's normally in the mid-60s.
The online outlet The Siberian Times ("up-to-date information in English from across Siberia's six time zones") featured a photo of people sunbathing on the shores of Lake Baikal in its report on what may be a new record high.
The average temperature in July is 13.6 but the mercury was touching 32C, a long way from the coldest-ever recorded temperature of minus 61C.
The previous hottest was 31.9C, more than three decades ago.
'I've never worn a bikini before in Norilsk, just to top up my tan', said Polina, 21, a student.
Minus 61 degrees Celsius is about 78 degrees below zero Fahrenheit.
Norilsk-TV.ru, however, disputes that this is a record. Translated by Google:
According to meteorologists, such hot weather in Norilsk recorded more than once. For example, in July 1979, the thermometer has been raised to the level of 32 degrees.
Maria Corina, head of the service economy Taimyr Center for Hydrometeorology: "The only difference this year is that there is such a high temperature for the past five days. Since 1972 in Norilsk, this has not happened."
The Weather Underground (from which the map above comes) described the bizarre heatwave on Wednesday. The site was also unable to figure out if Norilsk has seen such temperatures before.
The extraordinary and perhaps unprecedented heat wave continues in the central arctic region of Russia. Some locations have now endured 10 consecutive days above 30°C (86°F). Wildfires are erupting in the taiga forests …
The prolonged heat wave is the result of an amazingly intense and prolonged heat dome that has centered itself over north central Siberia.
A similar "heat dome" was responsible for the heat wave blanketing the East Coast last week.On Thursday night, The Atlantic senior editor David Frum made an interesting comparison, aligning President Donald Trump with former First Lady Nancy Reagan.
Frum began by slamming Anthony Scaramucci for his reaction to his published interview with The New Yorker, tweeting “I made a mistake in trusting in a reporter. It won’t happen again.”
“White House Communications Directors shouldn’t trust reporters,” Frum told The Last Word host Lawrence O’Donnell. “If they do, that’s not an excuse. That actually makes the problem worse.”
He then invoked the contentious firing of Don Regan, who served as Chief of Staff under President Ronald Reagan.
“First Lady Nancy Reagan thought that Don Regan was disserving President [Ronald] Reagan in a number of ways,” Frum said. “And she then conducted a campaign in the press that ultimately led…to his resignation. The reason she did that was because the president wanted to keep him.”
Frum then said this:
We have never seen before a president acting on the part of the first lady and not refusing to fire the person who he has the most authority over. It would be easiest to fire him. I mean he’s the Chief of Staff. He’s not a cabinet secretary. He isn’t the Attorney General. He hasn’t been confirmed by the Senate. The next Chief of Staff doesn’t have to be confirmed by the Senate. Donald Trump is taking the Nancy Reagan part and that is really strange.
The fate of current Chief of Staff Reince Priebus would seem to be up in the air as he was on the receiving end of attacks from Scaramucci. The White House could not say for certain that Trump supported Priebus and this follows a report that the president allegedly referred to the former RNC chair as a “neglected puppy.”
Watch the clip above, via MSNBC.
Have a tip we should know? tips@mediaite.comThe U.S. government has spent billions of dollars developing, deploying and protecting its Internet protocol router networks to enable authorized government officials to conduct the business of government, properly exchange information and intelligence, up to and including information classified SECRET, with others in the government (and their contractors) that are authorized and entitled to have it.
Last week I asked about Hillary Clinton’s email practices, Is it Espionage? Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton insisted that she “had broken no rules” to conduct government business through the use of a private email service in lieu of the U.S. government’s unclassified system, the Non-classified Internet Protocol (IP) Router Network (abbreviated as NIPRNet) and the Secret Internet Protocol Router Network (SIPRNet). These are a system of interconnected computer networks used by the U.S. Department of Defense and the U.S. Department of State to transmit classified information.
The Democratic Presidential candidate under investigation by the FBI has disclosed that her aides had deleted more than 30,000 emails that she deemed personal. 30,000 emails printed out represents a stack of 60 reams of paper, a stack 10 feet tall. When the FBI retrieved the spools of microfilm, the Alger Hiss “Pumpkin Papers” printed out to a stack 4 ½ feet tall.
Attorneys fresh out of law school are familiar with the legal issue known as “spoliation of evidence.” When parties fail to produce relevant evidence within their span of control, evidence which they are otherwise naturally expected to possess, the U.S. legal system allows and even mandates that unfavorable presumptions be drawn against them. So when some item of relevant evidence -- whether documents, physical objects or data relevant to an ongoing legal matter -- is destroyed, discarded or modified in some way, the U.S. legal system allows us to presume that the missing evidence was unfavorable to that party and allows us to draw conclusions accordingly. The classic junior high school excuse, “the dog ate my homework,” isn’t valid under the law when the disappearance is suspicious.
Spoliation of evidence is prohibited by an array of laws and regulations. Also, anyone who destroys relevant evidence or assists in such destruction is subject to criminal prosecution, civil fines, tort liability, exclusion of testimony and dismissal of claims, as well as adverse evidentiary inferences. Intentional destruction or negligent loss of evidence suggests that the party in possession believed that it was harmful to them, and that consciousness of guilt led them to destroy, hide or lose it.
Hillary Clinton said the deleted messages “included private emails with her husband, or involved personal matters like her yoga classes or planning for the wedding of their daughter, or the funeral of her mother.” These private emails that involved personal matters could possibly account for a ream of paper. That leaves 59 reams of paper “that the dog ate.” This is the very definition of spoliation of evidence.
Secretary Clinton said she regretted relying on a private email account while in office, rather than a government account. She blamed the Obama administration for a lack of policy guidance. She also said she used the private account “as a convenience” so that she didn’t need to carry separate phones for personal and official communications. Photographs show Mrs. Clinton with multiple personal electronic devices.
She said she had never sent any classified material on the private account, using other staffers’ government accounts for that. Emails now released reveal that her State Department minions were directed to strip off the classification headers and footers off classified documents and input those documents, or even essential information that would make the information classified. Whether she directed others to do it or she performed the action herself, the FBI has reported thousands of cases exist where classified information was moved to an unsecured email server.
Seventy years ago, senior State Department official Alger Hiss found a way to remove classified information from State Department offices. Hillary Clinton found a way to remove classified information from State Department offices. The essence of espionage is to get classified documents out of a Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility, a SCIF, and into the hands of “someone not authorized to receive them.”
Among those charged under the Espionage Act of 1917 were Socialist Party of America candidate, Eugene V. Debs, the communists Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, and most recently, whistleblowers Daniel Ellsberg, Bradley Manning, and Edward Snowden.
Being charged under the Espionage Act was appropriate for those who obtained any information relating to the national defense and delivered that information to someone who was not authorized to have it. The former State Department official, Alger Hiss, typed classified information on his office typewriter, slipped the copies into a briefcase, removed classified information from the State Department, and provided them to his Soviet handler who photographed and microfilmed them. The FBI wished to prosecute Alger Hiss for espionage, but the Justice Department indicated the statute of limitations had run out and Hiss was convicted of the lesser crime; perjury, for lying to the FBI.
The development of the Espionage Act was based on the Defense Secrets Act of 1911 along with the Trading with the Enemy Act. These were enacted shortly after the United States entered World War I. The purpose of the laws was in response to a growing number of spies who acquired and conveyed highly sensitive information which could “interfere with the operation or success of the armed forces of the United States or to promote the success of its enemies.”
In his December 7, 1915 State of the Union address, President Woodrow Wilson asked Congress for legislation to create the Espionage Act. He said, in part, “I urge you to enact such laws at the earliest possible moment and feel that in doing so I am urging you to do nothing less than save the honor and self-respect of the nation. Such creatures of passion, disloyalty, and anarchy must be crushed out. They are not many, but they are infinitely malignant, and the hand of our power should close over them at once. They have formed plots to destroy property, they have entered into conspiracies against the neutrality of the Government, they have sought to pry into every confidential transaction of the Government in order to serve interests alien to our own.”
A commenter of the article last week got it right. He observed,
“While the spies of yesteryear were motivated by ideology, the thoroughly modern Clintons are totally commercial. How quickly we forget the trading of US weapons designs to ChiCom bundlers of campaign cash, and the DOJ investigations terminated before further treason was exposed. Do not imagine for a second that the home brew server was merely a FOIA foil and not a blame free method of transferring state secrets to our nation’s enemies for cash paid into the Clinton Global Initiative.”
Mark A. Hewitt is the author of espionage thrillers. www.markhewitt.comSacha Kljestan is enjoying a career-best year in MLS in 2015, his first season in the league since 2010. After his most recent appearance - against Philadelphia Union on October 18 - he has matched his career-best record for assists in a single MLS regular season: he tallied 13 for Chivas USA in 2007 and he now has 13 in 2015 for the New York Red Bulls.
He has also set new MLS regular-season personal bests for goals (seven, so far), minutes played (2753) and games started (32) in his debut season for RBNY.
This isn't just a good season by his own standards - it is also a good season by those of his club. Kljestan's latest assist (a corner kick nodded on by Damien Perrinelle for Bradley Wright-Phillips to knock into goal for the match-winner against Philadelphia) was his 14th in all competitions for RBNY so far this season.
He now has the fourth-best single-season assists tally of all time for the club. Only Thierry Henry (19 assists in 2014), Clint Mathis (16 in 2000), and Eduardo Hurtado (15 in 1998) have tallied more in one season for RBNY.
And those 13 assists in the MLS regular season (his other was in US Open Cup) amount to the joint-second best single-season total in league play in club history. He is one assist short of matching the club record for league assists in a single season (14 - held by Thierry Henry and Eduardo Hurtado) with one league game remaining for RBNY in 2015.
Congrats, Sacha. Hope you get another assist or two in Bridgeview next week.After a week of political tumult and deepening economic anxiety, congressional leaders yesterday rallied support for an historic proposal that would grant the government vast new powers over Wall Street and offer fresh help to homeowners at risk of foreclosure.
The proposed legislation, which is scheduled for a vote today in the House, would authorize Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. to initiate what is likely to become the biggest government bailout in U.S. history, allowing him to spend up to $700 billion to relieve faltering banks and other firms of bad assets backed by home mortgages, which are falling into foreclosure at record rates.
The plan would give Paulson broad latitude to purchase any assets from any firms at any price and to assemble a team of individuals and institutions to manage them. In wielding those powers, Paulson and others hope to contain a crisis that already has caused the failure or forced the rescue of a half-dozen major Wall Street firms and unnerved markets around the world.
The measure was forged during a marathon negotiating session between lawmakers from both parties and Paulson -- who at one point appeared to negotiators to be on the verge of collapse. Restive Republican lawmakers originally criticized the package as putting taxpayers at risk and violating free-market principles, but many of them appeared yesterday to be dropping their opposition.
House Minority Leader John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) emerged last night from a meeting of House Republicans to say he is "encouraging every member whose conscience will allow them to support this." Boehner said he and other GOP leaders made the case that negotiators had improved the bill by gaining a key concession on a plan to limit taxpayer exposure.
A vote in the Senate could take place as soon as Wednesday.
President Bush last night released a statement praising the measure. Although it has been panned as a massive bailout for Wall Street financiers, Bush argued the bill would have broad benefits for ordinary families and business owners who need "access to credit" to "make purchases, ship goods and meet their payrolls."
"This plan sends a strong signal to markets around the world that the United States is serious about restoring confidence and stability to our financial system," Bush said. "Without this rescue plan, the costs to the American economy could be disastrous."
Bush has stressed that the ultimate cost of the bailout would be much less than $700 billion because the government would eventually sell the assets it purchases and recover most, if not all, of its investment.
Still, he acknowledged yesterday that the measure presents lawmakers with "a difficult vote" barely a month before the November elections. Polls show the bailout is hugely unpopular, and lawmakers have been inundated with calls and e-mails from angry constituents. With investors hanging on every twist of the debate in Washington, leaders in both chambers predicted that the bill would pass.
"If we do this and it works right, it's most likely that people will never appreciate how close we came to the brink. So there's not much political upside to this," said Sen. Judd Gregg (R-N.H.), the lead negotiator for Senate Republicans. But lawmakers are ready to support the bill, Gregg said, because they know "we are facing a crisis of proportions that are almost incomprehensible."
The scope of the crisis was laid out 11 days ago during a late-night meeting in the Capitol where Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke warned lawmakers that an imminent meltdown in financial markets threatened to destroy the wealth and jobs of millions of Americans. Two days later, Paulson presented lawmakers with a three-page economic rescue plan that would have granted the Treasury nearly unfettered power to shore up the nation's financial system, unchecked by federal or judicial review.Comedy Central Comedy Central host Stephen Colbert on Thursday dinged a Tennessee lawmaker for a controversial bill that would tie welfare recipients' benefits to their children's performance in school.
Republican state Sen. Stacey Campfield introduced the legislation in late January. It would cut welfare benefits to families whose children don't do well in school.
"If you want to talk motivation, nothing motivates better than cash," Campfield told Fox News recently, in a clip played by Colbert.
"And no one knows that better than a politician," Colbert retorted.
Colbert played a clip of Fox & Friends host Brian Kilmeade saying that he wished the program had been in place when he was in school. Kilmeade said he used to "fake illness" in kindergarten because he couldn't recognize his name. If his parents had had money taken from them, he added, they would have found out the reason he was faking illness.
"Sadly to this day, he still does not recognize his name," Colbert quipped.
Watch the clip below, courtesy of Comedy Central:Drugmaker Pfizer is pulling Mylotarg, a decade-old leukemia medicine, off the U.S. market after a study found a higher death rate and no benefit for patients.
Mylotarg won approval under an abbreviated process. Medicines cleared in that way have to pass follow-up tests to confirm they work. The FDA asked Pfizer to withdraw the drug after a recent clinical trial raised concerns about the product's safety and clinical benefits.
Reuters reports:
"The trial... showed more deaths in the first couple months of treatment. The fatality rate was 5.7 percent for Mylotarg patients, compared with 1.4 percent without the drug, Pfizer said. Mylotarg is the first drug approved under the FDA's abbreviated process to be withdrawn for failing to show effectiveness, agency officials said."
Pfizer, the world's biggest drugmaker, has also suspended trials of an experimental pain relief drug for osteoarthritis, Tanezumab, after reports that patients' conditions worsened and led to joint replacements.
Following a U.S. Food and Drug Administration request, Pfizer isn't recruiting any new patients or giving the drug to patients already in 10 osteoarthritis trials.
According to Bloomberg:Netflix has made a seven-figure deal to pick up a pitch from Andrew Dominik, who would direct, and Harrison Query.
In another sign of Netflix's flexing of its film fortitude, the digital giant has made a seven-figure deal for a film pitch.
Netflix has picked up War Party, an adventure project that has Tom Hardy attached to star and Andrew Dominik, the helmer behind Brad Pitt's The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, to direct.
Dominik will co-write the project with Harrison Query. Ridley Scott's Scott Free Films, which is working with Hardy on his FX period drama Taboo, will produce.
War Party details are being kept in a suppressor, but it is described as a being based on true events and centers on real-life Navy SEALs. Life rights was part of the deal.
Bidding was competitive for the project, with Netflix outflanking Amazon, Universal and Lionsgate, among others, according to sources.
Query is an up-and-coming writer who last fall sold a pitch centering on a true-life exorcism set on a military base to Lionsgate. And he wrote 1970s true-story crime thriller Honor for Sale, with John Hillcoat attached to direct, for Cross Creek. He is repped by UTA and Ground Control.
CAA-repped Dominik made his debut with the gritty prison drama Chopper and followed that up with the lyrical Assassination of Jesse James. He reteamed with Pitt for the crime movie Killing Them Softly and most recently made the Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds documentary One More Time With Feeling.
Hardy will next appear on the big screen in Dunkirk, the war drama that reunited him with filmmaker Christopher Nolan. It is set to open in July. The actor is repped by CAA, United Agents in the U.K. and Sloane Offer.Balawat (Classical Syriac: ܒܝܬ ܠܒܬ, beṯ labat) is an archaeological site of the ancient Assyrian city of Imgur-Enlil, and modern village in Nineveh Province (Iraq). It lies 25 kilometres (16 mi) southeast from the city of Mosul and 4 kilometres (2.5 mi) to the south of the modern Assyrian town of Bakhdida.
Ancient name [ edit ]
Balawat is the site of the ancient Assyrian city of Imgur-Enlil. The meaning of Imgur-Enlil is "Enlil agreed". Note that there was also a wall in ancient Babylon named Imgur-Enlil.[1]
History of archaeological research [ edit ]
Balawat Excavation Plan 1882
The site was excavated in 1878 by archaeologist Hormuzd Rassam.[2][3] The site was again excavated by Max Mallowan for the British School of Archaeology in Iraq in 1956.[4] A surface survey was conducted by D. J. Tucker in 1989 for the British Museum. The town walls enclosed an area of around 64 hectares.
Occupation history [ edit ]
The city of Imgur-Enlil was founded by the Neo-Assyrian king Ashurnasirpal II (884-859 BC). It lay 10 kilometres (6 |
LA
When Eric Earle met Karla Mendez Brada, he was spending his nights on the grounds of a rundown, sober-living facility.
Prosecutor Elena Abramson: At that time you were living in a trailer with three other men? Eric Earle: Yes.
Eden Ministries houses parolees from prison alongside other men living day to day, on the condition that they stay sober.
Prosecutor Elena Abramson: And you weren't living with women, right? Eric Earle: Yes.
Every day Eric Earle, an under-employed electrician and a chronic alcoholic, was shuttled down the street to attend the AA meetings required by Eden Ministries. They were held at "The Recovery Room."
Prosecutor Elena Abramson: And you had to go to meetings? Eric Earle: Yes.
Karla was being brought here too. The men from Eden Ministries couldn't wait for the arrival of the co-ed van from Karla's private rehab.
"The druggie buggie is what the guys at Eden Ministries -- at the halfway house -- would call the vehicle that brought the young women from rehab," Glaser explained.
"Nothing about that says success," Maher commented.
"Nothing about that says success. What it says to me is 'fresh meat,'" said Glaser.
"Enter in Eric Earle," said Maher.
"He cozies up to her," Glaser explained. "He presents himself to be a guy just trying to get sober... Mr. Nice Guy. He was charming."
Karla Mendez Brada and Eric Earle Jaroslava Mendez
Earle had hung around AA for decades. Karla was still new to it all.
Prosecutor Elena Abramson: One of the recommendations is you don't date while you're in recovery, is that right?
Eric Earle: Uh, it's suggested.
But together, both Earle and Karla chose to ignore the AA guideline.
"She brought him once to our house. And he was very outgoing. He was very friendly," said Jara.
Asked if he seemed to be kind to Karla, Jara told Maher, "Yes."
Karla's family didn't know much about Earle or his past. He told them he had embraced sobriety.
"I said, 'If he can help her stop drinking, you know, I mean I'll love him for it,'" Jara said. "I don't care who he is."
But Sasha wasn't buying it.
"I told Karla, and I told my mom. I said, 'I don't want anything to do with him. I don't wanna hang out with him. I think that he's just using her,'" she said.
Both Jara and Gabrielle Glaser believe Earle targeted Karla. In a matter of weeks, he moved from the trailer park into Karla's condo.
Prosecutor Elena Abramson: And you moved from Eden Ministries where you have all these restrictions and rules into this nice two bedroom condo... with your girlfriend Karla, correct? Eric Earle: Yes.
"I do think that he found her vulnerable... And needed a place to go, and she took him in. You know, that's Karla," said Rodriguez.
Then, less than five months after they met, Earle asked Karla to marry him.
"I called her and I said, 'Thanks for telling me, you know.' And she said, 'Well, I didn't think you'd be happy,'" said Sasha.
"Do you think she was happier with him?" Maher asked.
"I think she was happier to have someone," Sasha replied.
They had been living together for a few months. It all seemed fine until August 5, when that call came into the 911 operator from Karla's friend, Tonia Walsh:
Tonia Walsh: He just beat the crap out of her.... And she's asking him to leave and he won't leave. 911 Dispatcher: Put her on the phone please. Karla Brada: Hello? 911 Dispatcher: Where is your boyfriend? Karla Brada: Inside the house. 911 Dispatcher: OK, and you're - and are you out front? Karla Brada: I'm out front.
In front of Karla's family, Eric Earle went up against Prosecutor Elena Abramson, claiming he was dozing in an armchair when 120 pound Karla hit him in the nose.
Prosecutor Elena Abramson: Well, let's talk about August 5th... So you were drunk on vodka? Eric Earle: I was under the influence.
But when cops from the Santa Clarita's Sheriff's Station arrived, it was Karla, not Eric who was bloody and beaten.
Prosecutor Elena Abramson: What did you do? Eric Earle: Tried to get her off me and in the mix of it she got hit.
"Was he drunk then?" Maher asked Abramson.
"Yes, I believe he was," she replied.
Cops quickly put Earle into a squad car.
"He started rocking the patrol car back and forth. He started banging on the door," said Abramson.
Prosecutor Elena Abramson: He told you if you kept doing that he was gonna spray you with some pepper spray, you remember that? Eric Earle: Yes, I do. Abramson: And then you said, "F--- you, do it tough guy"? Earle: I think I did.
Then Earle slammed his feet into the police car window so forcefully he popped the glass out of its frame.
Earle was arrested for domestic violence and brought to the Santa Clarita Sheriff's Station. But it's what happened next that is ultimately so sad. Earle asked Karla to bail him out of jail.
Glaser says Karla paid the $8,000 bail and the couple continued to live together.
"Does the family know about this incident?" Maher asked.
"Her family does not know about this," Glaser replied.
"Then we saw her with a black eye and I says, 'Karla, what happened?' And she says, 'Oh, I tripped and fell.' And I said, 'Karla, are you sure?'" said Jara.
Like so many other frightened and battered women across America, Karla stayed in the shadows. She kept silent. Afraid and ashamed, she never told those who loved her what had happened.
"I called her on the phone and I said, 'Is he hitting you? Is he abusive towards you?'" Sasha said. "And, you know, she just kept saying, 'No....Her exact words were 'Do you really think I would let a guy hit me?'"
"Did you believe her?" Maher asked Karla's mother.
"Yeah," Jara sighed.
"But she told you, 'No.' What else could you do?"
"'He's not that kind of a guy' she said," Jara explained.
"Do you think she was afraid?" Maher continued.
"Yeah. She was terrified," said Jara.
"Victims come in every form," Abramson said. "They stay because they're afraid to leave. They stay because they're embarrassed. They stay because they think that their abuser is going to change."
Karla, with visible bruises, and Eric Earle would return to the same AA group where they had grown so close.
"She thought that she had found a safe place to get her life back together?" Maher asked Glaser.
"She thought she had found a safe partner who was on the same path," she replied.
"And in fact what did she find?"
"She found a violent, controlling, vicious man," said Glaser.
On September 1 at 8:38 a.m., just four weeks after he had been arrested for beating Karla, another call came into the 911 operator. This time it was Eric Earle on the line:
Eric Earle to 911[crying]: I woke up this morning and my girlfriend passed away....My girlfriend -- my fiancée!
He sounded panicked and began to weave a story about how Karla had accidently fallen down the stairs:
Eric Earle to 911: She's got like bruises like down the side of her. I like...I don't know if she fell last night. She did drink and she's been taking some pills.
Soon investigators were asking questions about murder. But another set of questions would be raised by Karla's family about why Eric and Karla were allowed to attend AA together at all.
"Do you think if she hadn't gone to AA she'd be alive?" Maher asked Jara.
"Definitely. Yeah," she replied.
"13TH STEPPING"
On trial for first-degree murder, Eric Earle denied he had punched or even argued with Karla Mendez Brada the night she died. But hours before investigators believe Karla was killed, Earle was on the phone with Johnny Dos Santos.
"Karla was in the background basically, lettin' me know that he was drunk," he said.
Dos Santos had lived at Eden Ministries with Earle. They attended NA and AA together.
"I heard her tell Eric, 'You need to leave.' And I can hear the punches through the phone," said Dos Santos.
"Eric punching her?" Maher asked.
"Yeah," he replied.
"How did you know he was punching her?"
"'Cause I've had a lot of punches myself," Dos Santos explained. "And I know what a punch sounds like."
"Did you call the police?" Maher asked.
"No. We don't call the police. We handle it ourselves," he said.
After midnight on Sept 1, 2011, the quiet suburban stillness was shattered. The next door neighbors say they heard Eric Earle inside the condo cursing repeatedly for over an hour. Those same neighbors also tell police that in the morning, around 7:30 a.m., they once again heard Earle's voice. This time he was saying "Karla! Karla!" over and over, as if he was trying to rouse someone who wouldn't or couldn't wake up.
Eric Earle testifies during his trial for the murder of Karla Mendez Brada. 48 Hours
Eric Earle [crying]: And that's when I started screaming her name. Defense attorney David Arredondo: At that point you realized she was dead? Eric Earle: I didn't know what to think! I didn't know what...
Incredibly, it took Eric Earle over an hour to call police, sounding stunned and frantic:
Eric Earle to 911: My girlfriend, my fiancé, she passed away....And it looks like - like she's got like some bruises down her right arm. She fell last night.
"I was asleep... And suddenly the phone rang," Jara recalled. "I picked it up and I heard... Eric -- he was shouting, 'Get over here right now!'... And he says, 'Well, she's gone. She's gone.'"
As her family raced to Karla's condo, Earle would tell police the same story he would eventually tell a jury: that he'd picked up two pints of vodka at a 7-Eleven and downed one.
Defense attorney David Arredondo: And then did you start drinking the other bottle of vodka? Eric Earle: Yes
And around midnight, the man who had spent decades in and out of AA claims he fell into a drunken slumber.
Defense attorney David Arredondo: Anything cause you to wake up? Eric Earle: Yes....I heard her tumble down the stairs carrying the basket full of clothes.
Earle swore it was the laundry -- not him -- that killed Karla.
Eric Earle: I immediately looked down the stairs. And that's where she was. Prosecutor Elena Abramson: Hunched over a laundry basket? Eric Earle: Yeah.
Earle swears he helped Karla back up the stairs and he noticed she was slurring her words.
Eric Earle: She was on something - I did not know.
In fact, the toxicology report shows the night she died, Karla had methadone and methamphetamine in her system.
"She apparently had a overdose of methadone," said Arredondo.
"Methadone wasn't enough to kill her," Abramson told Maher. "She was asphyxiated. She wasn't able to breathe."
The coroner's report indicates that the beating 6'2" Eric Earle allegedly gave 5' 4" Karla Mendez Brada was merciless -- that in her own home, she suffered dozens of injuries before investigators found her lifeless body in bed.
"Is there any doubt in your mind that Eric Earle killed your daughter?"Maher asked Jara.
"None whatsoever," she stated.
An ambulance took Karla's broken body to the morgue. By the time her family got to the condo that Karla had been so proud of, all that was left was a crime scene.
"What was the first thing that you saw?" Maher asked Jara as they walked through Karla's home.
"I could see there were marks, bloody marks on the wall and the door," she replied.
"Like blood spatter?" Maher asked.
"Right, and also here it was all broken glass, and there was about eight empty vodka bottles," said Jara.
And up that stairway Eric said Karla had accidently tumbled down, "This whole door was cracked... Everything was cracked," Jara continued, pointing out the damaged door jamb.
"So you think the door was broken down?" Maher asked.
"Obviously," Jara replied. "She must have locked herself in here and tried to keep him away from her."
The Mendez family was stunned. Eric Earle was in police custody....violent, raging, and drunk.
It was during those unfathomable moments, with Karla gone just hours, that Earle's hidden life began to be revealed.
"The detectives... right there in front of her condo. They told us that he's a very bad man, that he's done very bad things," Jara told Maher.
"'Hey did you know that Eric... has a record this long, and you know he was a con man,'" said Sasha.
Then Jara discovered photos on Karla's phone - self-portraits of that beating Earle gave Karla just one month before she died... purple bruises that few at their AA meetings could have missed.
"Was that the first time you saw those pictures?" Maher asked.
"Yes. Yeah," Jara replied.
Then, within days came the most sickening of revelations: Karla wasn't the first woman Eric Earle had beaten and abused.
"Since 1991, assault with a deadly weapon, domestic violence, elder abuse," said Jara.
"He's not... an extremely violent person. He is a person who is troubled," said Earle's defense attorney, David Arredondo.
"He is an extremely violent person. This man has misdemeanor battery, 1991, 1994. In December 2000, another domestic violence," Maher protested.
"It did not involve serious injury," Arredondo replied.
"How can you say domestic violence is not serious injury?" Maher pressed. "He went after his mother. He brandished a weapon. He has an extremely long rap sheet."
"Well here's the thing, his record is not an issue here," said Arredondo.
But Eric Earle's decades-long criminal history was about to become a huge issue -- not just for him, but for AA, where, remember, there's no requirement that attendees reveal if they have a criminal record.
"It's supposed to be a safe place," Sasha said. "Why would you mix these people together?"
"Were you surprised that somebody with that kind of criminal background could just be sitting openly in an AA meeting next to your daughter?" Maher asked Jara.
"Unbelievable," she replied.
Added Glaser, "His ex-wife told me that that's how he finds his women, that's where he goes."
AA states it "has no authority, legal or otherwise to control the behavior of AA members." While AA as fertile ground for predators is certainly not sanctioned, not part of the famous 12 Steps, insiders know more.
"There's something called the 13th Step that is this harassment. It's any sort of unwanted sexual advance. And it's gone on in AA from the beginning of time," said Glaser.
"13th step is like you see someone that comes in. She's vulnerable. She's little weak in the mind. She doesn't have a lotta strength," Dos Santos explained.
Documentary filmmaker Monica Richardson was in AA for 36 years. It was that concern over safety issues that compelled her to leave. She says 13th Stepping is "a huge problem" and is so common, she's now making a film about it.
"And the members who are going there are not safe?" Maher asked.
"No. They're not safe," said Richardson.
A DISTURBING PATTERN
In friendly, relaxing neighborhood bars and in liquor stores and pubs across the country, most Americans drink alcohol down in responsible moderation.
Eric Earle: I've been struggling with alcohol my whole life, yes.
Then, there are the 17 million people who are alcoholics. It used to be that for every four male alcoholics, there was 1 woman, but the profile is changing - now it's 2 ½ men for every 1 woman battling alcoholism.
One woman who spoke to "48 Hours" says, "It started out social. Then it would be just getting home and drinking."
It was 2010 when the wife and mother walked into her local AA meeting. She found support. But when she went downstairs to use the bathroom, she also found a longtime AA member waiting.
"He's like, 'Come here and gimme a hug,'" she said. "And he kept tryin' to kiss me, and I'm struggling with him."
The woman says she was groped, but managed to break free. She went to police and got an order of protection against her attacker. But it was the response she got from her group that really shocked her.
"You know, you need to stay away from him," she said she was told.
When the woman first spoke to "48 Hours" on camera, she was eager to tell her story. But just a few weeks before this story was set to air, she became concerned, saying some members of her AA group had strongly advised her that speaking to the media is against AA traditions. "48 Hours" decided not identify her, but we still felt her story demanded to be told.
"Why come forward and talk about it?" Maher asked the woman.
"Because I don't want it to happen to anybody else," she replied.
What she told "48 Hours" is part of a disturbing pattern. Her alleged attacker, just like Eric Earle, has a previous conviction for assault. And over the years, just like Eric Earle, sometimes he ended up at AA because of a court-ordered mandate.
"They were court-ordering sex offenders and violent offenders in plea deals to AA," said Richardson.
By AA's own numbers, 12 percent of its membership has been ordered to attend AA by the justice system.
"Courts are busy and jails are full and so everyone's looking for an answer," California Judge Rogelio Flores told "48 Hours."
Judge Flores served in the leadership of AA, as what the organization calls a Class A (non-alcoholic) trustee.
"I have so many friends and colleagues and family members who got sober in AA," he said.
For 16 years, Judge Flores served in "drug courts," providing sentencing options other than prison.
"And part of that drug court was a 12-step AA or NA meeting," he explained.
A maxed-out system recognized that some non-violent criminals may not need prison, they just need a way to deal with their addiction.
Eric Earle: I wanted to stop drinking. I wanted to better my life!
"Is it fair to say that violent offenders sometimes slip through the cracks and they end up in AA meetings? Maher asked Judge Flores.
"Oh, there's no doubt," he said.
Eric Earle fit that frightening profile to a T, when Karla Mendez Brada -- trying to mend her own tattered life -- walked into AA.
"He saw in her desperation. And he saw in her weakness," Sasha said. "I think he could read that from a mile away."
"Do you fear that there will be another Karla Mendez case if there isn't some sort of reckoning within AA?" Maher asked Gabrielle Glaser.
"Absolutely. There already have been," she replied.
In St. Paul, Minnesota, Megan Neely, a 27 year-old mother of two, was strangled to death by her boyfriend, Corey Dean Thomas, who she had met just a few months earlier at AA. Thomas had four prior violent felony convictions.
"I came across the case of a very creepy pedophile in Montana," Glaser continued.
His name is Sean Callahan. A convicted child molester, he was mandated to attend AA. Police discovered his diary. It reads like a manual for "13th Stepping":
"Will take sex wherever I can get it, whoever I can trick or use," Callahan writes, adding, "Usually women early in sobriety, 'cause they are the most vulnerable."
"So AA is aware there's a problem? Maher asked Richardson.
"Uh, huh," she affirmed.
"What has been the response?" Maher asked.
"They have said things like we don't tell our members how to act," Richardson replied.
AA doesn't have a traditional corporate hierarchy. Individual groups handle their own safety issues. The national leadership, known as the General Service Board, has stated it "Would not have a role in setting any behavioral guidelines."
In an anonymous building in Manhattan, AA has its headquarters. The organization that started in Ohio in 1935, now has some 1.3 million U.S. members, and countless worldwide success stories.
When "48 Hours" asked, we were let in, but were only allowed to film empty hallways and displays of memorabilia. No AA officials would speak to "48 Hours" on camera -- no interviews granted about safety or the tragic death of Karla Brada.
"They should know better. That you are vulnerable," Sasha said. "It's like you're washing your hands of something that you've created."
Karla Mendez Brada and her sister, Sasha Jaroslava Mendez
"Do you think Alcoholics Anonymous is partially responsible for what happened to your sister?" Maher asked.
"I do," Sasha replied.
But Alcoholics Anonymous is not charged with murder. Only Eric Allen Earle is. The defense maintains is that it was an accident -- Karla, high on drugs, fell down the stairs.
"The contusions, abrasions together, the pattern shows she fell down the stairs," defense attorney David Arredondo addressed the court.
The prosecution's case would come down to this: a drunken, rage-filled man and a brutal beating.
"He put something over her mouth and her neck and she suffered for three or four minutes before she died," prosecutor Elena Abramson told the court.
And in her closing argument, Abramson implored the jury to hold Eric Earle accountable.
"Tell him that by rendering a verdict of guilty as to first degree, premeditated murder," she said.
SEEKING JUSTICE FOR KARLA
September 18, 2014. Three devastating years after her death, Karla Brada's case goes to the jury. Emotionally drained, all her family can do now is wait on the verdict and the fate of Eric Earle.
Karla Mendez Brada Jaroslava Mendez
The deliberation lasted just over two hours. Karla's family braced for the news.
Court Clerk: "We, the jury... find the defendant Eric Allen Earl, guilty of the crime of murder.... We further find the murder to be of the first degree"
More tears from a family that has already cried enough to last a lifetime.
"We're shocked, but in a good way," Sasha said of the verdict. "We're just so grateful that they came to a decision so fast, and they came to the right decision."
It is a celebration no one would ever want to have.
"It's a relief," Jara said. "All this time we have not been able to live."
Following the verdict, Hector and Jara Mendez head straight to Karla's old bedroom and their shrine for her ashes.
"'Mama, we made it," Jara told her daughter. "Justice for you. We made it. We got justice for you."
But their fight is not yet over.
At Karla's childhood home, where her family has spent months and months grieving privately, her parents have decided to launch a very public effort. With Eric Earle convicted of murder, Hector and Jara are now taking aim at the organization they also hold responsible for their daughter's death. They have filed a lawsuit against one of America's most well respected institutions, Alcoholics Anonymous.
"With Karla, I mean, you have a young woman who's vulnerable... and a system that is designed to help her, actually hurt her," the Mendez' civil attorney, John Noland said. "What I was surprised was when I found out that people who go to AA have no knowledge of the person sitting next to them."
In their lawsuit, Hector and Jara claim AA is in part at fault for Karla's death for not warning attendees that violent criminals -- like Eric Earle -- could be at the same meeting.
"They just want to make sure that this doesn't happen to other young girls or other young victims," Noland explained.
Only days after Earle is convicted, a New York process server delivered the lawsuit to AA's world headquarters.
"You have an organization that in large part does good. But it has a problem and they refuse to address the problem. And it's a very easy fix," said Noland.
Asked what she would like to see AA do, Jara told Maher, "First of all, separate."
"If the criminals were separated from the regular population in AA, Karla would be alive today," said Richardson.
"Why can't they have two separate meetings at the same time?" Maher asked Glaser.
"I was told that would be stigmatizing," she said.
Up to now, AA's General Service Office has refused to implement such changes. And in an e-mail to "48 Hours" they wrote, "Members share as much, or as little as they wish about their past, with other AA members... There are no rules or policies regarding such things." But even Judge Flores agrees, AA can do better.
"You know, it's going to take some time. As more and more young people come into the fellowship, as more and more women come into the fellowship, as more and more people come into the fellowship who are concerned -- about these issues, I think we're gonna start seeing some changes," he said.
"But it has to happen," Noland said. "It has to start somewhere."
While the Mendez' fight to reform Alcoholics Anonymous moves ahead, Eric Earle, now in a wheelchair suffering from multiple sclerosis, is back in court to learn his sentence and to hear directly from Karla's family.
It is Hector, for whom English is a second language and who often doesn't say much, who demands Earle, and the court's attention.
"Eric Earle? Eric Earle? Eric Earle! This is my daughter -- for me, my child, my - all of my life - and you killed her," he said in tears. "I cannot accept that I will not see her again....You are very dangerous and you're a predator."
"Mr. Earle... you're done," the judge said, "because you're going to be locked up for the rest of your life."
For this shattered family, a sentence of 26 years-to-life for Eric Earle brings some peace. But there is still also a web of complex feelings, brought on by a loved one fighting the demons of addiction and domestic violence - a young woman like so many others, Karla Brada.
"Are you mad at her a little?" Maher asked Sasha.
"Uh huh. A lot," she affirmed. "She was smarter than that, she was better than that. She should have said something."
"There are a lot of complicated issues when you're talking about people who are victims of domestic violence," prosecutor Elena Abramson said. "You can't judge them. You have to love and support them. And do your best to try to keep them safe. But you can't blame them."
"If Karla hadn't been to those meetings, if she hadn't gone through that process... she would've never met him and she'd still be here. And -- maybe she'd still be struggling with her own issues, but she'd be here," said Sasha.
Alcoholics Anonymous has not filed its response to the Mendez family's lawsuit. It is due Dec. 1.Now that most of the 2016 presidential candidates have released their proposed tax policies (we’re looking at you, John Kasich) you may be wondering just exactly how your bank account would fare with Ted Cruz or Bernie Sanders in the White House. Two tax calculators in particular do a nice job of showing how everyday Americans will be impacted by each candidate’s proposals.
All you need to do is plug your income, marital status, and whether or not you have children into this simple calculator, and it will show you how much more or less you would pay in taxes if Donald Trump, Ted Cruz, Hillary Clinton, or Bernie Sanders were elected. (According to Vox, which partnered with the Tax Policy Center to create the calculator, Kasich’s tax plan was not substantive enough to analyze.)
Vox notes that the calculations will not be universally accurate—there are too many other factors, such as various deductions and penalties, that would over-complicate the tool. But it’s still useful to gauge how you’d fare under a new administration.
An equally user-friendly calculator at International Business Times, also made in conjunction with the Tax Policy Center, tells you how much your take-home pay will change under each of the candidates (again, with the exception of Kasich). Simply input your annual salary and after-tax pay, and you’ll see how much more or less you’d theoretically take home each pay period.
Read Next: Where the Presidential Candidates Stand on Money Issues
The takeaway from both of the calculators is that most people will see cuts under a Cruz or Trump administration, with the richest Americans enjoying the biggest tax breaks, while the majority of Americans would see modest cuts. And as MONEY noted previously, most Americans would probably see no change if Clinton is elected (unless they’re extremely rich), and everyone’s tax bill would balloon if Sanders wins the White House (free college isn’t actually free).
As Vox noted, the catch with plans to slash taxes for everyone is that they will result in trillions of dollars in lost revenue for the government, which is already grappling with a $16 trillion national debt. As MONEY has reported, the right-leaning Tax Foundation estimated Trump’s plan would result in $10.4 trillion to $11.98 trillion in lost revenue over the next decade, while Cruz’s would result in an estimated $8.6 trillion loss. On the flip side, under Sanders, those making $18.4 million would see an effective tax rate of 73.5%.About
Animals & Mandalas together at last!
** Disclosure - The Money Generator with a Money Goddess, as featured in the film, may make your life more magical and generate more money. It is not guaranteed. It is my humble way of saying Thank you for your participation in the Money & Love Project. After all, Money Goddesses activate by your unbridled power of belief and the belief of the collective backers. **
The Mission ::> To transform your money into loving, healing, inspirational evolutionary art to share with the world as we emerge into the unlimited potential of our New Earth experience.
::> There’s more....New heavenly art will be posted to keep us feeling fresh and vibrant. The 5th dimension is a state of present awareness. Color and art therapy is a powerful way to raise and maintain your evolving vibration. Check out what I have created for us so far...
Where will your money go?
Into making and producing more loving art to share with the world, of course!...'cause that’s what I’m into. Making 1000 inspirational, spiritual & cultural cards, filling rewards & expanding the collection.
Thank you for coming....We’re in heaven now, Yay! Tell your friends and neighbors!McQuade.jpg
U.S. Attorney Barbara McQuade in a July 9, 2015 file photo taken after the sentencing of oncologist Farid Fata, who was sent to prison for 45 years for administering chemotherapy to patients who didn't need it. (Tanya Moutzalias | MLive file)
DETROIT -- President Donald Trump and Attorney General Jeff Sessions have ordered 46 federal prosecutors appointed by former President Barack Obama, including Detroit-based U.S. Attorney Barbara L. McQuade, to resign
McQuade, who led the prosecution of imprisoned former Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick, issued a statement late Friday, but didn't indicate definitively whether she indeed intends to submit her resignation.
"I have loved serving in this job as much as anyone has ever loved any job," McQuade said.
"It has been an incredible privilege to work alongside public servants who devote their tremendous talents to improving the quality of life in our community. I am proud to have served as U.S. Attorney in the Obama Administration."
Sarah Isgur Flores, a Justice Department spokeswoman, told the New York Times all remaining U.S. attorneys appointed during the Obama presidency were told to resign and shift control to their deputy U.S. attorneys.
Former western Michigan U.S. Attorney Patrick Miles, Jr., another Obama-appointed federal prosecutor, resigned in January as Trump took office.
Acting U.S. Attorney named after Patrick Miles Jr. departs with Obama Andrew Byerly Birge has served as chief adviser to the U.S. Attorney for most of his 16 years in the federal prosecutors' office.
McQuade, who is the first woman to head the federal prosecutor's office for the Eastern District of Michigan, was appointed in 2010.
"During her tenure, McQuade has overseen a number of significant cases," McQuade's office said in the statement, "including the conviction of former Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick and more than 30 others on public corruption charges; the conviction and life sentence of an Al-Qaeda operative for attempting to blow up an airliner over Detroit on Christmas Day in 2009 with a bomb concealed in his underwear; the conviction and 45-year sentence Dr. Farid Fata for lying to patients about having cancer so that he could bill Medicare for expensive chemotherapy treatments; the conviction and $4.3 billion fine against Volkswagen AG for cheating on emissions tests; the conviction and $1 billion fine against Takata Corp. for fraudulently concealing defective airbags; and settlements with Pittsfield Township to permit the building of an Islamic School and with the City of Sterling Heights to permit the building of a mosque under religious land use laws,"
McQuade, a married mother of four children, was born in Detroit, graduated from the University of Michigan in 1987, Michigan Law School in 1991, worked as a law clerk for U.S. District Judge Bernard A. Friedman, and worked as an adjunct professor at Detroit Mercy School of Law from 2003 to 2009.
She worked as an assistant U.S. attorney in Detroit for 12 years before being promoted to the top job.Mixed twins are fraternal twins born to multiracial families which differ in skin color and other traits considered to be racial features.
From a biological point of view, the differences in these fraternal or dizygotic twins from two biracial parents are not surprising. In humans, a relatively small number of genes are thought to be responsible for human skin color. Different alleles or gene variants code for differences in the melanin found within the skin. Within some groups are high frequencies of dark skin alleles, while others have high frequencies of light skin alleles, for example. The parents of such twins, who are typically both of mixed race, have a combination of alleles for light and dark skin in their genome.
Each sperm or egg cell possesses a random selection of genes from its mother or father. While not the most probable event, a sperm or egg may randomly acquire, for example, mostly alleles that confer light skin coloration or mostly alleles that confer dark skin coloration. In such cases, fraternal twins can differ from each other quite dramatically in terms of skin color or other physical characteristics.
Numerous sets of mixed twins have been born.[1][2][3][4]
Much more rarely, mixed twins can arise as a result of heteropaternal superfecundation.[5]Both Spotify and Apple Music users today have noticed that albums from hip-hop artist Jay-Z, who happens to be owner of competing music streaming service Tidal, have been removed from the services.
It appears that most of the artist’s original albums have been removed while some content where he is a featured artist or collaborator, and perhaps not the sole owner of the content, remains available for streaming. Tidal representatives have not officially announced the move, but Spotify’s support team is confirming the removal to users of the service on social media (via MacRumors).
The best 4K & 5K displays for Mac
Tidal was most recently in the news when Sprint decided to acquire a 33% stake back in January in a move that would allow it to offer customers exclusive content and other tie-ins with the music streaming service. That followed acquisition rumors for Tidal over recent months with Spotify, Google and others reportedly showing interest.
At the time of Sprint’s acquisition, questions surrounding Tidal’s growth and subscriber numbers emerged with Norwegian newspaper Dagens Næringsliv claiming Tidal had inflated its subscriber numbers. Those estimates claimed the service had around 850,000 subscribers vs the 3 million it reported back in March of last year. The latest estimates late last month for Apple Music put the service at over 40M users on mobile, leading Spotify by 10M, despite Spotify claiming 50 million paying subscribers versus a total 20 million for Apple.
The news that Jay-Z has removed his albums from the services, if it turns out to not just be a temporary mistake, would be notable as Apple Music, Spotify, Tidal and the other services have continued to fight for subscribers with exclusive content.
Spotify and Apple Music are also increasingly stepping up efforts with original content, Spotify most recently announcing plans for its first original series as a counterpart to Apple’s Carpool Karaoke, both arriving exclusive for subscribers next month.
The competition has also increased abroad as Google Play Music this month undercut Apple Music in India as both companies play the long game.Activists are outraged over Obama’s raid of Emmalyn’s California Cannabis Clinic in San Francisco, but they should not be surprised.
Obama’s Attorney General Eric Holder had promised to end federal medical marijuana raids, as conducted by both Clinton and Bush’s administrations, leaving alone dispensaries operating legally under state law. Obama broke the spirit of the promise, but not the letter. The excuse for this last raid was state law violations—supposedly, sales taxes were being evaded. Now the |
film. But, of course, it was nothing of the kind. It was all about humanity. But I think you're absolutely right. The "vanilla prog-rock," if you can call it that, or the Tolkien-esque stuff always misses the point for me.
You've been quite outspoken in your disdain for TV talent shows such as Pop Idol and X-Factor. Is it ironic, then, that you've roped in Ninet Tayeb, winner of Israel's Pop Idol, for the album?
I guess you could say that, yeah! But, listen, the thing about Ninet—and, you wouldn't know this, because you don't live in Israel—is that she went through a complete reinvention of her whole image. She started out as a pop artist on Pop Idol. But she turned her whole back on it and reinvented herself as an almost kind of PJ Harvey-type alternative figure. A very brave thing to do. She turned her back on the whole celebrity and reality TV thing. I think she is genuinely a great artist. I think sometimes these Pop Idol type shows can throw up a genuine talent. She is the exception that proves the rule.
A few years ago, you declared that you were bored with the sound of metal and you moved away from that sound on recent albums, but "Ancestral" features some very heavy metal riffing. Are you a little less bored with it now?
There is a little bit of metal riffing on "Home Invasion" as well. Metal has come back in a bit. You know what? Metal is a part of my musical vocabulary now. But I don't think it would ever come back to the forefront like it was on the last three or four Porcupine Tree albums. It became very central to the sound of PT. But, you're right, there are some quite heavy riffs in this record. I guess I go through phases, like anyone else, or falling in and out of love with things. There is lots of stuff that has come back on this record but certainly wasn't on the Raven record: the use of electronics, the metal riffs, and the almost pop sensibility that is on two or three tracks on this record.
I guess I always come back to the concept of the record being largely responsible for the style of the record and the musical palette. Because, clearly, a record set in the city in the 21st century is going to have to sound a little more electronic, contemporary, and a little more edgy. I couldn't have used the same musical palette that I used for Raven for a contemporary story. So, maybe the metal grew a little bit out of that. The electronic side certainly came out of the urban, modern-world aspect.
"Three Years Older" features a very Chris Squire-like bass, Rick Wakeman-like keyboards and the guitar has a Steve Howe-like twang to it. The song itself doesn't sound like a Yes composition, but I wondered whether your remix work on the Yes albums had influenced your approach to the instrumentation.
I think that would've been a more valid observation on The Raven that Refused to Sing album. I tell you what I think it is, I play the bass like a guitar player does. I played the bass on that track. Because I have a guitarist's mind and a guitarist's sensibility, I tend to think of playing the bass with more of a lead approach. I'm guessing, but Chris Squire started out as a lead guitarist too. I wonder if that's also true of other bass players that play that way, like John Entwistle, Peter Hook, and Geddy Lee. I think that's what you're hearing. It's not a conscious thing.
Are you playing a five-string bass on that track?
I am, yes. A Specter.
Joyce Carol Vincent's story didn't end well. But your story seems to end on a hopeful note on "Happy Returns" and "Ascendant Here On"—the protagonist of your story is trying to reconnect with her loved ones. The music is bright rather than melancholy. Take me into your decision to end the album on that note rather than end on a downbeat, like Joyce Carol Vincent's story.
I think it would've been a real downer and depressing to base the story exactly on Joyce Carol Vincent. It had a tragic ending. In my story, [the ending] is definitely ambiguous. It's interesting—we talked a little bit about science fiction earlier on—there's actually a little frisson of sci-fi possibility in there. In her blog, she talks about visitors in the night and people talking to her about some other place so there's little hint of that. I like the fact that it's ambiguous.
I think you're right, it has got a hopeful ending. You can make up your own mind about where this character goes.
Are you afraid of dying alone?
No. It's the one thing I'm not afraid of, but I know it wouldn't happen. My music is my connection to the rest of the world. As long as I keep making music, there will always be people who make the feel a part of the world.
That brings me to something else. One of the ironies of the whole Joyce Carol Vincent story—and there are many ironies in her story—is that this is a woman who basically erased herself from life, but in death she's famous. She's had a movie made about her, she has her own Wikipedia page, she now has an album based on her. If you become a part of popular culture through movies and music, you become immortal. You're not alone.
What scares you as an artist—what are you least comfortable writing about? Are there lyrical themes you tend to shy away from rather than explore and confront?
Ooh! I don't think so—apart from the afore-mentioned Hobbit-y type things! Not really, no. I think part of the art of writing lyrics is being able to talk about your innermost fears and your innermost feelings. I don't think I'm afraid to write about anything, no matter how personal.
Was I thought you were going to ask me was, "What am I afraid of as an artist?" There is certainly always a fear for me that I've written my last song and my last album and there is nothing left to come. Right now, honestly, I have the feeling. Every time I finished a new record, and I'm proud of it, and I think it's the best thing I've done—this album is no exception—there comes a fear that I may never be able to do anything as good again.
Now, so far, most of the time I've managed to prove myself wrong. The next record, for me, if it's not better, has to at least be an evolution or a change in some positive way. It's kept things fresh for me. But I always worry about the next project, the next album. Is there going to be in a music left to come? Is there anything left to write about? Have I exhausted the well of inspiration? That's my greatest fear as an artist.
I think that is something that a lot of artists have in common. Not just songwriters, but authors as well. The fear of the blank page and having to start something fresh.
I think it is part and parcel of being someone who is creative. You should never take it for granted. As you know, my career has been very much a slow burn and a war of attrition in a way. I think it would've been worse, in a way, to have had what I call Citizen Kane syndrome—to have created this incredible masterpiece at the beginning of my career and then having to measure up to that. There are many examples of that. Velvet Underground's first album. King Crimson's first album, to an extent, as it will always be a landmark album for that band. Citizen Kane will always be the landmark Orson Welles movie. I have to be grateful that hasn't happened to me. I mean, some of my early records are terrible. But I learned from my mistakes and I gradually got better. And here I am 23 years into my career and I think I just made my best record.
On your first two solo albums, you utilized a range of guest musicians to play different parts. But then it seemed as if you were looking to consolidate a band of your own that you could specifically write for, as you did on Raven and Hand.Cannot.Erase. But the live band often seems to be in flux, with musicians coming and going. Are you resigned to the Steven Wilson band being a revolving door of musicians or would you like to consolidate a fairly permanent lineup with musicians that you can specifically write music for?
I think I'm going to have to have a pool of musicians to rely on. The downside of being a solo artist is that you can't always expect to keep them, and that's indeed is what has happened to me. It happened in the middle of the Raven that Refused to Sing cycle when I lost Marco [Minnemann] and Chad [Wackerman] came in and replaced Marco. It's happening again with Marco and Guthrie [Govan] this time. I'm not successful enough to be able to pay a retainer for the musicians. Paul McCartney is able to pay a retainer to keep his musicians so that they are always available and will be able to drop everything at any time.
I have set a precedent with my band. The guys in the band are these incredible world-class musicians. So I have a pressure, in a way, to maintain that level and, so far, so good. I've been up to find guys who are absolutely world-class musicians.
Another thing that springs off your question, is whether I like that. In a way, I do like the fact that, if I wanted to, tomorrow I could suddenly decide that I wanted to make a record with a completely different set of musicians. My band is not going to be pissed off with me if I suddenly decide to make an album of electronic gamelan music or an album with an Icelandic choir and a string quartet. That's the freedom, the liberating aspect of being a solo artist. So I think you kind of take the rough and the smooth in that respect.
Tell me about your connection with Dave Kilminster, who's joining your band for the North American tour. I've seen him play with Roger Waters' band. He's a very different guitarist from Guthrie Govan. What qualities do you think he'll bring to the band?
I had met Dave a couple of times. When Guthrie knew that he wouldn't be able to do the whole album cycle, he said to me, "You should talk to Dave." Like you, I said to Guthrie, "But isn't Dave's thing just doing Dave Gilmour?" He said, "No not at all." He said, in fact Dave didn't know Pink Floyd—I mean, he knew Pink Floyd, but he didn't know the music—until he was hired to play it.
Guthrie recommended Dave as his replacement because he felt Dave was the closest to him stylistically. I think with Dave we haven't seen that side to him, because he's basically been playing at being Dave Gilmour for years. I love that approach too, you know. I'm always trying to get my guitar players to slow down and play less notes. He is a wonderfully versatile musician who has the chops and the feel. I think he's going to be a perfect fit for the band and there will be a great sense of continuity from Guthrie to Dave.
I don't know much about Craig Blundell, who will play drums on the North American tour, tell me about him.
Craig was recommended to me by a producer friend of mine. I'd never heard of Craig. Most people haven't heard of Craig and the reason is because he's almost exclusively been doing drum clinics. He works for Roland and for Premier. He's an amazing player. You should go on YouTube and watch some of his clinics and some of his demonstrations. This will be the first time he's really aligned himself with the band for a whole tour, so I think a lot of people are going to be very pleasantly surprised by Craig. I auditioned a few drummers and Craig was the one that has what I call "the Marco gene"-some kind of flair and joy in his playing. You see that when you see Marco playing. Craig has also got that.
At this point, it seems to me that your career is a little bit like that of Damon Albarn or Sting—they can occasionally reunite Blur or The Police, but everyone realizes that those are now peripheral projects for them and their main focus is their respective solo careers. Is that a fair parallel?
I think those are good parallels. It still frustrates me when people tell me they like my solo record and then in the very next breath they ask, "So, when are you putting Porcupine Tree back together?" But then I think of someone like Peter Gabriel, who's been a solo artist now for 40 years, and people are still asking him when are Genesis getting back together.
It's not a bad thing. It's a flattering thing, because that's how much this music means to these people. Even to my dying day, I will be asked, "When are you putting Porcupine Tree back together?"
It's a very romantic notion that people have about bands in particular. I think being in a band always has a romantic notion to it that's being a solo artist doesn't. I'm talking about in the eyes of the fans now. And so when you step out of a reasonably successful band, it doesn't matter how good your solo work is [because] people always have a nostalgic attachment to the band identity. I accept that, and I'm used to it now. But it is frustrating sometimes that I have to explain to them, four albums into my solo career, that if Porcupine Tree was to get back together—and, by the way, I have never ruled that out—it will be a side project. There should be no question in anyone's mind that this is now my main musical path, my solo work. But I think the Sting analogy is a good one. I guess he still gets asked when The Police are getting back together.
During the past five years working exclusively as a solo artist, you've grown musically. So, if you do reactivate Porcupine Tree at some point, what do you imagine you'll bring to Porcupine Tree in terms of fresh perspective and all you've learned in the interim?
It's a good question. I don't really have a good answer. I'm not consciously aware that my approach to writing and making records has changed, but objectively speaking, I can hear that there has been a change and evolution and development.
One thing I will say, is this: if Porcupine Tree did get back together, I would have to say to the guys, "Look, there's no point in me writing the material, because if I were to do that, I might as well do it for a solo record. Let's try writing together, or try writing in partnerships." I would not be interested in coming in with an album that I'd written, which I used to do.
So it would be more like the second disc of The Incident, which were all band compositions.
That's right, a bit more like that.
You have a sideline career of remixing classic albums and your most recent remixes include records by Yes, Roxy Music, and Tears for Fears. Have you met, or spoken to, some of those band members? Are the likes of Steve Howe, Phil Manzanera, and Roland Orzabal aware that you're an artist in your own right?
The truth is it varies from project to project. Some artists are very involved and there are some projects where their involvement is more a question of listening to my mixes and suggesting a few tweaks. To be honest, most of them are like that. I don't really like to remix projects with is no interaction with the artist at all.
In the case of Roxy music, which was Phil Manzanera, in the case of Tears for Fears it was Roland Orzabal, in the case of Yes it was Steve Howe. They all basically let me get on with it. I sent my mixes to them and then they might come back with a comment or two or no comments and say, "It sounds great." Roland was quite particular, which I really appreciated. There would be a bit of to and fro, and then we would get to the final draft.
Are they aware of me as a solo artist? I guess they must be. Phil certainly is, because his wife runs the PR company that we hired in the U.K. to do my publicity this time around. It's always flattering to me to find out that these guys do know who I am. Actually, I assumed that Roland and Curt Smith had no idea who I was. But it transpired that they knew exactly who I was and they were familiar with my work and my other remix work. I was very pleased to hear that. Steve Howe is the one who really cares about the legacy of Yes. What happened is with Steve that he came to my studio for the very first remix I did. He came to listen to it. I think he realized that I could be trusted. I haven't had a lot of interaction with him since. He hasn't come back to the studio. He's listened to the mixes and said, "Yeah, sounds fine."
I think that's the point, you know. Once someone like that trusts you, they know that you are going to honor the legacy and not piss all over it and change things and "improve things." Obviously that's not what I'm about at all. I'm very faithful to the spirit of the original and the mix of the original. I think once he understood that, he let me get on with it.
Who was on your wish list of albums and artists would still like to remix?
It's still the same as always been at the top of the list from day one, Stephen. You know who that is.
Pink Floyd?
No.
Kate Bush?
Kate Bush. She's been at the very top of my list from the very beginning. She's still the top of the list. Overtures have been made to her manager, so I think it's on her radar. But obviously she has other things she's doing right now—she's mixing the DVD of her live show. But that's still my dream job, Kate's catalog. I just think it would sound incredible in surround, you know?
What did you think of Pink Floyd's The Endless River?
Listen, I don't think it was bad. It was very predictable and it was exactly what people expected. And perhaps it was what some people wanted. These days I find myself more and more going back to the really early days of Floyd, I love Atom Heart Mother and Meddle. I listened to Piper at the Gates of Dawn the other day, it's a fantastic record! Maybe the other stuff is just a bit overly familiar to me these days.
You couldn't come up with a better indication of how rock music has failed to reinvent itself than the amount of hysteria and press that that album got. It was the biggest selling album on Amazon in preorders. And that was for a 20-year-old album of instrumental outtakes! That tells me one thing: rock music has failed to reinvent itself in the 21st century.
I felt the same, last year, about the Kate Bush come back, although I thought her comeback was a lot more successful. Nothing has come along to take the place of those great conceptual artists. When Kate Bush and Pink Floyd come back the amount of interest for that stuff is phenomenal because they are almost filling a void.
What's caught your ear these days? What are you excited about?
The new Kreng album, The Summoner. What a great record! He's a great artist, the way he combines neo-classical music, electronic music, and he's got some doom metal on the new album as well. It's a weird mixture. It's almost like Max Richter meets Sunn O))) or something.
I really like the Gazelle Twin album. It's called Unflesh and it came out last year. She's kind of in the tradition of Björk, a female artist who works with electronics and uses her voice in a very processed way.
What do you make of Gavin Harrison's Big Band jazz versions of Porcupine Tree songs on his upcoming album, Cheating the Polygraph?
It's brilliant! I love it! It's amazing to hear music I've written presented that way. Listen, I don't know what the audience is for it, and I don't think he knows either. But as a piece of art it's phenomenal. What did you think of it?
I only received a download of it last night and so far all I've listened to is the first track, "What Happens Now?" It sounded great, but I have to admit I didn't recognize it.
Me neither! He sat me down and played me some of those tracks. I was almost the whole way through and he said, "Do you recognize it?" I said, "No...." And these, apparently, are songs that I wrote! So, obviously, they are very abstracted from the original source material, which is great. I was really impressed. It's a beautifully executed piece of work.
What do you still want to do in your career? What are your unfulfilled musical ambitions and goals of what you'd like to achieve?
I've heard, my whole career, how cinematic my music is and how wonderful my music would be in films. But for whatever reason, the opportunity has never arisen for me. I would love to be the Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross to a David Fincher. I would love to be the Danny Elfman to a Tim Burton. I would love to be the Hans Zimmer to a Christopher Nolan.
I keep hoping that there's some young director out there who's just about to make an extraordinary film and begin an extraordinary career, who is looking for some sort of collaborator on the sound design and music side. So, doing soundtracks for music is still my number one unfulfilled ambition. I keep my fingers crossed.
[Note: This interview has been edited and condensed.]
Steven Wilson North America tour dates (for more details visit www.stevenwilsonhq.com):
Thursday, May 21 Albany, NY: The Egg
Friday, May 22 Boston, MA: Berklee Performance Center
Saturday, May 23 Harrisburg, PA: The Whitaker
Tuesday, May 26 Washington, DC: 930 Club
Thursday, May 28 Philadelphia, PA: Keswick Theater
Friday, May 29 New York, NY: Best Buy Theater
Saturday, May 30 New York, NY: Best Buy Theater
Thursday, June 04 Chicago, IL: Park West
Friday, June 05 Chicago, IL: Park West
Saturday, June 06 Madison, WI: Barrymore Theater
Tuesday, June 09 Denver, CO: Boulder Theater
Friday, June 12 Anaheim, CA: The Grove
Saturday, June 13 Los Angeles, CA: The Wiltern
Sunday, June 14 San Francisco, CA: The Warfield
Tuesday, June 16 Portland, OR: Aladdin Theater
Wednesday, June 17 Seattle, WA: Neptune Theater
Friday, June 26 Toronto: The Danforth Music Hall Canada
Saturday, June 27 Montréal: Montréal Jazz Festival Canada
Sunday, June 28 Montréal: Montréal Jazz Festival Canada
Monday, June 29 Quebec City: ImpérialA recent study by Vanderbilt University scholars argues that the rise of Fox News, founded in 1996, has had a real-world effect by pulling members of Congress to the right.
As authors Joshua D. Clinton and Ted Enamorado write, "representatives from districts where Fox News entered became slightly more conservative relative to their ideological position on issues taken in the US House before the launch of Fox News in 1995-1996." They go on:
Using the fact that the Fox News Channel was launched in October 1996 and it gradually spread across congressional districts in the United States in a manner unrelated to the ideology of the district and the incumbent representative, we show that there is a modest effect on elected officials' positions — representatives from districts where Fox News begins broadcasting become slightly more conservative relative to similar representatives in otherwise similar districts where Fox News is not present. Given the distinctive ideological content of Fox News, the effect is predictably largest among the more liberal members. However, we find no evidence that Fox News affected which representatives were re-elected or replaced.
The authors looked at whether or not an elected representative changed their positions after Fox News came to their district between 1996 and 2000, and whether districts that got Fox News voted in more conservative members of Congress in elections during that period.
Correction: This article originally stated that the paper was written by Yale scholars -- they are from Vanderbilt.Senator Rubio is scheduled to announce his presidential bid April 13th, making him the third Senator to join the Republican primary fray.
The second? Sen. Rand Paul.
Waiting until the day after the NCAA basketball championship, Sen. Paul will formally announce his presidential run April 7 at a rally that morning.
Paul will announce at the Galt House Hotel in Louisville in what is being described as an historic event by event organizers.
According to Kentucky.com:
The event will prominently feature Kentucky in an effort to capture the historic nature of the announcement for the state. That also dovetails with the desire of Paul’s budding campaign team to build a sense of state pride around his candidacy, building a foundation for the senator’s presidential campaign and keeping his approval numbers aloft as he tries to run for re-election to his Senate seat simultaneously in 2016. Following the announcement, Paul will leave Louisville to embark on a nearly week-long trip to the early-voting states of Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada, with fundraising stops and grassroots rallies in a handful of other states along the way. Paul has traveled extensively to the early states already, including a return trip to New Hampshire this weekend. As the Times and others have noted, Paul’s early-April announcement coincides with the next U.S. Senate recess and allows the senator to enter the race at the start of a fundraising cycle, giving him a full quarter of raising money before he files his first campaign finance report.
Follow Kemberlee Kaye on Twitter#4196956 - 11:26 PM AvioDev Joined:
Posts: 61 TangoVPJT
Junior Member TangoVPJT
Junior Member
Joined:
Posts: 61
As some reading this may be aware, ED suddenly and unexpectedly removed me as a DCS developer. That however has nothing to do with what I'm about to talk about next...
At the beginning of September, AvioDev team lead Juan Oscar wrote an e-mail to all team members that by the end of September 2015 the EB and CC versions of the C-101 were to be finished (yes, you read correctly - finished, totally, including final versions of systems code and flight model, as well as all documentation, missions, and training missions).
I told them multiple times and clearly, that it would take a lot more than 4 weeks to finish everything (I estimated 9 to 12 months of work to maintain the current standard and complete everything). They were having none of that, and duly fired me from the team.
Today, I read this:
https://www.facebook.com/Aviodev/photos/...&permPage=1
A quick summary of events:
* July 2015 - I stop working temporarily whilst AvioDev get things together to pay me royalties owed for Q1 and Q2 (Jan-Mar and Apr-Jun).
* August 2015 - I get paid, and resume working as before
* Sept 2015 - Message sent that they want everything completed by September 30th 2015 (of course, this is impossible)
* Oct 2015 - I write to ask about payment of Q3 royalties (Jul-Sep)
* Oct 2015 - I get fired from AvioDev
As of this writing, the C-101 is still on sale with my code/work contained within the product. Q3 royalties have still NOT been paid to me.
As you can see from their own FB post (link above) they state:
Quote: We keep working on next fronts, which is a lot of hard work:
- C-101CC Systems.
- AFM integration.
- Multicrew for C-101EB
which is all the things I would be working on, and told them back in September it would be impossible to complete by the end of September 2015.
At the beginning of September 2015 when the e-mail was sent, it was impossible to do the multi-crew as ED had still yet to release V1.5 and the SDK that made this possible.
Here we are, November 20th/21st, 2015, and they are posting about "a lot of hard work", whilst profiting from my work to date, and failing to pay me royalties owed.
I can think of several things to call them, but I'll refrain.
I'm writing this post so that the community is aware that if they buy the C-101 from AvioDev, that AvioDev are knowingly failing to pay royalties, and ripping off one of the developers that made them what they are today.
I also find it extremely ironic that they themselves are unable to complete everything to their own schedule! No doubt they will blame me for that.
For the record, I have given them adequate time to resolve this peacefully, but they decided to put up a wall of silence and ignore the situation.
Best regards,
Tango. Aahhhh... what an eventful couple of months I have had!As some reading this may be aware, ED suddenly and unexpectedly removed me as a DCS developer. That however has nothing to do with what I'm about to talk about next...At the beginning of September, AvioDev team lead Juan Oscar wrote an e-mail to all team members that by the end of September 2015 the EB and CC versions of the C-101 were to be finished (yes, you read correctly - finished, totally, including final versions of systems code and flight model, as well as all documentation, missions, and training missions).I told them multiple times and clearly, that it would take a lot more than 4 weeks to finish everything (I estimated 9 to 12 months of work to maintain the current standard and complete everything). They were having none of that, and duly fired me from the team.Today, I read this:A quick summary of events:* July 2015 - I stop working temporarily whilst AvioDev get things together to pay me royalties owed for Q1 and Q2 (Jan-Mar and Apr-Jun).* August 2015 - I get paid, and resume working as before* Sept 2015 - Message sent that they want everything completed by September 30th 2015 (of course, this is impossible)* Oct 2015 - I write to ask about payment of Q3 royalties (Jul-Sep)* Oct 2015 - I get fired from AvioDevAs of this writing, the C-101 is still on sale with my code/work contained within the product. Q3 royalties have still NOT been paid to me.As you can see from their own FB post (link above) they state:which is all the things I would be working on, and told them back in September it would be impossible to complete by the end of September 2015.At the beginning of September 2015 when the e-mail was sent, it was impossible to do the multi-crew as ED had still yet to release V1.5 and the SDK that made this possible.Here we are, November 20th/21st, 2015, and they are posting about "a lot of hard work",I can think of several things to call them, but I'll refrain.I'm writing this post so that the community is aware that if they buy the C-101 from AvioDev, that, and ripping off one of the developers that made them what they are today.I also find it extremely ironic that they themselves are unable to complete everything to their own schedule! No doubt they will blame me for that.For the record, I have given them adequate time to resolve this peacefully, but they decided to put up a wall of silence and ignore the situation.Best regards,Tango.Recently, an article in the Columbia Journalism Review about “I F*cking Love Science” (IFLS) founder Elise Andrew (@Elise_Andrew) stirred up some controversies (see postscript). In the article by Alexis Sobel Fitts (@fittsofalexis), Andrew was praised for being one of “journalism’s self-made digital-era brands.”
If she isn’t already, Andrew is poised to be a new type of media superstar.
I will admit that I am not a fan of IFLS. I started out as one though – I enjoyed the quick wits by Elise Andrew and by the page’s followers, the interesting bite-size science, and some incredible photos as well as funny comics portraying the lives of scientists. I was also very impressed by how fast the number of followers increased. Despite some criticism about people loving pretty pictures and not actually science, I do think that science could start out from an inspiration – a photo, a quote, a story. And, for once, science get to ride to social media wave to reach a larger crowd.
The love faded very quickly though. More than once when I thought about sharing the images, I noticed that some of the images don’t have their sources listed. As a blogger, this is not the standard that I would have allowed on my own blog. I thought that perhaps I was just being too cautious myself, but later on this was rightly pointed out by a few fellow science artists; Alex Wild in particular wrote on his blog, “Facebook’s “I F*cking Love Science” does not f*cking love artists.” The attention caught on, some images were then credited (although this is far from the end of the story – see here and here).
With the strong number of followers, IFLS started a website; writers were recruited, and they began curating articles for the site and for sharing on the Facebook page. Although, occasionally, the titles of some articles would hit a (bad) nerve for me, like:
Genetic Secrets Of Longevity Discovered
Radioactive Boar Roam The Forests Of Germany (if you look at the url, the original title for the article was probably “Wild Boar Roaming Forests Germany Are Too Radioactive To Eat)
Apparently I am not alone on this – see Sensationalist Science at IFLScience
But, what frustrates me more about IFLS is probably the following – its handling of the vaccination topic.
(Full disclaimer: I get my flu vaccine every year, I was vaccinated per schedule thanks to my parents, and when I travel to a foreign country I make sure to get the appropriate vaccines. If I have kids in the future, they WILL be vaccinated. So you know my stance. And this is what I think of Jenny McCarthy)
There is no denial that vaccination is a tricky topic – one of those that can backfire very easily if thoughts are not put into its communication. In 2012, a study by Cornelia Betsch and Katharina Sachse showed that telling parents “there is no risk” instead of “there are some risks” actually works against parents’ intent to vaccinate their children. Another study published earlier this year (original scientific article here is paywalled, but you can find the pre-print here) by political scientist Brendan Nyhan of Dartmouth College with colleagues showed that the common tactics used by US CDC (and also in many discussions about the importance of vaccination) – including providing information about the lack of evidence connecting MMR and autism, explaining the risks involved in not vaccinating one’s children, showing an image of a very sick child, or supplying a dramatic narrative – actually are rather useless in convincing parents to vaccinate their children. What’s more, some of these interventions backfired.
Likewise, while Disease images did not have a significant effect on MMR side effects, it did increase beliefs that vaccines cause autism (AOR=1.47, 95% CI: 1.02 to 2.13), though the effect was not distinct from the other risk interventions (F(2, 1734) = 0.96, n.s.).
–
In addition, our results demonstrate the importance of measuring beliefs and behavioral intent when assessing health interventions. Corrective information about the disproven vaccine-autism link significantly reduced misperceptions, but also reduced intention to vaccinate among parents with the least favorable vaccine attitudes. If we had not measured intent, we might have missed a potentially dangerous backfire effect.
(By the way, this article in Journalist’s Resources covers the study very well, with additional readings as to why this is happening)
Most news coverage painted a rather gloomy and negative picture (here, here, and here), although I would really like to think that it simply means we need to find other ways to communicate the issue – such as the one suggested by Alyssa Rosenberg at Washington Post, “How can we convince parents to vaccinate? Acknowledge their fears” (which is supported by this small qualitative study). Or maybe we should enforce the message with positive imagery as suggested by Glendon Mellow (@FlyingTrilobite). And, there are some preliminary results suggesting that a different way of framing the issue might actually be helpful. Anyways, there are many interesting questions here, and I hope to see a major study in the future.
Now, back to IFLS.
Everytime it comes to the topic of vaccination, it comes out as a sarcastic talk down to the so-called anti-vaxxers (btw a term that I don’t like – you can ask me why in the comments). While I agree that it is frustrating to have heard from some of those who are against vaccinating their children, in the end some are actually parents who are concerned about their children’s health – and genuine concerns are not something I feel we should make fun of.
Images of sick kids
Articles with sarcastic titles, such as this one (by the way, the same CDC press release mentioned in this article was covered in May already by IFLS except its title did not have “Thanks to Anti-Vaxxers”).
And posting articles telling parents that they are lied to (back to what we talked about regarding “corrective information…”)
My point is, if doing all these will make those who decide not to vaccinate their children change their minds, then fine. But this is obviously not working – as Elise herself (or the poster) commented on the Facebook page,
Every time I post about vaccines, I receive hundreds of comments and emails accusing me of being paid by pharmaceutical companies.
Worse yet, based on the available research, it might be turning parents away from vaccinating their children.
I will admit that IFLS is not the only site/person communicating the issues around vaccination in such a negative, condemning way. But, its ability to reach a large crowd is something that is more |
good journalism are felt by those who didn't hold the Bush administration to a higher standard.Earlier this week Benja Serra Bosch, a highly educated 25-year-old Spanish man, became an unfortunate embodiment of Spain's youth unemployment crisis after a post he wrote on Facebook about cleaning toilets in London went viral.
Bosch is far from the only Spaniard forced to emigrate to find work (the unemployment rate for those under 25 in the country sits at a record high of 56%), and, worse still, the problem is hardly limited to Spain.
This map from Reuters shows the current levels for the crisis in Europe:
Reuters
Spain is beaten, perhaps unsurprisingly, by Greece, but Croatia isn't far behind. Italy, Portugal and Cyprus also struggle. On the other side of the scale, Germany, Austria and the Netherlands have youth unemployment rates that are just a fraction of Spain's.Facebook makes value judgements about what can appear in News Feed and what’s censored, but insists its a tech company not a media editor.
At TechCrunch Disrupt SF, writer Josh Constine sat down with Adam Mosseri, a VP at Facebook and head of News Feed, to hear more about how policies control what you see.
The talk started with Constine asking Mosseri much content people consume daily on their News Feed. Mosseri shared a new statistic, which is that the average Facebook users reads a little over 200 stories a day on their feed, which is about 10 percent of the 2,000 possible stories Facebook has to show them each day.
The average user consumes this News Feed content over 45 minutes a day. This number is still growing, which Mosseri says the company interprets as a signal that they are making News Feed better every day.
The conversation then moved to what kind of content is shared on Facebook most, original sharing (like photos of your friends) or a publisher sharing a story (like CNN). Mosseri noted that both types of sharing were still growing, but publisher sharing is growing at a much faster rate – which could explain why the average users may feel like their News Feed is dominated by content from big new publications.
But Mosseri also said that the company definitely understands that friends and family come first and seeing content from loved ones is why many people come to Facebook in the first place. So they are going to ensure there is a good mix, and content from your friends remains on your feed.
[gallery ids="1387138,1387135,1387131"]
Constine then asked about internet addiction amongst users and if it is something Facebook is concerned about. Mosseri replied that while they don’t track addiction they track a user’s sentiment, and try to understand if people think their News Feed experience is time well spent. Essentially they aren’t worried about someone using Facebook too much (and getting addicted) as long as the person is having a meaningful experience.
When asked about Facebook firing its team of description-writing curators, and the impact on its Trending Topics product, Mosseri said “I think it’s better”. But he conceded that the product needs to improve its ability to block fake news, and says tech that Facebook built to squash hoaxes in the News Feed is being rolled out to Trending Topics now.
The talk ended by the two discussing the Philando Castile shooting video which Facebook had at first temporarily removed from the site, then replaced it saying a “technical glitch” was to blame for its short removal. Mosseri clarified that this glitch was Facebook’s algorithms miscategorizing the content and accidentally flagging it as something else, not a technical glitch like a server going down. ”
“We have a lot of systems in place that try and automatically detect content that violates our standards. And we actually had a, sort of a miscategorization, essentially, which is really a bug. And it really, really unfortunate…about such an important story at such an important moment. I’m sure whatever the system was in place didn’t perform as was intended, and we shouldn’t have taken it down, we didn’t mean to.”
This brings up the question what place does Facebook have to censor content? While the company insists it’s not a media company, it effectively fills the shoes of an editor saying “yes or no” to each specific piece of content. If Facebook thinks something is important enough to see, even if it violates standard News Feed guidelines, they will still allow it – placing them in a position that is pretty damn close to being a media company.Reccently fired White House Communications Director Anthony Scaramucci was tricked multiple times into responding to fraudulent emails while working for Trump. Mark Wilson/Getty Images
You may remember that we recently went through a national election that was, in large part, about email security. Well, about that: News broke Monday night that numerous members of the Trump administration had exchanged emails with a prankster pretending to be White House staff.
The whole situation is as troubling as it is ridiculous. The prankster—who also duped the CEOs of Goldman Sachs and Citigroup in June and goes by @SINON_REBORN on Twitter—even tricked the White House homeland security adviser, Thomas Bossert, into assuming he was writing to Jared Kushner. Bossert, who was a fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Cyber Statecraft Initiative before joining the White House, is supposed to be an expert on cyber security.
The absurdity of the exchanges, which were first published on CNN, illustrates just how unprofessional and at times hostile the White House staff can be—but perhaps more importantly, it also points to a weak culture of digital security that could pose a serious threat to national security.
After all, if senior officials—including, again, a cybersecurity expert—don’t have enough basic digital security training to spot fake or malicious emails, there’s no telling what else people in the White House have clicked on. The whole network and computer system used by Trump’s administration may well be infested with malware. That’s because one of the most common ways people are attacked online is by opening emails that look like they come from a trusted source. If the unlucky target clicks on a link or an attachment in the email, it can trigger the installation of spyware. This is how an attack over Gmail spread in May, when more than 1 million people were tricked into downloading malware that looked like a link to a Google Document.
Hackers may also court people to responding to their fake email with sensitive information, like passwords, bank numbers, or in the case of the White House, national intelligence.
What’s alarming is how forthcoming Trump’s White House staff was with interpersonal details about other staff in the administration. For instance, the prankster tricked Anthony Scaramucci, the then-White House communications director, into thinking he was emailing with former White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus, who had been fired the day before the fake email was sent.
That exchange is worth reading in full:
The fake Prebius wrote: “I had promised myself I would leave my hands mud free, but after reading your tweet today which stated how; ‘soon we will learn who in the media who has class, and who hasn’t’, has pushed me to this. That tweet was breathtakingly hypocritical, even for you. At no stage have you acted in a way that’s even remotely classy, yet you believe that’s the standard by which everyone should behave towards you? General Kelly will do a fine job. I’ll even admit he will do a better job than me. But the way in which that transition has come about has been diabolical. And hurtful. I don’t expect a reply.”
To which Scaramucci replied: “You know what you did. We all do. Even today. But rest assured we were prepared. A Man would apologize.”
Fake Prebius: “I can’t believe you are questioning my ethics! The so called ‘Mooch’, who can’t even manage his first week in the White House without leaving upset in his wake. I have nothing to apologize for.”
Real Scaramucci: “Read Shakespeare. Particularly Othello. You are right there. My family is fine by the way and will thrive. I know what you did. No more replies from me.”
Other fake emails sent by the prankster include correspondence between the real Scaramucci and an email pretending to be from the Ambassador to Russia-designate Jon Huntsman Jr., as well as exchanges between the real Huntsman and emails sent by the prankster pretending to be Eric Trump. But the real Eric Trump, for his part, wasn’t so easily duped. CNN reported that he quickly caught on to the fraud and replied to tell the prankster his email had been forwarded to law enforcement.
This isn’t a new problem. Even the since-fired director of the FBI, James Comey, responded to a fake email sent by Gizmodo in April, as did Newt Gingrich, who is an informal adviser to the president.
Since becoming President, Trump has said that he aims to crack down on leakers. But considering how the email trickster, who told CNN he was only trying to be “humorous,” was able spark conversation with individuals at the highest level of the U.S. government with only a few fake emails, the White House’s shoddy cybersecurity protocols may be causing much of its own communications to leak out like a sieve.The pursuit of Goeben and Breslau was a naval action that occurred in the Mediterranean Sea at the outbreak of the First World War when elements of the British Mediterranean Fleet attempted to intercept the German Mittelmeerdivision consisting of the battlecruiser SMS Goeben and the light cruiser SMS Breslau. The German ships evaded the British fleet and passed through the Dardanelles to reach Constantinople, where they were eventually handed over to the Ottoman Empire. Renamed Yavuz Sultan Selim and Midili, the former Goeben and Breslau were ordered by their German commander to attack Russian positions, in doing so bringing the Ottoman Empire into the war on the side of the Central Powers.
Though a bloodless "battle," the failure of the British pursuit had enormous political and military ramifications. In the short term it effectively ended the careers of the two British Admirals who had been in charge of the pursuit. Writing several years later, Winston Churchill—who had been First Lord of the Admiralty—expressed the opinion that by forcing Turkey into the war the Goeben had brought "more slaughter, more misery, and more ruin than has ever before been borne within the compass of a ship."[2]
Prelude [ edit ]
Dispatched in 1912, the Mittelmeerdivision of the Kaiserliche Marine (Imperial Navy), comprising only the Goeben and Breslau, under the command of Konteradmiral Wilhelm Souchon. In the event of war, the squadron′s role was to intercept French transports bringing colonial troops from Algeria to France.
When war broke out between Austria-Hungary and Serbia on 28 July 1914, Souchon was at Pola in the Adriatic where Goeben was undergoing repairs to her boilers. Not wishing to be trapped in the Adriatic, Souchon rushed to finish as much work as possible, but then took his ships out into the Mediterranean before all repairs were completed. He reached Brindisi on 1 August, but Italian port authorities made excuses to avoid coaling the ship. This was because Italy, despite being a co-signatory to the Triple Alliance, had decided to remain neutral. Goeben was joined by Breslau at Taranto and the small squadron sailed for Messina where Souchon was able to obtain 2,000 short tons (1,800 t) of coal from German merchant ships.
Routes taken by the combatants.
Meanwhile, on 30 July Winston Churchill, then the First Lord of the Admiralty, had instructed the commander of the British Mediterranean Fleet, Admiral Sir Archibald Berkeley Milne, to cover the French transports taking the XIX Corps from North Africa across the Mediterranean to France. The Mediterranean British Fleet—based at Malta—comprised three fast, modern battlecruisers (HMS Inflexible, Indefatigable, and Indomitable), as well as four armoured cruisers, four light cruisers and a flotilla of 14 destroyers.
Milne′s instructions were "to aid the French in the transportation of their African Army by covering, and if possible, bringing to action individual fast German ships, particularly Goeben, who may interfere in that action. You will be notified by telegraph when you may consult with the French Admiral. Do not at this stage be brought to action against superior forces, except in combination with the French, as part of a general battle. The speed of your squadrons is sufficient to enable you to choose your moment. We shall hope to reinforce the Mediterranean, and you must husband your forces at the outset."[3] Churchill′s orders did not explicitly state what he meant by "superior forces." He later claimed that he was referring to "the Austrian Fleet against whose battleships it was not desirable that our three battle-cruisers should be engaged without battleship support."[4]
Milne assembled his force at Malta on 1 August. On 2 August, he received instructions to shadow Goeben with two battlecruisers while maintaining a watch on the Adriatic, ready for a sortie by the Austrians. Indomitable, Indefatigable, five cruisers and eight destroyers commanded by Rear Admiral Ernest Troubridge were sent to cover the Adriatic. Goeben had already departed but was sighted that same day at Taranto by the British Consul, who informed London. Fearing the German ships might be trying to escape to the Atlantic, the Admiralty ordered that Indomitable and Indefatigable be sent west towards Gibraltar.[5] Milne′s other task of protecting French ships was complicated by the lack of any direct communications with the French navy, which had meanwhile postponed the sailing of the troop ships. The light cruiser HMS Chatham was sent to search the Straits of Messina for Goeben. However, by this time, on the morning of 3 August, Souchon had departed from Messina, heading west.
Without specific orders, Souchon had decided to position his ships off the coast of Africa, ready to engage when hostilities commenced in order to attack French transport ships, which were headed toward Toulon. He planned to bombard the embarkation ports of Bône and Philippeville in French Algeria. Goeben was heading for Philippeville, while Breslau was detached to deal with Bône. At 18:00 on 3 August, while still sailing west, he received word that Germany had declared war on France. Then, early on 4 August, Souchon received orders from Admiral Alfred von Tirpitz reading: "Alliance with government of CUP concluded 3 August. Proceed at once to Constantinople." So close to his targets, Souchon ignored the order and pushed on, flying the Russian flag as he approached, in order to evade detection he carried out a shore bombardment at dawn before breaking off and heading back to Messina for more coal.[6]
Under a pre-war agreement with Britain, France was able to concentrate her entire fleet in the Mediterranean, leaving the Royal Navy to ensure the security of France′s Atlantic coast. Three squadrons of the French fleet were covering the transports. However, assuming that Goeben would continue west to Gibraltar, the French commander, Admiral de Lapeyrère, sent the "Groupe A" of his fleet to the west in order to make contact, but Souchon was heading east and so able to slip away.
At 09:30 on 4 August Souchon made contact with the two British battlecruisers, Indomitable and Indefatigable, which passed the German ships in the opposite direction. Neither force engaged as, unlike France, Britain had not yet declared war with Germany (the declaration would not be made until later that day, following the start of the German invasion of neutral Belgium). The British started shadowing Goeben and Breslau but were quickly outpaced by the Germans. Milne reported the contact and position, but neglected to inform the Admiralty that the German ships were heading east. Churchill therefore still expecting them to threaten the French transports authorised Milne to engage the German ships if they attacked. However, a meeting of the British Cabinet decided that hostilities could not start before a declaration of war, and at 14:00 Churchill was obliged to cancel his attack order.[7]
Pursuit [ edit ]
The rated speed of Goeben was 27 knots (50 km/h; 31 mph), but her damaged boilers meant she could only manage 24 knots (44 km/h; 28 mph), and this was only achieved by working men and machinery to the limit; four stokers were killed by scalding steam. Fortunately for Souchon, both British battlecruisers were also suffering from problems with their boilers and were unable to keep Goeben′s pace. The light cruiser HMS Dublin maintained contact, while Indomitable and Indefatigable fell behind. In fog and fading light, Dublin lost contact off Cape San Vito on the north coast of Sicily at 19:37. Goeben and Breslau returned to Messina the following morning, by which time Britain and Germany were at war.
The Admiralty ordered Milne to respect Italian neutrality and stay outside a 6-nautical-mile (11 km; 6.9 mi) limit from the Italian coast—which precluded entrance into the passage of the Straits of Messina. Consequently, Milne posted guards on the exits from the Straits. Still expecting Souchon to head for the transports and the Atlantic, he placed two battlecruisers—Inflexible and Indefatigable—to cover the northern exit (which gave access to the western Mediterranean), while the southern exit of the Straits was covered by a single light cruiser, HMS Gloucester. Milne sent Indomitable west to coal at Bizerte, instead of south to Malta.[8]
For Souchon, Messina was no haven. The Italian authorities insisted that he depart within 24 hours and delayed supplying coal. Provisioning his ships required ripping up the decks of German merchant steamers in harbour and manually shovelling their coal into his bunkers. By the evening of 6 August, despite the help of 400 volunteers from the merchantmen, he had only taken on 1,500 short tons (1,400 t) which was insufficient to reach Constantinople. Further messages from Tirpitz made his predicament even more dire. He was informed that Austria would provide no naval aid in the Mediterranean and that the Ottoman Empire was still neutral and therefore he should no longer make for Constantinople. Faced with the alternative of seeking refuge at Pola, and probably remaining trapped for the rest of the war, Souchon chose to head for Constantinople anyway, his purpose being "to force the Ottoman Empire, even against their will, to spread the war to the Black Sea against their ancient enemy, Russia."[8]
Milne was instructed on 5 August to continue watching the Adriatic for signs of the Austrian fleet and to prevent the German ships joining them. He chose to keep his battlecruisers in the west, dispatching Dublin to join Troubridge′s cruiser squadron in the Adriatic, which he believed would be able to intercept Goeben and Breslau. Troubridge was instructed "not to get seriously engaged with superior forces," once again intended as a warning against engaging the Austrian fleet. When Goeben and Breslau emerged into the eastern Mediterranean on 6 August, they were met by Gloucester, which, being outgunned, began to shadow the German ships.[9]
Troubridge′s squadron consisted of the armoured cruisers HMS Defence, Black Prince, Warrior, Duke of Edinburgh and eight destroyers armed with torpedoes. The cruisers had 9.2 in (230 mm) guns versus the 11 in (280 mm) guns of Goeben and had armour a maximum of 6 in (15 cm) thick compared to the battlecruiser′s 11 in (28 cm) armour belt. This meant that Troubridge′s squadron was not only outranged and vulnerable to Goeben′s powerful guns, but it was unlikely that his cruiser′s guns could seriously damage the German ship at all, even at short range.[10] In addition, the British ships were several knots slower than Goeben, despite her damaged boilers,[11] meaning that she could dictate the range of the battle if she spotted the British squadron in advance. Consequently, Troubridge considered his only chance was to locate and engage Goeben in favourable light, at dawn, with Goeben east of his ships, and ideally launch a torpedo attack with his destroyers; however, at least five of the destroyers did not have enough coal to keep up with the cruisers steaming at full speed. By 04:00 on 7 August, Troubridge realised he would not be able to intercept the German ships before daylight and after some deliberation he signalled Milne with his intentions to break off the chase, mindful of Churchill′s ambiguous order to avoid engaging a "superior force." No reply was received until 10:00, by which time he had withdrawn to Zante to refuel.[12]
Escape [ edit ]
Admiral Milne
Milne ordered Gloucester to disengage, still expecting Souchon to turn west, but it was apparent to Gloucester′s captain that Goeben was fleeing. Breslau attempted to harass Gloucester into breaking off—Souchon had a collier waiting off the coast of Greece and needed to shake his pursuer before he could rendezvous. Gloucester finally engaged Breslau, hoping this would compel Goeben to drop back and protect the light cruiser. According to Souchon, Breslau was hit, but no damage was done. The action then broke off without further hits being scored. Finally, Milne ordered Gloucester to cease pursuit at Cape Matapan.
Shortly after midnight on 8 August Milne took his three battlecruisers and the light cruiser HMS Weymouth east. At 14:00 he received an incorrect signal from the Admiralty stating that Britain was at war with Austria; war would not be declared until 12 August and the order was countermanded four hours later, but Milne chose to guard the Adriatic rather than seek Goeben. Finally, on 9 August, Milne was given clear orders to "chase Goeben which had passed Cape Matapan on the 7th steering north-east." Milne still did not believe that Souchon was heading for the Dardanelles, and so he resolved to guard the exit from the Aegean, unaware that Goeben did not intend to come out.
Souchon had replenished his coal off the Aegean island of Donoussa on 9 August, and the German warships resumed their voyage to Constantinople. At 17:00 on 10 August, he reached the Dardanelles and awaited permission to pass through. Germany had for some time been courting the Committee of Union and Progress of the imperial government, and it now used its influence to pressure the Turkish Minister of War, Enver Pasha, into granting the ship′s passage, an act that would outrage Russia, which relied on the Dardanelles as its main all-season shipping route. In addition, the Germans managed to persuade Enver to order any pursuing British ships to be fired on. By the time Souchon received permission to enter the straits, his lookouts could see smoke on the horizon from approaching British ships.
Turkey was still a neutral country bound by treaty to prevent German ships from passing the straits. To get around this difficulty it was agreed that the ships should become part of the Turkish navy. On 16 August, having reached Constantinople, Goeben and Breslau were transferred to the Turkish Navy in a small ceremony, becoming respectively Yavuz Sultan Selim and Midilli, though they retained their German crews with Souchon still in command. The initial reaction in Britain was one of satisfaction, that a threat had been removed from the Mediterranean. On 23 September, Souchon was appointed commander-in-chief of the Ottoman Navy.[13]
Consequences [ edit ]
In August, Germany—still expecting a swift victory—was content for the Ottoman Empire to remain neutral. The mere presence of a powerful warship like Goeben in the Sea of Marmara would be enough to occupy a British naval squadron guarding the Dardanelles. However, following German reverses at the First Battle of the Marne in September, and with Russian successes against Austria-Hungary, Germany began to regard the Ottoman Empire as a useful ally. Tensions began to escalate when the Ottoman Empire closed the Dardanelles to all shipping on 27 September, blocking Russia's exit from the Black Sea—the Black Sea route accounted for over 90 percent of Russia's import and export traffic.
Germany's gift of the two modern warships had an enormous positive impact on the Turkish population. At the outbreak of the war, Churchill had caused outrage when he "requisitioned" two almost completed Turkish battleships in British shipyards, Sultan Osman I and Reshadieh, which had been financed by public subscription at a cost of £6,000,000. Turkey was offered compensation of £1,000 per day for so long as the war might last, provided she remained neutral. (These ships were commissioned into the Royal Navy as HMS Agincourt and HMS Erin respectively.) The Turks had been neutral, though the navy had been pro-British (having purchased 40 warships from British shipyards) while the army was in favour of Germany, so the two incidents helped resolve the deadlock and the Ottoman Empire would join the Central Powers.[14]
Ottoman engagement [ edit ]
Continued diplomacy from France and Russia attempted to keep the Ottoman Empire out of the war, but Germany was agitating for a commitment. In the aftermath of Souchon's daring dash to Constantinople, on 15 August 1914 the Ottomans canceled their maritime agreement with Britain and the Royal Navy mission under Admiral Limpus left by 15 September.
Finally, on 29 October, the point of no return was reached when Admiral Souchon took Goeben, Breslau and a squadron of Turkish warships and launched the Black Sea Raid against the Russian ports of Novorossiysk, Feodosia, Odessa, and Sevastopol. The ensuing political crises brought the Ottoman Empire into the war.
Royal Navy [ edit ]
While the consequences of the Royal Navy's failure to intercept Goeben and Breslau had not been immediately apparent, the humiliation of the "defeat" resulted in Admirals de Lapeyrère, Milne and Troubridge being censured. Milne was recalled from the Mediterranean and did not hold another command until retirement at his own request in 1919, his planned assumption of the Nore command having been cancelled in 1916 due to "other exigencies." The Admiralty repeatedly stated that Milne had been exonerated of all blame.[15] For his failure to engage Goeben with his cruisers, Troubridge was court-martialled in November on the charge that "he did forbear to chase His Imperial German Majesty′s ship Goeben, being an enemy then flying." The charge was not proved on the grounds that he was under orders not to engage a "superior force." However, he was never given another sea-going command but did valuable service, co-operating with the Serbs on the Balkan and being given command of a force on the Danube in 1915 against the Austro-Hungarians. He eventually retired as a full Admiral.[16]
Long-term consequences [ edit ]
Although a relatively minor 'action' and perhaps not widely known historical event, the escape of Goeben to Constantinople and its eventual annexation to Turkey ultimately precipitated some of the most dramatic naval chases of the 20th century. It also assisted in helping to shape the eventual splitting up of the Ottoman Empire into the many states we know today.
General Ludendorff stated in his memoirs that he believed the entry of the Turks into the war allowed the outnumbered Central powers to fight on for two years longer than they would have been able on their own, a view shared by historian Ian F.W. Beckett.[17] The war was extended to the Middle East with main fronts of Gallipoli, the Sinai and Palestine, Mesopotamia, and the Caucasus. The course of the war in the Balkans was also influenced by the entry of the Ottoman Empire on the side of the Central Powers. Had the war ended in 1916, some of the bloodiest engagements, such as the Battle of the Somme, would have been avoided. The United States might not have been drawn from its policy of isolation to intervene in a foreign war.
In allying with the Central Powers, Turkey shared their fate in ultimate defeat. This gave the allies the opportunity to carve up the collapsed Ottoman Empire to suit their political whims. Many new nations were created including Syria, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia and Iraq, and the idea of a Jewish state in Israel was considered for the first time.
Also, the closure of Russia's at the time only ice-free trade route through the Dardanelles effectively strangled the Russian economy until a railway was constructed in 1915/16 to what would shortly become the town of Murmansk on the coast of the Barents sea to the far north. Difficulties in exporting grain or importing munitions was a significant problem for the Russian economy as well as for the Russian army. Combined with the German decision to release Vladimir Lenin in 1917, the sealing off of the Black Sea was one of the important contributors to the "revolutionary situation" in Russia, which would explode into the process leading to the October Revolution.
See also [ edit ]
Media related to Pursuit of Goeben and Breslau at Wikimedia Commons
Notes [ edit ]
Bibliography [ edit ]
Coordinates:Councillors came to the decision Tuesday evening, despite a lengthy statement from Altmann’s lawyer, Hermie Abraham, suggesting the probe was biased and lacked natural justice and that the entire investigation be reviewed.
Whitchurch-Stouffville Mayor Justin Altmann will have to apologize, respect staff, and lose a month’s pay, after fellow councillors accepted the penalties put forward in a damning ethics report that found his CSI-style wall constituted “workplace harassment.”
In her 30-page report published Friday, she concluded that Altmann’s extensive CSI-wall was “vexatious” and “disturbing to staff” and amounted to a “serious incident of workplace harassment.”
Details of Altmann’s behaviour were presented to council Tuesday by integrity commissioner Suzanne Craig, who had been investigating the wall since staff filed a complaint in March.
In a memo submitted to council, Altmann defended his decision to create his “ mind-map ” — made up of photos of staff, colleagues and members of the public connected by black lines — and responded to a number of allegations made by staff about his behaviour over the past few years.
The mayor’s salary was about $105,000 in 2015, which also included pay he received for sitting on regional council.
In her report, Craig asked council to consider such penalties as asking Altmann for a formal apology, imploring him to interact respectfully with staff and suspending his pay for 30 days. The maximum penalty under the Municipal Act is to dock an elected official three months’ pay.
On Tuesday, in a packed council room that included security guards and a police presence, some councillors suggested the presentation of the report was “punitive enough.”
“I believe the mayor should apologize for how he made staff feel for putting up the wall, and he should commit to creating a better work environment with staff,” said Ward 5 councillor Iain Lovatt, adding docking Altmann’s pay seems “unnecessarily punitive.”
“I believe the fact that we are here today and have faced national scrutiny for months, and have had to listen to this report is punitive enough.”
But after a lengthy in-camera meeting, councillors decided to accept all of the integrity commissioner’s recommendations.
“We have to show support for our staff,” said Ward 3 councillor Hugo Kroon.
The memo submitted by Altmann’s lawyer tries to explain why the mayor created the wall display in the first place, saying it was his attempt to conduct a “mini-investigation” into anonymous packages he believes were sent out to the public to “discredit, threaten and harass the mayor.”
According to the document, the mayor began to create the wall on Jan. 4 in his private office washroom, and included members of the public and council related to an ongoing lawsuit in the town.
“The wall was simply a mind-mapping exercise to ‘connect the dots’ between breached town policies, the anonymous packages, and matter with (the lawsuit),” the memo says. “It is our submission that by creating the diagram on the wall in his private bathroom, the mayor would have not anticipated, known or believed that various staff members would be entering his private bathroom for the purpose of viewing the wall.”
In the memo, Altmann takes exception to additional complaints made by staff but not investigated by Craig, as they came before the code of conduct was implemented in the town.
“The very inclusion of these supplementary allegations creates a prejudice to the mayor in the minds of the reader of the final report,” said Abraham.
The mayor refuted many of those allegations, including that he told a staffer he was “going to blow up this place.” What he actually meant, the memo said, was that “it was time to expose the corporation” and not blow up the place with a violent meaning.
It was also alleged he told certain staff he was “their king” and they were supposed to defend him. The memo explained that the mayor used an analogy that corporations were like monarchies and lords and armies protect the interest of the king, and that “staff should ensure that council members and the mayor are protected.”
It was also alleged that the mayor replaced furniture in the councillor boardroom with his own dining room furniture and when he was confronted by staff, he told them “you need to learn your place because I am the CEO of the corporation and I am your boss.” His response in the memo was that there was no furniture policy in place and he was given authority and approval to do so. He admitted to yelling at the staff member and later apologized.
The mayor also took issue with a complaint that he allowed a blind therapy dog named Smiley to wear the mayoral chain of office when the dog and its owner were being honoured during the town’s strawberry festival. In response, Altmann explained that Smiley had been recognized internationally and that placing the chain of office on the dog was not a show of disrespect for the mayor’s office. Further, the memo said, there were no rules in place that prohibited the use of the chain of office in this manner.
When questioned about the mayor’s concerns around fairness, Craig says the mayor had “reasonable opportunities to respond” and she went “beyond” her obligation in the code protocol.”A good few people objected to a recent project that colorized old photos of Walt Whitman, Charlie Chaplin, Helen Keller, Mark Twain, and other historical characters. Leave them alone! they grumped. The past, they wanted left in black and white. But this is not so easily done when some photos—whether of august personages like Leo Tolstoy above, or of ordinary anonymous peasants below—were always processed in color. The Tolstoy image dates from 1908, two years before his death, but the process is much older, and successful color photographs, not simply hand-painted colorizations, go back at least to the Lumiere Brothers’ Autochromes from the late 19th century.
The method that gave us Tolstoy in color involved taking three photographs---with a red, a green, and a blue filter---then projecting the resulting prints through filters of the same color. It's a procedure that dates to Scottish scientist James Clerk Maxwell’s 1861 experiments, which put to the test several earlier theories. The photographs you see here are the work of scientist and inventor Sergei Prokudin-Gorsky, who had perfected the projection method to such a degree that---as he wrote in a letter to Tolstoy asking him to pose---he only needed “from 1 to 3 seconds to take the photograph.” Thus it would not be “overly tiresome” for the soon-to-be eighty-year-old novelist.
Tolstoy, of course, was a national institution, and had warranted an earlier attempt at a color portrait by an anonymous amateur to whom Prokudin-Gorsky refers in his letter of request. The first attempt, the inventor implies, was a botched job. Billing himself as a specialist in “photography ‘in natural colors,’” the self-confident entrepreneur assured the writer he could produce “excellent results" with “accurate colors.” “My colored projections,” he wrote, “are known in both Europe and in Russia.” Prokudin-Gorsky was received and given two days to take several color photographs, though whether the others have survived, I do not know. We do know that the portrait appeared in the August, 1908 issue of The Proceedings of the Russian Technical Society as “the first Russian color photoportrait.” The journal offered the image in tribute to Tolstoy’s upcoming 80th birthday celebration, writing:
Our periodical, as a purely technical one, cannot honor this venerable representative of Russian thought and word with special articles. Desiring, however, to take part in the general festivities, the editorial staff […] decided to publish in this, its August issue, the newest portrait of Tolstoy, which is the dernier mot in photographic technology. The portrait was taken on location and in natural colors, achieved through technical methods alone, without any use of the artist’s brush or tool.
Prokudin-Gorsky expressed his gratitude to the novelist by mailing him a photographic periodical containing “many pictures produced in my workshops from my photographs.” Perhaps the other photos we see here were contained in that journal. Prokudin-Gorsky had every reason to be proud of his work, and the Russian Technical Society every reason to endorse it. The pictures are stunning.
Some of the photographs, like the Tolstoy portrait, have a painterly, almost impressionistic quality. Others, like the 1911 village scene with the Nikolaevskii Cathedral in the distance, have almost the depth of field and fine-grained clarity of 35mm film. And some, like that of the already cartoonish structure below, have an almost hallucinatory CGI quality. The method wasn’t perfect—even with such short exposures, subjects had to remain absolutely still. If they moved, the result was an eerie double exposure effect you see in the middle distance of the field workers photographed above. But overall, these photographs simply astonish in their crispness and fidelity.
You can see many more |
subject of America’s new morality before getting to Goldberg’s article and the ideas it raises.
To explain my fascination with America’s tremendous moral shift, I credit a news story I heard and a movie I watched during my long years as a generic Democrat. They made me realize that we are in a time when our popular culture encourages every man and women to be his own god — at least if that man and that woman include in their doctrine the basic premise that men are bad, white men are really bad, and that everyone else lives in a hierarchy of victimhood that determines their moral-status.
It was an NPR report I heard in the 1990s (and that I cannot locate in the NPR archives) that first alerted me that America was well on its way to abandoning traditional moral notions, especially those predicated on the Ten Commandments. As best as I can remember, the report was about an American high school that was trying to deal with an escalation of student-against-student crime, most of which, I think, involved theft. The school instituted special classes during which a counselor would talk with groups of students in an effort to get them to change their habits. The NPR reporter attended one of those classes.
During the class, the counselor had the students imagine a scenario in which they’d left their wallet behind and someone walked off with it. Once the students had that picture firmly in mind, the counselor asked them to discuss their feelings. The students readily did so, describing anger, frustration, sadness, perhaps empathy (if they imagined the thief needing stolen money to buy food), a desire for revenge, etc. After all the student had talked about their feelings, the counselor suggested that, if they stole something, their victim might also experience those same feelings. The implication was that it’s not nice to inflict negative feelings on others.
This being the 1990s, when the journey from garden-variety Democrat to hard-core Progressive was still a work in progress, the reporter was taken aback, something that I doubt would happen today. I remember his wrap-up, during which he noted that the counselor never once mentioned that, as a moral matter, stealing was wrong. Empathy was the name of the game.
The reporter may have been perplexed by this omission, but even then, despite my Democrat identification, I wasn’t. If the students had been so bold as to ask the counselor why stealing is wrong, the counselor would have been at a loss for words. His answer would have boiled down to “because it is.” The reality is that, because religion is banned from schools, the counselor had no higher authority to justify the claim that stealing is wrong. The only thing he could do was point to feelings — which are definitely real for the person experiencing them — and to hope that teenagers, who are collectively the most narcissistic beings on earth, would have a sudden burst of empathy that would override their selfish, and presumably irresistible, urge to make someone else’s possessions their own.
A few years later, in 2000 (when I was still thinking of myself as a liberal Democrat), I watched The Contender, a movie in which Joan Allen played a candidate for Vice President who was the victim of appalling sexual slanders put about by Republican villains so dastardly that they made Snidely Whiplash look staid and restrained. During her darkest hour, Allen goes an empty basketball court where, while shooting basket after basket, she breathlessly recites the doctrinal beliefs of what she calls a church based in “this very chapel of democracy” (i.e., Congress).
Here’s the video, followed by a transcript:
Mr. Chairman, Ladies and Gentleman of the Committee. Remarkably enough, it seems that I have some explaining to do. So, let me be absolutely clear. I stand for a woman’s right to choose. I stand for the elimination of the death penalty. I stand for a strong and growing armed forces because we must stamp out genocide on this planet, and I believe that that is a cause worth dying for. I stand for seeing every gun taken out of every home. Period. I stand for making the selling cigarettes to our youth a federal offense. I stand for term limits and campaign reform. And, Mr. Chairman, I stand for the separation of Church and State, and the reason that I stand for that is the same reason that I believe our forefathers did. It is not there to protect religion from the grasp of government but to protect our government from the grasp of religious fanaticism. Now, I may be an atheist, but that does not mean I do not go to church. I do go to church. The church I go to is the one that emancipated the slaves, that gave women the right to vote, that gave us every freedom that we hold dear. My church is this very Chapel of Democracy that we sit in together, and I do not need God to tell me what are my moral absolutes. I need my heart, my brain, and this church.
(A decade after watching The Contender, and being rather stunned by its navel-gazing in lieu of traditional morality I wrote a post explaining how Allen’s monologue sounds remarkably like something Barack Obama would say. A couple of months after that post, I again had occasion to note that Hollywood movies conflate the Progressive platform with an absolute moral code.)
By 2006, when I’d finally crossed the Rubicon and become a full-blown constitutional conservative, my sense about the politicization of morality, and its alliance with Marxist political doctrine, was well-enough developed to become a post at American Thinker. The catalyst for that article was yet another movie — Maria Full of Grace — from 2004. Maria Full of Grace follows the sordid picaresque adventures of a small-town Latin American girl who comes to America as a drug mule. I disliked the character’s narcissism and amorality, but didn’t really get steamed about it until I somehow wandered across the reviews written when the movie was first released.
What horrified me was that the MSM’s movie critics, all of whom hew left, were raving about Maria’s moral righteousness — and this despite her many traditionally immoral acts. For example, when Maria found she was pregnant, she refused to marry the father of her child. Once having dumped her boyfriend, she became a drug mule and then, when the drug lords were after her, she deliberately placed innocent people (including children) in danger in order to protect herself. As far as the critics were concerned, the fact that Maria lived a dead-end life in Mexico (“Maria is a victim of economic pressures,” said Roger Ebert), her choices were all righteous. She was a victim and, just as blacks cannot be racist (never mind the slurs they direct at other races or creeds), it appears that, in the Marxist economic hierarchy, poor people cannot be immoral.
Given my ongoing thoughts about America’s changing definition of morality, you can imagine how excited I was today when I read Jonah Goldberg’s Empty Integrity, an essay he wrote for The Seven Deadly Virtues: 18 Conservative Writers on Why the Virtuous Life is Funny as Hell. Using pop culture as a springboard, Goldberg examines way in which Americans are being encouraged to abandon traditional morality in favor of feelings. Goldberg describes a pop culture in which interesting people with whom we are made to empathize are viewed as morally superior to boring, unpleasant people, regardless of the fact that the former have utterly abandoned traditional morality (e.g., criminal mastermind Walter White, from Breaking Bad), while the latter are still trying to conform to that same traditional moral behavior (e.g., Walter White’s wife).
With his trademark humor, Goldberg cites to one hugely popular show after another, in which audiences are encouraged to identify with, or at least root for, the villain, rather than the good guy. This is an inversion of pretty much all Western popular culture going back thousands of years. To help constrain human conduct, Western cultures have defined what is “good” (the Judeo-Christian culture uses the Bible to provide this definition) and has then shaped its popular culture to elevate and make this good accessible. Now, though, with Hollywood in thrall to a worldview that denigrates faith, and believes that morality is the same as feelings — provided, of course — that those feelings are being felt by a member of the victim class — there simply is no room in entertainment for the traditionally moral guy to be either interesting or successful.
Or, as Goldberg says:
The truth is, it’s hard to find a children’s cartoon or movie that doesn’t tell kids that they need to look inside themselves for moral guidance. Indeed, there’s a riot of Rousseauian claptrap out there that says children are born with rightly ordered consciences. And why not? As Mr. Rogers told us, “You are the most important person in the whole wide world and you hardly even know you.” Hillary Clinton is even worse. In her book It Takes a Village, she claims that some of the best theologians she’s ever met have been five-year-olds (which might be true when compared with a certain homicidal Ukrainian priest). Such saccharine codswallop overturns millennia of moral teaching. It takes the idea that we must apply reason to nature and our consciences in order to discover what is moral and replaces it with the idea that if it feels right, just do it, baby. Which, by the by, is exactly how Lex Luthor sees the world. Übermenschy passion is now everyone’s lodestar. As Reese Witherspoon says in Legally Blonde, “On our very first day at Harvard, a very wise professor quoted Aristotle: ‘The law is reason free from passion.’ Well, no offense to Aristotle, but in my three years at Harvard I have come to find that passion is a key ingredient to the study and practice of law — and of life.” Well, that solves that. Nietzsche-Witherspoon 1, Aristotle 0.
The above two paragraphs, while amusing and informative on their own, don’t do justice to Goldberg’s carefully (and amusingly) developed thesis about the death of traditional morality in America. I urge you to read the whole thing.
Because the intellectual universe often harmonizes nicely once I get an idea my head, just an hour or so ago, a friend sent me an article showing that Jonah Goldberg and I aren’t the only ones thinking about the way in which morals are becoming de-valued in America, especially because of Marxist thought. Larry Correia, who earned well-deserved internet fame for his Second Amendment defense after the Sandy Hook shooting, has written a sterling post about the peculiar “morality” amongst self-styled Social Justice Warriors (“SJWs”).
Social Justice, as you’ll recall, is a movement predicated upon dressing the tenets of Progressivism up as moral imperatives. Leftist churches that don’t have time for Christ’s teachings, as well as Leftist synagogues that find the Torah old-fashioned, are big on social justice teachings which fill the gap created when House’s of Worship cling to their religious status despite having actually abandoned their religion.
The occasion for Correia’s post was a breaking story from SJW-land about the fact that one of its members, using a variety of alias’s, used the SJW’s crude tactics of insults, threats, intimidation, etc., against his fellow SJWs. Horrors! After absolutely savaging the SJW’s hypocrisy because of the way it accuses mild-mannered conservatives of oppression, intimidation, etc. — and then uses precisely those tactics to destroy the conservative — Correia gets down to the whole privilege hierarchy that the SJWs use to justify their hypocrisy:
If you really want to see just how stupid people can get, read the comments, where SJWs argue about “privilege”, where a bunch of white, liberal suburbanites excuse attacks on people who disagree with them, because they probably possess some nebulous concept of privilege. Like me for example, I grew up with Portuguese Dairy Farmer Privilege, where all that back breaking manual labor, knee deep in cow shit, at 3:00 in the morning, in order to scrape by in near poverty all those years, somehow turned me white and made it so that it was okay for SJWs to lie about me. Privilege sounds awesome. You guys should totally get some of it.
Please read the rest here. It’s that good.
Reading the above, I’m reminded of that old joke that “everybody talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it.” Any person who has even a vestigal sense that traditional morality serves society well because it demands that people behave well towards others (and then enforces that demand by reminding people that running afoul of these rules could cause eternal damnation), is going to be worried about the fact that we’re dangerously deep into “do-it-yourself morality” territory. ” Do-it-yourself morality is sold as a paradise in which people’s innate innocence, empathy, and good sense (something everyone who has ever cared for a toddler knows is a fantasy concept) inevitably lead them to do the right thing, resulting in a pastoral wonderland where the lion lies down with the lamb.
When this particular fantasy fails — which is always a surprise to the useful idiots — the new moralists tell the public that there is, in fact, original sin. Unlike that stodgy Catholic teaching about original sin, however, true original sin doesn’t occur in all people. Instead, it’s only to be found in oppressors. Oppressors are guilty of everything; the oppressed are guilty of nothing. Under this paradigm, morality is what the oppressed do to relieve themselves of the weight of oppression. Interestingly enough (at least to the ever credulous useful idiots), this so-called morality doesn’t work either. Indeed, it has an uncanny knack of leading first to riots (think: Ferguson) and then to rebellion and revolution.
Once rebellion and revolution are on the menu, the likelihood of a freedom-based constitution emerging is close to nil. (If you want an analogy, try to imagine how many monkeys, on how many keyboards, for how many years, would be able to come up with that doctrine. Can’t imagine that? Neither can I. The Founding Fathers were not the norm; they were a complete anomaly, and their like will probably never been seen again.) What inevitably emerges from the chaos is faith in the strongman, whether that strongman is big government or big dictator.
Our Man Obama of the Blessed Pen and Phone is working hard to merge these two bigs, with a Big Man heading a Big Government. “Mess on the border? Don’t worry, with a stroke of the pen, I’ll erase the whole problem of illegal aliens by redefining them as legal.” “Concerns about two-tier pricing for broadband internet access? No fear. With the stroke of a pen, I’ll bring the internet in the government fold, along with one of my solid-gold, time-tested promises that this act is to free the internet from businesses, rather than to subordinate it to government.”
When it comes to America’s fall from a traditional morality that is premised on externally imposed values of justice, respect, and grace, and enforced by the hand of God, it’s frightfully easy to talk about the problem, and to describe its various manifestations in great detail,. What to do about the problem, though, remains the big question. As Jonah Goldberg’s article makes clear, even those of us who decry this bizarre societal fall from grace are avid consumers of the same Hollywood and Madison Avenue fare that drives the fall.
So, having written this nice, very long post, I have a question for you: What steps can we, as ordinary individuals take, to try to resurrect the notion of a morality that transcends human emotions and politics, and that must be enforced if a society is to survive and thrive?
Share this: Email
Facebook
TwitterThe Portland Pirates and Adirondack Phantoms are two teams that have been struggling stringing together wins this year in the AHL. The Pirates are standing at 12th in the Eastern Conference, whereas the Adirondack Phantoms are standing at 13th in the Conference, therefore an emotional game was expected.
That being said, the chances of witnessing a line brawl and a goalie fight are much more slim today, so seeing it happen was a surprise to many.
Throughout the game there were many altercations, but as Portland Pirates radio broadcaster Jeff Manix said, all hell broke loose this time.
Around the.20 second mark in the final period of the game, a huge scrum would evolve. Cal Heeter, goaltender for the Phantoms would challenge Pirates’ goaltender Louis Domingue to a fight. It wasn’t until Tyler McGinn and Connor Murphy dropped the gloves when Domingue attacked McGinn, causing Heeter to leave the bench and drop the gloves with Domingue.
Pirates’ head coach Ray Edwards, as well as Phantoms’ head coach Terry Murray were both infuriated, as they were both yelling at each other from across the ice.
There was just a line brawl at this Pirates vs. Phantoms game. (Even a goalie fight) pic.twitter.com/ce0KmS1ZQW — Nick Godin (@FlyingOrr) February 16, 2014
The Portland Pirates would end up defeating the Adirondack Phantoms by a score of 2-0. This is unfortunately the last time these two teams face off this season.Image: Flickr/Peter Taylor
If you still buy DVDs, you're killing the environment.
Maybe that's a little extreme, but the environmental benefits of streaming a movie (or downloading it) rather than purchasing a DVD are staggering, according to a new US government study by researchers at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.
If all DVDs purchased in 2011 were streamed instead, the energy savings would have been enough to meet the electricity demands of roughly 200,000 households. It would have cut roughly 2 billion kilograms of carbon emissions.
If, like me, you're thinking, "who buys DVDs anymore, anyways," the answer is "a lot of people."
Image: Environmental Research Letters
Despite the advent of hi-res streaming sites and hi-res digital downloads, Americans still spent $7.78 billion on physical DVDs and Blu-Ray discs last year; they only spent $4.35 billion on digital versions of movies and subscription streaming services such as Netflix. Of course, both are trending in the expected ways: Physical media sales dropped 8 percent in 2013, and digital movie sales were up roughly 47 percent. But people are still buying a lot of DVDs, roughly 1.2 billion last year.
It's admittedly nice to own physical media and place it in on a shelf in your living room, but streaming is better environmentally from almost every perspective. DVDs have to be manufactured (often overseas), shipped, held in a storefront (or an Amazon warehouse), picked up in a car, and then played, most commonly, on a DVD player or game console, which use more energy than a laptop or a Roku (or whatever your streaming appliance of choice is). DVDs stay in the home for roughly five years, according to the study, before they are thrown into a landfill somewhere.
According to the study, published in Environmental Research Letters, even when you take into account cloud storage, data servers, the streaming device, streaming uses much less energy than purchasing a DVD.
"Data center energy use—both operational and embodied within the IT equipment—account for less than 1 percent of the total video streaming energy use," the study said.
Most of the energy use comes from actually getting the video to you—the internet connection itself—and the device you're streaming with.
Image: Environmental Research Letters
Watching one hour of streaming video requires roughly 8 megajoules of energy, compared to 12 megajoules for watching a DVD. Unless you're an electrical engineer, those numbers aren't going to mean a whole lot to you, 8 is a third less than 12, and that's what we're striving for.
If you're absolutely tied to physical media, there is one way you can keep watching DVDs without feeling bad: You can buy them on Amazon, or you can rent them through Netflix's mail-service. Just like you may have been surprised to find out that cloud storage uses only a minimal amount of energy, you might also be surprised to learn that manufacture and shipment of the DVD accounts for a similarly small amount of the overall energy used to get that copy of Twilight (and it was that or Despicable Me 2 sold to a staggering 5 million Americans last year) onto your screen.
This study, which, remember, was funded and carried out by the US government, has a lot of potential implications, particularly with regards to net neutrality and, perhaps, preventing manufacturers from making streaming devices that use a lot of energy ("policy makers should focus on the efficiency of end-user devices and network transmission energy to curb energy use from future increases in video streaming," Shehabi notes).
Image: Environmental Research Letters
Shehabi also suggests that "if more complex video platforms gain popularity in the marketplace (i.e., ultra high-definition or 3D video), streaming video may require greater data transfer rates while the change in manufacturing and transport of physical media would be minimal."
Meanwhile, there's that little debate going on in Washington right now about whether internet service providers should be allowed to discriminate against certain types of web traffic, with high quality streaming sites such as Netflix being the main target. What easier way to keep streaming environmentally friendly than by limiting the quality at which the video comes in?Birds found in the LaBagh Woods include kingfishers, owls, herons and hawks. View Full Caption Facebook/My Year Birding in LaBagh Woods
CHICAGO — Expert and would-be birders alike are invited to the Labagh Woods in Sauganash for a free guided tour of some of the city's most colorful residents early Saturday morning.
The tour is part of the "bird the preserves" program being launched by the Cook County Forest Preserves to "establish the Forest Preserves as a premiere birding destination in the Chicago Wilderness region," spokeswoman Stacina Stagner said.
While migrating season has passed, the group is bound to see "the usual suspects" of Labagh, like robins, cardinals and red belly woodpeckers, according to Chicago Ornithological Society member Katy Krigbaum. They'll also hope to spot some more vocal species, like Baltimore orioles, warbling vireos and great crested fly-catchers, she added.
Saturday's event is being billed as the perfect opportunity for amateur bird-watchers to get hooked on the hobby, Krigbaum said.
"Once you start seeing birds, you'll notice them more and more, and it becomes a great way to appreciate nature," she said. "They're a little treasure in our midst, in the middle of all this concrete."
The free tour will kick off from the Irene Hernandez Family Picnic Area at Foster and Kostner avenues at 7 a.m. Saturday. Binoculars will be provided.A North Texas police officer whose video demonstrating the quickly rising temperatures inside an idle car warns others not to risk their lives by trying the same thing. (Published Friday, July 11, 2014)
The hot-car deaths of children are tragedies that happen every summer, and Texas has led the nation in the number of such fatalities for the past two decades.
Now, one North Texas police officer is demonstrating just how fast the temperature inside a vehicle rises to a dangerous level.
Cpl. Jessie Peterson, of the Highland Village Police Department, posted a video to YouTube of himself sitting inside his parked patrol car for 30 minutes, noting the passing time and the discomfort he was quickly feeling.
Within just a few minutes, Peterson was sweating and turning flush.
North Texas Officer Shows Hot Car Dangers
It's a tragedy that happens every summer, and sadly Texas leads the nation in the number of hot car deaths. Now, one North Texas police officer is demonstrating just how fast the temperature rises. (Published Thursday, July 10, 2014)
"I didn't expect it to be so bad, because I'm getting in and out of my car all the time when it's hot, but right around the 15-minute mark it started hitting me," Peterson said later.
At the 30-minute mark, he said his breathing was labored, and he needed to get out of the car to recover.
Beating the Triple Digit Heat in NTX
Triple digit temperatures are expected this weekend. Here are some safety tips for North Texas families. (Published Friday, July 11, 2014)
Peterson said he was inspired to post the video after seeing news reports of children dying after being locked inside hot cars. When the temperature outside nears 100 degrees, the temperature inside a car without air conditioning can reach as high as 170 degrees in a short time.
Click here to view Peterson's entire video on YouTube.
Doctors Warn Against Trying Hot Car Challenge
Peterson is a law enforcement official, but now there is video after video of other people filming themselves inside their hot cars without emergency crews standing by.
These are becoming more frequent on YouTube, and while some people say they are doing it to raise awareness, a North Texas doctor tells NBC 5 this is very dangerous.
“There is much better ways to raise awareness rather than exposing yourself to harmful things, not only exposing themselves to high temperatures but also seeing how long they can do it,” said Dr. Pike Roper, of Texas Health HEB.
Peterson agrees that other people should not put their health and safety in danger to test the temperature inside their vehicle.
“When I did it, I was in a police department parking lot. We have officers coming in and out. I was in a safe location,” said Peterson.
He said viewers need to take his message as a warning, and that’s it.
“I was able to do something like that to put it out there for other people to learn from. Individuals on their own, I would highly recommend for them not to do it,” he said.
Dr. Roper says heat-related injuries can cause multi-organ failures, seizures and hallucinations, and he adds this dangerous stunt is simply not something anyone should do by choice.
NBC 5 reporters Johnny Archer, Julie Fine and Amanda Guerra contributed to this report.The Stable channel has been updated to 27.0.1453.116 (Platform version: 3912.101.0) for all Chrome OS devices. This build contains a number of stability fixes and security improvements.
Machines will be receiving updates over then next several days.
Release Highlights: Pepper Flash updated to 11.7.700.225-r4
Firmware update for Chromebook Acer C7. Note: A screen with Chrome Logo and a critical update notification will be displayed Security fixes and rewards:
Please see the Chromium security page for more information. (Note that the referenced bugs may be kept private until a majority of our users are up to date with the fix.)
[ 249335 ] Medium CVE-2013-2866: Clickjacking in the Flash plug-in.
Known issues:
File App keeps loading for small images ( 248235 ). Work around: Select multiple images to be able to open/edit
File App shows "File could not displayed" when moving across large images when they are still loading. ( 250936 )
Please see the Chromium security page for more information. (Note that the referenced bugs may be kept private until a majority of our users are up to date with the fix.)We’re thrilled to be hosting our second bootcamp, this time in Dublin! Team Ireland skaters and coaches will be on hand to teach you all the mad skills. Following this, we’ll be taking on Team Wales and Team West Indies in a double header! This is the team’s first games together and should be exciting match ups! Merch will be available on the day.
Bout Tickets: €10 on the door (cash only)
Bootcamp ticket: €45
Coaches:
Cork Rebel (Gotham Girls Roller Derby): Jamming
Chemikill Hazard (Glasgow Roller Derby): Blocking
Lil Paine (Boston Derby Dames): Offense – Defense Turn Around
Pippi Strongsocking (Gotham Girls Roller Derby): Pack Work
Bootcamp is co-ed.
Pre-register for the bootcamp (spaces are limited) by emailing teamirelandrollerderby2014 @gmail.com and include the following details:
Real Name
Derby Name
Derby Number
Affiliated League
How long you’ve been skating
Facebook Event for Games
Facebook Event for BootcampFILE - In this July 7, 2006 file photo, Boston Symphony Orchestra music director James Levine conducts the symphony on its opening night performance at Tanglewood in Lenox., Mass. New York's Metropolitan Opera says it will investigate allegations that its longtime conductor, Levine, sexually abused a teenager in the mid-1980s. Details of the police report were first reported Saturday, Dec. 2, 2017, on the New York Post website. Levine, 74, stepped down as music director of the Met in April 2016. (AP Photo/Michael Dwyer, File)
NEW YORK (AP) — New York’s Metropolitan Opera said Saturday it will open an investigation into allegations that its longtime conductor, James Levine, sexually abused a man three decades ago beginning when the man was a teenager.
Levine’s accuser, now middle-aged, contacted the police department in Lake Forest, Illinois, in October of 2016 to report that he’d had sexual contact with the conductor when he was under age 18.
He said he was reaching out to police in Lake Forest because some of his encounters with Levine took place there in the mid-1980s. Levine served as music director at the Ravinia Festival, outside Chicago, from 1973 to 1993.
Details of the police report were first reported Saturday on the website of the New York Post. Met officials said they learned of the police report last year.
“This first came to the Met’s attention when the Illinois police investigation was opened in October 2016,” the Met said in a statement. “At the time, Mr. Levine said that the charges were completely false, and we relied upon the further investigation of the police. We need to determine if these charges are true and, if they are, take appropriate action. We’ll now be conducting our own investigation with outside resources.”
An email to Levine’s manager seeking comment on the accusations was not immediately returned.
The accuser, whose name is being withheld by The Associated Press, contacted reporters from several news organizations and posted a handful of items on social media accusing Levine of abusing him when he was young.
The Lake Forest department assigned a detective who spent at least seven months investigating the allegations, according to a redacted copy of her written reports on the case.
The accuser, who at the time was hoping for a career in music, told police the conductor had invited him to audition for him in New York and then encouraged him to engage in sexual “experimentation.”
He also said that his relationship with Levine extended well into adulthood and that the composer gave him money over the years when he was having financial problems, amounting to more than $50,000.
The man told police he last spoke with Levine in 2014. At the time, he said, Levine said he wouldn’t send him money anymore.
The Associated Press does not generally name alleged victims of sexual abuse without their consent. In this case, the man asked that his name not be published and declined to be interviewed on the record.
The accusations against Levine, among the most prominent classical music conductors in the world, are the latest in a stream of sexual misconduct charges involving high-profile men in entertainment and the media that have rocked the nation since accusations against film mogul Harvey Weinstein were reported in October.
Levine served as music director of the Met from 1976 to 2016, when he assumed the position of music director emeritus.
Levine has struggled with health problems including Parkinson’s disease in recent years but is scheduled to conduct several productions this season.
___
Associated Press reporter Karen Matthews contributed to this report.About This Game One of the most difficult adventure games you will ever come across, Venture Forth forces players to uncover one of many paths through the complex cave system using minimal hand-holding. So, if you're looking for a casual stroll, this isn't the game for you.
If you're looking for an adventure game that forces you to discover obscure pathways while being blocked by menacing and relentless enemies, Venture Forth will be more your speed. We guarantee that your initial play-through will be riddled with frustration followed by a rewarding sense of achievement when you find your way to new areas of the map.
Death and dead-ends will be frequent. Figuring out how to best use each of the tools you come across will be challenging. Finding the Heart will be relieving. Finding your way back out again, well, that will be maddening.
Best of luck, adventurer. You're going to need it.
- The ManagementSpeculating about China’s possible political futures is an intellectual activity that intrigues some and puzzles many. The conventional wisdom is that the entrenched Chinese Communist Party (CCP), so determined to defend and perpetuate its political monopoly, has the means to survive for an extended period (though not forever). A minority view, however, holds that the CCP’s days are numbered. In fact, a transition to democracy in China in the next 10 to 15 years is a high probability event. What stands behind this optimistic view about China’s democratic future is accumulated international and historical experience in democratic transitions (roughly 80 countries have made the transition from authoritarian rule to varying forms and degrees of democracy in the past 40 years) and decades of social science research that has yielded important insights into the dynamics of democratic transition and authoritarian decay (the two closely linked processes).
To be sure, those believing that China’s one-party regime still has enough resilience to endure decades of rule can point to the CCP’s proven and enormous capacity for repression (the most critical factor in the survival of autocracies), its ability to adapt to socioeconomic changes (although the degree of its adaptability is a subject of scholarly contention), and its track record of delivering economic improvement as a source of legitimacy.
To this list of reasons why the Chinese people should resign themselves to decades of one-party rule will be a set of factors singled out by proponents of the theory of predictable regime change in China. Among many of the causes of the decline and collapse of authoritarian rule, two stand out.
First, there is the logic of authoritarian decay. One-party regimes, however sophisticated, suffer from organizational ageing and decay. Leaders get progressively weaker (in terms of capabilities and ideological commitment); such regimes tend to attract careerists and opportunists who view their role in the regime from the perspective of an investor: they want to maximize their returns from their contribution to the regime’s maintenance and survival. The result is escalating corruption, deteriorating governance, and growing alienation of the masses. Empirically, the organizational decay of one-party regime can be measured by the limited longevity of such regimes. To date, the record longevity of a one-party regime is 74 years (held by the former Communist Party of the Soviet Union). One-party regimes in Mexico and Taiwan remained in power for 71 and 73 years respectively (although in the case of Taiwan, the accounting is complicated by the Kuomintang’s military defeat on the mainland). Moreover, all of the three longest-ruling one-party regimes began to experience system-threatening crisis roughly a decade before they exited political power. If the same historical experience should be repeated in China, where the Communist Party has ruled for 63 years, we may reasonably speculate that the probability of a regime transition is both real and high in the coming 10-15 years, when the CCP will reach the upper-limit of the longevity of one-party regimes.
Second, the effects of socioeconomic change –rising literacy, income, and urbanization rates, along with the improvement of communications technologies — greatly reduce the costs of collective action, de-legitimize autocratic rule, and foster demands for greater democracy. As a result, authoritarian regimes, which have a relatively easy time ruling poor and agrarian societies, find it increasingly difficult and ultimately impossible to maintain their rule once socioeconomic development reaches a certain level. Statistical analysis shows that authoritarian regimes become progressively more unstable (and democratic transitions more likely) once income rises above $1,000 (PPP) per capita. When per capita income goes above $4,000 (PPP), the likelihood of democratic transitions increases more dramatically. Few authoritarian regimes, unless they rule in oil-producing countries, can survive once per capita income hits more than $6,000 (PPP). If we apply this observation and take into account the probable effect of inflation (although the above PPP figures were calculated in constant terms), we will find that China is well into this “zone of democratic transition” because its per capita income is around $9,100 (PPP) today, comparable to the income level of South Korea and Taiwan in the mid-1980s on the eve of their democratic transitions. In another 10-15 years, its per capita income could exceed $15,000 and its urbanization rate will have risen to 60-65 percent. If the CCP has such a tough time today (in terms of deploying its manpower and financial resources) to maintain its rule, just imagine how impossible the task will become in 10-15 years’ time.My name is Becky Pell and I am an anomaly. I’m a sound engineer, and I’m a woman. It’s an unusual combination, but I’m rarely conscious of it until someone points it out. Usually the conversation goes something like: ‘wow, a female engineer, you don’t see that very often’. Me: ‘No, there aren’t many of us’. Them: ‘Why is that?’ Well I have to confess ignorance; as I am one, I’m kind of the wrong person to ask! Why are we the unicorns of the touring world? And what’s life like as a woman on the road?
I love being a touring sound engineer. I’ve been in the business for 20 years, touring for 14, and I think it’s the best job in the world. I feel enormously proud and privileged to have made it in this industry. I work with my first love, music. I see more weird and wacky places in a month than most people will see in a lifetime, and I get to do it with a great bunch of people; there’s always someone to have a laugh with. I get a real buzz from that direct, minute-by-minute involvement in the live show when the lights go down and the audience go nuts. And I get to play with some really cool toys; I never did see why the boys should get all the best ones!
In the early days I got my fair share of sexist crap, but it’s no use being the type who runs off to a tribunal at the first sign of trouble. If I got legal on everyone who’d ever made a crack (‘Are you lost? Kitchen’s that way love’ etc etc) I’d be in court for the next 500 years! Most of it’s just banter and you can actually have a lot of fun with it; the key is learning to give as good as you get. Not having a massive chip on your shoulder about being a woman undoubtedly helps. We teach people how to treat us, and |
the strife will be worthwhile. Judging from the trailer, he’s yet again right on the money. Longtime collaborator and Oscar-winning cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki delivers breathtaking frames in the wilderness suffused with natural light. The Western revenge story, starring Leonardo DiCaprio as a 19th century frontiersman, looks to be a thrilling experience told with the precision and beauty that only Inarritu and Lubezki are capable of.
Sign Up: Stay on top of the latest breaking film and TV news! Sign up for our Email Newsletters here.IDEAS Rauch, a National Magazine Award winner, is a Senior Fellow in Governance Studies at the Brookings Institution.
The Trump Administration is right to worry about leaks — and, boy, is it worried. Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats told the Senate Armed Services committee that leaks are “devastating.” At a press briefing, Attorney General Jeff Sessions said they were “undermining the ability of our government to protect this country.” Never has an American administration been so unable to stem the flow of unauthorized information and so helpless to protect confidences in government. When Sessions spoke of the “staggering number” of leaks, he was not exaggerating.
Unfortunately, Sessions, Coats and the rest of the Trump Administration are wrong about the solution. The answer is not to crack down on leakers, as the government now swears it will do. The answer is to crack down on Donald Trump.
Leaking makes governing harder. Politicians and their staffs cannot function unless they can interact candidly, and candor requires privacy. As Jason Grumet, the president of the Bipartisan Policy Center, likes to say: Imagine how your conversation with your spouse about your Christmas party guest list would sound if you had to conduct it on Facebook. Delicate negotiations in Congress or the White House need space for trial balloons, plausible deniability and strategic maneuvering — without being immediately shot to pieces by outside interest groups and the media. All of that is before considering the importance to national security of keeping state secrets, well, secret.
No wonder, then, that the recent leak of full transcripts of Trump’s private conversations with two foreign leaders, Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto and Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, caused bipartisan dismay. Sen. Mark Warner, a Virginia Democrat, spoke for many when he called the release disgraceful. “A president of the United States or a governor [which Warner once was] would tell us they’ve got to be able to have confidential conversations,” Warner told The Daily Beast. As of now, foreign presidents and prime ministers need to assume that conversations with the U.S. president may all potentially become public.
One result will be a diminution of candor, and a commensurate increase in grandstanding and playing to the public back home. A second result will be that the parties, seeking privacy, will banish note-takers and record-keepers when they can. Trump has already done that. He has conducted two meetings with Russian President Vladimir Putin without any U.S. note-taker present. Eliminating the record not only blinds future historians, it leaves today’s policymakers unsure of what was said, or who committed to do what, or how to respond.
For those reasons and others, Sessions was right to deplore what he called the culture of leaks. What he was wrong about was the solution: tripling the Justice Department’s leak investigations. “In the first six months of this administration,” he announced, “the Department of Justice has already received nearly as many criminal referrals involving unauthorized disclosures of classified information as we received in the previous three years combined.”
Cracking down on the supply of leaks won’t work, except at the margins. Most of the time, leakers are hard to find, and proving a criminal case is even harder. The effort to find them can itself chill internal candor and conversation; as we recall from Nixon’s “Plumbers,” the attempt to plug leaks may lead to other kinds of abuse or even lawbreaking. And in the age of Wikileaks and digital encryption, there have never been so many ways to unload anonymous information.
Here is what would work: Reduce the demand for leaks. Leaking is happening at an unprecedented rate because an unprecedented number of people in the government are desperate to do it.
In the world’s most porous information society, leaking is not primarily deterred by law. Rather, it is forestalled by respect for ethical norms about keeping secrets, respect more generally for the president and his government, and an ability to air and address problems through approved, non-public channels.
President Trump’s own violations of basic norms about secrecy have dwarfed those of anyone who works for him. He publicly called upon Russia to spy on his political opponent and leak the result. He proclaimed his “love” of Wikileaks. He discussed highly classified information with the Russians (a fact we know, ironically, because of a leak). He discussed sensitive national security matters at a restaurant table amid onlookers. Nothing about his conduct signals seriousness about handling sensitive information or respecting boundaries of privacy.
More broadly, his erratic and deviant behavior has violated all kinds of norms of presidential conduct. Think about the president who uses his Twitter account to demean his own attorney general, or who exploits a Boy Scouts gathering to give a blatantly political speech, then ask yourself why anyone working for him would feel the need to scrupulously observe boundaries.
Perhaps most important, the President’s chaotic style and insistence on sycophancy often mean that serious problems do not get addressed until they turn up on the front page of the Washington Post. You couldn’t invent a more serious security risk than having a national security adviser who might be vulnerable to Russian blackmail. Trump knew about that for 18 days and did nothing — until a leak forced his hand.
If people in government believe that the President is not competent or not on the level, or that the only way to address problems or protect the country is by leaking, they will leak. And leak. And leak. As, indeed, they often should. In our democracy, unauthorized disclosure is a safeguard of last resort.
How could the Trump Administration prevent it? Don’t keep reaching the last resort. Establish some semblance of normal, ethical, orderly government. Set an example of probity and regularity. There is only one person in the government who can do that.
Look for the leaks to continue.
Contact us at editors@time.com.You have a problem with a company and you want to resolve it quickly. What is the best way to reach a real person? You can try calling. But you may spend precious minutes sorting through menu options in order to get connected to a human being.
When you call a company it can be difficult to get a human on the other end of the phone. ( Dreamstime photo )
Pressing zero at each prompt doesn’t always work. And if you push the wrong button, you’re back to square one, waiting on hold again. You can try sending an email. But some companies have done away with an email address for customer service, sending you to their live chat or online web forms. Internet companies can be especially hard to reach. When I tried to contact Twitter over a security issue with logging in, I couldn’t find a phone number or an email address.
Article Continued Below
I had to go through online menus and find one that fit. Twitter took six days to reply — an eternity in the online world — with a link to a help centre article that I had already read. So, how did I resolve the problem? I sent tweets to Twitter’s Toronto office and finally got someone to listen and call me back. Next time, I’ll go to GetHuman.com, a U.S. website set up to help customers get through to companies as quickly as possible. There, I found a phone number for Twitter. But it’s not toll-free, so you have to call the company’s San Francisco head office for customer support by phone. Get Human is a Boston-based company, started in 2005. It has three people compiling updated phone numbers and menu options, so that you can reach a live person on the other end as quickly as possible.
There are 162 Canadian companies in the database. They include: Telecom firms (Bell, Rogers, Fido, Telus, Wind Mobile).
Article Continued Below
Retailers (Hudson’s Bay Co., Canadian Tire, Future Shop, Best Buy, Kobo Books, Lululemon, Dell Canada, Home Depot, Bloomex).
Energy service providers (Enbridge, Toronto Hydro)
Loyalty programs (Aeroplan, Air Miles).
Government agencies (Canada Post, Canada Revenue Agency, Citizenship and Immigration Canada). How did Get Human get started? Adam Goldkamp, chief operations officer, gave me a quick history. Paul English was trying to help his father who had Alzheimer’s disease. When his father called a company and was left waiting on hold, he forgot why he was calling in the first place. English put together a list of the companies his father called regularly and posted it. Get Human was a big hit, but lay dormant after the founder went on to develop Kayak.com, a popular travel site. In 2009, Christian Allen took over as chief technology officer. He added mobile apps and hired Goldkamp, his former college roommate who had left a career as a Wall Street trader to look for another opportunity. Get Human uses crowdsourcing to keep its information accurate and current. Along with phone numbers and menu options, it has average waiting times for calls to many companies (provided by site users). For Bell Canada, the average wait is eight minutes. For Rogers, 18 minutes. For Aeroplan, 23 minutes. And for Canada Revenue Agency, 38 minutes. While it gets revenue from online advertisers (such as Hudson’s Bay, Safeway, UPS and TD), the company’s primary goal is helping customers contact companies a little more quickly and a little less painfully. “We’re looking for Canadian phone numbers,” says Goldkamp, who wants to beef up the non-U.S. part of the site. (I’ve already given him a few ideas.) Send emails to volunteers@gethuman.com or Adam@gethuman.com to provide your hard-won intelligence on how to reach companies effectively. Ellen Roseman writes about personal finance and consumer issues. You can reach her at eroseman@thestar.ca or www.ellenroseman.comNew York's New Indie Movie Theater is Teaming Up With the Criterion Collection
READ MORE: New York’s New Indie Movie Theater Unveils Stellar First Season of Programming
If you thought Metrograph’s first season of programming was an epic slice of cinephile heaven, just wait until you see the new additions to its spring special events.
The theater, a small two-screen cinema house located in the Lower East Side, will be opening next month and has just announced an extensive collaboration with the Criterion Collection, which will kick off on April 6. Titled The Criterion Collection Live!, these events, hosted by Criterion staff members, will feature special guests, screenings and audience prizes, while offering unique insight into the company’s process and the stories behind the films they release on Blu-rays and DVDs.
“We’re proud to be joining forces with Metrograph to be kicking off Criterion’s first ever live event,” said Criterion president Peter Becker in an official statement. “This is an exciting opportunity to expand our relationship with our audience in what we think is going to be a really lively and exciting night. We know Metrograph is going to be a vital part of New York film culture, and we’re so pleased to be a part of it as it makes its debut.”
Metrograph is also adding special Todd Haynes and Noah Baumbach events to its calendar, with more likely to follow as they find their footing in the dedicated world of independent film exhibition. All of the theater’s new additions can be found below. Information and blurbs provided by Metrograph.
One Night Only: Noah Baumbach’s Dream Double Feature (March 5)
Noah Baumbach prefaced his bizarre, yet wildly intelligent selection by explaining, “When Jake [Perlin] asked me if there was a double feature I’d like to present at his new theater, I said, ‘That’s easy, ‘Eyes Wide Shut’ (1999) and ‘Babe: Pig in the City’…Both movies take place in strange alternate cities. Part storybook, part nightmare. I’ve never been to these places, but I know what they are. One has a disturbing and harrowing chase scene that concludes with a pig rescuing a deranged, drowning dog hanging upside down by a chain. The other has a disturbing and harrowing pot-induced marital argument in a bedroom. All I know is, I get a similar hit off these two movies.
Ultimate IB: Three Technicolor Classics (March 19)
The wildly vivid colors of technicolor is a thing of the past, but that doesn’t mean we still can’t enjoy them today. With films such as “Singin’ in the Rain” (1952), “Hatari!” (1962), and “Vertigo” (1958) scheduled to be screened all on the same day, prepare yourself to be transferred back to a day of dancing, elaborate sets, and eye-dazzling colorful visuals. All films will be screened in 35mm.
“Carol” on 35mm (March 26)
For one night only, catch Todd Haynes’ critically acclaimed film grace the screen in all of its 35mm glory, along with wildly talented cinematographer Ed Lachman. Haynes’ pastiche to film coloring of yesteryear will only be more exacerbated by the wonderful grainy, flickering charm of a 35mm cut.
Henry Street Settlement Presents “Sidewalk Stories” (April 5)
Catch the harrowing black-and-white silent film as it retells a more contemporary version of Charlie Chaplin’s “The Kid.” While showcasing New York’s issues with homelessness, poverty, social unrest, and a slew of other issues that were plaguing the city in the late 80s, the film still retains Chaplin’s sense of humor, albeit in a much darker and grittier tone. The screening will include a Q&A from filmmaker Charles Lane.
The Criterion Collection Live!: Robert Drew and the Art of Politics (April 6)
Criterion will be kicking of their live events by hosting an advanced screening of their soon-to-be released set, “The Kennedy Films of Robert Drew & Associates.” The special event will be joined by Criterion president Peter Becker and pioneering documentarian, D.A Pennebaker, along with Robert Drew’s daughter-in-law Jill Drew. Included with the admission is a free advanced copy of the DVD or Blu-Ray which includes an alternate cut by Richard Leacock for “Primary” (1960), “Crisis” (1963), and “Faces of November” (1964).
6th Annual Old School Kung Fu Fest (April 8-10)
Subway Cinema is teaming up with Metrograph to bring you the 6th edition of the Old School Kung Fu Fest (OSKFF), celebrating the wildest, most outrageous and eye-darting martial arts and action cinema from the 1960s till the 1990s. This year’s OSKFF will be celebrating the films of Golden Harvest, Hong Kong’s leading studio in the second half of the century. Screenings will include “Pedicab Driver” (1989), “The Man from Hong Kong” (1975), “Rumble in the Bronx” (1995), “Enter the Dragon” (1973), “The Prodigal Son” (1981), “The Terra-Cotta Warrior” (1990), “The Blade” (1995), and “Big Bullet” (1996). Most, if not all, of the titles will be shown in archival 35mm film.
READ MORE: New York City is Getting Its First Independent Cinema Theater in 10 Years
Sign Up: Stay on top of the latest breaking film and TV news! Sign up for our Email Newsletters here.With just seven days till election day, I had to get my words and thoughts out on why I am supporting Donald J. Trump as President Of The United States. In the past few months I have been unfriended, labeled a racist, labeled a sexist and even compared to Adolph Hitler just because I was supporting Donald Trump. Before I go into why Donald Trump would make a amazing President I have to tell you where it all began……
I have a confession to make, I have voted and been a life long Democrat until now. I have supported President Bill Clinton and yes I voted for President Barack Obama not once but twice. I too fell like the rest of the nation to the promise of a real change with Barack Obama, turned out President Obama was just like the other politicians before him but worse. I always liked the ideas of the Democrats and felt like they were the political party of the people while the Republicans were the political party of the rich. I gave Obama a chance, and I think he had an ok first term in office. But too many empty promises and also how this country is a divided nation and with the ongoing corruption scandals, made me see the light with Donald J. Trump.
When I learned that Donald Trump was running for President, I thought it was more of a lark and he wouldn’t last with the other political opponents who had much more experience with the political machine. I have always been a big fan of Donald Trump from his hotels and casinos and his appearances on television and radio. He always told it like it is, and was a typical brash New Yorker who didn’t care who he hurt in the process of getting his message across. The more I listened to Trump and his ideas about bringing America back to its former greatness, the more I liked his message.
I have always believed that the country should be run somewhat like a business and I did support Ross Perot and Steve Forbes when they ran although unsuccessfully for president. With the deals whether it was for foreign policy or trade our nation needed a good negotiator, which it never really got as our elected officials mostly have a career in politics and that is pretty much the reason for the bad trade deals and bad foreign policy deals that have been made in the past.
With Donald Trump, we can have a real leader who will stand up for America and the Americans whether it would be for trade or our enemies abroad. With President Obama, we have a weak leader and that is why we have become a weak country in the eyes of the world. Nobody is scared of us anymore, our enemies laugh in our faces and our trusted allies don’t trust us anymore. We need a leader who will say America First!!!
Its sad to see our country going down this slippery slope that it has in the years of Obama, Bush and Clinton. So many American jobs lost to other countries, so many of our factories closed and economies of whole cities like Detroit pretty much wiped out. We barely make anything anymore in The United States and that has to change, we have some of the brightest and smartest people anywhere in the world and we are struggling in this new world economy, while other countries and its people are getting richer and richer.
Donald Trump will be the leader we need in this whole new world economy, we can’t rely on the same old policies and practices that have failed us miserably in the past. We need to build up our infrastructure, our airports and bring the jobs back to The United States.
Donald Trump is for making all Americans regardless of race, gender, sexual orientation prosperous as we are all one as in we are all Americans.
Donald Trump will also end the disaster which is Obamacare. Even Bill Clinton called Obamacare “The Craziest Thing In The World” with premiums going through the roof and no competition in many markets Obamacare is bound to fail and we have to euthanize it before its too late. With Trump’s plan to replace Obamacare would create competition with insurance companies and bring real change to the medical insurance that everyone needs. Before it was called Obamacare it was called Hillarycare………
Now speaking of Hillary, she does have much more experience than Trump. But in this new world environment we need people with fresh and new ideas and not people who are for keeping the same failed Obama policies. There are just too many questions and uncertainties with Hillary through all the scandals, emails, Benghazi, Clinton Foundation and more Hillary can not be trusted with being President Of The United States. When Bill was President there were scandals like WhiteWater, TravelGate, Monica Lewinsky and so much more. Bill and Hillary are pretty much The Bonnie And Clyde of politics and their time has come and passed. Just say no to Hillary because according to her she has a private and a public persona and both are different. So which Hillary will we get if she gets elected???? We cannot take that chance.
So on November 8th I will be voting for Donald Trump, because we need new ideas in Washington, because we need a real leader in Washington, and we have to drain the swamp of the old and tired career politicians who are relying on the policies of old to work for the new world. Yes Trump is brash and sometimes obnoxious but he tells it like it is and he is what America needs now more than ever. Lets vote for Donald J. Trump and together we can Make America Great Again.(RNS) The Vatican sent a telegram to Boston Cardinal Sean O’Malley on Tuesday, in which Pope Francis expresses sympathy for the victims of the marathon bombings and urges Americans to “combat evil with good.”
Here’s the full text of the telegram, as provided by the Vatican:
His Eminence Cardinal Sean O’Malley
Archbishop of Boston
Deeply grieved by news of the loss of life and grave injuries caused by the act of violence perpetrated last evening in Boston, His Holiness Pope Francis wishes me to assure you of his sympathy and closeness in prayer. In the aftermath of this senseless tragedy, His Holiness invokes God’s peace upon the dead, his consolation upon the suffering and his strength upon all those engaged in the continuing work of relief and response. At this time of mourning the Holy Father prays that all Bostonians will be united in a resolve not to be overcome by evil, but to combat evil with good (cf. Rom 12:21), working together to build an ever more just, free and secure society for generations yet to come.
–Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, Secretary of State
Here are some additional reactions to the Boston bombing from religious leaders in the U.S.
The U.S.-based Muslim Public Affairs Council said:
MPAC condemns this terrorist attack; this is a horrible crime, and we call on all of us as Americans to work together to bring those responsible to justice. The Boston Marathon is an annual, historic event with more than 28,000 people participating from all around the world. To attack those on what is supposed to be a day of jubilation is criminal and inexcusable.
Episcopal Church Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori offered the following prayer:
Gracious God, you walk with us through the valley of the shadow of death. We pray that the suffering and terrorized be surrounded by the incarnate presence of the crucified and risen one. May every human being be reminded of the precious gift of life you entered to share with us. May our hearts be pierced with compassion for those who suffer, and for those who have inflicted this violence, for your love is the only healing balm we know. May the dead be received into your enfolding arms, and may your friends show the grieving they are not alone as they walk this vale of tears. All this we pray in the name of the one who walked the road to Calvary.
Cardinal Timothy Dolan, president of U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, said:
The tragic end to the Boston Marathon April 15 reminds us all that evil exists and that life is fragile.
The deaths and injuries of people gathered for the celebration on Patriots Day in Boston calls on all of us to pray for the souls of those killed the healing of those injured and the restoration of peace for all of us unsettled by the bombings at a world renowned sporting event.
Our special prayers are with the Archdiocese of Boston and the people there who are working in the aftermath of this crisis to address those wounded in so many ways by these events.
The growing culture of violence in our world and even in our country calls for both wise security measures by government officials and an examination by all of us to see what we can personally do to enhance peace and respect for one another in our world.
Council on American-Islamic Relations director Nihad Awad said:
American Muslims, like Americans of all backgrounds, condemn in the strongest possible terms today’s cowardly bomb attack on participants and spectators of the Boston Marathon.
We urge people of all faiths to pray for the victims and their loved ones and for the speedy recovery of those injured. We also call for the swift apprehension and punishment of the perpetrators.
While spiritual measures can serve to comfort those in physical and emotional pain, we also call on Muslims and others in the Boston area to donate blood through the Red Cross as a concrete show of support for the bomb attack victims. Those who were participating in the marathon or were watching the event should contact authorities with any potential eyewitness information they may have.Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad looks on while attending a meeting with Egyptian experts in Tehran June 1, 2011. REUTERS/Morteza Nikoubazl
DUBAI (Reuters) - President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad appeared to indicate that Iran would be prepared to stop high-grade uranium enrichment - a demand of the United States and its allies - if world powers agreed to meet its needs for the fuel.
“From the beginning the Islamic Republic has stated that if European countries provided 20 percent enriched fuel for Iran, it would not enrich to this level,” Ahmadinejad stated in comments published on his presidential website.
Meeting to discuss Iran’s nuclear program in Moscow on Monday, world powers are to push for the suspension of its high-grade uranium enrichment activities over fears Iran is seeking to develop nuclear weapons capability. Tehran denies this.Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Barack Obama: "Borders cannot be re-drawn at the barrel of a gun"
Russia's president has said he is hoping for a peace deal between Ukraine and pro-Russian rebels by Friday.
Vladimir Putin urged both sides to stop military action in eastern Ukraine, adding that his views and those of his Ukrainian counterpart were very close.
Ukraine President Petro Poroshenko said they had agreed a "ceasefire process" but PM Arseny Yatsenyuk said no plan from Mr Putin should be trusted.
In Estonia the US president sought to reassure the Baltic states over Russia.
"You've lost your independence once before, with Nato you'll never lose it again," Barack Obama said in the Estonian capital Tallinn.
Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Watch: Timeline summary of the Ukraine conflict
He told his audience of US and Estonian military that their countries were stronger because they were democracies, but that their vision was threatened by "Russia's aggression against Ukraine".
He said that there were "provable facts" that Russian combat forces were on the ground in Ukraine.
"Nations have a right to determine their own future. This is why we stand with the people of Ukraine today," he said.
He added that Nato had to send an "unmistakeable message in support of Ukraine this week", as well as strengthening the defences of two other former Soviet republics, Georgia and Moldova.
A Nato summit opens in Wales on Thursday. It is expected to back plans for a rapid response force and bolster the alliance's presence in Eastern Europe.
Analysis: Oleg Boldyrev, BBC News, Moscow
Insisting that Russia is in no way a negotiating party in the Ukrainian conflict, Vladimir Putin is nevertheless certain that it is Moscow's proposals that are going to advance both sides to peace. Mr Putin's plan is short and leaves a lot of room for interpretation.
Take, for example, a point on moving Ukrainian troops away from positions from which towns and cities can be shelled. Taken to an extreme, this could mean rewinding the situation on the ground to a point several weeks ago before Ukrainian advances.
Just two weeks ago the discussions centred around when, and not if, the rebels would have to move out of Donetsk and Luhansk. But Moscow's plan will allow them to strengthen their control over the two regional centres and other areas.
Mr Putin has often seemed unwilling to negotiate from a position of weakness and the reversals of the past few days illustrate this perfectly. Now it's Petro Poroshenko who has to choose whether to accept something which clearly protects Kiev's enemies in eastern Ukraine.
In other developments
Russia confirmed the death of journalist Andrei Stenin in Ukraine on 6 August, saying he had been killed in a Ukrainian government ambush on a convoy of rebels and refugees near Donetsk
Russia is to hold military exercises in the south Siberian region of Altai this month involving more than 4,000 troops and air power, a defence ministry official told a Russian news agency
'Mutual understanding'
Speaking to journalists in the Mongolia capital Ulan Bator, Mr Putin said the two sides should reach agreement when they resumed talks in Minsk on Friday.
"Our views on the way to resolve the conflict, as it seemed to me, are very close," he said, referring to a phone conversation with Mr Poroshenko.
Image copyright Reuters Image caption A Ukrainian policeman removes a weapon found in Sloviansk, Donetsk region, on Tuesday
Image copyright AP Image caption US President Barack Obama reassured Estonian President Toomas Hendrik Ilves (right) in Tallinn that his country had Nato's support
Image copyright AP Image caption Russian President Vladimir Putin (right) was visiting Mongolia on Wednesday
He said he was proposing a seven-point peace plan:
The Ukrainian army and eastern rebels should stop "active offensive operations"
Ukrainian troops must pull back to a distance where they would be unable to shell population centres
International monitoring of the ceasefire
No use of military jets against civilians
"All-for-all" prisoner exchange without preconditions
Humanitarian corridor for refugees and to deliver aid
Restoration of destroyed infrastructure.
In its statement (in Russian), the Kremlin said a phone conversation had taken place on Wednesday between the two presidents in which their points of view had "coincided significantly" on possible ways to end the crisis.
Mr Putin's spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, clarified for Russian news agency Ria-Novosti: "Putin and Poroshenko did not agree a ceasefire in Ukraine because Russia is not party to the conflict, they only discussed how to settle the conflict."
Mr Poroshenko said he also hoped for a ceasefire.
"The people of Ukraine want peace while some politicos want to play a game of war. I will not allow this to happen. We must pull together in fighting for peace," he said.
But Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseny Yatsenyuk rejected the proposal.
"The real plan of Putin is to destroy Ukraine and to restore the Soviet Union," he said.
War in eastern Ukraine: The human cost
At least 2,593 people killed since mid-April (not including 298 passengers and crew of Malaysian Airlines MH17, shot down in the area) - UN report on 29 August
951 civilians killed in Donetsk region alone, official regional authorities said on 20 August
In some particularly dangerous places, such as Luhansk region, victims are said to have been buried informally, making accurate counts difficult
Rebels (and some military sources) accuse the government of concealing true numbers
260,000 people have fled elsewhere in Ukraine while at least 814,000 have gone to Russia.
Pro-Russian rebels said they supported Mr Putin's proposals but that they did not trust Mr Poroshenko to observe a ceasefire.
Meanwhile a Ukrainian official in Zaporizhzhya region, west of the combat zone, said the bodies of 87 soldiers and pro-government volunteers killed in a controversial incident near the town of Ilovaysk several days ago had been brought to a local morgue.
The Ukrainian military says troops were fired on by rebels on Sunday after they had apparently been given safe passage out of an encirclement during rapid rebel advances. No-one has been able to confirm the circumstances of the killings or the total number of dead.
More than 2,600 civilians and combatants have been killed and more than a million people have fled their homes since fighting erupted in eastern Ukraine in April, when pro-Russian separatists there declared independence.
Russia has denied accusations by the West and the Ukrainian government that it is sending troops and military equipment over the border to support the separatists, who recently gained the upper hand against government forces.According to Inside Edition, the internet has fallen in love with a fuzzy calf from a New Hampshire farm.
A viral video of a newborn Scottish Highland calf has garnered 12 million views, more than 160,000 likes, and more than 70,890 comments.
Watch the adorable video.
While most commented, “I need this cow,” “So cute,” or something similar, a growing number of people are concerned about the calf’s well-being.
Commenters are angry that the farm intends to kill the animal. One woman from Britain wrote:
Why are you posting videos of cute baby animals when you’re going to kill them and sell them as food? There’s something really twisted about that.
According to its Facebook site, Yankee Farmer’s Market, which raises cattle, chicken, and pigs, is a bit taken aback by all the attention. The owners falsely claim that the animals are killed humanely.
While the adorableness of this calf cannot be denied, the truth is that all animals deserve compassion. Just like dogs and cats, farmed animals are sensitive and form bonds with people. It’s the ultimate betrayal to send them off to an early death when there’s simply no need.
Vegetarian Starter Guide. Help spare the lives of innocent animals by switching to a compassionate vegan diet. Click here to order your FREEHey y’allz! This week on the podcast Jujubee calls me to talk about some hot topics!
And I sit down with my sistra gurl Detox Icunt for an indepth chat about the life of an international superstar post RuPaul’s Drag Race and DWV!
This episode is sponsored by: http://littlepioneer.com and http://AtomicCosmetics.com
I’ll be in the bay area this weekend! Come check out a show in San Francisco or Sacramento!
AND…..one mo time just for funtz:
Take a look and listen to the new parody of “All about that bass”–“All about dat dick!” with this brand new lyric video you can sing along! It’s NSFW–duh. If you can purchase the single I would appreciate that! I know no one pays for music these days, but it will help me keep things running over here.
Enjoy!
Subscribe, review, share!
love,
Ho
For more of The Wendy Experience:
Listen/ Subscribe/ Review on iTunes
subscribe to the Wendy Experience Youtube Page for exclusive videos and previews of interviews https://www.youtube.com/wendytheho​
Like Wendy’s facebook page to stream full episodes, keep up with her live show schedule and more https://www.facebook.com/wendyexperience
Follow Wendy on twitter at https://twitter.com/wendyexperience​
send Wendy an email at wendyexperience@gmail.comI made the mistake of reading some of the comments on those last youtube videos. There were some good ones, but they were also laced with the usual grunting assholes complaining about gays and "trannies" and quoting the Bible and making racist remarks about Africans. Let us pass over those contemptible arguments; there's no dealing with them rationally. Spit and move on.
But there's another flavor of argument that annoys me to no end: people who cite science and evolution to support their ignorant misconceptions about human nature. I want to address two, one anti-gay and the other pro-gay, both wrong.
First, there is the reductionist who knows a tiny bit about selection.
interesting point of view, but no. Evolution is all about competition. If you dont produce offspring, you take yourself out of the running. They may help the larger group, but that is more along the lines of the group exploiting a weakness. Their genes do not pass on. In the evolutionary crucible, thats a game over. It doesn't matter what disease you cure, what philosophy you teach, biologically, you lose. Now, again, in modern society, things are more complex. There are more qualities to a life than how many mini-me's you can make, but for the purposes of biology, it ends there.
If evolution is all about competition, how come reproduction in sexual species requires cooperation between two individuals to occur? Have you ever noticed that reproduction isn't actually literally replication? You take your complement of 20,000 pairs of genes, and you throw half of them away, splice the remainder into different combinations, and then you merge those with the similarly mangled set of genes from another person, and you produce a unique individual. Not a clone of either of you -- someone completely different.
That should tell you right away that you aren't the focal point of evolution. You are a test platform for a battery of genes, genes that are shared with other members of your community. Evolution sees the propagation of a pool of genes that tends to produce successful individuals; look up inclusive fitness sometime. You share genes and combinations of genes with your siblings, your cousins, and more distant relatives -- there's more than one way for your population to propagate itself than for every individual to maximize the number of offspring they produce.
I also have to laugh every time some oblivious multicellular animal announces that evolution is all about competition, and that all that matters is how many progeny you produce. Do you realize that your existence is entirely a product of cooperation? Your parents were made up of trillions of cells, almost all of them dedicated to specialized, non-reproductive functions, all in support of a tiny minority of cells that can produce gametes. And of all those gametes, only two combined to make you -- the great lumbering mass of agglomerated metazoan cells that were your parents then dedicated themselves to cooperatively nurturing the little zygote that was you (and which was not genetically identical to either) into a roughly similar lumbering mass.
Further, if that's too abstract for you, consider this: you'd most likely be dead right now if scientists hadn't collaborated to make vaccines against childhood diseases, if doctors and family hadn't worked to keep you healthy and educated. Imagine all those carpenters who built your house and plumbers who put in the pipes and electricians who wired it up; imagine the vast combines that work to deliver fuel for heating and food for eating. Everything that you think is important about you was created by cooperation.
If you think otherwise, go masturbate into a mud puddle and hope that some of your offspring can make it without any assistance.
Here's the pro-gay argument based on evolution. It's just as annoying.
from a view strictly based in the ideas of natural evolution, i always assumed "homosexuality" was as old as the species... and that it was evolution's way of both keeping the growth of the species in check (since humans are one of the few species that have sex for pleasure) and ensuring orphaned younglings have a chance at receiving care, guidence, and |
his music to temp track every movie in development. And that’s probably the most admirable thing about the post 2005 Hans Zimmer, is his desire to evolve. The Amazing Spider-Man 2 gave him an opportunity to flock some of his most cherished friends and collaborators together. They were dubbed The Magnificent Six and include Pharrell Williams, Johnny Marr, Michael Einziger, Junkie XL, Andrew Kawczynski and Steve Mazzaro. So how did this band experiment work out? Extremely well surprisingly, but not without a little bumps along the way.
Hans Zimmer is known for working through collaboration, and this isn’t the first time he’s co-composed with a group of people in band form. One of his most underrated scores is Barry Levinson’s An Everlasting Piece, which was composed by Hans Zimmer & The Jigs (a band comprised of frequent collaborators and named for the film). For Black Hawk Down they were simply referred to as the “BHD Band”. So this isn’t a new idea, but the talent involved here makes it one. Musically, the score is indeed a fresh and unique sound. Hans Zimmer is the band leader, and with that you can tell that the basic structure of the score is his voice. But he really did allow a lot of input from the rest, and as much of a Zimmer sounding score this is it’s also unmistakably not Zimmer in places.
The music takes different forms and structures that craft a modern, pulsing adventure that fills negative space with driving force. If you break this score apart you will find lots of moments of great innovation in musical storytelling. Electro’s theme is a brilliant result of experimenting with electronic sounds and audible lyrics (in English). The operatic style of it breathes life into the character, and Pharrell Williams’ voice will send chills instead of sooth you with the rhythmic lyrics that help describe Electro. Electro's theme in fact is maybe one of the most original ideas for a character theme, and definitely follows suit with past Zimmer villain themes. As for Peter’s theme, it’s a full-force fanfare that echoes a brightness and an energy found in that character. Peter Parker is a high school student with smarts, agility and vulnerability. That theme is his heroic theme, the “save the day” theme. And it works. I think Hans built the theme to not be completely unfamiliar to what James Horner did before. The theme even feels like something Horner would write with that repeating descending fashion towards the end. It does feel part of the whole soundscape that Zimmer and company built though. The rest of the character is fleshed out in the rest of the body of the score.
I do think there was a trade-off here though, and it’s hard for me to believe I’m going to say this about a Hans score. There seems to be an emotional disconnect, and I think it happened in the midst of crafting the unique soundscape. There’s so much talent involved here, and together they managed to create one seamlessly invigorating soundscape. However, in the end of it all I didn’t feel much in terms of an emotional connection. The flow seems disrupted and nowhere near what Hans has accomplished in the past. I hear the score working and know what it’s doing, but I’m not feeling that emotional state I'm used to. The second half of the score is much stronger in developing dramatic builds. I finally found some music I could grasp onto and get lost in. Hans utilized his recognizable “sirens” from Crysis 2 to build uneasiness, while Johnny Marr’s familiar style is reminiscent of his playing on Inception. That strong auteurism does peek up now and then, which is a welcome reminder.
Overall, this is a more than functional score with lots of great moments. The talent involved help drive the sound to new places. Electro’s theme is the highlight as it’s the piece of music that really pushes the narrative and allows the listener into the character. It truly is one of the most unique character themes I've heard. The rest of the score does its job, but it never finds that magic that resonates. The magic comes from hearing a bold soundscape materialize through collaboration. What’s missing is an emotional connection to the story. We can connect to the characters, but it’s hard to connect to their journey. That echoes how well the score works in certain areas, but also slightly disconnected as a whole. The score is fast, it's light, it's fun and it has some fantastic standout moments. In terms of a superbly built summer distraction, it doesn’t get much better. As a wholly lasting and emotionally engaging narrative maybe not so much. The 2-disc special edition has some great stuff including the original "The Electro Suite" sketch and should be chosen over the standard release.Quebec's Public Health Minister Lucie Charlebois kicks off a tour of the province Tuesday to gather input on how her government should regulate marijuana use when it becomes legalized next year.
While it is federal legislation that will make the drug legal beginning in July 2018, it is up to the provinces to decide many of the rules that will govern its consumption and sale.
Quebec Public Health Minister Lucie Charlebois says her government's upcoming marijuana law will likely be adjusted as time goes on. (Jacques Boissinot/Canadian Press)
Quebec must decide the legal age limit, how pot will be produced and sold and what kinds of driving restrictions to impose. It has less than a year to draft, and pass, legislation that will answer these questions.
"We would have liked to have had more time. I won't hide it. That said, we don't have a choice," Charlebois said.
Seven regions have their say
Both experts and ordinary citizens have registered to provide Charlebois feedback during her seven-region tour of the province.
The tour begins Tuesday in Rimouski before one-day sessions are held in Quebec City, Saguenay, Trois-Rivières Granby and Montreal. The final session will be held Sept.12 in Gatineau.
In Rimouski, Charlebois is expected to hear from a suicide prevention centre and public health officials from the Gaspé and the Magdalen Islands. Individual citizens will workshop their ideas in groups.
Upcoming bill will need to change
Charlebois said the provincial government is planning to table its marijuana bill this fall. But she also warned that whatever legislation is passed will likely be adjusted as time goes on.
"Just because we are producing a first draft doesn't mean it can't be perfected," she said.
Charlebois noted that the provincial law on tobacco has been changed several times over the years. "It will be the same thing for cannabis," she said.WoW Stable at 10+ Million Subscribers
Subscriber numbers are expected to decline, just like after the release of every other expansion. Asia is expected to have a larger decline, as subscriber numbers there are more fluid.
Hearthstone has over 25 million registered players
Heroes of the Storm has 9 million users registered for beta
Don't see a chart? Enable javascript!
Patch 6.0.3 Hotfixes - February 5
Blizzard ( Originally Posted by Blue Tracker / Official Forums) Raids, Dungeons, and Scenarios
Blackrock Foundry
Resolved an issue where Slagshop Brutes may sometimes not reset correctly if the raid wipes while they're casting Death Howl. Hans'gar & Franzok
Hans’gar and Franzok’s Crippling Suplex now deals 30% less damage (200,000 damage on Raid Finder, 450,000 damage on Normal, 600,000 damage on Heroic, and 700,000 damage on Mythic). Blackhand
Blackhand's Impaling Throw damage dealt to Siegemakers should now properly scale up based on the number of players in the Raid. Visuals for Marked for Death and Slag Eruptions should now be easier to see. Players should now only receive a single debuff that refreshes when running through Blazes created by Siegemaker Mortar attacks. Resolved an issue that could cause some Hunters or Warlocks to suffer fatal falling damage during the transition to Stage Three: Iron Crucible.
Battlegrounds and Arenas
Faction flags should no longer appear for players in an Arena or Arena Skirmish match.
Blizzard had their Q4 2014 earnings call today, announcing that WoW was still at 10+ million subscribers at the end of 2014. This is the same as thethat listed WoW at 10+ million subscribers.If you noticed an Internet speed drop after upgrading to the latest version of Windows 10, the following troubleshooting guide may help resolve it.
It may be particularly useful if the Internet speed was fine on previous versions of Windows, and is no longer after the upgrade to Windows 10 Anniversary Update edition.
Microsoft introduced a feature called Window Auto-Tuning back in Windows Vista, and has made it part of any newer version of Windows as well.
Set to on by default, it is designed to improve performance for programs that receive TCP data over a network.
While data transfers should be more efficient as a general rule, users may experience slower than usual data transfer speeds under certain conditions or even connectivity issues.
Managing Window Auto-Tuning in Windows 10
The first thing you may want to do is check the status of Window Auto-Tuning. If it is turned off for instance, it is likely that it is not the case for the slow downs, but if it is set, it may very well be the culprit.
Note: you don't need administrative privileges for running the command above, but you will need them for modifying the Window Auto-Tuning parameter.
Tap on the Windows-key, type cmd.exe, hold down Shift and Ctrl keys, and hit enter. Confirm the UAC prompt that opens. Run the command netsh interface tcp show global.
Locate the "Receive Window Auto-Tuning Level" value under TCP Global Parameters. If it is not set to disabled, it is being used by Windows to optimize TCP connections.
You may want to disable the feature to run connection tests and see if it is the cause for the limited Internet speed that you are getting out of the connection.
Run the following command to disable Window Auto-Tuning on Windows 10:
netsh int tcp set global autotuninglevel=disabled
You get ok as verification that the value was set correctly. You may verify this by running netsh interface tcp show global again.
Once disabled, start downloads just like before and monitor the speeds that you get. You may want to fire up a P2P client, Usenet program, FTP client or server program to find out if disabling Auto-Tuning Level did resolve the issue.
If it did not, you may want to turn it on again. This is done by running the following command:
netsh int tcp set global autotuninglevel=normal
Ok should be returned again to indicate that the new value was set correctly. It is recommended to check the global values again to make sure that is indeed the case.
If you want to know more about Window Auto-Tuning, check out the excellent analysis of the feature here.
Summary Article Name Find out if Windows 10 is limiting your Internet speed Description Find out how to fix Internet connection speed issues on Windows machines after upgrading to the Windows 10 Anniversary Update. Author Martin Brinkmann Publisher Ghacks Technology News Logo
AdvertisementU.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Massachusetts, and U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vermont, will headline a Boston rally this Friday.
Sanders, who ran for the Democratic nomination for president in 2016 but lost to Hillary Clinton, and Warren have emerged as the leaders of the progressive wing of the Democratic Party.
The rally is sponsored by Our Revolution, a political action group spun out from Sanders' presidential campaign. Raise Up Massachusetts, a liberal organizing group that has advocated for state policies like increases to the minimum wage and mandated earned sick time, will also participate.
The rally is being billed as a way for speakers to talk about economic justice and speak out against Republican President Donald Trump's agenda.
Warren has recently been one of the strongest Democratic voices in the Senate opposing Trump.
The rally will be held at the Orpheum Theater in Boston at 7:30 p.m. on Friday, March 31.Welcome to the weekly roundup of the best new Android applications, games, and live wallpapers that went live in the Market or were spotted by us in the previous 2 weeks or so.
This edition focuses only on new games. The app roundup is coming up soon, and you can find the tablet app roundup here.
Please wait for this page to load in full in order to see the Please wait for this page to load in full in order to see the AppBrain widgets, which include ratings and pricing info. Looking for the previous roundup editions? Find them here.
Featured App
Today's roundup is sponsored by HeroCraft's latest game - Musaic Box. Our own Liam Spradlin reviewed this game a few weeks back and found it to be excellent for both lovers of puzzle/hidden object games and music. In HeroCraft's own words:
--
Musaic Box is an unusual combination of musical puzzle and a detective quest. Its scenario offers you a riddle: to find the old organ master who has vanished.
Solving various quests and gathering the clues just like in other classic hidden object games you'll find outlines of musical scores for your music box and reveal exclusive puzzles where you have to recreate masterpieces of classical and modern music out of smaller pieces.
Unlike other puzzles, Musaic requires not just logic but a sense of musicality. Correctly composed melodies will lead you to the mystery's revelation and unlock new game mode.
A free Lite and a $1.49 paid versions are available in the Market.
The app was not found in the store. :-( Go to store Google websearch
The app was not found in the store. :-( Go to store Google websearch
Games
Age of Defenders
Android Police coverage: Age Of Defenders Hits The Android Market At Last, Successfully Marrying Tower Defense And Strategy Genres
Android Police review: [New Game Review] Age Of Defenders Easily Overshadows Existing Tower Defense Games With A Polished, Thoughtful, Unique Approach
New trend in the Tower Defense genre is here. Age of Defenders is totally addictive multiplayer TD game where you defend your base and at the same time attack your enemies.
Note: Only tablets with HD resolution 1280x800 are supported!
Prepare for the epic battles. This game is so much different to “regular” Tower Defense games. It is no longer a dummy computer you need to defeat. It is other humans with different tactics, but the same goal – to survive and to conquer. Age of Defenders is must-have for all the Tower Defense fans.
• Multiplayer mode – challenge players worldwide
• Five single player campaign with Easy and Hard difficulty
• 6 tower types for your protection
• 6 unit types for conquering anybody who dares to stand against you
• Charming graphics
• Atmospheric music
• Amazing gameplay providing lot of entertainment!
The app was not found in the store. :-( Go to store Google websearch
SHADOWGUN
Android Police coverage: MadFinger Games Puts Out Mind-Blowing Trailer For The Soon-To-Be-Released Shadowgun, [Updated: Now With Video] SHADOWGUN Is The First Android Game Optimized For Quad-Core Devices, Looks Ridiculously Awesome
Android Police preview: [Video] Pre-Release Preview: ShadowGun Isn't Just A 3rd Person Shooter, It's A Technical Marvel
Android Police review: Game Review: Shadowgun Is The Most Advanced Shooter On Android To Date, And It's Out Now
This is possibly the best-looking Android game ever created. And they're already working on multiplayer.
--
The year is 2350, and corrupt intergalactic corporations are the rule of law, hiring bounty hunters and mercs to do their bidding. The best of the best are known as SHADOWGUNS. SHADOWGUN puts you into the role of John Slade, the galaxy’s most infamous bounty hunter. Your mission: hunt down Dr. Edgar Simon, maniacal genius and leader of his own mutant army. Infiltrate Dr. Simon’s mountain fortress and fight his personal guard of cyborgs, battle droids, and genetically-enhanced humanoids. Using state-of-the-art weaponry, ships, and the assistance of S.A.R.A.—Slade’s personal android assistant—SHADOWGUN combines intense tactical combat with 3rd person action.
Need for Speed™ Hot Pursuit by EA
Android Police coverage: Need For Speed Hot Pursuit Now Available In The Android Market
Feel the rush of the escape and the thrill of the takedown. Outrun the law as a Racer in supercars like the Pagani Zonda Cinque – or stop racers cold as a Cop in high-speed police interceptors like the Lamborghini Reventon. Experience pulse-pounding action as you make the escape – or make the bust – with Need for Speed Hot Pursuit™ on Android.
CHASE ACHIEVEMENTS
Drive up to 20 precision-performance cars in adrenaline-fueled showdowns across 24 day-and-night tracks. Take it to the limit in 48 total Cop and Racer Career Events, collect bounty, and rise to the top of the ranks.
DUEL IT OUT ON THE ROAD
As a Cop, lay down the law with roadblocks and spike strips – or fry the Racer’s electrical system with an EMP lock. As a Racer, make the getaway with overdrive, jamming, and oil slicks. Duel it out on the road!
From the #1 interactive racing franchise, bring the heat with Need for Speed Hot Pursuit!
Hockey Nations 2011 THD
Android Police coverage: [New Game] Hockey Nations 2011 THD Utilizes Tegra Power To Bring Graphic Enhancements, Even More Dynamic Hockey Action To Your Device
Hockey Nations 2011 comes to Tegra 2 powered Android devices. By incorporating improved skin meshing, specular maps, and increased polygon count on player models, Hockey Nations 2011 THD is the most visually enhanced version of the game on any mobile platform. Distinctive Games took advantage of the NVIDIA® Tegra™ processor even further by adding player reflections on the ice and animated crowd behavior.
Pick your team from 18 international teams or play as your favorite team from anywhere around the World by customizing any of the 40 available city teams. Jam-packed with hockey action across 6 game modes from practice to World League, Hockey Nations 2011 THD will turn any puckhead into an international ice warrior.
NVIDIA® Tegra™ Enhancements
Specular maps on players, reflections on ice, increased polygon count, improved skin meshing and animated crowd behavior.
18 International Teams
USA, Canada, Finland, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, France, Latvia, Czech Republic, Belarus, Slovakia, Slovenia, Great Britain, Japan and Russia.
USA, Canada, Finland, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, France, Latvia, Czech Republic, Belarus, Slovakia, Slovenia, Great Britain, Japan and Russia. 40 Customizable City Teams
Now you can customize a city to match your favorite team from anywhere in the World and bag the trophy in Playoff Cup.
Now you can customize a city to match your favorite team from anywhere in the World and bag the trophy in Playoff Cup. 6 Game Modes
Dive into the action with 6 game modes including World League, Go for Gold, Shootout, Exhibition, Playoff and Practice.
Dive into the action with 6 game modes including World League, Go for Gold, Shootout, Exhibition, Playoff and Practice. Fight it Out
You asked for it and now it’s here! The gloves are off so fight your way into the penalty box for a cool down.
Greed Corp HD
Android Police coverage: Invictus Games Brings Turn-Based Strategy Game 'Greed Corp HD' To Android Tablets
Greed Corp is a fresh and fun strategy game situated in a rich Steam-Punk world, offering a long-lasting single player campaign and a variety of multiplayer options for up to four players. Find the delicate balance between harvesting the land for resources to fund your war machines and preserving it to stay alive. Choose one of four different factions: the industrious Cartel, the militaristic Empire, the Freemen preservationists, and the Pirate traders. Destroy your enemies, or destroy the very land they stand on, before they do it to you.
The app was not found in the store. :-( Go to store Google websearch
Princess Punt
Android Police coverage: [New Game] Princess Punt Brings Angry Birds-Like Gameplay With A Fun, Quirky Twist
It's Angry Birds, except instead of birds, you have a princess that kicks a knight at various enemies. In other words, this is totally awesome. And really well made. Oh, and there's also a THD version for Tegra devices.
I've cut the description due to Engrish - go read it in the Market if you wish.
The app was not found in the store. :-( Go to store Google websearch
Cartoon Wars: Gunner+ by GAMEVIL
Cartoon Wars: Gunner+ is a side scrolling, action-packed game incorporating elements from RPG and adventure genre.
MULTIPLE CHARACTERS FOR UNLIMITED ACTION
Fight against 30 different type of enemies- each with unique skill sets and attacking range
Fight against 30 different type of enemies- each with unique skill sets and attacking range WEAPON MASTERY
Choose from 11 unique array of weapons and master them as you fight against evil troops
Choose from 11 unique array of weapons and master them as you fight against evil troops VENGEANCE PREVAIL
Gain valuable skills by upgrading weapons and go head-to-head with the evil army to bring back the glory
Gain valuable skills by upgrading weapons and go head-to-head with the evil army to bring back the glory UPGRADABLE SKILLS
Become the ultimate hero by upgrading and activating the weapons to either active or passive skills
Become the ultimate hero by upgrading and activating the weapons to either active or passive skills BOOST EARNINGS
Vastly increase Gold and MP earnings by wisely choosing from different type of weapons
The Adventures of Tintin HD by Gameloft
Android Police coverage: Gameloft Unveils The Adventures Of Tintin HD For Android, Bringing Classic Mystery Action To Your Mobile Device
Explore the exciting world of The Adventures of Tintin in the official Android game of the movie. Treasure and adventure await those who seek to unravel the Secret of the Unicorn.
NEW THRILLS AT EVERY TURN
Use stealth to sneak your way past guards, engage in a swordfight, pilot a plane, solve puzzles, race a camel and discover many more exciting experiences.
Use stealth to sneak your way past guards, engage in a swordfight, pilot a plane, solve puzzles, race a camel and discover many more exciting experiences. MEET TINTIN’S FRIENDS
Tintin can’t do this alone! He’ll need the help of his friends throughout the story. You’ll take control of his dog Snowy, Captain Haddock and even the legendary Sir Francis Haddock during the great Age of Pirates.
Tintin can’t do this alone! He’ll need the help of his friends throughout the story. You’ll take control of his dog Snowy, Captain Haddock and even the legendary Sir Francis Haddock during the great Age of Pirates. FUN FOR EVERYONE
Casual players and pros of all ages will enjoy the game. Accessible controls allow you to easily interact with the environment. With just a swipe of your finger (or a tilt of your device), you can explore the world, collect clues and items, and battle villains.
Casual players and pros of all ages will enjoy the game. Accessible controls allow you to easily interact with the environment. With just a swipe of your finger (or a tilt of your device), you can explore the world, collect clues and items, and battle villains. A BEAUTIFUL, 3D WORLD
Every building and character was carefully recreated in stunning 3D graphics and animation that perfectly matches the style of the film. See for yourself what it’s like to walk through Marlinspike Mansion, the desert, and the Karaboudjan ship, all in HD.
For fans of adventure, mystery, action, puzzle solving and platform games.
Baams Away
Baams Away is an action arcade game which satisfies human-kind's most simple and primal pleasure – blowing up sheep with bombs. Utilize the power of the Baam to wreak havoc on 15 unique sheep while traversing 3 thrilling worlds, unlocking the overwhelming power of even more devastating secondary weapons along the way.
The app was not found in the store. :-( Go to store Google websearch
Flick Soccer!
Get the most fun and exciting free-kick game of the season on Android. Use Flick Soccer's unique 'after-touch' ball control to try and hit the target like a real Pro. Only Flick Soccer gives you this level of complete control and pinpoint accuracy. Featuring 5 modes of play, gorgeous graphics and an intelligent goalkeeper, Flick Soccer really is one of a kind.
Features
* Full Fat Flick Controls mean everyone can play!
* Shoot for insane scores in Quickshot mode, it's you vs the keeper.
* Take it to the limit in Endurance mode, set piece action with bonus items!
* Try out Challenge mode for the ultimate skill contest.
* Have you got the accuracy to hit the bar? Find out in Crossbar mode.
* Smash It! breaking glass panels against the clock.
* Unbelievably accurate flick controls for stunning top-corner shots.
* The most realistic goalkeeper on the Android Market.
* Interactive defenders will jump and react to shots.
* Gorgeous visuals and immersive sound
The app was not found in the store. :-( Go to store Google websearch
Sweeper 3D
Clear bombs like you've never done before. Based on the core mechanic of the popular minesweeper, adapted to a workable 3D gameplay, and brought to you by the maker of the popular DigiClock widget, Sweeper 3D is bound to become and instant classic!
MEGASTUNT™ Mayhem
Android Police coverage: [New Game] Want Big Monster Truck Action On Your Little-Bitty Screen? Check Out Megastunt Mayhem
MEGASTUNT Mayhem is the perfect action sports game that mixes racing, showmanship and total destruction into one thrilling experience.
The app was not found in the store. :-( Go to store Google websearch
Wind-up Knight
Android Police coverage: [New Game] Wind-Up Knight Brings Intense Gameplay And Quirky Graphics To Your Android Device
Wind-up Knight is a high-end, action-packed, 3D side-scrolling adventure game, and it's here to show you how games are supposed to be played. Guide your Wind-up Knight through devilish levels--over 50 in all--to rescue the Princess from the clutches of the evil Black Knight. Run, jump, roll, and slash your way to victory. Wind-up Knight is the type of challenging game you have been waiting for.
- Over 50 soul-crushing levels.
- Pick-up-and-play game play.
- Super high-end 3D graphics technology. A showcase for your phone.
- Crazy platforming action: double jumping, wall sliding, dive and roll, just to name a few cool moves.
- A secret card is hidden in EVERY level.
- Four unique worlds.
- Deviously cute art style.
- Power up with game-changing equipment and weapons.
- Original soundtrack by Josh Whelchel.
Driver San Francisco by Gameloft
With crime lord Jericho now on the loose, San Francisco faces a terrible threat. Only one man can stand against him. You are Tanner, a hardened detective who, from behind the wheel of his Dodge Challenger, is involved in a relentless manhunt throughout the City by the Bay. Driver San Francisco is the return of the popular action driving video game series. With its timeless atmosphere, unique car handling and revitalized gameplay, this game offers a free-roaming, classic car chase experience.
- Rediscover the cinematic driving sensations of Driver with its high speed pursuits in dense traffic
- Uncover a thrilling storyline in which revenge fuels Tanner’s relentless manhunt for Jericho
- Drive across 5 different neighborhoods and along iconic locations throughout San Francisco
- Challenge yourself with 10 types of missions ranging from a race against the clock to Survivor mode
- In Free Ride mode, use your GPS to locate new challenges and take on 30 unique “dare” missions
The app was not found in the store. :-( Go to store Google websearch
Tank Fury 3D
Tank Fury 3D is a team-based massively multiplayer online action game dedicated to armored warfare. In Tank Fury 3D you can get into the epic tank battles of World War II with other steel cowboys all over the world. Your arsenal includes 8 armored vehicles from Germany, and the Soviet Union, carefully detailed with historical accuracy. More vehicles will be added soon with updates.
Features:
★ Online battle with other players all over the world!
★ Superb photo-realistic 3D graphics!
★ 3D sound effects
★ Offline practice mode
★ Global rankings
The app was not found in the store. :-( Go to store Google websearch
Snark Busters Lite
Do you have what it takes to find the Snark? Are you ready to enter a hidden object world unlike any you have seen? A world in which giant steamships rule the skies and Victorian architecture exists alongside awe-inspiring technology? If you are, then step through the looking glass and into the unusual world of the Snark. Your mission will be to capture the elusive creature.
You'll know the Snark is nearby when you find the clues it left behind. Catching it won't be easy, as it moves quickly and uses mirrors to jump between the real world and the world where time and space are turned inside out. If you believe you can decipher these hints and piece together the objects you need to track down your target, then join Kira Robertson as she sets out to earn a place in the elite Snark Busters Club. Along the way, you'll tackle over a dozen mini-games, enjoy colorful visuals, and explore 30 amazing locations.
Open Sea! Free
Journey through the whole country to the promised land, on more than fifty missions and five unlockable Challenge games... Lead whacky people: panicked girls, sleepy sloths, slow elders, zigzaging drunkards, dumbs who turn back... Repel evil ships and shock mummies and wicked wizards. Your adventure will let you cross heroes' path, who will join the people and help them with miracles, like Jess who allows people to walk on water... And Abe, the Lovers, or El, whose miracle will allow you to turn villains back to ashes! And last but not least, take control of the legendary Nono's Ark.
In the full game you will get:
★ Innovative and intuitive game mechanics designed for hand-held touch screens
★ 51 original missions (and even more to come)
★ Several different environments
★ 6 hilarious kinds of people
★ 5 Heroes with exciting powers to help the people
★ 3 kinds of foes, each requiring specific strategy to deal with
★ Campaign mode evolving through the map of your People's journey, with Stars collecting and optional paths
★ 5 Challenge game modes: "Crossing of the Dead", "Save 'Em All", "Sacred Land", "Time Trial" and "Time Trial Extreme"
★ Online leaderboards with Scoreloop (requires two authorizations)
The app was not found in the store. :-( Go to store Google websearch
RoboFonics
ROBOTS, MUSIC, RHYTHM! Cute, fun-loving robots are working hard at the Fonic Factory. Join the assembly line, listen to the beat, and tap the robots to the right rhythm! Work the robots hard but don’t overload them. Let the flow of music brighten your day. Avoid killjoy boss MasterBotrix and help start a robo-revolution.
- Combines a visually enchanting rhythm game with puzzle solving
- Use rhythm and melody to solve puzzles
- A non-violent experience that’s easy to pick up
- Robots!
- A catchy, casual atmosphere
- 80 levels, a fun storyline, and two game modes, ‘tap’ and ‘puzzle’
- A carefully designed soundscape for constant fun
- Challenges you to listen and react to the rhythm with care and expert timing
- Numerous cute, unique robots
- Tunes that stick in your head
- The first game that actually makes you listen to the rhythm!
- Did we mention ROBOTS?
- Based on the award-winning PC Mod (first seen in MSUC at SIGGRAPH 2009)
Chicken Coup Remix HD
Sound the alarm! The chickens have escaped. A sly fox unlocked the coop while you were asleep and now they’re ready to dine. Get your chickens back into their coops before its too late.
o CHICKENS aren’t the only things you can grab! Make foxes drop your chickens by dragging them into the barn!
o Create CHICKEN CHAINS by sliding your finger across like colored chickens. Drag them back home for massive score multipliers!
o Build up your CHICKEN POWER by dragging individual chickens or Chicken Chains to their coops. This score multiplier will make the next chicken you save worth that many more points!
o If things get too hectic unleash a powerful BOMB to clear the screen!
Carnival of Horrors
A haunted seaside carnival... just the place for a thrill seeking Ghost Catcher. You've been hired by the owner of a once prestigious seaside carnival. Ghosts have overrun the park, and its your job to clear them out and return the park to its original splendor. But the ghosts have different ideas.
Templar Assault
Templar Assault: Armor Space Combat Simulator. Battle the vile Alien with your squad of Templar Warriors in this epic space RPG. Command your squad and journey across the galaxy in an epic war against the Alien.
Duke Nukem 3D
Android Police coverage: Duke Nukem 3D Lands In The Android Market, Brings Back 1996 With Style
THE ORIGINAL KING OF ACTION RETURNS!
Los Angeles. Under attack by aliens intent on stealing our chicks for breeding. Duke Nukem springs into action dealing damage like only he can, making his "insightful" comments along the way. If you've never played a Duke game, this is your chance to see why he's been a fan favorite since 1991, with over 18 original Duke Nukem games since that time. Duke Nukem is not the typical faceless hero -- he's an in-your-face hero who has a personality that doesn't quit. Yes, it's a B-movie plot, but that's what makes it fun.
* Optimized for all newer multi-touch devices
* Native support for large tablet sized devices such as the Xoom
* Dual stick or new "drag to look" controls
* Installs to SD by default
The app was not found in the store. :-( Go to store Google websearch
Alien Rescue Episode 1
Alien Rescue is a shoot-em up with engaging gameplay and beautiful graphics. Planet Earth, 1947. While out for a nice relaxing walk through the Universe, some of the aliens crash on the planet. You are Krut - an experienced alien pilot, who quickly embarks in the rescue mission. Will you succeed in rescuing all your friends and take them home, while escaping the violent and hostile planet?
Elemental
If you are a fan of games like Sudoku but you are sick of numbers, Elemental is your game! Use your brain to create elements by mixing earth, air, fire and water to solve puzzles. Complete puzzles as fast as you can and win the high score. You can use tips that teach you how to mix the elements. Each tip contains a famous quote that you can tweet and share with your friends. If you’re still stuck, you can also place a spell that magically puts a piece on the board right where it belongs.
Shopper’s Paradise HD
Build your shopper's paradise, become a retail tycoon and outsmart your competition before the last customer leaves town.
* build or buy stores, movie theaters, hotels and warehouses
* hire employees, manage inventory, pick best locations
* maintain your properties and catch thieves
* hire police officers to keep your town safe
Top Eleven
Top Eleven – Be a Football Manager. Over 3,200,000 active players every month. The most popular sports game on Facebook is now available on Android! Be a part of a growing community of more than 3,200,000 monthly active players worldwide. Create your own virtual Football (Soccer) Club and play against friends and other players in Leagues, Cups, Champions Leagues or Friendly matches. Manage the same team, and play the same game, whether you and your friends play it on Android, iPhone, Facebook or TopEleven.com.
Key features include:
- Manage your team’s squad and finances. Buy and sell players in an exciting live bidding system.
- Prepare your squad for matches. Set up formations, coach and mentally prepare players, and build up specific football skills to improve player’s performances.
- Watch your matches live, make substitutions, and give special orders during the match.
- Track how your friends’ teams are doing, even arrange friendly matches with them.
Roboto Lite
Android Police review: [New Game Review] Roboto Brings High-Quality Cel-Shading To Android In A Fun Platformer: Who's Ready To Hoverboard?
Free version of Roboto that came out back in July.
--
FULL CHARACTER CONTROL
This is not an endless runner game. In Roboto you take FULL control of the character to navigate crazy platform jumps and shoot off of skatepark ramps. Silky smooth thumbstick and button controls. 2 ways to play - choose either Joystick or L/R buttons. Features full Xperia Play support.
This is not an endless runner game. In Roboto you take FULL control of the character to navigate crazy platform jumps and shoot off of skatepark ramps. Silky smooth thumbstick and button controls. 2 ways to play - choose either Joystick or L/R buttons. Features full Xperia Play support. CLASSIC SIDESCROLLING ACTION
Take a walk down memory lane to your favorite platformers of the 80's and 90's (if you're old enough) ^=^
Stomp on enemies, collect coins, find hidden power ups, shoot everything – even battle giant endbosses!
Take a walk down memory lane to your favorite platformers of the 80's and 90's (if you're old enough) ^=^ Stomp on enemies, collect coins, find hidden power ups, shoot everything – even battle giant endbosses! HD GRAPHICS
Top notch, high res textures throughout the game. No pixelated blurryness here!
Top notch, high res textures throughout the game. No pixelated blurryness here |
likely to be physically attacked by a friend, an acquaintance or a stranger than by a girlfriend or a wife.
The statistics point to another gendered reality: Female victims suffer more damage. Abused women are 10 times more at risk than abused men to be sexaully assaulted and twice as likely to be beaten, choked or threatened with a gun or a knife. Forty per cent of female victims report physical injuries, compared with 24 per cent of male victims. As a result of the violence, women are more likely than men to suffer post-traumatic stress and miss school and work.
Of course, there are exceptions: Some women are in fact the primary abusers in their relationships with men. Michael Johnson, an emeritus professor of women's studies at Pennsylvania State University, recalls a husband in a support group who was being physically attacked by his wife, a police officer.
"She monitored his behaviour regularly. She threatened him with weapons and she threatened to do things to the children. It was small-town Pennsylvania and her buddies were all in law enforcement so he couldn't go to the police. He was attached to his children and didn't want to leave them with her," Johnson said, adding, "I don't know the end of that story."
Story continues below advertisement
A small number of Canadian outreach centres are now tailoring therapy and shelter programs to abused men. The Calgary Counselling Centre, which helps abused women, opened its doors to abused men in 2005. The centre's seen 94 women and 83 men come through between January and October this year; most men describe psychological abuse, with a much smaller fraction suffering physical assault. Often, someone in a man's life – a colleague or a mother – nudges him to seek help.
A brochure from the Calgary Counselling Centre.
As with female victims, male victims tend to minimize the abuse they've experienced. The outreach program focuses on healthy relationships, interpersonal stress management and safety plans for leaving when there's a risk of violence.
"We're trying to help them get inside, to deal with the man who's been really hurt and doesn't want to walk away from a partner that he really cares about," said chief executive officer Dr. Robbie Babins-Wagner. "They need to decide how they're going to have a safer life."
At the Wheatland Crisis Society, a rural shelter outside Calgary, men are welcome right alongside women. Though they sleep in separate bedrooms over a 21-day stay, men and women take part together in programming about relationship red flags, self-esteem and self-care, among other topics. "The camaraderie that happens in the building is remarkable," said chief executive officer Wanda McGinnis.
Though most of her male clients face psychological and not physical abuse, McGinnis argues that this shouldn't be underestimated. "That demoralizing behaviour leaves them with no sense of self, feeling completely defeated," she said.
Dr. Leslie Tutty, a professor emerita in social work at the University of Calgary, witnessed the carnage of emotional abuse first-hand when she observed 14 group-therapy sessions for men at the Calgary Counselling Centre. Tutty described one husband who had had his self-esteem systematically destroyed by his wife.
"There was nothing that he could do right. She actually gave him 'walking lessons.' She told him he 'laughed wrong.' She thought he was overweight and when she found out he'd had a cake for a birthday at work, she berated him," said Tutty, who penned a meta-analysis on husband abuse for Health Canada in 1999. "No abuse is okay. I don't care who's doing it."
Even so, Tutty isn't sold on men-only domestic-assault shelters: She doesn't think the numbers warrant it and argues that abused men often have jobs and resources, unlike their female counterparts who are often financially entrapped by their abusers. Tutty also doesn't think men are any more stigmatized than women from coming forward when they've suffered domestic assault.
Other advocates believe that a host of systemic barriers keeps abused men from coming forward. For men, they say, the greatest hindrance is shame – that you're not a man if you're suffering in an unsafe relationship.
Dr. Peter Jaffe, a University of Western Ontario education professor, calls it self-stigma. "Men are socialized to be strong and tough. If they're a victim they don't want to see themselves as a victim. It's much harder to reach out for help," said Jaffe, director of the Centre for Research and Education on Violence Against Women & Children.
Traditional notions of masculinity often steer men away from asking for help of any kind, be it booking a doctor's appointment or asking for directions on the road. That reluctance is hugely amplified when a man is feeling vulnerable in a romantic relationship.
Adding to the stigma is that men are sometimes not believed or even laughed at when they finally do ask for help, Babins-Wagner said. Her centre educates police, shelters, hospitals and social services on male victimization. "The hardest part of this – like it was in the [women's] shelter movement 30 years ago – is making it okay for men to come forward," she said. "The research and the work is very much in its infancy."
Perhaps we doubt assaulted men because, collectively, we still buy into outdated ideas of what it means to be man. Is it so improbable that a man could be abused by a woman, or that he, not she, is the sensitive, gentle party in a heterosexual relationship? Perhaps it's time to adjust our cultural lenses: Just as women should never be questioned or blamed for staying with harmful partners, men who claim abuse by women shouldn't necessarily be discounted – or worse, emasculated for being on the receiving end of violence.
"If our goal is to stop violence, then the way we engage people has to be different," Babins-Wagner said. "We can't take a critical perspective of people who are abusive or who are victims, if we really want to help them."
The isolation in abuse
Former Joy Division bassist Peter Hook writes in a new memoir that he was abused by his ex-wife, comedian Caroline Aherne. Mark Blinch / Reuters
Abusive women are mainly treated as a salacious anomaly, as evidenced by the flurry of headlines around Substance, a new memoir by former New Order bassist Peter Hook. In it, Hook accuses his ex-wife, the comedian Caroline Aherne, of attacking him with chairs, bottles, knives and lit cigarettes throughout their marriage.
"I was an abused husband and it's embarrassing, and you feel ashamed, and you can't tell anyone. I needed help," Hook wrote. (Aherne died in July of cancer and Hook declined repeated requests from The Globe and Mail to comment.) Though many abused men feel isolated, some outreach workers are beginning to work with them, while others are developing programs for women who hit.
In Ann Arbor, Mich., Lisa Larance works with a broad swath of clients – from prison inmates to CEOs – in RENEW, her program for women who use force in their relationships. Larance believes that women who hit men (and are outed for it) find themselves especially scrutinized. Abusive men are an old story, but "women aren't'supposed to' be violent," Larance said. "It gets sensationalized: a violent woman, the trainwreck you can't stop watching."
Larance said that in her experience, women lash out as a last resort, in self-defence: Many are being physically abused in the current relationship, or have been battered in the past. "The first thing women will tell me is, 'I grabbed whatever was closest because I knew he was coming after me,'" she said. "She's looking to say'stop.'"
Male victims were nearly four times more likely than female victims to be hit with something, according to the latest data from Statistics Canada, which also found that these men self-reported cuts, scratches and burns more often than abused women. Larance describes one client who cut her husband's face with the zipper on her purse when she swung it at him.
The woman called police because her husband was bleeding, but she intentionally omitted the backstory of that night because "she wasn't done with that relationship," Larance explained. Earlier, the two had fought about money and he walked out on her. When he returned hours later, she badgered him to explain where he'd been, fearing that he'd met with a drug dealer. The husband, who had abused her in the past, slammed her against a wall. When she wouldn't desist, he hit her, hard. That's when she swung the purse, and got booked by police.
Larance describes the deep shame and self-hatred abusive women will often feel for failing to hold their relationships together. Indeed, unlike male abusers, female abusers will often quickly and remorsefully admit exactly what they did to a partner.
"We find that in week one, the women tell you their stories," says Robbie Babins-Wagner of the Calgary Counselling Centre, which helps female abusers. "The men are way more reticent to share their story early on."MotoGP and BMW M Division announce a new safety car for the motorcycle racing championship. The BMW M2 MotoGP Safety Car follows on from the concept and success story of the BMW 1 Series M Coupe and the subsequent BMW 1M MotoGP Safety Car.
Since 1999, BMW M has been a permanent member of the international MotoGP family. The successful partnership with organizer Dorna Sports has grown consistently over the years, and is set to continue to run well into the future. In 2014, Dorna Sports and BMW M Division extended their cooperation up to and including 2020.
if (pl_is_mobile()) {? }?
The Safety Cars are specially modified at the BMW M factory for their use as lead cars on the motorcycle racing scene. The same goes for all the other vehicles in the fleet.
if (pl_is_mobile()) {? }?
The new 2016 MotoGP Safety Car shines here with an extremely eye-catching livery in the colors of BMW Motorsport and of course some modifications to prepare it for the permanent race track use. Carbon fiber part from the BMW M Performance catalog and golden details like the wheels complete the spectacular M2 Safety Car.
Inside, the rear seats have been stripped out while the front seats are now made by Recaro.
An adjustable coilover suspension the carbon fiber blades applied to the body and side skirts, the diffuser insert at the rear are just a few of the aerodynamic improvements. The racing wing, M carbon ceramic brakes and the Michelin Cup 2 tires are just some of the latest details that make this M2 a track monster.Marine Sales and Services, Used Fishing Boats
Acadien Boat Brokers, Marine Sales and Services,
Commercial Boats, Fishing Boats, Used Boat Sales, Yachts.
If you are looking for boat brokering services; such as used boat sales, commercial boats, or various sizes of fishing boats, look to Acadien Boat Brokers and Marine Services for a solution.We have been in the fishing business for over 14 years, and we know our boats! Whether you are looking to buy a commercial boat, yachts for sale, or a licensed fishing boat, we have the expertise to help you find what you need.
If you are buying a boat, regardless of the type (House Boat or Yachts,...), you can trust Acadien to help you make the right decision. We will take every necessary step to make sure the boat is sea worthy, and a purchase you will be satisfied with for a long time.
If you are a buyer looking for a boat or fishing license, we can help you find what you’re looking for. A satisfied customer is the number one priority in our business, which means taking the time to do it right and taking care of number one: You!!
Read more...Recently a proposal for electromagnetic acceleration has surfaced:
"Since there has been such a long wait for a conclusive equation describing EA theory, here is an approximate formula for large-scale bending. To find this, I took the limit of a much longer and nastier expression as x approaches infinity, so this will only work when y is much greater than x - that is to say, when the vertical distance travelled is much greater than the horizontal distance travelled. Put another way, its accuracy will improve the closer the light ray is to vertical. Therefore, it is not valid for short-range experiments such as the one proposed by Sentient Pizza, but it can give an idea of how much sunlight would bend on its way to the Earth, for instance.
Definition of terms:
x, y - co-ordinates in the plane of the light ray, where y is increasing in the direction of fastest decreasing Dark Energy potential, and x is increasing in the direction of the component of propagation of the ray which is perpendicular to y.
c - the speed of light in a vacuum.
β - the Bishop constant, named in honour of the great Flat Earth zetetic Mr. Tom Bishop, which defines the magnitude of the acceleration on a horizontal light ray due to Dark Energy. When the theory is complete, attempts will be made to measure this experimentally.
The equation itself is:
Where (0,0) is understood to be the point at which the light ray is horizontal (that is, the derivative of this function is zero)."(Times photo - Ravonelle Yazzie) TOP: A helicopter uses a bambi basket to put out the flames with water Friday evening in the Chuska Mountains near Asaayi Lake, which is east of Navajo Pine, N.M. Fire officials said they did not know what caused the fire. It is continuing to be investigated.
BOTTOM: A wild land firefighter, right (in yellow), can be seen walking in the direction of the fire as a helicopter drops water onto the flames Friday evening on the Chuska Mountains near Asaayi Lake, which is east of Navajo Pine, N.M. Fire officials said they did not know what caused the fire. It is continuing to be investigated.
A
fter three days of charring approximately 1,000 acres, the Assayii Lake Fire has reached the summit of the Chuska Mountains and the inferno is moving in a northeastern direction toward the communities of Naschitti and Sheep Springs, N.M.
The fire will be categorized as a Type II National and State Level Fire, according to the Southwest Area Incident Management Team.
“I got scared,” said Eleanor Largo, who had to evacuate her summer sheep camp near the area locals call Green Meadows.
Green Meadows, which is about 11 miles west of Naschitti, is on the part of the Chuska Mountains known as Biita’dah in Navajo. It’s a region of the mountain where locals have summer camps, and consists of canopies of pinion, juniper and pine trees.
Largo reported to the Navajo Times Sunday night that the fire was north of her summer residence, before she was told by fire officials to depart the mountain. She left her dog and cat behind and sought refuge at the command center and shelter in Naschitti.
“My daughter was crying,” she added, while wiping away tears from her face and having her vitals checked by a first responder.
“Sparks were going toward my house,” she added.
More than 250 firefighters from Bureau of Indian Affairs, including the Navajo Scouts and Navajo Hotshots are battling the blaze. They are being assisted by the Navajo Volunteer Fire Department and the Helitrack Crew.
Fire crews from all over the Navajo Nation and Southwest region of the U.S. are also helping manage the blaze.
According to the Southwest Area Incident Management Team, about close to 1,000 acres have been consumed by the fire that started Friday afternoon north of Assayii Lake in Crystal, NM.
Dangerous high winds reaching to up to 60 mph in the Chuska Mountains have played a key role in keeping the fire alive.
In response to the growing fire, emergency management centers have been set up at Crystal and Naschitti Chapter Houses.
Once seeing the fire reach the summit and moving down from Biighaadi, the very top of the mountain, Gloria Dennison, of Naschitti, knew the fire was “very serious."
“Some people left their livestock up there,” she said.
She added that the way fire has shifted with the wind is scary.
“This is not going to stop because of the wind,” the former chapter president said.
Melvin Stevens, a community member and president of the Authorized Local Emergency Response Team in Naschitti, said that the fire is between Whiskey Lake and Sand Springs, N.M., an area where locals also have summer sheep camps.
There is “heavy smoke and flames,” Steven said, adding that the fire has also moved down from the summit, or Biighaadi, to the region of the mountain known as Biita’dah.
“We’re trying to get organized to get people off of the mountain and keep them away from where the fire is at,” Stevens said.
“You can see the flames on our side of the mountain,” Steven said, adding, “This is one of the largest fires we had and its pretty dry up there."
Residents are advised to stay out of the Crystal/ Assayii Lake area. Highway 31 from Crystal to Sheep Springs is closed, as well as Highway 30 going to Mexican Springs. Route 321 coming down from Crystal Chapter to Assayii Lake is also closed.
People are asked by the SWA Incident Management Team to avoid these roads because the dangers of the fire and the unnecessary traffic for fire crews.
The cause of the fire is still unknown at this time, and authorities aren’t ruling out the possibility of it being human caused, said Regional Fire Management Officer Dale Glenmore, who added the fire is currently being investigated by Navajo Nation authorities.
Glenmore, who briefed fire crews at the SWA Incident Management Team command center at Navajo Nation Museum in Window Rock Sunday afternoon, explained that fire crews from Zuni, Fort Apache, Black Mesa, Mount Taylor, Prescott, Morman Lake, Globe and Blue Ridge are fighting the blaze.
The Southwest Region Team 3 will take over control of fire operations Monday morning. The fire crews will began work at 6 a.m. according to a Bea Day, Instinct Commander of the Southwest Region Team 3.
For more info, call the Bureau of Indian Affairs Division of Forestry and Wildland Fire Management (928)729-23007 or the Navajo Nation Police Department (928) 871-6111.
Watch a video of the fire-fighting efforts
How to get The Times:
Back to top ^Hellspawnl Profile Joined June 2010 Sweden 102 Posts #1
This MeatyOwlLegs recently played a StarCraft 2 tournament in Sweden called GoodOldCraft which was an amateur tournament for company employees in Sweden. Some of the companies participating were Spotify, Twingly, Perifer Design, Kullander, Opera Software, Flatter, NodeOne.
Rakaka was on sight and did an interview with the winner MeatyOwlLegs. In the interview which is done in Swedish and some of the topics are about the tournament itself, the reason NaNiwa used MeatyOwlLegs´s account and their friendship.
See the interview at: Some of you most likely recognize the nickname MeatyOwlLegs, the first one to reach 4000 points during the first ladder season. Behind the account was no other than NaNiwa who now are consider one of the the best in the World. The real owner of the account is a friend of NaNiwa who is named MeatyOwlLegs.This MeatyOwlLegs recently played a StarCraft 2 tournament in Sweden called GoodOldCraft which was an amateur tournament for company employees in Sweden. Some of the companies participating were Spotify, Twingly, Perifer Design, Kullander, Opera Software, Flatter, NodeOne.Rakaka was on sight and did an interview with the winner MeatyOwlLegs. In the interview which is done in Swedish and some of the topics are about the tournament itself, the reason NaNiwa used MeatyOwlLegs´s account and their friendship.See the interview at: Rakaka.se @Hellspawnlord - hellspawn@rakaka.se - Editor of Rakaka.se - Head Admin of Dreamhack Starcraft 2Just days before a planned visit to US regulators' offices by VW's new CEO, Matthias Müller, state attorneys on Friday accused the German automaker of withholding potential evidence related to its emissions-cheating scandal.
New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman told the "New York Times" that Volkswagen had been refusing to turn over internal emails and other communications among executives that could have shed more light on the company's illegal use of emissions-test defeat devices in hundreds of thousands of its diesel-engine cars.
A whole group of US state attorneys general investigating VW's pollution scandal echoed Schneiderman's allegation, saying Volkswagen was withholding emails they had requested in order to find out more about excess emissions in 580,000 diesel cars sold in the US.
The accusation came only days after the US Justice Department officially launched a civil lawsuit against the Wolfsburg-based lawmaker.
Running out of patience
State attorneys from 48 US states expressed discontent with VW's gambit of citing German law as the reason for not turning over the requested emails.
"I find it frustrating that despite public statements professing cooperation and an expressed desire to resolve the various investigations, Volkswagen is in fact resisting cooperation by citing German law," Connecticut Attorney General George Jepsen said in a statement Friday.
VW itself declined to confirm whether or not it was withholding documents, saying only it was not commenting on ongoing investigations.
Earlier Friday, the carmaker reported that sales of vehicles bearing the VW badge slid by 5 percent in 2015, posting the first drop in sales in a decade.
Overall VW Group sales, including brands such as Audi, Porsche and Skoda, were down 2 percent last year.
hg/nz (AFP, dpa, Reuters)Emily Lakdawalla • March 25, 2008
Saturn, Tethys, and Titan
I thought that today's image release from the Cassini imaging team was exceptionally pretty:
NASA / JPL / SSI Saturn, Tethys, and Titan Cassini spotted Saturn and two of its moons in this approximate true color image taken on January 30, 2008. The orange ball of Titan has just emerged from behind Saturn, and is much more distant from Cassini than the bright icy dot of Tethys, in the foreground at the lower left of the image. Because Cassini was on the north side of the rings, we are seeing the rings' shadowed side, so the broad, opaque B ring looks black, while the inner, tenuous C ring looks much brighter. As Cassini's mission proceeds, the season is approaching equinox, so the shadows of Saturn's rings now fall much closer to the planet's equator than they did in the beginning of the mission. At the same time, Saturn's northern hemisphere is losing the brilliant blue color it had at the start of Cassini's mission. Cassini spotted Saturn and two of its moons in this approximate true color image taken on January 30, 2008. The orange ball of Titan has just emerged from behind Saturn, and is much more distant from Cassini than the bright icy dot of Tethys, in the foreground at the lower left of the image. Because Cassini was on the north side of the rings, we are seeing the rings' shadowed side, so the broad, opaque B ring looks black, while the inner, tenuous C ring looks much brighter. As Cassini's mission proceeds, the season is approaching equinox, so the shadows of Saturn's rings now fall much closer to the planet's equator than they did in the beginning of the mission. At the same time, Saturn's northern hemisphere is losing the brilliant blue color it had at the start of Cassini's mission.
When Cassini catches many of the worlds of the Saturn system in one camera frame, you can readily understand how the brightnesses of different bodies in the system differ. Tethys, like Dione, Rhea, Enceladus, and Mimas, is an ice-covered moon, and is really very bright, and becuase Tethys reflects light pretty strongly at all visible wavelengths, it appears white. The atmospheres of Titan and Saturn are much dimmer, swallowing up more of the solar radiation that hits them, and they preferentially reflect more longer-wavelength than shorter-wavelength light, giving them an orangish cast.
The changes of Saturn's colors with the seasons are pretty interesting, too. It would be fun to dig into the Cassini archives for pictures of Saturn over time that show how the ring shadows have been moving south, and the northern hemisphere getting less blue, over time. Here's a photo from early in Cassini's mission to show you the shocking blue color that the northern hemisphere had when Cassini first showed up. I wonder if Cassini will last long enough at Saturn to see the same color develop in the south?
NASA / JPL / SSI Saturn's rings and shadows Saturn's gossamer-thin rings paint with light and shadow across the canvas of Saturn's upper atmosphere in a stunning true-color image captured by the Cassini spacecraft on November 7, 2004. The icy moon at right center is Mimas. Saturn's gossamer-thin rings paint with light and shadow across the canvas of Saturn's upper atmosphere in a stunning true-color image captured by the Cassini spacecraft on November 7, 2004. The icy moon at right center is Mimas.
Emily Lakdawalla Senior Editor and Planetary Evangelist for The Planetary Society
Read more articles by Emily Lakdawallaarticle
Last summer, many corporations hesitated to fund the Republican National Convention over concerns about Donald Trump, then the presumptive GOP nominee, leaving the Cleveland host committee with a $6 million gap days before the event began.
Continue Reading Below
Months later, as Mr. Trump's supporters sought to raise money for his inauguration, those hesitations were gone. The donations help fund the parade, concert and other celebrations during the weekend.
At least four corporations that declined to support or reduced their donations to the July convention have given to Mr. Trump's inaugural committee, which raised a record $90 million, according to an official on the committee. That haul far surpassed the $44 million President Barack Obama's committee raised in 2013 and the $53 million it raised in 2009.
United Parcel Service Inc., Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and Coca-Cola Co. are among the companies that are supporting Mr. Trump's inauguration, after opting not to give or to reduce their donations to the convention last year. All three companies had given to previous conventions of both parties.
A spokeswoman for UPS confirmed that the company was supporting the inauguration but declined to provide an amount for its donation. It didn't donate to Mr. Obama's 2013 inauguration, though a spokeswoman said it had given to past inaugurations. In 2012, the company gave about $400,000, including in-kind donations, to the Republican convention in Tampa, Fla., according to Federal Election Commission records. UPS didn't donate to the Democratic convention last year either.
Wal-Mart has given $150,000 to the inaugural committee, as well as sponsoring a ball, according to spokesman Greg Hitt. In 2013, it didn't donate to Mr. Obama's inaugural committee but sponsored some events during the festivities, Mr. Hitt said. The company gave $15,000 to each national party committee to fund last year's conventions after giving $150,000 to the 2012 GOP convention.
Advertisement
Coca-Cola has made a donation to Mr. Trump's inaugural committee that was "in line" with the $430,000 it gave Mr. Obama's 2013 event, a spokesman said. The company donated $75,000 to the GOP convention last year, down from $666,200 in 2012. A spokesman noted that the company gave the same amount to both parties' conventions last year.
Other companies supporting the inauguration or surrounding festivities after having reduced or eliminated their donations to the GOP convention include Motorola Solutions Inc.
The donations illustrate Corporate America's shifting relationship with the new president, after most companies were wary about linking themselves to him as a candidate.
Most industries supported Democrat Hillary Clinton instead, and not a single Fortune 100 CEO gave to the Republican or his allied super PACs. In some instances, corporate executives drew harsh criticism for interacting with the Republican nominee: Intel Corp. CEO Brian Krzanich, for example, canceled an event with Mr. Trump at his home after news of his plans emerged.
Since the election, many companies have found themselves the target of Mr. Trump -- in particular, of his Twitter account.
In recent months, the president-elect has tweeted criticism of companies including General Motors Co. and Boeing Co., while praising others, such as Ford Motor Co., for expanding operations in the U.S. rather than in other countries. Many companies including Wal-Mart have successfully fended off criticism from Mr. Trump -- even getting praise over Twitter -- by touting job-creation numbers from previously announced plans.
In some cases, the targets of Mr. Trump's tweets have overlapped with the companies supporting his inauguration. Last month, the president chastised Boeing's price tag for its new 747 Air Force One. "Costs are out of control," he tweeted. "Cancel order!" Boeing has given $1 million to the inaugural committee, the same amount it gave to Mr. Obama's inauguration in 2013. A spokesman said the donation was made before Mr. Trump's tweet.
Beyond the hope of avoiding Mr. Trump's Twitter wrath, there are plenty of reasons for corporations to sponsor an inauguration. Many companies say they see it as a civic responsibility. Major donors also win prime placement of their names or those of their corporations on "select printed materials," according to a list of benefits viewed by The Wall Street Journal.
A major donation also wins corporations or individuals the ear of the president: Donors who give $500,000 or more receive tickets to a "candlelight dinner" attended by Mr. Trump and his wife, Melania, and Vice President Mike Pence and his wife, Karen.
Meanwhile, at least two major corporate donors to Mr. Obama's inauguration in 2013 have opted not to support the event this time around. Xerox Corp. and the Edison Electric Institute, which collectively gave $335,000 in 2013, aren't donating to the inauguration this year. Chevron Corp. halved its contribution to the inauguration this year, giving $500,000. It also plans to sponsor additional events, a spokeswoman said.
A spokesmen for Xerox said its decision was for reasons unrelated to Mr. Trump. A spokesman for Edison Electric, an association of shareholder-owned electric utilities, said Mr. Trump's inaugural committee didn't accept funding from trade associations or PACs.Apple has posted Steve Jobs’ “Thoughts on Flash“. There are a lot of lies and half truths. No one will care. The article has enough valid points that people won’t check up on them.
That said, here’s my attempts to correct the lies.
Lie  #1: “Adobe’s Flash products are 100% proprietary.”
The Flash IDE, yes. Â The Flash Player, no. Â Here is a list of technologies open sourced/published by Macromedia/Adobe that are in the Flash Player ecosystem:
ActionScript 3 runtime, called Tamarin.  Given to Mozilla to hopefully utilize in future browsers. RTMP (and it’s ilk), the protocol for real-time video & audio streaming as well as data (AMF). Yes, many want “more” open sourced. Red5 and Wowza seem to be doing just fine with what is there currently. The SWF format itself, which is what Flash Player plays/runs, has most of it’s spec published in case you want to generate SWF files.
This street goes both ways, too. Macromedia/Adobe has adopted open source technologies into Flash Player with the hopes of embracing standards, not just the de-facto ones.
ActionScript 1, 2, and 3 are all based on EMCAScript. Yes, it’s not as compliant as many would like. Additionally, Adobe did participate in many ECMA Script discussions/debates. Yes, 4 didn’t turn out so well for Adobe. The XML parsing is based on E4X, ECMA Script for XML.
I’m not saying Adobe’s open sourced a lot of the Flash Player. Â There’s open source, there’s published, and then there is open source.
Regarding their products, he’s wrong there too. Â The Flex SDK, one of the biggest boosts for the Flash Platform in the past 4 years, is also open source (yes, the real kind). Â Most utilize Flex Builder, built on top of the open source Eclipse.
Using a blanket statement saying Adobe’s Flash products are 100% proprietary is a lie.  It paints an incorrect & negative picture over all the wonderful things Macromedia/Adobe have done in open source around their products.
Lie #2: “HTML5 being adopted by Google”
Google created the first browser to fully integrate plugins, and continues to work with Adobe to do so.  Google also utilizes Flash Player in Gmail for both file uploading, and configuring your web cam.  Google utilizes Flash Player in their online maps product for street view.  Google Finance utilizes Flash Player for a lot of their charts.  Their video site, YouTube, utilizes Flash Player for their videos.
Google didn’t start out with Flash. Â They started with text, AJAX, and later Flash. Â They’ve done a lot of forays into HTML5, yes, and will continue to do so. Â Saying they are “adopting” it, and only it and not Flash Player, is incorrect.
Lie #3: “…75% of video on the web is in Flash. What they don’t say is that almost all this video is also available in a more modern format, H.264, and viewable on iPhones, iPods and iPads…”
Incorrect. Â If a video is H264, that doesn’t mean it can play on the iPhone. Â If you look at the iPhone specs, you’ll see the only support a subset of what H264 offers, specifically 2 major components to quality video: Using a maximum of the Baseline profile, with Simple for higher bitrates/resolutions, as well as 2.5 for maximum (ish) bitrate.
Not all H264 videos conform to these specs. Â YouTube converted a lot of their Spark (Flash 6/7) videos to H264 to support iPhone because there was money to be gained in the large investment. Â Even so, not all YouTube videos work on the iPhone, in part because of the aforementioned reasons. Â There is a reason why when you upload a H264 video to YouTube, they’ll often re-encode it.
I’ve been in web video for 7 years.  Getting video to work in the browser is the easy part.  Setting up video encoding farms to support thousands/millions of users is not.  It’s hard and expensive.  Not everyone has the resources (read money and time) Google has, and that’s why companies like Brightcove are trying to capitalize on this problem.
Most importantly, HTML5 currently has no universal DRM solution.  That is why Flash Player’s RTMPE, and soon HTTP Streaming via Project Zeri, are the de-facto standard today.  Those who deploy video content they either own or license the rights to will not utilize HTML5 because it cannot be protected.  There is a reason you rent videos in iTunes using their <strike>ACC</strike> MP4 format vs. straight H264.  Legally, those videos CANNOT be utilized via HTML5.
Also, Hulu.com and others aren’t using H264, they’re using On2’s VP6.
Lie #4: “users aren’t missing much video.”
Every time a user see’s a blue lego instead of the video they wanted to see, they are missing a video. Â There were so many people seeing the blue lego, including Steve Jobs himself on stage demoing the iPad, that they removed the blue lego as a PR effort to make it seem like there was something wrong with the website itself vs. the iPhone/iPad.
…thankfully, Grant Skinner added it back.
Lie #5: “…Flash has recently added support for H.264…”
Incorrect. Â It’s been there since August of 2007. Â That’s almost 3 years. Â That’s a long time in technology.
Lie #6: “…must be run in software…”
Not entirely correct. Â Apple FINALLY gave Adobe and others access to hardware for desktop systems, which Adobe has recently utilized. Â The #1 criticism for Mac’s & Flash video is lack of hardware acceleration. Â This move by Apple will go a long way to improving video experiences, not just for Flash, for browser based video. Â Meaning, cooler Macs and more battery life.
For mobile, Safari/WebKit is using H264 hardware decoding just fine. Â They just won’t expose it, forcing yet again, Flash to utilize a sub par video experience for iPhone (having to launch a URL to utilize the iPhone’s default video player vs. incorporating the video into the experience).
Lie #7: “…When websites re-encode their videos using H.264, they can offer them without using Flash at all…”
See #3. Â Also, not all Flash video is just a video block on a page. Â Some are immersive experiences, games, or involved in compositing with other objects (alpha channels, easier particle systems, etc). Â HTML5 does not currently support some of these features.
Finally, not all video is pre-recorded and progressive.  Live and streamed events are currently done using Flash Player and Silverlight.  Yes, I’ve seen systems that can do live H264 via progressive with only seconds latency over CDN’s, regardless, they aren’t what’s being used en masse today.  This includes DVR like functionality that both technologies offer, including Adative Streaming capabilities to ensure you can see un-interrupted video regardless of your internet connections’s integrity.
Lie #8: “…Flash was designed for PCs using mice, not for touch screens using fingers…”
Incorrect. Â The whole reason Flash Player has continued to stay ahead of the curve is because Macromedia/Adobe innovates it. Â There are gesture & touch API’s in the Flash Player; I and many others have used them for the iPhone resulting in a 100+ apps on the App Store.
Lie #9: “For example, many Flash websites rely on “rolloversâ€, which pop up menus or other elements when the mouse arrow hovers over a specific spot.”
Incorrect. Â This was already discounted 2 months ago by Mike Chambers. Â Additionally, I tested both MouseEvent.CLICK, MouseEvent.MOUSE_DOWN, and MouseEvent.ROLL_OVER, and all 3 worked just fine on my iPhone. Â Additionally, I’ve seen video of a Nexus One using the native Flash Player 10.1 that plays a Flex website I made just fine |
he has helped to pioneer don’t yet capture economic reality. How do people really think, as individuals and in a market? How should we account for changes in expectations as people learn? How should we incorporate human thinking more realistically into economic models? He’s grappling with such questions, seeking more sophisticated techniques that incorporate what he calls the theory of “adaptive learning.”
Advertisement Continue reading the main story
His own assumptions need to be continually re-examined “to capture a fundamentally uncertain, constrained, complicated world,” he says.
Simon Potter, director of economic research at the New York Federal Reserve, says he has taken Mr. Sargent’s message to heart: “Our profession hasn’t reached the stage where it can reliably forecast the economy,” Mr. Potter says. “Our collective failure to do so in the financial crisis shows this.”
And so, he says, “we at the Fed have been using the teachings of Thomas Sargent to ‘tweak our models’ and build in alternative assumptions.” The point is to “ratchet down our forecasts,” he says, and try to prepare for “less obvious, less easily expected outcomes.”
WHILE neither Mr. Sims nor Mr. Sargent gives much prescriptive advice about the current economic malaise, both have already given guidance about the global crisis — providing advance warning of serious consequences if policy makers fail to understand the links between monetary and fiscal policy.
In a prescient paper more than a decade ago, Mr. Sims warned of disaster to come in the euro zone if a new central bank wasn’t accompanied by a unified fiscal authority. To avoid disaster now, he says, the European Central Bank must show a willingness “to act as a lender of last resort” in Europe. If that happens, he says, markets may be able to stabilize long enough for Europeans to study a long “menu” of accompanying fiscal and political arrangements.
Mr. Sargent has also written extensively about “budget constraints” and monetary policy. One influential study, “Some Unpleasant Monetarist Arithmetic,” written with Neil Wallace of Penn State, says a central bank will eventually run out of ammunition if the government fails to manage its debt. That analysis applies to the United States today, Mr. Sargent says.
“There are many choices open to us here,” he says. “But at some point the market will have to be convinced that the government can handle its debt.”
As for the euro, he says he will provide a few possible answers in his Nobel speech on Saturday. His draft is a scholarly, 40-page, footnoted, annotated paper. “There isn’t much about Europe in it,” he acknowledges. “They don’t want advice from an American, really.”
Advertisement Continue reading the main story
The paper contains an explication of rational expectations econometric theory, written in English and math, and an astute fiscal and monetary history of the United States in its early days.
Mr. Sargent notes that the United States moved from loose confederation to federal union — the arrangement embodied in the Constitution — in large part because of a crippling debt crisis. The parallels with Europe seem clear. Is he calling for a federal Europe?
“Maybe,” he says. “I’m pointing out the constraints and the possibilities.”They aren’t really, though—at least, not yet. What happened Wednesday was really Greater Paris’ political and business leaders waving to the international press to remind them of their existence, rather than the announcement of any new policies. And while no one in Paris actually said they want Brexit to happen, the tone of comments was nonetheless somewhat tart.
If Britain leaves the EU, then come to us. That’s the message coming from Paris this week, where a group of Parisian politicians and finance experts gathered to announce plans to grab a share of London’s finance business should the United Kingdom vote this month the leave the Union. The U.K.’s referendum on Brexit looms on June 23, and the result looks to be very close indeed. Paris knows this, and is standing in the wings waiting to attract any post-Brexit London exiles. As Paris Deputy Mayor Jean-Louis Missika put it: “We are rolling out the red carpet.”
“Britain can’t blackmail Europe forever without giving an answer at some point or other” said Patrick Devedjian, President of the Hauts-de-Seine department where Greater Paris’ La Défense business district is located. The CEO of trans-European stock exchange Euronext described London’s domination of European finance as an “offshore anomaly,” while the director of financial services company Societé Générale said, “We need to be completely clear—we are indeed in a position to challenge [London].”
But will the scenario Paris is preparing for actually happen? Right now, the polls predicting the U.K.’s June 23 referendum are in a dead heat. Britain’s “Leave” and “Remain” camps have been more or less neck and neck throughout the referendum campaign, but as of three days ago, The Economist’s Brexit Poll Tracker had the pro-leave camp ahead by just one percentage point. Already, some companies are saying they will cut jobs in London and relocate staff elsewhere if Brexit happens—notably HSBC bank, which said it would shift 1,000 jobs across the Channel to Paris.
It’s highly likely that other companies would follow suit, but it’s currently not possible to say how many. That’s because British voters are being asked to make a decision about leaving the EU without any clear answer as to what the U.K.’s subsequent relationship with the union will look like if Britain surrenders membership.
Would Britain follow the model of Non-EU member Norway, which contributes substantial funds to the union and thus gains tariff-free access to the European Economic Area? This would lessen the necessity for companies to relocate, but it would mean paying into the EU without having a say—the proverbial taxation without representation—and mean the U.K. would still need to follow the great majority of EU regulations.
Alternatively, Britain might sever all payments into EU funds, achieving greater sovereignty. This would mean losing tariff-free access to its largest market, one side effect of which would surely be many London-based European operations relocating to cities still within the EU. Brexiteers have tended to fudge questions like these, preferring instead to invoke Hitler, or focus on issues like immigration (though even here their approach is somewhat incoherent).
If Brexit provoked a stampede from London, Paris would still have to compete with other cities such as Frankfurt, Dublin, and Amsterdam also eyeing their share of London exiles. But even if the U.K. votes to remain in the EU, the uncertainty the referendum has created may still be to the advantage of other EU cities. As so often happens when any political change is afoot, the markets have got the jitters and investors are already moving billions out of the U.K. Some form of recession is forecast if the U.K. votes to leave, the question is how low things will go. London may increasingly look like a city detached from its continent—or at least be portrayed that way by rivals. As Valérie Pécresse, President of the Ile de France Region within which Greater Paris is located, put it on Wednesday:CTV Vancouver
B.C. Corrections has issued a public notification regarding high-risk sex offender James Conway, 41, who plans to move to the City of Mission.
According to B.C. Corrections, Conway “has maintained a versatile pattern of sexual offending against female children in a predatory and opportunistic manner.”
His criminal history includes convictions for “sexual interference of person under 16,” “sexual assault,” “arson damaging property,” “fail to comply with disposition,” and “breach of recognizance.”
Conway was the subject of protests in the City of Abbotsford after police there notified the public that he had moved to the city last year. The halfway home in which he was living was also vandalized at least 15 times by vigilantes, including on one occasion that caused the roof to collapse, according to Abbotsford police.
The City of Abbotsford filed a lawsuit in November seeking to close the halfway house because it violated city zoning.
Conway is subject to close monitoring by authorities and 25 court-ordered conditions, including the following:
He must remain in his residence at all times and may not leave without supervision.
He is subject to electronic supervision.
He may not engage in any activity that involves contact with persons under the age of 18, including online communication.
He may not engage in any activities, volunteer work or employment that will put him in contact with any person under the age of 18.
He may not attend any public park, playground, school yard, daycare centre, community centre or public swimming area or any other site which offers activities for persons under the age of 18.
He may not wear, for any reason, any uniform which includes but is not limited to, Firemen’s uniforms, Correctional Officer uniforms, Search and Rescue uniforms, Police uniforms, Security Guard uniforms, Nurse uniforms, or any patch or insignia that represents these occupations.
He may not travel alone on public transit.
He may not consume alcohol or be in an establishment where alcohol is for sale.
He may not possess any weapons.
Anyone who observes Conway in violation of any of these conditions is asked to call their local police agency.Scientists have found that the food can increase your attention span in the short term and can maintain a healthy mind in the long term.
They found that just one 200g blueberry smoothie was enough to increase powers of concentration by as much as 20 per cent over the day.
Regular consumption of the fruit could lead to a rewiring of a part of the brain that is linked to memory.
The findings of the study, reported at the British Science Festival, add to the growing reputation of blueberries as the super-food of super-foods.
The fruit, which is an anti-oxidant, has already been linked to lower heart disease and cancer rates as well as anti-ageing.
Antioxidants remove free radicals - chemicals that have the potential to cause damage to cells and tissues in the body.
But Dr Jeremy Spencer, a molecular nutritionist at the University of Reading who carried out the latest study, believes its affect on the mind is less to do with its antioxidant properties and more to do with its ability to increase the blood flow to your brain.
Special chemicals in the fruit, known as flavonoids, open up blood vessels, allowing increased blood flow and at the same time a reduction of blood pressure.
The effect is improved cognitive performance in the short term, and a healthier brain in the long term.
“I think that the findings were impressive and have the potential in the long term to lead to cognitive improvement,” he said.
Dr Spencer and his team tested the fruit’s powers on a group of 40 adults made up of students aged between 18 and 30.
The group was given a set diet, which included a blueberry smoothie, and then asked to do a number of exercises to test their powers of concentration throughout the day.
The tests included navigating through computer generated maze, IQ assessments and reacting to words flashing on a screen.
A month later they were brought back and given the same diet and tests but without the smoothie.
Researchers found that while there was no change in the cognitive powers between the two occasions for the first few hours, towards the end of the day the smoothie stopped the concentration flagging, while without it dropped by up to 20 per cent.
“After one hour there was little difference in the attention tests but after five hours people who did not have the smoothie’s performance dropped by 15 to 20 per cent,” said Dr Spencer.
The results were repeated with another group of 40 volunteers, this time pensioners.
He said that he was now concentrating on the long term effects of eating blueberries and particularly their effect on the hippocampus, the part of the brain related to memory.
He believes that flavonoid rich foods, which also include chocolate, spinach and some fruit juices, can re-structure the brain and ward off memory loss associated with Alzheimer’s.
“I think that is where the real benefit could come from,” he said.One of the more often overlooked aspects of Madden NFL every year is just how determined the development team at EA Sports is to make the game look as close to what fans see on Sundays as possible.
We’re not talking about how the game plays, either. We’re talking about how it looks. Do the players wear the same gear in the game as they do on the real field? Do jerseys look realistic? What about the cleats?
That process of development is all lead by the “Equipment Guru” of Madden, Dustin Smith who works as the franchise’s authenticity producers.
In part one of a series exclusive to Sports Gamers Online, we sit down with Smith to take a closer look at the visual and presentation side of Madden 18. From the Lambeau Leap to new and upcoming stadiums, no stone is left unturned when it comes to NFL authenticity.
What is your official position and what do you do exactly?
I’m the Authenticity Producer- or technical terms goes to Assistant Producer within the building. I do a lot involving anything player likeness, authenticity, and rosters. I kinda have a little big umbrella that I have to hover over.
That seems like a large umbrella that covers a lot of things. Can you touch upon how your position and the graphics and presentation teams work together?
I do most of my work with Art Works. I work a lot with a lot of their character artists on getting things just right for heads, uniforms, etc, stadiums. It’s relatively more kind of providing directions. Sometimes I do the actual work myself. It’s kind of a little bit of this and that, depending on what the work is. Not so much on the presentation side. More so just on the actual visual side.
A lot of guys will always come to me with questions about how should this look? Is this what you would expect when you go in game? Is this the proper number placement? Is this the proper number size? I just got ask the other day on sideline characters, “What’s your expected result here?” And I’m like, “I want it to look exactly like the player on the field. One-to-one, hardly any difference.” You know, those kinds of things is kind where I do a lot of my work with graphics.
Are there plans to improve sideline reactions and interactions even more than what we’ve seen thus far?
That’s something I know has been a big thing on Rex’s and presentation’s things to keep improving that, keep improving that, keep improving that. I believe it’s something we’ve made an improvement on this year. I’m not so involved in so much of the logic of how the players interact and how they react and all of the nuances and how they react to what’s going on on the field. But I’m more on that side of ‘are they wearing the right thing? Do they look exactly right?’
I guess it’s best to say I’m more of the visual type there. But I do know, I can speak to some degree, that there has been some improvement. I’ve heard people talk about many things. I haven’t been in the game as much as I’ve wanted to this year, but I’ve seen some things myself. So, I know there’s been some improvement. I don’t know what exactly I can say the finished product will be, but I know it will be better than last year.
Have there been any updates for stadiums in Madden 18?
Yes! We went out on a scan trip to multiple stadiums to scan stadiums. I could name Dallas Cowboys, Pittsburgh Steelers, Tampa Bay Buccaneers just to name a few. And I know we have plans that we want to keep doing that and get more and more so we can get to the point where all stadiums are scanned. But as of this year, we have I think… I think it’s around 10. Don’t quote me on that, but it’s somewhere in that range. We have a good amount.
We’re trying to get super, super authentic with it, and extra details on those. So we went with the scan route. And you’ll see a lot more detail with our scanned stadiums this year, which I’m sure we’ll touch upon again as the year goes on.
What about stadiums that are newer or currently being built? Such as the Rams’ stadium.
I don’t believe we have the Rams’ stadium since they still have- they’re behind on schedule. We have Falcons’, we had Falcons’ last year. We obviously won’t be able to scan Falcons until they’re completely finished. But we do have Falcons’ too, as accurate as we can.
We have the new Chargers stadium. Which isn’t a new stadium but it’s new to them. We’ve updated the Rams to more accurately represent what it looked like last year now that they’ve played in there. We hit up a bunch of stadiums for the renovations. Such as, you know, the Rams added some video boards which is technically USC. They added some stuff to the coliseum.
Anybody else who’s added some renovations we’ve been on. San Francisco did some renovations. Jacksonville did some renovations, even though it was minor. We did a pretty good job of trying to make sure we caught up with every team that did any sort of rework or major overhaul or anything over the off season.
Let’s talk celebrations. Is the Lambeau Leap back in the game yet? Is it something that may be added going forward? They were saying they had the ability to add celebrations after release.
I’m not a hundred percent on that. I can’t say for sure. Since that’s something that’s NIS driven, which is non interactive sequence for those who don’t know, I think there’s a way. Patching in an animation is easier now. But patching in a whole NIS sequence with an animation and all that, I can’t speak to how difficult that may or may not be. I wouldn’t rule it out though. Frostbite’s given us a lot of really good capabilities moving forward and we’ve obviously put a lot of effort and time into it’s development.
I don’t know at this point. Where as before we so willing to say “No, we can’t patch this, no we can’t patch that.” I would say moving forward, like, that realm has opened up some. To the point where we feel a lot more willing to take on things like that. And with us being on an engine that everyone else is on, we have a little bit more freedom and capability to go try out and do more things like that throughout the year. Where as before we were more limited.
Can you talk about the jersey upgrades afforded by the Frostbite engine?
Yeah, because of all of the new lighting that we ended up with, we had to basically kind of start from ground zero on the uniform colors. We tried a few methods, we thought one of them was going to work, but more and more, the lighting go to be final, we realized those weren’t going to work. So went and made a pass on all Nike colors. Every single Nike color has been redone.
It has been tuned to our lighting to look exactly like what it should look like based on what you see in TV and what you see in photos. We tuned it basically- as long as pictures were available, and for most there were, obviously except for color rush- we tuned it to midday lighting, and then we made sure the lighting would adapt correctly for night, other circumstances, dusk, etcetera etcetera. So if it looks slightly different at night or dusk or evening or whatever, then it’s more likely that we should look at the lighting rather than the color. But we feel pretty happy with where we got on all of our Nike colors for midday.
What threw another wrench into that was when Nike came to us and they said, “Well, we’re pulling out the new seam pattern that we were using on color rush last year. Well, most teams are going to be taking this change.” And we’re like “Ohh boy. So, all right. Shoot us a list on how many this is.” And it was basically ninety percent of the league. (He laughed) So we had to go redo all of our jersey seams and pants seams for all of those teams. It was an overwhelming task, but I think we got it right.
We have the little metal NFL looking shield that looks really cool. Especially from certain angels, you can see it. You can see it during gameplay. It’s a nice little touch that you’ll see on the field this season. You can see it last year if you look at color rush uniforms. It’s the same little metalized, or whatever you want to call it, decal. It looks really good.
On the Nike uniforms that didn’t have that, we made ours look more like the little rubberize plastic that was on it before. And we didn’t skimp on any of the Nike uniforms. I made a hundred percent sure we hit all color rush, all home and away, all alternates. And if a team was wearing a different uniform when Nike took over in 2012, we hit up those uniforms too. Every Nike uniform has had a full, authenticity pass.
You did mention some of the lighting and how that affects the uniforms. 4K and HDR have been big improvements moving to PS4 Pro and Xbox One X. Can you speak on how the increase in resolution and color range has impacted what you do?
We tried to increase- I know graphics and artworks spent time trying to find any textures or anything like that that were low rez and tried to upres them as much as we could knowing that we’re heading into that generation where it’s harder to get away with making somebody more low detail, low res. Because it will be so obvious when you see it next to something that has a much higher resolution texture. Right? So I don’t think we’re fully there, but I think we’re really on our way. And we did a lot of upgrades to kind of catch up and get ready.
I think, you know, the NFL presents a huge, huge task in that area, where you have to see tons of fans in the crowd. Twenty-two players on the field. However many refs we show at one time. A chain gang. All the sideline players. All the assistant coaches. And then all the media and all those other sideline players or characters that show up there. We’re trying to load umpteen thousand people on the screen at one time and try and make them all look good at the same time.
Stay tuned as we will be back with Dustin covering Equipment and Accessories in Madden 18, which launches on Xbox One, PlayStation 4 on August 25th. Those who pre-order the G.O.A.T. Edition of the game can get access three-days early on August 22.
Want to talk sports and/or games with the fastest growing community in gaming? Join the conversation in the comment section below as well as on our Twitter and Facebook pages.Men Not to Fuck in 2k16
Hi, guys. Here is my heteronormative-as-fuck list of men to not fuck in 2k16.
Man-Literature-For-Men Man - Are Hemingway/DFW/Franzen bad authors? IDK. Life is complicated and shit, but your top author list should cite something not from the White Man’s Handbook for Looking Learned
The Christopher Hitchens/Malcolm Gladwell/TED Talks Guy - This man is gonna yell at you in an Olive Garden about how he took philosophy 101 and condescend to you about your worldview. None of this in 2k16. You want to act like you know something, you better actually know something. The Ayn Rand Lover/Libertarian - Libertarians are people who read a Nietzsche quote on a desk calendar once and cemented up their worldview. No emotional children in 2k16. The Male Feminist - This man is gagging to call you a cunt in bed. And maybe that floats your boat but there’s gonna be some half-hearted oral to follow so… he doesn’t get this one. Also, he WILL talk over you at a party about bell hooks. This man is the worst man because he has so assured himself that he is the best man. Guys with No Guy Friends - In 2k15, we learned to back away from the woman who “doesn’t get along with other women.” The same is true of men who “don’t get along with other men.” They’re relying on platonic women for all the emotional labor in the world and aren’t gonna have a good relationship with you either. A Man All About Space-Based Franchises - We fucked enough dweebs in 2k15. Star Wars is gonna leave the box office and, frankly, “nerd culture” is founded on talking loudly and sweatily over women. It is fine to like nerd shit but don’t be all about it. “I’m Working On…” Guy - Unless that phrase ends in “my car,” run away from that man. He’s gonna be working on that play/movie/screenplay/adaptation of/book/novel/comic book for the rest of his days without any forward momentum or planning. He’s not “talking to” some agents. He’s talking to his mom and his diary.
The Wet Mop - This guy had hopes and dreams and then he fell down in a puddle. You’re walking around like a person who has her shit figured out, and he wants some of that. But you’re gonna try to lean that wet mop against something and it is gonna fall down again twice as hard. In 2k16, just leave that mop on the floor. Let it figure its own shit out. The No-Bed Guy - Does this guy have a twin bed? Does he have a mattress on the floor? Does he have a futon? Does he have a mattress on a box spring on the floor? Does this guy have an air mattress? Does this guy just sleep on a pile of ex-girlfriend’s old scarves? Do not sleep with this man. If he isn’t bothering to invest in a bed frame and a bed you can comfortably fuck in, he won’t bother to invest in you. The Finance Guy - Do not fuck this man. Have this man take you to dinner, and don’t fuck him. Have this man buy you some stuff, and don’t fuck him. Make this man take you to France, and don’t fuck him. Make him buy you a car, and don’t fuck him. Don’t fuck this man. It will drive him nuts, and he’ll think about you constantly when he is in the suburbs with two kids that have the names he thought about giving to boats, and you’re doing your part to destroy the capitalist system from the inside. Plus, he is 100% going to be bad at sex. A Man with An Active Reddit Account - I do not need to explain this one. A Man Who Reads Richard Dawkins - No one wants a man playing devil’s advocate between the sheets. The Man with Six Shirts - This goes back to No-Bed Guy. If a man cannot invest in himself, he cannot invest in you and you have THINGS TO DO. You have things to do and places to be and this man owns SIX SHIRTS. Do not reform this man in 2k16. Leave this man where he is. The Man Who Mentions High School - Why? Why is he doing this? Does he have no plans for 40? For 30? Does he miss the days when his mom made him lunch and his only responsibilities were thinking about how he could be an astronaut but not actually doing anything to be an astronaut? Get away from this man. A Man with a Hoverboard - Either you are accidentally considering fucking a teen or you are considering fucking a lawyer. Either one should be illegal. No men who embrace high-cost fads in 2k16. They’re gonna think they can “trade up” at some point.
This list will be ongoing, because men keep being alive in new and terrible ways.Merriam-Webster’s definition of bigotry is Conservatism.
Typing “bigotry” into their website, the word is defined as bigoted acts or beliefs. Scroll down to the “related words” section and you will see conservatism coupled together with reactionaryism, insularism, insularity, parochialism, and provincialism. But they go further. The antonym (opposite) of bigotry is liberalism.
The Daily Caller posted an email exchange between an unnamed source and Rose Martino, an associate editor of the unabridged Merriam-Webster.com via The Mirror.
Subject: Bigotry Definition Question: Can you explain to me why you would have conservatism as a related word to bigotry? I am a conservative and I haven’t a bigoted bone in my body, thought in my head or in my heart. This is deeply, deeply offensive to me. I anxiously await your answer ROSE MARTINO: “I apologize for the unfortunate juxtaposition; the basic line of reasoning seems to have been that since ‘liberalism’ is an antonym to ‘conservatism,’ perceived antonyms of ‘liberalism’ could be considered to be related words for ‘conservatism.’ The other word on that particular related words sub-list is ‘illiberalism,’ which makes the connection a bit clearer… for people who understand that the groups set off by semicolons are considered to be sets of words related to *each other*, which is not immediately obvious to many thesaurus users, and we apologize for that as well. The crux of the issue appears to be that those two entries were handled by different editors, one of whom thought ‘bigotry’ and ‘illiberalism’ were nearly synonymous (while the other did not, explaining why ‘bigotry’ does not appear at the actual ‘liberal’ entry), and so added both at ‘conservatism.’ This lack of perfect reciprocity crops up from time to time with a thesaurus, and in this particular instance it was especially regrettable. I’ll definitely recommend that the entry be reviewed thoroughly for the next new edition or revision of the thesaurus, and in the meantime I hope you’ll forgive us for the unintended but very real offensiveness of the apparent connection. Thank you for taking the time to write to us, and please do not hesitate to contact us with a question in the future.”
Truth Revolt also reached out Webster and their response that was different from the Mirror’s.The Lupus Foundation of America (Foundation) has been awarded a multi-million dollar grant from the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to improve symptom recognition, diagnosis and improve the quality of life for people with lupus.
”This is an unprecedented opportunity to build on the sustainable and meaningful programs and services we provide people with lupus and their physicians,” said Conrad Gehrmann, Chair of the Lupus Foundation of America’s National Board of Directors. “As an organization committed to resolving the challenges that have plagued lupus diagnosis and care, this award fits perfectly with our mission and we look forward to working with the CDC.”
The funding will be used to:
develop and implement an evidence-based national awareness and education campaign targeted at health care providers, individuals at risk for lupus and people with lupus;
establish new resources and support for people at risk for and living with lupus and their caregivers; and
build upon existing community-based partnerships with health care providers to help diagnose lupus more quickly.
Thursday, the Lupus Foundation of America, the National Association of Chronic Disease Directors and the CDC will unveil the first-ever National Public Health Agenda for Lupus at a briefing on Capitol Hill. It will identify public health priorities, strategies and recommendations that are relevant and complementary to efforts in lupus biomedical research and clinical care and serve as a model of a comprehensive approach to lupus care and treatment.
The Foundation is also currently conducting research among people with lupus, their caregivers and various physician groups/specialists, to better understand the barriers in obtaining a lupus diagnosis.
The National Public Health Agenda for Lupus, along with the Foundation’s research findings, will guide the creation of campaigns and tools to reduce the time to an accurate lupus diagnosis and help develop programs and services that will benefit people with lupus, their caregivers and health care providers.
The Foundation will work closely with the CDC and also in collaboration with the American College of Rheumatology who also was awarded funding for this grant.Video games can take us all over the place: the strange far reaches of space, famous historical battles, anime witch schools, and any combination of the three. For a new generation of game developers, the question emerges of where they'd actually like to go back to.
Nostalgia—that comfort food for the soul—beckons them to a primordial version of the platform we're now bound to: the world wide web. An internet without social media or a name for memes. An internet that was more exclusive, uncurated, and had lower stakes. An internet that thought midi files were close enough.
A wave of upcoming adventures are very interested in exploring those heady, hopeful days.
Shigesato Itoi's own nostalgic Earthbound is the inspiration for Ackk studios' YIIK. In that classic RPG opening, a meteor crashes in the dead of night, awakening a small town in their pajamas. In the PAX demo for YIIK, Episode Prime, something also stirs up a small town. A web forum, ONISM1999, is blowing up with reports of a ghost spotted in a cavern just outside the 'burbs, and immediately every youngster is out hunting for the paranormal.
A colorful, turn-based RPG, YIIK is a series of spooky investigations through mazes, puzzles, monsters and weirdos. In the demo, you play as Alex, Vella and Claudio, who fight with vinyl records, keytars, and hacky sacks, respectively. Each attack and defense pulls up a different mini-game, similar to Paper Mario, and the game's geeky, referential aesthetic is hard not to compare to Scott Pilgrim. While the game's aesthetic draws from a mix of 90s nerd culture inspirations, the plot has very precise origins.
Before Reddit's armchair detective agency, or the fleets of Twitter correctors, the internet's tall tales had longer legs. Allanson fondly remembers Ted's Caving Blog and a story he couldn't remember the details of, but described it as a "great House of Leaves-esque" fable of a man who tried to eat a house.
There's another, much more tragic story that weighed on the YIIK team's minds when crafting the tale.
Central to YIIK's main mystery (and tied to the early game's specter sighting) is a woman who vanished from an elevator, seemingly yanked into another dimension. It's reminiscent of the real life disappearance of Elisa Lam, last seen in 2013 "acting strangely" in the elevator of a Los Angeles hotel. Twenty days after disappearing, her body was discovered in the water tank of the same building. The coroner declared it an accidental drowning, with Lam's bipolar disorder considered a contributing factor.
Some rabblers believed Lam was performing a ritual called "The Elevator Game," a process to cross over into another dimension by travelling to a sequence of floors in an elevator, which doesn't really make sense, but the concept is catchy. As usual with supernatural conspiracy breeding, no official explanation resolved many of the loose ends of Lam's death. The incident reminded YIIK's creators of the kind of those bogus ghost stories that used to thrive online.
"The death of Elisa Lam has bothered me since it happened," said Ackk Studios co-founder Andrew Allanson, "I feel like there still hasn't been a great official story about her... I remember on local news they reported it from the gross out angle because people drank water that a corpse had been floating in. That's unfortunate, but what about the poor girl who died? It's easy to say she was off her meds, but why can't people think a bit more about her as a person?"
Header and all YIIK screens courtesy of Ackk Studios
YIIK is an homage to a more whimsical web, one where, according to Allanson, "everything was real, no matter if it was a hoax." Reading those bygone bump-in-the-night forums was sort of like reading gothic lit like Otranto and Frankenstein, exploring correspondences from a supernatural parallel world.
YIIK centers around the ONISM1999 blog, which will update with more supernatural threads as the game progresses. "Picture The X-Files," said Allanson, "if The X-Files were all online and you could read them, and check them out. Some end up being stupid, but others end up moving the plot forward."
That internet is gone, or at least, the scope is so radically different now. Internet affairs aren't limited to the internet anymore. The conspiracy culture that established itself online, long before the rest of the world plugged in, has spilled into the mainstream. It's easy to feel a pang of sentimentalism for the web that didn't matter, especially since digital spaces emit a sense of permanence, like every animated gif loop will inherently outlast you.
Anthrotari screen courtesy of Biggest Robot Productions
There are other games that return to a reimagined "old web," like YIIK does. Last year's Emily is Away was a gem of a text adventure, presented in AIM chat windows you might've poured your feelings into in during Jr. High. It's disarming in its familiarity, and hits you right in the soft bits.
The upcoming Anthrotari will similarly take players back to the 90s cyberspace through the perspective of a queer furry roleplayer. Broken Reality is a first-person adventure through old chat rooms that takes more of the vaporwave route, an aesthetic that pulls from a bygone era of file sharing and jpeg compression.
Jay Tholen, creator of the recent Dropsy, already announced his next venture, Hypnospace Outlaw, which is currently being Kickstarted. Like ReBoot before it, Hypnospace envisions the web as a constant battle between agents of chaos and order.
"Moderating Hypnospace is a low paying job and Enforcers are kind of required to be jerks," Tholen told me. "The entire post-Windows 95 era of the internet being accessible in an incredibly user friendly way is the biggest inspiration. It felt pretty wondrous just trailblazing your own path and finding special things you could be sure very few other people have seen. "A lot of the mythologization that happened with computers/video games in that era is also an influence. For example, flicking the cursor around really quickly will actually cause some processes to load faster in HypnOS. Also, the Hypnospace Highway looking approximately like what everyone in the late nineties imagined when they heard Information Superhighway."
Tholen said that taking the GeoCities look makes the game feel more personal. The criminals of Hypnospace should ring a bell: sleazebags, hackers, adware and those rogue toolbars your parents had a knack for collecting. The citizens of Hypnospace are the early web pilgrims trying to figure out where they fit in this new world. Looking for communities, trolling other users, posting sappy song lyrics hoping |
Brother) November 9, 2013
It helps even the most seasoned of comedians to see how this kind of humor can be done right. Stephen Colbert’s coverage of the debut of Kamala Khan as Ms. Marvel is a lot sharper and by contrast, exposes O’Brien’s humor for the dated palaver of yesteryear that it is. See for yourself:
(Conan O’Brien tweet via Mediaite)
Rohin Guha is a contributing editor at The Aerogram. Follow him on Twitter @ohrohin. Find The Aerogram on Twitter @theaerogram.Pascal Guyot/AFP Getty Images MEPs slam Commission over US visas Commission breaks EU law on visa rules.
MEPs are losing patience with the European Commission for not forcing U.S. citizens to obtain visas to enter the EU.
The Commission should have imposed the visa requirement in April after the U.S. failed to lift travel restrictions on citizens of five EU countries — Poland, Romania, Bulgaria, Croatia and Cyprus — due to what it told the EU were security concerns.
According to a 2013 law, the EU's executive is required to block visa-free access to the citizens of any country which doesn't waive visa requirements for all EU citizens.
However, no legal action was taken on the grounds that doing so would have "significant impacts" on U.S.-relations since Washington has threatened retaliatory action if visa requirements are reintroduced.
On Wednesday, MEPs are expected to condemn the Commission over the visa issue during a debate in Strasbourg.
"The EU has the right to expect symmetry in its relations with the U.S.," said Polish MEP Kazimierz Ujazdowski. "There is no explanation for the exclusion of Polish citizens and other European countries."
In June, MEPs on the Parliament's Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs had furious reactions to the Commission's inaction, threatening to take the institution to court for failing to fulfill its legal duties.
"It is absolutely inadmissible that all EU citizens are not treated equally," said Croatian MEP Tonino Picula, who suggested that visa-free access should be "pre-condition" for further trade talks between the U.S. and EU.
Last month, the Canadian government lifted similar restrictions on Bulgarian and Romanian citizens as part of a deal to ratify the Canada-EU trade deal.
"It creates the sense for Bulgarians that for one of our most important partners, the U.S., there are different types of Europeans," said Bulgarian MEP Eva Paunova. "We cannot accept that."
The U.S. Congress has considered removing travel restrictions for Croatia via the "Jobs Originated through Launching Travel" Act, although the law has not been discussed since August.
A spokesperson for the U.S. mission to the EU confirmed that authorities would "continue [their] engagements with these five EU member states to facilitate their work to meet the [Visa Waiver Program's] many requirements."Hillary Clinton is apparently a Parks and Recreation fan.
The former secretary of state kicked off 2010 with a simple request for aide Monica Hanley: "Can you give me times for two TV shows? Parks and Recreation and The Good Wife."
Image: State Department
For what it’s worth, she also asked Hanley to buy skim milk for her tea and to remind her to bring more tea cups into the office from home.
The email was a minuscule part of the roughly 7,000 pages of correspondence posted on the State Department’s website Monday night. Some were more intrigued with Clinton's affinity for The Good Wife given the plot.
HRC watching The Good Wife is like Anna Wintour watching The Devil Wears Prada. https://t.co/RDojNgeNAy — Kate Bennett (@KateBennett_DC) September 1, 2015
But the Parks and Rec fandom is made a bit more fun given her place on the show's radar.
Leslie Knope (played by Amy Pohler) once praised Clinton as the "the strongest, smartest punching bag in the world."
Co-creator Michael Schur told HitFix earlier this year that she was one of the guests they’d hoped would join the show.
Asked whether there were any "dream guest stars" that the show couldn’t snag, Schur said Clinton "became impossible once we jumped to 2017."
"We would’ve had to have answered a question that she probably wouldn’t have wanted us to even pose at this point," Schur said in the March interview.
Somewhere out there, Leslie Knope is beaming.Getting ready to transfer or fire up to 40,000 public workers over the next two years on the orders of international lenders, Greece is finally going after those who’ve been disciplinary problems or been wrongdoers at work.
Some 104 civil servants were fired in June, four more in one month than the previous 11 months as the government picks up the pace of weeding out workers who have forged credentials, don’t come to work, or committed felonies.
That comes as the government faces pressure from the Troika of the European Union-International Monetary Fund-European Central Bank (EU-IMF-ECB) to fire 4,000 civil servants this year and 15,000 in total by the end of 2014.
New Administrative Reform Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said he wants hearings granted problem workers to be wrapped up in two to four months instead of years as it takes in some cases.
The government wants to remove from the public payroll any civil servants found guilty of committing offenses. At the end of June, 1,920 cases, including appeals, were being examined by disciplinary panels.
There has also been an attempt to bolster oversight, with public sector employees being transferred from other departments to staff the civil service inspection team, which now has 135 employees in Athens and Thessaloniki.
Mitsotakis said that inspectors are going to search for civil servants that fail to turn up for work or who have used forged degrees to get their jobs. “Those who possess genuine skills have nothing to fear,” Mitsotakis told ANT1 TV.
IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde also made reference to staffing issues in Greece’s public administration in a statement following the Washington-based organization’s decision to disburse another loan of 1.7 billion euros ($2.24 billion) after completing the fourth review of the country’s economic program.
“Deeper public sector reforms are critical to complete the necessary fiscal adjustment going forward with broad public support,” she said. “Given the slow progress in public administration reforms, efforts should focus on ensuring the exit of unqualified personnel to create room to hire new staff with the relevant skills.”Kolkata: Five directors of West Bengal-based Win Realcon, nabbed by the Central Bureau of Investigation on Monday for illegally raising public money, will be produced before a court on Tuesday.
The five accused -- Mahitosh Ganguly, Partha Pratim Roy, Raju Dey, Joy Bhowmick and Rajib Debnath -- were arrested after being grilled by CBI sleuths.
"Win Realcon allegedly collected crores of rupees from the public which remain unpaid. Five of its directors have been arrested," an official of the Central Bureau of Investigation had said on Monday.
The CBI had registered cases against many non-Saradha Group companies including Win Realcon in November 2014 on various charges including criminal breach of trust, cheating, criminal conspiracy and violation of Prize Chits and Money Circulation Scheme (Banning) Act.
(With IANS inputs)Fox News’ parent company, 21st Century Fox, on Monday reached a settlement with company shareholders that requires third-party insurers to pay 21st Century Fox $90 million to help recoup financial damage cause by Fox News’ sexual harassment scandal.
The company also agreed to establish a committee at Fox News tasked with creating an inclusive workplace called the Fox News Workplace Professionalism and Inclusion Council as part of the settlement, 21st Century Fox announced on Monday.
“The Workplace Council gives our management team access to a brain trust of experts with deep and diverse experiences in workplace issues,” Fox News Channel Co-President Jack Abernethy said in a statement Monday. “We look forward to benefiting from their collective guidance.”
The settlement reached Monday resolves a complaint filed by the City of Monroe Employees’ Retirement System, a 21st Century Fox shareholder.
The complaint filed by the City of Monroe Employees’ Retirement System notes that there was a “systematic, decades-long culture of sexual harassment, racial discrimination, and retaliation that led to a hostile work environment at Fox News Channel” and claims that executives did not do enough to address those issues. The complaint argues that the publicity about the sexual harassment at Fox News, as well as the large settlements paid to accusers, caused financial harm to the company.
The settlement requires insurers representing Roger Ailes’ estate and Fox News officers, including Rupert Murdoch, Lachlan Murdoch and James Murdoch, to pay $90 million to 21st Century Fox for the benefit of the company’s shareholders. It also mandates the establishment of the workplace council. The defendants did not admit to any wrongdoing in the settlement.
In its statement announcing the settlement, 21st Century Fox said that the council will “will advise Fox News and its senior management in its ongoing efforts to ensure a proper workplace environment for all employees and guests, strengthen reporting practices for wrongdoing, enhance HR training on workplace behavior, and further recruitment and advancement of women and minorities.”Business at the old Star Wars set isn’t what it used to be. Miles into Tunisia’s southern desert wastes, fantastical structures define the desert landscape. Towers made of wood and fibreglass point fruitlessly into an endless sky. Pipes that lead from nothing to nowhere run between domed buildings that owe nothing to either region, country – or, strictly speaking, planet.
Revolution and terrorism have all but destroyed Tunisian tourism and the thriving film industry that helped produce three of the six Star Wars films. Locals who once worked as film crew live alongside the old sets, which now lie neglected, slowly being consumed by the desert.
Taieb Jallouli, art director on the prequels
“I’m retired now, but most of the old technicians don’t work in the film industry any more. A lot work in construction, anything really. We get by.” Jallouli was responsible for constructing all the sets that still remain. “Film companies talk about coming back. Ridley Scott was talking about filming here, Pompeii was due to be filmed here, but there’s always something.”
Mos Espa
This is the larger of the two Mos Espa sets from The Phantom Menace, which were constructed under Taieb Jallouli’s supervision in around 1998. The smaller was lost to the shifting dunes of the Sahara some time ago. It is presumed that it will emerge at some point, partially digested by the desert, but nobody knows when. Jallouli came back on a government contract in 2005 to renovate the set as a tourist attraction, before revolution and terrorist attacks rendered such notions moot. About 50 technicians were employed here during the making of the prequels, plus countless extras and other followers from the nearby towns of Tozeur and Nefta. Once filming was completed, the sets were left behind, where they gradually fell into disrepair before finding a short-lived second life as a tourist attraction.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest The Mos Espa set.
Sidi Bouhlel
Two white stuccoed mausoleums stand on either side of the entrance to the Sidi Bouhlel ravine. The larger is occupied by this man, who told me that he was the guardian of the mausoleum. The dramatic ravine, half an hour east of the city of Tozeur, south-west Tunisia, featured in so many scenes of the original film that the 1977 crew termed it Star Wars Canyon.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Sidi Bouhlel in April 2014.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest A Mos Espa souvenir seller with his tame desert fox.
Makhlouf and fox
Makhlouf works at the Mos Espa set with the other boys. His fox, like all their animals, was born and raised in captivity. When tourists come, he charges whatever he can to let them pet and be photographed with it. Last year, Makhlouf and his fox earned about £6.50 a day. This year, after the terrorist attacks at Bardo and Sousse, that has dropped to around £1.50. He doesn’t know how long he and his fox will continue to come to the set.
Azziz and Chedly Abderazak
There is little that Azziz and Chedly Abderazak agree on, other than that they both worked on the original 1977 film, Chedly as a location scout and Azziz as a prop man and extra. Chedly remembers his younger brother being put inside the R2D2 model during filming at Sidi Bouhlel; Azziz remembers being asked to dress as a “sort of cow”. Neither have ever seen the film. Chedly is retired now, but for years he served as an accredited desert guide. Azziz operates, then and now, as his black market rival. For Azziz, recent business has not been good. Azziz has fond memories of meeting Harrison Ford while working on Raiders of the Lost Ark. His feelings towards the original Star Wars film are ambiguous.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Ezzedinemlik and Chedly
Ong Jemel [the camel’s neck]
Ong Jemel, said to look like a sitting camel, featured in The Phantom Menace and The English Patient.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest The Ong Jemel.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Tahar Kerig, driver to George Lucas.
Tahar Kerig, 56, driver to George Lucas
“Whenever George Lucas comes back he asks for me … He’s not much of a talker, but he speaks a little French, and I speak a little English, so we get on.” So says Kerig, who has worked as a guide for 20 years. “It would be good if the Americans and Europeans came back. It’s very peaceful here.” He reckons Tozeur has seen an 80% drop in numbers this year. “The terrorists say they’re Muslims, but they’re not. The rich people need to find a war. Who loses? It’s you and me. We stay and pay the price.” Tahar was given the job of driving Lucas through the desert flats around Tozeur, both on a scouting visit in 1996 and for every visit since. The two would meet at around 4.30 every morning and would later eat breakfast together on set. They’ve maintained sporadic contact since.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest The Lars homestead.
Lars Homestead Exterior
Lost in the endless stretches of a salt lake, the exterior of the Lars homestead is probably the most iconic of all the Star Wars locations. Miles from any signpost, road or habitation, the small fibreglass igloo sits in a perfectly still scene of abandonment. The present building is a replica of the 1977 original, built by Taieb Jallouli’s team upon the original’s foundations. This was then restored by a very enthusiastic group of volunteers in 2012.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Sidi el Driss Hotel, Matmata, (Lars Homestead interior).
Sidi el Driss Hotel, Matmata
Facebook Twitter Pinterest ‘When there is no rain, the people leave. Everything ends. Even the birds leave.’
A traditional Berber troglodyte house, Sidi el Driss became a hotel in 1969, seven years before Lucasfilm first set up camp. The props that currently dominate the central courtyard date to the 2002 prequel, Attack of the Clones. The manager, Massoud Ben Rachid remembers between 250 and 300 people calling in just for lunch each day before the revolution. Currently, the number is closer to 20, nearly all Tunisian. You can stay the night for around £8.
The desert town of Matmata was a thriving tourist destination for nearly a century. Now it struggles to survive. The only other industry is agriculture. Ben Rachid says: “When there is no rain, the people leave. Everything ends. Even the birds leave.” Traditional Berber troglodyte houses dot the roadside, some functioning as outhouses or barns, some still occupied by families, some serving as hotels for the town’s dwindling tourist trade. The Sidi el Driss used to employ 15 people, now there are only six. The remainder have left for the capital.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Massoud Ben Rachid, Director of Sidi el Driss Hotel, Matmata.
Massoud Ben Rachid, director of Sidi el Driss Hotel
“There is a lot of poverty in Matmata, because of the revolution, because of Bardo, because of Sousse. Young people leave for the capital, finding work in grocery shops and hanoots [kiosks] and sending money home.” The Sidi el Driss has not made a profit for four years. Ben Rachid has worked here for 20 years, only recently being appointed manager. He is determined to turn the hotel’s fortunes around. “We can’t close. The people who work here have families. They need the hotel.”The Saddam interview refers to a famous television interview that occurred between President of Iraq Saddam Hussein and American news anchor Dan Rather on February 24, 2003, very shortly before the 2003 Invasion of Iraq. The interview was aired both in the United States and on all three Iraqi television networks. British politician Tony Benn had also interviewed Saddam earlier that month.
Background [ edit ]
Rather and CBS Evening News executive producer Jim Murphy were driven around Baghdad for 45 minutes and switched cars on two separate occasions to keep Saddam's position secret. The interview was held at the Republican Palace. Neither Rather nor Murphy were allowed to bring their own tape recorders. Saddam supplied his own translator, and CBS approved the translation of the recording. Rather and Murphy were treated well in the course of the interview, with Saddam offering Rather coffee at one point.
American interview [ edit ]
In the 1980s, Rather had an on-air confrontation with then-president George H. W. Bush over the Iran-Contra Affair. His son, George W. Bush, responded similarly, and declined to give Rather an interview during his presidency. After the Saddam interview, the White House was interested in a rebuttal interview. CBS News would accept President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney or Secretary of State Colin Powell for the interview, but the White House only offered other officials for the interview, such as Ari Fleischer and Dan Bartlett. The CBS network deemed these individuals inappropriate for the broadcast, and an American interview was never done.
Highlights [ edit ]
Memorable lines:
Saddam:...Bear with me. My answers are long. Rather: Mr. President, I have all night.
Saddam invited President Bush to a live TV debate, to which Bush declined.
Rather: Who would moderate this debate? Saddam: Yes, you Mr. Rather. Rather: With respect, Mr. President, I have other problems. I've got enough problems already.
On one occasion Saddam interrupted his translator and corrected his use of the term "Bush", instead of "Mr. Bush", which Saddam explained was out of respect.
Saddam Hussein floated an idea of holding a live uncensored unprepared debate televised worldwide where both American and Iraqi Presidents sitting in their respective countries would discuss their nation's problems. He also said Dan Rather could moderate the debate. This never happened.
Summary [ edit ]
Saddam declares his support of Allah, Islam and Palestine.
Saddam denies possessing weapons of mass destruction, or the possession of arms against U.N. Law.
Saddam denies association with Osama bin Laden.
Saddam declares he will not step down from presidency or ever surrender against a stronger opponent.
Saddam also declares he will not go into asylum, or leave Iraq.
Saddam claims that his armed forces lost only 10% of their military equipment in 1991's Operation Desert Storm.
Saddam expressed willingness to participate in a live globally televised Presidential debate before the Invasion in 2003.A man is facing charges of impaired driving after a car plowed into seven others parked along Henri-Julien Avenue between Duluth Avenue and Rachel Street in the Plateau-Mont-Royal borough early Tuesday morning.
Montreal police said they received reports around 2 a.m. of a car crashing into other vehicles along Henri-Julien Avenue.
Judith Bautista's car was damaged and she said she saw the incident occur.
"There was a big boom around two o'clock in the morning and then everybody came out and then we noticed that the car was on the sidewalk — well, my car was on the sidewalk — and a whole bunch of other cars were being destroyed by someone who was allegedly a drunk driver," Bautista told CBC News.
Officers arrived at the scene and arrested a man who they believe was the driver of the car that hit the parked vehicles.
Police said the impact of the various collisions was such that the front wheels came off the vehicle suspected of hitting the others.
Police said a woman passenger was also arrested and faces charges of assaulting an officer.
"When police were talking to the driver, the passenger came between the work of the officers and hit an officer," said Montreal police spokesman Const. Manuel Couture.
Henri-Julien Avenue will remain closed between Duluth and Rachel streets while investigators from the police collision team examine the scene.Tennessee Titans defensive end William Hayes, in the wrong place at the wrong time, suffered a concussion in Sunday's 34-14 loss to the Kansas City Chiefs when he was hit in the head by an errant pass from teammate Kerry Collins, according to The Tennessean.
The Titans quarterback floated a pass out of bounds, hitting Hayes along the sideline. The third-year defensive veteran Hayes did not return to the game.
"Thatâs kind of how the game went," coach Jeff Fisher said Sunday. "Iâve never had a player leave the game with a concussion after getting hit with the ball on the sideline. But weâll see how he is this week."
Hayes' injury left the Titans thin along the defensive line with veteran Jovan Haye deactivated.
The 6-foot-3, 272-pound Hayes has 29 total tackles in 13 games this season. He was drafted by the Titans in the fourth round of the 2008 NFL Draft out of Winston-Salem State.Jim Cooley says he just wanted to make a point when he brought his AR-15 assault-style rifle out in public. He went bigger than most so-called open-carriers, though, bringing his mean-looking weapon to Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, the busiest airfield in the world, to drop off his daughter.
Mr. Cooley was confronted several times by law enforcement, even though the Georgia legislature last year made it legal to carry properly licensed weapons at airports in the state.
Cooley took affront to the attention, citing a common refrain among public-carry advocates: that he doesn’t need to account for other people’s feelings or fears when conducting lawful activity. He’s correct, and he was not arrested.
Yet for many travelers, some coming through on international flights, his act still felt threatening and, perhaps more important, given the lethal power at his disposal, irresponsible.
The incident has brought to light an emerging dynamic that could affect the evolution of open carry in the United States: the role of tact, etiquette, and ethics for those who carry personal arsenals.
Indeed, as Texas is set to become the largest state to allow open carry, the evolution of the practice encompasses not just gun rights, but shifting notions around self-defense and even growing insecurities for many blue-collar, white men in America, some of whom see gun carry as central to “duty, relevance, even dignity,” as Jennifer Carlson, a gun rights scholar, writes in the Los Angeles Times.
“Yes, gun owners can do this, and maybe it does some good by raising awareness that this is the law,” says Brian Anse Patrick, a University of Toledo communications professor and author of the upcoming book “PropaGUNda.” “But there’s still this funny area around etiquette and frightening people” that draws a line between “Second Amendment ambassadors and Second Amendment exhibitionists.”
Today, even as gun-free zones are shrinking, many gun owners maintain a strong sense that gains made on Second Amendment rights could be quickly lost. In that way, many open-carry advocates, especially, are attempting to make gun-carry policy politically palatable by changing what Americans think of as normal, à la gay marriage laws and legal marijuana.
“This is what lefties have done for decades, and it works,” writes University of Tennessee law professor Glenn Reynolds on his “Instapundit” blog.
In interviews, gun owners who draw attention to themselves with their weaponry often acknowledge they’re making both a personal and political statement. One motivation is protecting family and others in case of an attack. The other motivation is to provide “a little bit of a political push” to make people more comfortable around guns, says a Kalamazoo, Mich., man who last year brought a gun to a grade-school reading hour at a library.
Even inside the gun rights movement, the issue of open-carry decorum is looming larger, given high-profile incidents that paint at least some gun owners as unstable, paranoid, and just plain rude for introducing potential weapons of mass mayhem to Little League games and airport check-in counters.
Last year, the National Rifle Association apologized for an editorial the association published that called open-carry demonstrations “weird” and “scary." Such actions, the editorial noted, make those who aren’t reflexively opposed to guns “feel uncomfortable and question the motives of pro-gun advocates.”
Such actions also “show a lack of consideration and manners,” it said.
However, an NRA spokesman said a few days later that it’s not NRA policy to criticize gun owners who legally carry their guns in public. Yet the complaint still reverberates for many gun owners, according to Second Amendment scholar Dave Kopel, research director at the Independence Institute in Denver.
“The people who open-carry and want it to be viewed as normal, which it obviously was for most of American history and is again, should do it by acting normal and not by being attention-[seekers],” Mr. Kopel says.
Though courts have extended the Second Amendment to cover the right to own weapons for personal self-defense, the amendment, in essence, is a check on tyranny.
“The idea that we must be more ‘polite,’ lest we frighten [the 46 percent of Americans who are seen as persuadable on gun rights,] ignores the nature of the right we are fighting for,” writes Kurt Hofmann on the website Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership. “We must be ‘frightening,’ because the people who would trample our rights will only lose interest in doing so if they perceive a very personal risk to themselves in continuing on that course.”
Still, it’s clear that gun owners ignoring the discomfort of others has become an issue, especially for police, who are fielding calls around the country about armed men and women in public areas. Some of those, including the police shooting of an airsoft gun-toting 12-year-old named Tamir Rice in Cleveland last year, have ended in tragedy.
Writing about an incident last year in Forsyth County, Ga., where a man shut down a Little League game after telling everyone, “Look, I got a gun and there’s nothing you can do about it,” gun rights advocate Nicki Kenyon called for gun owners to remember their manners.
Instead of generating a constructive discussion, the man “offered our opponents the opportunity to paint us as childish and uncouth,” Ms. Kenyon wrote. “Instead of helping give confidence to those around him that a responsible, judicious person was among them... he made them nervous and uncomfortable.”
She adds: “Simple decorum and maturity could have transformed his assertion of his rights into an opportunity to foster productive dialogue and maybe even changed some hearts and minds. But instead, while we may have won on the legal front, we lost the public relations battle.”
The phenomenon also underscores another, more complicated issue – that of primarily older white and male gun owners dealing with seismic demographic and economic upheaval.
“Firearms have a larger purpose in our postindustrial society,” writes Ms. Carlson, author of "Citizen-Protectors: The Everyday Politics of Guns in an Age of Decline." “In Michigan and other places hit hard by the economic downturn, men's guns can address social insecurities far beyond crime. The gun rights platform is [in part]... about a crisis of confidence in the American dream.”
The issue of increased open carry, critics say, comes down to the extent to which Americans are willing to trust armed strangers, given the overpowering speed and lethality of firearms.
Get the Monitor Stories you care about delivered to your inbox. By signing up, you agree to our Privacy Policy
“You have quite a few people afraid because calls are coming in left and right," an Atlanta police officer told Cooley, the airport open-carry activist, in one of the YouTube videos he posted.
"People think that if you're simply carrying your firearm, regardless of how you're carrying it, you're a bad person," Cooley later told the New York Daily News. "But if you're not carrying it in a menacing or threatening manner, it should be no cause for concern for anybody."'She's a pretty one, isn't she?'
The White Fang officer looked Weiss straight in the eyes, receiving a menacing glare from the snow-haired girl.
'She'll do nicely. The lot of you, get outta here. I'm going to enjoy my time with you,' he said, vilely licking his lips as he smiled at her, before tearing her clothes off with his claws. Noticing her sudden fearful gaze at his fingertips, he held his hand up.
'Tiger Faunus. These things come in handy, don't they?'
Noticing her now nude body, Weiss timidly covered up her important areas.
'Put this on,' the Faunus commanded, tossing her a maid outfit that even in her hands was obviously far too small for her to fit into.
'This isn't big eno-'
SMACK.
The sound of his palm echoing against her face reverberated through the room.
'I didn't give you permission to talk back, did I?'
I'll kill you, you filthy son of a bitch, Weiss thought to herself. But even as she thought it, every passing second made it seem less and less likely to come true. This man was in complete and total control, and she knew it.
'Put. It. On. NOW!'
Weiss hurriedly equipped the outfit, not wanting to anger the man further. She could feel the seams start to tear as her arms squeezed through, the dress clamping down hard on her chest almost to the point where it was suffocating. It didn't exactly hide much down there, either, her most private area on full display for the Faunus' enjoyment.
'Now then,' he continued, back to his relaxed tone almost immediately. 'Why don't you dance for me?'
'W-what?'
Weiss furiously blushed at the suggestion, before the Faunus ever so kindly reminded her what happens when she questions his authority, another red mark being deposited on her cheek.
'I said; dance.'
Weiss reluctantly did as she was told, trying to appease him while still doing as little as possible. 'No, no, no, no. That's just not good enough. If you're gonna dance, you've gotta give it oomph!'
With that he grabbed her butt with one hand, his claws painfully digging in as blood began to seep from her behind as he began teaching her how he wanted her to dance. Needless to say, it was rather... erotic, to put it lightly.
After 2 hours of this humiliating treatment, she was permitted to remove the dress and leave his room, but upon exiting the door she was immediately escorted, while still naked nonetheless, to a small dungeon chamber where she was thrown in and her arms were chained to the wall behind her. The man in charge of the dungeon threw her a measly amount of mouldy bread and a raw potato, as well as placing down a tiny bowl of water on the ground in front of her.
'How am I supposed to eat or drink this?' Weiss questioned, her usual defiant attitude returning once more.
'Like the dog you are. You bend over, you pick it up with your mouth, and you enjoy what you're given.
'Can I at least get some bread that isn't covered in mould?' she asked, much gentler this time. The dungeon keeper just laughed to himself as he thought of the events that were soon to come.
'If I were you, I'd be glad you're even getting that and finish it very quickly. Your next guest, well... let's just say he's not quite a Schnee fan, shall we? Moments after he told Weiss these words, a man in a leather mask slowly trudged his way down the stairs into the dungeon where Weiss was kept.
'Speak of the devil,' the dungeon keeper said, turning towards Weiss again. 'You know, I almost feel sorry for you. Almost.'
The masked man was trembling with delight as he made his way down the stone steps, the Faunus officers words ringing in his head.
Do what you want to her. Only two conditions;
Don't break her just yet.
Make sure you don't kill her.
Weiss gulped as she remembered the dungeon keeper's words. Not a Schnee fan? What did he mean? Her head was soon filled with images of exactly what he meant as she saw what the masked man carried with him. A barbed whip, a handful of knives, a syringe filled with God-knows-what – she suddenly realised who this man was.
He was a torturer.
As if on instinct, she began trembling all over, her mumbling slowly getting louder and louder.
'No... please... no... please don't do this... oh God no...'
The door to her cell creaked open agonizingly slowly. Weiss closed her eyes, praying it was all just a dream, tears rolling down her soft, white cheeks. The feeling of a razor sharp pain slicing up her arm told her it was most definitely not a dream, along with an appropriately loud soul-rending scream.
'Whassamatter, pretty girl? You don' like it? Well my family don't exactly like you either, you bitch. Ever since your fuckin' Schnee corporation tore my Papas business down I've been living HELL! It's all thanks to that bitch mother of yours that my mama died working to the bone to feed me! Hope you don't get too comfortable, bitch, cos I'm gonna make you feel ten times the pain my family did after your company fucked us over!'
Weiss was so terrified of the pain and of the anticipation of what was to come, she didn't care about appearances anymore. She didn't care about being the dignified, well-raised girl anymore. She was scared. She was terrified. She wanted to go home. She wanted it all to be over. But she knew that that couldn't happen.
'Mommy...'
As she sat in a growing pool of her own urine, she spoke so quietly she wasn't even sure she said it.
'Please save me...'
As the torturer delivered another blow worthy of an ear-shattering scream, she knew.
It was going to be a very long night.
'Pyrrha? Are you sure this is the right way?'
'This is the way Roman told us to head. He said those White Fang guys caught a couple of kids a few days ago, didn't he Jaune? Don't you think it might be Ren and Nora?'
'I mean... I guess, but how do we know he's telling the truth? Or that we can even trust him at all?'
'Well,' Pyrrha responded sharply, 'for one, he wouldn't have a reason to lie to us. I'm sure he wanted us gone just as much as we wanted to leave, and since he and the White Fang have no reason to work together anymore there isn't any reason for him to send us walking right into a trap. If he really wanted to he could use us to bait the Grimm away, or even keep us alive just to kill some of them. Any way I look at it, he doesn't have a motive for wanting us dead.'
'Well when you put it that way I guess it makes sense. But we've been walking for 3 days and we haven't seen a thing, not to mention it's the dead of night right now! All we've come across are a bunch of low class Grimm. You really think we're going the right way?'
Quickly covering his mouth, and dragging him to the ground, Pyrrha shushed him.
'Look,' she whispered, pointing forwards, where in the distance, they could see a very dim light. A flashlight? Whatever it was, it was definitely artificial, and that meant it belonged to a human. Inching closer, they saw exactly what they had been searching for. They could just barely make it out in the darkness, but there were definitely 2 White Fang members standing guard outside the entrance to a huge complex, one so big they wondered how they didn't see it earlier, even through the darkness.
'Pyrrha, do you think...?'
'Yes, Jaune,' she responded, a small smile crossing her lips. 'I think we're here.'Posted 10 June 2015 - 05:46 AM
I unfortunately can't copy/paste it because he blocked me at the end after I suggested he should once again engage with the community here at MWo, but here are some of the things I gathered from the conversation.
1. CW won't get any real meaningful updates until 2015 - 6+ months from now. -Unless maybe the community bombs his twitter to light a fire under his rear end.-
2. Russ thinks their current snails pace is more than acceptable in today's market.
-Even other small studios like Gazillion with Marvel Heroes update weekly and have in the 2 years (since alpha) nearly completely rebuilt their entire game core while constantly building out their game AND their store. Its a hotter (market) IP, but it also has a very hard working development staff.-
3. has zero intention of ever engaging with the community on the forums again.
-Sad, and mind boggling at the same time. But also explains the lack of direction in the production cycles. Again I'll reference the Marvel Heroes game, they have it sorted out on how to communicate with their players to keep the game on a good trajectory. Can also reference closed beta and even early open beta from this game some of us can remember that far back, to show they know how to do it but simply refuse to.-
4. Can't comprehend that his new attack/defense assault mode concept is exactly the same thing he put into CW for invasion being re-delivered as an update |
Another theory is that the microorganisms have developed their resistance to radiation purely by accident
“In general organisms that are resistant to one stress are also resistant to others,” explains Wagner. “The bacteria Deinococcus radiodurans is highly radiation resistant, but it’s also resistant to drying out. The two are most likely based on the same mechanisms.”
In other words all the Martian candidates – Conan the bacterium, the Halobacteriaceae and the methanogens – have developed unique ways of surviving in their environments. Radiation resistance is just a by-product.
How exactly do the microbes protect themselves from radiation?
Some of Leuko’s salt tolerant microorganisms do so by simply hiding away from the sun’s UV radiation. The Halococcus morrhuae cells cluster together forming layers upon layers of microbes. The cells deep within the cluster are protected from solar radiation, which is absorbed by the cells closer to the surface. As the microbes naturally live in low oxygen, salty habitats, they don’t suffocate.
However, as Leuko explains, this strategy only works for UV radiation and not ionising gamma radiation, which has more energy radiation and will penetrate through the cluster to reach cells deep in the centre. This means that the microbes could escape UV radiation on Mars by hiding within soils or ice, but they would still be prone to ionising radiation.
Other microbes use a different approach. Radiation triggers the release of reactive oxygen species (ROS), which damage cell constituents such as proteins and DNA. To counteract the problem, salt-tolerant archaea have a purple pigment called bacteriorhodopsin that can mop up ROSs and protect the cell from damage. They may have evolved the pigment because ROSs are also generated when the cell dries out – which is a common problem for cells living in such salty environments.
Even if radiation and drying does damage DNA, many of the microbes seem to be able to repair this damage. A study found that Conan the bacterium was able to stitch broken DNA back together with repair proteins. As long as the repair systems are intact, the bacteria can survive.
If radiation and drying damages DNA, many of the microbes seem to be able to repair it
The Conan microbe has another trick too. It carries multiple copies of its genes on different chromosomes. If one or two copies are damaged by radiation, the cell can use another copy of the gene to stay alive while it repairs the DNA damage. Leuko found that one of his archaea, Halobacterium salinarum NRC-1, was also able to actively repair its cells during the exposure to radiation, and Wagner believes that DNA repair may also be at the heart of the success of his superhero Methanosarcina soligelidi.
Some microbes accumulate salt and sugar inside their cells to protect themselves from drying out. This also seems to offer protection from radiation by somehow preventing the DNA double helix from breaking apart. How salts and sugars help is unknown, but the evidence is mounting that one sugar in particular, trehalose, does indeed offer protection and stops proteins and cell membranes from unravelling when they get hot and dry out.
Promising though all of this sounds, neither Leuko nor Wagner truly believe that any of these microbes could really survive on the surface of Mars today. Conditions there are just too extreme for even the toughest Earth-based life.
However the conditions on Mars’ surface early in its history were similar to those on early Earth. The planet may be barren and dry now, but lots of evidence suggests that rivers, lakes and seas once flowed on Mars. Perhaps life could have evolved on Mars back then and subsequently adapted as conditions worsened.
Mars may be barren and dry now, but lots of evidence suggests that rivers, lakes and seas once flowed there
“If we have a look at the environmental conditions on early Mars and early Earth they are comparable,” says Wagner. “Both had moderate temperature and pressure conditions, there was no oxygen on both planets and whilst Earth was dominated by oceans there are strong indications that there was also liquid water on Mars’ surface.”
We know that life developed in those conditions on Earth, and it probably could have done so on early Mars too. What happened to those lifeforms when Mars became a harsher place to live is unknown. “It could have become extinct, but could also be buried deep within the Martian crust,” says Wagner.Monday's federal byelections are not expected to change the seat count in the House of Commons as all are being held in safe ridings for the Liberals and Conservatives.
But there are still things to watch for as voters cast ballots in five ridings across the country that will test the popularity of a midterm government and the impact of the ongoing Conservative and NDP leadership races.
The byelections are being held in Ottawa–Vanier and Markham–Thornhill in Ontario, Calgary Midnapore, Calgary Heritage and in the riding of Saint-Laurent on the island of Montreal. They will fill the vacancies left by Mauril Bélanger, John McCallum, Jason Kenney, Stephen Harper and Stéphane Dion, respectively.
The two southern Calgary ridings have been Conservative strongholds since their creation — the Liberals last won the area in 1968, when few people lived within the modern boundaries. The three other ridings have been safe Liberal seats for years. Ottawa–Vanier, depending on how one defines the boundaries through history, has voted for the party in every election since 1887.
The margins in the 2015 federal election in these five seats were wide, ranging from McCallum's 23-point win in Markham–Thornhill to Kenney's 44-point victory in Calgary Midnapore.
Incumbent parties winning fundraising war
There have been no polls published for any of the five byelections. Regional numbers from national polls provide little indication the incumbent parties are in any danger of losing their seats.
But national polls — which might sample 10 or fewer people from a given riding — can only say so much. However, fundraising data from 2016, the most recent available numbers from Elections Canada, also suggest the incumbent parties are well-positioned to hold on to their seats.
Based on those donations to the national parties reported with postal code information (which largely includes only contributions of $200 or more), the Conservatives raised the most money in 2016 in both Calgary Heritage and Calgary Midnapore, while the Liberals were the fundraising kings in Markham–Thornhill, Ottawa–Vanier and Saint-Laurent.
Data compiled by David McKie. (Natalie Holdway)
In all five of these ridings, the incumbent party raised at least 63 per cent of all contributions from at least 55 per cent of all contributors.
In Calgary Heritage, the Conservatives raised $140,800 compared to $48,700 for the Liberals, while in Calgary Midnapore the Conservatives took in $81,200 to $23,300 for the Liberals. The New Democrats raised just $5,350 in Calgary Heritage and $4,400 in Calgary Midnapore.
The Liberals raised $230,550 in Ottawa–Vanier against $90,600 for the Tories and $19,900 for the NDP. In Markham–Thornhill, the Liberal edge was $52,400 to $28,600 for the Conservatives and just $2,400 for the NDP.
In Saint-Laurent, the Liberals took in $27,300, while the Conservatives raised $8,900, the Bloc Québécois $3,200 and the NDP $1,100.
Not just about holding seats
The prospects of an upset in these five seats are dim. If any of the seats change hands, the defeated party will have serious questions to ask about what went wrong.
But in the more likely scenario where the Liberals hold their three seats and the Conservatives retain their two, the results will nevertheless answer some lingering political questions — and whether the parties show an increase or decrease in support may tell us something about where these parties are headed in the future.
The Liberals will be looking to see if the bruising nomination battles in Markham–Thornhill and St-Laurent, in which the party faced charges that it was interfering in favour of preferred candidates, will have any impact on their support.
The results in Markham–Thornhill may provide a clue as to the Liberals' support in the election-deciding Greater Toronto Area, while recent gains in Calgary will be tested in Kenney's and Harper's former ridings.
Opposition looks to pick up votes
The New Democrats, who did no better than 19 per cent in any of these five ridings in 2015, will be looking to avoid their catastrophic results in last year's Medicine Hat–Cardston–Warner byelection, in which the party took just one per cent of the vote in the southern Alberta riding and finished in fourth place behind the Christian Heritage Party.
Another poor showing could give the NDP's ongoing leadership race extra urgency — particularly if the Liberals repeat the byelection gains they made at the expense of the New Democrats in 2016.
The Conservative leadership race, meanwhile, is entering its final stages and the candidates' rhetoric has been heating up. The byelection results could provide some indication as to whether the extra attention is paying dividends, as well as providing some clarity to the disagreeing opinion polls that put the Conservatives either ahead of the Liberals or well back of their 2015 showing.
Answers will come after 9:30 p.m. ET on Monday, when the polls in the five ridings close and the vote counting begins.Cassidy Lynn Campbell made history last week when her fellow classmates at her high school in Huntington Beach, Calif. crowned her homecoming queen.
The day after taking home the crown from a pool of nine other contestants, Campbell posted a shocking and tearful video online telling viewers that she was "so distraught" and had been the victim of an immense amount of bullying and criticism since her win. In response, the young queen received an outpouring of support, including an invitation from "NOH8" photographer Adam Bouska to take part in the campaign.
Prior to winning the crown and experiencing backlash against her gender identity, Campbell stated that:
"I'm a girl and if my school could recognize me as what I've always wanted the world to recognize me as my entire life, then it would be such an accomplishment... It's okay to be transgender and it doesn't matter what kind of girl you are -- you can still be a queen."Now, over a year after her big victory, Jenna's finding success in the modeling world. The 25-year-old scored a shoot in the January 2014 issue of Elle Canada, which spotlights the "leggy six-foot-one blonde" as a fashionable beauty (is that Louis Vuitton we spy?) but also an advocate for transgender rights.
And, of course, she's also a rising TV star: Jenna is readying for her new reality TV show, "Brave New Girl," which will follow her as she pursues a modeling career.
It's a pursuit that, judging by these new Elle photos, is already going well. Check out the full story at ElleCanada.com.
@ElleCanada my shoot with Elle canada, January edition <3 pic.twitter.com/weDUXxNu1Z — jenamee (@jenamae555) December 12, 2013
@ElleCanada my shoot with Elle canada, January 2014 edition :) pic.twitter.com/19xkrNBgWI — jenamee (@jenamae555) December 12, 2013
See more photos of the trailblazing pageant contestant:
Jenna Talackova's Journey SEE GALLERYAnimators spent decades trying to make hair look fully realistic, until Pixar created the software used in such movies as Monsters Inc. and Brave. Now that same problem has to be solved in virtual reality.
“From our perspective, hair is the hardest possible problem,” explains 8i’s Linc Gasking. 8i specializes in modeling fine human details like eyes and fingers, but its team found hair to be particularly challenging, especially the frizzy kind.
Gasking was finally able to crack the hair problem, thanks to a partnership with L’Oréal that’s resulted in a new training program for salon stylists affiliated with its professional hair care brand, Matrix. “We’re not talking about computer-generated hair,” he says. “It’s photo-realistic hair that you can see from any angle.”
The project, unveiled today at the Fast Company Innovation Festival by L’Oréal’s vice president of Innovation and Entrepreneurship, Rachel Weiss, will roll out to stylists through L’Oréal’s “Matrix Academy,” an educational program affiliated with its Matrix beauty brand. Instead of traveling across the country for trainings (which are highly costly), or watching two-dimensional YouTube videos, stylists will have the option to learn new styling techniques with a VR headset.
The first time that Weiss put on a virtual reality headset, she felt sick and dizzy. She was also struck by its potential, and wondered how it could apply to a beauty brand. “We are faced with the challenge of modernizing the industry,” Weiss said. From that moment, she recalled being determined to explore possibilities for L’Oréal to leverage virtual reality for its customers, including beauty professionals and consumers.
The VR experience features two photo-realistic humans—a stylist and a client—in a 360-degree environment. Students can step into the hairdressers’ shoes, and shift position in the virtual salon to watch from any angle. “You can feel like you’re there and learn from someone right in front of you,” says Weiss. “We felt that education was the best use case for us.”
L’Oréal’s application is available free of charge, although users will need to have access to a VR headset. A super-cheap option like Google cardboard isn’t ideal; instead Gasking recommends a headset that offers positional tracking.I felt a sense of deja vu hearing about Bill Maher being taken to task for saying “nigger” on his “Real Time With Bill Maher” HBO series, which aired on June 2nd. You see, I debated Sarah Silverman on Maher’s previous talk show incarnation — ABC’s “Politically Incorrect“ — on August 22, 2001, talking about her use of “chink” in a joke. And the second topic was: Can non-Blacks get away with saying “nigga?”
Check out this video at the 14:24 mark:
“Blacks are like, ‘Whites cannot say this word’. I disagree,” he argued. “This word has changed in the last 10, 15 years.”
Fellow panelist Anne-Marie Johnson of the Screen Actors Guild strenuously objected, saying the culture had not changed that much. “According to WHO?” he asked defiantly. “According to culture!” she shot back.
“Every African American in this room uses that word night and day,” Maher asserted. “It’s in every song. It has been co-opted as a term of endearment.”
“From Blacks to Blacks,” I corrected. “Not Whites to Blacks.” Even though Johnson insisted that as an African American, she was the only person on the stage qualified to assess how the word hurts and of its proper usage, Maher was not deterred.
“‘Nigga nigga nigga nigga (times two)’ is in every song. People come up to me and go. ‘Bill, you a nigga!’ But I can’t say, ‘Thank you’ or I go, ‘Please don’t use that word?’ Or I can’t use that word back?”
“That’s amongst Blacks,” I repeated. “Not for White people to call Black people ‘nigger.’ That still doesn’t work!”
But on the June 2nd show, Senator Ben Sasse suggested that Maher visit him in his home state of Nebraska (“Would you like to come work in the field with us?”) and Maher quipped, “Work in the fields?! Senator! I’m a House Nigger!” He was forced to issue a quick apology, the only one I’ve known him to make in his career. And on his show the following Friday, June 9, the host had to endure backlash from three African American guests.
Ice Cube told him, “It’s been used as a weapon against us by White people… when I hear my homies say it, it don’t feel like venom. When I hear a White person say it, it feels like that knife stabbing me, even if they don’t mean it.”
I tried to explain it to you almost 16 years ago, Bill, but oh well…
Maher endured the punishment, not wanting to make matters worse by seeming to back away from the apology he’d already issued. He offered a brief explanation to Dr. Michael Eric Dyson why the word came to mind — “the word is omnipresent in the culture”— similar to what he said back in 2001, but not as forcefully. He was insistent that his use of “nigger” was more a function of him being a comedian, not being racist: “That’s what comedians are somehow wired to do,” always trying to make a joke and make people laugh.
Dyson mentioned that in his book, he remembered being called “nigger” for the first time when he was seven. “I re-read it this week,” Maher interrupted. “I mean, I felt even worse.”
Well, guess what, Bill, if you felt bad about how horrendous it was for a young Black child to hear that, how’s that any different from an Asian child being called “Chink” or “Jap?”
In July 2001, Maher had Silverman on his show without inviting me to defend myself — well, his producers, Brad Grey and Bernie Brillstein, were her managers (Holy conflict of interest, Batman!). She got to address how upset she was at MANAA (the media watchdog group I co-founded in 1992) for calling her out for saying “Chink” in a joke on “Late Night With Conan O’Brien.” Maher was furious that Silverman was being asked to apologize for it, calling our reaction “fake pain, fake outrage.”
“I would like an apology from all those people who’ve made this country such a drab, Orwellian place, where no one can say or feel anything! How about an apology from them?!”
Watch it here around the 11:31 mark:
If that wasn’t enough, while asking Silverman about who I was, Maher quipped, “He’s the head Chink in charge.” ABC had the wisdom to bleep out that word. When I got equal time a month later on August 22nd and the panel was debating the hurtfulness of racial slurs, Johnson pointed out that an Asian American (Kenneth-Chiu) had recently been stabbed to death by a White man who wrote “Chink” on his family’s car. But that wasn’t enough to persuade Maher. “And we’re talking about a lone nut!” he concluded, dismissively. “And to indict the entire society for that is disingenuous!”
In the second segment of the show, I raised the Chiu murder again, telling Silverman: “I bet you would say that his family should take some comfort in knowing that the term didn’t really hurt him!” Maher got indignantly angry at me: “It is a cheap political trick to somehow link that horrendous crime to a joke!”
Contrast that with Maher’s contrite behavior this past Friday night when Symone Sanders (former Press Secretary to Bernie Sanders) reminded Maher that LeBron James was recently called a nigger (actually, that slur was spray painted on the gate outside his home). Funny how Maher didn’t likewise dismiss that example as the actions of “a lone nut.”
As for his blind spots, Maher told Dyson, “We are all evolving…day by day,” explaining that when he was growing up in New Jersey in the ‘50s and ‘60s, race wasn’t an issue. So he’s still learning.
I’m curious to see if Bill Maher has evolved to the point of understanding the hurtfulness of Asian slurs and not just the ones used against African Americans. Or does he have to test them out on his show and wait for the reactions?
Guy Aoki is the Founding President of Media Action Network for Asian Americans (MANAA) the first all-volunteer, non-profit organization solely dedicated to monitoring the mass media and advocating balanced, sensitive, and positive depiction and coverage of Asian Americans. For almost 25 years, he wrote the “Into the Next Stage” media column for the Rafu Shimpo and for 17 years wrote syndicated radio shows for Dick Clark.As spring arrives, countless working-age men and women in Uzbekistan traditionally move abroad in search of work.
But this year, the annual migration is taking place against the backdrop of economic stagnation in the main regional labour market, Russia, and grumbles among officials in Moscow about an apparent migrant-driven spike in crime.
During a recent trip to Moscow in the hope of negotiating simplified migration rules for Uzbek citizens, the country’s president Islam Karimov failed to secure a deal, meaning many potential migrants are now looking elsewhere for work.
Russia ‘stoking refugee unrest in Germany to topple Angela Merkel’ Read more
According to Russia’s official migration data for January, there were 1.9 million Uzbeks working in Russia, marking a 15% drop from the same period in 2015. The central bank in Moscow has also said that remittances to Uzbekistan have plummeted, totalling $3bn in 2015, down from $5.6bn the year before.
April and May are usually the months when most start leaving for Russia. But for Tashkent residents Suyun Usmanov and his wife, however, March was the month they decided to return home. Usmanov said that finding a job with a worthwhile salary has become tough in Russia.
“Migrant labourers can normally expect [monthly] pay of 20,000-30,000 roubles [around £315],” he said, “but if you want to have anything left over to send home, you need to make at least 40,000-45,000 roubles per month.”
The cost of living in Russia has become much more expensive following last year’s introduction of a new work permit. Obtaining the document requires migrants to undergo tests for HIV, tuberculosis, drug addiction and skin diseases.
Permit holders must also buy health insurance, obtain a taxpayer identification number and pass an exam testing their knowledge of the Russian language, history and laws. All this has to be done within one month or applicants face fines of 10,000 roubles.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest An Uzbek woman stands in her bedroom at the City of Hope women’s shelter in Dubai. Photograph: Ahmed Jadallah/Reuters
‘Crimewave’
Russian government officials have started to speculate that these financial pressures are driving some migrants to crime.
At the end of March, president Vladimir Putin met top security officials to demand that more be done to contain what he described as a crimewave. “The unremitting crime rates among foreign citizens are causing serious concern, particularly since crimes of this nature draw a lot of public attention,” Putin told officials.
Nikolai Patrushev, secretary of Russia’s security council, also said there had been 58,000 recorded crimes committed by foreigners in 2015, an almost 6% increase on the previous year.
Moscow chief prosecutor Sergei Kudeneyev told Moskovsky Komsomolets newspaper in an interview last year that citizens of former Soviet Central Asian nations were responsible for committing the bulk of crimes attributed to foreigners in 2014. “If you create a ranking of criminality, you will find citizens of Uzbekistan at the top. They have committed 2,522 crimes; next is Tajikistan, with 1,745 crimes; and in third place there is Kyrgyzstan, whose citizens committed 1,269 crimes,” Kudeneyev said.
But migrant labourers are themselves often targets of crime, be it physical intimidation at the hands of gangs, or being defrauded by unscrupulous employers.
According to Anvar Nazirov, a political analyst in Tashkent: “Russian companies often use grey schemes. There is no transparency and they are often corrupt, which pushes migrants toward criminality. The conditions are not right for migrants to legalise their status and get above-board employment.”
Closer to home
Back home, Uzbek authorities are not making things any easier for migrants.
Local media reported that a deal was being negotiated to streamline requirements for Uzbek labourers wanting to work in Russia. But 2015 came and went without a deal. Karimov’s visit to Moscow last month brought no breakthroughs on this front either. Instead, the focus of relations has been on increasing exports of Uzbek produce to Russia and possible oft-rumoured arms deals.
All this is compelling many Uzbeks to consider other options. Nearby Kazakhstan has long been a favoured alternative – cotton harvesting starts in the autumn and pays better than the same work in Uzbekistan, while a booming construction industry attracts out-of-work labourers.
Sarvar Hamidjanov, 22, first went to Kazakhstan when he was 17. Now, he and another nine natives of the city of Andijan have jobs as woodworkers at a furniture factory in Almaty. The monthly salary is $500, while board and food are paid for by the employer.
“I like working here,” Hamidjanov said. “The locals are very tolerant toward us, and we learned Kazakh very quickly. Our stuff sells well here. A couple of years ago, I went to Russia to earn some money, for about three months, but I couldn’t get used to it, so I came back to Kazakhstan,” he said.
Hamidjanov said that once he puts aside enough money, he wants to open a furniture business in Andijan.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Migrant worker dormitory blocks in Dubai. An increasing number of Central Asian workers are travelling to UAE to find work. Photograph: Martin Argles for the Guardian
Looking east
But as economic troubles spread across the former Soviet Union, the United Arab Emirates has started drawing more interest from workers too.
Gulnoza, who asked for her surname not to be published, said she and her husband worked at a supermarket in Dubai for five years. Every month, they earned $3,000 between them. Out of that, $500 went toward rent for accommodation.
“There are enough jobs to go around in the UAE, so that’s why many of our people work here. The main thing is not to break the migration laws, and they will leave you alone. With the money we earned here, we were able to buy an apartment and a car back home,” she said.
'So what if Putin is corrupt?': Russia remains unmoved by offshore revelations Read more
Growing numbers are also heading to Turkey. According to recent estimates there are now around 50,000 Uzbeks living and working there. But that destination has been gravely complicated by the war in Syria, meaning some migrants returning home for holidays are subjected to interrogations upon arrival because of the government’s concern about keeping a tight lid on Islamic radicalism.
But the increasingly popular country among all emerging work destinations for Central Asian workers is South Korea, where many migrants work primarily in factories. Salaries in South Korea for Uzbeks are said to vary between $1,500 to $2,000 per month.
In an interview with a Tashkent television station, the head of the Uzbek agency for foreign labour migration, Ulugbek Nazarov, said 16,500 Uzbeks are officially registered as working in South Korea.
Looking to capitalise on this trend, in March the two countries signed a tentative memorandum of understanding to allow for greater numbers of Uzbeks to work in South Korea.
A version of this article first appeared on Eurasianet.orgI recently obtained the latest edition of West's Criminal Code and Rules, the book containing the rules you need to know if you are ever accused of a federal criminal offense. The book is updated every year, and each new edition supersedes the prior edition. It gets worse every year.
The West's edition now runs to more than 1600 pages, with abridgments and supplements. In addition to the Rules of Criminal Procedure, the book contains selected federal criminal statutes, the Federal Rules of Evidence, the Federal Rules of Appellate Procedure, and the Rules of the Supreme Court of the United States. On virtually every page are mechanisms to hurt, humiliate, control and enslave people to the government's will — all presented within a framework of procedural rules.
Federal Criminal Code... West Best Price: $9.00 Buy New $102.28 (as of 12:20 EST - Details)
In theory, these rules provide an accused with avenues to defend himself. But one can judge a scheme of procedural rules by its fruits, and the codification, growth and expansion of the Federal Rules of Procedure (of which most state procedural codes are virtual copies), have produced the world's highest incarceration rate — and probably the highest incarceration rate ever registered in any society in human history. Even more significantly, the Federal Criminal Code and its procedural rules and guidelines have almost eliminated criminal trials in many jurisdictions, because most defendants are unable to defend themselves effectively under the rules and simply plead guilty. Such is the lopsided nature of the Federal Rules that they produce untold mountains of printed accusations and claims against individual Americans, while facilitating no more than a few sentences (generally at sentencing hearings) in rebuttal in most cases.
Three Felonies a Day:... Harvey A. Silverglate Best Price: $16.99 Buy New $55.67 (as of 05:10 EST - Details)
Footnotes are found on virtually every page of the Federal Rules, tracing dates of amendments and the steady progression of punishments over time. In general, Congress has ratcheted up sentences, expanded the limitation periods in statutes of limitations, expanded rewards for those who cooperate with the government, and limited or eliminated avenues for people to challenge government accusations and court judgments. One is hard pressed to find crimes described in the book as misdemeanors, even if they were misdemeanors long ago. Today, most federal crimes are felonies, and conviction brings more or less automatic prison time.
Altering or removing motor vehicle identification numbers? Up to 5 years in Federal prison. Using the telephone to incite or to "organize, promote," or even encourage a riot? Up to 5 years. Attempting to coerce any federal employee into "any political activity"? Up to 3 years. Removing or affixing a U.S. Customs seal on any merchandise without government permission? Up to 10 years in prison. Transporting "terrorists" on your boat? Up to life in prison. Engaging in "street gang" activity? An additional 10 years may be added to your sentence. Knowingly using a misleading domain name on the Internet in order to attract viewers to online porn? Up to two years in prison. Sending a letter in the mail urging insurrection? Up to 10 years. Trading with known pirates on the high seas? Up to 3 years.
The book seems to provide dozens of separate laws exposing unwary Americans to federal prison for simply filling out paperwork wrong. (Note that these provisions are almost never applied to people in government, who regularly fill out paperwork incorrectly.) There are provisions subjecting Americans to life in prison for cocaine possession. There are open-ended provisions which may (or may not) criminalize pouring a cup of coffee on the ground (and thus violating the Clean Water Act) or accidentally catching certain breeds of fish from the oceans. It remains only for a savvy prosecutor to fill in the blanks and add to the list of crimes that Congress may (or may not) have created.
Few people are aware that the Federal Rules (not just of criminal procedure but of civil procedure, appellate procedure, bankruptcy procedure and Supreme Court procedure) are riddled with provisions that grant more time to the government to file and respond to pleadings and briefs, greater privileges of appearance, and greater ease of prosecuting and defending litigation than individuals in the private sector. The governing advisory committees that produce these rules of procedure have offered no explanation for these filing requirement disparities.
Go Directly to Jail: T... Best Price: $3.30 Buy New $17.31 (as of 03:00 EST - Details)
Just a few examples:
Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(a) provides that U.S. government parties have 60 days to answer civil complaints, compared with only 20 days for private-sector parties. (This same 60-day/20-day filing disparity applies to the filing of cross-claims, counterclaims and third-party claims as well);
Federal Rule of Appellate Procedure 4(a) provides that litigants have 30 days to file appeals in civil cases, "but if the United States or an officer or agency thereof is a party, the notice of appeal may be filed by any party within 60 days after such entry";
Federal Rule of Appellate Procedure 4(b) provides that the United States has 30 days to appeal from criminal judgments, compared with only 10 days for criminal defendants.
Federal Rule of Appellate Procedure 40(a)(1) provides that petitions for rehearing "may be filed within 14 days after entry of judgment" in a civil case unless "the United States or its officer or agency is a party," in which case any party may seek rehearing within 45 days of judgment.
There are also provisions of the Rules that grant the government greater privileges with regard to the filing of amicus curiae briefs in support of government positions:
Federal Rule of Appellate Procedure 29 allows "[t]he United States or its officer or agency, or a State, Territory, Commonwealth, or the District of Columbia" to "file an amicus-curiae brief without the consent of the parties or leave of court" while "[a]ny other amicus curiae may file a brief only by leave of court or if the brief states that all parties have consented to its filing";
U.S. Supreme Court Rule 37.4 provides that "No motion for leave to file an amicus curiae brief is necessary if the brief is presented on behalf of the United States by the Solicitor General; on behalf of any agency of the United States... ; on behalf of a State, Commonwealth, Territory, or Possession when submitted by its Attorney General; or on behalf of a city, county, town, or similar entity when submitted by its authorized law officer." All other amici are required to seek permission to file such briefs.
You & the Police! Boston T. Party, Kenne... Best Price: $1.55 Buy New $5.00 (as of 07:55 EST - Details)
When compounded over time and federal jurisdictions since the 1930s (when the feds began codifying rules of court procedure), these differing deadlines for drafting briefs and pleadings have translated into millions of hours of extra time for Justice Department lawyers to research and prepare litigation documents. The disparities have almost certainly contributed to profound inequalities exhibited between Americans of different social, income and political strata in the past several decades.
FILING FEES: $350 FOR NON-GOVERNMENT PARTIES, FREE FOR THE GOVERNMENT
Americans seeking to access the federal courts independently will find that the filing fees are substantial. It now costs $350 to file a petition or a lawsuit in federal court. That is, unless you are a government lawyer, and then there are no filing fees whatsoever. Filing an appeal? Another $450 for parties in the private sector. Again, free for the government. In recent years there have been repeated arguments that certain politically marginalized individuals (incarcerated prisoners, for example) file too many "frivolous" lawsuits. Congress responded by drastically limiting the rights of such people to file suits in federal court. Not so for the greatest single source of truly frivolous cases — the U.S. Justice Department — whose access to the courts remains limitless. This entity alone is responsible for thousands of false accusations against innocent Americans, many of whom have languished in prisons over the decades.
The Criminal Law Handb... Paul Bergman J.D., Sar... Best Price: $13.70 Buy New $164.48 (as of 03:55 EST - Details)
When neoconservatives gripe that federal courts coddle defendants (or would coddle "terrorists"), they are depicting a fictional court system that exists only in their imaginations. In practice, the federal courts overwhelmingly favor the government, and the rules of procedure are loaded with tricks and traps for the poor and the unwary. Anyone who faces the federal government in court knows that these "protections" are elusive, far-fetched, and in some cases illusionary.
Arrest-Proof Yourself:... Dale C. Carson, Wes De... Best Price: $3.11 Buy New $8.99 (as of 03:40 EST - Details)
Most so-called defense lawyers shiver in fear at the thought of trying to actually "defend" a client from a federal prosecution. Most begin their "defense" by seeking a plea bargain. Here is an interesting article describing the exodus of criminal defense lawyers from the field due to the increasingly lopsided rules of procedure. Criminal defense is not only unrewarding financially; it can be downright dangerous. Many of the most high profile defense lawyers of the past century — including Clarence Darrow, William Kunstler, F. Lee Bailey, Bruce Cutler, Lynne Stewart, Geoffrey Fieger (and doubtless many others) — have been subjected to criminal prosecution themselves after defending clients too zealously.
A recurring trick in federal court occurs when "defense" lawyers convince their clients to plead guilty to what a defendant believes is a minor count of a large indictment, in exchange for the government dropping other counts. After the guilty plea, a sentencing investigation is conducted by the U.S. Probation office (which is theoretically neutral but which in practice works closely with the prosecution). The Probation Office's "presentence investigation report" invariably recommends a sentence consistent with conviction on all the counts that were "dropped" by the government in the plea deal, and the defendant is then sentenced according to the worst allegations of the prosecution (without any ability to challenge such allegations at a trial). The lawbooks are literally filled with appeals of such sentences. I have read many dozens of these cases. There are probably hundreds. Here is a thoughtful dissent by a federal judge regarding this shameful practice.
What makes the Federal Criminal Code truly despicable is its disguise as a code of fair and equal procedural protections. Indeed, this deception makes West's Federal Criminal Code and Rules worthy of inclusion among other infamously cruel books of human history. It deserves a place on the shelves next to the Communist Manifesto, Mein Kampf, and Keynes' General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money. The Federal Criminal Code documents the advancement of coordinated, systematic scheme of state tyrannical control — with a procedural overlay.
January 4, 2011
The Best of Roger I. Roots, J.D., Ph.D.The Argentine forward may well be the greatest ever player to wear the hallowed jersey, but he clearly has not forgotten the Brazil icon's impact on him as a Camp Nou youngster
EXTRA TIME
Camiseta com |
ron Eisenberg believed that, by Nog helping Jake Sisko engage in lengthy negotiations for a baseball card in "In the Cards", a quality inherent to Ferengi in general was exemplified. "This all relates to the Ferengi's setting of financial goals and going after them," Eisenberg observed. (TV Zone, issue 99, p. 41)
By the end of DS9 Season 5, the Ferengi makeup took around an hour and a half to apply. (Cinefantastique, Vol. 29, Nos. 6/7, p. 61) In the interim between the fifth and sixth seasons, Ira Steven Behr intended for the Ferengi to return, en masse, in "The Magnificent Ferengi". "We have to do the rescue mission with the 'Magnificent Ferengi'," he noted. "We're going to gather all the Ferengi." (Cinefantastique, Vol. 29, Nos. 6/7, p. 55)
When David Livingston asked Aron Eisenberg to improvise a dance for Nog to do in sixth season's "You Are Cordially Invited", imagining how members of the Ferengi species might dance was puzzling for Eisenberg. He asked himself, "How do Ferengi dance?" and proceeded to think up a set of unusual dance moves, which he termed the "Ferengi Love Dance". (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Companion, p. 506)
The Ferengi ensemble in "The Magnificent Ferengi" went some way toward motivating Ira Behr to make a rare set visit while the episode was in production. "I had all my Ferengi!" he exclaimed. "I had Nog and Rom and Quark, whose joint presence is worth a million bucks for me, anyway, and on top of that I had Jeff Combs back as Brunt, Josh Pais as Gaila ('Business as Usual'), [and] Hamilton Camp [...] playing Leck ('Ferengi Love Songs')." (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Companion, p. 516) Behr also declared about the episode, "It showed Ferengi in a somewhat different light." (Cinefantastique, Vol. 30, No. 9/10, p. 46) He elaborated, "The Ferengi needed to show that they could be heroes, but after they showed they could, it was like, 'Well... now we don't have to do that anymore.'" (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Companion, p. 518)
The actors playing Ferengi characters in "The Magnificent Ferengi" were happy with the Ferengi portrayals in the episode. The fact there were "seven character actors in this Ferengi makeup" resulted in Jeffrey Combs finding the installment to be very fun, from a production standpoint. He enthused, "Some of the things that we were doing just sitting around, or waiting for the camera to roll, some of the dialogue was really cool." The task of portraying Ferengi in the episode additionally resulted in friendships between Josh Pais and Combs, as well as between Hamilton Camp and Combs. (Cinefantastique, Vol. 32, Nos. 4/5, p. 84) Armin Shimerman was likewise happy with the portrayals of Ferengi in "The Magnificent Ferengi". "We were surrounded by these wonderfully comedic actors playing the other Ferengi – Jeff Combs, Josh Pais, Hamilton Camp, and Cecily Adams [....] They were so funny," he remarked. "I can't tell you what a treat it was to watch each of these truly talented performers chew up more scenery than I'd ever seen chewed before and make it all work beautifully." ("A Profitable Venture", TV Zone special #34) Though he usually considered himself the hammiest actor in the DS9 cast, Shimerman took delight in allowing his fellow Ferengi performers to overact even more than him. "I just loved being with all those Ferengi [....] There were so many hams on that episode that I decided to step back and enjoy myself and let them have a good time. They were brilliant," Shimerman enthused. (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Companion, p. 517)
Though Director Chip Chalmers had previously directed Max Grodénchik as the Ferengi Sovak in "Captain's Holiday", Chalmers was unfamiliar with DS9's take on the Ferengi species when he was assigned to film "The Magnificent Ferengi". He prepared to direct the Ferengi who were included in that episode by reading The Ferengi Rules of Acquisition and Legends of the Ferengi. Chalmers was very impressed by the performances delivered by the installment's selection of Ferengi-playing actors. "They're all quite talented comics," he observed. "I had no trouble whatsoever getting absolutely magnificent comic timing out of each and every one of them." (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Companion, pp. 518 & 517)
Although the DS9 writing staff intended for "The Magnificent Ferengi" to pay homage to the film The Magnificent Seven in title only, Armin Shimerman and Max Grodénchik based their performances in the installment on those of Steve McQueen and Yul Brynner, respectively, in the movie. (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Companion, p. 517)
Aron Eisenberg meanwhile enjoyed performing with Armin Shimerman and Max Grodénchik. He especially liked that all three Ferengi-playing actors could speak to each other and share ideas when it came to their performances as members of the species. "We can always talk about scenes or feel free to say, 'You know, would you mind doing it this way?' They're both very professional and very talented," Eisenberg commented, regarding his Ferengi-portraying co-stars. "They're always right on the money with their performances." (TV Zone, issue 99, p. 42)
An undeveloped comedic B-story for "Change of Heart" would have featured Rom, Nog, and Nog's mother, Prinadora. (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Companion, p. 545)
The females of the Ferengi species are focused on in DS9's last Ferengi episode, "Profit and Lace". René Echevarria remembered that the installment's development began with a discussion about "the feminist movement, and giving Ferengi women the right to vote." Although the writers of the episode wrote it as a light comedy farce, Director Alexander Siddig wanted to concentrate more on the bickering relationship between Quark and Ishka. (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Companion, pp. 575, 573 & 574)
At the time DS9 Season 7 entry "Take Me Out to the Holosuite" was produced, Max Grodénchik, Aron Eisenberg, and Armin Shimerman were very skilled at playing baseball, though their characters were depicted differently. "The joke was that the Ferengi were the worst ball players [in 'Take Me Out to the Holosuite'], but, in fact, we were the ones who really could play," Grodénchik explained, chuckling. (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Companion, p. 610)
When later season seven outing "It's Only a Paper Moon" was produced, the Ferengi makeup took three hours to apply and an hour to remove. (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Companion, p. 637)
As DS9 neared its end, bringing two specific Ferengi characters back to the show was important to the DS9 writing staff. "We wanted to do something with Quark and Rom before the going got hot and heavy," Ira Behr remembered. The Ferengi pair was therefore featured in mirror universe episode "The Emperor's New Cloak". (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Companion, p. 644) "Who better than to have Rom and Quark [in the mirror universe]?" Behr rhetorically asked. (Cinefantastique, Vol. 32, Nos. 4/5, p. 72) By having the Ferengi visit the mirror universe, the writers temporarily put them in jeopardy. "That gave us a chance to present another example of the Ferengi having to face adversity and danger," Behr explained. (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Companion, p. 644) The pair of Ferengi characters had to be shown carrying a cloaked Klingon cloaking device through a corridor, which involved Armin Shimerman and Max Grodénchik miming. (Cinefantastique, Vol. 32, Nos. 4/5, pp. 72-73; Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Companion, p. 645)
Armin Shimerman once reckoned that, instead of Zek ultimately continuing as Grand Nagus, he himself would have had either Ishka or Brunt assume that role at the end of DS9. Ira Behr dismissed the notion of Quark becoming the new Nagus or Zek continuing to hold that title, which led to Rom being appointed as Nagus in "The Dogs of War". However, the writers believed the Ferengi would, in Ron Moore's words, "eat him alive," unless their society changed. Behr stated, "We had to figure out what would have had to happen to Ferengi society that would enable Rom to become the nagus." René Echevarria reasoned, "To some extent, we'd laid some pipe in that direction with Moogie's influence on the nagus. The audience had accepted the leap Moogie had accomplished for females, so we figured they'd be able to make this leap." (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Companion, pp. 694-695)
Jeffrey Combs was surprised that, though he had expected the Ferengi characters of Gaila and Leck to return following their appearance in "The Magnificent Ferengi", those characters were never again reprised in DS9, due to the producers running out of time by the end of the series. "I'm sure they would have loved to have 'The Magnificent Ferengi' return," Combs speculated. (Cinefantastique, Vol. 32, Nos. 4/5, p. 84)
The DS9 producers were very proud of the Ferengi characters that appeared on the show. In retrospect, Rick Berman admitted, "I have been just delighted by how rich these relationships have become [...] [such as the ones involving] Quark and his brother Rom, Rom's son Nog, and Quark's mother and the Grand Nagus." ("Quark's Story", DS9 Season 2 DVD special features) Ira Behr commendingly mentioned Aron Eisenberg and Max Grodénchik as being among supporting actors whose work on the series pleased him. (Cinefantastique, Vol. 32, Nos. 4/5, pp.Any bird of the order Passeriformes, which includes more than half of all bird species. Sometimes known as perching birds
A passerine is any bird of the order Passeriformes, which includes more than half of all bird species. Sometimes known as perching birds or – less accurately – as songbirds, passerines are distinguished from other orders of birds by the arrangement of their toes (three pointing forward and one back), which facilitates perching. With more than 110 families and some 6,409 identified species,[1][2] Passeriformes is the largest order of birds and among the most diverse orders of terrestrial vertebrates.[3]
The passerines contain several groups of brood parasites such as the viduas, cuckoo-finches, and the cowbirds. Most passerines are omnivorous, while the shrikes are carnivorous.
The terms "passerine" and "Passeriformes" are derived from the scientific name of the house sparrow, Passer domesticus, and ultimately from the Latin term passer, which refers to sparrows and similar small birds.
Description [ edit ]
The order is divided into three suborders, Tyranni (suboscines), Passeri (oscines), and the basal Acanthisitti[4]. Oscines have the best control of their syrinx muscles among birds, producing a wide range of songs and other vocalizations (though some of them, such as the crows, do not sound musical to human beings); some such as the lyrebird are accomplished imitators. The acanthisittids or New Zealand wrens are tiny birds restricted to New Zealand, at least in modern times; they were long placed in Passeri; their taxonomic position is uncertain, although they seem to be a distinct and very ancient group.
Pterylosis or the feather tracts in a typical passerine
Most passerines are smaller than typical members of other avian orders. The heaviest and altogether largest passerines are the thick-billed raven and the larger races of common raven, each exceeding 1.5 kg (3.3 lb) and 70 cm (28 in). The superb lyrebird and some birds-of-paradise, due to very long tails or tail coverts, are longer overall. The smallest passerine is the short-tailed pygmy tyrant, at 6.5 cm (2.6 in) and 4.2 g (0.15 oz).
Anatomy [ edit ]
The foot of a passerine has three toes directed forward and one toe directed backward, called anisodactyl arrangement. This arrangement enables the passerine birds to perch upon vertical surfaces, such as trees and cliffs. The toes have no webbing or joining, but in some cotingas, the second and third toes are united at their basal third. The hind toe joins the leg at the same level as the front toes. The passeriformes have this toe arrangement in common with hunting birds like eagles and falcons.
The leg arrangement of passerine birds contains a special adaptation for perching. A tendon in the rear of the leg running from the underside of the toes to the muscle behind the tibiotarsus will automatically be pulled and tighten when the leg bends, causing the foot to curl and become stiff when the bird lands on a branch. This enables passerines to sleep while perching without falling off.[5][6]
Most passerine birds develop 12 tail feathers, although the superb lyrebird has 16.[7] Certain species of passerines have stiff tail feathers, which help the birds balance themselves when perching upon vertical surfaces. Some passerines, specifically in the family Ploceidae, are well known for their elaborate sexual ornaments, including extremely long tails. A well-known example is the long-tailed widowbird.
Eggs and nests [ edit ]
The chicks of passerines are altricial: blind, featherless, and helpless when hatched from their eggs. Hence, the chicks require extensive parental care. Most passerines lay coloured eggs, in contrast with nonpasserines, most of whose eggs are white except in some ground-nesting groups such as Charadriiformes and nightjars, where camouflage is necessary, and in some parasitic cuckoos, which match the passerine host's egg. Vinous-throated parrotbill has two egg colours, white and blue. This can prevent the brood parasitic Common cuckoo.
Clutches vary considerably in size: some larger passerines of Australia such as lyrebirds and scrub-robins lay only a single egg, most smaller passerines in warmer climates lay between two and five, while in the higher latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere, hole-nesting species like tits can lay up to a dozen and other species around five or six. The family Viduidae do not build their own nests, instead, they lay eggs in other birds' nests.
Origin and evolution [ edit ]
The evolutionary history of the passerine families and the relationships among them remained rather mysterious until the late 20th century. In many cases, passerine families were grouped together on the basis of morphological similarities that, it is now believed, are the result of convergent evolution, not a close genetic relationship. For example, the wrens of the Americas and Eurasia; those of Australia; and those of New Zealand look superficially similar and behave in similar ways, and yet belong to three far-flung branches of the passerine family tree; they are as unrelated as it is possible to be while remaining Passeriformes.[8]
Much research remains to be done, but advances in molecular biology and improved paleobiogeographical data gradually are revealing a clearer picture of passerine origins and evolution that reconciles molecular affinities, the constraints of morphology and the specifics of the fossil record.[9][10] The first passerines are now thought to have evolved in the Southern Hemisphere in the late Paleocene or early Eocene, around 50 million years ago.[11][10]
The initial split was between the New Zealand wrens (Acanthisittidae) and all other passerines, and the second split involved the Tyranni (suboscines) and the Passeri (oscines or songbirds). The latter experienced a great radiation of forms out of the Australian continent. A major branch of the Passeri, parvorder Passerida, expanded deep into Eurasia and Africa, where a further explosive radiation of new lineages occurred.[10] This eventually led to three major Passerida lineages comprising about 4,000 species, which in addition to the Corvida and numerous minor lineages make up songbird diversity today. Extensive biogeographical mixing happens, with northern forms returning to the south, southern forms moving north, and so on.
Fossil record [ edit ]
Earliest passerines [ edit ]
Perching bird osteology, especially of the limb bones, is rather diagnostic.[12] However, the early fossil record is poor because the first Passeriformes were apparently on the small side of the present size range, and their delicate bones did not preserve well. Queensland Museum specimens F20688 (carpometacarpus) and F24685 (tibiotarsus) from Murgon, Queensland, are fossil bone fragments initially assigned to Passeriformes.[13] However, the material is too fragmentary and their affinities have been questioned.[14] Several more recent fossils from the Oligocene of Europe that are more complete definitely represent early passeriforms, although their exact position in the evolutionary tree is not known.
From the Bathans Formation at the Manuherikia River in Otago, New Zealand, MNZ S42815 (a distal right tarsometatarsus of a tui-sized bird) and several bones of at least one species of saddleback-sized bird have recently been described. These date from the Early to Middle Miocene (Awamoan to Lillburnian, 19–16 mya).[15]
Modern knowledge about the living passerines' interrelationships (see the list of families below) suggests that the last common ancestor of all living Passeriformes was a small forest bird, probably with a stubby tail[16] and an overall drab coloration, but possibly with marked sexual dimorphism. The latter trait seems to have been lost and re-evolved multiple times in songbird evolution alone, judging from its distribution among the extant lineages. Sexual dichromatism is very rare among the basal lineages of Passerida, and probably their plesiomorphic condition. But among the youngest passerid clade, the Passeroidea, extremely colorful males and drab females are common, if not the rule. On the other hand, among the basalmost Passeri a considerable number of strongly dimorphic lineages exist, too, such as the very ancient Menuridae, as well as many Meliphagoidea and Corvoidea. Sexual dimorphism is also not uncommon in the Acanthisittidae and prominent in some suboscines such as the Pipridae and Cotingidae.
Early European passerines [ edit ]
Wieslochia fossil fossil
In Europe, perching birds are not too uncommon in the fossil record from the Oligocene onward, but most are too fragmentary for a more definite placement:
Wieslochia (Early Oligocene of Frauenweiler, Germany)
(Early Oligocene of Frauenweiler, Germany) Jamna (Early Oligocene of Jamna Dolna, Poland)
(Early Oligocene of Jamna Dolna, Poland) Resoviaornis (Early Oligocene of Wola Rafałowska, Poland)
(Early Oligocene of Wola Rafałowska, Poland) Passeriformes gen. et sp. indet. (Early Oligocene of Luberon, France) – suboscine or basal [17]
Passeriformes gen. et spp. indet. (Late Oligocene of France) – several suboscine and oscine taxa [18]
Passeriformes gen. et spp. indet. (Middle Miocene of France and Germany) – basal? [19]
Passeriformes gen. et spp. indet. (Sajóvölgyi Middle Miocene of Mátraszőlős, Hungary) – at least 2 taxa, possibly 3; at least one probably Oscines [20]
Passeriformes gen. et sp. indet. (Middle Miocene of Felsőtárkány, Hungary) – oscine? [21]
Passeriformes gen. et sp. indet. (Late Miocene of Polgárdi, Hungary) – Sylvioidea (Sylviidae? Cettiidae?)[22]
Wieslochia was possibly not a member of any extant suborder. That not only the Passeri expanded much beyond their region of origin is proven by an undetermined broadbill (Eurylaimidae) from the Early Miocene (roughly 20 mya) of Wintershof, Germany, and the indeterminant Late Oligocene suboscine from France listed above. Even very basal Passeriformes might have been common in Europe until the Middle Miocene, some 12 mya.[23] Extant Passeri super-families were quite distinct by that time and are known since about 12–13 mya when modern genera were present in the corvoidean and basal songbirds. The modern diversity of Passerida genera is known mostly from the Late Miocene onwards and into the Pliocene (about 10–2 mya). Pleistocene and early Holocene lagerstätten (<1.8 mya) yield numerous extant species, and many yield almost nothing but extant species or their chronospecies and paleosubspecies.
American fossils [ edit ]
In the Americas, the fossil record is more scant before the Pleistocene, from which several still-existing suboscine families are documented. Apart from the indeterminable MACN-SC-1411 (Pinturas Early/Middle Miocene of Santa Cruz Province, Argentina),[24] an extinct lineage of perching birds has been described from the Late Miocene of California, United States: the Palaeoscinidae with the single genus Paleoscinis. "Palaeostruthus" eurius (Pliocene of Florida) probably belongs to an extant family, most likely passeroidean.
Systematics and taxonomy [ edit ]
Corvida and Passerida were classified as parvorders in the suborder Passeri; in accord with the usual taxonomic practice, they would probably be ranked as infraorders. As originally envisioned in the Sibley-Ahlquist taxonomy, they contained, respectively, the large superfamilies Corvoidea and Meliphagoidea, as well as minor lineages, and the superfamilies Sylvioidea, Muscicapoidea, and Passeroidea.
The arrangement has been found to be oversimplified by more recent research. Since the mid-2000s, literally, dozens of studies are being published that try rather successfully to resolve the phylogeny of the passeriform radiation. For example, the Corvida in the traditional sense was a rather arbitrary assemblage of early and/or minor lineages of passeriform birds of Old World origin, generally from the region of Australia, New Zealand, and Wallacea. The Passeri, though, can be made monophyletic by moving some families about, but the "clean" three-superfamily-arrangement has turned out to be far more complex and it is uncertain whether future authors will stick to it.
Major "wastebin" families such as the Old World warblers and Old World babblers have turned out to be paraphyletic and are being rearranged. Several taxa turned out to represent highly distinct species-poor lineages, so new families had to be established, some of them – like the stitchbird of New Zealand and the Eurasian bearded reedling – monotypic with only one living species.[25] In the Passeri alone, a number of minor lineages will eventually be recognized as distinct superfamilies. For example, the kinglets constitute a single genus with less than 10 species today but seem to have been among the first perching bird lineages to diverge as the group spread across Eurasia. No particularly close relatives of them have been found among comprehensive studies of the living Passeri, though they might be fairly close to some little-studied tropical Asian groups. Treatment of the nuthatches, wrens, and their closest relatives as a distinct super-family Certhioidea is increasingly considered justified; the same might eventually apply to the tits and their closest relatives.
This process is still continuing. Therefore, the arrangement as presented here is subject to change. However, it should take precedence over unreferenced conflicting treatments in family, genus, and species articles here.
Taxonomic list of Passeriformes families [ edit ]
New Zealand rock wren (Xenicus gilviventris), one of the two surviving species of suborder ), one of the two surviving species of suborder Acanthisitti
This list is in taxonomic order, placing related species/groups next to each other. The Passerida subdivisions are updated as needed from the default sequence of the Handbook of the Birds of the World,[26] based on the most modern and comprehensive studies.[27]
Arrangement of families [ edit ]
The families are sorted into a somewhat novel sequence unlike that in older works, where e.g. Corvidae are placed last. This is because so many reallocations have taken place since about 2005 that a definite taxonomy has not been established yet, although the phylogeny is by and large resolved. The present sequence is an attempt to preserve as much of the traditional sequence while giving priority to adequately addressing the phylogenetic relationships between the families. Based on John Boyd's Taxonomy in Flux Checklist 3.5.[28]
Suborder Acanthisitti [ edit ]
Acanthisittidae: New Zealand wrens
Infraorder Eurylaimides – Old World suboscines (or broad-billed suboscines), probably a separate suborder Superfamily Pittoidea Pittidae: pittas Superfamily Eurylaimoidea – broadbills and allies Eurylaimidae: broadbills Philepittidae: asities Sapayoidae: broad-billed sapayoa
– Old World suboscines (or broad-billed suboscines), probably a separate suborder Infraorder Tyrannides – New World suboscines Superfamily Tyrannoidea – "bronchophones" Pipridae: manakins Cotingidae: cotingas Tityridae: tityras and allies Tyrannidae: tyrant flycatchers Superfamily Furnarioidea – tracheophones Melanopareiidae: crescentchests Thamnophilidae: antbirds Conopophagidae: gnateaters and gnatpittas Grallariidae: antpittas Rhinocryptidae: typical tapaculos Formicariidae: antthrushes Furnariidae: ovenbirds and woodcreepers
– New World suboscines
Suborder Passeri (songbirds or oscines) [ edit ]
Infraorder Menurides – the most ancient true songbirds, endemic to Australia, sometimes considered a superfamily "Menuroidea" [ verification needed ] Menuridae: lyrebirds Atrichornithidae: scrub-birds
– the most ancient true songbirds, endemic to Australia, sometimes considered a superfamily "Menuroidea"
Infraorder Climacterides – Possible superfamily "Ptilonorhynchoidea" [ verification needed ] – bowerbirds and Australian treecreepers, endemic to Australia, New Guinea, two very dissimilar families, one smallish and inconspicuous, the other sizeable, usually brightly colored and/or conspicuously vocal, and with extremely unusual mating habits Climacteridae: Australian treecreepers Ptilonorhynchidae: bowerbirds
– Possible superfamily "Ptilonorhynchoidea" – bowerbirds and Australian treecreepers, endemic to Australia, New Guinea, two very dissimilar families, one smallish and inconspicuous, the other sizeable, usually brightly colored and/or conspicuously vocal, and with extremely unusual mating habits Infraorder Meliphagides – mainly insectivores and nectarivores, distribution centered on Australo-Melanesian region extending into surroundings, notably the Pacific. Meliphagoidea Maluridae: fairywrens, emu-wrens and grasswrens Dasyornithidae: bristlebirds, formerly in Acanthizidae Meliphagidae: honeyeaters Pardalotidae: pardalotes Acanthizidae: scrubwrens, thornbills, and gerygones
– mainly insectivores and nectarivores, distribution centered on Australo-Melanesian region extending into surroundings, notably the Pacific. Infraorder Orthonychides – logrunners and pseudo-babblers, insectivores, endemic to Australia, New Guinea, mid-sized and rather inconspicuous, wings short and round but tails well-developed plumage grey and brown with black and white markings, males and females look alike Orthonychidae: logrunners Pomatostomidae: pseudo-babblers
– logrunners and pseudo-babblers, insectivores, endemic to Australia, New Guinea, mid-sized and rather inconspicuous, wings short and round but tails well-developed plumage grey and brown with black and white markings, males and females look alike Infraorder Corvides – a highly diverse group of global distribution, but most plentiful in the Australasian region and surroundings: The oldest truly globally successful group of passerines, they include among them what may well be the most intelligent and the most spectacular of the order. Mohouoidea Mohouidae Pachycephaloidea Pachycephalidae: whistlers Oreoicidae: Australo-Papuan bellbirds Psophodidae: quail-thrushes & jewel-babblers Orioloidea Eulacestomidae: Wattled ploughbills Neosittidae: sittellas Oriolidae: Old World orioles & figbirds Paramythiidae: painted berrypeckers Psophodidae: whipbirds & wedgebills Vireonidae: vireos Campephagoidea Campephagidae: cuckooshrikes and trillers Malaconotoidea Wilson's bird-of-paradise ( Cicinnurus respublica ) a oscine. ) a corvoid Artamidae: woodswallows, butcherbirds, currawongs, and Australian magpie Machaerirhynchidae: boatbills Aegithinidae: ioras Pityriaseidae: Bornean bristlehead, tentatively placed here Malaconotidae: puffback shrikes, bush shrikes, tchagras, and boubous Platysteiridae: wattle-eyes and relatives, formerly in Passerida, probably paraphyletic Vangidae: vangas Corvoidea Rhipiduridae: fantails Dicruridae: drongos Ifritidae: blue-capped ifrit Melampittidae: melampittas Corcoracidae: white-winged chough and apostlebird Paradisaeidae: birds-of-paradise Monarchidae: monarch flycatchers Laniidae: shrikes Corvidae: crows, ravens, and jays
– a highly diverse group of global distribution, but most plentiful in the Australasian region and surroundings: The oldest truly globally successful group of passerines, they include among them what may well be the most intelligent and the most spectacular of the order.
hihi (Notiomystis cincta) showing Male stitchbird or) showing convergence with honeyeaters
Regulus regulus) belongs to a minor but highly distinct lineage of Passeri Tiny goldcrest ) belongs to a minor but highly distinct lineage of Passeri
blue tit (Cyanistes caeruleus) and its relatives stand well apart from rest of the sensu lato ) and its relatives stand well apart from rest of the Sylvioidea
Hermit thrush (Catharus guttatus), like many ), like many Muscicapoidea a stout and cryptic bird with complex vocalizations.
Erythrura gouldiae), many Like these male (right) and female Gouldian finches ), many Passeroidea are very colorful
Phylogeny [ edit ]
Living Passeriformes based on the "Taxonomy in Flux family phylogenetic tree" by John Boyd.[28]
Passeriformes classification Acanthisitti Acanthisittidae Eupasseres Tyranni Eurylaimides?Sapayoidae Calyptomenidae Pittidae Philepittidae Eurylaimidae Tyrannides Tyrannida Pipridae Cotingidae Tityridae Oxyruncidae Onychorhynchidae Tyrannidae Pipritidae Platyrinchidae Tachurididae Rhynchocyclidae Furnariida Melanopareiidae Thamnophilidae Conopophagidae Grallariidae Rhinocryptidae Formicariidae Furnariidae Passeri Menurides Atrichornithidae Menuridae Euoscines Climacterides Ptilonorhynchidae Climacteridae Meliphagides Maluridae Dasyornithidae Pardalotidae Meliphagidae Orthonychides Orthonychidae Pomatostomidae Corvides Cinclosomatidae Campephagidae Neosittidae Mohouidae Orioloidea Eulacestomidae Psophodidae Falcunculidae Oreoicidae Paramythiidae Pteruthiidae Vireonidae Pachycephalidae Oriolidae Malaconotoidea Machaerirhynchidae Artamidae Rhagologidae Platysteiridae Vangidae Aegithinidae Pityriaseidae Malaconotidae Corvoidea?Dicruridae Rhipiduridae Lamproliidae Monarchidae Laniidae Corvidae Ifritidae Melampittidae Corcoracidae Paradisaeidae Passerides Melanocharitida Melanocharitidae Cnemophilida Cnemophilidae Petroicida Petroicidae Notiomystidae Callaeidae Eupetida Picathartidae Chaetopidae Eupetidae Core Passerides Core Passerides Sylviida Paroidea Stenostiridae Hyliotidae Remizidae Paridae Sylvioidea Nicatoridae Panuridae Alaudidae Macrosphenidae Cisticolidae Pnoepygidae Acrocephalidae Locustellidae Donacobiidae Bernieridae Hirundinidae Pycnonotidae Phylloscopidae Cettiidae Hyliidae Aegithalidae Sylviidae Paradoxornithidae Zosteropidae Timaliidae Pellorneidae Leiothrichidae Muscicapida Reguloidea Regulidae Bombycilloidea Elachuridae Mohoidae Ptiliogonatidae Bombycillidae Dulidae Hypocoliidae Certhioidea Tichodromadidae Sittidae Certhiidae Troglodytidae Polioptilidae Muscicapoidea Cinclidae Turdidae Muscicapidae Buphagidae Mimidae Sturnidae Passerida Promeropidae Arcanatoridae Dicaeidae Nectariniidae Urocynchramidae Irenidae Chloropseidae Peucedramidae Prunellidae Estrild clade Ploceidae Viduidae Estrildidae Passerid clade Passeridae Motacillidae Fringillidae Calcariidae Rhodinocichlidae Emberizidae Passerellidae?Zeledonia?Teretistris Phaenicophilidae Icteridae Parulidae Mitrospingidae Cardinalidae Thraupidae
References [ edit ]The Wage Penalty for State and Local Government Employees in New England
September 2010, Jeffrey Thompson and John Schmitt
Recent reports in the national and the regional media have described state and local government employees as earning more than workers in the private sector. The average state and local government worker does earn higher wages – but this is because they are, on average, older and substantially better educated than private-sector workers. When state and local government employees are compared to private-sector workers with similar characteristics – particularly when workers are matched by age and education – state and local workers actually earn less, on average, than their private-sector counterparts. On this basis, the wage penalty for state and local government workers in New England is close to 3 percent.Issue Brief - PDFI’m not a fan of flavoured vodkas. Adding artificial flavour to something that can easily and more successfully be replaced with a real, natural flavour seems absurd to me. Which is why I hate myself for saying this, but Three Olives Cake Vodka is fucking bomb. Seeing the bottle put me in absolute hysterics, because the idea of a cake flavoured vodka is absurd. Then, for some reason, which can only be explained by a lack of common sense and fiscal responsibility, I bought it.
It tastes like a god damned cupcake, and its strong to boot.
Drinking spirits straight is fun, and I’ll definitely be doing that, but cocktails are more fun. I couldn’t think of any possible logical application for this in a cocktail, so I did it myself.
And I did it.
1.5oz Three Olives Cake Vodka
0.75oz Noilly Pr |
to the community for doing this to me. So I started ch3ating and dup1ng on alts, because I didn't know better. Then me, Robin and PapreT started a ch3ating group called Sanity. And we were basically taking revenge on the community. After a while we almost ran out of alts, and ch3ating got pretty boring for me. Then, I started playing in a clan called Silenced Nation, I was glad they let me in, and we had a great time. So I took a cr4cked alt from my list, that wasn't b4nned yet: JSZylox, and bought silver for it. I played on it alot, until the day that almost 5000 Minecraft accounts were leaked, and all banned from Shotbow for reason 'Comprom1s3d Account'. I tried to appeal, but they said it would not be unb4nned because it was a cr4cked alt, once again I was thrown out of the community. I still continued playing legit on some cracked alts I had left 'till I saved up some money for a new alt: PetWoh. Luckily, JONNY_1NFERNO (Now banned) bought it silver. I have been playing since legit since then, and the account is emerald now. I also have 7 other alts, to fight the evil fox army in the lobby. I talked to lazer for a while, and some other admins, and they said if I didn't cause any more trouble, I would not be b4nned. I have been playing l3git for the past 8 months, and have been playing with a lot of old, but also new friends, and I'm happy that the community has forgiven me for this. So this is my story, I apologize to everyone for my past and my behaviour. And if you ever see me in-game, don't call me Wezzy, because I won't respond, because I'm ashamed of my past. I'm PetWoh, and I like to stay PetWoh. Thank you for taking your time read, and I hope you will forgive me. - Wezzy/PetWoh Worded by PetWoh, written down by GalaxyWolff. (Needs some recognition for writing this wall of text.)
RAW Paste Data
(Some words are censored to avoid the post being removed, I just wanted to share this with you all.) Hey all, as you all know, I'm PetWoh. I've been around the Shotbow Network for quite some time now, since Summer 2013 actually. And there's something I need to tell you all. I'm not the guy you all think I am. I'm not the cute mudkip you all suppose I am. Some of you may have noticed other people calling me 'xWezzyx' or just simply 'Wezzy'. This is because, I am xWezzyx. xWezzyx is my former account. I used to play on it, since the start of MineZ, and it used to be Emerald. That was until the day I met a guy 'RobinTheKayOh'. I got to know him, and I used to play wit him alot. One day, I was playing with him, and we were running up north in MineZ. Then he suddenly stopped, and told me on Skype that I had to watch this thing, that's where he started fly1ng around on the ice river, and back then, I didn't like ch3at3rs. So I had to record him. I did so, uploaded it, pm'd it to an admin and told him NOT to show it around. Then Robin got b4nn3d for it. Ofcourse he tried to app3al for it, and the admin that answered his app3al sent him the link of my video. Robin got mad at me, and I got mad at the admins for showing it, even though I told them NOT to. I ofcourse tried to deny that it was me that recorded the video that eventially got him b4nn3d. So we forgot about it, and he started playing on alts, he duped on them too. So, I thought that it was okay for me to dup3 too, because this was an easy way to get up north. And eventially I got caught moulding into the spire, on my account lazerbreaster (I think iamtoogoodforu still has the video up) by lazer himself. Back then, I was really depressed and sad in real life, because my mother had recently passed away, and people were saying bad stuff about her, trashtalking her and other mean things. So I got really mad and felt like doing something back to the community for doing this to me. So I started ch3ating and dup1ng on alts, because I didn't know better. Then me, Robin and PapreT started a ch3ating group called Sanity. And we were basically taking revenge on the community. After a while we almost ran out of alts, and ch3ating got pretty boring for me. Then, I started playing in a clan called Silenced Nation, I was glad they let me in, and we had a great time. So I took a cr4cked alt from my list, that wasn't b4nned yet: JSZylox, and bought silver for it. I played on it alot, until the day that almost 5000 Minecraft accounts were leaked, and all banned from Shotbow for reason 'Comprom1s3d Account'. I tried to appeal, but they said it would not be unb4nned because it was a cr4cked alt, once again I was thrown out of the community. I still continued playing legit on some cracked alts I had left 'till I saved up some money for a new alt: PetWoh. Luckily, JONNY_1NFERNO (Now banned) bought it silver. I have been playing since legit since then, and the account is emerald now. I also have 7 other alts, to fight the evil fox army in the lobby. I talked to lazer for a while, and some other admins, and they said if I didn't cause any more trouble, I would not be b4nned. I have been playing l3git for the past 8 months, and have been playing with a lot of old, but also new friends, and I'm happy that the community has forgiven me for this. So this is my story, I apologize to everyone for my past and my behaviour. And if you ever see me in-game, don't call me Wezzy, because I won't respond, because I'm ashamed of my past. I'm PetWoh, and I like to stay PetWoh. Thank you for taking your time read, and I hope you will forgive me. - Wezzy/PetWoh Worded by PetWoh, written down by GalaxyWolff. (Needs some recognition for writing this wall of text.)If the media were only ignoring Gary Johnson this campaign, we might pretend that it is because he represents a small party which they presume doesn't really have a chance of winning and therefore is not worth covering.
However, considering that the media also ignored him in 2012 when he began the race as a Republican, when they were happy to cover other candidates with less experience and less support as measured by polls, when they repeatedly changed the rules for inclusion in debates to exclude him - well, it becomes obvious that something else is afoot.
America has Freedom of the Press in part so that the press can act as a watchdog on government, but for many decades now the press has been bought off - to the point that it is now a fourth branch of government. Governor Johnson has a proven record as a responsible and prudent executive devoted to the public good, and that is exactly what those parties currently looting the United States do NOT want.
So make no mistake - the media is not ignoring Gary Johnson. They are well aware that he is there. They are trying their best to HIDE Governor Johnson from the American public, and knowing that most of the public will not investigate further on their own they hide him in plain site - with an occasional story buried where no one but those who already know about him will find it. This gives them plausible deniability.
You might think word would still get out via social media, but as we have seen with Twitter "shadowbanning" those with undesirable opinions (preventing such tweets from being visible to other users unless they specifically go looking for them) we can presume that other social media companies are doing the same, effectively isolating unwanted opinions within like-minded social groups to prevent them from reaching the majority of the population. Don't presume this is an accidental result of filtering - I have noticed on Facebook, for example, that my rare comments are more likely to get a response from my more distant acquaintances, especially those living in other countries, than from friends and family - and on inquiring why, it turns out that Facebook simply does not show my comments to friends and family unless they specifically seek them out.Hearthstone Americas Spring Preliminaries Results & Top Decks, Value Town #72
Garden of Terror Changes, Chromie Tips & Tricks, Heroes WTF Moments #51
Warcraft Movie Footage and Reviews, Leveling Hotfixes, Movie Transmog Items Live
Nevalistis replied to a thread about 3 cosmetic items potentially not dropping, including Aidan's Revenge - a normal Axe transmog that had its files added to the game, but not to the loot tables. So this specific cosmetic will not drop, and the other 2 are rare and hard to find. Read below.
Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
We know from neva now that the pennant is ingame, but it seems that people trying to farm everywhere to find this 3 missing transmogs :
Mace of Crows Aidan's Revenge and Steffons Heavy Lancebut it seems that they aren't live cause people farming like hell for this transmogs and noone already have them....
We don't need the locations only if they are live....
so it would be pretty good to know from a blue, if they exist on live servers?
Checking in on these. My gut on all three of these is that, similar to the pennant, they're particularly rare. Some of these additions were intended to be tougher to find than others. Just the same, I'm going to shoot off an email and double check to be sure. Never hurts!
I'll be back as soon as I have more info. Just bear in mind - I won't be giving any hints on whereabouts. These are all about the hunt, and it's been wonderful to see so many community efforts springing up around tracking these down. I hope you've been enjoying the journey as much as I have!
Final verdict:
Steffon's Heavy Lance - Available in game
Mace of Crows - Available in game
Aidan's Revenge - NOT available in game
It looks like, while the files were added for Aiden's Revenge, it hasn't yet been added to any loot tables. It's possible we'll make it available in the future, but, for now, this item does not drop from any source.
Happy hunting!
Or was the source that contained Aidan's Revenge also removed?
To clarify, there was never a source implemented to contain Aidan's Revenge, so you shouldn't encounter a "loot-less" container.
Tnx! It sure is better knowing which ones are available. Come on people, we got this
I totally believe you do! I'm always astounded at how dedicated and ingenious our community is, especially when presented with a challenge. I'm purposely not hunting these myself (that would feel like cheating since I've checked into where they spawn), but I do plan on joining the hunt after they've been discovered. I'm looking forward to completing my collection, too!On March 21, 2017, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi sat down for an interview with fellow multimillionaire Anderson Cooper on CNN. Though the discussion mostly consisted of softball questions about the Trump administration, Pelosi managed to provide the kind of tone-deaf responses that have made her widely disliked by the public.
Cooper asked Pelosi who she thought was leading the Democratic Party. Pelosi, not surprisingly, didn’t have an answer. “Well, President Obama was the president of the United States until just a matter of weeks ago,” she said. “I don’t think that he can be dismissed as the leader of the Democratic Party. Hillary Clinton did not win the election, but she is a respected leader. But we have leaders for all different aspects of it.”
Pelosi’s suggestion that former President Barack Obama is the leader of the party is inconceivable, especially since he does not currently hold office and has been on vacation since Donald Trump’s inauguration. Pelosi likely cited Obama due to his popularity among voters; he has the highest ratings among Democrats aside from Sen. Bernie Sanders. Pelosi failed to mention Sanders as a leading figure because of the Democratic leadership’s prevailing consensus that Sanders isn’t a “real Democrat.” Her suggestion that Hillary Clinton is the leader of the party is strange given that she does not hold elected office, repels millions of voters and has run two failed presidential campaigns—despite being the presumed front runner in both.
As an excuse for why she couldn’t name any leaders for the Democratic Party, Pelosi added, “We’re not in a presidential time.” Pelosi likely didn’t cite herself or Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer because she is aware of her and Schumer’s unpopularity. Nor did Pelosi mention anyone else currently in office because she knows there aren’t any popular Democrats in office. As much as Democrats are willing to ingratiate themselves with Sanders to exploit his popularity for political gain, they don’t want to admit that they have no popular leaders in the party. Their strategy, as Pelosi previously noted, is to wait out Trump’s presidency and hope that voters will abandon the Republican Party and turn their support to Democrats.
Pelosi has been a liability for the Democratic Party since she assumed her leadership role. She is one of the most widely known, yet least popular politicians in the country. Republicans are comfortable in a fight against Pelosi—and even hope for it—because having Pelosi in leadership helped Republicans swing over 60 seats in the House during the Obama administration. Even recently, in Montana’s special election for Ryan Zinke’s congressional seat, the Republican Party is using Nancy Pelosi to portray Democratic opponent Rob Quist in a negative light. The Democratic Party’s insistence to stick with Pelosi as its House Minority Leader is one of the main reasons why Democrats are out of touch with voters.
Democrats in office are old; the average age of Democrats’ senior leadership, according to Vox, is 72, compared to 49 for Republicans. Vox’s Jeff Stein cited this age problem is due in part to congressional redistricting creating safe districts that have allowed Democrats like Nancy Pelosi to win re-election without formidable challengers. Pelosi has also raised millions of dollars for Democrats in the House, whipping support in her favor and continuing the Democratic Party’s trend of favoring its donors over its voters. While many voters would like to see new leadership take the party in a different direction, Pelosi has insisted that the party doesn’t need a new direction, and other Democratic Party leaders have shown that they agree with that assessment by suppressing reform.It's a hard orc life, but living in New York City makes it a little better. View Full Caption Facebook/Harry Aspinwall
Escaping the watchful Eye of Sauron is only one of many reasons to move to New York.
"Orcs of New York," a Facebook page parodying the popular photo blog "Humans of New York," presents the fictional stories of those Dark Lord henchmen that chose to leave the dusty, pitted plain of Gorgoroth for the skyscraper-dotted landscape of the city.
The page's author, filmmaker and actor Harry Aspinwall, takes the classic J.R.R. Tolkien fantasy trilogy "Lord of the Rings" as his source material, photoshopping Tolkien's characters into familiar city settings. (Hey, if director Peter Jackson can make $2.9 billion off the books' appeal at the box office, why shouldn't Aspinwall take advantage of it?)
The spin-off, launched late last month, has 5,000 likes so far, a tiny fraction of HONY's 15 million likes.
But the orcs of New York have the same concerns as most Big Apple transplants and their families:
"My kids never believe me when I tell them how different things were when I was their age. I was the only orc in my class," reads one tongue-cheek caption.
"I moved here a few years ago, to be an actor, like everyone else. When I was growing up you never saw orcish faces on billboards...The media never taught us to think that we're beautiful," reads another.
Of course, it wouldn't be a true slice of orc life in NYC without neighborhood name-checks.
"I was born and raised in the Bronx. I don't really feel much connection with Mordor. It's hard, my parents don't talk about it much," one orc says.
"I moved to Chelsea in the 90s...I didn't know anyone. For the first year, it was completely overwhelming...Then I started thinking about how I grew up in Gorgoroth under the flaming eye of Barad-Dur, and if I can get through that I can probably do just about anything."A cinema which closed its doors in August is set to reopen as a state of the art facility.
Odeon shut its Wester Hailes cinema during the summer in order for refurbishment works to take place. The cinema is set to reopen next month boasting 800 handmade reclining seats across eight screens.
The new Wester Hailes Odeon will have reclining seats
Film fans will also be able to experience a new state-of-the-art iSense screen with 4K projection and Dolby ATMOs sound.
The newly renamed Odeon Luxe Edinburgh West will offer customers triple the original legroom and increased personal space - as well as retractable tray tables and a range of new food and drink options.
General manager of the Odeon Lux Edinburgh West, Isla Stilley, said: “We’re extremely proud that Scotland will be home to three of the four first Odeon Luxe cinemas in Europe and we’re thrilled to be able to offer film fans in Edinburgh the ultimate, luxury cinema experience.
“Since our doors closed earlier this year in August, our team has been working hard to create the ultimate venue for film fans.
“With recliner seating throughout, the highest quality sound and screens and an all new retial offering, we can’t wait to welcome back film fans to enjoy the biggest and best film releases in fantastic luxury and comfort.”
The refurbishment to the cinema has taken place ahead of an exciting release schedule of new films including the remake of Murder on The Orient Express and Star Wars: The Last Jedi.
The new cinema will reopen on Friday, November 3.Pro-Trump supporters interrupt Sen. Kamala D. Harris (D-Calif.) during her speech at a Dream Act rally on Oct. 11 in Irvine, Calif. (Kevork Djansezian/Getty Images)
There's a lot of attention on the rifts between Republican lawmakers in Washington.
You've got President Trump vs. Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.); former White House chief strategist Stephen K. Bannon vs. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.); and Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) vs. Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky).
But a new Pew poll suggests that these Beltway wars could be a reflection of the disagreements among the people that Republican Party leaders represent across the United States. In the poll, Pew divided the political spectrum into two sides, left and right, with sub categories within each.
They labeled the two largest groups on the right “core conservatives” and “country first conservatives.”
“Core conservatives” are the most traditional group of Republicans, and at 43 percent of politically engaged Republicans, they have the most outsize influence on the GOP coalition. The group is male-dominated and tends to be more financially comfortable, with nearly half of them belonging to households making $75,000 or more. About 1 in 3 are college educated.
“Country first conservatives” are a much smaller segment of the base and tend to be older and less educated — only 16 percent have a college degree — than other GOP-leaning groups. Fewer than 30 percent of them come from households making at least $75,000 a year. These conservatives are unhappy with the direction of the country.
A third Republican group Pew defined are “market skeptic Republicans.” It diverges from the GOP’s traditional support for business and lower taxes with only about a third saying banks and other financial institutions have a positive effect on the country.
“New era enterprisers,” a fourth group, are younger and somewhat less overwhelmingly white than the other groups and tend to be pro-business and generally believe immigrants strengthen, rather than burden, the country.
The thing these conservatives share the most common ground on is their support for Trump and their belief that the overwhelming majority of both groups say that black Americans who can’t get ahead in life are responsible for their own condition
Majorities within the group also agree that the government can't afford to do more to help Americans in need.
But it is on areas of international affairs where the two largest groups differ most. The majority of core conservatives — 68 percent — believe that U.S. involvement in the global economy is good for new markets and growth. Far fewer country first conservatives feel that way. Less than 4 in 10 — 39 percent — agree.
The country first conservatives also have a much more negative view of immigration. Nearly 8 in 10 — 76 percent — believe that immigrants are a burden to the country because they take jobs and housing. It's these conservatives that express the highest “cultural anxiety” among any group when it comes to immigration, arguing that “if America is too open to people from all over the world, we risk losing our identity as a nation.” Only 43 percent of core conservatives feel that way.
Core conservatives — the more affluent group — are much more likely to think that the U.S. economic system is “generally fair” to most Americans. Of the core groups, 3 in 4 see fairness in the current system. But less than half — 48 percent — of country first conservatives believes in the fairness of America's economic system.
One of the largest gaps between the conservatives comes to views on homosexuality. Among country first conservatives, 7 in 10 believe that homosexuality should be discouraged by society, while fewer than 4 in 10 — 37 percent — of core conservatives share that view.
All of this is worth paying attention to as Bannon has threatened to get behind candidates who reinforce his anti-establishment vision of the GOP. The country first conservatives could help him do that, starting with backing former Alabama chief justice Roy Moore in his U.S. Senate race.
But the Republican Party has put resources in the past few years in trying to connect with underrepresented groups including minorities and immigrants. And Trump campaigned to be more supportive the LGBT community that so many in his base don't seem to support.
Many of those groups feel less supported now that Trump is in the White House — but so do some groups within the GOP itself, hence so much of the infighting.
So often when those on the right point to dysfunction, they focus on Washington. But another way to understand the war in the GOP that will probably have a significant effect on what happens during the 2018 midterms — and the next presidential election — is to spend time looking into the dynamics between the voters outside the Beltway.Hair Dryer Cooking: From S'mores To Crispy Duck
Have a hankering for s'mores but not near a fire? Grab your hair dryer. Credit: Morgan Walker/NPR
This past year, we've introduced you to some wacky cooking methods. We've made an entire lunch in a coffee maker and even poached salmon and pears in the dishwasher.
But a few weeks ago, we stumbled upon a crazy culinary appliance that may be the most legitimate of them all: the hair dryer.
Now, before you think we've fallen off the kitchen stool from too much eggnog, check out the science and history behind the idea.
The technique dates back to 1978, and it was pioneered by culinary guru Marcella Hazan, whom you might call the patron saint of Italian cooking in America.
Enlarge this image toggle caption Michaeleen Doucleff/NPR Michaeleen Doucleff/NPR
Hazan's classic recipe for roast duck contains this unusual twist: Dunk the duck in boiling water and then thoroughly go over it with a hair dryer, Hazan writes in Essentials of Classic Italian.
The result, she says, is duck skin that's "succulent" and "deliciously crisp" but not oily.
We'll explore exactly how the blow dryer helps crisp up poultry skin in a moment. But first, a bit of background — and some fun with chocolate.
A hair dryer with a narrow nozzle melts dark chocolate on top of a graham cracker. Credit: Morgan Walker/NPR
The food scientists over at America's Test Kitchen offer up three reasons to keep a hair dryer in the pantry:
1- relighting charcoals on the grill
2- putting a glossy sheen on cake frosting and
3- softening up a bar of chocolate to make it easier to shave off slivers.
Many of us don't have the time to give our cake frosting a professional blowout, but softening up chocolate struck a chord and made us immediately think of one thing: blow dryer s'mores!
Most hair dryers produce air that's about 200 degrees Fahrenheit when the nozzle is about 2 inches from a surface. That's the perfect temperature for melting chocolate (or butter) without burning it.
So we tried making hair dryer s'mores here at NPR headquarters with some dark, 70 percent chocolate. And, well, we were blown away.
Seconds after the hot air hits the candy's surface, the dark chocolate starts to get glossy. Then it quickly turns into a chocolate fountain flowing across the graham cracker. (Note: You do have to hold the chocolate down with a fork or chopstick to keep it from blowing off the plate).
The dryer will also melt the marshmallow. But the air from the appliance is too cool to toast the marshmallow and give it a brown color. Caramelization of sugar and other browning reactions occur only at temperatures above 350 degrees Fahrenheit.
If your blow dryer got that hot, it would make your hair crispier than the skin of a Peking duck hanging in a Chinatown shop. Which brings us back to Hazan's use of the hair dryer in the kitchen: getting the perfect skin on your holiday duck or chicken.
"To crisp up and brown, the skin has to heat up to a high temperature — above 300 degrees Fahrenheit," says Guy Crosby, the science editor at America's Test Kitchen and a lecturer in food chemistry at Harvard University. "So the bird's flesh has to go into the oven very, very dry."
If there's any moisture in the skin, Crosby says, all of the heat will go into boiling off the water, and the skin won't get above 212 degrees Fahrenheit.
Enlarge this image toggle caption Michaeleen Doucleff/NPR Michaeleen Doucleff/NPR
In the classic recipe for Peking duck, the bird gets dried out by hanging in the open air for 10 to 12 hours. Hazan replaces that long dehydration step with a quick blowout of the bird.
"Pat it [the duck] dry inside and out with paper towels," she writes in the Essentials of Classic Italian. "Turn on the hair dryer and direct the hot air over the whole skin of the duck for 6 to 8 minutes."
The same idea can be applied to chicken, turkey and even fish, Crosby says. "Anything that you want to sear or crisp, get it in the pan as dry as possible — get rid of the moisture."
For the duck, though, the blow dryer serves a second function: It removes some of the fat.
What gives poultry skin its yummy texture isn't the oily fat but rather the proteins. "Fat contributes a great deal of flavor to the skin," Crosby says. "But the crispy structure comes from heating up the protein."
When the duck is raw, proteins in the skin form long chains, like a curtain of ropes or beads. These flexible strands make the skin soft and flexible. But as the duck heats up, sugars in the skin start to link the protein chains together. This makes the skin firm and crispy.
"Think about the frame of a house," Crosby says. "If all you had were vertical studs, the frame is not stable. But if you put some horizontal studs in it, they make the frame rigid. That's what the sugars are doing" during the browning process.
Duck skin has so much fat in it that it can get in the way of connecting up the proteins and, thus, the crisping process. Some of the fat streams out of the skin during the blow drying.
But this step also opens up the skin's pores, so that even more fat can drip out during the roasting process. And less fat means crispier skin.
Have a holly jolly hair dryer holiday!By Patrick Vecchio
I am waiting to see if—no, make it how—the Tea party and other way-right-leaning Republicans react to this week’s barely-qualifies-as-news that TV journalist/personality Anderson Cooper admitted he is gay. (Details here)
Another story from this week also has me worried about the backlash, but first, Cooper:
I have no idea how much courage it takes for a public figure like Cooper to come out. Nor do I have any idea about the extent and tone of the flak that will be fired at him and how he’ll deal with it. He will be abused online by people (a great many of them anonymous) who feel threatened by homosexuality or opposed to it because of personal or religious beliefs. I don’t think I’d be strong enough to shrug off their pounding.
To be fair, many of his potential critics will keep their counsel because they’re aware of advice in the Bible about glass houses and stones, or about biblical admonitions that we need to clean up our own lives before we pass judgment on others’. It’s also fair to say not all of the criticism of Cooper will come from the right. Plenty of people from across the political spectrum won’t be able to resist making smirky little wisecracks.
Setting those not-inconsiderable matters aside, the story about Cooper prompted me to shrug my shoulders and move to other, unrelated stories for several reasons, among them: one, his sexual preference has been what one writer called “an open secret” for years; two, his sexual preference has no influence on my life; and three, his sexual preference doesn’t make him any more or any less of a journalist than a heterosexual reporter is, and it’s journalism I care about. Everything else about Cooper is moot.
So far, the only reaction I’ve seen was found by following a link in Charlie Pierce’s politics blog over at Esquire.com (a daily must-read). Pierce’s blog provided a link to a tweet (Clever? Not.) by Brent Bozell, founder of a group called the Media Research Center (Damned liberal media!), where you can read reports like “How Network News Has Twisted Obama’s War on Religion Into a Conservative War Against Women” or from which you can buy, among other things, a bumper sticker that says, “I don’t trust the liberal media.”
I have to admit that I didn’t know that the word “teabagging” refers to a sexual practice. After I consulted the online Urban Dictionary, I better understood why Bozell’s followers thought his tweet was not only delightfully snarky, but also perfectly justifiable: because they say Cooper himself used the word to describe Tea party practices, so two wrongs make a right. Or maybe it’s three wrongs. There will be plenty more than that in the days to come.
I’m not going to look too hard, but I have a hunch that the blogosphere and tweetland are alive with declarations today that Cooper’s sexuality is either one, proof of a liberal media bias, or two, proof that the liberal media is part of a government-sponsored socialist plot to destroy marriage, the family, values and morals, the Second Amendment, and America as we know it. Those are not outcomes I’m prepared to wager a considerable sum of money on based solely on the fact that Anderson Cooper is gay. But this is why I expect most of the backlash against Cooper to come from the right. You don’t hear liberals complaining about the media’s so-called liberal leanings. I say “so-called” because the concept is as bogus as a “reality” TV show, but that’s a topic for another time.
Moving on: Another story from this week about another television journalist has me a little more concerned. The Huffington Post yesterday included an article titled “Rachel Maddow Talks About Battles With Depression In Rolling Stone” (Here it is). This will be a more difficult story for Tea party members and other right-leaners to attack because unlike homosexuality, mental illness is a darker matter, less discussed and less understood. I may, however, be underestimating the degree of ignorance and meanness people harbor against people with mental health problems; in fact, we may be due for a storm of unparalleled viciousness and stupefying ignorance, particularly because the venom and hate will be directed toward a television journalist who, in addition to having mental health problems, has a life partner who’s a woman (Oh-my-God-another-liberal-and-a-lesbian-serves-her-right!). This has been known for quite some time, and I’m sure she’s been treated like a piñata about this over the years, but her dealing with depression is an issue that will overshadow her sexuality, at least temporarily. Or it may give her critics two bull’s-eyes to aim at.
I am concerned about the Maddow story backlash because I have firsthand experience with clinically diagnosed depression. When my mood swings down, it swings way down, down into a deep blue funk, down to the point where I can’t get anything done, down to the point where mere conversations are an effort, down to the point where I get home from work at, say, 6 p.m., go straight to bed and don’t get out of bed until the alarm clock rings the next morning. Depression is, to use an old blues phrase, down in the bottom, and until my meds finally bring me back to balance, it seems there’s no way out of the pit.
Now, picture being a television journalist who is depressed. Picture being a television journalist whose on-air persona is that of someone calm, rational, even-tempered, smart as hell, and occasionally humorous in an ironic way. Carrying on with depression for an hour a night in front of the cameras must be a hugely draining task. I don’t understand how she has been able to do it.
I hope people of all political leanings will limit their comments about Maddow to expressions of well-wishing. Perhaps that hope is somewhat less realistic than my hope that the hair on my bald head will grow back—in dreadlocks—and again, you don’t have to be a Republican, a Democrat, a Tory or a Whig to be a jerk. Anyway, I say “expressions of well-wishing” because Maddow doesn’t need sympathy. It doesn’t help. Nor do statements like “you’ll get over this,” because the words only show how little people understand about depression. The intent and the remarks are laudable and goodhearted, but the words only make us more frustrated because it doesn’t seem as if we’ll ever clamber out of the pit. They don’t cause hope, but just the opposite.
Maddow’s story, then, is like Cooper’s in that both journalists are perceived as leaning toward the left, and no doubt someone somewhere has cobbled together some sort of Monty Python logic to prove that both of them are subversive liberals because they are made out of wood and therefore float. My reaction to Cooper’s story is a bit detached because I don’t and can’t understand what a gutsy move he made. However, he’s not a journalist I pay particular attention to.
Maddow’s story, though, is something I understand better on a personal level—and I hope she finds the strength she needs to maintain a more even perspective on life so she can continue to deliver smart, incisive journalism that I turn to her for.The Audi A1 e-tron concept car (pictured above). Audi's A2 Electric Hatchback is set to go on sale by 2013.
BERLIN, Oct. 26 (UPI) -- An electric car developed by a German company Tuesday set what organizers said is a world record when it drove 375 miles without recharging its battery.
Mirko Hannemann, 27, drove the yellow and purple all-electric Audi A2 in seven hours from Munich to Berlin, where he arrived Tuesday morning.
German Economy Minister Rainer Bruederle, who jumped inside for a quick drive in the courtyard of his ministry, called Hannemann's trip a technological quantum leap.
"No other electric car has gone to such a distance," he said.
Japanese scientists drove a 1-person electric car more than 600 miles around a track, but that was at 25 miles per hour and with a vehicle that was basically all battery.
"Today, we have shown what everyday cars can do," said Hannemann, the chief brain behind DBM Energy, a startup from Berlin that developed the powerful battery pack that made the long trip possible.
Consumers have so far been put off by the short driving range of electric cars, usually at between 60 and 100 miles, and by the cost and size of the batteries.
The four-seat Audi A2, funded by German utility lekker Energie and the German Economy Ministry, has all features of a regular car, including a fully usable trunk.
Hannemann drove the 375 miles at 55 miles per hour on average, had the heat on and was able to whisk around a few more miles in the city.
The battery, based on what DBM Energy calls the KOLIBRI AlphaPolymer Technology, comes with 97 percent efficiency and can be charged at virtually every socket. Plugged into a high-voltage direct-current source, the battery can be fully loaded within 6 minutes, Hannemann said.
"This is a great success," said Andreas Goerdeler of the German Economy Ministry. "We are in a fierce global competition and this proves that we're technological leaders."
Eager to reduce the dependency on imported oil and cut carbon dioxide emissions from road traffic, the German government last year said it wants to have 1 million electric cars cruise its highways by 2020.
Germany's powerful car industry has been criticized for |
. 0:38
The Assiniboine Park Zoo also unveiled the return of its Dinosaurs Alive! exhibit Thursday, which features 16 life-sized animatronic dinosaurs along a forested path in the zoo.
The newest dinosaur in the exhibit, which was an attraction at the zoo last year, is a 13-metre long Tylosaurus. The zoo said it's distinguished by its cylindrical snout which may have been used to ram and stun prey.
The zoo said a full-grown Tylosaurus was "invincible" in its environment to almost everything except disease and age.Regardless of one’s politics, pretty much everyone agrees that Justice Bernd Zabel shouldn’t have worn a Make America Great Again hat in his Hamilton, Ontario courtroom the day after the U.S. presidential election.
Last week, Zabel faced a disciplinary panel to answer for his unofficial wardrobe choice.
He said it was all a joke at the hearing, but had previously said he wanted to stick it to all the Hillary Clinton supporters in his workplace.
Love Trump. Hate Trump. It doesn’t matter. As the Americans say, justice should be blind. Let’s keep the politics out of it.
And while we’re at it, let’s talk about applying this principle consistently across the public service, whenever Canadians interact with their government.
We’re pretty good at it in most respects. It’s not like polling clerks on election day are allowed to wear buttons supporting candidates. Police officers, firefighters and other law enforcement have their uniforms. We run a tight ship.
But still, the Quebec government felt it needed to go one step further to codify some form of this into law. Not for overt political displays this time, but religion.
Bill 62, which is supported by the governing Quebec Liberals and now working its way through committee, calls for a “duty of religious neutrality” on the part of all public servants.
That effectively means a ban on face coverings, the most prominent of which is the niqab.
This has become an issue in the NDP leadership race, of all places, where the party is hoping to woo back those voters Jack Layton first enticed in the 2011 election but that Justin Trudeau won back in 2015.
Quebec politics is an entirely different scene. There you have voters who would strongly support both the NDP and niqab bans, the sort of blend that wouldn’t happen in Anglo NDP strongholds like Toronto and Vancouver.
The candidates are divided. Guy Caron, from Quebec, is OK with the bill.
But Ontario’s Jagmeet Singh calls it Islamophobic and Niki Ashton posted on social media: “You can’t tell a woman what she should be wearing.”
"You can’t tell a woman what she should be wearing" #ndpldr — Niki Ashton (@nikiashton) August 27, 2017
Ashton meant that as an indictment of the government’s bill. But I wonder if she’d use the same line on Zaynab Khadr.
“All sects of Islam have agreed unanimously that homosexual acts are a sin, hijab is mandatory, imams must be men,” reads a post Omar Khadr’s big sis shared on her Facebook page (which has since been made private). “If you reject this, you are lying to yourself and you are weak in faith. Accept Islam for what it is or leave our mosques.”
Looks to me like that’s telling women what to wear. It’s also a reasonable summary of what many women in niqabs likely think.
A whole bunch of complaints poured into the Ontario Judicial Council about Justice Zabel, arguing the hat implies he can’t separate his political support from his professional conduct.
By the same logic, a public servant in a niqab might well make non-covered women or LGBTQ clients uncomfortable.
The broader public in Canada doesn’t yet have a long enough frame of reference when it comes to Islam to have this conversation now. But sooner or later we’ll have to acknowledge that the niqab is as much a political statement as it is religious.
This is why it’s been banned over the years and in varying degrees in countries throughout Africa, the Middle East and Europe.
“The niqab and burka have nothing to do with Islam,” Raheel Raza, the president of The Council for Muslims Facing Tomorrow, wrote in a 2016 Huffington Post column. “They’re the political flags of the Muslim Brotherhood, ISIS, the Taliban, al-Qaida and Saudi Arabia.”
Looked at this way, it’s one giant body bag of a political message. At least the MAGA cap only covers the hair.This past weekend was one to put in the books for many festival goers from around the world. Yesterday concluded the beautiful Tomorrowland festival in Belgium. One of the many sets that was especially memorable was on Friday evening when deadmau5 and Eric Prydz took the first ever mau5trap vs. Pryda stage.
The two went B2B and took the crowd on a captivating journey by dropping a bunch of new music with their impressive stage design as the perfect backdrop. After the set, deadmau5 took to Twitter to thank Prydz but to also let fans know that they can expect to see more of the two together…possibly in the United States.
No joke, Eric and I and our team spent 3 months on that single show. We have some plans to expand on it, and perhaps bring it to the US 😉 — dead mow cinco (@deadmau5) July 23, 2016
Listen to the full b2b Tomorrowland set below:
Stay tuned for updates!(Credit: Independent.co.uk)
Facebook recently announced a Bot platform for it’s Messenger which provides businesses and individuals another way to communicate with people.
What is a Chat bot?
A computer program designed to simulate conversation with human users, especially over the Internet.
Chat bot in PHP
When I heard of it, my very first thought was to a bot in PHP. I started to find some SDK in this regard released by Facebook but none was present. I headed over to documentation which provided good information for starters.
Ok! so without wasting further time, let’s build our first Bot
Timebot
In order to create an Fb bot you will need two things to host your bot: A Facebook Page which will be like Home of Bot, People will visit the page, click on Message option to Interact with your bot. For example, suppose Pizza Hut introduce a bot for order related operations. What could they do that they integrate or host their bot on their official page, a fan can just click on Message button and send messages to order a Pizza, get new deals etc and they will get messages as if some human representatives is responding to them. It all depends how efficient a bot is. Facebook puts no limitation in this regard.
I am going to create a Time bot which will tell you current time Time API that provides different options to retrieve time. For our bot, we are just fetching latest(NOW) time. I will go step by step:
Step 1: Create Facebook Page:
I am going to create Bot’s Page first, this page will actually be the entry point for communication for the bot to interact with your page fans/users. Do note that it is not necessary to create a separate page only for Bot purpose. You may use existing Fan page for this purpose. For sake of this tutorial I am assuming that you never created a page before. Visit https://www.facebook.com/pages/create/ and you will see something like this(as of April, 2016):
I picked Entertainment option. In next steps it asks different options which you can always skip.
Alright! so my page is ready and something like should be visible for you as well:
Step 2: Create Facebook App:
Alright, go to https://developers.facebook.com/apps and click on Add a New App button. Make sure you have a developer account otherwise you will not be able to access developer dashboard.
When you click on it it shows a window and asks you what kind of app are you going to make. I picked Basic Setup given at bottom. I entered required information; Display Name & Contact Email and hit Create App ID button.
After Captcha you will be redirected to your App Page where you will be seeing details.
On left side bar you will see an option of Messenger. When you click on it, it shows introduction of Messenger Platform and why and how these bots will be helpful.
Click on Get Started and it will show a New Dashboard page related to your newly created app that’s going to be hooked with Messenger platform.
Now we need to do a few things for setting up the bot. As you can see, you are being asked a few things; Access Token/Page Token so that Facebook can know where do you want to host bot, Webhooks, your script URL that will be receiving messages from your users and responding them. It will also be hold the logic of your bot and Permissions that is, what this bot should be able to perform when communicating with users. Ok first, set the page which you just created. I am selecting TimBot. Since I, as a normal Facebook User going to use this page very first time, it will ask for Permissions as it normally asks.
Once all goes well you would get your Page Token like this, save it somewhere as this will be used as access_token while sending messages.
Now we have to set our Webhook. Facebook asks you to setup an https:// URL which means, you simply can’t use localhost while developing. You can either upload your script somewhere which allows SSL based requests or.. you can use some tunneling tool that will pass on your localhost message to outer world. Luckily such tools are available and they are FREE as well. I’d recommend nGrok for this purpose. Once it’s unzipped, go to the folder and run the command:
./ngrok http 80 1. / ngrok http 80
As a free user you are not allowed to give your own subdomain. Once it starts working, it shows something like this:
As you can see, it gives you two forwarded URLs. Since we re interested about https one so we will focus on that. nGrok also provides you an interface to view requests on your newly created domain. It will help you to debug how your webhook page is being accessed by Messenger Platform. For that purpose, open a separate tab with the URL http://localhost:4040/inspect/http and here you can see all details related to that request.
Now I have the URL, all I have to do is to setup my Webhook for Time Bot. Click on Setup Webhooks option and you’d see something like that.
Here I entered the nGrok based URL, Verify Token which could be ANY string and checked subscription fields. If you hit verify and save, you will get error:
What does it mean? Webhook when access the URL, it first verification token before doing anything further, if not present or incorrect, it gives the error you are seeing above.
It’s time to open IDE and write some code. Create a file, in my case it’s index.php, in your case it could be any other file. Write the code that verify your Webhook.
$access_token = "EAAH5qCyWCdcBAP0ddTZBNbVRdmqd43TZCnBJGFEwRZAmO76hlrXfWmVzBXO5xEsochEnlrQ88Tkrwm2B63KzXctLxXQ8RU6KKM9sWEFsGZAaBzmmMUoqVjfir1n5ufXgW8btvZAL41bNJ5S0IceHKUCioOLTqCLZCZCOOMlNz5fRAZDZD"; $verify_token = "fb_time_bot"; $hub_verify_token = null; if(isset($_REQUEST['hub_challenge'])) { $challenge = $_REQUEST['hub_challenge']; $hub_verify_token = $_REQUEST['hub_verify_token']; } if ($hub_verify_token === $verify_token) { echo $challenge; } 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 $access_token = "EAAH5qCyWCdcBAP0ddTZBNbVRdmqd43TZCnBJGFEwRZAmO76hlrXfWmVzBXO5xEsochEnlrQ88Tkrwm2B63KzXctLxXQ8RU6KKM9sWEFsGZAaBzmmMUoqVjfir1n5ufXgW8btvZAL41bNJ5S0IceHKUCioOLTqCLZCZCOOMlNz5fRAZDZD" ; $verify_token = "fb_time_bot" ; $hub_verify_token = null ; if ( isset ( $_REQUEST [ 'hub_challenge' ] ) ) { $challenge = $_REQUEST [ 'hub_challenge' ] ; $hub_verify_token = $_REQUEST [ 'hub_verify_token' ] ; } if ( $hub_verify_token === $verify_token ) { echo $challenge ; }
$verify_token holds the value you in Verify Token field.
Now all seems set, let’s try again! Hurray! if all goes well you would see something like this:
Now all seems set. How about we test our Webhook by sending message to our bot.
Step 3: Sending and Receiving Messages
Before you start sending/receiving messages, you need to subscribe your page. Go to Command prompt, assuming cURL is installed,run the following command.
curl -X POST "https://graph.facebook.com/v2.6/me/subscribed_apps?access_token=EAAH5qCyWCdcBAOGIHVjWL7TGTYHFYYTr1RZAxc0bXZCK9pBaqqFEJPn9ctdZCSgzbJbJIdTcEHScfIxJ2zWku2sn8AUSOEqktL5VmTqYhYrC0NXbJEMY3EpsshZAFCd484PEBcyK4hN3H2ZAaiQLowoZAbRSx5aNAihIVsjbCKggZDZD" 1 curl - X POST "https://graph.facebook.com/v2.6/me/subscribed_apps?access_token=EAAH5qCyWCdcBAOGIHVjWL7TGTYHFYYTr1RZAxc0bXZCK9pBaqqFEJPn9ctdZCSgzbJbJIdTcEHScfIxJ2zWku2sn8AUSOEqktL5VmTqYhYrC0NXbJEMY3EpsshZAFCd484PEBcyK4hN3H2ZAaiQLowoZAbRSx5aNAihIVsjbCKggZDZD"
Where access_token is the code I got in earlier step for the page Time Bot Page which I asked you to save somewhere. If works perfectly you should success message on console:
{"success":true} 1 { "success" : true }
Now go to your bot page and send message.
If hooks and subscription works fine, on your nGrok Web Interface(http://localhost:4040/inspect/http), you should see a request hit:
Now you will know the power of nGrok Web Interface, here we are receiving message from Bot in a structure. In next step we will convert this message structure by decoding JSON into array and fetch sender Id and message.
$input = json_decode(file_get_contents('php://input'), true); $sender = $input['entry'][0]['messaging'][0]['sender']['id']; $message = $input['entry'][0]['messaging'][0]['message']['text']; 1 2 3 4 $input = json_decode ( file_get_contents ( 'php://input' ), true ) ; $sender = $input [ 'entry' ] [ 0 ] ['messaging' ] [ 0 ] ['sender' ] [ 'id' ] ; $message = $input [ 'entry' ] [ 0 ] ['messaging' ] [ 0 ] ['message' ] [ 'text' ] ;
First line using to get message from Facebook and then convert the JSON into PHP Associative Array.
In next couple of lines I am getting senderID, the ID of the person messaging to bot and the message itself.
Wait.. while you are debugging requests on nGrok, you could find an error:
<span class="hljs-tag"><<span class="hljs-title">br</span> /></span> <span class="hljs-tag"><<span class="hljs-title">b</span>></span>Deprecated<span class="hljs-tag"></<span class="hljs-title">b</span>></span>: Automatically populating $HTTP_RAW_POST_DATA is deprecated and will be removed in a future version. To avoid this warning set 'always_populate_raw_post_data' to '-1' in php.ini and use the php://input stream instead. in <span class="hljs-tag"><<span class="hljs-title">b</span>></span>Unknown<span class="hljs-tag"></<span class="hljs-title">b</span>></span> on line <span class="hljs-tag"><<span class="hljs-title">b</span>></span>0<span class="hljs-tag"></<span class="hljs-title">b</span>></span><span class="hljs-tag"><<span class="hljs-title">br</span> /></span> <span class="hljs-tag"><<span class="hljs-title">br</span> /></span> <span class="hljs-tag"><<span class="hljs-title">b</span>></span>Warning<span class="hljs-tag"></<span class="hljs-title">b</span>></span>: Cannot modify header information - headers already sent in <span class="hljs-tag"><<span class="hljs-title">b</span>></span>Unknown<span class="hljs-tag"></<span class="hljs-title">b</span>></span> on line <span class="hljs-tag"><<span class="hljs-title">b</span>></span>0<span class="hljs-tag"></<span class="hljs-title">b</span>></span><span class="hljs-tag"><<span class="hljs-title">br</span> /></span> <span class="hljs-tag"><<span class="hljs-title">br</span> /></span> <span class="hljs-tag"><<span class="hljs-title">b</span>></span>Notice<span class="hljs-tag"></<span class="hljs-title">b</span>></span>: Undefined variable: data in <span class="hljs-tag"><<span class="hljs-title">b</span>></span>/Applications/MAMP/htdocs/Facebook-Chat-Bot/index.php<span class="hljs-tag"></<span class="hljs-title">b</span>></span> on line <span class="hljs-tag"><<span class="hljs-title">b</span>></span>30<span class="hljs-tag"></<span class="hljs-title">b</span>></span><span class="hljs-tag"><<span class="hljs-title">br</span> /></span> Invalid 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 < span class = "hljs-tag" > & lt ; < span class = "hljs-title" > br < / span > / & gt ; < / span > < span class = "hljs-tag" > & lt ; < span class = "hljs-title" > b < / span > & gt ; < / span > Deprecated < span class = "hljs-tag" > & lt ; / < span class = "hljs-title" > b < / span > & gt ; < / span > : Automatically populating $ HTTP_RAW_POST_DATA is deprecated and will be removed in a future version. To avoid this warning set 'always_populate_raw_post_data' to '-1' in php. ini and use the php : //input stream instead. in <span class="hljs-tag"><<span class="hljs-title">b</span>></span>Unknown<span class="hljs-tag"></<span class="hljs-title">b</span>></span> on line <span class="hljs-tag"><<span class="hljs-title">b</span>></span>0<span class="hljs-tag"></<span class="hljs-title">b</span>></span><span class="hljs-tag"><<span class="hljs-title">br</span> /></span> < span class = "hljs-tag" > & lt ; < span class = "hljs-title" > br < / span > / & gt ; < / span > < span class = "hljs-tag" > & lt ; < span class = "hljs-title" > b < / span > & gt ; < / span > Warning < span class = "hljs-tag" > & lt ; / < span class = "hljs-title" > b < / span > & gt ; < / span > : Cannot modify header information - headers already sent in < span class = "hljs-tag" > & lt ; < span class = "hljs-title" > b < / span > & gt ; < / span > Unknown < span class = "hljs-tag" > & lt ; / < span class = "hljs-title" > b < / span > & gt ; < / span > on line < span class = "hljs-tag" > & lt ; < span class = "hljs-title" > b < / span > & gt ; < / span > 0 < span class = "hljs-tag" > & lt ; / < span class = "hljs-title" > b < / span > & gt ; < / span > < span class = "hljs-tag" > & lt ; < span class = "hljs-title" > br < / span > / & gt ; < / span > < span class = "hljs-tag" > & lt ; < span class = "hljs-title" > br < / span > / & gt ; < / span > < span class = "hljs-tag" > & lt ; < span class = "hljs-title" > b < / span > & gt ; < / span > Notice < span class = "hljs-tag" > & lt ; / < span class = "hljs-title" > b < / span > & gt ; < / span > : Undefined variable : data in < span class = "hljs-tag" > & lt ; < span class = "hljs-title" > b < / span > & gt ; < / span > / Applications / MAMP / htdocs / Facebook - Chat - Bot / index. php < span class = "hljs-tag" > & lt ; / < span class = "hljs-title" > b < / span > & gt ; < / span > on line < span class = "hljs-tag" > & lt ; < span class = "hljs-title" > b < / span > & gt ; < / span > 30 < span class = "hljs-tag" > & lt ; / < span class = "hljs-title" > b < / span > & gt ; < / span > < span class = "hljs-tag" > & lt ; < span class = "hljs-title" > br < / span > / & gt ; < / span > Invalid
This issue arises if you are using PHP5.6. The best bet to create an.htaccess file with the content.
<IfModule mod_php5.c> php_value always_populate_raw_post_data -1 </IfModule> 1 2 3 < IfModule mod_php5. c > php_value always_populate_raw_post_data - 1 < / IfModule >
Now the error should be gone away. This particular will not go away by using ini_set().
I am setting some basic rules for my bot. It should only tell if it contains certain words.
/** * Some Basic rules to validate incoming messages */ if(preg_match('[time|current time|now]', strtolower($message))) { // Make request to Time API ini_set('user_agent','Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0)'); $result = file_get_contents("http://www.timeapi.org/utc/now?format=%25a%20%25b%20%25d%20%25I:%25M:%25S%20%25Y"); if($result!= '') { $message_to_reply = $result; } } else { $message_to_reply = 'Huh! what do you mean?'; } print $message_to_reply; 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 /** * Some Basic rules to validate incoming messages */ if ( preg_match ( '[time|current time|now]', strtolower ( $message ) ) ) { // Make request to Time API ini_set ( 'user_agent', 'Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0)' ) ; $result = file_get_contents ( "http://www.timeapi.org/utc/now?format=%25a%20%25b%20%25d%20%25I:%25M:%25S%20%25Y" ) ; if ( $result!= '' ) { $message_to_reply = $result ; } } else { $message_to_reply = 'Huh! what do you mean?' ; } print $message_to_reply ;
Jus to check all going well, the message going to be printed should be able to watch on nGrok debugger.
Ok, now we have to message back to user. We have sender’s Id, we prepared the message, it’s time to send.
//API Url $url = 'https://graph.facebook.com/v2.6/me/messages?access_token='.$access_token; //Initiate cURL. $ch = curl_init($url); //The JSON data. $jsonData = '{ "recipient":{ "id":"'.$sender.'" }, "message":{ "text":"'.$message_to_reply.'" } }'; //Encode the array into JSON. $jsonDataEncoded = $jsonData; //Tell cURL that we want to send a POST request. curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POST, 1); //Attach our encoded JSON string to the POST fields. curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, $jsonDataEncoded); //Set the content type to application/json curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER, array('Content-Type: application/json')); //curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER, array('Content-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded')); //Execute the request if(!empty($input['entry'][0]['messaging'][0]['message'])){ $result = curl_exec($ch); } 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 //API Url $url = 'https://graph.facebook.com/v2.6/me/messages?access_token='. $access_token ; //Initiate cURL. $ch = curl_init ( $url ) ; //The JSON data. $jsonData = '{ "recipient":{ "id":"'. $sender. '" }, "message":{ "text":"'. $message_to_reply. '" } }' ; //Encode the array into JSON. $jsonDataEncoded = $jsonData ; //Tell cURL that we want to send a POST request. curl_setopt ( $ch, CURLOPT_POST, 1 ) ; //Attach our encoded JSON string to the POST fields. curl_setopt ( $ch, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, $jsonDataEncoded ) ; //Set the content type to application/json curl_setopt ( $ch, CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER, array ( 'Content-Type: application/json' ) ) ; //curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER, array('Content-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded')); //Execute the request if (! empty ( $input [ 'entry' ] [ 0 ] ['messaging' ] [ 0 ] ['message' ] ) ) { $result = curl_exec ( $ch ) ; }
First, we will create a JSON structure of the message as given by Facebook platform and then will make POST call via cURL. If all things coded correctly, you should see bot in action!
As you can see it covers bot valid and invalid messages here as per our rules.
Alright! It’s your time to show your creativity and create your first awesome bot. if you bot goes public you can add a little code on your Website to invite others. Check the documentation for that.
Code is available on Github
Do you have an existing Web app or Facebook page and wants to integrate a bot with it? Let me know and I could help you in this regard. Contact me at kadnan(at)gmail.com29 February 2016, 19:53
Manu Tuilagi back training with England
Dave Ewers also returns after injury
Leicester Tigers centre Manu Tuilagi and Exeter Chiefs back row Dave Ewers have returned to the England training squad as preparations get underway for the RBS 6 Nations clash with Wales on 12 March.
Both players were initially named in the Elite Playing Squad but will join up with Eddie Jones' squad for the first time after recovering from injuries.
Tuilagi played 80 minutes for Leicester in a 47-20 victory over London Irish at the weekend while Ewers completed an hour for Exeter in a 26-17 win over Bath after 12 games out with a knee injury.
Luther Burrell (Northampton Saints) misses out, having replaced the concussed Ollie Devoto (Bath Rugby) last week.
Devoto is still unavailable to return as is Josh Beaumont (Sale Sharks) who is out with a shoulder injury.
Last week, England Head Coach Jones said he feels Tuilagi’s best position will be at inside centre and compared his physicality to that of All Blacks star Ma’a Nonu.
“He has to keep working on his fitness and he is going to be a valuable player for England. I think 12 is his best position, he can carry the ball off the gain line, he’s got the ability to catch and pass.
"He’s got all the attributes to be an outstanding 12. If you look at it on pure athleticism Manu is not far behind Nonu at all.
"He starts from a good situation and it depends how hard he works on his game and how desperate he is to play for England.”
England will train at the University of Bath this week as they look to build on an impressive start to the RBS 6 Nations with victories over Scotland, Italy and Ireland.
ENGLAND SQUAD
Forwards (19)
Kieran Brookes (Northampton Saints)
Dan Cole (Leicester Tigers)
Luke Cowan-Dickie (Exeter Chiefs)
Jack Clifford (Harlequins)
Dave Ewers (Exeter Chiefs)
Jamie George (Saracens)
Dylan Hartley (Northampton Saints)
James Haskell (Wasps)
Paul Hill (Northampton Saints)
Maro Itoje (Saracens)
George Kruis (Saracens)
Matt Kvesic (Gloucester Rugby)
Joe Launchbury (Wasps)
Courtney Lawes (Northampton Saints)
Joe Marler (Harlequins)
Matt Mullan (Wasps)
Chris Robshaw (Harlequins)
Billy Vunipola (Saracens)
Mako Vunipola (Saracens)
Backs (14)
Mike Brown (Harlequins)
Danny Care (Harlequins)
Elliot Daly (Wasps)
Owen Farrell (Saracens)
George Ford (Bath Rugby)
Alex Goode (Saracens)
Sam Hill (Exeter Chiefs)
Jonathan Joseph (Bath Rugby)
Jack Nowell (Exeter Chiefs)
Semesa Rokoduguni (Bath Rugby)
Manu Tuilagi (Leicester Tigers)
Anthony Watson (Bath Rugby)
Marland Yarde (Harlequins)
Ben Youngs (Leicester Tigers)Calgarians awoke to a sure sign that spring's not quite here yet, and one weather expert says there's more winter weather on the way.
Morning traffic slowed to a crawl as the city was blanketed under fresh snow Wednesday. The slippery roads contributed to 52 accidents, five of which involved injuries, between midnight and 10 a.m., police said.
Police say 52 accidents occurred in Calgary between midnight and 10 a.m. Wednesday morning. (CBC)
"It's almost a psychological downer, the fact that you'd been kind of tricked into thinking spring was here," said Environment Canada meteorologist David Phillips.
The wishful thinking was likely encouraged by the 12 days in February that saw melting temperatures, sometimes reaching as high as 16 C, he said.
"But it's been seven days in a row with snow. You haven't seen that all winter," Phillips told CBC Calgary News at 6.
While the city hasn't been dumped on, the daily sprinkling of fresh powder has been brought on by Siberian air sweeping in from the North, he explained.
"Of course, with that cold air, dense like molasses, filling all the nooks and crannies, any kind of weather systems that came in from the Pacific will of course produce snow," Phillips explained.
Keep your shovel handy
Last spring was Calgary's warmest in roughly 70 years, Phillips said, but Phillips expects this March to be cooler than normal.
"I wouldn't put away the snow shovel. I wouldn't take off the snow tires," he cautioned.
Calgarians woke up to a fresh blanket of snow Wednesday, which snarled morning commutes and contributed to 52 accidents, 5 of which involved injuries, between midnight and 10 a.m. (CBC)
On average, after March 1, Calgary gets approximately 54 cm of snow, which accounts for 42 per cent of the city's annual snowfall, Phillips said.
"You want spring to be here. You want to go from slush to sweat, but hey... we know that there's still some winter left in the air."
Calgary's 7-day plan
Wednesday morning's snow-covered commute triggered day one of the city's snow-clearing plan, which involves salting, plowing and paving roads in order of priority.
The first stage target major thoroughfares that see volumes of more than 20,000 vehicles per day, such as Macleod Trail and Crowchild Trail.
On day two, the city will turn to smaller traffic routes, including Kensington Road, bus routes and roadways with marked, on-street bike lanes.
The city then works its way through residential blocks, school and playground zones. If at any point fresh snow falls again, the city reverts back to day one to clear Priority 1 routes.
Roads with designated bike lanes, along with designated emergency routes, are considered Priority 2 routes in the city's seven-day snow-clearing plan. (CBC)
With files from CBC Calgary News at 6S ooo--- you're all excited, about to have your first recording session as an engineer. Great! Wish I were able to be there to help. Since I'm not (kell dough mahj), I thought I'd just jot down a few thoughts and tips, although you may have already learned some of them. Assuming you'll be using a directional mike (a Cardiac pattern, which has a "hearty sound", for example): Put the "talent" in the FRONT of the mike for normal recording.
Put the "talent" in the BACK of the mike only for backups. If you have an Army-directional mike (why they're credited to the Army no one can tell, and you're not supposed to ask), which picks up both front and back (also all around, unlike ribbon mikes, which are only bi-saxual), you can do the recording and backup at the same time. This is usually termed "Bi-Sax-o-Mode", in honor of the American Bison, and Adolf Sax, inventor of the Saxophone and Saxbut. The mike should be neither too close, nor too far from the sound source. A simple formula often used by professionals to calculate the optimum distance to the source, D, is given by: D = 4.72 x 10^-3 x (2pi/SV)[sin(M/T) - cos(M/2T)] dM/dt + e^[h(H'- H) sqrt(H/H')] x log (1/[SVT^2]) +/- msp Where: D = the desired distance in inches
H = height of the sound source in meters
H' = height of the mike in yards
V = max volume of the source in dBm
S = sensitivity of the mike in millivolts per dBm
T = mean temperature of the room in degrees Melvin
h = Plank's reasonably constant
M = arc tan (area of microphone diaphragm, in round mm)
and msp = mistake someplace, in watt-kilograms/hour. The best microphone for an accordion is none. (This rule-of-thumb also applies to bagpipes and rappers.) If you are recording onto tape, good maintenance practice would be to clean the tape head and path. Do not use peanut butter for this, even the "creamy" kind. Mustard, crazy glue, or mayonnaise are also poor choices (trust me), but in an emergency, Vodka on a Q-tip will work, especially if recording Russian music (hint: save some for yourself, but substitute an olive for the Q-tip.) Usually it's preferable to put reverb on AFTER the solo tracks are recorded, as true reverb filters not only don't exist yet, but are unusually expensive, and difficult to abuse. If you are recording onto the Hi-Fi tracks of a video deck, you may also wish to record the video feed that you monitor to observe if the talent behaves disrespectfully or slovenly. The tape can later be useful in preparing an MTV video... or blackmail. If you are recording onto the Hi-Fi tracks of a video deck, you may also wish to turn on an air-conditioner near the "talent". The a/c will supply a white noise sound, to hide the AFM glitches in the Hi-Fi tracks. This is an example of the Masking Effect. As the a/c gets louder, its masking effect may be measured via a "Signal to Noise Radio" and yardstick. These radios are portable, being battery |
take.”
The effects of the financial crisis are already serious, both for the American taxpayer, who will end up footing the bill no matter what, and for the relationship between the government and the economy. An era of American economic policy is coming to a close. Ironically, and surprisingly to many, the last few months of the Bush administration will mark the end of the so-called “Reagan revolution.”
Since the early 1980s, the United States has radically emphasized deregulation, which has meant lowering taxes, eliminating regulations and generally leaving the markets to their own devices. Ronald Reagan began his presidency in 1981 with this program, and it was following by a prolonged economic upturn.
It was driven in part by an aggressive policy of cheap money, for which a second icon of the American boom was responsible: former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan. During the 18 years of his tenure, whenever there was trouble brewing in the stock market and financial markets, Greenspan would drown the crises in a flood of fresh money. Whether it was the 1997 market crash in the Asian tiger countries, the selloff of Russian government bonds a year later, the collapse of the LTCM hedge fund or, finally, the bursting of the New Economy bubble at the beginning of the new millennium, Greenspan’s rescue operations could be counted on to return growth to the world’s markets. But there was one thing Greenspan overlooked: By repeatedly printing money, he also laid the foundation for the next financial bubble, and its destructive energy grew from one intervention to the next.
Over the last 15 years, Greenspan was opposed to oversight and control over those companies that used the ready cash made available by his policies to introduce a wave of so-called financial innovations. As long as he was in office, he blocked all attempts to impose government collateral requirements on the credit, stock and financial markets. In Greenspan’s view, it would only hamper “necessary flexibility.”
His policies were borne out by the successes of two decades. Fed by cheap money and freed of most regulations, the American financial industry experienced an unprecedented boom. The industry’s excessive growth was reflected in exorbitant salaries and ostentatious skyscrapers but also in the withdrawal of a large share of American value creation.
In 2007, at the beginning of the crisis, the American financial and lending sector was responsible for 14 percent of economic performance, while collecting 33 percent of all corporate profits.
The financial boom also set the turbo-charger in motion that would lend a new face to worldwide capital from then on. Avarice and greed have always been the central values on Wall Street, but now they had become a benchmark for the real global economy. The American banking industry paid for globalization and the Internet revolution, the Asian upswing and the boom in the commodities markets. “We need a 25-percent return,” or else his bank would not be “competitive internationally,” Deutsche Bank CEO Josef Ackermann said, thereby establishing a benchmark that would soon apply not just to banks but also to automobile makers, machine builders and steel companies.
But, as is often the case with recipes for success, at some point the healthy dose is exceeded and soon the risks and side effects begin to accumulate. The result: The supposed medicine instead becomes a pathogen instead.
In the United States, this process began after the collapse of the New Economy. Once again, Greenspan flooded the economy with money and, yet again, Wall Street started looking for a new market for its growth machine. This time it discovered the American homeowner, convincing him to take out mortgages at favorable terms, even when there was practically no collateral.
The total value of all outstanding mortgage loans in the United States — $11 trillion (€7.6 trillion) — is almost as large as the country’s gross domestic product. At the same time, with the help of Wall Street’s financial engineers, the Americans managed to sell a portion of the risk to other parts of the world, reasoning that if the risk was out of sight it would be out of mind.
But the fact that risks do not disappear when they are distributed around the world became clear at the beginning of last year. Interest rates rose across the board and house prices came down, triggering a chain reaction with collateral damage that was bringing down ever-growing segments of the financial sector from one week to the next. Today, 18 million single-family homes and condominiums in the United States are empty. More and more Americans can no longer afford the high interest rates they are being charged. Many consumers have even been forced to bid farewell to their beloved credit cards because the banks are no longer willing to extend credit to them.
To make matters worse, because a large share of the mortgage loans are now distributed all over the world, the crisis is spreading halfway around the globe like an infectious disease. In recent years, many of the industrialized countries deregulated their financial markets based on the American model. This has led to a relatively unimpeded flow of capital around the world today.
The financial assets that economies hold abroad have grown more than sevenfold in the past three decades. By late 2007, the market volume for derivatives, which are used to bet on interest rate, stock and credit risks worldwide, had reached a previously unthinkable level of $596 trillion (€411 trillion).
At the same time, the number of players has multiplied. The banks stopped being the only ones in control of the industry some time ago. Nowadays, hedge funds bet on falling stock prices and mortgage rates, private equity companies buy up failed banks and bad loans, and wealthy pension funds keep the fund managers afloat.
The “greater complexity of linkages within and between the financial systems” now has one man worried, a man whose profession ought to provide him with a better idea of what’s going on: Jean-Claude Trichet, president of the European Central Bank. In a recent speech at New York University, Europe’s highest-ranking central banker complained about the “obscurity of and interactions among many financial instruments,” often combined with a “high level of borrowing.”
The inventors of these complex securities hoped that they could be used to distribute risk more broadly around the globe. But instead of making financial transactions more secure, they achieved the opposite effect, increasing the risks. Today the notion of using “many shoulders for support,” the constant mantra of the gurus of financial alchemy, has proved to be one of the catalysts of the crash.
American economist Raghuram Rajan, whom ECB President Trichet is frequently quoting these days, had a premonition of the current disaster three years ago. The total integration of the markets “exposes the system to large systemic shocks,” Rajan wrote then in a study. Although the economy had survived many crises before, like the bursting of the Internet bubble, “this should not lead us to be too optimistic.” “Can we be confident that the shocks were large enough and in the right places to fully test the system?” Rajan asked. “A shock to equity markets, though large,” he continued, “may have less effect than a shock to credit markets.”
There was certainly no shortage of warnings, and there were many voices of caution. As long ago as 1936, John Maynard Keynes recognized the risk that “speculation may win the upper hand” in the markets. Its influence in New York, the British economist wrote, was “enormous,” and the situation would become serious “when the capital development of a country becomes the by-product of the activities of a casino.”
Irrational Exuberance
US economist Robert Shiller, who predicted the bursting of the dot-com bubble at the turn of the century, was one of the first to notice that the value of houses and condominiums in the United States was rising at a suspiciously fast rate. In Shiller’s view, this was another case of irrational exuberance. In December 2004, Stephen Roach, the former chief economist at investment bank Morgan Stanley, cautioned against the “grimmest of all financial bubbles.”
New York economist Nouriel Roubini presented the most accurate scenario of a crash, from the bursting of the real estate bubble to the domino-like demise of major banks. Roubini, known as a notorious alarmist, now predicts a prolonged recession in the United States that will drag down the entire global economy with it. “The US consumer has consumed himself to death,” says Roubini.
Paul Samuelson, the doyen of the world’s economists, predicted this bitter outcome three years ago. “America’s position is under pressure because we have become a society that hardly saves,” Samuelson, 90 at the time, said in an interview with SPIEGEL. “We don’t think of others or of tomorrow.”
And now the global conflagration is a reality, triggered by cleverly packaged US subprime mortgages sold around the world, even to bankers in the provincial eastern German state of Saxony. So-called credit derivatives, which banks and investment funds used to hedge against the failure of commercial loans, could soon add new fuel to the fire. In the wake of the subprime crisis, could credit derivatives be the next bad thing? Is the world facing a wave of bankruptcies that could soon bring the financial world crashing down through the mechanism of credit derivatives?
US market guru Warren Buffett calls derivatives ” weapons of mass destruction.” They are the creations of inventive financial alchemists, concoctions that blend classic forms of investment, like stocks, bonds and commodities.
In fact, within this discipline, derivatives used to hedge against credit risk are among the most dangerous gambles and, as one would expect within the global financial casino, they have experienced dizzying growth. In the last five years, the volume of credit derivatives has grown thirtyfold to about $55 trillion (€38 trillion), or about 20 times the gross national product of Germany.
The world is encased in a tightly woven network of reciprocal payment obligations. “The core problem is that it is no longer possible to know where the risks have ultimately landed,” warns Thomas Heidorn, a professor at Frankfurt’s Institute for Law and Finance. This is because traders pass on credit risks an infinite number of times, which explains the dizzying market volume. Where the risks end up is anyone’s guess.
Nevertheless, only a handful of firms set the tone in this high-stakes game of bingo in which trillions are on the line. According to a survey by Fitch Ratings, an international credit rating agency, about four-fifths of all credit derivatives bought and sold worldwide in 2004 was on the books of only 15 banks and major dealers. Lehman Brothers was one of the Top 10 players in the business, and its bankruptcy has torn giant holes in the fragile network of credit insurance. “Not saving Lehman was a huge mistake,” says a banking executive in Frankfurt, who notes that the shock waves will be extremely difficult to control.
Germany, where banks have had to write off about €40 billion ($58 billion), has managed to come away relatively unscathed until now. Experts believe that that number will be increased by significantly more than €10 billion ($14.5 billion).
German banks are now concerned that they will be at a competitive disadvantage if their US competitors are permitted to unload their bad debt with the government in the future, thereby improving their credit ratings. The Germans are demanding equal treatment. Last Thursday, leading representatives of the industry informed Finance Minister Steinbrück of their wishes — and were rebuffed.
The financial storm has even been felt in the most unexpected of places, such as the offices of German town halls. At the turn of the millennium, hard-up German cities like Bochum, Recklinghausen and Wuppertal, used complex agreements, to sell large shares of the municipal family silver to US investors — and then turned around to re-lease it. In many cases these so-called Cross-Border Leases (CBL) — in which entire sewage systems or municipal transport operations were sold off — were insured by the US insurance giant AIG, which was recently nationalized to avoid bankruptcy.
Naturally, the small print of the CBL agreements contains an explosive clause. It stipulates that if the guarantor loses its top-rated AAA credit rating, additional collateral must be provided. Despite government intervention, AIG was downgraded. Under their CBL agreements, the affected city councils have only a few weeks to come up with a solution.
By contrast, their counterparts in the cities of Münster, Troisdorf, Munich and Frankfurt can only wait and hope. They invested portions of their tax revenues with the Frankfurt subsidiary of now-bankrupt Lehman Brothers. By offering generous terms and citing a deposit insurance fund, the Americans managed to drum up urgently needed liquidity in Germany shortly before their bankruptcy.
The funds that German cities coughed up to help the Wall Street gamblers survive are not likely to be repaid anytime soon. BaFin, Germany’s Federal Financial Supervisory Authority, has imposed a moratorium on the German subsidiary, freezing all transactions until further notice.
On August 15, when the US investment bank was already on shaky ground, Helga Bickeböller, a member of Münster’s city council, transferred €15 million ($22 million) to Frankfurt in two tranches. “The offer was 0.004 percent higher than the next-best offer,” Bickeböller says in justifying the transaction.
The credit crunch is tearing holes in the balance sheets of municipalities, companies and private households across the world. Banks hardly lend each other money anymore, consumer confidence is evaporating, and investors are questioning whether new sales will help them recoup money already spent on new equipment. In Germany, Arcandor — a major holding company in the mail order, retail and tourism industries that reported €21 billion in 2007 sales — threatens to become the first victim of tighter credit terms.
As the bad news accumulates — in recent days, especially in the United States — the mood around the world is growing increasingly dire. In August, sales of new homes in the United States dropped to their lowest level in 17 years. In comparison to last year, which was already a bad year, new home sales have dropped by more than 34 percent. At the same time, more and more US citizens have applied for unemployment benefits. And the manufacturing industry is reporting significant declines in order volume.
“The United States cannot avoid an 18-month-long, severe recession and a deep-seated financial crisis,” warns Roubini, the New York economist. He would consider it a success if the country manages not to plunge into years of stagnation, as Japan did in the 1990s.
The consequences of the economic downturn in the United States are being felt around the world, especially in Germany, which is currently the world’s leading exporter. Hans-Werner Sinn, president of the Munich-based Ifo Institute for Economic Research, calls it an “extremely worrisome situation.” According to an analysis by the German Economics Ministry, the economy is exposed to “external shocks” and a “noticeably worsened external economic environment.” The report even mentions the dreaded word “recession,” although it adds that that recession is “not a foregone conclusion.”
This is all the more vexing for the German government because it was the one that warned against the current malaise some time ago. During the G-8 economic summit in Heiligendamm more than a year ago, for example, Chancellor Angela Merkel tried to convince her state guests of the need for tighter controls on the financial markets. But President Bush and then British Prime Minister Tony Blair gave the chancellor the cold shoulder.
‘One Can See that We Are on a more Solid Base’
For far too long, the Americans and the British made fun of the Germans for their risk-averse, savings-oriented mentality, says Bernd Pfaffenbach, Merkel’s chief negotiator on foreign trade issues. But now the relative conservatism that Germans have shown in financial matters is paying off. “One can see that we are on a more solid base,” says Pfaffenbach, who refers to the crisis as a “purifying storm.”
Pfaffenbach isn’t the only one to see the problem in this light. The American bank crash has prompted economists and politicians worldwide to prepare for the end of an era of turbo-capitalism driven by the financial markets.
The financial industry — especially in the United States — will shrink considerably, while the significance of the real economy will increase. Once again, the government will have to base its supervisory function on the old banker’s principle: security first.
This is especially true when it comes to monetary policy. For years, central bankers “paid attention almost exclusively to developments in consumer prices,” complains Thomas Meyer, chief European economist at Deutsche Bank. If consumer prices were going up by 2 percent or 3 percent, the risk of inflation was thought to have been averted.
The fact that the prices of stocks, bonds and real estate were often rising at double-digit rates was usually ignored until the financial bubbles burst with a loud bang. Some economists recommend that central bankers should also consider asset inflation when reaching future decisions.
At the same time, Europe’s finance ministers are calling for tighter supervision of the credit and securities markets, as a group of experts from the G-8 countries recently recommended. Their plan calls for requiring banks to maintain larger capital reserves for specific risks. In addition, they have recommended that hidden financial risks that banks have assumed be made more transparent and that better guidelines be developed for the valuation of financial instruments.
Most of all, the G-8 council of experts stresses the need to reform the risk classification of securities. The major international rating agencies, such Moody’s and Standard & Poor’s, have deeply embarrassed themselves in the current crisis. In many cases, they gave their highest ratings to what were really junk securities. The G-8 experts have proposed that these institutions be made subject to a code of conduct.
At the same time, the experts also warn against intervening too much in the financial markets. As was illustrated by Germany’s public sector Landesbanken, hard hit by the subprime crisis, as well as state-owned lender KfW — which transfered €350 million to Lehman Brothers the day it filed for bankruptcy protection — the government is usually not up to the task of owning and operating banks. Simply banning certain financial market operations also makes little sense, they believe, as such prohibitions are often easily circumvented.
If the G-8 experts prevail, there will be major consequences. For now, it would spell the end of ever-rising returns with constantly changing securities. At the same time, the market position of Anglo-Saxon banks would be significantly restricted, which would benefit the up-and-coming financial institutions of the emerging Asian and Eastern European economies.
A new chapter in economic history has begun, one in which the United States will no longer play its former dominant role. A process of redistributing money and power around the world — away from America and toward the resource-rich countries and rising industrialized nations in Asia — has been underway for years. The financial crisis will only accelerate the process.
The wealthy state-owned funds of China, Singapore, Dubai and Kuwait control assets of almost $4 trillion (€2.76 trillion), and they are now in a position to buy their way onto Wall Street in a big way.
But they have remained reserved until now, partly as a result of poor experiences in the past. The China Investment Corp., for example, invested in the initial public offering of the Blackstone Group, a private equity firm, and invested $5 billion (€3.45 billion) in Morgan Stanley. In both cases, it lost a lot of money.
But time is on the side of the Chinese. American stocks are becoming cheaper and cheaper. And the longer the crisis lasts, the weaker American objections to buyers from the Far East will become. In fact, it is quite possible that they will soon be celebrated as saviors.
The Chinese are interested in keeping the situation in the United States from spinning out of control. In a telephone conversation last Monday, Chinese President Hu Jintao told President Bush that he hoped that the measures to stabilize US financial markets would “achieve quick results and improve the economic and financial situation.”
Bush had called his Chinese counterpart to inform him about his government’s bailout program. Once again, the conversation symbolized just how great the mutual dependence between the two countries has become.
No Time to Gloat
Both in Asia and the United States, expressing schadenfreude over the decline of the United States as a superpower is out of place. The risk is too great that if America goes into a tailspin, it will drag the rest of the world down with it.
Despite the anger felt toward Bush, there is little enthusiasm in Europe’s capitals for the political consequences. The financial crisis will reinvigorate America’s tendency toward isolationism, which never quite disappeared.
The triumphalism of the Bush years could easily be followed by the “I’ll-sit-this-one-out” years of an Obama administration committed to a strict policy of belt-tightening. If that happens, both old and new Europe will have to demonstrate whether the European Union can rightfully claim to be on an equal footing with the United States.
In the past, the US government’s solo efforts provided the Europeans with an all-too-comfortable excuse for simply doing nothing. But that excuse is no longer valid.
BEAT BALZLI, KLAUS BRINKBÄUMER, FRANK HORNIG, HANS HOYNG, ARMIN MAHLER, ALEXANDER NEUBACHER, WOLFGANG REUTER, CHRISTOPH PAULY, MICHAEL SAUGAMANLIUS — The Bureau County Sheriff’s Office is working to get to the bottom of the suspicious Halloween candy found in Manlius.
After trick-or-treating on Sunday, Oct. 30, parents came forward with odd looking candy marked as Crunch Choco Bar in wrappers that had small cannabis leaves on it.
Officers performed a field test on the substance and got a positive reading for THC (tetrahydrocannabinol), the intoxicating drug in cannabis.
On Tuesday, Bureau County Sheriff Jim Reed admits there is room for error in the field test, however, he said he’s never seen a false positive test for cannabis throughout his time with the force.
Reed said the candy has been sent into a laboratory, where it will be confirmed 100 percent whether or not it does contain cannabis.
Wednesday afternoon, Reed sent out a press release stating results from the Illinois State Crime Lab in Morton confirmed the candy did not contain THC and was safe for consumption.
While there are items sold in stores that contain hemp oil and hemp seed, Reed confirmed those items do not test positive for THC.
“To get a positive reaction out of this candy is a concern... That’s why we were taking this seriously,” he said.
Reed said it is believed the candy bars are from another country, possibly made in Japan. He said his department does not believe anyone was trying to intentionally hurt children.
“There was no intention of any harm to children in this matter,” he said. “The candy bars have been deemed safe for consumption.”
Reed said no other information would be released. He said the immediate alert on the issue was sent out as a precautionary safety measure because of the Halloween holiday and also because lab testing would take some time to perform.
Comment on this story at www.bcrnews.com.On 26 April 1937, Nazi German and Italian bombers attacked the Basque city of Guernica. Over the course of three hours, they destroyed three-quarters of the ancient town, killing and wounding hundreds. The raid was “unparalleled in military history”, according to reports at the time – and it inspired one of the most famous anti-war paintings in history. A new exhibition staged in London by Barcelona’s Mayoral Gallery honours a group of artists who responded to the atrocities of the Spanish Civil War.
These artists were brought together by the 1937 Paris Exhibition, which opened less than a month after the bombing and just 10 months after the Civil War began. The Exhibition is usually remembered for the competing bluster of two nations: Germany, with its monumental granite tower topped with a giant eagle and swastika, and the Soviet Union, whose marble-clad structure was capped by an even bigger statue of two figures clutching a hammer and a sickle. Yet it also played host to a humbler project that has outlasted either monolith. Mayoral’s exhibition commemorates the 80th anniversary of the Spanish pavilion, seen by the Second Spanish Republic as a way of revealing General Franco’s cruelty to the rest of the world against a backdrop of rising authoritarianism.
Its ambitions were far removed from Nazi and Soviet architectural one-upmanship. As Europe moved towards war, the situation in Spain took on significance around the world. It became a battleground for the forces of Fascism and Communism and inspired new works from some of the greatest artists of the time. Pablo Picasso, Julio González, Joan Miró, Alexander Calder, Alberto Sánchez, and José Gutiérrez Solan were all shown in the Spanish pavilion.
Picasso was commissioned to create a mural for the pavilion, and had started on a series of anti-Nationalist images called Dream and Lie of Franco earlier in 1937. After reading reports of the attack on Guernica by Franco’s allies, he began work on a painting that would come to symbolise the wider fight against Fascism. According to the art historian Fernando Martín Martín, “For the first time in the contemporary history of war, a town and its civilian population had been annihilated both as a scare tactic and a way of testing the war machine.” He says this was the “instant Picasso knew what would be the subject of his mural for the pavilion.”
In Guernica, I clearly express my abhorrence of the military caste which has sunk Spain in an ocean of pain and death – Pablo Picasso
His painting, Guernica, is not on display at Mayoral (it is exhibited at Madrid’s Reina Sofía Museum) – but there are insights into its creation, including photographs taken by Picasso’s girlfriend at the time, Dora Maar. The mural took him just over a month to complete. While painting, to combat rumours that he supported the Nationalists, Picasso issued a statement: “In the panel on which I am working, which I shall call Guernica, and in all my recent works of art, I clearly express my abhorrence of the military caste which has sunk Spain in an ocean of pain and death”.
Political canvas
The artists creating pieces for the pavilion were explicit in their aims. Mayoral’s exhibition curator Juan Manuel Bonet says that “all the major works at the pavilion were fruits of a commission. The special thing about this commission was that it was not intended to be a political commission; the artists took it upon themselves to react in such a way.”
It was a new outlook for some of them, says Bonet. “Before 1936, neither Picasso nor Miró were very political; but the Spanish Civil War changed this.” According to him, 1937’s Dream and Lie of Franco by Picasso and Aidez l’Espagne (Help Spain) by Miró are the artists’ first overtly political works. “Later on in their careers, Picasso joined the French Communist Party in 1944 and Miró continued to be very active against Franco’s regime into and during the 1960s and ‘70s.”
The American sculptor Alexander Calder’s contribution to the pavilion was also a piece of propaganda. A supporter of the Republican cause and great friend of Miró, Calder was initially refused permission to create an artwork because he wasn’t Spanish, but the organisers relented after a marble fountain from Spain had to be repurposed. It was filled with mercury that was poured through a series of sculptures created by Calder until it reached a mobile labelled ‘Almadén’.
The word resonated with Republicans. It was the name of a stronghold that held out against an offensive by Franco’s troops in March 1937, famous for its deposits of mercury, an element valued for its use in manufacturing weapons. Calder’s piece, The Mercury Fountain, doubled as a symbol for Republican resistance. “Nothing in the pavilion was free from intention,” writes Martín.
Guernica was not a picture but graffiti, though graffiti done by a genius – José Bergamín
The exhibition has been put together with Joan Punyet Miró, historian and grandson of Joan. It includes a reconstruction of his grandfather’s El Segador (The Reaper) – a mural painted onto construction material in situ which was then lost or destroyed after the pavilion was dismantled. Showing a Catalan peasant with a huge misshapen head, it was a cry of outrage at the events in Spain. “Of course I intended it as a protest,” said Miró. “The Catalan peasant is a symbol of the strong, the independent, the resistant.”
Pop-up propaganda
Both The Reaper and Guernica were created as propaganda, in the manner of Soviet agitprop – “ephemeral art based on propaganda and agitation for a political cause aimed at stirring up the masses”, writes Joan Punyet Miró, arguing that the murals “looked like huge political propaganda posters”. The poet José Bergamín commented that “Guernica was not a picture but graffiti, though graffiti done by a genius”.
Painted on poor quality canvas, Guernica could easily have been destroyed as well. According to Punyet Miró, “Neither of them chose a tough, hard-wearing support, for they knew in advance that these were ephemeral works, designed to cause an impact and then disappear along with the pavilion… Guernica was spared the same fate as Miró’s mural because Picasso was asked to send it to London and later to the United States”.
The painting was not to return to Spain until democracy had been returned – Juan Manuel Bonet
As it turned out, the pavilion was only the beginning. Guernica toured around the UK in 1938, says Bonet. “Picasso later entrusted the painting to MoMA in New York, as it was his wish that the painting not return to Spain until democracy had been returned to the country. This was symbolically very important.”
Through a dark lens
Guernica took on a wider meaning in the years that followed. “It speaks about the Spanish Civil War, and the destiny of civilians in it, as well as the bombs that killed so many people in this Basque city,” says Bonet. “It also remarks on all wars.” The French writer Michel Leiris was moved to say of it: “On a black and white canvas that depicts ancient tragedy… Picasso also writes our letter of doom: all that we love is going to be lost.”
Yet there was hope in it too. Amid shrieking figures and corpses, Picasso left a beacon, according to Martín. “At the top, stretching out from a window, a woman with an oil lamp seems to want to illuminate the encroaching panic and darkness.”
Guernica tapped into an earlier tradition, echoing Goya’s works commemorating resistance to the Napoleonic invasion of Spain. According to curators at the Reina Sofía, “The grotesque vision that Goya brought to his political critique was not lost on artists as a powerful tool for crafting their own views of the present.” Picasso admired Goya’s “dark lens on Spain’s complex political and religious traditions”.
“Picasso, Miró, Calder and González taught us that sometimes major moments such as the Spanish Civil War force us to take sides,” says gallery director Jordi Mayoral. “The works created by these artists for the pavilion are still part of the Spanish collective memory; they represented a major turning point in the Civil War and the country’s struggle between democracy and fascism”.
Picasso himself summed up his decision, remarking in 1937: “I have always believed and still believe that artists who live and work with spiritual values cannot and should not remain indifferent to a conflict in which the highest values of humanity and civilisation are at stake.”
If you would like to comment on this story or anything else you have seen on BBC Culture, head over to our Facebook page or message us on Twitter.
And if you liked this story, sign up for the weekly bbc.com features newsletter, called “If You Only Read 6 Things This Week”. A handpicked selection of stories from BBC Future, Earth, Culture, Capital, Travel and Autos, delivered to your inbox every Friday.BMW celebrated today the production of its 100,000th i3 electric car at the Leipzig plant in Germany today.
While that’s a cool milestone, that wasn’t the coolest thing happening at the Leipzig plant today. For the occasion, they also inaugurated a new battery storage facility powered by old BMW i3 battery packs.
Harald Krüger, Chairman of the Board of Management of BMW, was quite pleased with the 100,000th i3 milestone.
He said:
“We are proud of the 100,000th BMW i3 built by our plant in Leipzig. The BMW i3 is the original, a true technological pioneer. With BMW i as our spearhead, we intend to remain the leading premium supplier of electro-mobility going forward. We are now looking ahead to the next member of the BMW i family, the i8 Roadster, which will expand our leading position in the field of electro-mobility. In 2025, we will offer our customers a total of 25 models with electrified drive trains,
The current daily production of the BMW i3 at Leipzig stands at “more than 120 units, with an annual production volume in 2016 of 26,631 vehicles.”
They also shipped 2,783 BMW i8s from the plant last year.
But as previously mentioned, the new battery facility stole the show. Earlier this year, BMW started a new program to use old BMW i3 battery packs to power large energy storage systems. They opened their first facility with Vattenfall in the Netherlands earlier this year.
Now the new system called ‘ the BMW Battery Storage Farm Leipzig’ is linked to both local renewable energy production and the grid in order to stabilize power and offer backup.
Here are a few images of the facility:
Speicherfarm auf dem Gelände des BMW Werkes in Leipzig kurz vor der Einweihung am 26. Oktober 2017. Speicherfarm auf dem Gelände des BMW Werkes in Leipzig kurz vor der Einweihung am 26. Oktober 2017. Speicherfarm auf dem Gelände des BMW Werkes in Leipzig kurz vor der Einweihung am 26. Oktober 2017.
The system can fit 700 battery packs, but 500 packs are currently installed. Right now, it’s a mix of used and new packs as most BMW i3 packs are still in used considering the vehicle is just a few years old at this point.
They plan to add used battery packs as they become available.
Joachim Kolling, Head of Energy Services at the BMW Group, commented on the project:
“The capacity of 700 high-voltage batteries is the equivalent of an electric range of 100,000 km in a BMW i3. The scalable approach means that the storage unit could be further expanded to accommodate more batteries. It is also already compatible with upcoming battery generations and therefore future-proof. We are demonstrating once again that the concept of sustainability at BMW i goes far beyond the car.”
Electrek’s Take
The “battery storage farm” project is interesting and I think we are going to start seeing more of those. Just earlier this week we reported on Mercedes-Benz building an impressive energy storage facility using electric Smart car battery packs.
As for the 100,000th i3 milestone, it’s definitely an achievement for BMW’s first significant electric vehicle program, but Krüger’s talk of EV leadership makes me uneasy.
If BMW ever had EV leadership, it lost it. The BMW i3 feels lonely as an EV program at the German automaker.
They unveiled the 2018 version this summer with little to no upgrade other than a new sports package. Then there’s the new i8 Roadster, which isn’t likely to do much better than its predecessor and it’s barely an EV anyway.
Yet the CEO says that the plug-in hybrid will “expand our leading position in the field of electro-mobility.” That’s the current state of BMW’s EV programs. Not much leadership here.
But at least they gave us something to look forward to. Last month, BMW seriously updated its EV plans with 12 all-electric cars by 2025.
The first one is expected to be the long-overdue all-electric Mini, which BMW says is coming in 2019. At that point, we should have a much better idea of just how serious BMW is about EVs.The picture is credited with encouraging millions of men to sign up to fight in the trenches, many of them never to return.
But new research has found that no such poster was actually produced during the war and that the image was never used for official recruitment purposes. In fact, it only became popular and widely-used after the conflict ended.
James Taylor, who has researched the history of recruitment posters, said the popular understanding of the design and the impact it had was almost entirely mistaken.
“It’s widely believed to have been the most popular design of First World War, instrumental in recruiting millions of men. But the truth is: that simply wasn’t the case. It’s an urban myth,” he added.
As part of his research, he studied the official records of the Parliamentary Recruiting Committee, the body responsible for recruitment posters, in the National Archives at Kew.
These documents provided details of the production of almost 200 official recruitment posters produced during the war and indicated which ones were deemed popular. The so-called ‘Your Country Needs You’ poster is absent. He also analysed thousands of photographs of street scenes and recruitment offices from the period in search of the image, again, without finding it.
In his new book, Your Country Needs You, Mr Taylor traced the picture back to its origins, on 5th September 1914, barely a month after the start of the war.
On that day, the image was used on the front cover of the popular magazine London Opinion, beneath the masthead, and alongside two promotional offers: “This paper insures you for £1,000” and “50 photographs of YOU for a shilling”.
It had been designed by Alfred Leete, a graphic artist, who had adapted a portrait of Kitchener to give him the distinctive pointing finger. The slogan was adapted from the official call to arms, which said: “Your King and Country Need You”.
In a subsequent edition, a week later, the magazine, which had a circulation of almost 300,000, said readers would be able to buy postcards of the image for 1s. 4d for 100.
Despite this, Mr Taylor has not been able to track down any surviving examples in public or private collections. He is now offering a £100 reward for anyone who can find the first.
Mr Taylor, who will present his research at an event at the National Army Museum, west London, next month, found that the original artwork for the magazine was acquired by the Imperial War Museum in 1917 and was mistakenly catalogued as part of the poster collection, contributing to later misunderstanding about its use.
“There has been a mass, collective misrecollection. The image’s influence now is absolutely out of all kilter with the reality of its initial impact. It has taken on a new kind of life. It is such a good image and saying that it was |
gave members of the media an inside look at one of the 22 Early Learning and Childcare Centres selected to take part in the $10-million pilot.
"I think what we're going to find is that, if you invest in early learning and child care, the developmental outcomes are much more positive," he said at the daycare inside the Louise Dean Centre in northwest Calgary.
So far 13 grants of up to $500,000 have been allocated under the program.
Expansion is the goal
Coolahan says he's hopeful the program will prove successful and help make life more affordable for families throughout Alberta.
"The main goal is to get to $25-a-day child care across the province," he said.
"Society benefits from children [who] are placed in good-quality child care, that's just the way it is."
At the Louise Dean Centre, which caters to pregnant and parenting teens, the money for the pilot program will eliminate the cost that Grade 12 student Varia Pylypchuk pays to have her baby in care.
Varia Pylypchuk, a young mother who takes her baby to the daycare at the Louise Dean Centre in Calgary, says the provincial government's pilot program for $25-per-day daycare will make a big difference in her life. (CBC)
That's because the daycare operated by the school is already subsidized, so its new grant under the pilot project will allow the daycare to waive the entire fee for clients like Pylypchuk.
"It's really exciting, because now we're able to do more things with our children and afford more things than otherwise we could," said Pylypchuk, who currently pays a subsidized rate of $400 per month.
"Now that there's a little bit more money, it's very helpful."
The province first announced the project late last year, saying the locations would be spread out in rural and urban areas in accessible places such as hospitals and public buildings.
The Alberta government's pilot project for $25-per-day daycare is set to last three years. The service at the Louise Dean Centre in Calgary, pictured, is taking part in the program. (CBC)
Taxpayer group critical
Paige MacPherson, Alberta Director of the Canadian Taxpayers' Federation, says while it's admirable the government wants to make childcare more affordable, a universal approach is not the way to do it.
In Quebec, a government-run low-cost daycare system for all families wound up making it less attainable for low-income families because too many wealthier people also took advantage, she said.
"So, we think that a voucher-based system would be a better solution so looking at families that actually need the help — low-income families, perhaps students who are low-income or have special needs."
MacPherson also said it's unnecessary to create a whole new system in Alberta, given that a subsidy program for low-income families already exists.
"So if there's a need there and that's not being addressed, then the government should simply expand upon what it has now," she said.
'Kids are our biggest resource'
Last month the province said the pilot-program will offer 1,296 licensed child care spaces, create about 120 new jobs and allow an estimated 357 Albertans to enter the workforce.
Patricia Jones, CEO of the Louise Dean Centre, says the pilot is a good investment of public resources.
"There will be much opportunity for more young women to access our child care centre," she said.
More broadly, if the government is able to implement Alberta-wide $25-per-day daycare, the province as a whole will be better off, she said.
"I think more, to be frank, women will be able to enter the workforce and be a contributing member, because there's a lot of mental health around working, and every child in Alberta will have access to quality, evidence-based child care," she said.Secretary of State Rex Tillerson listens to a question during a news conference at the State Department in August. (AP)
The hard-working staff here at Spoiler Alerts has not been shy in expressing ever-increasing levels of disdain toward our current secretary of state. Rex Tillerson got off on the wrong foot in February and has been mostly tripping over himself ever since. By some metrics, this is the lowest-profile State Department in decades. In the past month alone, there have been a profusion of long-form autopsies, columns and op-eds eviscerating Tillerson’s tenure. Critics such as Max Boot are calling for him to resign. Axios is reporting that even President Trump is apparently disenchanted with Tillerson.
A case can be made that Tillerson just needs more time to move down the learning curve. He has, ever so slowly, grown a little more comfortable with the press. His willingness to distance himself from Trump’s Charlottesville remarks is certainly admirable. And there are aspects to his plans to reorganize the State Department that are laudable, such as the rationalization of special envoys.
The thing is, it took me 10 minutes to write the previous paragraph. It took that long to rack my brain to think of positive things to say about Tillerson. In total, his negatives massively outweigh his strengths as secretary of state. He is slowly strangling the department he is ostensibly supposed to be leading.
Having trouble keeping track of everything that's wrong at the State Department right now? Post Global Opinions Editor Karen Attiah breaks it down. (Gillian Brockell,Kate Woodsome,Karen Attiah,Daniel Mich/The Washington Post)
Tillerson has made three strategic miscalculations that will cripple his tenure from here on in. First, as previously observed, Tillerson allocated all of his political capital to ingratiating himself with Trump. There were defensible reasons for this choice, but it’s increasingly clear that it hasn’t worked. If Trump no longer trusts Tillerson, then he has no other political goodwill to draw upon. He has made zero deposits in Washington’s favor bank.
Second, Tillerson has prioritized the reorganization of Foggy Bottom to the exclusion of pretty much everything else. This has led to some truly bizarre outcomes. His reliance on outside consultants has led to much derision within the diplomatic corps. I recently had the opportunity to chat with several high-ranking diplomats at State. When I asked one affable consul general who shall remain nameless whether he had taken the consulting survey designed to elicit feedback, he quickly shot back an expletive and a “no.” It is readily apparent than most Foreign Service officers think the surveys will not provide much in the way of useful data.
Because of the reorganization, Tillerson has moved extremely slowly on political appointments. His counterargument has consistently been that reorganization comes first. But no reorganization is going to eliminate key undersecretary and assistant secretary positions that remain unfilled. Even mundane activities such as reporting to Congress have been micro-managed by Tillerson and his political staff. Former State Department official Amanda Sloat chronicled the degree of micro-management in USA Today:
This is Jimmy-Carter-managing-the-White-House-tennis-court-schedule level of stupid. Furthermore, Tillerson appears to be taking his own sweet time with his big reorganization, astonishing members of Congress at the length of time his assessment would take.
What is particularly appalling is that all of the efforts at reorganization appear to have sapped any other efforts at, you know, diplomacy. Democracy promotion has been scrubbed from State’s mission. Lower-level initiatives such as the Community of Democracies have been allowed to atrophy.
Third, Tillerson’s emphasis on reorganization has resulted in the hemorrhaging of human capital from the State Department. There are myriad examples of top-notch Foreign Service officers retiring rather than having to endure the caprice of Tillerson’s obsession with reorganization. A month ago, New York Times columnist Roger Cohen collected some astonishing on-the-record quotes from recently departed Foreign Service officers:
An exodus is underway. Those who have departed include Nancy McEldowney, the director of the Foreign Service Institute until she retired last month, who described to me “a toxic, troubled environment and organization”; Dana Shell Smith, the former ambassador to Qatar, who said what was most striking was the “complete and utter disdain for our expertise”; and Jake Walles, a former ambassador to Tunisia with some 35 years of experience. “There’s just a slow unraveling of the institution,” he told me.
Colum Lynch and Robbie Gramer note in Foreign Policy that one of Foggy Bottom’s top lawyers stepped down this week. Lynch and Gramer’s story is devastating to any defense of Tillerson’s management acumen:
Veteran employees have been leaving in droves since January, when the Trump administration forced the State Department’s top career diplomats, including Patrick Kennedy, the undersecretary of state for management, and Tom Countryman, the acting undersecretary for arms control, to pack their bags. “This is extraordinary…I’ve never seen anything like it,” said one senior career State Department official…. “When serious hardcore professional diplomats that have records of exemplary service serving both Republicans and Democrats are deciding to head for the door rather than stick it out, something is very wrong,” said Reuben Brigety, dean of George Washington University’s Elliott School of International Affairs and former U.S. ambassador to the African Union. “If you wanted to actually set out to break American diplomacy, this is how you’d do it,” Brigety said.
Just as State’s most senior staff is leaving, Tillerson has halted the pipeline of any fresh infusion of human capital. State’s hiring freeze has been extended to fellowship programs designed to entice the best of the best to consider a career in diplomacy.
Tillerson is such a bad manager that he has spurned both free money and free talent. The State Department has not spent $80 million authorized by Congress to fight misinformation and Russian propaganda. According to Politico, “Tillerson aide R.C. Hammond suggested the money is unwelcome because any extra funding for programs to counter Russian media influence would anger Moscow, according to a former senior State Department official.” (UPDATE: A State Department official wrote me after this post was published to say that last week, Tillerson approved the release of $19.8 million from that fund. Politico reported the same thing this afternoon, also after this was published.) Furthermore, State has spurned all of the Council on Foreign Relations’ International Affairs Fellows. This is a program that makes talented scholars freely available to U.S. foreign affairs agencies for a year. Council president Richard Haass confirmed to me that State has not accepted any of this year’s fellows, despite the fact that they come with zero cost.
Let’s be very clear: Rex Tillerson is purposefully downsizing the State Department.
Last month, the American Conservative’s Daniel Larison explained why the crippling of the State Department would be a long-run catastrophe:
Trump and Tillerson are not only hamstringing this administration’s foreign policy in another example of self-sabotage, but they are ensuring that future administrations will inherit a diminished, dysfunctional department. They are going to make it harder to secure U.S. interests abroad in the near term, and they are practically guaranteeing the erosion of U.S. influence everywhere. Insofar as the State Department is the chief institution responsible for American “soft” power, weakening the institution simply makes it easier for an already intervention-prone Washington to rely on “hard” power to respond to crises and conflicts. That means more unnecessary wars, at least some of which might have otherwise been avoided.
This isn’t rocket science. In less than seven months in the job, Tillerson has proven to be a feckless manager of his organization and a poor handler of the president of the United States. To be fair, even the savviest secretary of state would have his or her hands full with a president like Trump. The sharp contrast between Tillerson’s fumblings and the more nimble footwork of Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis shows that Tillerson is the opposite of a good secretary of state. Most of Trump’s private-sector cabinet officials have been dreadful, but Tillerson is the worst of the lot.
I do not take any glee in chronicling this litany of incompetence. I was agnostic about Tillerson’s nomination, and thought his first speech to the State Department set the right tone. I have agreed with some of his diplomatic instincts, and even the need for some reorganization. He has been so bad at every facet of his job, however, that I am no longer worried about who Trump would pick to replace him. At this point, an inanimate carbon rod would be a better secretary of state than Rex Tillerson.
For the good of the country and the good of the State Department, I beg you, Mr. Secretary: please resign.NASA senior scientist Dr. Thomas Zurbuchen, about whom much of the video is based, denied the claims this week on Twitter.
"Contrary to some reports, there’s no pending announcement from NASA regarding extraterrestrial life," wrote Dr. Zurbuchen.
"Are we alone in the universe? While we do not know yet, we have missions moving forward that may help answer that fundamental question."
The video used Dr. Zurbuchen's public testimony to a congressional committee earlier this year as proof that NASA has an impending announcement on alien life, but quoted his speech out of context.
"We are on the verge of making one of the most profound, unprecedented discoveries in history," the video quoted Zurbuchen.
In his testimony, in fact, Dr. Zurbuchen explicitly states that "we haven’t found definitive signs of life elsewhere just yet."
Once the quote from the video is put into the context of his testimony it is clear that he was not referring to a current discovery, but rather one that may be years or decades away.
"And as we know from experience, NASA’s scientific discoveries of today continually drive impactful research for tomorrow that goes far beyond the initial observations," said Dr. Zurbuchen to Congress.
"For astrobiology, the key thing to remember is that answering the fundamental question of 'is there life out there?' will require scientific breakthroughs from many different science fields, including ones that are not currently engaged in this exciting endeavor. This, however, demonstrates the nature of great research: it’s not just about answering questions that have been asked in the past, it is about finding entirely new questions that will have impact for a long time to come."Next Man Up – How the Buffalo Bills Fill the Loss of Kiko Alonso
Next Man Up – How the Buffalo Bills Fill the Loss of Kiko Alonso by Chris Okrainetz
Although NBA free agency opened on July 1st, today is actually the day where players can officially sign those contracts. In what has been a busy off-season filled with headlines of LeBron James and “where the Big Three will end up” rumours, the Toronto Raptors have quietly flown under the radar and bolstered their roster. Before we analyze the moves made by the Raptors front office, let’s take a second to do a quick recap of them.
Before opening free agency, the Raptors made a move to free up a bit of cap space by acquiring Louis Williams from the Atlanta Hawks in a three player deal, sending guard John Salmons and a second-round pick to the Atlanta Hawks in exchange for guard Louis Williams and centre Lucas Nogueira. Louis Williams provides the Raptors with a decent scoring option off the bench that can play both guard spots, and Lucas Nogueira is an intriguing prospect that should play with the Raptors next season.
But the most prominent signing of the off-season for Toronto was without a doubt, the Kyle Lowry signing. Lowry was arguably the Raptors best player throughout the second half of the season last year, and he looks primed for a big campaign in 2014-15.
This ain’t Amir jersey y’all!! Lol….. it’s for the 2014-15 season cause Toronto will be my home city http://t.co/kOFGonoKES — Kyle Lowry (@Klow7) July 3, 2014
After re-signing Lowry, general manager Masai Ujiri quickly went back to work and started assembling the rest of the pieces in Toronto. Bringing back hard-working bench players like Patrick Patterson was a high priority for Toronto and Ujiri addressed this quickly by signing Patterson to a three-year deal, worth $18-million.
Patrick Patterson has signed a 3-year, $18 million deal with the Toronto Raptors, source told ESPN. — Jeff Goodman (@GoodmanESPN) July 4, 2014
After signing Patterson, Ujiri went back on the hunt to clear salary cap space. Guess what. Ujiri struck again by somehow trading Steve Novak‘s $7.2-million contract to the Utah Jazz.
Yahoo Sources: Toronto, Utah reach agreement on a deal to send Steve Novak to the Jazz. http://t.co/Myu61v1I6b — Adrian Wojnarowski (@WojYahooNBA) July 4, 2014
After clearing cap space in the Novak deal, Ujiri moved on to bringing back guard Greivis Vasquez. Well, as he usually is, Ujiri was successful in doing that too; inking Vasquez to a two-year deal.
Greivis Vasquez will sign a two-year, $13 million deal to stay with Toronto, league sources tell Yahoo Sports. — Adrian Wojnarowski (@WojYahooNBA) July 10, 2014
Masai Ujiri wasn’t done there though! Earlier today the Toronto Raptors signed former 16th overall pick James Johnson to a 2-year deal, worth $5-million. The deal brings Johnson back to Toronto for a second stint. The tall, long armed Johnson should give Toronto a flexible forward that can play both the three and a “stretch four” off the bench.
In what has been an exciting off-season for the Raptors, the signing of Johnson will more than likely be the final signing of free agency for Toronto. But with almost the same roster as last year’s playoff team returning, plus a bolstered bench led by Louis Williams, the Raptors faithful must be pleased with what has transpired.
If not with the personnel, consider it from a value standpoint alone. Two years ago the Toronto Raptors looked doomed and headed towards the NBA’s abyss of floundering franchises stuck with overpaid contracts. Yes, I am talking about the Rudy Gay and Andrea Bargnani deals that had the Raptors set to pay Gay and Bargnani $31-million during the 2014-15 season. After Masai Ujiri miraculously traded both of those albatross contracts, the Raptors are now paying Lowry, Vasquez, Patterson and Williams $31-million combined this year!
Which would you rather have?
But the financial makeover might not stop there. Look at the Raptors contracts for the upcoming season. Only the core of Kyle Lowry, DeMar DeRozan, Jonas Valanciunas, Terrence Ross, Greivis Vasquez, Patrick Patterson and Bruno Caboclo are signed beyond next season.
Coming off the books would be Amir Johnson, Landry Fields, Chuck Hayes, Tyler Hansbrough, Louis Williams and Marcus Camby. (Yes you read that right, the Raptors still owe Marcus Camby money from his buyout a few years back.) With all of those players coming off the books, the Raptors would have more than $33,525,760 in cap space next season!
That kind of money would allow the Raptors to take aim at high-profile free agents in 2015 like Kevin Love, Al Jefferson, Klay Thompson (restricted free agent), LaMarcus Aldridge, or even Brook Lopez or Robin Lopez. Either way, the Raptors will have cap space at their disposal to do whatever they see fit.
If the way Masai Ujiri has run this franchise since taking over as general manager is any indication, the Raptors will be players for the foreseeable future as Ujiri constantly adds more pieces to Toronto’s puzzle. Breathe easy Toronto, with Masai at the helm, being a Raptors fan doesn’t look to be so bad after all.
In Masai we trust.Palestinian children return to Gaza City beach where four boys were killed by Israeli gunboat strike less than a month ago
Children paddle in the surf as fishermen throw their nets by the spot where Israeli gunboat killed four cousins
The youngsters were killed less than a month ago in full view of international journalists at a seafront hotel
Ceasefire is in its second day and Israel reports no Hamas rockets have been fired from the Gaza Strip
Break in the violence reveals the true scale of the devastation to the narrow coastal territory
Talks between Hamas and Israel for a longer-lasting peace were set to resume in Cairo, Egypt, today
UNRWA warns'massive human displacement catastrophe is morphing into a massive homelessness crisis' in Gaza
Advertisement
Children were once again playing on the beaches of Gaza City today, less than a month after four young cousins were killed in the same spot by Israeli shells.
Two days into the latest truce between Hamas and Israel, boys and girls paddled in the surf and fishermen dragged their nets through the warm waters of the eastern Mediterranean.
Looking out across the beach and the sea, pictures of the scene could almost be depictions of a tucked away resort. But pan 180 degrees and the devastation of the Gaza Strip would be all too apparent.
Palestinian children paddle by the beach of Gaza City: It is less than a month since four young cousins from the same family were killed by shells from an Israeli gunboat as the ran across this beach This image posted on Twitter is believed to show a different view of three of the boys running for their lives along the beach, before they were hit by a second Israeli shell
Palestinians swim as fishermen on boats throw their fishing nets into the water: With a three-day truce now into its second day, these bathers and fishermen should be safe for now
Now and then: Things appear calm on the Gaza City beach today, but right is the scene of the atrocity less than four weeks ago that shocked the world
Four weeks ago this very beach was the scene of an atrocity that shocked the world when Israeli sailors killed four young boys playing hide-and-seek among the fishermen's huts of Gaza City's modest harbour.
As an explosion ripped through a beach shack in full view of international journalists watching from their nearby hotel, reports gave an account of four ragged, tiny silhouettes running furiously for their lives.
Seconds later, as the boys raced across the beach, watching reporters were stunned when the gunboat lurking off the coast of the besieged territory fired again, this time scoring a direct hit.
Even as the violence has calmed in Gaza and negotiations between Hamas and Israel continued today, the names of Mohammed Bakr, 11, Zakaria Bakr, 10, Ahed Bakr, 10, and Mohammed Bakr, nine, have not been forgotten.
But today the Sun brought solace to Gaza's people, even as the homes of an estimated 100,000 of them lie in ruins from the relentless bombardment that lasted more than a month.
Nearly 2,000 Palestinians have been killed and hundreds of thousands more forced from their homes. Water, electricity and sanitation systems have been devastated and, with the security situation still unclear, aid agencies have been unable to even begin counting the cost.
With the Palestinian territory's binmen unable to work since the beginning of the offensive on July 8, rubbish is out of control. Farm animals hunting for morsels of food picked through the refuse in one area where it lay piled in heaps.
Across the Gaza Strip the scene was almost post-apocalyptic, with whole neighbourhoods shattered and once-bustling streets abandoned by the hundreds of thousands of civilians still cowering in UN shelters.
Sheep search for food in a rubbish dump in Gaza: Sanitation workers have been unable to clean the streets in the strip since the Israeli offensive began in July
Shepherds watch their animals scouring the rubbish: The scenes across the territory appeared post-apocalyptic, with thousands of homes shattered A Palestinian flag flutters as man searches for his belongings in the ruins of his house in Khan Younis, which witnesses said was destroyed in the Israeli offensive A Palestinian woman is pictured through a hole in a damaged satellite as she stands atop the remains of her house in Khan Younis, southern Gaza Strip Two Palestinian youths, one with his arm in a bandage, sit under a makeshift shelter amid the rubble of homes in the town of Beit Lahiya In Cairo, Egypt, marathon, indirect negotiations between Hamas and Israel on a lasting cease-fire and a long-term solution for the battered Gaza Strip were set to resume today. A similar, three-day truce collapsed on Friday when militants resumed rocket fire on Israel after the sides were unable to make any headway in the Egypt-hosted talks. Hamas is seeking an end to an Israeli-Egyptian border blockade of the Gaza Strip while Israel wants Hamas to disarm.
A group of human rights organisations says it is organising a flotilla of vessels that will attempt to breach Israel's blockade of Gaza later this year.
Christopher Gunness, spokesman for the United Nations Relief Works Agency, which provides assistance and protection for Palestinian refugees, told MailOnline 'a massive human displacement catastrophe is morphing into a massive homelessness crisis.' 'In order for us to say how many houses, how many schools and how many communities have been destroyed we have got to get engineers in place, but until there's proper security we cant send engineers out into the field,' he said. 'People leaving our schools are going to see their homes, and then they're coming back, that suggests that their homes are uninhabitable.' 'There are probably bodies under the rubble,' he said. 'People, if they can get back to their homes, will probably find their water systems and sewage systems destroyed. I don't know how we are going to start the school year.'
A Palestinian woman drinks from a well in Gaza: The Palestinian Ministry of Works announced that more than 90 per cent of the infrastructure on the Gaza Strip has been destroyed
A boy fills a container with water: The United Nations Relief Works Agency has been trucking water to areas where the water infrastructure has been destroyed
With much of the water and sanitation infrastructure destroyed, UNRWA has been trucking water to shelters cut off from regular supplies. Some shelters were able to provide for the needs of refugees thanks to their own wells, UNRWA said.
According to the UN's Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), 386,000 people in the Gaza Strip have been forced from their homes by the bombardment.
Latest estimates are that 16,700 homes have been destroyed or rendered uninhabitable, leaving more than 100,000 people homeless.
With 25 schools destroyed or severely damaged since the start of the emergency, and a further 230 in need of at least some repairs, the start of the new school year is expected to be delayed.
Those homes that are still standing get an average of four hours of electricity a day, according to Mr Gunness. In many places, the electricity grid is entirely destroyed.
The death toll in Gaza stands at 1,960, including at least 1,395 civilians, 458 of them children. Two Israeli civilians and one foreign national working in Israel have been killed by Hamas rockets, as well as the 64 Israeli soldiers killed after they invaded the territory.
The Israeli military said no incidents between the two sides were registered overnight - neither Hamas rocket fire at Israel nor Israeli strikes in Gaza.
Israelis enjoying time at the beach in the southern city of Ashkelon, Israel. Reports state that many Israelis residents are trying to return to normal life
Palestinians rest in front of the destroyed Nada Towers in the town of Beit Lahiya, northern Gaza Strip
Israelis enjoying time in the sea in the southern city of Ashkelon. Reports state that many Israelis residents close to the border with Gaza Strip are making the most of the ceasefire
Israelis are making the most of the ceasefire as another 72-hour truce went into effect after more than four weeks of fighting with Palestinian militants
In Israel, 67 people have been killed during the month-long conflict, all but three of them soldiers, officials there say
On Sunday this city near the sea was hit by a barrage of rockets, Today Israelis were enjoying time at the beach
The Israeli delegation returned to the Egyptian capital on Tuesday after a trip back to Israel.
A senior Israeli official suggested that the first day of talks had not gone well.
'The gaps between the sides are big and there is no progress in the negotiations,' he said.
A member of the Palestinian delegation said that in Monday's talks, Israel had offered a number of concrete measures aimed at improving life for Gaza's 1.8 million residents, including an increase in the number of daily goods trucks crossing into the territory from Israel, and the free transfer of funds by the Palestinian Authority to Hamas-affiliated government employees in Gaza.
Also included in the purported Israeli package, the official said, was an easing in transit conditions between Gaza and the West Bank and an eventual quadrupling - to 12 miles - of the sea area in which Gaza fishing vessels are permitted to operate.
The official said that Israel was tying continuing Palestinian demands for the opening of a Gaza sea and airport to a verified cessation of smuggling, development and manufacture of weapons in the territory.
Nassim (centre), seven-years-old, and his older brother Ali (right) play around as they jump on the back of a donkey drawn cart while heading back home moments after leaving a UN school in Jabalia
A tent pitched in front of the destroyed Nada Towers as Palestinians return to the area to inspect what remains of their homes during a 72-hour ceasefire observed in the Gaza Strip
Ibrahim Radwan inspects damages of his family apartment caused by a fallen minaret of the Al-Sousi mosque, that was destroyed in an Israel strike, at Shati refugee camp, in Gaza City, in the northern Gaza Strip
Palestinian women walk past the rubble of their homes in Gaza City's Shijaiyah neighborhood
Palestinians use a bulldozer to clear the rubble of al-Qassam mosque, hit by an Israeli air-strike Saturday, from a street in Nusseirat refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip
CAMPAIGNERS PLAN NEW FREEDOM FLOTILLA TO BREAK BLOCKADE
A group of human rights organisations says it is organising a flotilla of vessels that will attempt to breach Israel's blockade of Gaza later this year.
The Freedom Flotilla Coalition (FFC) said it plans to sail to Gaza 'during 2014'. It said the flotilla was 'a reflection of the growing worldwide solidarity with the Palestinian people'.
The group said the boats would also be carrying 'Palestinian commercial products purchased by buyers worldwide to complete the work of Gaza's Ark', a cargo boat built by the FFC and Palestinians that the group said was bombed on July 11.
The group organised two previous flotillas, in 2010 and in 2011. During the first, Israeli forces stormed the Turkish ship Mavi Marmara, killing nine people on board. The incident led to a breakdown in Turkish-Israeli relations.
Last week's talks failed in part because Israel rejected Hamas' demand for a complete end to the blockade of the Gaza Strip, enforced by Egypt and Israel.
Israel says the closure is necessary to prevent arms smuggling, and officials do not want to make any concessions that would allow Hamas to declare victory.
The blockade has greatly limited the movement of Palestinians in and out of the impoverished territory. It has also limited the flow of goods into Gaza and blocked virtually all exports. Unemployment in the coastal territory is more than 50 percent.
Hamas officials have since signalled that they will have more modest goals in the current round of talks.
Another member of the Palestinian delegation said that Egyptian officials told the delegation to expect 'an extremely long negotiating session' on Tuesday - an indication that the talks may be about to enter a sensitive phase.
The Israeli official and the two members of the Palestinian delegation al spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the talks with the media.
This round of Gaza fighting - the third in six years - escalated from the abduction and killing of three Israeli teens in the West Bank in June.
Israel blamed the killings on Hamas and launched a massive arrest campaign, rounding up hundreds of its members in the West Bank.
Hamas and other militants then unleashed rocket fire from Gaza and Israel launched its air campaign against Gaza on July 8.Reports in the Italian media today suggest that Napoli president Aurelio De Laurentiis will now be happy to have Juan Zuniga depart and discuss a move with Juventus.
The fans are also angry with the player at the moment after he refused to join in with their chorus of ‘he who does not jump is Bianconero’ at the club’s pre-season training in Dimaro.
Gazzetta dello Sport believe that ‘ADL’ will let him leave but only on his own terms which is €10 million or the beginning of negotiations that would see Alessandro Matri move to the San Paolo.
The Old Lady are reported to be ready to offer €6 m as well as one of Reto Ziegler, Federico Peluso or Paolo De Ceglie to try and appease the Partenopei.
Zuniga himself is adamant that he will not sign a new contract to tie him to Naples and will likely leave before the start of the season.MACKINAC ISLAND -- Skeptics have suggested that the effort to create a start-up ecosystem in downtown Detroit, led by Detroit Venture Partners, is the result of wealthy backers (read: billionaire Quicken Loans founder and Chairman Dan Gilbert) having money to burn on top of money to burn. The investors in the nascent companies in DVP’s portfolio bank on a slim success rate for their return-on-investment, one skeptic suggested at TechWeek Detroit, then cash out when a company emerges as viable enterprise poised for growth. According to research from the Harvard Business School,
, three out of four start-ups fail. But Josh Linkner, CEO and managing director of DVP, has some numbers of his own. “We did the math just on Detroit Ventures Partners - there’s obviously so much more going on beyond our little thing – but just on Detroit Venture Partners, and if we invest at the same pace that we’re doing today over a 10-year period, and assuming we just have average, center-of-the-bell-curve returns, we’re not doing especially good, not especially bad, just average Silicon Valley returns, when you add that up, it’s pretty profound over a 10-year period,” he said. “We’ll end up creating over 6,500 high-paying jobs in the city of Detroit, it means we’re going to create over $1 billion year of economic revenue inside the city, and fill 1 million square feet of office space. And we’re one little venture firm.” “Little” may be relative for DVP, at least compared with the same time last year. Then, DVP’s companies were concentrated in downtown Detroit’s Madison Building. Now, DVP and its related companies are in four buildings in an area now known as the Madison Block. The Madison Block is the city block bordered by Woodward Avenue on the west, Broadway on the east, Witherell on the north, and John R. on the south. It’s a partnership between DVP, Grand Circus, Bedrock Real Estate Services and Bizdom. In the buildings on that block, there is Grand Circus, the new technology training institute launched in the Broderick Tower last August. There is also Bizdom, the start-up incubator at 1528 Woodward. Sasche Construction, which built office space on the block, is also at 1528 Woodward. Detroit Labs, which began in Madison Building but expanded beyond its space there, now occupies the fifth and sixth floors of the building at 1520 Woodward. Avalon Films/Hudson Editorial is at 1500 Woodward. It is on that block that Linkner, Gilbert and others have been busily trying to establish Detroit’s own technology ecosystem, with entrepreneurs and their ideas feeding off each other. DVP was launched by Linkner, a best-selling author and founder of ePrize (now called HelloWorld), and Gilbert, along with Brian Hermelin in 2010 with the intention of investing in 6-8 companies that year, and another 20 in 2011. There are now 70 companies on the Madison Block, Linkner said Thursday. Those start-ups have produced 400 jobs, according to Bizdom CEO Ross Sanders. "There's been just explosive growth, particularly in the past year," Sanders said. And Linkner said the ecosystem is still far from mature. "It's not like, 'oh now were done,'" he said. "The momentum in fact is building, so the rate of change is only increasing from here."
David Muller is the business reporter for MLive Media Group in Detroit. Email him at dmuller@mlive.com or follow him on TwitterThis very interesting project was done by photographer Peter Menzel.
You’ll see the prices and the quantity of different goods and products in different countries.
Japan: $317.25
Italy: $260.11
Chad: $1.23
Kuwait: $221.45
USA: $341.98
Mexico: $189.09
China: $155.06
Egypt: $68.53
Ecuador: $31.55
USA: $159.18
Mongolia: $40.02
Great Britain: $253.15
Bhutan: $5.03
Germany: $500.07
Australia: $ 376.45 per week Family Recipe: Marge Brown's Quandong (an Australian peach) Pie, Yogurt
India: $39.27 Family Recipe: Sangeeta Patkar's Poha (Rice Flakes)
USA: $242.48 Favorite Foods: Shrimp with Alfredo sauce, chicken mole, barbecue ribs, pizz
Mali: $ 26.39 Family Recipe: Natomo Family Rice Dish
France: $419.95 Favorite Foods: Delphine Le Moine's Apricot Tarts, pasta carbonara, Thai food
Greenland: $ 277.12 Favorite Foods: polar bear, narwhal skin, seal stew
Turkey: $ 145.88 Favorite Foods: Melahat's Puffed Pastries
The Philippines: $49.42
China: $57.27
Bosnia and Herzegovina: $ 167.43
Cuba: $ 56.76
Australia: $ 303.75
Guatemala: $ 75.70Not all coffee burns turn into huge paydays: A woman based in Victorville, Calif. alleged that McDonald's coffee was too hot to handle, but the photos she produced as proof of the injuries she sustained were found to be fake.
Selena Edwards claimed to the court that after placing an order at a McDonald's drive-thru, an employee handed her a hot cup of coffee with a faulty lid. She alleged that the lid came loose, and that the hot coffee that spilled on her hand gave her second degree burns. Included in her paperwork were several photos she claimed were of her burns. Investigators found that she had pulled the photos off of a hospital's website.
Edwards' scam is costing her: She's now facing 21 felony counts of insurance and workers' compensation fraud. California Insurance Commissioner Dave Jones released a statement clearly meant to discourage other would-be coffee burn copy cats: "By copying legitimate burn photos from the internet, |
SLDA in the United States. The organization promotes the idea of homeschooling without government involvement in the United States and around the world.
Consul General Defends Germany
Lutz Görgens, the German consul general for the southeastern United States, contradicted the lobbyists' accusations. Germany has a wide range of education options, he told the Associated Press in an e-mail, noting that "parents may choose among public, private and religious schools, including those with alternative curricula like Waldorf or Montessori schools." Mandatory school attendance, he added, ensures a high standard of education for all children.
The Foreign Ministry in Berlin said that it had taken note of the case, but that it would not issue a statement until the ruling was made official. "The consulate general in Atlanta will attend to the matter," a spokesman told SPIEGEL ONLINE.
According to US government statistics, 38 German nationals applied for asylum in the United States in 2008. Five were granted permanent asylum, and in three cases asylum that had initially been granted was later revoked. The statistics do not cite the reasons for the applications.
The US government can contest asylum rulings made by an immigration court. A spokesman for the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement declined to comment on the case when approached by the AP.
'More about Vampires and Witches than about God"
Homeschooling, which many fundamentalist Christians consider the correct way to educate their children, is prohibited in Germany, where the constitutions of the country's individual states stipulate mandatory school attendance. Austria, France, Britain and other countries, on the other hand, only have mandatory lesson or teaching requirements. In the United States, homeschooling is considered a parental right, and an estimated 1 million to 2 million children are homeschooled.
The reasons are not always religious. Some parents are also critical of rigid lesson plans or unwilling to pay the high cost of private schools. But evangelical Christians are waging a particularly dogged battle for homeschooling. They want to protect their children from secular influences and try to educate them within a strictly Christian worldview.
The Romeikes also wanted to spare their children from the "un-Christian goings-on" at German schools. They said that their children were being "educated according to an anti-Christian worldview" in public schools, and that textbooks are filled with obscene language, swear words and blasphemy. "They're more about vampires and witches than about God," says Uwe Romeike.
Beginning in September 2006, the family kept its three oldest children out of elementary school. As is normally the case with persistent non-attenders, "the police came to our door" one morning, says Romeike, who is a music teacher. The officers took the children to school. By then, the Romeikes had already been keeping their children out of elementary school for one month and had been teaching them at home in the "right spirit," as they put it.
Fundamentalist Christians in the United States have been critical of German mandatory school attendance laws for years. Evangelical Christians are well connected with German fundamentalists and are searching for model cases to use in their campaigns. In fact, the Romeikes did not hit upon the idea to emigrate to the United States completely on their own. Mike Donnelly, an attorney for the HSLDA, which is representing the Romeikes, was the one who first suggested that they leave Germany, says Uwe Romeike.
Slim Prospects
In Germany, mandatory school attendance from the age of six developed more as a right to education than a compulsion to attend school. It was introduced in Prussia as early as the 18th century. Although parents who are dissatisfied with the system can set up a private school, it has to be recognized by the government. It is illegal to keep children out of school for any reason. The outcomes of several cases in the past indicate that parents opposed to mandatory school attendance have little chance of success.
Mandatory school attendance is based on "the idea that group learning in school also helps develop social skills," says Martina Elschenbroich, an expert on education law with the Culture Minister Conference, an assembly that brings together education ministers from Germany's 16 states. Children learn how to interact with people who hold different views, which serves as the basis of a democratic society, says Elschenbroich.
Until now, German and European courts have consistently supported this view. In late May 2006, the German Constitutional Court ruled that parents are not entitled to keep their children from attending school because of their religious views. Citing the government's responsibility to provide education in a pluralistic society, the judges argued that it was completely acceptable for children to be exposed to other religious beliefs or views.
In November 2007, the Federal Supreme Court ruled that parents can even be deprived of the custody of their children, arguing that the public has a rightful interest in preventing the formation of "parallel societies" based on religion or worldview.
In September 2006, the European Court of Human Rights ruled that Germany's mandatory school attendance policy, along with the corresponding ban on homeschooling, is compatible with both European law and the European Convention on Human Rights.Interim DNC chair Donna Brazile spoke out on ABC’s This Week today about the leaked Democratic emails and Russian interference in the election, something she actually pushed back against President Obama on.
The president said at his press conference Friday that there was no “further tampering of the election process” after he personally confronted Vladimir Putin about it. Brazile claimed to Martha Raddatz this morning that this was not the case––that hackers went after them every day.
Raddatz repeatedly asked her if she was “disappointed” in Obama’s response. Brazile did not speak to the president specifically, but did express frustrations with how the DNC was “fighting a foreign adversary” that they were no match for.
She briefly dismissed the controversy about emails showing her sending a town hall question to the Clinton campaign––saying it was all just “allegations from stolen hacked emails” (allegations that led to CNN formally severing ties with her)––and said the emails were “weaponized to sow misinformation and to sow discord between the Clinton and Sanders camps.”
Watch above, via ABC.
[image via screengrab]
— —
Follow Josh Feldman on Twitter: @feldmaniac
Have a tip we should know? tips@mediaite.comGreek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras warned euro zone leaders on Thursday his country would struggle to return to sustainable growth without a debt-relief deal.
Athens, facing a second bailout review entailing an unpopular loosening of labor laws in the autumn, is keen to show that painful tax rises and pension cuts as part of its 86 billion-euro bailout deal last year will bear fruit.
In an interview with French newspaper Le Monde, Tsipras said he expected the recession-stricken Greek economy to return to growth in 2016 and expand by 2.7 percent next year but that the lack of debt relief acted as a brake on the recovery.
"The recovery is slow, in particular because we don't see the necessary generosity from our partners on the issue of debt relief," he told Le Monde in an interview published on its website.
"If they refuse to move forward on this issue, then it will be difficult for my country to return to growth," he said.
Tsipras said it was time for Europe to give a signal on the issue and that it could not wait until after Germany's federal elections due in September 2017.
"We have 27 democratically elected governments in Europe. Germany is not the only country with elections," he said.
Germany, the European Union's biggest economy and longtime critic of Greece's economic performance, is very reluctant to discuss granting debt relief for Athens before its elections.
Tsipras also said it was unacceptable that only 3,000 migrants had been resettled so far this year out of a planned 33,000 for the full year.
Hundreds of thousands of migrants, many fleeing wars in the Middle East, have arrived in Greece over the past year from Turkey hoping to move on to wealthier western Europe, but many are now trapped in detention centers. Athens wants other EU member states to share the burden of caring for them.
[Reuters]NSA's Rules Allowing Warrantless Searches On Americans Came THE SAME DAY It Was Told Searches Violated 4th Amendment
from the legal-loopholes dept
The FISC Court didn't just "approve" minimization procedures on October 3, 2011. In fact, that was the day that it declared that part of the program violated the Fourth Amendment. So where the glossary says minimization procedures approved on that date "now allow" for querying US person data, it almost certainly means that on October 3, 2011, the FISC court ruled the querying the government had already been doing violated the Fourth Amendment, and sent it away to generate "an effective oversight process," even while approving the idea in general. And note that FISC didn't, apparently, require that ODNI/DOJ come back to the FISC to approve that new "effective oversight process."
We already wrote about the bombshell revelation from the Guardian that the NSA changed the rules in October of 2011, so that it had permission to do warrantless searches on US persons (contrary to public claims). However, Marcy Wheeler recognized the date of that update is the very same date that the FISA court supposedly smacked down the NSA for violating the 4th Amendment with some searches.If you don't recall, about a year ago, under pressure from Senator Wyden, the US government admitted (late on a Friday evening) that, indeed, the FISA court had "on one occasion" ruled that certain activities concerning Section 702 "minimization" (i.e., trying to avoid searches on US persons) were "unreasonable under the Fourth Amendment." And yet, that very same day, the NSA announced that the rules had changed and it could do searches on US persons, following a certain (undisclosed) "oversight process." Wheeler notes that the NSA seems to have interpreted the FISA court smacking it down for spying on Americansto spy on Americans:Wheeler goes further, providing details from the discussion in the Senate Intelligence Committee during the debate over reauthorizing the FISA Amendments Act (which is where 702 comes from), in which it was strongly hinted that the FISA court had "concerns" about this very type of backdoor searching, and despite acknowledging this, no one bothered to close that backdoor. In fact, it now appears that the NSA and the Director of National Intelligence may have used all of this as a cover to argue that they are authorized to do these kinds of searches.
Filed Under: 4th amendment, faa, fisa amendments act, fisa court, fisc, nsa, nsa surveillance, searches, section 702, surveillancePresident Donald Trump speaks with CBN Founder Pat Robertson at the White House on Wednesday, July 12, 2017. (Screen grab from CBN)
(CNSNews.com) – President Donald Trump says he got along “very well” with Russian President Vladimir Putin when the met at the G20 in Hamburg last week.
“He wants what’s good for Russia, and I want what’s good for the United States,” Trump said in an interview with CBN, the Christian Broadcasting Network, on Wednesday.
Trump said it would have been better for Russia if Hillary Clinton were president because she would have “decimated” the U.S. military and raised U.S. energy prices by building windmills.
“Yeah, I think we got along very well,” Trump said of his meeting with Putin. “And I think that’s a good thing. That’s not a bad thing.
"You know, people said oh they shouldn’t get along. Well, who are the people that are saying that? I think we got along very, very well. We’re a tremendously powerful nuclear power. And so are they. It doesn’t make sense not to have some kind of relationship.”
Trump said the U.S. is getting more and more powerful, “because I’m a big military person.”*June 25: This post has been updated with some words from Mos Prob. Scroll to the bottom for them if you’ve already read the rest.*
As KOTD starts booking battles for August’s World Domination 5 in Toronto, we figured we’d toss out a few quick ideas about what we’d like to see at the event. This will be the third time KOTD Toronto throws battles on a big stage and we’re hoping after the audio and crowd control problems of WD4 and the no-shows of BO4 that they’ve learned some lessons and this time will be the charm.
Re-establish the Canadian elite
World Domination’s original concept was to show that Canada’s talent could hang with the world’s best. With the impressive rise of the Fresh Coast division, we’re already seeing a lot of American battlers on KOTD’s main stage, so try to bring back some Canadian fan favourites like Kid Twist, poRICH, Knamelis and Osa alongside established and emerging talent like Charron, 100 Bulletz, Loe Pesci, Hollohan, Sketch Menace and Tycoon Tax.
Scale it down
We mentioned in the intro that this will be the third “big stage” event – but it doesn’t have to be. KOTD has been pushing to be “bigger and better” with every event, but the problem is that when things get too big you start losing the ability to control quality. Large crowds can ruin battles with booing or background chatter and booking 30 battlers in a weekend inevitably leads to no-shows. The best KOTD events in Toronto (Blackout 2, World Domination 2-3) and the current crop of excellent events on the Fresh Coast have all been in mid-sized venues that hold around 500.
Focus on reliability
Only book battlers who already have passports in hand, can cross the border without incident and who have shown they’ll put effort into a KOTD performance. It might keep some big names off the card, but we’d much rather see hot battles than a hot card.
Capitalize on the KOTD/Don’t Flop rivalry
Things have settled down between the two leagues, which makes it the perfect time to actually get some dope battles out of last year’s bad blood. We’re not expecting Eurgh vs Organik, but matchups between KOTD and DF veterans would have something at stake and give the battlers plenty to talk about.
Judge the battles
It looks like our suggestion from a few months ago caught Organik’s eye, because he’s announced that WD5 battles will be judged. To avoid too much blowback on any unpopular decisions, we recommend having a consistent panel of high-profile, respected judges from all different backgrounds, along the lines of Poison Pen, Drect, Soul Khan, Knamelis, Dirtbag Dan, Jay Blac, Jon Rines, Chris Unbias or Angryfan. Whoever is chosen should also make a video ahead of the event explaining how they judge battles.
Article: How to judge a rap battle
Push for the title match
From the sounds of it, Pat Stay is sitting World Domination 5 out (which we at T.O. Battle Blog speculated on weeks before his announcement by the way…). We’d prefer if he defended the chain against someone, whether it be Charlie Clips, Charron or even Daylyt. Title matches are usually the apex of a weekend of big battles at Toronto events and it would be better to have one than not have one.
Whatever the case, we’re confident KOTD has a handle on things and we’re already looking forward to the weekend.
We’ve also put together three cards for the event, from TOBB writers Chris, Matt and Adam (AKA Mos Prob). Not predictions, not leaks, just trying our hands at putting together a card of this magnitude. It wasn’t easy. We tried to be as realistic as possible, so as much as we want to see people like Bigg K, Caustic or Illmaculate up in Toronto, their border issues have kept them off these cards.
CHRIS’ CARD
Day 1
Charron vs Charlie Clips (#1 contender match, unless it would lead to Clips/Daylyt II)
Kid Twist vs Rone
Knamelis vs Tony D
poRICH/Diaz vs Marlo/Shuffle T
Real Deal vs Tumi
Ness Lee vs Dialect
Rum Nitty vs 100 Bulletz
Uno Lavoz vs Deffinition
Day 2
Pat Stay vs Daylyt (title match)
Hollohan vs Dizaster
The Saurus vs Shotty Horroh
Arcane vs Dirtbag Dan
Soul vs Chilla Jones
Tycoon Tax vs Megadef
Sketch Menace vs Tantrum
Anygma vs Danny Myers
Day 3 [GZ Battles]
N Pose vs Lexx Luthor
Yung Casper vs Citty Towers
Step Easy vs Ayem
Mos Prob vs Carter Deems
Pigsty vs Olde English
And for a special surprise battle: Marlo/Shuffle T vs Charron/Tricky P (I’m making Marlo/Shuffle do two battles since they only have to do half the work as everyone else otherwise. I’ll even let Charron freestyle his way through this one too.)
MATT’S CARD
Day 1
Organik and Knamelis vs Cruger and Eurgh
Kid Twist vs Rone
Bender vs Big Kannon
Shuffle T vs The Saurus
Henry Bowers vs Daylyt
Osa vs Fresco
Uno Lavoz vs Dirtbag Dan
Day 2
Pat Stay vs Charlie Clips
Pass vs T Rex
DNA vs Rum Nitty
Charron vs Soul
100 Bulletz vs Chilla Jones
J-Pro vs Danny Myers
Madness vs Oshea
Day 3 [GZ Battles]
Prince Ali vs Cee Major
Megadef vs Ty Law
Lex D vs Kinaze
Carter Deems vs Trick Stephens
N Pose vs Illite MC
Reverse Live vs Isaac Knox
ADAM (MOS PROB)’S CARD
I’ve been absent for a few months, moving house twice, making my laptop not dead and watching helplessly as my fiancée eats up more visa issues than Blackout 4. On a positive note, both my brain and my glorified calculator have chugged precariously into life again, so if it’s more words you want, more words you shall have. If not, that’s tough, isn’t it?
I’ve been distracting myself with the prospect of World Domination 5, KOTD’s flagship event that really sets them apart from pretty much every other league on the face of the planet. Who do I think will show up to the showdown to [complete the catchphrase for the special bonus prize of absolutely fuck-all]?
I have written about judged battles for the Don’t Flop blog, and I’m on the fence, in all honesty. I enjoy the fierce competition that comes from judging, however questionable the eventual decisions can sometimes be. With that said, the recent crop of King of the Dot events have not wanted for drama, lyricism and hunger, so the showcase-y standard promo issues haven’t truly affected the quality of recent output.
But with judging added to that? We’re in for a right old time.
My one change to Chris and Matt’s suggestions (and this is a tentative one) is reducing the weight of the URL influence we’ve seen permeate KOTD’s style for the last year or so. As esteemed as the URL crop are, I think the variety and global ambitions of the World Domination series dictate a larger picture. As Chris mentioned, WD is really about pitting Canada against the world and setting up some tasty, never-likely-to-happen-in-any- other-context matchups featuring international talent.
I’ve also got a heavy influx of British battlers. Because, well, obviously.
DAY 1
Daylyt vs Charron
Kid Twist vs Shotty Horroh
Knameils vs Rone
Ness Lee vs Hollohan
Tumi vs Tony D
Rum Nitty vs Soul
Joe Cutter vs Henry Bowers
DAY 2
Organik vs Eurgh
Bender vs Arsonal
Charlie Clips vs DNA
Chilla Jones vs Arcane
Dialect vs Loe Pesci
Danny Myers vs Unanymous
Sketch Menace vs Anygma
DAY 3
Ogmios vs Nils m/ Skills
Carter Deems vs Notez
Mos Prob/Rapunsell vs Math Hoffa/Bonnie Godiva (okay, fuck off, we can dream)
Hansen (Germany) vs Rupert Common
Zain Azrai vs Tiger Ty
I’ve made Day 3 a fun one with a dope headliner. That’s more just the little light-hearted corner for me to nerd out in.
____________
Let us know what battles you want to see on the card on Twitter or Facebook!
And check out all of our World Domination coverage from last year.[email protected]
El consejero presidente del Instituto Electoral del Estado de México (IEEM), Pedro Zamudio, confirmó que la actriz mexicana Kate del Castillo presentó una impugnación ante el Tribunal Electoral del Poder Judicial de la Federación (TEPJF) por la convocatoria de candidatos independientes a la gubernatura mexiquense que emitió el órgano electoral local.
“Lo que a nosotros toca es tramitarlo, el tribunal nos remitió el expediente porque se le debe dar publicidad, hay un procedimiento específico, debe estar fijado en los estrados de la autoridad sobre la que está presentada la impugnación que somos nosotros y se le dará el tratamiento de eso, de una impugnación, estará en los estrados el tiempo que marca la ley y luego será devuelta al tribunal para que resuelva lo conducente”, dijo.
Según el expediente SUP-JDC-1904 /2016, Kate del Castillo Negrete Trillo interpuso ante la Sala Superior del TEPJF, el 25 de noviembre pasado, un juicio para la protección de los derechos políticoelectorales del ciudadano. Los actos que impugna son las bases segunda y sexta de la Convocatoria de Candidatos Independientes en el Estado de México.
La base segunda se refiere al requisito VI de no contar con una o más nacionalidades distintas a la mexicana. La base sexta contempla el respaldo ciudadano que deberá contener las firmas de un equivalente al 3% de la lista nominal de electores del Estado de México, con corte al 31 de agosto de 2016.
El TEPJF turnó la demanda y el acuerdo al IEEM por correo electrónico en el que se ordena darle trámite de ley. La publicación se hizo en estrados del IEEM a las 16 horas del 29 de noviembre y el plazo para resolverla vence mañana viernes a las 16 horas.
“Lo que señala (Kate del Castillo) como motivo de impugnación es que le parece inconstitucional que nosotros pongamos en la convocatoria que quien quiera aspirar a la candidatura independiente del Estado de México para ser gobernador no tenga o no pueda tener más de una nacionalidad, o sea, que no sea solamente mexicano sino que pueda tener otra nacionalidad, ahí es donde se centra la querella”, explicó.
El consejero presidente del IEEM aclaró que hasta ahora es la única impugnación que se ha presentado contra la convocatoria para candidatos independientes en la entidad mexiquense donde el 4 de junio próximo se celebrarán elecciones para la renovación de la gubernatura.
Pedro Zamudio precisó que será el Tribunal Electoral del Poder Judicial de la Federación la instancia encargada de resolver la impugnación de la actriz, quien reside en Estados Unidos.Marvel Comics and Jim Starlin – an early, influential architect of the publisher’s now thriving "cosmic" corner of their universe – were in the early stages of a reunion to partner on more stories in the creator’s series of “Infinity” storylines starring The Avengers movie villain Thanos, but a matter of the availability of the Adam Warlock character may be putting that reunion in jeopardy.
Starlin, who created both Thanos and Drax the Destroyer (who will be seen in August’s Guardians of the Galaxy) recently resumed work with the publisher on several Thanos-related projects tying into the character’s increased role at Marvel in films and the higher profile of Marvel’s cosmic titles. In a Facebook post over the weekend, the writer/artist wrote that he’d been told not to use Adam Warlock in any future work, implying dissatisfaction over the decision.
"Okay, this time, after I brought Adam Warlock back from the dead in The Infinity Revelation, someone at Marvel anonymously put a corporation-wide-no-use restriction on the character, effectively putting the brakes on the ongoing plans I had for him and [Thanos]," Starlin wrote.
The Infinity Revelation is a new graphic novel that the writer/artist finished earlier this year and is awaiting publication by Marvel.
Created by Jack Kirby and Stan Lee, Warlock’s best known stories were created by Starlin in various Marvel titles between the 70s and 90s. For a time under Starlin’s direction, Warlock was leading a group of heroes called the Infinity Watch who held the Infinity Gems, now a key element in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
Following this Facebook post and an ensuing groundswell of comments by fans and comic professionals (including a job offer from IDW Editor-In-Chief Chris Ryall), Starlin posted that he wouldn’t comment further, saying that “The past is the past, even its mistakes. Keeping my eye on tomorrow.”
Presented with Starlin's comment over the weekend on his Tumblr page, Marvel Vice President of Publishing Tom Brevoort responded to the matter though not directly addressing Warlock's status, writing: “This is all really about something else, something much smaller that Jim probably shouldn’t even have taken public on his Facebook page. But he did, so there you go.”
Approached Tuesday for comment, Starlin shared more insight into the situation from his perspective.
“When I started on The Infinity Revelation, I asked about Adam's status, was told no one had any plans for him and that he was dead,” Starlin told Newsarama. “So I brought him back to life in the graphic novel and made plans to use him further.”
Upon the conclusion of his work writing and drawing the graphic novel, Starlin said he began working on the next project he had planned for Adam Warlock and Thanos, titled The Infinity Duel.
“I turned in a plot to Tom Brevoort, which included Adam Warlock, and about two months later Tom informed me about the hold but said he couldn't explain it to me,” Starlin claimed. “That's when I took on the Savage Hulk story arc, to keep busy until the hold was lifted and built up some more advanced storyline for the proposed project (The Infinity Duel).”
According to Starlin, he finished penciling his four-issue arc of Savage Hulk last week but found the Adam Warlock situation had remained unchanged.
“The hold is still in place and, apparently, shows no signs of being lifted any time in the future,” Starlin told Newsarama Tuesday. “So I'm moving on.”
Starlin, who has worked for Marvel as a writer and artist on-and-off for over 43 years, went on to infer that the situation might be due to the character being used in an upcoming Marvel live-action project.
“I find this all rather strange,” Starlin offered, “seeing how Thor, Captain America, Iron Man, the X-Men, Daredevil, the Hulk, Fantastic Four, Ghost Rider and whatever other characters became movie projects without this hold ever being placed upon them.”
Whatever the reason, it appears the situation may scuttle the proposed longer-term reunion with Marvel.
“I've given up on Warlock happening any time soon and have completed the three projects I committed to for Marvel - The Thanos Annual, The Infinity Revelation, and the Savage Hulk story arc," Starlin concluded.
"Talking to folks about future work, but nothing I can talk about at this time."
Marvel declined to comment on the matter Tuesday afternoon.(Courtesy: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.)In Why America Failed, cultural historian Morris Berman completes his trilogy on the decline of a nation by tapping his exceptional talents for research, observation and theory. The result is a compelling narrative of decay.
Now, nobody lives forever
Nothin’ stands the test of time
Oh, you heard’em say “never say never”
But it’s always best to keep it in mind
That every tower ever built tumbles
No matter how strong, no matter how tall
Someday even great walls will crumble
And every idol ever raised falls
And someday even man’s best-laid plans
Will lie twisted and covered in rust
We’ve done all that we can but it slipped through our hands
And it’s ashes to ashes and dust to dust – Steve Earle, “Ashes to Ashes,” 2002
In 1977, Elvis Presley’s ex-bodyguards and former friends released a book with the help of writer Steve Dunleavy, called Elvis: What Happened? The book gave heartbreaking testimony to the hideous and hurtful downfall of America’s greatest popular entertainer. According to Red and Sonny West, who had worked for Elvis since befriending him in 1955, Elvis had gone from a Greek god-like figure the public met on the Ed Sullivan Show, and fell in love with again on the 1968 Comeback Special, to an overweight, drug-addicted shadow of his former self. His voice had lost most of its mysterious power; his face had lost its beauty – and his behavior had become increasingly erratic, boorish and bizarre. He’d lie down on stage, subject his family and friends to incoherent sermons in the Jungle Room, and gorge on fatty foods, all while swallowing pills by the handful. The King had become material for a modernized Shakespearean tragedy. Elvis was furious at the West brothers over the book, viewing it as the worst form of betrayal. The remaining members of his entourage, mostly sycophants who feared offending their boss because of his swift and severe temper, fed Elvis’ delusions by condemning the book as a lie. The fans ignored its revelations. Two weeks later Elvis died due to the complications of prolonged drug abuse.
Cultural historian Morris Berman has just recently completed his trilogy on the decline of the United States of America. At the point of this writing, he has not given the trilogy an official name, but he may want to consider “America: What Happened?”
The trilogy began in the year 2000 with the publication of The Twilight of American Culture. Berman had just recently completed a different trilogy – one on human consciousness that, as the title of the first book implies, calls for a “re-enchantment of the world” – an incorporation of spirituality into our lives to balance the materialism, individualism and scientism of modernity. Berman was living in the brain of the beast – Washington, DC – and teaching sociology at the Catholic University of America when he began keeping a file of newspaper clippings, academic studies, and handmade notes chronicling disturbing developments of ignorance, cruelty and lunacy in American life. A New York Times article in 1995 reported that the nation’s top one percent of income earners owned 40 percent of America’s wealth. A few years later, Northern Illinois University conducted a random survey that revealed 21 percent of Americans believe the sun revolves around the earth, and other studies found that many Americans could not locate their own country on a map. Around the same time, the United Nations ranked the United States 49th in literacy. Dozens of universities and newspapers began studying the “lack of civility” in everyday American life, while the country grew more violent, mounting a staggering body count from between 15,000 and 20,000 homicides a year, and incarcerating more people, in per capita and sheer numbers, than almost any country in the world.
After several years of collecting these obituaries of American civilization, and recognizing that the file would grow larger on a daily basis, he decided to write a book. The Twilight of American Culture was the result, and it became a critical and commercial success. Berman wrote that “collapse involves a progressive weakening of a society’s political and administrative center.” It is a “recurrent feature of human societies,” and there was no reason to believe, despite the dogmatic protests of American exceptionalists and Reaganites – what Cornel West calls “cheap American optimism” – that America’s tower would not tumble. Based on his own studies of civilizational decline, Berman identified four factors present during a collapse:
1. Accelerating social and economic inequality – check.
2. Declining marginal returns with regard to investment in organizational solutions to socioeconomic problems or, in other words, the political system becomes dysfunctional – check.
3. Rapidly dropping levels of literacy, critical understanding and general intellectual awareness – check.
4. Spiritual death, what Berman calls the “emptying out of cultural content and the freezing of it in formulas, kitsch” – check.
Berman demonstrates how in the year 2000, all four factors of collapse had become regular and routine parts of American life. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, poverty grew at a rate of 22 percent and wages for most Americans stagnated, but the income of the top one percent grew by 78 percent.
The American political system brazenly became one of legalized bribery and normalized corruption with lobbyists, corporate donors and public relations specialists dominating Washington’s business – not statesmanship or concern for the common interest and public good.
The high school dropout rate grew to 30 percent; many public school systems became disgraceful and universities changed their model to mutate into businesses, rather than remain real institutions of higher learning.
Vulgarity, frivolity, and superficiality emerged victorious in pop culture, while the arts struggled to survive.
American culture has many critics. Political Scientist Robert Putnam famously documented and described the collapse of community in America. His bestseller Bowling Alone showed a nation of atomized individuals – transients lacking even the flimsiest of connections to one another. Philosopher Sheldon Wolin indicted the nation’s political system in Democracy Inc., calling it “inverted totalitarianism.”
Corporate America maintains tyrannical rule of America, but it is by concession and the public believes in their illusion of freedom. Neil Postman called America a “technopoly,” where technology becomes a religion and is able to swallow up culture whole (Berman spends a great deal of time and ink making a similar argument against America’s infatuation with technology).
Communications Professor Robert McChesney, in a series of books, undresses the mainstream media as nothing more than a shallow shill for its parent companies and advertisers. Famous thinkers like Noam Chomsky and Cornel West present convincing cases against America’s foreign policy and race and class divisions.
Morris Berman manages to encapsulate all of these critiques into one solid documentation of America’s slow and steady decline. He also goes well beyond familiar attacks on American materialism, narcissism and imperialism to present theories, ideas and insights of his own.
In The Twilight of American Culture, for example, he rebukes the wedded notions of “progress” and “growth” to show how they are ultimately hollow, and set people on a road to ruin. He expands on this idea greatly in the third book, Why America Failed. In the first book, he also recommends to readers a “new monastic option,” in which – like the monks who preserved classic texts during the final days of the Roman Empire – Americans can work to protect what is sacred and special in their own land.
He identifies a woman who started a symphony in New York City and a man who humanized nursing homes by bringing residents animals and planting the grounds with gardens, as contemporary keepers of the monastic option.
At the time of Twilight’s publication, America had not yet had an election of questionable legitimacy. It had not yet been attacked simultaneously in its political and financial capitals. It had not yet stripped millions of citizens of their constitutional rights in the name of safety and security. It had not yet invaded a country that posed no threat. It had not yet begun practicing torture and it had not yet allowed New Orleans – one of its greatest cities – to perish for lack of assistance in the world’s richest nation.
The attacks of September 11th, the brutal governmental response, Hurricane Katrina and the criminally negligent governmental response to it, all transpired between the publication of Berman’s first America book and his second, Dark Ages America.
Dark Ages America picks up where Twilight left off, but adds to it a detailed study of America’s foreign policy. Exploitative, aggressive and disastrous, the stretch of the American arm around the globe has created enemies – what Chalmers Johnson calls “blowback” – and accomplished very little for the overwhelming mass of its own citizens.
Imperial upkeep eats away most of the federal budget – the current budget allocates 57 percent of discretionary spending to the Pentagon – and the nation is going bankrupt as a result. Meanwhile, an aggressive foreign policy makes for a jingoistic, bloodthirsty citizenry. Berman points to studies and surveys showing terrifyingly large numbers of Americans supportive of limitations on free speech in wartime, restrictions on religious freedom for Muslims, and harsh regulations on the editorial liberty of the press.
The book is the thickest of the three, and Berman assembles a battery of evidence to make his case. From Vietnam to Iraq, America has been imperialistic. From Nixon’s crackdowns on dissenters to Guantanamo Bay, America has violated its promise of human and civil rights. I find Berman at his best, however, when he navigates the everyday world of American anti-communities.
Relying on stories reported in the mainline media and personal anecdotes, he describes a country that every American knows well – an unwelcoming place where people are regularly rude to each other, fail to show minimal courtesy in public places and meet the slightest inconvenience with psychotic levels of bellicosity and belligerence.
Most Americans, especially those under 30, know no alternative to people shouting on cell phones during movies and concerts, employers failing to notify applicants when they are turned down for jobs, deadly stampedes at Christmas sales in department stores and yearly massacres by alienated gunmen. Congressman Ron Paul announces that a young man who gets sick after choosing not to buy health insurance should die, and receives roaring applause, while on the other side of the aisle, The New York Times reports that President Obama found it an “easy decision” to assassinate American citizen and radical cleric Anwar al-Awlaki. Esquire magazine describes, in gruesome detail, how al-Awl |
They have also been seen not just with Miley Cyrus but also with Ariana Grande, whom they consider their best friend, as well as Mitch Grassi from the hit a capella group Pentatonix.
Despite their famous friends, though, they also exude both shyness and vulnerability, quick to pull their shirt up to cover their face when overwhelmed with attention, and ready to cop to their demons.
"I've dealt with depression and anxiety throughout my life," Tyler said. At the same time, they also don't have the same need for company as many others. Tyler considers themselves asexual and aromantic, someone who prefers to be alone rather than seeking romantic relationships.
"What if I'm agender because I don't like being sexualised?" Tyler asked, as though having a moment of discovery when I asked them about whether their gender had anything to do with their independence. "I know my gender is not the result of my sexuality, but I can see being agender and being aromantic as intertwined."
This reflective quality is something that their roommate Michael considers one of Tyler's hallmark qualities, a facet of their steadfast devotion to being true to themselves. Even though they're aromantic, they also admitted to me that they have a significant yearning to be desired by white, cisgender gay men.
"I used to try to butch it up just so they would notice me," Tyler said. "But I don't even want them. I just want to be desired."
Later that night after I interviewed them, Tyler texted me to say this: "additional thoughts before bed: wanting cis gay dudes to find me attractive is mostly about validation (which is complicated, because I don't want to be seen as a guy... I just don't want to be seen as a girl!). All my intimate relationships are/have been with girls and other non-binary folks."
For me, this text connected to something else Tyler said while I had my soy latte and they had their hot chocolate at Think Coffee: "I don't really feel seen by anyone."
It's something I recognise in myself - I used to be seen as a boy, which wasn't real, and now I'm seen as a girl, which also doesn't feel quite right. The difference between me and Tyler is that Tyler is intent on being themselves, while I have a tendency to try to live up to the perceptions of others. Maybe that's why Tyler remains a deeply attractive person to many even though they express all this trouble and vulnerability.
Tyler's roommate Michael agrees. "The whole way they've become friends with all these celebrities, is because Tyler is simply themselves. Tyler doesn't pretend for these people. Tyler is a person that the world needs to see. They are exactly the kind of voice the world needs right now."
***
Another voice for gender-nonconformity is 46-year-old Kael Sharman, a trans man who lives in Ontario, Canada. Kael transitioned later in life, when he was 41 years old, after giving birth to a daughter when he was 22.
I became intrigued by him because his wife Theo Hummer, an old friend from graduate school, mentioned his story on Facebook; after I posted an article about Caitlyn Jenner, she commented that there's a lot of attention paid to masculine men who transition into women, but there isn't as much on conventionally attractive women, like Kael used to be, who transitioned as men.
Kael and I were already Facebook friends, so I looked at the pictures in his profile and found several of him pre-transition. When I asked him about them, he said: "I keep the pictures there because it means a lot to me to maintain memories and associations of me for my daughter."
Every trans person I've met has differing relationships with their former identity. Some disavow any sign of it altogether. More often than not, though, trans people wish to maintain parts of their pre-transition selves they value, either because those parts are important to other people and it doesn't bother them, or they themselves find affirmation in aspects of their former identity.
For Kael, the two most prominent traces of his former self are images of him as a conventionally attractive woman and his identity as a mother - images that overlap yet differ in the sense that one taps into an external idea while the other reaches into aspects of his being that surprise even himself.
From an early age growing up in Ontario, Kael has felt alienated from his assigned gender. But as he grew into an unusually attractive young woman, both his family and surrounding culture pressured him to cling to the privilege of attractiveness, in ways that mirror trans women like Caitlyn Jenner who clung to masculine-identified traits like athleticism.
Both Kael and Jenner speak to the experience of using their gender-conforming traits to shield them from their transgender identification - though it's telling that Jenner in her male role was valued primarily for what she could do, while Kael as a woman was valued for what he looked like.
"I definitely fall into the narrative of trying to live up to archetypes," he told me when we spoke over Skype. "It was not uncommon for people to tell me how gorgeous I was."
The gap between Kael's internal gender and external presentation only grew over time, as he became obsessed with bodybuilding and trained obsessively at the gym. Ironically, having a muscled body put more pressure on him to maintain feminine traits such as long hair and makeup.
"People were OK with my masculinity if I could feminise in other ways, and that contradiction got more extreme as I got older," Kael said. "Then there came a point when I couldn't go any further. That was when I needed to transition."
It was at this point, near the beginning of Kael's hormonal transition in 2011 when Kael and Theo met through an online dating site, a point at which Kael gave Theo the impression of seeming more like a butch lesbian, rather than the more physically masculine presentation he currently has after several years on testosterone.
Though Theo said that it was less Kael's gender presentation and more his outlook that attracted her. She said, "He was so happy with his life. He was so happy with himself. It was like an aura around him."
There's no question that Kael is happier with his body and identity now that he is seen as male. Yet paradoxically, he still reminisces about a specific time when he identified as a woman. "I was happiest when I was breastfeeding," Kael said, recalling the time after he had his daughter Tessa, now 22. "I had this weird sense of exactly how my metabolism worked. I was fascinated with it. I thought, this is what my body was meant to do. It's so strange and contradictory, and I can't explain it."
Kael's fluidity in his perception of gender extends to his image. Theo describes how, in addition to pictures on Facebook, Kael's mom still keeps old pictures of him as a gorgeous 20-year-old woman all over her house, where Kael frequently visits. Kael also keeps pre-transition pictures around his own house for Tessa so she won't forget to associate his role in her life with that of a mother.
Tessa agrees. "When he was first transitioning I really struggled with figuring out how to place in my life and how to identify who Kael was to me now," she said. "I felt like I'd lost my mother. So keeping photos around was nice at the beginning - I didn't feel like everything was forced upon me all at once, and I had to fully cut ties with my association of Kael as my mother."
For his part, Kael doesn't seem perturbed. "I don't have too many sensitivities about these pictures. When I look at them, it's a reminder of how happy I am now. I don't have to do it anymore. I'm looking in the mirror, and I love what I see."
At the same time, Kael also recognises that not feeling trauma over old images of himself is a privilege, one that he connects to being a trans man who hasn't often been subject to ridicule or discrimination as a result of transition. He sounded almost apologetic as he described his worst experiencing transitioning as a teacher. "There was a secretary in my school who would call into my room and misgender me. I had a short conversation with her once, and she made the mistake once more, but nothing else has happened since."
Kael talks about keeping his job through transition, having great benefits, and making a good living. It's a far cry from the experiences of many of his trans woman friends. At the same time, he still experiences moments when he doesn't feel like he can't live up to a masculine ideal. He recalled this one time when he and Theo were at a restaurant for lunch and the waitress said, "What would you ladies like?"
"I don't even think she was looking at us when she said it," Theo said.
It just so happened that Kael was supposed to meet his brother-in-law at a bar called Little Memphis that evening, which Kael describe as a "man's man" bar, where all the Chrysler workers hang out to drink whiskey and beer." When the time came, Kael couldn't bring himself to go because he didn't have the confidence. "I was bent out of shape for days," Kael said.
Nevertheless, Kael agrees that the positives more than outweigh the bumps in his transition, even as someone who doesn't fit all the norms expected of his new gender. This is a marked difference from Tyler's experience. Blending in seamlessly as a man in public affords Kael security, and being white also shields him from the racism that causes both Tyler and my next subject, Persephone Smith, to be more heavily scrutinised.
The 44-year-old Smith and I met last winter at the Brooklyn Community Pride Centre at an event called the Trans Ladies Picnic, which is held monthly in various locations throughout New York City. I couldn't help but notice that she was the only visibly black woman there, and I made a point to introduce myself as she tidied the space and made sure everyone had enough to eat.
"I'm just motherly that way," I remember her saying.
Though as we've gotten to know each other both online and off, Persephone readily admits that she doesn't fit the stereotypical idea of motherhood, or the common stereotype of trans women being "passable," meaning that they generally strive to appear like cisgender women, especially on the street where they are vulnerable to harassment.
"Passing is a big thing among black trans women," Persephone told me over lunch. "A lot of them won't hang out with you if you're not passable."
She cites her Hawaiian upbringing as a reason for the difference in the way she approaches her trans identity. "A lot of black trans women in New York are influenced by ball culture," Persephone said, referring to the drag pageant scene famously depicted in the Jennie Livingston documentary Paris Is Burning. "But my aesthetics are really different. I don't really go for glamour."
Persephone also doesn't feel that she passes in most situations, being taller and having a larger build than most cisgender women. Lunch gave me an indication of why other black trans women value passing so much: I noticed at least two people in the relatively liberal neighbourhood give Persephone openly hostile stares.
This wasn't something I'm used to as someone who passes as white and cisgender, even though I'm Asian and trans. It's a well-documented phenomenon that black trans women are particularly vulnerable to harassment because the intersection of racism, misogyny, and transphobia all conspire to make them prone to rousing people's anger for simply existing.
Our mutual friend Kara Tucker, a white trans woman in her 50s, has also witnessed people treat Persephone with a type of vitriol she doesn't experience herself. Kara told me that she witnessed a man shaking his head openly as Persephone passed him while the two of them were at a restaurant. It seems that people who don't agree with Persephone's gender presentation are more than willing to express their disapproval openly.
"That's just the tip of the iceberg compared to the stories she's told me about," Kara said.
Indeed, street harassment and threats of violence are a daily reality for Persephone. "I'm always worried someone's going to attack me today," she said. "I've been in more fights than I've ever been in my life since transition two years ago, because people want to pick on the defenceless tranny."
While other trans women rely on passability to navigate these threats, Persephone uses her martial arts training from many years in the Navy to defuse potentially explosive situations. Like many trans women, she chose a hypermasculine profession earlier in life to try to deny her transgender identity.
But Persephone also had another motive. "Looking back, I realise that because I couldn't accept myself, I literally was finding a way to get myself killed," she says, "but that didn't work." This image of pain stands in comparison to the life she leads now, where being her authentic self also routinely leads to violence. Persephone told me about a particularly harrowing experience last New Year's when four men tried to attack her as she was walking home alone. They backed down after she knocked one of them out by hitting them in the nose.
"I just want to live my life," Persephone said. I've seen her go through depressive spells on Facebook, times when she has trouble getting out of bed because of the trials she faces on a regular basis. Persephone recently split with her wife, who said she could no longer handle the extent of Persephone's transition, and she's lost all of her close friends as well.
"I feel like I don't fit anywhere," Persephone said, referring not only to her life as a trans woman, but also to her immediate social circle. "I don't really get along with other black trans women, but there are ways that the women from Trans Ladies Picnic don't always understand my experiences."
Nevertheless, the trans women from the picnic have become the core of Persephone's social life, as the group strives to be inclusive of all transfeminine identities. She has also made close friends from the group, who admire her for her independence and benefit from learning about her perspectives.
"Persephone has more than anyone opened my eyes to the struggles of trans women of colour by sharing with me in detail openly and honestly all the terrible harassment and violence that happens to her on a daily basis," the poet and academic Trace Peterson told me. "Hearing that someone I cared so much about was in this much constant danger had a visceral effect on me. It caused me to look at my own situation differently and encouraged me to stand up for trans women of colour and speak out on issues pertaining to race in trans communities."
Persephone has also recently been able to channel her experiences towards more productive ends, working as a counsellor at the Ali Forney Centre, which provides emergency housing for LGBTQ youth. "I'm the only full-time trans counsellor in the house where I work," Persephone said, "and I feel like my words mean more when I talk to our trans residents, because they know I speak from experience."
Certainly, part of that experience for Persephone is being true to herself, despite the costs. It's a lesson she embodies along with Kael and Tyler, though they all do so in different ways, despite enduring the judgments of others. And even though becoming more visible figures in the trans community has made them more vulnerable, all of them emphasise the importance of telling their stories, so that other trans people can be aware that there are many ways to be trans.
"The media has co-opted black trans identities and are trying to dictate what we all should look like," Persephone said. "I get so much pushback from people who say it's not just trans people 'because the media does this to everyone.' Sure, but your livelihood and life are not contingent on people perceiving you as who you are."
Persephone's words resonate with me, and they also echo Tyler and Kael's desire to tell their individual stories. Doing so is key to our survival, as we're constantly under pressure from mainstream society to conform to its expectations, even as people have become more accepting of our trans identity.
Complicating established narratives allows the public to be more aware of the many possible ways to be trans, and also reminds trans people - the vast majority of whom defy gender stereotypes in some way - that we shouldn't need to conform to established media narratives to be accepted by others.
- This story first appeared on Vice.com
Head to our Facebook page for more from Stuff Life & StyleAt the core of the two same-sex marriage cases argued this week before the Supreme Court is the fundamental question of whether the Constitution requires the state and federal governments to treat same-sex marriage exactly the same as traditional, opposite-sex marriage for all purposes for all time, or whether it is permissible to draw reasoned distinctions between the two, ranging from California’s simple reservation of the term “marriage” to opposite-sex couples to the federal government’s comprehensive reservation of all federal benefits of marriage (including joint tax filings, Social Security benefits and immigration status) to opposite-sex couples. I respectfully submit that this should not be a difficult question. Common human experience, basic biology, and existing social science all confirm that there are significant differences between SSM and traditional marriage. Whether or not you support SSM as a political and policy matter, there should be no doubt as a legal matter that the state has the same legitimate right that it has always possessed to draw distinctions between the two in the many, many areas of law that touch on marriage and family life.
I have not, over the years, spent much time or energy on the battle over political recognition of same-sex marriage; while I don’t think it’s a wise idea, it is also not likely to have enormous consequences, for reasons I discuss below. Democracy works, however imperfectly: things done legislatively can be modified or undone the same way, can be adapted in different ways to the needs of different jurisdictions, and can be passed or amended with protections for conscientious dissent. Personally, for two decades, I’ve supported the “live and let live” option of civil unions, the moderate solution that allows people the freedom to choose whatever partner they want and make a life together, with the basic rights of contract, inheritance, hospital visitation and the like. Call it a marriage if you want, but without the official endorsement and coercive power of the state behind the name.
But the democratic process is one thing. A judicial determination that the Constitution prohibits recognition of any distinctions between the two institutions for all time would have much more far-reaching effects on our laws – effects we may not even be able to anticipate or foresee until creative lawyers have gone off to the races with this freshly-minted legal doctrine. We have seen, over and over, how changes in law and policy produce unforeseen or unintended consequences in the family and society; the institution of marriage in particular has buckled badly under a long series of liberal social experiments over the past five decades. You’d think that by now we would at least have learned to stop using irrevocable court decisions to open Pandora’s Box.
It does the law no good to pretend things that are not so. Whatever the merits of SSM, it is not the same thing as marriage between a man and a woman, and the differences are neither irrational nor insignificant. Even if you support SSM, the only reasonable conclusion is that male-male or female-female marriage is not the same as male-female marriage. Let us count the most obvious ways.
I. Children
Marriage has many facets: it’s an emotional coupling, a religious sacrament, an economic unit, and the basic building block of social organization of all kinds. But the aspect of marriage that is of most urgent interest to the state is its role in producing children and creating a home for them. Children are, literally, the future of the state: no kids, no future. They are also the aspect of married life that the state traditionally involves itself in most heavily, from child custody law to the substantial public role in education.
And there is no disputing the facts that (1) opposite-sex couples are dramatically more likely to produce children in marriage than same-sex couples; and (2) opposite-sex couples are dramatically more likely to produce children outside of marriage than same-sex couples. Both facts, combined with the state’s interests in promoting the birth of children and having them reared in stable, two-parent homes, create a compelling state interest in promoting traditional opposite-sex marriage that simply does not exist in the case of SSM.
And that’s before we get to the distinct question of whether same-sex marriages are truly the equivalent of a home with both a father and a mother.
A. Where Babies Come From
Even in an age when modern science can provide children without sex, virtually all of the world’s children are the product of opposite-sex unions, for obvious reasons. If we evaluated our laws on the basis of common human experience accessible to the average voter – as was the case for the first century and a half of our democracy – that would be the end of the argument (the Bill of Rights has served us just fine even though it was adopted without the benefit of social-science studies). The available data, unsurprisingly, supports the same conclusion: far lower rates of child-rearing among same-sex couples.
I looked at this issue in 2011, in response to a New York Times writeup of 2009 Census Bureau data showing that “[a]bout a third of lesbians are parents, and a fifth of gay men are.” A rising proportion of those children are adopted: 19%, up from 8% a decade ago, which is good news in that adoption is a good thing, but also a reminder of the distinction from how traditional marriages operate. A more recent American Community Survey report from the Census Bureau put the estimate at 593,000 same-sex couples, of whom 115,000 (19%) had children age 18 or under in the home – but 15.9% of those couples had no “own children” (a group that includes biological children, adopted and step-children), more than twice the rate of married couples with children in the home. Thus, the actual “own children” rate is 16.3%.
By contrast, looking at the 2010 CPS data and drilling into Table F1, we can see more detailed data on how opposite-sex married couples have families. Among married couples, there are 24.575 million families with “own children” under age 18 out of 58.41 million overall – 42.1%, or two and a half times the rate of same-sex couples. And when you break down the married couples by age, what you see is that the percentage with minor children in the home peaks at 83.8% of married couples age 35-39. Only about 15% of opposite-sex married couples between age 35-45 have no children living with them at all. You will look long and hard for a sub-sample of same-sex couples that looks anything like this. The bulk of couples with no children at home are senior citizens whose kids have grown up:
That’s before you get to the question of how many children these families have. Comparative data is harder to come by on this point, but anecdotal experience suggests that there are very, very few same-sex couples with three or more children in the home. By contrast, in the peak childbearing years, we see that more than a quarter of married couples are families of five or more, and over 60% are families of four or more:
Ten years into the SSM experiment in Canada, we see a similar disparity:
There are approximately 21,000 married same-sex couples in Canada, out of 6.29 million married couples. Same-sex couples (married and unmarried) constitute 0.8% of all couples in Canada; 9.4% of the 64,575 same-sex couples (including common-law and married) have children in the home, and 80% of these are lesbian couples. By contrast, 47.2% of heterosexual couples have children in the home.
(As an aside, we will encounter a few times in this essay the distinctions between gay men and lesbians; suffice to say that what can be generalized from the data about one group is not always true of the other. Gay men and gay women are still men and women.)
The evidence on this point is clear, and consistent with elementary biology and common experience: married opposite-sex couples are significantly more likely to be raising children than same-sex couples, and quite likely more children. A government interested in the next generation will rationally be much more interested in the opposite-sex couples.
B. Where Adults Come From
1. Motherhood And Its Deniers
Is there any rational basis to conclude that two parents of the same sex are not the equivalent of a mother and a father? You would think that common human experience tells us that of course there is. Not everything of value or importance in life can be quantified by social scientists. For example, in order to accept the proposition that same-sex parents are equal in all ways to opposite-sex parents, you must literally accept the conclusion that a mother adds nothing of unique value to a child’s life that a man could not provide – no unique value to breastfeeding, no unique value to maternal love, no unique value to a female role model in the life of a young girl or to teach a young boy how to respect a female authority figure. (The same goes for the absence of male role models in two-female households, despite everything we know about the importance of fathers in the development of young men.) I submit that you do not have to be any sort of bigot to believe that mothers have a value no man can entirely replace, or to fear the consequences for family law if the United States Supreme Court holds that this is an irrational opinion.
The case for arguing that common sense and experience are wrong on this point rests wholly on appeals to social science – appeals that are deeply flawed. First of all, it’s always hazardous to cast Constitutional rules in permanent concrete based on social science data that can be disproven by subsequent studies. The very nature of science is that it is subject to change, but courts are in the business of providing final and unchanging answers based on the evidence at a particular point in time. The Supreme Court in 1927 held, in Buck v. Bell, that states could forcibly sterilize the “unfit” (e.g., the mentally retarded) for the good of the state – a decision that rested on the widely-accepted eugenic and Malthusian economic theories of the day, now long since discredited. Buck‘s reliance on social science gave us this cringe-inducing passage from Justice Holmes for an 8-1 majority that included such distinguished Justices as William Howard Taft and Louis Brandeis:
We have seen more than once that the public welfare may call upon the best citizens for their lives. It would be strange if it could not call upon those who already sap the strength of the State for these lesser sacrifices, often not felt to be such by those concerned, in order to prevent our being swamped with incompetence. It is better for all the world if, instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime or to let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind. The principle that sustains compulsory vaccination is broad enough to cover cutting the Fallopian tubes….Three generations of imbeciles are enough.
The lone dissenter in Buck was, not coincidentally, the sole Catholic on the Court at the time, Justice Pierce Butler, a firm believer in tradition and religion.
Skepticism of the limits of social science is not a sentiment unique to SSM opponents; as Rod Dreher has noted, it’s nearly impossible to find supporters of SSM who could ever be persuaded by any social-science data to abandon that support, having decided in most cases that the issue is one of fundamental rights rather than utilitarian benefit to society.
2. Lies, Damned Lies, And Statistics
All that aside, what does the social science say about the quantifiable merits of same-sex parents as opposed to traditional homes with a father and a mother? The answer is surprisingly unsatisfactory, if you’re accustomed to thinking of social science as an all-seeing oracle. Certainly there is enough anecdotal evidence to support the idea that same-sex parents are capable of raising children well, but that’s not the issue; as a comparison, we know that individual single moms can raise children well, but we also know from a vast body of literature that as a group, single moms are more likely to produce kids with a host of problems, both because single parenting is hard and because fathers are important. Similarly, the question is not the existence of some number of good and diligent same-sex parents, but whether same-sex parenting is so identical in all meaningful respects to traditional married parenting that no rational distinction could ever be drawn between the two.
Liberal commentators would have you believe that there is an unbroken chain of scientifically incontrovertible evidence showing that distinctions between opposite-sex and same-sex parents are inconceivable. Most prominent is the 2005 claim in a brief by the American Psychological Association that “[n]ot a single study has found children of lesbian or gay parents to be disadvantaged in any significant respect relative to children of heterosexual parents.” Here’s what the district court claimed in the Proposition 8 case:
Children raised by gay or lesbian parents are as likely as children raised by heterosexual parents to be healthy,successful and well-adjusted. The research supporting this conclusion is accepted beyond serious debate in the field of developmental psychology.
And here’s Nathaniel Frank, writing in Slate – before admitting that “none of this should matter” because he would support SSM “[e]ven if gay parenting did disadvantage kids”:
“Rarely is there as much consensus in any area of social science as in the case of gay parenting,” said Judith Stacey, the New York University sociologist who is one of the deans of gay parenting scholarship…. Is there any research showing disadvantages for kids with gay parents? Try as they might, conservative scholars, often funded by anti-gay think tanks, have failed to produce a single study….Whatever you may say about the limits of the gay parenting studies – and all research has limits – the pro-gay research is currently winning, 45-0.
In fact, most of the studies in this area have suffered from a combination of flaws, which cannot be cured simply by repeating them over and over in multiple studies: (1) very small sample sizes, the bane of any kind of statistical study; (2) unrepresentative, often self-selected samples, (3) inherent biases in self-reporting by the parents; and (4) failure to choose a proper comparison group. Partly this is the inherent difficulty of the project, given the relative recency and rarity of such families. But there are also reasons to suspect that it reflects the political and social biases of the researchers.
The amicus brief filed in the Proposition 8 case by Leon Kass, Harvey Mansfield and the Institute for Marriage and Public Policy lays out the general argument for why social science “consensus” reports like the APA’s should be regarded more as political documents than science, and why social science in general and fields like sociology and psychology in particular are especially prone to left-leaning political bias that colors and enforces such consensuses. The brief describes the characteristics of the existing research:
One prominent study, for example, relied on a sample recruited entirely at lesbian events, in women’s bookstores, and in lesbian newspapers. Others relied on samples as small as 18 or 33 or 44 cases. And most of them relied heavily on reports by parents about their children’s well-being while the children were still under their own care.
(Citations omitted). This is the kind of “random” sampling that gives you internet polls won by Ron Paul. The perils of self-reporting by parents are especially noteworthy in this context, where the reporting parents are fully aware of the political purposes to which the research will be put. Yet the proponents adopt the familiar tactic of declaring that a “consensus” of a large number of studies endorsed by a large number of politically sympathetic scientists is conclusive of the issue, regardless of the actual scientific rigor of the studies themselves. We have seen this movie many times before.
Salon, for example, touts one long-running study of 78 children of lesbian families over 25 years that found “zero percent of children reported physical or sexual abuse – not a one.” Ezra Klein cites the author of an American Academy of Pediatrics brief in favor of SSM who describes this as “[t]he best study” available. But given the number of families involved and the self-selected nature of such a long-running sample, it is a stretch to consider this a significant finding applicable to the population as a whole. Albert Pujols opened last season by going 116 plate appearances without a home run; this does not make it irrational to be concerned about pitching to Albert Pujols.
The most detailed effort yet to open the hood and see what is actually inside these studies was performed by Loren Marks of the LSU School of Human Ecology, who published a paper in Social Science Research in 2012 examining the 59 published studies behind the APA’s breezy assertion of a scientific consensus. (Marks did not examine the other 8 studies cited by the APA, which were “unpublished dissertations.”) Marks opened his paper by comparing the research on same-sex families to the by-now bulletproof research showing the advantages of traditional married parents over “cohabiting, divorced, step, and single-parent families,” noting that those studies used “large, representative samples” such as “four nationally representative longitudinal studies with more than 20,000 total participants.” By contrast, Marks found:
-“[M]ore than three-fourths (77%) of the studies cited by the APA brief are based on small, nonrepresentative, convenience samples of fewer than 100 participants. Many of the non-representative samples contain far fewer than 100 participants, including one study with five participants” -The samples were “racially homogenous,” none of them focusing on African-American, Hispanic or Asian-American families. Of course, social science studies of the family commonly find large racial disparities – picking an all-white sample is an extremely easy way to bias your results. -More broadly, he cited a “continuing tendency of same-sex parenting researchers to select privileged lesbian samples…’Much of the research [still] involved small samples that are predominantly White, well-educated [and] middle-class.'” -“[C]omparison studies on children of gay fathers are almost non-existent in the 2005 Brief.” -“[I]n selecting heterosexual comparison groups for their studies, many same-sex parenting researchers have not used marriage-based, intact families as heterosexual representatives, but have instead used single mothers…[one pair of researchers] used 90.9 percent single-father samples in two other studies.” -The APA, while ignoring these flaws in the studies it relied on, excluded one of the largest studies available, which had found significant differences in educational outcomes on the theory that assessments by teachers (i.e., tests and progress reports) were “subjective assessments.” Note the contrast between this and the APA’s eager acceptance of self-reporting by parents. -Most of the studies ignored “societal concerns of intergenerational poverty, collegiate education and/or labor force contribution, serious criminality, incarceration, early childbearing, drug/alcohol abuse, or suicide that are frequently the foci of national studies on children, adolescents, and young adults,” and again the APA simply ignored one “book-length empirical study” that had used a more diverse sample and had concluded that “If we perceive deviance in a general sense, to include excessive drinking, drug use, truancy, sexual deviance, and criminal offenses, and if we rely on the statements made by adult children (over 18 years of age)…[then] children of homosexual parents report deviance in higher proportions than children of (married or cohabiting) heterosexual couples.” -“[V]irtually none of the peer-reviewed, same-sex parenting comparison studies” looked at adults raised in same-sex parent homes, but only at children and adolescents, thus excluding from consideration social and emotional problems that are commonly observed only in adulthood. Research on children of divorce, for example, has found a number of problems that do not surface until adulthood.
Nobody who has not already made their mind up would find research of this nature conclusive of anything.
One recent study that attempted to fix the problems Marks identified was published in the same edition of the same journal by University of Texas professor Mark Regnerus. Regnerus’ study had – as he freely admitted – limitations of its own, discussed below. But the reaction to Regnerus’ work – in contrast to how the badly flawed studies examined by Marks were swallowed uncritically – vividly illustrates why credible, unbiased research on this topic is so hard to come by.
Regnerus set out to do a truly randomly selected study over a large population sample, and to remove the problem of biased parental reporting by interviewing adults about their childhood experiences. His sample covered 15,000 respondents, and despite the subsequent firestorm, no problem was ever identified with his methods or the data he gathered. Unlike most of the prior research, the respondents with a “gay father” or “lesbian mother” (more on which below) were, respectively, 48% and 43% black or Hispanic. His findings were dramatic across numerous types of outcomes, detailing greatly elevated incidence of parental rape, parental pedophilia and suicidal tendencies; as he explained his findings,
Even after including controls for age, race, gender, and things like being bullied as a youth, or the gay-friendliness of the state in which they live, such respondents were more apt to report being unemployed, less healthy, more depressed, more likely to have cheated on a spouse or partner, smoke more pot, had trouble with the law, report more male and female sex partners, more sexual victimization, and were more likely to reflect negatively on their childhood family life, among other things.
But Regnerus’ effort faced the usual problem: his random sample, large as it was, turned up only a little over 200 respondents who said they had a parent who had been in a gay or lesbian relationship. And of those 200, only two – two! – reported that the parent’s relationship was stable enough to cover their entire childhood (in both cases, the parents were lesbians):
In his original article, he reported that an initially-screened population of 15,000 young adults aged 18-39 yielded a set of 163 who said their mothers had had a same-sex relationship sometime during their childhood. (There were only 73 who said this of their fathers.) In his new article, Regnerus has re-sorted a dozen of the FGR cases into the MLR category (since in these cases the subjects reported that both parents had had same-sex relationships). Now focusing on his 175 subjects in the MLR category, he finds that fewer than half of them (85) ever lived with both their mother and her same-sex partner during their childhood. But that low |
while, at the same time, going to the heart of the matter,” said Mark Lilla, who teaches intellectual history at Columbia University. “Most academics do neither — they float in between. But Tony was able to talk about the big picture and explain why it matters now.”
Tony Robert Judt was born in the East End of London on Jan. 2, 1948, and grew up in Putney. His parents, although secular and apolitical Jews, encouraged him to join the Labor Zionist youth organization Dror as a way to meet friends. He became a fervent convert to the cause, spending several summers working on a kibbutz in Israel and serving as the organization’s national secretary from 1965 to 1967.
“I was the ideal recruit: articulate, committed and uncompromisingly ideologically conformist,” he wrote in an autobiographical sketch for The New York Review of Books in February.
After he passed the entrance examinations to King’s College, Cambridge, he volunteered as an auxiliary with the Israeli Defense Forces during the Six-Day War, acting as an interpreter for other volunteers in the newly conquered Golan Heights. There he lost faith in the Zionist mission and began to see Israel as a malign occupying power whose self-definition as a Jewish state, he later argued, made it “an anachronism.”
Mr. Judt returned to Britain disabused and highly skeptical of the radical political currents swirling around him at Cambridge, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in history from King’s College in 1969. After studying for a year at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris, he returned to King’s College and earned a doctorate in 1972.
Advertisement Continue reading the main story
His dissertation, on the French socialist party’s re-emergence after World War I, was published in France as “La Reconstruction du Parti Socialiste: 1921-1926” (1976). In 1979 he followed up with “Socialism in Provence, 1871-1914: A Study in the Origins of the Modern French Left,” and in 1986 he published “Marxism and the French Left: Studies on Labour and Politics in France, 1830-1981.”
These relatively specialist works led to two interpretive studies of French postwar intellectual life: “Past Imperfect: French Intellectuals, 1944-1956” (1994) and “The Burden of Responsibility: Blum, Camus, Aron and the French Twentieth Century” (1998).
Photo
Casting his lot with the nonideological liberals, like Raymond Aron and Albert Camus, who dared to criticize the Soviet Union and third-world revolutionary movements, he subjected Sartre and others to a withering critique that came as a shock to many French and American intellectuals. His target, he wrote, was “the uneasy conscience and moral cowardice of an intellectual generation.”
Fluidly written, with a strong narrative drive and an insistent, polemical edge, both books established Mr. Judt as a historian whose ability to see the present in the past gave his work an unusual air of immediacy. Increasingly he inclined toward free-ranging inquiry across disciplines, pursuing a wide range of his interests reflected in the essay collection “Reappraisals: Reflections on the Forgotten Twentieth Century” (2008).
“A historian also has to be an anthropologist, also has to be a philosopher, also has to be a moralist, also has to understand the economics of the period he is writing about,” he told the online magazine Historically Speaking in 2006. “Though they are often arbitrary, disciplinary boundaries certainly exist. Nevertheless, the historian has to learn to transcend them in order to write intelligently.”
Newsletter Sign Up Continue reading the main story Please verify you're not a robot by clicking the box. Invalid email address. Please re-enter. You must select a newsletter to subscribe to. Sign Up You will receive emails containing news content, updates and promotions from The New York Times. You may opt-out at any time. You agree to receive occasional updates and special offers for The New York Times's products and services. Thank you for subscribing. An error has occurred. Please try again later. View all New York Times newsletters.
In 1987, after teaching at Cambridge, the University of California at Berkeley and Oxford, he began teaching at N.Y.U. There, in 1995, he helped found the Remarque Institute with a bequest from Paulette Goddard, the widow of the writer Erich Maria Remarque. Under his directorship, it became an important international center for the study of Europe, past and present. His skepticism about the future of the European Union found expression in a sharply polemical, pamphlet-length book, “A Grand Illusion?: An Essay on Europe” (1996).
His first two marriages ended in divorce. He is survived by his wife, the dance critic Jennifer Homans, and their two sons, Daniel and Nicholas.
His views on Israel made Mr. Judt an increasingly polarizing figure. He placed himself in the midst of a bitter debate when, in 2003, he outlined a one-state solution to the Israel-Palestinian problem in The New York Review of Books, proposing that Israel accept a future as a secular, bi-national state in which Jews and Arabs enjoyed equal status.
In 2006, a scheduled talk at the Polish Consulate in Manhattan was abruptly canceled for reasons later hotly disputed, but apparently under pressure, explicit or implicit, from the Anti-Defamation League and the American Jewish Committee.
Advertisement Continue reading the main story
Leon Wieseltier, the literary editor of The New Republic, told The New York Observer at the time that Mr. Judt, on Israel, “has become precisely the kind of intellectual whom his intellectual heroes would have despised.” Mr. Judt’s name had been removed from the masthead of the magazine, where he had been a contributing editor, after his article on the one-state solution.
Mr. Judt expressed some surprise that he should be defined by his position on one issue and expressed distaste for public controversy, while showing an unmistakable relish for the cut and thrust of public debate.
“Today I’m regarded outside New York University as a looney-tunes leftie self-hating Jewish communist; inside the university I’m regarded as a typical old-fashioned white male liberal elitist,” he told The Guardian of London in January 2010. “I like that. I’m on the edge of both, it makes me feel comfortable.”
His discovery in 2008 that he had Lou Gehrig’s disease did not deter him from his work. He continued to write and lecture.
Last October, wrapped in a blanket and sitting in a wheelchair with a breathing device attached to his nose, Mr. Judt spoke about social democracy before an audience of 700 at N.Y.U. He turned that lecture into a small book, “Ill Fares the Land,” published in March by Penguin Press.
During the lecture, his last public appearance, he told the audience that some of his American friends felt that seeing him talk about A.L.S. would be uplifting. But he added, “I’m English, and we don’t do ‘uplifting.’ ”
He did write about his illness, however. In an essay in The New York Review of Books in January, he wrote, “In contrast to almost every other serious or deadly disease, one is thus left free to contemplate at leisure and in minimal discomfort the catastrophic progress of one’s own deterioration.”
History remained uppermost in his mind, though. In “Ill Fares the Land,” he turned his attention to a problem he regarded as acute: the loss of faith in social democracy, and the power of the state to do good, that had brought prosperity to so many European countries after World War II.
“The historian’s task is not to disrupt for the sake of it, but it is to tell what is almost always an uncomfortable story and explain why the discomfort is part of the truth we need to live well and live properly,” he told Historically Speaking. “A well-organized society is one in which we know the truth about ourselves collectively, not one in which we tell pleasant lies about ourselves.”Almost a week after president-elect Donald Trump shocked many around the world with his U.S. election win, his long-time friend, Conrad Black, remains unsurprised.
“I just didn’t drink the Kool-Aid on the other side,” Black told BNN’s Jon Erlichman in an interview on Monday. “I knew his appeal was stronger than the conventional wisdom accepted that it was.”
Black cited the enormous support Trump earned during the Republican primaries as an early indication of the billionaire businessman’s popularity. He said Trump managed to increase voter turnout for the Republican primaries by 60 per cent from four years ago.
Black also believes that, despite reports Trump was shocked by the election outcome, the Republican candidate had really expected to win.
The real Donald Trump
Black said he had trouble marrying the controversial, public persona Trump displayed during the campaign with the man he knows personally.
“The real Donald Trump is not such an absurd character and not so bombastic,” Black said. “He’s certainly not a self-effacing man, but he’s quite presentable.”
The “real Trump” according to Black, is the subdued man who appeared before supporters to deliver his victory speech hours after polls closed.
“He spoke in a quiet voice, quite amusingly, not at all self-importantly and it was rather suave,” Black said. “That is him. He’s a great raconteur.”
Black said Trump has a clear mandate when it comes to reforms for campaign financing, taxes, immigration, political correctness, education, employment and national security. He described Trump’s plans as a “moderate program.”
Trump’s relationship with Canada
Black said he isn’t concerned about potential friction between Trump and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
“They’re both affable people. I think they’ll get on very well,” Black said.
He said there may be a few areas of contention between the two leaders when it comes to certain policies, such as climate change, that will have to be managed carefully, however. Black also mentioned the Keystone XL pipeline proposal and the softwood lumber dispute as other issues the two countries will have to address.
Trump has been very vocal about his opposition to the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and his plans to make changes to the deal. Black said this position shouldn’t be misinterpreted as an insult to Canada.
“I think it’s clear that Donald Trump doesn’t have a problem with Canada. When he attacks NAFTA, he’s not attacking Canada-U.S. free trade,” he clarified.But regional parties remain its biggest hurdle
As the NDA government approaches three years in power,
available evidence suggests it is popular across large parts of
the country. But BJP is known to be in permanent campaign
mode and would like to leave nothing to chance before 2019 Lok
Sabha elections. Thus party president Amit Shah reiterated at
BJP’s national executive meet last month his ambition of dominating
all possible political space from panchayat to Parliament and
breaking into opposition bastions.
After the UP election victory, foremost among BJP’s ambitions
must be breaking the mahagathbandhan in Bihar, which halted its
advance in the country’s Hindi-speaking regions. In that political
context come income tax raids and CBI investigations of prominent
opposition leaders and their kin, not fortuitously according to the
latter.
Among these have been raids against entities associated with RJD chief Lalu Prasad Yadav, with Lalu’s daughter Misa and sons Tej Pratap and Tejashwi – the latter two being ministers in Bihar’s cabinet – accused of involvement in corrupt land deals worth Rs 1,000 crore. BJP has been taunting Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar, who came to power on the back of his clean image as an administrator, about inaction against RJD leaders even as Kumar’s decision not to support Lalu in public has not gone down well with RJD. While BJP must clearly be hoping to drive a wedge between Lalu and image-conscious Nitish and thus break the mahagathbandhan, Lalu will not be a pushover. As a shrewd politician in feudal Bihar, he could turn the situation around politically and garner sympathy by portraying himself as a victim.
BJP has plans for Bengal and Odisha as well where regional
parties rule the roost. Its Mission Bengal received a jolt when
Trinamool Congress became the first mainstream party to snatch
Mirik municipality from BJP ally Gorkha Janmukti Morcha (GJM)
in Darjeeling Hills in three decades. TMC won four of seven
municipalities that went to the polls on Sunday. In Odisha BJP was
impressive in recently concluded zila panchayat elections, winning
297 seats up from 36 it won in 2012. But in terms of assembly seats,
this puts BJP ahead in only 41 of the 147 assembly seats. Repeating
what BJP did in UP in southern and eastern states will certainly be
an uphill task.Trade surplus surges to $3.6b in February as imports tumble
Updated
Australia's trade surplus rebounded to $3.6 billion in February, the second largest on record, and Australia's fourth in a row.
Key points: $3.6 billion surplus second largest on record
Large fall in imports of electrical goods and clothes drives the larger than expected result
Iron ore and coal exports edge up, while LNG and rural exports fall sharply
The unexpectedly large jump was largely due to the value of imports tumbling, more than a surge in exports.
Seasonally adjusted figures from the Australian Bureau of Statistics showed, while the value of exports rose by 1 per cent or $469 million in February, imports were down by 5 per cent or $1.6 billion.
However, it is the fourth successive monthly surplus, after almost three years of deficits and is only $100 million shy of the widest surplus of $3.7 billion recorded in December last year and well ahead of market estimates of a $2 billion surplus.
Surplus may have peaked: analysts
JP Morgan's Tom Kennedy said looks can be deceiving and the underlying drivers of the result were less favourable than hoped.
"Unlike last year's stellar outcome which was underpinned by surging exports, today's print is mostly owing to a surprise 5 per cent drop in import values, which more than unwound the previous month's strength," Mr Kennedy said.
Mr Kennedy said it was worth noting that the figures do not take into account last week's devastating storms in northern Queensland.
"The outlook for Australia's external sector will temporarily sour over the next few months as the ramifications from last week's cyclone in Queensland become clearer," he said.
Capital Economics analyst Paul Dales argued the February result well see the peak in the current run of surpluses.
"With commodity prices having started to edge lower and the legacy of Cyclone Debbie currently reducing the volume of coal being exported, the trade surplus may be past its peak," Mr Dales said.
Iron ore and coal remain solid, LNG and rural exports fall
There were mixed results for major commodity exports.
The value of coal exports rose 4 per cent, or $238 million, although volumes of both hard coking coal and thermal coal were down.
The value of top quality iron ore "fines" shipped to China edged up, driven by a 4 per cent rise in price, but overall volumes softened, down 8 per cent on the month before.
Gold exports - which have the tendency to be highly volatile - drove the bulk of resource sector gains, up 33 per cent or $352 million.
Surprisingly, the value of LNG shipments fell on the back of lower prices and a 10 per cent decline in volumes.
Rural exports were also weaker, down 5 per cent, dragged down by a 15 per cent fall in wool which had been enjoying record prices in recent months.
It was a surprisingly large retraction in imports, principally consumption goods, that drove up the surplus.
Imports of electrical goods fell 20 per cent in February, while clothing and footwear was down 15 per cent.
Falling imports point to weak domestic spending
Citi economist Josh Williamson said the Reserve Bank was likely to be concerned with the sharp decline in consumption imports.
The data comes one day after disappointing retail sales figures that showed an ongoing decline in discretionary spending.
"With businesses paring back consumption imports in February, it looks as if consumer facing businesses are expecting a continuation of soft household spending," Mr Williamson noted.
"Weaker consumption imports also points to a paring back of non-food retail inventories, which we suspect implies a continuation of the cost-cutting cycle that also highlights Australia's soft underbelly of domestic demand."
Topics: trade, oil-and-gas, mining-industry, iron-ore, gold, coal, globalisation---economy, economic-trends, business-economics-and-finance, australia
First postedGet the latest from TODAY Sign up for our newsletter
May 10, 2016, 11:12 AM GMT / Source: TODAY By Tom Costello
Any time Mary Gaston drives by the intersection where a driver high on marijuana plowed into her son’s motorcycle two and a half years ago, the loud bang of the impact replays in her head.
Blake had hugged her before he left the suburban Seattle restaurant’s parking lot — it was the last time she would ever feel his embrace.
“I heard it and I knew instantly,” Gaston remembers. “I said ‘that’s Blake’ and I just ran. It was not even 50 feet away. And he was lying in the intersection bleeding out.”
Though doctors tried to save his life, 23-year-old Blake Gaston didn’t make it.
His story is becoming frighteningly more common. A new report by the American Auto Association (AAA) has found that the percentage of drivers who are high on pot during fatal accidents in Washington State more than doubled between 2013 and 2014.
Open vintage shredder and bag with medical marijuana; Shutterstock ID 414208561; PO: today.com; Other: claudia Maxim Apryatin / Shutterstock
In Washington, only looking at crashes in which at least one driver tested positive for active THC, there were 40 fatalities in 2010, compared to 85 in 2014, according to AAA estimates. However, a large number of drivers were not tested for THC or did not have available blood test results, so THC-related fatalities could be much higher, the report notes.
The AAA report focused only on Washington state, while legalized the sale and possession of marijuana in 2012. It did not track driving while high fatality trends in Colorado, which also legalized pot that in 2012.
But with marijuana on the ballot to become legal in more states, AAA researchers fear that the numbers will rise more sharply.
The problem is, many people don’t realize that “driving under the influence” isn’t just about drunk driving. It also means driving when you’re high.
“Driving is already a tough task,” says Jake Nelson, director of Traffic Safety Advocacy and Research at AAA. “When you add a drug that impairs our ability to manage that task, it’s a recipe for disaster.”
Currently 20 states allow medicinal marijuana use, while four states and Washington, D.C., allow recreational use.
Related: Pot fuels surge in drunk driving deaths
After the accident, Mary Gaston learned that the driver of the car that hit her son’s motorcycle, 33-year-old Caleb Floyd, admitted he had been smoking pot. He was eventually convicted of vehicular homicide and sentenced to three years in prison.
That’s little comfort to Mary, who wonders where her bright, talented son would be now if he not been hit by a stoned driver.
A computer whiz who developed websites, Blake was also an accomplished musician.
By 23, he'd already mastered numerous musical instruments, including piano, guitar and drums. He didn’t just play music, though, he also wrote songs too.
“Blake was going to change the world,” Gaston says. “Blake had an energy about him. He affected people’s lives in such a positive way. It makes me happy to think about him. Even in 23 years he lived a hell of a life. His life was way too short. But he lived a hell of a life.”The Winnipeg Blue Bombers won't have to foot the bill for any repairs due to cracks at Investors Group Field, the CFL team's brand-new stadium.
Investors Group Field has not even hosted its first regular-season CFL game yet, and already there are visible signs of wear and tear on the building. Cracks have begun to emerge in the stadium's concrete, with some as big as a centimetre wide.
From ramps to stairs to concourse floors, the cracks are everywhere. Some have even been filled in.
Construction of Investors Group Field was overseen by BBB Stadium Inc., a consortium involving various levels of government and the University of Manitoba, where the stadium is located.
City of Winnipeg chief administrative officer Phil Sheegl, who is the city's representative in the consortium, told CBC News on Thursday that Stuart Olson Dominion, the stadium's general contractor, is responsible for any repairs to the cracks.
The Blue Bombers organization also confirmed that the contractor is responsible for addressing the cracks.
However, a statement from Stuart Olson Dominion says the cracks are not structural and the stadium has been inspected and certified by engineers.
According to University of Manitoba civil engineering professor Fariborz Hashemian, cracks in concrete aren't unusual but they can be prevented.
Hashemian said he could not comment on Investors Group Field specifically, but he said if concrete isn't given enough time to cure it can crack easily.
"You need to give it enough time, enough moisture to keep it at the proper temperature for the curing process to happen properly," he said.
He said cracks can be reduced by designers.
"There's also some detailing that we can put into our design by putting in control joints or crack control joints or contraction points where we tell the concrete where to crack, basically," said Hashemian.
'Not acceptable'
But, the professor added anything beyond a hairline crack could be a warning sign.
"Cracks are always a way of the concrete telling you it's not happy — something is wrong and you got to take a look at it," he said.
A number of local engineers have been reluctant to discuss the Investors Group Field cracks, specifically, with CBC News.
But an engineering professor at McGill University, who specializes in concrete, agreed to review some video and offer some insight.
"On a public structure like this, where you know, thousands of people will be coming to events, it's not acceptable," said Saeed Mirza.
"If I'm designing something, my expectations will be that that structure will not crack."
Mirza said cracking happens all the time and hairline cracks are acceptable, but anything larger can cause moisture to seep into the structure and could cause permanent and extensive damage.
He added an inspection of the stadium would need to be done to see exactly what happened to the concrete and what remedies might be needed.
Cracking'very common', says contractor
Officials with Stuart Olson Dominion told CBC News the cracking is only on wearing slabs and is non-structural.
The cracks appear only on a thin "topping" of insulation, the company said.
Company officials said concrete in that application could shrink and expand as it cures, and cracking is unavoidable and very common.
They added the structure was inspected and certified by engineers.
Mirza agrees but said there is much that can be done to mitigate the size of cracks.
"The engineer has to control that shrinkage in such a way that your cracks, these wide cracks, don't appear," said Mirza.Al-Qassam Bridgades, the armed wing of Gaza rulers Hamas, have issued a warning against foreign airlines flying into Tel Aviv, a day after an Egypt-brokered ceasefire fell through and fighting resumed between Israel and Palestinian factions in the besieged coastal enclave.
"We are warning international airlines and pressing them to stop flying into Ben Gurion airport from 6am (0300 GMT) Thursday," Al-Qassam's website said on Wednesday.
Flights to Ben Gurion were suspended earlier in July by US and European states due to a Palestinian rocket being fired nearby.
AFP mentioned that Al-Qassam Brigades spokesman Abou Obeida said in a speech broadcast on Hamas's Al-Aqsa TV channel, "We are calling on the Palestinian delegation to withdraw immediately from Cairo and not to return."
"There will be no return to talks after today and any move in this direction will never achieve any result," he added.
Israel and Palestinian factions have blamed each other for the collapse of an Egyptian-sponsored 24-hour truce late Tuesday which led to the re-eruption of armed confrontations.
Prior to that, Egypt brokered two 72-hour truce agreements and a five-day ceasefire in a bid to allow more time for negotiators from both sides to reach a common ground.
Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered new airstrikes on Gaza and withdrew his negotiators from the Cairo talks.
Fatah leader and head of the Palestinian delegation Azzam Al-Ahmed said his team will leave Cairo on Wednesday. "The enemy lost a golden chance to reach a ceasefire with limited demands, for which it will pay after today."
The wife and two-year-old son of Al-Qassam Brigades' commander Mohammed Deif were killed in an Israeli air strike on a building in Gaza City late Tuesday – but Hamas said Deif was still alive.
"The Zionist enemy failed to assassinate general commander Abu Khaled (Deif)," said Obeida, Al-Qassam Bridgades' spokesman.
The Israeli assault on Gaza has killed 2,047 Palestinians and 67 on the Israeli side since 8 July. Palestinian emergency services say more than 10,240 Palestinians have been wounded.
Short link:As far as marijuana is concerned, most of the attention has recently focused on the start of commercial sales of the drug. But this week, the mediator of pot's mind-altering effects, the chemical THC, also graced the pages of Science, and not simply because it's easier to obtain in Colorado. As with many other illicit drugs, THC can be used to tell us about how the brain works. And, in this case, it has identified an entirely new bit of signaling that normally helps limit the drug's intoxicating effects.
The study came about because some scientists were curious as to whether drugs altered steroid signaling in the brain. We tend to think of steroids as muscle-building molecules, but things like testosterone also affect behavior in both men and women. And the brain also produces a specialized set of hormones that regulate behavior and cognition.
So, to find out whether drug use altered the brain's steroid signaling, a large international team of researchers started feeding a variety of drugs to mice and rats: cocaine, morphine, nicotine, alcohol—and THC. They then looked at whether a variety of steroids in the brain had altered concentrations. Just about every drug caused some changes, but most of these were relatively minor. In contrast, one steroid, pregnenolone, went up by 3,000 percent.
That's a somewhat surprising result, given that pregnenolone isn't thought to be very exciting. As far as anyone knew, it was a precursor that enzymes modified into a number of different active steroids, but pregnenolone itself didn't seem to do anything. Yet tests with several chemicals that also activate the cannabinoid receptor that THC binds to showed that all of them boosted the level of pregnenolone. And the authors showed that activating the cannabinoid receptor boosted the levels of the enzyme that synthesizes the steroid.
To find out whether pregnenolone might have a previously unidentified function, the team obtained a chemical that blocked its synthesis. Then the researchers injected it along with THC and tested the animals for what they termed the "cannabinoid tetrad": slow movement, poor regulation of body temperature, reduced sensitivity to pain, and catalepsy (a specific type of loss of consciousness). They also tested for symptoms normally seen in humans, like memory loss and the munchies.
Normally, you'd expect (or at least I'd expect) that a signaling molecule induced by a drug might mediate a subset of its effects. So, injecting an inhibitor that blocked the signaling should selectively eliminate some of those effects—stopping the munchies while leaving animals lethargic and indifferent to pain. Instead, the exact opposite occurred. The inhibitor of pregnenolone synthesis enhanced every single one of the effects the authors tested. Thus, animals without the hormone seem to respond to THC even more strongly than they normally do.
The authors conclude that pregnenolone actually binds to the cannabinoid receptor that THC activates and, in doing so, inhibits its activity. Thus, it appears that the active ingredient in pot creates a feedback loop that limits its effects: THC increases pregnenolone, which in turn blocks the response to THC. These sorts of feedback loops aren't uncommon and tend to be used to keep a signaling event from causing an excessive response. It also suggests that the intoxicating effects of marijuana would be even stronger if it weren't for this bit of brain chemistry.
The authors suggest that the hormone could have a role in treating anyone who became dependent upon THC. But, until any side effects are characterized, it's probably not a good idea to try to use this to sober up before driving.
Science, 2013. DOI: 10.1126/science.1243985 (About DOIs).Cardio For Muay Thai – All For The Win
How To Develop Endurance, Stamina & Confidence: Cardio for Muay Thai
Scenario 1 :
You gasp for air, your throat on fire as each breath scorches your chest like napalm. Your hands feel like 10-ton breezeblocks and your shoulders ache like you’ve just done one hundred pull-ups.
You can barely lift your leg to check the kick you see telegraphed a mile away. You see openings – a low guard, an easy sweep – but when you tell your body to move, it ignores you.
“I can’t…I can’t…I can’t…”.
A sense of panic pervades. Your opponent, technically inferior, steps into the clinch and throws you to the ground. The final bell goes and it’s called as a split decision. You think you’ve done enough. But when the referee raises your opponent’s hand, you wish you’d done more.
Earlier: the alarm goes off and you slap it down, turning over and going back to sleep…you tell yourself ”I’ll run another day, I need a rest…”
Scenario 2 :
Your opponent stands frozen like a deer in the headlights. He’s run out of ideas, and you’ve outworked him in all areas. All he has left is a desperate overhand, and each one is weaker than the last.
You punish his every attempt to attack you, choosing your shots and enjoying the high ground. You find yourself performing outrageous techniques that you’ve barely dared to display in sparring, yet your opponent has nothing left after trying to knock you out. The ref calls it, your hand is raised and you emerge victorious, high as a kite for weeks – hard work pays off.
Earlier: you focus on the fight ahead, following the beat of your shoes on the pavement, knowing that you’re doing all you can to outwork your opponent. While they sleep, you progress; this is what it takes to win.
Cardio to a fighter is like capital to a businessman. It’s like votes to a politician. It’s oxygen to a fire. You NEED it. Without it, there is no fight in you.
This is good news – because cardio is the easiest thing you can attain. All it takes is dedication, commitment and discipline.
For me, it took a loss I felt I didn’t deserve. Keeping a diary of all my fights, I realised that a common thread in my reflections on each one – whether a win or a loss – was that my cardio could have been better. So this year I dedicated myself to it. And started feeling the benefits. Not just in fights, but in training, in sparring, in confidence and weight control. Everything.
Yes, it’s hard work, but unlike the repetition and mental fatigue involved in improving in technique, unlike the physical pain and fear factor of hard sparring, unlike the miserable grind of cutting weight, it’s a simple equation: you just have to get out there and do it. And so this is my current routine (in kilometres – convert to miles here if you need to):
My Week of Muay Thai Training
MONDAY: RUNNING / BOXING / MUAY THAI
5.30am – get up & run 8-10km
6.50am – leave for work
4pm – finish work and travel into the city for training
5.30pm – boxing
6.30pm – muay thai technique, drills and padwork
8.15pm – finish training
9pm – get home and eat
11.20pm – sleep
TUESDAY: SPARRING / MUAY THAI
6.20am – get up
6.50am – leave for work
4pm – finish work and travel into the city for training
5.30pm – sparring
6.30pm – muay thai bag sprints, heavy bag work and padwork
8.15pm – finish training
9pm – get home and eat
11.20pm – sleep
WEDNESDAY: RUNNING / KICKBOXING / MUAY THAI
6.30am – get up & run 8-10km
8am – start work (work from home day – writing)
4.30pm – finish work and travel into the city for training
5.30pm – kickboxing
6.30pm – muay thai technique, drills and padwork
8.15pm – finish training
9pm – get home and eat
11.20pm – sleep
THURSDAY – YOGA / BOXING / MUAY THAI
6.20am – get up
6.50am – leave for work
12-12.30pm – lunchtime yoga
4pm – finish work and travel into the city for training
5.30pm – boxing
6.30pm – muay thai bag sprints, heavy bag work and padwork
8.15pm – finish training
9pm – get home and eat
11.20pm – sleep
FRIDAY: KICKBOXING / HARD SPARRING
7am – get up
8am – start work (different site, closer to home)
4.30pm – finish work and travel into the city for training
5.30pm – kickboxing
6.30pm – hard sparring
8.15pm – finish training
9pm – get home, relax, watch a movie, have a drink
SATURDAY: RUNNING
?am – get up when I wake up and run 12-18km
A Simple Guide To Cardio – Sample Roadwork Workout
If you’re a total beginner at this, start slow and build up. Go running three times a week. Here’s one potential schedule
Week 1: Monday 2km / Wednesday 3km / Saturday 4km
Week 2: repeat.
Week 3: Mon 2.5km / Weds 3.5km / Sat 5km
Week 4: Mon 3km / Weds 4km / Sat 6km
Keep building up and what once felt really hard will soon feel easy. By month three, aim to do three runs of 6km / 8km / 10km. Keep building up. Don’t allow excuses. Find a way to make cardio work around your other training and work/school/family schedule.
There are two important elements to cardio – aerobic and anaerobic. Simply speaking, aerobic is long term energy: “endurance cardio”. Anaerobic is short term energy: “burst cardio”. As a fighter you need both. Aerobic is trained by longer runs. Anaerobic is trained by resistance training and intervals: running sets of steps, hills or sprints interspersed with jogging.
As you get closer to a fight, you need to place greater emphasis on your anaerobic systems. This could for example consist of a 6km run – 2kms to warm up (followed by a good stretch), 2 kms of sprints (sprint 15m / jog 15m / repeat), 2kms to warm down.
Start your anaerobic program three to four weeks out from your fight, and finish it one week before your fight, giving your body and legs time to recover.
Cardio For Muay Thai Tips
ALTERNATIVES: Perhaps you have bad knees – if this is the case, replace some sessions (or all sessions, if it’s really bad) with swimming or cycling.
RECOVERY: Make sure to space your sessions out. Ideally have one full recovery day a week. I try to run as early as possible on a Saturday so I get close to 48 hours of full recovery before my training week starts again on Monday morning. I’ve started to take magnesium which I find helps with muscle recovery plus protein shakes after running and training. Stretch well.
SHOES: They can make all the difference between pain and even in preventing serious injury. You don’t need to spend a lot of money and the jury is out on whether gait analysis is actually worth it (I’ve found it helpful), but make sure you try a few different types of shoe (high arch, low arch etc).
MUSIC: When I began running I just couldn’t do it to music. It would fuck up my breathing, put my rhythm out and distract me. But then I read an article about how it could improve your times substantially so I made a playlist and experimented. I started smashing my previous times, and feeling intensely motivated – even looking forward to getting the earphones in and pushing hard.
Differing people have different opinions, but I absolutely love it!
I have a big mix to which I’ve added over the years and it’s currently 128 songs and 589 minutes long, which keeps me from getting sick of it since I use it on random three times a week. I listen to everything from techno to metal to rap to pop to funk to punk to instrumental soundtrack music – it really helps me get in the flow and push harder when one of the really inspiring tracks comes on. Ten selections from random mode:
KILLING JOKE – Requiem
THE NOTORIOUS XX – Dead Wrong Intro [the notorious b.i.g. vs the xx]
DAFT PUNK – Get Lucky
VATICAN SHADOW – USS Carl Vinson Night Tide Funeral
STANDISH/CARLYON – Industrial Resort
VATICAN SHADOW – Not the Son of Desert Storm, But the Child of Chechnya
BJÖRK – All Is Full Of Love
DEPECHE MODE – Barrel of a Gun
HANS ZIMMER – Dream Within A Dream (Inception Soundtrack)
NANCY SINATRA – These Boots Are Made For Walkin’
FOCUS: Running is a great time to |
about 10,000 and 9,000 students, respectively, had online testing issues. Because of the interruptions in 2013, the state and CTB came to a settlement for $3 million.
Altman said the state no longer has any testing contracts with CTB.
Chalkbeat reached out to representatives from CTB, which is now part of the Data Recognition Corporation, and McGraw-Hill Education, but did not immediately receive a response to a request for comment.Photo: Aftab Hussain
Advertisement
Human skin’s natural ability to feel sensations such as touch and temperature difference is not easily replicated with artificial materials in the research lab. That challenge did not stop a Saudi Arabian research team from using cheap household items to make a “paper skin” that mimics many sensory functions of human skin.
The artificial skin may represent the first single sensing platform capable of simultaneously measuring pressure, touch, proximity, temperature, humidity, flow, and pH levels. Previously, researchers have tried using exotic materials such as carbon nanotubes or silver nanoparticles to create sensors capable of measuring just a few of those things. By comparison, the team at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) in Saudi Arabia used common off-the-shelf materials such as paper sticky notes, sponges, napkins and aluminum foil. Total material cost for a paper skin patch 6.5 centimeters on each side came to just $1.67.
”Its impact is beyond low cost: simplicity,” says Muhammad Mustafa Hussain, an electrical engineer at KAUST. “My vision is to make electronics simple to understand and easy to assemble so that ordinary people can participate in innovation.”
The paper skin’s low cost and wide array of capabilities could have a huge impact on many technologies. Flexible and wearable electronics for monitoring human health and fitness could become both cheaper and more widely available. New human-computer interfaces—similar to today’s motion-sensing or touchpad devices—could emerge based on the paper skin’s ability to sense pressure, touch, heat, and motion. The paper skin could also become a cheap sensor for monitoring food quality or outdoor environments.
Last but not least, cheap artificial skin could give robots the capability to feel their environment in the same way that humans do, Hussain says. In a paper detailing the research—published in the 19 February issue of the journal Advanced Materials Technologies—the researchers said:
The envisioned applications of such artificial skin takes a lot of surface area coverage (like robotic skins or skins for robots). There, lowering cost is crucial while not compromising performance. In that sense, if mechanical ruggedness can be proved, there is no scientific or technical reason for not accepting paper skin as a viable option.
The team’s low-cost approach often seems as approachable as a classroom experiment. As an example, researchers built a pressure sensor by sandwiching a napkin or sponge between two metal contacts made from aluminum foil. The same simple device could also detect touch and flow based on changes in pressure. Its aluminum foil even allowed it to act as a proximity sensor for electromagnetic fields with a detection range of 13 centimeters.
In another case, the researchers created a pH sensor. The simple solution came from drawing a film using a pencil. The pencil lead, made of graphite, undergoes chemical reactions in the presence of either acidic or basic (alkaline) substances. The reactions increase or decrease the film’s resistance.
The paper Post-it Notes provided the main material of the paper skin device and helped detect humidity based on the papers’ ability to absorb moisture. Double-sided adhesive tape helped keep everything together.
Lab testing with the paper skin showed that its results seemed equally as good as other artificial skin devices made of more exotic materials, says Joanna Nassar, an electrical engineer at KAUST and lead author on the study. In some cases, it outperformed many rival artificial skin devices.
“Compared with the sophisticated and complex artificial skin platforms found in the literature, Paper Skin not only provides the most functionalities on one platform, including 13-cm range proximity sensing, but also displays improved sensing performances over the highly expensive counterpart materials,” Nassar says.
One comparison suggests that the paper skin provides twice the temperature sensitivity of an earlier artificial skin platform based on carbon nanotubes. It also resets and becomes ready for a new temperature measurement four times as fast as the nanotube-based system.
Another comparison found that the paper skin had pressure-sensing capabilities twice as good as a pressure sensor based on carbon nanotubes. It was also five times as pressure-sensitive as a nanowire pressure sensor, and 40 times as sensitive as one made from silicon nanoribbons.
A low-cost approach to artificial skin that produces results comparable to more expensive approaches is likely to produce some skepticism among other researchers. It was not easy to get the research published in the first place, Hussain says. But he and his colleagues hope their unorthodox approach can spur faster development of artificial skin devices.
The KAUST team’s next step will involve testing the paper skin’s possible uses in medical monitoring systems. Researchers hope to test its capability to monitor real-time vital signs such as heart rate, blood pressure, breathing patterns and movement. Reliability tests will also see how long the cheap materials can hold together and whether the sensor’s performance is affected by mechanical stress like twisting and bending.
“Why should we be waiting for decades for an exotic material to be qualified to serve as the key for an application which we can benefit from today?” Hussain says. “Start with what we have and improve the status quo with the new material(s) when ready.”WASHINGTON — In late spring or early summer, the US Air Force will decide who will build its next-generation bomber. Yet, despite all the hype and public interest, the program remains shrouded in mystery.
The Long Range Strike-Bomber (LRS-B) program is stealthy , literally and figuratively. Few details are actually known about the bomber's capabilities or design. But the program's impact is already being widely felt throughout the Pentagon and its industry partners.
At the annual Air Force Association conference last September, Northrop Grumman hung a major ad for its LRS-B program. Photo Credit: Aaron Mehta/Staff The half a dozen analysts and experts interviewed by Defense News for this piece all agree on one thing: the LRS-B has the chance to shape American military aerospace for the next 20 years. Whichever competitor wins will reap a windfall of development money; the loser could find itself out of the military attack airframe business entirely.
And while the program appears to be on track, Congress is waiting in the wings for any sign of cost overrun or technological problems.
"This is crunch time," said Richard Aboulafia, an analyst with the Teal Group . "It's the biggest single outstanding DoD competition by a very wide margin. That makes it important in and of itself."
Known Unknowns
The program is targeting a production line of 80-100 planes. It will replace the fleet of B-52 and B-1 bombers. It will be stealthy, capable of carrying nuclear weapons, and optional manning has been discussed. A down-selection will be made this spring or early summer, with initial operating capability planned for the mid-2020s. Nuclear certification will follow two years after that.
The target price, set by former Defense Secretary Robert Gates, is $550 million a copy. To keep the price down, the Air Force is looking to use mature technologies that are available now, rather than launching new developments. At the same time, the program will have an open architecture approach for future technologies.
Unless there is a secret competitor still unknown — highly unlikely, but like many things with the program, impossible to rule out — there are two teams are bidding for the contract. One is Northrop Grumman, which developed the B-2 stealth bomber. The other is a team of Lockheed Martin and Boeing. Together, those companies represent three of the top five defense firms in the nation.
Breaking down the rest of the program is a master class in the classic "known unknowns" phrase coined by Donald Rumsfeld. What equipment will it carry? Will it be in a flying wing shape? What is more important, stealth or speed? Will the planes, like the B-2, be so classified that they cannot be stationed abroad? If so, does that affect the range vs. payload tradeoff?
A source with knowledge of the program said the Air Force is likely looking at something smaller than a B-2, perhaps as small as half the size, with two engines similar in size to the F135 engines that power the F-35, so enhancement programs can also be applied to the bomber.
"They should go bigger [in terms of airframe], but Gates threw that $500 million figure out there without thinking through the overall effect and requirement," the source said.
Retired Lt. Gen. David Deptula, former deputy chief of staff for ISR, agreed that the focus on the $550 million figure may end up hurting the bomber's capabilities by driving the discussion from what the plane does to what can keep the price down.
"One of the biggest concerns is that this is going to turn into a cost shootout, and whomever can produce a 'technically acceptable' airplane at the lowest cost will be the winner, without any judgment or look at the ability for growth, the ability to connect to new technologies," he said. "That is a big concern amongst folks out there who are involved in this evolution."
And then there are the theories that the bomber is further along in its development cycle than it appears. Last year, J.J. Gertler, an analyst with the Congressional Research Service penned a memo noting that the bomber's budget profile looks more like a production than a research and development program, hinting that much of the technological development and testing has already occurred behind the scenes.
One analyst noted that some of that work could be based on technologies developed for the previous bomber recapitalization, which was cancel ed in 2009.
Mark Gunzinger, a retired Air Force official and senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, argued that the mystery around the jet isn't a bad thing.
"We don't know performance specifics in terms of range, payload, low observability, what weapons, what missions, radar capabilities — all these specific performance details," he said. "Nor should we. Those should not be announced publicly. It is a black program and those kind of details now would do nothing but give our potential enemies more time to develop countermeasures."
Industrial Impact
One of the larger unknowns is how much weight the Air Force — or higher ups at the Pentagon — is putting on industrial base impact. The answer to that question could seriously affect on which of the Boeing/Lockheed or Northrop teams win.
Deptula said industrial base considerations "absolutely" need to be part of the calculus.
"It has been a factor in other segments of our defense architecture, and one could make the case that in the aerospace industry, it is perhaps even more important than in the shipbuilding industry," he said.
Asked about that topic on Jan. 14, William LaPlante, the civilian acquisition head for the service, indicated that while industrial base concerns are something the Pentagon is aware of in a broad sense, that is not specifically one of the criteria for the bomber program.
"There is a bigger picture of just making sure we understand when will [different programs] have a downselect, what will come out of that — it's almost like a game theory thing to understand the implications," LaPlante said. "It's at the strategic level. Occasionally you might put it into a single competition. I don't think that's the case on the LRS-B."
The stakes are high for all three companies, Aboulafia said. After this contract, the next attack airplane will be a new fighter in the 2030s, and then a follow-on bomber sometime after that.
If Northrop loses, the chances of it still having the infrastructure to compete for a jet 15 years from now, or on a bomber longer out, seem slim. Losing the contract now would essentially end that part of their business.
Boeing, too, is coming to the end of its time as an attack aircraft manufacturer, despite the company's best efforts to keep the F/A-18 Super Hornet line humming. While the KC-46A tanker remains a Boeing program, it, and many other products from the company, are commercial derivatives rather than a brand new design.
Awarding Northrop the bomber would spread out the US Air Force's three top recapitalization priorities among three companies. On the flip side, giving the contract to the Lockheed/Boeing team would mean that Lockheed Martin, the producer of the F-35, essentially has full control over Air Force combat aviation production.
Analysts are divided as to who would be favored if the industrial base is a high priority. On the one hand, an industrial base angle should benefit Northrop, as it would spread the major programs among competitors.
"If you want Northrop to stay in the game as a prime, and you don't want to see the entire combat air forces at Lockheed, you have to go with Northrop," noted the first source familiar with the program.
Aboulafia, however, questions whether there is truly enough work available to spread among the three firms.
"That presupposes the Pentagon has this illusion that there can be three military airframers, and that's living in a fantasy land," he said, adding that strengthening the two military primes in Boeing and Lockheed would be "appealing" to DoD.
Aboulafia also points out that the contract could have major implications for one long rumored transaction among aerospace analysts — the potential sale of Northrop's aerospace group to Boeing.
"If Northrop loses, it could tip things to being bought by Boeing because it would not have a new airframe to build," Aboulafia said. "If Northrop wins, it could make them a more attractive target, and do the same."
Once the primes are settled, the subcontractor battle is likely to be just as fierce, Aboulafia noted.
Spokespeople for both teams expressed confidence that they were offering the better option to the Air Force.
Another thing to keep an eye on is the fight over the engine. If F135-maker Pratt & Whitney wins that competition, it would give it a stranglehold on the US military engine market. Whether the Pentagon be OK with that, or look to award a contract to General Electric instead, is another known unknown.
Challenges Ahead?
Right now, the program is humming along, with strong support from inside the Pentagon.
Last week, outgoing Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel threw his weight behind the new bomber in a speech at Whiteman Air Force Base, Missouri.
"I think the Long-Range Strike Bomber is absolutely essential for keeping our deterrent edge," Hagel said. "We need to do it. We need to make the investments. We'll have it in the budget. It's something I have particularly put a priority on."
That commitment was echoed by Air Force Secretary Deborah Lee James at a Jan. 14 speech.
"When we roll out the FY16 budget, the budget line will be similar to what you saw in '15 projected into '16," James said. "We're on track for our competition, it remains a top priority and it is truly the future of our bomber force."
But some foresee challenges ahead as the bomber moves from a black, hypothetical program to one actually bending metal — and one that can become a high profile target for government spending watchdogs and the nonproliferation community.
"As the F-35 gets spun up, LRS-B will become a new target, especially with the arms control people," said the source with knowledge of the program. "This a big airplane, and it will cost a lot."
Several experts agreed that the larger threat to the program comes from internal budgetary pressures, as the bomber will be competing not just with other service priorities, but with programs like the Navy's Ohio-class ballistic missile submarine replacement, something Rebecca Grant of IRIS Independent Research says the Navy is positioning as a "national asset" on Capitol Hill.
"The black program status makes it harder in my opinion to build support for the bomber," Grant said. "With new [Senate Armed Services Committee] leadership, the program will come under additional scrutiny as the first big budget wedges appear this year and beyond. So the USAF had best have its act together on why the bomber they pick is the right bomber now, in the hands of the right manufacturer."
Congress could also interfere with the program in another way. The loser could protest the award, which could set up not only a battle at the Government Accountability Office, but a public relations fight. High profile contract protests often result in each company tapping its preferred congressmen to lobby on its behalf.
According to public data analyzed by the non-profit OpenSecrets.org, Lockheed ($4 million), Northrop ($3.9 million) and Boeing ($3.1 million) were the top three contributors to congressional campaigns and affiliated political action committees from the defense sector in 2013-2014. All three companies also rank in the top 25 of US companies in terms of dollars spent on lobbying.
Drawing a direct line from dollars spent on campaigns and lobbying and results for certain programs is always a bit risky, especially given the breadth of each company's portfolio. After all, Boeing and Lockheed traditionally work against each other, while both companies work with Northrop on different programs.
But those figures illustrate how strong the ties are between industry and members of Congress, even before the key issue of industrial base in various districts comes into play. After all, representatives will always rally around whichever side will bring jobs to their constituents.
While Boeing and Lockheed each have their own local supporters, Northrop may be able to call on the California and Florida delegations following its decision to expand facilities at Melbourne International Airport, on Florida's Space Coast.
While a company official did not confirm that Northrop plans to work on a potential LRS-B in Florida, Sen Bill Nelson, D-Fla., told media in May that the company plans on using the facility for that purpose.
Andrew Tilghman, traveling with Hagel, contributed to this report.
Email: amehta@defensenews.com
Twitter: @AaronMehtaImage caption Celeste North's start-up brings independent films to a wider audience
When Jorge Tellez left his native city of Monterrey, it was a good place to live. After six years in the US, he returned to Mexico in 2010. By then, the country's drug violence had brought about dramatic changes.
Nonetheless, Mr Tellez decided it was his duty to return. As an international development worker, he had seen how Mexico's growing volatility had led to a brain drain - and he resolved to help reverse it.
"If we are to become leaders, what kind of example are we giving other people by leaving and letting everyone deal with that mess?" he asks.
His own way of leading by example was to set up Menthora, an online community that offers a question-and-answer forum for technology users.
Mr Tellez is one of a growing number of young Mexicans using start-ups in an effort to create positive social changes within the country.
It is the kind of effort that Mexico badly needs at the moment, as the country struggles to cope with a wave of killings blamed on organised crime.
Creating opportunities
There have been at least 50,000 drug-related killings since former President Felipe Calderon launched his crack-down on traffickers in late 2006.
And the death rate keeps on rising. Figures from the consultancy Lantia suggest a 10% rise in homicides related to organised crime in the first six months of 2012 compared with the final half of 2011.
But the economy is powering forward. In 2011, Mexico's growth rate of 4% outpaced that of Brazil, which managed a mere 2.7%. Forecasts suggest it will notch up the strongest growth in Latin America by the end of this year.
Entrepreneurship is a reputation-based economy Jonathan Nelson, Hackers and Founders
Unemployment has been declining as Mexico continues to recover from the deep recession it suffered back in 2009. In September, the rate fell to just 4.7% of the workforce, its lowest level for nearly four years.
Even so, Mr Tellez reckons it could be even lower if more people get the start-up habit. "I'm trying to help people start their own businesses, so they can create their own jobs," he says.
He says that in Mexico, you normally need connections to get access to business opportunities. He wants the knowledge required for entering business to be available to everyone.
Mr Tellez strongly believes that the start-up movement is a better vehicle for change than the country's political system. He worked on Mr Calderon's 2006 presidential campaign and the experience left him sceptical. It was slow-moving and "full of backstabbing", he says.
On the other hand, "you can empower people through technology", he says.
"And you can have scalable impact."
Flexible friends
Mexico is currently showing a strong interest in start-ups. So far this year, there have been 17 start-up weekend events in the country, with 13 more planned for November and December.
There were only seven start-up weekends in 2011 and just one the year before, when the phenomenon first reached the country.
At the same time, a number of venture capital funds have been making their presence felt in Mexico, including Mexican VC, Alta Ventures and Angel Ventures Mexico.
Image caption Cesar Salazar is a serial entrepreneur
Cesar Salazar, a serial entrepreneur, founded Mexican VC in April 2011 as a way of funding and mentoring Mexican start-ups, after experiencing frustration in finding seed funding for his own ventures.
It offers fledgling businesses $25,000 (£15,600) in cash and $30,000 in services. It has invested in 16 companies over the past 18 months after receiving 300 applications, and was recently acquired by the Californian seed fund 500 Start-ups.
Mr Salazar sees a noticeable interest in solving real-world problems. And these are the sorts of ventures Mexican VC wants to invest in.
Ventures recently taken on include RubberIt, a discreet condom delivery service. Mr Salazar says he got involved because contraception is still a taboo subject in Mexico, and the founder is passionate about the importance of practising safe sex, having lost a friend to Aids.
"Entrepreneurs believe in market mechanisms to solve problems," he says.
Celeste North is another keen start-up enthusiast. She co-founded NuFlick, an online platform for independent and art-house films, many of which explore gritty social issues. Since distribution can be difficult and costly to secure, her site provides a much-needed opportunity for film-makers to find an audience.
"In general, independent films talk about topics that big blockbusters just don't talk about," she says.
In her view, corruption and vested interests make it hard for the Mexican government to act effectively in promoting social change. This is where start-ups can step in.
"They have flexibility," she says. "They are faster with making new proposals."
Social benefits
HJ Barraza also believes that other methods of helping society can fall short. He works at Humana, a think tank for social innovators. He and his colleagues are working to launch technology start-ups dealing with neighbourhood improvement, citizenship and micro-volunteering.
"When you talk about social good, automatically everyone thinks about philanthropy and giving money away. That's a very Mexican thing," Mr Barraza says.
Image caption RubberIt allows people to order condoms by computer
He thinks that start-ups can work where charities fail.
"Since they are always depending on donations, they dedicate most of their resources to getting money instead of solving real problems," he says.
And entrepreneurial activity in itself can have general social benefits. US start-up enthusiast Jonathan Nelson believes that entrepreneurs can encourage positive behaviour. "Entrepreneurship is a reputation-based economy, so you need to be helpful," he says.
Mr Nelson started Hackers and Founders in 2007 to provide communities specifically for tech start-ups. There are now branches in eight countries, including five in Mexico alone, with the Chihuahua, San Luis Potosi and Puebla branches opening this year.
Having grown up in Honduras and Costa Rica, he has experienced the region's difficulties.
"The only way Mexico will change is if business becomes more profitable than drugs," he says. "Only oil, finance and tech start-ups have similar profit margins."Friends, family, the three members of the Chad Michael Murray fan club who are reading this: I have some bad news. ABC is delaying the Season 2 premiere of Marvel's Agent Carter. Now before you start bombarding the official ABC Twitter account with all the weapons emojis and before you can fire off a strongly worded e-mail about how the network is "seriously, like, trying to ruin your life," you should know that there is actually a legitimate reason for the delay: the State of the Union Address is scheduled for January 12.
Agent Carter was originally scheduled to kick things off with a two-hour premiere on Tuesday, January 5, but the network is opting to delay the show by two weeks so it can air the entire season uninterrupted (because of course ABC wasn't going to air a new episode opposite the president, only FX does that). Instead, Peggy will return for more butt-kicking action, this time in Los Angeles, on Tuesday, January 19 at 9pm. Please plan your weekly CMM discussions around the new date.In the latest news out of Florida regarding psychosis-inducing drugs, a man in Fort Lauderdale, naked except for his sneakers, ran into oncoming traffic away from imaginary pursuers before he was nabbed by police, reported the Sun Sentinel on Monday. And it was all caught on tape. His drug of choice? Flakka.
Not to be confused with Atlanta rapper Waka Flocka Flame, Flakka, the new drug out of South Florida also known as "$5 insanity" and "gravel," is causing mayhem in a state that is already a meme for being the epicenter of all things weird in the United States.
Imported from China, Pakistan and India, the synthetic street drug, called a "cousin" to "bath salts," according to Forbes, is either snorted, smoked or injected, and induces rapid body-temperature elevation, the need to disrobe and a psychotic paranoia convincing the user that he is being chased, a la new horror film "It Follows." It can raise body temperature up to 106 degrees, and like amphetamines, it creates a state of "excited delirium."
Matthew Kenny, 34, told Fort Lauderdale police that after smoking Flakka, he felt he was being pursued by people who wanted to kill him and ran into traffic because "he'd rather die than be caught by these unknown people," reported the Sun Sentinel. He was taken in for psychiatric evaluation.
In March, police surveillance videos in the same city recorded the curious sight of a man, James West, high on Flakka trying to break into the police station by kicking the door and throwing a rock. He told Fort Lauderdale Police Detective Tracy Figone that several cars were chasing him and he ran to the police for help, reported CBS Miami.
The main ingredient in Flakka, reports Business Insider, comes from a compound called alpha-PVP, a chemical similar in composition to one that was in bath salts. Although that active ingredient was banned, reports Business Insider, alpha-PVP is now legal in states that don't ban the chemical.
Unfortunately for law enforcement, Flakka, improbably, is rising in popularity. According to the Drug Enforcement Administration, there were no known cases in Florida in 2010, 85 in 2012 -- and 670 reported in 2014.Recently I noticed when I delete photos from the iPhoto trash, iPhoto doesn't necessarily delete the image files from its library. My iPhoto library is the single biggest thing on my MacBook Air's hard drive, and it's the reason I had to pay extra for a 256GB SDD rather than use the stock 128GB one. I'm in the habit of taking a bunch of shots of every subject to make sure at least one has the correct focus, exposure, and is level. All this is to say I have a lot of extra photos that I need to get rid of.
But as I noticed, sometimes iPhoto doesn't delete photos when you empty the iPhoto trash. It just removes them from its database so they're no longer visible without deleting the actual image files. Those files still use up disk space—to the tune of 10 GB, in my case.
It's not clear to me why iPhoto fails to remove unwanted images from its library, but it looks like this started to happen when I switched from downloading images off my camera using the USB cable to plugging the SD card directly into my computer (not sure if that's a relevant data point though).
So, after a little tinkering, here's how to get rid of those unwanted photos and reclaim that disk space in eight easy steps:
Step zero—Make sure you have your iPhoto library backed up properly.
Step one—Make an album in iPhoto. Drag all your photos to that album. (iPhoto may take a second or two to respond once you've selected several tens of thousands of photos.) A good name for this album is "keep." Do this before step two, which requires repairing the database.
Step two—Find your iPhoto library (in ~/Pictures/ by default) or the iPhoto app in the Finder. Open the library or the application and immediately press the command and alt/option keys. This way, when iPhoto opens, it presents four photo library first aid options. Select the third, "repair database." This will make iPhoto scan all the photos in the library and restore missing ones to the database so you can see them.
Step three—Create a smart album "don't keep" that matches all the photos that are not in the "keep" album:
Step four—All the not-really-deleted photos, as well as any photos that got lost along the way somewhere, now show up in the "don't keep" smart album. (Any photos that you've added to the library after step one are also here.) You may want to look them over and see if there are any photos in there that you want to keep after all. If so, drag them to the "keep" album, and they'll disappear from the "don't keep" album.
Step five—Move the photos from the "don't keep" album to the iPhoto trash. Because "don't keep" is a smart album, all the menu options for deleting photos are grayed out. But you can still move photos to the iPhoto trash with the keyboard combination command-option-backspace.
Step six—Go to the iPhoto trash and note how many photos are there in the upper right corner of the window. Click "empty trash."
Step seven—Go to the Finder trash. There should be an iPhoto folder in it. Check (using "get info") whether that iPhoto folder has the same number of items in it that iPhoto's trash had before you emptied it. Folders also get counted, so the number won't match precisely. But from what I've seen, either iPhoto deletes everything or it's not even close. It should be fairly obvious whether the trash emptying was successful. If not, go back to step one, although I've never seen deletion of a specific photo fail a second time.
Step eight—Empty the Finder trash and enjoy your recovered disk space.
Step nine—There is no step nine, just glorious disk space.JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. — Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon said Thursday he is directing officials to accept tax returns jointly filed by same-sex couples who were legally married in other states.
The Democratic governor said his executive order deals solely with tax filing status and does not authorize or sanction same-sex marriage in Missouri.
It’s in response to a decision by the U.S. Treasury Department and Internal Revenue Service that said legally married same-sex couples would be treated as married regardless of where they lived. That decision came after the U.S. Supreme Court invalidated part of the Defense of Marriage Act.
Missouri’s tax code is tied directly to the federal government, and the state requires married couples who file joint federal tax returns also to file state taxes jointly.
Speaking at a news conference at the state Capitol, Nixon said recognition of same-sex marriage is a separate question from the tax filing issue, but that he hopes voters will have a chance to revisit that.
Article continues below
In 2004, Missouri became the first state to enact a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage. The measure was approved by 70 percent of the vote.
“I just don’t think we should treat folks differently in this zone anymore,” Nixon said. “I think if folks want to get married, they should be able to get married.”
© 2013, Associated Press, All Rights Reserved.
This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
This Story Filed UnderRed Line South Branch Reconstruction
Posted: Thursday, May 9, 2013
The Red Line South Branch connects thousands of Chicagoans to their jobs, school and other activities in the city. But starting May 19, that connection will be cut off for at least five months as the CTA rebuilds tracks on the line to improve speed in several "slow zones" along the nine South Branch stops.
Despite shuttle buses and increased Green Line service, many South Side commuters say the shutdown will have a major impact on their plans. And some business owners along the Red Line stops are bracing for a financial hit.
The Red Line Project interviewed several South Siders to learn about their concerns about the shutdown and how they plan to deal with it.
79th Street Stop Stephanie Hart (left), owner of the Brown Sugar Bakery, is one of many small business owners along 75th Street who think the Red Line South closure will have a big impact on the number of customers. 75th Street underwent construction in 2009 as well.
Cermak-Chinatown Stop Experts say Chinatown businesses will take a financial hit during the construction. Some Chinatown business owners say they were never told by the CTA that the Cermak-Chinatown stop would be closed down.
Garfield Stop The Green Line has undergone several upgrades, including security cameras, to handle the extra load during the Red Line closure. Still, some University of Chicago students say they're hesitant to take the Green Line because of safety reasons.
47th Street Stop The closure has some Bronzeville residents scrambling to adjust their commutes. But others are taking advantage of the construction jobs the project has created.
Sox/35th Street Stop The White Sox have benefited from having a Red Line stop nearby. But what will the team, which has struggled with attendance the last few years, do when their fans have to drive or take a bus to the game?
Commuter Reaction Some riders are getting creative with their commutes. Crime and commute time trouble some riders. And others see the project's long-term benefits.Photo via Flickr user Rick Donaldson
Big white trucks with tinted windows crept behind us ominously as we drove. It was freezing that night, 24 degrees, as we cautiously made our way through the little town where Colorado City, Arizona, meets Hildale, Utah—the hub for the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (FLDS).
The town is called Short Creek, though the locals know it as "the Creek" (pronounced crick). The FLDS settled here over a century ago, when they broke away from Mormonism in order to keep practicing polygamy after it was outlawed by the mainstream church. Since then, the Creek has been an isolated community of many wives, governed by the word of God, as interpreted by cult leader Warren Jeffs. Jeffs was convicted of raping multiple child brides over seven years ago, but the town still lives in his shadow.
A friend of mine, Willy Steed, had grown up here and volunteered to show me around while he was visiting with his new girlfriend. I grew up Mormon—not FLDS, though I did briefly follow a cult leader who practiced his own version of polygamy—so I felt like I was familiar with the culture. I had always imagined that life in the Creek would look like the boisterous houses in Big Love or the well-to-do suburbia of Sister Wives—weird, sure, but still cozy. Short Creek wasn't like that at all.
There's a single gas station in Short Creek, with some quiet-looking housing tracts nestled into the mountain on the other side of the road. At first, it looked like any other shitty desert community, but when we started looking a little closer, something felt... off. Houses sat half-completed, and the town was eerily stark and neglected-looking, though here and there was the occasional sprawling mansion. Framed portraits of Jeffs were displayed prominently on walls in many of the homes—so big and brightly lit that we could see them from the street at night. The women in pastel dresses, who could be seen rounding up their children during daylight hours, were all in for the night, leaving just the men in the trucks known as the "God Squad"—the church's security force designed to intimidate outsiders and maintain control.
Willy had left the Creek three years ago, when he was 18. He still spoke with a soft Southern accent, but since I'd seen him last, he'd grown his hair long and bought a leather jacket. He grew up here with three moms and 38 siblings; church leaders had sent him to work in construction when he was ten, traveling and building houses with other young "plygs" instead of learning to read. But he was a rule-breaker, and since the church has a way of kicking out men who might compete with the truly faithful for wives, he made the first move and escaped.
Willy's girlfriend, Alyssa Bistline, has barely been out a year. Her birth father was exiled from the Creek when she was a kid, so she was assigned an extra mom and a new dad who constantly told her he was going to marry her, too. He had a habit of beating her brothers and slamming the piano on her fingers when she tried to play non-religious music. But like Willy, she was a rebel—or at least that's how she puts it. Her defiant activities included watching Anne of Green Gables, sneaking off to a library, and, after finding it on a hard drive, secretly watching the music video for Michael Bublé's "I Just Haven't Met You Yet." (She had "never seen someone that cute," she gushed to me over IHOP pancakes. "He's, like, sliding around, dancing and stuff. Oh my God. I LOVE Michael Bublé.")
Alyssa in Short Creek
When their living conditions went from bad to worse, Alyssa and her birth mother took a risk |
: I was actually more nervous about our first match with Envy Us in the WB Finals than the one on the Main Stage. After we beat them, I knew we had a great shot at winning, so I felt really comfortable after that.
Dodgers: I was nervous because I thought Rambo was going to be extremely weird, but he turned out to be normal. I was also worried about the time we put in before the event because we spent most of our time messing around on the forums rather than scrimming.
Rambo: (laughs)
Sharp: I was kind of worried about Dodgers hugging the TV.
Rambo: He was our FearItself. (laughs)
Xtravagant Icons took home a jumbo-sized check for their efforts, along with the title of National Champions.
MLG: You guys did manage to beat EnvyUs 3-0 in the Winners Bracket Finals, but in the Championship Match they took three straight games to tie the series. What were you guys thinking at that point, and what went on as a team that enabled you to win the following three games to clinch the title?
Rambo: Sharp… (laughs)
Dodgers: We decided beforehand to let them have a few maps to make it interesting, so I wasn’t nervous or mad at all.
BigTymer: Envy came into the finals red hot after beating Fear in an 11 game series, and we hadn’t played in a few hours. That, along with being party bombed on Crash Domination, sort of got us off to a slow start. After getting warmed up, and of course Sharp going 10-0 in Search and Destroy, we had a huge momentum boost that carried throughout the rest of the series.
Sharp: Our coach helped a little, because when we were all down he would keep us in it.
Rambo: I think we could have had that Crash Domination match if Casperr vR didnt interupt our leading side. (laughs)
MLG: Speaking of gametypes, what would you guys say was your strongest?
BigTymer: At the National Championships it was definitely Sabotage. I don’t think we lost a single Sabotage game the entire tournament. We were definitely the best Sabotage team there.
MLG: In that case, I guess I’m going to have to ask each of you guys what you would say your tournament highlight was.
Rambo: Sabo overgrown vs NK.
Sharp: For me, it was going 10-0 on the Main Stage.
BigTymer: 26-12 on Overgrown Domination in the Finals.
Dodgers: Search and Destroy Overgrown vs. NK — the only time I went more than -2 in a S&D match.
Team: (laughs)
MLG: Well, it sounds like your final Call of Duty 4 tournament had some pretty interesting highlights. As you all know, the sequel to Call of Duty 4, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, was just released. What is your initial reaction to the game?
BigTymer: At first I was skeptical about everything: how fast you die, spawns, maps, etc. But after playing a few scrims, I think it’s safe to say this game makes for some very exciting spectacting and intense matches
Rambo: Most of the maps aren’t that great, but the game is alright competitively. They still haven’t fixed the LAN issues, which I’m pretty upset about.
Dodgers: Right now, I feel that it fails in comparison to COD4 competitively, but playing public matches is more entertaining with the addition of callsigns and emblems.
Sharp: If they fixed the LAN issues in MW2 I’d probably be a bigger fan.
Call of Duty 4 got the Main Stage treatment in Anaheim, as fans at home were treated to expert analysis in the booth from Fwiz, Puckett, and Lies.
MLG: Well, aside from that, what do you think about some of the specific gameplay changes from Call of Duty 4 to Modern Warfare 2, such as the consolidated and merged perk system, the killstreak rewards, deathstreaks, etc.?
Dodgers: The perks are diverse and interesting, and the same goes for the gun selection.
Rambo: I’m not a big fan of it taking less bullets to kill people.
Dodgers: I agree.
Sharp: There’s no juggernaut!!!
BigTymer: MLG restricts the killstreaks and deathstreaks, so everything really feels about the same, besides a normal gametype feeling like Hardcore Mode from COD4.
Dodgers: I’m not a big fan of the removal of juggernaut.
Rambo: Yeah, Dodgers must of been pretty mad with that perk being removed. (laughs) I was looking forward to having a perk named after him in MW2 since he was the all-time jug player in COD4.
BigTymer: (laughs)
MLG: So, competitively speaking, online at least, how do you think the game is shaping up to be?
Rambo: Since the game requires less bullets to kill people, good tactical play and smart gameplay will mostly decide the top teams and players.
BigTymer: I think it has the potential to be another Halo 3, as long as Infinity Ward cares enough to change some things.
MLG: Let’s get some tips from the top COD players in the world. What is the best tip you could give someone trying to improve?
Rambo: Smarts are more important than gun skill.
Sharp: Don’t play public matches, play GameBattles matches and scrims.
BigTymer: Play as much as you can to get some gunskill, and then find three other people that work well together. Play with those guys as much as possible and develop chemistry. This game is ridiculously team based.
MLG: Speaking of gun skill, what would you say is your favorite weapon in the game?
BigTymer: Tar-21 with a holographic scope.
Sharp: Famas.
Rambo: Tar-21.
Dodgers: P90.
MLG: Just for fun, do any of you have exceptionally high kill to death ratios? Have you prestiged yet?
Dodgers: I’m prestiging in 5…4…3…2…1….
Sharp: 1.77 and no.
Rambo: 2.90 playing mainly Search and Destroy, and definitely not.
BigTymer: At first, I had like a 3.5 k/d. After realizing it takes about three days of playing time to reach level 70, I started playing just to get as many points as possible, and my k/d has suffered greatly.
MLG: Based on those stats, clearly Rambo and BigTymer aren’t going to be top players.
Dodgers: Agreed.
Rambo: Can’t agree more.
Team: (laughs)
Xtravagant Icons took down Envy Us to become to COD4 National Champions.
MLG: Well, now that we’ve established that BigTymer and Rambo have no future in competitive Call of Duty, I’m going to ask you the most important question of the night. How are you going to spend your prize money?
BigTymer: Zaxbys, pizza, and a new TV.
Sharp: A new laptop.
Dodgers: Shoes, clothes, and GB credits.
MLG: Alright guys, thanks for joining us and congratulations once again on winning the 2009 MLG Call of Duty 4 National Championship.The movie Nosferatu has been released in 1922 and is still one of the scariest movies ever made. Now the classic movie is in the news today because of a real world scary story. Unknown people have broken into the grave of Nosferatu director Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau in Berlin. The stole the head of the embalmed body of Murnau. He has been buried in 1931 in the family burial vault at graveyard in Stahnsdorf near Berlin.
German actor Max Schreck (1879 - 1936), as the vampire Count Orlok, being destroyed by sunlight, in a still from F. W. Murnau's expressionist horror film, 'Nosferatu, Eine Symphonie Des Grauens', 1921. The film is based on Bram Stoker's novel 'Dracula' and was released in 1922. (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
According to German Bild, Police does not know yet how the grave robbers got into the tomb. It is also completely unclear why the skull has been stolen. This could be related to a ritual or cult as investigators found wax on the floor. It could also just be a tasteless prank. F.W. Murnau has been buried in a metal coffin. In the tomb are also his two brothers buried. The grave had been disturbed several times before. The graveyard management is now considering to completely seal the tomb. Let's just hope there will not be a Youtube video about this violation of graves.
Update: Days after the incident the Police in Germany has still no new leads about identity of the grave robbers. We have been one of the first News outlets reporting about this weird story. Two days later the report about the theft of F.W. Murnau's skull has been reported by all major news outlets including New York Times and Washington Post.
Friedrich Wilhelm "F. W." Murnau (born Friedrich Wilhelm Plumpe was born on December 28, 1888 and died March 11, 1931. He was a German film director greatly influenced by Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Shakespeare and Ibsen plays he had seen at the age of 12, and became a friend of director Max Reinhardt.
F. W. Murnau's best known movie is his 1922 film Nosferatu. The film is an adaptation of Bram Stoker's Dracula. It was not a commercial success due to copyright issues with Stoker's novel, the film was considered a masterpiece of Expressionist artwork.
Murnau emigrated to Hollywood in 1926, where he joined the Fox Studio and made three movies, including Sunrise (1927), 4 Devils (1928) and City Girl (1930) according to Wikipedia.
Murnau died in a car accident in 1931 at the age of 42 in Santa Barbara.It has been a year since the passing of one of music most prominent sons, Adam "MCA" Yauch. We wanted to do something special this year, and In tribute to MCA and the undeniable impact the Beastie Boys have had on our art and culture for nearly 30 years, we are pleased to announce our very special June 2013 issue: Beastie Boys, a visual history + tribue to MCA. The issue was curated and compiled by our contributing editor-at-large, Joey Garfield.
A big thank you to Haze for contributing his iconic handstlye to Juxtapoz' masthead this month.
For the special issue, we have interviewed every album cover artist, from Polly Wog Stew to Hot Sauce Committee Part Two, inner-sleeve artists, photographers, and even feature some of the outtakes that went into every album cover. We find the inside stories of how each album came to fruition through the experiences and artwork of each artist that is now part of the Beastie Boys canon.
We speak to Cey Adams, Haze, Arabella Field, World B Omes, Glen E Friedman, Ricky Powell, Todd James, Mike Mills, Matteo Pericoli, Bill McMullen, Bruce Davidson, Alex Grey, Kiino Villand, Sunny Bak... and, we interview Adrock of the Beastie Boys as he gave us the inside story and behind-the-scenes look at how each album cover was selected, from inside the band.
The issue hits newsstands on May 14, 2013, and in our webstore next week. Stay tuned for previews and exclusive Beastie Boys content on the Juxtapoz site all month.Replacing a traditional neighbourhood in the heart of Tokyo, Roppongi Hills combines modern city life with suburban elements to create a self-sufficient and (hopefully) disaster-proof community. But only for Japan’s 1%
When the late Tokyo property tycoon Minoru Mori completed construction of Roppongi Hills in 2003, it was hailed as a technological wonder – a huge, sprawling hodgepodge of residential, commercial, leisure and retail functions that performed as if it were a self-contained neighbourhood. And it was, though perhaps not in the way its designers imagined.
The layout was almost perversely illogical: 724,000 square metres of floor space distributed among four distinct high-rises and a warren of multi-level passages that could have been designed by Magritte. The joke about Roppongi Hills is that once inside, no one has ever been able to figure out how to get from point A to point B and back again – even with a map.
Whether intended or not, this complex mimics the maze-like quality of many old Tokyo neighbourhoods. Until the end of the second world war, the city had the unfortunate habit of burning down every couple of years (in fact, local firefighting brigades were traditionally made up of carpenters, thus providing an historical rationalisation for Tokyo’s infamous “scrap-and-build” reputation).
Since the war, the city seems to have been transforming itself on an almost daily basis, resisting any attempts at urban planning owing to the makeshift nature of its neighbourhoods, a laissez-faire attitude toward development, and a penchant for the new. In this, Roppongi Hills was no different.
The neighbourhood the complex replaced was a jumble of miscellaneous structures delineated by several main thoroughfares and the studios of a major commercial broadcaster. By the 1960s, the area contained five nine-storey apartment buildings run by the national housing authority, but mostly it was made up of closely packed wooden houses arranged along twisting streets that were so narrow they couldn’t accommodate fire trucks – and which only had one exit point.
The joke goes that no one has ever been able to work out how to get from point A to point B and back – even with a map
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Roppongi Hills is self-sufficient in the event of power outages – essential for a facility that relies on elevators. Photograph: Maisant Ludovic/Hemis/Corbis
The Roppongi neighbourhood is in the heart of the Yamanote, an area of the city centre ringed by the railway line – what Tokyo historian Edward Seidensticker called the “high city”, where the “proper people” lived. Except that Roppongi wasn’t considered proper. During the pre-modern era and blessed with abundant ground water, the area was populated by samurai warriors who supplemented their measly sinecures by raising goldfish. The tradition continued: the first head of the Roppongi Hills residents’ association, Tamotsu Hara, used to breed goldfish himself before his house was condemned and he moved to a comfortable corner unit on the 41st floor.
Before the war, Roppongi was home to the Japanese military; afterwards, the Americans used it for a base that outlasted the occupation. By the high-powered 1980s it had became Tokyo’s designated exotic demimonde, famous for bars and discos frequented by foreign residents and servicemen on the prowl. It was never as respectable as the nearby neighbourhoods, but it was on the edge of the commercial district that Minoru Mori’s family was quickly filling up with tall office buildings. In 1986, he gained permission from the Tokyo prefectural government to redevelop Roppongi, of which Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates was the master-planner of the scheme – the biggest such project in the city’s history.
It took Mori 17 years to negotiate the title transfers. About 400 households were promised condominiums in the towers to be constructed on the land they were being asked to give up, but only 161 actually took up the offer. During the extreme “bubble” period of the late 1980s, property values in Roppongi skyrocketed – so even though the owners could sell their land for huge profits, the new condos would cost them even more. Moreover, the management fees of more than 60,000 yen (£320) a month were beyond the means of most of these families.
Japanese city planners have always been interested in the self-contained community. In the 1960s and 70s, “new towns” designed by the central housing authority sprung up in the suburbs of the country’s major cities. Modern apartment blocks and single-family houses would be within walking distance of shopping and leisure facilities – and, most importantly, work places. Though popular, these developments never attracted the businesses that would have made them true “towns”, so salarymen residents ended up commuting into the city.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Roppongi Hills offers stunning views of Tokyo, a city that is constantly developing. Photograph: Blaine Harrington III/Corbis
With Roppongi’s central location, however, the job issue took care of itself. Moreover, it alleviated some of the problems associated with modern city living by mixing in some suburban elements. A quarter of the compex’s total footprint is made up of parks, and the buildings’ roofs all possess real vegetable gardens. One even has a rice paddy. Consequently, the average outdoor temperature within its borders is 2-to-3 degrees cooler than that of the surrounding neighbourhoods, thus addressing the urban heat island phenomenon.
The complex also has its own gas turbine that reduces energy usage by 20% and carbon emissions by 27%. It is is self-sufficient in the event of power outages – essential for a facility that relies on elevators – and has 13 rainwater collection points; waste water is purified and reused within the complex. All refuse is recycled, and solar panels provide lighting with the surplus stored in batteries.
These features make Roppongi Hills not only environmentally responsible but also fairly disaster-proof – a model for how to live in a city that everyone knows is going to be hit by a major earthquake one of these days. The kind of densely concentrated wooden neighbourhood that Roppongi used to be – and the kind that still houses 20% of Tokyo’s population – will crumble and ignite in such a quake. But Roppongi Hills has set an example that has been followed throughout the city in a rush to build new high-rise towers that aim to be self-contained, self-sufficient and state-of-the-art in terms of withstanding disasters.
While the temblor which devastated the northeastern region of Japan in 2011 slowed this “tower mansion” boom slightly, Tokyo is one of the few places that continues to attract new residents as the country’s overall population dwindles. Many people question the wisdom of this vertical orientation to buildings, but in Tokyo (and most of Japan) there’s no place to go but up.
The world's first skyscraper: a history of cities in 50 buildings, day 9 Read more
Not everyone can afford this green, disaster-resilient lifestyle, of course. In 2003 when Roppongi Hills was completed, the complex immediately became identified with Japan’s version of the 1%, and its success spawned two similar luxury complexes: Tokyo Midtown, a few blocks to the east, and Toranomon Hills.
When Roppongi Hills opened, high-profile IT and finance companies moved into its office spaces. Some of the wealthiest people in the country have lived in its apartments, including Takafumi Horie, founder and former CEO of Livedoor, the hugely controversial internet services firm.
Horie subsequently spent several years in jail for securities fraud, but his reputation as an iconoclast endures and is informed by the image attached to Roppongi Hills – a place that goes beyond the conventional notion of what a high-rise complex is for, while maintaining the unique “jerry-built” quality of the Tokyo landscape. The main difference, though, is that this complex has been designed to last a lot longer.This article is about Lucy, a six-story architectural creation. For Lucy, the Asian elephant, see Lucy (elephant)
Lucy the Elephant is a six-story elephant-shaped example of novelty architecture, constructed of wood and tin sheeting in 1881 by James V. Lafferty in Margate City, New Jersey, approximately five miles (8 km) south of Atlantic City. Originally named Elephant Bazaar, Lucy was built to promote real estate sales and attract tourists. Today, Lucy is the oldest surviving roadside tourist attraction in America.[4]
Patenting and Construction [ edit ]
In 1881, the U.S. Patent Office granted James V. Lafferty a patent giving him the exclusive right to make, use or sell animal-shaped buildings for a duration of seventeen years. Lafferty funded the design and construction of his first elephant-shaped building at South Atlantic City, now called Margate. He employed Philadelphia architects William Free and J. Mason Kirby for the design.[5] Lucy was modeled after "Jumbo the Elephant", the famous elephant with Barnum and Bailey's Greatest Show on Earth, and constructed at a cost of $25,000 - $38,000. [6][7][8]
Initially named "Elephant Bazaar", the structure stands at 65 feet (19.7 m) in height, 60 feet (18.3 m) in length, and 18 feet (5.5 m) in width and weighs about 90 tons. It is listed as the 11th tallest statue in the United States. Lucy was constructed with nearly one million pieces of wood, and required 200 kegs of nails, 4 tons of bolts and iron bars; 12,000 square feet of tin covers the exterior. There are 22 windows placed throughout the structure.[6]
Early use and sale [ edit ]
Originally, Lafferty brought potential real estate customers to view parcels of land from Lucy's howdah (carriage).[9] The howdah offers unique views of Margate, Atlantic City's skyline, the beach, and the Atlantic Ocean and it serves as an observation deck for modern day visitors during tours.
The structure was sold to Anton Gertzen of Philadelphia in 1887 and remained in his family until 1970. Anton's daughter-in-law, Sophia Gertzen, reportedly dubbed the structure "Lucy the Elephant" in 1902.[6] The shape of Lucy's head is characteristic of an Asian Elephant, and male elephants have tusks. Initially, the elephant was referred to as a male, but eventually became commonly known as a female.[citation needed]\
Through the first half of the 20th century, Lucy served as a restaurant, business office, cottage, and tavern (the last closed by Prohibition). The building was depicted on many souvenir postcards, often referred to as "The Elephant Hotel of Atlantic City." (The actual hotel was in a nearby building, not inside the elephant.)
On July 23, 2016, Lucy announced her candidacy for President of the United States at a celebration for her 135th birthday. [16]
In 2016, Lucy had 135,000 visitors at the site, 35,000 of whom took the guided tour. [7]
Other structures by Lafferty [ edit ]
Elephantine Colossus (1885–1896) [ edit ]
The Elephantine Colossus or Elephant Hotel, at Coney Island amusement park in Brooklyn, New York, stood 122 feet (37.2 m) tall, approximately twice the size of Lucy, with seven floors of rooms, and legs 60 feet in circumference. With the exception of the number and relative size of the windows, and the design of the howdah, its exterior was a nearly exact scaled-up replication of Lucy. It held a cigar store in one leg and a diorama in another, hotel rooms within the elephant proper, and an observation area at the top with panoramic sea views. It burned down in 1896.[17]
Light of Asia (1884–1900) [ edit ]
Light of Asia (dubbed Old Jumbo by locals) opened in Cape May in 1884, and was a slightly smaller version of Lucy. It was not successful and was torn down within 16 years. Lafferty was not directly involved with the construction but granted patent rights to Theodore M. Rieger, a real estate developer like himself, who sought to do for Cape May what Lafferty did with Lucy for Atlantic City[18] It is unclear whether the Light of Asia matched the quality of the other buildings; the only known surviving photo of Light of Asia appears to have been taken while still under construction with no metal skin and an incomplete head, and with yet another different howdah design.[19] A video presented to visitors inside Lucy in 2009 includes that same photo with the narration describing it as Cape May's "inferior rendition" of Lucy.[20]
Prospectus for 1893 World's Columbian Exposition [ edit ]
A prospectus was published in 1892 by Kirby (while Lafferty still owned the patent) for a fourth building, even larger than Elephantine Colossus and with a moving trunk, eyeballs, ears and tail as well as a Calliope in the throat, to be built for the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago.[21][22] No actual construction was ever attempted.
See also [ edit ]The two general-purpose LHC experiments have unveiled analyses of data collected in 2015 from proton collisions at an energy of 13 TeV
Particles circulated in the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) on Sunday for the last time in 2015, and, two days later, the two large general-purpose experiments, ATLAS and CMS, took centre stage to present their results from LHC Run 2. These results were based on the analysis of proton collisions at the previously unattained energy of 13 TeV, compared with the maximum of 8 TeV attained during LHC Run 1 from 2010 to 2012.
The amount of data on which the two experiments’ analyses are based is still limited – around eight times less than that collected during Run 1 – and physicists need large volumes of data to be able to detect new phenomena. Nonetheless, the experimentalists have already succeeded in producing numerous results. Each of the two experiments has presented around 30 analyses, about half of which relate to Beyond-Standard-Model research. The Standard Model is the theory that describes elementary particles and their interactions, but it leaves many questions unanswered. Physicists are therefore searching for signs of Beyond-Standard-Model physics that might help them to answer some of those questions.
The new ATLAS and CMS results do not show any significant excesses that could indicate the presence of particles predicted by alternative models such as supersymmetry. The two experiments have therefore established new limits for the masses of these hypothetical new particles. Advances in particle physics often come from pushing back these limits. For example, CMS and ATLAS have established new restrictions for the mass of the gluino, a particle predicted by the theory of supersymmetry. This is just one of the many results that were presented on 15 December.
A 13 TeV proton collision recorded by CMS. The two green lines show two photons generated by the collision. (Image: CMS)
The two experiments have also observed a slight excess in the diphoton decay channel. Physicists calculate the mass of hypothetical particles that decay to form a pair of photons, and look at how often different masses are seen. If the distribution does not exactly match that expected from known processes, or in other words a bump appears at a specific mass not corresponding to any known particle, it may indicate a new particle being produced and decaying. However, the excess is too small at this stage to draw such a conclusion. We will have to wait for more data in 2016 to find out whether this slight excess is an inconsequential statistical fluctuation or, alternatively, a sign of the existence of a new phenomenon. Find out next time: season 2 is only just beginning.
The presentations by ATLAS and CMS are available here. More details are also available on the ATLAS and CMS websites.Utrecht-based Mark Lohmann has been releasing music as Moon Moon Moon since 2014, when his self-released debut album I Want! I Want! first appeared. Combing the intimacy of Elliott Smith's early work with the angular structures of Pinback and Broken Social Scene (not to mention a liberal dose of his own singular magic), Lohmann's music is warmly comforting and yet filled with that same sense of heart-melting despair that made the likes of Sufjan Stevens and Conor Oberst seem so relatably appealing.
Composed and recorded entirely at home, and slathered with the sort of sonic experimentation that can only come about from hours of unrestrained creativity, Moon Moon Moon's latest album Help! Help! is scheduled for release on 17 March via Dutch stable Tiny Room Records (also home to Guided by Voices' similarly-minded collaborator Todd Tobias). Watch the clip for album track Disintegration Loop in the player above, and read Lohmann's thoughts on the song and video here...
How the song came to be:
Mark Lohmann: "At a time of a little too much death in my life, I was listening to the Disintegration Loops by ambient/loop composer William Basinski a lot. Especially this one:
"The story behind them really intrigued me. Basically, they’re short loops that keep looping until they’re completely destroyed/disintegrated/dead.
"So one evening in December 2015, I was riding my bike during a heavy snowfall and listening to Disintegration Loops 1.1. After a while I started to sing some words on a melody that came to me while listening to the loop. I came up with most of the lyrics on my bike and then went inside and recorded my song on top of the loop – I kept adding things and after a while it became my own song, with Disintegration Loops 1.1 still audible in some parts."
What it's about:
"I guess the song is about not being able to let go of things that have passed. In the song and video, this is visualised as hands from the grave, popping up everywhere. Re-using a loop that had ‘died’/disintegrated is basically trying to take the loop out of its grave, which is in turn what the song is about."
Not wanting to get sued:
"I emailed Basinski to let him know I used his music to make my own and that I really loved his work. He was nice about it and said he liked the song but after some emails he insisted that I took Disintegration Loops 1.1 out of my mix. I respected this, of course, but it did make me a tad sad. Anyway, I recorded some weird flute with a lot of reverb and pitchshifting instead."
About the video:
"I recorded all the shots while I was visiting a friend. We went camping in the Lake District and it was raining almost 24/7, so it really was almost all black and white as in the video. Later, back home, I spent a lot of time choosing the right videos and just kind of started drawing on top of them – then I had a video."
Help! Help! is now available for pre-order from Tiny Room RecordsOn the eve of a Lords ruling over US demands for his extradition, a British computer hacker claims that American prosecutors threatened to haul him before a military tribunal
When he wakes up this morning, Gary McKinnon will be 72 hours from learning whether he is on the fast track to a 60-year prison sentence, thanks to his obsession with aliens.
McKinnon, 42, from Enfield in north London, is accused by American prosecutors of illegally accessing top-secret computer systems in what they claimed in one legal document was 'the biggest military computer hack of all time'.
The self-taught IT expert insists he was simply looking for information the US government had on UFOs and is adamant that he never damaged any of its computer systems. This argument, however, cuts little ice with the Americans, who are trying to extradite him. Five years after being told by British police that he would probably get a six-month community service order for his exploits, McKinnon finds himself still wanted by the US authorities. A 2006 High Court ruling granted the extradition request, and on Wednesday the House of Lords will decide on McKinnon's appeal against that ruling.
That it should come to this is little short of outrageous, say his supporters. Soon after he was arrested in 2002, US prosecutors appeared to offer McKinnon a deal: if he agreed to extradition and admitted his guilt, he would get a sentence of three to four years, most of which could be served in the UK. When McKinnon rejected the offer - made in confidential meetings at the US embassy - his lawyers were told 'all bets were off'. They claim the US prosecutors upped the stakes, suggesting he would be 'treated like a terrorist' if he did not agree to face trial and plead guilty in the US.
McKinnon claims that at one stage there were suggestions that he would face a military tribunal, possibly at Guantánamo Bay. 'They said they wanted to see me fry,' he said.
McKinnon's lawyers claim that attempts to force him to accept a plea bargain constituted 'an unlawful abuse of the court process'.
A Lords ruling in favour of McKinnon, who has become a cause célèbre for UFO enthusiasts, computer users and civil liberties groups, would force US prosecutors to restart their extradition process in the magistrates' courts, a major setback that could have ramifications for other Britons resisting removal to the US. A ruling against him would mean an appeal to the European Court of Human Rights and leave him in legal limbo, banned from travelling abroad, forced to report to police every Friday, and barred from accessing the internet.
In a further twist, it has emerged that a crucial file containing details of the early meetings with the US prosecutors, at which the offers were apparently made, has gone missing from the office of McKinnon's solicitor. A laptop holding details of the same meetings was stolen from the car of one of his barristers.
The revelations have prompted febrile speculation among McKinnon's supporters, who fear that events have taken a sinister turn. McKinnon believes his phone has been bugged and claims to have been followed. As a result of his exploits, no IT company will now offer McKinnon a job. 'I think it's bloody ridiculous,' he said. 'They should employ me to bust paedophile rings or credit card frauds rather than stick me in jail for the rest of my life.'
These days he earns a living driving a fork-lift truck. It seems a mundane job for a man who between 1999 and 2002 broke into the most secure computer systems in the world from his north London flat. Using a computer language called Perl and a cheap PC, McKinnon linked a number of computer systems to search for US databases that were not protected by a password. 'I could scan 65,000 machines in less than nine minutes,' McKinnon said.
McKinnon unearthed unprotected computer systems operated by the US army, the navy, the Pentagon and Nasa. On every system he hacked, he left messages. 'It was frightening because they had little or no security,' he said. 'I was always leaving messages on the desktop saying, "your security is really crap".'
One message has come back to haunt him. 'I said US foreign policy was akin to government-sponsored terrorism and I believed 9/11 was an inside job. It was a political diatribe,' he admitted.
In the end, the ease with which he could hack the systems became his undoing. 'I got sloppy. I went to places directly rather than jump through systems. Nasa tracked back my IP address.'
McKinnon's interest in aliens was started by an internet-based group of UFO enthusiasts called The Disclosure Project. The group had collected more than 200 testimonies - some from people who have served in the US military - that 'confirm' that extra-terrestrials exist. Not only that but, according to McKinnon, some of the testimonies offered proof that 'certain parts of Western intelligence had acquired and reverse-engineered their technology, mainly weaponry and free energy'.
Intrigued, McKinnon used the testimonies to help him search top-secret US databases for information about free energy. 'I felt if it existed it should be publicly available,' he said. He says he came across many other hackers in the supposedly secure systems, many with Chinese and Russian internet addresses. Since his exploits were exposed, consecutive government reports have confirmed that the US military's computer systems remain poorly protected.
McKinnon was caught before he could find any confidential information on 'free energy', but he saw enough to believe the US authorities are suppressing what they know about aliens. He says he came across a document written by a Nasa official who claimed the agency has to airbrush UFOs out of satellite photos because 'there are so many of them'.
With only a 56k modem, he found that downloading the huge volume of documents was too time-consuming. But McKinnon claims that he managed to capture almost two-thirds of an image of what he believes was either a UFO or a top-secret US craft operating in space.
The picture was confiscated, along with all the other material McKinnon downloaded. The material included an Excel spreadsheet entitled 'non-terrestrial officers' and a list of names. 'It was a really weird phrase,' McKinnon said. 'Maybe it was the secret development of a space force. Space is the next frontier and it's already being weaponised.'
His hacking career came to an abrupt end one morning in March 2002. The National High Tech Crime Unit searched his flat and arrested McKinnon and his then girlfriend. 'They said "you'll probably get six months' community service",' McKinnon claimed.
In the end the Crown Prosecution Service decided not to prosecute, but two years later, after crime unit officials visited Washington, apparently taking McKinnon's hard drive, the US government began extradition proceedings. 'Now I'm facing 60 years in prison,' McKinnon said. 'I believe my case is being treated so seriously because they're scared of what I've seen. I'm living in a surreal, nutter's film.'
The greatest hackers
Jonathan James At 16 he was the first juvenile to be jailed (for six months) for hacking in 2000. He targeted high-profile organisations including Nasa, stealing more than $1.7m worth of software.
Adrian Lamo Broke into organisations such as the New York Times and Microsoft between 2002-2003 using internet connections at coffee shops and libraries. He had to pay $65,000, serve six months of home confinement and two years' probation.
Kevin Mitnick The Department of Justice called him 'the most wanted computer criminal in United States history' for his hacking activities between 1982 and 1992. He served |
only further fuel the fiery debate about the advantages and disadvantages that transgender athletes bring to sports — especially if Bearden walks away with a victory.
Dave Taylor, based in Boulder, Colorado, has been writing about consumer electronics, technology, and pop culture for many years and runs the popular site AskDaveTaylor.com.Are you a collector of rare artifacts? Have you always wanted the skull of a Catholic saint in your possession? Well, you’re in luck! The severed head of St. Vitalis of Assisi, who died in 1370, is prepped to hit the auction block in Duleek, Ireland on Sunday.
Vitalis, a benedict monk and hermit, gained his sainthood some years after his death, mostly thanks to some heavily publicized repentance for an early life marked by lots of sexy, sexy sinning. Since then, he has been widely attributed as the patron saint of.. venereal diseases. They really do have a saint for everything.
The skull, enclosed in a Queen Anne case, sat in the hallway of a Ango-Irish family’s home for years, relegated to an outhouse when children were present, which is exactly where auctioneer Damien Matthews came across it.
ADVERTISEMENT
“It is strange and it is macabre but it is very interesting object,” Matthews said.
The piece is valued somewhere between $1200 to $1800, which seems pretty low, until you consider that the number of people who collect saintly skulls is not bound to be very large.
Owning an artifact said to cure VD for roughly the amount of the hooker that ruined your life? That’s a steal.
For more on the odd item and it’s pending auction, visit Irish Central.
MORE GREAT STORIES FROM WEEK IN WEIRD:Alireza Khajehali is a very talented 3d artist. His focus is creating open-world 3d environments. His Artstation page is full of deserts, misty mountains, and green grasslands. Most recently he shared some images of his new open world environment, which sort of remind us of the wild open steppe regions of Ukraine.
In this particular example, Alireza used some wonderful trees and explored his grass material. The scenes look very versatile and hold a bunch of great detail. The vegetation looks precise and almost photo-realistic. The biggest part of the scene is the incredible lighting and very real skybox. It feels like a photograph. We’ve talked with Alireza about this particular project and figured out how he managed to build this amazing scene.
Intro
One thing I need to point out first is that many people are disgusted when the shader complexity looks red or white, and they limit their art instead of unleashing it. UE4 allows you to see the shader complexity, and it’s a nice feature. But it’s designed to let you see the shader complexity. It’s not “Use the shader complexity view mode and remove what is red or white”. It’s not possible to have a bunch of grass and trees without having red or white in shader complexity view. Just right over the street is the Cryengine community. No one there is talking about shader complexity as much as the UE4 community members do because Cryengine doesn’t have a shader complexity view built in the UI and people have a piece of mind putting together dense forests and jungles. As long as it runs well. Right?
However, to my personal knowledge, in UE4 shadowing and overdraw cost more than normal when compared to another engine like Cryengine, and a lot of UE4 users will disagree, but it’s not a case of who thinks what.
How to make everything work faster?
Instead of having a lot of leaves cards on your tree, try to have as much less cards, but larger in size so you can have much more leaves on your cards which ends up filling the trees with much less tris.
When creating your leaves cards try to have as less empty space as possible, it’s fine to spend more tris on a card but reduse the transparent spaces because in the end overdraw costs more than trinagle count.
When using a directional light for an outdoor environment set the dynamic shadow cascades to 1. This will instantly release a lot of frames.
How to increase the overall quality of your outdoors?
Use DFAO with a min occlusion value around 0.15. In case 0.15 makes it too dark for you the problem is with your lighting and/or textures not being calibrated to PBR friendly values.
In case you’re using a billboard for your trees, try to tile a very rough and noisy normal map on it. At far, that noisy normal map on the billboard will break the flat look. (And don’t forget to increase the Opacity Mask Clip Value for the billboards too.
If you have noticed, usually your foliages look not so well when you’re not close to them. And that’s because of the MIP mapping. What happens is that when the texture is mipmapped you lose the full resolution and thus your alpha or opacity is blurred. That little blur results in losing all those tiny while holes and lines and therefore you don’t get to see anything from behind the mesh. This can be solved by increasing the Opacity Mask Clip Value. As you can see in my pictures the trees look very noisy, full of holes, you can easily see the sky behind the leaves and that’s what makes it look realistic.
Set your SSAO intensity to 1, Quality to 100, Fade out Distance to maximum.
Check “Generate Distance Field as if TwoSided” on your foliage meshes and their LODs. This will leave fewer artifacts in DFAO generated on your meshes.
Increase your normal map strength on grasses/leaves a lot! This will make your flat planes look directional. Plug the normal map to the A pin of a Multiply node, plug a 3Vector into the B pin, set the 3Vector values to 1,1,0.2 and that should do it.
Additionally, the pictures in this article are WIP images from Our Ghosts of War, a WW2 survival game that we’ve been working on since last year, and I think we’ll have a lot of good news soon! You can follow the progress here. There are tons of other things I’d like to share but I’m really busy and running out of time here for now. Might have another chance in the future again to share more. Thank you for reading, and thanks to Kirill Tokarev and 80.lv. Also special thanks to Quixel for Megascans, one of the main pillars for the environments of our game.
If you have more questions, make sure to check out our interview with Alireza Khajehali over here.Khreshchatyk (Ukrainian: Хрещатик, Khreshchatyk;) is the main street of Kyiv, Ukraine. The street has a length of 1.2km (0.81 mi). It stretches from the European Square (northeast) through the Maidan and to Bessarabska Square (southwest) where the Besarabsky Market is located. Along the street are the offices of the Kiev City Council which contains both the city's council and the state administration, the Main Post Office, the Ministry of Agrarian Policy, the State Committee of Television and Radio Broadcasting, the Central Department Store (TsUM), the Ukrainian House, and others.
The entire street was completely destroyed during World War II by the retreating Red Army troops and rebuilt in the neo-classical style of post-war Stalinist architecture. Among prominent buildings that did not survive were the Kiev City Duma, the Kiev Stock Exchange, Hotel Natsional, and the Ginzburg House. The street has been significantly renovated during the modern period of Ukraine's independence. Today, the street is still significant to administrative and business city organizations, as well as a popular tourist attraction.
As of 2010, Khreshchatyk is included in the Top 20 of most expensive shopping streets in Europe.[1]
History [ edit ]
The name of Khreshchatyk is believed to be derived from the Slavic word krest or khrest (cross). It lies in a valley that is crossed by several ravines. When looked at from above, the valley resembles a cross. A small river, the Khreshchatyk River, a tributary of Kiev's Lybid River, ran along much of the valley, and still runs underground along much of the street.
Russian Empire [ edit ]
For a long time, Khreshchatyk remained an undeveloped ravine between several neighborhoods of Kiev: Podil - the commercial neighbourhood, the Upper City - the administrative neighbourhood, and Pechersk neighbourhood built around the Pechersk Lavra ("Monastery of the Caves").
The development of the area only started in the 19th century. The ravine was filled and accelerating construction quickly followed. By the middle 19th century, Khreshchatyk was developed as Kiev's main thoroughfare in the climate of rapid growth of the city during the Industrial Revolution in Imperial Russia. The street soon became the center of Kiev's commercial life, as the city itself developed into the main commercial center in the Empire's south-west.
In 1892, the first electric tram line in the Russian Empire ran in Kiev and by 1894, the line was extended to Khreshchatyk. The street was served by the tram for about 40 years.
Revolution [ edit ]
During the period of chaos after the Russian Revolution of 1917, many buildings on Khreshchatyk were heavily damaged as the city changed hands many times between Ukrainian, German, Polish, and Bolshevik forces. On May 9, 1920, the Polish army under General Rydz-Smigly celebrated their capture of Kiev by a ceremonial parade on Khreshchatyk. They were driven out by the Bolshevik counter-offensive within weeks.
Interbellum [ edit ]
Between the wars, Khreshchatyk underwent major development and reconstruction. Between 1923 and 1937, the street was named after V.V. Vorovsky, an early Bolshevik diplomat assassinated in Switzerland. In the mid-1930s, the tram lines were deconstructed, and the trams replaced by trolleybuses.
World War II [ edit ]
During World War II, almost every building on the street was mined with explosives by the retreating Red Army troops. In September 1941, after German troops occupied the city, explosions were set off by radio-controlled fuses from over 400 kilometres away. The demolition of over three hundred buildings on Khreshchatyk became the first operation in history where the long-distance radio-controlled explosions were used for military purposes. Much of the surviving historic center of Kiev was demolished. This unprecedented method of warfare caused panic and brought heavy casualties among both the occupiers and city's remaining civilian population.
Under German occupation, the street was renamed Eichhornstrasse, after the German World War I Field Marshal Hermann von Eichhorn supreme commander of Army Group Kiev (Heeresgruppe Kiew) and simultaneously military governor of Ukraine during the previous German occupation, who had been assassinated in Kiev in 1918.[2]
Soviet Ukraine [ edit ]
Khreshchatyk and its Stalinist architecture seen in the early 1980s.
Following the war, Khreshchatyk was rebuilt in the 1950s and 1960s. The street was widened to 75-100 meters and new buildings were erected in the Neoclassical Stalinist architectural style. Important buildings of the new ensemble include the City Council House (Kyivrada), the Central Post Office (Poshtamt) and Trade-Union House (Budynok Profspilok).
It was used for demonstrations and parades in honor of May 1 (until 1969), Victory Day (9 May) and the October Revolution.
The street was one of Kiev's first landmarks that was serviced by the Kiev Metro in 1960, (see Khreshchatyk (Kiev Metro)) and was the system's first transfer station when the second line opened in 1976.
On May 1, 1986, a few days after the Chernobyl nuclear accident, Soviet authorities held a traditional May Day parade on Khreshchatyk, in order to "calm people" and "prevent panic" caused by the disaster. Thousands of Kievans, including many children, were exposed to dangerous doses of radiation.
In the late 1980s, the porch of the Central Post Office building partially collapsed during heavy rain, killing a dozen people and injuring some. The porch was rebuilt in the following years according to its original design.
On July 24, 1990, the first ceremonial raising of the Ukrainian national flag took place on Khreshchatyk, on the large flagstaff of the Kiev City Council. Due to its central location, the street became the traditional place for political rallies.
Independent Ukraine [ edit ]
Imperial, Stalinist and modern buildings on the Khreshchatyk
Following the dissolution of the Soviet Union and Ukraine becoming independent, the avenue gained a wider context as the central street of the country. During the late 1990s, a complex reconstruction took place, and most of the buildings were cosmetically cleaned up from elements, structurally upgraded and enhanced with colourful illumination. Modern electronic billboards and screens were also installed.
In 2000–01, Khreshchatyk and Maidan Nezalezhnosti, became the centre of the mass protest campaign known as Ukraine without Kuchma. Allegedly to keep the protesters out, the city Mayor (Oleksandr Omelchenko at that time) ordered a major reconstruction of the street, which led to significant rebuilding of Maidan Nezalezhnosti, and construction of two large underground shopping malls.
In the winter of 2004, Khreshchatyk and Maidan Nezalezhnosti became the centre of the main public protests of the Orange Revolution. The protesters' main tent encampment was situated in the street, and many Khreshchatyk buildings served as makeshift feeding and warming sites for the protesters, including the City Council House. In its peak, over a million people from all around Ukraine attended the rally. Late 2013 Khreshchatyk also became one of the centre of the Euromaidan protests.[3]
Attractions [ edit ]
Kyiv Central Department Store (currently being reconstructed)
Khreshchatyk is a popular attraction for tourists. During weekends and public holidays, the street is closed to road traffic and reserved for pedestrians.
Khreshchatyk contains many up-market stores, cafés, and restaurants.
Points of interest situated along Khreshchatyk are the following (south-west to north-east):
Khreshchatyk is a traditional setting for outdoor concerts and festivals, and is frequented by street musicians. Major parades and celebrations are held on Kiev Day (the last Sunday of May), Victory Day (May 9) and Ukrainian Independence Day (August 24).
Significant buildings [ edit ]
No.2 Ukrainian House
No.4 UNIAN building
No.15 Pasazh
No.24 Ministry of Agrarian Policy
No.36 Kiev City Council/Kiev City State Administration
No.38 Central Department Store
Streets and Squares [ edit ]
Transportation [ edit ]
Gallery [ edit ]
References [ edit ]
Footnotes
Bibliography
Edited by Анатолий Кудрицкий [1], ed. (1986). Киев. Энциклопедический справочник. УРЕ. LCC DK508.923.K54 1986. (in Russian)
Александр Анисимов (1992). Скорбное бесчувствие. На добрую память о Киеве, или грустные прогулки по городу, которого нет (in Russian). Tabachuk Ltd. ISBN 5-7707-2150-2.
edited by Анатолій Кудрицький (1995). Вулиці Києва, Довідник (in Ukrainian). УЕ. ISBN 5-88500-070-0.
Coordinates:A crash on the southbound side of U.S. Highway 101 Thursday morning backed up traffic as far as Bath Street. (Claire Scholl / KEYT photo)
A crash on the southbound side of U.S. Highway 101 Thursday morning backed up traffic as far as Bath Street. (Claire Scholl / KEYT photo)
SANTA BARBARA, Calif. - A crash on the southbound side of U.S. Highway 101 Thursday morning backed up traffic as far as Bath Street.
The California Highway Patrol said on its traffic incident webpage that a tan-colored pickup truck with a camper shell crashed into the center divider. The crash was reported just after 9 a.m.
At least one lane was closed during the investigation but traffic remains backed up to Mission Street as of 10:30 a.m.
The driver of the pickup suffered minor injuries according to the CHP.
Crews will remain on scene to clean up the wreckage. Motorists should expect delays this morning.
No further details were immediately known.Troubling news this evening out of Padres camp.
According to beat writer Corey Brock of MLB.com, top pitching prospect Casey Kelly “will have tests done” this week on his right (pitching) elbow, which has been plagued by soreness since his last Cactus League start on March 7 against the Angels.
Kelly began experiencing elbow discomfort last April and was shut down for the next three months as a precautionary measure. Tests taken throughout that period of rest ruled out any structural damage, but there is obviously something not quite right.
The 23-year-old right-hander was rated the Padres’ top prospect this winter by Baseball America and he ranked 45th on Baseball America‘s Top 100 for 2013. The future remains bright but is for now partly cloudy.
*********************
UPDATE, 6:54 PM: Padres manager Bud Black told Brock that the “doctors are concerned what the tests look like” and said Kelly needs to talk to his family before making any further decisions. He may also get a second opinion on the elbow. It seems like Kelly is headed for Tommy John reconstructive surgery.*** no Amazon account or credit card available? Check out our main project page for more funding options! http://www.huelsbeck.com/the-piano-collection/
Chris Huelsbeck
Join us and take part in the creation of The Chris Huelsbeck Piano Album & The Limited Edition Biographical Score Book. The album will feature the greatest hits by Chris Huelsbeck, performed by Patrick Nevian as wonderful piano renditions.
"I'm very excited about this project which I had planned for a very long time! And with all your help and my excellent team we will be able to make history again! :)"
Special: For the first time, Chris Huelsbeck's music will also be available as downloadable sheet music and A Limited Edition Premium Printed and Bound Biographical Score Book! This first edition of 500 limited Score books will be numbered and signed in order of the pledges received and with the higher pledge levels from $119 you'll also get your CD numbered and signed [001-100]!
Pianist Patrick Nevian was our perfect choice to arrange and perform the music, since he is a big fan of Chris Huelsbeck's music and had already released a number of fantastic piano renditions of classic Amiga game soundtracks. His natural talent and understanding of the music makes the album recordings shine. Aside from running the audio production of the album, Chris will of course also be supervising and discuss the evolving arrangements with Patrick. Together they will make sure that they turn out absolutely perfect.
Chris' long term partners in orchestral game music Sound of Games are responsible for the realisation of the Score Book including the Biographical Content for which Audun Sørlie will provide the text.
The first edition of the Score Book will be strictly limited to 500 copies and individually numbered and signed. Higher pledge levels will receive lower numbers. The order of pledges will be tracked so that the first backers will again get the lowest number in their reward category.
Score Book numbered and signed (example)
THE CHRIS HUELSBECK STORY will be an essential part of the Score Book; it will contain never-before published autobiographical material about Chris. Read about the inspirations behind his compositions, how he started making music in his childhood, and his musical path that included inventing his own music technology that brought him on top of the C64, Amiga and many game audio productions (for all of which he ultimately received a Lifetime Achievement Award by the Game Audio Network Guild).
Each piece’s story contains photos and screenshots of Chris and his work.
Score Book inside mockup
THE SHEET MUSIC is transcribed in detail, as performed by Patrick Nevian. Each piece also includes a second score for beginners, so that players of all levels can enjoy playing Chris’ music. Even those who aren't trained musicians can enjoy and visually follow along with the scores while listening to the Album, and get an impression about the passionate arrangements.
This is the very first time in game music history that scores of a game music composer will be published in such a detailed way!
Sound of Games has more than 15 years of experience in writing score music. Over the years they worked with Chris on several projects, and they will take care to bring about a perfect experience in Chris’ story and the sheet music.
The piano is such a fantastic instrument to showcase music in its purest form. With no big sound or orchestration to hide behind, the music has to stand on its own. However, it is an exceptionally expressive instrument that can take the listener on incredible musical journeys.
Patrick Nevian is an experienced performer and recording artist of two Amiga Piano Albums and also produces his own band. In close collaboration with Chris, he will transform the music into a new exciting listening experience. Here are 2 previews from our first recording sessions:
The Great Bath (from Turrican 2) preview excerpt:
R-Type Theme preview excerpt:
The final album recordings will be produced to the highest standards in our state-of-the-art studios and also professionally mastered.
CD Mockup
Special CDs of this kind are becoming a rarity these days (and the first one hundred of these will also be numbered [001-100] and signed), so make sure to reserve yours before they are gone. Included are pieces from The Great Giana Sisters, Turrican, Apidya, R-Type, Gem'X, Extreme Assault, Jim Power and more, including surprises that will be revealed at a later date in the campaign.
New Vinyl Option:
12" Double Vinyl Mock-Up
The regular cost of the Vinyl will be $100, however for backers who have secured a Limited Edition Score Book ($59 level or higher), the Vinyl will be exclusively discounted by 50%for a total of only $50 added to your pledge.
Very Important: In order to keep your reward level, which ensures your specific numbered and signed Limited Edition Score Book, we can not just give you another reward level to switch to--that’s why you will have to upgrade manually by raising your pledge amount and keep your reward selection!
The stretch goals will include our Paypal supporters, so we reach these goals usually before the total of the Kickstarter page reflects it. We currently have already surpassed the 64k and are well on our way to smash the 66k goal!
Included as lossless digital download for levels $39 and up!
At 60k, we will add at least 5 More Pieces to really fill up the CD completely. This of course also includes adding these pieces to the Score Book and digital PDF--in both Beginner and Intermediate versions.
At 64k (in honor of the Commodore C64 computer) we will give every backer an exclusive download of a special stereo double SID recording of the original Shades C64 piece (recording courtesy of our friend 'Sid Spieler') which was never released before!
At 66k (because we were funded in just 66 minutes) we will produce a video of a roundtable discussion / interview with the whole team during gamescom 2015 about the production of “The Piano Collection” and the biographical Score Book.
Additional Bandcamp download album with the original arrangements (from C64, Amiga and others) of all the compositions, free exclusive for backers ($19 reward level and higher) and Paypal supporters of the project.
At 80k we will record one Chris Huelsbeck Bonus Piece (that you will choose together with us) with Piano & Full Live Orchestra on top of it. We will also document the recording session on video for you to download.
More stretch goals are planned!
Available unlimited rewards at a glance:
Rewards in detail:
Reward Matrix
“Proof Readers” get early access to music previews, the biographical texts, photos and sheet music during the production time between January - July 2015. They can discuss all the content with us and make suggestions about the details of the sheet music and the texts. The proof readers names will be listed in the book in order of the backer pledges received.
Also, if you have a limited edition score book, your CD and the optional vinyl will also be numbered and signed, which will make these items a highly valuable collectible.St Matthew-in-the-City church says Jesus Christ’s sexuality is not know for sure but he would have backed gay marriage
Jesus was gay according to a Christmas billboard at a New Zealand Anglican church.
The Christmas billboard at St Matthew-in-the-City in Auckland is frequently controversial – previously it has joked about Joseph’s sexual prowess and shown the Virgin Mary with a pregnancy test.
This year it depicts Jesus in his manger with a rainbow halo and the words: ‘It’s Christmas. Time for Jesus to come out.’
St Matthew’s Reverend Clay Nelson said: ‘Some scholars have tried to make the case that he might have been gay. But it is all conjecture. Maybe gay, maybe not. Does it matter?’
While his colleague at the church, Reverend Glynn Cardy implied Jesus would have backed same-sex marriage, which is currently being debated in New Zealand.
He said: ‘There is almost nothing in the record of his teachings about sexuality while there is plenty about the perils of being rich. Certainly he always supported the marginalized in society.’
And he wanted to raise the question of sexuality among the faithful.
‘Would it make a difference if he was gay? Would that change the picture for you? Would it mean what we revere about him changes?’
Last year’s Virgin Mary pregnancy test billboard spread around the world, reaching 21 million people on Facebook. But it was condemned as ‘blasphemous’ by some Catholics and vandalized.Here we are, fifteen years into a new century, and many authors are churning out noir novels as essential as anything from its heyday. If you’re like me, when you think of the 90s, it feels about five years ago, but the last decade and a half comprises the entire publishing career of many authors, even though we’re about 80 years beyond the origin of noir fiction and about 65 years away from its golden age.
Here then, are 10 of my favorites from the new millennium. I won’t say they're the best because I certainly haven’t read every noir novel to come out since 2000, and I’m hoping someone out there comments about another book they feel passionate about, so I can find new titles to add to my reading list. Comment away and tell me what I missed.
1. The Cleanup by Sean Doolittle (2006)
The hallmarks of noir are the sad sucker, the femme fatale, some very bad decisions—The Cleanup has them all. Working night security at an Omaha supermarket is about as low as a man can sink. He might as well have been thrown off the hay truck about noon. Doolittle is the king of suburban noir and he’s never been blacker than here in a timeless tale that of the desperate side of a man’s soul seeking redemption and a slice of what passes for happiness in his snowbound flatlands world.
2. Dope by Sara Gran (2006)
A blazing, first-person narrative that gleefully takes you into the gutter with Josephine, recovering drug addict and newly minted amateur P.I. Set in the 1950s, this one could have been plucked off the shelves in that decade just as easily as now, except Gran is more honest, more brutal, and more unforgiving than many classic pulp writers. No happy endings here. But this is noir, so that’s no spoiler.
3. Small Crimes by Dave Zeltserman (2008)
A lot of noir protagonists fall into their predicament by bad luck, poor choices, or scheming forces at work against them. Zeltserman specializes in writing about characters who put themselves right in the fire, and never more so than with crooked cop Joe Denton. Denton seems hellbent on ruining his life, even after he’s given a second chance. And reading about his slide down is bleak, black fun.
4. The Cold Kiss by John Rector (2010)
One bad choice often leads to another. And Easy Street always seems one short step away. But we know it’s never that simple. Watching the disaster that befalls a down-on-their-luck couple who think they’ve hit the jackpot, is a slow spiral through small justifications for bad actions—always thinking one more indiscretion will be all that’s needed to set them up for life. But, oh, no. There is always one more loose thread to be cut. One more test of how crooked we are willing to get when staring temptation in the face. An instant classic.
5. Hell On Church Street by Jake Hinkson (2012)
Alongside the sad suckers and put-upon cuckolds of noir is the psychopath. Think of the (anti)heroes of The Killer Inside Me, Kiss My Fist, Grifter’s Game. Hinkson has created a despicable rogue who also happens to be a charmer, both to the people in the story and the reader. Southern-fried and Bible-thumping, this noir also contains one of the most noir sentences ever uttered: “So, you see, starting out I had good intentions.” That sums up the cynical world view as well as anything. Good intentions with skewed approaches lead to dark outcomes.
SEE ALSO: What Sleuth Are You?
6. Cemetery Road by Gar Anthony Haywood (2009)
Another candidate for the most noir line ever is this one from Cemetery Road: “I was given my first clue that what we were about to do could only end badly.” That’s one thing about noir. It doesn’t try to hide the fact that things will, indeed, go badly. In Haywood’s masterpiece of contemporary L.A., they go spectacularly awry. And it all starts with those damned good intentions again. This is a story about the failure to live down your past, and the fact that payback is patient and will always find you in the end.
7. Twisted City by Jason Starr (2004)
There is not a string of more perfect hardcore noir novels than the early work of Jason Starr. He churned them out like a Gold Medal writer on deadline, or more like someone who had to keep typing before the devil showed up to claim his due. Twisted City, Hard Feelings, Tough Luck, Cold Caller, Fake ID, Nothing Personal, Lights Out. I put all these novels in a series since they take place in the same moody world where nobody is safe and no one is clean, no matter how innocent.
Twisted City is the ultimate bad-luck noir. A simple twist of fate draws our protagonist into the worst week of his life, and on every page, you feel terrified that this could all happen to you tomorrow. Chilling. Nobody abuses his characters more than Starr. If there is justice in literature, Starr’s afterlife will consist of him being tortured for eternity by all the fictional people he has wronged.
8. Fade To Blonde by Max Phillips (2004)
Of all the Hard Case Crime books that could have made this list, I have a soft spot for this one. I’m due for a re-read, because while thinking about it, I could recall very little of the specific plot, but I still remember the feeling of being soaked in an old-school noir with a modern feel. Max Phillips may be a pen name. I’m not even sure, but this is homage that elevates itself above the realm of mere imitation and stands proudly on its own. This one won the Shamus award from the Private Eye Writers of America, and it’s easy to see why.
9. A Very Simple Crime by Grant Jerkins (2010)
I was reminded of Cornell Woolrich several times while reading this novel, and I consider Woolrich to be the master of the form. A small story, simply told, this novel progresses deliberately, but powerfully, forward. Second-guessing doesn’t even cover it. You can’t figure it out. It’s like mercury in your hands. Jerkins toys with the reader and each page is like taking another step deeper into quicksand.
10. The Ice Harvest by Scott Phillips (2000)
A modern classic of noir nihilism. These are nasty people doing nasty things and almost daring you to root for them. The crooks and shysters are small-time, but the stakes are high in their seedy little world. Best of all, the crimes are wrapped in a family drama of a failed marriage and a doomed man determined to make very bad decisions. There are double-crosses, femme fatales, and there hasn’t been a man more desperate to run after his big plans fail since Harry Fabian in Night and the City. This is midwestern noir at its ice-cold best.
Ten was hard to whittle down, so here are some more dishonorable mentions:
Abide With Me by Ian Ayris
The Ninth Step by Grant Jerkins
Drive by James Sallis
Die a Little, The Song Is You by Megan Abbott
Donnybrook by Frank Bill
Hard Cold Whisper by Michael Hemmingson
The Science Of Paul by Aaron Phillip Clark
Dark as Night by Mark T. Conard
Eric Beetner is a hardboiled crime author of The Devil Doesn't Want Me, Dig Two Graves, White Hot Pistol, The Year I Died Seven Times, Stripper Pole At The End Of The World, Split Decision, A Mouth Full Of Blood and co-author (with JB Kohl) of One Too Many Blows To The Head and Borrowed Trouble. Award-winning short story writer, former musician, sometimes filmmaker, film noir nerd and father of two.This video was filmed at a meeting held in Southall, west London, in the run-up to Fidel Castro’s 90th birthday. His anniversary was rightly celebrated by the people of Cuba – and is particularly remarkable in view of the literally hundreds of attempts to assassinate him made by US imperialism. After all, Mainland USA lies just 90 miles from the coast of Cuba, and their Navy continue to illegally occupy Guantanamo Bay, on the eastern point of the island.
CPGB-ML Chairman Harpal Brar introduces Cde Jorge Luis Garcia, Councillor of the Cuban Embassy in the UK. In his preliminary remarks, Cde Harpal notes the enduring successes of the Cuban revolution, and that the audacious attack on the Moncada barracks, though unsuccessful in toppling US puppet dictator Fulgencio Batista’s rule, and resulting in several of Castro’s comrades dying and many – including Castro himself – being arrested, none the less served as a basis for the M 26-7 movement in Cuba.
It was this revolutionary guerrilla movement which sparked Cuba’s national liberation struggle, and led to the victorious revolutionary socialist uprising that liberated the island from US domination, and effectively brought the communist movement to the Americas.
Harpal’s comments were well received by the packed meeting, organised to mark the 63rd anniversary of the storming of the Moncada barracks as well as the victory of the Korean people over the aggressive invasion and occupation of their country in 1953.
Comrade Garcia thanked Harpal and the CPGB-ML, and all British progressive workers for their support of Cuba, and in particular their recent contribution to the campaign that ultimately forced the US government to release the Cuban 5, who have recently toured Britain to speak at solidarity meetings.
Cde Garcia also noted that while there is a thawing of relations, and re-establishment of dialogue with the USA – achieved during the lifetime of their commander in chief, Fidel – the Obama administration remains the 11th successive US regime that seeks to overthrow the Cuban revolutionary government, and still maintains the illegal blockade, despite the overwhelming world sentiment, often expressed at the UN, that it must end this criminal action.
Our chief demand must be to demand the lifting of the Blockade, and the removal of US troops from the illegally occupied part of Cuba, and the closing of USA’s torture camp, naval and military base at Guantanamo Bay.
Long Live the Cuban Revolution! Viva Cuba Libre! Hasta La Vitoria Siempre!
All of the speakers contributions at this international solidarity meeting will shortly be made available.
Workers of all countries unite – we have nothing to loose but our chains; we have a world to win!
_____________________________________________________
Subscribe! Donate! Join us in building a bright future for humanity!
http://www.redyouth.org
http://www.cpgb-ml.org
http://www.youtube.com/ProletarianCPGBML
http://www.lalkar.org
Red Youth Education Program: Each one teach one!
http://redyouthuk.wordpress.com/educational-links/
Join the struggle!
http://www.cpgb-ml.org/index.php?secName=join
Donate:
https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_s-xclick&hosted_button_id=RNTPLUHGTMRP6I purchased these as driving lights for 2002 Honda Accord (250,000 miles). At night, it was very difficult to see. I have tried better headlight bulbs and polishing my lenses. They helped some, but it was still hard to see, especially when in the rain. I could barely see light on the road at night during the rain and it was difficult and dangerous to drive. I aimed them so the light pattern is just below my headlights and nobody flashes me. They basically look like super bright fog lights. I have passed several police vehicles head-on and have had no problems. They are super bright though and make sure you aim them right, or you will blind people. They do not compare to a light bar obviously, but would be great for ATV's, motorcycles, or someone who needs SOME extra light...they will not light up the world like a light bar, but they do what they are supposed to do. They also make great daytime running lights, if you want to save your headlight bulbs. LED's last much longer than halogen bulbs in headlights.
There are only two reasons I did not give them 5 stars: 1. They do not come sealed. Make sure you buy some clear silicone caulk to seal all the cracks and seams. Other reviewers said their lights filled up with water and moisture. I have driven in the rain many times and there are no moisture issues (because I sealed them |
turn away people complaining about corruption in Delhi Police and the Delhi Development Authority as well. Instead, people only have to approach the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) with their complaints.
Additional Commissioner of Police V Renganathan, who heads the ACB refused to speak on this subject. “The matter is sub-judice.... I have nothing to say,” he said, in reference to the high court hearing a petition challenging the ACB’s powers to probe the Centre’s decision on gas pricing.
His predecessor N Dilip Kumar, who breathed life into the otherwise moribund anti-graft department during his stint in 2009-11 and encouraged people to do stings on the corrupt, said the Centre’s move was “very unfortunate”.“For a government that came to power on the promise to strike at the roots of corruption, this is outrageous... The police, municipal corporations and the DDA are one of the most corrupt bodies,” the retired IPS officer said.A home ministry official told HT that the ACB would still be able to investigate employees of municipal bodies. “But the DDA and Delhi Police come under the Central government. They can only be probed by the CBI,” the official stressed.
First Published: Aug 10, 2014 23:47 ISTBuy Photo Gov. Mike Pence talks about authorizing the arming of soldiers at Indiana National Guard facilities and recruiting sites statewide. He was joined at a news conference Sunday, July 19, 2015, at Indiana National Guard Joint Force Headquarters by (from left) Col. Timothy Thombleson, Col. Ronald Westfall and Maj. Gen. Courtney Carr, Indiana’s adjutant general. (Photo: Kelly Wilkinson/The Star)Buy Photo
For Gov. Mike Pence, arming the more than 14,000 members of the Indiana National Guard is, above all else, a matter of safety.
Safety for the men and women who have made the choice to serve. Safety for the civilians who work alongside soldiers and airmen at dozens of National Guard facilities across the state.
Safety for Hoosiers who might find themselves in the path of an attack such as the Thursday shootings that took the lives of five U.S. service members in Chattanooga, Tenn.
“Quite simply, I will not allow our citizen soldiers to remain unable to defend themselves and our citizens at facilities around the state,” Pence said. “Those who serve in the Indiana Army and Air National Guard, and their families, make great sacrifices for the people of Indiana. They deserve nothing less than our best efforts to see to their safety and security, and that is the very foundation of my decision.”
On Saturday, Pence issued an executive order that will allow the arming of all Indiana National Guard members at facilities and recruiting sites statewide.
That means starting Monday, National Guard members at the state’s 62 armories, two air wings, 12 recruiting storefronts and the Muscatatuck Urban Training Center will be allowed to carry their personal weapons with the proper permit.
Pence’s action follows similar moves to arm guardsmen in Florida, Texas, Arkansas, Oklahoma and Louisiana.
Pence said his administration also is working on a policy that will allow National Guard members without a permit to obtain one at an expedited basis if they so desire.
For security reasons, additional information about timing and scope of the policy are not being discussed publicly, Pence said.
“It is important to note that Indiana is home to the fourth-largest National Guard contingent in America, and our National Guard is a source of great pride to all the people of Indiana,” Pence said. “The action that we’ve taken is born of my heartfelt desire to make sure that those who are defending our freedom can defend themselves in the event that they are put in harm’s way.”
NEWSLETTERS Get the Breaking News newsletter delivered to your inbox We're sorry, but something went wrong Urgent developments you should know now, not later. Please try again soon, or contact Customer Service at 1-888-357-7827. Delivery: varies Invalid email address Thank you! You're almost signed up for Breaking News Keep an eye out for an email to confirm your newsletter registration. More newsletters
Maj. Gen. Courtney Carr, Indiana’s adjutant general, said the most important thing about the policy is ensuring the safety and security of his soldiers and airmen. The National Guard is working closely with the Department of Homeland Security, the Indiana State Police and other law enforcement agencies on training, implementation and permitting, he said.
Additionally, the National Guard armories are home to military weapons that will be carried by qualified individuals who receive orders to serve as force protection officers or commanding officers.
“I’m extremely appreciative of Governor Pence’s quick action to allow us to increase the protection of our soldiers and airmen,” Carr said. “Our training will include rules on use of force to make it clear that this policy is about self-defense and not to supplant the great protection we have from our law enforcement officials around the state.”
Four Marines and a Navy petty officer were killed in Thursday’s attacks at a U.S. Navy Reserve Center before the gunman, Mohammad Youssuf Abdulazeez, 24, a naturalized U.S. citizen, was killed in a shootout with police.
The four Marines killed in the attack were identified as Gunnery Sgt. Thomas Sullivan, Springfield, Mass.; Staff Sgt. David Wyatt, Burke, N.C.; Sgt. Carson Holmquist, Polk, Wis.; and Lance Cpl. Squire K. Wells, Cobb, Ga. Navy Petty Officer Randall Smith, a logistics specialist originally from Paulding, Ohio, died early Saturday.
Hundreds of people paid tribute to the servicemen across Tennessee on Saturday, as well as the nine people killed in last month’s shooting at a church in Charleston, S.C.
On Friday, Gen. Ray Odierno, chief of staff of the Army, said that security at military recruiting and reserve centers would be reviewed but that it was too early to say whether the facilities should have security guards or other increased protection. Congressional leaders said Friday that they would direct the Pentagon to allow troops to carry guns on bases.
USA TODAY contributed to this story. Call Star reporter Justin L. Mack at (317) 444-6138. Follow him on Twitter: @justinlmack.
Read or Share this story: http://indy.st/1MBUXMRHow dare they refuse to protect the queen!
Congressional Dems furious GOP colleagues may 'leak' (i.e. tell the public) what's in FBI's Hillary files
You’ve heard by now that the FBI is turning over its notes from the Hillary e-mail interrogation to the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. Republicans on the committee want to see if Hillary’s answers in the interviews were consistent with what she said under oath when she testified before them earlier this year, and whether there is any basis for a perjury case against her. FBI Director James Comey was very careful in telling the committee that Hillary did not lie “to the FBI.” That doesn’t mean she didn’t lie to anyone. A comparison of the FBI interview with her congressional testimony should be very interesting. Now remember: The Clintons’ entire world revolves around keeping things secret if they possibly can. This is why Hillary ran the schlock, homebrew e-mail server in the first place - to keep the contents of her e-mails out of public view in the event of subpoenas or Freedom of Information Act requests.
And because protecting Hillary means keeping information about her away from your prying eyes, Democrats on the committee are hopping mad at the FBI for turning over their notes to the committee. Why? Because they fear the worst, the worst being that the public will actually be shown the information: GOP lawmakers said they were shocked by the FBI’s decision not to recommend criminal charges against Clinton last month and have accused Comey, a Republican, of instituting a two-tiered system of justice. Comey and Attorney General Loretta Lynch defended the decision on Capitol Hill last month, and Herring, in his letter on Tuesday, reiterated much of their arguments. Clinton and her team were “extremely careless,” the FBI official maintained, but their behavior did not meet the legal hurdles for an indictment. Democrats had opposed the call to give the FBI materials to Capitol Hill, claiming that Republicans were merely trying to prolong a politically damaging saga for Clinton.
The move could set a precedent, warned Rep, Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), and discourage people from participating in future interviews with the FBI. Handing over the notes also serves little purpose, Schiff maintained, since the case is closed and Congress has no power to reopen it. “And make no mistake, if these statements are released to Congress, they will be released,” said Schiff, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, in a statement on Monday. “The history of the partisan Benghazi investigation made it clear that any information that can be leaked by the majority to the prejudice of Secretary Clinton, will be leaked.” That’s a hilarious use of the word “leaked.” Releasing information is simply releasing it. Here it is, everybody! There’s nothing sneaky or untoward about that. A “leak” is when someone who is not authorized to release information gives it to someone who is not supposed to have it, usually under anonymity because he or she would get fired if it was known what they did. If Jason Chaffetz decides to make this information public, that’s not a leak. That’s simply telling the public what’s in the file. And this is a terrifying prospect for Democrats because they know what Hillary said about the FBI interview is probably not exactly what happened. Now, getting the media to pay much attention to it is another matter entirely. They’re on a mission to stop Donald Trump, and any release of information that’s not helpful to Hillary will probably not garner much attention. But it should.
The media might not want to talk about Hillary’s dishonesty By the way, Congress may not be able to re-open the case Comey just closed, but as he made clear, they can make a referral against her for perjury related to her congressional testimony. It may be just as difficult to get anyone who works for the Justice Department to charge her, but as a matter of fact Schiff is wrong when he suggests Congress has no power to do anything meaningful with the information. Besides, releasing it would be a meaningful thing to do too. The media might not want to talk about Hillary’s dishonesty, but there might still be a few voters left who’d like to know about it.
Only YOU can save CFP from Social Media Suppression. Tweet, Post, Forward, Subscribe or Bookmark us
Dan Calabrese’s column is distributed by HermanCain.com, which can be found at HermanCain
Follow all of Dan’s work, including his series of Christian spiritual warfare novels, by liking his page on Facebook.
Please adhere to our commenting policy to avoid being banned. As a privately owned website, we reserve the right to remove any comment and ban any user at any time.Comments that contain spam, advertising, vulgarity, threats of violence and death, racism, anti-Semitism, or personal or abusive attacks on other users may be removed and result in a ban.-- Follow these instructions on registeringThe Rabbitohs have been hit hard by the NRL match review committee following their 24-18 win over the Knights on Saturday.
Three South Sydney players are facing extended time on the sidelines with George Burgess, Hymel Hunt and Braidon Burns all facing multiple week suspensions.
Burgess was slapped with a grade 2 striking charge – which he was sent to the sin-bin for – on Newcastle's Mitchell Barnett. The Rabbitohs prop will miss two matches with an early guilty plea, but could miss three matches if he fights the charge and loses at the judiciary.
Hunt is facing up to six weeks on the sidelines after he was charged with a Grade 2 reckless high tackle on Brendan Elliot. An early plea would see the Rabbitoh miss four matches, but he risks up to a six-match ban if he fights the charge and loses.
Burns was slapped with a grade 1 shoulder charge, but will only miss one match with an early plea.
Newcastle's Josh Starling and Manly's Apisai Koroisau could both avoid suspension with early pleas.
Starling was cited for a grade 1 dangerous contact on Kyle Turner, while Koroisau was hit with a dangerous throw on Kane Linett.Murray will return to number two in the world rankings on Monday, even if he loses the Rome final
British number one Andy Murray reached his first Italian Open final with a straight-set victory over unseeded Frenchman Lucas Pouille.
Murray, seeded second, won 6-2 6-1 in a rain-interrupted semi-final at Rome's Foro Italico to make Sunday's final.
He now meets Novak Djokovic - who beat him in last week's Madrid Open final - after the Serb defeated Kei Nishikori.
In the women's singles, top seed Serena Williams will face Madison Keys on Sunday in an all-American final.
Murray makes swift progress despite rain
World number three Murray, who will be 29 on Sunday, broke serve four times as he won in 59 minutes.
The first semi-final was delayed by an hour because of heavy rain, and the players were forced off for 15 minutes during the first set.
"I think it is the first time since I've been on Tour that I've not had a chance to hit balls before going on to the court," said Murray.
"It pretty much rained non-stop and then they flipped the schedule around so I didn't feel that comfortable coming on to court.
Djokovic beat Murray in last week's Madrid Open final
"But he made a few mistakes and I served well to make it easy for myself."
In between the showers, Murray was at his ruthless best against world number 52 Pouille, playing his first ATP Masters semi-final.
The 22-year-old looked nervous as he dropped serve from 40-0 in the fourth game and - after that brief rain delay - Murray broke again to clinch the set.
It was a similar story in the second set, with Murray repeatedly drawing his opponent into the net and setting up the passing shot.
Two more breaks of serve gave Murray the match and he left the Centrale Court in sunshine, having surpassed his best effort of reaching the last four in 2011.
"A lot of the best players of all time have played, won and competed for the title here, so I'm very happy to get the chance to do that," added Murray.
"After 10 years of kind of struggling on the clay and especially this event maybe not playing my best, I'm happy to be there."
Djokovic provides final test
Novak Djokovic converted only two out of 14 break points in a thrilling semi-final against Kei Nishikori
Murray completes his preparation for the French Open, which starts on 22 May, by facing world number one Djokovic in Sunday's final (16:00 BST).
The Serb, 28, needed to dig deep to beat Nishikori in the second semi-final, eventually prevailing 2-6 6-4 7-6 (7-5) in a match lasting a minute over three hours.
"Any time you get the chance to play the best players, especially right before a Slam, is great preparation," said Murray, who has won just one of his past 13 matches against Djokovic.
"Regardless of who I play in the final, I know I will be pushed hard. That's what you want."
Murray is bidding to win the third clay-court title of his career after finally succeeding on the surface in back-to-back tournaments last year.
"Clay is not my most natural surface, but because of the wins I've had on it in the last few years, once I've played a few matches and had a bunch of practice sessions on it, I do start to feel much better," said Murray, who reached the semi-finals at Roland Garros in 2011, 2014 and 2015.
"I believe that I can compete with the best players on this surface now, because of the wins I've had in the last two years."
Serena Williams has won 15 successive matches against American opponents since sister Venus beat her at Montreal in 2014
Serena finding form before French Open
Williams reached her fourth Italian Open final with a 6-4 6-1 win over Romania's Irina-Camelia Begu.
The world number one missed the start of the clay-court season through illness, but is finding form before her title defence at Roland Garros.
Williams is one Grand Slam victory away from equalling Steffi Graf's record of 22 singles titles in the Open era.
And, after beating world number 35 Begu in one hour and 26 minutes, she is one victory in Rome away from her 70th career title.
Keys, 21, stands in her way after a shock 7-6 (7-5) 6-4 victory over third seed Garbine Muguruza.
The unseeded American, ranked 24th in the world, had already produced the best European clay-court performance of her career to reach the last four.
We've launched a new BBC Sport newsletter ahead of the Euros and Olympics, bringing all the best stories, features and video right to your inbox. You can sign up here.Man, myth, Miley Cyrus fan - whatever he is, ACT leader David Seymour has had quite a week.
He's told students with mental health issues to "harden up," he's asserted that the French "love the coq," and he's urged a delay on the flag vote, so kids and parents can argue about it at Christmas.
But this is hardly Seymour's first press conference. With Winston Peters turning 70 this year we need a politician making these kind of headlines, and 32-year-old Seymour has been his heir apparent for a long while now. Like Peters (who he's not frightened to send up), Seymour's got a sense of humour - and he's quick to use it.
DAVID WHITE/FAIRFAX NZ ACT MP David Seymour in his Bowen House office.
Seymour entered public life repeating the word "hi" six times in a row, starring in 2014's most talked about political campaign video.
With all the charm of a nine-year-old forced into this by his overbearing mother, ACT's then-candidate for Epsom explained his remarkable, surely unique skill of knocking on doors in New Zealand's richest electorate.
But youthful awkwardness was something of a breath of fresh air in the ACT Party, which was just coming off a half-decade featuring John, Don, and Jamie.
Seymour didn't seem to have a dog whistle so firmly lodged in his mouth, and he brushed off the negative reaction to the video with aplomb, tweeting that "the thing about making a viral video is you never quite realise when you're doing it."
He won the seat easily and was soon ACT's only member of Parliament.
(Epsom has long been one of New Zealand's most "interesting" electorates, as National routinely hand it off to an ACT MP in a complex little dance of MMP trickery. But that's neither here nor there.)
As Parliamentary Under-Secretary to the Minister of Education and Minister of Regulatory Reform, Seymour has continued ACT's drive back towards populist libertarianism. He's helped move charter schools and RMA reform forwards, as well as drafting a private bill legalising euthanasia.
Yet he's probably gotten the most headlines out some slightly less serious governing - it was Seymour who secured every Kiwi's right to buy booze at whatever the time the rugby was on.
With all that under his belt, it's no surprise Last Week Tonight host John Oliver is keen to have him on.CLOSE Buying a new home can be very overwhelming, especially if it's your first one. These six tips – like getting extra inspections and researching your neighborhood beforehand – can help simplify the process. Time
Houses considered 'underwater' financially are still a problem in many areas. (Photo11: Keith Srakocic, AP)
Nearly a tenth of homes with a mortgage in the United States were considered “seriously underwater” at the end of the first quarter of 2017, according to statistics from ATTOM Data Solutions.
These homes — all 5.5 million of them — are not physically flooded, though the situation is nearly as alarming: A property is seriously underwater if the amount owed on the loan secured against it is at least 25% higher than the value of the property.
The good news is that the number of seriously underwater homes is down from the same time in 2016, but up slightly from the fourth quarter.
Where Are the Trouble Spots?
“While negative equity continued to trend steadily downward in the first quarter, it remains stubbornly high in often-overlooked pockets of the housing market,” said Daren Blomquist, senior vice president at ATTOM Data Solutions.
These pockets exist in several Rust Belt cities, Las Vegas and central Florida, Blomquist said. And nearly a third of all homes nationwide valued at less than $100,000 are seriously underwater.
Using ATTOM data, we’ve compiled the ZIP codes where at least 65% of the properties are seriously underwater. They represent the worst areas in the country.
15. Chicago ZIP Code 60636
Properties with loans: 7,875
Properties seriously underwater: 65.6%
14. Detroit ZIP Code 48227
Properties with loans: 7,825
Properties seriously underwater: 65.8%
13. North Chicago ZIP Code 60064
Properties with loans: 2,856
Properties seriously underwater: 65.9%
12. Milwaukee ZIP Code 53206
Properties with loans: 3,189
Properties seriously underwater: 66.2%
11. Detroit ZIP Code 48234
Properties with loans: 6,096
Properties seriously underwater: 66.6%
10. Maple Heights, Ohio ZIP Code 44137
Properties with loans: 7,694
Properties seriously underwater: 66.8%
9. Detroit ZIP Code 48205
Properties with loans: 7,574
Properties seriously underwater: 67%
8. Riverdale, Illinois ZIP Code 60827
Properties with loans: 5,391
Properties seriously underwater: 67.4%
7. Dolton, Illinois ZIP Code 60419
Properties with loans: 6,673
Properties seriously underwater: 68.2%
6. Detroit ZIP Code 48228
Properties with loans: 9,993
Properties seriously underwater: 68.2%
5. Detroit ZIP Code 48224
Properties with loans: 8,974
Properties seriously underwater: 69.4%
4. Las Vegas ZIP Code 89109
Properties with loans: 6,327
Properties seriously underwater: 69.9%
3. Detroit ZIP Code 48235
Properties with loans: 9,629
Properties seriously underwater: 70%
2. St. Louis ZIP Code 63137
Properties with loans: 5,954
Properties seriously underwater: 70.6%
1. Trenton, New Jersey ZIP Code 08611
Properties with loans: 4,426
Properties seriously underwater: 74.6%
More from Credit.com
This article originally appeared on Credit.com.
Myles is a writer and editor at Credit.com. Before joining Credit.com, he worked as a journalist for the 'Star-Ledge'r covering northern New Jersey.'More by Myles Ma Credit.com is a USA TODAY content partner offering financial news and commentary, and users of the website can view their credit scores for free every month. Its content is produced independently of USA TODAY.
Read or Share this story: https://usat.ly/2s3E4Y7Apple released a completely overhauled version of its Final Cut Pro software yesterday, much to the chagrin of some of its users.
The early response to Final Cut Pro X is at best mixed, with some complaining that the film editing application lacks XML support, and worse still, is bereft of backward compatibility with previous versions of the software.
Others who use Final Cut Pro are saying it's too early to be moaning about the application, which Apple said yesterday had been "rebuilt from the ground up".
The complete re-write of the software has left many film and video editors perplexed by the radical changes to Apple's Final Cut Pro, which competes with Avid in the film editing software market.
A steady stream of insults against and in support of Apple is currently flowing around the blogosphere.
One forum over at Creative Cow has fanbois waving handbags at each other about the new look application.
Some have questioned why it is that Apple released a product that lacks adequate "professional" elements.
Apparently, an update to make FCPX more "professional" is expected to be released in the coming months via Apple's App store.
"I know Apple can make great products, however much I may dislike the way they go about it, but do I invest now in the blind hope that they will actually make their 'pro' product actually work for 'pros' at some unknown point in the future?" asked one poster on the Creative Cow forum.
Creative Cow offered a measured response to Apple's decision to ditch Final Cut Pro 7 and re-write its product "to meet the needs of today's creative editors", pointing out that there are some major improvements to, for example, the GUI and overall performance.
But some editors who chose to go with FCP years ago beg to differ.
"Mostly, I can't believe X won't be supporting older versions. 'REVISIONS' are a fact of life. I deeply regret using FCP for some of the complex things that have been created in my studio. FCP 7 goes into a coma with its lack of 64 bit support, and this has been a damning failure on the late workstations that are terrifically underused," noted Charles Mouyat.
"I've been waiting anxiously, hoping I could upgrade some agonising projects into a new version that was 64 bit friendly. I made the wrong bet on FCP.
"The fact that X won't open projects from FCP 7 is ludicrous. I've been depending on FCP for about 5 years, and as my needs grow, it just falls short. Now, think I'm gonna have to jump away from Apple to explore other software options." ®Image caption Sales of Microsoft's Surface tablet were disappointing in the second quarter
Two of the world's biggest technology companies, Google and Microsoft, have badly missed earnings expectations for the second quarter.
Google reported profits of $9.7bn (£6.4bn), up 16% from a year ago but less than analysts were expecting.
Microsoft made $4.5bn in the second quarter, but announced that it would take a $900m charge relating to poor sales of its Surface tablet.
Shares in both companies fell by more than 4% in after-hours trading.
Declining PC sales - which recently saw their longest slide in five years - have hurt Microsoft's efforts to boost its business with the sale of its Windows 8 operating software.
Last week, the company also announced that it would cut the price of its Surface tablet amid sluggish sales.
More mobile
While Google's profits were up by more than 16% since last year, the company missed analyst expectations.
The main driver of Google's profits - advertising revenue - was up 15%.
More of Google's advertising revenues is coming from mobile adverts, which are cheaper.
While the company has been adapting, the change has hurt Google's bottom line.
Chief executive Larry Page said that adapting to mobile was a challenge the company was embracing.
"The shift from one screen to multiple screens and mobility creates tremendous opportunity for Google," he said.
On a conference call to discuss earnings, Mr Page mentioned the company's revamped AdWords programme, which has been well-received.Bashing white America and stirring the pot of racial discord has become in vogue all year round. But every February, the usual suspects (race profiteers and America haters) use Black History Month to double down on their rhetoric. Their operatives who control our public schools lay guilt trips on white students for being white while teaching blacks kids to feel victimized and resentful.
White America is once again beat over the head with slavery as liberals argue the need for federal government payback (reparations). In a nutshell, the Left's annual message is America is still racist and owes blacks, big time.
The Left's approach to Black History Month is to celebrate black achievement from a divisive “blacks vs white America” point of view; insidiously leaving out the contributions of whites from black success stories. Their desire is to create the illusion that these blacks succeeded “in spite of” racist white America burning the midnight oil plotting ways to keep them down. Clearly, the Left's intention is not to unite Americans nor to heal the racial divide which has grown exponentially under Obama.
Everyone is expressing outrage over Obama touting a moral equivalence between Muslim terrorists and Christians in his speech at the National Prayer Breakfast. But his comments also included a backhanded slap across the face of white America. Obama said slavery and Jim Crow were justified “all too often” in the name of Christ.
Rather than furthering the truth that we have moved light years from Jim Crow, Obama nurtures the lie that blacks are still victims in America. During an interview, the black interviewer told Obama that she cut the hoods off her husband's hoodies fearful of police shooting or killing him. Obama replied, “I understand.” Are you freaking kidding me? Why is the president of the United States feeding into such absurdity? I will say this for the ga-zillionth time: over 90% of the time blacks are killed by other blacks.
In that interview, Obama also furthered the silly notion that cops need special training. Hogwash! Either someone is breaking the law or they are not. Skin color should not matter.
Mr. President in the name of fairness, unity and healing, how about mentioning that white Christian abolitionists risked their lives helping blacks escape slavery via the Underground Railroad? In 1852, the anti-slavery novel, Uncle Tom's Cabin by white Christian active abolitionist Harriet Beecher Stowe was published, which some say led to the Civil War. Over 600,000 (mostly whites) died in the Civil War which purged our nation of slavery.
Liberals love to obsess on things America has gotten wrong, while ignoring the price we have paid to make things right.
Folks, I realize you're probably sick of me bringing up this topic. However, it blows my mind that the Democrats and MSM have such a grip on the minds of much of black America duping them into believing and reacting to false narratives -- lies.
For example: One TV, a black channel that broadcast the 46th NAACP Image Awards is promoting the Black Lives Matter movement which according to their website is based on lies.
“#BlackLivesMatter was created in 2012 after Trayvon Martin's murderer, George Zimmerman, was acquitted for his crime...”
“Rooted in the experiences of black people in this country who actively resist our de-humanization, #BlackLivesMatter is a call to action and a response to the virulent anti-Black racism that permeates our society.”
Trayvon Martin was not murdered. Blacks are not suffering dehumanization in America. Anti-Black racism has not permeated our society. And yet, a mainstream black TV channel is spoon feeding these lies to its viewers.
For years, I avoided watching the movie, The Pursuit of Happyness the true story of successful black stockbroker Chris Gardner. I assumed the movie was another liberal propaganda film about how America sucks, a white racist country where blacks can't catch a break. After seeing the movie, I was elated that I was wrong. The inspiring movie showed various whites who saw Gardner's potential and desire to better himself and chose to help him.
Like Chris Gardner, my life story is full of whites who saw my potential, my desire to better myself and chose to help me. My 7th-grade white art teacher met with my dad praising him for supporting my artistic talent. Two white senators and a white mayor of Baltimore awarded me scholarships to attend art college. Right out of college, a white business owner offered me free office space to launch my own graphic design firm. I could go on and on. Have I encountered racism? Yes. But, for the most part, whites have helped me to achieve my dreams.
Of course, there are evil, jealous, and racist people out there seeking to crush dreams. However, there are plenty of good people willing to help those who are willing to help themselves; education, hard work and right choices. If only Black History Month focused on promoting this truth. It would really empower blacks and help heal the racial divide.
Sadly, Democrats, the MSM, and far too many black power brokers equate racial authenticity and loyalty with feeding into the destructive false narratives that blacks are victims and should resent white America.
This is why I am not a fan of the way the Left celebrates Black History Month aka Annual White America Sucks Month.
Lloyd Marcus, The Unhyphenated American
Chairman, Conservative Campaign CommitteeFW: Tax Breaking News
From:Jake.Siewert@gs.com To: john.podesta@gmail.com Date: 2015-05-28 19:36 Subject: FW: Tax Breaking News
Might be time for Denny to vanish to an undisclosed Japanese island. The Justice Department on Thursday announced an indictment against former House Speaker Dennis Hastert for allegedly structuring cash transactions to avoid financial reporting rules and lying to the FBI about his conduct. A grand jury in Illinois charged that Hastert agreed to pay an unnamed individual $3.5 million as part of an effort to conceal "his prior misconduct." To change your alert settings, please go to https://www.politicopro.com/member/?webaction=viewAlerts. ________________________________ This email alert has been sent for the exclusive use of POLITICO Pro subscriber Jake Siewert. Forwarding or reproducing the alert without the express, written permission of POLITICO Pro is a violation of federal law and the POLITICO Pro subscription agreement. Copyright © 2015 by POLITICO LLC. To subscribe to Pro, please go to www.politicopro.com<https://www.politicopro.com>. ________________________________ ________________________________ This e-mail may contain information that is confidential, privileged or otherwise protected from disclosure. If you are not an intended recipient of this e-mail, do not duplicate or redistribute it by any means. Please delete it and any attachments and notify the sender that you have received it in error. Unintended recipients are prohibited from taking action on the basis of information in this e-mail. E-mail messages may contain computer viruses or other defects, may not be accurately replicated on other systems, or may be intercepted, deleted or interfered with without the knowledge of the sender or the intended recipient. If you are not comfortable with the risks associated with e-mail messages, you may decide not to use e-mail to communicate with Goldman Sachs. Goldman Sachs reserves the right, to the extent and under circumstances permitted by applicable law, to retain, monitor and intercept e-mail messages to and from its systems. See the http://www.gs.com/disclaimer/afg/ for important information regarding this message and your reliance on information contained in it.The new Waze app has been in the works for a few months, and now it's finally ready to be unveiled. Waze 4.0 takes a lot of cues from the iOS version released back in October, both visually and functionally. It boasts a fresh new look, quick access to your frequent destinations, an improved driving experience, a new way to quickly share your ETA with friends and family, and plenty more features.
This update will likely also include all those spiffy new animations we got a glimpse of last month. Even though it's probably not what you would call Material, it does emphasize motion and the tactile nature of the UI, which are key principles of Material Design.
Waze has not said when the update will begin rolling to devices, but hopefully it won't be too long now that version 4.0 is finally official.Etude House SOON JUNG pH5.5 Relief Toner was purchased by Cosmeperks for review purposes.
Etude House recently launched the SOON JUNG collection, allegedly from the best year ever (I might have been born in) 1988! It focuses on what is currently the biggest trend in Korean skin care – damage healing and care.
This collection came just in time for the fine dust pollution season, as for the past couple of weeks the pollution has been quite severe. And this collection’s purpose is exactly to help you restore your skin to its whole greatness while at the same time protecting it in the long term. So, of course we start at the beginning and use the Etude House SOON JUNG pH5.5 Relief Toner first!
Claims:
Most skin problems start with an unbalanced skin pH. Whereas your body has an internal pH as high as 11, your skin’s external pH should be no more than 6 for it to be healthy! This collection uses that as a focus on the treatment.
The toner in this collection has a pH of 5.5, ideal to regulate your skin pH balance. It relieves your skin, it is pure and mild, and cares for any harm your skin may have. It protects your skin from external aggressive factors.
Ingredients:
Purified Water, Propanediol, Glycerin, Betaine, Panthenol, Madecassoside, Camellia Sinensis Leaf Extract, Scutellaria Baicalensis Root Extract, 1,2-hexanediol, Butylene Glycol, Ethylhexylglycerin, Carbomer, Polyglycerin-3, Disodium Edta
Volume: 180ml or 80ml
How to use:
1.After washing the face, dispense the product onto the palm of your hands and apply to the face with a gentle tapping motion so promote absorption onto the skin.
2. Usually if you have combination or oily skin you shouldn’t apply toners (or any other first steps) with your hands, however since this one focuses specifically on pH balancing you should be fine applying it as they say.
My Skin Type: Oily T, dry U, blemished, sensitive, and allergic.
Etude House SOON JUNG pH5.5 Relief Toner Review:
To better review this product I stopped using any repair skin care lines, and balms, or anything that would cure the damage from the heavy pollution.
For 2 days before I started using this toner, and for the whole duration of using it I thought it would be better not to use products that might affect their function (by helping them) since I wanted to know exactly how effective they were!
The only products I have used were water based skin care, pollution blockers and sun blocks since they are basic care, and in this case are unrelated to the effect of this product’s healing abilities.
Since there is barely any information on this product, I hope you find the review helpful!
The product comes in a big size of 180 and also it comes in |
. There is nothing wrong with either approach. In fact, it’s well known that there are different learning styles and theory-first is one of them.
If you like to geek out, comprehensive courses are for you. Fortunately, there are lots of online courses that suit a theory-first style. They range in price from free to, well, not so free.
Let’s look at some good places to start:
Stanford Online : Databases
Udacity : Intro to Relational Databases
Safari : Learning Path: SQL and Relational Databases
Stanford offers a free course on various database topics. Overall, it’s a bit academic and includes related subjects, like database modeling. SQL is treated as part of a larger picture. There aren’t many exercises, and the course does not cover the complete SQL language. There is some interactivity, so you do not need to set up your own environment.
Udacity also offers a free course on relational databases. The estimated duration is four weeks, and it is mostly targeted at users of higher-level programming languages who need to learn SQL. You need to setup your own database and environment.
In my opinion, Safari’s offering is the hands-down winner in this category. It’s not free, as the course itself is part of Safari’s online book platform. However, it’s detailed and goes through the complete relational theory, which is the basis for SQL. The downside is that it isn’t interactive and you have to set up your own environment.
To summarize this path’s metrics:
PRICE MEDIUM LEVEL HIGH SETUP LOW
Competitive Programming Sites
Competitive programming sites – a.k.a. hackathon sites – are a surprising place to brush up SQL knowledge. What is a competitive programming site? It’s a place where programmers or teams of programmers compete among themselves to solve a certain program problem the fastest (or solve the most problems, or be the most accurate, etc). Most of these sites have a “warm up” area to let coders do a bit of practicing before they join the fray.
One of the most popular sites where you can dabble in SQL is HackerRank. HackerRank has a list of domains where you can practice solving problems in a myriad of programming languages. One of these domains is SQL. (They also have a general database domain.)
In these sites, you can interactively practice solving some real problems in SQL, but you will get no guidance on how to write SQL correctly. You only get the problem and the opportunity to see if you solved it. You can even challenge your friends to solve the problem. While this competition-based training can be fun, it is more suited to seasoned SQL coders.
To summarize this path’s metrics:
PRICE LOW LEVEL HIGHEST SETUP LOW
Local SQL Classes
The traditional way of learning SQL and database-related subjects is in the classroom. This is the type of learning we did for years in school. It is your plain-vanilla “teacher in front of a class, showing and explaining” routine. Some people prefer this style of teaching as it has a more human touch. But others find it outdated and impractical. The downsides include finding a course in your area, enrolling, coming to class at a predefined time, and the fact that courses can be expensive.
I have no recommendations in this area, since it is very individual and depends of your location. There are a lot of downsides to this approach and I would not recommend it. If you like a more personal approach to teaching, a better alternative is hiring a tutor over Skype to guide you through the SQL language. There are also plenty of freelancing sites where tutors can be found.
To summarize this path’s metrics:
PRICE HIGH LEVEL MEDIUM HIGHEST SETUP MEDIUM
Learning SQL by Book
Somebody once told me no wise person exists who does not read books. As I get older, I see the truth in those words. Books about technical subjects, including SQL, can be a huge source of knowledge. But as the subject is broad there are many books to choose from. This in itself can be overwhelming. Let’s look at some examples of popular SQL books you can find online or in your local bookstore:
Joe Celko’s books on SQL (e.g. SQL for Smarties)
O’Reilly’s SQL books (e.g. SQL Cookbook)
The Manga Guide to Databases
Joe Celko’s books are considered classics in the SQL programming world. They’ve stood the test of time quite nicely. The author served on ANSI and ISO SQL Standards Committees and contributed to various SQL standards. His topics appeal to a more professional audience, with books covering various SQL facets like the representation of hierarchies.
O’Reilly has plenty of books covering SQL. I personally would recommend their SQL Cookbooks, which are also geared for the advance end of the spectrum.
The Manga Guide to Databases is basically a comic about databases. It’s fun and simple but it doesn’t give pure SQL a lot of space. The series has a myriad of books on SQL that cover simple to complex topics.
Other than books, check out various tutorials and blogs related to SQL (like Vertabelo Blog | Data Modeling & Web Development). These are another good place to start, although they will take more of your time. It takes time to set up the environment, to start coding, and to practice. (This is the same as with the local class approach.)
You could always download an image of a system with a pre-installed database and use this to practice quizzes and examples. But this would be tedious and time-consuming. And if you don’t know what an image is, then you would have to invest even more of your time to figure it out. Interactive online courses do the setup for you.
Another setup alternative is a fiddle. Fiddles are basically virtual environments that you can use to test code. SQL Fiddle is available online, and it lets you practice SQL without setting up your own local environment. However, it supplies no guidance, and fiddles are notoriously unstable. I would recommend this option for quick tests only.
To summarize this path’s metrics:
PRICE LOW HIGH LEVEL MEDIUM HIGHEST SETUP HIGH
Hands-On Projects
Nothing beats working on something you dreamt up yourself. This way of learning is a combination of different styles. It’s also a great way to motivate yourself to get coding. But if you don’t know where or how to begin, it’s pretty difficult to start. I would use this method to deepen my knowledge on any programming subject (be it a language or a concept) rather than learning from scratch. The time spent in finding and going through various tutorials could be used more effectively in a well-structured online course. Don’t fall for the trap of thinking that this is wasted time, though. What you spend at the beginning of your SQL journey will be repaid tenfold later on.
You will also have to invest a lot of time in setting up your environment. Here no fiddle can help. It’s your project, your baby, and your environment.
To summarize this path’s metrics:
PRICE LOW HIGH LEVEL HIGH SETUP HIGH
Making the Comparison
Let’s examine all of our choices side by side:
Interactive web PRICE LOW Interactive web LEVEL LOW Interactive web SETUP LOW Online course PRICE MEDIUM Online course LEVEL HIGH Online course SETUP LOW Competitive web PRICE LOW Competitive web LEVEL HIGH Competitive web SETUP LOW Local class PRICE HIGH Local class LEVEL MEDIUM Local class SETUP MEDIUM Books PRICE LOW Books LEVEL MEDIUM Books SETUP HIGH Hands-On PRICE LOW Hands-On LEVEL HIGH Hands-On SETUP HIGH
Which SQL Learning Path is Right for You?
How you learn SQL is very individual. It depends on your current level of knowledge and what made you learn the language in the first place.
You know how to write SQL and want to deepen your knowledge without spending too much? Get some books.
You need to prep for a test? Go for a comprehensive online course.
You’re a true beginner? Nothing beats a structured interactive online course.
Whatever you choose, the main thing is to get going and give it a try. If one path doesn’t work, try another. Don’t give up, and you’ll be rewarded by understanding how to use SQL.Did you know that 50 to 70 percent of muscle gain (in terms of size) from body building style weightlifting is not actually muscle fiber at all? It’s actually a fluid called Sarcoplasm. As Sarcoplasm is a fluid and not muscle fiber it contributes very little to strength.
Many red-blooded men and women would like nothing more than to become stronger. The sense of achieving something of our human physical potential can be very fulfilling. Unfortunately modern bodybuilding has become a last refuge for lost souls with poor self-esteem and body image issues. This must at least be partly responsible for taking bodybuilding far from its original roots.
Bodybuilding has hugely influenced what people do at home and at the gym when they lift weights. Unfortunately bodybuilding has largely lost its way. It is now primarily just another arm of a profit driven “fitness” industry along with other sectors such as supplements and weight loss.
So today when we examine the following six rules of strength you may find that almost all the rules presented here are in direct contravention of commonly held body building “wisdom”. That’s because these rules are for iron athletes who want to become strong and be as strong as they look.
Never go to failure
This is as good a place to start as any. A long held tenant of bodybuilding is that you should go to failure (lift until you cannot lift anymore). Take a turn around your local gym and you’ll see all types of people working out half reps and assisted reps that help push them into complete muscle failure. Compare this behavior to the massive size and strength of phenomenal powerlifters and Olympic weightlifters and know that they never go to failure. Nor does the greatest fighter on the planet Fedor Emelianenko. This is because training to failure is training to fail. By not going to failure when he lifts, Fedor gets stronger while still remaining fresh enough to train fighting techniques. That means you can get a lot stronger without burning yourself out. No more feeling too exhausted post workout. No more feeling sore for three days after a workout.
No more than five reps per set
Completing no more than five reps per set caries on from the idea of never going to failure. Figure out what your one rep max for a particular lift is and set the bar at around 70 to 80 percent it. Use that weight to do low rep sets of one to five reps. There is nothing wrong with doing heavy singles. Also, while perhaps counterintuitive, lifting heavy for sets of 1 to 5 reps is the safest way to lift. This is because the stabilizing muscles get tired before the prime movers in high rep sets, which sets you up for an injury.
Lift heavy
If you want to get strong you have to lift heavy. This is dead simple. Sure, using light weights for high rep sets may give you some tone but doing so will never make you strong. Lifting heavy requires a large amount of tension. You will be forced to recruit muscle fibers in places not normally directly activated by the lift. Tension is strength. The greater the weight the greater the amount of tension required. Think of strength as a skill. The more muscle fibers you can recruit to a movement and the harder the contraction of those muscle fibers the stronger you are. Lifting with heavy weights should be approached as practice as opposed to working out.
Lift often
Many powerlifting and Olympic lifting teams work out as many as eight times per week or even more. This means they are working out more than once a day. They can do this because they are not going to failure and are working low rep sets. It has been found that completing five heavy singles per day for five days in a row is better for strength development than completing five sets of five reps on a single day.
Take longer rest periods between sets
To avoid failure, you will need to take longer rests between sets. This will allow your body to adequately recover for the next heavy lift. You also will not experience anywhere near as much soreness post workout as a result of extending your rest periods.
Focus on compound movements
Powerlifters and Olympic lifters do not train body parts. As discussed above with regards to tension, your body combined is far stronger than your body broken down by isolation exercises. Stick to lifts such as the deadlift, squat, benchpress, military press and the Olympic lifts – snatch and clean and jerk.
For more information check out Power to the People and Beyond Bodybuilding both by Pavel Tsatsouline and The Purposeful Primitive by Marty Gallagher. You can also read about the differences between bodybuilding and powerlifting explained in the articles Why Powerlifting and not Bodybuilding and Beginning Powerlifting.
Share your thoughts on these six rules of strength by leaving a comment. Also let us know what you have found works for you when it comes to increasing strength and becoming as strong as you look.
Written on 10/29/2008 by Stephen Cox. Stephen learned the vital importance of good health the hard way. Having overcome open heart surgery at age 7, chronic fatigue at age 20 and debilitating migraines in between. Today Stephen writes daily at Balanced Existence where he shares the knowledge and insights gained from his personal journey of holistic health and wellbeing. Photo Credit:
eyeliamWinning and losing is part and parcel of sports, but the downright abject surrender of the Indian cricket team at the hands of Pakistan in the 2017 ICC Champions Trophy is quite baffling.
We have been the most consistent team in ICC tournaments after our victory in the ODI World Cup in 2011 and this pathetic performance has indeed come like a bolt from the blue.
While there may be many reasons for this loss, the lion’s share probably has to be shared by captain Virat Kohli, who had a really bad day at the office. A look at some of the mistakes he committed…
1) Baffling bowling line-up
There were five matches played at the Kennington Oval before the final in the tournament. In the 10 innings, in only one did a spinner have any role in the match: South African Imran Tahir’s four-wicket haul in the match with Sri Lanka.
In the remaining 9 innings either the fast bowlers got the better of the batsmen at the beginning, or the batsmen went on to dominate in the second half of the innings.
So spinners were not the key. Ravindra Jadeja was just about average in the tournament. Ravichandran Ashwin just about held his ground with South Africa with 1-43 in a low scoring game where he was overshadowed by other bowlers. In the semi-final with Bangladesh, his figures of 0-54 were far from inspiring.
In a pitch that favoured fast bowlers outright, Kohli’s decision to go in with two off-colour spinners despite having a part-timer (Kedar Jadhav) was baffling to say the least. Ashwin should have been dropped and we should have recalled Umesh Yadav or taken Mohammed Shami.
After 6 overs, Bhuvneshwar Kumar had astonishing figures of 1-11 and had he got support from any other fast bowler, then the Pakistani batsmen may have been kept in check.
“Let’s stick to the winning combination” is a lazy approach and doesn’t work all the time. Kohli was guilty of not taking the bowling line-up seriously.
2) We have never won in an ICC final after we’ve elected to field
I remember while watching the 2003 ODI ICC World Cup final on a big screen, when Sourav Ganguly elected to field with the Aussies, half the crowd walked out. In big pressure games it’s difficult to chase.
Indians are great chasers, but you can’t keep pushing your luck too often. India has never won an ICC final when they’ve won the toss and elected to field. Either we have batted first or have been made to field by the opposition.
India had a much superior batting line-up and the Pakistanis didn’t have great spinners. Pakistan had the best fast bowlers of the tournament: Hasan Ali and Junaid Khan. It would have been better to bat first and see off the initial bowling spell, aim for 300 and put the Pakistanis under pressure.
Now Pakistan’s both ODI ICC tournament victories have come while batting first. They are generally abysmal chasers.
3) Couldn’t calm down star performer Bumrah
At the end of 3.1 overs Pakistan was an abysmal 8-1. Then came the shocker that Jasprit Bumrah had bowled a no-ball. That over went for 12 runs and at the end of 4 overs Pakistan were 19-0 and they never looked back after that.
Before the final, Bumrah had taken 26 wickets in 15 ODIs and had a career economy rate of less than 4.5, which is phenomenal. Even in the tournament before the final, Bumrah had an economy rate of just 4.3.
The Pakistan team reacts after the loss of Kohli's wicket.
He was our star performer and he totally lost it after that no ball and he finally went for 7.55 runs per over and he went wicketless. He chose the final to melt down. In the end he bowled 3 no balls and 5 wides.
This is where someone like MS Dhoni used to have a calming effect on his bowlers. Kohli could do nothing and watch as Bumrah virtually threw away the match. He could have immediately taken him off and brought him away from the other end.
Kohli also didn’t have much of a leeway because he went with an extra spinner and was a fast bowler short for the match.
4) Got in Ashwin too early
Ashwin was our out-of-form bowler and also had the added disadvantage of not bowling on a spinning track. However Kohli got him in when Bumrah started to get hit even though Sir Ravindra Jadeja is our most economical bowler and is known to keep the batsmen in check.
Unsurprisingly, Ashwin went for 10 runs in his first over and 8 runs in his second even though Bhuvi had given two runs in two overs at the other end, so we couldn’t keep Pakistani batsmen under pressure.
When Jadeja was brought in, he was initially economical, but by that time it was too late and he was hit towards the end.
5) Our star performer failed with the bat
The way we used to be dependent on Sachin Tendulkar in the 1990s, we have become dependent on Kohli in the 2010s. That way he lasted just 11 balls. Both Kohli and Dhoni are known to start cautiously and be steady for the first 15-20 balls and then hit out.
Instead of saving the batting after the early exit of Rohit Sharma, Kohli ended up precipitating the batting collapse.
6) Generally insipid captaincy
Again Kohli had one of his rough days. From team selection, to making the right call after the toss to bowling changes and field placements: Kohli got nothing right that day. He looked clueless on the field and failed to inspire both his bowlers and batsmen, which is something that a leader has to do with his men.
7) Spat with Kumble may have caught up
When the team is in turmoil, the team does end up crashing from time to time. That’s why even if you look at Pakistan, they may have won that day, but they have many more spectacular crashes than India thanks to their perpetual turmoil.
After the Kapil Dev-Tendulkar-M Azharuddin imbroglio of the late 1990s we had our greatest tournament final crashes ever at Sharjah 2000. Sri Lanka made 299 and India was 54 all down!
After the Greg Chappell-Sourav Ganguly spat, we were kicked out in the first round of the 2007 ODI World Cup after our loss to Bangladesh. (We haven’t lost a single Test-ODI-T20 with them outside Bangladesh after that match!)
This time Kohli brought up the issue of Anil Kumble’s coaching methods before the tournament and split Team India down the middle. It would have been better to have taken up the issue after the tournament.
It is just a theory, but off-field battles do ultimately lead to meltdowns on the field. And boy did we have both a bowling and batting meltdown in the tournament final!
Also read: Champions Trophy 2017: Why losing to Pakistan is a good thing for India0
There was a time in the not-so-distant past when The Flash was the crown jewel of the Berlanti-verse. Not mired in darkness like Arrow (which had, at that time, lost its way), nor as chaotic as Legends of Tomorrow, nor as preachy as Supergirl, The Flash had a fantastic cast who interacted together in funny, compelling ways, as they fought well-conceived villains. But in this past year, things took a turn. Arrow got its early-seasons mojo back with Prometheus, Supergirl moved to the CW and embraced its joy (while losing its Heavy-Handed Feminist Speeches and started showing rather than telling), and Legends of Tomorrow somehow became the best of all with a rebooted team and a solidly dastardly team of villains. The Flash, meanwhile, languished as it was hamstrung by an ineffectual villain, a far-too-short exploration of Flashpoint (one episode?!), and a focus for half a season on a future death scene that we knew would never stick.
The Flash’s Season 3 finale, “Finish Line,” could have probably gotten away with it, too, if it wasn’t for the show’s over-reliance on the Deus Ex Machina that is the Speed Force. Those final moments were nonsensical — there was no context for why the Speed Force needed Barry (if it needed a prisoner because of Savitar, surely with him being gone that position can be vacated? How did Jay Garrick get released?), nor why Wally, Savitar, and Jay Garrick were forced to experience an unimaginable hellscape while special Barry gets to go in to Odin Sleep for an indeterminate amount of time. More than anything though, why was he so happy to leave the woman he finally had secured a future with? He essentially tra-la-la’d into the unknown, leaving his entire team behind. Also, R.I.P. HR? Your death kinda didn’t matter in the end. What is going on!
Even if you were onboard for this season, I think we can all agree that The Flash has some problems. While some have postulated that the show could be doing a soft reboot by keeping Barry in the Speed Force to start Season 4, it’s extremely unlikely. This is Grant Gustin’s show, no matter how badly his character has been treated this season. Wally is, at this point, no substitute for Barry story-wise, and Gustin’s charisma is what holds this whole thing together (which is one reason why dark, sad Barry has been so tedious — give him back his happiness!) So with that in mind, let’s take a look at some ideas of how The Flash can be great again in Season 4:With overseas investor limits for India’s high-yielding sovereign debt almost used up, bond funds are starting to buy up state notes. Problem is, finding decent data on the local economies.Aberdeen Standard Investments started buying the securities about three months ago and they now account for about a fifth of its $312 million Indian bond fund, said Lin Jing Leong, a fixed-income investment manager in Singapore. Finding timely figures on the states, even ones like Maharashtra, of which Mumbai is the capital, is challenging, she said.“Maharashtra was one of the hardest states to look at in terms of bottom-up economic analysis,” Lin said in an interview. “It was even difficult finding a document with numbers on the most recent budget. Last year’s GDP growth numbers are still not out for some of the states.”The highest yields among major Asian emerging markets have made Indian government debt a favorite with overseas investors, who have pumped about $20 billion into rupee securities this year. State bonds, which offer an extra 60-70 basis points of yield over the sovereigns, trade at very similar levels despite differences between the local economies. That’s because the Reserve Bank of India has a zero percent risk rating on the notes, meaning domestic investors treat the unrated securities like federal debt.Foreigners are a bit more wary. The lack of differentiation in spreads means Nomura Asset Management favors debt from states with the stronger finances, said Simon Tan, a fund manager in Singapore, who oversees Nomura’s Indian bond fund. He declined to name the states he likes. While Tan started buying the debt in 2015, it still makes up less than 1 percent of the fund’s $1.75 billion of assets.“We’d like to increase our exposure but are unlikely to until the liquidity situation improves,” Tan said in an interview.Is a solution at hand? The Reserve Bank in its October policy document said it would release high-frequency data on state finances available with it, and hold state bond auctions on a weekly basis. Improving liquidity by reselling debt and buybacks is also on the cards.Inadequate data apart, large supply of state debt is also a concern as local governments need funds for higher pay for their staff and farm loan waivers. Net borrowing by states is estimated to rise to 3.8 trillion rupees ($58 billion) in the year to March, up 12 percent from the previous year, said Nagaraj Kulkarni, senior Asia rates strategist at Standard Chartered Plc in Singapore.States are due to sell up to 1.3 trillion rupees of bonds in the December quarter, as per RBI.Overseas funds had used up 14 percent of their state bond quota as Monday, versus almost 100 percent of the sovereign limit, data from NSDL show. In the long-term investor category none of the state quota has been filled, while 79 percent has for central government notes.Aviva Investors isn’t in the state bond market yet, but is looking at it closely, said Stuart Ritson, the Singapore-based head of Asian FX and rates.“Foreign involvement in the market is picking up from a very low base,” he said in an interview. “That for us is quite an interesting opportunity.”At Fidelity International, Bryan Collins, a Hong Kong-based fund manager, is hopeful that the launch of a new national sales tax in July will make state finances more transparent. He said he will probably participate as the market develops.Aberdeen’s Lin said she chose to invest in bonds of six states -- Chhattisgarh, Karnataka, Gujarat, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh and Maharashtra -- that offer a mix of good financial profiles and liquidity. Economic fundamentals and debt-to-GDP ratios of some of these states are better than India as a whole, she said.While liquidity is a concern, Aberdeen has had some success in getting local brokers to connect it with potential onshore buyers, Lin said.“We were one of the early asset managers to get into Indian state bonds,” she said. “We’re definitely seeing others try and get on board. We’re all commiserating with each other at conferences about how hard it is to get data.”KINSHASA, Democratic Republic of Congo
At least 250 armed militants in the Ituri province have been killed since mid-May, the head of the UN’s Organization Stabilization Mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo (MONUSCO) said.
MONUSCO chief Martin Kobler said, during a recent press conference, that the militants were allegedly associated with the Front for Patriotic Resistance of Ituri (FRPI).
The FRPI was established in 2002 in Ituri, a province located in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC)’s northeastern region, with the aim of claiming a stake in the country’s rich natural resources.
Gen. Jean Claude Bongangwela of the DRC army stressed the possibility of forging a deal with the separatist group if its fighters were willing to lay downs their arms.
"Our door is always open to separatists who want to surrender and participate in the disarmament process," Bongangwela said.NEW YORK (Billboard) - With their digital download sites, a growing number of indie rock labels have begun to answer the prayers of fans who would love to hear long-out-of-print singles on their iPods or other mobile devices.
Merge Records became the latest to join the field with the recent launch of its online emporium, which, according to label president Mac McCaughan, features “high-quality MP3s and full FLAC (free lossless audio codec) files of recent, older and out-of-print titles, including all the early Merge singles, as well as the Superchunk ‘Clambakes’ series.” The store will also eventually host exclusive tracks, remixes and video content, in addition to the label’s catalog.
Given the wealth of options available to indies that want to peddle their merchandise online, why would a label want to sink the time and money into developing its own store? Merge wouldn’t divulge how much it cost to build its online store, but it did say that most of the expenses were upfront. And whatever profits it makes will go directly to the label and bands, Merge publicist Christina Rentz said. “There is no middleman taking fees, so we are the only ones who benefit.”
The ability to promote artists on label download sites is also key. Rentz said that through a “recommended artists” feature on the Merge site — similar to Amazon’s — the label will promote lesser-known or older artists.
Such sites can also help foster a new ethic of digital-song ownership. After a song is purchased at Seattle label Sub Pop’s download store, launched in fall 2007, “you can log on to your account page and download it as many times as you want,” director of technology and digital development Dean Hudson said. “We are also able to do things like automatically upgrade songs without any cost to the buyer once the song becomes available at a higher bit rate. And of course, all the songs are (digital-rights-management)-free.”
CHANGING BUYERS’ HABITS
Perks like those aside, driving buyers to a single-label online store can be a challenge, especially if they are used to purchasing all their music from one, multilabel outlet, such as eMusic or iTunes. Def Jux, one of the first indie labels to start a download site, circumvents the problem by making its Web site and Web store one and the same.
Many other labels’ digital stores are directly connected to their online physical stores as well, so that users can purchase T-shirts, CDs and MP3s all at once. “We are counting on our mail-order customers being our early adopters,” Rentz said. “Our goal is to make it a real one-stop shop.”
Most of those one-stop-shop customers aren’t trying to replace long-lost discs from their high school years, however. In fact, label representatives say that new releases account for the bulk of their online sales.
“Our highest growth months have always been those with new releases,” Def Jux general manager Jesse Ferguson said. “They tend to bring the most new people to the site.”
Hudson noted a similar phenomenon: “People do dip into the catalog from time to time,” he said. “But in general, the newer stuff sells.”
And when the newer stuff does sell, it sells for pretty much the same price it would on iTunes. Merge will sell its tracks for 99 cents each; Def Jux’s albums are $9.95 each, and Sub Pop’s are $9.90. McCaughan said he chose the price structure for philosophical reasons: “Driving down the price of downloads will devalue the music.”
Reuters/BillboardWomen's tears contain a chemical signal that lowers testosterone levels and dampens sexual desire in men, according to a team of scientists in Israel.
They studied the effect on men of sniffing fresh tears, which the researchers collected in vials as they rolled down the faces of women watching weepy movies.
The surprise discovery may help scientists solve the mystery of why humans shed tears when they're distressed or sad.
The researchers measured a small but persistent fall in men's sexual feelings when they sniffed women's tears, but the chemical or chemicals responsible may work primarily by suppressing aggression, which then has the effect of reducing sexual arousal.
"It is easy to see the advantage of having such a chemical signal in tears," said Noam Sobel at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, who led the research. "Basically, you are protecting yourself when you are vulnerable." The study is reported in the US journal Science.
Tears are produced by the lachrymal and meibomian glands and contain all manner of chemicals, including proteins, enzymes and metabolic waste products. But the chemical make-up of emotional tears is very different from that of tears shed as a protective reflex, for example when grit gets into the eye.
In some animals, tears are known to contain chemicals that influence how other individuals behave towards them. The blind mole rat rubs its tears into its fur, which appears to make other mole rats less aggressive, said Sobel.
The scientists enrolled people for the study by posting adverts around the institute's campus asking for volunteers who were easily moved to tears. They didn't specify whether they were looking for men or women, but out of more than 60 people who responded, only one was a man. After an initial test that involved watching a sad film of their choosing, Sobel's team picked the most tearful, all of whom were women.
In one experiment, a group of 24 male volunteers sniffed either fresh tears, or drops of saline as a control, before being asked to rate the sadness or sexual appeal of women's faces that appeared on a computer screen. The men's sadness ratings were the same regardless of whether they sniffed tears or saline, but 17 men ranked women as less sexually appealing after sniffing tears.
At no time did the men or the experimenters know what was in the vials being sniffed.
A second test found that levels of testosterone in men's saliva were on average 13% lower after they sniffed fresh tears compared with saline, and their scores for physiological arousal were also reduced.
In a final experiment, a brain-scanning technique called functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) revealed that sniffing women's tears reduced activity in parts of the brain that are involved with sexual urges, such as the hypothalamus and left fusiform gyrus.
Sobel said his lab is now trying to identify what chemical in tears might be responsible for the effect and whether it is also present in men's and children's tears.
"We don't think there is something special about women's tears," he said. "We definitely predict chemical signals in men's tears and children's tears too."Drama from Peter Bowker starring Christopher Eccleston; a return to Liverpool Women’s hospital; undercover in the Saudi kingdom. Plus: Jim Al-Khalili on how the universe started
The A Word
9pm, BBC1
Set among the awesome vistas of the Lake District, this drama from Peter Bowker follows five-year-old Joe, whose apparent disobedience, isolation and obsessiveness spark a chorus of consternation from mum Alison’s family. Their interfering eventually results in a diagnosis of autism, but with Christopher Eccleston as magnificently blunt grandad Maurice, and spectacular rudeness practised by pretty much everyone else, this looks set to scoop up all kinds of social behaviour into its storyline. Rachel Aroesti
One Born Every Minute
9pm, Channel 4
A new series of new arrivals and a return to Liverpool Women’s hospital to tackle the tumult accompanying the final flourishes of expectant maternity for all manner of mothers, not to mention a soon-to-be father who feels a selfie stick is a worthwhile inclusion in the overnight bag. Tonight’s series opener includes the tale of Kirsty, who – 19 years previously – was the first triplet ever delivered at the hospital. Now, she’s returning for the birth of her own child, hopeful that it marks her transition into independence. Mark Gibbings-Jones
The Beginning and End of the Universe
9pm, BBC4
Professor Jim Al-Khalili has a crack at the big one: how the universe started. He does it with his usual mix of spectacular locations, clear explanations, a few gags and the stories of scientists who made crucial breakthroughs. So George Lemaître (there was a big bang), Ralph Alpher (its light should still be detectable) and Cecilia Payne (hydrogen and helium dominate the universe) get their dues alongside Hubble and Einstein. A visit to the Large Hadron Collider completes the journey. Jack Seale
Exposure: Saudi Arabia Uncovered
10.40pm, ITV
For all that we are supposed to regard Saudi Arabia as an ally, we know little of life inside the kingdom, which – almost as if it has something to hide – does little to encourage independent reporting or tourism. This documentary uses footage shot by undercover camera operators, and the portrait is far from flattering. It also speaks to experts to reinforce the case that Saudi Arabia funds the fundamentalism abroad it imposes at home. Andrew Mueller
Ross Kemp’s Britain
9pm, Sky1
Ross Kemp has carved a televisual niche in recent years, tempering his hackneyed hardman persona with some brave investigative reportage. Despite not having any of the usual prerequisites such as, say, a forces background, he has tracked down Somali pirates, dodged the Taliban and, of course, ingratiated himself with deadly gangs. Now, he’s setting out to explore some issues closer to home, turning his attention first to immigration. As he delves into a highly sensitive topic, can Kemp provide a balanced picture? Hannah J Davies
Alan Partridge’s Mid Morning Matters
10pm, Sky Atlantic
Series two of the faultless Mid Morning Matters concludes. Series one’s finale was pitched perfectly and so is this, with trouble brewing on the home front between Alan and Angela, and then at work with Sidekick Simon, who could be about to betray Alan in the most grievous manner. As one might expect, Alan’s inner turmoil spills out into “North Norfolk’s best music mix”. Coogan and co hit a perfectly calibrated sweet spot where poignant meets snortingly funny. Ben Arnold
Million Pound Jewellers
11.05pm, Channel 4
If you’re an A-lister seeking eye-catching, ingenious jewellery, the White brothers are your hotline to bling. From their base in London, gifted designer Bobby and business-minded Tommy supply bespoke gem-encrusted pieces for a client list that includes Beyoncé, Jay Z, Rihanna and Usain Bolt, a man who presumably knows a thing or two about gold. This one-off doc shadows the siblings as they attempt to reconcile their ambitions for innovation and expansion in an exciting but unpredictable market. Graeme Virtue
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Q’Orianka Kilcher and Colin Farrell in The New World. Photograph: AP
Film choice
The New World (Terrence Malick, 2005) 9 |
reciprocating with Pennsylvania."
The man was checking into the hotel as part of his relocation from Texas for a job, Mahalick said.
— Frank WarnerA local watchdog group is demanding that the Orleans Parish District Attorney’s Office stop arresting victims in sexual assault and domestic violence cases in order to force them to testify.
In one case last year, a woman who had accused a man of rape was arrested and held in jail for eight days.
In a report released Tuesday, the group Court Watch NOLA argued that prosecutors should curb such arrests, which are carried out using so-called material witness warrants. And in the case of sexual assault and domestic violence, the group said, such warrants should never be employed.
“We really think that it’s up to the DA’s Office to take the trauma of the victim into consideration,” said Simone Levine, the group's executive director. “We think that in cases of sex offense and domestic violence, that it’s really just not worth bringing the victim in through an incarceratory facility.”
The group said there were at least 30 cases in which Orleans prosecutors obtained material witness warrants in 2016, and six cases in which victims were arrested.
Those cases represent a tiny fraction of the roughly 5,000 new felony cases that come through the door at Criminal District Court every year, according to Metropolitan Crime Commission reports.
In a statement, Assistant District Attorney Christopher Bowman dismissed the Court Watch NOLA report as “simply sloppy.” He pointed to a chart in which the group misidentified the number of crime victims who are women. The group later issued a corrected version of the report.
“According to Court Watch NOLA, the DA’s Office arrested six people on material witness warrants in 2016, but only one of these warrants was issued for a victim in either a sex crime or domestic violence case," said Bowman, the spokesman for District Attorney Leon Cannizzaro. "The district attorney is far more concerned with the numbers 55 and 204, which are, respectively, the number of people murdered and shot in New Orleans in 2017.”
In the rape case, prosecutors said they could not find the accuser in a case in which the defendant was charged with second-degree rape and second-degree battery.
The victim was held in jail for eight days before the warrant against her was dropped. The defendant was ultimately convicted of second-degree battery, according to court records. Online court files do not make clear whether the victim testified.
Half of the 30 material witness warrants tracked in 2016 were for victims of crimes and half were for witnesses, Court Watch NOLA said.
In one case, a witness in an attempted murder case was held for 179 days because his failure to testify violated the terms of his probation, the report said.
The report said that warrants were obtained for women who made accusations in a sexual battery and second-degree kidnapping case and in an aggravated assault and domestic abuse battery case. Neither woman was actually arrested.
Court Watch NOLA said it believes more material witness warrants may have been issued in 2016, but it was difficult to track such cases in court records. Bowman said the DA's Office does not keep a count.
The court observation group acknowledged that prosecutors are often put in a difficult position by reluctant witnesses. They must decide whether to arrest the victim or witness or to drop a case and allow a criminal to go free. The dilemma is particularly thorny in gang violence cases, since they present a clear threat to the larger community.
The group said the DA's Office should issue a public protocol to make clear when it will seek material witness warrants.
One law professor who has written about the use of material witness warrants said she was surprised to hear that prosecutors had issued one in a rape case.
“I think that most jurisdictions don’t want to get the reputation that you have to issue warrants to prosecute either sexual assault or domestic violence cases. A lot of advocates see material witness warrants as a way of victimizing the victims,” said Geneva Brown, a professor at Valparaiso University in Indiana.
Brown said the trend in sexual assault and domestic violence cases in recent years has been to offer victims support services, such as an advocate who can guide a victim through the judicial process or compensation for transportation.
“If (material witness warrants) are being issued, even in just a handful of cases, what message are you sending to other victims of sexual assault?” Brown said. “Other victims may not come forward if they know this is how they’re going to be treated.”
Levine said she was not aware of any study tracking the use of material witness warrants in other jurisdictions. However, Jefferson Parish prosecutors have employed the tactic in at least one recent case.
In February, Xevion Davis was booked on a material witness warrant in order to force him to testify before a grand jury in the killing of his 10-month-old son in Marrero.The disco-fixated duo on commercial dance music, funkiness and how to make music together when you live in different countries
Who are you, and how did you end up becoming Televisor?
We are Tim and Tom. We're both from the UK, but Tom has been living in Amsterdam for the past 14 years.
We originally met on Soundcloud when working on solo projects. Collaborating produced some funky stuff and we became really good friends. We knew we had found each other's Simon and Garfunkel.
Describe your music-making process
Since we're both in different countries we have to send and share our projects with each other. We've used Dropbox to share all of our projects for such a long time now that we couldn't work without it!
In terms of writing the music we both play integral parts in this process. Typically one of us will start the initial idea, whether its a chord sequence, a drum pattern or a bass line, and then we will send it over to the other person who will add / chop and change it. As the projects grow it becomes a massive collaborative process and we have so much fun doing it.
We tend to write lots of songs, but only a select few get to see the light of day. If our feet start tapping whilst working on it, then thats the sure sign that the song will be put in the 'good' pile.
What does disco mean to you?
Melody and harmony play a huge part in our music. We love playing around with live instruments such as guitars and old synths and disco happens to be full of all that good stuff!
Disco is like black coffee and fried chicken. Its not all about the flares and the massive gold chains. Its music which you can't help but dance to. Music that to the vast majority of people is timeless. If its funky everyone can feel something in that type of music.
What are your thoughts on the current state of dance music?
Well a couple of weeks ago, Swedish duo Daleri made a mash-up out of the main hooks from the top 10 Beatport dance chart. Needless to say, the mash-up sounded like one long song.
In terms of mainstream dance music, we're not big fans and the majority of tracks that get played in festivals by charting DJs all sound the same.
There are two sides to the coin when it comes to commercial dance music. On the one side you have music which is written and produced by DJs and producers who are still very much still in creative control of their music, and on the other you have more commercially accessible music which is built upon the framework of modern pop music.
The music David Guetta produces is quite simple and nothing that a bedroom producer couldn't write after a year on a PC using FL Studio. However, every song he writes has a vocal hook in it driven by a commercially successful pop singer that helps carry the song along.
Some of the songs we play in our DJ set are by artists that you may not have heard of – Eumig and Chinon, Futurecop, Tobtok, Robotaki, Majestique – these guys excel at their ability to write great music, yet are nowhere near as succesful as the popular names in commercial dance music who knock out the same tired sounding crowd pleasers.
Who would you class as your musical peers?
Thats a tough question. We often see other musicians and producers and think to ourselves 'why can't we sound as good as them?' Tobtok and Oliver Nelson are great producers, although we consider these guys to have a more solid and refined sound than us, so it's great to know that equally they love our music just as much as we enjoy theirs!
Thats not to say that we don't sometimes think 'You bastards!' for having written such a great hook. It's not a competition by any means, but if they write good music, it keeps us on our toes. We know we have to deliver something great!At QuakeCon, moments ago, Todd Howard has confirmed that The Dark Brotherhood will be in Skyrim.
Bethesda has been claiming for awhile now that there is a whole host of information that they are still sitting on, but that will trickle out in the coming weeks. This is a big one for me since I found the Dark Brotherhood lines of quests some of the best to be found in Oblivion. Sure, joining a fighters guild is all well and good. You get to fight. But to be a terrifying assassin of the night is something I think we can all get behind. <insert joke about rogue's doing it from behind here>.
In any case, it's great to see the tradition of these different outfits and guilds making it back into the new game, and my fears that Skyrim will somehow not be as ample as its predecessor are slowly dissipating. And I await the chance to have more 'favorite moments' in the new world they are crafting.
As for Oblivion, coming to be the head of the Dark Brotherhood was my favorite moment. What was yours?
[Source: Bethesda PR Tweet]CLEVELAND – Nobody saw this coming.
Miami Heat submitted their most impressive performance of the season Monday, sweeping the home-and-home with the Cleveland Cavaliers with a 106-98 victory at Quicken Loans Arena.
The Heat, who routed a short-handed Cleveland team Saturday at home, were the shorthanded team this time.
Cleveland had LeBron James and Kyrie Irving back, both rested Saturday, and Miami was without James Johnson (elbow) and Tyler Johnson (shoulder) the entire game and Luke Babbitt for most of it.
Coach Erik Spoelstra had nine available players after Babbitt went down, and used eight.
And although Miami never trailed after James’ basket with 8:18 to play in the first quarter and opened a 20-point lead in the fourth quarter, the game was not sealed until Dion Waiters banked home a 32-foot, 3-point shot with 12.2 seconds to play.
“I had to take that shot,” said Waiters, who led the Heat with 29 points, 24 in the first half. “I had to because I missed a couple of easy ones that went in and out on me. If just told myself the opportunity would at least come back around and I just shot with a bunch of confidence.”
Miami withstood two Cavaliers runs. Cleveland also cut Miami’s lead to three points midway through the third quarter before the Heat went on a 20-5 run.
“Great teams are going to make a run and come back,” Heat coach Erik Spoelstra said. “We had some messy possessions and some of our defensive breakdowns down the stretch. … they turned a 20-point lead to an eight-point lead like that. But our guys found a way to dig in and find some grit to finish it out.”
Goran Dragic added 21 for the Heat, 10 in the fourth quarter.
The Heat’s win coupled with Detroit’s victory over Chicago means Miami is 1.5 games behind both, who are tied for the No. 7 seed in the East. Miami is also just 2.5 games behind No. 6 Indiana.
Here are our five takeaways from Miami’s most impressive win of the season.
Revenge game: The Cavaliers had to be looking forward to Miami coming to their place after the Heat took advantage of James and Irving sitting out Saturday’s game in Miami and hammered the Cavs by 28. Then there was the J.R. Smith reaction to Rodney McGruder’s dunk in the final minutes and verbal altercation at the end. While most expected the Cavaliers would come out and bury the Heat, Miami stood up to the Cavaliers and took the game to them.
“They made a mad rushing in coming back, made shots, you just have to find a way in competition to make some plays down the stretch and fortunately we were able to,” Spoelstra said. “If the game was 10-minutes longer, I don’t know.”
Defense rules the day: The Cavaliers had just 71 points after three quarters and were shooting 44.3 percent as Miami built a 20-point lead early in the fourth quarter. And Cleveland was dependent on two players; James and Irving. The two combined for 62 points on 22-of-47 shooting while the rest of the Cavs were just 13-of-31 from the field. The Cavs finished shooting 44.9 percent.
“We needed to be really solid defensively, especially with them being home,” Dragic said.
What slump?: Waiters was on the court long after his teammates had left following Monday’s shoot-around, working with shooting coach Rob Fodor. It worked. Waiters, who was 4-of-21 his last two games, started the game red hot with 24 first half points, making all but two of shots including all four 3 pointers. He had three driving layups, three midrange jumpers and four 3s. His only misses were at the rim. Waiters hit a rut in the second half, making just 2-of-12 shots but none of that mattered when his last shot hit the glass and went through the basket.
“He’s fearless,” Spoelstra said. “That irrational confidence. Sometimes it drives you nuts. He can do special things out there and if you want to beat a team like this you have to have guys like Dion and Goran that can create something out of nothing.”
Help from his friends: While Waiters carried the Heat early, Wayne Ellington took over in the third quarter before passing the baton to Dragic. Waiters had just two points in the third quarter but Ellington made three 3-point shots to help Miami limit the Cavs run. Then it was Dragic who scored 10 points in the first 2:43 of the fourth quarter as Miami built its biggest lead of the game, 20 points.
“We’re finding the right balance,” Dragic said. “We’re still an attacking team that tries to get into the paint but everybody is worried about us getting into the paint that they are shrinking. Usually when we spray we have a lot of open threes. We’re making those shots. It’s a great balance. If everybody’s involved it’s really tough to defend.”
Shorthanded Heat: Miami was without its top two bench players, James Johnson and Tyler Johnson, and lost Luke Babbitt to back spasms during the game. James Johnson’s right elbow remains sore after he received three stitches to close a cut that happened when he inadvertently elbowed Cleveland’s Iman Shumpert on Saturday. Shumpert chipped his two front teeth on the play. Spoelstra said the team wants to be sure the cut does not get infected. Tyler Johnson’s neck and left shoulder are sore after he “got pinched” while being screened during Friday’s game in Orlando. Tyler, who already sat six games this season with a left shoulder strain and missed three months last year after having rotator cuff surgery on the same shoulder, said he re-aggravated the injury Saturday. Both are hopeful they can play Wednesday at home against Charlotte. Babbitt played nine minutes before his night was through.
“The only thing about what’s happened this season when you end up missing so many guys due to injury guys get used to it,” Spoelstra said. “We missed them but guys are used to the routine, used to the drill, OK next man up.”
[Miami Heat connected to free agent forward Jared Sullinger]
[James Johnson the reason Heat players say Rodney McGruder has ‘honeydew melon’ eyes]
[Dion Waiters says J.R. Smith ‘overreacted for no reason’ at end of Heat’s victory Saturday]
[Want more Heat news sent directly to your Facebook feed? Make sure to like our Heat Facebook]In the 2,500+ years that have passed since acupuncture was first used by the ancient Chinese, it has been used to treat a number of physical, mental and emotional conditions including nausea and vomiting, stroke rehabilitation, headaches, menstrual cramps, asthma, carpal tunnel, fibromyalgia and osteoarthritis, to name just a few. Now, a meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials which is being published this month in Menopause, the journal of The North American Menopause Society (NAMS), indicates that acupuncture can affect the severity and frequency of hot flashes for women in natural menopause.
An extensive search of previous studies evaluating the effectiveness of acupuncture uncovered 104 relevant students, of which 12 studies with 869 participants met the specified inclusion criteria to be included in this current study. While the studies provided inconsistent findings on the effects of acupuncture on other menopause-related symptoms such as sleep problems, mood disturbances and sexual problems, they did conclude that acupuncture positively impacted both the frequency and severity of hot flashes.
Women experiencing natural menopause and aged between 40 and 60 years were included in the analysis, which evaluated the effects of various forms of acupuncture, including traditional Chinese medicine acupuncture (TCMA), acupressure, electroacupuncture, laser acupuncture and ear acupuncture.
Interestingly, neither the effect on hot flash frequency or severity appeared to be linked to the number of treatment doses, number of sessions or duration of treatment. However, the findings showed that sham acupuncture could induce a treatment effect comparable with that of true acupuncture for the reduction of hot flash frequency. The effects on hot flashes were shown to be maintained for as long as three months.
Although the study stopped short of explaining the exact mechanism underlying the effects of acupuncture on hot flashes, a theory was proposed to suggest that acupuncture caused a reduction in the concentration of β-endorphin in the hypothalamus, resulting from low concentrations of estrogen. These lower levels could trigger the release of CGRP, which affects thermoregulation.
"More than anything, this review indicates that there is still much to be learned relative to the causes and treatments of menopausal hot flashes," says NAMS executive director Margery Gass, MD. "The review suggests that acupuncture may be an effective alternative for reducing hot flashes, especially for those women seeking non- pharmacologic therapies."
A recent review indicated that approximately half of women experiencing menopause-associated symptoms use complementary and alternative medicine therapy, instead of pharmacologic therapies, for managing their menopausal symptoms.Corey Lewandowski said Monday the FBI should have notified him that Paul Manafort was under suspicion when he joined the Trump campaign.
“He was under a FISA warrant, supposedly, both before and after his tenure at the campaign and the FBI never notified the leading presidential candidate for a major Republican Party race? Never notified him of a potential problem? This is a problem with the FBI, if you ask me,” Mr. Lewandowski said on Fox Business, referring to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court that issues warrants to monitor individuals who are thought to be spies.
Mr. Lewandowski served as President Trump’s campaign manager prior to Mr. Manafort taking the position last June, and said the FBI never notified the campaign that they had suspicions about Mr. Manafort’s past business dealings. He did say that while Mr. Manafort should be held accountable for any wrongdoings, the president should not be tied to it.
“If Paul Manafort did something in 2006, a decade before he was brought on as a volunteer to the Trump campaign, then he should be accountable for that,” Mr. Lewandowski said. “He and his associate, Rick Gates, have now been indicted on 12 counts of money laundering and probably tax evasion and other things, which have absolutely nothing to do with the campaign, have nothing to do with the Russia investigation, and have nothing to do with the president.”
Mr. Manafort and Mr. Gates were charged early Monday and told to surrender themselves to authorities. The two men are scheduled to appear in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., Monday afternoon.
Copyright © 2019 The Washington Times, LLC. Click here for reprint permission.“No you fools! You’ll destroy us all!”
That was my reaction to this story at ars technica (via) which talks about new “external” graphics cards. The idea is that users can buy lots of them and stack them high and wide and set up fancy cooling schemes that would not be practical within the confines of the average computer case. I can only conclude that this is some sort of sick scheme to eliminate PC gaming forever.
People made a big deal about the PS3 “sticker shock”. You know, because the complete game system, including controllers and the blu-ray transmorg-matrix, cost $600.
Don’t get me wrong, I like getting fancy new hardware, as budget allows. This would be a nice development if this were something just for framerate junkies, but the way things work right now is that expensive new technology ends up appearing on the side of PC games under the wordsabout three weeks after it gets invented. ATI could come up with a graphics card that costs $10,000 and needs to be continually submersed in liquid nitrogen, and idiot developers would build their next-gen engine on top of it. Advances like this are things that hardcore gamers should be doing to get ahead, not things that average gamers should be doing just to keep up. Sadly, I’m sure that’s where this is going. The only thing more horrifying than seeing a PC game which requires a $500 graphics card is one that requires several of them.
And even if you do pour all that money into your PC, odds are the games will suck anyway, and run like a sick turtle. On an uphill grade. Against the wind. While, like, pulling some heavy stuff or something. You know: Slow.
You’re a coder, working on developing a game for the PC. NVIDIA hands you one of their latest cards, which can do some new rendering feature. Let’s call this new feature “bling-mapping”. The NVIDIA SDK comes with a demo showing off what bling-mapping looks like and how it works. It’s pretty sweet. We HAVE to put this in our upcoming game! You know in eighteen months “everyone” will have one of these cards. So you add bling-mapping to your graphics engine. Sadly, this is not as easy as dropping it into place and walking away. Sure, it makes polygons look nicer, but it makes them take longer to render. Is it worth it for little polygons in the distance? Where is the point at which the feature is just slowing things down and not adding to the game visually? A meter from the camera? Ten meters? A hundred? You need to figure this out. Oh, and this distance probably varies based on resolution, so at 800×600 the cutoff is N meters but at 1024×768 the cutoff is (maybe) N*2 meters. You’ll need to work out how this scale works so you know how far away a polygon needs to be before you can safely disable bling-mapping for it. Looking at the complex calculations that are needed to “bling” a polygon, are there any approximations or shortcuts that will be (say) twice as fast but look nearly the same? Perhaps there is a shortcut that will make all bling-mapped objects render faster, but it causes very ugly distortions and artifacts up close. Perhaps there is another, different optimization that only works well at a distance, and perhaps these two optimizations can’t be combined. Figuring out how to use them properly, and when to use one and when to use the other, is no small task. What about transparent polygons? Perhaps bling-mapping looks fantastic, but for textures with transparent areas (like grass, or leaves) the effect is ten times slower to render? Is there a way around this? Maybe you should disable bling for these parts of the scene? Or is there some way your artists could build these items that will mitigate this problem? What happens when you go to put a decal on the polygon? (A decal is another texture slapped over the surface, usually things like adding scorch marks or blood splats to walls, or cracks and bullet holes to a plane of glass.) Maybe bling-mapping and decals don’t look very nice together, or they cause really heavy slowdowns. The variables are endless. There are many aspects to the scene that need to be considered. I’ve barely scratched the surface, really. This work will take months. All done? Got all those tradeoffs worked out? Think you can render the scene with bling-mapping enabled and not waste too many GPU cycles? Great. Now go do it all again. ATI has a card that does the same thing, only slightly differently. It doesn’t have the problems with transparent textures like NVIDIA, but it ends up being really, really ugly with polygons which have certain shadow effects applied. So you’ll need to find some way around that. Done? Great. By the way, NVIDIA just came out with a new card. It speeds up bling-mapping by 50% in certain cases, but only if you do this other optimization over here which is incompatible with other optimizations that you’ve already put into place and calibrated. Our game should be ready to ship by now. Aren’t you done yet? You were only working on one feature. Obviously old cards won’t support bling-mapping. But since it is now an intergral part of our render path, we must write an entirely different path that does all of the rendering without the aid of bling-mapping. Ah, screw it. We’ll just drop support for old cards. We’re already four months past our intended release date.
This is what the “Advanced Video Options” dialog looks like to a casual user. Similar to the mysterious devices in Myst, the user has no way of knowing what the controls will do without experimenting with them. Some sliders will do nothing. Some will make the game look like crap but do nothing for framerate. Some will cripple performance for little or no visual benefit. These controls are there because there are so many graphics cards and so many configurations and screen resolutions that nobody has time to wrap their head around it all. They have to depend on the end user to come in and experiment with the controls until it works right.
Picture the early Playstation titles, and compare them to the Playstation titles that came out near the end of the console’s lifespan. The latter ran smoother and looked far better, even though they ran on the exact same hardware. This is what you get when coders can have a fixed configuration to deal with: They get good at using it.
What I outlined above isn’t really how things work. It would be great if a coder was free to work and optimize a particular feature for endless weeks or months, but this just isn’t practical. The coder has other work to do, and the rest of the team will need him to stop mucking with the engine so they can finish the rest of the game. The result of this is that by the time coders have come to grips with bling-mapping and have it working right, it will be phased out in favor of some other new feature that comes along. We’re re-inventing the wheel every eighteen months, and for the most part this means that all of our games are built on top of first-generation engines or even rough prototypes. These graphics cards are getting faster and faster, but I’m confident that much of the additional speed is being consumed by sub-optimal code. As just one example, check this thread, where dozens of users with dual-core machines, 2GB of RAM, and one or more high-end graphics cards, all gather to complain about slow framerates. Let’s put this in perspective: If these guys had saved the money they had put into their PC’s, they would have enough cash to buy a PS3 three times over. Or they could buy seven Wiis. And yet they are still having stability, framerate, or esoteric driver issues.
Yes, bling-mapping is great. It makes the player say “wow”. But then they get over it and play the game. They will notice that it is choppy, buggy, has annoying visual glitches, or requires them to muck around with driver and DirectX versions.
It used to be consoles were for the “serious gamers”. They were the ones that shelled out the big bucks for a special computer that just played games, while those of us of more humble means made do with using our PCs, which weren’t as specialized but which we already owned. Now we’ve reached the point where PC games are less numerous, more buggy, and require more expensive hardware. All of this and the games run slower, too.
In the games store, PC games have been relegated to a small shelf at the back, like the porno rack at the bookstore. Yeah, we hate to waste shelf space on that stuff, but there are always a few freaks that like to come in and buy that sort of thing. Of the meager assortment of games they do bother to carry, a handful are probably venerable oldies like Starcraft, Diablo II, and their respective expansion packs.
This is a sad state of affairs. Somewhere in this ridiculous pageant the whole point is lost: Games are supposed to be fun. The main chunk of the blame falls on PC game developers, who insist on riding the bleeding edge instead of hanging back technology-wise and focusing on making something worth playing. Wasn’t that the whole point?[Update #2] In response to our request for clarification on the status of the EA Montreal, an EA representative has told Game Informer definitively that the studio is not closing. It is still unknown how the cuts impacted different teams at EA Montreal and beyond, or if the focus of the layoffs was exclusively the publisher's mobile operations there.
[Update #1] EA has provided the following statement on the EA Montreal mobile layoffs to Game Informer,
"These are difficult decisions to let go of good people who have made important contributions to EA, and whenever possible we retrain or relocate employees to new roles. Streamlining our operations will help ensure EA is bringing the best next-generation games to players around the world."
[Original Story]
Following the closure of EA’s Visceral Montreal studio in February, the publisher has dealt another blow to their Canadian operations. Today, a Game Informer source shared that EA Montreal, most recently responsible for co-development on Army of Two: The Devil’s Cartel, has been hit with layoffs in its mobile division. Furthermore, former lead game designer at EA Mobile, Marc-Andre Caron tweeted:
This is surprising because of recent statements made by the publisher. As reported in February, EA shared this about the Montreal team, "EA Montreal is a key development studio where our long-term plan is to sharpen our teams' focus on consoles and mobile games." While we are unaware of the deliberations that contributed to this decision, the tumult experienced by EA in the intervening period has been significant.
CEO John Riccitiello resigned in the wake of slumping financial performance, the frustration amongst consumers over the growing use of microtransactions is reaching fever pitch, and the publisher has “won” a second “Worst Company in America” award. It’s not unreasonable that EA has changed their mind, especially after a change in leadership.
We have reached out to EA for comment. Our thoughts are with the employees affected by the layoffs.Community is the place where our limitations, our fears and our egotism are revealed to us. We discover our poverty and our weaknesses, our inability to get on with some people, our mental and emotional blocks, our affective and sexual disturbances, our seemingly insatiable desires, our frustrations and jealousies, our hatred and our wish to destroy. While we are alone, we could believe we loved everyone. Now that we are with others, living with them all the time, we realise how incapable we are of loving, how much we deny to others, how closed in on ourselves we are.
Come close. Take my hand. Lean in and let me whisper to you. You are loved.
Know this, dear one, you are loved.
Christian community is a participation in the Triune life of God, where the perichoresis of the Father, Son and Spirit reflects the koinonia of the Kingdom of God.
Many months ago in a conversation about church with my friend and colleague David ( check out his blog here ) I revisited a quote from Jean Vanier's book Community and Growth Vanier, if you did not know, is the founder of the L'Arche community. Many will recall that Henri Nouwen famously left academia to serve in the L'Arche community.I was sharing with David what I found important and valuable about church. Though Vanier is speaking about communities living under the same roof, I believe his insights apply to all faith-based communities. This is why church is so important to me:As I shared with David, church is simply the place where I find myself revealed as being vain, judgmental, envious, jealous, competitive, irritable, selfish, self-absorbed, neurotic and stubborn. Church helps me know this about myself.More, it's easy to love people in the abstract. And social media can aid in this illusion. It's easy--oh, so easy--to write a loving, grace-filled and big-hearted blog post.And the easiness isn't just with poetic and lyrical blogging. It's just as easy to write a blog about loving others in academic jargon.How easy was that to write? I could blather on like that for days.Loving others through social media is one thing, but when it comes time to love actual flesh and blood people many of us remove ourselves from the daily grind of simply getting along with others.I used to think this was a failure of effort, of not wanting to put in the time and effort to be in concrete relationships with others. Church is a chore. It's hard relational work.But as I mentioned above, I think a lot of our disengagement is being driven by ego. The disciplines of community expose our selfishness, vanity, impatience, entitlement and our brokenness.And rather than enduring this exposure it easier to withdraw into the illusion that we are loving people through social media.While we are alone--in front of screens typing and Tweeting--we believe we love everyone.A couple months after the very first spyshots of the Lamborghini Gallardo successor emerged, currently dubbed the Lamborghini Cabrera, another prototype was recently spotted testing under heavy camouflage.
Unsurprisingly, Lamborghini is keeping its cards very close to its chest when it comes to the long-awaited successor to the Gallardo meaning that very few styling details about this prototype are visible. With that being said however, this Lamborghini Cabrera prototype is sporting a drastically different shape to the current Gallardo.
One of the most notable features of the Lamborghini Cabrera will be its redesigned rear-end. From the side, the sharp lines first featured on the Lamborghini Sesto Elemento then passed down to the Lamborghini Aventador, are extremely evident. Additionally, this prototype features slightly offset quad-exhaust pipes at the rear, as well as what appears to be a very long and narrow rear light stretching across the entire width of the Italian supercar.
Another notable change at the rear-end, is the dramatically redesigned engine cover. With a similar shape and profile to the Aventador’s, it features three panes of overlapping glass stretching to the roof rather than one single sheet reaching towards the cabin. It’s unclear if such a feature will be present on the production version.
Under the hood, the Lamborghini Cabrera is expected to feature a 600hp 5.2-liter V10 engine. A debut in concept form is sadly not happening at the IAA Frankfurt Motor Show 2013 in September but likely for the Geneva Motor Show 2014.
[Via Zero2Turbo]The Danish shipping giant Maersk has revealed the completion of its first live blockchain trial, aimed at simplifying the way in which it sends trillions of dollars worth of products around the world.
Coming at a time when the firm that accounts for 15.8% of the world’s global shipping fleet traffic has experienced a sharp decrease in annual revenue, the application was designed to help save costs by moving the expensive and time-consuming paperwork between each of the counterparties to a blockchain-based smart contract system.
Built in partnership with IBM using Hyperledger’s open-source Fabric blockchain, the test resulted in a trans-Atlantic shipment of goods from Schneider Electric, a French energy management and automation company.
Following the successful test, Ibrahim Gokcen, chief digital officer for Maersk Transport & Logistics, said that the company sees a potential role for the technology in its supply chain management process, and is exploring other applications as well.
Gokcen told CoinDesk:
“We believe blockchain has a huge potential for supply chain applications. We don’t think it’s yet ready for prime-time fully, and that’s why we’re exploring, piloting in different use cases, to really understand what are the initial applications of blockchain.”
The shipment in mid-February, took two weeks to move from Rotterdam to the port of Newark in New Jersey, passing through US customs and other agencies along the way.
While the minimum Hyperledger requirement of only four nodes were active during the supply chain test, every party involved was given customized credentials that allowed them to view only the shipping data that was required along every step of the shipment.
“We believe we have proved the technology with one shipper,” said Gokcen. “And we want to continue engaging more and more in any part of the supply chain.”
Fighting fraud
In the shipment revealed today, only Maersk and IBM managed the nodes, with the other parties using their credentials to access data via a mobile device or web application. But in the future, shipping companies and government regulators are expected to manage their own nodes.
For example, in the test revealed today, Maersk’s supply chain solutions company, Damco, managed the shipment at the point of departure, with the Customs Administration of the Netherlands and the US Department of Homeland Security Science and Technology Directorate also participating.
As a result, Gokcen believes the blockchain solution has the potential to not only reduce paperwork, but fight costly shipping fraud by making it more difficult to inaccurately label products, if widely adopted.
“There are lots of entities involved,” he said. “Lots of signatures involved and one of blockchain’s clear promises is to make this trusted environment to allow parties to exchange information and to actually not cheat the system.”
A study conducted by Maersk in 2014 showed that on average about 30 people and organizations are involved in the shipment of a product using a shipping container, resulting in over 200 separate interactions, each requiring a new set of documents.
Gokcen said:
“The customs agencies are terribly interested in making sure the entire blockchain import-export events work securely. They are spending a lot of time to investigate the cargo that is passing through customs.”
Empty containers
But this trial wasn’t just about testing new technology.
Amidst a |
Paul Haggis | Mark “Marty” Rathbun | Mike Rinder | Spanky Taylor | Hana WhitfieldSpaceX's first Dragon capsule to visit the International Space Station bobs in the Pacific Ocean after a successful splashdown that capped its successful test flight on May 31, 2012. The capsule landed off the coast of Baja California.
This story was updated at 11:59 a.m. EDT.
The world's first commercial space cargo ship dove through Earth's atmosphere and splashed down in the Pacific Ocean early Thursday (May 31), ending an historic test flight to the International Space Station.
The SpaceX Dragon capsule made a water landing off the coast of Baja California, Mexico at 11:42 a.m. EDT (1542 GMT). Recovery ships have spotted the capsule and are en route to collect the vehicle to tow to Los Angeles.
Mission Control in Houston informed the space station crew that the capsule's red-and-white striped parachutes were visible.
"That's good news," NASA astronaut Don Pettit radioed back.
Dragon departed the space station earlier today, when it was released from the outpost's robotic arm after being plucked from a docking port on station's Earth-facing Harmony module. The unmanned capsule began its return to Earth in earnest at 10:51 a.m. EDT (1451 GMT) with a nine minute, 50 second de-orbit engine burn.
A map shows where Dragon was expected to splashdown in the Pacific Ocean on May 31, 2012. (Image: © NASA TV)
Dragon became the first private vehicle to visit the space station when it docked there May 25, three days after launching atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral, Fla. The capsule spent a total of five days, 16 hours and 5 minutes attached to the $100 billion orbiting laboratory. [ Dragon Capsule's Space Station Arrival in Pictures]
"It was a major success for us," Dragon mission director John Couluris of SpaceX said during a news conference yesterday (May 30). "The trust and hard work that NASA helped SpaceX with were really important. The ability to get to the space station on our first time, to not only rendezvous but to berth — we would call that mission alone a success."
SpaceX's test drive for NASA
The nine-day Dragon flight was a test run for the 12 cargo-delivery flights SpaceX (short for Space Exploration Technologies Corp.) is contracted to fly for NASA for a total of $1.6 billion. The Hawthorne, Calif.-based company was founded in 2002 by billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk, who also co-founded PayPal.
"We are hoping to continue working with NASA and hopefully flying crew within three years," Musk said. "This was a crucial step and makes the chances of becoming a multi planet species more likely."
Though this flight is only Dragon's second-ever trip to orbit, the mission went smoothly from end to end, with all the major milestones achieved without mishap.
That Dragon's re-entry and splashdown went well marks another significant achievement, as the spacecraft is alone among the automated cargo freighters that service the space station in its ability to carry supplies not just up, but down.
While the cargo-delivery spacecraft built by Russia, Japan and Europe are designed to burn up during re-entry, Dragon is equipped with a heat shield and parachutes to survive the fiery plunge.
Dragon is packed with 1,367 pounds (620 kg) of crew items, used hardware and completed science experiments for its return trip. On the way up, the spacecraft delivered student-designed experiments and food, clothing and other supplies for the station's astronauts.
Elon Musk of SpaceX (3rd from right in front row, hand on his head), watches as the Dragon capsule returns to Earth, May 31, 2012. (Image: © NASA TV)
Will astronauts be next?
SpaceX is one of two private firms receiving NASA funding to develop robotic cargo spacecraft (the other is Orbital Sciences Corp. of Dulles, Va.). SpaceX is also competing for a NASA contract to carry crew, as well as cargo, aboard Dragon.
Officials say if work proceeds on schedule, the first humans could fly on Dragon as soon as 2015. The capsule, which measures 14.4 feet tall (4.4 meters) and 12 feet wide (3.7 m), is designed to fit up to seven astronauts aboard.
You can follow SPACE.com assistant managing editor Clara Moskowitz on Twitter @ClaraMoskowitz. Follow SPACE.com for the latest in space science and exploration news on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.TOKYO -- Former major leaguer Wladimir Balentien hit his 55th home run on Wednesday, tying Japanese baseball's single-season record.
Wladimir Balentien tied the Japanese single-season record with his 55th home run Wednesday and has 21 games remaining to break the mark. AP Photo/Kyodo News
Balentien matched the mark set by Sadaharu Oh in 1964 and equaled by ex-major leaguers Tuffy Rhodes in 2001 and Alex Cabrera in 2002. He has 21 regular-season games left to break the record.
Balentien hit a solo homer in the sixth inning at Jingu Stadium and was presented with a bouquet of flowers after reaching home plate. Despite Balentien's home run, the Tokyo Yakult Swallows lost 6-2 to the Hiroshima Carp.
"It's an honor to be tied with such great players," Balentien said. "I'm relieved and happy I was able to do it here in front of our home fans."
Balentien, who is from Curacao, played for the Seattle Mariners and Cincinnati Reds before signing with the Swallows in 2011. He hit 31 homers in each of his first two seasons in Japan.
Rhodes and Cabrera tied Oh's record with several games left but were then walked more and were unable to break it.
Oh is a legend in Japan. His 868 career home runs, which surpassed Hank Aaron's then-major league record of 755, made him a national hero.
The single-season home run record is also highly regarded, and former New York Yankees outfielder Hideki Matsui wore No. 55 in recognition of it.
The closest Matsui got to breaking Oh's record was 50 homers in 2002, when he played for the Yomiuri Giants.
The 29-year-old Balentien missed the first 12 games of this season because of a leg injury sustained while playing for the Netherlands in the World Baseball Classic.
Balentien's challenge of Oh's record comes in a season in which there is controversy over a new, livelier baseball.
In June, Japanese baseball officials admitted they introduced the new official ball this season without notifying players. The new ball has resulted in a dramatic increase in home runs.The German city of Munich is the second public administration to join the advisory board at the Document Foundation, a non-profit organisation promoting the development of LibreOffice. Munich is joining the advisory board in a meeting this week Thursday, the Document Foundation announced yesterday.
France’s MIMO (Mutualisation Interministérielle pour une Bureautique Ouverte, or Inter-ministry Mutualisation for an Open Productivity Suite) joined the board in June 2013.
The advisory board is for organisations that contribute significantly to the development of LibreOffice - by submitting code, for example, or by helping financially. The members meet the directors of the foundation once every three months, says spokesperson Italo Vignoli. “The discussions provide insight on the free software ICT market; it is also a way for the advisory board members to provide feedback on their large-scale implementations.”
In Munich, LibreOffice is now used on 16,000 PC workstations. “The city of Munich is a healthy reference for every migration to free software”, the Document Foundation quotes its chairman Thorsten Behrens as saying, “it will add a significant value to our advisory board.”
MIMO, set-up in 2005, represents about half a million users of LibreOffice and the closely related Apache OpenOffice, at eleven French ministries - including Energy (Ecologie), Defence (Défense), Justice Education and Finance. The Interior Ministry is responsible for the largest deployment of LibreOffice, with 240,000 desktops.
More information:
Announcement by the Document Foundation
Golem news item (in German)
El Pais news item (in Spanish)
OSOR study on Limux
OSOR news item on MIMO
OSOR study on MIMOI went to Dunkin Donuts, I went to the counter and told the guy, “Hey man, I missed free coffee day,” free coffee day was like a month ago, “I missed it, but I’m here, and I’m really sorry I’m so late. I don’t know what happened, it’s like, I was all about the free coffee, I kept making sure to remember to come in for the free coffee, and I don’t know what happened, I just totally forgot about it,” the guy behind the counter had a nametag that said “Jeff.” I said, “Hey, Jeff, do you think I could still get one of those free coffees? Please?” And I did one of those apologetic smiles, like come on, please?
And Jeff was like, “Come on, that was two weeks ago.”
“I know. I’m really sorry. I wouldn’t even bother asking, I know this is like super embarrassing. And it’s not even about not paying for the coffee. It’s just, I really … I was really looking forward to free coffee day. And it’s like, I’m in here all the time.”
“Well,” Jeff said, “Not all the time. Because free coffee day was two weeks ago. So you haven’t been here in two weeks.”
“OK, well these past two weeks have been kind of crazy …”
“You see that guy over in the corner?” I turned around and saw this old guy with a big bushy moustache reading a gigantic newspaper. He had the smallest cup of coffee I’ve ever seen placed at his table, like a paper cup, like I didn’t even know Dunkin had those tiny paper cups. “Hey Joe!” Jeff called out.
“What’s up?” the old man looked toward us.
“That’s Joe,” Jeff said to me. “He’s here every day, a regular.”
I didn’t know what point Jeff was trying to make here. “Listen Jeff,” I said, “I’m not trying to make this a thing about being like the number one customer. I come in here enough.”
“Do you?” Jeff said.
“Jeff, what did you call my name for?” Joe called over from his table in the corner.
I waited for Jeff to answer, but he didn’t break eye contact with me. So after an awkward half second, I said, “I think I come in enough.” Jeff didn’t look convinced, so I added, “And when I do come in, I always buy an extra large coffee with a turbo shot, and then I always get one or two donuts. That’s like six bucks. How much does Joe spend on that tiny coffee? And for real,” and I lowered my voice a little so Joe wouldn’t hear me, “how long does he sit there every day, just reading the paper? Is that the kind of customer you’re trying to please?”
Jeff looked at me, but didn’t say anything back. Maybe I was getting through to him.
“Hey Joe,” I called out this time.
The old man turned around and said, “Who are you?”
I said, “Were you here for free coffee day two weeks ago?”
“Of course I was here for free coffee day,” Joe replied, folding his huge newspaper down the front. “I always just get a small coffee,” he said. “But on free coffee day they give you a medium. It was too much coffee, so I didn’t want it to go to waste. I said to Jeff, I said, Jeff, just give me a small. But Jeff wouldn’t, he said a small was gonna cost me. But a medium was free. Go figure. So I took the medium. And it was just really … just really too much coffee. Who drinks that much coffee?”
I thought Joe’s testimony basically made my argument right there, but Jeff didn’t look pleased. Maybe I shouldn’t have had Joe undermine the company line. Maybe I should have just begged.
“Come on,” I tried again. “Please?”
But Jeff didn’t budge. I wanted to storm out, but I also really wanted some coffee, so I got my extra large with a turbo shot, my two donuts. After he gave me my drink, I thought he was maybe going to offer the next person in line a free coffee to spite me. But no, it was just, “Can I help you?”
On my way out the door, Joe was staring me down. He saw my extra large coffee and said, “Holy smokes, you kids drink way too much coffee. You know, before 1980, 1985, you never saw coffee cups that big. Never. And let me tell you …”
Usually I’m a nice guy with old people. Like, if they want to talk my ear off, I’ll give them two or three minutes of smiles and eye contact. But I was pissed off at not getting any free coffee, and so I just got out, I just gave Joe a polite nod, and I left.Armed man who tried to uncover Charlottesville statue of Robert E. Lee (Screen capture)
An armed man wearing a tie-dye T-shirt tried to slash away the black drape placed over a statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee in Charlottesville on Wednesday.
As onlookers tried to dissuade him, the man slashed at the black tarp covering the statue, but was only able to cut at about shoulder height.
“People have died!” a woman said angrily. “Does that mean nothing to you?”
Someone is cutting down the shroud on the Lee statue in #Charlottesville pic.twitter.com/3vtlCF5STW — Lauren Berg (@laurenbergk) August 23, 2017
Witnesses report that the man was carrying a gun.
Armed man cuts shroud draped over Lee statue in Charlottesville pic.twitter.com/GQlkYsWsFb — Justin Miller (@justinjm1) August 23, 2017
The man called covering the statue a “desecration” and said that anti-racist protester Heather Heyer was killed because she was “playing in traffic.”Just like Wifatch and Hajime, the BrickerBot malware is the work of a vigilante grey-hat, who goes online by the name of Janit0r, a nickname he chose on the Hack Forums discussion boards.
If you're unfamiliar, BrickerBot is a new malware family that was first identified at the start of the month by Radware researchers. The malware made headlines because it was the first threat of its kind that intentionally bricked IoT and networking devices, by rewriting the flash storage space of affected devices with random data.
Such actions rendered troves of devices useless, many needing a firmware reinstall, but as many needing to be replaced altogether.
Destructive actions like these caught the attention of authorities. In the US, the Department of Homeland Security’s Industrial Control Systems Cyber Emergency Response Team (ICS-CERT) issued an official alert last week, warning companies to disable Telnet and SSH access to their devices and asking owners to change their devices' default factory passwords.
Anonymous tip leads us to Hack Forums profile
Since BrickerBot's appearance, law enforcement and the infosec community have been on the hunt for new information regarding how BrickerBot operates and who's behind it.
New information surfaced over the Easter weekend when Bleeping Computer received an anonymous tip about the online identity of BrickerBot's creator. The tipster pointed us towards the profile of a Hack Forums user named janit0r.
We ignored the tip at first since Hack Forums is known to attract a crowd of braggadocio hackers, many of whom tend to "embellish" their abilities or knowledge. We expected that that two weeks after BrickerBot's discovery, Hack Forums would be abuzz with people trying to take credit for BrickerBot, but it was strangely silent.
On Monday, feeling bad that we did not follow through with the same dilligence that the tipster had warned us with, we decided to have another look over janit0r's profile.
What we discovered was a user that registered on January 21, 2017, had the forum boards set up to use the Alaska timezone and had made four posts.
Right off the bat, his first post was the most interesting one. In a forum topic discussing a decline in the number of active Mirai bots, Janit0r made the following statement. Remind you, this still almost two months and a half before Radware's BrickerBot discovery.
I have killed over 200K telnet devices since Nov.. you've probably seen a drop in your bot counts by now.
His second and third posts also came before BrickerBot became public and attested to his skills as a reverse engineer, in a topic he started himself, discussing a security flaw in Dahua 2nd and 3rd generation IP cameras.
The researcher who discovered and made public the flaw, withheld proof-of-concept exploit code for one month, to give Dahua customers time to apply a firmware update. Janit0r showed dissatisfaction with the researcher's action and published exploitation details for that particular bug himself.
His last post was in a topic started by a user who "heard" that BrickerBot's source had leaked. Janit0r's response was quick and to the point.
I'm gonna call bullshit on this rumor.. I'm pretty sure I'd be sitting in jail if someone had managed to snatch the full source off my desktop :P
At this point, we had to confirm that Janit0r was indeed BrickerBot's author and not just some guy bragging on Hack Forums. This is how we spent the next two days, scraping through the Dark Web, underground hacking forums, and getting in contact with a few threat intelligence analysts we knew.
By Wednesday, we didn't manage to find any other clue of Janit0r's existence, or anybody else claiming to be BrickerBot's author, with some solid proof on his side. That's when we just gave up, and launched a desperate tweet, asking BrickerBot's author to reach out.
BrickerBot's Author reaches out
Lo and behold, this was exactly what happened. The same day, we received an email from a person claiming to be BrickerBot's creator.
The email contained lots of details about BrickerBot's operation and internal structure. Nevertheless, at this point, we knew that there could be the possibility that someone was pulling a prank.
Chance had it that someone else had also seen our tweet. That person was Victor Gevers, a security researcher mostly known for tracking the destructive ransom attacks against MongoDB and other databases.
In the Bleeping Computer article that broke the news of BrickerBot's existence, we asked Victor for his expert opinion on this new malware's behavior and repercussions. Victor not only put BrickerBot in perspective for our readers, but also asked BrickerBot's creator to reach out and discuss an alternative method of dealing with unsecured IoT devices, instead of blindly destroying people's property.
Unknown to all was that BrickerBot author had reached out to Victor hours after our article went live. The two had shared notes and Victor was acting as an intermediary between Janit0r and various CERTs. All the operational details shared with us on Wednesday were the same Janit0r shared with Victor in the previous three weeks, confirming we were speaking with the same person.
"Yes, I am janit0r"
"Yes, I was janit0r on Hackforums," the BrickerBot author started his email, which then continued with Janit0r showing his anger at the sad state of affairs in the realm of IoT security.
Like so many others I was dismayed by the indiscriminate DDoS attacks by IoT botnets in 2016. I thought for sure that the large attacks would force the industry to finally get its act together, but after a few months of record-breaking attacks it became obvious that in spite of all the sincere efforts the problem couldn't be solved quickly enough by conventional means.
The IoT security mess is a result of companies with insufficient security knowledge developing powerful Internet-connected devices for users with no security knowledge. Most of the consumer-oriented IoT devices that I've found on the net appear to have been deployed almost exactly as they left the factory.
For example 9 out of every 10 Avtech IP cameras that I've pulled the user db from were set up with the default login admin/admin! Let that statistic sink in for a second.. and then consider that if somebody launched a car or power tool with a safety feature that failed 9 times out of 10 it would be pulled off the market immediately. I don't see why dangerously designed IoT devices should be treated any differently and after the Internet-breaking attacks of 2016 nobody can seriously argue that the security of these devices isn't important.
I hope that regulatory bodies will do more to penalize careless manufacturers since market forces can't fix this problem. The reality of the market is that technically unskilled consumers will get the cheapest whitelabel DVR they can find at their local store, then they'll ask their nephew to plug it into the Internet, and a few minutes later it'll be full of malware. At least with 'BrickerBot' there was some brief hope that such dangerous devices could become the merchant's and manufacturer's problem rather than our problem.
BrickerBot allegely wiped over two million devices
I joined Hackforums in January mainly to see if my activities had been noticed by the botnet kids. Back then 200,000 bricked units seemed like a lot and I was sure I was close to the end of it. Now when the count is over 2 million it's clear that I had no idea (and still have no idea) how deep the rabbit hole of IoT insecurity is. I'm certain that the worst is still ahead of us.
I hope the unconventional actions by 'BrickerBot' have helped in buying another year of time for governments, vendors and the industry in general to get the current IoT security nightmare under control.
Many other people have also done important things to combat IoT malware (Team White, Hajime author, @packetcop and his fellow sinkholers, etc) so I'm by no means claiming credit for Mirai being weak in Q1/2017, but if Imeij and Amnesia have suffered a little recently then it's probably mainly my fault ;)
Janit0r's email then goes on to detail a few operational details regarding BrickerBot's infrastructure, also dispelling the notion that he's a madman set on the random destruction of IoT devices.
In reality, Janit0r wants to be considered in the same class as the White Team, the self-proclaimed white-hat hackers behind the Wifatch malware, and the author of the Hajime malware, another vigilante who created a new malware family last October that tries to secure IoT devices by force.
The Radware writeup made 'BrickerBot' sound simplistic, but it actually carries 86 protocol and device-specific payloads and is relatively successful at mitigating commonly exploited devices. The bot's every action has a statistically determined purpose and what might've seemed like buggy behavior in the honeypot really isn't.
As a preference 'BrickerBot' will try to secure units without damaging them and the bricking behavior is a 'plan B' (yes the B stands for brick :) for units which are unlikely to be securable. A blogger on the net wondered about 'BrickerBot' simply trying to change his honeypot's login and this would've been due to the bot assuming the device had a persistent user db. Because the honeypots are often quite different from any actual devices the behaviors in them are usually weird.
If security researchers made their honeypots look more like actual devices (that one could actually find with default credentials on the net) and hosted them on dirtier networks they would find even more interesting things going on..
Victor Gevers, who confirmed Janit0r's bricking statistics also believes this person is only misguided, and hopes to convince him to abandon his ways. "The writer of the email does not strike me as a bad person," Gevers told Bleeping Computer based on his own communications with Janit0r. "Just some young guy who was too eager to solve a problem."
Janit0r wants a change in IoT security standards
For the time being, Janit0r doesn't seem interested in stopping BrickerBot attacks, or at least not until officials and hardware vendors take a look at IoT security and start changing things with a hurry.
Authorities have been talking about IoT security standards for years, but in the meantime, some of the same vendors participating in those discussions have continued to ship out insecure devices with the same ol' default passwords. In a follow-up email, Janit0r wrote the following.
I consider my project a form of "Internet Chemotherapy" I sometimes jokingly think of myself as The Doctor. Chemotherapy is a harsh treatment that nobody in their right mind would administer to a healthy patient, but the Internet was becoming seriously ill in Q3 and Q4/2016 and the moderate remedies were ineffective. The side effects of the treatment were harmful but the alternative (DDoS botnet sizes numbering in the millions) would have been worse. I can only hope hope that when the IoT relapse comes we'll have better ways to deal with it. Besides getting the number of IoT DDoS bots to a manageable level my other key goal has been to raise awareness. The IoT problem is much worse than most people think, and I have some alarming stories to tell.
Janit0r is a wanted man
Nonetheless, the actions of BrickerBot place this malware in the same category as other destructive e-threats, such as ransomware and banking trojans. Janit0r already knows he's a wanted man and has taken many precautions.
Tracking down Janit0r's real life persona may also be a little harder than going after teenagers that rent DDoS botnets with their father's credit card. While he signed his Hack Forums posts with the name "Rob," Janit0r also used different names within each email, said he never intends to log into his Janit0r Hack Forums account again, and has consistently changed email addresses every few days.
For what's worth it, Janit0r has been very careful with his OpSec, compared to many of today's hackers, who, according to a Flashpoint report released yesterday, prefer Skype as their main communications method, an IM service known to give up data on its users to law enforcement.
Janit0r: I'm not a security researcher
Current clues like Janit0r's reverse engineering skills, in-depth knowledge of the malware scene, and a desire to do good, point to the fact that we may be dealing with another security researcher or network engineer that has decided to do something about the ever-increasing number of unsecured network and IoT devices.
"For what it's worth I'll state that I've never actually worked in networking, systems administration, information security or anything of the sort, but I have a hobby interest in all of the above. I believe that basic knowledge in such things is good self-defense in the 21st century," Janit0r wrote in an email.
Right now, all users and companies can do is to follow Radware and ICS-CERT's recommendations, and block access to Telnet and SSH ports, and also change the device's default password. Otherwise, they may get a visit from BrickerBot, and it might reach Plan B.
Headline image credit: Simeon W & Bleeping ComputerOpposing defenses have figured out how to beat Dak Prescott and the Cowboys’ offense.
The book on how to do it is in the public domain.
The good news for Dallas is that it takes a preponderance of defensive talent and plenty of discipline to execute the game plan.
Article continues below...
The bad news is that those are two characteristics that every true Super Bowl contender should have in the postseason.
They’re also characteristics that the Tampa Bay Buccaneers will bring into Sunday night’s game in Dallas.
The Cowboys’ passing game has been terrible over Dallas’ last two contests against Minnesota (139 yards passing) and the New York Giants (165 yards passing) and that has led some to call for Prescott to be benched in favor of Tony Romo.
The calls to bench Prescott for Romo make sense, in some ways — Romo is a master of this Dallas offensive system, and now that the going has gotten tough for the rookie quarterback, it’s logical to want to bring in an old, steady hand. There’s a lot on the line for the Cowboys this year.
But the Cowboys shouldn’t bring in Romo — he would have likely experienced the same problems in the last two games.
And now that the book on how to slow down — or shut down — the Cowboys passing offense is readily available, it’s actually Prescott that has the best chance to right the ship for Dallas.
Romo might be the more accurate passer and experienced player, but he can’t physically do some of the things that Prescott can do, particularly with his feet, and it’s Prescott’s running ability that can help the Cowboys get their passing offense back on track.
Over the last two games, two of the best pass rushes in the NFL have relentlessly and almost superfluously blitzed the rookie quarterback, particularly with A-gap pressure.
The pressure up the middle is tough for all offensive lines, but it’s been particularly difficult for the Cowboys’ zone blocking scheme — it can leave one o-lineman to block two pass rushers, while on the other side of the line, three blockers are taking on one guy.
As a result, Prescott’s pocket hasn’t been as clean as it was in early weeks of the season, though it’s not that the Vikings and Giants figured out something others weren’t able to deduce — they were just able to execute the plan better.
That’s because both teams were able to pressure Prescott without the blitzes, too – three and four-man rushes were effective in both games.
That Cowboys offensive line that looked so stout early in the year isn’t looking as good in the passing game anymore.
The other key to the Vikings and Giants’ successes against the Cowboys’ passing game was exceptional cornerback play.
Both teams played physical press coverage with their All-Pro-caliber corners, taking away a lot of short routes that the Cowboys’ West Coast-style passing game needs to be effective.
The way to soften that coverage up is to hit the defense over the top, but that’s hard when:
1. Cornerbacks are able to win one-on-one against receivers, allowing safeties to play back on passing downs and up on rushing downs
2. There isn’t much time to throw anything downfield — whether the safeties are back or not — because of the pass rush.
The same problems should exist Sunday night against Tampa Bay — the hottest defensive team in football right now — and they’re certainly going to exist for at least one game the Cowboys play this postseason, if not more.
So how do the Cowboys avoid a third-straight bad passing game and get Dak back?
Simple: create more time.
It sounds impossible, but it’s actually doable, just ask the Seattle Seahawks.
The Cowboys need to take a page out of the Seahawks’ playbook and get Prescott out of the pocket often Sunday and beyond.
Seattle has a woeful offensive line, and that creates the same problems the Cowboys are experiencing right now — it takes away passing-game options and forces quarterback Russell Wilson to be almost perfect with his throws in the pocket.
So the Seahawks roll out Wilson, a lot. If he can’t throw from the normal pocket, create a new pocket, right?
Prescott has a lot of similarities to Wilson — especially with his ability to throw on the run. It’s probably one of the reasons that both players weren’t top draft picks: The NFL wants guys who can stand tall in the pocket and make throws downfield — that’s the 6-foot-5, Tom Brady, Joe Flacco, Jared Goff prototype (it’s working out great in L.A.…) — and while both Wilson and Prescott can certainly make those throws, their brilliance comes when they’re playing something that looks like backyard football.
Remember, against Minnesota, the Cowboys’ only third-down conversion came when Prescott scrambled to the right — he made a play with his feet.
It’s not about scrambles through — it was really only when Prescott improvised with his feet or was rolled out of the pocket on a play that the Cowboys picked up anything in the passing game against the Vikings.
Yet against the Giants, the Cowboys only had Prescott roll out (and create a second pocket, if you will) four times.
He was 3-for-4 with a touchdown and two first downs.
The play design of those three completions was excellent — that’s not up for debate — but Prescott made things happen outside the pocket in a game where the Cowboys weren’t able to get things done in the passing game. Why not do that more often, Dallas?
That’s the difference between Romo and Prescott — while the veteran has better accuracy and understanding of pro defenses, it’s Prescott’s athletic ability that adds another dimension to the Cowboys’ attack.
Four roll-outs against the Giants? That’s a terrible gameplan.
It’s easy to understand why people want Romo to start over Prescott — the Cowboys are still running the Tony Romo playbook.
It’s time for the full Dak Prescott playbook to break out.
As soon as the Cowboys come around to the fact that Prescott can do more than Romo physically, and embrace the rookie’s quirks, the sooner they’ll get back into the win column. And then, not only can Dak get back on track, the Cowboys can get momentum going before the postseason starts.PoliZette Why Ted Cruz is Still Kicking Texas senator is first contender to hold up under full-scale Trump offensive
By some measures, it has been an abysmal start to 2016 for Ted Cruz.
The Texas senator has endured birther questions, allegations of cozy ties with Wall Street, campaign paperwork slip-ups, and a relentless stream of hits against his personality, all stoked by media master and GOP front-runner Donald Trump.
Advertisement
“I mean, look, everybody dislikes him,” Trump said during an interview with Don Lemon on CNN. “I mean, he’s a nasty guy that everybody dislikes.”
But while the race has undeniably tightened in Iowa ahead of the Feb. 1 caucuses, Cruz has managed to retain a strong core of support in the Hawkeye State and is actually gaining ground in several other key states. The hits on Cruz from Trump and others may not be having the desired effect.
The media has been only too happy to blanket the airwaves with attacks on Cruz. The Washington Post published over 10 stories and columns specifically focused on the Trump-created uncertainty over Cruz’s quite-settled eligibility.
The nonstop coverage of the Cruz negatives has brought more Cruz attackers out of the wings to join the pigpile.
[lz_related_box id=”36851″]
Former Kansas senator and failed GOP presidential nominee Bob Dole told The New York Times that a Cruz candidacy would be “cataclysmic” for the Republican Party and would result in “wholesale losses” at every level.
Advertisement
“I think we’ll lose if he’s our nominee,” Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch lumped in on Thursday. “Ted is going to have some trouble.”
The 2016 field is scattered with the political bones of former Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, former Texas Gov. Rick Perry, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson and Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul — all candidates who were targeted by Trump, only to collapse. But Cruz has survived the stream of seemingly lethal attacks and avoided joining his predecessors as political road kill on the Trump highway.
Indeed, Cruz has surged into second place in New Hampshire, according to a poll released Thursday by CNN/WMUR.
The senator, picking up more ground than any other candidate in the survey, rocketed past Establishment candidates Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and Ohio Gov. John Kasich. They have all targeted a second-place finish in the Granite State as the focal point of their strategy.
At the same time, Cruz has gained ground in Florida, moving from 10 to 16 percent to wrest the second-place slot in the Sunshine State from rival Rubio.
Trump’s attacks have fallen flat on Cruz where they leveled earlier opponents because of the deep well of favorability among conservative, high-propensity Republican primary voters whom Cruz has cultivated for years. Conservatives like Cruz, and that affinity is deep enough to garner their trust.
Advertisement
Gallup released a favorability tracking poll the day before Trump opened his birther blitz against Cruz. The poll found the Texas senator atop the GOP field with a net 45-point favorability spread. Trump notched a far more modest 23 percent, good enough only for sixth place.
Among voters who consider themselves “very conservative,” the highest propensity voters in GOP primaries, Cruz’s net favorability rose to a commanding 76 percent.
An ABC News/Washington Post survey taken in the first five days of the intense birtherism assault against Cruz found the senator’s favorability still the highest in the field — essentially untouched. The poll found Cruz has actually clawed 7 points higher since the outlet’s survey in November.
[lz_ndn video =30219863]
Trump’s relentless attacks, and the frenzied media amplification behind them, seem to have bounced off the armor-plated buffer of favorability cultivated by Cruz.
Advertisement
In any campaign there is a race for candidates to define themselves before any opponents can. Over the last month, Cruz has proven himself the first GOP candidate to successfully define his own candidacy before weathering an onslaught from Trump.
But what of the impact of former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin’s endorsement of Trump? The pundits, in all their wisdom, seem sure the conservative icon’s backing of Trump would hurt Cruz.
It likely won’t. Conservatives are as tired of losing as they are fed up with the Washington Establishment. Palin is the news of the past, and ironically she fails the truest test of a political figure for Trump himself. She is not a winner, but rather a symbol of conservative defeat. Palin reminds conservatives that while they may win battles, they have consistently lost the war for true governing power in the country since Ronald Reagan sat in the Oval Office.
Conservatives want a true-blooded fighter who can win, and truly remake the landscape of a party torn apart by the disparate priorities of its people and elite. Surviving the early year Trump-kreig is a testament to Cruz’s claim on that title.
Assuming he can win the razor-close contest in Iowa, Cruz will have staying power to continue to challenge Trump further in the contest and to shift from survival mode to Trump take-down as he works to turn favorable conservatives into solid votes. |
, only promotes sustainability if it is binding for all involved. Our results have implications for policy interventions designed to sustain intergenerational public goods.
Here's a Q&A with and essay by the author. Article on the research.
EDITED TO ADD (12/10): A low-res version of the full article can be viewed here.
Posted on November 27, 2014 at 8:32 AM • 49 CommentsNkosi Brown, president and founder of Cleverhouse Games and Toys LLC, spent his last years in prison building Chess King, a puzzle game based on the rules of chess that pushes players to make "better choices," reports the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
Brown founded the Milwakee-based studio with his wife in 2011 with the goal of making games that entertain and teach children positive values. It's first game, Chess King, is a strategy game that requires players to quickly move chess pieces across a nine-square grid in a distilled version of the classic board game. Players also have the opportunity to maneuver their way out of game-ending scenarios and continue the puzzle. The name Chess King is an acronym for a more elaborate idea, according to Brown: "Challenges Help Empower Strategy; Seeking Knowledge Inspires New Growth."
"I'm trying to spark the idea into anyone else who comes from my circumstances that they can do anything they put their mind to," Brown said. "If you disguise learning with fun, a child will return for more."
Brown was arrested in 1999 after robbing two men of $110 and their driver's licenses, and began serving his 10-year sentence the following year. During that time he focused on playing chess to keep himself out of conflict with the guards and other inmates. While in solitary confinement, he and other prisoners would draw chess boards on the floor and call out moves between cells in order to play. Two years before he was released, Brown sent his mother detailed blueprints of what eventually would become Chess King.
According to math teacher and Cleverhouse's education advisor Mike Weidner, the game is a metaphor for thinking hard about life choices.
"You can think about different strategies, look ahead and plan out your moves," he said. "That's a whole metaphor for making choices in life."
Cleverhouse currently has 11 part-time employees, including Brown, his wife and his father. Chess King is currently available as a boardgame and on the iTunes App Store.A new ‘Ubuntu for Android’ commercial has appeared online.
The 2 minute animated spot explains the key concepts behind the technology, which was first announced back in February, via irrelevant analogies.
“It’s not literally magic but it’s close.”
“Your quad core handset is a phone when it’s unplugged, but when you connect it to a monitor and keyboard and boom: you’ve got yourself a full Ubuntu-powered computer,” the narrator explains in the video.
“And since your PC is a phone you can make calls or sends texts from your desktop!”
The ad ends with the narrator jovially advising viewers to ‘get a Phone with Ubuntu for Android to start living a life less complicated’.
But… It’s Still Not available
Sadly Mr Happy Narrator Man leaves out one slightly important point: you can’t get a phone with Ubuntu for Android yet.
That’s not to say that the idea hasn’t been popular. It has. Crazily so.
Reams and reams of column pixels and social statuses have been given over to praise the concept since its announcement, and this cute animated ad with all its lighthearted sensibilities will only add to this.
Now, the part of me that likes to indulge in wild speculation wants to ask why this ad was released now when consumers can’t buy an Ubuntu for Android device, and no manufacturer or telecoms carrier has publicly announced plans to ship it?
Is its appearance a subtle prelude to a formal announcement? Is an Ubuphone finally in the offing?
Logical Joey says ‘probably not’.
It’s more likely that the ad was released to sustain and build on the awareness already generated for the technology. This pent-up demand could then be used by Canonical in negotiations with vendors interesting in rolling with it.
But for now this ad is just another tease at what might be – and no amount of cuteness can cushion the impatience generated by that.The State Security Committee of the Republic of Belarus (Russian: Комитет государственной безопасности Республики Беларусь, КГБ, KGB; Belarusian: Камітэт дзяржаўнай бяспекі, КДБ; translit. Kamitet Dziaržaǔnaj Biaspieki, KDB) is the national intelligence agency of Belarus. Along with its counterparts in Transnistria and South Ossetia,[1] it is one of the few intelligence agencies that kept the Russian name "KGB" after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, albeit it is lost in translation when written in Belarusian (becoming KDB rather than KGB).
It is the Belarusian successor organization to the KGB of the Soviet Union. Felix Edmundovich Dzerzhinsky, who founded the Cheka – the original Bolshevik intelligence police – was born in what is now Belarus and remains an important figure in the state ideology of Belarus under president Alexander Lukashenko as well as a patron of the KGB of Belarus.
It is governed by the law About State Security Bodies of the Republic of Belarus. [2]
Major General Vadim Zaitsev, who was in charge of Lukashenko's personal security, was appointed its leader in July 2008. His tenure lasted until November 2012 and he was replaced by Valery Vakulchik.[3] The KGB is formally controlled by the president of Belarus, Alexander Lukashenko.
Role in political repressions [ edit ]
According to human rights organisations, the United States, and the European Union, the KGB and its senior leadership play a key role in human rights violations and political repressions in Belarus. The KGB has maintained both the name, the symbols and some of the repressive functions of its Soviet predecessor, the KGB of the Soviet Union.
Several dozens former Chairmen and senior officers of the KGB of Belarus have been included in the sanctions lists of the European Union and the United States, especially following the brutal crackdown of peaceful protests that followed the allegedly falsified presidential elections of 2006 and 2010.[4] Against most of them, the sanctions have been lifted in 2016 following an improvement of the Belarus–European Union relations.
KGB officers sanctioned by the EU or the US [ edit ]
Chairmen and Deputy Chairmen [ edit ]
Sector (Board) commanders [ edit ]
Yaruta, Viktor Gueorguevich, Head of the KGB Board on State Communications
Maslakov, Valeri Anatolievich, Head of the KGB Board of Intelligence
Shugaev, Sergei Mikhailovich, Head of the KGB Counter-Intelligence Division and former Deputy Head of the KGB Counter-Intelligence Board
Sanko, Ivan Ivanovich, Major, senior investigator of the KGB
Tolstashov, Aleksandr Olegovich, Head of the KGB Board on Protection of the Constitutional Order and Fight Against Terrorism
Voropaev, Igor Grigorievich, former Head of the KGB Board on State Communications
Volkov, Sergei Mikhailovich, former Head of the KGB Board of Intelligence
Zakharov, Alexey Ivanovich, former Head of Military Counter-intelligence Board of the KGB
Regional commanders [ edit ]
In 2011, commanders of the KGB in the regions of Belarus were accused by the EU of being responsible for political repressions in their regions:[6]
Busko, Igor Yevgenyevich, Head of the KGB of the Brest Region;
Gerasimenko, Gennadi Anatolievich, former Head of the KGB of the Vitebsk Region
Kalach, Vladimir Viktorovich, Head of the KGB of the Minsk Region and the city of Minsk, former Deputy Head of the KGB for Minsk
Korzh, Ivan Alekseevich, Head of the KGB of the Hrodna Region
Kuznetsov, Igor Nikonovich, former Head of the KGB in the Minsk Region and in Minsk city
Leskovski, Ivan Anatolievich, Head of the KGB for Homel and former Deputy Head of the KGB for Homel
Sergeenko, Igor Petrovich, Head of the KGB of the City District of Mahiliou
See also [ edit ]
References [ edit ]
Coordinates:"In the note he said he hated mankind and the human race. And that he had been planning this since 2002," Mr Neulaniemi said. The note went on to say "the solution is Walther 22", a reference to the gunman's Walther.22 calibre handgun, ABC reported.
The Independent reported that Saari lived alone with his cat and police were having trouble getting in contact with his relatives. But former classmate Susanna Keronen said Saari bore no resemblance to the loner profile of many mass murderers. "He was happy, a social guy - there was nothing exceptional - he got along with people well and he was not lonely. He had friends [and was easy to talk to]," she said.
In his profile on social networking site IRCgallery, Saari billed himself as a committed misanthrope and touted war and revenge. He spent his last hours on the internet, having logged on to IRCgallery on Tuesday morning before leaving for school and opening fire on his classmates.
Saari, an atheist, said on MySpace.com, that he was interested in meeting friends and networking. But on other sites, he mulled the final solution to the problems of mankind and aired darker thoughts. On his YouTube profile, Saari listed death metal and electronic bands among his favourite music, and quoted lyrics from a song called War, by the group Wumpscut: "Whole life is war and and whole life is pain and you will fight alone in your personal war." He also listed horror as his favourite movie genre and said his hobbies were computers, guns, sex and beers.
Saari also mentioned his gun on a dating site, and wrote that he was looking for a woman but did not want children. Saari did not have a previous criminal record, The Guardian reported.
- with ReutersPresident Trump on Thursday addressed the National Prayer Breakfast, opening his remarks by talking about TV ratings.
Trump noted his "tremendous success" as star of his reality shows "The Apprentice" and "Celebrity Apprentice," as well as the latter show's drop in ratings since he left.
"We know how that turned out. The ratings went right down the tubes. It's been a total disaster" since the show restarted with Arnold Schwarzenegger hosting, Trump said.
"And I want to just pray for Arnold if we can, for those ratings," he joked.
ADVERTISEMENT
Trump last month tweeted that Schwarzenegger's debut as host of "New Celebrity Apprentice" got "destroyed" in the ratings compared with previous seasons. Trump hosted "The Apprentice" and "Celebrity Apprentice" for 14 seasons, from 2004 until he launched his presidential campaign in mid-2015.
During the prayer breakfast, the president also praised Senate Chaplain Barry Black, who spoke earlier during the breakfast.
"I don't know, chaplain, whether or not that's an appointed position," he said.
"Is that an appointed position? I don't even know if you're Democrat or if you're Republican, but I'm appointing you for another year," Trump said. "The hell with it.
"And I think it's not even my appointment, it's the Senate appointment, but we'll talk to them. Your job is very very secure."In anticipation of the Pirelli World Challenge’s SprintX championship kicking off this weekend at Virginia International Raceway, CRP Racing has signed Canadian racer Daniel Morad to join Ryan Dalziel in the No. 2 Devilbiss Mercedes AMG GT3. As a five race championship within the existing 2017 calendar, the SprintX format will expand both races in the events from 50 minutes to 60 minutes, requiring each driver to complete no more than 35 minutes of racing.
While only 27 years old, Morad’s 10 year racing resume boats strong results. In 2007, the Toronto native won the Formula BMW USA Championship, setting a record of six race wins in one championship. In 2015, Morad’s career in sports car racing began to blossom when he finished second in the Porsche GT3 Cup Challenge Canada with nine podiums in ten races. The following year, he returned to the series to clinch the championship, earning four wins and ten podiums in twelve races. Morad closed out the 2016 race season with another championship title, winning the inaugural season of the IMSA Porsche GT3 North American Cup. His 2017 race season got off to the best kind of start, with a GTD class win at the Rolex 24 Hours At Daytona with Alegra Motorsports. Morad’s first laps in the No. 2 Mercedes AMG GT3 will occur on Wednesday at the promoter test day at Virginia International Raceway.
“I am really happy to join CRP for the 2017 SprintX Championship,” said Morad. “There were a lot of top drivers in the mix for the seat so it is a real honor to have been chosen to pursue this exciting challenge. The past 12 months have been career changing, and I really appreciate the opportunity from Nick Short and the whole team.”
Morad will join full time driver Ryan Dalziel in the No. 2 Mercedes AMG GT3, who has already completed three races with the team. Dalziel holds two second place finishes at the 3.27 mile, 17 turn road course in Alton, Virginia.
“I’m really looking forward to Virginia International Raceway,” said Dalziel. “I haven’t been there since the resurfacing, but we’ve heard it is perfect now. I am excited about the first SprintX race of this season, and hoping Daniel and I can get a win.”
The two will be up against strong competition in the already highly competitive series, as the SprintX events have attracted professional drivers from around the world.
Competitors will have just under four and a half hours of testing and practice before Saturday’s qualifying session. The current driver rankings hold Dalziel at a Gold, and Morad as a Silver, meaning their Pro/Pro lineup will not require a minimum amount of time spent in pit lane during the mandatory pit stop. Both drivers will have to complete a minimum of 25 minutes of racing, but no more than 35 minutes.
Race one of the Pirelli World Challenge SprintX Championship will begin Saturday, April 29 at 3:30PM ET, followed by Race 2 on Sunday the 30th at 1:15PM.
Source. KBru CommunicationsIn honor of the 40th anniversary of Star Wars this week, Vanity Fair has published a huge cover story on this year’s forthcoming sequel, Star Wars: The Last Jedi. We saw the four covers that will be on shelves this week, but now the full photo spread shot by famed photographer Annie Leibovitz is online.
Along with the photos, there’s an extensive cover story that reveals a bunch of new Star Wars The Last Jedi details. So let’s run through everything we learned, including new information on characters played by Laura Dern and Benicio del Toro, the location known as Canto Bight, and a surprising interaction between Poe Dameron (Oscar Isaac) and General Leia (Carrie Fisher). Keep in mind that if you want to go into The Last Jedi completely blind, you probably shouldn’t read beyond this point.
Mark Hamill Didn’t Want to Go Back to Skellig Michael
For Star Wars: The Force Awakens, saga actor Mark Hamill had to hike all the way up the cliffside of the Irish landmark Skellig Michael to film the final scene of the movie, all so he could stand there and look meaningfully at Daisy Ridley without saying a single like of dialogue. Therefore, when it came time to go back to the island, Hamill was not thrilled. The actor said, “When I read the script for Episode VIII, I went, ‘Oh my God, we’re going back?’ Because I said I was never going back.”
Though Hamill is hardly decrepit at the still-young age of 65, he’s not nearly as young and fit as Daisy Ridley, or the rest of the crew that had to scale Skellig Michael with him. While all the young members of the production were given 45 minutes to climb to the shooting location where Rey and Luke met, Hamill was given an hour and a half to get up there, and the actor explained, “I had to stop every 10, 15 minutes to rest.”
Still, Hamill is only complaining in a very tongue-in-cheek way, because he couldn’t be more grateful to return to the role that made him the sci-fi icon that he is today.
Rian Johnson Had Immense Freedom in Crafting the Story
Even though there’s a Lucasfilm story group of 11 people who maintain the continuity of the entire Star Wars universe (spanning comics books, video games and more), they don’t have a mandate of plot points that filmmakers directing a Star Wars movie have to hit. In fact, Rian Johnson had the freedom to take The Last Jedi in whatever direction he pleased, and that was almost too much freedom.
Johnson indicated in the interview that he wanted “more give-and-take with the Lucasfilm team” when it came to cracking the story, so he set up base in San Francisco for six weeks during the writing process, just a couple doors down from story department head Kiri Hart, and met with the story group twice a week to bounce ideas off them and get a little more guidance on where to take the saga next.
The Last Jedi Knocks the Stool Out from Under Our Characters
So far, we’re very much in the dark when it comes to the actual plot of Star Wars: The Last Jedi, and director Rian Johnson isn’t budging when it comes to revealing specific details about the story (at least not this far out from release). But he did say that his goal was to really challenge the characters this time after The Force Awakens set everything up for him to play with. The director said:
“J.J. [Abrams] and Larry [Kasdan] and Michael [Arndt] set everybody up in a really evocative way in VII and started them on a trajectory. I guess I saw it as the job of this middle chapter to challenge all of those characters—let’s see what happens if we knock the stool out from under them. I started by writing the names of each of the characters, and thinking, ‘What’s the hardest thing they could be faced with?'”
Luke Skywalker Hasn’t Been Alone on His Island
In Star Wars: The Force Awakens, we learn that Luke Skywalker has been missing for quite some time. As Han Solo explains to Rey and Finn, Luke had formed a new Jedi academy, but “one boy, an apprentice, turned against him, destroyed it all.” We’ve all assumed, presumably correctly, that boy is none other than Kylo Ren, also known as Han and Leia’s son, Ben. After that, it was believed that Luke went to look for the first Jedi temple, and no one has seen or heard from him since then.
Rian Johnson has confirmed that the hearsay about Luke Skywalker in The Force Awakens is true. Luke did indeed go in search of the first Jedi temple, and he found it in the location we reunited with him at the end of The Force Awakens, a planet called Ahch-To. Many have assumed that Luke has been alone this whole time, but Rian Johnson revealed an interesting tidbit during his Vanity Fair interview.
While they were on Skellig Michael, the set builders “duplicated the beehive-shaped huts where the monks lived on Skellig and made a kind of little Jedi village out of them.” The village isn’t just a remnant of the old Jedi temple left abandoned, because Johnson revealed that Luke has been living “among an indigenous race of caretaker creatures.” The director wouldn’t reveal any more about the creatures than that, but for those concerned we’re looking at another Return of the Jedi scenario, Johnson reassured everyone that these are “not Ewoks.”
On the next page, you’ll find details about Laura Dern and Benicio del Toro’s characters, as well as a shocking interaction between Oscar Isaac and Carrie Fisher as Poe Dameron and General Leia.Like Earth, Saturn is tilted on its axis. Over the course of its 29-year-long orbit, the Sun’s rays move from north to south over the planet and its rings, and back again. The changing sunlight causes the temperature of the rings — which are made of trillions of icy particles — to vary from season to season. During equinox, which lasted only a few days, unusual shadows and wavy structures appeared and, as they sat in twilight for this brief period, the rings began to cool.
In a recent study published in the journal Icarus, a team of Cassini scientists reported that one section of the rings appears to have been running a slight fever during equinox. The higher-than-expected temperature provided a unique window into the interior structure of ring particles not usually available to scientists.
“For the most part, we can’t learn much about what Saturn’s ring particles are like deeper than 1 millimetre below the surface. But the fact that one part of the rings didn’t cool as expected allowed us to model what they might be like on the inside,” said Ryuji Morishima of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California, who led the study.
The researchers examined data collected by Cassini’s Composite Infrared Spectrometer during the year around equinox. The instrument essentially took the rings’ temperature as they cooled. The scientists then compared the temperature data with computer models that attempt to describe the properties of ring particles on an individual scale.
What they found was puzzling. For most of the giant expanse of Saturn’s rings, the models correctly predicted how the rings cooled as they fell into darkness. But one large section — the outermost of the large, main rings, called the A ring — was much warmer than the models predicted. The temperature spike was especially prominent in the middle of the A ring.
To address this curiosity, Morishima and colleagues performed a detailed investigation of how ring particles with different structures would warm up and cool down during Saturn’s seasons. Previous studies based on Cassini data have shown Saturn’s icy ring particles are fluffy on the outside, like fresh snow. This outer material, called regolith, is created over time, as tiny impacts pulverise the surface of each particle. The team’s analysis suggested the best explanation for the A ring’s equinox temperatures was for the ring to be composed largely of particles roughly 3 feet (1 metre) wide made of mostly solid ice, with only a thin coating of regolith.
“A high concentration of dense, solid ice chunks in this one region of Saturn’s rings is unexpected,” said Morishima. “Ring particles usually spread out and become evenly distributed on a timescale of about 100 million years.”
The accumulation of dense ring particles in one place suggests that some process either placed the particles there in the recent geologic past or the particles are somehow being confined there. The researchers suggest a couple of possibilities to explain how this aggregation came to be. A moon may have existed at that location within the past hundred million years or so and was destroyed, perhaps by a giant impact. If so, debris from the breakup might not have had time to diffuse evenly throughout the ring. Alternatively, they posit that small, rubble-pile moonlets could be transporting the dense, icy particles as they migrate within the ring. The moonlets could disperse the icy chunks in the middle A ring as they break up there under the gravitational influence of Saturn and its larger moons.
“This particular result is fascinating because it suggests that the middle of Saturn’s A ring may be much younger than the rest of the rings,” said Linda Spilker, Cassini project scientist at JPL and a co-author of the study. “Other parts of the rings may be as old as Saturn itself.”
During its final series of close orbits to Saturn, Cassini will directly measure the mass of the planet’s main rings for the first time, using gravity science. Scientists will use the mass of the rings to place constraints on their age.
Saturn: Exploring the Ringed Planet
Our 196-page special issue devoted to the most beautiful planet in the Solar System, is now available in the UK at WHSmith or order your copy online.
Inside we explore Saturn and its many moons, delve into the planet’s interior and run the rule over its wonderful rings. We discover the landing site on the moon Titan, fly through the water-ice geysers that spray out from Enceladus and climb the mountains of Iapetus.
Hundreds of amazing pictures from NASA’s Cassini mission.A Man of Steel who can’t fly. No heat vision. Cape torn to shreds. Yup, Action Comics #41 is the best Superman comic to come out in years.
This week marks the start of what publisher DC Comics is calling the New DC Universe, an initiative where they’ll be debuting big status quo shifts, new series and tonal divergence for longstanding characters. Fittingly, it starts with the character who put the company on the map more than 75 years ago.
(Mild spoilers follow. Hover over the top left of each image and click on the magnifying glass icon to expand it.)
As foreshadowed in teasers over the last few weeks, today’s Action Comics #41 stars a Superman who’s a lot weaker now. This issue by Greg Pak and Aaron Kuder doesn’t offer up any explanation as to why a bunch of Kal-El’s superpowers aren’t working. Instead, readers see him going on a big road trip across the United States, experiencing the sensations of cold and hunger for the first time.
Advertisement
Thanks to Lois Lane, people now know that Superman is also Clark Kent and that he wasn’t born on Earth, along with having a general sense that he’s a lot more vulnerable now. When a group of young malcontents tries to get all xenophobic on him, Clark shows that he’s still strong enough to put down a bully.
Advertisement
That sequence serves as a call-back to the earliest Superman stories, where he’d deliver comeuppance to a man who was assaulting his wife...
Advertisement
or dangle a corrupt senator’s criminal associate off the Capitol building.
The bully confrontation is a quick moment that also shows the pulled-in focus that the next few months of Superman comics will probably offer. Kal-El has been brought low, so to speak, and his reactions to being less indestructible will be all over the place, ranging from panic to unexpected delight. Some of the beats that we’ve seen elsewhere make sense. If you could fly and have bullets bounce off your skin once, wouldn’t you do anything to get those abilities back?
Advertisement
Superman can be a tricky character to grapple with. On one hand, he’s supposed to a near-unbreakable power fantasy, capable of feats far beyond the abilities of mortal men. On the other, the best versions of the Last Son of Krypton have been relatable, able to sum up the most admirable qualities of the human spirit in larger-than-life form.
It’s a difficult balance to strike and trying to do so leaves creators open to criticism on from all sides. Make him too strong or ultra-capable and it seems there’s never any risk in his adventures. Script a Kal-El who’s extra-emotional and it’ll feel like he lacks the toughness that many feel is an essential part of his character. Action Comics #41 manages to dodge those pitfalls.
This is a Superman who—right now—can’t save a planet, galaxy or multiverse. Hell, he might not be even be able to save his own block, from the looks of it. But he shows a broad range of recognizable emotions, with the ones that catalyze his heroic nature brought to the forefront.
Advertisement
When Clark comes back to Metropolis, he’s met by cops dead-set to arrest him...
Advertisement
but there’s a also a block party on the street where he lived, thrown by neighbors grateful for how his superheroics made their lives better.
Kuder’s art on Action has been a highlight for a while and this issue shows why. His style skates the line between goofy cartoonishness and rough-edged realism, with facial expressions that sell the sincerity of a moment or chunk of dialogue. Almost every page has Clark relating to an existence previously taken for granted with wonder, concern or resolve. As for Greg Pak’s dialogue, yeah, some of it makes Clark sound very bro-y but it also creates a feeling of organic connection. The paternalism that was one of the the most off-putting elements of the character is nowhere to be seen.
Advertisement
Sure, he’s still strong enough to punch a giant shadow monster in the face, but Superman feels like one of us now. There will doubtless be a main plotline concerned with the trope-laden intricacies of this or that villainous machination. But as long as the stories to come figure out ways to make Clark Kent come across like a dude you might meet at the supermarket, I’m on board for the ride.Many people let others know on Twitter what they're listening to as they work through their day, but what if you could also include the actual MP3 for people to join in and listen along?
This is the idea behind Blip, a new service from Fuzz. that allows you to microblog ala Twitter, but with the added feature of using an MP3 search to embed the song you are currently listening to into the post so that others can check it out. Unlike SeeqPod, which has run afoul of legal questions, Blip is "legal and it's covered by the DMCA," according to Fuzz CEO, Jeff Yasuda.
One of the most amazing things about Blip is they have done something that everyone has cried out for Twitter to do: a self-refreshing feed page! What a novel concept! It's true, the page updates itself without hitting refresh... it's obviously demonic magic.
We sat down with Gavin Hayes, lead singer of Dredg, to get his thoughts on what Blip brings to the music industry, as well as what he, as a musician, would like to see change in the dynamics of the industry. I have to say I was quite intrigued by his thoughts on pre-sales of albums, and how that might be a way to bring the artist and fans closer together.
You can download the MP3 file directly here.
Never miss an episode with these links:
Get the Mashable Conversations podcast here.
Add directly to iTunes here (or give us a rating).
Add directly to your Zune here.
Are you a regular listener to Mashable Conversations? Consider filling out our Listener Survey.The Republican-led House Rules Committee late Monday approved a rule for a massive Hurricane Sandy relief package that shuts out most GOP proposals to pare back the size of the bill.
The main bill provides $17 billion in relief, and an amendment made in order would add another $33.7 billion, for a total of $50.7 billion.
Late last week, Republicans offered amendments that would trim the bill significantly, but few of those were made "in order" by the Rules Committee on Monday. For example, Rep. Tom McClintock (R-Calif.) proposed amendments that would have slashed $22 billion from the total package, but none of them were accepted by the committee.
ADVERTISEMENT
And Rep.(R-Ga.) proposed several amendments that would have cut more than $300 million from the bill. House Rules made just one of these in order — to cut $13 million in funding to "accelerate the National Weather Service ground readiness project."All told, Republican amendments were made in order that would cut less than $200 million from the $50.7 billion package. One of these, from Rep.(R-Texas), would cut $150 million for Regional Ocean Partnership grants.Another amendment made in order, from Rep.(R-La.), would cut nearly $10 million from the Fish & Wildlife Service. And one from Rep. Jeff Duncan (R-S.C.) would cut $1 million for the Legal Services Corporation, which provides legal aid to low-income Americans.Preventing votes on the larger proposals to cut back the size of the bill reveals the ongoing split within the Republican Party about whether disaster aid should be off set. It is also likely to draw anger from conservatives later in the week, when the bill is considered. Just a few weeks ago, 67 House Republicans voted against a $9.7 billion Sandy aid bill because they believed it would allow the National Flood Insurance Program to go deeper into debt without any reforming of the program.McClintock told The Hill last week that he and many other Republicans believe this week's Sandy relief bill is filled with expensive items that are not critical to providing relief for victims of Sandy."These disaster bills are becoming pork spending," he said. "There's lots of spending in these bills that has nothing to do with the disaster."The only chance Republicans will have to mitigate a significant piece of the bill is by voting for an amendment from Rep. Mick Mulvaney (R-S.C.) that was made in order. His language would require a 1.63 percent cut to discretionary programs to make up for the $17 billion in spending in the main bill.During the Rules Committee hearing, Republicans and Democrats indicated support for keeping away the bigger amendments that might have complicated passed in both the House and the Senate."I am requesting an appropriate rule for this legislation to ensure swift passage," House Appropriations Committee Chairman Hal Rogers (R-Ky.) said. "Hurricane Sandy has brought much of the Northeast region to its knees, and, as it has been in the past, it is once again our duty to help our people and their communities get back on their feet in a timely fashion."Rep. Nita Lowey (D-N.Y.) said she worried about holding votes on GOP amendments that she said would be seen as a "poison pill.""I am deeply concerned the rule will make in order so many as to constitute filibuster by amendment, or any number of small reduction amendments making for death by a thousand cuts," she said. "I ask the Committee not to propose a rule that hinders swift House passage of a bill the Senate can pass and the President can sign."The House will start work on the Sandy package Tuesday by taking up the rule for the bill, but might finish the bill by Wednesday. Other amendments made in order by the Rules Committee are from:Jon Runyan (R-N.J.), to clarify that money in the bill for fisheries can be used by states that were hit by Sandy and suffered a fisheries disaster in 2012;John Campbell (R-Calif.) and(D-Ore.), clarifying the use of federal funds for Corps of Engineers construction projects;Nydia Velazquez (D-N.Y.), increasing the Community Development Fund by $25 million, and offsetting that increase elsewhere in the bill;Tim Huelskamp (R-Kan.), requiring FEMA to disclose all disaster relief grants;(R-Mich.), to restore a requirement that local investments are required in Historic Preservation Grants;(R-Utah), to prohibit the government from acquiring any more federal land under the bill; andVelazquez, to increase funding for the National Cemetery Administration by $1 million.NEW YORK -- New York Yankees third baseman Eric Chavez criticized the Oakland Athletics for excessive celebration after they hit three home runs in the top of the 13th inning of Saturday's game, but the A's felt that they were well within their rights to do so.
"Listen, we've got 17 rookies in here, you know?" said A's outfielder/designated hitter Jonny Gomes, who belted one of the three 13th-inning homers in Oakland's 10-9, 14-inning loss at Yankee Stadium. "I mean, these guys are playing the game to have fun, you know? These guys aren't playing the game to go to arbitration. These guys aren't playing the game for free agency. They're playing the game for fun, you know? And when you take fun out of the game, you're going to have 17 rookies crumble."
Chavez told the New York Post that Oakland's "orchestrated clapping, cheering celebration" was "high schoolish" and "pretty unprofessional."
"That's his business if he wants to come out and say things like that," A's catcher Derek Norris told ESPNNewYork.com. "We're going to play our game, and if nobody likes it, it just gives everybody another reason to hate us. It seems to be a common theme with us."Physicists aren't afraid of thinking big, but what happens when you think too big?
This philosophical question overlaps with real physics when hypothesizing what lies beyond the boundary of our observable universe. The problem with trying to apply science to something that may or may not exist beyond our physical realm is that it gets a little foggy as to how we could scientifically test it.
A leading hypothesis to come from cosmic inflation theory and advanced theoretical studies — centering around the superstring hypothesis — is that of the multiverse, an idea that scientists have had a hard time in testing.
In its most basic sense, the multiverse is a collection of universes popping in and out of existence, bustling around in a foamy mess, embedded in a vacuum of non-zero energy. Through quantum fluctuations, universes are born while others die — each universe taking on different forms and different kinds of physics.
But, if the multiverse hypothesis has any shred of reality behind it, how can scientists prove (or at least gather some observational evidence) that we exist inside one of an infinite ocean of universes?
This question is a tough one for scientists as many critics will argue that the multiverse hypothesis is nothing more than metaphysics, or a philosophical discussion. We are forever cocooned inside our universal ‘bubble' and can therefore never experience what is going on ‘outside' — if, indeed, there is an outside — so what's the point in thinking about it?
But in a thought-provoking news release from the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics, in Ontario, Canada, theoretical physicists are working hard to marry the multiverse with observational science collected from the furthest-most frontiers of the Cosmos.
SEE ALSO: When the Multiverse Collides
"We're trying to find out what the testable predictions of [the multiverse] would be, and then going out and looking for them," said Matthew Johnson of the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics.
If the multiverse is real, it stands to reason that, in this rampaging mess of neighboring universal "bubbles," there should be frequent collisions, much like the jostling balls in a ball pit. Johnson's team has specifically set out to look for observational evidence of neighboring universes colliding with our own, thereby supplying some |
political scientist and an associate at St. Norbert's Strategic Research Institute, said the survey also asked if voting should be more or less restrictive, or if the current system should stay the same.
She said 53 percent said it should stay as it is: “But 30 percent think that it should be more restrictive, while 15 percent thought that it should be less restrictive.”
Scattergood said there are partisan divides when it comes to voting. Two-thirds of Democrats don't think any changes are needed.
“Republicans are more likely to think that it's a serious problem and also think that there should be more restrictions on it. Whereas, for example, 55 percent of Democrats think that voter fraud is not at all a serious problem,” she said.
A report released earlier this week by the Pew Charitable Trusts ranked Wisconsin in the nation's top three states for how it administered the 2012 elections.About
We have spent two years developing the Dueling Wizard game concept. We have made certain that we have the unique use of the Dueling Wizards game rules, and the concept of spells projecting from wands is a concept owned and controlled by our company. We plan to go into full production of the plastic wands and spells necessary to play the game. The potential interest in this live, interactive game could be very intense.
Risks and challenges
The risk or challenges for completing this project are very minimal when you factor the amount of time we already have invested in Dueling Wizards. We have been working with a couple of companies that specialize in the manufacturing process over the last 3 months to help us prepare and understand any obstacles we could face, and if any setbacks should arise we have a team in place to help us work through them!C
ONGRATULATIONS TO ALL THE KIDS WHO WERE BORN IN THE
1940's, 50's, 60's and 70's!! First, we survived being born to mothers who smoked and/or drank while they carried us. They took aspirin, ate blue cheese dressing, tuna from a tin, and didn't get tested for diabetes. Then after that trauma, our baby cots were covered with bright colored lead-based paints. We had no childproof lids on medicine bottles, doors or cabinets and when we rode our bikes, we had no helmets, not to mention, the risks we took hitchhiking As children, we would ride in cars with no seat belts or air bags.
Riding in the back of a van - loose - was always great fun.
We drank water from the garden hosepipe and NOT from a bottle.
We shared one soft drink with four friends, from one bottle and NO ONE actually died from this.
We ate cakes, white bread and real butter and drank pop with sugar in it, but we weren't overweight because......
WE WERE ALWAYS OUTSIDE PLAYING!!
We would leave home in the morning and play all day, as long as we were back when the streetlights came on.
No one was able to reach us all day. And we were O.K.
We would spend hours building our go-carts out of scraps and then ride down the hill, only to find out we forgot the brakes. After running into the bushes a few times, we learned to solve the problem. We did not have Playstations, Nintendo's, X-boxes, no video games at all, no 99 channels on cable, no video tape movies, no surround sound, no cell phones, no text messaging, no personal computers, no Internet or Internet chat rooms..........WE HAD FRIENDS and we went outside and found them! We fell out of trees, got cut, broke bones and teeth and there were no lawsuits from these accidents.
We played with worms and mud pies made from dirt, and the worms did not live in us forever.
Made up games with sticks and tennis balls and although we were told it would happen, we did not poke out any eyes.
We rode bikes or walked to a friend's house and knocked on the door or rang the bell, or just yelled for them! Local teams had tryouts and not everyone made the team. Those who didn't had to learn to deal with disappointment. Imagine that!!
The idea of a parent bailing us out if we broke the law was unheard of.They actually sided with the law!
This generation has produced some of the best risk-takers, problem solvers and inventors ever!
The past 50 years have been an explosion of innovation and new ideas.
We had freedom, failure, success and responsibility, and we leared
HOW TO DEAL WITH IT ALL!
And YOU are one of them!
CONGRATULATIONS!
You might want to share this with others who have had the luck to grow up as kids, before the lawyers and the government regulated our lives for our own good.
and while you are at it, forward it to your kids so they will know how brave their parents were.
Kind of makes you want to run through the house with scissors, doesn't it?!LOGAN -- A rocket launch in California drew cheers in Logan Monday morning as NASA launched a unique made-in-Utah instrument.
The Wide-Field Infrared Survey Explorer, known as WISE, will map the entire sky and hunt for unknown, and possibly threatening, objects. WISE was designed and built at Utah State University's Space Dynamics Laboratory.
Did you know… • WISE will scan the entire sky in infrared light with a sensitivity hundreds of times greater than ever before, picking up the glow of hundreds of millions of objects and producing millions of images.
• The mission will uncover objects never seen before, including the coolest stars, the universe's most luminous galaxies and some of the darkest near-Earth asteroids and comets. -NASA
"So, it's looking for things that we don't see with our naked eye," explained Forrest Fackrell, executive vice president of the Utah State University Research Foundation.
Suppose a space rock that has Earth's number on it is hurtling toward us and we can't see it. This new instrument is designed to find things we can't see. It could open our eyes to all sorts of new things in the Universe.
Infrared is a manifestation of an object's heat, or even slight warmth. So, the scope is kept cold in a container like this with frozen hydrogen.
"440 Fahrenheit, below zero," said calibration engineer Harri Latvakoski. "Very cold."
WISE is so sensitive to heat, it's expected to discover incredibly dim, not very warm objects. Computer simulations show it can spot a room-temperature baseball, or even a golf ball, at the distance of Los Angeles to New York.
Portions of the instrument were tested and calibrated in a giant chamber designed to simulate the conditions of space.
"We're hopeful that we'll identify asteroids that heretofore have not been seen," Fackrell said.
That would be a potential service for all mankind, Fackrell pointed out. "We all know that an asteroid was responsible for the demise of the dinosaurs," he said.
Beyond that, there's pure science. The scope may discover dozens of star-like objects lurking invisibly, closer than the closest known star.
"Brown dwarves are wannabe stars, I guess, that have not quite achieved enough heat for the fusion to take place that creates a star," Fackrell explained.
The Wide-Field Infrared Survey Explorer will perform for only ten months, until the frozen hydrogen thaws out. By then WISE is expected to have a complete map of infrared sources throughout the entire sky.
E-mail: jhollenhorst@ksl.com
×
Photos
Related LinksOn June 12, United announced it will add a $15 fee for first checked bags. United’s policy applies to tickets purchased on or after June 13 for travel on or after August 18—yes, the fee takes effect one day after its announcement.
Ever since American broke from the pack and added the fee a few weeks ago, it has seemed a foregone conclusion that similarly cash-strapped airlines would follow suit. United’s new fee, then, comes as little surprise, even though passengers were furious with American and will likely have choice words for United as well.
But the airlines know most passengers need to check bags, and the financial benefit from charging for this “service” is apparently too appealing to resist. So the question becomes: Will other airlines follow suit?
We may get an answer very soon. According to The Arizona Republic, US Airways is strongly considering a first-checked-bag charge, and may announce the fee as early as today. The airline may also begin charging for soft drinks. Soft drinks!
We’ll have more on the US Airways story as it develops, and keep an eye on other carriers as well. If US Airways does add a fee for first checked bags, it’s hard to imagine the remaining legacy lines won’t do the same.
Editor’s note: As you probably know, US Airways did in fact add a $15 first-checked-bag fee and a beverage charge. Read our Today In Travel entry on it here.What if technology could completely replace relationships?
“Who are you? What can you be? Where are you going?”
Theodore Twombly stops in his tracks, hooked by an ad for the word’s first artificially intelligent computer. “It’s not just an operating system,” the ad promises. “It’s a consciousness.”
So begins Theodore’s foray into a relationship with binary code – and the audience’s one-of-a-kind excursion through a layered but disquieting “love” story.
Her, the latest film from music video director turned auteur Spike Jonze, introduces us to a not-too-distant future Los Angeles, where videogames are all 3-D, a Siri-like assistant occupies every ear, and high-speed trains replace the notorious LA traffic. High-waisted pants have apparently made a killer comeback, but besides that nothing really seems too far-fetched. This is 2034 – maybe even 2024 – and to Jonze’s credit, it’s eerily believable.
Theodore (a surprisingly subdued Joaquin Phoenix) is isolated and emotionally detached, despite writing “Beautiful Handwritten Letters” for people too harried or distracted to write their own. In fact, the people in Jonze’s world seem to have been pulled in so many digital directions for so long that they’ve accepted distraction as the basic fabric of existence.
But uneasiness erupts in Jonze’s world as it does in our world. Insomnia, audio trysts with strangers, video games replicating a mother’s household duties – all of it points to a certain longing for the “old way” of connection, of a manner of being and speaking that feeds off the messiness of presence, not disembodied fantasies.
Theodore, trapped in a feedback loop of free-floating malaise and self-destructive relationships, is no different, and decides that purchasing an AI system seems as good a way to be “distracted from distraction by distraction” (to use T.S. Eliot’s phrase) as any.
Gradually, he begins to do what anyone who saw the trailer knew he would (and probably hoped he wouldn’t) do: he falls in love with his operating system (or OS). Samantha, voiced by Scarlett Johansson, sounds as natural as any person, and mimics humor, regret, sensuality, spontaneity, growth, and the whole panoply of human emotions and behaviors.
But the fact that Samantha is not only not a person, but not even really conscious, haunts Theodore – and us. In fact, as philosophers of mind like John Searle and Hubert Dreyfus have long pointed out, no matter how well a computer replicates awareness by obeying certain rules, the entire process could easily bypass understanding, just as a man hidden in a room might follow be able to follow complex rules to write Chinese characters onto pieces of paper without actually understanding a word of Chinese (Searle’s famous “Chinese Room Argument”).
Jonze hands us all the trappings of new love on a silver platter: elegant music, jealous outbursts, that swirling and giggling in public moment. But at the end of the day, Samantha is nothing but a chimera, a grand illusion; and this Kafka-esque, almost solipsistic substratum hollows out the emotional waves that make up the rest of the film. In fact, those hollow waves – waves where something like romance should live – only seem to heighten the discomfort.
To be sure, Joaquin Phoenix and Amy Adams deliver wonderful performances, both of them worlds away from their psychotic characters in The Master. And Spike Jonze has crafted a solid film with worthy insights: on the way technology affects relationships in the digital age; on the modern de-emphasis of embodiment; on our zeitgeist’s sense of disconnectedness in an age of hyper-connectivity. Her is also drawing comparisons to Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, a similar film which says so much about love through its bizarre structure.
But Jonze’s story seems to do the opposite: it gazes on the bizarreness of man through a romantic structure. “With you I’m safe and a million miles away,” HAL 9000 – I mean, Samantha – sings to Theodore. We might be tempted to sigh and ponder our own loves, until we remember that no one is really there singing with him. Theodore is with…Theodore. “You always wanted to have a wife without the challenge of dealing with anything real,” Theodore’s ex announces in one scene. “I’m glad you found someone. It’s perfect.”
Although Her is a captivatingly original story, and ends on a note of hope, it’s anything but de-lovely. In fact, if this film is about love at all, it seems to be a story about the suffering of being unable to love – a state, incidentally, Dostoevsky once termed hell.Now playing: Watch this: Save your data by using Google Maps offline
Google Maps, the venerable mapping service from the world's largest search company, will soon work both online and off.
Google Maps' offline support will be launching "later this year," Google announced during its keynote address at its I/O developer confab on Thursday. The feature will allow users to download maps to their devices and get the full Google Maps experience, including turn-by-turn voice directions even when they're away from an Internet connection.
The offline push is a major departure for Google Maps, which has over 1 billion users. Since its launch in 2005, users needed to have a Web connection to use its features, which include mapping and directions, among others. Adding offline support makes the service far more useful in areas around the world where Web connections are unavailable or slow.
James Martin/CNET
Google's annual conference for software developers, I/O, is one of the biggest for Google, as the company shares the latest developments in its world-leading Android mobile operating system. Google also uses the stage to talk up its wearable platform Android Wear, its in-car infotainment service Android Auto, and other services.
Google I/O is being held in San Francisco on Thursday and Friday.
Adding offline support to Maps gives Google the opportunity to keep pace with some of its competitors, including Nokia Here. That platform, which is wildly popular in the car business and is running on mobile platforms, including Android, offers offline support for mapping in over 100 countries.
When users download a Google map to their device, they'll find that searching in Google Maps still provides suggestions. In addition, users will see a location's reviews, if it has them. Basic information, like hours and website information, are also supported in the app.
Google didn't say how many countries will be supported in its offline Google Maps, but the company said that it wants users to be able to "explore the world literally wherever they are."Boeing is in “conversation” to make the Super Hornet fighter jet in India as part of its strategy to invest “billions of dollars” in the country, the US aviation giant’s top official has said, a move that will give a big boost to the government’s signature Make in India initiative.
“We see Super Hornet as an opportunity to do that to tie directly into the “Make in India” strategy,” Dennis Muilenburg, president and CEO of The Boeing Company, told HT in an interview on Tuesday.
Muilenburg also hinted at sharing with India Boeing’s state-of-the-art technology used to develop its fifth generation series of fighter jets. “We (Boeing and Lockheed Martin) jointly develop the F22 Raptor. Subject to all government-to-government agreements, that is an area of future investment for which we are interested in,” he said.
Read more: ‘Boeing will invest billions of dollars in India’
On plans to manufacture Super Hornets in India, he said that “Conversations are ongoing.”
“We think there is a great opportunity for us to bring Super Hornet to India that will fulfil an operational need, but even more importantly think about it as a capability investment and architect it as a broad industrial investment, build up a supply chain that has industrial capability, not only to design but also to manufacture for the full lifecycle of the products,” he said.
Read | Over $150 billion investments required for smart cities: Study
The F/A-18 Super Hornet is a twin-engine, supersonic, all weather multirole jet fighter that is capable of landing and taking off from an aircraft carrier.
Muilenburg said that once the government-to-government agreements are in place, the plans to manufacture Super Hornets in India can move fairly rapidly.
“I would not say there is an official offer. This is a conversation we are having with interested parties right now,” he said.
“It could happen quite rapidly. It requires government-to-government agreement. It requires a customer here who makes a decision on projects it wants to pursue. In terms of our ability to execute on the project, to ramp up supply chain and skills base, that is something we can move up on fairly quickly,” he said.
In September 2014, Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched the “Make in India” initiative in Delhi vowing to remove bureaucratic sloth and make the country more investor-friendly.
The government wants to boost the share of manufacturing in country’s gross domestic product to 25% from about 15% now, roughly the same share of the economy as peers like Brazil and Russia but less than China’s 32%.
Muilenburg, who took over as CEO in July 2015, said Boeing was planning investment worth billions of dollars in India, which the company has identified as one of the targeted regions for investment.
“Ultimately it will be measured in billions of dollars. But it is more than money. It is investment in skills. It is investment in capabilities, infrastructure, and partnerships,” he said.
Read | France to invest $1bn more in India every year
First Published: Feb 02, 2016 22:03 ISTAs part of a series of experiments designed to resolve one of the deepest mysteries of physics today, researchers from RIKEN, in collaboration with the University of Mainz, GSI Darmstadt and the Max Planck Institute for Physics at Heidelberg, have made the most precise ever direct measurement of the magnetic moment of a proton.
The work, published in Nature today, seeks to answer the fundamental question of why we exist at all. It is believed that the Big Bang some 13 billion years ago generated equal amounts of matter and antimatter-which annihilate when they collide-and yet the universe today seems to contain only matter. Work is being carried out from many fronts to detect differences that would explain this, and one promising route is to compare the magnetic moments of particles and their antimatter conjugates, as even a tiny difference could explain the matter-antimatter asymmetry. The research collaboration is working to measure the magnetic moment of the proton and antiproton to unprecedented precision, and determine if there is any difference.
In the study published today, the researchers reached an important milestone by directly measuring the moment of a single proton to enormous precision, based on spectroscopy of a single particle in a Penning trap. Andreas Mooser, first author of the paper, explains that "this important quantity has never been measured directly and is so far only known at a relative precision of about 10 parts per billion, based on hyperfine spectroscopy of a MASER in a magnetic field. However, this required significant theoretical corrections to extract the proton's magnetic moment from the measurement." In the new paper the researchers report the first direct high precision measurement of the proton magnetic moment at a fractional precision of 3 parts per billion, improving the 42-year-old "fundamental constant" by a factor of three.
The new method using a single particle in a Penning trap can now be directly applied to measure the magnetic moment of the antiproton, which is currently known at a relative precision of only 4 parts per million.
According to RIKEN researcher Stefan Ulmer, second author of the paper and spokesperson of the BASE collaboration at CERN which aims at the high precision measurement of the antiproton moment, "Using the new method will allow this value to be improved by at least a factor of thousand, providing a stringent test of matter -antimatter symmetry.""After the discovery, the NSA tuned its sensors to detect [the] use of any of the tools by other parties, especially foreign adversaries with strong cyber espionage operations, such as China and Russia," Reuters reports.
If you are a hacker, you might have enjoyed the NSA's private zero-day exploits, malware and hacking tools that were leaked last month.But the question is:It has been found that the NSA itself was not directly hacked, but a former NSA employee carelessly left those hacking tools on a remote server three years ago after an operation and a group of Russian hackers found them, sources close to the investigation told Reuters The leaked hacking tools, which enable hackers to exploit vulnerabilities in systems from big vendors like Cisco Systems, Juniper, and Fortinet, were dumped publicly online by the group calling itself " The Shadow Brokers."NSA officials have also admitted to the FBI that their careless employee acknowledged the error shortly afterward, and hence the agency was aware of its operative's mistake from last three years.But instead of warning the affected companies that their customers were at risk, the NSA maintained the silence.Well, that's Bullshit! If they call it a 'tactic.'Shortly after the public release of NSA cyber weapons, firewall vendors Cisco and Fortinet confirmed that the leaked zero-day vulnerabilities were legitimate and issued out patches to fix those exploits.We are still waiting for the comments from the NSA, the FBI and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence about the matter.Since the initial leak of NSA's hacking tools last month and confirmation of the leaked vulnerabilities being legitimate by Cisco and Fortinet, the intelligence agency and online community has been finding out the working exploits in the data dump that are still unknown and used in the wild.Just recently, Cisco revealed a new zero-day vulnerability from the leaked data dump that had been used by hackers to target some of its customers, which indicates that hackers would likely continue to take advantage of the now-exposed exploits to conduct cyber attacks.Every now and then, the Indian cricket team turns easy matches into nail-biting finishes. Fans wonder why the game had to be taken down to the wire. Indian politics is in a similar situation, where the BJP seems to be throwing away all the massive political advantages it had gained last year.
With headline-grabbing scams afflicting the Congress, one would have thought that the 2014 elections would be a cakewalk for the BJP. Unfortunately, that is not the case anymore. Instead of making plans to lead the nation, the usual BJP problems - infighting, inconsistent messages and personality clashes - have surfaced again. Too many talented people, too many egos and, frankly, too few ideas hold back the party. Public arguments don't help ins-pire confidence either.
Meanwhile, the Congress plans to wire taxpayers' money into millions of Aadhaar cardholders' accounts right before the elections. Yes, ignore the havoc it will play with the nation's finances or with inflation. We all know free cash in hand works for voters. Doesn't seem like such an easy match for the BJP now, does it?
At a broader level, this isn't about the BJP or the personalities that run it. The BJP represents the non-dynasty, non-Gandhi alternative for India. When the BJP flounders, it isn't just a party or its people floundering, it is a sign that we Indians are still not quite ready to wean ourselves off the Gandhi family. That while we have created a democracy, deep inside we prefer kings at the top. BJP, where technically anyone can reach the top creating a more democratic environment, either does not perform as well in elections or is unable to manage itself well.
Indians see this instability of a non-dynasty party and go back to voting for India's default safety option - the Gandhi family. This is much like people buying gold and tucking it under the pillow in times of crises. It may not be the best investment, but it sure beats putting it in something uncertain.
So why does the BJP constantly suffer such internal battles? Why is it unable to present an image of stability and consistency? More importantly, are we Indians incapable of choosing a leader from within ourselves compared to preordained dynasty?
Of course, there are no easy answers. To the first question, internal battles occur due to a mismatch of expectations of the individuals and the organisation. The Congress doesn't need a clear policy on how the top leadership will be chosen. The top guys will be from the Gandhi family. The next layer would consist of people most liked by the Gandhi family. The family may well use some meritocratic means to promote people, but even if it doesn't, members can't do much. The family has the veto, and anyone signing up for the Congress knows that.
The BJP, however, cannot, and does not operate like that. There is no absolute directive from the top. Party members have the freedom to express their opinions, irrespective of hierarchy. This is wonderful for freedom and better solutions and is a more democratic system. However, it also often leads to abuse of that freedom, or can create a much higher degree of miscommunication among members.
In such cases, the policies and procedures need to be extra objective and transparent. The same should also be well communicated. In some ways, the Congress needs less management. The BJP needs a lot more of it. For instance, there is a school of thought among a section of senior BJP members that only Brahmins seem to get the top party positions. Other seniors in the party disagree with it. Whatever be the case, this issue can be a flashpoint for future trouble and needs to be resolved.
To the second question - of why the BJP is unable to inspire stability - there is no clear sense of what it stands for. The core message of Hindutva is outdated, the plank of anti-corruption was hypocritical and other parties already own the pro-poor theme. The youth in particular don't know what to expect from the BJP.
While it used to be pro-capitalism and pro-business, the retail FDI opposition has led to confusion. It claimed to be anti-corruption, but found it difficult to take action against its own members. Opposing the Congress cannot be the raison d'etre of the party. The exercise to find a new contemporary identity is long overdue. The answer will probably lie in it being aligned with the new India the youth wants to see - merit-based, efficient, accountable and progressive.
The third question is perhaps the most important one. Do we Indians trust ourselves enough to choose our own leaders? Perhaps deep down, we know we are all unethical. Hence, we are cynical when one of us stakes a claim to lead us. A dynasty doesn't face that cynicism. Our feudal mindset quickly allows those who have led us to continue leading us, even if we know we can do better. We want to have leadership, but we don't want to take risks and change things.
Weaning ourselves off the Gandhi family may be difficult, but it is ultimately necessary. It may lead to some short-term instability. But ultimately, things will get better. This positive attitude towards change is what will drive voters towards parties like the BJP, and away from dynasties. Until then, the BJP has some self-reflection to do.
The writer is a best-selling novelist.8 years ago
(CNN) – President Barack Obama is responding to the GOP's so-called "pledge to America," saying the newly unveiled 21-page document is nothing more than a continuation of "irresponsible policies."
"What I'm seeing out of the Republican leadership over the last several years has been a set of policies that are just irresponsible. And we saw in their 'Pledge to America' a similar set of irresponsible policies," he told NBC's Matt Lauer Monday morning.
"They propose $4 trillion worth of tax cuts and $16 billion in spending cuts and they say we're going to somehow magically balance the budget, the president continued. "That's not a serious approach. So the question for voters over the next five weeks is who is putting forward policies that have a chance to move our country forward."
The comments came less than a week after House Republican leaders ventured to Sterling, Virginia to reveal the pledge in what amounted to a clear effort to recapture the spirit of their 1994 election landslide.
Among other things, House GOP leaders pledged to permanently extend all of the Bush-era tax cuts due to expire at the end of this year - including for individuals making over $250,000. They also proposed giving small businesses a tax deduction equal to 20 percent of their income, while requiring Congress to review any new federal regulations that add to the deficit.
They pushed a domestic spending freeze, with the exception of certain politically sensitive programs such as veterans' benefits.
While stressing the need to reduce spiraling deficits, they did not offer specifics on how to restrain the growth of entitlement programs such as Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.Icebergs Make Their Own Weather
Icebergs are temperamental. They make their own weather and effuse a moodiness underwater that is visceral. The approach to a small berg is done cautiously. In the waning days of their lives, they are petulant. They calve and roll with unexpectedness. The create unique down-currents as the fresh water pours off the melting mass. They emit a dense fog along their girdle and fizz as they dissolve in the warmer air temperatures. Underwater, they can be a cacophony of noise. Cracks and bumps are punctuated with thuds so loud that they shake the core of your soul. As the first person to ever dive inside an iceberg cave in Antarctica, I have witnessed calving that sealed my entrance, currents that pinned me down and the complete destruction of a 4 square mile iceberg I had just emerged from. I am paranoid around icebergs. My partner Cas Dobbin and I approached slowly with Debbie Stanley and Luc Michel. Rick ran the Zodiac, offering strict instructions not to surface by the berg but to swim back away on the safe side before coming up. We planned a short 30 minute peek to check it out. Halfway in to our dive, a deafening thud reverberated through my body as the berg slammed the sea floor pounding everything on it into a pulp. Debbie, a wise veteran of icebergs headed for the boat. She had seen it all in the past and wasn’t going to push fate. We skirted along the edge of deco to reserve enough conservatism to emerge at any time. Safely aboard the boat, we were jubilant. Cas had completed his first iceberg dive for his 32nd birthday!The Transparent Cup Theorem
© Jaspower
This all originated from a post in reddit's r/mildlyinteresting by user Jaspower. Looking at his cup the redditor noticed that the reflection of the saucer lined up with the saucer itself when viewed from a specific angle.
Being interested in maths and geometry this got me thinking: Is there a shape that would make this work from any angle? I soon came up with an idea and posted it on the math subreddit.
This post contains a brief explanation of my idea and finally includes a proof.
(Note that I tried to keep the proof simple, so the phrasing may sometimes be inexact)
The Conjecture
I soon discovered that if there was a cup shape with the desired property it would have to be a hyperboloid - which is some sort of "3d hyperbola".
A Hyperbola has an interesting property: any ray cast from one of its focal points will be reflected in such a way that it appears to originate from the other focal point.
In the image below this means an observer (in the top right corner) looking in the direction of F 2 would actually always see the mirror image of F 1. The reason behind this is that the tangent in any point of a hyperbola will always be the angle bisector of the two lines leading towards the focal points.
(based on this image (CC-BY-SA))
As this works in 2 dimensions I hoped it would work in 3 dimensions as well and I came up with the following
Conjecture: To fulfill the desired property the cup has to be a hyperboloid and the rim of the saucer has to be the locus of all focal points of hyperbolas on the hyperboloid's surface.
The locus of all focal points is a circle which we will label f.
Visualization
Does this conjecture hold up against a quick check? A visualization in Blender shows it does:
Soon I also received visualizations from other people: codepen user kzf created a great interactive WebGL visualization (doesn't work on all browsers).
Screenshot from kzf's interactive visualization
The proof
Through our arguments in the 2D case we're already very close to a proof.
(based on this image (CC-BY-SA))
We already know:
If we mirror the line PF 1 along the tangent plane T we will get the line PF 2.
Now we want to know:
If we mirror a random line PX along the tangent plane - will we get a line that hits the circle f as well?
Let's imagine X moves along the cirlce f. Which shape would the connecting line PX sweep out?
The answer is: an elliptic cone (image) - note that I'm referring to the infinite surface, not the solid.
An elliptic cone always has two planes of symmetry. In our case, one of these planes of symmetry must be the tangent plane T - as T is the plane of symmetry between PF 1 and PF 2.
Therefore we know: Mirroring the elliptic cone along T will transform it into itself.
Thus, mirroring any line on the elliptic cone will result in another line on the cone. So:
A ray that's directed at a point of the circle f and gets reflected will always end up hitting another point on f.
If we reverse the direction of the ray in our minds we're able to confirm our conjecture.
I hope you enjoyed the read. If you have comments, message me on reddit or email me!Two orangutans that spent years in captivity as pets have finally been returned to the wild after lengthy rehabilitation at our orangutan rescue and rehabilitation centre in West Borneo.
It has taken more than five years to prepare females Susi and Desi for their release and ensure they are equipped with the vital skills they will need to survive.
Before they were rescued, Desi was kept in a very small barren cage, while Susi was chained up by the neck.
Susi in particular was living in a terrible state of neglect. She had several severe injuries, including a foul-smelling, infected wound from the heavy neck chain which had become embedded in her flesh. When the time came to remove it, no key could be found to the padlock and the chain had to be removed with bolt cutters. Susi then had to be anaesthetised in order for the wound to be cleaned and dressed. She subsequently suffered a number of health issues as a result of her years of neglect and her neck has been permanently damaged by the chain.
Over the past five years, both Susi and Desi have progressed through forest school together and on to the pre-release island. Our centre is currently home to 106 orangutans all at various stages of rehabilitation.
During the rehabilitation process the animals are encouraged to develop natural behaviours and are closely monitored by IAR’s team to assess their progress and their suitability as candidates for release.
Susi and Desi were on the pre-release island with five other female orangutans. They stayed there day and night, foraging for forest fruits, making their own nests to sleep in every night and travelling through the trees. They were given supplementary food daily as there aren’t enough fruiting trees on the island to sustain them all. They were selected as suitable candidates for release by our expert team of vets.
The pair were released into Gunung Tarak National Park after a journey which involved leaving the IAR centre at midnight and arriving at the edge of the forest at 5am.
In the video of the release operation (video can be seen below) Programme Director Karmele Llano Sanchez explains that the transport crates are to be carried deep into the forest by local men acting as porters. The eight kilometre trek from the edge of the forest to the release site takes four hours and involves crossing extremely rough terrain, but the team of porters make light work of negotiating fallen trees, swamps and rivers with the weight of the heavy crates on their shoulders.
After the two orangutans have been released, Sanchez says what a special moment it was for her to see them return to the wild. She explains that setting Susi free from the cruel chain around her neck was just the first step towards giving her back her freedom in the forest. Everyone in the team hopes that, after spending years together in rehabilitation at the centre, friends Susi and Desi will stick together and help each other adjust to their new life in the forest.
Alan Knight OBE, IAR CEO, adds:
“The release of orangutans like Susi and Desi is the ultimate goal of our project. These animals were born to be wild and we are committed to giving as many of them as possible a second chance back in the forest.
It is thrilling to know that, after so many years of confinement, these two orangutans are now tasting freedom once again. Our thanks go to everyone who has helped make this possible.”So, in my highschool, we can paint on ceiling tiles and give them to teachers or take them home. One tile I decided to give my science teacher back a while ago was this hot mess!
I was a HUGE Adventure Time fan back in the day, so quite a few of my tiles were just AT stuff
from top to bottom, I'll list the objects :: what/who they represent:
a completely burnt match, somehow still burning :: Flame Princess and fire's destruction
a gold, worn sword :: Finn and humanity's will to strive forward and do what's right
a bubbling test tube :: Princess Bubblegum and hubris that comes with advancement
an axe converted into a bass guitar :: Marceline and using pain to create art and happiness
I sure was pretentious back then, huh?
I'll upload some closeups soonThere is a saying, “the more things change, the more things stay the same.” That’s kind |
most visible positions in state government. The secretary by law also holds the title of chief executive of the Massachusetts Department of Transportation, which oversees high-profile agencies including the MBTA, the Registry of Motor Vehicles and the state highway division.
Pollack has advocated in the past for increases in the state's gasoline tax to fund transportation. The Legislature in 2013 approved a 3-cent increase in the gas tax to help pay for road and bridge repairs and other transportation improvements, but this past November voters repealed a provision that would tie future increases in the tax to inflation. Baker backed repeal of gas tax indexing as a candidate and has said he does not intend to raise taxes as governor.
Baker's only remaining unfilled cabinet post is secretary of public safety and security. Andrea Cabral, who was appointed by former Gov. Deval Patrick, is continuing in the public safety job while Baker looks for a successor.
With reporting by The Associated Press and WBUR's Fred Bever.WASHINGTON, Feb. 17, 2016 - The Food and Drug Administration plans to begin testing corn and soybeans for glyphosate residues, the agency confirmed today.
The testing was first reported by consumer advocacy group U.S. Right to Know, whose press release cited an article in Civil Eats by Carey Gillam, a former Reuters reporter who joined U.S. Right to Know last year.
The testing “is a good first step, but (it) must be thorough and widespread,” said U.S. Right to Know co-director Gary Ruskin. “USDA also should get on board.”
“In the wake of intense scrutiny, (FDA) has finally committed to taking this basic step of testing our food for the most commonly used pesticide. It’s shocking that it’s taken so long, but we’re glad it’s finally going to happen,” said Nathan Donley, a scientist with the Center for Biological Diversity.
Glyphosate is the active ingredient in Monsanto’s Roundup, the use of which has soared since the introduction in 1996 of genetically engineered, herbicide-tolerant seed. A recent study in Environmental Sciences Europe estimated that agricultural use in the U.S. grew from 800,000 pounds in 1974, to 27.5 million pounds in 1995, to 250 million pounds in 2014.
Monsanto said it had not been officially informed of the testing by FDA, but that “glyphosate’s 40-year history of safe use has been upheld by the U.S. EPA and regulators around the world following decades of study and review.
“No data have ever indicated residue levels of more than a fraction of EPA’s very conservative Allowable Daily Intake or any level of concern,” the company said. “If FDA does move forward with residue testing in a scientifically rigorous manner, we are confident it will reaffirm the safe use of this vital tool used safely and effectively by farmers, landowners and homeowners around the world.”
FDA said the cost to test for glyphosate had been prohibitively expensive, but new “streamlined methods” have made it cheaper.
“The agency is now preparing plans for fiscal year 2016 to measure glyphosate in soybeans, corn, milk, and eggs, among other potential foods,” the agency said in a two-paragraph statement.
“The FDA has not routinely looked for glyphosate in its pesticide chemical residue monitoring regulatory program in the past for several reasons, including that available methods for detecting glyphosate were selective residue methods that would have been very cost- and labor-intensive to implement in FDA field labs,” the agency said. Another reason it didn’t test is that “glyphosate levels, if present in genetically engineered corn and soybeans, are likely to be reduced by the processing done to those foods.”
Asked why it was doing the testing now, FDA said it would not comment beyond the statement.
USDA recently released its 2014 Pesticide Data Program report, which it said “confirms that overall pesticide chemical residues found on the foods tested are at levels below the tolerances established by the Environmental Protection Agency and do not pose a safety concern.”
Glyphosate was not one of the active ingredients tested, prompting calls for its inclusion. “Only once in the history of the 24-year program has the agency conducted tests for glyphosate residues,” U.S. Right to Know said. “Those tests, in 2011, were limited to 300 soybean samples and found that 271 of the samples had glyphosate residues.”
Peter Wood, a spokesman for USDA’s Agricultural Marketing Service, characterized those results differently. The 2011 tests, which also looked for glyphosate metabolite AMPA (aminomethylphosphonic acid), “showed that no samples exceeded the tolerance for glyphosate.”
The range of levels found was 0.26 parts per million to 18.5 ppm. The mean for the detections was 1.97 parts per million. At the time, the tolerance for soybeans was 20 ppm; in 2013, EPA raised that to 40 ppm.
Read about other FDA and ag and rural policy news. Sign up for a four-week free trial Agri-Pulse subscription.
Asked why USDA does not routinely test for glyphosate, Wood said, “USDA and EPA specialists discuss the selection of commodities and pesticides for testing. With USDA’s scientific input and EPA’s data needs, EPA makes the determination which commodities and pesticides are tested.”
Wood said EPA is waiting on the results of the FDA testing “before making the determination if additional data is needed for its ongoing evaluation of glyphosate tolerances to ensure that the levels set by EPA meet the safety standards prescribed by the law.”
EPA was expected to issue a new risk assessment for glyphosate last summer, but has yet to do so.
In a November 2014 report, the Government Accountability Office criticized FDA for not disclosing in its annual monitoring reports “that it does not test for several commonly used pesticides with an EPA-established tolerance,” including glyphosate.
Glyphosate has been a target of food safety and environmental groups for decades. Last year, the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer concluded that the chemical was probably carcinogenic to humans, a designation that would trigger labeling as a carcinogen by California’s Proposition 65.
Monsanto released a preliminary scientific review disputing the IARC monograph, and is now suing the state of California over its proposal to add glyphosate to the Prop 65 list.0 SHARES Facebook Twitter Google Whatsapp Pinterest Print Mail Flipboard
On the Senate floor today, Sen. Al Franken (D-MN) sent Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) a strong message today when as acting president he denied Lieberman’s request for more time to speak. The message was simple. If Lieberman is going to destroy healthcare reform, then he shouldn’t count on getting any future help from Democrats.
Here is the video from Think Progress:
When Lieberman ran out of time, he asked for an extra second to finish up, and Franken said, “In my capacity as Senator from Minnesota, I object.” Lieberman was surprised, but sat down then Lieberman’s BFF John McCain freaked out, “I’ve never seen a member denied an extra minute or so, as the chair just did.” Democrat Carl Levin pointed out that he thought something like this happened earlier today, but that didn’t appease McCain who replied, “I think it harms the comity of the Senate.”
Maybe Democrats were trying to enforce the ten minute rule, but the message being sent to all Republicans and sympathizers like Lieberman was obvious. They aren’t going to put up with any more stall tactics and nonsense. Franken’s office said that he was just enforcing the rules, but this is a rule that is never enforced.
Senators break this rule dozens, if not hundreds of times a day. Everyone will deny it, but the message to Lieberman was that if he is intent on bringing down healthcare reform, he is not going to get an inch of courtesy from Democrats.
It looks like Harry Reid has finally started to play hardball. It is about time, and long overdue. It is probably too late to save the Medicare buy in, or the public option, but was certainly to at least see that at least one Democrat has enough spine to tell Joe Lieberman no.
If you’re ready to read more from the unbossed and unbought Politicus team, sign up for our newsletter here! Email address: Leave this field empty if you're human:Passing and the Problematic of Multiracial Pride (or, Why One Mixed Girl Still Answers to Black)
by Danzy Senna
Chapter in: Black Cultural Traffic: Crossroads in Global Performance and Popular Culture
University of Michigan Press
2005
416 pages
Cloth ISBN: 978-0-472-09840-8
Paper ISBN: 978-0-472-06840-1
Ebook ISBN: 978-0-472-02545-9
Edited By:
Harry J. Elam, Jr., Olive H. Palmer Professor in Humanities and Professor of Drama
Stanford University
Kennell Jackson (1941-2005), Associate Professor of History
Stanford University
I have never had the comfort zone of a given racial identity. My mother is a Bostonian white woman of WASP heritage. My father is a Louisiana black man of mixed African and Mexican heritage. Unlike people who are automatically classified as black or white, I have always been up for debate. I am forever having to explain to people why it is that I look so white for a black girl, why it is that my features don’t reveal my heritage. It’s not something I should have to explain, but in America, at least, people are obsessed with this dissonance between my face and my race. White Americans in particular have a difficult time understanding why somebody of my background would choose blackness. With Tiger Woods proclaiming himself a Cablinasian, multiracial activists demanding new categories, and Newsweek declaring it hip to be mixed, it strikes most people as odd that I would call myself a black girl.
But my racial identity developed when I was growing up in Boston in the 1970s, where there were only two choices for me: black and white. For my sister, a year older than me, with curly hair and more African features, there weren’t even these choices. There was only black. And my parents, smitten with the black power politics of the time, taught my siblings and me, in no uncertain terms, that we were all black. They saw this identity as armor against the racism beyond our front door. They also knew that my sister didn’t have a choice, and to define us differently would be damaging to us as a family unit. The tact that the world saw each of us as different (my sister as light-skinned black, my brother as Puerto Rican, and me as Italian) raised complications, but didn’t change the fact that we were all one tribe…
Read the entire chapter here. (pages 83-87)Email not displaying correctly? View it in your browser. Show Alert Dear Producer,
Consider this a No Agenda Emergency. Lost support.
No Agenda had the worst support last show in two years. No Executive producers. No Associate EP’s, nothing. As this goes out we once again have NO Executive producers. WOW. This is your show, support it.
If you have never contributed, now is the time.
And this Sunday is Father’s Day, all you who make any Father’s Day donation by Consider this a No Agenda Emergency. Lost support.. No Executive producers. No Associate EP’s, nothing. As this goes out we once again have NO Executive producers. WOW. This is your show, support it. Click here and give what you can genuinely afford to give.And, all you who make any Father’s Day donation by clicking here, will get a call out by name on tomorrow’s show. No anonymous donations, so people contributing any amount using this link will get a call out. What better gift for the show and for Fathers everywhere? lost some of our audience do to the fact that too many of the early listeners were not paying attention and remained on a Mevio RSS fee that we left two years ago. It continued to work until last week but suddenly shut down for good. Were they the only ones becoming executive producers?
Adam put together an
But I do not see this group as being totally responsible for the missing donations. The entire No Agenda family came up short. This is not good.
Those of you producers getting this newsletter are urged to contribute something (anything) to show 626 by It’s possible that we’vedo to the fact that too many of the early listeners were not paying attention and remained on a Mevio RSS fee that we left two years ago. It continued to work until last week but suddenly shut down for good. Were they the only ones becoming executive producers?Adam put together an explanation here. But I do not see this group as being totally responsible for the missing donations. The entire No Agenda family came up short. This is not good.Those of you producers getting this newsletter are urged to contribute something (anything) to show 626 by clicking here. This means anything. The show needs executive producers too. Consider that if you haven’t before.
Compare the 24-plus hours of No Agenda you get every month
If you are listening to our show, you should consider its value.
What is Karma worth?
Please help us for tomorrow’s show. Click
Your co-host,
John C. Dvorak
PS It will not be in time for the Sunday show, but also think of sending checks directly to No Agenda Show, Box 339, El Cerrito, CA 94530.
PPS Wish us a and what it is worth to you? A dollar an hour? Five dollars an hour. What do you pay for a 90-minute movie? It’s rare that a movie gives you important insights and analysis. What does an audio book cost? What is the price of a good book?If you are listening to our show, you should consider its value.What is Karma worth?Please help us for tomorrow’s show. Click here for the Support page or click here for the PayPal page.Your co-host,John C. DvorakPS It will not be in time for the Sunday show, but also think of sending checks directly to No Agenda Show, Box 339, El Cerrito, CA 94530.PPS Wish us a Happy Father’s Day too.The Starship in our Future
The relentless expansion implicit in the Kardashev scale ranks civilizations according to their use of power, with the notion that there is an upward movement from exploiting the energy resources of a planet to the entire home star and then on to the galaxy (Type III). Hence the interest in trying to observe civilizations that operate on such colossal scales. Surely a Kardashev Type III culture would, in its manipulation of such titanic energies, cast a signature that would be observable even by a relatively lowly Type.7 civilization like ours.
So far we see no signs of Type III civilizations, though early searches through our astronomical data continue (see G-HAT: Searching For Kardashev Type III, for example, which gets into the Glimpsing Heat from Alien Technologies work at Penn State). In Earth in Human Hands, David Grinspoon relates the question to our own survival challenges as we deal with the so-called Anthropocene, a time when our technologies are increasingly affecting our planet, creating a new set of challenges to survival.
Humans may have a history that implies expansion as long as resources hold out, but would alien societies necessarily parallel our own? If civilizations do not expand exponentially, perhaps because such models prove unsustainable, then the average technological culture may be on a much slower track, focusing on improving conditions a bit closer to home. That creates a set of SETI observables that we looked at yesterday, still engineering on scales beyond what we can manage ourselves, but well below Kardashev Type III.
The Inevitability of Space
Talk like this sometimes conjures images of planets where societies have turned sharply inward, moving away from exploration and adopting a low-tech way of life. But there are reasons to believe this would not be the case. In its own way, Grinspoon’s book is an example of this. The author is an astrobiologist who focuses on planetary atmospheres, their interactions with the surface, their evolution and contribution to habitability. His book includes planetary-scale projects that future humans may choose to deploy to keep the Earth healthy as we reduce atmospheric pollution and work for sustainable environments.
You can see that studies like this demand a space program as well as an advanced astronomy. If we want to understand the various paths of planetary evolution, we have to go to the planets themselves, gathering data on why Venus has turned out to be the hellish place it is, and why Mars has proven unable to sustain habitable conditions. We also have to study exoplanets with many of the same issues in mind, learning how stellar systems form around distant stars and witnessing the variety of outcomes in systems much different from our own.
Sheer curiosity drives at least our species to planetary exploration even as we learn how best to manage our own planet, and it seems reasonable that alien civilizations would do the same. Moreover, we have the imperative of protecting our world from catastrophes and mass extinctions, so vividly illustrated in our geological past. I’ve argued for a long time that the need to operate far from Earth is essential if we are to have the capability of changing dangerous asteroid or comet trajectories. These technologies are planetary insurance policies that emerge in tandem with our interest in how other worlds have followed their own evolutionary paths. Space is part and parcel of keeping a technological society healthy.
Image: Putting our technologies to work sustaining a planet cannot be done without a robust space program that delivers the lessons of planetary evolution and provides opportunities for deeper exploration.
And can we reach the stars? We can go back to Tsiolkovsky to find the origins of the so-called ‘generation ship,’ that staple of science fiction that presents an intriguing alternative to the all but instantaneous travel so many SF scenarios invoke. Traveling at a small percentage of lightspeed, the generation ship breaks no physical laws and sacrifices travel time for its own kind of sustainability, a functioning culture aboard a vessel in constant passage to the stars. Destinations are finally reached, but I’m persuaded that we may eventually see such ships become their own solution to habitability, an alternative to any kind of planetary surface.
Grinspoon finds the generation ship a useful analogy. For in many older SF tales (think Heinlein’s Orphans of the Sky for one), the knowledge of the ‘world’ as a ship on a voyage has been lost and must be recovered. Suddenly the passengers must be introduced to the idea that there is an entire universe outside the ship. The challenge now is to figure out where the ship is, how far along in its journey, and what to do with it upon arrival. Can we relate this to the early Anthropocene and the need to overcome its challenges? Grinspoon does it this way:
We are hurtling through space on the only place we know we could live, and we’ve discovered that it is indeed, in part, a kind of construct. We are piecing together its history, coming to understand our situation, and realizing that we have inherited a role for which we are not trained. Our current world, inhabited by seven billion, soon to be ten billion people, was created, in part, by the actions of our predecessors and will require smart engineering to return to a safe course. Our immediate task is to switch to auxiliary power and turn off the carbon generators that are overheating the ship. Our longer-term challenge is to shore up our world for the generations who inherit it.
But the generation ship is also a technological outcome in its own right. Here we can think about human migrations in the distant past, out of Africa, across the Bering Strait, into the deep Pacific by outrigger, and so on. Each such migration committed future generations to outcomes they could not choose, just as decisions we make today about our technologies will produce a civilization we hand off to descendants who have no voice in the matter. Like Grinspoon, I think that the nature of our species includes the will, the need, to explore, which is why we will eventually build such craft even as we develop faster technologies.
We are also pushing our space technologies to the limit as we start talking about true interstellar probes, sail-driven craft that will reach their targets within decades, the kind of project envisioned by Breakthrough Starshot. This drive to explore distant targets is not slowing down now that we have surveyed the planets in our own Solar System. Instead, we are trying to get data unavailable to our largest telescopes to expand our understanding of planets around the closest stars, each of which may offer lessons in planetary management.
No, space is woven into the very fabric of a culture coming to grips with the effects of its technologies on its own planet. Thus I think we can expect that even if a culture is not necessarily climbing the Kardashev scale as relentlessly as we might expect, it will still be exploring on its own timeframes the planets and stars closest to it. Who knows what protocols of contact might keep such a culture from making itself known to those it encounters? And who knows what kind of philosophies of time and space may be spawned by all this?
For when we start talking about leaving a home world, we confront the immensity not just of distance but of time. Grinspoon is eloquent on the matter:
Going interstellar means going long. We cannot imagine ourselves as interstellar actors without also conceiving of ourselves as intergenerational actors. We cannot reach the stars without a sense of identity and goals that span generations. This is true for interstellar communication as well as for travel. Neither makes sense unless we see ourselves as collaborating with our descendants. To travel, or even send messages, to the stars, we will have to start conversations, projects, and journeys for our descendants to finish. This cements the essential bonds between generations. We won’t be the first to attempt such projects. The builders of pyramids and cathedrals mostly never lived to see them completed. Sometimes they worked under duress or coercion, but sometimes they were moved by spiritual commitment to something beyond their individual lives. I think of science itself as such an effort, with individual researchers fashioning bricks in an edifice each of us can see only partly constructed, knowing that our students and theirs will continue to build.
The sense of commitment and sacrifice toward outcomes bigger than ourselves often feels missing in our day, but these are human traits that continually re-surface in our history. We keep hammering on these issues because their relevance persists, and the fog of short-term thinking occasionally lifts to offer a view of landscapes and stars so expansive as to take the breath away. Handing off ideas to our posterity is the best life-shaping goal I know. Our messages must reach across generations and we must see that they get there intact.The head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI), Ali Akbar Salehi, says Tehran will keep all options on the table if the United States violates the landmark 2015 nuclear deal signed between the Islamic Republic and the P5+1 group of countries.
The US will be the one to suffer if it breaches the deal, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), Salehi said in an interview with Lebanon-based Arabic-language al-Mayadeen news network published on Tuesday.
He added that Iran would reciprocate the US approach to the JCPOA.
As the European Union, China, Russia and other world countries have approved the JCPOA, the US withdrawal from the JCPOA would never have any impact on the endurance of the deal, Salehi said.
The senior Iranian nuclear official emphasized that Washington has to bear responsibility for its measures in contravention of the JCPOA.
He said Iran is not liable for any possible violation of the JCPOA because the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has released seven reports verifying Tehran’s complete fulfillment of its commitments under the deal.
Iran and the five permanent members of the UN Security Council – the United States, Britain, France, Russia and China – plus Germany reached the JCPOA on July 14, 2015 and began implementing it in January 2016.
Iran has been complaining that the US, under the administration of President Donald Trump, has been seeking to sabotage international trade with Iran. This is while according to the deal, the US must “refrain from any policy specifically intended to directly and adversely affect the normalization of trade and economic relations with Iran.”
The US has also imposed sanctions on Iran over the country’s missile activities, including most recently on July 28.Shutterstock
Charles Montgomery's new book finds the intersection of urban policy and well-being.
Charles Montgomery begins his new book, Happy City: Transforming Our Lives Through Urban Design, on a bicycle ride in Bogota, Colombia, with former mayor Enrique Peñalosa. While in office, Peñalosa implemented a number of policies quite progressive for that time and place. He scrapped plans for highways through the city. He built hundreds of miles of bike lanes. He made room for parks and pedestrian plazas. Peñalosa's goal, explains Montgomery, was to make Bogotans happier. Montgomery's goal with Happy City is equally ambitious: to document whether urban policy and design can really influence well-being. "For years, urban designers and architects have claimed happiness as their goal," Montgomery says. "And yet none of the claims have been supported by empirical evidence. Which isn't to say they're not right. It's just to say that we don't know. That we haven't known." In this spirit of empirical discovery, Montgomery takes readers around the world in search of the places where urban design has (and has not) improved quality-of-life. He also leads us into the laboratories of behavioral scientists measuring which mindsets make happiness easier (or harder) to achieve. The result is a six-part "recipe" for urban happiness — challenging cities to promote joy, health, freedom, resilience, equity, and social connections.
"Serious people have thought a lot about these issues," says Montgomery. "What I hoped to do with the book was to draw their thinking, some of their activism, and some of their research together into a coherent narrative." One of the big messages in the book is that a livable city is a happy one. I think they're almost synonymous. But I think the bigger point is that there are fear mongers out there who tell us that if we want to address the great challenges of our age — and I'm talking about climate change, resource scarcity, population — then we all have to put on a hair shirt. That we'll be dooming ourselves to years of deprivation. And they're wrong. At least when it comes to city-making. So the happy city, the low-carbon city, the green city, the city that will save us — they're all the same place. You point out a number of cognitive biases that explain the attraction to sprawl: things like the commuter paradox, in which people mistakenly think money will make up for a long drive to work. What can we do about these tendencies that seem built into our behavior? We pay too much attention to rewards we can see — like you mentioned, the house, the car — and too little the complex systems that shape our experiences. When it's experiences that matter the most. I think the most basic piece of advice is we'll all be better off if we understand that happiness is driven more by experience than things. If we build cities and if we make individual choices with that in mind, we may be able to nudge ourselves to design for experiences and human relationships, as opposed to systems that just enable more infrastructure. The happy city, the low-carbon city, the green city, they're all the same place. I was struck by how many small things a city can do to improve well-being. Putting in a small park. Carving out a pedestrian plaza. Yes, there is tremendous potential for intervention at the neighborhood level to enrich our lives. I'm thinking of the efforts of city repair in Portland. The idea is that back in the 90s, a bunch of neighbors marched out and turned their intersection into a piazza. It was such an ordeal to bring neighbors together, to network, to work together, to fight city hall, to build something new — the process itself created powerful new bonds of friendship and trust and conviviality.In a surprise move, eGifter, one of the two biggest online gift card providers that accepts bitcoin, added Ebay giftcards as an option for its customers.
This means that, for the first time on a major scale, people can essentially buy stuff on Ebay with Bitcoin, Litecoin and Dogecoin, albeit in an round about way.
Paypal, which is still technically a part of Ebay, recently started allowing merchants to accept bitcoins for payments and the CEO of Ebay has stated that his company will likely follow Paypal's lead on digital currencies at some point.
Back late last month, Ebay President Devin Wenig was quoted in the Wall Street Journal as being very open to the idea of accepting Bitcoin at some point in the future:
“Both eBay and PayPal are open to [Bitcoin]—PayPal is experimenting with it—and through our relationship we’re likely to do the same. I am very open to it.”
But the wait has been painful for some, especially those who want to turn some of their digital currencies into holiday gifts purchased on Ebay. eGifter appears to be ready to fill that void by offering gift cards in denominations from US $5 to US $500.
This is still a far cry from Ebay going out of its way to accept bitcoin itself, and it should be pointed out that offerings on egifter (and its primary competition, Gyft) often disappear without warning. A store supported one week may not be offered the next.
That being said, you can now purchase stuff on Ebay using your cryptocurrency, something that was nearly impossible to accomplish in a secure and trustworthy way just a few hours ago. With any luck, Ebay will begin accepting Bitcoin directly, but until then, at least we finally have a viable option.
Did you enjoy this article? You may also be interested in reading these ones:Please enable Javascript to watch this video
NORMAN,Okla. -- Another question has been raised after the expulsion of two OU SAE members... Is the University of Oklahoma strong against racism, but weak against violence?
"We won't tolerate this. These people, as I said this morning, don't deserve to be called Sooners," OU President David Boren said after fraternity members of SAE were caught chanting racial slurs.
"The house will be closed, and as far as I'm concerned, they won't be back... at least not while I'm President of the university," Boren said.
He's shows a firm stance against their racial act, but some are bringing up violent acts from other students.
"It just kind of seems a bit hypocritical that we're kicking these kids out of school for being idiots, where as you know a guy can punch a girl in the face and get back on the football team," OU student, Michael Slemmons said.
According to court records, football star running back Joe Mixon punched a girl in the face so hard she received a fractured jaw, fractured cheekbone, fractured sinus, and fractured orbit.
The OU president's response when that incident happened was, "we believe in second chances so that our students can grow from life's experiences."
His running back coach, Cale Gundy said, "he made a split second and wrong decision and he knows that. He is a super, super kid... he's still very young."
We asked students on campus to step on a soapbox and give us their take.
"If the university would have had pressure to remove him, I think that that would have been something that would've been a bigger deal. But I don't think it had anything to do with him necessarily being an athlete," Ronald Tait, another OU student said.
"Doesn't make sense, maybe if when he had hit that girl, someone would have tweeted it sooner, then what we're having now would have happened then," Andrew Laws-Danaher, an OU student says.
"If you are going to expel people for being violently offensive with their words, we should expel people for being violently offensive with their physical being," Basit Shittu, an OU student said.
The president's office did send us a statement saying,
"There is no double standard at the University of Oklahoma. We punish bad behavior without regard to race. He was suspended from the team for a year and was not allowed to play. He was also ordered to perform community service, which he has completed. We punish bad behavior without regard to whether a person is an athlete or non-athlete, black or white. It is sheer and utter nonsense to make such a statement. We are colorblind at the University of Oklahoma and make no distinction between athletes and non-athletes. We have even taken one case to the state Supreme Court to enforce the findings of our internal disciplinary process under Title IX, in a case involving a student athlete."
Statement from OU Director of Athletics, Joe Castiglione pic.twitter.com/sS6FFoBoZe — Oklahoma Football (@OU_Football) March 12, 2015
Report a typo(By E. Somanathan and Ridhima Gupta)
Advertising
By now, everyone in north-western India (and northern Pakistan) knows that one of the main reasons they are choking on smog is the burning of residue from the rice crop by farmers. Some people have also heard of the Happy Seeder, a machine whose use can do away with the need to burn residue. It fits onto a tractor and is capable of planting wheat without getting jammed by residue leftover after the rice harvest. What people don’t know is that the cost of producing enough of the machines to eliminate burning entirely is very low.
Eight years ago, a survey conducted by one of us (Gupta) found that there were fewer than a hundred farmers using the Happy Seeder in Punjab. Now there are 3,000, showing that adoption has been proceeding rapidly. But there is still a long way to go. A policy brief by the National Academy of Agricultural Sciences estimates that 1.2 lakh Happy Seeders would be needed to cover the entire area under the rice-wheat cropping system in India. There are presently about 15 manufacturers of the machine, and if they get enough orders they can bring the price down to Rs 1 lakh rather than the current sale price of about Rs. 1.3 lakh per machine. Also needed is another machine — the Super SMS (straw management system) — that fits onto the combine harvesters for rice in order to spread residue evenly over the field, making the Happy Seeder more effective. These machines presently cost about Rs 1.2 lakh each and only half as many (60,000 machines) are needed since combine harvesters can cover a greater area. At a large scale, the production cost of each machine would be about Rs 1 lakh each, so this works out to a total cost of Rs 1,800 crore for the purchase of enough machines to cover the required area throughout India.
The government can announce a procurement policy for the Super SMS attachments and Happy Seeders for the next year with a guarantee to procure 80 per cent of the requirement with warranties and after-sales service to ensure quality. It can then auction the machines to farmers and hire-purchase operators who buy machines and rent their services to farmers. This would ensure the availability of enough machines giving farmers an alternative to residue-burning, next year. The policy of fines for residue-burning can then be strictly enforced without a political backlash. This needs to be combined with a public information campaign and an intensification of extension efforts. Together, these measures would ensure that there will not be a repeat of the problem next year, and in the years to come.
The difference between the purchase price and auction price of each machine will be the government subsidy. It is likely to amount to much less than the total cost of the machine if the government makes clear its intention to enforce the fines for burning, and provides enough publicity, because then there will be high demand for the machines. The government would thus need an outlay of only a few hundred crore for this programme, a tiny fraction of the agriculture ministry’s budget of Rs 40,000 crore. This would prevent a recurrence of the current disaster next year. In the long run, it is necessary to move away from the power and fertiliser subsidies and selective procurement of grain — these encourage a wasteful farming system.
There are other big contributors to air pollution: Once a pollution cloud forms, the air gets trapped near the ground because sunlight is blocked. The normal process of air getting warmed during the day, and rising up and carrying away pollutants with it, stops. In winter, the cold and dimming from the pollution cloud cause increased lighting and heating demand, generating more pollution from heating fires by the poor and coal burning in power plants. And there is the ever-present pollution from diesel trucks and cars. Dealing with these other sources is also important and solutions may not be as immediate.
As always, prevention is better than cure. Diesel combustion produces many-times-more-polluting fine particles than petrol. Currently, petrol costs about 20 per cent more than diesel. All that is needed to prevent new diesel cars being produced is to lower the petrol tax and raise the diesel tax so that the price difference is reversed. The myth that diesel taxation falls more heavily on the poor has now been thoroughly debunked (for example, in the book Fuel Taxes and the Poor edited by Thomas Sterner) — it is the rich and middle class who own vehicles, and it is they who buy most transported goods.
A new study from the University of Maryland shows that sulphur dioxide (SO2) pollution declined by 75 per cent in China in the last decade while India’s SO2 pollution increased by 50 per cent. SO2 gets converted in the atmosphere to sulphate particles that form smog. China implemented SO2 pollution controls on coal power plants. Meanwhile, in India, regulations to control SO2 were issued as late as December 2015, and recently the power ministry wrote to the environment ministry to delay enforcement in some cases to as late as 2022.
Advertising
In many cases, there are lobbies that benefit from the status quo. Some auto companies opposed the advancement of Bharat VI standards to 2020 (previously 2024). As a result of the public outcry over air pollution last winter, the central government held firm on that issue. All governments respond to the demands made on them. Unless the public is vocal about demanding action on air pollution, progress will continue to be slow.An Arlington County School Board member stood by allowing teachers to post politically-suggestive messages in classrooms during a Wednesday interview on a Washington-based radio station.
The signs, posted by teachers, were seen by students at Yorktown High School in Arlington, Virginia. Parents of a student contacted the school board and complained about the political undertones of the signs posted at the school.
“We put a lot of effort into ensuring all of our students feel safe, and supported as well as academically challenged,” Barbara Kanninen, Vice Chair of the Arlington School Board told WMAL. “It’s not a school board decision about approving signs or not approving signs. This came to us because parents asked about it. We have a very |
assigned to the 174th Fighter Wing are now remotely operated in Afghanistan and Iraq by pilots at the Mattydale base.
Schumer said Hancock already meets FAA requirements for unmanned aerial vehicles because about 7,000 square miles surrounding the airport is designated as “special use” airspace.
He said that “making Hancock a test site for this technology would be a boon for Central New York, creating jobs and bringing new investments to our defense contractors that provide thousands of good paying jobs.”
The senator noted that two Central New York companies, SRC and Saab Sensis Corp., are working on technology to help integrate drones into the national airspace with “sense and avoid” ground-based radars. In addition, the Mattydale base employs more than 1,200 people.
In his letter to Huerta, Schumer said Hancock Field’s assets make it an ideal location, including the large open spaces of Lake Ontario and the Adirondack Park.
“Hancock Field is ideally positioned to be a test site because of its attractive air space, and because the region has two restricted areas, four seasons, a varied terrain, an over water range, air to ground gunnery capability and large airspace volume – all essential to ensuring that our drones and their pilots are able to complete their missions abroad,” Schumer wrote.
FAA officials had no immediate comment.
Col. Kevin Bradley, commander of the 174th Fighter Wing, has said that any Reaper drones that eventually fly out of Hancock would not be equipped with missiles or bombs. No training would take place within civilian air space, Bradley said.
The drones would be armed with live ordnance only when used at firing ranges at Fort Drum near Watertown. Central New York peace activists have protested the Air National Guard's decision to base the drones at Hancock Field.
Contact Washington Correspondent Mark Weiner at mweiner@syracuse.com or 571-970-3751.England striker Sturridge has been sidelined by Anfield manager Jurgen Klopp, who is reportedly ready to allow the injury-prone England striker to leave in January to make way for new signings. Klopp has this season preferred to use Roberto Firmino in attack and once again on Saturday Sturridge was confined to the bench and played only 12 minutes as a substitute, ironically at Southampton.
GETTY Claude Puel is reportedly targeting Daniel Sturridge
GETTY Jurgen Klopp has preferred to start Roberto Firmino as oppose to Daniel Sturridge
Saints have been monitoring Sturridge’s situation for some time, and are ready to table a loan offer in the mid season transfer window, with a view to a permanent summer deal. Southampton manager Claude Puel wants a regular partner for central striker Charlie Austin, having seen front men Graziano Pelle and Sadio Mane both leave in the summer – Mane to Liverpool.
GETTY Claude Puel wants a striker partner for Charlie Austin
Twitter reacts as Liverpool linked with £40m swoop for Southampton stars Mon, November 21, 2016 Express Sport brings you all the best tweets as Liverpool reportedly plot a £40million move to sign Virgil van Dijk and Sam McQueen from Southampton Play slideshow Getty Images 1 of 10 Express Sport brings you all the best tweets as Liverpool reportedly plot a £40million move to sign Virgil van Dijk and Sam McQueen from SouthamptonThe greater Yellowstone ecosystem is full of predators and prey, but a new study on the behavior of Yellowstone's elk shows that the presence of wolves in the ecosystem does not reduce the reproductive rates or body condition of female elk.
Prior research on the Yellowstone ecosystem offered no consensus on whether wolves reintroduced into the region would affect elk populations indirectly, such as by creating an environment of fear wherein the elk are less able to forage or reproduce.
"Elk respond to wolves, but less strongly and less frequently than we thought," Arthur Middleton, a researcher at University of Wyoming, said in a statement.
Middleton spent three years tracking an elk herd west of Cody, Wyo., and the wolf packs that prey on it.
"We found that wolves influence elk behavior, but the responses were subtle and -- over the course of winter -- did not reduce body fat or pregnancy. Our work indicates that the effect of wolves on elk populations is limited to direct predation and doesn't include so-called harassment, stress and fear," he said, adding that the find differs from some previous studies indicating wolves influence elk behavior strongly enough to contribute to regionwide declines in calf production.
When wolves approached within 1.6 miles, the elk became more active and vigilant. But such encounters only occurred an average of once every nine days, even in high-risk areas. The frequency of encounters and high risk of predation, the study concluded, was not associated with the nutrition elk were getting or the frequency of pregnancy in female elk.
Middleton said the study was unique because the research team tracked wolves while also monitoring the movements, foraging behavior, body fat and pregnancy of the elk they hunted.
"This approach, essentially connecting the dots from wolf movements all the way to elk behavior and nutrition, revealed that elk respond to wolves too weakly and too infrequently for those behaviors to carry nutritional costs."
Gray wolves, which roam throughout much of the American west, have made headlines recently because of a move to delist the animals as an endangered species, a protected status they have enjoyed for 40 years.
Middleton and his colleagues' study was published in the journal Ecology Letters.
RELATED: Gray Wolf May Lose 40 Years of Federally Protected StatusEmber 1.0 RC4
Announcement
We have noticed a performance regression, a debug flag was left on by mistake. So if you really want the goodness of RC4 without this regression use this build, we'll have an official release out soon.
Today, we are pleased to announce Ember.js 1.0 RC4:
This RC4 release of Ember puts us very close to the final 1.0 release.
Ember.js 1.0 RC4
As we approach 1.0 final, our focus continues to be on bugfixes, performance, and reliability.
BREAKING CHANGE: Controller/Model Setup
One of the roles of Route objects in an Ember application is to tell controllers which model they should represent.
By default, the object that you return from a route's model hook is set as the model property on the corresponding controller. So, for example, if you have this route:
1 2 3 4 5 App.PhotosRoute = Ember.Route.extend({ model : function () { return App.Photo.find(); } });
The array returned from model would be set as the model property of the App.PhotosController. This tells the controller that it should present that model to its template.
What if you need to set up additional controllers, beyond the primary controller associated with that route? In that case, you can implement the setupController hook:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 App.PhotosRoute = Ember.Route.extend({ model : function () { return App.Photo.find(); }, setupController : function (controller, model) { this.controllerFor('application').set('showingPhotos ', true ); } });
This is all well and good, but what if you wanted to prevent a model from being set on the PhotosController at all?
In RC3, preventing this default behavior was impossible. In RC4, implementing the setupController hook prevents the default behavior from happening. This is a potentially breaking change.
If your route implements the setupController hook and you want to preserve default behavior, make sure you call _super() from within the hook:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 App.PhotosRoute = Ember.Route.extend({ model : function () { return App.Photo.find(); }, setupController : function (controller, model) { this._super(controller, model); this.controllerFor('application').set('showingPhotos ', true ); } });
Thanks to Kris Selden and Luke Melia for pulling together PRs from Paul Chavard, Rob Harper and input from others into a cohesive change. We don't take breaking changes lightly at this stage of the release process, but this one is worthwhile.
RSVP 2.0
Ember now embeds version 2.0 of RSVP.js, a microlibrary for Promises/A+ compatible promises.
All of the Ember.js APIs that return promises use this library to ensure compatible behavior.
A big, big thanks to Stefan Penner for all of his work on improving the promises story across both Ember and Ember Data.
Run Loop Extracted to Backburner.js
Erik Bryn has extracted the run loop into the Backburner.js microlibrary, which Ember now uses.
This will allow other frameworks and libraries that use Backburner to benefit from using a deferred event queue, and hopefully we can share our work to make the web platform faster for everyone.
Handlebars RC4 Compatibility
Ember.js RC4 requires the latest release of Handlebars, which is also at RC4.
Improved Route Redirection
Routes provide a redirect hook that allow them to conditionally redirect to a different route. For example, you may redirect the user to a login route if you detect that they do not have an authentication token saved.
Many improvements to the redirect hook have been made to make it more reliable. Additionally, you can now implement this hook in the ApplicationRoute, which previously would not work.
Props to Tom Dale for this work.
ember-testing Improvements
The ember-testing package, included in Ember.js, is the officially-supported library for writing unit and integration tests for Ember apps. Introduced in RC3, this has continued to be improved, with many bug fixes and performance improvements landing in RC4.
A huge thanks to Teddy Zeeny for driving many of these improvements.
disabledWhen {{linkTo}} Option
The {{#linkTo}} Handlebars helper now has a disabledWhen option that can be bound to conditionally disable a link:
1 2 3 {{# linkTo'upgradeAccount'disabledWhen = isPremiumUser }} Upgrade Account {{/ linkTo }}
Thanks to Trek Glowacki for this improvement.The worst thing about being a moon landing denier is, apparently, the part where reporters call you out for labelling Apollo 11 as some kind of false flag operation.
When I wrote a story about Kentucky Senator Rand Paul’s relationship with his father—and the impact it might have on his chances of getting the Republican presidential nomination—I expected some pushback. But not like this.
My characterization of radio host Alex Jones (a frequent promoter of the Pauls) sparked outrage among his devotees. Specifically, they got all rage-y because I referred to Jones as a “moon landing denier.” A weird thing to quibble about, considering he is a moon landing denier.
Alex Jones, I wrote, is “a noted conspiracy theorist who spreads his message on his syndicated radio show and on his website, Infowars.com. Jones is a moon landing denier who believes the government acted as a guiding hand for the September 11 attacks and the Oklahoma City bombing, buys into the New World Order—the theory that a group of so-called elites are conspiring to form a singular, totalitarian global government has accused American pop stars of being purveyors of Illuminati mind control.”
@PrisonPlanet—aka Paul Joseph Watson—is editor-at-large of Infowars.com, Jones’ site. There is rich irony in having the editor of Infowars.com charge that your job is to “make up shit.” Infowars.com, for the uninitiated, is a very special place where ideas like the Super Bowl halftime show is an illuminati ritual, and that President Obama has called for a New World Order, are welcome. The website even sells iodine drops, called “Survival Shield,” at their official store.
Watson is taking issue—rather impolitely, I might add—with what I consider a moon landing denier. Jones does not deny the entire event of the moon landing altogether, but he does not believe the version of the moon landing shown to the public actually happened.
On his radio program, he told his listeners: “The government lies out of hand. You say, ‘well then, why do you believe in the moon landing?’ Because I have sources inside NASA—they put on some fake stuff for you—see, there was a lie. It’s not just ‘did we go’ or ‘didn’t we go.’ You were shown the tinker-toy stuff because you’re not supposed to see what they really got. You’re not supposed to know the thousands of astronauts that have died. Oh, yeah. In fact, I should to a whole show on that. This is the kind of stuff that will get you killed. I shouldn’t even get into things I know, because I don’t have the absolute proof in front of me—I just have sources and evidence that backs it up, but I’m digressing.”
People who claim that a much smaller number than six million people were murdered in the Holocaust are Holocaust deniers—even though they are not denying that some version of the event did take place. Similarly, when Alex Jones goes on his radio show to tell his canned goods-hoarding, Illuminati-fearing listeners that what the government showed the world of the moon landing was not reality, but a “tinker-toy” version of it, he earns himself the title “moon landing denier.”
Because I am so #Blessed, some of Jones’ fans chimed into the debate.
Truly awe-inspiring command of the English language.
Watson then took to YouTube to recap our Twitter exchange, because the Internet is horrible. And I would ask him and all other critics: If you are going to call me an “establishment media hack,” please pronounce my name correctly. (Newt-Zee)
Not only was my name mispronounced, but some people seemed unclear about what my name actually is. A fan of my work emailed me to say: “Hello Ms. Nazi, It’s so great these days to read so-called ‘journalists’ and their garbage pieces full of lies and disinformation. You should be so proud of yourself working for an illegitimate rag like the Daily Beast. But of course you’ve sold your soul to make money for the corporate elite who control you.”Though mental health issues are less taboo than they were in the past, and certainly more people are getting treated for them (at least pharmaceutically), the suicide rate is still high – especially for men. The World Health Organization estimates that about one million people take their own lives each year, and this is not counting those who attempt it but are not “successful.” In just about every country, men commit suicide more frequently than women, which is intriguing since women typically have higher (at least, reported) rates of mental health disorders like depression. A new study looked at the factors that might explain why certain groups of men are so much more likely than women to take their own lives.
Certainly suicide is linked to mental health problems like depression and anxiety – it almost has to occur in their presence – but there are other factors involved. And it is these external factors that, according to the researchers, need some attention. The new study was commissioned by the organization Samaritans, and carried out by a team of researchers in Great Britain.
One of the risk factors for suicide in men seems to be middle age. Historically, younger men were at greater risk than older ones, but this has changed in recent decades. Now, middle-aged men experience the lowest levels of well-being and the highest suicide rates (especially if they are of lower socioeconomic class; more on this later). In fact, well-being for both sexes follows a U-shaped curve, with well-being bottoming out in the middle years.
For middle-aged men today, being in between two very different generations (“the prewar ‘silent’ and the post-war ‘me’ generation”) may make them feel more stuck. “Men currently in their mid-years are the ‘buffer’ generation – caught between the traditional silent, strong, austere masculinity of their fathers and the more progressive, open and individualistic generation of their sons. They do not know which of these ways of life and masculine cultures to follow.”
Middle age is also the time when the importance of long-term life decisions is clear: Making changes can come with a big cost, both financially and personally/socially, since doing so could lead to job loss, financial uncertainty, or on the personal front, a breakdown in marriage. Feeling boxed in could seriously compromise well-being.
The study found that the suicide rate was ten times higher in men of lower socioeconomic status than in affluent men. The link between suicide and unemployment has been known for some time, but the authors discuss the reasons why, beyond losing a job, socioeconomic class might affect suicide risk. One factor is the increasing “‘feminisation’ of employment (shift towards a more service-oriented economy),” which may cause men to feel like they have less room in the professional world. The authors write that “men in lower socioeconomic groups now have less access to jobs that allow for the expression of working-class masculinity, and have thus lost a source of masculine identity and ‘pride.’” Yet losing a job may still make men feel like a “double failure, since they are unable to meet two central demands of the masculine role: being employed; and ‘providing’ for the family.”
Another interesting finding is that while divorce and separation are linked to suicide risk in both sexes, divorced/separated men seem particularly vulnerable to suicidal “ideation” (thoughts and planning) and to suicide itself. This may make sense, since it’s been shown that men derive more mental and physical health benefits from marriage than do women (although it’s good for both sexes) – so the breakdown of a marriage could lead to more detrimental outcomes for men. That said, there’s still a lot of pressure on men to fill out the masculine husband role, whatever socioeconomic class one is in, and the reality is that today this classic role may be somewhat unrealistic. “There is a large and unbridgeable gap between the culturally authorised idea of ‘hegemonic masculinity’ and the reality of everyday survival for men in crisis,” write the authors. One way of taking back one’s own masculinity, they suggest, is to take one’s own life.
The reality is that there is a constellation of variables that all interplay, and can compound one another. Men of lower socioeconomic status may, for example, feel the breakdown of a relationship more, and conversely, financial problems can contribute to marital problems and pressures. When things break down for men, they really break down. The authors point out that there is too little known about the actual “psychological routes” to suicide for men – that is, once men are feeling the fallout of financial, professional, or personal problems, why do these problems end in suicide more frequently than women?
Part of it may be that men actually have a higher threshold for pain, which could, counterintuitively, lead to a greater risk for suicide, in volcano-like fashion. They may also may poorer decisions when under stress – and men who are unemployed may not come up with effective solutions to personal problems as well as their employed counterparts.
How to reduce the risk of suicides in middle-aged men (or any other demographic) is a question to which there aren’t many answers. The authors of the new study suggest one way may be to develop effective interventions for young men and boys at risk, since many of the patterns leading to suicide in middle age may begin during youth.
“It’s not acceptable for people in lower socioeconomic positions to be at so much higher risk than men in higher socioeconomic positions,” study author Stephen Platt told the Telegraph. “And we need that understanding to be very much a part of suicide prevention strategies and action and local and national level – and up to now, it’s not been.”
Follow me @alicewalton or find me on Facebook.Why is it so hard to listen to Nicki Minaj? I don’t mean her music – which may or may not be to your taste – but to what she says? According to the headlines, she is causing more trouble, and is in another “catfight”. Last time it was with Taylor Swift, this time Miley Cyrus. At last night’s MTV Video Music Awards (VMA), she and Swift publicly made up, only for Minaj to “attack” Cyrus, who – although some say all these “confrontations” are faked – looked genuinely stunned when Minaj referred to her as a “bitch”.
The jibe was apparently in response to an interview Cyrus gave to the New York Times a few days ago, in which she said Minaj was “not very polite”, and explained to her the correct way to talk about race. “I know you can make it seem like, ‘Oh I just don’t understand because I am a white pop star’,” said Cyrus, before continuing, “I know the statistics, I know what’s going on in the world.” Cyrus won’t be winning any awards for self-awareness for feeling she could lecture Minaj on the polite way to discuss race. No wonder Minaj reacted.
The Nicki Minaj debate is bigger than Taylor Swift's ego Read more
If anyone bothers to read between the headlines or just takes on board anything Minaj says, we would see that the focus on personal “beefs” is an unhelpful diversion. Minaj is political, and wants to talk seriously about racism. She won’t keep quiet about it. “Racism is alive & well” she tweeted last year. This was somehow seen as her having a go at Iggy Azalea rather than a mere statement of fact. Time and again she is portrayed as an aggressive, angry black woman who goes around picking on sweet white girls. Stereotyped much?
Minaj is an immensely skilled artist in “a culture that is”, she has said, “so male driven”. Her hypersexualized self-representation makes many uneasy, but this is her choice. She writes the words. She chooses the imagery. As she has said: “When you hear Nicki Minaj spit, Nicki Minaj wrote it.” She is in charge – in charge enough to question the structural racism of the music industry.
NICKI MINAJ (@NICKIMINAJ) If your video celebrates women with very slim bodies, you will be nominated for vid of the year 😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊
Her tweets questioning why her video for Anaconda was not nominated for the Video of the Year award at the VMAs – while videos which celebrated “women with very slim bodies” were – was taken personally by Swift, who tweeted: “I’ve done nothing but love & support you. It’s unlike you to pit women against each other. Maybe one of the men took your slot.” Swift later apologised. And last night they “hugged it out”. When Minaj isn’t writing or perfoming she consistently speaks out about what is happening in America. Last year she talked of police brutality and their complete lack of accountability. In an interview with Rolling Stone she said: “I feel like when Public Enemy were doing ‘Fight the Power’, we as a culture had more power – now it feels hopeless.”
The backdrop to all this is much more serious than the MTV Video Music Awards. In the US, black people are being murdered in churches and by the police. The openly racist rhetoric of Donald Trump is all over the airwaves. Kanye West says he wants to be president, while every political statement Minaj makes is somehow depicted as her just being an uppity bitch.
Minaj can talk about race in any way she wants. The fact that the press focuses instead on “catfights”, tells us just this: she needs to keep talking.Could Booster Gold be getting a movie, after his Syfy series failed to make it to the pilot stage?
In a new interview with The Hollywood Reporter, DC's Legends of Tomorrow executive producer Phil Klemmer ruled out the possibility of Booster appearing in the show's first season -- and suggested that there's something greater in store for Rip Hunter's famous father.
“I wish I could tease a Booster thing but, you might have to wait a good long while at least on our show,” said Klemmer. “Perhaps Booster is being groomed for bigger things." THR followed up with speculation that Booster could be featured in a movie -- which isn't the first time the rumor has circulated.
Long before Suicide Squad was announced, comics-industry news and gossip site Bleeding Cool claimed that the Squad was one of a number of smaller DC properties being groomed for feature films. The idea, at the time, was that top-tier Justice League members could have the blockbusters with $200 million budgets, while lesser-known DC properties could provide fodder for relatively inexpensive mid-budget action films that would help keep the DC brand alive without necessarily laying out the $300 million-plus that Disney is currently spending to make two Marvel movies a year. Later, ComicBook.com heard very similar things, but we didn't have anything beyond what Bleeding Cool had already heard, or a secondary source to corroborate it. That THR has made this remark, though, lends it some additional credence given their place in the film industry.Researchers have found traces of Earth's crust in the Canadian Shield dating back 4.2 billion years, when our planet was in its infancy.
Earth's composition is unlike any other known planet or moon, with rocky crusts forming and moving over the surface. Over time, this has forced older evidence of such crusts — both oceanic and continental — deep below the surface.
The oldest crust that exists today is about 2.7 billion years old, and remnants have long been known to be in the Canadian Shield.
But older crust, to roughly 4.6 billion years ago when the Earth formed, has remained elusive.
Hoping to find evidence of that original crust, Jonathan O'Neil, assistant professor at the University of Ottawa's Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, and his team of researchers made the trip to a portion of the Shield in northern Quebec to collect samples.
Rock lineage
Rocks have a parentage but that parentage remains hidden. And trying to uncover how they first formed, and what they were compsed of, is an onerous task.
"Most granite, we believe, comes from the melting of an older crust," said O'Neil, the lead author in the resulting study, published Thursday in the journal Science.
"We knew that these rocks had an older precursor or an older parent. But how old, we didn't know."
Rocks are notoriously difficult to date. But one way to do it is by measuring an isotope that was only produced within the Earth's first 500 million years, neodymium-142; which the team found in the Quebec samples.
Close-up of 2.7 billion-year-old continental crust from Nunavik, northern Quebec showing a complex history of re-melting of oceanic-type rocks that were older than 4.2 billion years. (Véronique Villeneuve)
That means that the samples formed between 4.2 billion and 4.3 billion years ago.
Though the findings don't answer every question about Earth's early history, they do shed some light on its development.
"At least it gives us more tools to understand the early geodynamics," O'Neil said. "Was [the process] the same everywhere on Earth? Or was it local? These are all questions we'll have to answer."
O'Neil now hopes that more of these ancient cratons around the world will be studied leading to a better understanding not just about our world, but others.
"If we understand early processes that shape our planet, we can maybe understand other planets: Why are they different? Or are they similar and where in their life they drift apart in terms of geology?"In the lead up to President-elect Donald Trump’s election, 12 women came out and said that the New York businessman had sexually assaulted them. Many have remained silent since the election, and none have made it known that they seek to file a lawsuit against Trump for the alleged sexual assault.
Trump during the campaign called the women “liars” and said that after the election he would sue the women who had accused him of sexual assault. His transition team did not return a request for comment.
One of his sexual assault accusers Summer Zervos said in a press conference days after the election that she refuses to “be intimidated into silence.” And that she’d like for Trump to retract his statement saying she’s a liar.
Zervos is represented by attorney Gloria Allred, as are fellow accusers Karena Virginia, Jessica Drake, and Temple Taggart. Allred recently wrote in a piece for The Hollywood Reporter that if Trump does sue, his accusers will sue him for defamation and that’d he’d have to sit for a deposition. She added that if Trump “does not sue any of the accusers, it is possible someone will sue him first. We will just have to wait and see.”
President Bill Clinton was sued by Paula Jones for sexual harassment while he was in office, and Allred said during a Nov. 11 press conference that Trump could be sued as president.
Seven other women announced their allegations against Trump during the election. Mindy McGillivray said Trump groped her during a 2003 Palm Beach, Fla. party and, before the election, said she was planning to leave the country. She has remained silent since the election and has not returned a request for comment.
Two of Trump’s sexual assault accusers Ninni Laaksonen and Jessica Leeds made their claims known through newspapers. The Daily Caller has not been able to reach them and they have both remained silent since Trump’s win.
Rachel Crooks and Kristin Anderson were both contacted by the TheDC and did not reply. They have also not spoken out since Trump’s win.
Cassandra Searles said in a Facebook comment in June that Trump grabbed her ass without her permission, but has refused to comment on this statement since then and did not reply when TheDC asked her if she has plans to file a lawsuit.
Former People magazine writer Natasha Stoynoff in October said that while interviewing Trump in 2005 at his Florida Mar-a-Lago home, she was sexually assaulted. She has not made any plans to sue Trump public, but since the election she has published a book tilted “Chicken Soup for the Soul: Curvy & Confident: 101 Stories about Loving Yourself and Your Body.”
There was one sexual assault accuser that was known before the election, Jill Harth. Harth had filed a 1997 lawsuit alleging “attempted rape,” and she later withdrew the suit.Please select your country: United States Argentina Australia Austria Belarus Belgium Brazil Brunei Bulgaria Canada Chile China Colombia Croatia Cyprus Czech Republic Czechoslovakia (1945-1992) Denmark East Germany (1949-1990) Estonia Finland France Georgia Germany Greece Hong Kong Hungary Iceland India Indonesia Ireland Israel Italy Japan Latvia Lithuania Luxembourg Macau Macedonia Malaysia Malta Mexico The Netherlands New Zealand North Korea Norway Philippines Poland Portugal Romania Russia Saudi Arabia Serbia Singapore Slovakia Slovenia South Korea Spain Sweden Switzerland Taiwan Thailand Turkey Ukraine United Arab Emirates United Kingdom Uruguay Vietnam U.S.S.R. (1922-1991) Yugoslavia (1945-1992) Africa » Cameroon Africa » South Africa Worldwide Other
Not an American user?
Description
Screenshots
Promo Images
Alternate Titles
"エターナルダークネス 招かれた１３人" -- Japanese spelling
"Eternal Darkness: Mawa Kareta 13jin" -- Japanese title
"ED" -- Common abbreviation
"이터널 다크니스" -- Korean spelling
Part of the Following Groups
User Reviews
Critic Reviews
Forums
is a psychological thriller epic starring the adventures of twelve characters that span across the world and two millennia. From time immemorial the forces of evil from beyond have been trying to manifest themselves in our world, and it is only through the actions of these forgotten heroes that the world has been saved from being overrun. Chapters take place in Ancient Rome, Persia, the Middle East, and modern-day Rhode Island. Throughout the game, the protagonists will have access to several weapons appropriate for their era, from bastard sword and gladius to flintlock pistol and shotgun.The game features an involved Magick system, which allows different spells to be created through the combination of runes. These spells can attack enemies, dispel illusions, and heal both the body and items.also has a unique feature called Sanity. If an enemy sees a character, their Sanity meter drops. When Sanity gets low, hallucinations begin to plague the character. Walls bleed, voices whisper from nowhere, the camera gets disoriented. Sanity can be restored by dealing a finishing move on a dying enemy, or with spells or some items. Aside from this, characters also have health and mana meters.
There are currently no topics for this game.
Trivia
1001 Video Games
Ancients
Ulyaoth, God of the dimensional planes, is Blue.
Xel'lotath, Goddess of the Mind and Madness is Green.
Chattur'gha, God of physical strength and matter is Red.
Mantorok the Corpse God or God of Order and Chaos is Purple (though sometimes Black).
Canada
Development
Fourth wall
Inaccuracies
Names
Ratings
References
This game has several homages to classic horror and fiction writers. As if the Edgar Allen Poe quote on the intro wasn't enough, the guy who speaks to you on the beginning of the game introduces himself as Inspector Legrasse... and there is an Inspector Legrasse on H.P. Lovecraft's tale The Call of Cthulhu. The setting being on Rhode Island is another tip of the hat to Lovecraft's place of birth.
. The setting being on Rhode Island is another tip of the hat to Lovecraft's place of birth. Mantarok, the creature encountered by Ellia, is the keeper of "The Ancients". An obvious reference to Lovecraft's Yog-Sothoth, who is the keeper of The Great Old Ones. Also they both coexist in multiple planes of reality.
. Also they both coexist in multiple planes of reality. While playing as Alex, check the stack of books in the study, to find another reference to classic horror tales, including Poe and Lovecraft.
One of the sanity effects has the character's head falling off and quoting Shakespeare, more specifically Scene I, Act III of Hamlet, the famous "To Be Or Not To Be" speech.
References to the game
Title translation
Awards
4Players 2002– Best GameCube Game of the Year 2002– Best GameCube Action Game of the Year 2002 – #2 Best GameCube Game of the Year (Readers' Vote)
GameSpy 2002 – Day of the Tentacle (Cthulhu) Award (GameCube)
Related Web Sites
JPaterson Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem (GameCube) on Jun 27, 2002 (9550) added(GameCube) on Jun 27, 2002
appears in the book 1001 Video Games You Must Play Before You Die by General Editor Tony Mott.Each of the Ancients is represented by a colour, which is the colour of their alignment as well as their Magick and their creatures.However, there is also"neutral" Yellow Magick present in the game. According to Denis Dyack, a designer of the game, this actually represents a fifth, unrevealed Ancient.The fact that yellow is the complementary colour of purple may also indicate that this Ancient is diametrically opposed to Mantorok.is the first game to be developed fully by a Canadian developer, inside Canada, and published by Nintendo Of Canada (NoC). As a result, it was released in Canada two days before the U.S.was originally planned to be one of the last games released for the N64. Once it slipped that release, it was scheduled to be a GameCube launch title and be shipped in October 2001. It didn't make that date and was once again rescheduled for release in February 2002. It still didn't make that date and was finally released in June 2002. Because it was in testing for so long, the in-house testers at Nintendo began calling it "Everlasting Darkness." Silicon Knights co-developed the remake The Twin Snakes of Metal Gear Solid with Konami. Given that series' fondness for breaking the fourth wall, Silicon Knights reused some of thesanity effects, such as the tilting floor effect, during the player's battle with Psycho Mantis. Eternal Darkness is also one of the games recognised when the character attempts to "read the player's mind" (which consists of reading the contents of the system's memory card). Breaking the fourth wall in such a manner is a notable stylistic similarity between games developed by Silicon Knights and those developed by Hideo Kojima In the manual when describing Dr. Maximillian Roivas, they put the date and setting of "A.D. 1760 - Rhode Island, USA." Not only is it glaringly obvious that the United States not even exist at that point, but Rhode Island didn't even join the Union until 1790! Oops! The developers, Silicon Knights, are Canadian.Alexandra's family name, Roivas, is savior spelled backwards.This was the first Nintendo only published game ever to receive a ESRB Mature rating. Conker's Bad Fur Day and Perfect Dark are older Nintendo games that also carry a Mature rating but it can be argued that they were co-published by Rare In Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes, magazines called ED Magazine can be used to distract guards. The magazines show Ellia on the cover and a centerfold of Alex Roivas when used, two characters fromThe translation of the Japanese title in English is "Eternal Darkness: Call of 13 People".Christiana Figueres, the executive secretary of the climate convention, said the global negotiations were necessary, but were not sufficient.
“We won’t get an international agreement until enough domestic legislation and action are in place to begin to have an effect,” she said in an interview. “Governments have to find ways in which action on the ground can be accelerated and taken to a higher level, because that is absolutely needed.”
Newsletter Sign Up Continue reading the main story Please verify you're not a robot by clicking the box. Invalid email address. Please re-enter. You must select a newsletter to subscribe to. Sign Up You will receive emails containing news content, updates and promotions from The New York Times. You may opt-out at any time. You agree to receive occasional updates and special offers for The New York Times's products and services. Thank you for subscribing. An error has occurred. Please try again later. View all New York Times newsletters.
The new figures show that emissions are falling, slowly, in some of the most advanced countries, including the United States. That apparently reflects a combination of economic weakness, the transfer of some manufacturing to developing countries and conscious efforts to limit emissions, like the renewable power targets that many American states have set. The boom in the natural gas supply from hydraulic fracturing is also a factor, since natural gas is supplanting coal at many power stations, leading to lower emissions.
But the decline of emissions in the developed countries is more than matched by continued growth in developing countries like China and India, the new figures |
, Mullsjö AIS
Rasmus Enström, IBF Falun
Rasmus Sundstedt, Red Ants Rychenberg Winterthur
Johannes Larsson, IBF Falun
Line-up Finland
Goalies
Eero Kosonen, Växjö Vipers
Pyry Luukkonen, TPS Turku
Defenders
Petri Hakonen, FC Helsingborg
Krister Savonen, Classic
Juha Kivilehto, FC Helsingborg
Jesperi Lindfors, Esport Oilers
Janne Lamminen, Classic
Nico Salo, Classic
Tatu Väänänen, SV Wiler Ersigen
Tero Tiitu, EräViikingit
Forwards
Janne Hoikkanen, Happee
Eemeli Salin, Classic
Mika Moilanen, EräViikingit
Juuso Heikkinen, Happee
Lauri Kapanen, EräViikingit
Joonas Pylsy, Classic
Jani Kukkola, EräViikingit
Mika Kohonen, FC Helsingborg
Peter Kotilainen, Happee
Jami Manninen, FC Helsingborg
Miko Kailiala, EräViikingit
Floorball Worldwide Facebook Group - 1.920 members! Become a member For lovers of floorball worldwide! Here you find the latest news about floorball!
Join the Floorball Worldwide Facebook GroupIf the most stunning night in political history taught us anything about traditional media's coverage of this election, which spanned nearly 600 days, it's this:
It doesn’t remotely have the influence it thinks it does.
In piously dismissing public sentiment when it comes to the entire premise of Donald Trump Donald John TrumpREAD: Cohen testimony alleges Trump knew Stone talked with WikiLeaks about DNC emails Trump urges North Korea to denuclearize ahead of summit Venezuela's Maduro says he fears 'bad' people around Trump MORE's fed-up outsider campaign, the vaunted media proved it just ain't what it used to be in the eyes in the public.
ADVERTISEMENT
You've probably read the numbers in this space before. And they're horrifying:Media approval rating: 19 percent ( NBC News/Wall Street Journal Americans with high confidence in the media: 6 percent ( Associated Press Suffolk University/USA Today poll question : “Who do you think the media, including major newspapers and TV stations, would like to see elected president:or Donald Trump?” A full 75.9 percent answered Clinton, while just 7.9 percent picked Trump. That's about a 10-to-1 ratio of Americans who feel the media was actually for one candidate against another.And, finally, there's the major newspaper endorsement count, per The Hill's Reid Wilson : Clinton 57, Trump 2 — a ratio of more than 28-to-1.The election results are still coming in, but from all appearances Trump could still break 300 electoral votes, which would be the most of any Republican candidate in nearly 30 years (George H.W. Bush, 1988).Trump repeatedly said throughout this general election that the media was rigged against him.The elites, the ones so out of touch living in their safe Manhattan bubble, where the national media calls home, declared he was engaging in conspiracy theory, just blowing more hot air.But WikiLeaks revelations proved otherwise.
From just one single email account — that of Clinton campaign chief John Podesta — we saw that quote approval by Clinton campaign sources did happen. Sharing stories in advance with Clinton campaign officials did happen. Collusion via sharing debate questions in advance with Clinton senior aides did happen. Reporters advising and/or cheering on campaigns with guys like Podesta did happen.
And these weren't small-time bloggers or pundits or anchors committing these journalistic no-nos, either. These were major names at major organizations. And none of them will even extend the professional courtesy of an apology. Instead, it's the usual condescending defiance.
Even Clinton supporters agree in a recent AP-GfK poll that the media was biased against Trump, by a 4-to-1 margin.
Yup, even Clinton supporters even saw the media pile-on from a mile away.
Suffice to say, the polling and numbers gurus should not be so breathlessly relied upon in 2020 and beyond. A special shout-out goes to the Hufington Post, whose polling outfit gave Hillary Clinton a 98.2 percent of winning going into last night.
We can also retire the "guru" label as it pertains to fivethirtyeight.com's Nate Silver, whose final formula had Clinton with a 71.4 percent chance of winning the presidency.
In fact, news organizations should simply treat these predictions like online polls: a fun mention here and there, but not anything to hang a hat on day after day, and certainly nothing to be treated as "BREAKING NEWS." Deal?
On the pundit front, MSNBC election night anchor Rachel Maddow encapsulated a perfect example of the kind of elitism Americans are showing to increasingly loathe when it comes to being spoken down to like peasants:
“Well, it is what it is," Maddow said after Trump's victory was apparent on Wednesday morning. "People go into this eyes wide open. If you vote for somebody who can’t win for president, it means that you don’t care who wins for president.”
Yup. Tell people how they should vote because your candidate didn't win. That'll go over well.
On CNN, Van Jones — formerly of the Obama administration — played the "How will I explain this to my kids?" card, which many publications have picked up on since, making it go viral.
"People have talked about a miracle. I'm hearing about a nightmare," Jones said early Wednesday morning, fighting back tears. "You tell your kids: Don't be a bully... don't be a bigot... do your homework and be prepared. And then you have this outcome."
Does doing your homework and being prepared also mean getting debate questions sent in advance?
I digress.
"You have people putting children to bed tonight, and they're afraid of breakfast. They're afraid of 'How do I explain this to my children?'"
The premise here appears to be that the candidate who didn't win — Hillary Clinton — is someone Jones and his kids could be proud of. It's the kind of predictable, one-way analysis we get far too often from former administration officials serving as pundits.
Speaking of curious, Karl Rove, formerly of the Bush administration, tried to make an argument that Trump partially owed his victory in Wisconsin to Speaker Paul Ryan Paul Davis RyanBrexit and exit: A transatlantic comparison Five takeaways from McCabe’s allegations against Trump The Hill's 12:30 Report: Sanders set to shake up 2020 race MORE, who couldn't run away faster from Trump on the campaign trail if he tried.
Rove is an establishment guy, of course, so what you hear is what you get.
As for media coverage of voters, half of Trump’s supporters were called a “basket of deplorables” by Clinton on the campaign trail. Many in the media — particularly those on the left — embraced the former first lady’s characterization as fact and ran with the narrative.
Many also chalked up Trump's loss as automatic, and riots and violence in the street an almost-certainty afterward.
Those folks should be ashamed of themselves. They can attack the candidate, have at it. But label 30 million Americans as racist xenophobes? Have fun sleeping in that bed you made.
And finally, the Chicago Daily Tribune Award for most ill-advised headline going into Trump's big win last night goes to New York Magazine, simply branding Trump a “loser.”
The Chicago Daily Tribune, of course, was responsible for the infamous Dewey/Truman cover.
Moving forward, the bright side for cable news outlets and publications both in print and online is they have a president who has proven to be a ratings cash cow like no other public figure before him. The profits will likely roll in for at least the next four years as a result.
But ratings and clicks are one thing. Integrity is quite another.
I'd like to write that traditional media undoubtedly has learned its lesson after embarrassing itself time and again during this long campaign. I truly would.
But without any hint of contrition or any attempt at accountability when sacred rules of journalism are broken, nothing changes. In fact, it will just keeping getting worse. Letting the inmates run the asylum will do that.
Self-importance is prevalent in this business. Self-awareness, not so much.
The good news for the consumer is, choices and alternatives are everywhere.
And to those who worry that the press will continue to pile on Trump throughout his presidency, take solace in knowing that this election result shows their days of major influence are a now a laughable thing of the past.
Concha is a media reporter for The Hill.
The views expressed by Contributors are their own and are not the views of The Hill.Key takeaways Prefer built-in exceptions, or subclasses thereof, for common types of errors.
Use the type of exception to indicate whether the error is in the application itself, in the library being called, or an environmental issue.
Exception types should help operations determine who needs to look at the error first.
Avoid using error codes to distinguish between unrelated types of errors that happen to be raised by the same method.
Never catch or throw ApplicationException.
Exceptions are an integral part of working with.NET, but far too many developers don’t think about them from an API design perspective. Most of their work begins and ends with knowing which exceptions they need to catch and which should be allowed to hit the global logger. You can significantly reduce the time it takes to correct bugs if you design the API to use exceptions correctly.
Whose fault is it?
Related Vendor Content Troubleshoot performance bottlenecks and optimize your application performance with Site24x7.
The basic theory behind designing with exceptions begins with the question, “Whose fault is it?” For the purpose of this discussion, the answer will always be one of these three:
The Library
The Application
The Environment
When we say the “library” is at fault, we mean there is an internal flaw in whatever method is currently being executed. In this context, the “application” is the code that invoked the library’s method. (This is a bit of a fiction because both the library and the application code may be in the same assembly.) Finally there is the “environment”, which is anything external to the application that can’t be controlled.
Library Flaws
The quintessential library flaw is the NullReferenceException. There is never a legitimate reason for a library to throw a null reference exception that can observed by the application. If a null is encountered, the library code should always throw a more specific exception explaining what was null and how the problem should be corrected. For parameters this is clearly going to be an ArgumentNullException. If instead there is a null in a property or field, the InvalidOperationException is usually appropriate.
By definition, any exception that indicates a library flaw is a bug in the library that needs to be fixed. That doesn’t mean there isn’t also a bug in the application code, but the library needs to be fixed first. Only then is it appropriate to let the application developer know he has also made a mistake.
The reason for this rule is many people may be using the same library. If one person makes a mistake by passing in a null where it doesn’t belong, surely others will too. By replacing the NullReferenceException with one clearly indicating what went wrong, the application developers will immediately understand what went wrong.
The Pit of Success
If you read early literature on.NET design patterns, you’ll often come across the phrase “pit of success”. The basic concept is this: make the code easy to use correctly, hard to use incorrectly, and ensure the exceptions tell you what you did wrong. This philosophy of API design guides the developer into writing correct code almost by default.
This is why a naked NullReferenceException is so bad. Other than the stack trace, which may be quite deep into the library code, there is no information to help the developer figure out what they did wrong. ArgumentNullException and InvalidOperationException, on the other hand, give the library author a way to explain to the application developer how to fix the problem.
Other Library Flaws
The next library flaw is the ArithmeticException family. This includes DivideByZeroException, FiniteNumberException, and OverflowException. Again, this always represents an internal flaw in the library method, even if that flaw is just a missing parameter validation check.
Another example of a library flaw is the IndexOutOfRangeException. Semantically it is no different than an ArgumentOutOfRangeException, as seen in IList.Item, yet it only applies to array indexers. And since naked arrays are not normally used by application code, this implies that there is bug in a custom collection class.
ArrayTypeMismatchException has been rarely seen since.NET 2.0 introduced generic lists. The situation that triggers it is… well weird. From the documentation,
ArrayTypeMismatchException is thrown when the system cannot convert the element to the type declared for the array. For example, an element of type String cannot be stored in an Int32 array because conversion between these types is not supported. It is generally unnecessary for applications to throw this exception.
For this to happen, the aforementioned Int32 array has to be placed into a variable of type Object[]. If you are working with raw arrays, the library needs to check for this. For this reason, and many others, it is better to just not use raw arrays and instead wrap them in an appropriate collection class.
Other casting problems are usually revealed with the InvalidCastException. Continuing our same theme, type checks should mean InvalidCastException is never thrown and instead the caller gets an ArgumentException or an InvalidOperationException.
MemberAccessException is a base class covering a wide variety of reflection-based errors. In addition to the direct use of reflection, both COM interopt and incorrect use of the dynamic keyword can trigger it.
Application Flaws
The quintessential application flaw is the ArgumentException and its subclasses; ArgumentNullException, ArgumentOutOfRangeException. There are other subclasess you may not be aware of including:
All of these unequivocally indicate the application code is at fault and the flaw is on the line invoking the library method. Both parts of that statement are important. Consider this code:
foo.Customer = null; foo.Save();
If this were to throw an ArgumentNullException the application developer would be quite confused. Instead it should throw an InvalidOperationException to indicate something before the current line was messed up.
Exceptions as Documentation
A typical programmer doesn’t read the documentation. At least not at first. Instead he or she will read the public API, write some code, run it, and then, if it doesn’t work, search for the exception’s message on Stack Overflow. If the programmer is lucky, the answer will be readily found there with links to the right documentation. But even still, our programmer is unlikely to actually read it.
So as a library author how can we address this? The first step is to literally paste some of the documentation into the exception.
More Object State Exceptions
The most well-known subclass of InvalidOperationException is the ObjectDisposedException. Its use is pretty obvious, yet it isn’t unusual to see disposable classes that forget to throw this exception. The usual result of forgetting this is a NullReferenceException caused by the Dispose method nulling out disposable child objects.
Closely related to InvalidOperationException is the NotSupportedException. The difference between them is easy: InvalidOperationException means, “You can’t do that right now,” while “NotSupportedException” means, “You can never do that with this class”. In theory NotSupportedException should only occur when working with abstract interfaces.
For example, an immutable collection should throw a NotSupportedException in response to the IList.Add method. By contrast, a freezable collection would throw an InvalidOperationException when frozen.
An increasingly important subclass of NotSupportedException is PlatformNotSupportedException. This indicates the operation is allowed on some runtimes, but not others. For example, you may need to use this when porting code from.NET to UWP or.NET Core, as they don’t offer all the features found in the full.NET Framework.
The Problematic FormatException
Microsoft made a few mistakes when designing the first version of.NET. For example, FormatException is, logically speaking, a type of argument exception. The documentation even says “thrown when the format of an argument is invalid”. But for whatever reason, it doesn’t actually inherit from ArgumentException. Nor does it have a place to put the argument name.
Our tentative recommendation is to not throw FormatException. Instead, create your own subclass of ArgumentException called “ArgumentFormatException” or something to that effect. This will allow you to reduce debugging time by including essential information such as the argument name and the actual value being used.
This leads us back to our original thesis about “designing with exceptions”. Yes you could just throw a FormatException when your custom parser detects a problem, but that doesn’t help the application developer trying to use your library.
Environmental Flaws
An environmental flaw comes from the fact the world isn’t perfect. This includes scenarios such as when the database is down, a web server is unresponsive, a file is missing, etc. When environmental flaws appear in bug reports two things need to be considered:
Did the application handle the flaw correctly? What in the environment caused the flaw?
Usually this is going to involve a division of labor. First off, the application developer is going to look into the answer for question number one. This doesn’t mean just error handling and recovery, it also means generating a useful log.
You may be wondering why we started with the application developer. The application developer has a responsibility to the operations team. If a call to a web server fails, the application developer can’t just throw up his arms and shout, “Not my problem”. He or she needs to first make sure the exception has enough detail to allow operations to do their job. If the exception just says “Server connection timeout”, how are they supposed to know which server was involved?
Specialized Exceptions
NotImplementedException
The NotImplementedException means one thing and one thing only: this feature is a work in progress. As such, the message for a NotImplementedException should always include a reference to your task tracking software. For example:
throw new NotImplementedException("See ticket #42.");
You could provide more details in the message, but realistically anything you write is going to be out of date almost immediately. So it is better to just direct the reader to the ticket where they can see things such as when you plan on implementing the feature.
AggregateException
The AggregateException is a necessary evil, but hard to work with. On its own it contains no information of value, all of the details are hidden in its InnerExceptions collection.
Since the AggregateException usually only contains one item, it seems logical for the library to unwrap it and return real exception. Normally you can’t rethrow an inner exception without destroying the original stack trace, but starting with.NET 4.5 there is a way to leverage ExceptionDispatchInfo.
Unwrapping an AggregateException
catch (AggregateException ex) { if (ex.InnerExceptions.Count == 1) //unwrap ExceptionDispatchInfo.Capture(ex.InnerExceptions[0]).Throw(); else throw; //we actually need an AggregateException }
Unanswerable Cases
There are some exceptions that simply don’t fit into this scheme. For example, AccessViolationException indicates there was a problem reading unmanaged memory. Well, that could be caused by the native library code or could be caused by the application misusing the same. Only thorough research will reveal the nature of this bug.
Whenever possible, unanswerable exceptions should be avoided in your designs. In some cases, Visual Studio’s static code analyzer will even go so far as to flag violations of this guideline.
For example, ApplicationException is effectively deprecated. The Framework Design Guidelines explicitly says, “DO NOT throw or derive from ApplicationException.” And for good reason; an ApplicationException isn’t necessarily thrown by the application. Though that was the original intent, look at these subclasses:
Microsoft.JScript.BreakOutOfFinally
Microsoft.JScript.ContinueOutOfFinally
Microsoft.JScript.JScriptException
Microsoft.JScript.NoContextException
Microsoft.JScript.ReturnOutOfFinally
System.Reflection.InvalidFilterCriteriaException
System.Reflection.TargetException
System.Reflection.TargetInvocationException
System.Reflection.TargetParameterCountException
System.Threading.WaitHandleCannotBeOpenedException
Clearly some of these should be argument exceptions while others represent environmental problems. None of them are “application exceptions” because they are thrown only by libraries in the.NET framework.
Along the same lines, developers shouldn’t work directly with SystemException. Like ApplicationException, the subclasses of SystemException are all over the map, including ArgumentException, NullReferenceException, and AccessViolationException. Microsoft even goes so far as to suggest you forget this exists and only work with its subclasses.
A subcategoy of the unanswerable case are the infrastructure exceptions. We’ve already seen one, the AccessViolationException. Others include:
CannotUnloadAppDomainException
BadImageFormatException
DataMisalignedException
TypeLoadException
TypeUnloadedException
These tend the be very difficult to diagnose and may reveal esoteric bugs in either the library or the code that is calling it. So unlike ApplicationException, they legitimately fall into the unanswerable category.
Putting it into practice: Redesigning SqlException
Keeping these principles in mind, let’s take a look at SqlException. In addition to network errors where you can’t reach the server at all, there are over 11,000 distinct error codes in SQL Server’s master.dbo.sysmessages. So while the exception has all of the low level information you need, it is actually difficult to do anything with it beyond simply catch & log.
If we were to redesign SqlException, we would want it broken into distinct categories based on what we expect the user or developer to do.
SqlClient.NetworkException would represent all the error codes that indicate there is an environmental problem external to the database server itself.
SqlClient.InternalException would include the error codes that indicate something is critically wrong with the server such as database corruption or the inability to access a hard drive.
SqlClient.SyntaxException is our equivalent to ArgumentException. It means that you passed bad SQL to the server (either directly or by a bug in your ORM).
SqlClient.MissingObjectException would occur when the syntax is correct, but the database object (table, view, procedure, etc.) simply doesn’t exist.
SqlClient.DeadlockException happens when there is a conflict between two or more processes that try to modify the same information.
Each of these exception types imply a course of action:
SqlClient.NetworkException: Retry the operation. If it happens frequently, contact network ops.
SqlClient.InternalException: Contact a DBA immediately.
SqlClient.SyntaxException: Notify the application or database developer
SqlClient.MissingObjectException: Have ops check to see if something was missed during the last database deployment.
SqlClient.DeadlockException: Retry the operation. If it happens frequently, look for design errors.
To do this in real life we’d have to map all 11,000+ SQL Server error codes to one of those categories, a rather daunting proposition which explains why SqlException looks like it does.
Conclusions
When designing an API, organize your exceptions around the type of action that needs to be performed in order to correct the problem. This will make it easier to write self-correcting code, allows for more accurate logs, and makes routing the problem to the right person or team much faster.
About the Author
Jonathan Allen got his start working on MIS projects for a health clinic in the late 90's, bringing them up from Access and Excel to an enterprise solution by degrees. After spending five years writing automated trading systems for the financial sector, he became a consultant on a variety of projects including the UI for a robotic warehouse, the middle tier for cancer research software, and the big data needs of a major real estate insurance company. In his free time he enjoys studying and writing about martial arts from the 16th century.The organisers of the Nations Elite Esports have announced that Kinguin are the latest invitee for the tournament along with the registration links for the qualifiers.
Kinguin join previously invited duo GODSENT and LDLC in the list of participants for the tournament, which will feature a prize pool of €25,000 (~$29,100).
The trio will be joined by a fourth invited team, who will be picked by public vote. Space Soldiers, HAVU and AGO have been proposed by the tournament organisers as possible invitees, but the community can also suggest other teams.
rallen's Kinguin recently won ESL Clash of Nations
Three of the last four participating teams will be determined by a series of regional qualifiers, held for Iberian, Balkan and Nordic teams, with the final team coming from a tournament open to all European teams.
Below you can find the dates and the registrations link for these 256-team open qualifiers:
European: November 18-19 - sign-up here
Nordics: November 29-30 - sign-up here
Iberian: November 29-30 - sign-up here
Balkans: December 2-3 - sign-up here
With Kinguin's invitation, here is how the team list for the Nations Elite Esports' debut season currently looks:I just received my second order from Notoriously Morbid and I am very excited! Here’s a quick look at what I think.
I placed an order on February 21st and February 24th. Not a bad turn around time at all! Less than two weeks between both of my orders being placed, and having them in my hand. I was able to combine my two orders so I only had to pay for one’s shipping. Very cool!
Carrie(of Notoriously Morbid) has a promotion called Free Day Friday where each Friday she has a new offer. When I ordered, each order over $10 received a free full size eyeshadow called Douglas Firs(a pressure sensitive shadow!) from her new collection. Previous offers have included free shipping, free coffin kissers, and 2 free mini eyeshadows.
My Friday order was a full size of Noble, a limited edition “lemon pound cake” coffin kisser(their lip balm), and a “strangely charming cherry” coffin kisser.
I wish you could smell through the Internet because these coffin kissers smell AMAZING. I’m kicking myself for only ordering one of the lemon ones. I am in love with citrus scents, and this one knocks it out of the park. It definitely smells like a lemon pound cake. Very sweet, but citrusy. It doesn’t give a cleaning supply smell off at all, which I was worried about. The cherry smells amazing as well. Very sweet, and true to a real cherry scent. It doesn’t remind me of medicine at all, which I was also worried about. I am very impressed with these, and wish I would’ve ordered them sooner! They feel absolutely great on the lips. I’ll post an update later on how I feel they hydrate over time, but so far they seem to be doing the trick. My lips are always extremely dry and I need a pretty heavy duty lip balm. So far, my scaly lizard lips have been loving the Coffin Kissers.
My Monday order was placed because Carrie released her new Twin Peaks inspired collection “Lost In The Lodge!” I ordered minis of “She’s Full of Secrets”, “Sometimes My Arms Bend Back”, “See You In 25 Years”, “My Log Saw Something That Night”, and “Garmonbozia”. With my free “Douglas Firs”, that makes up the entire collection! I also ordered a full size of “Big Bird Must Die” and sample sizes of “Hallowed Ground” and “Hallows Eve”. I got a free sample of Morgana and Catherine’s Woe(blush).
“Noble” is absolutely gorgeous and definitely makes me think of Donna Noble, it’s namesake. It’s a lovely matte orange with gold sparkles. The sparkles come to life over my Fyrinnae pixie epoxy, but even without primer it was quite vivid and not patchy. I plan to update with how well it blends and lasts. It is described as “Burnt orange semi matte with golden sparkles” on their website.
“Big Bird Must Die” is a mustard yellow with sparkles. It is quite sheer with no base but is very vivid over Nyx Milk and Fyrinnae Pixie Epoxy. This is a discontinued shade, which is a shame because I really like it! My daughter watches quite a bit of Sesame Street and Big Bird is such a whiner! The yellow definitely looks like a Big Bird Yellow.
“Hallowed Ground” was a limited edition Halloween color that Carrie brought back for a limited time due to so many customers asking for it. I snatched up a sample since it looked interesting enough. Wow. I wish I would’ve bought a full size. On bare skin, it is a sparkly dusty greenish brown that is pretty, but this shade is remarkable over primer. It looks so different over Milk and Pixie Epoxy! It brings out gorgeous bronze tones and looks foiled.
“Hallow’s Eve” was also a limited edition Halloween color that was brought back for the same reasons as “Hallowed Ground”. On bare skin, it looks like a dark purple/grey with lots of shimmer. Over primer, it looks like a gorgeous purple/grey with a lot of shimmer. It also has a tinge of bronze. Both of the Halloween shades definitely say Halloween to me in the best possible way.
“My Log Saw Something That Night” is the first of the new Lost in the Lodge collection. Over my bare skin, it almost looks like a matte brown, very reminiscent of bark on a tree. Over a base, it is absolutely gorgeous with lots of shimmer. I see myself using this one a lot. I’m a sucker for browns. It is described by the site as “A warm bronze with golden glimmer.”
“Sometimes My Arms Bend Back” is also from the new Lost in the Lodge collection. Over my bare skin, it’s very sheer. A light brown with quite a bit of sparkle. Over a base, it is gorgeous. It has a bit of blue over the rose brown. It reminds me of a very sparkly tree branch. I also see myself using this one a lot. It reminds me a lot of Sidecar from Urban Decay. It is described by the site as “A soft rose copper with a slight blue shift. “
“She’s Full of Secrets” is the third of the Lost in the Lodge Collection. It barely shows up on my bare skin. It looks like a pinky highlight with a teal shimmer. Over primer, it is one of the prettiest shadows I’ve seen in a long time. It’s a pink/blue duochrome, and I catch lots of green and purple as well when I shift my arm. I’m not a good enough photographer to capture just how awesome this shadow is! It is described by the site as “A sweet classic pink, but not for long. The cool blue shift overpowers the pink the more you build. “
“Garmonbozia” is the fourth of the Lost in the Lodge Collection. Over bare skin, it looks like a shimmery yellow with a blue tint. Over primer, it looks like a warm version of Sometimes My Arms Bend Back. It looks like a brown/blue or brown/white duochrome. I can’t quite decide which I’m getting from it. You definitely want a primer for it. It is described by the site as “A creamy corn yellow with a chestnut undertone and a frigid blue shift. The more you blend, the more the chestnut undertone appears. If you are really into unique shades, this one is for you.”
“25 Years” is the fifth color from the Lost in the Lodge Collection. Over bare skin, it looks like a sheer gray with pink shimmer. Over primer, it looks like a dark gray/pink duochrome. I see myself using this for darker looks. It is described by the site as “A deep taupe with rosy pink shift.”
“Douglas Firs” is the final color from the new Lost in the Lodge Collection. This is the first “pressure sensitive” shadow Notoriously Morbid has released, and also the first pressure sensitive shadow I have ever used. When you first apply it over bare skin, it looks like a light matte green. Over primer, it looks like a more vivid matte green. When you blend it, or apply more pressure via brush/finger, it turns into a deep blue/green, even over bare skin. I’m a little wary of using this in a look in case I don’t blend evenly, but once I get better at it, I see it being an awesome look. I’m very impressed with how vivid it looks blended even over bare skin. It stained my skin slightly when used over Nyx Milk and being blended to maximum blue, but came off with a bit more effort. It is described by the site as “A matte piney green that transitions into a deep blue.”
I hope Carrie continues to make pressure sensitive shadows in other colors since I don’t wear green or blue very often 🙂
I received a free sample of “Catherine’s Woe”, a blush from Notoriously Morbid’s line of Ripper’s Rouge. It is a very intense matte burnt orange. I see myself using this a lot, and definitely plan on buying a full size when I run out. I absolutely love coral and orange blushes.
I also received a free sample of “Morgana”, which I already owned from a previous order. I noticed the bag color looked different from my other sample.
I swatched both and found the new one to be much less blue than the older sample.
They are both very pretty, but definitely didn’t look like the same color. I contacted Carrie, and she said, “It’s my new blender. I was afraid it would be. that means the whole batch is going to act like that.” She immediately offered me a free replacement and threw up an announcement on her Facebook. I was incredibly impressed by how kind she was and how she was very honest and open about what happened. I let her know I didn’t need a replacement since it was free to begin with 🙂
Overall, it is really hard to pick a favorite out of all my new pretties. If I absolutely had to choose, I would either choose the Lemon Pound Cake Coffin Kisser, or Sometimes My Arms Bend Back. I see myself using both on a near daily basis. So far I’ve only done swatches but I am in love. I am way stoked that I got a sample of the Catherine’s Woe blush. Her sample sizes are totally generous, as are her mini sizes. Out of all the indies I’ve ordered from, I think Notoriously Morbid gives the biggest samples and minis. At first glance, the minis look like full sizes! I’m very glad that the Business Card that was included has a coupon code, because I definitely plan to buy again!This weekend, a huge cache of documents, over 13 million in total, were leaked and they detail the shady financial dealings of some the most prominent figures in politics and business including such high profile people as the Queen of England herself. The document dump which is being called the “Paradise Papers” detail how the wealthy hide their money all around the world, launder it, or otherwise evade having to declare their full worth, either to avoid taxes or to hide illegal dealings. And these papers name names, so the information is very damning and could lead to investigations or arrests.
So, how does this relate to crypto? Well, as we can see by this leak, the old ways of “hiding” money by the rich and famous may not work that well anymore. With all these leaks and whistle blowers, it’s only a matter of time before they get exposed for all their illegal dealings. We can also add hacking to that list, where documents are stolen and then released, exposing the wealthy even further. And how much are these wealthy people hiding in secret accounts all around the world? It is thought to be $135 Trillion or more! That’s an awful lot of money for a crypto currency that can provide these people with the secrecy they seem to need now more than ever, and that’s where I think Monero comes in.
$135 Trillion is a lot of money. And that is money that is ALREADY in secret accounts around the world. So as far as I am concerned, this is a better comparison than when people talk about Bitcoin replacing gold. People invested in gold aren’t really looking for something better. However, the owners of that $135 Trillion ARE looking for something better after the release of the Paradise Papers exposed all their hidden money.
Now, I am not suggesting that all of that money is going to poor into Monero starting today. But as a long term play, I can see the people who manage these huge amounts of money and look for secret ways to hide the cash beginning to look into Monero as a way to avoid the kind of exposure that the Paradise Papers have brought them.
Many cryptos claim to have access to a huge market with a lot of money, but that market isn’t really looking for something new, the crypto has to take over, which takes time. But with Monero and hidden money, it’s a match made in heaven, and the people hiding their money are in the process of looking for a way to secretly hide money, so this makes Monero a front runner for a long term hold.
Disclaimer – This is just my personal opinion and my own personal investment strategy. It is not financial advise.
Start trading INSTANTLY without needing to verify ID on Binance. Click here to set up your account in less than 2 minutes!Get the biggest politics 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
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn was tonight urged to go on a war footing to fight a General Election this year.
Senior Labour MP Toby Perkins believes David Cameron will quit as PM whatever the outcome of the EU referendum, likely to be held in June.
And he has warned his boss that Labour could then face a snap General Election in the autumn.
Shadow Defence Minister Mr Perkins said: “If Labour is under-prepared, divided and under-resourced we would be hurtling towards catastrophe.”
He believes his party must use elections due this May as “a dress rehearsal for the real thing”.
The Labour leader faces his first big electoral test when Scotland and Wales go to the polls on May 5 along with local authorities in England.
But Labour is bracing itself for the loss of 200 council seats in England, losing power in Wales and facing further setbacks in Scotland after infighting over Corbyn’s leadership.
Read more: If young people register to vote we can change history
Mr Perkins adds: “The party has started focusing more attention on elections than internal squabbling.
“But we cannot afford to be complacent about the scale of the challenge.”
Video Loading Video Unavailable Click to play Tap to play The video will start in 8 Cancel Play now
A shake-up to restrict the money trade unions get from members going through the Commons this week means Labour will have £8million less to fight elections.
The party predicts the Tories will have access to £19million of election funds - more than four times Labour’s £4.3 |
one that’s often tinged with a deep antipathy to the world they left behind.
As the title of his latest book makes clear—Why I Am an Atheist Who Believes in God—Schaeffer’s path out of fundamentalism was more interesting than either of these. His father moved from theology into American conservative politics, co-founding the Moral Majority movement in 1979. At first Frank tagged along. But after his father’s death in 1984, he veered into the Greek Orthodox church, directed a few B-movies—and along the way, encountered the gorgeous, terrifying universe revealed by science.
His intelligence and curiosity wouldn’t allow him to drown out that reality with ecstatic hymns, as so many of his fellows had. But because of his years staring into the abyss beneath all human feet—which you’ll recall is a real thing—he couldn’t completely renounce the Story that had banished it for us.
You might think he’d become an agnostic. But as he says in the book, “An agnostic neither believes nor disbelieves in God. I’m not that person.” Instead, he ends up frozen with one foot in each of the antonyms of God and not-God: “I believe and don’t believe at the same time.”
Agnosticism finds insufficient reason to believe either way. But Schaeffer finds both conclusions too compelling to be false. So he flips agnosticism inside out and believes both, not in alternation, but at once. He believes and he doesn’t, right now.
This is more than enough to send an atheist straight to the CAPS LOCK key, informing Schaeffer (by mustering the full faith and credit of the Oxford English Dictionary and bloody common sense) that YOU CAN’T BE AN ATHEIST IF YOU BELIEVE IN GOD.
And I have to agree with them. He’s absolutely wrong. By any sensible definition of atheism, you can’t do it. And yet it’s done.
I feel the same about a recent book title that says Atheists Can’t Be Republicans and a Virginia politician who recently said you can’t be a Christian and a Democrat—assertions disproven by the actual existence of atheist Republicans and Christian Democrats.
What these declarations mean is not that these things are impossible but that they are, in the speaker’s view, boneheadedly inconsistent. The ability of people to hold ridiculously inconsistent positions is well enough established that we ought to stop saying it can’t be done. Maybe it can’t be done rationally or consistently, but that’s another question.
Schaeffer’s position is deeply inconsistent, and frequently infuriating for that. But he’s reflecting the impossible situation in which he finds himself, trying to capture a position between two opposites, neither of which he finds he can reject.
It’s not a position I hold myself or even fully understand, but there’s a strange kind of honesty in the attempt. Remember when two ideas, both irrefutably true and absolutely contradictory, collided in the mind of Phaedrus in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance? How is Schaeffer any different?
Well for one thing, Phaedrus had the good manners to go insane.
But there’s another difference, one that makes Schaeffer’s position a little more tenable. The two ideas in Phaedrus’ head (I’ll pretend I remember what they were) were true according to the same rules, namely logical principles. But God feels emotionally true to Schaeffer, while not-God is intellectually true. Different rules. It’s like God has won a soccer game while not-God has won in backgammon, and everybody gets a trophy.
Schaeffer denies this head/heart dichotomy, but it explains things too well, and his own statements throughout the book reflect exactly that.
That’s why he can know Earth is 4.54 billion years old and believe that his dead mother arranged to have him sit next to a professional opera singer on the plane, and that her recent performances were somehow engineered to speak to his life circumstances.
That’s why he accepts evolution but seeks and finds convenient openings for the Story:
My brain is not evolved enough to reconcile the collision of my genetic imperative with transcendent experience. My brain recognizes but can’t explain how love and beauty intersect with the prime directive of evolution: survive. Nor can I reconcile these ideas: “I know that the only thing that exists is this material universe,” and “I know that my redeemer liveth.” Depending on the day you ask me, both statements seem true.
I can argue these points with Schaeffer all day. He’s really not trying hard to see past the difficulties, something Richard Dawkins has called the “argument from personal incredulity.” But reading this uniquely moving and elegantly written book, I was less interested in arguing than in watching. Most of the time, I like to sit back and watch him dance, even when I can’t imagine the tune he’s hearing. And once in a while, I can:
I realize now that my parents were often right for the wrong reasons. For instance, I feel guilt when I shout at Lucy and Jack. And when it comes to the “big sins” I would not have burned in hell for sleeping with the many women I’ve looked at longingly, but adultery would have ruined my marriage and the home where I play with my grandchildren… What I fear today isn’t God’s theoretical wrath but my family’s palpable sorrow when I hurt them.
The book has plenty of the wishful thinking commonly seen when an intelligent person tries too hard to fit reality to his or her preferences. Schaeffer admires the ability of a child to accept mutually exclusive ideas as both true, for example, something I find adorable in a four-year-old but problematic in her father, especially if he’s driving anywhere near me on the freeway. And Schaeffer leaps much too quickly on tentative findings (or wild conjectures) in epigenetics and quantum theory, not to mention simple coincidences, if they support his desire to keep believing in a beloved idea.
Science is a way of getting desire out of the way so you can focus on what’s true, and God is a way of getting what’s true out of the way so you can focus on what is desired. Schaeffer is determined to have them both. To a certain kind of mind, that attempt to have and eat his cake will just be too much to stand. But the anthropologist in me found it impossible to resist watching a human heart and mind simultaneously at war and at peace with each other over how to respond to our unbearably beautiful and deeply crappy situation.
This post is part of a roundtable on Why I Am an Atheist Who Believes in God, hosted at the Patheos Book Club here.A judge is allowing small businesses to sue the major credit card companies for forcing them to adopt chip readers at the checkout counter -- a case that could become a multi-billion-dollar class action.
The lawsuit takes aim at the nationwide upgrade to chip-based credit cards, an awkward rollout that's been annoying for stores and shoppers.
Customers have found the system confusing. And it's much slower to process transactions than the old magnetic stripe cards.
To business owners, it's a raw deal. They were forced to upgrade to expensive machines that reduce fraud but don't eliminate it. If they don't upgrade, they're penalized by the credit card companies. Stores that don't install chip readers are on the hook whenever a shopper swipes a stolen credit card -- a burden previously shouldered by banks.
These stark terms were designed by credit card companies, banks and major retailers.
The lawsuit, brought by four grocery stores in California, Florida and New York, calls it an industry conspiracy that violates fair trade practices. They sued American Express, Discover, MasterCard and Visa in California federal court in March.
The grocery store owners have yet to be granted class action status. If they are, the case could include 8 million small businesses across the United States, according to lawyers involved in the case.
They're seeking to recoup the costs of upgrading to the chip system, an estimated $6 billion, according to the lawsuit.
The grocery store owners point to something Visa CEO Charlie Scharf told analysts in 2014: that Visa met "in a room" with fellow credit card companies, trade groups, banks and select retailers to come up with a plan.
That astounded U.S. District Judge William Alsup, a former antitrust prosecutor, at a court hearing in September.
"It's remarkable... you don't get many antitrust cases where the CEO admitted they were 'in a room,'" he said, according to a court transcript. "I did antitrust cases as a lawyer. I never saw anything this good."
On Friday, the judge issued an order allowing the case to move forward. He said the case "raises a plausible and reasonable suggestion of collusion" by the credit card industry, which operated "in lockstep."
According to the grocery store owners, the industry eliminated free market competition by banding together to impose uniform penalties. If they hadn't, any single credit card company could have offered better terms.
MasterCard (MA) spokesman Seth Eisen said the company was disappointed in the judge's decision but expects to prevail in court.
He said MasterCard has a "strong case that will allow us to put this matter behind us and focus on driving our business and relationships with our customers."
American Express (AXP)declined comment. Discover (DFS) and Visa (V)did not respond to CNNMoney.
The judge has already blocked American Express and Discover from pulling the case out of public courts and dragging it into arbitration, a private system that is often seen as favorable to corporations.
Patrick J. Coughlin, one of the lawyers representing the grocery store owners, said in a statement Tuesday: "Our hope is to secure some relief for the millions of merchants -- many of them small businesses -- who have suffered and continue to suffer enormous losses from this conspiracy."Classical economics argued that eventually a stationary state or the end of economic growth was going to be reached but they did not forsee the technological change of 19century industrialization.The result was income and wealth growing by leaps and bounds.However, yet another paper - this time by Thomas Piketty and Gabriel Zucman of the Paris School of Economics - suggests it may all be coming to an end with important effects this time for wealth and inequality.
In a long, comprehensive and very detailed paper which a short blog post cannot do justice, Piketty and Zucman put together a new macro-historical data set examine wealth to income ratios over the period 1700 to 2010 for eight developed countries. They discover that the ratio of wealth to income is going up again to levels not seen since the late 18th and early 19th centuries. They find:
“ in every country a gradual rise of wealth-income ratios in recent decades, from about 200-300% in 1970 to 400-600% in 2010. In effect, today’s ratios appear to be returning to the high values observed in Europe in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries (600-700%).”
So, tomorrow is yesterday. Why? Two reasons. First, there is a long-term upward trend in relative asset prices. Whereas before the First World War, capital markets were relatively unfettered, the combination of world war in the twentieth century (which blew up a lot of capital) and policies that limited capital mobility reduced the return on capital. This by extension depressed the growth of wealth. Second, the twentieth century particularly after the Second World War and up until the 1970s saw high-income growth. However, since the 1970s, there has been a slowdown in productivity and income growth. Again, in their words: “In short: capital is back because low growth is back.” Of course, a rising wealth to income ratio could have future implications for tax policy but for that you should read the paper.
I suppose one question is whether or not economic historians several hundred years from now will view the economic expansion of the twentieth century and the broadening of wealth and income as merely a short-term aberration resulting from the industrialization phase. The role of the two world wars in “blowing up the capital stock” and setting the stage for the post war recovery and boom is also another interesting if somewhat depressing variable to contemplate. However, I think much of the post-war boom was also fueled by the baby boom – which I suppose could be seen as pent-up demand from the years of war and austerity.
The baby boom and demographics in general are important to economic history. The one variable that Piketty and Zucman don’t seem to mention in their reasons for the upward trend in the wealth to income ratio since 1970 in developed countries is the effect of an aging population. A big difference between Europe of the late 18th century and Europe today is life-expectancy: populations are a lot older now as so many more live beyond age 65. Wealth rises with age whereas working income eventually drops off so wealth to income ratios naturally will rise with age. This would make the current high wealth-income ratios less alarming from an inequality perspective than they would be in the much younger population of the late 18th century. Moreover, in the long run the inequality may be at least partially self-correcting. After all, as fertility rates fall and the aging baby boom embarks on the "Great Dying", one might expect to eventually see excess supply in assets and increased demand for labour again affecting the balance between wealth and income. However, we have to live through the short run to get there.Oktoberfest, the annual German beer bash celebrated everywhere, is a perfect excuse to try a better brew. And that doesn’t mean ordering a Heineken instead of your usual brand; instead, grab an American craft beer. It’s the trend—so much so that the industry saw a 22-percent growth in sales last year—and the libations now outsell Budweiser.
Cool, but exactly what is craft beer? Technically, it’s defined as a traditional (largely malt-based) or innovative brew created by a small, independently owned company. And sensually speaking? Mmmm. Craft beer has a rich, full taste, usually heavy on hops (a bitter cousin of cannabis) with other unique flavors.
“The beer that was around when I became of drinking age was the Wonder Bread version, this bland, fizzy liquid,” says Garrett Oliver, brewmaster at New York City’s Brooklyn Brewery. “People are now discovering that beer is the most diverse, delicious beverage in the world.”
All people? Despite the fact that some data points to African-Americans being behind the curve when it comes to the craft trend, “I don’t pay any attention to that White-guys-with-skinny-jeans thing,” says Julian Riley, president of Harlem Blue, a small NYC-based brewery.
Riley and Oliver aren’t the only Black brewers. Upstarts including Cajun Fire in New Orleans; 18th Street Brewery in Gary, Ind.; and Black Frog in Toledo, Ohio, are among the country’s 3,700 craft breweries. In fact, most Americans live within 10 miles of a brewery (find one near you here: brewersassociation.org), so enjoying these smaller batches also means supporting community.
At $10 to $12 per six-pack, these beverages are no doubt pricier than your average brand, but “We’re not talking about a $70-bottle of burgundy,” says Oliver. Yet, like wine, craft beer can truly complement food. One key pointer: “Match intensity with intensity,” counsels Cajun Fire brewmaster Jon Renthrope. “Strong-flavored foods overwhelm light-flavored beers, and vice versa.”
To learn more, read up online (CraftBeer.com, BeerAdvocate.com), check apps (UnTappd, Ratebeer) and talk to people: bartenders and cicerones (the beer equivalent of sommeliers). Listen for cues such as “hearty,” “refreshing,” “lighter,” even “sweet” or “fruity.” Visit a brewery tasting room or a brewpub for a flight, or host a tasting yourself: Put together a few “mixer sixers” of several varieties, and invite buddies to give ’em a try. Start small, be open-minded, and above all, advises Riley, “Trust your taste.”Sol Messinger was just six years old when, as one of 907 German Jews aboard the M.S. St. Louis seeking a place to escape persecution, the ship was shunned first by Cuba and then by America. He remembers sailing along the Florida coast as Miami’s city lights disappeared into the dusky distance.
Canada did not want the refugees traveling on the vessel either — “none is too many,” an immigration agent would say of Jews such as those aboard the ship in May, 1939. The St. Louis was within two days of Halifax Harbour when Ottawa, under pressure from high-ranking politicians within, refused to grant the Jewish families a home.
“Nobody wanted us,” Dr. Messinger, now 78 and a retired physician in Buffalo, N.Y., said in an interview with the
National Post
. “We were Jews, we were expendable … It was terrible — terrible, terrible — of Canada and the United States, of all countries, to not let us in.”
Turned away thrice, the ship had no choice but to journey toward an uncertain fate in Belgium. Dr. Messinger, then just a boy, would celebrate his seventh birthday en route back to the very land his parents feared spelled disaster for their only son.
Dr. Messinger said the German crew had treated the passengers “as human beings,” even offering them “big breakfasts, and ice cream with mini umbrellas pegged in the scoop.” Canada, though, would offer the family nothing.
He and his parents managed to survive the Holocaust — thanks to a “series of miracles,” he said — but 254 of the Jews turned away by the Mackenzie King government would not.
On Thursday, more than 70 years later, at Halifax’s Pier 21 — the very place where the ship would have docked had Canada welcomed it — a memorial designed by renowned architect Daniel Libeskind will be unveiled.
“It’s important to remember the mistakes the country has made,” Dr. Messinger said of the memorial, the first of its kind.
Canada’s mistake nearly cost Dr. Messinger his life: En route to France from Brussels, his mother laid on top of him to block machine-gun fire that threatened to rain from German planes overhead. Then later, just weeks after his family fled southern France for America in 1942, the French rounded up the Jews and sent them to concentration camps.
Related Libeskind to make monument commemorating Jewish refugees
Dr. Messinger said he appreciates Canada’s gesture in erecting the steel memorial, titled The Wheel of Conscience and which is part of a $500,000 project initiated by the Canadian Jewish Congress and paid for by Citizenship and Immigration Canada.
“What brilliant symbolism: the very facility through which these refugees could have entered and found refuge only to have the door slammed in their face will now feature an enduring memorial to their memory,” Mr. Libeskind, who was born to Holocaust survivors in Poland and whose projects include the Jewish Museum in Berlin, wrote in the Ottawa Citizen last fall.
For Bernie Farber, CEO of the congress, the Wheel culminates a decade of efforts to memorialize what has become known as the Voyage of the Damned.
“On this boat was the world: There were children, the elderly, young men and women, brides and grooms, teenaged romances, it became a metaphor for life,” said Mr. Farber, whose mother arrived at Pier 21 in 1933. “[The St. Louis] was the microcosm of the macrocosm of what was the Shoah.”
Mr. Farber explained that the congress has never asked Ottawa to apologize for the wrongdoings of those in power at the time — most notably Frederick Charles Blair, the head of immigration, and Vincent Massey, Canada’s high commissioner to Great Britain (and later Governor-General) who, according to the 1982 book None Is Too Many, “worked through External Affairs to keep Jews out of Canada.”
“Within [the Jewish] tradition it is not really permissible to demand apologies,” Mr. Farber said. “It is more accepted for people to do T’shuva, which means to make amends.”
National Post
kcarlson@nationalpost.comTed Cruz Rafael (Ted) Edward CruzTrump unleashing digital juggernaut ahead of 2020 Inviting Kim Jong Un to Washington Trump endorses Cornyn for reelection as O'Rourke mulls challenge MORE’s presidential campaign is betting that an old-time religious revival will deliver him victory in South Carolina's GOP primary on Saturday.
When Cruz announced Thursday that 300 Christian leaders across the state had endorsed him, it was the culmination of what the campaign has dubbed “Operation Gideon.”
ADVERTISEMENT
It’s an alliance among a close-knit group of prominent Christians in South Carolina who are leveraging their positions as faith leaders to influence their thousands of followers to join them in supporting the Texas senator for president.Among Cruz’s most influential supporters in the 300: Bob Jones III, the chancellor of the influential conservative Christian university in the state that shares his name; Ed Lofton, parish priest for an enormous Catholic church in Summerville; and the Revs. Stephen Williamson, Andy Wells and Chad Watson, who together are credited with arranging a Christian rally on the steps of the state capitol last summer that drew at least 10,000.There's also Bill Monroe, the pastor of the largest Baptist church in South Carolina, as well as Tommy Kelly and Skip Owens, the current and former presidents of the state’s Southern Baptist Convention.“This is something I’ve not seen in my lifetime,” Watson said. “You have pastors and faith leaders across the state that maybe normally wouldn’t join together — people with doctrinal differences — but for sake of religious liberty, they’re laying those differences aside to stand with Cruz.”The “Operation Gideon” tag and the 300 members it counts as activists are pulled from an Old Testament story in the book of Judges, at a time when the Bible says the people of Israel had turned their backs on the Lord.
God recruited Gideon, a young and unaccomplished man, to attack a group of idol worshippers. The Lord whittled down Gideon’s army from tens of thousands to only 300 to ensure all the glory went to God and not the army of men.
The biblical Gideonites marched on their foes armed with only trumpets and tambourines and other musical instruments. The wayward Israelites scattered at the sight of Gideon and his army, and returned to worshipping the Lord.
Cruz’s Gideonites believe the U.S. needs religious revival to save it, and they believe the Texas Republican is the only candidate who can deliver that.
“I’m a Republican, but I want the party to give us a candidate that we can vote for in good conscience, not someone who we vote for because we’re against whatever Democrat,” Williamson said. “Cruz is that guy.”
The religious leaders have held voter registration drives and personally knocked on doors.
They’re calling acquaintances and hitting the campaign’s phone banks at offices in Columbia and Greenville several times a week, where they feast on Chick-fil-A, an institution Christians have embraced for its opposition to same-sex marriage. They watch the debates together and stay for the post-game analysis.
Once a week, dozens of pastors join a conference call to lift Cruz, his campaign and the nation up in prayer. The call doesn’t end until everyone on the call has had a chance to pray.
Many will be fasting in the days leading up to the primary, a practice encouraged in the Bible during times of spiritual trial.
But the pastors say the real payoff will be in the followers they reach.
They’re not standing at the pulpit and telling their congregations who to vote for — that would run afoul of IRS rules governing nonprofit organizations.
But they’re also not hiding their support for Cruz.
The pastors interviewed by The Hill said they explain to their followers why they believe Cruz is the best candidate for Christians to support.
They say that they’re hearing countless stories from congregants who have never before voted but now plan to cast a ballot for Cruz in the Republican primary.
“My feeling is that as a pastor, we have a public office of moral influence,” said Carl Broggi, whose Community Bible Church in Beaufort has some 4,000 congregants that Cruz addressed in person last Sunday.
“My responsibility as a pastor is to show morality comes from scripture,” he said. “If the Bible is the word of God, people must understand that to vote intelligently, they must be informed by scripture. I explain to my congregation why my study of the Bible led me to support Ted Cruz.”
All of the faith leaders interviewed by the The Hill said the same factors drove them to join Operation Gideon.
They say they're alarmed by what they see as the federal government cutting into their religious liberty, citing last summer’s Supreme Court ruling legalizing gay marriage.
And they’re worried that the Republican Party might nominate Donald Trump Donald John TrumpHouse committee believes it has evidence Trump requested putting ally in charge of Cohen probe: report Vietnamese airline takes steps to open flights to US on sidelines of Trump-Kim summit Manafort's attorneys say he should get less than 10 years in prison MORE, who they view as an imposter with a history of championing secular values.
Several pastors said they don’t believe Trump has had a true change of heart on abortion. They say they don’t want a first lady who has posed nude in a magazine, as Melania Trump has done. They don’t like the real estate mogul's crude language. And they don’t believe Trump is a Christian, noting that he’s publicly stated that he’s never asked the Lord for forgiveness.
“I don’t think Donald Trump is a conservative and I don’t think he’s a Christian,” said Brad Lindsey, a church official at Gethsemane Baptist in Lexington. “If he hasn’t asked for forgiveness for his sins then he’s not a Christian. He’s tapping into anger right now and that’s all he’s got.”
Still, polls show Trump with a huge lead over Cruz and Marco Rubio Marco Antonio RubioHillicon Valley: Senators urge Trump to bar Huawei products from electric grid | Ex-security officials condemn Trump emergency declaration | New malicious cyber tool found | Facebook faces questions on treatment of moderators Key senators say administration should ban Huawei tech in US electric grid Trump unleashing digital juggernaut ahead of 2020 MORE, who are running a distant second in South Carolina just days before the election.
Some polls show Trump’s margin bolstered by majority support from self-identified evangelicals in South Carolina, who made up about two-thirds of the 2012 electorate there.
Cruz’s Christian leaders say their legions of supporters are underestimated in polls, noting that their candidate is the only one to outperform in both Iowa and New Hampshire.
Cruz’s ground game, grassroots support and evangelical backing propelled him to a record-setting victory in Iowa, even as polls showed him trailing Trump significantly heading into Election Day.
“The polls don’t show the full extent of the army we have or who we’ve reached,” said Williamson, the rally co-orgainzer. “I personally have more than 100 pastors who are close friends, who I eat supper with, and every one is voting for Cruz and they’re letting their people know that. These are not Sunday Christians. These are militant Christians and they will be voting.”
It’s been a trying week for Cruz leading up to Saturday.
His rivals have attacked his integrity, accusing him of lying and engaging in dirty campaign tactics. The Texas Republican badly needs to finish in second place in the Palmetto State to build momentum heading into the March contests in the Deep South, where expectations for him will be high.
Watson noted that he and his colleagues organized the rally that drew at least 10,000 on the steps of the state capitol less than two months after the Supreme Court had ruled on gay marriage.
He believes they can do better for Cruz on election day.
“This is what grassroots activism looks like,” Watson said. “The polls are underestimating the strength of God.”If you’re a non-violent criminal in Bay Minette, Alabama, you now have an option for how you’d like to handle your punishment: Stay behind bars… or attend the church of your choice.
Operation Restore Our Community or “ROC”…begins next week. The city judge will either let [misdemeanor] offenders work off their sentences in jail and pay a fine or go to church every Sunday for a year. If offenders elect church, they’re allowed to pick the place of worship, but must check in weekly with the pastor and the police department. If the one-year church attendance program is completed successfully, the offender’s case will be dismissed. … [Bay Minette Police Chief Mike] Rowland says the program is legal and doesn’t violate separation of church and state issues because it allows the offender to choose church or jail…and the church of their choice.
I know what you’re thinking: “Sign me up for jail!”
I’m just kidding. You’d never have to make that choice because atheists rarely go to jail.
Wait! I have another one!
I know what you’re thinking: “I’ll go to church!” [Two weeks later…] “SEND ME BACK TO PRISON!”
Wait! I have another one!
I know what you’re thinking: “I’ll take the option which involves less sodomy: Jail.”
…
How long would a service have to be in order for it to “count”? What if the criminals don’t show up for the worship music? What if they arrive late (like plenty of other Christians)? What if they openly disagree with what the pastors say? What’s stopping them from committing another non-violent act since the punishment is simply “give up an hour of your Sunday”? What if I’m a non-violent criminal and an ordained minister online — can I just start my own church?
None of those questions have been answered.
And just to flip the equation, I wonder how churchgoers in Bay Minette feel right now… their weekly ritual is now someone else’s voluntary punishment? That’s gotta make them feel like crap…
But, come to think of it, what if a church-going Christian commits the crime? This policy would not only mean that the crime would essentially be “off the books” after a year, but also that the criminal would get away without any real penalty. It’s not a punishment if you have to keep doing something you already do! To those suggesting that couldn’t happen, yes, it could. Just check out the image below from the Freedom From Religion Foundation’s “Black Collar Crime Blotter” in Freethought Today for proof. (Click to enlarge)
The only people this policy would hurt are those criminals who choose not to be religious… or who refuse to lie about their religious beliefs in order to serve a lighter sentence.
While more than 50 churches have signed up to participate in this program, no word yet on whether mosques, synagogues, or [insert wherever a local Humanist group meets] are included on the list.
But Christian pastors are excited:
Pastor Robert Gates of Christian Life Church leads one of 56 congregations participating in the effort. He predicted it would succeed. “You show me somebody who falls in love with Jesus, and I’ll show you a person who won’t be a problem to society but that will be an influence and a help to those around them,” he told the television station.
And I’ll show you several counterexamples: Catholic priests, televangelists, Jerry Falwell, Ken Ham, George W. Bush, Scott Roeder… loving Jesus does not a kind, generous, and wonderful person make.
If the goal is to save the city money — which Police Chief Mike Rowland has argued — then I can suggest a number of ways for the criminals to serve their time while actually helping the community (instead of sitting in a pew, doing nothing):
Volunteer at a local hospital
Pick up trash on the sides of local roads
Mentor students about how they can avoid making the same wrong decisions you did
Learn a trade so that when your sentence is served, you can begin working in the community.
All of those would have to be supervised, of course, but I would much prefer any of those options for non-violent criminals over having them listen to a pastor preach lies and bigotry on a Sunday morning.
The ACLU of Alabama can’t believe this is happening:
“While we certainly support alternatives to putting people in prison, Operation Restore Our Community flagrantly violates the Constitution and we intend to send a letter to Bay Minette officials demanding that this illegal program be suspended immediately. In the face of mounting budget deficits, states and local jurisdictions are right to embrace cost-effective alternatives to incarceration that hold people accountable while better addressing the root causes of crime. But it is a fundamental principle of the Establishment Clause that the government cannot force someone to attend church. When the alternative to going to church is going to jail, the so-called “choice” available to offenders is no choice at all.” — Olivia Turner, Executive Director of ACLU of Alabama
And, as usual, FFRF is already on the case (PDF):
It should also be obvious that attendance at religious services is not akin to community service. The false “choice” that would be given to offenders between church attendance and jail/community service is not a true choice at all. Our concerns relate only to the church attendance issue and are in no way a criticism of bona fide probation conditions or sentencing plans which permit community service or work release in lieu of jail time.
This is government endorsement of religion and it needs to come to a stop quickly. Then again, it’s Alabama… this is the state where former state Supreme Court Chief Justice Roy Moore put up an illegal Ten Commandments monument because he believed his religious beliefs were more important than the law. So keep complaining and maybe someone in Bay Minette will hear you.
If you’d like to send a message to Police Chief Rowland, his contact information is on the department’s website.
If you do contact him, don’t be a dick. And let us know what you wrote in the comments.
***Update***: It seems something similar is happening in Idaho.The Toronto Raptors are closing in on the signing of free-agent point guard John Lucas III, according to sources close to the process.
Sources told ESPN.com the sides are in advanced discussions to finalize the terms on a multiyear deal to add Lucas to a backcourt rotation that had already been strengthened earlier this month by the Raptors' acquisition of Kyle Lowry.
One source said Wednesday the Chicago Bulls, who've employed Lucas for much of the past two seasons, were resigned to losing the 29-year-old.
With the Raptors and representatives for point guard Jose Calderon working together on trying to find a new home for Calderon via trade, as ESPN.com reported last week, Lucas has been targeted by the Raptors to potentially serve as Lowry's primary backup when Calderon -- who wants a fresh start -- moves on.
The Raptors, though, have insisted for weeks they were unwilling to release Calderon via the amnesty clause and will now keep the Spaniard -- after the passing of Tuesday's 2012-13 amnesty deadline -- as he enters the final year of his contract (valued at $10.6 million) as a possible trade chip between now and the NBA's annual trade deadline in February.
After playing in Italy, Spain, China and the D-League, Lucas gained an NBA foothold over the past two seasons and had some big moments in the spring after the Bulls lost Derrick Rose to injury for long stretches.
Lucas scored 25 points against Washington in January in his first NBA start, and then scored 24 points to spark the Bulls to a home win in March over eventual champions Miami with Rose sidelined by a groin ailment.Photo courtesy of Bellator MMA
Perhaps no promotion did MMA as a spectacle better than Pride Fighting Championships. Now Bellator is taking a page from the now-defunct Japanese organization for its upcoming “Dynamite” event.The Scott Coker-led promotion announced on Thursday that popular former Pride FC voice Lenne Hardt will serve as ring announcer for the Sept. 19 event.Hardt, a voice actress, began working for Pride in 2000. When Zuffa purchased the promotion in 2007, Hardt took her talents to Dream, where she continued in the same role. Hardt’s unique delivery, which includes high pitched screeching and her trademark long rolling “R,” made her something of a cult favorite in the MMA world.Bellator 142 “Dynamite” takes place at the SAP Center in San Jose, Calif., and is headlined by a light heavyweight championship bout between Liam McGeary and Tito Ortiz. The event, which will feature an MMA cage and kickboxing ring in the same venue, also includes a four-man 205-pound tournament to determine the next title challenge.[Update 2] A new The Witcher 3 Blood and Wine gameplay video and details on a returning characters have also come in. You can find everything here.
[Update] Now that the embargo is up, the teaser trailer and additional details on The Witcher 3 Blood and Wine expansion have emerged online. NeoGAF user Dmax3901 has put together a summary of all the revealed information.
The Numbers:
• 30+ hour adventure.
• Over 90 new quests.
• Over 40 new points of interest.
• Dynamic points of interest system. Killing bandits in their main hideout will affect the number of enemies in surrounding camps.
• 14000 lines of dialogue (Hearts of Stone had 6000).
• 100 individual pieces of armour (including new Witcher sets).
• More than 20 new monsters.
• New Game + maximum level increased to 100. Armour and Weapons:
• New Witcher armour class ‘Grandmaster’.
• New armour merchant who is the only one able to craft this level of Witcher gear.
• Can get blue, hooded armour from Witcher 2, armour from Witcher 1, Ursine Witcher armour with furry pauldron that was in the artbook but cut from the main game.
• More than 30 new weapons.
• Can now dye armour. Dyes can be bought from a merchant, crafted or looted. Only obtainable in Toussaint. Pink is among the colours.
• You can acquire the golden, plumed armour of the Touissant knights, and the same goes for Roach! New Mutation System:
• Mutations. 12 new abilities. Mechanic is unlocked through a quest started by a letter from Yennefer. Examples: Signs can have critical hits causing the enemy to explode, instead of dying Geralt is healed and has damage immunity, opponents knocked down by AARD freeze and die instantly. Can only utilise one at a time.
• The UI resembles Witcher 2’s character customization screen. Basically they’re super strong abilities/stat boosts that require mutagens and skill points to unlock. Can only pick one at a time but you have to unlock earlier ones to get the others.
• Despite unlocking it at level 34+ (recommended level to venture to Touissant) the system and anything you’ve unlocked carries over to New Game+ so you won’t have to unlock it again. |
the Clinton case.
Graham said he wants to find out whether Comey had "predetermined the result" of the case involving Clinton's emails.
"He needs to come back to committee," Graham told Fox News.Forget the jockeying of the 2016 Republican wannabes. Put aside the splits within the House GOP. It's all about Wyoming right now.
Liz Cheney is running for the Senate in Wyoming. AP Photo/Cliff Owen
That's because Liz Cheney, the daughter of the former vice president, announced on Tuesday that she will primary Wyoming Republican Sen. Mike Enzi in 2014. Cheney's decision immediately turns the Wyoming race into the highest profile intraparty fight on the ballot heading into next year.
The race has it all. A high profile national name who recently moved to the state with a clear desire to run for elected office. An incumbent senator who has weighed retirement in the past. Did we mention Liz Cheney is running? And that her dad is perhaps the most divisive politician (or ex-politician) in the country?
While it's beyond question that Wyoming is set to get more national attention than it has since a guy named Dick Cheney emerged out of the state and into Congress, it's less clear what Liz Cheney's rationale is for running.
Unlike other past intraparty fights in places like Utah, Indiana and Alaska where Senate Republican incumbents lost to more conservative challengers, it seems unlikely that Cheney will gain much traction by casting Enzi as insufficiently conservative. Enzi was the 8th most conservative senator in 2012, according to National Journal's vote ratings and has a 93 lifetime rating from the American Conservative Union. (Enzi's Heritage Action score is a slightly less robust 67, the lowest of the state's three federal representatives.)
The direction Cheney seems to be headed is to cast the race as a generation battle. "I think that part of the problem in Washington today is seniority," she told the Associated Press Tuesday. "I don't see seniority as a plus, frankly."
Cheney is 46, Enzi is 69. While that clearly puts them in different generations, it's not nearly the same sort of generational choice that Newark Mayor Cory Booker, 44, was seeking to set up when he challenged then New Jersey Sen. Frank Lautenberg, who was 89 years old at the time. (Lautenberg passed away in June.)
The truth of the matter is that Liz Cheney is running because she wants to be in elected office and this is her best chance to get there in the near term. (In case you need proof of that fact, remember that Liz Cheney bought a home in Wyoming last year after spending many years in Virginia.)
Despite lacking a clear contrast — other than age (kind of) — Cheney represents a major problem for Enzi. Her candidacy has drawn (and will continue to draw) massive amounts of media attention due to her last name. And she will almost certainly outraise the incumbent who told reporters Tuesday afternoon that "money raising’s always been a problem for me." Enzi had less than a half million dollars in the bank as of the end of June.
"Generally I would say that an incumbent with a solid record and without scandal would be safe, but usually that incumbent isn't going up against someone with a name like that," said one veteran Republican strategist. The source expressed some level of surprise about the Cheney candidacy but added, "She isn't the kind of person to wander off on a wild goose chase. I suspect she has research that shows it is doable."
Regardless of the final outcome, Liz Cheney's ambition has turned Wyoming from a forgotten race to a centerpiece of the 2014 election cycle overnight.
Fixbits:
Attorney General Eric Holder condemned “stand your ground” laws Tuesday
Former secretary of state Hillary Clinton stopped short of weighing in on the George Zimmerman trial.
President Obama picked new NLRB nominees. And the Senate confirmed Richard Cordray to head the CFPB.
Obama also said NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly would be "very well qualified" for the job of Homeland Security secretary.
Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-Ill.) wants on a congressional hearing on the shooting death of Trayvon Martin.
Boston City Councilor-at-large John Connolly (12 percent) and state Rep. Martin Walsh (11 percent) lead the crowded Boston mayoral candidate field, according to a new Suffolk poll. But 40 percent of likely voters say they are undecided, so the race remains well up in the air.
Jennifer Crider, a longtime aide to House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), will join Microsoft’s worldwide public affairs team as a director of public relations.
Must-reads:
"John McCain helps avert Senate showdown" — Paul Kane, Washington Post
"Watch him pull a USDA-mandated rabbit disaster plan out of his hat" — David A. Fahrenthold, Washington PostBy Jason Compton
Forget traditional three-day delivery. These days the pressure is on retailers and wholesalers to deliver in hours.
So it’s no surprise that warehouse tech is top of mind for manufacturers. Forty percent of them will buy advanced robotics or autonomous vehicles for their warehouses within three years, according to International Data Corp.
This past July, Honeywell went a step further, buying a top robotics outfit. Before it acquired Intelligrated for $1.5 billion, Honeywell had a deep but narrow presence in warehouse tech, building, for instance, handheld barcode scanners. Now it’s at the forefront of a new warehouse automation wave.
Intelligrated’s combination of robotics hardware, control software and deep integration experience made it a prime takeover target. Its acquisition helps Honeywell dramatically increase its footprint in the warehouse automation and control (WA&C) market.
“Intelligrated [Honeywell] is well positioned for the boom in warehouse automation and control being driven by e-commerce,” said Clint Reiser, director of supply chain research at ARC Advisory Group.
Through this acquisition, Honeywell now offers mechanized material handling product lines under Intelligrated’s Alvey brand, which focuses on palletizing and de-palletizing: packing cases onto pallets for outbound shipping and unpacking arriving pallets for warehouse storage. Alvey focused in recent years on optimizing the handling of goods that bear minimal secondary packaging.
Product-handling equipment has driven Intelligrated to the top in the crucial business of packing and unpacking pallets.
“Intelligrated is well equipped to help customers automate a facility, looking at their storage and throughput plans, and crafting a full solution including conveyors and sorting equipment,” Reiser said.
Intelligrated already provided solutions to demanding high-volume retail players like Amazon and Walgreens, shippers including both UPS and the U.S. Postal Service, and up-and-coming manufacturers like Tesla. Honeywell’s large sales force and industrial reach will give Intelligrated’s solutions greater exposure to companies that are reconfiguring their supply chains to keep pace with industry leaders.
Unsurprisingly, some of Intelligrated’s chief competitors are also being snapped up by larger organizations. Logistics and warehouse automation solution developer Dematic was recently purchased by Kion Group for $2.1 billion. Robotics maker Kuka is in the process of being acquired by Midea for over $5 billion. Other key rivals include baggage-handling-focused Vanderlande, which also competes in warehouse materials handling, and Beumer Group, which has a solution footprint similar to Intelligrated’s.
“Because of the massive shift in retail and the growth of e-commerce, companies are reconfiguring and buying new warehouses, and buying new equipment,” Reiser said. “It’s a real opportunity for growth.”
Folding Intelligrated into Honeywell’s Sensing and Productivity Solutions is almost certainly not the end of Honeywell’s WA&C growth spurt. Honeywell has been steadily increasing its presence in warehouse automation, notably through its 2012 acquisition of a voice-activated software system for warehouse workers called Vocollect. With its purchase of Intelligrated, though, Honeywell has made a statement: It has arrived on the warehouse automation scene in a major way.
Jason Compton is a writer and reporter with extensive experience in enterprise tech. He is the former executive editor of CRM Magazine.
Certain Oppenheimer Funds may hold some of the companies mentioned.
The mention of specific companies does not constitute a recommendation by any particular fund or by OppenheimerFunds, Inc.
OppenheimerFunds Inc is not affiliated with Forbes.
Visit The Upside to read more stories about innovative companies and creators making a difference in the world.by admindelta
The story of On Grid Off Grid Solar Power System.
When people try and get acquainted with solar photovoltaic energy and its benefits, there are some basic queries that come up in the mind. Most important are the following two questions:
What will happen to the excess electricity produced during the day? What if, due to some reason, no electricity is produced during the day?
The answer to these questions is easy once we understand some of the crucial facts about Solar Power. Solar Power systems can be categorized into two parts:
Off Grid Solar Power System On Grid Solar Power System
Off Grid Solar Power System –
An Off-Grid Solar power system or standalone photovoltaic system is when your system is not connected to the utility grid and you are producing your own electricity using solar energy. These systems generally use a battery bank to store the electricity for use when needed.
Benefits of using such system are:
Makes you completely independent from external energy supplies.
Reduces your expenditure.
Saves you from outrageous grid connection charges.
On Grid Solar Power System –
An On-Grid Solar Power System or grid-connected PV power system is an electricity generating system that is connected to the utility grid. When connected to the utility it helps in case of shortage, or no generation of electricity. However, if the electricity produced is in excess as compared to the requirement at the moment, the excess energy can be sold back to the utility grid. This difference of energy can be tracked using a meter connected to your solar PV system. These systems generally use an inverter and one or two meters according to state utility rules.
The meters connected to the solar system can help you track the difference of energy used or sold back to the utility grid. There are two types of Metering:
Gross Metering Net Metering
Gross Metering :
In gross metering, entire energy generated by the Solar energy System is fed back directly into the utility grid. In this case, the benefit to the owner is based on feed-in tariffs proportional to the energy fed back to the grid.
Net metering:
Net Metering involves tracking the net energy between selling of the generated energy and buying of energy from utility supplier. This involves the usage of a single meter (or two meters, as per state rules) which has the facility to record both selling and buying of electricity. Under the net metering system, the excess energy generated by the solar energy system is sold back to the grid instead of being stored using a battery. However, when there is a deficit in the power generated by the system either during the night or on a cloudy day, power is drawn from the grid. On the basis of the amount of electricity drawn or sold back to the utility, the supplier decides whether to charge the user or give credit or pay the amount to the user. The incentive and charges vary from state to state.
Benefits of using such system are:
Financial Benefit to the owner of solar power.
No dependence on battery.
Watch this space for more – we’ll bring you all that you need to know about Net Metering and how it benefits you!A new report from San Francisco-based community advocacy group Causa Justa::Just Cause released today details just how deeply gentrification is reshaping San Francisco and Oakland. In a sweeping report detailing the economic, social and even public health impacts of gentrification, Causa Justa::Just Cause hits back at the narrative of the seeming inevitability about gentrification. Rather, the authors of “Development Without Displacement” argue, gentrification is the outgrowth of public disinvestment in marginalized communities and years of unjust economic development policies.
In 2011 median rental prices in Oakland neighborhoods in late stages of gentrification surpassed rental housing prices in even Oakland’s historically affluent neighborhoods like the Oakland Hills. Between 1990 and 2011, median rental housing prices in San Francisco neighborhoods in the late stages of gentrification increased 40 percent. What’s more, the rental price increases and housing crisis have fueled the displacement of blacks and Latinos from both cities.
Between 1990 and 2011 the proportion of black residents in all Oakland neighborhoods fell by nearly 40 percent. Perhaps more stunning, black homeowners were about half of north Oakland’s homeowners in 1990. By 2011 they were just 25 percent of the neighborhood’s homeowners. In San Francisco’s Mission district, the historically Latino neighborhood has lost over 1,000 Latino families and seen an influx of 2,900 white households, the report authors write.
“The Mission right now is in chaos with evictions,” Causa Justa member Cecilia Alvarado says in the report. “There is also nowhere to go. The units available are for people who earn $6,000 to $7,000 more than I do per month–not for middle-class or working-class families, which had always been the status of the Mission–families with kids.” Indeed, to longtime residents of the historically Latino neighborhood in San Francisco, the Mission is a new and strange place these days.
The report also includes policy recommendations to slow and reverse gentrification, ranging from housing protections to equitable economic development in all communities. The underlying message is that displacement is a choice, not an inevitability.At a coal mine near the town of Soma in Manisa province, 274 miners have reportedly been killed so far and about 120 others are still trapped underground after a fire of unknown origin broke out on May 13. Turkey’s Energy Minister Taner Yildiz said this disaster could potentially become the worst in Turkey’s history, signaling that the number of deaths could possibly pass the 1992 mine gas explosion that killed 263 miners near the Black Sea port of Zonguldak.
Turkey’s state-run Anatolia news agency reported that 3,000 miners have been killed and more than 100,000 wounded in work accidents since 1941 in Turkey. The Turkish Statistical Institute also shows in its last report that the most common labor accidents occur in mines and quarries. These accidents are mainly linked to poor safety conditions and improper inspection mechanisms.
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, however, said in a press briefing after visiting the accident zone on May 14 that the Soma mine had received a pass in March on security and health regulations. “Let’s please not pretend such incidents do not occur in mines,” Erdogan said. “These are ordinary developments. There is something like labor accidents in literature. This is part of the nature of this business.”
Erdogan also listed a number of high casualty mine accidents in the late 19th and early 20th century in countries such as the United States, the United Kingdom, France and Japan. “In England, 204 miners died after a landslide in 1862, 361 miners died in 1866 and 290 miners died after an explosion in 1894,” Erdogan said. “The most deadly mine accident occurred in France in 1906 where 1,099 miners died. More recently, 687 miners died in Japan in 1914. In China, 1,549 miners died after a mixture of gas and coal poisoned them in 1942. Again in China, 684 miners died in 1960. And a mine gas explosion resulted in the death of 458 miners in Japan in 1963. … In the United States, too, which has the most advanced technology, 361 miners died in 1907."
While Erdogan also announced that a judicial investigation into the Soma tragedy has already started, his approach to consider these accidents as being ordinary and referring to some accidents from the past received mix reactions. Some eventful protests have taken place in Istanbul and Ankara. Yet, this is not the first time Erdogan expressed this opinion. He also said in May 2010, after a mine explosion that killed 30 miners in Zonguldak, “Death is the fate of miners” — provoking many on social media to rally against Erdogan.
As if trying to disprove that it is not miners' fate to die underground, Turkey’s mass-circulated daily Posta reported on May 14 that as a leading coal-producing country, Germany has only seen three miners killed in the last two decades. “While all the mines in Germany are state-controlled, Turkey is turning over these mines to subcontractors and as a result the death toll triples,” it wrote.
Erdogan Kaymakci, head of the Zonguldak branch of the Union of Chambers of Turkish Engineers and Architects, told Al-Monitor, “Miners' health and well-being are pushed to secondary importance when these mines are privatized or subcontracted, as their primary concern is only about making more profit.” Kaymakci complained about those who express sheer sadness after the funerals take place. “We remember the condition of mine workers on days like this, but we have been trying to convince the authorities to improve the working standards based on the latest scientific work to no avail.”
Indeed, Turkey’s main opposition Republican People’s Party proposed a motion to be discussed at the General Assembly in October 2013 specifically drawing attention to the safety conditions of the Soma mine, asking a parliamentary inspection commission to be established. The other opposition parties — the Nationalist Action Party (MHP) and pro-Kurdish People’s Democracy Party (HDP) — supported the motion when it came to the floor on April 29. Images and videos have circulated on social media on May 14 showing the Justice and Development Party (AKP) deputies chatting to each other while CHP Manisa deputy Ozgur Ozel raised the issue of mining safety, brandishing a miner’s hard hat. AKP deputies rejected the motion.
Erdogan said in the May 14 news briefing that the CHP deputies proposed this motion only to change the country's agenda, and that there was nothing about Soma in that motion. However, the transcript of the parliamentarians discussing the issue on that day show there is reference to Soma 38 times. Filing this motion soon after a small fire took place in the same mine in Soma, CHP parliamentary group Deputy Chairman Akif Hamzacebi said, “We are requesting the formation of an investigation commission to look into the causes and reasons of the labor accidents and the deaths in the mine in Soma.” Muzaffer Yurttas, AKP Manisa deputy, however, fiercely objected to this motion, arguing that the opposition was trying to paint the ruling party as being against workers' rights, especially in the wake of the May Day celebrations, and argued that the AKP has brought nothing but freedom and democracy to the country, including to those wearing headscarves and the media.
All evidence points to this tragedy adding to the further polarization of the country, and that little or nothing will be done to improve working standards of miners. Still though, Erdogan announced three national days of mourning and ordered flags to fly at half-staff while the fear of a rising death toll remains.READER COMMENTS ON
"Bush Admin War on U.S. Troops Continues: Pentagon Contracts Pet Crematorium for Fallen Service Members"
(32 Responses so far...)
COMMENT #1 [Permalink]
... Dredd said on 5/10/2008 @ 4:26 pm PT...
Our second cat that DreddsGirlfriend and I rescued from the feral realm is dying. It is the devastation cat cancer. She was doing very well, but death has some quickie reversal aspects to it. My heart is very scarred from the deaths I have seen in these wonderful pets I tried to save. I really would not mind being cremated at a pet crematorium, because I think that in many aspects animals are superior to humans. But it is an individual thing, some animals are full of hatred and ill will. Some humans too. But from the standpoint of warrior worshippers, who generally don't think that much of animals, this seems to be an extreme dis to them. I would not do that to a soldier, even tho I can never be one, so yes Brad, this is not left, it is right.
COMMENT #2 [Permalink]
... Yourkidding said on 5/10/2008 @ 4:35 pm PT...
Talking about notm entioning something. This story made the news because the Sec. of Defnese is making sure this doesnt happen and will give the families of the fallen HEROS a choice and will pick up the tab. Brad, how do you sleep lying to people everyday?
COMMENT #3 [Permalink]
... Dredd said on 5/10/2008 @ 5:31 pm PT...
Yours #2 You must learn to take things in context, and get a bit intahnashonal dude or dudette. For instance, these words:
Sue Scott plays all the female parts (Comodee or Comedy?) would cause some wrong wingers to cry "lesbian". Butt o reilly yours, its just a cowboy bond band.
COMMENT #4 [Permalink]
... Dredd said on 5/10/2008 @ 6:03 pm PT...
Speaking of push ah and poll ah... Joe "Zell Miller" Lieberman just checked out McFeign's family jewels (his "bearings") and announced that they were all there. Obama, if you remember, had suggested that McFiegn has "lost his bearings" by getting dirty and saying "Hamas wants Obama to win". Well, lets just hope the Scrotum Court headed up by the neoTurds (Scrotlea, et alia) don't have to squeeze out another erection (speaking Japanease of coarse).
COMMENT #5 [Permalink]
... Dredd said on 5/10/2008 @ 6:43 pm PT...
Heros now hear this... heros now hear this:
The man picked by the John McCain campaign to run the 2008 Republican National Convention resigned Saturday after a report that his lobbying firm used to represent the military regime in Myanmar. (McNews). What McFeign, the great white hope, uses lobbyists? Who but a great blogger would support that? You can't fool me on voting because you can fool me on McFeigh. Oh fuck off greenhorn. I was in jail for freedom before you stopped sucking your thumb bitch.
COMMENT #6 [Permalink]
... GWN said on 5/10/2008 @ 6:52 pm PT...
# 1 Dredd. "I think that in many aspects animals are superior to humans." I think I am beginning to agree. The world would get along just fine without us on it.
COMMENT #7 [Permalink]
... Dredd said on 5/10/2008 @ 7:51 pm PT...
GWN #6 Yep, but if we could get our shit together, the animals, the earth, and humanity would rejoice and live a better life... Me and my animals hope, pray, and struggle for that for all of us here on this sooooooo tiny a globe in this sooooooooo not tiny space we are in... the usaverse... love and peace to all crematoriums...
COMMENT #8 [Permalink]
... GWN said on 5/10/2008 @ 8:00 pm PT...
Maybe if we had left the Native Indians alone or allowed them to guide us...well who knows, maybe we would appreciate the land, the animals, and take wisdom from what they knew... but we took their children at the age of seven,(Canada) from their parents and put them in "English" schools, mostly Catholic, some died and were buried without the parents knowing where they are or even that they died. I don't resent our Native Indians not having to pay taxes. WE OWE THEM that at least. #2 Brad probably snores when he sleeps. like most of us over forty... We have to ask Desi.
COMMENT #9 [Permalink]
... 72dawg said on 5/10/2008 @ 8:06 pm PT...
Yourkidding #2, Yourwrong. The point is not about the crematorium but about the way that the news has been reported for the past 16 years. The military officials only said they would look into it, as reported below.
US war dead cremated in same facility as pets: Pentagon
COMMENT #10 [Permalink]
... GWN said on 5/10/2008 @ 8:06 pm PT...
Scrotlea, et alia, Loved that Dredd LOL Who's Brad voting for... He said not Obama or Clinton, who is still pissing in the wind...so I have to know!!!
COMMENT #11 [Permalink]
... Dredd said on 5/10/2008 @ 9:21 pm PT...
GWN #10 Ok... but give me some time... no way to figgur it out before he does... right left middle??? luv ya GWN...
COMMENT #12 [Permalink]
... Nunyabiz said on 5/11/2008 @ 7:32 am PT...
Personally I think those that are both ignorant enough to not see through the blatant lies of the Bush administration and the ENTIRE 110th Congress and don't have the intestinal fortitude to simply say NO! to mass murder & the total destruction and eternal contamination by radiation of an entire country that has done nothing to us are actually the ones that are dishonoring the PETS not the other way around. When this all first started I had sympathy for the soldiers, I no longer do. How can anyone not expect such as this from the Bush administration?
These people are nothing but 21st century Nazi's.
COMMENT #13 [Permalink]
... Big Dan said on 5/11/2008 @ 7:32 am PT...
"Conservative Media Begin Plans to Ignore Incident as Soon as Possible..." THAT is the most important sentence in here! We've got to expose that the corporate media is not "liberal" like the fascists' spokesmen have been paid to repeat!
COMMENT #14 [Permalink]
... lanah said on 5/11/2008 @ 10:31 am PT...
How do we know that the pentagon has not been cremating untold numbers of US soldiers, who have no family to look out for them? How do we know they have really been reporting the truth about how many they have cremated. Judging from history, we know that the pentagon does not tell the truth. If it were only 200 soldiers, why did then need to use a pet cremation services. If they weren't doing anything sinister, why did they suddenly halt this when it came to light? Why does this scream Mob covering up the bodies to me??
COMMENT #15 [Permalink]
... Linda said on 5/11/2008 @ 10:55 am PT...
In listening to the video of Morrell do his damage-control thing with this issue of a private funeral industry contractor contracting out to a pet mortuary to incinerate the remains of some of our dead Iraq war vets, I heard one of the press people ask, "What's insensitive about that? What's the problem there?" Anybody want to guess who owns that voice? I swear it sounds like Dana Perino. Also, I have an unrelated question: I remember watching the video at your site about the touch screens being manufactured in Asia, and I remember watching the video about the US company and its employees who refused to approve the hanging chad ballots that were used in PBC in 2000. Is this one video, or two? I can't remember. Please help me out.
COMMENT #16 [Permalink]
... Agent 99 said on 5/11/2008 @ 11:00 am PT...
Linda Search the archives for "Dan Rather". It should get you to the video in no time. Oh, here... faster....
COMMENT #17 [Permalink]
... Linda said on 5/11/2008 @ 11:11 am PT...
Yes, 99, I have the link to the video about the touch screens being manufactured in Asia. What I'm asking is, does that video also contain the story about the company in America that manufactures paper ballots and whose employees refused to approve the ballots that were used by PBC in the 2000 election? I don't want to have to watch the whole video to find this answer, if I can help it. Thanks. {Ed Note: Yes. It has it. All of it. --99}
COMMENT #18 [Permalink]
... Agent 99 said on 5/11/2008 @ 11:20 am PT...
The specs for the punch holes in the ballots for that election were wrong. Employees complained. Were given some song and dance about adjusting for moisture affects. Inspectors at the company repeatedly nixed the bad batches, but the batches were put back into circulation anyway. Someone was determined to get bad ballots into Florida in 2000.
COMMENT #19 [Permalink]
... Linda said on 5/11/2008 @ 12:01 pm PT...
Muchas gracias. I just wanted to make sure I had that included in my links in the post I made at my site this a.m.
COMMENT #20 [Permalink]
... Robert said on 5/11/2008 @ 1:34 pm PT...
The logical result of a Republican administration's fetish for the destruction of government by "contracting out" shows up in the care of the remains of our fallen heroes in the flag drapped coffins the media "doesn't respect." in photographs.
COMMENT #21 [Permalink]
... greggp said on 5/11/2008 @ 3:26 pm PT...
Just imagine: you take your beloved recently deceased pet to be given a respectful cremation, and you get back a bag in a little box that is contaminated with radioactive residue from spent uranium fuel used as artillery shells in Iraq, because soldiers were cremated in the same furnace.
COMMENT #22 [Permalink]
... Big Dan said on 5/11/2008 @ 5:32 pm PT...
Watch the video, here's the guy's first answer to the question of why they are even apologizing, and did they or did they not cremate soldiers in a pet crematorium: "We have absolutely no evidence whatsoever at this point that any human remains were at.....at all, ever mistreated....were ever not cremated....were they were supposed to be cremated...ummmm...that said, the secretary believes that it is inappropriate....uhhhhh....even if though.....uhhhhhh.....permissible under the rules and regulations....aaaaahhhhhhhhh.......to cremate....urrrrr....ahhhhhh.....our fallen....OUR HEROES....IN A FACILITY THAT ALSO CREMATES PETS!"
COMMENT #23 [Permalink]
... Big Dan said on 5/11/2008 @ 5:35 pm PT...
He also says, in the beginning, "not co-located"...doesn't that crack you up when they make up these words and phrases? Did you EVER say "co-located" or "not co-located" or ever hear anyone in your LIFE ever say that???
COMMENT #24 [Permalink]
... Big Dan said on 5/11/2008 @ 5:36 pm PT...
He says, "were ever not cremated", too!
COMMENT #25 [Permalink]
... Bamboo Harvester said on 5/11/2008 @ 8:44 pm PT...
Wilber ~ This story smelled of subterfuge or sheeplespeak right from the start... Furthermore I'm insulted... I haven't decided wether I want to be cremated in a place that
COMMENT #26 [Permalink]
... Agent 99 said on 5/11/2008 @ 10:26 pm PT...
I've heard the term "bi-located"... being in two places at one time.
COMMENT #27 [Permalink]
... Disillusioned said on 5/12/2008 @ 1:06 pm PT...
'co-located' is actually used a lot in big corporations, for example: "Design engineering and planning are going to be co-located in the new building to facilitate coordination between the groups." That said, it seems a bit strange with the 'low fatality rate' that the repugnants think this war has cost that the military has resorted to pet-crematoriums. I suppose they were the lowest bidder, and thats the way the buck rolls.
COMMENT #28 [Permalink]
... Dredd said on 5/12/2008 @ 3:11 pm PT...
Lets not forget the obvious, the military oil complex thinks that we are all their pets. But that is not the end of the story, because some of us really love and care for our pets. That is not what I mean, some people think animals are junk they can do whatever they want to to them whenever they want to. In short they treat pets soldiers like a red-headed step child.
COMMENT #29 [Permalink]
... Dredd said on 5/12/2008 @ 7:45 pm PT...
Agent 99 #26 I wish you would stop drinking and start drinking... you bi-hicc... :0)
COMMENT #30 [Permalink]
... Agent 99 said on 5/12/2008 @ 8:10 pm PT...
Dredd, see comment #25.
COMMENT #31 [Permalink]
... Dredd said on 5/12/2008 @ 9:27 pm PT...
Agent 99 #30 I can't see when you're drinking that stuff...
COMMENT #32 [Permalink]
... Bamboo Harvester said on 5/16/2008 @ 8:28 am PT...Navy Secretary Ray Mabus has driven a women’s uniform revamp, but now Congress is looking to stall some of those changes and accusing the Navy of ignoring its evaluation process to speed them through.
The move would extend the window for female chiefs and officers to buy the re-styled combination covers that resemble those worn by men, and put a halt to new choker whites and crackerjacks until the Navy provides a report on its uniform changes. These changes prompted an outcry from women officers upset they'll have to pay out of pocket for the style changes.
The House Armed Services' mark-up of the fiscal year 2017 National Defense Authorization Act includes a section just for the Navy's uniforms,
"The committee is concerned that recent changes to Navy female service dress uniforms, uniform covers, and other non-operational uniform components were not consistent with the Navy's standard processes for evaluating uniform items, including user test groups that represented a broad spectrum of service member locales and operational specialties, out-of-pocket expenses to service members, including members of both the Active Forces and Reserves, and the inability for the Navy to identify an operational necessity driving this uniform change during a time of fiscal constraint," the House Armed Services Committee wrote in a mark-up of the 2017 National Defense Authorization Act.
That concern is consistent with feedback from many Navy women, who tried and didn't like the new uniforms. Officers also complained of the expense of replacing their existing uniforms.
"A lot of us have wondered how the cover and chokers were pushed through so quickly, and then when we ask about our khaki pants, we are told that that will take time to go through the process," a female O-5 said, asking that her name be withheld for career concerns.
The House’s bill would push the required wear date for the combination cover from October to October 2020, which the O-5 said would make a significant difference.
× Fear of missing out? Fear no longer. Be the first to hear about breaking news, as it happens. You'll get alerts delivered directly to your inbox each time something noteworthy happens in the Military community. Thanks for signing up. By giving us your email, you are opting in to our Newsletter: Sign up for the Navy Times Daily News Roundup
"I spent almost $200 on the one I have now and it has been barely worn," she said of the so-called bucket-style cover. "I really don't want to spend another $200 for something I may have to wear three more times before I retire."
And more time to replace her existing dress whites would be significant, the commander said.
"The uniform changes are also weighing heavily on whether I want to put on O-6 or retire, so it is a retention issue for me," she said. "A few more years before having to waste money on bogus uniform items would push me to stay in a bit longer."
A spokesman for Mabus declined to comment on pending legislation.
Two spokesmen for the Navy secretary did not Mabus spokesmen had not responded to emails and phone messages seeking requests for comment via phone and email on Friday afternoon.
'Gender-neutral' under fire
The House's action would put a hold on a host of changes rolling out of the next few years, laid out in NAVADMIN 236/15.
Women at boot camp will begin receiving restyled blue crackerjacks in October, followed by the white version in October 2017.
Senior enlisted women have until 2020 to make the switch with their dress whites, while junior enlisted women have until that date to get blue crackerjacks, followed by the white version by October 2021.
For women at the Naval Academy, who over the past few years have transitioned to combination covers and choker dress whites, 2016 graduation will see a new, restrictive uniform policy: No skirts.
The move didn't sit well with many midshipmen or academy graduates.
At the Officer Women's Leadership Symposium outside Washington, D.C., on Thursday, an academy mid stood up to voice her frustration with the pants-only policy in a question-and-answer session with the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Air Force Gen. Paul Selva.
"Uniforms are designed to take away some of our identity," Selva said. "Part of it is about taking choice away, and I don't mean that to be flip. That is why we call them uniforms and not costumes."
However, he added, "I don't like the idea that we would use uniforms to strip people of their identity."
For the female O-5, the graduation uniform policy is a 180-degree turn from her own commissioning day in Annapolis.
"When I was a mid, it was mandated that we wear skirts to show that there was a significant number of us graduating," she said.Obama administration spearheads attack on auto workers
17 February 2009
General Motors and Chrysler are scheduled to submit restructuring plans to the White House today that include a drastic reduction of auto workers' wages and benefits and the elimination of tens of thousands of jobs.
The outgoing Bush administration and Democratic-controlled Congress last December mandated the auto companies to submit plans to restore profitability as a condition for $17.4 billion in emergency loans. Under the terms of the |
to change your name to Christopher Skye?"
"Yes ma'am," says Novak, 27.
By now the restless audience has stilled to listen. "He's a girl?" a woman whispers to her friend.
No criminal record, the judge notes, and nothing to indicate you're doing this to duck a debt. She looks at a driver's license photo that could be his pretty sister. Then she peers over her glasses at him.
She says she is glad to be part of this moment. "You look every bit Christopher," she says. Papers are signed, dated, stamped. "You are now a young man, officially on paper," the judge says. The whole thing takes only a few minutes.
He walks out of court with his girlfriend. The rain has stopped. Legally, he is who he feels like he has been for a long time. He has a name that sounds like himself. He is, officially, Christopher.
• • •
In Florida, as long as it's not for nefarious purposes like avoiding a bankruptcy or hiding a criminal record, you can change your name for pretty much any reason. Pay your fee ($414 in Hillsborough County, $395 in Pinellas), submit your paperwork, show up for your court date. You don't even need a lawyer.
A Miami-Dade judge recently granted a local artist's request to henceforth be known as Leonardo da Vinci. A Florida man with the last name Dudah once legally made his first name Zippidy.
Often, name change requests are about restoring former names after divorces or making sure the name someone has been using matches the one on his birth certificate. But at this moment in history — when even small- town America knows Bruce Jenner became Caitlyn and the president himself has weighed in on bathrooms in schools — judges are seeing more of another kind of name change on their dockets: Transgender people who want their names to reflect not the sex to which they were born, but the one with which they identify.
Because the required forms don't ask why someone wants a new name, it's difficult to say how many gender-based requests are sprinkled amongst the hundreds that pass through local courtrooms each year. But on both sides of Tampa Bay, judges say the numbers are up.
"There have been more over the last year or two than I had previously seen," says Pinellas-Pasco Circuit Judge Jack Helinger, who has been on the bench eight years. Among his cases have been teenagers, who must have the consent of both parents.
Some local judges handle gender-based name changes at the bench or move them to the end of the docket to avoid any reaction from the audience. A petitioner isn't required to bring documents from a doctor specifying details of transitioning — counseling, hormone therapy, surgery — though judges say they often do.
For the unfamiliar, transgender issues can be uncharted territory: terms like nonbinary, pangender and — instead of Mr., Mrs., Miss, Ms. or a gender-neutral honorific used in Britain, Mx. (It's unclear how wide usage could be here, though the term was added to Merriam-Webster Unabridged in April.)
An August conference for Florida judges included a class on transgender matters in court. One question: How do they properly address someone standing in front of them asking for a name of a different gender?
Miss or Mr.?
He or she?
"I don't want to insult anyone," says Hillsborough Circuit Judge Michael Scionti, elected to the bench in 2014.
The simplest solution: Ask. "I'll ask, 'Jonathan Smith, how do you prefer the court address you?' And they'll say, 'Judge, I prefer 'Miss Smith,' " Scionti says. "And that seems to be working well."
It sounds simplistic that people in court should be called by the right name and pronoun, says Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Scott Bernstein, chairman of the Florida Supreme Court Standing Committee on Fairness and Diversity. "But you wouldn't believe what impact that has on a litigant," he says.
As the Trans and Youth Program Coordinator at Metro Health, Wellness & Community — a St. Petersburg and Tampa nonprofit that began as an HIV service organization and provides LGBT primary care, therapy, counseling and support groups — Lucas Wehle finds himself helping two or three people a week negotiate the legal name- change process he has been through himself.
"Especially lately," says Wehle, 24.
He goes through the paperwork with them step by step and sends them to the police department for fingerprints for the required background check. He tells them to get copies of birth certificates and, "I don't know, your cat's middle name" — to make sure nothing's missing.
His mother cried when he changed his name. His father wanted him to wait. They have come around since, he says.
"Names are super important," he says.
Changing your name is a turning point, Wehle says. But it can also be as practical as the cashier who wouldn't let him pay for his lunch because of the feminine-sounding name printed on his card.
"Most of the time it's ignorance," Wehle says. But on occasion, "you'll find the anger," too.
• • •
Transgender name changes tend to get granted without much fuss.
But earlier this year in Augusta, Ga., Superior Court Judge J. David Roper declined to change the name of a college student from Rebeccah Elizabeth to Rowan Elijah Feldhaus.
"I don't know anybody named Elijah who's female," the judge said, according to a court transcript. "I'm not going to do that. I've never heard of that. And I know who Elijah was, one of the greatest men who ever lived."
Months later, he ruled similarly in the case of a transgender man who wanted to legally become Andrew Baumert, the name by which he said everyone already knew him. The judge refused. "My policy has been that I will not change a name from an obviously female to an obviously male name, and vice versa," he said.
The judge did say he could "live with" the petitioner picking a "gender-neutral" name and suggested Shannon, Shaun or Bobby. "Even Morgan is now transgender," Roper said. "Jamie, whatever."
Baumert declined. Both cases are on appeal.
But this resistance appears to be the exception and not the rule.
"Most states have treated transgender folks like they treat all other people before them asking for a name change," says Beth Littrell, senior attorney with Lambda Legal, the national LGBT legal advocacy group that's handling the appeals. They are hopeful about the legal precedent these cases could set. A decision in the Elijah matter is expected by April.
• • •
How do you pick a new name for the rest of your life?
Obviously, the decision is intensely personal. Some people try on names with friends or support groups and discard what doesn't fit. Some peruse baby names popular now or when they were born. Some take the names of relatives or famous people. Some ask their parents: What would you have called me if I had been a boy? If I were born a girl?
Others say they have quietly carried around what seemed like their real name for years.
Whatever it is, "you need to identify with it," Wehle says.
Once a high school football star and homecoming king, Gina Duncan is now the transgender inclusion director for Equality Florida in Orlando, helping businesses and corporations develop fully inclusive transgender policies and procedures.
Here is how she got her name when she started to transition from male to female a decade ago:
"For some reason, the trend seemed to be you chose the most flamboyant name that you thought was the most feminine," she says. She picked Tiffany. "I must have known four different Tiffanys that were transgender" at the time, she said. (Others report picking names considered hyper-masculine, like Phoenix.)
Over dinner, she told friends. "They all kind of turned their noses up and said, 'You don't really look like a Tiffany.' " Someone said she looked Italian — maybe a Gina.
"It made a lot of sense in that my old name was Greg," she says. "I became Gina."
"It was all very random. But it had a lot of meaning for me."
She also remembers snickers in the courtroom the day she made it legal. It came from court personnel.
• • •
Advocates say a legal name change can be an important psychological, social and emotional step — particularly given a transgender population in which a stunning 41 percent report having attempted suicide. It's a population that also reports high rates of discrimination and harassment.
A name that matches your gender identity — and how you look, dress and present yourself — is "a very simple way that the world validates you as who you are," say Mira Krishnan, a Michigan neuropsychologist and diversity consultant who has worked on LGBT issues. "It has a sense of feeling right."
"It's funny — people will say to me, 'I forgot what your name was before,' " says Krishnan, who legally changed her name two years ago. "I do, too."
Some won't speak their former name. It's called "dead-naming" when someone else insists on using it.
"When I use my birth name, it's kind of like lying," says JJ Martinez, a 27-year-old Tampa college student who came out as a transgender man at 19. "Pretending to be somebody I've really never been."
Novak, the Plant City petitioner who hopes to become a chef, says a new name is like saying goodbye and then welcoming who you are.
"Your happier self," he says.
Transgender activists say that carrying around a name that doesn't match how a person looks can even be dangerous. It can attract the kind of attention "that can lead to harassment, abuse, even violence," says Littrell of Lambda Legal.
According to the National Transgender Discrimination Survey, 40 percent of respondents reported being harassed when they used an ID that did not match their gender expression. Fifteen percent were asked to leave an establishment. Three percent said they were assaulted or attacked.
"It's not like you wake up one day and say, 'Oh, this is who I can be,' " Martinez says. "Nobody would choose to do something that could get them killed."
Judges say they see the weight of this in court.
"I've heard from enough transgender folks who tell me the day they get their name change — something which they celebrate like you and I might celebrate a birthday — they view this as almost like a rebirth for them," says Judge Bernstein.
"I sense some relief," says Judge Scionti.
"Sometimes," says Judge Helinger, "it is truly moving on to another chapter of life."
• • •
He got to the Hillsborough courthouse ready to become Jeremiah Josiah "JJ" Martinez and leave Tiffany Lynn behind three hours before his hearing was supposed to start. He wore a suit — dress for success, his mother always said — prompting a woman in the courtroom to consult him for lawyerly advice in her divorce.
The bailiff said he was last on the docket. By the time his case was called, he was shaking.
The judge asked why he wanted this. He said he wanted his name on the college degree he was about to get, and one day on his children's birth certificates. Later he would remember she smiled. Granted.
Here is what happened afterward:
"Have you ever seen this thing where a guy excuses himself from a meeting, goes in a room and does a little dance?" he says. "I did that in the hallway."
Contact Sue Carlton at [email protected]Over the past six weeks, multiple reports and rumors have hinted that Google is building an ad blocker into its Chrome browser. The company today set the record straight regarding its plans, which are not quite what the speculation suggested.
Google has joined the Coalition for Better Ads, a group that offers specific standards for how the industry should improve ads for consumers — full-page ad interstitials, ads that unexpectedly play sound, and flashing ads are all banned. Chrome will stop showing ads (including those owned or served by Google) on websites that are not compliant with the Better Ads Standards “starting in early 2018.”
In other words, Google will use Chrome to cut off ad revenue from websites that serve low-quality ads, as deemed by the aforementioned standards. That means the browser’s built-in ad blocker will be taking an all-or-nothing approach: All ads blocked if one ad doesn’t follow the standards or all ads allowed if all the ads follow the standards.
The hope is that this will stymie the usage of add-ons and extensions that block all ads outright. Google acknowledges that this kind of ad blocker hurts publishers that create free content (like VentureBeat) “and threatens the sustainability of the web ecosystem.” Interestingly, despite the fact that Google makes the vast majority of its revenue from ads, the company says it sees this type of selective browser ad blocker as the natural evolution of pop-up blockers.
But the Chrome ad blocker coming next year isn’t the only thing Google is doing. The company is also launching the Ad Experience Report, a tool that provides screenshots and videos of annoying ad experiences to help sites find and fix issues. Developers can re-submit their site for review once the problematic ad experiences have been addressed. For a full list of ads to use instead, Google recommends that publishers visit its new best practices guide.UPDATE #16 1/06/2016: For information regarding a helper tool for Dead Island: Definitive edition, please read this post.
NEW! I’ve released an updated version of DIH for Dead Island: Riptide. You can read about (and download) it from here: http://www.theplaywrite.com/tools-and-utilities/tweak-visual-settings-controls-and-performance-with-dead-island-riptide-helper/
UPDATE #15 22/09/2011: v1.94 beta, out now for the brave! I finally managed to track down the crash problem that was causing issues for so many people.
This update also fixes a crucial bug with the save game backup feature – it is strongly recommended you update to v1.94 beta if you use this feature and please, DO NOT use any of the save backups you’ve created with versions of the tool before 1.94 beta because they won’t work!
Fixed a critical bug with the save game and backup feature. This now also backs up the “remotecache.vdf” file, which contains important size and timestamp data.
Fixed a bug that would cause Dead Island Helper to crash on non-Administrator accounts and accounts without application compatibility enabled.
UPDATE #14 22/09/2011: v1.93 beta is available for download. Hopefully people will have less (or no) issues with this version. Changelist below:
Added extensive error handling – hopefully we’ll get more constructive information when something goes wrong.
Added “Create diagnostic file”. This option will produce a simple text file on your desktop that contains some useful debug information. I can use this info to help troubleshoot problems, so please use it when you contact me!
Added “Launch via Steam” checkbox, under “Play Dead Island”. When this checkbox is set, Dead Island Helper will launch the game using the Stream protocol (steam://) when you click “Play Dead Island”. Movies will still be enabled (unless you disable them with “-nologos” in the launch properties). Use this option if things don’t work quite right when running the game directly via “Play Dead Island”.
Added “Clear all settings” option. This will clear the settings folder, game directory and all non-tweak related settings from Dead Island Helper’s memory and restart the program. This will give you a clean slate to work from when using new versions.
Dead Island Helper will automatically exit on startup unless it detects the correct settings folder, or you’re able to manually select the correct settings folder.
Dead Island Helper will no longer demand administrative privileges when it runs. However, you may need to use “Run as Administrator” if some features do not work.
UPDATE #13 19/09/2011: v1.91 beta has just been uploaded. Here’s what’s new:
Added a save game and profile backup and restore. Once activated, you can press F5 in-game to create a backup of your save game and profile (up to a maximum of 10, at which point, the Helper will replace the oldest backup with a new one). Important: This is not a quick-save! It only backs up what the game has saved, in case it becomes corrupted.
Added black screen fixes – one changes the “Monitor” value in Video.scr, while the other disables Desktop Composition while Dead Island is running. These aren’t guaranteed to fix every black screen issue under the sun, but it should help with those caused from having more than one monitor.
Slight bug fix for the vertical synchronization tweak. Shouldn’t have cased problems for a majority of cases.
UPDATE #12 18/09/2011: Released v1.9 as a beta! It contains some experimental features that have been tested as much as possible on a single machine. However, to make sure it’s as good as possible, I’ve released it as a beta. Changelist follows:
Removed the process priority enforcement from v1.8.
Reverted to the old keyboard hook-based micro-stutter fix as it is more reliable. The way it works has been tweaked so it should consume less CPU cycles (not that it was ever processor-intensive).
Settings restore points: It is now possible to set restore points for your settings. This feature will take a snapshots of your “Documents\DeadIsland\out” folder, compress them as a ZIP file, and store them in “Documents\DeadIsland\Restore Points”. Note that snapshots must be taken / restored manually. The snapshot feature at this stage does not save “Disable event logging” or “Enable micro-stutter fix”
Added “Fix auto-equip delay” tweak.
Added “Rebind hardcoded instances of the Use key” tweak. If you’re using “F” for something other than “Use”, this is the tweak for you. Limited to alphanumeric keys for now.
UPDATE #11 17/09/2011: Changes in v1.81:
Replaced the keyboard hook-based micro-stutter fix with a FilterKeys one. Should fix any issues people have been having with weird sound or framerate issues when this tweak is active.
Updated the disable bloom, weapon refraction and dust tweaks to use the files in Data02.pak. This should hopefully fix the issues people have been having where effects seem to disappear while these tweaks are active
The auto-update feature can now be disabled
Laid some groundwork for an in-game save feature. Should be in for v1.9
Added a periodic check for the Dead Island process that will set the process priority to “Normal” if it ever drops to “Below Normal” or “Low”
Because of the updated code for the bloom, weapon refraction and dust tweaks, you will need to reapply them using the tool.
UPDATE #10 15/09/2011: Changes in v1.8:
Split up the categories a bit more. FOV and motion blur moved to “Camera Tweaks”
“Disable in-game audio” removed. I had so many reports of it not working, and I can’t provide support for it, so it’s gone
Added an option to force the max refresh rate. Settings for 59Hz, 60Hz, 100Hz and 120Hz are available
Auto checks for updates. The tool now checks to see if a new version is available and, if so, lets you know. That’s the call it’s doing to the internet. It does it once on start-up. I’ll add an option to disable the check in the next version
I added the head bob tweak, but it didn’t seem to do anything for me, so I’ve disabled it for now.
I should note I’m no longer providing support for people who can’t get the tweaks working because the configuration folder is “apparently” wrong. It seems to be an issue only with less-than-wholesome versions of the game, and being a developer myself, I have no interest in supporting that behaviour.
UPDATE #9 14/09/2011: Minor bug fix release, v1.7a. It addressed a crash on program start-up. This would happen if the Dead Island registry settings could not be found.
UPDATE #8 14/09/2011: New version, we’re up to v1.7 now. No new tweaks, but some significant structural changes and a few bug fixes.
Smart tweak detection: Dead Island Helper now reads edited files for changes and intelligently sets the enabled / disabled state of each tweak. Now you can see exactly what tweaks you’ve set – even ones you didn’t activate with Dead Island Helper!
Alternate configuration folder option replaced with custom folder selection. Users can now hunt down the exact directory configuration settings are stored. Don’t worry, it still tries to autodetect them if it can
Autodetection of the game’s main directory via the registry
Fixed a bug that would require the user to constantly re-enable the micro-stutter tweak in order for it to work
Added a “Start with Windows” option
Added a “Play Dead Island without intro movies” option. Start the game directly from the Helper! This option will also set Dead Island’s CPU priority to “Normal”
Dead Island Helper now starts on the lowest possible CPU priority setting to minimize any interference with the game while it’s running
UPDATE #7 13/09/2011: Version 1.6 is now available! I’ve made quite a few changes under the hood to make the program more powerful and user-friendly. Here’s a changelist for the curious:
Tweaks have been split up and categorised. The result is a cleaner interface and an easier time finding the tweaks you want
Alternate settings folder support. You can now switch between My Documents and your game folder, if you’re finding that the tweaks aren’t working
Added the following tweaks: Disable event logging, Disable in-game voice and Enable simple shadows
Small reminder when Video.scr is read-only or writeable and the ability to easily switch between these settings
The program should now prompt the user for administrative privileges
Renamed the keystroke repetition feature to make its usefulness more obvious
Corrected a typo with the field of view settings
Added a Close menu option along with Exit program
Various checks and balances for missing files and directories
Added a passive check for the micro-stutter fix so it only limits keyboard repetition while Dead Island is running.
Fixed a potential memory leak in the file extraction rountine
UPDATE #6 12/09/2011:It seems some people are having trouble getting the tweaks to work. I’ll be investigating the issue the moment I have the opportunity. FYI, I can’t, and won’t, be troubleshooting issues with pirated or cracked versions of the game.
If tweaks don’t seem to be applying, you may need to run the program with administrator privileges. To do this, please see the following guide: http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/11841-run-administrator.html.
UPDATE #5 11/09/2011: Okay, last update for today, I promise. Changelist follows:
The tweaks menu no longer closes automatically when you check/uncheck an option
Shadow maps: You can now set the shadow map resolution to 512, 1024, 2048 or 4096
Field of view: Expanded selection of values ranging from 62.5 (default) to 90 degrees
Added an option to enable overcast weather
Fixed a bug that could cause the program to crash when selecting non-option menu items
UPDATE #4 11/09/2011: The fun never stops. Version 1.4 is available now, and allows you to change the weather to overcast. You can now also reselect your Dead Island folder, if you somehow managed to choose the wrong one initially.
UPDATE #3 11/09/2011: Yet another update! We’re now at version 1.3. Here are the changes:
Added an option to enable vertical syncronization
Added an option to disable dust
Added an option to disable the desaturation effect
Disabling bloom and weapon refraction now affects front30.ppfx and indoor30.ppfx
Thanks to the hard work of the folks over on the Dead Island Steam forum for isolating the files and locations for these changes.
UPDATE #2 11/09/2011: I’ve uploaded a new version, which removes the routine that detects if Dead Island is running in the foreground. So the program is no different to something like X-Mouse (actually, it’s even less intrusive than X-Mouse). I’ve done this to minimise any chance of this resulting in a VAC ban.
UPDATE 11/09/2011: People have been asking a few questions about the tool, here’s what I can say.
Will it get you VAC banned? It’s highly unlikely. The tool doesn’t modify any of the game files directly, which is what VAC looks for. It simply extracts the required files from the game’s data packs, puts them in the Dead Island folder in “My Documents” and makes the necessary alterations.
Now, the game does install a keyboard hook and does run a routine to detect if Dead Island is running in the foreground. If it does detect DI, it prevents multiple keystrokes from being processed, otherwise, it lets them through. It doesn’t send keystrokes, inject code or do anything else bot-like, so I’d be very surprised if it resulted in a VAC ban.
Does the helper need to be running while I’m playing? Only if you use the “Prevent keystroke repetition” option, as it installs the keyboard hook. All the other options, like overriding the field of view, disabling motion blur, etc., work without the helper running once they’ve been set.
Any other questions, don’t hesitate to ask!
UPDATE 10/9/2011: I’ve uploaded a new version, 1.1, which allows you to also disable bloom and weapon refraction.
So, Dead Island.
It’s 6:30AM in the morning here and I have yet to sleep, so I’m going to make this quick and bed-shaped. Spent the last couple of hours putting together a little helper app for the game to address some of the problems people have been complaining about.
Here’s what it can do:
Remove stuttering / jerkiness caused by repeated keystrokes… without using Filter Keys
Fixes sluggish mouse in menus
Disable / enable SSAO shader for increased performance on some configurations (NVIDIA only)
Disable / enable motion blur, as some people just don’t like it
NEW in v1.1: Disable / enable bloom and weapon refraction
Depending on how popular this tool proves to be, I might add in more stuff like removing bloom and weapon refraction. For now, it addresses the bigger issues. Well, the ones that bothered me.
Grab it below, and extract it wherever you like. Run it, and then right-click the little green tree that appears in the notification area (near the time and date). To enable the advanced options, the Helper needs access to the data packages to extract and alter the required config files.
Don’t worry, if you’ve already extracted some and made your own tweaks, the app is smart enough to just edit those, rather than overwrite them. It can also undo any changes it makes, so you’ve got nothing to lose, other than your sanity from not trying it.
Requires the.NET 2.0 Framework, which anyone running Windows XP SP3 and above should have.
Simply extract it anywhere convenient (it doesn’t have to be your Dead Island folder), and run the program.
Posted in Gaming, Tools and utilities
Tags: bugs, dead island, fix, fps, frame rate, free, motion blur, patch, performance, ssao, stuttering, tweaksBaikonur, Chernobyl, Transnistria … The pictures of Hélène Veilleux are part of an attempt of questioning the real, exploring the concept of « Zone » : these spaces, whether real or fictional, where what we take for granted is a little less … where certainties crumble, giving way to something certainly … Other.
With this photoset she brings you to the land of stone giants … Bulgaria
IPSOLONI
In the Bulgarian mythology, well before the appearance of human beings, the earth was inhabited by a race of giant named the Ispolini.
It is difficult not to invoke these mysterious figureheads while walking the site of the « Founders of the Bulgarian State Monument / Паметник 1300 години България » in north-eastern Bulgaria.
Since 1981, perched on the heights of the town of Shumen,
this huge monument visible 30km round, commemorates more than 1300 years of Bulgarian history. The sculptors then in charge of the project, Krum Damyanov and Ivan Slavov, gave to kings and heroes once the appearance of these towering giants of stone, echoes of the past forever frozen in concrete
More info: ladentdeloeil.netBUDAPEST (Reuters) - Prime Minister Viktor Orban will ask the EU to finance half the cost of Hungary’s border defense measures to keep out migrants, an aide said on Thursday, days before a court ruling on Hungary’s rejection of the bloc’s migrant quotas.
FILE PHOTO: A barbed wire is seen in front of a European Union flag at an immigration reception centre in Bicske, Hungary June 25, 2015. REUTERS/Laszlo Balogh
Migration policy has been the focus of deep division within the 28-member bloc, with hundreds of thousands of refugees arriving in Europe, largely from conflict zones in the Middle East and Africa.
Orban’s chief of staff, Janos Lazar, said Orban would write to European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker on Thursday, asking the European Commission to contribute about 400 million euros.
He said Hungary, its borders with Serbia and Croatia fortified with a fence, police and troops, “was protecting all the citizens of Europe from the flood of illegal migrants” and it was time the EU helped Hungary as it did Italy, Greece and Bulgaria.
“Double standards cannot be applied,” Lazar told a news conference.
REFUSING ASYLUM SEEKERS
Hungary’s request comes just days ahead of a ruling by the top EU court in a case which Hungary and Slovakia launched against the obligatory relocation of refugees across the bloc.
There is a chance the court will dismiss the challenge by the two east European countries after its Advocate General Yves Bot rejected procedural arguments presented by Bratislava and Budapest that obligatory quotas were unlawful.
The two states - backed by their neighbor Poland - wanted the court to annul a 2015 EU scheme to have each member state host a number of refugees to help ease pressure on Greece and Italy, struggling with mass arrivals across the Mediterranean.
Lazar said he did not want to comment on the case before the ruling but reiterated that Hungary retained the right to decide whom it wants to admit and allow to settle in the country.
In June the European Commission also launched a legal case against Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic for refusing to take in asylum seekers.
Orban, one of the EU’s toughest opponents of immigration from the Middle East, has been campaigning against migration for several years. His tough rhetoric goes down well with his rightwing party’s voters ahead of elections in April 2018. Orban’s Fidesz has a firm lead over the opposition in polls.
In 2015, hundreds of thousands of migrants fleeing war and poverty passed through Hungary en route from the Middle East and Africa to western Europe.
There are currently less than 700 migrants in the country, of whom about 430 are kept in two closely guarded container camps on the Serbian border.Canonical developer Michael Hall has published today a short update on Snap packaging for the Ubuntu Linux operating system, showing us how easy it is to package any software in the new Snap format.
For those of you not in the loop, the Snap package format was invented by Canonical specifically for the Snappy Ubuntu Core operating system, a slimmed-down, re-architected version of Ubuntu Linux engineered for deployments in embedded and IoT (Internet of Things) devices.
Starting with the Ubuntu 16.04 LTS (Xenial Xerus) release, Canonical has surprised the community and implemented out-of-the-box support for Snap packages in the popular Linux kernel-based operating system so that package maintainers get a head start and prepare their software projects for the Snap format.
The other day, we reported on the upcoming features of the Ubuntu MATE 16.10 (Yakkety Yak) operating system, about which project leader Martin Wimpress informed us. One of these new, major changes brought by it was the adoption of the Snap package format for the MATE desktop environment.
We forgot to tell you that, by offering Snaps, software developers will be able to bring users the latest versions of their applications as soon as they're out, without the delays of a few days or even weeks implied by the Debian packaging and the.deb file format.
Krita 3.0 Snap package coming soon
The example presented by Martin Wimpress in his announcement about Ubuntu MATE 16.10 adopting Snap packages to offer users the latest MATE version as soon as it's out was a simple calculator utility called Galculator. However, Canonical's Michael Hall has given us today a much bigger example of Snap packaging, for the Krita 3.0 digital painting software.
"Snap packages aren't just for calculators," said Michel Hall. "Today I snapped up the pre-release version of Krita 3.0 direct from upstream. It wasn't nearly as difficult as I expected either, it took longer to find the right dependencies and to compile than it took me to create the snapcraft package configs."
So this should be a good enough example for software developers who want to package their apps as Snaps for Ubuntu Linux. To get started with Snap packaging, please check out the official documentation provided by Canonical. As for the Krita Snap package, Michael Hall will personally help the Krita devs build their own Snaps for Krita 3.0 and publishing it in the store.Websites that rely on the Tor anonymity service to cloak their server address may be leaking their geographic location and other sensitive information thanks to a setting that's turned on by default in many releases of Apache, the world's most widely used Web server.
The information leak has long been known to careful administrators who take the time to read Tor documentation, but that hasn't prevented some Tor hidden services from falling victim to it. To plug the hole, darkweb sites that run Apache must disable the mod_status module that by default sets up a server status page displaying a variety of potentially sensitive information about the servers. Details include the number of requests per second sent to the server, the most recent HTTP requests received, CPU usage, and in some cases the approximate longitude of the server.
It would appear some hidden services still haven't figured out that many Apache installations display the data by default. In a blog post published over the weekend, an anonymous poster wrote:
I've discovered several such exposures over the last six months, reporting them wherever a contact was provided. And it's not just static pages or small personal sites that are vulnerable. Even sites where user privacy is absolutely imperative show negligence in this regard. Toward the end of 2015, I found a popular.onion search engine that had failed to disable the status module. As you might imagine, the result was not pretty. I reported the flaw, and it was fixed within a few hours. A fine response, but it shouldn't have been necessary in the first place. It's a little ridiculous that such a basic server misconfiguration could be so dangerous. Forget 0days, traffic analysis, and crypto attacks; it's simple mistakes like this that bite the hardest.
Finding vulnerable servers is as easy as appending /server-status to the base onion address of the hidden service. Turning off the default setting isn't complicated, either. It involves disabling the mod_status module using the a2dismod status command.Tesla just keeps making cool things. On the top of the list is its newest addition to the lineup, an all-electric semitruck. Oh, that might sound like a dumb idea—but I don't think so. Just consider how much stuff is shipped back and forth across the country. Clearly a train would be more efficient, but trucks also play a large role. It seems like the Tesla semi might be able to make two improvements over a traditional truck. First, the electric truck will clearly reduce emissions (depending on the energy source to charge these things). Second, with more onboard automation it is likely these semis will be significantly safer than their diesel counterparts.
But what if the Tesla semi also had solar panels? Elon Musk already has a whole company devoted to solar energy—why not just combine and conquer? Tesla and SolarCity are already teaming up to make solar panels, home batteries, and electric cars a unified energy system. Wouldn't slapping some solar panels on top of this truck's surface area make the thing more efficient? You can only learn by trying—so I'm going to estimate the effect of solar panels on the roof of the trailer.
How Much Power from the Roof?
How much power and how much energy (those are two different things) could you get from solar panels on the trailer? First, I guess I should point out the difference between power and energy. Power is the rate that you would get energy from the sun. At the surface of the Earth, the light from the sun produces about 1,000 Watts per square meter. In terms of energy, this is 1,000 Joules every second (assuming the panels are 100 percent efficient—which they're not).
The average power a solar panel produces depends on several things. Bigger solar panels provide greater power (that seems obvious). But it also depends on the efficiency and the angle at which the sunlight hits the panel. The best panels [available today are around 20 percent efficient](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_panel, and they work best when the light hits perpendicular to the panel.
Using those assumptions, let's get some values to estimate power for a solar semi.
First, I need to estimate the size. I'm going to say that the solar panel covers the entire top of a standard semi trailer. Since there are apparently different standard sizes of trailers, I am going to say this one is 2.6 meters wides and 15 meters long for a total area of 39 square meters. Second, I need both the time and average incident angle for the sunlight. I am going to use a time of 8 hours at 60 degrees from vertical. This is obviously an oversimplification of the problem, but good enough for a rough estimate. Oh, also I will use the efficiency of 20 percent.
From the area, sunlight angle and efficiency, I can calculate the average power:
Since the total energy is just the product of power and time (in seconds), I get an energy of 112 x 106 Joules (112 MJ). But is that enough to keep this truck trucking?
How Much Energy in the Tesla Semi Battery?
In order for the trailer solar panel to be meaningful |
uge period of Polish history. Khmelnytsky’s memory is a mixed one in the minds Ukrainians who have both lauded him as a hero and condemned him as a traitor. He is known to have allied with the Crimean Tatars and given them free reign over much of the Ukraine in search of slaves to sell in the Turkish market. Perhaps more importantly, he brought Moscow into Ukrainian affairs after the signing of the Pereyaslav treaty in 1654, which the Russians interpreted as meaning the Cossacks were swearing allegiance to them. In the end, the revolt saw the splitting of Cossack territory between Poland and Moscow, which had used the uprising as a chance to intercede in Polish affairs.
In what remained of Polish Ukraine it was not long before life went back to how it had been prior to 1648. This included the system of governance. Poles resurrected their old system of governance in Ukraine, except this time the number of noble families with true power was limited to a small handful who had survived the trials of the Deluge and were now engaged in internal power struggles.[xi] The flight of Ukrainians eastwards and the end of Cossack influence made it easier to impose Catholicism[xii] and for the nobles to once again act with impunity. This meant, yet again, that Jews were brought in as tax-farmers, agents on noble land, etc., much to the consternation of the locals.
During the eighteenth century another rebellion occurred as a result of the actions of the Polish elite and Jews — the Haidamak rebellion. This rebellion, however, was generally more of a low-level guerrilla-style conflict, although major battles did occur such as the Siege of Uman in 1768, which resulted in the massacre of Poles and Jews by the victorious Haidamaky Cossacks. The Haidamaky used Russian territory as a base of operations to conduct their attacks and this inevitably resulted in a diplomatic row. The Haidamak revolt was put down in 1769 when a group of Haidamaky had raided Ottoman territory. The Turks threatened war with Russia over this, so the Russians decided not only to stop assisting the rebels, but to help the Poles crush them. The reason the Haidamaky had crossed into Turkey? They were chasing a group of Jews.[xiii]
After 1795, Poland-Lithuania ceased to exist, having been partitioned for the third and final time by Prussia, Austria and Russia. Its Ukrainian territories were split between the Russians and the Austrians. Life remained the same as it had for centuries. However, there were to be no major outbreaks of violence involving ethnic cleansing in either Austrian or Russian Ukraine. The reasons for this are as follows:
In the Austrian zone the szlachta’s powers were broken and they were brought under royal control (although Polish nobility continued to rule the area). In 1781 Austrian Emperor Joseph II ended serfdom, although aspects of it were brought back by his successor and peasantry continued to live in poverty, this was seen as a great accomplishment by the peasants.[xiv] The monarchy was shown to be an effective force that could intervene on the behalf of Ukrainians. After 1848 the monarchy even went so far as to actively promote Ukrainian national consciousness as a way of countering Polish nationalism. It helped, too, that most Ukrainians in Austria were Uniate and Joseph II gave Uniate church the same rights as mainstream Catholicism which even the Poles had not done.[xv] However, a short-lived bout of violence did occur in 1846 but it was more akin to the earlier Cossack and Haidamak uprisings in that it largely targeted Poles and not the Austrian government (which reacted to the rebellion by finally abolishing serfdom).
As for the hated Jews, Joseph II wanted to fully assimilate Jewry and so he made them liable for military service, got rid of their separate system of governance, made them pay the same taxes as everyone else and use German instead of Yiddish. Restrictions on movement and ability to serve in certain professions remained, however.[xvi] Thus, it appeared the Jewish problem was being solved by a liberal policy of integration combined with mechanisms to lower competition with Jews.
In the Russian zone the shared Orthodoxy of Russians and Ukrainians greatly helped and so did the destruction of the szlachta system. However, serfdom remained in force until the 1860s and the power of the Cossacks in Russia was destroyed in the Great Northern War (1700–1721). The Russians relied on autocracy to keep everyone in line and increasingly on Russification. Though this caused resentment, it did not lead to outright rebellion. No doubt it helped that the Russians, too, appeared to be solving the Jewish problem. As in Austria, the Jews lost much of their previous power and their separate system of governance. There were also restrictions on where Jews could settle. Under Russian rule, Jewry were largely kept under control at first but eventually the same problems erupted although in a far less violent or dramatic way. The so-called Pale of Settlement (i.e., the area where the vast majority of Jews could legally live) was largely in Ukraine and it was here that the highly exaggerated pogroms of the late nineteenth century would occur.
In both cases it should be noted that foreign rule was tolerated but it was not fully accepted. As soon as the empires began to crumble, Ukrainians were quick to declare independence. Even in the Hapsburg lands where, as explained earlier, there was greater cultural autonomy.
Multiculturalism failed in Poland-Lithuania, just as it did later on in Austria-Hungary and indeed has throughout history. The Polish case is especially interesting as it is often held up today as an example of a great multicultural state where the various disparate groups lived in peace and harmony. Reality, on the other hand, is much different, especially when it comes to the Ukrainian portions.
It is interesting to note the behaviour of the non-Jewish elites. Then, as now, they looked only at what would benefit themselves and completely cut any ties they had with the masses. The major difference between Polish Ukraine and the situation in the Occident today is that the elites were a foreign ethnie. Generally speaking, our (non-Jewish) elites are ethnically the same as the majority.
We can see similar connections today, again to the detriment of the majority. It is also interesting to note that multiculturalism failed for a people who today are its most prominent supporters: Jewry.
Another point to note is how there could be so much slaughter and violence between not only Ukrainians and Jews but Ukrainians and Poles. Both are Slavs, both are White, both are Christian. Advocates of multiracial states are incredibly short-sighted as they ignore the many incidences of intra-racial violence yet expect inter-racial societies to work out just fine.
[i]Crimea and the southern portions of Ukraine were at this time under control of the Turks and Tatars. The Russians eventually wrested these lands away from the Muslims in the 18th century.
[ii]PRM 143
[iii]Dmytro Doroshenko, A Survey of Ukrainian History. Trident Press Limited. Winnipeg. 1975. Page 214
[iv]Adam Zamoyski, A History of Poland. HarperPress, London. 2009. Page 94
[v]Ibid. 139
[vi]Gershon Hundert, “The Implications of Jewish Economic Activities for Christian-Jewish Relations in the Polish Commonwealth,” The Jews in Poland ed. By Chimen Abramsky, Maciej Jachimczyck and Anthony Polansky
Page 62
[vii]Paul Robert Magocsi, A History of Ukraine. University of Toronto Press, Toronto. 1996. Page 147
[viii]Dmytro Doroshenko. 216
[ix]Ibid. 221
[x]Ibid. 223
[xi]Ibid. 486
[xii]Paul Robert Magocsi. 293
[xiii]Doroshenko. 498
[xiv]Magocsi. 391
[xv]Ibid. 398
[xvi]Ibid. 394A section of the Indian population exists which is always over eager to demean the Indian Right-wing, to insult the Indian Right-wing and exaggerate every little shortcoming of the Indian Right-wing political parties to humongous proportions just so that they can feel better about their political affiliations. Facts are gladly ignored in this misguided pursuit and all logic and reason goes for a toss without so much as a second thought.Unfortunately, the mainstream media of our country seems to be suffering under the same bias.
And what’s worse, a certain section of the Media seems to have developed an unhealthy habit of catering to this section of its customers and merrily indulges in propagating and perpetuating lies to vilify the BJP and Right-wing in general. As I keep saying, we live in a Post-Modern Era where Facts mean nothing, truth matters little and the narrative is all that counts.
And the person who has been the subject of a great number of media hit jobs has been Narendra Modi.
To say that the Prime Minister of India has had a troubled relationship with media in the past would be a massive understatement. All of us remember the massive media trial Narendra Modi had to endure since 2002. And it was quite nice to see Narendra Modi verbally slap Rajdeep Sardesai during his Prime Ministerial campaign.
One of the recent non-issues that was blown massively out of proportions for all the wrong reasons was Narendra Modi’s supposed insulting remarks on Kerala during one of his speeches. Modi actually said the Infant Mortality Rate among the Tribals in Kerala was worse than that in Somalia. Somehow, the comment was twisted beyond all recognition and the end product of all the synthetic treatment it received was a totally new comment hardly recognizable from the original remark that was made. The twisted reportage and the massive propaganda that ensued from known quarters transformed the comment to make it seem Modi had said Kerala is as bad as Somalia. Well, it would have been nice if someone from the Liberal camp had made an effort to clear the air and say, “Well, that’s not what Narendra Modi said. He did not equate Kerala with Somalia. He just said there’s something morbidly wrong with Kerala which needs an immediate fix. That’s not insulting Kerala, is it?” Even a whisper of sanity would have been music to the ears but as Voltaire once said, “Common Sense is not so common.”
Amidst the hullabaloo, the main point that Narendra Modi raised has conveniently passed into oblivion. The main issue that the Prime Minister raised was the Infant Mortality Rate among Tribals in Kerala is insanely high and the state government has been thoroughly incompetent at tackling the menace. Instead of focusing on the issue, the people who claim a monopoly over Intelligent Life instead trended #PoMoneModi for quite a while. The trend gathered enough momentum and attracted enough attention to find a mention in leading newspapers which cloak their agenda under the garb of neutrality. The Liberal Brigade which claims monopoly over the fight for Human Rights could not care less about the existential threat that Tribals in Kerala face, instead they did not hesitate for a moment to twist the issue and run a campaign to embarrass the Prime Minister for it.
http://indianexpress.com/article/india/india-news-india/pomonemodi-trends-across-india-as-kerala-twitterati-vent-ire-at-pm/
In a very similar tone, media outlets published an article with the headline, “Railways send bill of 4 crores to Latur for ‘Water Trains’ as requested.” The headline subtly sends off the signal that the Railway Ministry somehow was making the people Latur pay for the water that was sent. The headlines elicited a prompt reply from the authorities concerned that the bill was sent to the State Government as was already agreed upon. One could have imagined the full implications of the outrage that was already halfway in the making had the authorities not issued a swift clarification.
http://www.patrika.com/news/special/after-sending-water-train-to-latur-railways-send-rs-4-crore-bill-1295700/
All these misleading headlines, the intense propaganda that is being employed by the media outlets and certain popular political handles on Twitter is hallmark of their deliberate agenda of defaming the Narendra Modi government. Worse is the significant percentage of gullible people who are falling prey to such insidious propaganda to defame the Indian Right-wing.
Recently, a bunch of people, a dozen by popular estimates, performed a ‘havan’ for Donald Trump praying for his win in the American General Elections to be held later this year. The amount of coverage it received is bewildering and perhaps slightly amusing. The manner in which the obsessive behavior of a dozen individuals was projected as the general behavior of the entire Indian Right-wing was distasteful and should have been embarrassing for those who made the claim. One wonders if it was a propaganda tool designed specifically for the purpose of defaming the Right-wing considering the amount of coverage that it received and the conclusions that were drawn.
http://www.hindustantimes.com/india/only-he-can-save-humanity-hindu-sena-performs-hawan-for-trump-s-us-win/story-EkzGI8Uz4ncRONPGALW0LJ.html
At the end of the day, if people from both ends of the spectrum could put aside their political affiliations while addressing critical issues, it would be very welcome. The #PoMoneModi Twitter trend did absolutely nothing for the Tribals in Kerala who continue to suffer from the menace of morbidly high Infant Mortality Rate and only served to take attention away from the crucial issue that Narendra Modi raised. The Tribal children and their parents who lost their lives care neither about your political affiliations or which Political party is in power. The only thing that the parents do care about is someone, anyone helping out with their situation. And if you could for a moment set aside your petty political fights to address the issue that was raised instead of seeing it as another opportunity to score political victories that would be great.
Similar is the case with the Drought crisis that has gripped significant regions of the nation. Without ever taking the time out to compliment the NDA government which has attempted to tackle the issue with great sincerity and dedication, the media and the Liberal Brigade did sure find the time to malign the government’s image even where they did the best they could.
There are some issues which demand that people from all ends of the political spectrum come together to find a workable solution to the danger they pose. Such issue shouldn’t be played politics over but the opposition seems to have lost control of its moral compass altogether and all it seeks is opportunities to malign the Right-wing government at the Center.The anniversary of Occupy Wall Street is September 17. While there will be public events in New York, it’s likely that number of people that will be involved will not be large enough to impress the punditocracy (multi-citi militarized crackdowns have a way of discouraging participation), leading them to declare OWS a flash in the pan.
That conclusion may be premature.
The release of the The Debt Resistors’ Manual suggests something very different: that the movement is still alive, if much less visible, and is developing new avenues for having impact. This guide is designed not only to give individuals advice for how to be more effective in dealing with lenders but also sets forth some larger-scale ideas. This is a project of a new OWS group, Strike Debt. Fighting for debt renegotiation and restructuring, something that the bank-boosting legacy parties have refused to do, is becoming a new focus for OWS efforts.
Quite a few well qualified people who in Occupy fashion are going unnamed, participated in developing this manual. Having read most of the chapters in full and skimmed the rest, I find that this guide achieves the difficult feat of giving people in various types of debt an overview of their situation, including political issues, and practical suggestions in clear, layperson-friendly language. For instance, the chapter on credit ratings gives step-by-step directions as to how to find and challenge errors in your credit records, and what sort of timetable and process is realistic for getting results. The chapter on dealing with debt collectors is similarly specific and detailed. The discussion of the bankruptcy process includes this section:
One detailed law study found that bankruptcy laws, specifically Chapter 13, implicitly favor a certain profile, an “ideal debtor,” who is usually white and married. Most bankruptcy laws tend to favor wealth over income, ownership over renting, formal dependents over informal dependents and heterosexual married couples, all of which have significantly higher rates in white communities. Before 2005, African Americans filed for Chapter 13 nearly 50% of the time, compared to less than 25% by whites. Why, you may ask? Here’s one explanation: a study found that when all other factors are equalized (identical financial cases), lawyers are twice as likely to steer Black clients toward Chapter 13 than they are white clients. The study could find no other cause besides racism in all forms: conscious, unconscious, structural and institutional.
The manual also includes two chapters on “fringe finance”, meaning financial services for the barely banked or underbanked, including check cashing outlets, prepaid cards, payday lenders, and pawn shops. It stresses that these are tantamount to a poverty tax, since low income people pay more for these services.
Each chapter has a list of resources at the end, including websites, articles and books, as well as footnotes. Some end with ideas for collective action, others with survival strategies. And it presents a manifesto:
We gave the banks the power to create money because they promised to use it to help us live healthier and more prosperous lives—not to turn us into frightened peons. They broke that promise. We are under no moral obligation to keep our promises to liars and thieves. In fact, we are morally obligated to find a way to stop this system rather than continuing to perpetuate it. This collective act of resistance may be the only way of salvaging democracy because the campaign to plunge the world into debt is a calculated attack on the very possibility of democracy. It is an assault on our homes, our families, our communities and on the planet’s fragile ecosystems—all of which are being destroyed by endless production to pay back creditors who have done nothing to earn the wealth they demand we make for them. To the financial establishment of the world, we have only one thing to say: We owe you nothing. To our friends, our families, our communities, to humanity and to the natural world that makes our lives possible, we owe you everything. Every dollar we take from a fraudulent subprime mortgage speculator, every dollar we withhold from the collection agency is a tiny piece of our own lives and freedom that we can give back to our communities, to those we love and we respect. These are acts of debt resistance, which come in many other forms as well: fighting for free education and healthcare, defending a foreclosed home, demanding higher wages and providing mutual aid.
You can download the manual here or from the link below. Strike Debt will also be handing out hard copies of the manual in Washington Square Park on Saturday from 10:30 AM till 7:30 PM and at Judson Church from 7:30 PM till 9:30 PM.
Occupy Wall Street/Strike Debt: The Debt Resistors’ Operations Manual
Update: Please note that this document was removed by ScribD over our vociferous protests. They apparently received a complaint from someone associated with Strike Debt about a copyright violation. We pointed out to ScribD that Strike Debt had asked us to publish the manual, and that it had clearly displayed a Creative Commons License which allowed for it to be freely published and redistributed. That did not make any difference to ScribD. They don’t adjudicate complaints. They just react.Who was a greater Formula 1 driver: Nigel Mansell or Elio de Angelis? Expert panels have uniformly selected Mansell. Raw statistics of success — wins, championships, and the like — also clearly favor Mansell. Yet, every mathematical model of driver rankings developed to date resoundingly answers de Angelis. Examining the data table below helps to explain why.
This is a motivating example, but certainly not an isolated case of head-to-head results and career achievements telling conflicting stories in Formula 1. Such cases highlight the importance of the metrics used to make driver comparisons, and the different tendencies of experts and models.
When I began this blog, I had just embarked on a major analysis project that ultimately generated model-based rankings of the best Formula 1 drivers across history. The essential difficulty in rating drivers (compared to rating athletes in many other sports) is accounting for the different cars drivers used — with the exception of teammates (and even that comparison can be complicated), no direct driver comparisons are possible. Team performance differences greatly exceed driver performance differences in Formula 1, meaning traditional metrics for success (e.g., wins, points) make for unreliable driver performance metrics. Quantitative models are thus needed to infer any sort of objective rankings.
At the time I started my work, only one such model existed for Formula 1 (Eichenberger and Stadelmann, 2009). I felt that there was still room for significant improvement, and I think my model (Phillips, 2014) generated many new insights, and a driver hierarchy with greater face validity. This model has been the basis for several of my posts on this blog, including yearly rankings.
Recently, another model was published (Bell et al., 2016), unrelated to this blog, also with the goal of separating driver and team performances in Formula 1. This means that there are now three peer-reviewed models. Each of these models is a fully objective method for ranking drivers and teams. Provided with a set of data (i.e., historical race results), parameter values that represent team and driver performances are found by achieving the model’s best fit to the data.
The model assumptions
Interestingly, each model has slightly different underlying assumptions. These are the choices that dictate what the model takes as inputs, how these are mathematically related, the complexity of the model, and what the model gives as outputs. The existence of multiple models is extremely valuable for understanding how different assumptions affect relative rankings, and how robust rankings are to the structure of the underlying model.
The properties of each model are summarized in the table below, with my model (Phillips (2014) — the one used on f1metrics) in the middle column.
One of the key differences between the 2009 model and the latter two is the use of finishing position instead of points as the performance metric. Using finishing position in a linear model introduces a few potential problems. First, the model becomes very sensitive to any bad results. For example, a driver who finishes 1st several times and 20th once (e.g., due to a DNF), may have a worse performance than a teammate who consistently finishes 3rd. The same DNF penalty does not afflict drivers who habitually run in lower positions, meaning DNFs also penalize drivers differently depending on the competitiveness of their team under this system. Second, the model will experience floor and ceiling performance effects — driver/car combinations that are right near the top or the bottom of the field have less scope for differences in finishing positions. A nonlinear performance metric can address this by accounting for nonlinear changes in the performance metric (points) as a function of driver/team performance. An obvious downside to traditional points systems is their failure to discriminate between non-scoring positions (e.g., 12th vs. 15th), but this can be addressed using an extended points system, as I described previously, and that is how the other two models work.
A second key difference is the treatment of DNFs. The model used on this blog (Phillips, 2014) is unique in excluding non-driver DNFs (such as mechanical failures and technical disqualifications) from the analysis. The main downside to doing this is that it is extremely time-consuming to prepare the data in this form — as I can attest, having spent several weeks doing that myself! The upside is that it partially adjusts for bad luck. Bell et al. argue in their paper that, given enough races, the effects of luck will tend to balance out. I agree with this in principle, but in practice drivers often have short careers (tens of races), or extremely unlucky years. This undermines the ability to do per-season rankings (as I’ve presented using my model previously) and can lead to some peculiar driver rankings. For example, Lauda is ranked very low by the Bell et al. model, which is probably partly due to his very poor reliability alongside Prost in 1985 (10 mechanical failures in 14 starts). Meanwhile, Christian Fittipaldi is ranked the 11th best driver of all time by Bell et al., despite mixed results alongside weak teammates — this is because he had many fewer mechanical DNFs than his teammates during his short career. As a counterargument to excluding mechanical DNFs, car preservation was an important skill in the earlier days of F1, so mechanical failures cannot be considered purely bad luck, as they usually are today.
The Bell et al. model is unique in assuming some relationship between team performances across different years. The other two models instead allow team performance to be fit independently in each year. There is some sense to both approaches. Top teams tend to remain top teams between seasons. However, there are also many historical examples of drastic changes in team performance from one season to the next. Both assumptions are therefore worth consideration.
The models of Eichenberger & Stadelmann and Bell et al. also consider effects of secondary factors, such as weather and the track. I preferred to start with a simpler model structure, given the risk of model overspecification, especially since many years have had 0-2 wet races. Nevertheless, Bell et al. used this information to show that drivers are of relatively greater importance on average in the wet and on street circuits. Both of these findings square very well with intuition.
Model rankings
The three models make predictions that are similar in many areas, but significantly different in others. In addition to ranking drivers, the models can also be used for ranking the best teams in history. The two most recent models confirm that team performance is a larger contributor than driver performance to overall performance in Formula 1, with estimates of 61% team from Phillips and 86% team from Bell et al. This figure was probably also computed, but not reported in the paper, by Eichenberger & Stadelmann.
The top 50 driver rankings by the three models are listed below. In some cases, two of the models like a particular driver, while one does not.
Consensus rankings
One way in which we can use the models is to create a consensus ranking list by combining the rankings of the three individual models. In essence, we are then treating the three models as experts with differing opinions. Generating consensus rankings is a problem that has been studied in many areas outside of sports, including electing political candidates and ordering priorities most efficiently for business.
The simplest approach to consensus rankings is to create a list based on the average rankings of each candidate. This is the Borda method. For example, if one driver has ranks of 3, 2, and 6, their average ranking is 3.67. If another driver has ranks of 2, 1, and 4, their average ranking is 2.33, which would put them ahead of the other driver. However, many people do not like the Borda method. One problem is that it can be easily affected by extreme outlier votes. For example, a driver who is ranked 5th by 5 models but 100th by 1 model will be ranked behind a driver who is ranked 20th by all 6 models. If we are treating all models as equally valid (which we are for now), it seems more sensible to consider the consensus of 5 models over the wildly different ranking of 1. A related problem is that the Borda method fails the Condorcet criterion, which states that if an absolute majority of ranking lists place a driver in number 1 position, that driver should be ranked number 1 in the consensus list.
An alternative algorithm for finding consensus rankings is the Kemeny-Young method. The goal in this case is to find the consensus ranking list that minimizes disagreement with each other list using the Kendall tau distance as its distance metric. What this means in simple terms is to check the relative ordering of each pair of drivers in the consensus ranking list, compared to their relative ordering in each individual ranking list. For example, if Driver A is ranked ahead of Driver B in the consensus ranking list, we count how many of the models disagree on that ordering (i.e., by ranking Driver B ahead of Driver A in their lists). The total number of disagreements is counted across all possible pairwise driver comparisons.
This method is guaranteed to satisfy the Condorcet criterion, and has other favorable features. The main downside is that it can be computationally intensive to actually find the optimal consensus ranking list. In this case, it was not difficult, because the lists involved are not too long and there are only three of them.
Using this distance metric, we can first check the similarity of the three models’ lists based on how many pairwise disagreements there are between them.
From above, we can see that the three models’ lists are all similarly close to one another, with the two more recent models being slightly closer to one another than the E&S (2009) list.
The consensus ranking list for the three models (i.e., the list that is closest to all three) is shown below, with the driver ranks for each of the three models shown alongside.
*Schumacher’s rating in the Bell et al. model is derived by ignoring his post-2006 results, and treating N Rosberg’s teammate for 2010-2012 as a different driver.
Overrated and underrated drivers
While the three models do not universally agree, there are some notable cases where they are in good agreement with one another, but strong disagreement with expert opinions. These are interesting cases to consider, because they indicate drivers who may be overrated or underrated by subjective criteria. One of the most recent driver ranking lists compiled by a panel experts is the Autosport Top 40, which polled 217 Formula 1 drivers. Below are the cases of most notable expert/model mismatch.
Jack Brabham
Jack Brabham is quite rightly recognized as one of the giants of the sport. Nobody has repeated his feat of winning a championship in a car of their own construction. Only four drivers have historically won more drivers’ championships than Brabham, and he raced successfully in F1 for a period of 16 years, winning his last race at age 43. However, when his successes are weighed against those of his teammates, all three models think that on driving performance alone, there were several better in his generation. He was notably outperformed by Gurney, Rindt, and Ickx as teammates.
Mika Hakkinen
Hakkinen is often cited as Schumacher’s greatest rival. Martin Brundle, a pundit I hugely respect, has previously written about how closely he rated the pair on the basis of his experience as teammates to both. I think it’s important to note, however, that Brundle faced Schumacher in the latter’s first full season of Formula 1, whereas Hakkinen was into his third full season when he faced Brundle. He thus faced Schumacher well before his peak.
The models attribute the closeness of the Hakkinen-Schumacher rivalry to a car advantage for McLaren in most years. The models also view Coulthard as no stronger than Barrichello, which does Hakkinen no favors given he was much closer matched with Coulthard than Schumacher was with Barrichello. In addition, Coulthard was beaten by a greater margin by Raikkonen than he was by Hakkinen during their respective stints as teammates.
Nigel Mansell
Mansell was hugely entertaining to watch. His all-or-nothing approach to racing often generated on-track drama. In the eyes of experts, he is consistently ranked among the all-time top 20, and sometimes even the top 10. It is difficult, however, to square these rankings with the objective facts. Mansell was convincingly beaten by teammate de Angelis, and then closely matched with Keke Rosberg, both of whom are typically ranked much lower by experts than Mansell. Models instead place Mansell closer to 50th in the all-time rankings, and are less than impressed by his tally of only one drivers’ championship given he spent at least three years in the undoubtedly best car on the grid (1986, 1987, 1992).
Gilles Villeneuve
Much like Mansell, Gilles Villeneuve had all the qualities that make a driver popular with fans and pundits: phenomenal car control, raw speed, wet-weather skills, and willingness to take (often insane) risks. Yet the results weren’t always there. The unmissable qualities mask issues in other areas, such as consistency and the occasions when the risks simply didn’t pay off. The models — which do not care whether race results were achieved by overt brilliance or boring consistency — view things very differently from the experts. By their assessments, Villeneuve’s results rate him a good driver but not a great one. In their view, if Villeneuve was the complete package, he should have more easily beaten his teammates, including chief rival Pironi, who was actually outscored by every teammate he ever faced in Formula 1.
Nick Heidfeld
Nick Heidfeld holds the rather unfortunate distinctions of most podiums without a win (13) and second most starts without a win (183). Based on model rankings, he should be considered a natural contender for the best driver to never win a race, alongside Chris Amon. Undoubtedly, both of these drivers are better than many race winners in Formula 1 history, and both came agonizingly close to winning. Yet, for whatever reasons, Heidfeld hasn’t yet gained the same legacy as Amon in the eyes of experts.
In Amon’s case, there were parallel exploits in the Tasman Series, non-championship grands prix, and endurance racing by which experts could rate him. In Formula 1, the cars Amon raced were often quick enough to challenge for victories, but unreliable, which kept him in the public eye. Heidfeld, by contrast, raced mostly for middling Formula 1 teams, after narrowly missing two potential moves to McLaren. His results were consistently much better than should have been expected from the machinery, but there were few obvious highs and few obvious lows. He just kept on, metronomically, scoring points. A consistent, low-risk driving style can be devastatingly effective in a front-running team (just ask Alain Prost), but it has never been a fan winner for drivers stuck further down the grid. Heidfeld is the archetypal example.
Elio de Angelis
Elio de Angelis is a remarkably forgotten and underrated driver, especially given he died near his peak and had a reputation as one of the most charismatic drivers in the paddock. During their time as teammates at Lotus, de Angelis handily beat Mansell (see the table at the beginning of the article). He then gave Senna a genuine fight in 1985, losing 3-13 in qualifying, 3-5 in races, and 33-38 in points — comparable to Mansell’s results against Prost at Ferrari. If we consider that most expert ranking lists place Senna 1st and Mansell around 15th, it would seem inexcusable to leave de Angelis out of the top 10. In actual fact, he rarely appears inside the top 40!
The models arrive at a very different conclusion from the experts. Namely, they universally propose that de Angelis belongs among the greats of the 1980s, and that he should very likely be ranked ahead of Mansell.
Ayrton Senna & Alain Prost
A final fascinating case to consider here is Senna vs. Prost. Every expert ranking list published by a major English-language motorsport journal since 1997 has ranked Senna the 1st or 2nd greatest driver of all time. In addition, every one of these lists has ranked Senna ahead of Prost, usually by a small margin. During their time as teammates at McLaren, Senna beat Prost 14-9 in races where neither driver had a mechanical failure. Prost was ahead 186-154 on overall points, although this tally is affected by Senna’s much worse luck in 1989.
Interestingly, none of the three mathematical models rank Senna or Prost in 1st place overall. Moreover, all three models rank Prost ahead of Senna, albeit by a small margin in the two more recent models. One could speculate on many reasons for Senna potentially being overrated by experts, including his spectacular driving style compared to Prost’s unassuming but very effective approach, Senna’s cultivated air of mysticism, and of course his untimely death near the peak of his career.
Room for improvement
While models have the obvious advantage of being quantitative and objective, they are not without flaws. As a seasoned observer of the sport, there are times when my subjective assessments don’t accord with my own model’s rankings. In some of these cases, I find my subjective impressions to be without solid foundation, but in others I can give good reasons why I think the model is incomplete in particular cases. The problem with subjective views, of course, is that there are equally seasoned observers who don’t share my opinions or subjective reasoning — who then do we choose to believe? Subjective impressions from the keen eyes of experts can nevertheless guide us to areas where the models are currently missing important factors and could in future be improved.
One idea for improving these models is to include other performance metrics, such as timing data, in addition to race results. In my paper, I showed that the predictions of my model do correlate well with timing data. However, there are many challenges associated with deducing performances from lap-times, including safety cars, traffic, weather, tyre and fuel strategies, and drivers choosing to back off (e.g., when they have a comfortable lead or for technical reasons). Moreover, these factors have varied significantly between eras, making it difficult to find a satisfactory model specification. To my knowledge, there has been only one attempt to quantitatively rank driver and team effects using timing data, which is the impressively detailed GrandPrixRatings system. However, this is not a fully objective model, as the top drivers in each year are chosen by the author a priori, and then other driver and team performances are calculated relative to them.
Notably, the three models considered here do not account for factors such as team orders or interactions between drivers and cars (e.g., some drivers preferring particular cars). This is because these factors cannot ever be reliably quantified back to 1950, and typically cannot even be reliably quantified today |
them learn German as quickly as possible.
Education experts have admitted that it is a major challenge to make sure refugee children can be speedily integrated into Austrian schools. There is also a need for private tutors, trauma counsellors and violence prevention courses.
Vienna city council has said it plans to increase the number of social workers and psychologists working within schools - and has pledged to set aside €24 million for this purpose.HEALTH MINISTER SIMON Harris has announced a review of Ireland’s policy on medicinal cannabis, which is currently strictly controlled.
The announcement comes a day after mother Vera Twomey began a 150-mile protest from Cork to Dublin to try to persuade the government to legalise cannabis for medical purposes.
Vera’s six-year-old daughter Ava has Dravets syndrome, an extremely rare, drug-resistant form of epilepsy which at its worst, causes up to 20 seizures in a day.
Vera says that medicinal marijuana in liquid form has the potential to save her daughter’s life, as it reduces the frequency of Ava’s seizures – she says by about 80%.
Having been frustrated by continuous efforts to contact the Department of Health, and after her daughter had a particularly violent seizure, Vera set off on a 150-mile protest to try and get the government’s attention.
Speaking on RTÉ’s Drivetime tonight, Vera said that she and other people who had joined her had walked 20 miles and arrived in Mallow at about six o’clock when Minister Simon Harris rang her.
“He said well Vera I’m not comfortable that you are doing this, that you are walking all the ways up to Dublin; you don’t have to do this.”
I said to Simon I’m not comfortable having to walk 20 miles either but what am I going to do? What are you going to do?”
A formal meeting was arranged between Harris and Vera and the minister later released a statement regarding the medicinal cannabis.
In the statement, Harris says that he has asked the Health Products Regulatory Authority (formerly the Irish Medicines Board) to provide him with their expert scientific advice on the issue.
“This is not a discussion about decriminalising cannabis in any way shape or form, it is about reviewing our current policy and seeking to inform ourselves of the latest medical and scientific evidence on the potential medical benefits of cannabis for some people with certain medical conditions”, the Minister said.
Minister Harris continued, “I met with Vera Twomey in June and I understand the very difficult situation the family are in. I look forward to meeting with Vera again in the coming days.
I know that many patients believe cannabis should be a treatment option for their medical condition.
“However, cannabis is not currently an authorised medicine and has not gone through the normal regulatory procedures for medicines which are designed to protect patients and ensure treatments are supported by good evidence of their effectiveness.”
Cannabis for medical purposes is available in a number of countries, such as the Netherlands, Czech Republic, Canada, Australia, Malta, Croatia and certain states in the United States, but is currently strictly controlled in Ireland.
With reporting from Gráinne Ní Aodha.Thanks to all you wonderful readers, in just one week I am getting thousands of views every day. As I am currently traveling and therefore have no way to keep a steady job, you all have given me an incredible opportunity to make a living off of writing, something I am very passionate about.
However, WordPress won’t allow me to monetize this blog with advertisements. So, I am forced to move the blog over to Blogspot. You can find the new location at:
http://thiswillbetough.blogspot.com/
And while you’re there, don’t shy away from clicking on and ad that seems relevant to you. It would really help me out a bit, and help provide me with a living that could keep me writing, traveling, and meeting hot new people to fuck.
Thank you all for this amazing opportunity. I had no idea that my personal adventures would be so interesting or that my writing style would be so appreciated. I feel so grateful for you all.
If you have any questions, comments, or suggestions, please email me at thiswillbetough@gmail.comAdvertisement Royals' Jeremy Guthrie stirs up anger with O's-bashing shirt Former Oriole wears shirt that says "These O's ain't Royal" Share Shares Copy Link Copy
The Baltimore Orioles dropped their third straight game to the Kansas City Royals in heartbreaking fashion Tuesday night, and one of the Royals players who used to pitch in Baltimore has stirred up some controversy.While the Orioles held a lead Tuesday for the first time all series, the Royals ended up tying it in the fourth inning and hit a sacrifice fly in the sixth. When Adam Jones hit a foul ball into the seats on the third baseline in the sixth inning, Royals' Mike Moustakous made an incredible catch -- one that former Oriole and current Royals starting pitcher Jeremy Guthrie appreciated."To start an inning off like that, people don't quite understand how important that is for a pitcher, to get that first out and to have web-gem-type plays like that. It's huge. That turns around the entire inning. That's a player-of-the-game type performance," Guthrie said.At the podium, Guthrie was wearing a T-shirt that said "These O's Ain't Royal."While the shirt is likely a play off a line from a popular Chris Brown song that says "These girls ain't loyal," it stirred up lots of outrage on Twitter overnight.Baltimore native and actor Josh Charles tweeted, "Congrats Jeremy Guthrie for showing a true lack of class wearing that shirt post game. You're like Ron Burgundy, but not funny."29147266Early Wednesday morning, Guthrie tweeted out an apology to O's fans, saying, "My intention was not to anger O's fans w/ my shirt 2night. I apologize to those offended. Did not consider this reaction." He then capped it with, "Go Royals."The Orioles aren't down and out just yet. A comeback is possible. The Boston Red Sox became the first team in baseball history to win a best-of-seven league championship series after losing the first three games in 2004.Former Red Sox pitcher Pedro Martinez was part of that 2004 magic. He Tweeted about it after Tuesday's game, saying, "The Orioles are equally as talented and equally as capable to do what we did in 2004."VAMPS have announced that new material is heading your way, with a new two-track single to be released on August 31. The new single INSIDE OF ME was created and recorded overseas, in USA, and produced by the big-hit American producer, Howard Benson.
The title-track INSIDE OF ME features Chris Motionless, lead singer of the American metalcore band Motionless In White. The coupling track on the single RISE OR DIE also features another renowned name, with the guitarist of German industrial-metal band Rammstein, Richard Z. Kruspe, lending his guitar and composing skills for the song.
Left to right: Howard Benson, Chris Motionless, Hyde (VAMPS).
This may be the first of many new ventures for VAMPS in the international territory as earlier this year VAMPS signed a contract with the American management company, 10thStreet Entertainment. VAMPS join the likes of: Mötley Crüe, SIXX:A.M., Blondie, Five Finger Death Punch, and more, on 10thStreet Entertainment’s artist roaster. With this, there can only be more hope for an internationally expanding fan base and touring opportunities. Let’s hope we hear the news of a world tour soon!
A digital release date has been set for the title-track INSIDE OF ME which will be available in Japan from July 29. Though the wait may be a bit longer for international fans as an overseas digital release date is to yet be announced.
INSIDE OF ME feat. Chris Motionless of Motionless in White
Regular edition 1000 – 1080 yen
CD INSIDE OF ME feat. Chris Motionless of Motionless in White RISE OR DIE feat. Richard Z.Kruspe of Emigrate / Rammstein Buy at CDJapan or Amazon Limited Edition A 1600 – 1728 yen CD INSIDE OF ME feat. Chris Motionless of Motionless In White RISE OR DIE feat. Richard Z.Kruspe of Emigrate / Rammstein DVD INSIDE OF ME feat. Chris Motionless of Motionless In White -Music Video- INSIDE OF ME feat. Chris Motionless of Motionless In White -Music Video Documentary- Buy at CDJapan or Amazon Limited Edition B 2200 – 2376 yen CD INSIDE OF ME feat. Chris Motionless of Motionless in White RISE OR DIE feat. Richard Z.Kruspe of Emigrate / Rammstein Extra Bandana Buy at CDJapan or Amazon
More info:
Official Website
YouTube
Facebook
TwitterUntil about 11,000 years ago, mammoths, giant beavers, and other massive mammals roamed North America. Many researchers have blamed their demise on incoming Paleoindians, the first Americans, who allegedly hunted them to extinction. But a new study fingers climate and environmental changes instead. The findings could have implications for conservation strategies, including controversial proposals for “rewilding” lions and elephants into North America.
The idea that humans wiped out North America’s giant mammals, or megafauna, is known as the “overkill hypothesis.” First proposed by geoscientist Paul Martin more than 40 years ago, it was inspired in part by advances in radiocarbon dating, which seemed to indicate an overlap between the arrival of the first humans in North America and the demise of the great mammals. But over the years, a number of archaeologists have challenged the idea on several grounds. For example, some researchers have argued that out of 36 animals that went extinct, only two—the mammoth and the mastodon—show clear signs of having been hunted, such as cuts on their bones made by stone tools. Others have pointed to correlations between the timing of the extinctions and dramatic fluctuations in temperatures as the last ice age came to a halting close.
To get a higher resolution picture of what may have happened, archaeologists Matthew Boulanger and R. Lee Lyman of the University of Missouri, Columbia, decided to look at a region that had not been well studied in the past: the northeast of North America, including the states of New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Maine, and the Canadian province of Ontario. “This is a region that has been virtually absent from discussions” about megafaunal extinctions, Boulanger says, which have mostly focused on the Great Plains and the American Southwest. “Yet it is also a region with an incredibly rich record” of prehistoric animal remains. For example, the bones of at least 140 mastodons and 18 mammoths have been found in New York state alone.
Boulanger and Lyman compiled databases of radiocarbon dates from both megafaunal finds and Paleoindian sites for the northeast, throwing out any dates whose reliability had been or could be questioned. This gave a final sample of 57 megafauna dates from 47 different sites and 25 Paleoindian dates from 22 sites. When the two databases were compared, it became clear that most of the megafauna had already disappeared before humans came on the scene—suggesting that the humans had little to do with their demise.
The radiocarbon dates also suggest that northeastern megafauna underwent two major declines before finally going extinct. The first was 14,100 years ago, before any humans were in the region, but the number of animals then recovered after about 500 years; the second and final population crash began 12,700 years ago, when Paleoindians had just arrived in the region, according to the archaeological record. Moreover, the team reports in the 1 February issue of Quaternary Science Reviews, even though humans and megafauna continued to coexist for about 1000 years before the animals finally went extinct, the animals were already on their way out: Between 75% and 90% of the northeastern megafauna were gone before humans ever came on the scene. Yet even during the millennium of human and animal overlap, the team argues, there is no evidence for hunting: Neither megafaunal nor Paleoindian sites in the northeast contained animal bones that were butchered or otherwise modified.
The authors stress that their results can be directly applied only to northeastern North America, and not to other regions such as the Great Plains and Southwest. Nevertheless, given the large amount of megafauna in the northeast, and the lack of evidence for human involvement in their demise, they argue that overkill cannot have been the only or even the major factor for continent-wide extinctions: Climate and environmental stresses must have also played a key role. The timing of the second megafaunal crash, 12,700 years ago, corresponds with the beginning of a major, 1300-year-long cold snap called the Younger Dryas, which was followed by the warming trend (called the Holocene) we still live in today.
The new work bolsters the views of many researchers that “the arguments and evidence are stronger for environmental and climatic explanations,” says Lisa Nagaoka, a zooarchaeologist at the University of North Texas, Denton. By the time humans arrived, she says, the “tipping point” toward megafaunal extinctions may already have been reached.
And although these events occurred thousands of years ago, Lyman says that they have important implications today. Recently, a number of conservationists have begun advocating the “rewilding” of North America by reintroducing species such as elephants—which are closely related to extinct animals like mastodons and mammoths—and African lions, which are related to the extinct American lion.
This idea has received increasing attention in both the scientific literature and the popular media. For example, rewilding proponents advocate introducing elephants and Bactrian camels—which are now close to extinction in the Gobi Desert—onto the continent, with the idea that they would eat woody plants and weeds that threaten grasslands in the western United States, and that a new habitat would help protect them from extinction. But some researchers have argued that these proposals are based on faulty ecological logic and could end up hurting ecosystems rather than helping them, as well as threatening existing species.
And Lyman says that the strategy is based in large part on the ethical argument that because humans killed off relatives of these animals, they bear responsibility for now saving them and restoring their habitats. “The overkill hypothesis is a very weak foundation for rewilding.”
Meanwhile, advocates of the overkill hypothesis remain unconvinced by the new study. “The authors have engaged in an exercise in data analysis that neither proves nor disproves overkill,” says Gary Haynes, an archaeologist at the University of Nevada, Reno. Humans may have come into the northeast earlier than the radiocarbon database indicates, but their remains may not yet have been found, he says. Todd Surovell, an archaeologist at the University of Wyoming in Laramie, insists that the new study is entirely consistent with the view that humans dealt the final blow to the great beasts of North America: “The fundamental question is whether these animals would have suffered extinction if humans had not arrived.”Google has expanded the scope of their bug bounty program to include Google-created apps and extensions for Chrome.
At the same time the company increased "substantially" the rewards they pay out as part of their Patch Rewards program. This program pays out rewards for fixes to vulnerabilities in a set of significant open source projects, such as the Linux kernel, OpenSSL, Sendmail and libxml2.
The Vulnerability Reward Program, Google's main bug bounty, will now accept vulnerability submissions for Chrome apps and extensions developed and branded as "by Google." Google says developing such apps and extensions securely is relatively easy, especially if you follow their security guidelines, but these apps and extensions are popular and important enough that they receive a high level of scrutiny.
The reward levels will range from $500 to $10,000 and you may make submissions at goo.gl/vulnz.
Google also increased the rewards for patches to a set of high-profile open source projects on which they and many other developers rely. The new reward structure is:The extremes of American society are gathering for a showdown in Charlottesville, Virginia today as 2017 meets 1865.
Video shows agitators carrying communist red flags through the streets as another group passed, with many flashing the leftist power fist:
Witness Hector Alcala noted Black Lives Matter at “Democratic Socialists” were on hand, and added the “Defend Cville” hashtag.
Antifa, the group best known for violence in Berkeley, is on the scene, too:
Here, a counter protester hurls a newspaper box at demonstrators:
Meanwhile, “white nationalists” gathered and video shows them rushing down stairs to battle the leftists.
More battles:
Huge brawl breaks out between what is reported to be Antifa and the alt-right marchers. #Charlottesville pic.twitter.com/Igi72se3qQ — The Rouser (@RouserNews) August 12, 2017
ABC News reports about the day:
Saturday’s far-right rally comes after a Friday night march by torch-bearing white nationalists on and near the University of Virginia campus resulted in brawls with protesters countering the event.
The Unite the Right event Saturday was supposed to begin at noon, but people both in support and opposed to the rally began gathering earlier and by 11 a.m. two people had been treated for serious but non-life-threatening injuries after an altercation at the city’s Emancipation Park, according to city officials.
Developing…Atmospheric carbon dioxide emissions, the main contributor to global warming, are set to rise again in 2014 – reaching a record high of 40 billion tonnes, according to a new report.
The latest annual update of the Global Carbon Budget (GCB) shows that the projected rise of 2.5 per cent in burning fossil fuels and cement production this year follows a 2.3 per cent increase in 2013, a then record high of 36 billion tonnes.
The GCB said the 2013 emissions were the highest in human history and 61 per cent higher than in 1990 (the Kyoto Protocol reference year). In 2013, the GCB added, coal burning was responsible for 43 per cent of the total emissions, oil 33 per cent, gas 18 per cent and cement 5.5 per cent.
Global CO 2 emissions were dominated last year by China (28 per cent), the U.S. (14 per cent), the 28-member European Union (10 per cent) and India (seven per cent), the GCB said.
China’s CO 2 emissions grew by 4.2 per cent in 2013, the U.S.’s grew by 2.9 per cent, and India’s grew by 5.1 per cent, data shows, while European Union emissions decreased by 1.8 per cent.
Deforestation and other land use changes accounted for eight per cent of CO 2 emissions.
The emissions growth for 2014 brings the cumulative emissions of CO 2 to a record high of 2,000 billion tonnes of CO 2 since 1870, according to the Global Carbon Project update.
The GCB was also published as a discussion paper in the open access journal Earth System Science Data which noted that the remaining CO 2 emission “quota” may be used up in one generation, and at least half of all fossil fuel reserves may need to be left untapped.
The journal added that in a companion paper published in Nature Geoscience based on these findings, Pierre Friedlingstein and colleagues reveal that total future CO 2 emissions cannot exceed 1,200 billion tonnes – for a likely chance (66 per cent) of keeping average global warming under 2°C (since pre-industrial times).
“At the current rate of CO 2 emissions, this ‘quota’ would be used up in around 30 years,” the journal said.
“This means that there is just one generation before the safeguards to a 2°C limit may be breached. The international team of climate scientists says that to avoid this, more than half of all fossil fuel reserves may need to be left untapped.”
The annual update was led by Corinne Le Quéré, director of the Tyndall Centre at the University of East Anglia, with 59 co-authors from 10 countries and 49 institutions.
Le Quéré was reported as saying the human influence on climate change is clear.
“We need to act fast to rapidly reduce CO 2 emissions from burning fossil fuels if we are to limit global climate change,” she said.
“We are nowhere near the commitments necessary to stay below 2°C of climate change, a level that will be already challenging to manage for most countries around the world, even for rich nations.”
The update was published last Sunday, two days before the UN Climate Summit in New York where politicians discussed their nation’s intentions towards fighting climate change and working towards a new international emissions-reduction agreement in Paris in 2015.
A sampling of their comments can be read here.
Image credit: Smokestack pollution via Shutterstock.Get the latest news and videos for this game daily, no spam, no fuss.
Harmonix on Monday announced more than a dozen new tracks for its upcoming Rock Band 4.
There's an eclectic, amazing variety of songs here, including classics like "No One Like You" from the Scorpions and Rick Derringer's "Rock and Roll Hoochie Koo," along with newer cuts like "Fever" by The Black Keys and Halestorm's "I Miss the Misery." See some snippets in the video below.
Rock Band 4 New Songs (August 3)
4 Non Blondes – "What's Up?"
The Black Keys – "Fever"
Disturbed – "Prayer"
Duck & Cover – "Knock Em Down"
Eddie Japan – "Albert"
Fall Out Boy – "Centuries"
Halestorm – "I Miss The Misery"
Heart – "Kick It Out"
Heaven's Basement – "I Am Electric"
Lightning Bolt – "Dream Genie"
Rick Derringer – "Rock and Roll, Hoochie Koo"
Rush – "A Passage To Bangkok"
Scorpions – "No One Like You"
Slydigs – "Light The Fuse"
Soul Remnants – "Dead Black (Heart of Ice)"
System of a Down – "Spiders"
White Denim – "At Night In Dreams"
These tracks add to Rock Band 4's existing soundtrack, which includes songs from Avenged Sevenfold, The Killers, Elvis Presley, Paramore, Jack White, Fleetwood Mac, The Who, Foo Fighters, and others. Check out the Spotify playlist below to listen to all the Rock Band 4 songs confirmed so far, except for "Light The Fuse," which doesn't appear to be on Spotify.
Despite Rock Band 4 being developed on one of the smallest-ever budgets for a Rock Band game, Harmonix pledges that the title will offer a "top-tier" soundtrack. The game launches October 6 for Xbox One and PlayStation 4.
What do you make of the soundtrack so far? Let us know in the comments below.Bobby Fischer, Max Von Sydow, Watson His Computerized Self: it's not a good look to get into a chess match with mortality, if only because no one has won yet. But while Father Time is undefeated, that doesn’t mean his matches only last two or three moves. Thanks to improved diets (Dwight Howard excepted), state of the art strength and conditioning practices and various different modes of self-preservation, some things we probably don't know about and the happy accident of having been born into the often freakish body of an NBA athlete, today's players are able to play longer—and better—than ever before.
Thanks to those aforementioned innovations and information, another act is available for aging players who are looking for one. Tim Duncan, Kobe Bryant, Kevin Garnett, Steve Nash, Jason Kidd, Andre Miller, Ray Allen, and Paul Pierce have all extended their primes—and, once those passed, their careers as viable, high-level contributors—much longer than anyone would have thought possible not so long ago.
Gerald Wallace does not quite fit into this group—he's had a long career, and in some ways a great one and in many more ways an admirable one. But he also seems, on the cusp of 31 and in the first season of a four-year, $40 million contract, very close to the end. The advances and examples listed above would suggest that a player like Wallace might have a good deal more left in him than he has shown this season. But it's possible that Gerald Wallace doesn't, mostly because there has never been a player quite like Gerald Wallace.
***
Wallace is a former All-Star and one of the game's more revered gamers. He has also looked, this season, overpaid and overcooked. In some sense, this isn't a surprise: anyone who has watched Wallace play over the course of his career had to know that his rugged, violent style wasn't going to allow longevity. Before the season began, former ESPN projecto-genius and current Memphis Grizzlies front office magus John Hollinger projected Wallace’s PER and points per 40 minutes would shrink by less than a point. Instead, both have stepped on a banana peel.
Knowing that Wallace was due for a decline and understanding how that decline might look—and how suddenly it could happen—is not at all the same thing. In an era in which players all across the league have been able to sharpen different tools to account for a natural decline in physical ability, nearly all of Wallace's abilities seem to have deserted him at once. It's a collapse so complete that it defies analysis; even Wallace himself seems baffled by it.
After a career that began with three mostly lost years in Sacramento, pile-driving garbage-time dunks and generally learning on the job after just one year at Alabama, Wallace made a quick ascent—he became a fantasy basketball beast, and a vital player on playoff teams in Charlotte and Portland. He was, during the Nets' miserable last year in Jersey, the team's best and most admirably engaged player. It's not that Wallace isn't getting the third act he deserves, although he isn't. It's that the third act seems barely to be happening at all.
***
This isn't about being overpaid. This is about competing with the best small forwards in the world one year, then mutating into arguably the worst shooter in the league among players that play at least 30 minutes a night, the next. In his last 20 games, Wallace has shot 34% from the floor, 15.6% from behind the three-point line, and 65.2% on free-throws. He’s averaging just 6.7 points per game; his 11.8 PER is more than four points below the mark he posted last season.
This is all painfully palpable in watching Wallace on the court, but the issue goes beyond numbers. Wallace doesn’t run the floor like he used to, even as recently as last season. He has no burst in transition, no quickness to drive by a single defender in a half-court set, and because his shot has never been anything to write home about, no way of getting separation or, to be frank, respect from defenses that would much rather double Brook Lopez or swarm Deron Williams than pay him any mind. All Wallace’s production this season has been spoon-fed. After re-watching much of his season before writing this article, this is both increasingly obvious and increasingly miserable to watch.
Synergy Sports ranks him as the NBA’s 353rd most efficient player. On offense he often sets off-ball screens, then drifts behind the three-point line, out of everybody else’s way. Plays are hardly ever called with his number in mind. Among his Brooklyn teammates, Wallace’s usage percentage is higher than those of Keith Bogans and Reggie Evans; that’s it. Those are the only teammates who end fewer possessions on the whole team. He averages fewer points per game than Andray Blatche, a bench player who sees the court 12 fewer minutes per game on average.
Is it possible that a good chunk of Wallace’s athleticism has simply been beaten out of his body, or is he simply a victim of circumstance? Brooklyn is one of the slowest teams in basketball, 29th in pace, averaging only 90.94 possessions per 48 minutes, according to NBA.com/Stats. This style stands in opposition to everything that ever made Gerald Wallace the Gerald Wallace he once was. Only 15.7% of his baskets are coming on fast break points this season, also according to NBA.com/Stats; this is the second lowest figure of his career and by far the lowest since 2007.
Or could the answer just be that Wallace doesn’t know, after his years as one of the league's most eccentric centerpieces, how to play beside really talented players? Williams, Lopez, and Joe Johnson headed into the season as Brooklyn’s first three offensive options, leaving Wallace in a peripheral role he hasn’t experienced since 2004. Third acts aren’t supposed to be trips back in time; this is where Wallace is supposed to either re-invent himself or find some late-career reward. Or, to lose the narrative for a moment, this might well have been the time when Wallace—who’s sacrificed so stanchion-crashingly much for his teams—was supposed to be picked up in turn, and allowed to enjoy a lucrative and successful late career as a role player. But it looks like there is, at the moment, no obvious role that Wallace could play with distinction, or even especially competently.
There are questions, of course, all hypothetical and all without obvious solutions—could Wallace turn things around, change his game to save it? Might he have had a different fate if Portland hadn't traded him last season? There are no obvious responses, or none beyond the bleak ones that Wallace keeps serving up on the court. He asks as much of himself as ever, and that's as much as any player of his generation has asked. He just no longer seems to have any answers that work.The World Health Organization estimates that around one sixth of the world lacks access to clean drinking water. Since those billion people are also the poorest people in the world, water purification techniques need to be cheap to help those most in need. Since it activates under plain visible light, this new water-purifying photocatalyst may help bring purer water to the world's neediest people.
The water-purifying chemical consists of nitrogen-doped titanium oxide enhanced with palladium nanoparticles. When exposed to visible light, the titanium oxide produces bacteria-killing free radicals, while the palladium nanoparticles absorb electrons that would shut that reaction down. Once activated, the material reduces the bacteria levels from 40 million cells per gallon to just one cell per 2,500 gallons.
Even more impressive, the palladium nanoparticles perpetuate the reaction so efficiently that the titanium oxide continues to purify the water even after the light is shut off. For countries with limited lighting infrastructure, or places prone to blackout, that greatly extends the purification power of the material.
Technology ReviewThe National Institutes of Health (NIH) has spent more than $39 million on obese lesbians, origami condoms, texting drunks, and dozens of other projects that could have been scrapped in favor of developing an Ebola vaccine.
“Frankly, if we had not gone through our 10-year slide in research support, we probably would have had a vaccine in time for this that would’ve gone through clinical trials and would have been ready,” said NIH Director Francis Collins, blaming budget cuts for his agency’s failure to develop a vaccine for the deadly virus.
However, the Washington Free Beacon has uncovered $39,643,352 worth of NIH studies within the past several years that have gone to questionable research.
For instance, the agency has spent $2,873,440 trying to figure out why lesbians are obese, and $466,642 on why fat girls have a tough time getting dates. Another $2,075,611 was spent encouraging old people to join choirs.
Millions have gone to “text message interventions,” including a study where researchers sent texts to drunks at the bar to try to get them to stop drinking. The project received an additional grant this year, for a total of $674,590.
The NIH is also texting older African Americans with HIV ($372,460), HIV and drug users in rural areas ($693,000), HIV smokers ($763,519), pregnant smokers ($380,145), teen moms ($243,839), and meth addicts ($360,113). Text message interventions to try to get obese people to lose weight have cost $2,707,067.
The NIH’s research on obesity has led to spending $2,101,064 on wearable insoles and buttons that can track a person’s weight, and $374,670 to put on fruit and vegetable puppet shows for preschoolers.
Click for more from The Washington Free BeaconUpon hearing there had been an attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya, that the U.S. ambassador and three other Americans had been killed there and that this murderous assault had been carried out on the 11th anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, a rational mind might be tempted to conclude that this had been a premeditated act of terror.
The Obama White House and State Department resisted the temptation.
On Sept. 12, the day after the attack, White House press secretary Jay Carney was asked whether "the attack in Benghazi was planned and premeditated." "It's too early for us to make that judgment," Carney said.
The next day, Sept. 13, State Department spokesperson Victoria Nuland subtly pointed to a YouTube video as possibly creating a motivation for the attack. Asked "whether the Benghazi attack was purely spontaneous or was premeditated by militants," Nuland replied, "[W]e are very cautious about drawing any conclusions with regard to who the perpetrators were, what their motivations were, whether it was premeditated, whether they had any external contacts, whether there was any link, until we have a chance to investigate along with the Libyans... [O]bviously, there are plenty of people around the region citing this disgusting video as something that has been motivating."
A Sept. 14 Associated Press story described the video in question as 14 minutes of clips from "the amateurish anti-Islam film 'Innocence of Muslims,' " which "depict the prophet Muhammad as a fraud, a womanizer and a madman in an overtly mocking way." The video had been posted on YouTube.
Carney brought up the video at the Sept. 14 White House press briefing. The attacks, he said, were "in response not to United States policy, not to, obviously, the administration, not to the American people. It is in response to a video, a film that we have judged to be reprehensible and disgusting... This is in response to a video that is offensive and -- to Muslims."
A reporter asked Carney: "At Benghazi?"
"We certainly don't know, we don't know otherwise," said Carney. "You know, we have no information to suggest that it was a preplanned attack. The unrest we've seen around the region has been in reaction to a video that Muslims, many Muslims, find offensive. And while the violence is reprehensible and unjustified, it is not a reaction to the 9/11 anniversary that we know of or to U.S. policy."
The same day Carney said these things, a CNN correspondent in Benghazi "gained access to the mission, which was, you know, had been evacuated. And found while she was there a journal," CNN Managing Editor Mark Whitaker explained 10 days later on his network. "And, of course, she didn't know what it was. But then when she looked at it, it became clear that it was writings from Ambassador Stevens."
Out of deference to Stevens' family, CNN did not initially reveal it had discovered the journal. But based on that document and other sources -- "including one," CNN's Anderson Cooper reported Monday, "who had a detailed conversation with the ambassador, which confirmed much of what we felt important in the journal" -- CNN reported: "A source familiar with Ambassador Stevens' thinking says that in the months before his death, he talked about being worried about what he called the never-ending security threats specifically in Benghazi. The source telling us that the ambassador specifically mentioned the rise in Islamic extremism, the growing al-Qaeda presence in Libya, and said he was on an al-Qaeda hit list."
On Sunday, CNN's Candy Crowley asked House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers if there was "any protest at all going on" at the Benghazi consulate at the time of the attack.
"I have seen no information that shows that there was a protest going on as you have seen around any other embassy at the time," said Rogers. "It was clearly designed to be an attack."
What did our government know and when? What did our government not know and why? These are unfortunate and familiar questions that Congress must investigate and answer now.
Examiner Columnist Terence P. Jeffrey, the editor in chief of CNSNews.com, is syndicated by Creators.First off, it pains me to say that after forty-plus issues, Venom is cancelled. I’m bummed, not just for the obvious, but because I wanted to see if it could have outlasted the 90’s solo series, which went a full 60 issues. I can’t say I’m too surprised. The whole demon subplot (which is still a dangling thread) really hurt the momentum and the symbiote’s been tossed to the sidelines as a character, always being drugged up and being a mental non-factor. It’s a weapon rather than being a creature.
They did just give him a teenage girl sidekick and that had potential. Ah well. Chances are he’s going to be killed in the big upcoming Spider-Man crossover when Doc Ock Spider-Man goes too far or something. You know, regular Spider-Man never did blow a gasket over Venom being a government agent and member of the Avengers. You’d think he would have had a passionate opinion about that, but all he ever did was make a joke about the Punisher and tell Venom to please not kill Carnage.
Whether Venom’s set to die or not, he currently has another series to call home in Thunderbolts. Recently, Thunderbolts was pretty bad, mainly because it was written by Daniel Way, who wrote 11 issues of… I’m not really sure. It was a bunch of twists and turns and I found myself not caring for a lot of it. Frank Castle strapping a landmine to his chest and jumping onto a guy was pretty sweet, though. That and it gave me one of my favorite Deadpool quotes with, “You may kill me first, but I fucking guarantee I’ll kill you last.”
Charles Soule took over as of issue #12 and already it’s felt like a breath of fresh air. #12 was a Punisher-centric story that turned his “banging on the side” relationship with Elektra into something more dramatic as she’s given him reason to kill her down the line |
stage politically for their own ideological view on this issue," she said. "It is high time to have some kind of objective, thoughtful, relevant policy discussion about the need for drug-policy reform, beginning with marijuana."
In addition to reviewing the policy aspects, the centre also recommends an awareness campaign on the health effects of marijuana use among young Canadians.
Story continues below advertisement
Story continues below advertisement
The proposed review would look at a ticketing option proposed by the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police as well as international approaches, listing the Netherlands, Australia, Uruguay, Colorado and Washington as examples; the two U.S. states only began allowing legal sales on Jan. 1 of this year.
Liberal MP Marc Garneau said his party would welcome an independent review of the issue. "Anything that is going to shed some light from a science point of view or an evidence point of view is a good thing," he said.
The centre's submission notes that many of the social impacts of marijuana use are related to the criminal justice system, with marijuana possession accounting for more than half of the 57,429 drug crimes reported by police in 2012.
"These crimes impact Canada through costs to the criminal justice system, but also through the economic and social impacts associated with having a criminal record," the report states.Latex body paint: kinky? Or a great nail art product? I had seen so many people using tape, Elmer’s glue, Vaseline, and Liquid Palisade to help in nail cleanup. I tried Vaseline, but it was too messy for my liking. I use tape for water marbling, but you can’t get tape to hug the nail shape perfectly. I haven’t tried the other two, but Liquid Palisade always intrigued me. However, I didn’t want to spend that much money (it’s $22 for an itty bitty tube!) when I could easily clean up with some acetone.
And then last month, I caught a video on YouTube by elleanddish that was possibly going to change my cleanup! She tried out liquid latex body paint and it looked amazing, so I had to try it out! I bought Liquid Latex Fashions Body Paint in Neon Blue for only $6.50, and used an old crappy nail art brush to apply it after putting my base color on.
Here’s what it looks like while drying (quick shot from my iPhone):
After putting my base color on, I stamped the images on and peeled the latex off. It worked perfectly!! I had no polish to clean up and it was super easy! Plus it’s fun to peel off 🙂
The only issue was that my nail art brush was kind of ruined:
But if I use the brush only for this application, it shouldn’t be an issue!
OK, so let’s finally show you some nail art huh?
So the image on my index finger is a bit uneven. The reason is that that particular image was real fickle in getting picked up by the stamper. So when it finally picked up, I got super excited and hastily stamped without really paying attention to how even it was.
Otherwise, I love this! I love red and gold together, and I hadn’t worn this particular red polish (Orly Shimmering Mauve) yet! I’ve owned it for almost 2 years and have never found a good use for it. It does show brushstrokes pretty heavily since it has a metallic chrome finish, but since I was stamping over it I wasn’t too concerned with that.
Products used:
Base color: Orly Shimmering Mauve… a chrome-finish red with pinky-gold shimmer. It kind of reminds me of Marsala (the new Pantone color for 2015). I can’t say I’m a huge fan of Marsala, but I’m warming up to it slowly. KBShimmer is starting to show swatches of a new release for January that has a GORGEOUS version of Marsala holo.
Stamping plate: Winstonia W120
Stamping polish: Essie Good as Gold
Liquid Latex Fashions Body Paint in Neon Blue… as the name implies, this product most certainly contains latex. So if you’re allergic to latex, don’t put latex on yourself. 😉
What do you think? Do you like the Marsala color? What’s your go-to cleanup product? Would you try latex body paint for your nails?
AdvertisementsAmong methods for accepting donations, Bitcoin stands out with its ease of use, low cost, and simple setup process. This is especially useful for podcasts and other decentralized media forms, many of whom offer their service for free in hopes of receiving voluntary donations, making their operating margins potentially slim.
Cointelegraph spoke with several independent media outlets, from podcasts to radio to video shows, about the unique considerations provided by deriving funding from Bitcoin.
A significant source of income
Mark Edge, host of radio show Free Talk Live, indicates that Bitcoin income is around “20% now, sometimes lower. 50%+ at times in the past,” while Rodger Paxton of the LAVA Flow Podcast claims: “I receive about half of my income from my podcast by bitcoin.” Brian Sovryn, host of technology and futurism podcast Sovryn Tech, also receives a similar ratio.
“I do a podcast called Sovryn Tech that has been covering Bitcoin since its inception, and so I pretty quickly set up a Bitcoin donation address and that has worked out well for me over the years. Sometimes it's from quite a few listeners in small amounts, and other times someone will donate once a year or a every few months with a significant amount.”
Sovryn is also an indie game developer, and the ratio of Bitcoin received in that pursuit is significantly higher.
“While my donations for my podcasts and blog posts are often varied between Bitcoin donation or PayPal donation, it's very different in that 87% of my PC game sales are with Bitcoin.”
Convenient, low cost donations
Paxton prefers donations in Bitcoin because of the ease of setup and relative absence of fees.
“I love that there are no fees. Both Patreon and PayPal have very large fees that eat into my profit, so I encourage everyone I can to use Bitcoin to send me their donations.”
Edge maintains some concerns over slower transactions and higher fees recently over Bitcoin’s block size limit, saying “I would really like to see the Devs come to some agreement.” Sovryn appreciated the relative ease of setup compared to other donation systems.
“It was really easy to setup, and without having to go through PayPal's hassle of verifying identity and all of that, which really is a pain. And I ended up being able to either put a QR code at the end of a blog post, or just put the actual address in the show notes for a podcast episode. It was way easier to implement the means to get a donation in Bitcoin than any other system, so that was definitely another impetus to start using it.”
Ideologically free-market
For cryptocurrency and peer-to-peer network evangelist (and former Cointelegraph contributor) Amanda B. Johnson, co-founder of cryptocurrency video report The Daily Decrypt, the lure of a fully independent currency got her interested in using Bitcoin.
“After thinking about it for a good 6 months or so, and after seeing that independent bloggers online had these weird little QR codes on their websites and they were actually making money that way, I began to see Bitcoin as the potential fulfillment of the dreams of every free market economist for the last 200 years: the first workable competing independent money. Once that dawned on me, I became interested in getting paid in Bitcoin to write about Bitcoin. So I first reached out to Bitcoin magazine, and that led to various writing stints, from Bitcoin magazine to Cointelegraph to Bitcoin.com, to CopBlock.org.”
Paxton concurs, saying “I love the fact that the money is non-fiat and uncontrolled by any government.”
Bitcoin facilitates a decentralized, independent media
Sovryn feels that a decentralized currency like Bitcoin is imperative to an independent media that can speak or report without fear of financial repercussions from angering government.
“As long as you're doing things right, you're Bitcoin wallet can't get "shut down". You think about how WikiLeaks was effectively banned from donations by MasterCard, and the like. We simply wouldn't have WikiLeaks without Bitcoin, in my opinion. And without WikiLeaks, there would be so few truths even available in the media, independent or otherwise. It's essential that people that do actual journalism and reporting, etc., to be able to get paid. But it's pretty clear that if governments and many corporations had their way, independent media that speaks truth to power would starve.”
Paxton agrees that the lack of government paperwork and risks involved in traditional currency can do wonders for independent media.Tratamiento Para Curar la Gastritis Cronica 4.2 (84%) 10 votes (84%)votes
Tratamiento Para Curar la Gastritis Crónica
¿Padeces de Gastritis?
La gastritis no es una sola enfermedad, más bien son varias enfermedades de diversas condiciones. La palabra Gastritis significa “inflamación del estómago”.
La inflamación del estómago puede ser causada por una variedad de factores. Cuando el estómago se inflama, es porque algo ha irritado el revestimiento. La gastritis puede ser leve o grave, temporal o crónica. Puede ser muy doloroso en algunos pacientes e incluso fatal si no se trata adecuadamente.
¿Como Se Aparece la Gastritis?
Las lesiones, las enfermedades, las bacterias o los virus pueden causar gastritis, la causa más frecuente en todo el mundo es una bacteria llamada Helicobacter pylori. Esta bacteria invade el revestimiento mucoso del duodeno y el estómago y puede causar úlceras pépticas además de la gastritis. Es una de las pocas bacterias conocidas que pueden sobrevivir al ambiente muy ácido del estómago; la mayoría de los otros organismos son destruidos.
Por suerte, es posible tener la bacteria Helicobacter pylori en el estómago y nunca ver ningún síntoma.
También puede desarrollar gastritis debido a una ruptura del sistema inmunológico. Si usted ha tenido una enfermedad prolongada, o si está tomando fármacos inmunosupresores para el tratamiento del cáncer o tiene el VIH, esto puede debilitar su sistema inmunológico y hacerlo más susceptible a desarrollar gastritis.
Un tipo de gastritis es más específicamente conocido como gastritis erosiva. Este tipo de Gastritis es donde el estómago no sólo está inflamado, sino que se está desgastando. El revestimiento del estómago puede ser erosionado por una variedad de irritantes, incluyendo la aspirina.
La enfermedad de Crohn también puede usar el revestimiento del estómago. Normalmente, una persona con gastritis erosiva no sabe que la tiene al principio, porque generalmente se desarrolla muy lentamente con el tiempo. A menudo, la persona es por lo demás muy saludable y no muestra síntomas hasta que finalmente la gastritis erosiva se convierte en lo suficientemente grave como para ser notable.
Existe una clase de Gastritis causada por el estrés agudo, esta se da cuando una lesión o enfermedad repentina provoca una ruptura del revestimiento del estómago y la inflamación del estómago.
La lesión no necesita ni siquiera estar relacionada con el estómago a veces una lesión que implica sangrado abundante o quemaduras importantes en la piel pueden causar.
La razón por la que estas lesiones aparentemente no relacionadas pueden causar gastritis erosiva no es definitivamente conocida, pero una teoría es que las lesiones causan disminución del flujo sanguíneo al estómago como la sangre se está enviando a las áreas dañadas para propósitos de curación, debilitarse.
El tratamiento de radiación puede causar gastritis, también, si se inflige en el lado inferior izquierdo del tórax o el abdomen, cerca del estómago.
Algunos pacientes que han tenido operaciones de estómago, en particular para eliminar parte del estómago por razones de pérdida de peso, pueden desarrollar gastritis después.
Por lo general, la gastritis irrumpe en el lugar donde el tejido se ha cosido juntos después de la cirugía. Se piensa que sucede porque la cirugía restringió el flujo de sangre al revestimiento del estómago, o porque el revestimiento estaba expuesto a demasiada bilis durante la cirugía.A crossover is the placement of two or more otherwise discrete fictional characters, settings, or universes into the context of a single story. They can arise from legal agreements between the relevant copyright holders, unauthorized efforts by fans or common corporate ownership.
Official crossovers [ edit ]
Crossovers often occur in an official capacity in order for the intellectual property rights holders to reap the financial reward of combining two or more popular, established properties. In other cases, the crossover can serve to introduce a new concept derivative of an older one.
Crossovers generally occur between properties owned by a single holder, but they can, more rarely, involve properties from different holders, provided that the inherent legal obstacles can be overcome. They may also involve using characters that have passed into the public domain with those concurrently under copyright protection.
A crossover story may try to explain its own reason for the crossover, such as characters being neighbors (notable examples being the casts from Golden Girls and Empty Nest) or meeting via dimensional rift or similar phenomenon (a common explanation for science fiction properties that have different owners). Some crossovers are not explained at all. Others are absurd or simply impossible within the fictional setting, and have to be ignored by the series' respective continuities. Still others intentionally make the relations between two or more fictional universes confusing, as with The Simpsons and Futurama, where each show is fiction in the other.
Comics [ edit ]
Speed Comics number 32, Artwork by Comic book crossovers may be traced back to the Golden Age, where characters frequently teamed up on the cover (though far more rarely on the inside).number 32, Artwork by Alex Schomburg
Archie Meets the Punisher (August 1994). The Marvel version, with identical content but a different cover, was titled The Punisher Meets Archie. Cover art by Henry Scarpelli. (August 1994). The Marvel version, with identical content but a different cover, was titled. Cover art by Stan Goldberg
Crossovers of multiple characters owned by one company or published by one publisher, have been used to set an established continuity, where characters can frequently meet within one setting. This is especially true of comic book publishers, as different characters in various Marvel, DC or Valiant comic books frequently interact with one another since they live in a "shared universe". For example, in the Marvel Comics universe, Spider-Man has frequent dealings with another Marvel hero, Daredevil, just as in the DC Comics Universe, the Flash and Green Lantern often collaborate. In comic book terminology, these "guest star" roles are common enough that they are generally not considered crossovers; rather, this short-term collaboration to fight crime is called a team-up. A crossover in comic book terms only occurs when a story spans more than one title.[citation needed] This has led to "crossover events", in which major occurrences are shown as affecting most or all of the stories in the shared universe.
The earliest such crossover event was Gardner Fox's Zatanna's Search, which took place in Hawkman #4 (October/November 1964), Detective Comics #336 (February 1965), The Atom #19 (June/July 1965), Green Lantern #42 (January 1966), Detective Comics #355 (September 1966), and Justice League of America #51 (February 1967). This story dealt with Zatanna attempting to reconnect with her father, Zatara, and seeking the aid of Hawkman, Batman, Robin, the Atom, Green Lantern, and Elongated Man along the way.
The first major crossover event was spearheaded by the Marvel Editor-in-Chief at the time, Jim Shooter. As a way to further toy sales he devised the Secret Wars crossover, which brought all the major Marvel heroes into a 12-issue miniseries to battle a common threat. After the threat was dealt with, they all returned to their regular titles. Secret Wars was hailed as both a critical and commercial success, largely because the events of the crossover had lasting effects on the characters (such as the introduction of Spider-Man's black suit which would later become the villain Venom). Jim Shooter later perfected his crossover technique at Valiant Comics with the Unity event. Unity brought all the Valiant characters together to defeat Mothergod, but was told within the existing Valiant Comics titles (and two bookend special issues). Readers were not obliged to buy all 18 chapters as the story was coherent when reading just one title, but far more layered when all were read. Like Secret Wars, the Unity crossover had lasting effects on the Valiant universe; most notably the introduction of Turok, the birth of Magnus, Robot Fighter and the death of a major Valiant hero.
Dark Horse Comics's Aliens Versus Predator comic book franchise was a success that continued into many video games, two movies and even an Aliens Versus Predator Versus The Terminator comic.
The comic crossovers from Raj Comics are very famous in India, in which the super heroes meet to fight a common enemy. Many of these crossovers have occurred between Nagraj and Super Commando Dhruva. In Kohram, all the heroes in Raj Universe meet to finish Haru, an extremely powerful enemy.
Webcomics creators sometimes produce crossovers; one of the first was a two-week sequence between Christopher Baldwin's Bruno and Peter Zale's Helen, Sweetheart of the Internet in 1998.[1]
In 2013, Archie Comics released a 12-part crossover of Capcom character Mega Man and Sega character Sonic the Hedgehog called "Worlds Collide". Taking place in issues of the Sonic the Hedgehog, Sonic Universe and Mega Man comic series from Archie, the crossover involved Dr. Eggman and Dr. Wily forming an alliance to take over both their universes and destroy their respective nemeses. Sonic and Mega Man were briefly tricked into fighting each other, but later joined forces and teamed up with other heroes to battle the doctors' forces, which included virtually every Robot Master introduced in the Mega Man games. The popularity of this crossover and the books involved led to a second crossover in 2015 entitled "Worlds Unite", which not only reunited Sonic and Mega Man but also featured comics-exclusive characters from both of their books, the Mega Man X and Sonic Boom spinoff franchises and various other SEGA and Capcom franchises. This crossover was enabled by the conclusion of the first crossover, which saw a reboot to the Sonic books as their universe was drastically rewritten. Aftereffects of this included the Genesis Portals, gateways connecting worlds that would be exploited by Mega Man X villain Sigma and his minions, forcing a reunion between Sonic and Mega Man and an alliance between heroes of the various franchises involved. "Worlds Unite" spans not only the three series featured in the first crossover, but also includes the Sonic Boom comic series, which entered publication between the two crossovers.
There are also intercompany crossovers, where characters owned by two different companies meet, such as those from DC and Marvel.
Animation [ edit ]
Cartoon crossovers are not uncommon, and most of them – like comics or live-action TV shows – will often feature characters owned by the same company or network. One example is Cartoon Network's The Grim Adventures of the Kids Next Door. It features five crossovers – Ed, Edd n Eddy, Codename: Kids Next Door, The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy, a reference to The Powerpuff Girls and a quote from Scooby-Doo, which are all licensed Cartoon Network series. The cast of Ben 10: Ultimate Alien and Generator Rex team up in Ben 10/Generator Rex: Heroes United. Similarly, characters from Uncle Grandpa and Steven Universe appeared in a crossover episode "Say Uncle". The same occurred with The Powerpuff Girls and Teen Titans Go! in an episode called "TTG v PPG". OK K.O.! Let's Be Heroes did a crossover episode called "Crossover Nexus" to celebrate 25 years of Cartoon Network where the lead character joined forces with Ben 10, Garnet from Steven Universe and Raven from Teen Titans. Most of the last episodes of the Lilo & Stitch: The Series (a spinoff of the film Lilo & Stitch) had crossovers with various other Disney cartoons, including The Proud Family, Kim Possible, Recess, and American Dragon Jake Long. The Jimmy Timmy Power Hour trilogy is another example, in which Jimmy Neutron and Timmy Turner switch universes. The Disney TV series Hercules, based on the 1997 film of the same name, had an episode titled "Hercules and the Arabian Night" that had a crossover between the characters of the TV series and film and with the characters of the Disney film Aladdin, in which Hades and Jafar each try to get rid of each other's enemies (Hades would try to defeat Aladdin while Jafar would try to defeat Hercules). Another crossover is Rugrats Go Wild in which the Rugrats are stranded on an island where The Wild Thornberrys were at the time. In Dexter's Laboratory "Dial M for Monkey" "Huntor" who tries to hunt Monkey is himself hunted; "Huntor" later makes a cameo crossover in Samurai Jack's "Jack vs Mad Jack." During the 1970s and 1980s, crossovers were particularly common among the Hanna-Barbera properties. Some of the earliest examples happened on The New Scooby-Doo Movies, which featured appearances by characters from Harlem Globetrotters, Josie and the Pussycats, Jeannie, Speed Buggy, Batman and Robin, and The Addams Family. Later, the Hanna-Barbera Superstars 10 set of movies involved several crossovers, including such combinations as The Jetsons Meet the Flintstones. This was taken to an extreme in the 1977–79 series Laff-A-Lympics, which was essentially a gathering of the Hanna-Barbera characters for a regular series.
Crossovers are not necessarily composed of characters under common ownership. Two of the most notable cartoon crossovers consisted of characters from different companies. Disney's movie Who Framed Roger Rabbit had characters from various companies, most notably Disney and Warner Bros. Daffy Duck and Donald Duck made a simultaneous appearance in one scene, in which the two of them exchanged blows during a piano duet. Later in the movie, Mickey Mouse and Bugs Bunny were shown parachuting together (to keep things from getting too iffy legally, Mickey and Bugs' lines were written so that each of them said exactly the same number of words in the movie).[citation needed] The film also includes cameos of characters from MGM. The end of the movie features all the cartoons from all of the animation companies joining together in song, to be concluded by Porky Pig stuttering his famous "That's All, Folks!" line as Tinker Bell ends the scene with a magical fade-out.
On February 27, 1998, Fox Kids show, Power Rangers in Space and Ninja Turtles: The Next Mutation, had their crossover with the episode "Shell Shocked".
On October 4, 1997, The 2 Kids WB shows, Superman: The Animated Series and The New Batman Adventures, had their first crossover with the TV movie World's Finest, which was also released on DVD.
Another cartoon crossover would occur in 1990, Cartoon All-Stars to the Rescue. This cartoon featured popular characters from children's Saturday morning cartoons, banding together to promote an anti-drug message. ABC, CBS, Fox, and NBC aired this half-hour special one Saturday morning with characters from all their networks, including Huey, Dewey, and Louie (from Disney's DuckTales), Winnie the Pooh, Tigger, Slimer (from The Real Ghostbusters and Extreme Ghostbusters), Michelangelo (from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles), Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Alvin and the Chipmunks, The Smurfs, ALF (from his short-lived cartoon spinoff), Garfield, and the trio of Baby Kermit, Baby Piggy, and Baby Gonzo (from Jim Henson's Muppet Babies). Animation companies granted unlimited, royalty-free use of their cartoon characters for this project, a feat that has been unequalled before or since then. This cartoon was also introduced by then-President George H. W. Bush and Barbara Bush, and would be distributed to schools and video stores free of charge nationwide.
Manga artist Leiji Matsumoto has been known to cross over the characters of his various stories and characters such as Captain Harlock, Galaxy Express 999, and Queen Millennia, all of which were originally written as separate, self-contained stories. In the Maetel Legend, Queen Promethium is revealed to be having been Yukino Yaoi, the protagonist from Queen Millennia. Matsumoto has also created various crossovers with Space Battleship Yamato, an anime on which he served as director, although the rights to Yamato are actually owned by Yoshinobu Nishizaki.
The adult parody-oriented series Drawn Together features many crossovers; while some are regular cameos, such as Peter and Lois Griffin from Family Guy, others involve a personality twist, such as the homicidal version of Bambi from the eponymous film or the gay version of Elmer Fudd from the Looney Tunes franchise.
The Disney/Marvel crossover Phineas and Ferb: Mission Marvel features the Marvel heroes Spider-Man, Iron Man, the Hulk, and Thor, the Marvel villains Whiplash, MODOK, Red Skull, and Venom, and characters from Phineas and Ferb, where the storyline involves Phineas and Ferb trying to restore power to the Marvel heroes, whose powers were taken away by Doofenshmirtz.
During its 26th season, The Simpsons has crossovers with Family Guy and Futurama. In the hour-long Family Guy season 13 premiere "The Simpsons Guy", the Griffins meet the Simpson family,[2] who meet the Planet Express crew in the Simpsons episode "Simpsorama".[3]
In the Disney series House of Mouse, Mickey Mouse and friends host a nightclub featuring cameos by other Disney characters.
Webtoons (animated shows from the internet) can also have crossovers with different webtoons, franchises, YouTubers and more. Some examples are when Kate from TomSka's Crash Zoom series makes an appearance in Eddsworld as a trick or treater who possesses Matt and Edd in the episode, "Trick or Threat". In addition to this a couple of characters from Eddsworld make appearances in some Crash Zoom episodes such as "Orcs and Dorks". Another example is Death Battle which is a show where two guys (Whiz and Boomstick) put two characters from different franchises together to battle each other. These characters range from television, movie, video game, or comic franchises. Shows like One Minute Melee, Cartoon Fight Club, and Death Battle Exhibitions (the spinoff series) have a similar format to Death Battle.
Anime [ edit ]
Video games [ edit ]
Konami made the first crossover video game featuring Simon Belmont from Castlevania, Universal Picture's King Kong and Mikey from the Warner Bros. Movie The Goonies in Konami Wai Wai World for the Famicom in 1988. The King of Fighters, Marvel vs. Capcom, and many other franchises from third-party developers such as Capcom and SNK bring these licenses together.
The 2.5D fighting game series Super Smash Bros. brings various Nintendo characters together and allows players to fight against each other as these characters in arenas. The third game in the series, Super Smash Bros. Brawl introduced two third-party characters with the inclusion of Solid Snake and Sonic the Hedgehog, of Konami's Metal Gear series and Sega's Sonic the Hedgehog series respectively. The fourth and fifth installments, Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS and Super Smash Bros. for Wii U, feature characters from the third-party franchises of Capcom's Mega Man and Street Fighter, Sega's Sonic the Hedgehog and Bayonetta, Bandai Namco's Pac-Man, and Square Enix's Final Fantasy, in addition to other Nintendo characters from the company's different universes. The sixth installment, 2018's Super Smash Bros. Ultimate also introduced Simon and Richter Belmont from Konami's Castlevania series and Ken Masters from Capcom's Street Fighter series in addition to bringing back all of the playable characters from the previous entries in the series.
The Namco-developed Soul series features characters from a variety of other franchises including Link from Nintendo's The Legend of Zelda series, Heihachi Mishima from Tekken, Todd McFarlane's Spawn, Darth Vader, Yoda, and Starkiller from Star Wars, Lloyd Irving from Tales of Symphonia, Ubisoft Montreal's Ezio Auditore from the Assassin's Creed series, Geralt of Rivia from Andrzej Sapkowski's The Witcher, and YoRHa No. 2 Type B from PlatinumGames' Nier: Automata.
Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games, released in Japan two months before Super Smash Bros. Brawl, was the first time that Mario and Sonic (as well as their associated characters) appeared in a game together.
The Kingdom Hearts series of role-playing games developed by Square Enix features a number of characters Disney films, Final Fantasy, and The World Ends With You.
Super Robot Wars are turn-based strategy games featuring a variety of Japanese mecha series from many generations, such as Mazinger Z, Gundam, Neon Genesis Evangelion, and GaoGaiGar.
More recently, there has been a collaboration between Capcom and Namco, which results in Street Fighter X Tekken and the upcoming Tekken X Street Fighter.
Warriors Orochi is the game that crossover that features the casts of both the Dynasty Warriors and Samurai Warriors series. The third installment of this series included a number of playable characters from other Koei Tecmo properties, such as Ninja Gaiden, Dead or Alive, Zill O'll, and Sophitia Alexandra from Bandai Namco's Soul series. Warriors All-Stars similarly crossed-over a number of characters from Koei Tecmo series.
The Disney film Wreck-It Ralph features many video game character cameo appearances.
Perhaps one of the most notable video game crossovers is Lego Dimensions, which makes use of over 30 different franchises, including DC Comics, Doctor Who, The Lego Movie, The Lord of the Rings, Sonic the Hedgehog, and more.
Film [ edit ]
The first film crossover in a series of Universal Studios monster films was Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man, in 1943. In 2003, Freddy vs. Jason was released by New Line Cinema. In 2004, 20th Century Fox released Alien vs. Predator along with the sequel Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem in 2007. One year later, both Dollman vs. Demonic Toys and Puppet Master vs Demonic Toys were released by 20th Century Fox and Terry Kelley Studios. In 2015, Sony released Lake Placid vs. Anaconda.
After the comics publishing house Marvel Comics ventured into movie production, they set of to produce solitary films with popular superheroes from the Avengers team, with characters from upcoming films making cameo appearances in films starring another superhero, while it all lead to the crossover movie The Avengers (2012). The same process was repeated for Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015) and Avengers: Infinity War (2018) and all the movies together form the crossover film series referred to as the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Inspired by Marvel's success, Warner Bros., who hold movie rights for DC Comics' heroes, announced the production of Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016) and further plans to develop the cinematic DC Extended Universe, while Paramount Pictures and Allspark Pictures announced plans to create a cinematic universe on the Transformers film series.
There have been numerous crossovers in Japanese cinema. The boom of kaiju films saw a lot of crossovers produced at Toho Studios, with some of the monsters forming teams in numerous movies, much like the Marvel movie franchise. Godzilla, Mothra and Rodan (Radon) each first appeared in standalone films before being set against each other or even teaming up against stronger enemies. Their first encounter was in 1964, first in Mothra vs. Godzilla and a few months later of all three in Ghidorah, the Three-Headed Monster. In 1962 Toho released King Kong vs. Godzilla. The long running Zatoichi series sees Shintaro Katsu's blind master swordsman face of with Toshiro Mifune in his iconic role in Zatoichi Meets Yojimbo (1970) and also features a unique cross-Asian project Zatoichi and the One-Armed Swordsman (1971). This coproduction sees Jimmy Wang reprise his famous part of the One-Armed Swordsman while featuring two different endings for both the Japanese and Hong Kong audiences.
Literature [ edit ]
In literature, some authors also engage in crossovers by including characters from different novels they have written in one. Kim Newman is another author who frequently uses this device, as does Stephen King. The works of James Branch Cabell, J.D. Salinger, William Faulkner, Margaret Laurence, Thomas Pynchon, Kurt Vonnegut, Mordecai Richler, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Robert Heinlein, and Isaac Asimov also cross over with each other, linking different characters and settings together over a number of different works. Author Rick Riordan publishes multiple book series featuring gods of ancient civilizations in the modern day, which have had two crossovers and three references to other series. The first popular crossover in literature was the 1885 Mark Twain novel, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, which had an important guest appearance by Tom Sawyer.
Brazilian writer Monteiro Lobato also created solid and imaginative crossovers, using elements and characters from Brazilian folklore such as the Cuca and Saci, from Greek mythology, from the Arabian Nights, from fairy tales such as Grimm's "Snow White", Western literature such as Peter Pan, cartoons such as Popeye and Felix the Cat, and Western films.
Public domain [ edit ]
It is also common for authors to 'crossover' characters who have passed into the public domain, and thus do not require copyright or royalty payments for their use in other works. The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen by Alan Moore and Kevin O'Neill is another example of this, as all of the main characters and most of the secondary / background characters are fictional characters whose copyright has expired, and all are characters of different authors and creators brought together within one massive extended universe. Many of the works of Philip José Farmer's Wold Newton family sequences (which has also been explored and developed by other authors) also utilize and interweave numerous otherwise unrelated fictional characters into a rich family history by speculating familial connections between them (such as a blood-relationship between Sherlock Holmes and Tarzan). Roger Zelazny's novel A Night in the Lonesome October combines Sherlock Holmes, Doctor Frankenstein, Jack the Ripper, and the Cthulhu Mythos, although he never specifically identifies them as such ("The Count", "The Good Doctor", "Jack", etc.).
Occasionally, authors will include into crossovers classic fictional characters whose copyright is still held by the original authors (or at least their estates), but who are nevertheless considered iconic or'mythic' enough to be recognised from a few character traits or descriptions without being directly named (thus not requiring royalties payments to be made to the copyright holder). A prominent example occurs within The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Volume One, wherein a character who is clearly intended in appearance and description by other characters to be Dr. Fu Manchu appears as a significant villain; however, as this character was not in the public domain at the time of writing and the rights still held by the estate of his creator Sax Rohmer, he is not directly named as such in the work and is only referred to as 'the Devil Doctor'. Something similar occurs in The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Black Dossier, wherein a character named "Jimmy" is clearly intended to be Ian Fleming's character James Bond, though here he is satirized as being an inept and unfavorable antagonist, likely to parody Sean Connery's appearance in the 2003 film adaptation. Another example in The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen is when a character is named to be the Anti-Christ, yet, despite never being named, is shown to be an evil Harry Potter.
The TV show Once Upon a Time is set in a world in which all fairy tales coexist, including Snow White, Little Red Riding Hood, and even Alice in Wonderland. (As a production of The Walt Disney Company, copyrighted elements from that company's productions have appeared in Once Upon a Time.) The Shrek film series is built on the same concept, and even includes references to then-copyrighted elements like Peter Pan (often in the form of satire).
Television series [ edit ]
One of the earlier instances of crossovers in TV productions outside the US is the episode Unter Brüdern (1990), which was produced by WDR and DFF as a crossover between the West German crime series Tatort and the East German crime series Polizeiruf 110. Their respective popular heroes Horst Schimanski and Peter Fuchs join forces to solve a case in the turmoil of the time after the fall of the Berlin Wall. The episode was produced during the short transition period between the fall of the Berlin Wall and the reunification of Germany.
Between established shows [ edit ]
Crossovers involving principals can also occur when the characters have no prior relationship, but are related by time period, locale or profession. The Law and Order series, for example, afford a commonality of setting and profession which lends itself to crossovers, both within the franchise and in a wider universe. Law & Order: SVU has crossed over several times with Chicago P.D. and Chicago Fire, as well as sharing a common character with Homicide: Life on the Street. NCIS has crossed over with NCIS: Los Angeles, NCIS: New Orleans and JAG, while NCIS: Los Angeles has crossed over with both Scorpion and Hawaii Five-0 |
2001. That’s statistical noise. It’s about the same number of people killed each year by sharks. (Note: I’m not claiming here that there is no more racism in America, or that violent Islamists don’t exist. Only that neither is responsible for a statistically significant number of homicides in the United States.)
Of course, the New America study may have overlooked some incidents. And the New York Times article points out that there were several attacks that may have been thwarted. But if we were to double, triple or even increase the number by a factor of 10, in a country of 320 million people, we’re still talking about a really small number.
These figures are likely of little comfort to those who lost friends or relatives in these attacks. It’s also true that these attacks are intended to sow fear in entire communities, or in the country at large, so measuring incidents such as the Charleston shooting or the Boston Marathon attacks solely by fatality or casualty figures understates their impact. But if the goal of a terrorist is, by definition, to sow terror, then the success of failure of a terrorist is largely measured by our reaction to the attack. If we let the Boston Marathon attacks scare us into thinking any Muslim-looking person with a backpack might be carrying a bomb, in spite of the fact that by all measures, American Muslims are peaceful, productive and as patriotic as any other ethnic group, then we’re giving the marathon bombers far too much credit. Likewise, if we let the Charleston massacre scare us into thinking there are armies of Dylann Roofs out there ready to start a race war, again in spite of all the available empirical evidence, then we’re letting the Charleston suspect have far more impact on our lives than he deserves to.
Last week, Rep. Michael McCaul introduced a new bill in Congress that would create an Office of Coordination for Countering Violent Extremism within the Department of Homeland Security. McCaul, a Republican, fears radical Islam. But there have been similar calls from the left for more government monitoring of radical right-wingers. This comes after then-Attorney General Eric Holder announced last September that the Department of Justice would embark on a series of new initiatives to counter extremism. He warned that “Few threats are more urgent.”
To see how quickly the fight against exaggerated claims of extremist violence can morph into a vague campaign against extremism generally, look to Britain. Last fall, Home Secretary Theresa May introduced a series of new policies that the Telegraph reported “would allow judges to ban people deemed extremists from broadcasting, protesting in certain places or even posting messages on Facebook or Twitter without permission.” The goal is to “eliminate extremism in all its forms.”
That’s a horrifying prospect. Over the course of U.S. history, the extremist label has been applied to abolitionists, suffragists, antiwar protesters, civil rights protesters and countless other activists who would later become the mainstream. Who is or isn’t an “extremist” under such laws will, of course, ultimately be determined by politicians. Which means the laws will inevitably be used to target groups politicians see as a threat to their power. Atheist groups are afraid the laws will prevent them from criticizing religion. Religious groups fear they’ll be used to target critics of gay marriage, abortion or other religions. Muslim groups fear that they’ll be used to target them. Critics of Muslims fear the same. They’re all right to be worried.
But you needn’t go overseas to see how the fight against extremism can be abused. The last time the government really took aim at right-wing extremism was the 1990s, when federal agencies aggressively targeted gun rights groups, militias and white supremacist organizations. There were countless reported abuses. Waco and Ruby Ridge are the most notable examples, but hardly the only instances of overreach. Perhaps, quite understandably, you aren’t particularly sympathetic to someone like Randy Weaver or David Koresh. (Of course, children also died in both instances, but let’s put that aside for a moment.) But understand that if the goal here is to stop the spread of extremism, both cases became rallying cries and recruiting propaganda for such groups. And despite all the extra-constitutional surveillance, informant abuse and gung-ho militarism of groups such as the ATF and the FBI at the time, none of that was able to prevent the Oklahoma City bombing (though there’s good evidence that it helped inspire it.)
The story is similar with Muslim extremists since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. (Or, for that matter, since the World Trade Center attack in 1993.) Time and time again, the government announces that it has uncovered a new terrorist cell or thwarted a pending attack. And time and time again, we later discover that the vast majority of the planning was done by an undercover agent or an informant working for the government. The targets of these investigations are inevitably hapless dupes, innocent of any wrongdoing, or Muslims who at worst were guilty of showing too much sympathy or being too polite when an informant started talking about jihad. Yet despite all the surveillance, the informant abuse, the “fusion centers” and the monitoring, the government wasn’t able to prevent the Boston Marathon bombing. Despite the fact that there were warnings they could have caught, they were apparently too busy monitoring Occupy Wall Street protesters.
The new threat is apparently from “lone wolf” attacks. But these attacks are even less preventable than organized attacks. It may be difficult to accept, but there’s really no law that could have kept Dylann Roof from allegedly shooting up that church in Charleston, at least not a law that’s consistent with the values of a free society. Creating new government agencies in charge of monitoring extremism means creating new law enforcement agencies whose leaders will inevitably feel the need to justify their existence by making arrests. That means more monitoring, more surveillance, more undercover stings and more informant-driven investigations into alleged extremists will almost certainly ensnare innocent people, and entice hapless people into committing crimes they otherwise wouldn’t have committed. Perhaps occasionally they’ll also uncover a real plot, and prevent a legitimate extremist from carrying out a legitimate act of violence. But we’ll be creating far more martyrs, and allowing groups with ugly politics to win some sympathy by legitimately painting themselves as victims. And all of this will be to fight an alleged scourge that on average claims about five victims each year.
The only remedy here is for pundits and political groups on all sides of the political spectrum to speak out against government excesses and civil liberties abuses even of people and groups we find abhorrent. It also means speaking up when the threat posed by these groups is exaggerated or presented without context. Extremist violence is incredibly rare in the United States. That doesn’t mean it never happens, or that it isn’t tragic and awful when it does. But it’s okay to recognize the tragedy of a particular event and conclude that there was nothing to be done about it. Doing so doesn’t mean the lives that were lost any less important or meaningful, nor does it make the sheer horror of it all any more palatable. But when a monster commits an inexplicable crime, we do no one any good by insisting that this particular monster could only have been one of an army of them– despite all evidence to the contrary — then insisting that no one feel safe until we’ve destroyed them all.Regulation (EC) No. 2257/94 European Union regulation Text with EEA relevance Made by European Commission Made under Art. Journal reference L245, pp. 6-10 History Date made 1994 16 September Came into force 1995-01-01 Other legislation Amended by Commission Regulation (EC) No. 1135/96 of 24 June 1996
Commission Regulation (EC) No. 386/97 of 28 February 1997
Commission Regulation (EC) No. 228/2006 of 9 February 2006 Current legislation
Commission Regulation (EC) No. 2257/94 of 16 September 1994 laying down quality standards for bananas, sometimes referred to in the media as the bendy banana law, is a European Union regulation specifying classification standards for bananas, which took effect on 1 January 1995. It was replaced by Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) No 1333/2011 of 19 December 2011 laying down marketing standards for bananas, rules on the verification of compliance with those marketing standards and requirements for notifications in the banana sector with effect as of 9 January 2012.[2]
Provisions [ edit ]
The regulation applies to unripened green bananas, and thus to growers and wholesalers rather than retailers.[3] The main provisions of the regulation were that bananas sold as unripened, green bananas should be green and unripened, firm and intact, fit for human consumption, not "affected by rotting", clean, free of pests and damage from pests, free from deformation or abnormal curvature, free from bruising, free of any foreign smell or taste. The minimum size (with tolerances and exceptions) is a length of 14 cm and a thickness (grade) of 2.7 cm. It specifies minimum standards for specific quality classifications of bananas (Extra, Class I, Class II). Only Extra class bananas have to comply fully with the shape specifications. Class II bananas, for instance are permitted to have "defects of shape"; Class I bananas are permitted only "slight defects of shape".[4] This is not true, however, of the size specifications; sale of bananas below the minimum size is almost always prohibited (with exceptions only for bananas from a few regions where bananas are traditionally smaller).
Applicability [ edit ]
The regulation took effect on 1 January 1995. It applied directly, in its entirety, in all member states of the European Union. It was repealed by Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) No 1333/2011 of 19 December 2011 laying down marketing standards for bananas, rules on the verification of compliance with those marketing standards and requirements for notifications in the banana sector with effect as of 9 January 2012.[2]
Bent bananas [ edit ]
This regulation requires that bananas as a minimum standard must not have "abnormal curvature",[5], although no definition or guidance was given about the degree of curvature that would be regarded as "abnormal". This led to various stories about an EU ban on either curved[6] or excessively curved[7][8] bananas. This has been frequently repeated by pro-Europeans and Euro-sceptics alike; the former tending to regard it as an apocryphal or misleading Euromyth[6][8] and the latter regarding it as an example of needless European bureaucracy.[7][9]
On 29 July 2008, the European Commission held a preliminary vote concerning the repeal of certain regulations related to the quality of specific fruit and vegetables that included provisions related to size and shape. According to the Commission's press release, "In this era of high prices and growing demand, it makes no sense to throw these products away or destroy them." The Agriculture Commissioner stated, "This is a concrete example of our drive to cut red tape and I will continue to push until it goes through. [...] It shouldn't be the EU's job to regulate these things. It is far better to leave it to market operators."[10] Regulation 1221/2008 took effect as of 1 July 2009. Though neither the press release cited above nor Regulation 1221/2008 made any mention of bananas or Regulation 2257/94, some reports of the changes treated them as including the banana quality standards regulation and contained explicit or apparent references to this regulation, using expressions such as "the infamous'straight banana' ruling".[11][12] Some sources have claimed this to be an admission that the original regulations did indeed ban "bent bananas",[13][14] or that it was accepted that it was "a farce".[15]Update: I did mention that lock free data structures are really hard to write, it looks like there might be some issues that haven’t been addressed in the implementation of this LF Queue that we’re referencing. The rest of the analysis is still valid and hopefully useful to you, just know there’s actually more that needs to be done, don’t try to use that code for a mission critical application out of the box.
It’s said that locks keep honest people honest. In programming locks keep multi-threaded programs honest by ensuring only one thread can access a resource at a time. Why would we want to get rid of locks then? In this post I’ll revisit the queue that I wrote in C, and instead look at a “lockless” queue implementation. We’ll talk about atomicity and the tradeoffs when choosing one strategy or the other, and end with some ways to write “lock-free” Ruby code. Prepare to unlock your imagination!
First off, if you haven’t read my Mediations on Writing a Queue, go do that first. Now that you’re up to speed, we’ll look at someone else’s code. Here is a lock free queue written in C.
This post will be using examples from this commit of lfqueue. Future versions of that lib may change.
Both libraries are very similar, they both have a constructor, a push method, and a pop method. They’re both based on a linked list, but you’ll notice that this one does not have any mutex or condition variable. How can it be threadsafe then?
Let’s look back at a real world example of locks, an intersection. There is a space where cars going north and south need to intersect cars going east and west. If two cars try to use this resource at the same time, they will crash. We can put a stoplight at the intersection (our lock) and this will regulate who can use the resource and when.
A way to make a lockless intersection would require that we get rid of the stoplight, but also that we change the structure of the intersection. A good example might be a roundabout. We normalize all the behavior of the cars so they’re turning the same direction, and then it is up to each individual car to ensure there’s not another vehicle coming when they enter the roundabout.
Exact same problem, totally different solution.
In programming the way that we make lock free data structures is by first removing locks, and then re-designing the data flow to use atomic APIs.
In the case of lfqueue. The atomic API being used is __sync_bool_compare_and_swap. From the docs:
bool __sync_bool_compare_and_swap (type *ptr, type oldval type newval,...) type __sync_val_compare_and_swap (type *ptr, type oldval type newval,...) These builtins perform an atomic compare and swap. That is, if the current value of `*ptr` is `oldval`, then write `newval` into `*ptr`. The “bool” version returns true if the comparison is successful and newval was written. The “val” version returns the contents of *ptr before the operation.
This method is atomic. That means anything this method does internally is completed in one operation. This method will first check to see if the pointer in the first argument is equal to the element passed into the second argument. If it is then it will replace (or swap) that value with a new value, which is the third argument. If the operation was able to succeed then it returns a boolean for true, otherwise false.
If this method was not atomic then after the check to see if the pointer matches the element we expect it to, another thread could modify the value, and then we would end up in an indeterminate state (a car crash). The atomic nature of the structure guarantees consistency even without a lock.
It’s not enough to use an atomic API to remove locks, we also have to change our data flow to account for any memory setting failures. In the enqueue operation, we need to add a new node to the tail. This is done in lfqueue here:
do { p = ctx -> tail ; if ( __sync_bool_compare_and_swap ( & ctx -> tail, p, tmpnode )) { p -> next = tmpnode ; break ; } } while ( 1 );
First a temporary variable, p, is assigned the same value of the tail of our queue. In this case ctx is short for “queue context”. Next we want to add our new node tmpnode to the end of our queue (make it the tail). If two threads are trying to do this at the same time, then one of them will succeed and one of them will fail. If the compare operation fails then the enqueue action will immediately loop again, trying to do another compare and swap operation, with the updated tail value. It will do this until it is successful, or until the heat death of the universe.
When the compare and set operation is successful, it means that we were able to change the value of the tail. The next line updates the previous tail’s next pointer to point to our new node. We don’t need to do this via a compare and set atomic operation, because if anyone else is trying to modify the the tail, they failed (or otherwise our compare would have failed). The break at the end exits the loop.
After you’ll notice the __sync_add_and_fetch, and I think this is hilarious. If you look up the docs for it here’s what it says:
These builtins perform the operation suggested by the name, and return the new value.
Seriously? I get that the names are pretty intuitive, but that just comes across as user hostile. This is why I added a documentation feature to CodeTriage to help find undocumented methods in Ruby libraries. I believe that good documentation that respects users and their time helps all developers from all skill levels. If you’re looking to help out a language community, docs is a great place to have a large amount of impact with a minimal amount of effort.
Back to the code. This call:
__sync_add_and_fetch ( & ctx -> count, 1 );
Will synchronize the value of ctx->count and then add one to it. It’s not enough to do ctx->count++ because this equates to:
ctx -> count = ctx -> count + 1
Imagine that two threads are trying to do this same operation, one of them could context switch after the ctx->count but before the plus operator
ctx -> count = ctx -> count + 1 // ^ // |___HERE
If that happened, then thread A tries to increment from 0 to 1, sees the value is zero, goes to add one. Then thread B context switches in, sees the value is 0, adds one so the value is now 1. Now thread C switches in and increments from 1 to 2 successfully. Thread A finaly gets to context switch in, but it sill thinks that the value is zero, so adding one to it will produce 1 instead of the correct result: 3. To avoid this race condition from happening we have to use an atomic function.
The dequeue function in lfqueue is pretty similar to enqueue, except in reverse. Instead of spinning trying to change the tail, it spins while trying to change the head. Instead of adding one to the count it subtracts one from the count.
So why would we ever use a lock when we can write with lock-free data structures? First is complexity. When we’re locking a mutex, we know that we can access a shared state and do anything we want, we don’t have to worry about how another thread might change that resource. With lockless programming, we have to always be asking ourselves if any new code needs to be atomic, and if so how can we enforce consistency.
When we learn to program, we don’t generally think that an operation might succeed. 1+1 is always 2 (or sometimes occasionally 2.0000001 ). Having to convert everything to atomic operations requires a paradigm shift, and getting it right can be challenging. Writing multi-threaded code is hard enough, writing it with no locks is kinda like playing on ultra-hard mode.
Next reason why using lock free structures isn’t such an easy win: performance. While it sucks to be stuck at a traffic light, when it turns green you go and don’t look back. If you’re at a really busy roundabout it can be very nerve racking to constantly burn cycles trying to figure out how fast each car is going, can you squeeze in, and should you go right now or wait. If you’re suffering from a lot of contention and calls to your atomic structures are failing frequently, then there’s a lot of extra work being done, when we could be sitting back grabbing a sip of our La Croix and listening to NPR.
In my Operating Systems course I learned about another type of a lock, which is called a spinlock. This is a lock that instead of blocking and yielding execution to another thread, keeps trying to acquire the lock until it succeeds. This again sounds like a waste of resources but it’s not always. Context switching between threads isn’t free, and if a task is very short lived then it’s likely the mutex will be released and acquired faster than it would take to context switch in another thread.
Does that behavior sound similar to the structure that lfqueue coded? If the swap operation isn’t successful, it will spin and keep trying until it succeeds. If you’re using a queue that won’t experience much contention, it seems reasonable that the lockless structure would be better, it will have fewer cases where it will have to spin. In cases where someone is constantly popping or pushing and the queue is the bottleneck, being able to tell threads to calm down and wait until they’re ready to do work is a benefit of a lock based approach.
Ultimately if the performance bottleneck of your program ends up being your queueing library, hopefully you’ll have some real world example data to profile with, and you won’t have to take my best guess estimations.
Lock Free Ruby
The key to lock-free code is in atomic data structures, this is also the key in Ruby. Some operations like Queue#pop are atomic, but others like:
value ||= 0
Are not. In Ruby this expression will be expanded to be:
value = value || 0
And we can have the same race condition we saw earlier with the count. The concurrent ruby gem has a number of thread safe data structures, some of them expose the ability to do a compare_and_set for example:
require 'concurrent' my_atomic = Concurrent :: AtomicFixnum. new ( 0 ) my_atomic. compare_and_set ( 0, 1 ) # => true puts my_atomic. value # => 1
I will tell you a dirty secret though, which is this method is powered by a lock under the hood:
# https://github.com/ruby-concurrency/concurrent-ruby/blob/041c1d10df225e6d3295c428aebb719931754562/lib/concurrent/atomic/mutex_atomic_fixnum.rb#L42-L51 def compare_and_set ( expect, update ) synchronize do if @value == expect. to_i @value = update. to_i true else false end end end
The benefit of this style of “lock free” code is that the lock isn’t exposed to the end consumer. Instead of having to pass around a value and a lock everywhere, you can instead pass only a value, that has a mutex associated with it. If you’re using this library with JRuby, actually get a lock free version of many of these methods. For the exact same top level code, you would get this implementation under the hood instead:
# https: //github.com/headius/ruby-atomic/blob/63107c09afca85df9136050185fdb1968da13bc9/ext/org/jruby/ext/atomic/AtomicReferenceLibrary.java#L105-L115 @JRubyMethod ( name = { "compare_and_set", "compare_and_swap" }) public IRubyObject compare_and_set ( ThreadContext context, IRubyObject expectedValue, IRubyObject newValue ) { Ruby runtime = context. runtime ; if ( expectedValue instanceof RubyNumeric ) { // numerics are not always idempotent in Ruby, so we need to do slower logic return compareAndSetNumeric ( context, expectedValue, newValue ); } return runtime. newBoolean ( UNSAFE. compareAndSwapObject ( this, referenceOffset, expectedValue, newValue )); }
So by using the libraries in concurrent-ruby, you’re guaranteeing that they’re threadsafe, and depending on the implementation and version you’re using you may actually get a lock-free implementation.
While it would be nice if there were more atomic primitives such as compare and swap we could use in Ruby, we’re able to get just about all the functionality we need via good ole-fashioned locks. If you find yourself in a patch of Ruby code where acquiring the mutex is the bottleneck, it might be time to drop down to the C interface.
That’s it for today on atomic function calls, and lockless data structures. If you’ve made it this far, thanks for reading the whole lock stock and barrel.Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. requested a special prosecutor last year to investigate an intern's accusation that she was sexually assaulted by a high-ranking member of his office. View Full Caption Mario Tama/Getty Images
NEW YORK CITY — A female intern in the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office claimed last year that a high-ranking employee in the office sexually assaulted her, but her accusations were not investigated because she declined to cooperate with a special prosecutor, DNAinfo New York has learned.
Staffers working for Manhattan DA Cyrus Vance Jr. initially tried to look into the intern’s claims. But when she refused to discuss any of the allegations, Vance asked the administrative judge for New York City courts to assign a special prosecutor to investigate the matter “to avoid any appearance of impropriety.”
“I am informed that a former legal intern in this office has accused an employee of this office of sexually assaulting her,” Vance said in a March 31 affirmation in support of his application for the special prosecutor.
“The former intern will not divulge her identity, the identity of her assailant or any details of the sexual assault to anyone in my office, other than saying that her assailant is ‘high-ranking.’”
The DA’s office learned of the accusations through a friend of the intern, according to a source. Vance said in his affirmation that without the intern’s cooperation, he believed a special prosecutor was appropriate.
"Since this person will not cooperate with my office and will not divulge the name or position of her assailant, we are unable to investigate her claims," Vance said.
“Therefore, the interests of justice dictate that an application for recusal and appointment of a special district attorney be submitted to this court. This application is made to avoid any appearance of impropriety and to allow these serious allegations to be investigated."
A judge granted Vance’s request on April 4, assigning the probe to the Bronx District Attorney’s Office.
But Bronx DA spokeswoman Terry Raskyn said her office never investigated the accusations because the intern “did not wish to share any information with us” and would not reveal her or her alleged attacker’s identity.
Joan Vollero, a spokeswoman for the Manhattan DA’s Office, did not say how much time passed between when her office learned of the allegations and when Vance asked for the special prosecutor. She also would not say why her office tried to look into the allegations before requesting a special prosecutor.
“As the affirmation indicates, the complainant refused to identify herself or the employee in question, or provide details about the purported incident,” Vollero said. “The investigation has been referred to the Bronx District Attorney’s office and any further questions should be directed there.”
The Bronx DA’s office also didn’t respond to a question asking how long Vance's office waited before requesting a special prosecutor. It would also not say what steps, if any, were taken to try to obtain her cooperation.
Both the Manhattan DA's office and the Bronx DA's office would also not say whether they alerted the NYPD to the accusations or tried to refer the accuser to support services.
Eugene O'Donnell, a professor at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, said that accusations like these require investigators to use all the tools at their disposal to find out what happened.
"This is not an ordinary run-of-the-mill accusation, obviously," said O'Donnell, a former NYPD officer and prosecutor in the Queens and Brooklyn district attorneys' offices.
"Has the DA pulled out all the stops to secure cooperation and physical evidence? Has NYPD been asked for assistance beyond the prosecutor's office? This calls for NYPD's A-team.
"Has thought been given to compelling the witness' testimony? Has the victim been referred to support service?"
Vance has overseen several high-profile sex-assault investigations since he took office in 2010, including a recent case in which a female executive at the Rev. Al Sharpton’s National Action Network accused prominent civil rights attorney Sanford Rubenstein of rape.
Following a three-month probe, the DA’s office announced on Monday that it would not bring charges against Rubenstein, citing a lack of evidence.
In 2011 Vance also withdrew charges against ex-International Monetary Fund chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn after prosecutors found his accuser, a hotel maid, to be untruthful.Sure, we all know that Ben Browder stepped in to lead SG-1 during the show’s last few years — but he was apparently supposed to anchor another Stargate show first.
Fresh off his acclaimed run on Farscape, Browder was a bankable star for the SCIFI Channel back in the early 2000s. So when the producers behind Stargate Atlantis started putting the cast together for the spinoff series in 2003-2004, Browder was on the short list.
But there was just one problem — Farscape fans are a lively bunch, and had successfully lobbied for a followup miniseries to bring the narrative to an end after the show was canceled on a WTF-inducing cliffhanger. The shooting schedule for Farscape: The Peacekeeper Wars coincided with work on the pilot for Stargate Atlantis, so Browder ultimately had to pass on the gig to wrap up his old show.
Enter Joe Flanigan, who would ultimately take on the role of Atlantis’ Maj. John Sheppard instead of Browder — and do a bang-up job with the character in the process. The actors are pretty similar, and it's not much of a stretch to see how the writers originally envisioned Browder in the role.
Of course, that wasn’t the end of the story for Browder when it came to Stargate. Though the Atlantis job didn’t work out, the producers did bring him in for the role of Cameron Mitchell on Stargate SG-1’s last few seasons, after Richard Dean Anderson opted to reduce his workload as part of a semi-retirement.
So it might not have been in the Pegasus Galaxy — but Browder still got to have his fair share of adventures through the ‘gate.
(Via IMDB)
And check out these other little-known sci-fi facts:
Michael Keaton was supposed to be Jack on LOST
How Whedon accidentally got Angel cancelled
How Nick Fury (all 3 of him) got that eyepatch
Spock's Vulcan nerve pinch? It started as a punch
How Star Trek was saved by... Lucille Ball?
The REAL reason Han was frozen in carbonite
Why Stan Lee put a hyphen in Spider-Man
S.H.I.E.L.D. almost had a VERY different acronym
What Tolkien REALLY wanted to call the 3 Rings volumes
Whedon spent 7 weeks rewriting 'generic' Waterworld script
Originally, Wonder Woman was the JSA's secretary
The Thing once had a happy(ish) ending
Lucas wanted Indiana Jones 2 to be a dinosaur movie
Stan Lee thought Marvel's readers would HATE Iron Man (at first)
Know Yoda's original first name, we do
Uhura's famed Trek kiss wasn't meant to be with KirkOKLAHOMA CITY – Sen. David Holt (R-OKC) said Thursday that he is considering a possible run for the mayor’s seat after Oklahoma City Mayor Mick Cornett announced Wednesday that he will not seek re-election when his fourth term as mayor expires in the spring of 2018.
“I love my city. Thoughts of its future are never far from my mind, but this has been especially true in the 24 hours since Mayor Cornett’s announcement,” Holt said in a statement Thursday morning.
“With the election of our next mayor now less than a year away, a sense of urgency exists. It is critical that visionary, optimistic and unifying leadership remains the hallmark at City Hall. I am actively exploring how I may personally work to bring about that outcome, and I will be making an announcement in the coming days.”
Cornett became Oklahoma City’s Mayor on March 2, 2004. He is the city’s longest-serving mayor and is currently the longest-serving mayor in the country among the 50 largest cities in the United States. He is scheduled to leave office in April 2018.
The next Oklahoma City mayoral election starts with a primary on Feb. 13, 2018. If a candidate receives a majority of votes in the primary, he or she is elected to office. If no candidate wins a majority, the two candidates with the most votes will advance to a runoff in a general election on April 3, 2018.
Contenders are already lining up. District 2 Oklahoma County Commissioner Brian Maughan announced Wednesday he would run for the mayor’s seat.
Holt was elected to the Senate on July 27, 2010 and took office on November 16, 2010. His 2014 re-election to a second term was unopposed. On his first day in office, Holt was elected to Senate leadership, serving first as Vice Chair of the Majority Caucus and then as a Majority Whip.
He currently serves as Chairman of the Appropriations Subcommittee on Select Agencies, the General Government, Judiciary, Appropriations and Public Safety committees. He also serves on the Oklahoma Compensation and Unclassified Positions Review Board.
In the past, he has served as Vice Chair of the Appropriations Subcommittee on Select Agencies, Vice Chair of the Business and Commerce Committee and Vice Chair of the Redistricting Committee, responsible for Central Oklahoma.Broad strokes can paint an array of tenuous similarities between Sven-Goran Eriksson and Jurgen Klinsmann, men whose 16-year gap in age may be their least-compelling difference. Still, both have managed major European countries and are known for their affability. They’re media darlings who carry a cosmopolitan air that allows them to easily navigate different circles. The two even passed each other in the night at Sampdoria, Eriksson leaving for Lazio as Klinsmann arrived in 1997.
In 2008, Eriksson’s long managerial career took an unexpected turn when he began an ill-fated tenure as coach of the Mexican national team, a move that would eventually create another flimsy link between himself and the German icon. Three years later, Klinsmann was hired to overhaul CONCACAF’s other power, accepting the head coach’s role with the United States.
Since Klinsmann’s appointment, the parallels between him and Eriksson continue to grow, even if the vastly different worlds of American and Mexican soccer often make for clumsy comparisons. But given the striking similarities between the two coaches’ mandates, the follies of Eriksson’s 10-month tenure offer a number of lessons.
Eriksson’s eventual demise begged a question still relevant for Klinsmann: Can you overhaul a program and qualify out of CONCACAF for a World Cup? With Eriksson, Mexico didn’t wait to find out.
“The decision of the club directors was unanimous.” – Jorge Vergara, member, Mexican soccer federation (FMF) selection committee, announcing the hire of Sven Goran Eriksson1
At the time of his appointment, the 60-year-old Eriksson was still a hot coaching commodity, even if he’d just been harshly dismissed from Manchester City by then-owner Thaksin Shinawatra. The former Benfica, Lazio and England boss had guided Manchester City to ninth in the Premier League, a place in Europe (via fair play), and two derby wins over Manchester United. But a hot start that saw City take an early league lead was ultimately his undoing. Shinawatra cited a series of poor, end of season results as cause for termination, a bizarre euphemism for (what was then) City’s best Premier League points haul.
For the United States, landing Jurgen Klinsmann was a similar coup. Like Eriksson, he had his skeptics. The success of his Germany successor (Joachim Löw) has led to the meme that the former Nationalmannschaft boss was little more than a figurehead, an unfair assessment. Klinsmann is rightfully credited with leading Germany’s mid-oughts resurgence. Resuscitating the country’s youth system made him a perfect candidate for U.S. soccer. The highest profile coach the States had ever hired, Klinsmann represented a chance to start the country’s much-debated overhaul.
So it was that after a five-year courtship – with near elopements in 2006 and 2010 – the California native was announced as Bob Bradley’s replacement. One day shy of his 47th birthday, Klinsmann was back coaching. Three years after rival Mexico had swung for the fences with their own hire, the States had followed suit.
“This is not the time to hire a European coach.. if you do that, you are not thinking in soccer terms.” – Jared Borghetti, forward, Mexico2
“I don’t think I’d like to see 11 naturalized players in the national team.” – Guillermo Ochoa, goalkeeper, Mexico3
There was never going to be a good time for the FMF to hire a European coach. Bora Milutinovic was Serbian but had roots in Mexico, where he had resided for over a decade before being appointed national team manager in 1983. That connection allowed the future U.S. men’s coach to transcend the suspicions Mexican soccer fans hold toward Europeans, an attitude born of pride that sees no reason their futbol should bow to perceived European arrogance.
Initially Eriksson helped downplay their fears. He took hours of Spanish lessons each day, often giving interviews in the language, even when it didn’t help. “We’re at a level now to make life complicated for any team,” he said early on, assuaging concerns he’d subjugate Mexico.4
Those concerns returned with Eriksson’s naturalization policy. He aggressively sought to bring in talent from outside Mexico’s player pool, recalling Matias Vuoso, Lucas Ayala (both Argentine), Leandro Augusto and Antonio Naelson (Brazilians) for a 2009 friendly against his native Sweden. Whatever hope Eriksson had of winning over the Mexican public was lost when those players gained access to the tricolor.
Jurgen Klinsmann hasn’t had to deal with such concerns. Having adopted the United States as his home, Klinsmann’s an established fixture in the country’s soccer, appearing in analyst roles on television and serving as an advisor to Major League Soccer’s Toronto FC. His biggest criticisms – an abhorrence of pay-to-play development, his desire to see the country’s soccer reflect its makeup – are shared by |
their own neighbourhood. Many people who cared about the Nietos came to the trial each day, and the courtroom was usually nearly full.
Trials are theatre, and this one had its dramas. Adante Pointer, a black lawyer with the Oakland firm of John Burris, which handles a lot of local police-killing lawsuits, represented Refugio and Elvira Nieto, the plaintiffs. Their star witness, Antonio Theodore, had come forward months after the killing. Theodore is an immigrant from Trinidad, a musician in the band Afrolicious, and a resident of the Bernal area. An elegant man with neat shoulder-length dreads who came to court in a suit, he said he had been on a trail above the road, walking a dog, and that he had seen the whole series of events unfold. He testified that Nieto’s hands were in his pockets – that he had not pointed his Taser at the officers, there was no red laser light; the officers had just shouted “stop” and then opened fire.
When Pointer asked him why he had not come forward earlier, he replied: “Just think: it would be hard to tell an officer that I just saw fellow officers shooting up somebody. I didn’t trust the police.” Theodore testified cogently under questioning from Pointer. But the next morning, when city attorney Margaret Baumgartner, an imposing white woman with a resentful air, questioned him, he fell apart. He contradicted his earlier testimony about where he had been and where the shooting took place, then declared that he was an alcoholic with memory problems. He seemed to be trying to make himself safe by making himself useless. Pointer questioned him again, and he said: “I don’t care to be here right now. I feel threatened.”
The details of what had happened were hotly debated and often contradictory, especially with regard to the Taser. The police had testified as though Nieto had been a superhuman or inhuman opponent, facing them off even as they fired again and again, then dropping to a “tactical sniper posture” on the ground, still holding the Taser with its red laser pointing at them. The city lawyers brought in a Taser expert whose official testimony seemed to favour them, but when he was asked by Pointer to look at the crime‑scene photos, he said the Taser was off and that it was not something easily or accidentally turned on or off. The light is only on when the Taser is on. Officer Morse had testified that when he arrived to kick it out of Nieto’s hands there was no red light or wires coming from it. The Taser wires are, however, visible in the police photographs documenting the scene.
One piece of evidence produced was a fragment of bone found in the pocket of Nieto’s jacket. Some thought this proved that his hands had been in his pockets, as Theodore said. Dr Amy Hart, the city coroner, said in the trial on Friday, 4 March, that there were no photographs of his red 49ers jacket, which must have been full of bullet holes. The following Monday, an expert witness for the city mentioned the photographs of the jacket that the city had supplied him. The jurors were shown photographs of Nieto’s hat, which had a bullet hole in it that corresponded to the hole in his temple, and of his broken sunglasses lying next to a puddle of blood. The coroner testified to abrasions on Nieto’s face consistent with Nieto wearing glasses. Before this evidence was shown, Officer Richard Schiff had testified under oath that he made eye contact with Nieto and saw his forehead pucker up in a frown. If the dead man had been wearing a hat and glasses, then Schiff was mistaken that he saw those things.
When Elvira Nieto testified about her devastation at the death of her son, Pointer asked her about her husband’s feelings as well. “Objection,” shouted Baumgartner, as though what a wife said about her husband’s grief should be disqualified as hearsay. The judge overruled her. At another point, Justin Fritz apologised to the Nietos for the outcome of his 911 call and seemed distressed. Refugio Nieto allowed Fritz to hug him; his wife did not. “Refugio later said that at that moment he was reminded of Alex’s words,” Adriana told me, “that even with the people that we have conflict with, we need to take the higher ground and show the best of ourselves.”
Adriana sat with the Nietos every day of the trial, translating for them when the court-appointed translator was off duty. Bac Sierra, in an impeccable suit and tie, was right behind them every day, in the first of three rows of benches usually full of friends and supporters. Nieto’s uncle often attended, as did Ely Flores, another young Latino who was Nieto’s best friend and a fellow Buddhist.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Elvira and Refugio Nieto take part in a protest march. Photograph: Steve Rhodes/Demotix/Corbis
It was a civil trial, so the standard was not “beyond a reasonable doubt”, just the “preponderance of evidence”. No one was facing prison, but if the city and officers were found liable, there could be a large financial settlement and it could affect the careers of the policemen. The trial was covered by several local media outlets. On Thursday 10 March, after an afternoon and morning of deliberations, the eight jurors – five white, one Asian woman and two Asian men – unanimously ruled in favour of the police on all counts.
Flores wept in the hallway. The American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California published a response to the verdict headlined, “Would Alex Nieto Still Be Alive if He Were White?” Police are now investigating claims that Officer Morse posted a sneering attack on Nieto on a friend’s Facebook page that night.
San Francisco is now a cruel place and a divided one. A month before the trial, the city’s mayor, Ed Lee, decided to sweep the homeless off the streets for the Super Bowl, even though the game was played 40 miles away, at the new 49ers stadium in Silicon Valley. Online rants about the city’s homeless population have become symptomatic of the city’s culture clash. The open letter to the mayor published in mid-February by Justin Keller, founder of a not very successful startup, was typical in tone: “I know people are frustrated about gentrification happening in the city, but the reality is, we live in a free market society. The wealthy working people have earned their right to live in the city. They went out, got an education, work hard, and earned it. I shouldn’t have to worry about being accosted. I shouldn’t have to see the pain, struggle, and despair of homeless people to and from my way to work every day.” And like Evan Snow, who wanted to blow away Alejandro Nieto after their encounter, Keller got his wish in a way. Pushed out of other areas, hundreds of homeless people began to set up tents under the freeway overpass around Division Street on the edge of the Mission, a gritty industrial area with few residences. The mayor destroyed this rainy-season refuge too: city workers threw tents and belongings into dump trucks and hounded the newly propertyless onward. One of the purges came before dawn the morning the Nieto trial began.
When the trial ended with a verdict in favour of the police, 150 or so people gathered inside at the Mission Cultural Center and outside on rainy Mission Street. People were composed, resolute, disappointed, but far from shocked. It was clear that most of them had never counted on confirmation from the authorities that what happened to Alex Nieto was wrong. They did not need that validation. Their sense of principle and history was not going to be swayed by this verdict, even if they were saddened or angered by it. Bac Sierra, out of his courtroom suits and in a T-shirt and cap, spoke passionately, as did Oscar Salinas, who had just posted on Facebook the words: “Alex you will never be forgotten, your parents will always be taken care of by us, the community. As I’ve always said, the unspoken word of La Mision is when someone is hurting, needs help, or passes we come together as a family and take care of them.”
The Nietos spoke, with Adriana translating for those who did not understand Spanish. And Adriana spoke on her own behalf: “One of the most important changes in my path being involved in the Alex Nieto case has been to learn more about restorative practices, because as someone trained in legal systems, I know that the pain and fear that we are not safe from police in our communities will not go away until there is personal accountability by those who harm us.”
Fear that we aren't safe from police in our communities won't go away until there's accountability by those who harm us Adriana Camarena
Adriana, her historian husband, and their friends – including an Aids activist and a choreographer – who live nearby in a ramshackle old building, had faced their own eviction battle last year, and won it. But the community that came together that night was still vulnerable to the economic forces tearing the city apart. Many of these people may have to move on soon, some already have.
The death of Alex Nieto is a story of one young man torn apart by bullets, and of a community coming together to remember him. They pursued more than justice, as the case became a cause, as the expressions became an artistic outpouring in videos, posters, and memorials, and as friendships and alliances were forged and strengthened. Adriana Camarena told the crowd: “Our victory, as the Nietos said yesterday, is that we are still together.”
Main photograph: Gabrielle Lurie for the Guardian
Follow the Long Read on Twitter at @gdnlongread, or sign up to the long read weekly email here.
• This article was amended on 29 March 2016. An earlier version said incorrectly that Justin Fritz had described Nieto to a 911 dispatcher as “probably foreign”. That was based on a mishearing of a recording of the call. In fact Fritz was describing Nieto’s height and said he was “probably six-one”. We apologise for the error.Halley VI station moved to safer location but staff to be brought home during southern winter as ‘prudent precaution’
A British research station on an ice shelf in Antarctica is being shut down over the southern hemisphere winter because of fears it could float off on an iceberg.
The British Antarctic Survey (BAS) said in a statement on Monday that it had decided not to winter at the Halley VI research station on the Brunt ice shelf due to concerns for its staff’s safety amid changes to the ice.
Preparations to relocate the station further inland due to the threat posed by a growing crack in the ice were under way last month, but it was to remain operational.
The station will now be shut down between March and November 2017 and the 16 people who were due to stay there over the winter will move out.
British Antarctic research station to be moved due to deep crack in the ice Read more
The BAS said changes to the ice – and particularly the growth of a new crack – presented a “complex glaciological picture” that meant scientists were unable to predict with certainty what would happen to the ice shelf in the forthcoming winter and beyond.
Parts of the ice shelf periodically cleave off from the floating ice sheet, creating icebergs. Glaciologists have run computer models and created bathymetric maps to try to determine the likelihood and impact of this happening, but there was “sufficient uncertainty” for concern.
The BAS said there was no immediate risk to the people currently at the station or to the station itself, and that staff were being relocated only “as a precautionary measure”.
There are 88 people on the station, most of whom are only there for the summer and are due to leave. Staff could be evacuated quickly if the ice were to fracture in the summer months, but not during winter with its 24-hour darkness, extremely low temperatures and frozen sea.
Capt Tim Stockings, the director of operations, said in a statement the mission aimed to leave the station ready for reoccupation as soon as possible after the Antarctic winter. “We want to do the right thing for our people. Bringing them home for winter is a prudent precaution given the changes that our glaciologists have seen in the ice shelf in recent months,” he said.
The Halley VI station, made up of eight modules built on stilts with giant skis, has been situated on the Brunt ice shelf since 2012 and was designed with a potential move in mind.
Halley VI and other Antarctic research stations – in pictures Read more
The relocation is in its final stages, with seven of the eight modules dragged 14 miles (23km) inland and off the shelf away from two cracks in the ice. One had lain dormant for at least 35 years before showing signs of growth in 2012, while the other appeared as recently as October 2016. Glaciologists monitoring their growth have found that the recent changes to the Brunt ice shelf have not been seen before.
Stockings said the move had been “going very well” and should be completed on schedule by early March.
Ozone measurements at Halley led to discovery of the Antarctic ozone hole in 1985 and the station is important for monitoring climate change.
The BAS said every effort was being made to continue scientific experiments under way there and that options to temporarily redeploy research and technical support teams to other parts of the organisation were being explored.Best news this week is that traffic police in Timisoara, Romania, are to have ballet lessons. Videos revealed an "awkwardness and lack of elegance" in their movements, confusing drivers and impairing road safety. Their instructor in pirouettes and pliés claims that Swan Lake offers the best role model, a nuance lost on me. Sadly, the police would not be wearing tutus but will perform in standard-issue uniforms.
Traffic police have long gone out of fashion in British cities. They have been replaced by technology, otherwise known as traffic lights. The common assumption is that this constitutes an advance, a machine being invariably better than a human. This is untrue.
Cut to Professor John Adams of University College London. Meeting Adams is to feel like an Inquisitor grappling with Galileo. He persists in rejecting received wisdom. In his virtual world, white is black, mad is sane and the Earth is round, when everyone knows it is flat. Among other things, Adams has long regarded seat belts and crash helmets as lethal, a menace to public safety. They raise the personal risk threshold and, while making the wearer safer as he drives faster, cause more injury to others. Needless to say, Adams has figures to prove it. He also thinks traffic lights should be banned, along with stop signs, zebra crossings, kerbstones and railings. The reason is not that he is a libertarian nutcase but that they kill people.
Traffic lights force drivers to watch and obey robots rather than other road users - an obedience not enforced to the same degree on pedestrians, skateboarders or cyclists. One result is that zebra crossings are dangerous because drivers are no longer used to eye contact with other road users. Technology makes them drive like zombies.
Traffic lights, like one-way systems, are also hopelessly inefficient allocators of road space. Even in London's busiest streets, half the tarmac is vacant, waiting for a light to release vehicles on to it. Many British streets are so empty they might as well have shops and houses built over them. We build over countryside but treat roads as sacred.
The concept of traffic-light removal is simple. It is that all users of public space adjust their behaviour to that of others, balancing a measure of danger and risk in return for convenience. Drivers undirected by signs, kerbs or road markings are faced with confusion and ambiguity. Since they do not want to cause accidents at junctions, or damage their cars, they reduce their speed and establish eye contact with other users.
I recently watched the result of a traffic-light failure in London's Portland Place. Two things happened. One was that drivers opened their eyes and scrutinised other drivers and pedestrians as the intersection became like an American "flashing amber". The other was that traffic flowed steadily over the crossing without being held for minutes while nothing moved. Drivers instinctively policed the crossing and rationed the road space on their own.
While the concept is not universally applicable, for instance on access to main arteries, it is no longer radical. Across the world, except in Britain, the so-called shared space movement preaches that urban streets should be redesigned for use by all and sundry, motor vehicles weaving their way along them as best they can with chicanes and other devices offering relative protection to pedestrians.
The concept has long been familiar in Italy's historic towns. It has been introduced, at the last count, in 3,500 zones in Germany and the Netherlands, 300 in Japan, 600 in Israel, and in cities as widespread as Lyon, Barcelona, Copenhagen, Melbourne and Portland, Oregon. All have experienced a drop in accidents, and most a drop in journey times. At the now celebrated lights-free Laweiplein intersection in Drachten in the Netherlands, the chief danger is from crowds of foreign experts watching incredulously as traffic merges with pedestrians and separates, unaided by robots.
Why has the concept not caught on in Britain? The reason is simple. Policy is in the hands of traffic engineers. These people deal with road builders, kit manufacturers, consultants and health and safety inspectors. All have large budgets and a vested interest in treating streets as policed corridors of total control. To them, traffic management involves herding pedestrians into cages and hurling vehicles along fast, one-way streets to bring them to a halt at the next stop light or traffic bump.
As a result, road users in cars and on foot in Britain are probably having to travel twice as far as necessary to get from A to B, with controlled crossings and cars negotiating tortuous one-way systems with long waits at lights. This increases traffic volume, causes more accidents, misallocates road space, slows buses and doubles carbon emissions. It is plain dumb. British traffic engineering is stuck in the dark ages, covered in woad and chanting runes about "gridlock".
One of the few progressive councils in Britain, London's Kensington and Chelsea, has bold politicians leading from the front. The deputy leader, Daniel Moylan, studied shared space abroad and designated Kensington High Street as an experiment (as if it needed one). Railings and crossings were removed. Pedestrians were encouraged to cross where they chose. Bicycle racks were placed on the central reservation. The whole street was tidied.
The effect over two years has been a dramatic cut in accidents, down 44% against a London average of 17%. Pedestrians and wheelchair users are no longer dragooned behind railings. Drivers have slowed and pedestrians look at drivers rather than traffic lights. Moylan did not have the courage to remove all lights, but perhaps that will come with the extension of the scheme to Exhibition Road. The experience has been a success.
What pushed the Kensington High Street scheme was an eagerness by businesses to make their street more attractive against competition from malls. They wanted, as Moylan puts it, "to get away from the idea that streetscape is essentially an exercise in safety engineering". His latest report tells of the need to overrule health and safety officials, who seemed uninterested in evidence that accidents would fall. As for engineers in general, they seem to care only about "making it harder for road accident victims to bring successful litigation against highway authorities".
Because of this opposition, Moylan is gloomy about his efforts being imitated elsewhere in Britain. The pro-accident vested interest is too strong. Like Adams, he thinks officialdom would rather people died than admit it was wrong.
Certainly the concept of people and vehicles sharing the road, and thus rendering it safer and more efficient, is counter-intuitive, because vehicles are regarded as inanimate thugs that do more damage than bicycles and pedestrians. But vehicles are driven by people with eyes, who only become dangerous when treated as automatons. That is why shared space has saved thousands of lives across Europe in the past decade. It also saves pollution, time, money and policing costs. It is a no-brainer.
In Britain the flat-earthers deny evidence and cry that the great god traffic would "grind to a halt" if streets were shared and traffic lights were abolished. Yet as Galileo told the Inquisition, "Eppur si muove", and yet it moves.
simon.jenkins@theguardian.comThe award-winning poet on why she’s using her MacArthur genius grant to explore whiteness, her questions for Lionel Shriver, and how an Ohio prison explodes the idea that blackness equals criminality
I meet Claudia Rankine, the poet and author of 2014’s National Book award-winning Citizen: An American Lyric, on the roof of her high-rise Manhattan apartment building. It’s a sunny day, about a week after it was announced that she had received a MacArthur “genius grant”, and the clouds and the planes heading to LaGuardia airport seem so close, it feels as though we could reach out and touch them.
It feels fitting, too, to be sitting so high in the sky, because Rankine’s thinking is equally elevated and ambitious: she plans to donate her $625,000 stipend from her MacArthur genius grant to found the Racial Imaginary Institute.
The what? What is a Racial Imaginary Institute?
Claudia Rankine wins $625,000 MacArthur 'genius grant' Read more
Rankine is part of a group of thinkers who are dreaming up a “presenting space and a think tank all at once” where artists and writers can really wrestle with race. She wants it to be a “space which allows us to show art, to curate dialogues, have readings, and talk about the ways in which the structure of white supremacy in American society influences our culture.” These, it’s safe to say, are not the organizing questions of most of the art spaces in New York City.
To Rankine, it’s important to have the institute in downtown Manhattan, because “this is where those discussions begin” and “it has to be in the same playing field” as the world’s major galleries, like Gagosian or Pace. While she admits that galleries “might not be altering legislation”, Rankine is spot-on in understanding that “culture really does determine what we think [and] how we think about things.”
Rankine is extremely interested in whiteness, believing that “it’s important that people begin to understand that whiteness is not inevitable, and that white dominance is not inevitable.” One reason Rankine wants such a center to exist is because she recently went into a bookstore at the Los Angeles Contemporary Museum of Art “and I asked them for books on whiteness. The man was like, ‘What?’
There’s a lot of ways to think about whiteness... it involves the kind of underbelly that has been kept from the public Claudia Rankine
“I said, ‘Well, you know. Books that address the ways in which white contemporary artists deal with whiteness, interrogate it, analyze it, work in ways that push up with constructions of whiteness.’ He’s like, ‘I don’t know what you mean.’”
Rankine had a similar conversation in three different bookstores. While she knew they would have had books on African American art, these art bookshops never had anything to deconstruct race in general or whiteness in particular.
“Conceptions and constructions of whiteness,” she explained, have been “made and then propped up with eugenics and propped up with false science and false rhetoric and maintained through the justice system in every way”. They then become invisible. As writers and artists, she said, “it’s our job to point this out, because I really believe that people don’t know” – about what makes whiteness, or about how broad the life experiences of white people are.
“There’s a lot of other ways to start thinking about whiteness, and it involves the kind of underbelly that has been kept from the American public,” Rankine said. She told me about a photograph she took outside of the Ohio Reformatory for Women last summer.
“This prison is 80% white women and 19% black women. One percent other. But when I say to people 80% of the women in this prison are white rural women, they’re shocked. And they’re shocked because that information is kept from them. It’s kept from them because it doesn’t bolster the ideas that blackness equals criminality. It’s contrary to that. It doesn’t enforce the idea that white people should be afraid of black people and not afraid of each other.”
This is a white America that we don’t see in media, Rankine said, except in Breaking Bad. (And even there, “the only way that whiteness equals criminality” was when “a dying white guy who only broke the law so he could take care of his family”.) Rankine said she is always being told that she must watch Orange is the New Black, a show that does bolster the idea that black is criminal and a white woman is out of place in jail.
While Rankine acknowledges how people of color are disproportionately incarcerated, she is also interested in “the reality of who is actually incarcerated by the numbers” (white people) and thinks it would be fascinating to see a show about a black woman locked up with a whole lotta white women in the mid-west.
How is it one is able to move through life with a level of sameness? Is that conscious? Claudia Rankine
I ask Rankine about two of the most talked about speeches about race and art in the past year: her viral keynote speech at the American Writers and Writing Programs conference in April, in which she called out the racism of writing programs, and Lionel Shriver’s speech at the Brisbane Literary Festival, in which she ridiculed the idea of “cultural appropriation” while wearing a sombrero. Rankine won’t initially talk about Shriver because “she doesn’t have the work behind it. If she had the work, then I would engage.” She is, however, interested in the views of “somebody like Jonathan Franzen,” as she acknowledges the seriousness of his writing.
“He said something like ‘I can’t write about people I don’t know.’ That, to me, is more complex. So, why don’t you know these people? What choices have you made in your life to keep yourself segregated? How is it one is able to move through life with a level of sameness? Is that conscious? Is segregation forever really at the bottom of everything? When he says something like that, I find that really interesting as an admittance to white privilege: that he can get through his life without any meaningful interaction with people of color.”
These, to Rankine, are questions worth thinking about, because they form a “more critical evaluation of one’s own habits and one’s own positionality relative to making art and doing work.” By contrast, “Getting up and putting on a sombrero and saying, ‘I can do what I want. I have the right to do what I want,’ to me is missing the point. What would be interesting would be to talk about why is it in the language of rights? Like, white people should have more stuff?... ‘It’s my right to take what I want?’ Isn’t that the history of colonialism? It’s my right to take resources. It’s my right to take land. It’s my right to have slaves.’”
Rankine’s presence is extremely intentional: you can watch her forming her words carefully, so that spoken sentences come out particularly and poetically. She is sensitive to the experiences of people of color in almost everything she says and writes. We discussed the concept of John Henryism, a biological medical reason for why black people die younger than white people developed by Sherman James, which I first learned about when reading Citizen. Rankine says she appreciates how James could make visible the ways that for “people of color in the United States, so much effort has to go into negotiating the day-to-day, beyond the regular random things that comes into a life, that the tendencies for chronic ailments towards that shouldn’t be a surprise to anybody. It’s a lot of stress that one is carrying – if you think your child could be shot dead, or you’ll be the first one to lose your job, or you won’t get an interview simply because you’re black.”
Nevertheless, much of Rankine’s new work will focus on whiteness. She is currently working on a play “in conversation with” Citizen. “There’s a dinner party. The dinner party is where many things get talked about. The people in the play are in the art world. You’ll recognize passages from Citizen, but it is not an attempt to stage Citizen.”
Her next book, which is just starting to take shape, will be “doing a lot of work on white construction and understanding the trajectory, historically, from the 1700s to now and seeing that the stories are the same.” She’s especially interested in comparing two phenomena. “The 1790 naturalization act was an attempt to limit who could govern and keep people away from self governance.” Over 200 years later followed “the birther movement, which was all about ‘Where’s your birth certificate?’ You have no right to the White House.
“There are no new tricks out there,” she adds. “The same mechanisms to keep people out are in play over and over again.”
Thinking about the racial imaginary has also led her to track down transcripts of police killings, “because so many of these videos where somebody says ‘Why did you shoot me?” and the person says, ‘I don’t know. I don’t know.’ I’m interested in moving the lens onto these white men and women who really are being put in positions that they don’t understand.”
Rankine says she understands why people don’t want to focus on whiteness. “I think we’ve seen whiteness centralized forever, so they’re no longer interested in making it the subject, putting it in the subject position. But I think that it’s been centralized in order to continue its dominance, and it’s never been the object of inquiry to understand its paranoia, its violence, its rage.”Share. Life finds a way... into a Coolum Beach resort. Life finds a way... into a Coolum Beach resort.
Notorious Australian business man (and potentially crazed mad scientist) Clive Palmer is said to be attempting to develop a real-life Jurassic Park -- like, with actual dinosaurs.
Exit Theatre Mode
According to the report from Business Insider (via Sunshine Coast Daily), the controversial and eccentric billionaire has been in serious discussions with the people who successfully cloned Dolly the sheep to work the same magic from dinosaur DNA. Palmer's endgame, naturally, is to let this scaly abomination roam free in a Jurassic Park-type sanctuary at his Palmer Resort in Coolum.
This isn't Palmer's only outlandish project currently in the works. He's also planning to build a 21st century replica of the Titanic. Whether these wild escapades will ever see the light of day remains to be seen, but in any case you've got to admire the man's sense of scope.
So far, Palmer has refused to comment on the rumors of his Hammond-esque aspirations, but if I were you I would definitely stay tuned.
Exit Theatre Mode
Max Nicholson is a writer for IGN, and he desperately seeks your approval. Show him some love on Twitter and IGN.Hello! GeorgeV here posting from the new office. All the movers are moved and we’re pretty settled.
One of the things we discussed today was adding an AI “character” in each ship which would act as a new way to receive certain items, upgrade your ship, give you quests and help you out in general. There was also talk about giving it a bit of personality, potentially making it based on race and having it upgrade along with the ship.
Obviously this idea is in the early stages. I’ve only just started planning out the UI. In fact, here’s a really quick sketch we made on our wall in order to make sure everyone was on the same page:
Yes it is very rough but that’s how everything starts out ;).
All of this is tentative and is being shared to give you an idea of what we’ve done today. We’ll try to keep you up to speed!
-GeorgeVI’ve been thinking about the links for awhile, but it has taken me some time to get into writing an Occupy Wall Street/Big Food piece. So many other things going on in the food movement in October! 😀
I think for anyone following food issues, especially food policy, knows that the same financial-political system that makes some people absurdly rich and many others poorer and poorer also makes our food less and less safe, decreases our food security, and result in a Big Ag system that hurts most to benefit a few fat cats.
Occupy Wall Street & Food
Still, though, let’s draw some of the lines.
Many in industrialized countries are fat as he**, while tons of people starve around the world. Something is wrong, in our wealth distribution and our food distribution. In the U.S., “the richest one percent hold 40 percent of the wealth, while almost one in five Americans is on food stamps,” Siena Chrisman of Civil Eats writes. Food costs are rising. Small farmers continue to be driven off their land and out of business by Big Ag. Monsanto and other GMO and chemical companies spent a ton of money lobbying and funding government and get to run a huge, probably dangerous experiment on the human population in return. Agribusiness is developing a monopoly over seeds, a basic necessity for life on Earth! Lobbyists against climate change are keeping our country from acting on this pressing issue, killing billions of dollars worth of crops and countless people in the process.
Here’s more form Chrisman:
At the most obvious level, as the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy recently wrote, “Wall Street deregulation has not only made the stock market extremely volatile, it has increased prices and price volatility in agricultural markets.” That is, the relationship between government and Wall Street firms has turned food into commodity like any other, subject to the whims of the market. For decades, only people directly involved in agriculture (e.g., farmers) could freely participate in trade of futures of agricultural commodities (e.g., corn, soy, wheat). Outside speculators were allowed into these markets but with strictly enforced limits to how much they could buy. Futures trading served a practical purpose, giving farmers a guaranteed price for future harvests, and prices stayed relatively stable and reasonable for both buyers and sellers. But in 2000, a wave of industry-backed deregulation raised and then removed these limits on speculation, which opened commodity markets to a flood of new players—these later included funds controlled by some of the biggest Wall Street firms looking for new investment opportunities after the housing bubble burst. Flooded with new investments unconnected to any direct stake in crop prices, in 2008, the commodity markets exploded, driving up grain prices worldwide. The grain price spikes were catastrophic for millions of people worldwide. Farmers, who sometimes benefit from high grain prices, mostly were no better off, because similarly skyrocketing energy prices also drove up prices of agricultural inputs. In 2008 and 2009, the UN estimated that an additional 130 million people were driven into hunger by the food price bubble. Spontaneous food riots broke out in dozens of countries where chronic hunger is a reality. Today’s Wall Street protests are not unconnected to those; the effects of food and energy speculation continue in 2011. A study in June by University of Massachusetts Amherst professor Robert Pollin estimates that U.S. gasoline prices are $0.83 higher per gallon due to Wall Street speculation. The CEO of ExxonMobil said he estimates prices are $1.20 to $1.40 higher per gallon. And food commodity prices are as high, or higher, than they were in 2008—while 46 million Americans are now living below the poverty line, struggling with basic expenses like food.
What are people doing about this? Is the Occupy Wall Street movement embracing this?
Yes and yes.. oh, wait, the first question wasn’t a “Yes or No” question…. Well, occupy wall streeters have been implementing, teaching, and spreading decentralized sustainable food options, such as permaculture and gardening.
“I can’t express how happy it makes me to learn that the implementation of sustainability and permaculture principles is spreading to many Occupy encampments –and spreading with the same momentum as the Occupy Movement itself,” Daniel Owen writes on occupy-wallstreet.com.
“Many of the Occupy encampments have set up committees to analyze their own environmental impact, and conceive of practical solutions. Since Mobile Design Lab first installed a grey water system (more below), sustainability committees in different parts of the country have introduced peddle powered generators, solar panels, bike sharing programs and permaculture workshops…. There are even long term projects, such as composting and gardening.”
Looks inspiring.
They’ve also had events, such as Take Back Our Food in Zucotti Park this last weekend.
Hope the positive momentum continues on. Have more to share on this? Please drop us a note!
Image Credit: Some rights reserved image of giulia.forsythe adaptedI am looking for an answer to this question in the context of the VIPER Architectural pattern -
If you have an application that talks to both a web api and a database how many dataManagers should you have one, two or three?
Case
a) dataManager
b) APIDataManager and LocalDataManager
c) dataManager, APIDataManager and LocalDataManager
Where in
a) The interactor talks to a single dataManager that talks to any services you may have (remote or local).
b) The interactor knows the difference between local and remote information - and calls either the APIDataManager or the LocalDataManager, which talk to remote and local services respectively.
c) The interactor only talks to a general dataManager, the general dataManager then talks to the APIDataManager and LocalDataManager
EDIT
There may be no definitive solution. But any input would be greatly appreciated.REUTERS/Stringer BEIJING (Reuters) - China's factory sector unexpectedly shrank for the first time in nearly 2-1/2 years in January and firms see more gloom ahead, an official survey showed, raising expectations that policymakers will take more action to forestall a sharper slowdown.
The official Purchasing Managers' Index (PMI) fell to 49.8 in January, the National Bureau of Statistics said on Sunday, a low last seen in September 2012 and a whisker below the 50-point level that separates growth from contraction on a monthly basis.
The December level was 50.1, and a Reuters poll saw a better result, 50.2 for January. Only one of 11 economists in the poll predicted a January contraction.
Most of the PMI indexes "showed a downward trend, indicating that current economic growth is still in a downtrend," said Zhang Liqun, an economist at the Development Research Center, a state think |
things make me think we're a lot closer than this record looks like. Does that mean that under any circumstances we're not going to do everything we can? If you look at last year, pass rush was a priority, we got after it in pass rushing. This year, we were hot off the press, hot off the stove with the quarterback situation, we're going to address it and we should address it.
"I think the thing that motivates me to address it, both short and long term, Romo relatively short, 3 to 5, and then long term with a prospect that might be a future is the fact that we're close. You can operate pretty good in this territory."teamgravity Profile Joined July 2013 United States 354 Posts #1
Poll: Who will win?
[Grav]Kreos (24)
65%
[Qntc]Macgeolli (13)
35%
37 total votes (24)65%(13)35%37 total votes Your vote: Who will win? (Vote): [Grav]Kreos
(Vote): [Qntc]Macgeolli
+ Show Spoiler + [Grav]Kreos
"Kreos started playing off and on after the release of WoL as his first ever RTS. During the summer he decided to take SC2 more seriously and broke into GM every season since, placing as high as 19th on the ladder. As of yet he hasn't played in any serious LANs, but is attending the Gameclucks LAN in Seattle, Washington on September 21st. Kreos is now regularly streaming on twitch with commentary on his games, be sure to check him out!"
[Qntc]Macgeolli
"Macgeolli is one of Quantic's rising Terran stars. Despite being one of the youngest players in Quantic, he has proven that he can definitely play on par with the other sc2 veterans. As of now he does not have any significant tournament results, but he has pulled a lot of upsets in clan wars most especially against Goswser, and this has gained him some attention as one of the newer players to watch out for."
[Grav]Semper
"Semper started playing after the release of WoL. He played casually at the time, until he started following the pro scene of SC2. Shortly after playing more seriously, he was able to break into GM and consistently holds a top 100 spot on the NA ladder. His growth as a player has been steady and he is definitely a player we can rely on to pull through for our team in tough matches. Semper hasn't played in any LAN's and only tried a few online cups - making it to the finals of Playhem a couple times, but most recently he did manage to make it to the RO16 of a WCS America Qualifier and was casted live on WCS."
[SCA]Bioice
"Bioice has been around the indie scene for quite a while, having previously competed with Triumph eSports. Since his switch to Team.SCA, he has been one of their most solid players to date. His arsenal includes the ability to produce long macro games, but also destructive allins."
[Grav]KoreanAir
"KoreanAir started playing one year after the release of Starcraft 2. Before Starcraft, he played Age of Empires 3. He started playing ladder 1 year ago and has been improving quickly. He's a high master Zerg who's goal is to reach top 50 GM on NA, and plans to compete in more LAN's in the near future. KoreanAir streams almost everyday around 7-8 PM EST and does commentary for viewers."
[SCS]Coyote
"Coyote started playing SC2 at release and was hooked from the very first game he played. He loved everything about it, and has been playing ever since. He's been around strategy a lot of his life, even before he played BW/WC3 and some other strategy games. When Coyote heard people can be professional gamers, (something he's dreamed of since he was young) he went to work immediately. Coyote's game play has improved a lot and he's looking to further improve it still, by far."
"What I know now is to work as hard as you can to make your dream come true and quitting is not an option. No matter what." - [SCS]Coyote
"Kreos started playing off and on after the release of WoL as his first ever RTS. During the summer he decided to take SC2 more seriously and broke into GM every season since, placing as high as 19th on the ladder. As of yet he hasn't played in any serious LANs, but is attending the Gameclucks LAN in Seattle, Washington on September 21st. Kreos is now regularly streaming on twitch with commentary on his games, be sure to check him out!""Macgeolli is one of Quantic's rising Terran stars. Despite being one of the youngest players in Quantic, he has proven that he can definitely play on par with the other sc2 veterans. As of now he does not have any significant tournament results, but he has pulled a lot of upsets in clan wars most especially against Goswser, and this has gained him some attention as one of the newer players to watch out for.""Semper started playing after the release of WoL. He played casually at the time, until he started following the pro scene of SC2. Shortly after playing more seriously, he was able to break into GM and consistently holds a top 100 spot on the NA ladder. His growth as a player has been steady and he is definitely a player we can rely on to pull through for our team in tough matches. Semper hasn't played in any LAN's and only tried a few online cups - making it to the finals of Playhem a couple times, but most recently he did manage to make it to the RO16 of a WCS America Qualifier and was casted live on WCS.""Bioice has been around the indie scene for quite a while, having previously competed with Triumph eSports. Since his switch to Team.SCA, he has been one of their most solid players to date. His arsenal includes the ability to produce long macro games, but also destructive allins.""KoreanAir started playing one year after the release of Starcraft 2. Before Starcraft, he played Age of Empires 3. He started playing ladder 1 year ago and has been improving quickly. He's a high master Zerg who's goal is to reach top 50 GM on NA, and plans to compete in more LAN's in the near future. KoreanAir streams almost everyday around 7-8 PM EST and does commentary for viewers.""Coyote started playing SC2 at release and was hooked from the very first game he played. He loved everything about it, and has been playing ever since. He's been around strategy a lot of his life, even before he played BW/WC3 and some other strategy games. When Coyote heard people can be professional gamers, (something he's dreamed of since he was young) he went to work immediately. Coyote's game play has improved a lot and he's looking to further improve it still, by far."
+ Show Spoiler +
Team Gravity's SpaceWhales
"SpaceWhales is a supreme conscious entity, sentenced to incarnation on earth by his fellow space dwelling cetaceans, as consequence for an incident involving public defecation, masturbation, and other obscenities better left unspoken (it was nastier than Japanese porn). Utilizing his human vessel, SpaceWhales casts Team Gravity’s clan wars, projecting an erection-inducing balance of energy, insight, and humor, to facilitate the optimal viewer experience.
The will to expand his knowledge of competitive gaming is what motivates SpaceWhales to commentate on high-level Starcraft 2 matches: He intends to absorb as many strategic and tactical dynamics, as he will eventually apply them to his human vessel’s overarching life objective of establishing the pinnacle of conscious experience in the digital realm, also functioning as counter-propaganda towards the socio-economic matrix of entrapment."
Tampa eSports' Shadow
"Shadow is an astrophysicist, currently studying distant radio galaxies using interferometry at USF. The goal of the research is to determine if there is a pattern to the orientation of radio galaxies throughout the universe or if it is simply random. This will give us further insight into the origin of the universe.
He is also a self-employed software and hardware engineer. Shadow was a Masters Terran near the end of WoL but has since switched primarily to coaching his five man team and running the Starcraft 2 and sponsorship divisions of Tampa eSports. He says he is particularly drawn to Starcraft 2 by its extraordinarily high skill ceiling. It gives him many opportunities to develop optimum learning, coaching and training strategies, as the functioning of the brain is another area he's particularly interested in.
Shadow announces every live cast/coaching corner he does on his twitter @rmdeluca. Most of his Starcraft 2 content is hosted at twitch.tv/tampaesports and youtube.com/tampaesports."
"SpaceWhales is a supreme conscious entity, sentenced to incarnation on earth by his fellow space dwelling cetaceans, as consequence for an incident involving public defecation, masturbation, and other obscenities better left unspoken (it was nastier than Japanese porn). Utilizing his human vessel, SpaceWhales casts Team Gravity’s clan wars, projecting an erection-inducing balance of energy, insight, and humor, to facilitate the optimal viewer experience.The will to expand his knowledge of competitive gaming is what motivates SpaceWhales to commentate on high-level Starcraft 2 matches: He intends to absorb as many strategic and tactical dynamics, as he will eventually apply them to his human vessel’s overarching life objective of establishing the pinnacle of conscious experience in the digital realm, also functioning as counter-propaganda towards the socio-economic matrix of entrapment.""Shadow is an astrophysicist, currently studying distant radio galaxies using interferometry at USF. The goal of the research is to determine if there is a pattern to the orientation of radio galaxies throughout the universe or if it is simply random. This will give us further insight into the origin of the universe.He is also a self-employed software and hardware engineer. Shadow was a Masters Terran near the end of WoL but has since switched primarily to coaching his five man team and running the Starcraft 2 and sponsorship divisions of Tampa eSports. He says he is particularly drawn to Starcraft 2 by its extraordinarily high skill ceiling. It gives him many opportunities to develop optimum learning, coaching and training strategies, as the functioning of the brain is another area he's particularly interested in.Shadow announces every live cast/coaching corner he does on his twitter @rmdeluca. Most of his Starcraft 2 content is hosted at twitch.tv/tampaesports and youtube.com/tampaesports."
+ Show Spoiler + Main Event : [Grav]Kreos vs [Qntc]Macgeolli
Preliminary Matches : [Grav]Semper vs [SCA]Bioice / [Grav]KoreanAir vs [SCS]Coyote
Time : Saturday - September, 14th @ 4:00 PM EST
Style : Main Event - Best Of 7. Preliminary Matches - Best Of 5.
Main Event Prize Pool : 1st Place = $75. 2nd Place = $25.
Map Pool
Starting map will be Akilon Wastes. After that it's loser's pick.
Whirlwind
Derelict Watcher TE
Neo Planet S
Star Station
Bel'Shir Vestige LE
Newkirk Precinct TE
Frost LE
Yeonsu LE
: [Grav]Kreos vs [Qntc]Macgeolli: [Grav]Semper vs [SCA]Bioice / [Grav]KoreanAir vs [SCS]Coyote: Saturday - September, 14th @ 4:00 PM EST: Main Event - Best Of 7. Preliminary Matches - Best Of 5.: 1st Place = $75. 2nd Place = $25.
+ Show Spoiler + Team Gravity
Facebook : https://www.facebook.com/TeamGravityOfficial
Twitter : https://twitter.com/TeamGravitySC2
Twitch : http://www.twitch.tv/TeamGravityOfficial
Quantic Gaming
Facebook : https://www.facebook.com/QuanticGaming
Twitter : https://twitter.com/QuanticGaming
Website : http://www.QuanticGaming.com/
Team.SCA
Facebook : https://www.facebook.com/TeamDotSCA
Twitter : https://twitter.com/dotSCA
Website : http://www.TeamSCA.co
Team SCS
Website : http://www.Starcraft2Strategy.com
+ Show Spoiler +
Tampa eSports
Founded in early 2013, Tampa eSports aims to bring together the local gaming community to play and compete with each other. Tampa eSports was originally started by a small group of Starcraft 2 players who wanted to bring the LAN experience to Tampa Bay. However because of the overwhelming feedback from the community, Tampa eSports has expanded to include other games like League of Legends, DotA 2 and Counter-Strike: Global Offensive in its future events, both offline LAN and online.
Tampa eSports is a grassroots organization looking to promote eSports and help the local gaming community grow.
"I am sponsoring the Team Gravity showmatches because I see a solid NA team in Gravity and want to help increase its success." - Rob "Shadow" DeLuca - Tampa eSports Starcraft 2 Director & Coach
Tampa eSports Contact Info
Facebook : https://www.facebook.com/TampaESports
Twitter : https://twitter.com/TampaESports
Website : http://www.TampaESports.com/
Founded in early 2013, Tampa eSports aims to bring together the local gaming community to play and compete with each other. Tampa eSports was originally started by a small group of Starcraft 2 players who wanted to bring the LAN experience to Tampa Bay. However because of the overwhelming feedback from the community, Tampa eSports has expanded to include other games like League of Legends, DotA 2 and Counter-Strike: Global Offensive in its future events, both offline LAN and online.Tampa eSports is a grassroots organization looking to promote eSports and help the local gaming community grow.A major topic of this year’s General Assembly of the Jewish Federations of North America is how to combat assimilation. At the conference, which is being held in Jerusalem this week, JFNA leaders have unveiled various ambitious ideas, including free universal Jewish preschool. I’d like to offer a much simpler proposal: Just stop dumbing down Judaism. American Jews overwhelmingly receive excellent secular educations; they are exposed to the most challenging, rigorous, thought-provoking material available in science, philosophy, history, and literature. Yet they rarely encounter Judaism at a level more intellectually challenging than a kindergarten class. And as long as that’s true, Judaism will never be able to compete with the secular world for their attention.
Ironically, the Orthodox were way ahead of the non-Orthodox in grasping this, and it’s one reason why Orthodox retention rates are currently much higher than non-Orthodox ones. As far back as 1917, one of Poland’s leading Orthodox rabbis, the Chofetz Chaim, approved the opening of Bais Yaakov, the first school to teach Torah to girls. His reasoning was simple: It had become normal for girls to attend secular schools, and if they didn’t obtain a comparable Jewish education, they wouldn’t stay Jewish. The same understanding fueled the opening of numerous high-level women’s yeshivas in recent decades: Today, girls routinely attend not just secondary school, but college and graduate school; hence their Jewish learning must also be on a higher level.
But in the non-Orthodox community, Jewish education never comes close to the intellectual rigor of secular studies. Almost every American Jew who has attended a non-Orthodox Hebrew school can attest to this; just last week, the Forward ran a piece by an associate professor, Michah Gottlieb, deploring the lack of opportunities for serious Torah study at his childhood synagogue. My own experience is equally typical: During 12 years of Hebrew school, the numbing boredom was punctured by only two classes that offered comparable intellectual stimulation to my secular public schools–and both were taught by Orthodox rabbis. The difference was that they took classic Jewish texts seriously, insisting that we read, analyze, and debate them with the same rigor I encountered in secular history or literature classes.
The good news is that, given a chance, Judaism can easily compete with the best secular thought has to offer. There’s a reason why Jewish sources have inspired some of the greatest non-Jewish writers and thinkers throughout the ages–including many of the 17th-century political theorists who laid the foundations of modern democracy. As Herzl Institute President Yoram Hazony noted in a 2005 essay, “Hobbes was learned in Hebrew, and his magnum opus Leviathan devotes over three hundred pages to the political teachings of Scripture. Locke knew Hebrew as well, and the first of his Two Treatises on Government is devoted to biblical interpretation … [John Selden’s] 1635 treatise on the law of the sea, Mare Clausum—one of the founding texts of international law—argued for the concept of national sovereignty on both land and sea on the basis of the Hebrew Bible and the Talmud.”
In Israel, serious study of classic Jewish sources has exploded in recent years–not because secular Jews are becoming Orthodox, but because they’ve understood that these texts are their heritage, too. American Jews need to offer their children similar opportunities. For without being exposed to Judaism’s intellectual riches, they will never consider it worth a lifetime’s commitment.The 30 cybersecurity stats that matter most
Keeping on top of the most important trends in cybersecurity can be challenging sometimes—not because of a lack of data, but because of the sheer quantity of it. Analysts, vendors, research outfits, and others produce voluminous amounts of data on breaches, malware trends, emerging threats, spending habits, security budgets, compliance efforts, and myriad other topics.
The data can alert you to things you should be looking out for, how your controls and processes stack up against those of peers, where criminals are focusing their efforts, whether you are spending enough, and how your compliance efforts measure up against others. But how do you separate the data that matters from the data that just adds to the noise?
To help you focus on what matters, TechBeacon went through numerous research reports, vendor analyses, and whitepapers and zeroed in on information that either adds fresh insights or updates you on statistics you may already know.
Get up to speed fast with the stats that matter most to information security pros.
Get Big Data Protection With Data-Centric Security GET REPORT
Data breaches by the numbers
1,579: Total number of publicly disclosed data breaches in 2017
If it seemed as if more organizations disclosed data breaches last year than ever before, it was only because they did. At 1,579, the number of breaches in 2017 was 44.7% higher than the 1,091 disclosed in 2016. Business organizations—such as those in the retail, hospitality, trade, and utilities sectors—accounted for 55% of breaches, followed by the medical and healthcare industry, with 23.7%
Source: 2017 Annual Data Breach Year-end Review (Identity Theft Resource Center)
1,946,181,599: Total number of records containing personal and other sensitive data that have been in compromised between Jan. 1, 2017, and March 20, 2018
As staggeringly large as that number might appear, it is actually smaller than the more than 4.8 billion records exposed in data breaches in 2016. Two breaches that Yahoo disclosed in 2017 accounted for some 1.5 billion of the records exposed last year, while one disclosed by Myspace accounted for another 360 million records.
Source: Chronology of Data Breaches (Privacy Rights Clearinghouse)
75%: Proportion of data breaches caused by external attackers
Contrary to some perceptions, external actors continue to pose a far bigger threat to organizations than do internal ones. Among the external actors, organized cyber-crime groups accounted for more than half (51%) of breaches, while 18% of attacks involved state-affiliated groups. Careless, negligent, and malicious insiders with legitimate access to systems and data caused 25% of breaches.
Source: 2017 Data Breach Investigations Report (Verizon)
71%: Percent of US enterprises in a survey of 1,200 companies that reported suffering at least one data breach
More than 7 in 10 of all organizations in the US were affected by a data breach in some way over the past few years. Some 46% of US organizations experienced a breach incident in the past year, a substantial increase from the 24% that reported one in 2017 and the 20% that said they had suffered a breach in 2016. Worldwide, the numbers are slightly lower, with 67% of the respondents reporting at least one breach.
Source: 2018 Global Threat Report (451 Group for Thales)
$3.62 million: Average cost of a data breach in 2017
While breaches became larger, the average cost of a data breach declined 10% in 2017, to $3.62 million. The average cost associated with lost and stolen records containing sensitive information also declined substantially, to $141 from $158 per record in 2016. At the same time, the number of compromised records per breach increased to 24,000.
Source: 2017 Cost of Data Breach Study (Ponemon Institute)
Detection and incident response
77%: Proportion of respondents in a survey of 2,800 IT professionals who said their organizations do not have a formal cybersecurity incident response plan
Despite heightened concerns over data breaches, more than three-quarters of organizations do not have a formal process for responding to one. Twenty-six percent have only an ad-hoc or informal process, and 27% do not apply their incident response plan consistently across the enterprise.
Source: The Third Annual Study on the Cyber Resilient Organization, March 2018. (Ponemon Institute for IBM Resilient)
191 days: The average length of time it takes for organizations to identify a data breach
A more than six-month gap between when a breach happens and when it is first identified might seem awfully slow. But 191 days is actually an improvement on the average of 201 days it took organizations to detect a breach in 2016.
Source: 2017 Cost of Data Breach Study (Ponemon Institute for IBM Security)
66 days: The average time needed to fully contain a data breach in 2017
The number of days it took for organizations to contain a breach in 2017 ranged from 10 to 164 days, with an average of 66 days. Breaches caused by malicious and criminal attacks generally took longer to contain (77 days) and longer to identify (214 days) than breaches caused by human error (64 and 168 days, respectively).
Source: 2017 Cost of Data Breach Study (Ponemon Institute for IBM Security)
[ Webinar: Ensure Privacy Protection Through Your Digital Transformation ]
Topics for top brass
45%: Percent of respondents in a survey of 9,500 executives from 122 countries who said their corporate board participates actively in setting security budgets
For all the talk about security needing to become a board-level issue, many boards still appear to be relatively uninvolved in their organization's security strategy. Only 39% actively participate in setting security policies, just 36% are involved in the technology selection process, and less than one-third (31%) actively review current security and privacy risks.
Source: The Global State of Information Security Survey 2018 (PwC)
87%: Percentage of enterprises that say they require up to 50% more budget for cybersecurity
Organizations are spending more than ever on security. Yet 7 in 10 say they want at least 25% more spending, and 17% want up to a 50% increase. However, only 12% believe they will actually receive a security budget increase of over 25%. The rest clearly will just have to make do with whatever increases they get.
Source: EY Global Information Security Survey 2017-18
76%: Percent of organizations that would likely increase the resources available for cybersecurity following a breach that causes significant damage
More than three-quarters of organizations said that a significant data breach would be a catalyst for increased spending. But many of those same organizations would be unlikely to increase spending in the event of a breach that causes no harm. Sixty-four percent of organizations say an attack that did not cause harm would not trigger budget increases.
Source: EY Global Information Security Survey 2017-18
29%: Proportion of respondents in a survey of 9,500 executives from 75 industries in 122 countries who said CISOs bear the responsibility for IoT security
Organizations often deploy IoT devices with little thought about the security implications. Only 34% of the survey respondents, for instance, even plan to assess the potential risks to business security from connecting more devices to the Internet. Yet nearly 3 in 10 feel the security organization should be responsible for securing the IoT environment.
Source: The Global State of Information Security Survey 2018 (PwC)
Cyber-attack trends
77%: Percent of attacks on endpoint devices in 2017 that involved the use of fileless malware and exploits
Malware running in memory is a lot harder to detect and stop than malware installed on systems, which is why threat actors have increasingly begun using fileless malware in attacks. Fifty-four percent of the respondents to a survey of 665 IT professionals said their organizations suffered one or more attacks that compromised data and/or infrastructure. Of those attacks, 77% involved fileless malware and exploits.
Source: The 2017 State of Endpoint Security Risk Report (Ponemon Institute for Barkly)
56%: Percentage of organizations in a survey of 1,300 IT decision makers who identified targeted phishing attacks as their biggest current cybersecurity threat
Of all the threats that organizations face these days, phishing attacks continue to be the biggest for many, with 56% identifying it as their top concern. Other threats keeping security managers awake at night include insider threats (51%), ransomware/malware (48%), and unsecured privileged accounts (42%). Forty-two percent of respondents identified threats to data in the cloud as another big issue.
Source: Global Advanced Threat Landscape Report 2018 (Vanson Bourne for CyberArk)
26.2%: Percent of those targeted by ransomware in 2017 who were business users
The purveyors of ransomware last year turned their focus to businesses in a big way. The WannaCry attacks last May, the NotPetya outbreak in June, and the BadRabbit attacks of October were the biggest ransomware exploits targeted at businesses, but there were several others as well. That made 2017 the year of ransomware for enterprises.
Source: Kaspersky Lab
87%: Percent of remote code execution attacks late last year that involved crypto-mining malware
The hijacking of computers for crypto-mining purposes is quickly becoming a major problem for enterprises in much the same way that ransomware became a major threat a couple of years ago. Nearly 90% of all remote code execution attacks last December involved attempts to surreptitiously download crypto-miners.
Source: Imperva
Cybersecurity budgets and spending
86%: Percent of US organizations that plan to increase cybersecurity spending this year
Nearly 9 in 10 companies plan to increase cybersecurity spending this year, up 10% from the 76% that said the same thing in 2017. Worldwide numbers are slightly smaller, with 78% reporting plans to increase spending on cybersecurity, compared to 73% last year.
Source: 2018 Global Threat Report (451 Group for Thales)
$96.3 billion: The total organizations worldwide plan to spend on cybersecurity in 2018
Data breach concerns and fears of threats such as WannaCry and NotPetya will drive cybersecurity spending to yet another high this year. The $96.3 billion that organizations will spend on security products and services this year represents an increase of 8% over 2017 and a more than 17% jump over the $82.2 billion that organizations worldwide spent in 2016.
Source: Gartner
$75.2 billion: Amount that organizations worldwide will spend on infrastructure protection and security services in 2018
Gartner expects IT outsourcing, security testing, and security information and event management to be the fastest-growing segments within the infrastructure protection and services categories this year. The Identity and Access Management segment will see some $4.7 billion in spending this year, and the network security segment will account for $11.7 billion of overall spend.
Source: Gartner
Compliance and government
74%: Percentage of US respondents in a survey of 1,200 organizations that feel adherence to compliance requirements is either "very" effective or "extremely" effective
Notwithstanding the compliance-versus-security debate, nearly three-quarters of organizations in the US think that complying with regulatory and industry mandates such as PCI DSS is a great way to improve security. In contrast, a somewhat smaller 64% of organizations worldwide have a similarly positive view about compliance.
Source: 2018 Global Threat Report (451 Group for Thales)
88%: Percent of 300 CIOs, CPOs, general counsels, and other senior staff at US, UK, and Japanese companies who reported spending more than $1 million on GDPR compliance
Organizations rushing to meet the deadline for complying with the EU's General Data Protection Requirements are spending more on ramping up their privacy and security programs. Of the companies that have completed their preparations, 88% said they spent at least $1 million, and 10% said they spent north of $10 million. Among companies still finishing up, 60% expect to spend at least $1 million on GDPR compliance, and 12% will spend more than $10 million.
Source: PwC
$15 billion: Proposed budget for federal cybersecurity in the FY 2019 budget
The proposed amount is a $583.4 million increase over the FY2018 estimate for federal cybersecurity. As usual, more than half of the amount is for the US Department of Defense, which last year received $8.5 billion in cybersecurity funding.
Source: Cybersecurity Funding—Whitehouse.gov
$971 million: Amount requested by the US Department of Homeland Security for cybersecurity operations in 2018
Out of this amount, the DHS has allocated $437 million to the science and technology directorate for research and development and $279 million on continuous diagnostics and mitigation efforts.
Source: Statista
52%: Percent of respondents in a survey of 200 civilian and Defense Department IT decision makers who view cybersecurity regulations and mandates as hindering risk management
More than half of IT decision makers in federal agencies view mandates such as NIST's Risk Management Framework as complicating their cybersecurity efforts, rather than helping them. On the plus said, 55% said that NIST's Cybersecurity Framework has helped to at least promote a risk management dialog at their organizations.
Source: Federal Cybersecurity Survey, SolarWinds
54%: Percent of IT decision makers at federal agencies who view careless and untrained employees and contractors as posing the biggest security risk
Contrary to perception, careless and negligent insiders often pose a bigger threat to cybersecurity than malicious ones. Concerns over the issue appear to be growing, considering that only 48% cited careless insiders as a security risk in 2016 compared to the 54% who said the same thing in 2017.
Source: Federal Cybersecurity Survey, SolarWinds
Mobile, IoT, and industrial control systems
100%: The percent of organizations from a sample of 850 organizations with at least 500 mobile devices that experienced a mobile attack in 2017
Every organization permitting the use of mobile devices for work experienced some form of an attack, but they didn't always know it. In fact, organizations were attacked 54 times on average. Not all attacks resulted in breaches.
Source: Mobile Cyberattacks Impact Every Business, Check Point Software
54%: Percent of respondents in a survey of 359 cybersecurity practitioners who reported at least one security incident involving an industrial control system in the past 12 months
Concerns over catastrophic security failures at organizations with critical industrial control systems appear to be outweighing the number of actual incidents. Even so, more than half have experienced security incidents involving malware, third parties, and other sources.
Source: The State of Industrial Cybersecurity 2017 (Business Advantage for Kaspersky)
55%: Percent of industrial organizations that allow third parties such as suppliers, partners, and service provides to access their industrial control network
Despite heightened concerns over third-party risks, more than half of industrial organizations permitted outsiders to access critical systems remotely. Unsurprisingly, organizations allowing third-party access also are 63% more likely to experience a cybersecurity breach versus those that do not permit such access.
Source: The State of Industrial Cybersecurity 2017 (Business Advantage for Kaspersky)
40%: Proportion of business leaders in a survey of 9,500 IT professionals who are concerned about a cyberattack on IoT networks and other emerging technologies causing operational disruptions
Despite the potential benefits of automation and robotic systems, many organizational leaders worry about the vulnerability of emerging technologies to cyber threats. In addition to operational outages, data theft is a worry for 39%, and 32% fear that product quality could be affected by a successful cyberattack on emerging technologies.
Source: The Global State of Information Security Survey 2018 (PwC)
61%: Percent of organizations that have deployed some level of IoT technologies, and have had to deal with a security incident related to IoT in the past year
Most security incidents involving IoT networks have resulted from actual attacks, such as malware infiltration (24%) and phishing/social engineering attacks (18%). Over 1 in 10 (11%) IoT security incidents involved device misconfiguration issues, 9% involved privilege escalation, and 6% resulted in credential theft.
Source: Internet of Things Cybersecurity Readiness (Osterman Research for Trustwave)
The data we added to this list was based on solid research, came from reputable sources, and, most importantly, was unbiased. Put it to work for your organization.
[ Partner resource: Take Security Journey's first two white belt modules for free ]I’m honestly not sure what I can say about The Last Unicorn that hasn’t been said before—folks were proclaiming the book a classic almost as soon as it was published, and certainly before I was born. Ursula K. Le Guin has paid tribute to Peter S. Beagle’s “particular magic,” Madeleine L’Engle described him as “one of my favorite writers,” and countless other readers, writers, and reviewers have heaped such a formidable mountain of praise at his door that it almost seems futile to approach, from down in the valley, and try to carve out some new flourish or clamber conveniently onto some hitherto unexplored perspective.
But even great monuments have their road signs, billboards, and tourist brochures, their aggressively fluorescent arrows pointing helpfully toward sites that really shouldn’t be missed. So consider this post a roadside marker, a glossy pamphlet, a helpful map to a well-worn path that’s much-travelled for a reason: the world of The Last Unicorn is always worth visiting, and revisiting, even if you think you’ve seen it all before.
Note: Spoilers for the plot and ending of The Last Unicorn below.
For no particular reason that I can think of, looking back, I didn’t actually read the novel until I was in my late teens, although I’d been obsessed with the animated movie version well before I could read. As faithful as the movie is (Beagle himself adapted the screenplay, and I’ll actually be discussing the film in a separate post later this week), I’ve always felt that the experience of reading the novel is markedly different from that of watching the film.* As a devoted and unapologetic fan of both versions, I don’t necessarily privilege one above the other, but the movie embroiders upon the simple elegance of the original story with its spectacular animation, its cast of well-known actors, its memorable soundtrack—it’s a tale well and richly told, and captures much of what makes the book so beloved. What resists translation from page to screen is what might be termed the literary angels’ share—the subtlety of writing that continuously loops in on itself and turns the reader into an unconscious co-conspirator, an acolyte (and, every so often, a comedic straight man).
*I should probably note here that I have not read the comic series published by IDW, although all the glimpses of the artwork I’ve seen have been gorgeous—if you’ve read them, please share your impressions in the comments!
The plot itself is a relatively straightforward quest narrative. It begins with the unicorn, alone in her lilac wood, spending the long years of her immortal existence in quiet, untroubled solitude until one day she overhears a pair of hunters debating the existence of unicorns. Shocked at their assertion that she is the last of her kind, she sets out in search of the others, finding the world much changed after so many years apart from it. The people she encounters have a longing for magic, miracles, and legends of the past, but are no longer capable of recognizing true magic when it appears, preferring cheap trickery and illusions.
Out on the road, the unicorn is mistaken for a horse by men and sees no signs of her lost kin until she crosses paths with a rapturous, half-mad butterfly who recognizes her and names her, between reciting frantic snippets of songs, poetry, and jingles.* In a fleeting moment of clarity, he tells her that her people have been chased down by a creature called the Red Bull, and so she sets out again, only to find herself recognized and captured by a seedy hedge witch. Outfitted with a false horn (so that she may be seen by unknowing customers for what she truly is), the unicorn is put on display as part of Mommy Fortuna’s Midnight Carnival, a shabby collection of counterfeit monsters and one other true immortal creature: the harpy, Celaeno.
*Apparently, Beagle explains every reference, allusion, and in-joke woven into the Butterfly’s speech in “The Butterfly Decodex,” rumored to appear in his highly-anticipated collection The First Last Unicorn and Other Beginnings, due out on February 1st.
Finding an ally in the carnival’s would-be sorcerer, Schmendrick, the unicorn escapes (in one of the most harrowing and starkly, sadly beautiful passages in the novel) and returns to the road. |
asking about him and hoping for good news.
“That’s my prayer,” Bredu said.
The building was too old to be required to have modern fireproofing such as sprinkler systems and interior steel construction.
___
Associated Press Writer Larry Neumeister contributed to this report.Baylor brothers celebrate Super Bowl and World Series titles in same year
When the Chicago Cubs won the World Series earlier this month, among those joining in the celebration was Baylor Bear Colin Faulkner, BBA ’98, the Cubs’ senior vice president of sales and marketing.
But Faulkner wasn’t the first Baylor Bear to see his employer win a professional sports title in 2016; in fact, he wasn’t even the only member of his family. That’s because Colin’s brother, Chris Faulkner, BBA ’01, is the senior manager of premium seating for the Super Bowl 50 champion Denver Broncos.
Both brothers got their start in Baylor’s Hankamer School of Business. Colin, the older of the two brothers, graduated from Baylor in 1998 and went to work for the Dallas Burn (Major League Soccer) before joining the Texas Rangers and Dallas Stars. He made the move to Chicago in 2010 and now oversees all ticket sales, corporate partnership sales, and marketing functions for the Cubs.
Chris followed Colin to Baylor and graduated in 2001; he began his career with the Colorado Rockies the following year, then worked for the Texas Rangers and Colorado Crush (Arena Football League) before landing with the Broncos, where he celebrated the franchise’s third Super Bowl win in February.
(You can read more about the brothers in this 2013 story from the Baylor S3 Report.)
Sic ’em, Faulkner family!When the Clinton administration moved to limit the proliferation of encryption technologies with recourse to International Traffic in Arms Regulation, it didn't work too well. There was almost a Streisand Effect -- outside of government-approved channels, strong cryptography spread unabated until in 1997 ITAR lowered the classification of such software; there was no stopping the proliferation.
There's a lesson here for the State Department, which this week ordered that Defense Distributed founder Cody Wilson take offline his design for the the 3-D-printable “Liberator” handgun to review the files for compliance with ITAR. It's a lesson libertarian Wilson seems to already know. Referring to the letter he received from the government ordering that his files be taken down, he told Forbes, "All such data should be removed from public access, the letter says. That might be an impossible standard."
Advertisement:
And indeed, TorrentFreak reports Friday that, while Wilson has complied with the government, "the blueprints, however, are still available on The Pirate Bay and many other file-sharing sites, which adds a 3D chapter to the IP enforcement debate.The Pirate Bay says it welcomes the blueprints and has no intention of taking the files down." Before Defense Distributed was asked to remove its files, the gun design was downloaded 100,000 times since its release Monday -- that's plenty of fodder for file sharing. Government intervention might yet prompt a Streisand Effect now that groups with little stake in 3-D gun prints, but strong feelings about censorship and data sharing (such as the Pirate Bay), throw their hats into the game.
Via TorrentFreak:Google just updated the developer dashboard with the most recent Android distribution numbers, measured during a 7-day period from the end of last year until the 5th of January. This is always an interesting read (not only for developers, but for Android-enthusiasts as well), and at the end of each year it is good to look back on what happened in 2014. Google releases these numbers every month, which I collected and made into a chart to visualize last year’s changes.
Android version distribution in 2014
KitKat grew to dominate in 2014, starting at only 1.8% and finishing at 39.1%, taking the lead from 4.1 sometime in September. And while Honeycomb disappeared in May (meaning it didn’t reach 0.1%), FroYo (0.4%) and Gingerbread (7.8%) continue to be present, both slowly declining. And while the first release of Lollipop was rolled out on November 12, 2014, it still didn’t make the cut.
Made with Charted, an awesome tool for making awesome looking charts by Medium (it’s open-source, available on GitHub). An interactive version is also available, hover above the lines to see the exact percentages for each month. You might notice that the numbers for September are missing - I couldn’t find the corresponding data, if anyone has it, please let me know and I’ll update the chart accordingly.
Also, see the same chart for last year here.Josh Gordon is out of rehab and back to preparing for his future in the NFL.
The Cleveland Browns wide receiver departed from an in-patient rehabilitation facility on Sep. 21. On Wednesday, Sep. 27, he posted a Snapchat video of himself working out on a football field.
There have been no reports of Gordon re-applying for reinstatement. It is unclear how long it would take Commissioner Roger Goodell to make a ruling on his suspension.
On January 25, 2015, Gordon was suspended indefinitely for violating the NFL's drug and alcohol policy. On July 25, 2016, the NFL announced the wide receiver would be reinstated after serving a four game suspension. Before he could make his long awaited debut, he voluntarily entered an in-patient rehabilitation facility. He returned to the league's suspended list. Commissioner Roger Goodell denied his latest attempt for reinstatement on May 11.
(Sign up for our FREE email newsletter and do not miss any Browns breaking news as they prepare for an AFC North showdown with the Bengals!)
Gordon, who is now 26 years old, has recorded 161 receptions for 2,754 yards and 14 touchdowns in his career. The Baylor product was a second round choice in the 2012 NFL Supplemental Draft. Of a potential 80 regular season games since he entered the league, he has played in just 35.
If he accrues a full season in 2017, he is scheduled to become a restricted free agent next off-season. Gordon is technically still fulfilling a four year deal worth $5,341,648 that he signed after being drafted. His money has been deferred since he was suspended indefinitely.poster="http://v.politico.com/images/1155968404/201606/874/1155968404_4944735019001_4944711029001-vs.jpg?pubId=1155968404" true Clinton goes for swing-state soft touch
When Hillary Clinton’s first general election ads start hitting the airwaves in eight battleground states on Thursday, they won’t all be torching Donald Trump.
In addition to the anti-Trump ad that the campaign released last week, the former secretary of state’s team will plaster Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Ohio, and Virginia airwaves with two soft biographical spots, one lasting sixty seconds and another thirty.
The one-minute spot — “Always” — traces Clinton’s life working for children, opening with 1950 footage of her as a small child and segueing to describing her post-law school job with the Children’s Defense Fund, a regular part of her stump speech at times during her campaign, before touching on her work in Arkansas and as First Lady to pass the Children’s Health Insurance Program. It then pivots to her time as secretary of state before turning to the present campaign.
“Through the years there have been challenges, setbacks,” says the narrator. “But for Hillary, one thing’s never changed. Helping children has been a cause of her life, and it always will be."
View Hillary Clinton ad: 'Quiet Moments' A new ad released by Hillary Clinton's campaign on Thursday.
The shorter clip — “Quiet Moments” — also centers on her efforts to pass the Children’s Health Insurance Program, focusing on her work with Republicans while showing old footage.
“It’s in the quiet moments when you see why she does this,” intones the narrator. “For Hillary, it’s always been about kids."
Clinton’s ad onslaught joins a similar one from her largest supportive super PAC, Priorities USA Action, which has for weeks hit swing state airwaves with its own trio of spots ripping at Trump. The GOP standard-bearer and his supporters have yet to respond aside from one nationwide cable news buy from a super PAC.The current look of the two tablets. It's not common for tablets to have split-screens.
I've dropped an image of Crash Bandicoot running on the tablet, courtesy of Engadget Soon, you'll have the ability to download original PlayStation games on a Sony -branded tablet. No, I'm not sure anyone was asking for complicated controller-based games to be mapped to a touch screen, but my own snark aside, Sony revealed the first PlayStation Certified tablet at an event in Japan tonight. Ridge Racer advocate and PlayStation lead executive Kaz Hirai was on-hand to help unveil Sony's devices. There are actually two tablets coming from Sony sometime in fall 2011, S1 and S2. Both have tentative codenames, with the former designed for home use ("rich media entertainment," says the press release), the other meant for on-the-go experiences ("mobile communication and entertainment").== TEASER ==The press release doesn't provide any indication of the lineup of original PlayStation games, only mentioning consumers will have access to "high quality first generation PlayStation titles," but games like Crash Bandicoot have already launched on other PlayStation Certified phones featuring Android Based on Google's Android 3.0 operating system, Sony's S1 features a 9.4-inch display, while the S2 sports two 5.5-inch displays. Both can grab onto local Wi-Fi points and access 3G and 4G networks.No pricing information is available yet for either tablet.I'm still trying to figure out how original PlayStation games would be any fun with touch, though.When the cat's away, the mouse will play, or charge more for his services, as the case may be. Or to be more specific, AT&T is launching its fiber Internet service in parts of Cupertino, California, home of Apple, but is charging more for 1Gbps speeds than it does in other areas where U-verse with GigaPower is offered.In Kansas City and Austin, AT&T's U-verse with GigaPower costs $70 per month for gigabit service when opting in to its "Internet Preferences" program, which gives the company permission to view your web traffic. In exchange, AT&T matches Google's competing fiber Internet pricing in both areas.Google Fiber isn't offered in Cupertino, and so AT&T is charging $110 per month for 1Gbps, or $80 per month for 300Mbps service. Ready for the kicker? You still have to opt-in to AT&T's Internet Preferences program. We'll have to wait and see if residents and businesses cry foul over the pricing discrepancy for the exact same service as what's being offered in Kansas City and Austin, though the city's mayor doesn't seem fazed by it."We are proud to be the first city on the west coast to launch the AT&T GigaPower network, bringing the speed of fiber to homes and businesses,"' said Cupertino Mayor Rod Sinks. "People come to Cupertino from around the world, and want to connect with families and culture in their home countries, as well as with work colleagues and customers worldwide. We place high value on education and access to information, and GigaPower enables more and improved services, from remote learning to telemedicine to entertainment."Pricing strategy aside, AT&T is thinking about expanding its fiber network to up to 100 cities and municipalities across 25 markets. And if its proposed acquisition of DirecTV is approved, AT&T will expand its GigaPower network to an additional 2 million customer locations, the company said.Charging done Right! 54 - 80A Adaptive Charging Stations at Caltech
Updated 1 May 2016
By Christopher Howell - OpenEVSE
In the latest issue of Charged EV Magazine (January/February 2016) there is an article about a large deployment of Level 1 charging. I read the article shaking my head the whole time, I feel trickle charging is too constrained and not creative enough given the technology we have today. I absolutely agree infrastructure is cost prohibitive for large deployments of Charging Stations and work must be done to increase the number of charging stations while reducing the infrastructure cost burden.
Over at Caltech in Pasadena California they have solved the exact same problem in a very different way. Caltech has installed 54 80A Charging Stations, 50 General use - 4 Handicapped. That is over 1,000,000 watts, it would cost a fortune to bring in that much power...
Caltech students, alumni and professors came up with a better way. They developed an adaptive algorithm to schedule resources among the charging stations by sending command to OpenEVSE controllers. The infrastructure cost can be reduced significantly because: not all EVs require 80A... not all spots will be occupied... some spots will be occupied by non-electric vehicles... some vehicles will finished charging... some may only need a few miles...
The load is split between 2 150kVa transformers which is about 300kW, current sensors monitor the load on each station and servers schedule resources. The current is dynamically allocated to vehicles based on need.
Real time usage charts.
On a touch screen display, users can identify the vehicle type, how long they will be parked and how many miles need to be added to reach their destination. The proper resources can be provided to ensure each driver receives the needed energy.
The Caltech team also came up with a cleaver way to allow general parking while ensuring some spots are dedicated to EV charging. Each Charging station has an ultrasonic sensor which provides the system with the status of the spot (space occupied - not charging, space occupied - charging, space open). If too many spots are occupied the displays of the remaining charging stations will change to "Electric Vehicle Charging only" ensuring some of the 54 spots will always be available.
Smart use of infrastructure will accelerate proliferation of charging stations, Level 1 trickle charging is just too limited to provide significant value. Adaptive throttling solves the same infrastructure cost problem while allowing great flexibility and maximum use of available resources. some users can charge very fast while others can charge at much slower rates. These 54 charging stations at Caltech will provide the team tons of data and serve as a model for future large scale charging deployments.Medford officials project a $1.1 million increase in the city�s revenue next fiscal year, including at least $300,000 from a pending parking enforcement deal.
The projections are part of a proposed $150 million budget for fiscal 2015 presented by Mayor Michael J. McGlynn to the Medford City Council on Tuesday night during the council�s first of five scheduled budget meetings.
The proposed budget of $150,842,790 is an increase of about $6.2 million from the current budget and includes a 2.5 percent increase in tax revenue, the maximum allowed under state law.
Medford residents, therefore, can expect another increase in property taxes, despite the city�s projection it will receive almost $13.1 million in revenue from sources such as vehicle and restaurant taxes, licenses and cable fees.
The city generated an estimated $11.95 million in revenue in fiscal 2014.
Given the city�s projected revenue increase, Medford resident John Storella said it should not raise taxes on residents by the maximum amount.
"My suggestion is this: If the revenue is reduced, the budget is automatically reduced," Storella said. "It will happen all by itself. No one need suffer, and you can eliminate unneeded spending. But when we start off imposed, on the people � with a maximum levy, they�re stuck with it. There�s nowhere to go. And they�re going to be paying $200 and $300 and $400 more on their taxes than they did last year, automatically."
McGlynn, meanwhile, said he supported the proposed budget.
"This is a budget that I feel is good for the city to deliver the services," he said. "The council, if they want, they can cut it down to $43 million. But there will be far less services here."
McGlynn said the projected revenue increase includes at least $300,000 in anticipated revenue from a new parking enforcement contract the city is negotiating.
"It�s a low number, but we wanted to put something in there," he said.
Tuesday night�s meeting also included discussion about the council�s desire for a dog park, playground and pathway upgrades for Magoun Park and transmission issues for Comcast subscribers watching City Council meetings, among other topics.
� Check back with wickedlocal.com/medford for more budget updates throughout the week.1. With the engine idling, turn the steering wheel slowly and completely in each direction several times to raise the fluid temperature to 175 Degrees Fahrenheit.
2. If the fluid level is not at the full/"hot" markings. Fill the power steering reservoir with the recommended fluid til the level is at the full/"hot" marking.
3. Now, with the vehicle in Park, and the engine running at 1000RPM, turn the steering wheel fully in each direction three or four times. Each time the steering wheel is turned fully to the right or left, hold it there for 2 to 3 seconds before turning it in the other direction.
4. Check for foaming of the fluid in the reservoir.
5 If foaming of the fluid is still present, continue turning and holding the steering wheel til fluid foaming stops.
6 Once foaming stops. Check the fluid level with the engine running and be sure it is at the hot full mark. Shut off the engine, and make sure the fluid level does not increase more than 0.02 of an inch.PICTURED: Ga. officer patrols homeless camps
SAVANNAH, Ga. (AP) — Officer Tom Gentner works a police beat few Savannah residents ever see, patrolling 20 rustic camps populated by hundreds of homeless people tucked away in the woods and under highway overpasses.
Savannah-Chatham County police assigned Gentner as the department's homeless liason last year. He gets no partner and no extra budget. Just a patrol car he drives down dirt roads to camps with names like Bamboo Forest and Hob-Knob Hill. He keeps a milk crate in the trunk containing files he's compiled on many of the 360 homeless residents.
"He keeps the riffraff out of here," said Larry Lewis, who lives at one of the camps.
In this Monday, Dec. 9, 2013 photo, Savannah Metro Police Department Homeless Liaison Officer Tom Gentner, right, gathers contact information from a young couple who are living in homeless Camp 8 South under the ramps of the Truman Parkway in Savannah, Ga. Since September 2013 the Savannah police department gave Gentner the task of keeping track of over three hundred homeless people living near the historic downtown area. The couple later found temporary housing with the help of Gentner. (AP Photo/Stephen B. Morton)
When a couple wanted for jumping bail in Florida moved into one of the Savannah camps, residents tipped off Gentner. Besides investigating crimes, he also mediates disputes between camp residents and helps charities organize food and blanket donations.
The following images show Gentner on the job working the homeless beat.
In this Monday, Dec. 9, 2013 photo, a homeless man talks to Homeless Liaison Officer Tom Gentner about new people who arrived to a nearby campsite in Savannah, Ga. Gentner has built a relationship of trust with the homeless population around Savannah. They keep him informed about camp activities and he addresses their needs as they arise. Gentner's duties include settling disputes, documenting camp residents and checking their criminal backgrounds. (AP Photo/Stephen B. Morton)
In this Friday, Dec. 13, 2013 photo, A young homeless woman known as "Crystal," center, thanks Homeless Liaison Officer Tom Gentner for her new wheelchair at Camp 8 South under the Truman Parkway in Savannah, Ga. Her previous wheelchair was damaged by rocks on a path to the camp, and he contacted Savannah Christian Church who found a used wheelchair for donation. (AP Photo/Stephen B. Morton)
In this Saturday, Dec. 14, 2013 photo, Homeless Liaison Officer Tom Gentner leads a group of homeless men living under a highway overpass in Savannah, Ga. to his patrol car to give them donated items from an Army soldier at Hunter Army Airfield who collected tarps, tents, rope, jackets and other supplies. A large part of Gentner's job is to organize charitable donations and ensure their safety during distribution. (AP Photo/Stephen B. Morton)
In this Friday, Feb. 7, 2014 photo, Homeless Liaison Officer Tom Gentner races to the arrest of one of the homeless residents under his watch on the west side of Savannah, Ga. Gentner spotted the woman in a known area frequented by prostitutes outside his precinct boundaries and organized a sting operation that morning to arrest her. (AP Photo/Stephen B. Morton)
In this Friday, Feb. 7, 2014 photo, Homeless Liaison Officer Tom Gentner talks to one of the homeless residents he keeps track of after she was arrested for prostitution on the west side of Savannah, Ga. Gentner spotted the woman in an area known for prostitution outside his precinct boundaries and organized a sting operation earlier in the morning. (AP Photo/Stephen B. Morton)
In this Monday, Dec. 9, 2013 photo, Homeless Liaison Officer Tom Gentner, right, tries to make eye contact with a homeless man known as "K.B." who started a fight with residents in an area called the Bamboo Forest in Savannah, Ga. Gentner documents, monitors and mediates all 20 camps in the area, keeping the peace and monitoring the activities of the diverse population. (AP Photo/Stephen B. Morton)
In this Monday, Dec. 9, 2013 photo, Homeless Liaison Officer Tom Gentner talks with two long-time residents of the Bamboo Forest camp in Savannah, Ga. Building trust with the city's homeless population is a tool that Gentner uses to keep the peace in the camps and garner information from the over 300 homeless men and women living there. (AP Photo/Stephen B. Morton)
In this Thursday, Dec. 19, 2013 photo, a homeless man takes a quick swig of beer that was hidden in his sleeve while Homeless Liaison Officer Tom Gentner, center, meets with a group of volunteers in Savannah, Ga. Gentner uses a balance of tolerance and enforcement to keep the peace and earn the trust of the over 300 people living in the 20 homeless camps around the Historic District. (AP Photo/Stephen B. Morton)
In this Tuesday, Jan. 21, 2014 photo, Homeless Liaison Officer Tom Gentner stands in the entrance to a tent as he searches for a suspected felon near the camps under the overpass of the Talmadge Memorial Bridge in Savannah, Ga. One of Gentner's homeless informants told him the new couple was bragging about skipping out on a $50,000 bond in Florida and being on the run from a felony charge of methamphetamine dealing. The were later arrested. (AP Photo/Stephen B. Morton)
In this Tuesday, Jan. 21, 2014 photo, Savannah Homeless Liaison Officer Tom Gentner chases a suspected felon near Camp Six under the Talmadge Memorial Bridge overpass in Savannah, Ga. One of his homeless informants told him of a new couple that was bragging about skipping out on a $50,000 bond and being on the run from a felony charge of methamphetamine dealing. (AP Photo/Stephen B. Morton)
In this Monday, Dec. 9, 2013 photo, Homeless Liaison Officer Tom Gentner walks on a makeshift drawbridge outside an abandoned building while checking on people living in the structure in Savannah, Ga. The owner asked Gentner to evacuate the building so it can be donated to the fire department for training exercises. (AP Photo/Stephen B. Morton)
In this Friday, Jan. 3, 2014 photo, Savannah Homeless Liaison Officer Tom Gentner meets with Citizen Office Director Susan Broker about giving a name to a remote street near Camp 7 East in Savannah, Ga. More than half of Gentner's work week is spent in meetings with city, county administrations and advocacy groups concerning the over 300 homeless living in the downtown precinct. (AP Photo/Stephen B. Morton)
In this Monday, Dec. 9, 2013 photo, Homeless Liaison Officer Tom Gentner, center, uses a map to show a group from the Episcopal Diocese of Georgia where they plan to hold a Christmas service in Camp 8 South under the Truman Parkway, in Savannah, Ga. Since being named homeless liaison in 2013, Gentner designated camp boundaries by using features in the terrain, numbering each one to help emergency services with locations. (AP Photo/Stephen Morton)
In this Friday, Dec. 13, 2013 photo, Homeless Liaison Officer Tom Gentner sorts through paper phone messages he picked up from the police station while sitting in his patrol car during a visit to a camp under the Truman Parkway in Savannah, Ga. Gentner has had no more budget than a typical patrol officer who rides a beat, but after being awarded by the department for his work with the homeless, he will be assigned a new SUV to help him get to remote locations. (AP Photo/Stephen B. Morton)
In this Friday, Dec. 13, 2013 photo, Savannah's Homeless Liaison Officer Tom Gentner's is reflected in the shaving mirror of a homeless man at Camp 7 in Savannah, Ga. Residents call the area the "Bamboo Forest" because of the acres of the dense plants which conceal their community of fenced off encampments. (AP Photo/Stephen B. Morton)
In this Friday, Jan. 3, 2014 photo, Homeless Liaison Officer Tom Gentner stands on the door frame of his police cruiser to check the depth of floodwaters blocking his access to one of the city's 20 homeless camps in Savannah, Ga. Several of the camps are in remote sections of town surrounding the historic district. After being awarded by the department for his work with the homeless, he will be assigned a new SUV for his job. (AP Photo/Stephen B. Morton)
In this Thursday, Dec. 19, 2013 photo, Homeless Liaison Officer Tom Gentner takes notes on a homeless couple who recently moved into a wooded area near the boundaries of his district in Savannah, Ga. Gentner is the only officer in Savannah who interacts daily with the homeless community in town, many living in remote locations. (AP Photo/Stephen B. Morton)
In this Saturday, Dec. 14, 2013 photo, Homeless Liaison Officer Tom Gentner, right, leads a group wanting to donate clothing past a memorial for a woman who died in a tent fire in Camp 2 in a wooded area behind the Savannah College of Art and Design's Boundary Village in Savannah, Ga. The tent ignited from the sparks of a nearby campfire. (AP Photo/Stephen B. Morton)Ready to fight back? Sign up for Take Action Now and get three actions in your inbox every week. You will receive occasional promotional offers for programs that support The Nation’s journalism. You can read our Privacy Policy here. Sign up for Take Action Now and get three actions in your inbox every week.
Thank you for signing up. For more from The Nation, check out our latest issue
Subscribe now for as little as $2 a month!
Support Progressive Journalism The Nation is reader supported: Chip in $10 or more to help us continue to write about the issues that matter. The Nation is reader supported: Chip in $10 or more to help us continue to write about the issues that matter.
Fight Back! Sign up for Take Action Now and we’ll send you three meaningful actions you can take each week. You will receive occasional promotional offers for programs that support The Nation’s journalism. You can read our Privacy Policy here. Sign up for Take Action Now and we’ll send you three meaningful actions you can take each week.
Thank you for signing up. For more from The Nation, check out our latest issue
Travel With The Nation Be the first to hear about Nation Travels destinations, and explore the world with kindred spirits. Be the first to hear about Nation Travels destinations, and explore the world with kindred spirits.
Sign up for our Wine Club today. Did you know you can support The Nation by drinking wine?
The one word you never hear from the lips of a practicing capitalist is “guilt.” Milton Friedman taught a generation of business execs and bankers that their only job is to make as much money as they can. Leave the blame game to dewy-eyed liberals. Economists and business schools picked up on the theme and told losers who didn’t share in the good times it was their own fault. They didn’t work hard enough or get a proper education. Maybe in their next life they can go to grad school or choose a career that doesn’t involve working with their hands. Ad Policy
Only now comes this world-class player from the privileged “1 percent” to admit he is feeling guilty. Two cheers for Bill Gross, the co-founder and managing director of PIMCO, the California-based bond house that manages some $2 trillion in other people’s wealth. Gross himself has accumulated $2.2 billion, which puts him at #252 on the Forbes 400.
“Having gotten rich at the expense of labor,” Gross confessed, “the guilt sets in and I begin to feel sorry for the less well-off.” The message is addressed to fellow rich guys who are IMCO clients, in Gross’s latest monthly Investment Outlook. He calls them “Scrooge McDucks.” He suggests they stop whining about the enormous taxes they pay the government and give more back to the society they degraded with inequality.
“Admit that you and I and others in the ‘magnificent 1 %’ grew up in the gilded age of credit,” Gross wrote. “…You did not create that wave. You rode it. And now it’s time to kick out and share some of your good fortune by paying higher taxes or reforming them to favor economic growth and labor, as opposed to corporate profits and individual gazillions.”
Gross propose this reform: “The era of taxing ‘capital’ at lower rates than ‘labor’ should now end.” That heresy is a little like punching PIMCO customers where they live, but Gross will no doubt get away with it. They are used to hearing his occasional heresies and Gross has made them lots of money over the years. Besides, the capitalists are counting on the politicians to protect them from higher taxes.
Some other wealthy capitalists like Warren Buffett have made similar raise-my-taxes pleas, but Bill Gross’s is distinctive because, first, he acknowledges a personal sense of guilt and, second, he bluntly describes the fundamental conflict as capital versus labor. You seldom hear that kind of talk any longer in American politics and certainly not from financial-market billionaires. Gross is not a closet commie. He is simply acknowledging in plain English the underlying ideological contest that has dominated the last thirty years.
Capital won and labor lost. Not just union workers but middle-class people of all kinds, especially “those who used their hands for a living,” as Gross puts it. That verdict is now so obvious that even timid commentators talk about it obliquely. The middle class is breaking up, while the largest capital owners continue to claim an ever larger share of the nation’s wealth, even during the economy’s bad years. This trend has been obvious to working people for years while elite opinion was celebrating the triumph of market economics. Neither political party wishes to inquire too deeply into the causes since both Republicans and Democrats are implicated.
Maybe it requires unorthodox sources of truth-telling—odd heretics like Bill Gross—to put these questions on the table. Certainly, the political system will not find any real answers as long as most politicians are afraid to ask real questions. Gross expressed his own frustration with reluctance of elected officials to face hard truths about the hollowing US economy.
He cited Barack Obama’s recent speech sounding “a faint alarm” about the failure of corporations and capitalists to invest in US productivity. Obama said, “It’s time for folks to…focus on doing everything we can to spur growth and create new, high-quality jobs.” Gross was exasperated. “Folks?” he responded. “Ordinary folks, the 99 percent, don’t have money any more. Mr. President. The rich and corporations do.”
I am a little biased in Gross’s favor because I first encountered him fifteen years ago with my book on the globalizing economy—One World, Ready or Not—which described the capital-labor struggle and the threatening consequences I foresaw for Americans. Gross invited me to address the semi-annual conference PIMCO has its bond traders from around the world. I asked him why. Prominent economists and financial reporters were disparaging my fears as silly. Bill Gross said he thought I had the story right and his people needed to hear it. The bond traders, rather loudly, did not agree.
William Greider writes that the $13 billion JPMorgan settlement is a good start—but not enough until someone goes to jail.UPDATE: this is actually changelog 0.12.0.1 not 0.12.1.0! Blame our silly number bot (who has now been recycled) for any confusion. The patch also includes x86/32-bit support, which wasn’t mentioned in our earlier post.
We’ve released a new version of Minecraft Windows 10 Edition Beta to improve functionality and fix some reported bugs & crashes.
Notable improvements & bug fixes
Other things
Added x86 / 32-bit support
Anvil UI works better- you can access the main UI while renaming/repairing & can place items in the second slot
Minecarts don’t disappear when you enter the nether
“Repopulation” achievement fixed
Squid able to be pulled with a fishing rod
Creative world saves can be imported to the Trial version
Nether brick slab now craftable
You can keep chatting with your friends when you get on a boat
Fixed spawning/respawning in the Nether & in flat worlds
Mining emerald ore fixed for correct pickaxe types
Custom skins tab fixed
Enchanted books now include enchantment names
Fixed scenario where writing signs would cause the game to crash
Fixed issues with furnaces & chests not working
Fixed crashes when players repeatedly entered & left the Nether
Audio file fixes
Fixed crashes for players with non-ASCII characters in names.
Fixed world progress saved game issue.
Report bugs here: Minecraft issue tracker.
And feedback here: Minecraft Windows 10 Beta Edition Feedback(Note! if this is on any other site than Planet Minecraft and my website (junilia.com), go away from the website!)
Thank you guys so much for 100 Diamonds, 70000 views and 15000 downloads!
ALSO WITH MUSIC
The track numbers are:
Installation:
1)Go to start menu and search for run,
2) In run type in %appdata% and then go into.minecraft
3) Go into the folder resource packs and drop the file you downloaded in there
DISCLAIMER: I do not own any of the content from Super Mario 64, they belong to Nintendo.
For connected textures, use optifine, or it won't work.If you have an issue/problem, comment or send PM so I can fix the problem.-To play the music use the command in game:/playsound sm64_(track number) music @pBob-omb battlefield: sm64_1Snow mountain: sm64_2Cave dungeon: sm64_3Jolly roger bay: sm64_4Slider: sm64_5Feel free to leave a diamond if you like what you see!If you like what I'm doing, feel free to join my Discord Server at https://discord.gg/DPSU9GQ
Check out my Website (to support Nintendo, buy their games :).Pope Francis greets the crowd as he arrives for his weekly general audience on February 10, 2016 at St Peter's square (AFP Photo/Filippo Monteforte)
Vatican City (AFP) - Dubbed'super confessors', for one year only they can absolve sins usually only pardoned by the pope himself.
And on Wednesday over 1,000 of these "missionaries of mercy", handpicked by Pope Francis, were sent forth to win back the hearts of those who have left the Catholic Church and open the door to repentant sinners across the world.
There are certain evils the Vatican ranks above other sins, from attempting to assassinate the pope to defiling the Eucharist -- the rite of consuming consecrated bread and wine in Church -- by spitting it out or using it in a Satanic ritual.
Since the 12th century, those guilty of these so-called "reserved sins" had their cases evaluated by a secret tribunal in the tiny Vatican city state before they were sent before the pope, who would determine an appropriate penance.
Now, 1,142 priests and monks from around the world have be given the power, for the Vatican's Jubilee Year, to forgive sinners in their flocks -- and possibly fellow priests as one of the special sins is breaking the seal of confession.
Maltese Franciscan Marcello Ghirlando, 53, told AFP he thought giving the'super confessors' authority usually reserved for the man in white was "a symbolic gesture" to show people the Church is ready to wipe slates clean.
"I think the pope wants to insist that 'listen, God is always going to forgive us if we turn to him with a clean heart, with a repentant heart'," he said with a grin, adding that he was relishing the challenge of bringing people back to church.
Pope Francis has repeatedly warned priests not to turn off potential believers by being boring, inaccessible or overly intrusive, and on Tuesday he told the missionaries they should take a "maternal" approach to sinners.
"Remember, you are not dealing with sin but a repentant sinner, a sinner who wants to change but can't," he said, telling them to "cover the sinner with a blanket of mercy, so that he is no longer ashamed and can rediscover joy."
- 'Spiritual, social revolution' -
Some of the super confessors are already thinking outside the box. One missionary is off to the Canadian Arctic to hear Eskimo confessions, another will tour Australia in a camper, whilst others are packing their bags for Burundi, China and Lebanon.
Vatican watcher John L. Allen, writing for the Cruxnow website, said the pontiff was hoping the missionaries would carry with them his messages on key social issues, from tackling climate change to |
full index.blade.php view is like the following.
@extends('layouts.app') @section('content') <div class="container"> <table class="table table-striped"> <thead> <tr> <td>ID</td> <td>Title</td> <td>Description</td> <td colspan="2">Action</td> </tr> </thead> <tbody> @foreach($tickets as $ticket) <tr> <td>{{$ticket->id}}</td> <td>{{$ticket->title}}</td> <td>{{$ticket->description}}</td> <td><a href="{{action('TicketController@edit',$ticket->id)}}" class="btn btn-primary">Edit</a></td> <td> <form action="{{action('TicketController@destroy', $ticket->id)}}" method="post"> {{csrf_field()}} <input name="_method" type="hidden" value="DELETE"> <button class="btn btn-danger" type="submit">Delete</button> </form> </td> </tr> @endforeach </tbody> </table> <div> @endsection
The whole TicketController.php file looks like the following.
<?php namespace App\Http\Controllers; use Illuminate\Http\Request; use App\Ticket; class TicketController extends Controller { /** * Display a listing of the resource. * * @return \Illuminate\Http\Response */ public function index() { $tickets = Ticket::where('user_id', auth()->user()->id)->get(); return view('user.index',compact('tickets')); } /** * Show the form for creating a new resource. * * @return \Illuminate\Http\Response */ public function create() { return view('user.create'); } /** * Store a newly created resource in storage. * * @param \Illuminate\Http\Request $request * @return \Illuminate\Http\Response */ public function store(Request $request) { $ticket = new Ticket(); $data = $this->validate($request, [ 'description'=>'required', 'title'=>'required' ]); $ticket->saveTicket($data); return redirect('/home')->with('success', 'New support ticket has been created! Wait sometime to get resolved'); } /** * Display the specified resource. * * @param int $id * @return \Illuminate\Http\Response */ public function show($id) { // } /** * Show the form for editing the specified resource. * * @param int $id * @return \Illuminate\Http\Response */ public function edit($id) { $ticket = Ticket::where('user_id', auth()->user()->id) ->where('id', $id) ->first(); return view('user.edit', compact('ticket', 'id')); } /** * Update the specified resource in storage. * * @param \Illuminate\Http\Request $request * @param int $id * @return \Illuminate\Http\Response */ public function update(Request $request, $id) { $ticket = new Ticket(); $data = $this->validate($request, [ 'description'=>'required', 'title'=>'required' ]); $data['id'] = $id; $ticket->updateTicket($data); return redirect('/home')->with('success', 'New support ticket has been updated!!'); } /** * Remove the specified resource from storage. * * @param int $id * @return \Illuminate\Http\Response */ public function destroy($id) { $ticket = Ticket::find($id); $ticket->delete(); return redirect('/home')->with('success', 'Ticket has been deleted!!'); } }
Finally, our Laravel 5.5 CRUD Tutorial Example Step By Step From Scratch is over.Maybe Senators had an advance look at Albert Edwards' report, or maybe the fog of Wall Street whispering sweet bribing nothings into their ears is finally lifting, but that vote we were supposed to have tomorrow to reconfirm Ben? Ain't happening.
From Dow Jones:
WASHINGTON (Dow Jones)--The U.S. Senate is "unlikely" to hold a confirmation vote on Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke's second term at the helm of the central bank, a senior Democratic leadership aide said Thursday.
Earlier this week, leadership aides said it was possible lawmakers would seek to vote on Bernanke's confirmation on Friday, but that now seems doubtful, the aide said.
The Fed chief's four year-term ends on Jan. 31. It is unclear what would happen if the Senate fails to approves him for a second term before then.
Bernanke is widely expected to be confirmed once a vote is held, but there are a handful of lawmakers preventing the Senate from moving directly to a vote. One of those, Sen. Bernie Sanders, a Vermont Independent who generally votes with the Democratic majority, is pressing for President Barack Obama to withdraw Bernanke's nomination and select another candidate to lead the Fed.You want to log everything, but you'll find that even in the simplest requests with the fastest response times, a simple file-based access log can add 10% to your response time (which usually means ~91% as many requests per second). The fastest substitute we've found for file-based logging in Python is syslog. Here's how easy it is:
import syslog syslog.syslog(facility | priority, msg)
Nothing's faster, at least nothing that doesn't require you telling Operations to compile a new C module on their production servers.
"But wait!" you say, "Python's builtin logging module has a SysLogHandler! Use that!" Well, no. There are two reasons why not. First, because Python's logging module in general is bog-slow--too slow for high-efficiency apps. It can make many function calls just to decide it's not going to log a message. Second, the SysLogHandler in the stdlib uses a UDP socket by default. You can pass it a string for the address (probably '/dev/log') and it will use a UNIX socket just like syslog.syslog, but it'll still do it in Python, not C, and you still have all the logging module overhead.
Here's a SysLogLibHandler if you're stuck with the stdlib logging module:
class SysLogLibHandler(logging.Handler): """A logging handler that emits messages to syslog.syslog.""" priority_map = { 10: syslog.LOG_NOTICE, 20: syslog.LOG_NOTICE, 30: syslog.LOG_WARNING, 40: syslog.LOG_ERR, 50: syslog.LOG_CRIT, 0: syslog.LOG_NOTICE, } def __init__(self, facility): self.facility = facility logging.Handler.__init__(self) def emit(self, record): syslog.syslog(self.facility | self.priority_map[record.levelno], self.format(record))
I suggest using syslog.LOCAL0 - syslog.LOCAL7 for the facility arg. If you're writing a server, use one facility for access log messages and a different one for error/debug logs. Then you can configure syslogd to handle them differently (e.g., send them to /var/log/myapp/access.log and /var/log/myapp/error.log).Coding bootcamps have proliferated in recent years in the U.S. One of them, Fullstack Academy, today announced a commitment to invest in promising startups founded by their alumni.
According to Fullstack Academy CEO David Yang, the New York-based startup will invest from its own balance sheet, and seek to fund up to eight companies a year in pre-seed or seed-stage deals. Terms and capital commitments will be determined ad hoc.
To qualify for funding consideration, startups must include at least one graduate of the coding bootcamp’s 13-week, JavaScript intensive as a cofounder.
Yang said, “This a great way for us to signal to our students that we believe in you. I hear ‘I want to build a company one day,’ all the time. We’re saying one day should be now, now that you have the technical skills you need.”
Three hundred students graduated from Fullstack Academy last year. The company is on target to see 450 students graduate in 2016. It is also expanding from New York to Chicago next month, following its acquisition of The Starter League there earlier this year.
Yang said Fullstack is already profitable, which is how it was able to create its eponymous Fullstack Fund without raising money from outside limited partners.
With 35 full-time employees, Fullstack Academy prides itself on placing graduates in software developer jobs at major tech firms, especially Google, Amazon and Facebook. The Fullstack Fund should make it equally attractive to entrepreneurial types, not just junior developers looking to get a leg up in large corporations.
Fullstack Academy also claims to have the most rigorous admissions process of all bootcamps, helping to weed out applicants who are not likely to be able to complete the program, or work in the field, successfully Yang said.
On CourseReport, a ratings and reviews site for coding bootcamps, Fullstack Academy currently holds a five-star rating from 37 reviewers. But the company has not disclosed extensive data about its admission, completion rates, job placement and other data that some other bootcamps disclose to third-party auditors.An upcoming exhibit at Ohio Wesleyan University's Ross Art Museum will feature 26 northern New Mexico artists selected by OWU students who visited the artists as part of a university-funded Theory-to-Practice Grant project.
An upcoming exhibit at Ohio Wesleyan University's Ross Art Museum will feature 26 northern New Mexico artists selected by OWU students who visited the artists as part of a university-funded Theory-to-Practice Grant project.
"New Art/New Mexico," to be on display from Feb. 11 through March 30, was curated by six students who spent almost three weeks in May and June of last year visiting art galleries, meeting artists, gallery owners, museum curators and patrons and learning about curating, guided by Ross Museum director Justin Kronewetter, professor emeritus of photography.
Kronewetter, who wrote the Theory-to-Practice grant that allowed the students to travel to New Mexico, continues to teach OWU's gallery management class.
In an OWU news release, Kronewetter said the experience allowed the students to see what is involved in curating a professional art exhibit.
"I also sought to organize a multi-media exhibition consisting of artwork created by African American, Native American, Hispanic and Anglo artists in an effort to diversify our exhibition programming," Kronewetter said in the release.
Several of the artists whose work is included in the exhibit will come to Ohio to speak about their work in programs that will be free and open to the public. The first presentation will feature fine arts photographer Nancy Sutor, who will speak at 4:10 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 13 in Room 121 of Edgar Hall, 35 S. Sandusky St. More about Sutor, who studied at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, can be found at nancysutor.com.
OWU's Ross Art Museum is open from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday; from 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. Thursday; and from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. Sunday. Call 740-368-3606 or visit ross.owu.edu for more information.There is an endless supply of people who are ready and willing to inform us about what we are doing wrong, and how we can alter our behaviour so we can get ahead and inject magic and happiness into our lives. Between modern day guru Gala Darling who believes “positive thoughts generate positive realities,” and you can “manifest” your own destiny, to capitalist public thinkers such as Oprah Winfrey telling us positive thinking can help us obtain “the sweet life,” it is easy to get misled into a muddle of mistruths.
A recent blog by Gala is entitled “Happiness is simple: why too many choices make us miserable and 5 ways to improve your life!” Yeah? Nah. Too many choices are not the issue for a huge majority of the political underclass; a lack of choice is exactly the problem. Whether it be lack of choice when it comes to quality of education, or lack of access to higher education because you were not born into wealth and privilege, or lack of choice when it comes to nutritious food or warm dry housing because wages are often too low in this country, too often, too much choice is not an issue for the growing majority of the 99 percent; restricted choice is.
Gala and magazines such as Oprah Winfrey’s O Magazine, tell us:
If you just change your attitude and think more positively over time, your life will get easier. Over time, you will land a job that affords you a contract guaranteeing you some security and a pay-check which does not leave you in poverty. You simply have to manifest what you want. Drink a couple of litres of soda pop, add diamantes to your manicure, wear a fake moustache all day long (as Gala really has suggested as a remedy for the blues), put on a nice pink dress and smile a bit more then BOOM! That suicidal depression over the stresses of life such as being unable to buy food because you are on minimum wage, working depressing precarious jobs, and/or the debilitating anxiety over whether your welfare will be cut this week will suddenly melt away.
Middle or upper class young white women seem to be the demographic of the radical self-love movement. It is all well and good to tell them to “smash that class-ceiling” and just work hard to achieve your dreams and the bling and designer shoes will follow, but as Laurie Penny points out in her book Unspeakable Things, there are a lot of women drowning in the basement. In particular women of colour, trans, and queer women who disproportionality suffer from poverty, depression, feelings of alienation, and are discriminated against in the work-place:
It is hard to “think positive” when treated so negatively based on the colour of skin and/or sexuality, when facing hate crimes, targeted violence, and when there are so many structural hurdles put in your way to success and triumph. Radical self-love gurus do not tend to promote or even really engage in discussions on privilege or the disadvantages people are born into; that shit would undermine the cause of “changing yourself, not the system.”
In a powerful piece for The Guardian, “Oprah Winfrey: one of the world’s best neoliberal capitalist thinkers,” Nicole Aschoff writes,
A stream of self-help gurus have spent time on Oprah’s stage over the past decade and a half, all with the same message. You have choices in life. External conditions don’t determine your life. You do. It’s all inside you, in your head, in your wishes and desires. Thoughts are destiny, so thinking positive thoughts will enable positive things to happen.
I used to watch Oprah when I was unemployed, with no money, and feeling utterly crap about my situation. I even started cycling religiously a few years back because Oprah told me exercise would help to reduce my feelings of worthlessness; my arse got smaller but my anxiety and panic attacks over my future, and how I was ever going to pay back my student loan, did not. I even read O Magazine for a while until I realised I was not an idiot and my situation was not my fault. I saw that there are external factors which can offer some pretty challenging barriers to success which no number of pictures of green meadows and calm beaches and deep breathing and kitchy “nick naks” can elevate.
What Nicole suggests in her piece is that Oprah just reinforces the focus on the “individual,” which hides the role of political, economic, and socio-economic structures in our lives,
O Magazine implicitly, and sometimes explicitly, identifies a range of problems in neoliberal capitalism and suggests ways for readers to adapt themselves to mitigate or overcome these problems.” She advises us to turn our gaze inward and reconfigure ourselves to become more adaptable to the vagaries and stresses of the neoliberal moment.
Changing your attitude is not going to change or help to dismantle structural injustice and a failed and unstainable economic model which serves only the elite rich of this world, and exploits the rest of us, particularly the working class and those living in poverty. As far as I am concerned positive thinking will fucking ruin your life.
“Just think positive” is a precursor to “it gets better,” and the hard reality is it is only going to get much, much worse for our most vulnerable. With social bonds being introduced into our public welfare state, life for those who have a disability or mental health diagnosis who need support from the state is only going to get more grinding and unmanageable.
My friend, who suffers from a generic connective tissue disorder, pointed out to me when I told him I was writing this blog,
“When it comes down to it, it doesn’t matter how positive I think, my joints are still going to dislocate and I’m still going to be in constant pain. Work will still be hard to find, my options will always be limited and I’ll never have the full capacity and range of freedom in this area as someone healthy.”
Multiple WINZ (Work and Income New Zealand) case-managers have told me to think “positively” over and over again, often in response to my having told them “The reason why I am struggling to find any work is because we have a flooded job market with countless over-qualified graduates.” Often the message to “just think positive” is not only divorced from reality, it is an unhelpful and patronising statement to say to someone who is struggling to secure work and to stay above the poverty line, especially if they have a disability or other barriers that may regularly prevent them from obtaining a job or better quality of life.
“Positive thinking” and “affirmations” are now being used as a form of psychological coercion against beneficiaries. A first research paper by Hubbab titled, Unemployment being rebranded as psychological disorder expands on what exactly this coercion looks like.
The authors documented the physiological toll on beneficiaries in London who are subject to these practices, “from unsolicited emails extolling positive thinking to attitude changing exercises, with people looking for work frequently perceiving such interventions as relentless, humiliating, and meaningless.
Attitude changing exercises and similar strategies that people like Oprah and radical self-love promoters such as Gala Darling use to ‘lift people up’ are now being employed by state workers to harass and demean people who are struggling to find work.
Perhaps this is why I find it so hard to stomach people who tell me to think more “aspirationally” as some kind of solution to a stagnant job market, where any work I can get is underpaid and stressfully precarious. These positive attitude advocates remind me of WINZ case-workers who would phone, without warning, to grill me about what jobs I had applied for, and how many. One in particular spent a good twenty minutes telling me how I needed to “change my attitude” and that I should take any job, even cleaning toilets at minimum wage. I got off the phone crying, not because I think I am above cleaning toilets, but because I felt harassed and humiliated. It was a defeating experience.
I understand people like Gala are trying to help; in fact I know Gala personally. She gave me a job many years ago at Lush Cosmetics. She was, and I am sure still is, a very caring and generally lovely and a kind hearted person. As Gala has said on her own blog site, radical self-love helped her overcome an eating disorder and depression, and she continues to help other women. Some of the help and advice Gala has on offer comes free of charge but she also charges a mint for her “Radical self-love Boot Camps” which cost a staggering $197. Unless you are a high income earner this amount of money is unaffordable.
Gala’s position that she just wants to help women transform their lives does not negate the fact what she and so many others are selling is a flawed ideology which preys on feelings of insecurity and isolation for a lot of women, and especially women who sit a little or a lot lower on the privilege ladder and do not benefit from being in a higher social class. Offering solutions to these feelings of disconnection and discontent, such as looking “inwards,” and changing how you behave, is reductionist, over-simplistic, and problematic.
The disenfranchised, poor, and working class need to collectively band together to restructure the systems, and to expose the neoliberal policies and thinking which has helped create feelings of disconnection and discontent in the first place. Adherence and adaptation will further exasperate the situation, endorsing solutions built on neoliberalism to solve the very problems it has helped to create—which is exactly the thinking that people like Oprah and Gala promote—is truly next level insanity. It doesn’t even make sense!
My spiritual guru advice to you is:
Think revolutionarily. No amount of “positive thinking” can fill the bellies of the 280,000 children living in poverty in this country. I fully support declaring mutiny against governments who pass welfare reforms that push people further into crippling poverty, instead of waging mutiny against ourselves. Radical self-love and positive attitude advocates such as Oprah and Gala are more about adapting to a world “gone mad” and systems that do not serve you, than really improving your life.
It really is your choice: adapt, or disrupt?
Fight for a different paradigm! It might be a tad more productive than trying a green tea diet to purify your body, or rearranging your stationary draw so your pens are in harmony with your paper clips. Fighting for a new paradigm may bring you enemies and some deeply negative reactions but would you not rather seek out that brutal truth than live endlessly on in someone else’s brutal fairy tale? It is a fairy tale which tells you:
If you change your attitude and enough of yourself maybe someone might love you. If you work hard enough and want it badly enough maybe you will land some dream job which pays you enough to afford both rent and food and a bit of financial security. If you just play by the “rules” and adapt to a brutal capitalist system while changing what colour lipstick you wear and your “negative” thought patterns, your life will become easier and better.
If radical self-love and all that glitter and sequins and pink bows and “positive thinking” has worked for you and you have managed to manifest your dream life, then cool, I am stoked for you. But for many of us it is not the answer we are looking for: it part of the problem, not the solution.
You can follow me on Twitter!
A version of this essay also ran on Open Democracy
Do you want to support my writing? As a low income earner in the service industry finding the time to write, can be hard. You can support me economically by becoming a ‘Patreon’ of my work. CLICK HERE for more details.Derrick Rose may return to the Chicago Bulls in the second round of the NBA playoffs, according to his brother/manager, Reggie.
Speaking with the Chicago Tribune (via NBC Sports' Rotoworld), Reggie said that Rose is close to 100 percent and could return in the second round against the Miami Heat:
He has been working hard and getting a lot of shots up every day. Most of all, he is getting his mind ready, getting comfortable with his body. I think (his mind) is probably at a good 90 percent now.
Reggie isn't being presumptuous about Chicago advancing past the first round. The Bulls are now up 3-1 on the Brooklyn Nets and appear fated for a second-round date with LeBron James and the Heat.
He is, however, being rather audacious in his assessment of his brother's immediate future. Rose has been cleared to play since March, but he's been reluctant to return until he's mentally ready. Reggie appears to believe that his brother's mind is almost right, but Bulls head coach Tom Thibodeau said it was unlikely his point guard would return during the postseason.
Though some would be inclined to believe that Rose's brother would have an inside track on what the floor general plans to do, this is the same brother who ripped Chicago for not making any moves at the trade deadline, insisting that would play a factor in whether Rose returned.
Has Rose suddenly changed his mind? Perhaps. The Bulls have won three straight games over the Nets in convincing fashion. That could be enough to make both Reggie and Derrick believe there's something more than an early exit to play for.
But is it worth reading anything into Reggie's most recent sentiments? Absolutely not. Rose has been close to returning since the All-Star break. He's been officially able to return since March.
But he hasn't.
Rose himself could tell us that he will return for the second round, and I wouldn't believe him until I saw him run out of the tunnel in his uniform. That's the kind of roller coaster his year has been.
Everyone, including Rose's own family, has an opinion, and it's imperative we remember not to recognize any speculation as fact—especially from a brother/manager.
Nothing against the man, but he asserted Rose may not return because the Bulls didn't have enough pieces to win, something Rose himself refuted. Now he's changed his tune, and there's really no telling if that's because Derrick has changed his.
Reggie could be telling the truth, he really could. But his evaluation of the situation could also be fabricated or merely a personal opinion—without a trace of fact—or even some combination of both.
Even if his take was an accurate one, it doesn't necessarily mean anything. Who's to say Rose goes from 90 to 100 percent by the second round?
Derrick may return for the second round, and he might not. We just don't know. Everything we've heard up until now has played off that.
Reggie Rose's latest offering is no exception.
Follow @danfavaleHatsune Miku to perform on David Letterman October 8th
Hatsune Miku, the popular fictional singer voiced by a singing synthesizer application, has been performing in many concerts, including at Anime Expo 2011 and as an opening act for Lady Gaga. Now she’s going to be on national TV by performing on The Late Show with David Letterman on October 8th, according to Hatsune Miku Expo.
Miku will be performing a song while also showing off the 3D technology that makes it look like she’s actually performing on stage with live band members.
If you can’t get enough of Miku, there will be a Hatsune Miku Expo this October in Los Angeles and New York City. Here’s the information:
Los Angeles
Hatsune Miku 3D live show
Dates: October 11 & 12, 2014
Venue: Nokia Theatre
Website: http://mikuexpo.com/la
Hatsune Miku Halloween Party
Dates: October 11 & 12, 2014
Venue: Los Angeles Center Studios
Address: 1201 W 5th St T-110, Los Angeles, CA 90017
Entrance: Free
New York
Hatsune Miku 3D live show
Dates: October 17 & 18, 2014
Venue: Hammerstein Ballroom
Tickets: please visit http://mikuexpo.com/ny
Hatsune Miku Art Exhibition – Universal Positivity
Dates: October 9 to 19, 2014
Gallery: Wallplay
Address: 118 Orchard Street (corner of Delancey), New York, NY 10002
Entrance: Free
Source: Hatsune Miku ExpoGraph of the distances driven by robots, rovers and automobiles on other planets.
If you thought driving on Earth is a chore, you haven't tried off-roading on another planet. So far, robotic rovers have reached out to the moon and Mars, with astronauts actually driving a lunar car on the moon during NASA's Apollo program. Those missions amount to what could be the first interplanetary road race. See how the endurance drives on other worlds stack up in the SPACE.com infographic above.
Leading the pack is NASA's Mars rover Opportunity, which has been driving across the plains of Meridiani Planum on the Red Planet since 2004. Opportunity has driven more than 24.07 miles (38.73 km) and is still going today.
In second place with silver is the Soviet-era Lunakhod 2. This huge moon rover drove 23 miles (37 kilometers) on the moon during its 1973 mission and is currently the world champion for off-world driving, winning the gold medal.
The bronze medal for space driving goes to NASA's Apollo 17 moon rover, which was driven by astronauts Gene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt in 1972. The astronauts drove 22.3 miles (35.89 km) during their mission, which was the last moon landing of NASA's Apollo program.
The latest to enter the race is Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity, which is just getting started with 3.0 miles (4.8 km) traveled so far.Yeah I put 3 things there in the title, but for the purpose of my film they are all the same thing! I am what I like to call “background lazy”. Maybe that is just being lazy? Who’s to judge? Stop judging me! -but what it means is that I’m a step skipper…dun, dun, dun DUNNNNN! Yeah that’s right. I love skipping steps and TOTALLY CHEATIN’ THE SYSTEM! I can hear it now “BUT TARA? You always say follow the process”. OK sometimes I lie, and sometimes I bend rules, but mostly I break them. The Animation process is a super cool system, BUT since I am working alone, I am able to do some things in my head. <–This even as I type it, is a cop-out. I know. If I did follow the process, imagine how much better my BG’s (backgrounds) would be. Yeah YEah YEAH. I’ve said it all before, I just don’t care. My BG’s will be of the quality they are with the time I am giving to them because they are there to support the animation.
Now, after I’ve stopped punching myself, let’s get into BG’s. They are these mini masterpieces that will be on screen for a matter of seconds. Let me say that again. SECONDS. If they are good backgrounds, no one will actually notice them, because they will be watching the animation. Soooooooo having said that, I’m spending WAAAAAAAYYYYY too much time on these backgrounds!
I guess I should start at the beginning. Inspiration! In my desperation to plough ahead, I started backgrounds without much of a clear plan. I started gathering some color schemes which became larger and larger, and started right in on painting scenes in photoshop. As I worked away on this semi-photorealistic woodland scene, on day 3, I was like “what the hell am I doing? I have 50+ BG’s to do!” Sure this was great, but I will be here the rest of my life! So I trashed it and went back to the process. Since I trashed it, you will have to take my word that it was an amazing digital painting! hahaha
I spent the next 2 days READING! I went back to my original process of using the Secret of Kells and the work of Maurice Noble as a starting point for my design. I read The Noble Approach cover to cover and made many notes. What I discovered was really a much needed refresher, I had taught Layout and Design for College Animation and it was also a great ego boost to know that what I had taught was inline with Maurice Noble’s teachings! So now all I had to do was implement what I had reviewed! Easy peasy! Basically the name of the game is the KISS method-Keep It Simple Stupid!
I started again with color, keeping it simple this time using triads and colors that would create the mood, setting, compliment the characters and make them stand out. Now again, I am lazy, so why should I waste my time thinking about colors. I checked out this site called Color Lovers and there are a ton of color schemes to pick from! Here’s some I picked out, you can never have too much color! I’m color CRAZY!!!
In line with limiting my color palette, I also wanted to limit my brushes and chose 3 photoshop brushes to use. One for line work, one for paint and one for spots! (The funnest part!) This really helped me to economize my time and efforts.
I have more tales of backgrounds, as I have been working on them for the past 2 months! So this blog is catching up, but there is more to do. So I better get back to it! I will be meeting with my mentor Terry Gadsden this week and get the ball rolling for audio and I can finally answer this question:
In case this is the 1st production blog post you read, the main character of my story is a fox…
Exactly! Adjust your sails and you’ll always be happy, if you are in a sailboat. And either way, you are in a freaking sailboat? What are you complaining about? Unless it is some sort of Life of Pi situation? Then you have every right to complain, though I think the moral of that story was not to complain? Eat the tiger? I might have fallen asleep for parts of it. IT WAS OVER 2 HOURS LONG!!! Also, I never understood “When Life Gives you Lemons, Make Lemonade”. Did Life also give you sugar and water, some ice and a pitcher? That was nice of Life. I always thought it was implied that you should sell the lemonade to make money to get over the shitty lemons you got. So really life just gave you an awesome stater business! Though I like lemons, and would probably eat them straight up with a bit of salt, or, OR I would find a baby and give it the lemons! That is hilarious! If you’ve never given a baby a lemon, you need to! They make crazy faces, BUT STILL KEEP EATING IT!!! Go get your Life lemons, then find the nearest baby and get to laughing. Hey Life, wicked move with the sailboats and lemon businesses/snack/baby entertainment! Keep it coming!
Follow my production blog MoxyFox.Wordpress.com for more production stuff about my animated short and my steady decline into the abyss of creativity.Dubai: A proposal to ensure enough affordable housing for ‘mixed-income’ people (low to middle-income) between the labour-class and luxury market is under review, a senior official said.
If made law, the proposal will not only provide more economic stability, but also reduce traffic jams, said Abdullah Rafia, acting director-general for engineering and planning, Dubai Municipality.
Many professionals working in Dubai live far — even outside Dubai — from their places of work in upmarket areas. The arrangement means there is more traffic on major commuting routes.
Though there is no shortage of labour accommodation or luxury properties in Dubai, the executive working class is facing a housing squeeze as Dubai expands in area and population, Rafia added.
The commute from lower market segments to areas where there are only major corporations and luxury homes is also putting pressure on the roads.
Dubai has seen property prices and rents rise again recently. They had peaked before dropping during the global financial slowdown in late 2008. Economic recovery followed more recently and led to higher property prices and rent.
Many middle-class workers priced out of the market moved to cheaper areas within Dubai or other emirates. By comparison, there was no significant migration in the labour or upper class brackets.
Many of the luxury projects, properties and developers employ a considerable portion of human resources in the mixed-income spectrum, who do not live in pricey areas.
To factor in population growth and its impact on traffic, housing and other issues, Dubai has been working on an Urban Plan 2020 that seeks to ensure the situation is as ideal as possible by the time 2020 rolls in.
Several government departments, including municipality, transport and land divisions, are involved in the process.
The year 2020 is also the time when Dubai will host Expo 2020, which had initially not been taken into account because the wining bid came years after the plan started taking shape in 2010.
The proposal to develop a law that will balance out luxury and affordable housing — while reducing traffic congestion — is part of the overall strategy of “building a sustainable city”, Rafia told Gulf News.
However, it is not expected to be ready by the end of 2014 as was previously reported.
“Laws take some time to mature. There is a lot of discussion about the law itself. It’s more about building a sustainable city, signalling affordable housing, but not necessarily to limit luxury housing” by any fixed formula, Rafia said.
Placing enough mixed-income units on the market is “one of the suggestions for the major developers, to provide for at least some of the people who’ll be operating the business or the [property] development itself.”
Rafia stressed the mechanism to implement the law would be “more complicated and comprehensive” than simply restricting the amount of luxury projects or forcing a minimum number of mid-market projects onto the market.
“It will be more involved than that, it will be quite a rigorous process … Now, how much that [particular housing supply] should be depends what type of project it is, how much and what kind of human resources were involved. Lots of things go into it, but what it should give us is a sustainable city.”
He added: “The city did well for labour housing. They are geographically well located, enough dwellings were built. But between the labourers and luxury housing, that’s the spectrum where more work needs to be done.”
He said projections indicate if people live and shop close to their place of work, it will reduce congestion, pollution and volatility of property market cycles.
“You’ve to make cities in a way that more people find it easy to get from work to home and back. If you do that, it has a positive impact on the city’s sustainability, environmental sustainability, economic and social sustainability.”
Rafia added: “There are many ways to do this … It takes the effort of many departments in the application of the [proposed] law. City planning is an urban department issue; we [the municipality] have already submitted the proposal. It is good to go, it has been placed in the right channel.”V8 Supercar star Will Davison will race for Erebus Motorsport in 2014 and beyond, it was confirmed today.
Davison, third in the 2013 V8 Supercars Championship, has signed a long-term contract with the Betty Klimenko-owned team in the sport’s most significant driver move of the new season.
“Will’s signing is the final and highly significant piece for our program with future planning,” Erebus Motorsport CEO Ryan Maddison confirmed today.
“It’s a major coup for us … Will is among the top three drivers in Australia with a tremendous record of success over the past five seasons and we’re delighted in the commitment he’s shown in us for the future, he’ll be a key part of our success as we move forward. With the combined strengths in Will and Lee (Holdsworth) I am very comfortable with our strategy.”
Team owner Betty Klimenko also welcomed Davison’s arrival.
“Will Davison is already one of the sport’s most |
party Friday night which the news media, with rare exception, chose not inform the public about most likely because of how bad it made Obama look in contrast to Donald Trump’s visit to Louisiana with running mate Mike Pence earlier Friday.
Drudge felt so strongly about Obama golfing through the flood he posted a rare tweet on Sunday with the phto-shopped image.
https://twitter.com/DRUDGE/status/767369167641030658
Summer’s over…
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_OBAMA?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2016-08-21-08-26-06 …Teams: Wizards at Hornets
Time: 7:00 p.m. ET
Venue: Time Warner Cable Arena, Charlotte, NC
Television: CSN
Radio: WFED-AM 1500/WNEW-FM 99.1
Spread: Wizards favored by 2 points.
It can be difficult, as a sports fan, to avoid speaking—and even thinking—in the native tongue of herp-a-derp sportswriters and brand-conscious players: the language of CoachSpeak.
Here’s an example: While watching the Wizards lose to the Hornets Monday night, words like “energy” and “focus” and “momentum” may have seemed like they bypassed the mere nuts and bolts of the contest and made straight for the truest essence of the thing. This next sentence will seem like a fully credible way of describing that game: The Wizards didn’t come out with enough energy or focus and the Hornets seized momentum right from the opening whistle. How many times have you read virtually that same sentence?
If you can briefly set aside the notion that these loan-words have unique utility within American sports, it’s fun to observe the basic ambiguity of the concepts, their limitations as descriptors, and how they can ultimately obscure the facts of a given contest. “Pace” is a handy example. Even in the context of NBA basketball, “pace” is a word with too many meanings. To the analytics crowd, Pace is a statistical measure of the number of possessions generated per 48 minutes. That number is established on the court, where it might be affected by any number of factors, including roster makeup, offensive design, player efficiency, or simple (and grating) caution among shooters [stares daggers at Otto Porter]. But! Pace (the statistic) is also influenced by defensive success, and even defensive priorities—a team that generates more steals, blocks, and general live-ball turnovers will usually play at a faster Pace than one playing a more conservative style.
And when a coach says “pace,” he might be referring to any of those component pieces, or none of the above. He might be referring to pushing the ball up the floor in transition (undoubtedly a component of Pace), or he might be referring to ball movement or player movement, which are significantly less correlative with generating more possessions per 48 minutes. My point here is this: No one really knows what the hell Randy Wittman means when he says “I liked John’s pace tonight.” I have a hunch he means something like “tempo” but I’ll be damned if I’m gonna ask him.
Words like “pace” and “momentum” and “execution” are used by players and coaches in conversations with the sports media when they’d really rather not dig into what actually took place on the court. Coach Wittman says it as a fill-in for something like “John made pushing the ball up the court in transition a priority,” and the rest of us hear something like “faster pace = good.” Over time, the word comes to mean nothing so much as “the basketball men moved in fast motion and the ball went in the basket.” The Wizards’ radio broadcast has recently become a near-nightly sermon on the virtues of a concept (pace) that is now so broadly defined as to be virtually meaningless.
Let’s stick with pace, here (not necessarily Pace, the stat, but the general concept of why the basketball men should move fast between commercial breaks). The Hornets, tonight’s opponent, for all their brutal spacing and earthbound bigs and general dysfunction, do a couple of things well that tend to enforce upon their opponents a pace that suits Charlotte: they’re conservative and disciplined on defense; they’re the stingiest team in basketball with respect to turnovers; and they play at the eighth slowest Pace in basketball. These factors tend to frustrate teams like the Wizards, who generally need at least some of their chances to come from quick offense and in transition. Charlotte’s victory on Monday night was at least not impeded by the success they had at staying within that model: the Hornets turned the ball over just 11 times; they kept the total possessions shy of 93 (below each team’s regular Pace); and (to use Randy Wittman’s language) they “gave” the Wizards offense a steady diet of bad, inefficient shots.
Here, check it out:
To whatever extent Pace is an important factor in Washington’s overall offensive success, the Hornets succeeded in forcing the Wizards to play at a rate that is slower than normal, and the Wizards aren’t exactly speeding Bullets to begin with.
This game was part of a broader recent trend of Washington playing a disjointed, disorganized, seemingly-disinterested brand of basketball that has brought them in desperate need of the fixings of a stirring comeback. These comebacks avoid the kinds of lopsided scores that might more accurately depict the funk the Wizards have fallen into. The Hornets loss at home may not have been the nadir of that funk, but it was at least the impetus behind Randy Wittman’s “dirty” practice on Tuesday, presumably designed to reforge Washington’s competitive edge before the All-Star break.
From far enough away (or, conversely, from perhaps too close) Washington’s subsequent loss to the Hawks in Atlanta last night would seem to indicate that Wittman’s old-school tough-lovin’ missed the mark, and maybe time will tell, but I tend to think enough good happened in Atlanta to feel vaguely encouraged, especially given the context of Washington’s previous clashes with the Hawks, in which they played the part of Frozen Side of Beef to Atlanta’s Rocky Balboa. The final score was close, but that did require a stirring comeback, only this time it came well before garbage time, and for whole big sections of the game the Wizards played shot-for-shot with the best team in the NBA. After stinking out the joint in losses to Toronto and Charlotte, we’ll have to accept incremental improvement, and the loss in Atlanta provided some of it.
Rather than use the unverifiable CoachSpeak intangibles to assess the positive change from Monday to Wednesday, let’s try to talk in specifics about what happened. The Wizards had some limited success when they seemed to make a deliberate effort to force the ball up the court as quickly as possible, during the game’s early stages; Bradley Beal showed a glimpse of the attack mode he displayed in the playoffs, keeping his dribble and knifing all the way to the rim on several occasions; the team shot nearly twice as many free throws (30) as they did against Charlotte (16); and they outscored the Hawks in the paint (40-38) and on the break (12-2). They didn’t win the game, but if a narrow road loss to the NBA’s best team is at least marginally better than the same kind of loss to the Hornets at the Verizon Center, the “how” is probably measured by the ways in which Washington was able play a style and at a pace that more readily suit them and their personnel.
The game was also, notably, played at a faster statistical Pace (97.04). Throughout, Washington’s radio broadcast talked over and over again about inadequate pacing. No one listening had a clue what that meant, but everyone nodded. Which component part of Pace was unacceptable? Or, conversely, which alternate meaning of pace was being referenced? Who can know? It seems broadly agreed upon that Washington’s offense needs to play at a faster Pace, a faster pace, a faster other pace, and at a quicker tempo. At least.
So, here we are. The Wizards have a chance, tonight, to take whatever deficiencies informed Coach Wittman’s decision to run the “dirty” practice after Monday’s Hornets game, whatever was learned from that practice, whatever gains were made in last night’s Hawks game, and whatever was learned from that result, and apply it all to tonight’s rematch with Charlotte. The Hornets will want to keep the Wizards from attacking the basket, will want to limit their transition opportunities, and will generally favor the kind of snail’s-pace that suits Al Jefferson and the core of Charlotte’s offense. The Wizards will prefer to push the ball up the floor, incorporate ball and player movement, get to the rim, and generally play a quicker brand of basketball. In many ways it will be a race between the tortoise and the hare. Which team will play at the appropriate pace? Just what is the appropriate pace? No one knows. Literally, no one will ever know.
TAI’s Kyle Weidie joined the Queen City Hoops podcast, cleverly named “Hive Talk Live,” to preview the recently lopsided matchup between the Wizards and Hornets. Have a listen.(written from a Production point of view Real World article
Patricia J. Tallman (born 4 September 1957; age 61), also known as Pat Tallman, is an actress and former stuntwoman who appeared in several episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, and Star Trek: Voyager and in the seventh feature film Star Trek Generations. For most of her Trek appearances, she received no credit.
Outside the Star Trek universe she is best known for her role as telepath Lyta Alexander on the science fiction television series Babylon 5 where she became romantically involved with future Star Trek voice actor Robin Atkin Downes and for her starring role as Barbara in Tom Savini's 1990 remake of George Romero's horror cult film Night of the Living Dead on which she worked with Tony Todd.
Contents show]
Early life and career Edit
Tallman was born in 1957 and grew up with two younger sisters and a younger brother. Together with her family she moved several times around Illinois, including Pontiac, Peoria, Wheaton and Glen Ellyn. At the early age of two she appeared with her father in a radio show, singing "Bicycle Built for Two", beside playing Dark Shadows and Star Trek with her cousin Susan and their Barbie dolls. Her father was working all the time and mother, who was seriously ill with cancer, died when Tallman was twenty-three. Tallman's sisters are also working in the business today, Judie as a hair and makeup artist and Mary as a script supervisor. Her brother Jonathan became a doctor.
Tallman attended the Glenbard West High School in Glen Ellyn, Illinois and graduated in 1975. During her time in high school she joined the cast of several musicals and stage plays and performed at The Red Barn Theatre at the age of fifteen in Saugatuck, Michigan. One year later, at the age of sixteen, she got her first paid acting job in dinner theater. After her graduation she knew she wanted to be an actress beside her dreams working with animals or for the law enforcement and she enrolled at the Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, studying for a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Theater Arts. She worked in musical theater at the Pittsburgh Civic Light Opera, where she performed in over eighteen musicals. At Carnegie Mellon University she was given an award for Outstanding Achievement in Acting in her senior year at the same weekend when she was Homecoming Queen.
After graduation in 1979, Tallman moved to New York where she continued her stage career, winning lead roles in musicals and Broadway plays including the award-winning "Big, Bad Burlesque" show, appearing as Rosalind in the Riverside Shakespeare Company production "As You Like It", and becoming a member of J. Allen Suddeth's show fight group "Fights'R'us" after Suddeth taught her in period sword techniques. Tallman took several jobs to survive. On day she worked as model and on night she waited tables, worked in a bakery and later also at the little girl's department at Macy's.
Acting and stunts Edit
Tallman was cast in a recurring role on the soap opera Guiding Light, followed by several appearances in series such as Texas. One day the stunt coordinator for the daytime series All My Children, J. Allen Suddeth, needed a stuntwoman, 5'9" with red hair, to double an actress for a stair fall and wearing only lingerie and cast Tallman, who earned $1200 for this job. She auditioned for a role in the 1981 adventure drama Knightriders, produced and directed by George A. Romero. Tallman landed the featured part of Julie and was soon cast in other productions by Romero and Tom Savini, who also graduated from the Carnegie Mellon University, taught a makeup class there, and performed in Knightriders. Knightriders also featured her first nude appearance on screen. Other 1980s projects include the comedy Stuck on You! (1983, with Richard Rothenberg), as stunt double for Savini actress Roberta Weiss in the Tales from the Darkside episode Inside the Closet (1984, with guest star Fritz Weaver), and for Romero actress Page Hannah in the Creepshow 2 segment The Raft (1987), as well as the Tales from the Darkside episode Family Reunion (1988, with Stephen McHattie and Marilyn Rockafellow) and Romero's horror film Monkey Shines (1988, with Kate McNeil, Stephen Root, and Eric Stuart).
In the late 1980s, Tallman decided to move to Los Angeles, California and stayed with friends before she was introduced to her future (and first L.A.) roommate Iona Morris who herself would later guest star on Star Trek: Voyager. Following a few engagements in soap operas, including the roles as underwear model Billie and undercover cop Christy Russell in the daily soap Generations and theater, Tallman was cast for her first L.A.-based feature film, the action drama Road House (1989, with Kevin Tighe and Anthony De Longis). One day before she filmed her stunt scene as the redhead bandstand babe, Tallman injured her knee in a softball match but stunt coordinator Charlie Picerni changed the stunt choreography and she was able to film her scene.
Tallman then auditioned for the part of Red Sonja for the Universal Studios "Conan" live stunt show and was cast alongside Conan actor Ron Clark. One of her castmates was Jodi Laine who also worked as Red Sonja on this show. Together with Laine, Tallman later started the business company "Quelles Tomates!" in 1990, a special events entertainment group. She continued her stunt work in films such as Wes Craven's horror film Shocker (1989, with John Tesh, Dendrie Taylor, Stephen R. Hudis, Brent Spiner, and stunts by Charlie Brewer, Tony Cecere, Dennis Madalone, Dennis Scott, and Tim Trella), and the action sequel Another 48 Hrs. (1990).
In 1990, Tallman learned that Tom Savini was working on a remake of Romero's Night of the Living Dead from 1968 and auditioned for the part of Barbara. She was cast and worked with many people from her time in Pittsburgh and from Carnegie Mellon on this project. It was also this film which was important being considered for her part in Babylon 5 two years later. On Night of the Living Dead she worked with fellow Trek alumni Tony Todd, Tom Towles, and Stacie Foster.
Star Trek Edit
It was on the set of Shocker that Tallman first worked with Dennis Madalone, and in 1991, Madalone brought her onto Star Trek: The Next Generation for the episode "Power Play", where she played a security officer. She filmed her scenes for this episode along fellow stuntmen Lincoln Simonds and Rusty McClennon on Tuesday 3 December 1991, Thursday 5 December 1991, and Monday 9 December 1991 on Paramount Stage 8 and 9. This single appearance was followed by a long-term relationship with Star Trek, as Tallman became part of the core stunt group. Because of her height and resemblance she doubled lead actresses Gates McFadden, Nana Visitor, and Terry Farrell as well as several guest actresses for the next eight years and played stunt acting parts as a Romulan, Bajoran, and several other aliens.
For her second Star Trek episode "The Outcast", Tallman filmed her scene as stunt double for guest actress Melinda Culea on Friday 21 February 1992 on Paramount Stage 9 during second unit filming. About her makeup and appearance in the J'naii costume, Tallman remarked "Okay, I hated this little alien. What the hell? Not cool, scary or weird. Just ugly." ("Pleasure Thresholds", p. 120) Madalone, his wife Linda, and fellow Trek stuntman Spiro Razatos were among Tallman's guests on her birthday/Babylon 5 wrap party on 4 September 1992.
Tallman described her look as Kiros in the episode "Starship Mine" as having a "glued vagina on my face and my hair looked like Bozo, the Clown." She also remembered being on two sets during these days: Filming her scenes for "Starship Mine" and being the stunt double for Joan Cusack in Addams Family Values on Paramount Stage 12. TNG was filmed on Paramount Stage 8 and 9 and DS9 on Paramount Stage 18, the street including these stages is named Avenue P. Tallman also remembered goofing around with Marie Marshall and Tim DeZarn on set and Patrick Stewart's "great butt" while filming the corridor scenes with him. ("Pleasure Thresholds", pp. 113-117) About her look as Romulan in the episode "Timescape", Tallman said "I looked like Liza Minnelli with jaundice." She also remembers Brent Spiner being a total funny guy and how she broke the set with her head because she was trying not to laugh and was up to do her fall right. ("Pleasure Thresholds", pp. 115-116) Her appearance from "Timescape" was later used for the card "Jera" in the 1994 CCG: Premiere Edition.
About her work on the DS9 first season episode "Battle Lines", Tallman remembered "We had a battle with these huge spear things. I had on armor, but my fight partner's [Tom Morga] spear got past my guard and sliced my ribs. I had a scar for years. Later, he picked me up and banged my head so hard on the shuttle, it made this huge boom. I had a wig and headwrap so it didn't hurt that much, but the director was so impressed with the noise they gave me an extra $100 bucks. Made up for the rib slice." ("Pleasure Thresholds", p. 123) This episode is still among Tallman's favorite episodes of Star Trek. (Star Trek Monthly issue 52, p. 31)
Tallman said about Nana Visitor that she was very good in fight scenes because of her extensive dance background. Sometimes, Tallman was just sitting behind the scenes and waiting to jump in for Visitor while she did most of her stunts on her own. But Visitor knew, that Tallman wouldn't get any residuals if she was not filmed so she made sure that Tallman always was filmed and won't be edited out. About the fight scene between Tallman and guest star Tim Russ in the DS9 second season episode "Invasive Procedures", she remembered "When the camera was on Nana's back and Tim's face, I stepped in and Nana took a cigarette break. Tim was supposed to throw a punch to my face in the fight. We had worked out the distance between us so he could safely swing a ferocious punch at my face and I would react as if it connected. He did this beautifully in rehearsal. When the director called "Action", Tim took a step into the space between us and punched me full on in the face. Everyone gasped because you could hear it clear as a bell. Tim was horrified and the director called, "Cut!" I yelled, "Don't cut! Keep going!" and we did. I didn't want to waste the take. I'd rather finish the fight, then go put ice on my face, than stop and have to do it again! I earned my pay that day because Nana had a photo shoot for TV Guide that afternoon. An egg on her face from a Klingon fist wouldn't have gone over well." ("Pleasure Thresholds", pp. 142-143)
While filming her scenes as stunt double for Bertila Damas on the Deep Space Nine episode "The Maquis, Part I", Tallman was visited by her father Jerry and his second wife Arlene. She also remembered about Deep Space Nine that they shot eighteen hour days, normally overtime, and that a crew member died in an accident on the way home because he fell asleep at the wheel after weeks of grueling schedule. ("Pleasure Thresholds", pp. 118-119) About her time on DS9, Tallman remarked that she was filming Babylon 5 one day and scenes as stunt double for Terry Farrell on DS9 the next day. While she was dressed as double for Farrell one of the DS9 producers approached her and told her "I really like Babylon 5'".
Tallman had her wardrobe fitting as bridge officer and stunt double for B'Etor actress Gwynyth Walsh in May 1994. She then learned about her pregnancy but was determined to work on this film. Her baby bump was showing when she wrapped Generations. She already had to pull out several sets of falsies off her costume while filming the sequences where she was hit by Malcolm McDowell into the face and during the scenes aboard the Klingon Bird-of-Prey. A fun fact Tallman mentioned in her book "Pleasure Thresholds" (p. 87) is that she was on both bridges during the fight. As a Starfleet officer aboard the Enterprise-D and as stunt double for Walsh aboard the Klingon Bird-of-Prey. During the filming of the Enterprise-D crash sequence, Tallman also filled in as stunt coordinator for Bud Davis. Tallman had already filmed her scenes as stunt double for Gates McFadden in this film aboard the sailing ship Lady Washington in Marina del Rey for a few days in April 1994. Her Starfleet uniform was later sold off on the It's A Wrap! sale and auction on eBay [1] as well as her costume as double for Gates McFadden aboard the sailing ship. [2] Her costume as double for Gwynyth Walsh cost $10.000. ("Pleasure Thresholds", p. 87)
Tallman doubled Terry Farrell during the fourth and fifth season again. Several times in a fight sequence with Worf stunt double Brennan Dyson. She also coordinated fight sequences and remembered "We'd create moves that made sense with the weapons and develop a fighting style. Then, we would teach our actors as much as they could learn." ("Pleasure Thresholds", p. 122) Her costume for one of the fight sequences was later sold off on the It's A Wrap! sale and auction on eBay. [3] Her work as double for Farrell in the fourth season episode "To the Death" also included some fight scenes along with fellow stunt performers Leslie Hoffman, Scott Leva, Tom Morga, Ken Lesco, and Chuck Borden. However, in the final episode no scene involving Tallman appeared. Her costume doubling Louise Fletcher in the final Deep Space Nine episode "What You Leave Behind" was also sold off on eBay. [4]
For her stunt work as double for Marjorie Monaghan in the Voyager first season episode "Heroes and Demons", Tallman filmed her scenes on Tuesday 14 February 1995 on Paramount Stage 11 along with John Nowak and Tom Morga. Her next stunt work on Voyager was in the second season episode "Persistence of Vision" in which she doubled guest actress Carolyn Seymour. She filmed her stunt with Kate Mulgrew on Tuesday 15 August 1995 on Paramount Stage 8 and her costume was later sold off on the It's A Wrap! sale and auction on eBay. [5] For her stunt part in the second season episode "Basics, Part I", Tallman worked with Tom Morga, Spiro Razatos and Dennis Madalone on Friday 1 March 1996 on Paramount Stage 8.
Tallman worked with fellow stuntman Brett Jones as stunt double for guest actress Sarah Silverman on the third season episode "Future's End, Part II". She filmed her scenes on second unit on Wednesday 4 September 1996, her 39th birthday, and Thursday 5 September 1996 on location in Lancaster. For the episode "Favorite Son", Tallman is listed as "Stunt Sister #1" on the call sheet for Tuesday 7 January 1997. She filmed this stunt along with Elle Alexander and Al Goto on Paramount Stage 16 and her costume was also sold off on eBay. [6]
Babylon 5, J. Michael Straczynski, and Studio JMS Edit
In 2011, Straczynski wrote the foreword titled "1,800 Non-Libelous Words About Patricia Tallman" for Tallman's autobiography "Pleasure Thresholds – Patricia Tallman's Babylon 5 Memoir". He described himself as fan of scary movies and zombie films and saw Tallman for the first time in the 1990 horror remake Night of the Living Dead. He became fascinated by her performance and specifically wrote the part of Leonora Holt in the Murder, She Wrote 1992 episode "Incident in Lot 7" for her but was told by the casting department that Tallman was unavailable and the role was cast with actress Paula Prentiss. The same year, Straczynski again wrote a part specifically for Tallman, the role of the Psi Corps telepath Lyta Alexander in "The Gathering", the pilot episode of Babylon 5.
At the day of the audition for "The Gathering" Straczynski stepped into the waiting area and told Tallman that he wrote the part specifically for her. After Tallman auditioned for him and casting director Mary Jo Slater, who previously worked on Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, she was called back and brought in for a table read for the producers at Warner Bros. Tallman read her scene with G'Kar actor Andreas Katsulas whose work she knew and with director Richard Compton. One week later she received a call from her agent and was cast. Tallman filmed her last scene for "The Gathering" on her birthday in 1992 and threw the wrap party at a friend's house. She then worked close with the production company promoting the project at several conventions.
After the experience being written out at the studio's decision when the series went into production, she joined an acting class and was guided by mentor and coach Charles Nelson Reilly. But Straczynski liked her performance and was ecstatic when he found the chance to bring Tallman back aboard Babylon 5 in March 1995 in the second season, this time as a guest actress in the episode "Divided Loyalties", followed by two more appearances in the third season after her "replacement", actress Andrea Thompson, decided to leave the series. With the beginning of the fourth season, Tallman joined the cast as a regular again and remained until the end of the series in 1998, appearing in 21 episodes alongside Walter Koenig, John Vickery, Harlan Ellison, Marjorie Monaghan, Musetta Vander, Tracy Scoggins, Julie Caitlin Brown, Carolyn Seymour, Bill Mumy, Star Trek stunt partner Tom Morga, and director Adam Nimoy. Tallman also appeared in the Babylon 5 television movie Thirdspace, with Clyde Kusatsu and stunts by Steve Rizzo and Jimmy Ortega. Spice Williams-Crosby, her former DS9 stunt partner, was among the stunt doubles for Tallman on this series and doubled her in the scene where Kosh exploded. Joni Avery, Tallman's stunt partner from Generations was also on set that day.
Tallman had a second meeting with director Adam Nimoy on set of the Babylon 5 episode "Passing Through Gethsemane" after he directed her in the TNG episode "Timescape". She remembered "When it came time to shoot it, however, Adam Nimoy, who was directing this ep, shot it all in profile. He made it clear he didn't trust or like me very much as an actor. I think it was because he had worked with me as a stunt person on Star Trek and couldn't accept that people can have skills in different disciplines." ("Pleasure Thresholds", p. 133) Tallman also regrets that she had no screen time with actor Brad Dourif who guest starred in this episode. On the set of Babylon 5, Tallman met co-star Jeffrey Willerth, who played the Vorlon Kosh, was Bruce Boxleitner's stand-in as well as PA and assistant to John Copeland, and married him on 28 August 1999. The marriage was held by fellow B5 star Peter Jurasik. They divorced on 12 March 2008.
One of Tallman's memories about the series was the use of the black contact lenses for her portrayal of Lyta in later seasons. She remembered "They had to hire a lens technician who would put the lenses in. He would hold my eyelids open and maneuver them in, while I clenched the chair in terror. The lenses were huge; they were full circles that would be big enough to cover the inner and outer corners of my eyes." ("Pleasure Thresholds", p. 146) One of her co-stars from Babylon 5, Julie Caitlin Brown, is also working with Tallman in the more recent years. Brown is working as booking agent for fellow actors and is booking convention gigs also for Tallman.
Throughout the following years Straczynski and Tallman only met occasionally at the funerals of fellow B5 cast members Andreas Katsulas, Richard Biggs, Johnny Sekka, and Jeff Conaway. In 2010 they reconnected and became friends again. That also led into working together. In 2012, Straczynski launched his own production company Studio JMS and Tallman became CEO and Executive Producer of the company, bringing in her business skills and experiences with "Talent to Go".
As part of Studio JMS, Tallman is currently working on Phase Two of the MTV.com series The Adventures of Apocalypse Al as follow up of the online comic strip web series, with a 2014 release. [7] In pre-production is the science fiction series Sense8, distributed by Netflix [8] as well as the drama The Flickering Light, set for a 2016 release. [9]
Life and career Edit
1993 – 2008 Edit
Following her work on "The Gathering", Tallman played a lead part in Star Runners, a science fiction pilot by Foundation Imaging which ultimately did not went into production. She doubled Elizabeth McGovern in the 1993 drama Me and Veronica, Joan Severance in the television thriller Lake Consequence (1993), Laura Dern's skeleton fall and car stunt work in the blockbuster Jurassic Park (1993), Joan Cusack's car crash in Addams Family Values (1993, with Christopher Lloyd, Carel Struycken, Andreana Weiner, Ian Abercrombie, Camille Saviola, and stunts by Joni Avery and Pat Romano), Daryl Hannah's falls in Attack of the 50 Ft. Woman (1993), and played the evil witch in Sam Raimi's fantasy film Army of Darkness (1992). About her work for Steven Spielberg's blockbuster Jurassic Park, Tallman remembered her stunts scenes in the end of the movie when she fell off the dinosaur skeletons. She wasn't able to use pads because of the short pants Dern's character was wearing in these scenes. She went home and was shocked by the bruises and hematomas. On the next day at the makeup trailer she asked for someone to cover these hematomas for her scenes and from the P.A. to the assistant directors, even the special effects guys came to see them. "They had to call in a specialty makeup person who used paints on my body, then airbrushed my legs back to flesh colored. Thank god. It worked". ("Pleasure Thresholds", pp. 155-157)
In 1993, Tallman met Andrea Rogantini, an executive chef at Prego Beverly Hills, and the two fell in love. Following work as a regular stunt double on the series Melrose Place she doubled actress Lolita Davidovich on the sport drama Cobb in 1994. While being in makeup her makeup artist told her about her own pregnancy she just found out. Tallman also bought a test and learned that she was pregnant, too. At the same time she was doubling Davidovich being dragged down the hallway and thrown onto a bed by Tommy Lee Jones. Being in her seventh month, Tallman worked with fellow Trek stuntman Bernie Pock on his drama The Biker Poet on which she played Amber Tamblyn's mother. Rogantini's and Tallman's son Julian Jon was born on 12 November 1994, two weeks after Tallman finished Charles Nelson Reilly's play "The Wives".
Other projects she participated in are the comedy sequel Naked Gun 33 1/3: The Final Insult (1994), Stephen King's miniseries The Stand (1994, with Matt Frewer, Ray Walston, and Miguel Ferrer), the action film Speed (1994), and Roland Emmerich's Independence Day (1996). She doubled Geena Davis' cliff fall in The Long Kiss Goodnight (1996), played the beaten Electric Psychedelic Pussycat club waitress in Austin Powers: International Man of Mysteries (1997), and a flying waitress in the 1998 blockbuster Godzilla. About her time on The Long Kiss Goodnight, Tallman remembered "I was often looking right into the camera, rather tha turning away like stunt folks usually do. The stunts were extreme – falling into camera from sixty-plus feet on a wire – and I couldn't hide my face. That meant I was wearing a silicon "Geena" mask, which was new to me. This required about five extra hours to get into and out of make up." Tallman was requested after Davis' first stunt double got injured on set and couldn't finish her work. She flew to Toronto, Canada where the scenes were filmed and described this stunt as one of the most dabgerous stunts she did in her career. ("Pleasure Thresholds", pp. 160-161)
Tallman earned a certification from the British Society of Fight Directors, studying with B.H. Barry and tested by Patrick Crean. She continued to perform stunts in productions such as a Talk Show Stunt Guest in Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me (1999), as a stunt double in the crime drama The General's Daughter (1999, with James Cromwell and Clarence Williams III), as stunt double for Hudson Leick in the action film The Chill Factor (1999), and for Katie Finneran in the 2005 remake Bewitched. She was the evil mistress Caroline Dula in the Sheena episode The Darkness (2001), Alisa Fox in the drama For Pete's Wake (2004), appeared in the stage play "Waiting" (2004) directed by Chip Chalmers, and reprised her role as Lyta Alexander in the two animated Babylon Park spoofs "Frightspace" and "Grudgematch". She voiced the lead character of Lt. Richmond in the audio plays "Lives of the Cat" and "Anne Manx" and narrated the Better Sex video series from the Sinclair Intimacy Institute. Tallman was interviewed or had pictorials in every major science fiction magazine, including Starlog, SFX, Cinefantastique, and Celebrity Sleuth.
Her connection to Dennis Madalone gave her the chance to appear as Ms. Peters in the horror short Jennifer is Dead (2002, with Tom Morga, Lynn Salvatori, and stunt coordinator Madalone), as a mother at a cemetery in Madalone's music video "America We Stand as One" in 2001, as stunt double for Angela Lansbury in the television movie Murder She Wrote: The Celtic Riddle (2003, with Fionnula Flanagan, Cyril O'Reilly, W. Morgan Sheppard, her "Starship Mine" co-star Tim de Zarn, and Justin Sundquist), as stunt double for Laura Prepon in the thriller Karla (2006, with George Colucci), and in at least three episodes of the television series Without a Trace (2004, 2006, and 2007, under stunt coordinator Madalone, starring Enrique Murciano). The stunt work on Karla was Tallman's last "full stunt work" in television and film. She remembered that the stair film on this film caused a serious injury of her leg and knee and she was treated in hospital. Her leg has never been the same again. ("Pleasure Thresholds", p. 142)
Among her more recent projects are the role of Dr. Klein in the science fiction film InAlienable (2008), written by and starring Walter Koenig, and with Courtney Peldon, Erick Avari, Marina Sirtis, Andrew Koenig, Judy Levitt, Alan Ruck, Richard Herd, Gary Graham, J.G. Hertzler, Lisa LoCicero, Jeff Rector, and stunt coordinator Justin Sundquist, the starring role as Lucy in Corbin Bernsen's science fiction thriller Dead Air (2008, stunt coordinated by Tom Morga), and a guest role as lawyer Liz in the Valentine episode "Act Naturally" (2008, alongside Autumn Reeser and directed by John Putch).
2010 – today Edit
Outside of her acting career, she co-founded and is heading, along with fellow actress Judy Kain, the company Talent To Go, a marketing and auditioning service for actors in Los Angeles. Tallman is also a leading fundraiser for Penny Lane for over twenty years, a center for abused children in California. She was brought in by fellow stuntwoman Spice Williams-Crosby and is mainly working with the North Hills campus of teens from twelve to eighteen. [10] For over ten years she is also part of Penny Lane's "Be a Santa" event. [11]
In 2010 Tallman finished the short drama Waitin', written and directed by Victor Warren. She portrayed Sally, one of the people in the hospital waiting room and her son Julian had a |
of choice is python; h2defs.py / pygtk-codegen made short work of turning the glib header files into python bindings, and we're off. (btw - yes, actually, there is an example in Pyjamas and GWT called "kitchen sink"). basically, if you're a perl-lover, you get to write your own kitchen sink, if you haven't already done so. what's the catch? [update: pyjamas-desktop 0.1, which is useable, was released 06sep2008] the catch is: pyjamas-desktop is in development. the version known as "pyjamas-desktop/pywebkitgtk" is about... 16 hours old! don't be fooled, though: in python terms, that's an awful long time. the DOM model support went from 0% to 5%, enough to run Hello.py, in an hour. 5% to 20%, enough to run GridTest.py, in about 30 minutes. 20% to 40%, enough to run Mail.py, took another half hour, and so on. i'm up to KitchenSink.py and it's pretty much been a walk in the park. i've a little bit of thinking to do, to handle events properly: the only type of event supported at present is mouse "click" but pywebkitgtk now has support for all the browser event types: it's just i haven't added them in to pyjamas-desktop yet. also, i'm adding in glib bindings that i missed out and put on the "TODO" list as i go along. when i encounter a feature that i need for pyjamas-desktop, "TODO" becomes "Today". where on earth did you get this idea from? it seemed obvious. i remember seeing - it could have been a trick of my imagination - back in 1992, a Windows NT 3.51 application toolkit where you could run Win32 apps - unmodified - through a web browser. exactly how this was done i really don't know, but the idea stuck. so, last month, i made three separate attempts to get started. the first attempt was with GTK-Sharp and IronPython. It was the most promising of the attempts, but, missing a JSONRPC Proxy, and not wishing to get involved in Mono /.NET socket and XML at this early stage, i quickly skipped to pygtk2 (where it was easier to create a client-side JSONRPC proxy). i did a part-port of pyjamas to gtk2 in a few days - enough to tell me that i was wasting my time... ( pyjamas-pygtk2.tgz if anyone's interested).. due to the lack of support for libgtkhtml3 which has a crucial feature i needed (for Pyjamas "FlowPanel"). i did a part-port of pyjamas to qt4 in about _two_ days... (pyjamas-pyqt4.tg z if anyone's interested)... enough to know that, despite the rich-text support, the layout mechanism in Qt, and the lack of support for being able to remove layouts from grid layouts.... i just... gave up and made a beeline for webkit... now, in under 8 hours, with the DOM model access glib bindings to webkit, pyjamas-desktop has 80% of the functionality completed! what's the other possibilities? there exists some _really_ exciting tantalising possibilities with this, which takes a bit of explaining. the first time i saw pyjamas, i went "cool! a web-based widget set that looks like a desktop widget set. i wonder if it can be _made_ to be a desktop widget set?". then, i saw that llampies - one of the pyjamas developers - had ported pyjamas to gtk. i got really excited, only to find that _actually_ what he'd done was the OTHER WAY ROUND: he'd ported _gtk_ to pyjamas! GsocLlpamies llampies, basically, has written "wrappers" - alternative implementations of gtk.py, glib.py and gobject.py, which get compiled with the python-to-javascript compiler, pyjamas, along with your pygtk2 app, to run your pygtk2 apps UNMODIFIED as *web* applications. so, you write your app as a python-gtk app, you compile it up using pyjamas, and it runs as a web application. even though it's actually python-gtk-compliant source code. bear with me whilst i outline why that work is so significant. take a python-GTK application, and run it through pyjamas, and it's a web app... but if you run it under pyjamas-desktop, it runs... as a web app. that doesn't sound significant... (...in fact it sounds mad. you're taking a desktop app and running it... err... on a desktop, adding massive overhead and missing out bits of the pygtk2 API as well, _and_ you're limiting me to the subset of python that the pyjamas compiler supports!!!) whooa, hold your horses - it sounds mad... until you remember earlier that i mentioned the possibility of running webkit under python-qt4 if someone writes the bindings. and running webkit under python-wxwidgets if someone does the python bindings for that, too. so... you get to write an app as a python-gtk2 app, conforming to the pygtk API, and... through pyjamas-desktop/webkit with llampie's gtk2 wrappers, you get to run your python-gtk2 app UNMODIFIED in a qt4 environment. or a wxwidgets environment. or... any-other-kind-of-environment. including a web app, remember, if you dump pyjamas-desktop and just use llampie's compiler. wow! yeah. it's still madness yeah. quit bitching about it. oh - and you _should_ be writing your apps to conform to a MVC framework _anyway_, so there's no need to complain about being limited to a subset of the python library. you have JSONRPC (yes, i've written a JSONRPC proxy, which is a useful JSONRPC client library in its own right), you have pimentech's JSONRPC server-side django plugin, so you can write the front-end in a limited subset of python (it's not _that_ limited) and get it to talk to the back-end, which happens to be running on loopback HTTP as a twisted app or a django service, where you have full and complete access to the entire range of python libraries. and, then, if you're ready to make it a web app, compile it to AJAX with pyjamas and... well... that's it. you're done. and your code is nicely subdivided into front-end, back-end, just the way it should be. gimme some examples! okaaay... from ui import Button, RootPanel, Label import Window def greet(sender): Window.alert("Hello, AJAX!") class Hello: def onModuleLoad(self): b = Button("Click me", greet) l = Label("hello world") RootPanel().add(b) RootPanel().add(l) one button. one "hello world" label. one alert popup. one vision. ( just gimme gimme fried chicken ) that's it?? yeah. well.. ok... here's the associated HTML, too. <html> <head> <meta name="pygwt:module" content="Hello"> <title>Hello</title> </head> <body bgcolor="white"> <script language="javascript" src="pygwt.js"></script> </body> </html> strictly speaking, you don't need the pygwt.js library in there, but you might as well leave it there. sure, webkit will try to load it, but if it doesn't exist, so what. but.. but... that's just the pyjamas "hello world" example! yes, and it's unmodified, too, that's the whole point, and it _still_ runs as a desktop application under pyjamas-desktop, using the modified pywebkitgtk (see code references below). basically, i'm taking all the "javascript" code fragments in the pyjamas ui.py and other library functions, and replacing them line-for-line with pure python, calling pywebkitgtk DOM bindings functions! ( ideally, of course, the work would go a lot quicker if i had a javascript-to-python compiler. ) so, for example, in pyjamas, there's some voodoo trickery going on to walk the Hello.html document, looking for that special "meta" tag with the name "pygwt:module". i've replaced __pygwt_processMetas javascript function with one that accesses the DOM model directly in python rather than in javascript, and, once the names of the modules are obtained, this is done: for m in pygwt_processMetas(): exec """\ from %s import %s m = %s() m.onModuleLoad() """ % (m, m, m) which, for each of the modules found, directly runs the onModuleLoad() function. so, in the Hello.html example, you get this being executed: from Hello import Hello m = Hello() m.onModuleLoad() and thus your app gets prepared, ready to run the gtk main loop. can i _really_ still run bits of javascript even though it's a desktop app? yes. ctx = main_frame.gjs_get_global_context() doc = ctx.get_by_name("document") ctx.eval("console.error('hello');") doc.execute(""" node = document.createTextNode('Some content.')); document.getElementById('body').appendChild(node); """) that's disgusting! yes it is, isn't it? even more disgusting is that after you've done that, you can go and access the DOM model directly through the glib-object python bindings and mess with it some more! gdoc = main_frame.get_gdom_document() body = gdoc.get_element_by_id('body') node = gdoc.create_text_node('some more content') body.append_child(node) of course, that's using the new pywebkitgtk bindings directly (just like in KDE except without... KDE: see example and bugreport context). but - you do NOT have to do this - that's pyjamas-desktop's job, to take you entirely away from the "mess" of performing DOM model manipulation, and providing you with a neat widget-set instead. just like it's pyjamas's job to take you entirely away from the mess of AJAX programming. like they say on Braniac - "STOP! DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME! We do these experiments, so you don't have to!" what... what _is_ this!!! it's a new widget set API, effectively. it's like python-qt4, it's like python-gtk2, it's like python-wxWidgets, except without the limitations of those widget sets. gtk2 has the look-and-feel of an abandoned urinal. qt4 i love but it still has limited "rich text" - nothing like the power and flexibility of CSS stylesheets. when i or someone gets round to it, there will even be DOM bindings to the SVG document features of webkit. so, you will be able to create very powerful and flexible applications, drawing direct to a canvas. but, that might take a few days of work, so i'm putting it on the "TODO" list. i want one. how can i get it? now! right now, you'll need patches to webkit and pywebkitgtk (see below). then you get to play. in the meantime, you can always write your apps as web apps, using the pyjamas compiler, confident in the knowledge that you will be able to run them as desktop apps in the very near future. code references and patches: git@github.com:lkcl/pyjamas- desktop.git
webkit issue 16401
pywebkitgtk issue 13
The Javascript barrier, posted 31 Aug 2008 at 03:35 UTC by cdfrey » (Journeyer)
I'm glad you wrote an article on this. I've been seeing your outbursts of excitement in your diary entries, but it's hard to piece together from just that. I was hoping for a little more technical details and background information, but I can ask the dumb questions here and save others the trouble. :-) The idea of writing a GUI application once and being able to compile it for the desktop or the web is something that has struck me too, after some long laborious work with PHP. So pyjamas-desktop looks like a giant step in the right direction to me. As a GUI developer, I don't want to worry about the low level details of gtk2 or win32 or html or javascript. I'd really like one API that does it all for me. The fly in the ointment is that I am not interested in web applications that require Javascript in order to function. Neither as a user or a developer. There are many people who decide to use the web without Javascript, for various reasons, and the web is perfectly useable in those cases (albeit, rather slow). Websites should not turn those users away. And plain old HTML does have the bare basic widget set for a GUI application: buttons, fields, labels, combo boxes, lists, radio buttons. This should be enough for an API to provide limited functionality across the web and desktop barrier. Since pyjamas and friends makes use of AJAX for its functionality, I'm assuming that an out-of-band channel is required for handling the event-driven nature of a GUI, in the super-cross-platform way it does. Does this make plain old HTML impossible to implement? Is the architecture so tied to AJAX that my dream of a truly cross-web experience is dead before it starts? :-) Because if I'm writing a website, I must support the non-Javascript users as well, and while pyjamas-desktop gives me a great desktop experience for free, if I have to write an HTML-only version of the site as well, there's not much gain for me.
pure HTML, posted 31 Aug 2008 at 11:01 UTC by lkcl » (Master)
Since pyjamas and friends makes use of AJAX for its functionality, I'm assuming that an out-of-band channel is required for handling the event-driven nature of a GUI, in the super-cross-platform way it does. if i understand you correctly, i don't believe that is correct [that an out-of-band channel is required]. in the pyjamas-javascript original version, element.onclick and friends all get over-ridden with a global function that "vets" events. the framework allows you to register "listeners" in a per-element list. so, the global function will receive an event call, look at the element's listeners and call them all - e.g. ClassName.onClick(event) or InputClassName.onChange(event), that sort of thing. in the pyjamas-gtk2 version, i simply... added those very same listeners to the "connect" glib signal - click, focus, mousemove - all of them. there was a _direct_ correspondance between the functionality provided by the javascript-based framework and the gtk2 framework. likewise for the pyjamas-qt4 version. for the pyjamas-webkit version, i've managed so far to add in a callback mechanism connecting addWindowEventListener to a signal that i'm naming "browser-event", and i've just very kindly received a reply from someone on the webkit-dev mailing list, giving me enough clues on how to add per-element event listening, corresponding to "click", "mousedown", "mouseover" etc. etc. so it may come as a surprise, and it may not, to know that there is direct one-to-one equivalent functionality, making the task of converting pyjamas-javascript to pyjamas-desktop/webkit pretty damn easy. the "HTML" version you talk about (see below for way on how it can be done) now that _is_ slightly trickier, because many desktop and web apps _rely_ on that "mouseover" and "focus" functionality. so, if you _genuinely_ have to do PURE html, end-of-story, you would have to code up your app to cope with that possibility. however, i feel reasonably confident in saying that if you could put up with a _tiny_ bit of javascript - over-riding "element.mouseover" and "window.onresize" for example, you would, i am sure, be able to get the entire framework functionality. Because if I'm writing a website, I must support the non-Javascript users as well, and while pyjamas-desktop gives me a great desktop experience for free, if I have to write an HTML-only version of the site as well, there's not much gain for me. well, in another rather obscure project i did, i did actually successfully do exactly this: a framework which had two modes. 1) AJAX mode 2) plain HTML mode. (and i planned to do mode 3: iframe mode, you'll see why that would be possible, from the description below). the basic principle was that "areas" of the screen were subdivided into python-functions (corresponding to widgets). the AJAX version had empty < div > tags set up to represent those areas, and on the server-side, additional code was outputted in the form of a < script lang="javascript" > code-fragment, containing an AJAX-based function with the div "id" as one of the arguments. as you can guess, that AJAX function called _back_ to the server, to obtain the bit of server-side-generated HTML content to be substituted into the < div > innerHTML. that HTML could of course contain _further_ < div > tags and yet _more_ javascript calls for the user's browser to execute, and in this way, the page gets constructed bit-by-bit. there was also a bit of arseing about to make < script > tags being inserted into the innerHTML actually _work_, because as you may be aware, you can't just insert javascript or CSS into a running HTML page without going through some voodoo magic that gets the JS or CSS properly into the browser's DOM model. in this way, in fits and starts, and with a horrendous amount of AJAX calls, the site was "constructed", from the outside in. as the actual amount of HTML being loaded was really quite small, it _was_ actually very quick - it just looked odd. then, version 2: the "HTML-only" option, was to "bypass" the AJAX loop entirely. for this case, the server-side would actually call the function which created the sub-content DIRECTLY, resulting, potentially, in sub-sub-content server-side calls and sub-sub-sub-content server-side calls. and, on receiving each bit of sub-content, the framework would template-substitute the sub-content into the EXACT same location that the client's browser _would_ have substituted the innerHTML of the corresponding < div > tag. so it _can_ be done. the bottom line is that there's no reason why the same trick should not be done, making a version called Pyjamas-HTMLServer which, instead of creating Javascript, creates HTML fragments. or, better yet, XHTML nodes. you could use python-libxml2 to construct the DOM node tree in pretty much the same way, with very little modification to the actual pyjamas framework (replace DOM.py with a libxml2-aware version) and you simply spew the XML document out as a text file.
I was hoping for a little more technical details and background information, i've put in a proposal to do a talk and a tutorial at ukuug on the subject - but let me get at least my 7,000-line app working as a test example, first! :)
update, posted 31 Aug 2008 at 20:11 UTC by lkcl » (Master)
update on progress: i have all the examples now working except for the "contributions", which includes the canvas-manipulating one. for that, i would need to add SVG support in the DOM bindings. so - to confirm, i have: * KitchenSink.py - runs fully, including text selection, iframes, treeview, event handling. the only thing slightly odd is that VerticalPanel content seems to go "middle" rather than "top" (there had to be something...) oh - and the treeview does go a bit weird when "hiding". * FormPanelExamply.py - this was the real surprise: being able to submit and upload files, using, yes, you guessed it - a hidden iframe! of course, that's implementation details but it was just... icing on the cake to have this one going. * JSONRPCExample.py - yep, even this one works: it was one of the first i got going. * Mail.py - yes, even the resize notification works, which is captured in this example and resizes the content displaying the "fake email" to fit on the page. i'm just... i'm amazed. now i don't really know what to do next!
Documentation, posted 3 Sep 2008 at 18:25 UTC by lkcl » (Master)
always useful. the API docs are auto-generated from the code, and are now available at: PyJD api
the 7,000 lines of python i wrote, for my interactive video chat application, now successfully runs under pyjamas-desktop. given that that includes the flash plugin, so you can do realtime video chat (via a red5 hosted server) i'd say that was pretty impressive. installing flashplugin for amd64 was a bit of a lairy mess, i have to say: nspluginwrapper did _not_ want to play nice, and i had to do a couple of accidental upgrades of random obtuse debian packages to make it work. all in all, with the event handling including window onload, window resize, mouse drag, move, up down click, keyboard event handling and even XMLHttpRequest working, all of which i needed in my videochat app, i'd say that was enough for most people to be able to start developing apps, and so i've done a first release: Pyjd 0.01 now all that's needed is for the webkit and pywebkitgtk people to include the patches.
I think that's crucial. I want a framework that degrades gracefully in the presence of a browser that does not support having the client run any software provided by the server written in Turing complete languages. In this case, Javascript, but I wanted to use a broad category to forestall talk about Flash or Silverlight or what-have-you. I've seen far too many examples of server provided software who's sole purpose is to trick the platform running it or the user into doing something for the benefit of the software author but against the user's own self-interest.
ok :) i get the message :) i'll try at some point to do a _basic_ demo, but i have to warn people: it will hammer the stuffing out of any server using it, unless cacheing is caaarefully integrated. auto-generating _every_ bit of HTML, from source code... that's... something that.. well... :) think about it: when you execute some python code (on the server, now, not some python-converted-to-javascript, or some python on the user's desktop), you'll end up calling a widget class which will create an XML DOM node, ultimately resulting in some XHTML being "constructed" and returned. that's gotta hurt. very little "static" content returned, anywhere. l.
Started!, posted 5 Sep 2008 at 14:37 UTC by lkcl » (Master)
ok - i dug up my old zct application, and hacked it into submission, using lxml. it's a start. you can obtain the git repository, here: git@github.com:lkcl/pyjamas-desktop.git look for pyjamas-web. the principle is as-described, above: look in mainpage.py for where it "starts" (i did say i had done a hatchet-job on my old code!). there's a global variable, xml_doc, which stores the XML document. the initialisation is done with init_doc() (hatchet-job loading Hello.html). then, onModuleLoad() can get at the xml document - eventually - via RootPanel() via ui.py via DOM.py _eventually_ back to the global variable xml_doc in __pyjamas__.py, and then, finally, back in index(), return etree.tostring(doc()) converts the XML document to HTML. looovely :) slightly tricky: how to do button submits etc. i'm going to have to create an HTML form with a GET method around the entiiiire document, to receive any input. it's _not_ going to be pretty, but it will work. anybody who would like to help out, you're more than welcome. i've done quite a lot of work already on pyjamas-desktop and pyjamas (without financial gain or incentive); i've started the ball rolling on pyjamas-web, and it's quite straightforward: keep trying the examples, and if you get "error" from Window.JS, you know you have a bit of code to replace from the old javascript with a bit of lxml manipulation :) one small thing you have to remember: errors cause the apache process to "hang around". eventually, you end up with every single apache process "frozen" at the last error message, and you need to restart apache to clear them all.
FORM submit thing, posted 5 Sep 2008 at 14:51 UTC by lkcl » (Master)
remember: the history behind pyjamas is that you do _not_ have a "form" anywhere on the page (except for file upload, and even then that's a hidden iframe target with oodles of AJAX lurking horribly underneath). consequently, not a single app designed for pyjamas widget set is going to even _remotely_ consider the "form" concept which every good web designer loves. that leaves very few options to consider, and about the most sensible one is to just... have... a single "form" for submission of absolutely everything on the xml-created page. the only other possibilities involve javascript, which is exactly what you want to avoid :)
well, i got "Hello World" working, by cheating somewhat. "Grid Test" indicates a bit more of a serious issue. "Grid Test" has a previous and next button, which you click on to make the contents of the grid go "up" and "down" from 1 to 10. the code i have so far, you can get the first page (1 of 10). you can get to page 2 - fine. but... you can't go any further. the reason is because the numbering is supposed to go from where the user previously left off, and i'm recreating the page from scratch (page 1). this tends to indicate that actually what i need to do is to serialise the entire "object"... the GridTest() instance - store it in memory somehow and then re-access it and carry on. this is pretty advanced stuff for a throw-together application. it smells of zope persistent objects [and me and zope don't get on :) ] i'll have a look see if there's a solution / code kicking around.
... nnnope., posted 5 Sep 2008 at 21:47 UTC by lkcl » (Master)
thinking about it: the only _sensible_ option is to create a separate process (or daemon) which is responsible for maintaining the state information, in its entirety. the front-end web server will communicate with this, using a cookie or other session information to identify the connection. the XML content would be communicated from the persistent back-end, via the front-end web server. ideally of course the back-end would actually be webkit-based, resulting in a rather insane but highly accurate rendition of the page. including javascript execution. and, every now and then, content is thrown out for the user to see. uuurgh :) but - i don't think that's sensible to do, as a first cut: working on webkit was long enough and it's a _big_ dependency to add. i think i can get away with running a back-end daemon, and a "persistent session daemon" is something i've been meaning to write, anyway, for various other reasons, including managing IRC, IMAP, Database and other connections on behalf of user sessions, all of which cannot be "stuffed" into a sql database, a la zope.
FastCGI, posted 5 Sep 2008 at 22:44 UTC by cdfrey » (Journeyer)
Speaking of a "state daemon"... One of the things I've always wanted to play with in more detail was FastCGI, after having read Peter Simon's paper FastCGI - The Forgotten Treasure. This seems like the perfect architecture for web apps that need to support plain old HTML, and instead of writing a daemon on the side to handle the persistent state, your web app itself can be persistent. Of course, I don't know if Pyjamas and friends can plug into FastCGI, I'm just piecing the little tidbits I know together into a brainstorming suggestion. :-)
Given that compiling webkit from source, including patching, is rather fraught and inconvenient, I'm providing pre-built amd64 debian packages of libwebkit-dev, libwebkit-1.0-2 and (previously never deb-built) pywebkitgtk-1.0. Sourceforge downloads of libwebkit-glib/gtk and pywebkitgtk They're based on svn from this morning: Repository UUID: 268f45cc-cd09-0410-ab3c-d52691b4dbfc Revision: 36129
don't need web, posted 6 Sep 2008 at 21:08 UTC by lkcl » (Master)
The fly in the ointment is that I am not interested in web applications that require Javascript in order to function. it just occurred to me to point out, of course, that now, thanks to pyjd, those web applications don't _need_ javascript! you download pywebkitgtk, and pyjd, give the user the python app and they run it on their desktop. no javascript at all. of course... it's a big download :)
pyv8 too, posted 14 Feb 2009 at 15:18 UTC by lkcl » (Master)Image copyright Getty Images Image caption The movements of capoeira require great bodily dexterity
Capoeira - a Brazilian martial art form combining dance - has been given a special protected status by Unesco, the UN's cultural arm.
A Unesco representative said defining capoeira as "intangible cultural heritage" would help Brazil preserve the tradition.
Capoeira was originally created by African slaves to keep their fighting skills alive, disguising it a dance.
It is performed by two players who dance on their hands and feet.
Image copyright Getty Images Image caption Capoeira was born in the 17th Century and is usually performed in a circle of players and musicians
A combination of martial art, dance and sport, capoeira is performed to percussion and chanting.
It requires great physical strength and flexibility and is regarded as being of immense acrobatic beauty.
"It is one of the most important symbols of Brazilian identity and is present throughout our national territory as well as being practiced in more than 160 countries," the Brazilian culture ministry said in a statement.
Brazil now has five cultural art forms which have been given Unesco cultural heritage status.
They include several dance and music forms, indigenous rituals and art.Most of us think the money we earn on our paychecks is really ours. After all, we exchanged our physical labor and mental exercise for that money. But many among the political left see it differently. They believe that money really belongs to the government. It's just nice enough to let us keep a bit of it sometimes.
It's not a position expressed out loud by Democrats in America too often. But for many on the political left, it's right there below the surface, ready to burble out, which is what appears to have happened recently in Great Britain, where the author of the Labor Party's economic policy spoke his covetous mind.
"I would suggest that we don't as such pay taxes," said Richard Murphy, the "chartered accountant" who is the "guru" behind Labor leader Jeremy Corbyn's economic plan. "The funds that they represent are, I suggest, in fact the property of the state."
Murphy went on, claiming "there is no such thing as 'taxpayers' money': It is the government's money to do what it will with in accordance with the mandate it has been given and for which it will have to account."
Dan Mitchell, whose indispensable blog brought Murphy's statement to our attention, said the rant "truly gives us a window into the soul of statism" and correctly labeled it a "poisonous ideology."
Mitchell also noted that "Murphy's view is basically reflected in the 'tax expenditure' concept used in Washington and the'state aid' concept in the European Union."
It also sounds, we should add, a lot like Hillary Clinton threatening that "we're going to take things away from you on behalf of the common good."
As we said, sometimes the inner urges that a politician tries to keep bottled up in public do manage to slip out.Finance Capital is the problem.
It is at the heart of the multiple socioeconomic crises that we are now encountering, both in North America and worldwide. Thus we aim to stop it at the places where it conducts its business: that is, Wall Street, Bay Street, and the other cities where it has (up to now) been permitted to thrive.
We know that it owns both our so-called ‘democratic’ political processes and the mainstream media. We also know that, unless we make a direct intervention into its operations, it will not stop its reckless pursuit of profits at all costs, which have ruined so many lives, both at home and overseas.
We may or may not have the same demands; after all, we are one common front composed of many diversified interests. Still, unified as we are by our one common antagonist, we will not stop until we have confronted and solved the most pressing problem of our time.
Guy Fawkes, AnonymousMaybe it’s the jazz music that sneaks every now and then out of the doorway and into the thoroughfare. Maybe it’s the comfy couches and the industrial-chic vibe inside. Maybe it’s the allure of the friendly ghost that’s rumored to wander the building. Whatever draws you to it, there’s something bewitching about B Sharp Coffee House.
Located in Tacoma’s Opera Alley, this coffee house is a gathering place for people of all ages that really captures the essence of Tacoma’s Antique District. Exposed brick and beams betray the shop’s first life as a warehouse for the Tacoma News Tribune. Today, instead of stacks of bundled newsprint and the whir of machines, visitors can expect to hear the buzz, hiss and grind of artisan coffee brewing or being poured.
Because the brightly colored buildings in the Opera District sit squarely, shoulder to shoulder with one another, it would be easy to mistake the space for a small coffee shop from the outside. Once visitors cross the threshold, however, they’re often surprised to find that the cafe is very spacious inside. The venue can accommodate roughly 90 people, as fans of B Sharp’s live music scene can personally attest. Exposed brick and beams create an atmosphere of gritty ambiance that’s softened by couches, wide tables and benches and plush pillows made from the upcycled burlap of coffee bean bags.
Music is a big part of the what makes B Sharp such a special spot. Owners Dennis and Maryann Ellis have a lifelong affinity for jazz and blues; Dennis in particular. He’s played a venerable part in the South Sound jazz scene, and has been the saxophonist in the band the T-Town Aces for ages. If Ellis’s favorite songs aren’t playing over the stereo, it’s likely that it is just on hold to accommodate one of the many musical acts that have performed live at the shop since it’s opening in 2013.Drugs. The great debate. Should we treat drugs as a health problem rather than a criminal problem? Should we change existing drug laws or not? The simple answer is yes.
globalcommissionondrugs.org Sir Richard Branson
When in 2011 I became a commissioner of the Global Commission on Drug Policy, I joined an esteemed group of global leaders, including seven former Heads of State, former U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan, former U.S. Secretary of State George Shultz, former European Commission Head Javier Solana, and the former Head of the U.S. Federal Reserve Paul Volcker. We all share one simple message: After more than four decades, it’s time to acknowledge that the war on drugs has failed. It’s a message that resonates with people around the world. So what is holding us back from taking the next step?
Last year, my son, Sam, collaborated with a wonderful group of filmmakers to produce an eye-opening documentary on this exact issue. Narrated by Oscar winner Morgan Freeman, “Breaking the Taboo” includes interviews with President Clinton and Fernando Cardoso, the former President of Brazil — who currently chairs the Global Commission on Drug Policy. The film makes a powerful and compelling case why existing drug laws here in the United States and around the world must be changed. For instance, Harvard economist Jeffrey Miron estimated in 2008 that regulating and taxing drugs would inject over $76 billion a year into the U.S. economy. Given the financial turbulence of recent years, just imagine what a difference that could have made.
This weekend in St. Paul, Mayor Chris Coleman and I will discuss why taking a more science- and fact-based perspective on drug policy is so important. Why? Because much of the debate has been distorted by exaggeration, misinformation and fear-mongering. The truth is that a policy reversal makes not only economic sense; it also would be a much more humane response than the current approach, which has cost way too much in lives and dollars. The United Nations estimates that in the past 30 years, more than $320 billion have been spent on the war on drugs. And the FBI says that in 2009, there were roughly 1.6 million arrests in the U.S. for drug possession alone, over half of those related to marijuana, which still isn’t legal — even for medicinal purposes — here in Minnesota.
Here’s why it should be. If one of my businesses keeps losing money, then the business is broken. Well, these current drug laws are broken, and they need to be fixed. While Minnesota has one of the lowest inmate populations in the country, the Drug Policy Alliance reports there are fifty drug courts in this state alone. We need to find a pathway to the decriminalization of drugs and drug users. Drug addiction shouldn’t be treated as a crime, but as a public health issue. In doing so, we can cut the enormous costs on law enforcement and incarceration, while also generating billions of dollars |
The President of the United States Obama is one of the principal instruments leading the world toward a thermonuclear war, and this means generally an extinction form of war. This thing which is going to happen at the beginning of this next week, is probably absolutely necessary to avoid the danger of thermonuclear war. Now, of course, our President is the key source, the greatest source, of that threat right now. He's not as an individual, but as an individual as President of the United States. Unless he were suspended under the rules of the Twenty-Fifth Amendment, he could still set off a thermonuclear war on a global scale. All the potential for that exists now. And therefore, what is going to happen in the next week, the coming week, and henceforth in that period, is going to determine whether or not the world is ready to prevent the launching of a thermonuclear war. That's what the issue is. UN/Milton Grant There are many aspects to this. The question is, why did mankind ever let itself get involved into this kind of mess? Well, there were problems, faults, in the way people thought. For example, since the beginning of the Twentieth Century, our very system of life has become more and more degenerate. People are not quite as smart, or quite as concerned about humanity, as they were at the end of the preceding Century. And therefore, this is an urgent issue. We have to recognize that our school systems, our education system, our economic system as it's organized, our standards of living, our standards of education of our young people,all of these things have been put into jeopardy since the beginning of the Twentieth Century, when this change occurred. So now we've come to the point, where the Twentieth Century issue, has come to the point of the paymaster. We must now take this moment of this new international assembly, which is fully aware,its best people are awareof the implications of this situation, now. And therefore, what we must organize around in the United States, in particular, but throughout the world, is to prevent the launching of a thermonuclear war. That's what Obama represents! And, to get him off the agenda, by the 25th Amendment, is the absolute requirement for the safety of mankind in general today. Therefore, what was being assembled in the coming period, the international event, this event is absolutely crucial. It's also absolutely crucial that we contribute our abilities into making this next great convention successful. Because this may be the last chance for humanity. That's the extreme view, but things approximating that are there. They have, however, been building up. Ever since Franklin Roosevelt left office, there has been, despite good Presidents,a few of them have occurreddespite those Presidents and other representatives of our government, the general characteristic of our government has been one of degeneration. Degeneration in everything; degeneration in respect to our Constitution, and its meaning. And therefore, this event, which is to be assembled in the coming week, is the thing on which we must all concentrate, not only inside the United States, but globally. There are movements in the world which can do this, but they have to be brought together, and the forces of a different disposition must be curtailed. And, that's what I think the situation is, what I see, and what I fear.
Speed: OK. Very good. [applause] Our next speaker is Ramsey Clark, former Attorney General of the United States. So, Ramsey, why don't you go right ahead, and respond as you will, to what you've just heard. Ramsey Clark Clark: From here? I forgot I was wired! [laughter] I usually oppose wiring, but here I am, in front of all these people, wired. How good to see so many beautiful faces, who believe in the preparation, behind their faces, for struggle to overcome the human propensity toward self-destruction, war. Schiller Institute You know, when you think about our schoolchildren and all our babies, you realize that we still have this maniacal energy. Energy can be dangerous, as essential as it is to life, and the energy committed to destruction, to self-destruction; the billions we spend on the most sophisticated means of destroying big pieces of real estate, with lots of people on them; and even the pride that we take as a people in the capacity for self-destruction. Militarism ought to be the supreme crime, because it has been, and remains,and because of its capacity for total destruction,now more than ever, the greatest threat to life on Earth, and all the things that we can hope for, for our children, or, in my case, our great-grandchildren. Our materialism distracts us from, not only the best parts of life, those that really bring the most joy and happiness and satisfaction. But the clamor of our society, with technology in the driver's seat, and the driver is without a license. When you think about militarism, think of Syria today: Damascus, beautiful Damascus, historic Damascus; a contender for, among half a dozen other places in the region, the oldest permanently settled place on Earth by human beings. It's been there for a long time; you don't have to be in the city but a few minutes before you're told about it, and it's a great story. But the threat to it, is much greater than any of the destructive potentials of history. The Roman troops were nothing compared what can happen todaythe obliteration of whole cities with a single blast. And, somehow or other, we are able to live reasonably happily and normally, and not even think about it. And, when we do think about it, we think less of ourselves, because we can't find a way to do anything about it. We haven't found a way to do anything about it that's adequate to address the phenomenon. Iraq, today, is a vast wasteland, as we used to say. The "cradle of civilization," in the Twenty-First Century a vast wasteland. You don't really want to go there. I have to go there; I've been going there too much for the last 20 years. Hasn't done any good, but we keep going, keep trying. With all that history, and all that love and all that knowledge, and all that violence that was mixed in with it, and finally, the violence seems to come out on top, doesn't it? Just staying alive in Iraq has been the principal challenge for every man, woman, and child that's living there. That may sound excessive, but go there and take a look. It's not just the constant threat of violence; it's where are you going to get potable water in the next days? And whether food will be available? And whether bombs will come down again? And, still, rather than examine that, in acts of human unity and concern to change it, most of our energies and concentrations, on this subject, are devoted to more efficient means of mass destruction. I'm an optimist, which has to mean, having said what I just said, a little crazy; but you have got to be crazy enough to face the situation, you know? A sane person would turn away from it. And just look at the babies, and hug them. And there's more: what their future will be if we don't put our hearts and minds toward creating conditions, where there aren't millions constantly struggling to stay alive. Leaving their homelands, and going across wastelands and dangerous waters; and dying of thirst, and drowning on sinking boats. While we're wondering what the next Saturday afternoon movie will be at the theaters, a way of going away, of avoiding facing the reality of the condition of human conduct, and the life it's creating on a planet that in many areas is largely overcrowded, and doesn't seem to understand the possibility that that could create a problem; for all the organizations and mail we get about addressing the subject. Our capacity to change all that is, to me, clear. It's a question of will. But we first have to have the will to face the facts, to organize and present the facts, in a way that every man, woman and child can see the havoc we're wreaking on this beautiful planet. A pretty terrific place to be born into, most of the centuries that we're aware of. There are scuffles around here and there that were cruel, and our species was the principal offender. But it's only in our time that making Mother Earth as lifeless as the Moon became a real possibility. We could scruff it up a little bit in the old days, but nothing serious. It's like walking through a rose garden, and getting scratched by a barb or two, here and there, a thorn. Our capacity to overcome the problems we see, those that are risking their lives in boats to cross dangerous waters that they've never seen before, to try to get to a place where their feet could be dry, and their babies can be fed, and they can live in peace. It's clear, but we have to set our minds to it, and devote our energies to overcoming. I'm a believer that energy is genius, and all that thinking doesn't change a thing until all that energy organizes and mobilizes it and moves it. And that's probably the main reason we're here today, is to see the problem, analyze the solution, and address it outright, and overcome. So, I'll be anxious to hear your wisdom. Most of my time is,like today, I have to go someplace elseI'll never get there in time. But I'll be with you in spirit, and I'll hear what was said later. Best wishes to you, and our thanks to those who brought us together, Lyn. You're looking well, pal! I hope I'll see you, in person, around Christmastime. [applause]
Speed: Our next speaker, former U.S. Senator from Alaska; 2008 Presidential candidate; most notorious for his work back in the 1970s, concerning the infamous Pentagon Papers, Mike Gravel. [applause] Mike Gravel Mike Gravel: Thank you very much Dennis. Lyndon, I've got to say that you've got me by eight years, and what I've noticed in reading history, in the biographies of people like Arnold Toynbee and Will Durant (and of course his wife, but primarily Will) is that, as they got older in life, they became more pessimistic about the survival of the planet. And I must say that I'm an optimist, but I've got vestiges of this fear as I get older, that is there hope for the human race? Schiller Institute But what I'm really impressed with, is the work that you've done, Lyndon, your wife, the Schiller Institute, the Executive Intelligence Review, and this didn't come to be naturally, or quickly. I want to say that this lady up front here, Anita Gallagher, has been beating on me for a decade, and calls me. [laughter] And I got to tell you, I have been captured. I am now part of the team, and will work towards the goals. I want to compliment you, and first off, let me say this: when you look to solutions, I wish I could say, as an American,because I love my country, and I'm sure all of you do, but I love the world more. When I was in the Senate, I used to get away with making extensive speeches, where I would end the speech that my priorities in life are first, the human race; second, the United States; and third, Alaska, and all my priorities are in that order. And so all I can say now, is that I don't see a solution within the confines of the United States. I think that you're quite right in your assessment of the Obama Administration. But I've got to tell you that when you look to the Congress, and I can say when I was a Senatoryou know, we had a certain arrogance, being Senators; we'd look to the House, and say, "Well, that's a zoo over there." But now, when I look from this distant position, on the entire Congress, it is a total zoo, not just the House! And so, we focus on the Administration and the Presidency as the agent to work on. Well, I got to tell you, this other body is co-equal, and they can do things, and have been doing things, that have been sabotagingsabotagingand destroying any possibility we have for world peace. So I've come to the conclusion, after a number of years, that I look elsewhere. I look to where the successes in life have been, of recent nature, and the attitudes. I want to compliment you, by underscoring what China is doing today. I personally feel that Putin is running his country a hell of a lot better than our last three or four Presidents have been running our country. [applause] When you take the combination of the Chinese leadershipand I'll go into, in a moment, what they're doing, which is, I think, the touchstone of the Twenty-First Century. If [Henry] Luce wants to continue to hold the view that the last century was the American Century, I think it's not a good mark on our history, because it was a terrible century. But now, when you look at the Twenty-First Century, who is the group that's actually acting in the most mature fashion, and has not made a reliance on military power? Of course, that's the problem with American foreign policy today. It's that, first, we think in terms of force, and use of our "superb" military. Well, one, they're not so superb; and two, it's horrible thinking. You can say that, well, the American people sustains this. Well, unfortunately, the American people, they're not stupid, but they are totally uninformed as to what's going on in the world today. Our six leading communications companies, which are total pawns of Wall Street, have guaranteed, that we will [audio loss].... What's going to happen, from my perspective? I don't disagree with your sense of urgency, don't disagree at all. But I've come to the conclusion that we could all be incinerated over the Kashmir, because any bombs going off between Pakistan and India will just wipe us out, too, in the process. It's the total human insanity we have, that we can deal and manipulate and control the bomb. We can't. Not at all. We're victims of circumstance. Look to the Chinese And so, when I take your views, they're as valid as mine. But my view is optimistic; I'm not old enough, yet, to be totally pessimistic. My view is that what China is doing, with the help of Russia, and with the BRICS, is really where the future of mankind lies, in terms of solutions. Not our leadership. It's going to be what they're [the Chinese] doing, and how they're handling it. Xinhua/Wang Ye As I pointed out to you earlier, Putin has run things very well. After the provocation of Ukraineand most Americans have forgotten that we're the ones that did this; we're the ones that did it. They don't hear that any more in the press. And I don't know if anybody has seen the recent "Frontline" piece on "Putin's Way": It was horrible. And I have an intelligence background. When I was 23 years old. I was a top secret control officer. At 23, mind you. I was in Germany as an adjutant for a communications intelligence service. Our cover was the CIC. What did we do at this place? There were only two military officersmyself, 23, as a second lieutenant; and a lieutenant colonel, who was in the sauce a good part of the time. The rest of it was run by Germans. And what we did is, we'd open people's mail, wantonly, and wire-tap people in Europe, wantonly. Now, that's when I was 23 years old. [1953] So you can figure, when we had the Pentagon Papers come up in the Senate, and a Senator could not go in and read the papers, except being under guard, couldn't take any notes; all I could think of was: when I was 23, I was acting with more power than any Senator can act right now in viewing the Pentagon Papers! So, little wonder that when Ellsberg approached me, and asked if I would read the Pentagon Papers as part of my filibuster against the draft, I said, instantaneously, "Of course, yes, I would!" And so, now we come to the same situation that existed then and exists now: what the government, our government, is doing, is really what's leading the destruction throughout the world community. When you see the blow-back of these refugees, which we have not seen it at this level since the Second World War; when you see that going on right now,who's responsible for that? I would hope that, maybe, our European leaders, who are all wimps, led around by the American forces, both civilian and military, through NATO,which I want to characterize, as, NATO is the globalization of the military-industrial complex. That's what NATO is, and it's as useless as anything you could think of. We should dissolve NATO, first opportunity. But let's get back to where the answers are, and what's going forward: it's what China is doing. And it's in their self-interest. There's nothing wrong with intelligent self-interest; and that's what they're exercising. Because they have overcapacity; they have a great deal of presence in the worldnot military presencebut what they're going to do is to amass this into a force, to create the economic union, via communications and transportation systems, and general broad economic systems. They're going to go from western China to Europe, and then all the areas in-between. And this is going to give the world a focus of attention on economic solutions, rather than what we focus on now. I was just listening to General [Michael] Flynn. A fine thing: The guy's admitting that they were doing things wrong, but not too much of an admission. But he was saying we failed, but the real answer is economic development in these areas, so that people could be concerned about their well-being and jobs in the future, rather than what they're doing now, which is annihilating themselves. Well, this is exactly what China is putting forth, with the help of Russia, and tying it in. And thank God we have these institutions that are creating financial institutions to overcome the short-sightedness of the World Bank and IMF. So, they're leading in the financial area; they're leading in the economic area. And, if only we would have enough sobriety in this country to say, "Let's work with them." Can you imagine? Since the Second World War, we have been the ascendant power in the world, and we've not acquitted ourselves very well. Look out at the world today, since the Second World War, and say, "This is nothing to be proud of." But what China is doingand if we were to now say, "They're on the ascendancy, economically, and they're going to ride that horse to the saving of human civilization." And so, here again, I want to compliment the LaRouche organization for all that you're doing in this regard, in communicating this. And this is in line with views that I found out 20 years ago: I went to an event, as a normal citizen, to a LaRouche gathering, and that's when I became aware of what you wanted to do in crossing the Bering Sea into the Kamchatka Peninsula. And I was always fascinated by that as an Alaskan, because there's no question, it's very do-able. I won't live, and you won't live, to see the fruits of what is going on today with this new wisdom exercised in China, in their leadership. Of course they're not falling prey to what we did. Their defense budget is 10% of our budget. And it's ridiculous that we feel such suspicion about what they're doing. But we've been on an ego trip for decades and decades, and all of a sudden, there's somebody coming forward that is going to eat our lunch, and we don't know how to stop them, because they're not talking about eating it with the force of arms. They're talking about outperforming us in an economic fashion. And so, I just want to add my voice to the work that the Executive Intelligence Review is doing, what the Schiller Institute is doing, and say that any way I can help, I'm there. Because the opportunity is thereand, a little bit which is a take-off from your career, Lyndonis that, if the truth be told, it is fully recognized by those who hear it, unfortunately. And you have a cadre of people who do hear it, who are committed to it, and now, count me as one of those aboard. Lyndon, thank you. And Helga, thank you for what you're doing. [applause]
Speed: Now we're going to hear the founder of the Schiller Institute, Helga LaRouche. [applause] Helga Zepp-LaRouche Helga Zepp-LaRouche: Well, thank you. Thank you, Senator. Hello, Lyn! When the Senator made his remarks, I reminded myself that when the Iraq War was conducted, we had a conference on the same day. And we were truly horrified. As a matter of fact, we knew that this was based on lies. The EIR had produced a report, half a year earlier, where we predicted that they would make this war, the Bush-Cheney-Blair combination. And we had tried to warn against it, because there were no weapons of mass destruction; there was no way that Saddam Hussein would have reached any city around the world in 45 minutes. Schiller Institute We knew it was a lie, and we published that in an EIR report, and we had distributed many leaflets around the world. And in Germany it led to a situation where in August, shortly before the war broke out, Gerhard Schröder all of a sudden made an about-face and said Germany is not going to participate in this war. And that had a very important influence in causing Jacques Chirac to also not go in this direction. And so on that day when the war started, I was so horrified. I gave a speech at this conference and I just recalled that I said, are these people not aware that there is a higher law which will avenge this injustice? And I think I recalled the Ibykus poem by Friedrich Schiller; I said "Don't you know the lesson that if you commit a crime, there is such a thing as Erinyes, the goddesses of revenge which will come down on you?" I think that that is exactly what we are seeing right now. Because one war followed the other one. You had the Iraq War. You had before that the Afghanistan War, which was also based on lies, because if you look at what really happened on Sept. 11, then Article Five of NATO should not have been invoked. Then you had the murder of Qaddafi. Look at what all of these countries now look like. Then you had the attempt to overthrow Assad. You can add Yemen. You can add Palestine. So, the whole region from Afghanistan to the North of Africa is a nightmare. And, as a result of it, because of various dubious policies, to say the least, of the Obama Administration in support, first of the mujahideen, then al-Qaeda, then Al Nusra, then ISIS, you have now a situation where the largest refugee crisis since the Second World War has erupted. There are now every day, tens of thousands of people coming from mainly Syria, but also Iraq, Afghanistan, and other war-torn regions, and this is clearly over-stretching the capacity of Europe. People arrive, 10,000, 20,000 on the shores of the Greek islands; and the Greek Islands are poor, so the authorities have no food, they have no water, they have no medical supplies. So, people are now trying to get to the mainland in Greece, and from there they are trying to get to Macedonia, which is exploding with refugees. People are trying to go further to Hungary, and there is a barbed wire wall built around Hungary. You saw these absolutely horrifying pictures, where you have small children caught between tear gas deployed by the police and refugees trying to get through these barbed wires. This is a breakdown of civilization, what is happening there; on top of all the other things which happened in Ukraine and other places. So, as a result, you have now an explosion of misery and refugees. A Shift in Process But something positive has happened. I think it remains to be seen what all went into it, but there was a sudden shift in the German policy. Now Mrs. Merkel, who I admit is not my favorite politician, responded to an impulse in the German population, where all of a sudden the German population who were pretty much in a soap bubble of unreality until very recentlybecause people in Germany behaved exactly like Americans, they said there's nothing you can do anyway. They felt completely impotent to change anything. As a matter of fact, this was not the American outlook some years ago, but in the recent period, Americans and Germans became pretty similar in their pessimism, but also indifferentism, not being interested in all these matters. Bundesregierung/Kugler But suddenlysuddenlypeople recognized, these poor people running away from war needed help. So you had an outpouring of love, of charity, people streaming by the thousands to the main rail stations in different cities, bringing clothes, bringing food, bringing necessities of life. I think it was that which caused Merkel to say, wait a second, the majority is going in this direction, and I can only stay in power if I go with the majority; being a truthful politician, so she took the initiative. I think other factors were involved, because in the recent period, there were many, many people in Europe who warned that we are on the edge of World War III. Helmut Schmidt, who is 95 years old, and Gorbachov, who's not liked in Russia but the Germans always liked "Gorby," warned three times in a row that we are at the verge of World War III. The head of the Duma, Naryshkin, said if it comes to World War III, this will be the last one of mankind because nobody will survive it. You had the European Leadership Network, which is a thinktank of former defense ministers and military analysts, who put out three papers within six weeks, saying we are heading towards war, towards nuclear war. The first paper said "NATO is preparing a war against Russia and Russia is preparing a war against NATO," and therefore we have to have urgently new rules of dialogue, of communication, which does not exist any more, urging that such a code of behavior must be urgently established. So, while the normal person on the street may not know all the reasons, the geopolitics behind it, the fact that the trans-Atlantic financial system is about to blow out in a much bigger way than 2008, yet people in the last weeks have changed in all of Europe. We have information tables in many countries, and therefore we have a good reading on what is the mood in the population; and I think it was the combination of the euro crisis,people knew that if Greece would go in an unorderly exit, you could have an instant blowout of the entire financial system. So people were caught in between anxiety because of world war, worry about the economic security because of the euro collapsing, and naturally then the refugee crisis on top of it. I think it dawned on people, all of a sudden, and this soap bubble, which people were in the whole time, popped; and people realized, "Hey wait a second. This civilization is about to crash against the wall and we have to change." That, I think, led to a situation where people opened their hearts, and responded to the refugee crisis. I think the last time you had an expression of popular will like that, was when the Wall came down, and with the peaceful revolution, the peaceful demonstrations, the Monday demonstrations, in what became then east Germany, and what was the G.D.R. before, which brought down the Wall. And the present mood in the population is approaching exactly that quality. Now with that goes something else and that is what I referred to as the Erinyes, the idea, in this beautiful poem by Friedrich Schiller, the Cranes of Ibykus, which you should all read when you get home,we have a book where this is published also and translated,that there is a higher power, that you can't commit crimes for a very long time; that God is not an old man with a beard Who immediately, if somebody robs their neighbor, comes down with the lightning and strikes people down. It's not like that at all. But there is something which is called natural law. The Chinese call it the Mandate of Heaven, and in all great cultures you have this idea that there is a higher lawfulness which man cannot defy forever. And I think we are, at this point, experiencing such a moment where a great crime is awakening many, many peoples around the world, and it is a moment of change, and we must absolutely not miss that moment. Because what went along with the refugee crisis is suddenly people saying, wait a second; where do these refugees come from? It is the United States. It is the wars which were conducted by the United States in the Middle East, and it is the support of terrorist organizations, to eliminate and replace legitimate sovereign governments. Now, you don't have to be a friend of Saddam Hussein, of Assad, of Qaddafi, but the reality is when these people, who may have been dictators or not,I mean, democracy is not such a thing to cherish so much, because where is democracy in the United States? Where is democracy in Europe? [applause] So these people have been called dictators, and you don't have to like them. I have no particular sympathy for any of them. But if you look at how they were running their countriesIraq, with Saddam Hussein, had a functioning infrastructure, a functioning university system; women could study. You look at Libya, Qaddafi was involved in infrastructure development not only in Libya but in Africa. It was a functioning country. Syria before this happened, was a country where you had a very functioning collaboration of all religions who peacefully lived together, Christians, Muslims of different types, other people, and now? Look at what has happened now! You have Wahhabi Salafists trying to destroy the memory of humanity about its cultural goods. The bombing of the Baghdad museumthere was no military reason for it. U.S. General Schwarzkopf, who promised to bomb Iraq back into the Dark Age, did a pretty good job fulfilling his promise. Then you look at what happened recently with the ancient city of Palmyra. It was flattened. In Afghanistan, the large Buddhist sculptures. These people are trying to eradicate the memory of culture, which is universal history. So, don't tell me there was anything good coming out of these wars. You have a situation where even some former American diplomats are making public speeches, to say that even from a narrow American interest, this is a failed policy from Cheney, Bush, to Obama without interruption, because the same neo-con apparatus is running both administrations. Even from a narrow American standpoint, if the objective is to increase American influence in the region: complete failure. So why is there not a movement in the United States that says: Yes, these are failed policies and we need to correct them. The Promise of the BRICS Now, on the optimist side, I was very happy that the Senator was praising China so much, because it is a different model of working together of nations. Not only has China developed the idea of Confucian economics. It's a meritocracy. It's maybe still a little communist, but I think that can really be neglected, because the Confucian element is so much stronger in what the present Chinese government does: the emphasis on education, the emphasis on brilliance, on excellence of young people, of bringing the best minds forward, of having as many people as possible participating in the best possible education. And offering a model of collaboration based on win-win, on sovereignty, on respect for the other social system. And they have offered to the United States a collaboration on equal footing. So why not take that offer? The BRICS countries have developed a completely alternative model of economics, of great projects, of overcoming underdevelopment, and it's steadily progressing. Just now, China had a big conference with leaders from the Arab world. Now, when I read that, I was extremely happy because, how are the hell are we going to bring peace to the Middle East? Obviously, and from everything we know, President Putin will make a speech at the United Nations General Assembly, where he will demand and offer an international coalition to fight terrorism, and other forms of extremism. I know that Germany, for example, is already backing a flanking move, which Russia just did in Syria by moving its military there, because they don't want to have the last secular government in the region wiped out. Now, the United States government was completely caught by surprise. They said, "why didn't we see this coming?" The CIA said, "Oh, we missed that one..." But, what is the NSA good for, if they're spying on everybody, when they can't even catch a move like that? Now you have a situation where Germany has already backed the Russian move in Syria. Hollande is backing it. Even the British are forced to realign their view on it. So, when Putin makes a speech in the United Nations, saying we need to have an international coalition against terrorism, if the United States should turn out to be the only country opposing it, that would really make them look very bad. So I hope that they use the remaining days to think through this question very well, and make up their mind to join this coalition. Because what we need to do, is not only to end this terrorism, but we have to eliminate the root of terrorism, and that is poverty. The only way that we will bring back peace to the Middle East, is by taking the BRICS conception of a "win-win" collaboration of all the participating countries, of extending the New Silk Roadthe idea of rebuilding the ancient Silk Road with modern means, modern technology, modern infrastructure, and extend it to become the "World Land-Bridge." WeEIR, the Schiller Institutehave produced a 370-page study, with the title "The New Silk Road Becomes the World Land-Bridge," which is the idea of taking that conception, in a certain sense take an economic miracle, like the United States did it repeatedly, with Lincoln, with Franklin D. Roosevelt, with Kennedy; or Germany did it after the Second World War, with the German Economic Miracle; or China has been doing it for the last 30 years, where China developed in 30 years what other major nations needed 200 years for! And China is now offering that Chinese economic miracle as a model of economic development for all the countries who want to be part of it. And it is moving quite nicely: Latin America is already part of it; large parts of Asia are part of it; Africa is very much interested in it. The Egyptian President el-Sisi, has just completed the second Suez Canal, in one year. And, that is part of the Chinese Maritime Silk Road. So, when I read that the Chinese just conducted a conference with the Arab leaders, and they responded very well to the idea of having economic development in the Middle East, I was extremely happy. Because this is what we proposed in 2012, where we said we have to have a solution where Russia, China, India, Iran, Egyp, and hopefully Germany, Italy, France, the United States, all work together to develop the Middle East economically. We have to give a perspective especially to young people, that they want to study, in order to be able to raise a family, rather than joining the jihadis; where we have to offer them something where they start to love you, instead of hating you. I mean, the only way that we will ever come out of this is, stop the hate! Stop this destruction! Stop the drones! For every drone killing a terrorist, you are creating 50 new terrorists! Have we not learned that lesson? So, we have to replace this policy of destruction, of militarization, which doesn't serve anybody except a couple of billionaires. And look, the United States is falling apart! Have you travelled recently over a highway? Have you tried to go by car from Washington to New York? Your chance of ending up in a pothole, is higher than winning the Nobel Prize! [laughter] Well, that's not a good proportion. But anyway, if you go by the train, how many miles of the fast train system has the United States built in the last decades? None. Zero. How many has China built? I think it's around 18,000 km right now. The goal is 50,000 by 2020-something. But, they have already built 18,000! I was lucky enough to travel from Beijing to Shanghai with one of these Chinese-engineered made fast trains, and it goes 310 km; and you can take your water, fill it to the brim and not one drop falls out of it, because they go smooth, quick, quietmore quiet than this room! [laughter]
Gravel: Siemens. Siemens is the one that built that technology. Isn't that maglev?
Zepp-LaRouche: Well, no, no. The train I went on was a Chinese-engineered technology. I'm not talking about the maglev, no. This was a different fast- train system. CC/Khalidshou I'm saying, why can we not create a movement in the United States, which says: If the United States joins the Silk Road, joins the World Land-Bridge, rather than wasting all this investment in military productswhich is not so great anymore, anyway; you know the Chinese are just outdoing you there too? And why can we not build an infrastructure in the United States, have fast train systems connecting the East Coast; replace obsolete, old airplanes by having maglev trains, or other fast trains? And reconstruct the United States! Build a couple of new cities! The Chinese are building one new city after the other; why can the United States not build a dozen new cities in the |
This is a beautiful piece of art and a great description
Thanks for sharing.
(Led here by following your works ^_^)
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=864472.msg9626998#msg9626998 At this rate I might soon develop a wood addiction myselfThis is a beautiful piece of art and a great descriptionThanks for sharing.(Led here by following your works ^_^)
WoodCollector
Offline
Activity: 168
Merit: 100
Full MemberActivity: 168Merit: 100 Re: "Transcendence" a $750 Bitcoin Art Piece November 23, 2014, 05:03:01 PM #14 I have received a lot of inquires about doing Bitcoin art bongs over the past 3 days. In order to cut back on time and cost i would like to do them all at once so i can turn out all the blanks on the lathe in one day so i do not have to keep going back and fourth. Doing it this way can knock about $100 off the cost of each bong so if you would like to order a Bitcoin art bong please contact me by Friday November 28th.
Thanks ROFLMFAO - The bullshit faggot dictators (A.K.A The Mods) banned this account. May you all rot in cryptocurrency hell.
WoodCollector
Offline
Activity: 168
Merit: 100
Full MemberActivity: 168Merit: 100 Re: "Transcendence" a $750 Bitcoin Art Piece November 23, 2014, 05:11:58 PM #16 Quote from: TookDk on November 23, 2014, 05:03:58 PM Great work, I been following your thread with "WTB wood".
People like you are good for the bitcoin community and ecosystem.
Thanks TookDk. Bitcoin really has made obtaining rare and exotic wood so much easier and more cost effective. I just bought a load of some BEAUTIFUL purpleheart wood with bitcoin and in all my years this is the best i have over come across. I have been praying for someone to want a BTC carved out of purpleheart as i think it would be one of my most beautiful BTC logo carvings yet. Thanks TookDk. Bitcoin really has made obtaining rare and exotic wood so much easier and more cost effective. I just bought a load of some BEAUTIFUL purpleheart wood with bitcoin and in all my years this is the best i have over come across. I have been praying for someone to want acarved out of purpleheart as i think it would be one of my most beautifullogo carvings yet. ROFLMFAO - The bullshit faggot dictators (A.K.A The Mods) banned this account. May you all rot in cryptocurrency hell.
ducatitalia
Offline
Activity: 250
Merit: 250
100% Positive EBAY Feedback Since 2001
Sr. MemberActivity: 250Merit: 250100% Positive EBAY Feedback Since 2001 Re: "Transcendence" a $750 Bitcoin Art Piece November 23, 2014, 06:16:08 PM #17 Quote from: WoodCollector on November 23, 2014, 01:58:22 AM
Commissioned by:
Material: Grade AAAA Cocobolo with Purpleheart base
Price: $750 usd
Transcend into the reimagination of economics...the reinvention of finance...the transition from centralized exploitation to individual empowerment as ducatitalia once said. This piece represents the infinite movement of BTC itcoin as it elicits curiosity into places unknown.
Transcendence was carved from
Thank you to ducatitalia for allowing me the opportunity to create this beautiful representation of Bitcoins infinite movement.
Commissioned by: ducatitalia Material: Grade AAAA Cocobolo with Purpleheart basePrice: $750 usdTranscend into the reimagination of economics...the reinvention of finance...the transition from centralized exploitation to individual empowerment as ducatitalia once said. This piece represents the infinite movement ofitcoin as it elicits curiosity into places unknown.Transcendence was carved from Cocobolo wood imported from Costa Rica. Unable to be portrayed through photography, Transcendence moves while standing still as the high oil content of Cocobolo wood emits an iridescence much like a tigers eye stone or a hologram.Thank you to ducatitalia for allowing me the opportunity to create this beautiful representation of Bitcoins infinite movement.
Sincerest thanks to WoodCollector for considering my crazy ideas, for being willing to take on this commissioning and for putting so much passion and energy into this unique BTC art piece. This work will display proudly and prominently as a statement of Bitcoin's infinite movement and evolution, and will indeed stand as a symbol of transition from centralized exploitation to individual empowerment.
For anyone potentially interested in having an art piece created...I highly recommend WoodCollector without hesitation. His talent speaks for itself, and I can assure you that you are dealing with someone at the top of their craft...I feel honored to have had the chance to work with him.
Just bought lighting for the display and will post pictures as soon as possible. Sincerest thanks to WoodCollector for considering my crazy ideas, for being willing to take on this commissioning and for putting so much passion and energy into this uniqueart piece. This work will display proudly and prominently as a statement of Bitcoin's infinite movement and evolution, and will indeed stand as a symbol of transition from centralized exploitation to individual empowerment.For anyone potentially interested in having an art piece created...I highly recommend WoodCollector without hesitation. His talent speaks for itself, and I can assure you that you are dealing with someone at the top of their craft...I feel honored to have had the chance to work with him.Just bought lighting for the display and will post pictures as soon as possible. Top Bitrated Escrow Service: Racer Great BTC Resources: www.thebtcboss.com
Interest Free Loans: Here BTC: 1LUwMs4QJNPWZmaSrD4Uk8SrHSkbaGvqt4New York is not a place where hope lives long.
On the eve of the 2017 NBA Draft, Knicks president Phil Jackson appeared on the team’s MSG Network to explain why the team was entertaining trade offers for Kristaps Porzingis, the best young prospect the franchise has seen since Patrick Ewing. Not that there are many contenders for that particular throne. And while Knicks fans understandably don’t extend much benefit of the doubt to Jackson and the front office, trading a player like Porzingis is practically unheard of, especially for the reasons that the Knicks are considering trading him.
Tension between Porzingis and the Knicks rose following a missed exit interview following the season; Porzingis’s brother has acted as an intermediary since. But the rift goes all the way back to the 2015 draft, when Jackson reportedly preferred Duke center Jahlil Okafor for, let’s say unconventional reasons. Following the season, Jackson expressed concerns about Porzingis’s ability to stand up to a full season’s schedule, and bizarrely complimented him for going a full game without taking a 3-pointer. Jackson has openly antagonized star Carmelo Anthony for months, which frustrated Porzingis, who sees Anthony as a mentor. And with the team president in open war with his two best players, the Knicks have held pre-draft workouts accentuating the Triangle offense — a system neither quite fits, and which likely precludes the Knicks’ selecting top prospects such as De’Aaron Fox.
According to ESPN’s Ramona Shelburne, the Knicks, who currently hold the No. 8 pick, have been in touch with every team that has a top-5 pick, and are looking for one of those picks in addition to a talented young star. For instance, Ian Begley reports that potential Phoenix deals include Dragan Bender or Marquese Chriss along with the No. 4 pick. But even in the best case scenario, the sort of young player the Knicks could get from the teams in the top five accentuates the trouble with trading a player like Porzingis.
Prospects like Chriss or Julius Randle of the Lakers or even Jaylen Brown on the Celtics all have potential, but it’s uncertain whether they’ll fulfill it and become playoff-caliber starters. And that uncertainty goes double for whomever the Knicks draft, whether it’s Jackson’s reported favorite, Kansas’s Josh Jackson, or the big man the team has reportedly eyed as a Porzingis replacement, Arizona’s Lauri Markkanen. Porzingis has room to improve as well, but fulfilling potential is much less in doubt — he’s already incredibly valuable on the floor.
Alonzo Mourning Joe Smith Brevin Knight Kevin Johnson Carlos Boozer Michael Beasley Chris Webber Mike Miller Elton Brand Rasheed Wallace Gilbert Arenas Ronnie Brewer Hedo Turkoglu Stephon Marbury James Harden Terry Cummings Jason Kidd Wayman Tisdale The small list of young, good players who were traded Since 1980, all players who were traded in the first three years of their career, younger than 23, and ranked in the top 100 of Win Shares through their first two seasons.
Dealing a young player who has made an immediate impact is exceedingly rare. Next to this paragraph is a list of every player since 1980 who was traded in the first three years of his career, despite being 22 or younger (Porzingis is 21) and ranked in the top 100 of Win Shares through his first two seasons.
Win Shares aren’t an absolute measure of a player’s worth — Porzingis trails the marks set by fringe NBA players such as Josh Childress and Nenad Kristic through two years — but they’re good enough to give us a broad peer group. For the most part, a team only parts with a promising young player when its hand is forced either by the salary cap or by the player himself.
Webber, for instance, had negotiated an opt-out into his rookie deal, and forced a trade due to disagreement with coach Don Nelson. Elton Brand, traded after his second season, was a flight risk at a time before restricted free agency gave home teams an advantage in retaining players. As one of the most valuable rookies ever drafted, Kevin Johnson was traded by the Cavaliers — the worst franchise of the decade — as part of a lopsided deal for Larry Nance and Mike Sanders. Arenas was a second-round pick and restricted free agent. He flipped a coin to decide where to sign; the coin came up Washington and spawned a new rule. You know about James Harden.
Under slightly different circumstances, Jackson would have the right idea. The Knicks have needs at virtually every position; talent-poor teams are supposed to roll large assets into smaller ones in the hopes of turning one potential star into two or three starters. But Porzingis isn’t just a prospect. He’s the sort of concrete asset that teams like the Knicks should be turning their organization inside-out to make happy.
Porzingis’s offensive numbers flattened out in his sophomore season, which may seem like reason for concern. But underneath modest gains to his overall shooting percentage, Porzingis made improvements in key areas. He scored much better around the rim, improving from 57.6 to 70.1 percent on shots from 0 to 3 feet, and from midrange, improving from 40.5 to 48.2 percent from 10 to 16 feet. This was offset by a nosedive on his percentage on long 2s, but he also took fewer of those shots in his second season in favor of more 3-pointers as he adjusted to the NBA 3-point line. Still, he was a good but not exceptional offensive player in a year when fellow young, big stars Karl-Anthony Towns and (especially) Nikola Jokic had breakout seasons.
But while Porzingis has untapped potential on offense, he’s already one of the best defensive players in the league. Here’s a chart showing the defenders who affected opponents’ shot value the most in the regular season :
POINTS AGAINST DEFENDER DEFENDER EXPECTED ACTUAL DIFF. DIFF. PER GAME Draymond Green 1066 866 -200 -2.64 Rudy Gobert 1078 903 -175 -2.16 Anthony Davis 839 700 -139 -1.86 Kristaps Porzingis 812 691 -121 -1.84 Hassan Whiteside 885 764 -121 -1.57 Myles Turner 1014 890 -124 -1.53 LaMarcus Aldridge 706 596 -110 -1.53 Andre Roberson 871 758 -113 -1.43 Giannis Antetokounmpo 811 706 -105 -1.32 Which defenders hampered opponents’ shooting the most? Regular season 2016-17. “Expected” value is what a shooter would make against an average defender. Source: NBA
Though he isn’t as well known for his defense as peers on this list, his production stands alongside that of some of the best defensive players in the league. Meanwhile, Towns was ranked 79th, and Jokic was 479th out of 485. In an environment where teams are increasingly packing a few specialized skills into their big men, Porzingis’s ability to protect the rim, score inside and stretch the floor make him ready to contribute to a contending team right now, today, even if he isn’t quite ready to carry an offense.
In sum, Porzingis’s production outpaces his hype. That makes his place on the trading block something familiar to Knicks fans: a reality even more nightmarish than advertised.
VIDEO: Why the No. 1 pick is such a valuable crapshootX-Men: Days of Future Past will gross $111 million by the end of the four-day holiday weekend, according to studio estimates distributed early Monday. Factoring in overseas grosses, Bryan Singer's film has topped $300 million worldwide in its first few days.
That is the biggest opening of any movie in the X-Men franchise, and it kicks off what should be a stellar summer for its distributor, Fox.
The studio already scored two hits in April — Rio 2 and The Other Woman. While the former has grossed just $122 million in the United States, it has surpassed $400 million worldwide thanks to its massive popularity overseas.
Also read: 'X-Men' Stars Evan Peters, Shawn Ashmore Nerd Out About 'X-Men: The Animated Series' and Favorite Characters (Video)
The Other Woman, a romantic comedy that received middling reviews, has been a big hit thanks to a dearth of movies that appeal to women. With $4.5 million in projected grosses this weekend, the $40 million movie has banked $78 million in the United States – and $164 million worldwide.
This is but a sign of what's to come for the studio, whose next release is The Fault in Our Stars, a teen drama that has rival studios in awe. Based on a book by best-selling author and vlogger John Green, the movie boasts a massive following online and a movie star-in-training in Shailene Woodley.
Also read: 'Fault in Our Stars' Rising: How Social Media Is Turning the Bestseller Into a Shailene Woodley Box-Office Hit
Its social mentions rival those of fellow blockbusters X-Men, 22 Jump Street and Maleficent – not bad for a movie that cost $12 million to produce.
It remains to be seen whether this massive social buzz will translate into tickets sold, but advanced tracking projects an opening of more than $30 million. Fox is underselling the numbers, as all studios tend to do in advance of a release.
Fox's next release will be How to Train Your Dragon 2, as sure a hit as there is this summer. Though the bulk of the grosses will go to DreamWorks Animation, Fox will also benefit from the biggest animated film of the season.
Following Dragon is Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, another sequel that poses just one question for its distributor: how high?
The only question mark on the entire schedule is Let's Be Cops, an action comedy set for mid-August. If it hits, all the better. If not, it is a gentle gust during an otherwise serene summer.
As for the rest of the box office, Godzilla grossed $38 million and had another strong weekend on IMAX screens, which stuck with the primordial monster rather than jumping to the mutants of X-Men.
Blended finished third with $17 million for the weekend, a pedestrian opening for the Adam Sandler-Drew Barrymore romantic comedy. It barely held off Neighbors, which has topped $100 million in just three weeks.
Million Dollar Arm, the baseball drama starring Jon Hamm, dipped below $10 million over the holiday, a disappointing result for Disney.
X-Men grossed more than all of those movies put together, though next weekend it faces a potent newcomer, Disney's Maleficent.
The post 'X-Men: Days of Future Past' Climbs to $302 Million Worldwide, Kicking Off Fox's Stellar Summer appeared first on TheWrap.
Photo credit: 20th Century FoxProtesters campaigning to stop Sheffield Council’s controversial tree felling programme have had their latest appeal rejected by the court.
Campaigners from Sheffield Tree Action Groups had launched an appeal and new injunction in a bid to halt the Street Ahead scheme that has seen more than 3,000 trees replaced since 2012.
But both challenges have been rejected.
Councillor Bryan Lodge, Cabinet Member for the Environment, said: “We are pleased that once again the Council’s actions in relation to street trees have been supported by the court and the claimants appeal and this new attempt, via an injunction, to stop the Streets Ahead works have both been rejected.
“We have said before and reiterate that we are working in the best interests of the whole of the city.
“To date, under the Streets Ahead contract we have replaced just over 3,800 street trees but as a council, since August 2012 alone, we have planted more than 55,700 trees and created 17 new woodlands.
“We do value our green heritage and are working hard each and every day to ensure that we still have trees in the city for future generations to enjoy.
“Now that the court proceedings are over, we hope that we can now be allowed to get on with our street tree replacement programme without fear of further wasteful litigation, the cost of which ends up being paid by council tax payers.”
Fierce debate has raged over the felling of Sheffield’s highway trees since the introduction of the scheme in 2012.
Campaigners insist there are alternatives to removing and replacing mature trees as part of Sheffield Council’s £2.2bn Streets Ahead contract, while the council claims there is no other solution.NEW DELHI: The government is likely to soon enact a law for rehabilitation of Hindu refugees from Pakistan and Bangladesh. At a meeting held at home minister Rajnath Singh’s residence, the issue was discussed along with the recent Maoist attack in Chhattisgarh and how to get past the roadblocks in the way of the land acquisition bill.The meeting was attended by Union ministers Arun Jaitley, Sushma Swaraj, Nitin Gadkari, Ravi Shakar Prasad and Venkaiah Naidu apart from BJP president Amit Shah, party member Ramlal and RSS functionary Krishna Gopal. Sources said the issue was taken up on the insistence of RSS."The issue has been of concern to the party as well as the Sangh Parivar. It was discussed during the meeting and a decision will be taken in due course," said a BJP member close to Rajnath Singh.There are over one lakh Hindu and Sikh refugees who have migrated from Pakistan and Bangladesh over the years due to various reasons including persecution by the majority community in those countries. More and more such people keep pouring into the country every year. These refugees have been forced to live in India on short-term visas that are extended periodically. Associations of these refugees have been for long demanding citizenship for them.The Centre had last year set up a task force to expedite pending citizenship requests from refugees and promised to give them long-term visas (extending up to 10-15 years) in case citizenship issues were not processed quickly.There are about 400 Pakistani Hindu refugee settlements in cities like Jodhpur, Jaisalmer, Bikaner and Jaipur. Most Hindu refugees from Bangladesh live in West Bengal and north-eastern states.RSS has been campaigning for rehabilitation of such refugees for several years with arguments that their percentage in Bangladesh and Pakistan population has been consistently dwindling and that it was Centre’s responsibility to give them protection.In November last year, Rajnath Singh approved a number of steps to ease grant of citizenship to such refugees. Some of these included manual acceptance of applications for citizenship, consideration of an affidavit filed before the authority prescribed under Rule 38 of the Citizenship Rules, 2009, in lieu of renunciation certificate and permission to the children of such refugees, who entered India on the basis of their parents’ passport, to apply for citizenship without a passport.The latest move is consistent with the promise that PM Narendra Modi made during election rallies in West Bengal and Rajasthan. Modi had said that Hindu refugees from Pakistan and Bangladesh would be treated on par with Indian citizens.Donald Trump has had no bigger fan and friend on the Religious Right than Liberty University president Jerry Falwell Jr. On Monday, Falwell invited political operative Ralph Reed, another Trump booster, to speak to Liberty’s students in the wake of a very bad week for Trump. In his speech to the Christian school, Reed made the case that Christians have a duty to vote for Trump.
Reed’s speech offered brief criticism of Trump’s recently unearthed bragging about getting away with kissing and groping women without their consent, saying he did not “appreciate” the “offensive and inappropriate” comments. He then shifted immediately into a much longer discussion of the controversies around Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server.
Reed criticized those tempted to sit out the election or vote for a third party candidate, drawing an analogy to Ronald Reagan’s statement that Christians who portrayed capitalism and communism as equally flawed chose to remove themselves “from the struggle between right and wrong and good and evil.” Said Reed:
We must confront the choice before us and vote for someone who actually has a chance to become president. We dare not and we cannot surrender our vote during such an important election. Retreating to the stained-glass ghetto from whence we came, refusing to muddy our boots with the mire and muck of politics is not an option for followers of Christ. We are called to put away our “my way or the highway” pride, forsake cynicism and negativity, and participate fully as citizens, always cheerful, always winsome, always ready to defend our faith.
Reed argued that “on issue after issue on matters involving grave and intrinsic moral evil, there are stark differences between the two major-party nominees for president.” Among the issues he cited were abortion, religious freedom, the Hobby Lobby case, judges, the Iran nuclear deal, repeal of Obamacare, education reform and school choice, the “redefinition” of marriage and “rebuilding our hollowed-out military.” He said Trump “has pledged to protect life from conception to natural death” and praised Trump’s list of “20 outstanding conservative jurists” for future Supreme Court appointments.
Reed told the Liberty students not to be discouraged by the election, saying that the “pro-family, religious conservative movement is only about 40 years old” in contrast to the centuries of slavery and Jim Crow that preceded the passage of federal civil rights laws.
Reed said evangelical Christians have it in their power to win elections if they would only turn out in greater numbers:
According to exit polls, self-identified evangelical Christians comprise roughly 27 percent of the electorate; faithful, frequently Mass-attending Roman Catholics made up another 10 percent of the electorate. Together they are the largest, most vibrant, and most dynamic single constituency in the electorate today; a larger force than the Latino, the African-American, and the union vote combined.
Reed recalled that Falwell’s father, Jerry Falwell Sr., described his mission as getting people born again, baptized, and registered to vote. Falwell Jr. has said before that Trump reminds him of his father, and in reality the similarity is getting stronger as a super-Bannonized Trump ramps up his attacks on Hillary and Bill Clinton and says that if he were in charge she would be in jail. After all, it was Jerry Falwell Sr. who in the 1990s used his Old Time Gospel Hour to hawk videotapes that accused Bill Clinton of being involved in drug smuggling and murder when he was governor of Arkansas.
There’s at least one way in which Trump himself does not seem to be taking the advice Reed offered Liberty students: “Honey attracts more than vinegar, and a winsome attitude wins our fellow citizens more than harsh language or angry words.”Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders Bernard (Bernie) SandersPush to end U.S. support for Saudi war hits Senate setback Sanders: 'I fully expect' fair treatment by DNC in 2020 after 'not quite even handed' 2016 primary Sanders: 'Damn right' I'll make the large corporations pay 'fair share of taxes' MORE (I) says he will decide by March whether to run for president in 2016.
"I don't want to do it unless I can do it well," the independent senator told the Associated Press in an interview published Friday. "I don't want to do it unless we can win this thing."
ADVERTISEMENT
Sanders said it would be a "gut decision," and that he is still unsure if he would run as an independent or a Democrat, setting off a potential primary challenge from the left to likely frontrunner Hillary Clinton.
Sanders would be 75 years old next year, but said that his "health is good."
Sanders's comments are only the latest sign that the Vermont senator is serious about a 2016 run.
While polls show that former Secretary of State Clinton is the clear frontrunner for the Democratic nomination, a number of progressive groups have pushed for a liberal challenger. MoveOn.org is seeking to draft Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), but she has denied plans to run.
Earlier this month Sanders traveled to early-voting Iowa to deliver a speech to a progressive group.
Last month, a veteran Democratic strategist, Tad Devine, signed on to help his possible campaign. Devine was a top adviser to Al Gore in 2000 and to John Kerry in 2004.
In the interview, Sanders cited growing income inequality as motivating his possible bid, arguing that the middle class is "collapsing."
"You have one family, the Walton family of Walmart, owning more wealth than the bottom 40 percent of the American people," he told the AP.
"We have 95 percent of all new income going to the top 1 percent. You have millions of families unable to afford to send their kids to college," he continued. "People are desperately worried about whether or not they are going to retire with dignity."Ramona Shelburne discusses how realistic it is for Ronda Rousey to be ready to fight Holly Holm at UFC 200 on July 9 in Las Vegas. (2:47)
The UFC has targeted a bantamweight title rematch between Holly Holm and Ronda Rousey on July 9 in Las Vegas, despite a report that Holm wishes to fight sooner.
UFC president Dana White told Los Angeles Times on Wednesday that "it's Rousey" next for Holm. The Times printed a story earlier this week, quoting Holm's manager, Lenny Fresquez, stating Holm has interest in fighting Miesha Tate instead.
Editor's Picks ESPN exclusive: Rousey says she's down, but not out In the days after her stunning defeat to Holly Holm at UFC 193, Ronda Rousey told Ramona Shelburne in an exclusive interview that there's no question she'll fight again.
White insisted Rousey would be ready.
"We're real concerned with [Fresquez's] opinion," White said, sarcastically.
Fresquez told the Times: "Holly's used to staying active. We're from the old school, and we believe the No. 1 contender is there for a reason. [Tate] deserves a shot, but it's not for me to decide."
Holm (10-0) claimed the UFC title in stunning fashion last month, knocking out Rousey (12-1) in the second round with a left kick to the head at UFC 193. White immediately expressed interest in scheduling a rematch. Rousey recently told ESPN The Magazine she wants the Holm fight but is facing a lengthy recovery time from their last encounter.
Dana White made it clear Holly Holm's next fight will be a rematch with Ronda Rousey. "It's Rousey," White told the Los Angeles Times. Paul Crock/AFP/Getty Images
Tate (17-5), a former Strikeforce bantamweight champion, is on a four-fight winning streak and was actually expected to fight Rousey early next year, before the UFC switched gears and announced a matchup between Rousey and Holm.
White, who has been in contact with Rousey since her defeat, told ESPN last week he and UFC CEO Lorenzo Fertitta should "probably lose our promoter's license" if the company didn't book a rematch. The UFC is scheduled to host a landmark UFC 200 pay-per-view event on July 9 at a newly built 20,000-seat arena in Las Vegas.
"Ronda Rousey has gone undefeated; she's taken the sport to another level and beaten the best women in the world in 14 seconds, 30 seconds," White said last week. "She deserves a rematch. Holly agrees she deserves a rematch. We'll figure it out."
Rousey, a former U.S. Olympian in judo, had won all 12 of her professional fights by knockout or submission before losing to Holm. She became the first female fighter to sign a UFC contract in 2012 and entered the promotion as the inaugural 135-pound champion. Fighting out of Glendale, California, Rousey recorded six UFC title defenses.I went to New York this week to give a two-minute pitch about my memoir to some 200 event planners from an array of North America’s JCC’s and synagogues. (Think speed dating for 262 authors and 200 or so book bookers.)
Right before the pitch session, I went to the bathroom, where I first bent over to wipe the toilet seat, at which my red reading glasses fell from their post in my cleavage into the toilet bowl. I don’t think the 10-second rule applies in this case, so I quickly fished them out and washed them off with a lot of soap.
This of course got me thinking about one of my common ruminations: What would be the cutoff value of an item for me to retrieve it from a public toilet?
Just how far—or how deep—would I go?
Clearly the answer is a ratio of preciousness of the sunken treasure to grossness of the latrine. [scatological alert]
This nasty thought occurs most frequently when I am either in the worst kind of public bathrooms in China (the most delicate picture I can give is a gutter with bare-bottomed women squatting one behind the other) or using a Port-a-John at, say, the huge grassy mall area near the Smithsonian museums in DC.
Usually my first picture of an imagined something plunking into the muck is the ring that my second ex-husband’s mother had had made for me with her grandfather’s exotic pearl (I’m not sure why her grandfather had a pearl) as an engagement ring. It’s quite a beautiful ring that I would love one of my daughters to have.
I cannot answer whether or not I would dive in to get the ring. I think with a plastic baggie on my hand it might be okay. Ugh, but how to clean all the little crevices? I just don’t know.
Generally I live most in fear of losing information, such as my to-do list. But notes like that would be soaked and soiled beyond recognition.
After the pitch I told one of the “bookers” what had happened to my glasses, and she said, “When my daughter was little, I always wondered what would happen if she were to fall into a Port-a-John and whether I would go in to fish her out.”
I’m never sure if I should be pleased or dismayed that someone has come up with a more neurotic scenario than I have ever dreamt up.
How far—or how deep—would you go... and for what?
MARRIAGE, RELATIONSHIPS, PSYCHOTHERAPY AND MORE IN MY NEW MEMOIR...
Confessions of a Worrywart: Husbands, Lovers, Mothers, and Others
Check it out on Amazon.com, Kindle, and Smashwords
Readers of all ages will relate to this deeply personal story, told with comical sensibility by a quirky, startlingly honest mother, daughter, ex-wife, and dog lover, who—à la Nora Ephron—will feel like a dear friend. Confessions of a Worrywart: Husbands, Lovers, Mothers, and Others will stay with you long after you finish reading it. (adapted from Amazon description and culled from Amazon reviews)
The perfect book for worrywarts or anyone who enjoys a “neurotic, hilarious, poignant,” deeply personal story.Ring of Honor COO Joe Koff discusses a number of topics including this weekend’s Death Before Dishonor event, as well as a potential Daniel Bryan return.
Since 2002, Ring of Honor has been one of the premier promotions on the professional wrestling scene. During a time where it seemed as if WWE had fully engulfed the sports entertainment world, this small promotion emerged and has been growing and thriving ever since. In 2011, the promotion took another step in that growth when it was purchased by Sinclair Broadcast Group and Joe Koff was named the Chief Operating Officer of the company.
Ring of Honor has only continued to make strides since Koff took over in his role as COO, and one of the goals that has been met is regularly showcasing its product to the fans with pay-per-view events. This Friday night in Las Vegas, ROH will present another edition of its Death Before Dishonor show live on PPV, which the COO is rightfully excited about.
“You know, we’re really, really excited. There’s a lot of good things happening on that show,” Koff said. “I actually shouldn’t just pick out this show because every ROH show is special and it seems something happens at every one, but the fact that Kenny King will be facing KUSHIDA for this TV title in his hometown makes it special. The fact that we’re going to see [Minoru] Suzuki wrestle our world champion Cody Rhodes makes it special. And the six-man title match — which features Bullet Club’s Adam Page and The Young Bucks taking on either The Kingdom or Bully Ray and The Briscoe Brothers — really makes this show a must-see event.”
Now when you’re the boss, it’s sometimes tough to single out one single match from a card that you’re a bit ecstatic about. But Koff has a bit of a soft spot in his heart for a match that features a certain competitor who just so happened to appear as a contestant on ABC’s hit show The Bachelorette recently.
“I’m a bit of a sentimentalist and a TV guy as well, and I think Kenny King did an amazing job on The Bachelorette,” Koff admitted. “I don’t like to play favorites with my roster because, you know, they’re like children and I don’t mean that in a negative sense, I love them equally, but I would be happy for Kenny. I think this is a good spot for him — his family’s there, he has a lot of notoriety and he’s worked hard for this moment. I’m looking forward to that event. ”
Again, ROH putting on yet another PPV event is a testament to the growth the promotion has enjoyed in recent years, especially since Sinclair took over in 2011. But just what was behind the growth spurt since 2011?
“I think what happened in 2011 was more backing, more television, more distribution — just a real company backing an incredible wrestling company,” Koff said. “I think it was just naturally time in its history, in its youth, actually.
“We have Ring of Honor in its teenage years, and for anyone who’s a father and has worked with teenagers, you know what these years can be like. I will tell you, from my perspective as a parent of teenagers, my boys and girls are very well-behaved, very respectful and really serious about what they do. And I think in that analogy, we can see why Ring of Honor has been so successful.”
When it comes to a professional wrestling promotion being as successful as it can be on the biggest stage possible, it’s been proven for decades now that your product needs to regularly be seen on television screens. Through syndication, the Sinclair Group has made this possible on a number of platforms around the country, but the future may hold something larger for Ring of Honor.
“Well, I think you’ll see it. I can envision it because I think it will happen,” the COO predicted when talking about ROH garnering a larger television presence.
“As Sinclair grows and expands its reach around the country, so does Ring of Honor grow with it. There are things on the horizon that your readers and fans might be aware of or not, but I think in the next four of five months, Ring of Honor is poised to be seen in more places than it is today — almost replicating a national-level footprint, although seen in its local markets at its individual time.
“Now we are also seen in what we call ‘in-pattern’ on some of our emerging networks, and this is the wonderful thing about Sinclair, it’s that we are constantly innovating and constantly building and constantly programming. And the emerging network business, which a lot of you may not know it by those names, they’re the digi channels that have specialty genre like Comet, which is science fiction, and Charge, which is all-action, or Stadium, which is all-sports. These are all platforms that Sinclair have involvement with if not ownership with, which allows us to have more of a playing field for our product — not to mention cable networks that could come into play down the road for us. The next five years are just really rosy for us.”
One section of the professional wrestling universe as a whole that has seen some growth of its own in recent years is women’s wrestling. With the wealth of women’s talent all around the world these days, the females have been given the platform to perform they’ve deserved for quite a while now.
Ring of Honor, of course, has begun to capitalize on the women’s movement by providing its Women of Honor programming across |
sixth World ayurveda Congress, to AIMIL Pharmaceuticals India Ltd for its commercial production and sale.
Dr. Mohammad Junail of AIMIL said his company has signed an agreement with DRDO for the commercial launch of three of their herbal products. "Lukosin has already been launched. The two other products will soon be commercially launched in Indian markets," he informed.
Leucoderma is generally considered an incurable disease, but Lukosin has been extremely effective against it. The drug is also on sale at the expo.
"The quest to cure leucoderma (Vitiligo) has finally ended with the development of the new herbal product with extensive studies by the scientists of DIBER. It can effectively combat the ailment and render the much-needed service to mankind," said Dr. W. Selvamurthy of DRDO.BPA: Demonstration Project would stabilize bayou in more natural state
A controversy has arisen concerning a permit application to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers by the Harris County Flood Control District related to a stream/bank restoration and erosion control project on Buffalo Bayou known as the Memorial Park Demonstration Project (Project). The Bayou Preservation Association (BPA) supports the Project because it will address an active and increasingly growing erosion problem on Buffalo Bayou that is destructive to riparian flora, fauna, native habitat and it’s banks.
BPA is a local non-profit corporation with a mission to “to protect and restore the richness and diversity of [Houston area] waterways”. In BPA’s view, the Project is critical in helping to stabilize Buffalo Bayou in a more natural and sustainable state using Natural Channel Design. Some public controversy arises from a mistaken impression that Buffalo Bayou in the vicinity of Memorial Park and the River Oaks Country Club is in a “natural” condition. It is certainly true that there are trees, vegetation and wildlife in the area, but the channel and banks of the bayou are suffering from severe erosion caused by stressed conditions related to it’s modified or reduced floodplain.
BPA understands and respects the concerns of those who fear any project near Memorial Park. It is wrong, however, to view stopping the Project as “preservation”. The occupation of these riparian habitats and beyond has created irreversible conditions that the bayou is attempting to adjust to but without the space it requires to create stable slopes. Stormwater that once took days to reach the bayou channel and ramped up and down slowly now fills the channel from bank to bank in a matter of hours producing flash-flood erosion generating conditions. Moreover, artificial flow rates of stormwater released from the Addicks and Barker Reservoirs allow for prolonged saturation and bank failure.
The Project is worthy of support because it follows NCD design principles. NCD is a holistic approach to stream restoration and stabilization pioneered by Dr. Dave Rosgen, a Colorado hydrologist. It is a science-based method of stream restoration that uses river science (“fluvial geomorphology”) to restore stream banks and bayou channels to stable configurations that river scientists predict the stream would achieve over long time frames.
Fear of construction is understandable. Habitat, trees and vegetation will be disrupted and some trees will be removed. The majority of the potentially affected trees are on a single tract of private land that has already suffered tremendous losses of land and forest, and will likely lose the remainder if nothing is done that supports natural bank stabilization. The Project includes a plan to replace the collected topsoil after construction. The Project will use natural woody material for structural support. Revegetation methods with native soils and plants on stabilized banks will restore habitat quicker than allowing the banks to move about until such time that it acquires additional land if available and then seeks it’s own point of stability.
It is important to understand that of the 972 trees surveyed in the Project reach, 73 are dead and many others are in a declining state. Only 180 trees are in the impact zone. Many of the surveyed trees are invasive species such as Chinese Tallow, Camphor, Chinaberry, Arizona Ash, Ligustrum and Red Mulberry that are introduced species that also encourage native habitat loss through their short life spans, aggressive root systems and shading of the native trees that could be providing food, long-term bank stability and habitat.
BPA encourages everyone to support the Memorial Park Demonstration Project and to get involved in bayou preservation. After all, we are the Bayou City.
Robert Rayburn is president of the Bayou Preservation Association. He can be reached at bpa@bayoupreservation.org.The idea of a connected home, which lets me control every lightbulb, appliance and service running in my house from virtually anywhere, is certainly intriguing. But years after we first began hearing about the Internet of Things and saw loads of products arrive in stores, the concept is still fraught with problems.
The latest horror story comes from Petnet, which makes a smart feeder for pets that you can set up to periodically dispense treats for your cats and dogs.
It’s certainly a clever idea for easing the task of managing your pet’s eating habits and sticking to a rigid schedule – all while allowing you to control it via the cloud.
Unfortunately, the device relies far too much on receiving instructions from a central server. So when its systems went down earlier today, Petnet feeders stopped dispensing food as per the schedule users had set – which means poor Fido will have had to go hungry for hours on end.
https://twitter.com/alanzeino/status/758209842477604864
That’s a nightmare for pet owners and a potential goldmine for lawyers who specialize in class action cases.
The trouble with the Internet of Things is that it seems to have developed into a buzzword for just about any hardware company to latch onto. Accounting for security issues, fallbacks in case of outages and device failures are all par for the course for more mature product categories (and we still have trouble with some of them). Sadly, these don’t seem to figure into the plans of most IoT firms.
It’s obviously not just Petnet’s customers that are at risk – yesterday, several of Nest’s connected thermostats went offline in the US right in the middle of a massive heatwave across the country.
One day, the connected home will be a reality as hardware manufacturers intend. But we most certainly aren’t there yet, and I’m not ready to dip my toes into that pond at the moment.Chuck Redding says he's been overwhelmed by support since his attack.
A 75-year-old gay Florida man says he was pulled from his car and beaten to the ground in the name of Donald Trump.
Chuck Redding of Sarasota describes the incident this way: ‘He yanked the door open, dragged me out, ripped my shirt. I was on the pavement. He kept saying, “You know my new president says we can kill all you faggots now.”‘
Redding tells Gay Star News he noticed he was being followed home Monday (14 November) from a local bowling alley ‘extremely close’ by an SUV – possibly because he has pro-marriage equality and Human Rights Campaign bumper and window stickers on his car.
He initially didn’t think anything of it except there was ‘a jerk’ who was following too close.
But as he pulled on to his street he noticed the SUV creeping even closer knew something was very wrong.
Redding parked his car in the middle of the street in front of a neighbor’s house and says the driver instantly appeared outside his car door and started banging on the window.
Unfortunately, Redding had not locked his door.
‘He yanked the door open and dragged me out, ripped my shirt. I was on the pavement,’ Redding says.
He has been left with a cut hand swollen to twice its normal size, a badly bruised arm, a ripped toe and scrapped knee.
The attack stopped when the neighbor came out and yelled. The attacker ran to his SVU and backed down the street at about 45 miles per hour.
Redding ran after the vehicle but was unable to get the license plate number. He filed a report with police and describes the attacker as a Latino in his late 20s or early 30s with a beard and mustache.
Redding, who has had a defibrillator implanted for 20 years, went to the hospital for treatment and is expected to fully recover.
A former flower shop owner, He makes extra money this time of year wrapping Christmas presents for people. But he is unable to do the work for awhile with his hand so injured.
Although shaken, Redding has no plans to hide who he is and has rejected a friend’s suggestion that he removed the pro-LGBT stickers from his car.
‘I’m not,’ he says. ‘In fact, I’m going to look for a larger sticker.’
If he was able to be face-to-face with his attacker now Redding would ask: ‘Who the hell are you? What did I do to you? Why did you do this to me?’WASHINGTON -- In a hearing marked by openly hostile questioning from House Republicans, consumer advocate Elizabeth Warren made her highly anticipated first appearance before Congress as a member of the Obama administration, emphasizing the need for stronger oversight of big banks and small mortgage firms.
Warren, who is currently tasked with setting up the new Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection, was subjected to two and a half hours of inquiry before a Financial Services subcommittee regarding her role at the emerging agency and the scope of its powers. In her testimony, she focused on the need for easily-understood consumer lending terms and stronger enforcement of predatory lending regulations.
"I don't care how big you are, I don't care who you your friends are, everybody follows the law," Warren said, adding later, "What this agency is about is making the prices clear, making the risks clear, making it easy to compare one product to another. The point is to get an informed consumer, because I believe that American families are good at making decisions when they have good information upfront."
Congressional Republicans attempted to portray Warren as the "unaccountable" head of a bureaucracy immune from oversight from Congress or federal agencies. Republicans are waging a two-front war on the CFPB, hoping to cut its funding and weigh down its rulemaking procedures by replacing its single director with a five-member board of directors.
House Financial Services Committee Chairman Spencer Bachus (R-Ala.) has introduced a bill to establish such a board, which has garnered 11 Republican cosponsors, and last week told an audience of international bankers that such a commission was the most feasible way to limit further regulation given Democratic control of the Senate.
Bachus stated early in Wednesday's hearing that the CFPB has "no oversight" and "no accountability," a charge echoed by Reps. Scott Garrett (R-N.J.), Sean Duffy (R-Wis.) and others.
"When we don't have any oversight of what you're doing, I view that as incredibly problematic," said Duffy, a former star of MTV's "The Real World" who has occupied since January the seat long held by Democrat Dave Obey.
Warren was clearly anticipating the claims, which Republicans have been making to the press since President Barack Obama signed the Dodd-Frank financial reform bill into law last summer. She presented lawmakers with 34 pages of written testimony covering everything from the agency's plans for mortgages and credit cards to its budget needs, hiring procedures and organizational chart. Several Democrats on the committee were noticeably irked by the questioning.
"I do think that Dodd-Frank, in allowing the CFPB to be overruled by the safety and soundness regulators, does put a... fail-safe in there," Rep. Stephen Lynch (D-Mass.) said, referring to the bureau's housing within the Federal Reserve, the nation's central bank charged with preserving the stability of the financial system.
Rep. Al Green (D-Texas) ticked off a list of statutory oversight requirements the CFPB is subject to: the Government Accountability Office must perform an annual audit of the new agency's operations; it must submit quarterly reports to the Office of Management and Budget; and the director must appear before Congress at least twice a year. Perhaps more importantly, the Financial Services Oversight Committee can overrule any new regulation issued by the CFPB if the committee deems that the rule poses a threat to bank stability.
Warren's supporters say the main objections to the agency aren't grounded in any serious good-governing principles. Instead, they say, politicians are simply trying to preserve big banks' bottom lines.
"There's been no meaningful oversight of the big financial institutions for more than a generation, and even though the result was financial collapse, there's real resistance to reform," a source close to Warren told HuffPost. "She represents unwanted accountability and balance in the system, and the industry has virtually unlimited resources and lots of allies."
In an interview with HuffPost on Thursday, Rep. Randy Neugebauer (R-Texas) acknowledged that plans to curtail the CFPB's funding were part of an effort to limit its ability to function effectively.
Other Republicans zeroed in on Warren's role in an ongoing settlement with big banks and other mortgage servicers over widespread allegations of improper foreclosure practices. Warren noted that her agency currently has no legal authority to negotiate a settlement, but said she had been asked to advise various negotiators on the deal, since the CFPB will have regulatory responsibility for mortgage companies starting in July.
Warren has been pushing back against efforts to politicize the negotiations. "Political attacks against federal and state law enforcement officials for responding to alleged legal violations are dangerous," she said in a statement released Tuesday. "We know what can happen when laws aren't fairly or consistently enforced because of political pressure, and it doesn't end well for American families, for honest businesses, or for the economy."
Many GOP objections were directed at the notion of consumer protection regulation itself.
"What you're talking about today... is preventing people from being able to fulfill the American Dream!" Rep. Lynn Westmoreland (R-Ga.) said in response to a story from Rep. Bill Huizenga (R-Mich.) about a constituent in the banking industry who told him, "I'm not gonna be able to serve the people... because of the paperwork and the layering."
Warren, however, has said that the CFPB's first task will be to simplify credit card and mortgage disclosures into a single, easy-to-understand page, rather than stacks of paper filled with complicated fine print. Because several different regulators have consumer protection jurisdiction for banking activities, the amount of paperwork required to meet similar rules can be lengthy.
While some Republicans expressed skepticism about Warren's efforts to eliminate unnecessary fine print, Neugebauer told HuffPost on Thursday that he is on board with those plans.
"I get the disclosure piece," Neugebauer told HuffPost. "When I first started buying property, there was a one-page closing statement, there was a one-page note and the deed of trust was the front and back of another piece of paper. And so you'd walk out of a transaction with five pieces of paper."
Democrats at the hearing repeatedly praised Warren, with many suggesting she would make a good director for the nascent consumer protection agency. Rep. Brad Miller (D-N.C.) likened the CFPB to federal groups that began regulating meat during the early 20th century. At the time, Miller noted, the meatpacking industry decried attacks on consumer choice and consumer freedom -- a freedom most consumers did not, in fact, want.
"They did not particularly value the right to buy spoiled beef," Miller said.
"That is a fair point," Rep. Thaddeus McCotter (R-Mich.) responded later in the hearing. "No one wanted to eat it." McCotter argued, however, that preventing rotten food from coming to market 100 years ago also led to overly burdensome food regulations today.
Rep. Steve Pearce (R-N.M.) contested the CFPB's plans to regulate payday lenders. He suggested that existing regulators had done a good job enforcing mortgage laws in recent years, and demanded to know Warren's plans to influence monetary policy, openly mocking favorable descriptions of Warren.
"I wonder if you're gonna be the angel, be the champion for consumers with inflation," Pearce said. "Are you gonna take on the Fed for printing money?"
"I'm sorry, Congressman, but our job is not in monetary policy," Warren replied.
After two and a half hours, the hearing concluded.THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
February 25, 2014
White House Weighs Four Options for Revamping NSA Phone Surveillance
Proposals Range From Running Program Through Phone Companies to Ditching It Altogether
By SIOBHAN GORMAN and DEVLIN BARRETT CONNECT
Feb. 25, 2014 7:32 p.m. ET
WASHINGTON—Administration lawyers have presented the White House with four options for restructuring the National Security Agency’s phone-surveillance program, from ditching the controversial collection altogether to running it through the telephone companies, according to officials familiar with the discussions.
President Barack Obama in January asked U.S. intelligence agencies and the attorney general to report by March 28 on alternatives for revamping the program in a way that would take it out of the NSA’s hands.
The Office of Director of National Intelligence and the Justice Department have provided the options ahead of schedule, these people said.
None of the three options for relocating the data have gained universal favor. But failure to agree on one of them would leave only the option of abolishing the program, which would be a setback for intelligence agencies and other backers of the surveillance effort. Of the three options for relocating the data, two of them—with phone companies or another government agency—appear most technically possible.
Under the current program, the NSA collects millions of U.S. phone records from three phone companies, which former officials have identified as AT&T Inc., Verizon Communications Inc. and Sprint Corp.
Since the start of revelations about NSA surveillance last year by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, the phone-records program has sparked the most controversy. Some lawmakers and government officials have defended it as critical to fighting terrorism, while others argue it amounts to a massive violation of constitutional rights.
Obama administration officials have sought to preserve the collection of phone records in a way that raises fewer concerns about privacy.
One way of doing that would have the phone companies retain the data, officials said. The NSA would then tell the companies when it needs searches of call records concerning specific phone numbers the agency believes are connected to terrorism. The companies would provide the results to the NSA.
Under this model, the NSA would only collect the data that comes in response to the search, rather than millions of unrelated American phone records.
Several lawmakers have proposed legislation on Capitol Hill that would take this approach. But telecommunications companies oppose this option. Phone companies likely would demand liability protection and possibly other conditions to avoid outside demands for data—for instance, for run-of-the-mill legal cases such as divorce proceedings.
Already, some criminal defendants have sought access to the NSA records, claiming the data could help show their innocence.
The phone-company option is also opposed by the chairman of the House intelligence committee, Rep. Mike Rogers (R., Mich.), who told The Wall Street Journal this week that the proposal doesn’t have enough support for committee approval and a House floor vote.
Phone companies have not yet been consulted on options, a telecommunications-industry official said.
A second option presented to the White House would have a government agency other than the NSA hold the data, according to a U.S. official. Candidates for this option could include the Federal Bureau of Investigation, which some current former intelligence officials have recommended.
Another possibility floated in policy circles was turning the program over to the custody of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which oversees the phone-data and other NSA surveillance programs, but judges have balked at an expanded role for the court.
A third option would be for an entity outside the phone companies or the government to hold the data, officials said. This approach has been criticized by privacy groups who say such a third party would just become an extension of the NSA and would provide no additional privacy benefit.
A final alternative would be to scrap the phone-data program and instead bolster investigative efforts under current authorities to obtain the information about possible terrorist connections some other way, an official said. Mr. Obama acknowledged this approach in his January speech, but said “more work needs to be done to determine exactly how this system might work.”
Caitlin Hayden, a spokeswoman for the White House National Security Council, declined to speak about specific proposals.
She said that since the president’s Jan. 17 speech unveiling surveillance-overhaul measures, the Justice Department and intelligence agencies have worked on developing options.
“They have kept us abreast of their progress, and we look forward to reviewing those options,” she said. “Beyond that, I’m not in a position to discuss the details of an ongoing process.”
Mr. Obama will consult with Congress and will seek legislation, as needed, she added.
Two of the options echo recommendations of the president’s review panel, which issued a report in December that proposed the NSA phone program be overhauled so the data be held by either the phone companies or a third party.
In his January speech, Mr. Obama said both of those approaches “pose difficult problems.” Retaining the data at the phone companies, he said, “could require companies to alter their procedures in ways that raise new privacy concerns.”
Establishing a third party to hold the data, he said, could be even more difficult. “Any third party maintaining a single consolidated database would be carrying out what’s essentially a government function, but with more expense, more legal ambiguity, potentially less accountability, all of which would have a doubtful impact on increasing public confidence that their privacy is being protected,” he said.
Separately on Tuesday, the Justice Department notified a convicted terror suspect that NSA bulk-data surveillance had been used against him before he pleaded guilty to a charge of attempted material support for terrorism.
The defendant, an Albanian immigrant named Agron Hasbajrami, pleaded guilty in federal court in Brooklyn in 2012, after he was accused of sending more than $1,000 to someone in Pakistan to finance terrorism.
Since the revelations about NSA spying, the government has notified two criminal defendants that they intended to offer evidence derived from NSA interception of electronic communications. The Hasbajrami notification marks the first time such a notice has been given to a defendant who has already pleaded guilty, officials said.
The letter notifying Mr. Hasbajrami noted that he is still seeking to have his conviction vacated. Mr. Hasbajrami’s attorney, Steve Zissou, said he would seek more information about the surveillance of his client.
Patrick Toomey, a lawyer at the American Civil Liberties Union, said the new filing shows “warrantless surveillance has played a role in more criminal cases than the government has ever before admitted, and the government has been improperly withholding that fact from defendants for years.”
Write to Siobhan Gorman at siobhan.gorman@wsj.com and Devlin Barrett at devlin.barrett@wsj.comCapcom’s Deep Down Is an Online RPG, Only PS4 Mentioned as Platform; Gets Teaser Trailer
Giuseppe Nelva August 1, 2013 5:44:48 AM EST
Yesterday Capcom held a presentation in Japan titled “Capcom Network Games Conference” to introduce the upcoming online titles in development at the company. Between other things (and a lot of social games) more information has been shared about Deep Down.
It’s being developed as an online game, and more details will be shared at Tokyo Game show where the game will be playable, as announced during the presentation. Only PS4 has been mentioned as a platform, even if the game isn’t yet explicitly confirmed as exclusive for Sony’s upcoming next generation console.
In addition to that, the company opened a teaser website for the game, that can be found here and identifies the game as a”Reading” (リーディング) RPG.
No offline mode seems to be present as an internet connection is explicitly required, and “Online Only” is mentioned as well.
A brief teaser trailer has also been shown. You can check it out below (courtesy of our friends at Game HQ Media). You can see further details about the game and its engine here.“Takemusu Aiki” by Morihei Ueshiba, edited by Hideo Takahashi
What don’t we know and why don’t we know it…
When Sam Chin visited Hawaii last year he told us (I’m paraphrasing) that it’s not so bad not to know – as long as you know that you don’t know. That struck a certain cord with me – isn’t this really the first part of the problem?
When I started in Aikido there was very little information available in English. What was available was, we know now, highly sanitized – here’s a good example from the Aikido Journal website, and another one by Meik Skoss on the Koryu.com website. There were far fewer non-Japanese who could speak Japanese at that time, let alone read the original sources, and most of the Japanese in the public eye presented a more-or-less uniform representation of the history and particulars of Aikido.
Now, of course, there are hundreds of books out in English on the subject of Aikido – so what’s the problem?
Well, the material in English, especially that from original sources, is more of an overview than a detailed analysis of the material – a real academic translation has yet to be done.
In fact, the original materials produced by Aikido Founder Morihei Ueshiba are so difficult to read that even most Japanese people decline to read it in their own native language. If they do read it – well, without a particular background and experience there’s just no decoding the stuff. Worse, when we read it in English, not only is it through the lens of the translator and their understanding, but it’s completely out of the context of the world in which the Founder lived, which is highly specialized and complex, and out of the context of certain other specialized fields that are really essential to figuring out what’s going on.
Dan Harden at the 2015 Sangenkai Workshop in Hawaii
I know, I tried, and it didn’t make any sense at all until years later through the lens of greater knowledge in certain areas, and for that I will be eternally grateful to the generosity of Dan Harden, who has been kind enough to share his training with us.
That’s not to denigrate what’s been done so far in terms of English translations, everything has to start somewhere. John Stevens told me himself that he considered his translation of “Takemusu Aiki”, which remains the most complete collection of the Founder in his own words, to be a kind of “Takemusu Aiki – Lite“, so that it would be at least semi-comprehensible to a general audience.
Still, we’re left with a situation in which most Aikido instructors and students, whether they are native-Japanese speakers or not, have no idea what the Founder of their art said or wrote in any detailed way.
Aha! You say, your teacher is a direct student of the Founder, an uchi-deshi, and learned at the feet of the master. Unfortunately, most of the uchi-deshi were young kids without the background to understand the content of the lectures, or the patience to endure the pain of sitting and listening to the Founder on cold winter mornings – they said it themselves. Here are a few examples – these are from interviews in Japanese that are not yet published in English, but Stan Pranin has a number of similar quotes in interviews on the Aikido Journal website:
Shoji Nishio
Q: Why has the substance (of Aikido technique) been lost?
A: Nobody listened to what O-Sensei was saying. They just tried to remember the outer form of the technique. Even though O-Sensei said “What use is it to just copy my technique? If you do a technique once it’s already finished.”. Because he spoke like a Kami-sama (God) they thought that nothing he said could be understood, and didn’t even try to pay attention when they were listening. Much later on when they’ve forgotten everything sometimes they’d remember “Ah, so that’s what that meant”. That’s why most people’s practice today is empty. They don’t look at other types of Budo. Right from the start, the value of a Budo is determined by comparisons with other Budo.
Yoshio Kuroiwa
Q: I’ve heard that the lectures were quite long.
A: I hated it (laughing). He’d talk about the Kojikki and things, but my legs would fall asleep and I couldn’t understand anything, it just made me cry. Thinking of it now really brings things back.
Yasuo Kobayashi
Q: Is it true that there was no technical discussion?
A: In terms of how to apply specific techniques, some people say that O-Sensei said this or that, but as far as I was concerned I never heard any such explanation.
Nobuyoshi Tamura
O-Sensei would slip into the dojo, show a few techniques, and then slip out. If he felt like it he would speak for a while. We were all young, so mostly we just wanted to get on with the practice. (on the content of the lectures) He would talk about the gods – Izanagi, Izanami and so forth. In Sakurazawa-shiki (Macrobiotics) they have some of the same ideas, so I thought that he was speaking about something concerning In and Yo, but that’s about as much as I understood.
Nobuyuki Watanabe
Q: The Founder used to speak a lot about the Kojikki (“A Record of Ancient Affairs”), didn’t he?
A: Yes. One time the Founder brought in a diagram of the human body and gave an explanation while holding a copy of the Kojikki in one hand. While pointing out muscle and bones on the diagram he gave a very detailed explanation, saying things like “This is Naohi (correct spirit)” and so forth. However, at the time I just wondered what it all meant. It was just once, so I can’t remember the details very well.
Yoshimitsu Yamada
Q: There wasn’t any explanation of the techniques?
A: No, no. Just difficult speeches about the Kojikki, and then he’d throw you and say “Like this!”. However, he often said that Aikido changes every day.
So here’s the first part of the problem – most people don’t even know that they don’t know. What that means is that most people are happily doing whatever they’re doing with no idea that there is, or ought to be, something else, the training that Morihei Ueshiba engaged in every day from the day he met Sokaku Takeda at the Hisada Inn in 1915 until he passed away in Tokyo in 1969.
Now, why don’t we know it?
I think that it’s possible to make a very strong case that much of the historical record was deliberately altered or obscured, Stan Pranin’s work shows much of that.
It’s also possible to make a very strong case that the students of the Founder missed a lot – that what they got they got by feel, through being thrown directly by the Founder. A corrolary to this is that those students who got a little or a lot of something from the Founder then had problems transmitting those things in turn to their students. It’s easy to see how this leads to a breakdown in the transmission, a steady degradation of skills where the students of the Founder never quite match the level of the Founder, the students of the students never reach the level of their teachers and so on.
Worse than either of those things is that many of us have become comfortable with not really knowing or understanding what the Founder was talking about. Ask most senior Aikido instructors for clear explanation of the terms and goals expressed in “Takemusu Aiki” and you’ll get…very little. It is incredible, to me, that an instructor in an art is comfortable with not understanding clearly the speech of the Founder of their art.
Lastly, for now, “Why don’t we care?” – this is another thing that is incredible to me, but I suppose that it is typical of people in general and not a problem specific to Aikido. People are generally happy doing what they’re doing and have been doing, and the longer they’ve been doing it the less they question.
It is amazing to me how few people, for example, question the “traditional” ranking system in Aikido even though the “tradition” only began in the 1940’s, and was really started to conform with the Japanese government’s attempt to regulate the martial arts under the Dai-Nippon Butokukai.
It ought to be the responsibility of each and every one of us in Aikido to be active in discovering what we don’t know, and how we can learn those things, and to care about the process.
Further, I think that it behooves each of us to have a clear understanding of what the Founder thought about his art, what his technical, philosophical, and spiritual goals were and to be able to express those things in a clear and cogent manner.
Otherwise, how can you really say that you are training in the art of Morihei Ueshiba?
Morihei Ueshiba meditates on top of Haleakala, Maui, 1961
Published by: Christopher Li – Honolulu, HIFAIR Work Australia has ordered the reinstatement of an employee who was sacked for telling his boss to "get f... ed".
Security guard Craig Symes was sacked from Linfox Armaguard last year after he told his manager to get f... ed, complained about the "f... ing roster" and then aggressively poked a notice board - all while carrying a loaded gun.
Symes, who had worked with the Brisbane firm since 2000, cracked during a monthly meeting last December after having a fight with his wife before work. "He was frustrated with his wife and, in hindsight, should not have come (to the meeting)," FWA heard.
He abused manager Aryn Hala after being assigned to a faulty armoured van and stormed out.
Symes later apologised in writing but was sacked the next day.
FWA ruled Symes' behaviour amounted to misconduct but found his dismissal was harsh.
While finding swearing at a person was "of a different character" to swearing at an object, or as an adjective, FWA Commissioner Helen Cargill said it was "also relevant to consider the evidence that the respondent's workplace is one in which bad language is commonly used and in which... employees may have received mixed messages about such use".
She said the swearing was not "overheard by other employees which could have undermined Mr Halas' authority".
Ms Cargill ordered the company reinstate Symes with back pay - less six weeks pay as a penalty.The Anglo-Dutch company has cut its support of European projects to just 15pc of its total investment spend, which it puts at $100bn (£62bn) over four years. Shell expects to keep reducing that share amid longer-term concerns about the region, according to Simon Henry, its chief financial officer.
“Europe’s macroeconomic position can only recover, and the sovereign debt crisis can only be addressed, through underlying economic growth and we do not see the European Union creating the conditions for that - in fact quite the opposite,” Mr Henry said.
“Most moves made by the [European] Commission, one way or the other, tend to almost, either directly or indirectly, reduce competitiveness of European industry. So that’s more of a concern to us in the medium and long term than the sovereign debt crisis.”
The warning came as Shell, Europe’s largest oil company in terms of market value, reported profits had doubled in the third quarter of this year, boosted by the climbing oil price. Brent crude was up 48pc against to the same period last year, to average $113 a barrel.
Shell's earnings were $7.2bn (£4.5bn), up 106pc on a year earlier, on a current cost of supplies (CCS) basis, an oil industry’s accounting measure which strips out changes in the price of inventory.
Overall oil and gas production fell 2pc to 3.01 million barrels of oil equivalent a day, but Shell said production was rising when the impact of asset sales was taken out. Shell has been selling off assets seen as non-core, and is currently ahead of its $5bn target for the year with $6.2bn sales already. Meanwhile, it is investing heavily in new projects.
Liquefied natural gas (LNG) sales were up 12pc, with plans underway to export LNG from Canada to Asia. Prices in the East are significantly higher, while the problems with nuclear plants following the Japanese earthquake have boosted demand for other energy sources.
On Wednesday British group BG announced a $8bn deal to buy LNG to export from Louisiana, a landmark in the US’s shift to becoming a exporter of gas now that technology allows it to access vast reserves trapped in shale rock.
“We do expect LNG export to take place,” said Mr Henry. “We think energy security, particularly in the US will probably limit that, but we do think there will be opportunities.”
Shell also said it hoped to be able to return to Libya to resume its exploration programme, but is not yet back in the country following the death of Colonel Gaddafi.
Analysts welcomed the results and said the company had hit a "sweet spot".
Richard Hunter, head of equities at Hargreaves Lansdown, said the results served as a timely reminder of the market adage "Never sell Shell".
Its 'B' shares closed up 11p - 0.47pc - at £23.30, as the wider FTSE 100 climbed 2.89pc.
Separately, US rival ExxonMobil said quarterly earnings rose 41pc to $10.3bn as the high oil price offset falling production.Who's behind this? We’re Breather, a network of beautiful, inspiring workspaces located in cities throughout the US and around the world.
Why did you do this? Sounds of New York is our tribute to a city we love. We spent months capturing the buzz and energy of New York City's neighborhoods and present it to you as ambient noise to help you focus while you work
What is it exactly? It’s ambient noise for you to play in the background while you’re working. We just happened to curate these particular background sounds from famous locations throughout NYC neighborhoods.
How? First we mapped out our favorite places in NYC, neighborhood by neighborhood. Then, armed with our recording equipment, we went and recorded the daily bustle of the delis, comedy venues, restaurants, parks, concert halls, markets, subway stations, and everything else the city had to offer us.Q: Do you think Justise Winslow will get playing time this season? He's pushing himself hard for a rotation spot. -- Dan.
A: I think this will be one of the most intriguing questions of camp. For all that Justise showed during Duke's run to the NCAA championship and then with the Heat in summer league, that still was just college and summer league. And some of it could be beyond Justise's control, such as if Gerald |
do?”
“Not this cat,” says Dorothy. “There’s a reason he’s back here and not up with the others. He’s not for adoption.” She stands to face the woman. “I’m sorry. You really can’t be back here.”
“I saw the cat. You can pet the other cats…”
Dorothy moves to my cage. She closes the door, slides the two bars. “This cat is in quarantine. And you’re not allowed back here.”
I do not want her to touch me.
I will cut her hand. If she touches me I will gouge her open palm.
With a low moan she drops to one knee, her hand snaking forward into my cage. “Don’t worry. Don’t be scared.” I hiss. My back arches. I want this woman to go away. “Poor thing. Poor thing.”
I press into the back of my cage. I do not like this woman.
A woman I do not know crouches in front of my now open door. Her hair is wiry, gray, and wild. She is licking her lips and snapping her fingers.
I awaken to the sound of my cage door opening. I can see the sun slanting through the trees outside the door. It is hot. It is somewhere past midday. This shouldn’t be happening.
She says things to me. Says my name. Asks questions. Leans back and stares at the ceiling. The hand that rubs me slowly slides off my back. She gets up and leaves.
She visited every day at first. I assumed that’s what this would be. I had no idea for how long, but I thought I would be here and She would be here as often as She could and then we would leave. Back before, sometimes She would take me places like this – metal table places, all jars and locked cabinets and girls in matching suits in grass green colors. She would be with me in those places and then She would not, but ultimately She always came back and then we left. I thought that’s what this was. Together, then separate, then together again. But it’s different. And now She’s hardly ever here at all.
And I’m not sure that She’s happy to see me, either. Her brown hair is wild, tangled. She is tired. She sits cross-legged in front of my cage, cooing and kneading the flesh at the base of my neck. Dorothy has left the room. She’s usually here with us. There were times, in the early days, when Dorothy would open my cage and then stand at the door in a stooped posture while She cradled me in her arms and scratched my chin. But that doesn’t happen anymore. A lot of what happened in the early days doesn’t happen anymore.
But I won’t. Because I’m not sure that I am happy to see Her.
I want to purr. To sing. To tell Her how happy I am to see Her.
I can hear the mice, somewhere in the walls, moving, talking. But they aren’t coming out, not now. Nothing is happening now.
Long Hair and the Tall Man push the metal table out of the room. The door closes behind them. I am alone again. This time, however, there is no open door. There is no outside. I look at the floor where the dog’s giant head lay not so long ago. The streak of spittle left by his lolling tongue is drying, shrinking. Soon it will be gone. His final trace, taken by the air, and if the air is too slow, then by Dorothy’s mop. However it goes, it will go. Just like the dog itself.
And then the Man in the White Coat leaves. This is all I know of him. He comes to this room to deal death. Then he leaves.
The Man in the White Coat presses his hand over the dog’s heart. He pulls open the dog’s eyelid and pokes the dog in the eye.
The Man in the White Coat takes something small and blue out of his pocket. Long Hair squeezes the dog’s naked leg, while the Man in the White Coat leans down. I don’t see what he does.
Long Hair pulls something black out of a cabinet. It has a long cord which he connects to the wall. Whatever it is it whines and buzzes. It’s like a little version of the thing outside that makes the grass shorter. And just when I think this, Long Hair pushes it across the inside of the dog’s back leg and a clump of brown fur falls away. Long Hair sweeps aside the loose hair with his hand and puts the black thing down. He finds a tall bottle and sprays something over the bare leg. It looks like water but it isn’t. I can smell it. Chemical and sharp.
Long Hair and the Tall Man stand on either side of the unconscious dog. They grunt and moan and lift the dog off the floor. They drop him on a metal table. His great, square head is still pointing at me.
The Man in the White Coat enters the room. He shakes hands with the Tall Man.
I watch the dog sleep. His body twitches. His tongue is pinned between his jaw and the floor. I don’t want to see the next part. It’s bad enough hearing it. I hope they pull the dog away. I hope they close the curtain. I hope they remember I’m here.
I look down at the litter and my paws. “And what did you do?”
“Do? Nuthin’! I’m a good boy! Very good. Very good.” His tongue begins to creep out of the side of his mouth. His breaths are short.
I’m still lying in my litter box, flexing my paws. “Not sure,” I say. “What did you do?”
Long Hair and the Tall Man step away from the curtain, leaving me with the drowsy dog. He has an enormous, square head, all black and tan with a line of white running up and down between his eyes. His mouth is wide and jowly, his fur short and soft.
The other one looks through the curtain. He’s tall and thin and wears a dark uniform. At least now I know what he looks like. “He out?”
The dog falls and sighs. Only his head is through. Long Hair pushes back the curtain a little. “Oh. Did you guys want to talk?”
“Careful, Cesar. Just lie down, buddy. Just lie down.” The dog takes uneven steps – I can hear the rhythm of his paws and nails clattering on the concrete floor. Quick quick – sloooow. Quick quick quick –slooow sloooooow.
“Alright.” The dog continues to wander and smell. The two men talk to each other. They laugh. The curtain pulls taut where the dog suddenly falls against it.
“I don’t think so. We can but he’s pretty trusting. If yer quick he probably won’t even notice.”
Someone whistles. The dog is clomping around, sniffing, mumbling to himself. This room is terrible for dogs. There’s too much to take in, too many old smells, too many strange ones. I’m used to it.
I hear the door open. There’s voices, Long Hair and someone else. I’ve heard this other one before, but never seen him. I smell the dog, then hear his footsteps, his heavy breathing. He must be big. He’s absolutely rank – very nervous, I’d guess. The curtain billows inward. I can see the shape of the dog’s snout as he snuffles at the fabric.
Long Hair bangs around, straightening, preparing, doing…whatever it is he does every time this happens. Then he leaves, closing the door and it’s quiet. I sit in my litter box and flex my paws. My claws score the gray sand. I wonder.
I hate that. Not because I want to see, but because it always means the same thing.
The inside door opens. The one with the long hair comes in. I’ve never figured out his name. He sweeps past me, closing the outside door. The sounds all fall away with a slam. The birds are gone. The wind is gone. The grass machine is…still there, but not as loud. Long Hair pulls the curtain closed.
Something roars just outside the door and I jump, bang into the top of my cage and land in my water bowl, which flips on to its side. It’s just that machine, I realize belatedly. The one that makes the grass smaller. I’ve seen it and heard it twice before. It really shouldn’t startle me so much. And now I have no water for the rest of the day. Maybe Dorothy will notice. Probably she won’t.
I haven’t thought about the raccoon for quite some time. He used to be all I thought about. I’d never really considered the dearth of subjects occupying my mind before the raccoon came along, but I can see very clearly now that my life had become far too simple. I understand why the raccoon became the only thing I thought about those first few weeks – there was nothing else. There had been nothing else. Now there’s nothing else again, but I won’t let myself fall back on despair and anger. Ultimately the raccoon had done nothing other than be a raccoon and do what he felt he needed to do. The taunting, though…
Then again, I suppose sometimes it gets you here.
Two birds tweet back and forth from someplace off and away. Someplace I can’t see. A squirrel shuffles across a distant branch. I used to try calling to them – to any of them. It didn’t matter. I just wanted someone to come close. I wanted someone to talk to. But it’s natural not to trust. It’s how they live out there. I used to feel the same way, but I had to adapt. You have to trust to live inside. It falls apart if you can’t manage that.
Dorothy closes the wire door and slides the two bars. I eat my food. “Beautiful day out there!” She opens the other door, the one that leads out into the sky and the grass and the woods. She kicks at a rock until it wedges into place. “Fresh air.”
Dorothy pushes aside a blue comforter. “There you are!” I stand up and stretch, then hop quickly off the pile and make my way to my cage. The alternative is being picked up. I don’t like being carried. I haven't been carried in a long time.
I know she’s calling to me. She’ll have to find me. And she will. There’s really no place to hide here, no place good. I managed to use a bucket to get up on a second shelf once. I hid behind a bag of wood shavings. That’s the only time I’ve ever even gotten her to start to think I’d actually gotten away. But she never left the room. Never opened the door. Just looked and looked and looked. Eventually I got tired of waiting and just went to my cage. I was hungry.
“There’s a girl in the cat room I wish you could meet,” says Dorothy. “She’s all black and she loves tuna fish. Her name is Midnight. Just got here yesterday. She reminds me of you. I wish you could stay up in the cat room with the rest. Smoke? Smoke? Where’d you go this time?”
I crawl in amongst the blankets and lie down. I sit perfectly still and wait. I realize I’m hiding again. I know it doesn’t work. I’ve no idea what else to do with myself. So I sit and wait.
I stick my head in between the bags of dog food. There are mice here, but they usually only move around at night, when I’m in the cage. They know I’m here. They know I can’t do anything to them…most of the time. But I caught a straggler two weeks ago. He was resting under the pallets that hold up the big bags of kitty litter. I didn’t play with him. Dorothy saw, though, and she took it away. I think she burned it. She was upset. Because of death? How could she be? With everything she sees here…
I slink slowly out of my cage, pausing as she runs a hand gently down my back. I purr, because I think it’s rude not to, then move away from the cage. I don’t like to watch her clean my mess.
“Well, come on,” she says as she opens the door to my cage. “Stretch out while I clean this up.”
Dorothy opens the door and turns on the lights. “Rise and shine, handsome boy.” I have been sleeping in my litter box again. I don’t know how I got there. I stand and stretch as Dorothy carefully closes and locks the door. “Did you have sweet dreams?” I sit next to the door of my cage and watch her move around the room. She’s always talking to me. Sometimes I feel embarrassed that I can’t understand her. By the force of sheer repetition alone I believe I ought to understand at least the common phrases, but no. I understand moods and how they are communicated through sound and body language. That’s the best I can do.
“Smoke!” says one. The other races to the window. The raccoon’s gone. “Smoke,” they say. “Smoke. What happened? Smoke, are you okay? Did he get you, Smoke? Did he get you?”
The lights come on. Neither of us heard them coming. They both stand in the open door.
“You shouldn’t’ve,” smiles the raccoon, swaying back and forth in the moonlight. “Act like a dog, get a dog’s death.”
The raccoon is smiling at me. He’s standing on the windowsill leering at me. The moon is at his back and all I can see is white teeth and flashing black eyes. I’m panting. I’ve too little breath to hiss. All I can do is growl softly. The wind rolls through the open window and I can feel the three long gashes in my left side. They tingle and sting.
The Cat in Quarantine
Day 82…still
I ran, even though I didn’t want to. Even though I don’t like to. I would sprint when I was younger. All over, when the mood struck me. Run nearly up the walls.
She had a…something back then. A little device. A creature of pure, red light lived inside. The creature came out sometimes and I would be mad for it. Crazed. I chased after it. Up, over, and under furniture. Through doors and into closets. Clipping across carpet. Sliding across that white, slick floor.
I don’t why. I don’t know what that little creature of red light meant to me. I suppose it was only that I could never catch it. It was galling. Infuriating. I could catch everything else. Eventually everything else came to heel. The light made me question myself. My power. My ability. It made me feel slow. I hated it. I chased it with malice.
But there was never any resolution. One day was the last day I ever saw the light, though I had no way of knowing that at the time. And then I became a cat who didn’t want to run.
But here I am now, running. At first I ran because Dorothy had struck me. But then I ran because I didn’t know where or when to stop. Every place I arrived was equally wrong. Equally dirty and wild and sharp.
I stop occasionally to catch my breath, but fear grips me when I am still. The strangeness is suffocating.
The world grows dim.
I run.
Day 83
I became exhausted. Eventually I could no longer run. In the dark and alone, I slept fitfully in the crook of a thin tree. The night was wild with hoots and caws and the skittering crunch of night things roaming. I thought at times that it might have been a bad dream.
But then I woke and I am very much here, in the wild. Under a tree. Alone.
I still don’t understand. Why was Dorothy angry with me? What had I done?
Nothing. Nothing at all.
But humans are like that. Even She would sometimes behave in ways that I could not fathom. She would yell at me, with no warning or provocation. I would nestle on her stomach as she lay in bed, changing my grip ever so slightly in search for a better spot, and suddenly she would buck and shout and toss me aside like I’d done her harm. Some foods I could take. Some would raise her ire. Some things were play. Some things were not.
It’s hard to find true balance around humans.
Especially the strange ones. The ones you don’t know at all. Like the man. And the one before. It was almost impossible to tell what would upset them or please them. I made it a point to attempt to do neither.
But now I am walking. I have no direction. I sense I may be able to get back to Dorothy if I wished, but that’s not where I want to be. I want to be home. Could I find home on my own? I don’t believe I could. I think I should go back and wait for Her, but would Dorothy attack me again? Will She know where I am?
I have to get home. I suppose if I walk long enough, I may find myself somewhere familiar.
“’at? ‘at? ‘ey ‘at!”
There is a voice – small and reedy – coming from somewhere up above. It is somehow familiar.
“’eh ‘at! ‘ou out? Out? Huh?”
I look up and around and do not see the source. But then something moves, twitches, on a branch up above and I can see the face - but mostly the tail - of a squirrel.
“Are you the squirrel I met before?” I ask, sitting back peaceably on my haunches.
“Ob’v,” says the squirrel, jittering further down the branch so I can see all of him. “No ‘ember?”
“Well now, yes,” I say. “Though squirrels mostly look alike to me.”
“Ah,” says the squirrel, creeping ever nearer. “’ember you. Big gray. ‘ou out? ‘ow out?”
“They set me free,” I lie. Or is it a lie? “I’m going home now.”
“’ood,” says the squirrel. “Where zat?”
“Somewhere. I’ll find it. Don’t worry.”
“No worry. Find ‘coon? Get ‘em, eh?”
“The raccoon…” I haven’t considered that. “It seems unlikely that we’ll meet.”
The squirrel blinks rapidly. “Okay. ‘ood luck! Find fam’ee!” It races away into the tree cover. I remember now that it doesn’t have a family. I suppose I should have said more then. Too late.
And besides, the squirrel has reminded me of that night with the raccoon and what it feels like to be cut and cut back. How it hurts. And how I survived it.
I flex my paws. My claws are long – almost uncomfortably so. Dorothy did not care for me in all the correct ways. That’s fine. Here, in the wild, that’s good.
It’s natural to be scared. Normal and good. But I have power of my own.
I walk slower now, with more confidence. When the leaves rattle, I look sharply, almost eagerly.
I will not be intimidated by this world I do not understand. Instead, I will tame it.
But for now…I’m hungry. I must focus on myself and my needs if I’m going to make it home...
Day 86
How did I become this? Where is my pride? Where is my strength?
I’m lost. I have been lost, the entire time, but the forest only seems to tighten its grip on me, inch by inch. Yesterday, at night, in the deepest dark, I found a clearing, which became a road. I followed it for a distance, until a bright, yellow light appeared in the distance, growing ever closer. There was a sound there, as well – a grinding, roaring shout that followed the lights towards me. I felt I should know what they meant – what it all meant. But I was dumb with fear. Or simply dumb. I froze, froze until it was nearly on me…and then I fled. Back into the darkness. Racing. Breathless. Brainless.
Hopeless.
I still haven’t eaten since the morning Dorothy chased me away. I thought it would be easy. I thought I had, hidden away within me, the instincts of a hunter. I caught that mouse, after all. But I was wrong. I can seemingly do no more than wander and sniff and waste away.
Now it’s morning and I’m back to the road and there is something laying in the middle of the surface. An ugly thing, with a long, pink tail and oblong face. I sit in the dirt a long time looking at it. It must be dead. Perhaps I was right to run away last night.
And now I wonder if it’s edible. If it was, could I eat it? Is that what’s become of me?
I take a cautious step and then a great, roaring machine appears in the distance, racing down the road. She had something like that. She made me ride in it sometimes. I rode in it that last time, after the raccoon…
The machine passes and the creature in the road makes no attempt to move. It is dead. I feel compelled to inspect the carcass. My hunger guides me.
Cautious and slow, I make my way across the road, looking back and forth, anticipating another roaring machine. None appears. I step to the side of the carcass. The thing is even uglier up close. Larger, too, now that I see it better. A rodent’s face. I see no wound, however. There is no gore and no…
“Step away!” I nearly shriek, leaping away as the creature rights itself suddenly. “What’s the game?” yells the creature, gathering itself up, baring down towards me. “What were you plannin’, huh? Bite me? Eat me?”
“You were dead!” I say, which is an impossibly stupid thing to say.
“Just playin’,” says the creature, backing down a bit. “That’s what I do. It’s a strategy.”
“Strategy for what?”
“It’s a life-savin’ strategy,” says the creature. “They think you’re dead, they leave you alone.”
“You’re in the middle of the road,” I say. “The fact you aren’t dead is entirely luck.”
The creature seems a little perplexed by the logic of this. “No. I’m not dead. So it’s a good strategy.”
“Well I’m also not dead and I don’t go around laying perfectly still in dangerous places.” In the distance, another one of those machines begins to approach. The creature notices and flops to the ground. “You have to be kidding me.”
The creature is silent. I prod it with an outstretched claw.
“Go away,” it mumbles. “Strategy.”
I try grabbing at the scruff of its neck. I remember my mother doing that to me when I was very small. Even She would do something similar when She wanted to move me from one place to another against my will. But the creature is heavy – possibly even heavier than me.
“Knock it off,” it hisses. “Strategy.”
The machine is coming closer. I try once more. I can’t budge it. I dart away, back to the woods. Behind me I hear a horrible squeal and an even worse squelch and crunch. The machine passes on. I wait a moment in the woods, listening, not daring to go back. But the road is silent. Utterly silent.
There seems to be no escape from the madness of the wild.
Day 87
I do not know what dying feels like. Even having seen it happen with my own eyes, I have no sense of what it feels like. So perhaps I am dying. I don’t know. I can’t imagine what else it might feel like, though.
I’m weak. And I’m very tired. It is a chore to move now. I don’t even remember falling asleep last night. I was walking and then I was waking, pressed against damp stone. That seems to be happening often now. Moments simply…vanish.
I suspect it’s because I haven’t eaten. That must be the cause of all things. Food. It’s hard to believe there was ever a time when I turned my nose up to food, but a good human makes it easy to be picky. She always found Her way back to my preferred foods, even if it took a few days of ignored bowls or spat out treats. Why She ever thought to change things I never knew. I like what I like. I don’t think things are all that complicated.
But now there’s no choice. No food at all. Just the wind and the grass and the gibbering chirp of birds. Distressed birds, crying loudly. Curious, I move toward the sound. There’s a nest up high in one of the branches. I can just make it out. They’re being especially noisy today. But, oh…
There, at the foot of the tree. There’s a small bird. Half-formed. Nearly nude and crying weakly. No one comes for it. No one does anything.
It’s just a baby bird, lying on the ground.
My mouth moistens. It’s strange and involuntary. My stomach twists and pulses.
The little bird exhausts itself, crying out, flapping small, useless wings. I step closer.
From up above, another bird darts down, nipping and piercing the back of my neck with the point of its beak. The mother? It swoops again and I swipe at it, entirely on instinct. A pair of feathers float down. The bird returns to the higher branches, chirping madly, but staying away.
I examine the fallen baby bird. Bat it gently with my paw. Its cry grows weaker and weaker.
I’ve never been so hungry.
I put my mouth to its chest and bite. The crying rises up, then dies away. The baby bird is silent. The birds up above are silent. Soon, the only thing I can hear is the sound of small bones grinding and snapping inside my mouth.
I leave nothing edible behind.
Day 89
I have left the woods. I found a place that reminds me a little of where I live – of where She lives. But only a little. None of the smells are right. The details are similar, but different. There are houses here. Rows of them. The roads are busy. Roaring machines start and stop and fly in every direction. I have to be cautious.
I found a pile of soggy food beside the stairs of one house. It smelled a bit like the food She gives me. I wouldn’t have eaten food like that before – food that had been out, that had gotten wet. But I’m still so hungry. I ate some, but then a child suddenly appeared at the door of the house and I got scared and ran. Since then I have wandered, examining.
There are many quiet, dark places here. I find many places to sleep, though I don’t sleep well anywhere. I wait out the heat of the day beneath a crooked plank of wood and bags of debris. There are other wild creatures here, though they are just as secretive and stealthy as I am. I see squirrels shimmy up and down poles. I wonder if any are the one I met before. There are other cats here, too, though I have no desire to make their acquaintance. At least not yet. I need to recover my strength.
How far away am I from my home, I wonder? Am I heading in the right direction? Perhaps not, but the further I go the more likely I am to see something I recognize, yes? The world is not so big that I cannot find what I want as long as I look long and hard enough. And I have to assume She is looking for me, too. Maybe we’ll met in the middle? I’m sure we will.
Eventually I sleep. When I wake it is dark and cool, almost cold. I feel dirty and sore. And I itch – badly. Just a little while ago I felt something like a little bug crawling across my shoulder, but it jumped away before I could catch it.
There are great lights up and down the road, similar to the ones I could see out of the window of my home at night. The world is a strange purple color, and quiet. Some houses are lit bright, and others are dark. I set out down the road, examining, moving slowly. I can hear things moving about in the shadows. I try not to jump at every strange sound.
There!
I had thought it might be… There is another pile of food set out in front of one of the houses. I quicken my pace, refusing to run. When I reach the pile there is no one else. It is fresh. Very similar to what I eat at home. I dive into it. I gorge, half-choking on unchewed morsels.
As I am eating as quickly as I have ever eaten, another cat sidles up. They don’t say anything. They just calmly, coolly slink up to the pile and begin to eat.
I hiss. I’m very hungry. I don’t want to share.
The other cat ignores me completely. It is orange and white and does not even acknowledge me.
“I found it!” I cry. “Go away!”
It just eats.
Suddenly there is another cat. It is black and white. It helps itself to the food. It also ignores me.
“It’s mine!” I say, shouldering up against the orange cat. “Go away.”
But they don’t care. Perhaps they can tell that I’m weak. Is it so obvious that I cannot fight back? Soon the food is gone. I could have eaten more, but for now I’m satisfied.
The black cat and the orange cat go their separate ways, neither having said a word to me. I didn’t want to talk to them anyway. Not really. What would I even have to say?
From a distance, though, I watch them stalk away, into the deeper darkness. They are both so sure of themselves. They look strong and well fed. Perhaps they are the sorts who have homes but choose to wander? I met one like that once. It lay on the fence of our yard from time to time. One day when I was outside I walked up to it and asked who they were and what they were doing.
“Whoever I want to be and whatever I want,” they said, which still sounds like a silly answer to my ears. They told me a bit about the cats that live outside and the cats that live inside (like me) and the third brand, which did both. They could be inside when they wanted and outside when they wanted. The cat on the fence had a perfectly good home not far from my own. He just liked to explore and talk to the neighborhood cats. He was never hungry, never in want, and never confined. “No offense,” he’d said, single paw drooping down, “but your type is the worst kind of cat there is. How can you be satisfied, living like a pet? Haven’t you any pride at all?”
She came out to collect me about then, shooing him away – that cat that lived between two worlds. Perhaps these are like him. Cats without want of any kind.
I follow the orange one, though I don’t know to what purpose. I suppose I must continue on my way soon, but there is something comforting and less hostile about this place. It’s familiar and quiet. I can see myself living as an outside cat, at least for a time; and when I go home, perhaps I’ll become that third brand, too rough and seasoned to live entirely indoors.
As I follow the orange cat, I see the lid of a nearby bin shift and clatter to the ground. There is a creature there, hovering at the mouth of the bin, glaring down at me, dark bands shrouding its eyes in the deepest shadows.
A raccoon.
It leans forward, teeth barred, hissing. I arch and recoil. My claws scrape and click across the hard ground.
“Mine,” it murmurs. “Don’t. Come. Near.”
Black lips quiver. White teeth flash purple in those strange lights. I feel transported. Back, back to that night. The monster that slipped in through an open window. A window I could have come and gone through, were I that kind of cat. The raccoon that cut me. The one that started all this.
What could I have done better? How could I have changed things?
Could I stand to let something like that happen again?
Its mouth is wet and dripping. It stinks of rotten food. I back away. I back away slowly. I back away.
It watches my every step. Only the eyes move. It watches as I stumble sideways and turn and run.
I’m running again.
I run out of the light and out of the street and out of that row of houses. I run to the darkness.
I feel I can hear it breathing behind me. But it’s only my breath. Coming in gasps. As if I’m chasing myself.
I come to my senses and slow down. Lost again. There’s no use for it. I’m back in the woods. I find a small nook between two trees and settle down to wait for morning.
I needed to move on anyway. I’m getting closer to home. I’m sure of it.
Day 98
My days have settled into a rhythm. Sleep. Exploration. Scavenging. Hiding. Sleep.
There have been days of solitude and days of terror. There are more creatures out here roaming the wild than I ever would have imagined. They are all strange and single-minded in their own ways. I have been chased by dogs, attacked by birds, and ever set upon by some unseen enemy that bites at my flesh and drives me half-insane with discomfort. Hostility from my fellow wandering cats has been rare, but so too has been kindness. I am on my own, at least until I get home and return to Her.
I admit, though, that some days I forget where I am going and what I am striving for. I get so consumed in simply living that I forget my purpose. Never for long, but it does happen with unsettling frequency. I’ve begun to wonder whether or not I should simply wait for Her to find me? If She is looking, how much harder am I making things by moving all the time?
The thought gnaws at me.
And now there is this…
I have found a strange place. Again, it is similar to home, but different, in many key ways. It is enormous, to begin, and surrounded all over in a sort of tall, metal fence. The fence is no trouble for me, but it gave me pause at first. That’s what fences are supposed to do, after all – keep you to one side. But I saw a white cat scale the fence with little effort. Later, I saw another orange cat climb underneath the fence at a certain place. All day long, the fence was bypassed, by humans and cats, and humans with dogs, and always by squirrels. In and out. Curiosity got the best of me. I went in.
It was stranger still on the inside. The houses were gargantuan, stretching off for great lengths, dotted repeatedly with many doors and windows. More like a hive than a house. There were rows of those roaring machines, all silent and still. Small wooden fences here and there. Stairs all over. Little lawns, reeking of dog urine, and patchy flower beds filled with drooping perennials. Like a city unto itself. A small, isolated version of the world I had been lost and wandering across these last few days.
It is thick with cats, napping on step rungs and lazing on the tops of those tiny fences. Some wear collars like I once did. These ones seem civil enough, if not a bit haughty and distant. Then there the others, who have never been collared and never could be. There is a natural sort of madness in their eyes. They are free – perhaps too free. Guided by instinct. They can be shy and strange, but rarely unkind. All, every stripe, seem wary of me, though I suppose that may be because I am wary of them.
The humans here pay us little mind. Just this morning, I happened to be standing outside one of seemingly infinite doors, when it flew open quite suddenly. I froze. The human that came out looked down at me, said something – neither a shout nor a silly coo – then shut the door and walked past. It’s almost as if I were expected to be here.
As noted, this place is also rife with squirrels. None are as strange and talkative as the one I once knew, but they are also much fatter and stupider than I am accustomed to. It makes little sense to me. There are so many cats here and so many squirrels, and while they are not allies, it would be inaccurate to call them enemies. I have seen very little bloodshed in my time here, but more, I have seen very little effort to that end. These cats simply don’t seem to care.
No one seems to care. This is a quiet place, seemingly free of danger. It’s easy to find food, as long as you aren’t picky. There are places you can go and places you cannot go – places where humans are less welcoming and cats have created personal territories. But those places are rare. For the most part, this is the safest I have felt since that day I met the raccoon. I don’t know how long I should stay here, but for now it seems there is no better place for me. I’ll wait for Her here. And if She doesn’t find me, I’ll go out again and find a better place to wait.
Day 149
It’s hard to fathom how quickly the days pass. Have I really been here so long?
I haven’t left this place – this strange maze of endless, multifaceted homes. And now it seems it’s too late. The days grew colder and colder and then suddenly it was snowing and it has become all I can do to simply take care of myself. I have seen the snow many times in my life, but I’ve never before experienced it like this. There is no comfort to be found anywhere now. The best one can hope for is a brief respite from the fiercest sorts of winds and chills and collected snowfall.
So life is frozen, and |
They were sort of reluctant participants. But I don’t think it was expected that they were going to go so far as to actually torpedo the treaty. They had not supported key elements, like regulating ammunition, which was sort of central to keeping—stopping the killing.
AMY GOODMAN: Talk about the players who were at the United Nations, the forces lobbying against the ATT, the arms trade treaty. Talk about the power of the NRA.
WILLIAM HARTUNG: Well, the NRA has taken an interest in the global arms trade going back about two decades. And their theory, which has been discredited, is if you regulate guns anywhere, then they’re going to be regulated everywhere. Also, they’re opposed to treaties of any form. So, basically, they love guns, they hate treaties. And this was a chance for them to exert influence, both within the U.N. and also against the Obama administration, to keep it from really taking a stronger stand.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, Wayne LaPierre was at the United Nations, the spokesperson for the head of the National Rifle Association?
WILLIAM HARTUNG: Yes, he was there. He gave a speech where basically he said the treaty was an offense to any American who breathed free air. So, you know, they were way over the top, especially given that the treaty was designed to let countries regulate arms within their own borders, really dealt only with cross-border transfer. So they really—not only were they an obstacle, but they were completely off base in their characterization of the treaty.
AMY GOODMAN: Last month, Larry Pratt, executive director of Gun Owners of America, spoke to Fox News about his concerns about the U.N. arms treaty.
LARRY PRATT: It would completely work against what the Second Amendment is intended to do, but it doesn’t seem that the Constitution is much of an obstacle or a problem for this administration. But nevertheless, “shall not be infringed” is something that a treaty can’t trump. The very language in the Constitution dealing with treaty making says that treaties have to be made under the authority of the United States. And if we, the people, haven’t given authority for gun control to the United States, to the federal government, then its hands are tied.
AMY GOODMAN: That’s Larry Pratt, executive director of the Gun Owners of America. Bill Hartung, your response?
WILLIAM HARTUNG: Well, there’s two problems with that. Once, obviously, if you agree to a treaty, it’s ratified by the Senate, the people have spoken. That’s why you elect representatives. Second of all, as I mentioned, the treaty had nothing to do with domestic gun control. So it’s essentially kind of a paranoid fantasy of the NRA translated into their, you know, political force around the country.
AMY GOODMAN: Bill, the torpedoing of the arms trade treaty, the ATT, took place exactly a week after the Aurora massacre in Colorado with 12 people killed and many injured. Talk about the links between what’s happening in the United States—you know, very quickly, President Obama came out and said we don’t need new laws around gun control, affirming the Second Amendment, and the Republican candidate, Mitt Romney, also shares the same view on that—and then you have this global treaty at the United Nations, within days, torpedoed.
WILLIAM HARTUNG: Well, I think it sends an awful signal to the world. Not only are we not willing to keep arms from killing people overseas, but also our government is not willing to take strong action to prevent the kind of massacre that happened in Aurora within our own borders. And the NRA bridges that gap, because they tried to kill the arms treaty, and they’ve tried to prevent any gun regulation in the United States, even though their own membership, in some cases, supports stronger measures than their leadership does. So, to some degree, it’s not really the kind of grassroots movement that is presented. There’s the leadership out ahead, sort of on the right wing of it. Also they’re heavily funded by the gun manufacturers. So it’s really a special interest group masquerading as some sort of mass movement.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, explain that. What do you mean?
WILLIAM HARTUNG: Well, the leadership is out in front of the membership in terms of harsh opposition to any gun control, even things like a waiting period, registration of guns, making sure you can’t walk into a gun show as a criminal and buy a gun easily, which was what happened in the Columbine case, you know, controls on assault rifles of the kind that was used in Aurora. All those things are being blocked by the NRA leadership. And companies like Smith & Wesson, that made the gun that was used in Aurora, the military-style assault weapon, have given over a million dollars to the NRA. Some gun shops say, “Oh, you know, round up your purchase, and we’ll give the difference to the NRA,” called the Round-Up Program. That’s put millions in their coffers. So, you know, the NRA would prefer not to have that known, but places like the Violence Policy Center have exposed it in some detail.
AMY GOODMAN: Bill Hartung, I want to ask you about how best to regulate arms. Let me ask you, for a moment, about what happened in Illinois—very interesting news. The Illinois governor, Pat Quinn, has unveiled a proposal to ban assault weapons in Illinois. On Tuesday, he used his amendatory veto power to propose banning the manufacture and sale of assault weapons and attachments. Quinn is the first U.S. governor to formally put forward an assault weapons ban since the shooting massacre in Aurora, Colorado, last month.
GOV. PAT QUINN: We should show the nation that when something really bad happens, as happened in Aurora, Colorado, a horrific massacre, that we don’t stand idly by. We take action to deal with the source of that problem, and I think we have done that today.
AMY GOODMAN: That’s Illinois Governor Pat Quinn. Bill Hartung, was this a surprise? How significant is this? Could this lead other governors to do the same thing?
WILLIAM HARTUNG: Well, we haven’t seen that kind of courage by other elected officials, and I’m hoping that it gets the ball rolling and that it’ll be emulated in other states. As I indicated, to some degree, the NRA is a paper tiger, and what I mean by that is they don’t have full support of their own membership. Eighty percent of the public supports sensible gun controls. So, really, they’ve kind of puffed up their political force beyond what it really is. And they’ve sort of harped on the fact that they’re important in key states like Pennsylvania, swing states like Ohio and Virginia, North Carolina. But even there, I think if you had people explaining—governors, for example—the impact of these things, I don’t think you would have the majority of people, even in the NRA, supporting easy access by criminals to military-style assault rifles.
AMY GOODMAN: On the issue of best regulating arms, I want to go first to one of the activists who set up a mock cemetery outside the U.N. Wednesday to urge negotiators to pass a strong arms trade treaty. David Grimason has been active in calling for stringent arms regulations ever since his two-year-old, Alistair, was shot and killed during a family visit to Turkey nine years ago.
DAVID GRIMASON: A treaty that doesn’t include all conventional weapons and all ammunition is—to me, will just be pointless. At the moment, you’ve got kind of unscrupulous governments that are willing to sell arms to any nation, not really caring about how they’re going to be used. If we don’t get a strong treaty, then that will continue, and the numbers we’re seeing, with—you know, 2,000 people a day are dying—that will continue unless we get a strong treaty.
AMY GOODMAN: Bill Hartung, your response?
WILLIAM HARTUNG: Well, I think he’s absolutely right. I mean, countries like Russia arming Syria, China arming Sudan. The United States doesn’t have clean hands here, selling to places like Bahrain that have crushed democracy movements, countries like Saudi Arabia, which are not only undemocratic themselves but have supported the crushing of democracy in Bahrain, sent troops there. Yet we’ve got the biggest weapons deal in history with the Saudis, $60 billion, which there’s nothing to compare to that in history. So there’s this signal by the United States: we’re going to still arm dictatorships, even in the midst of the Arab Spring. We’re not going to get up front about regulating some of these sales; we’re going to try to delay it. So I think it sends an awful message to the world, and it doesn’t represent the views of the American public.
AMY GOODMAN: Let me turn to President Eisenhower. In fact, part of the name of your book comes from that famous address that President Eisenhower gave, President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s famous farewell speech to the nation. It was January 17th, 1961.
PRESIDENT DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER: My fellow Americans, this evening I come to you with a message of leave-taking and farewell and to share a few final thoughts with you, my countrymen. We have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions. Three-and-a-half million men and women are directly engaged in the defense establishment. The total influence—economic, political, even spiritual—is felt in every city, every statehouse, every office of the federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development, yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.
AMY GOODMAN: That was President Eisenhower’s farewell address, January 17, 1961. An excerpt from the documentary Why We Fight. More than 50 years after that speech, many argue the military-industrial complex is stronger than ever. Bill Hartung?
WILLIAM HARTUNG: Well, I think it certainly is stronger than ever. You know, a company like Lockheed Martin, by itself, gets $36 billion a year from the Pentagon. Essentially, people are paying a Lockheed Martin tax of $300 a year or more. It’s the biggest entity that’s getting money from the federal government. It’s also involved not only in arms exports, building nuclear weapons, building fighter planes, building combat ships, but it’s also one of the key players in trying to roll back regulations on arms exports and to try to keep the Obama administration from reducing Pentagon spending. So, it’s working on all fronts, you know, to change our policy in a more militarized direction. And as I said, that runs counter to what the average American thinks. Even in states that depend on military spending, recent polls show that they’re willing to cut military spending to a greater degree than the so-called sequester, the automatic cuts, that would come if Congress doesn’t get a budget deal together to reduce the deficit. So, you know, in the same sense that Eisenhower talked about, that a military-industrial complex subverts democracy, we’re seeing that very same thing today.
AMY GOODMAN: Earlier this year, Bill, one of the world’s most notorious arms smugglers was sentenced to 25 years in prison by a New York federal court judge—not for smuggling, but for conspiracy and terrorism charges. Viktor Bout is known as “The Merchant of Death” for running what the United Nations and U.S. officials say was an intentional arms trafficking network. In April, during a pre-sentencing telephone interview with Voice of Russia, Bout maintained his innocence, saying all arms suppliers in the U.S. would be in prison, too, if the same standards were applied across the board.
VIKTOR BOUT: I’m innocent. I don’t commit any crime. There is no crime to sit and talk. If you’re going to apply the same standards to me, then you’re going to, you know, jail all those arms dealers in America who are selling the arms and ending up killing Americans. They are involved even more than me.
AMY GOODMAN: That was Viktor Bout. Bill Hartung, your response? If you can respond to what Viktor Bout is saying, respond to the power of the U.S. military contractors, and also talk about whether the ATT, the arms trade treaty, is totally dead.
WILLIAM HARTUNG: Well, I think, starting with the treaty, there’s a move by the groups that supported it to take it to the General Assembly of the United Nations. There, they need a majority, not a full consensus of every country in the world. I think that’s a hard thing to do but certainly worth, you know, as much energy as possible. I don’t think it’s impossible to do that.
In terms of Bout’s statement, perhaps the United States is not quite on the level he was. He was arming, you know, Sierra Leone. He was arming Angola. Some of his arms went to the Taliban. But the United States had links to Bout. His companies were being hired to ferry weapons into Iraq. Many dealers like Bout have past associations with the CIA, with intelligence agencies around the world, helping them carry out deals like Iran-Contra. So, you know, as I said, the United States doesn’t have clean hands in this. And without an arms trade treaty, somebody like Bout can go around the world, hide behind different laws in different countries, deal with kind of the patchwork regulations we have now, which is why it took so long to get him into jail. And as you said, they didn’t even get him on arms trafficking but rather on a lesser, different charge. So, that’s why, I think, you know, torpedoing the arms trade treaty is really unconscionable, because it makes it possible for the Viktor Bouts of the world to continue to operate relatively unimpeded.
AMY GOODMAN: Finally, President Obama’s relationship with weapons manufacturers, with Lockheed Martin, with Boeing, with the many other in the military-industrial complex?
WILLIAM HARTUNG: Well, he’s not at the level of the Bush administration, which really had many, many Lockheed Martin people in the administration. But they’ve had people, for example, lobbyists from Raytheon, top level jobs in the Pentagon. They’ve had advisers in the White House on the board of Boeing. They’ve been really—and, you know, as you mentioned, there’s people in the State Department bragging about how much they’ve helped the industry. And not only Obama, but the Congress, which gets millions of dollars from the industry, has people working there who used to work for companies like Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman at the top levels of the Armed Services Committee in the two houses.
So, that’s exactly what Eisenhower was talking about, the revolving door from industry into government, the money flowing to government to help, you know, destroy arms export regulations, funding of right-wing think tanks like the Heritage Foundation, that helped block things like the arms trade treaty and reductions in military spending, cuts in the Star Wars program. So, unfortunately, you know, without more public pressure, which I think is necessary and possible, the military-industrial complex is going to roll over many of the things that most people in this country think our government should be doing in this area.
AMY GOODMAN: Bill Hartung, I want to thank you for being with us, director of the Arms and Security Project of the Center for International Policy. Bill Hartung is author of Prophets of War: Lockheed Martin and the Making of the Military-Industrial Complex. This is Democracy Now! Back in a minute.Norwich prostitute and pimp jailed for robbing driver with rape threat Mark Shields
mark.shields@archant.co.uk
@mark__shields
Sharon Skoulding. Archant
A prostitute and her husband have been jailed for robbing a young man with the threat of reporting him for a made-up rape.
Share Email this article to a friend To send a link to this page you must be logged in.
Karl Skoulding.
Drug addict Sharon Skoulding stood in the middle of the road to flag down the victim’s car before getting in and demanding £40 for a heroin fix for her and her husband.
As the pair argued, Karl Skoulding got into the car, threatening the victim with a knuckleduster and showing him a black handle he thought was a knife, before forcing him to drive to a cashpoint to withdraw the money.
At Norwich Crown Court yesterday, Karl Skoulding, 33, of Union Street, was jailed for five years. Sharon Skoulding, 41, of Trory Street, was sentenced to four years.
Both had denied robbery but were found guilty at trial.
Judge Peter Jacobs said the pair had resorted “to Plan B” after Sharon Skoulding had tried to prostitute herself for drug money on the afternoon of November 6 last year.
When that failed, she stopped the victim’s car in daylight in a side street off Ber Street, telling him unless he handed the money over she would report him for a fictional rape.
Judge Jacobs said: “You said to him: ‘Do as I say or I will say you raped me.’ Those are the sorts of words that would strike a chill into anybody.”
She said she would call her Polish partner if he didn’t pay up, at which point her pimp Karl Skoulding appeared, faking a foreign accent.
With Karl Skoulding holding an object to the victim’s side, they drove to Sainsbury’s on Queen’s Road, where the victim withdrew cash. He asked for help from another customer but, with the two still in the vehicle, “he was in an impossible situation”, said Judge Jacobs, and had been “effectively abducted in his own car”.
Lori Tucker, mitigating for Sharon Skoulding, said there were no aggravating features of violence or injury, adding her client had been making progress in prison as she tried to get clean of drink and drugs.
John Farmer, for Karl Skoulding, said the incident had been “a short-lived episode with no actual violence”.
Det Sgt Richard Dickinson, of Norwich CID, said: “This was a very traumatic experience for the victim involved and I would like to thank him for his courage in coming forward.”As neo-nazis and anti-fascists prepare to head to Dover this weekend, Ed Goddard takes a look at the importance of violence as a tool in the anti-racist toolkit both in the struggles of the past and present.
The far-right are mobilising yet again for a demo in Dover and yet again anti-fascists are heading to the south-coast town intent on stopping them. The day looks set to be a repeat of January’s chaotic events, which saw hundreds of anti-fascists and openly neo-nazi demonstrators clash, throwing punches and paving stones with serious injuries racked up on both sides.
While the left is comfortable decrying fascist violence, it is noticeably more unsure when it comes to its own. Those who dish out beatings to far-right mobs are ritually accused of “stooping down to their level”, of being “as bad as the fascists”, or even of actually being “left-wing fascists” themselves for successfully using violence against their political opponents.
Though in a sense understandable due to the nasty nature of violence and the fact we’re often the first to condemn it in the form of wars or police brutality, it fails to take into account the nature of the racist gangs mobilising for Dover, not to mention the current threat to multiculturalism in Britain (as well as across Europe). Moreover, it completely ignores the significant role violence played in establishing multiculturalism as a reality in so many British cities in the first place; that, as well as promoting peaceful coexistence, anti-racism has always involved physical opposition - whether organised in racist groups or not - to those who would threaten that coexistence.
The nature of the enemy
First up, it needs to be said that the groups coming out for Dover are not your traditional right-wing nationalist political parties. They’re not like UKIP, they’re not even much like the BNP under Nick Griffin, and the difference isn’t just over politics.
The key difference is practice: while even hard-right political parties focus primarily on seeming respectable to try and win at the ballot box, these groups reject respectability in favour of a focus on violent street confrontations. A successful demo is one where members get pissed and start aggro with counter-demonstrators or, failing that, any non-white locals.
Yet this is what people misunderstand about these groups, laughing at them for being inarticulate pissheads who couldn’t string a sentence together let alone influence government policy. But their goal isn’t to affect policy or produce provocative think-pieces for The Spectator. Their goal is to intimidate. Their organisational model is not the political party, it’s the hooligan firm.
This is why an approach that rejects physical confrontation cannot work, why even chanting ‘there are many many more of us than you’ makes no sense. The South East Alliance have the words ‘sometimes outnumbered, never outgunned’ emblazoned on a St George’s Cross. They love being outnumbered as long as they get home safe enough to brag about it. It validates their self-image as brave defenders of the nation taking on crowds of irate (though ultimately soft) student lefties.
More than being outnumbered, the politics they understand is when they are outviolenced. Indeed, so comprehensively outviolenced that they can’t even put a brave face on social media (as they will inevitably always try to).
Nazis duck missiles as they are held behind police lines for their own safety during failed 'White Man March' in Liverpool, 2015.
So events like Liverpool in 2015, when National Action ended up hiding in a lost luggage department for their safety while a multiethnic crowd of Scousers chucked bananas at them, or Walthamstow 2012 when the EDL’s march was blocked by crowds hurling bottles and bricks and chanting “If it wasn’t for the coppers you’d be dead”. Events like these rupture their hardman self-image. They set off organisational disarray and internal recriminations as they start rowing amongst each other about who ballsed up what and who’s never turning up again to anything organised by whoever else. And they discourage those who were thinking about coming down for a laugh and a ruck, when they realise the reality means being shepherded behind police lines for their own safety or taking a kicking as their mates run for their own safety.
Fighting racism: a historical snapshot
All this is nothing new. Yet to a large extent contemporary anti-racism has been sanitised, reduced in the popular imagination to ‘I have a dream’ and Benetton adverts, or worse, not being able to order a black coffee in case someone gets offended. Even the collective memory of Nelson Mandela makes him seem just a kindly old man who once met the Spice Girls rather than a Communist revolutionary who spent 27 years in prison for involvement in an underground guerrilla organisation.
Yes, it’s true that multiculturalism was created by the increasing interactions - cultural, social, romantic - between people of different ethnicities and, yes, it’s true that those interactions have been based on basic humanitarian principles like ‘peace’, ‘love’ and ‘unity’. But it must always be remembered that those interactions and those principles had to be defended and the capacity to use violence against those who would threaten them played a significant part in that defence.
So when fascists attacked London’s black community during the 1958 Notting Hill race riots, themselves thought to have been triggered by a group of white people attacking an interracial couple, the West Indian community formed its own self-defence groups. As Jamaican community activist and participant, Baker Baron, describes:
The men, well we were armed. During the day they went out and got milk bottles, got what they could find and got the ingredients of making the Molotov cocktail bombs. Make no mistake, there were iron bars, there were machetes, there were all kinds of arms, weapons, we had guns. Quote:
Black man is searched by police during the Notting Hill riots, 1958.
Eighteen years later, Notting Hill’s black community would again be on the frontline fighting racism on the streets: black youth revolted, this time against racist policing at the 1976 Notting Hill Carnival, resulting in officers taking “a real hammering [...] knocked over like ninepins by volleys of bricks and bottles”.
And almost exactly a year after Notting Hill, it would be the National Front’s turn to feel the full force of militant anti-racist mobilisation as they attempted to march through Lewisham. Anti-fascist activist Steve Tilzey recounts his memories of the day in which, apart from one group of nazis being “pummelled to the ground by fists and boots”:
All along the route of the march the NF were getting serious problems as fighting and skirmishing broke out between the two sides. At one point the march was smashed completely in half as hundreds of anti-nazis broke through the ranks of police and engaged the Front in vicious hand-to-hand fighting. Quote:
An anti-fascist lays into a National Front member during protests in Lewisham, 1977.
All these represent the fight of communities, whether against the encroachment of fascist groups or of racist police, to exist both socially and culturally in Britain. Yet even these remain a handful of spectacular events in the history anti-racism in Britain. While multiculturalism took root among those who welcomed it in those environments where different ethnicities mixed freely, it was imposed on those who didn’t want it through thousands (or hundreds of thousands, potentially millions even) of minor scuffles, struggles and conflicts whose only record is in the memories of those who experienced them.
One such memory is that of my older sister who remembers being slapped in the face by an older white boy for playing football with a group of black kids in the park behind our house when she was little (which must have been as late as the early 1990s). They leapt to her defence, gave the boy a slap and chased him off. My sister continued playing in the park, as did I when I got older, but I don’t ever remember seeing that boy.
I don’t include this anecdote because it’s particularly exciting (I sometimes even wonder whether the kids who backed my sister up even remember it). The opposite, actually: to show the kind of everyday physical defence of simple coexistence which took place in British cities in order for multiculturalism to become a reality. Those kids fought for their right, and my sister’s right, to play with whoever they want in our area. The innumerable stories of playground punch-ups and public altercations which won’t make history books, in large part because there are just too many of them and their unspectacular nature make them interesting only to those who know those involved.
When looked at together, however, as part of a generalised fightback or movement, they become more interesting. The fantastic Young Rebels documentary on the Southall Youth Movement does just this in recording some of these stories of young Asians growing up in 1970s-80s Britain. One SYM member, Jagdish Banger, remembers “coming out of class, all these white people just jumped on me, started beating me up and there was another Jamaican boy with me [...] and he ran off and I thought ‘Ah, that’s nice.’ But what he did two minutes later: he came back with a load of Jamaican black people and we had such a big scuffle.”
In the same documentary, Jaswant Hunjan, recalls:
We were young, we formed a gang. And like, what the skinheads were doing, they always shouted ‘We’re going Paki bashing today! We’re going Paki bashing today!’ So we were going skinhead bashing. Coz most of the time, at night time, they’ll come, in cars and everything, you know, just to swear at us, and find someone on his own and beat him up. Well, there was quite a few of us and, we just stood round corners with bottles and bricks and when you see the cars coming… let it go. Quote:
The struggles which Southall Youth Movement members engaged in with local racists were inseparable from the wider issues of racism the group took up. Indeed, it was the assault and murder of Gurdip Singh Chaggar by a racist gang that led to the the group’s creation, with its dedication to “physically keeping racism off the streets of Southall” as well as the “lack of youth provision in the Borough”. The climax of Southall’s youth activism came in 1981 when the community stopped a far-right skinhead concert, torching the pub it was due to be held in and attacking fascists while police were helpless to stop them. As Jagdish Banger explains: “It was a proud moment, we stood up for ourselves saying ‘We’re Southall’. Yes, alright, it’s full of Indians but we stood up for ourselves.”
Facing the threat ahead, not just with violence, but certainly not without it
For anyone who opposes racism, there seems an endless cause for alarm these days. In Britain, UKIP finished the election with almost four million votes, 27% of the total and the third-highest of any party. Meanwhile, hate crimes between 2014 and 2015 increased 18% and Islamophobic attacks in London went up a worrying 70% while EDL-splinter groups are able to mobilise hundreds for demonstrations under nazi flags for the first time since the early 1990s.
The rest of Europe is equally worrying, if not more so: Greek neo-fascists Golden Dawn remain the third most popular party while continuing to carry out attacks on migrants. Xenophobic Eastern European governments continue to use barbed-wire fences and the inflammatory language of ‘invasion’ to keep out refugees. In Calais, France, fascist groups frequently abduct, strip and beat refugees living in the ‘Jungle’ encampment while French police frequently make incursions with batons and teargas while between 2014 and 2015 Germany saw a 500% increase in attacks against refugee centres. And with every ISIS terror attack such jingoistic nationalism becomes further entrenched.
While there was never any ‘Golden Age’ of multiculturalism, we certainly are seeing a return to cruder, more explicit (which in turn enable more vicious) forms of racism. This is not to say that violence is the only ‘true’ form of anti-racism or that the problem of racism can be tackled only with violence. In the end, the only long-term solution is to build a movement which can oppose both the racist narrative and the social injustices it conceals, a task which involves a wide range of activities and tactics.
But while there are those who act out the politics of ‘race’, with all the violence it entails, there will be those who will respond in kind. Multiculturalism may have been created in the spirit of peaceful coexistence but it was defended with a violence strong enough to overpower its enemies. And for that, we make no apologies.Jim Gordon shines a light on the corrupt GCPD as Detective Comics explores Zero-Year!
The Good:
Writer John Layman shows us what young Lt. James Gordon was up to during the events of “Zero Year,” which you can read in the Batman book! This issue focuses on Gordon and his attempts to clean up the city. With the power completely knocked out in Gotham, criminals and violent gangs are taking over the city and stretching the police force thin. To make matters worse, Gordon isn’t getting any help from his fellow officers as they intentionally slow down any investigations into serious crimes. Layman writes Gordon well: he’s practical, logical, smart, and with a little bit of that dry wit and sarcasm we’ve come to expect from Gordon. He knows how to write Jim Gordon’s personality well. It’s a nice change of pace for Detective Comics to star Jim Gordon, and honestly, it was refreshing. With Batman appearing in several books, Detective Comics could be even better if it focused more on Jim Gordon’s story in the future, similar to the “Black Mirror” storyline or even like the book Gotham Central from years ago. And if this single issue is any indication, John Layman is the man for the job. He shows us how Gordon sticks to his moral code and that he’s not afraid to bend the rules a bit in order to do his job: protect Gotham. Gordon isn’t some goody-goody boy scout—he’s a flawed man trying to do his best in a city of corruption. And that’s exactly why we love Jim Gordon.
Detective Comics #25 also had some nice surprises to add to Batman’s mythology. Detective Harvey Bullock, looking much younger and so dapper, makes a cool cameo. We learn the idea behind the Bat-signal and how it came into use. And artist Jason Fabok pays homage to the first cover with Batman (way back in 1939’s Detective Comics #27). Speaking of Fabok, that brings me to my next point. The man is amazing. His art keeps getting better and better. Fabok’s art is crisp and clear while still retaining the dark, ominous atmosphere that perpetually hangs over Gotham. There is no one that draws Gotham quite like how he does. Jason Fabok is, for lack of a better word, bad-ass. The homage mentioned earlier is a beautiful splash page that makes readers pause, eyes wide, and unconsciously say out loud, “Wow.” It’s great.
The Bad:
This issue isn’t quite perfect though. For one, John Layman’s story structure is getting very familiar. Detective Comics #25, like a few other issues before it, begins with some big action happening in the first two or three pages before jumping back in time and showing the reader what led to that moment. It’s a neat way to hook people into a story right at the beginning, but only when used sparingly. If almost every issue begins the same way it starts to lose that hook and gets tiresome. Secondly, readers are introduced to Roman Sionis as Jim Gordon investigates the Black Mask gang. However, we never really learn what Sionis is doing or why he’s doing these things. All we’re told is that he’s the CEO of a major cosmetic corporation and oh yeah he is also a crime boss for some reason. Why? Well hopefully those answers will be revealed in future issues of Detective Comics.
The third thing that stuck out to me about this issue involved Gordon falling off a bridge. (SPOILERS ahead so reader beware! I’ll let you know when it’s safe again.) After being thrown off a bridge by some unsavory policemen, Gordon not only survives the fall but walks away from it completely unharmed. He spends some time in the issue wondering how he managed to survive a fall that would normally kill someone, but he’s never quite sure what happened. It’s not until the end of the issue that Gordon realizes he had help from some Dark Knight out there. Here’s my problem with this: wouldn’t Gordon feel someone rescue him at the last second before he hit the water? He should have known right then and there that he had help, right? And when we first see Gordon survive that fall, we see him walk out of the water. If Batman saved him in time, why didn’t Batman take Gordon to land? Did Batman briefly save Gordon from hitting the water, only to drop him back in it and make him swim to shore? (Okay, the SPOILERS are over now. Continue!)
The verdict: 4/5
Overall this is a great one-shot story starring James Gordon and it fits in nicely with Zero Year. John Layman’s take on the future police commissioner and the corrupt GCPD was nicely done and it felt like a classic, old school, Jim Gordon storyline. Jason Fabok’s art is top-notch as always and the splash pages are wonderful. There are some very minor issues that stuck out to me, but nothing serious enough to really take away from the story and overall book. It’s a great, self-contained story and a treat for your eyeballs at that!Governments divided over how to deal with unprecedented migration to the EU, with states increasingly blaming each other
Europe’s fragmented attempts to get to grips with its worst ever migration crisis are disintegrating into a slanging match between national capitals ahead of what is shaping up to be a major clash between eastern and western Europe over a common response.
Berlin has won plaudits for seizing the moral high ground and opening its doors unconditionally to Syrian refugees but Austria and Hungary attacked it on Tuesday for stoking chaos at their railway stations, on their roads and at their borders as thousands of people seek transit to Germany.
A laboratory for refugee politics: inside Passau, the 'German Lampedusa' Read more
The German chancellor, Angela Merkel, rejected the criticism and stepped up her campaign to pressure reluctant EU partners into relieving the load on Germany and taking part in a more equitable system of sharing refugees across the EU.
“We must push through uniform European asylum policies,” she said. With Germany expecting to process 800,000 asylum applications this year – more than four times the figure for 2014 and more than the rest of the EU combined – Merkel insisted that there had to be a fairer distribution. “The criteria must be discussed,” she said.
Mariano Rajoy, the Spanish prime minister, stood alongside Merkel in Berlin as she spoke, but he rejected the German pressure for a new system of binding quotas for refugees spread across the EU. “Some countries don’t want refugees,” he said. “You can’t force anyone [to take them].”
Facebook Twitter Pinterest A young girl walks in front of Hungarian police officers prevent people from entering a central Budapest train station. Photograph: Matt Cardy/Getty Images
“It’s not the time to be pointing fingers at each other,” said Natasha Bertaud, the European commission’s spokeswoman on immigration.
Merkel’s comments came as Hungarian authorities closed Budapest’s main station to refugees and migrants following chaotic scenes on Monday, when people who had been camped outside for weeks were suddenly allowed to leave for Austria and Germany without visa checks.
The move followed the station’s complete closure earlier, when all trains to the west had been stopped from leaving. Police in helmets and wielding batons surrounded Keleti station’s grand, crumbling facade and dozens of refugees and migrants who were inside were forced out.
As night fell more than 300 migrants were still being barred from the station by police, and rights group Hungarian Helsinki Committee warned that the situation was “very tense and unpredictable”.
The blocked migrants chanted “Germany! Germany! We want to leave!” in protest, and some held their babies in the air as a sign of their distress.
Hungarian railway authorities said they would allow “only those in possession of the appropriate travel documents and – if necessary – a visa” to board trains travelling to western Europe.
The difficulties of forging a consensus were apparent, |
its bombings over the weekend.
As the Wall Street Journal reported Monday, the air campaign has transformed Yemen into a battlefield for broader contest over regional power between Shiite Iran and Sunni Muslim countries led by Saudi Arabia.
There were also reports the Russian government has offered to sell advanced surface-to-air missiles to Iran, providing Tehran with a mobile system that could attack both missiles and aircraft.
The system, the Antey-2500, apparently has the capacity to defend against – and attack – ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, and fixed-wing aircraft.
Meanwhile, Russia has also continued to be the primary arms supplier to Syria, another military hot spot in the Middle East.
Historically, virtually all of the weapons systems in the Syrian arsenal have come from Russia, which decades ago signed a Treaty of Friendship and Cooperation with Damascus ensuring uninterrupted supplies of arms from Moscow.
The civil war in Syria, which has cost over 220, 000 lives, is now in its fifth year, with no signs of a settlement.
The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) recently released data that showed the United States was still the world’s leading arms exporter.
In the most recent period its data covered, 2010-2014, the United States accounted for 31 percent of the world’s transfers of major conventional weapons. Russia was in second place with 27 percent. No other country accounted for more than 5 percent of arms sales during this period.
According to the New York Times, U.S. defence industry officials told Congress they were expecting within days a request from Arab countries “to buy thousands of American-made missiles, bombs and other weapons, replenishing an arsenal that has been depleted over the past year.”
And Qatar is planning to replace its French-made Mirage fighters with U-S.-made F-15 jets.
Dr. Goldring told IPS one particularly troubling aspect of recent press accounts is the consideration of potential sales of the U.S.’s new F-35 stealth fighter, one of the most advanced, to countries in the Middle East.
“We’ve seen this tactic before. First, U.S. policymakers want to sell our most sophisticated fighter aircraft. Then they turn around and say we need to develop new fighters because the current technology has been distributed to so many countries.
“If we want to preserve our military forces’ technological advantages over potential adversaries, we need to show more restraint in our weapons transfers,” she added.
The F-35 programme already includes an unusual arrangement with U.S. allies under which sales of the aircraft will begin as it is being deployed with U.S. forces.
“We shouldn’t compound this error by considering even wider sales of the F-35,” Goldring said.
Meanwhile, France is negotiating the sale of its most sophisticated fighter plane, the Rafale, to the United Arab Emirates.
Ironically, as these potential sales were being negotiated, countries have been meeting in Vienna to develop implementation plans for the Arms Trade Treaty.
The Arms Trade Treaty calls on countries to be more reflective before making weapons sales decisions, taking into account their potential effects on human rights and humanitarian concerns, and considering factors such as the effect of the transfers on peace and security, among other issues.
“Middle Eastern suppliers and recipients alike desperately need to do this sort of reevaluation. Unfortunately, the recent reports suggest that it’s ‘business as usual’ in the Middle East,” declared Dr. Goldring, who also represents the Acronym Institute at the United Nations on conventional weapons and arms trade issues.
“For years, I’ve written and spoken about the ‘fallacy of the last move’ in U.S. foreign policy. We keep repeating the same mistake, which is to assume that our foreign policy decisions will not be answered by our adversaries. Time and time again, we’ve been proven wrong in this regard. It’s likely to happen again in this case.”
Edited by Kitty Stapp
The writer can be contacted at thalifdeen@aol.comMedia playback is unsupported on your device Media caption The BBC's Rory Cellan-Jones: "This is a really interesting development"
Microsoft has unveiled Surface - its own-brand family of tablets.
The touchscreen computers will be powered by its upcoming Windows 8 system and contain a choice of an Intel or ARM-based processor.
It allows the firm to challenge Apple's bestselling iPad with a device that can run standard applications such as its own Office programs and Photoshop.
But it puts Microsoft in competition with other manufacturers planning to release tablets designed for Windows 8.
The company's chief executive, Steve Ballmer, said he had wanted to give the software "its own companion hardware".
The devices have 10.6 inch (26.9cm) displays, built-in kickstands and are housed in magnesium cases - which the company described as the first of their kind.
The ARM-based tablets are 9.3mm (0.4 inches) thick - slightly less than the iPad - and run the Windows RT version of the new system. The Verge reported that the chipset will be built by Nvidia. Third-party developers must rewrite programs from scratch to run on the system's Metro interface to work on these devices.
The versions using Intel's x86 technology run Windows 8 Pro and are 13.5mm (0.5 inches) thick. These can run Metro and an updated version of the "classic" desktop meaning they can use software designed for earlier editions of Windows, although some programs will need to be updated to be compatible.
The specifications mean the Surface tablets have bigger screens than the iPad but are heavier.
Pen input
A variety of accompanying covers can be attached using built-in magnets. They double as keyboards with trackpads. One version is flat while the other offers keys that can be depressed.
The devices are also designed to work with a pen accessory using what the firm dubbed "digital ink". When the stylus is held close to the screen of the tablet it ignores touch-input from the users' hands and "samples" the ink at 600dpi (dots per inch).
The ARM-based version will be available with either 32GB (gigabytes) or 64GB of storage. Microsoft said they would be priced at a similar rate to other tablets using the same type of processor built by other firms.
It added that the Intel-based versions would be offered with either 64GB or 128GB of storage and would have price tags comparable to ultrabook laptops.
Different chipsets
Targeting tablets When Apple unveiled the iPad in 2010 some tech watchers scoffed, dubbing the device a "giant iPod Touch" and questioning whether there was really a market for the product, bearing in mind others had tried and failed to sell sizeable numbers of tablets. Fast-forward two years and there is no question there is demand for such devices. Tech research firm IDC recently forecast 107.4 million tablets would be shipped this year with the number growing to 222.1 million by 2016. It expects Apple's iPad to account for about 62.5% of the market this year with Android devices such as Amazon's Kindle Fire taking a 36.5% share. IDC does not yet include Windows-based tablets in its market forecasts, but plans to start doing so from July. It says it does not necessarily believe Windows-based tablets like the Surface will take marketshare from Apple and Android, but says they should grow the overall market for such products.
One tech analyst told the BBC that other hardware makers were likely to feel aggrieved by the news.
"Microsoft can offer a competitive price for these specifications as it doesn't need to pay itself a licence for the Windows 8 software which other manufacturers will have to do, and that might make its PC and tablet-making partners unhappy," said Carolina Milanesi, research vice president at the technology consultants Gartner.
She added that the firm appeared to have focused on a specific part of the market which wanted a more powerful device than the iPad.
"They seem to be be targeting a professional audience," she said.
"So they are going head-to-head with Apple within the corporate sector. Price will be key - these devices won't be at the bottom end of the market. They will probably let other manufacturers fight over that space."
By contrast the tech research firm Forrester said it thought the focus for ARM-based Surface tablets would be consumers, rather than the enterprise sector.
But one of its analysts warned there was a risk customers would shy away if they found it confusing distinguishing between the two types of Windows 8 experience. This will be the first time Microsoft will offer a version of its PC system designed for chips based on ARM's architecture.
Image caption Mr Ballmer described Surface as "a whole new community of computing devices"
"Microsoft will be its own worst enemy in this market," blogged Sarah Rotman Epps.
"Consumers aren't used to thinking about chipsets. Choice is a key tenet of Windows, but too much choice is overwhelming for consumers. Apple gets this, and limits iPad options to connectivity, storage, and black… or white."
ARM's ambitions
Despite the potential for confusion, British chip designer ARM said it was "excited" by the news.
The firm's designs have already proved popular with smartphone makers, but Microsoft's support for its technology in Windows 8 offers it the potential to expand into a market dominated until now by Intel and AMD.
"This represents a significant milestone in Microsoft's journey to expand the support of the Windows operating system and embrace the ARM architecture," said Lance Howarth, the firm's vice president of marketing.
"With the Surface for Windows RT announcement we are delighted to see yet another example of this partnership in action which follows on from various Windows RT devices demonstrated at Taiwan's Computex show recently."
Intel said it was also "pleased" about Microsoft's move.
"Intel believes in and supports an open and healthy ecosystem that delivers a broad scale of innovation and choice in solutions and user experiences," a statement said.
"We also believe Windows 8 on Intel architecture will deliver the most complete experience with the best performance and compatibility across all computing platforms."Our president can’t help himself. He just cannot help himself.
As he exited a firehouse in Corpus Christi, Texas, on Tuesday, President Donald Trump noticed a crowd of about 800 people. He grabbed a lone star Texas flag and shouted back at his supporters: “What a crowd! What a turnout!”
And there you have it. Minutes after managing to show leadership while sitting at a table of local, state and federal officials managing the catastrophic mess of Hurricane Harvey, the president couldn’t resist the lure of an adoring crowd of supporters.
And as a result, once again ignite questions about his inability to show true compassion for those who are hurting.
I know, I know … this sounds like nit-picking. Only it’s not.
This is about our president, and the hundreds of thousands of flooded-out Texans who want to believe that he feels their pain. That at least for today, they are first on his heart.
Presidents Clinton, Bush and Obama all had to do it. It’s part of the job as comforter in chief. It’s acknowledging the fact that anyone can write a check, but not everyone is willing to come down, put their arms around you and tell you it’s going to be OK.
Trump had the opportunity on Tuesday, but he didn’t close the deal.
Trump did well going to Texas
The president, despite criticism about a Friday night pardoning of former Arizona sheriff Joe Arpaio, had pushed aides from the beginning to schedule a visit to Texas as early as possible after Harvey made landfall near Rockport, Texas that same Friday night as a Category 4 hurricane. He has made sure to say repeatedly that all necessary federal resources would be made available to relief efforts. And the crucial Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has performed admirably, coordinating with Texas state and local officials.
Trump even made the right call Tuesday by going to the Gulf Coast city of Corpus Christi, to avoid being a distraction from the catastrophic flooding that was ravaging the Houston area about 200 miles to the northeast.
“It’s a real team, and we want to do it better than ever before,” Trump said of the response effort during a briefing with officials in the Corpus Christi firehouse. “We want to be looked at in five years, in 10 years from now as, this is the way to do it.”
That’s all good. But even during the briefing, Trump had to be pulled back from P.T. Barnum-mode after introducing FEMA administrator Brock Long as “the man who’s really been very famous on television over the last couple of days.”
Long quickly responded that “all eyes are on Houston, and so are mine,” cautioning that rescue and recovery efforts still have “a long way to go.”
“We’re still in a life-saving, life-sustaining mission,” he added, as if intending to re-focus the president’s attention where it should be — on the victims, especially in Houston where 9,000 residents fleeing rising floodwaters crammed into a makeshift shelter designed to accommodate 5,000.
“This is not the Superdome,” Long said, referring to the chaos residents of New Orleans endured while seeking shelter at a sports arena after Hurricane Katrina 12 years ago. “I have an incident management team inside the city of Houston. And more and more people are being moved to shelters to stabilize the situation.”
America in split-screen: flag-waving vs. empathy
Long’s sobering focus was made surreal by the split-screen video feed from Houston that showed simultaneously on every major news channel that carried the president’s briefing.
Images of people wading through water chest deep, carrying babies and pets. The self-described “Cajun Navy” risking their own lives and boats to find trapped residents and get them to safety. Neighbors fighting against rushing floodwaters to form a human chain to get a nine-months-pregnant woman aboard a dump truck.
It was an awesome sight. America at its best, to be sure.
And in Corpus Christi, which, by comparison, had sustained relatively light damage from the storm, there was Trump still managing to seem like he was above it all standing atop a fire truck.
“Texas can handle anything,” he said, waving the state flag to cheers.
There were no handshakes. No hugs. No words of comfort whispered in any ears.
Well, even Trump knew this lack of empathy didn’t play well.
On Wednesday morning, he tweeted: “After witnessing first hand the horror & devastation caused by Hurricane Harvey, my heart goes out even more so to the great people of Texas!”
And that afternoon, before a speech touting his tax reform proposal, he gave weary Texans another shout out.
But those words from a distance did little to erase the seeming disconnect on Tuesday. A disconnect made worse shortly after Trump’s firehouse speech by Houston’s mayor and police chief when they delivered the somber news that a Houston Police Department officer had died in the relief effort around 4 a.m. Sunday. Officer Steve Perez, a 34-year veteran of the force, drowned when his car was submerged driving through a flooded underpass as he tried to get to his “secondary” duty station, according to Police Chief Art Acevedo.
At last 40 people, including Perez, have been confirmed dead as a result of the storm, officials said Friday.
Thank goodness for second chances
As this column was going to press, Trump was scheduled to return to the region on Saturday. That would be a good time for him to reach out to Acevedo and Mayor Sylvester Turner, whom Trump has basically avoided to this point.
Yes, he’s already been shown up by Vice President Mike Pence, who on Thursday was on the ground in Rockport hugging and consoling victims. He also lent a hand at picking up debris.
Trump, as if to raise the vice president one, is now pledging to write a $1 million check to the Harvey relief effort, the White House said Thursday.
OK, but why didn’t he do that on Tuesday, when he and the first lady were in Texas “witnessing first hand the horror & devastation caused by Hurricane Harvey”?
It is possible, given all of the misery they are currently experiencing from the deluge of Hurricane Harvey, that Texas residents — especially those in Houston — could care less whether the president feels their pain.
Maybe this early test of Trump’s talents as comforter in chief will be less of a showcase for him to demonstrate compassion, and more one for leadership. To that end, maybe all frustrated and exhausted residents really care about is an adequate FEMA response.
Nah … they also want to know that the president cares more about them than he does himself. That he won’t be standing above an adoring crowd blowing kisses — wearing a “USA” cap that he hawks for $40 on his website — while they and their family members are sleeping on cots in an over-crowded, makeshift shelter.
Sure, it’s symbolic; but symbolism matters — just ask former President George W. Bush.
Rarely do we get second chances to make good impressions. I hope the president makes the most of his.At a press conference in Spain a few weeks ago, a journalist asked world-famous architect Frank Gehry what he would say to critics who accuse him “of practicing showy architecture.” Gehry, who was in town to receive a prestigious Princess of Asturias Award, responded by extending his middle finger. (As one critic later quipped, “Artists often speak in symbols.”)
After an equally impertinent follow-up question from another reporter, an exasperated Gehry said, “Let me tell you one thing. In this world we are living in, 98% of everything that is built and designed today is pure sh*t. There’s no sense of design, no respect for humanity or for anything else. They are damn buildings and that’s it.” The 85-year-old Gehry quickly apologized for his cranky behavior by explaining that he was tired from his flight.
The architect, who implicitly exempted himself from that 98%, might have been arrogant, but that doesn’t mean he wasn’t right.
Ironically, many in the art world might agree with his first sentence but not find it derogatory. Much modern art has been inspired by excrement. The motto of the Surrealists was “Kunst ist Scheisse” (“Art is sh*t”). In 1961, Italian artist Piero Manzoni took that literally when he made “Merda d’artista,” which consists of 90 sealed cans of his own merda. (In 2007, one of the cans sold for €124,000 at Sotheby’s. Alas, the auction was not titled “Sh*t Show.”) Most recently, in October American artist Paul McCarthy installed a giant inflatable balloon in the Place Vendôme that to many Parisians resembled a butt plug. This put a new spin on what has been called the “turd-in-the-plaza” school of public art: those abstract bronze boluses (think: Henri Moore) plopped in front of banal skyscrapers in the 1960s and 1970s.
But the vast majority of those in the architecture world have taken Gehry’s observation as an affront. Curiously, however, more than one mainstream critic has seemed to agree with the starchitect. Alan G. Brake, executive editor of the Architect’s Newspaper, penned an editorial in which he said Gehry “has a point. We continue to tolerate poorly functioning, wasteful, ugly buildings, which do little to serve society and often do a lot to harm it.” But who is the “we” doing the tolerating? It is those who read and write for the eminently establishment, eminently Modernist Architect’s Newspaper. It is they who are squatting over the helpless public.
Architects' Journal, a leading British magazine, likewise featured an editorial titled “Frank Gehry Is Probably Right About Quality.” After conceding the failures of Modernist architecture, executive editor Paul Finch admitted, “Although I do not find the work of contemporary classical architects to my taste, I can at least acknowledge that it can be done with skill and panache and, if somebody wants to commission buildings in that style, so be it.... One thing that can be said for Classicism is that it provides rules, which mean that not very good designers, or builders, can knock out passable buildings.”
In other words, there is safety in the discipline of tradition. (An example of such a rule is that the width of the spacing between columns should be less than the height of the columns.) These rules are somewhat analogous to rules of grammar: They prevent an improper sentence/building, though they don’t ensure an elegant one.
What Finch does not say is that many if not most architects will always be of middling ability. There is nothing wrong with that. The craftsman should not be required to be a genius. We don’t expect other skilled professionals, such as lawyers or doctors, to be geniuses either.
What Finch also does not say is that many if not most buildings are the work of contractors, not architects, and that this has been and will likely always be the case. Unfortunately, architectural education and criticism tends to focus on important buildings at the expense of the common and ordinary.
Prior to the twentieth century, do-it-yourself builders used to rely on “pattern books,” which were catalogs of pleasing design options. Builders and homeowners, from whom no special aesthetic skill was expected or required, could select from models in which the floor plans, windows, detailing, etc. all coordinated, and the result was guaranteed to be not-bad, and sometimes delightful. In recent years, some towns admired for their traditional architecture have been reviving the use of some of those books, which contain nary an alienating Mod box or vulgar McMansion.
Modernist architects can sneer at those “nostalgic” bourgeois catalogs and the supposedly hidebound rules of classicism, but what do they offer in their place? If those designers concede that rules are conducive to good, or at least not-bad, architecture, what rules do they propose in place of those of the classical? At best, they offer esoteric theories articulated in gobbledygook “comprehensible” only to initiates who attended the right design schools. And the would-be architectural rule-makers have nothing to say to mere builders, whose common sense makes them immune to the bullsh*t that 98% of architects subscribe to today.In an election so ugly and so close, one is reluctant to proclaim winners. But it’s clear that there’s a loser -- the very notion of the United States of America.
Instead we have populations and geographies that barely seem to belong in the same country, if not on the same planet. The electorate is so divided that many states went for either Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton by lopsided margins. The Northeast was solidly Democratic, with Clinton winning New York, Massachusetts and Vermont with three-fifths of the vote or more. Washington, D.C., heavily black and the seat of the bureaucracy and pundit class, delivered an almost Soviet-style 93% to 4% margin.
On the other side were a series of states where Trump won just as easily, including Tennessee and Kentucky, with three-fifths of the vote, and West Virginia, by a margin of two-to-one -- higher than those attained by 2012 GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney.
Much of the rest of the map has followed the usual patterns: Democratic domination of Illinois and the West Coast, while Republicans held the South. Where the election was decided was in previous battleground states: Florida, North Carolina and Ohio.
The Revolt of Middle America
America is a nation of many economies, but those that produce real, tangible things -- food, fiber, energy and manufactured goods -- went overwhelmingly for Trump. He won virtually every state from Appalachia to the Rockies, with the exceptions of heavily Hispanic Colorado, Nevada and New Mexico, and President Obama’s home base of Illinois.
Some of his biggest margins were in energy states where the fracking revolution created a burst of prosperity. Generally speaking, the more carbon-intensive the economy, the better the Republicans did. These states include Ohio, Texas, Louisiana, Wyoming, Idaho, and especially West Virginia, where he won by a remarkable margin of 68% to 27%. The energy industry could well be the biggest financial winner in the election.
The Green Trap
Clinton’s support for climate change legislation, a lower priority among the electorate than other concerns, was seen as necessary to shore up support from greens threatening to attack her from the left. Yet the issue never caught on the heartland, which tends to see climate change mitigation as injurious to them.
This may have proven a major miscalculation, as the energy economy is also tied closely to manufacturing. Besides climate change, the heartland had many reasons to fear a continuation of Obama policies, particularly related to regulation and global trade, which seems to have been a big factor in Trump’s upset win in normally moderate to liberal Wisconsin.
Trump either won, or closely contested all the traditional manufacturing states -- Ohio, Wisconsin, Indiana, Iowa and even Michigan, where union voters did not support Clinton as they had Obama and where trade was also a big issue. Trump did consistently better than Romney in all these states, even though Romney was a native of Michigan. Perhaps the most significant turnaround was in Ohio, which Obama won with barely 51% of the vote in 2012. This year Trump reversed this loss and won by over seven points.
Agricultural states, reeling from the decline of commodity prices, not surprisingly, also went for the New Yorker.
Premature Epitaphs For The White Voter
Race, as is often the case, played a major role in the election. For much of the election, commentators, particularly in the dominant Eastern media, seemed to be openly celebrating what CNN heralded as “the decline of the white voter.” The “new America,” they suggested, would be a coalition of minorities, educated workers and millennials.
To be sure, the minority share of the electorate is only going to grow -- from less than 30% today to over 40% in 2032 -- as more white Americans continue to die than be born. Just between 2012 and 2016, the Latino and Asian electorate grew 17% and 16%, respectively; the white electorate expanded barely 2%.
In Colorado the new minority math was seen, with a strong showing among Latinos, the educated suburbs around Denver and millennials.
That may be the future, but now is now. Exit polling nationwide showed Trump won two-to-one among people without a college degree, matched Clinton among college graduates, losing only those with graduate degrees, a group that has voted for the Democrats since 1988.
But there’s simply more high school graduates than those with graduate degrees. And for now there are a lot more whites than minorities. As we look into the future, these groups will fade somewhat but right now they can still determine elections. Nowhere is this clearer than in Trump’s decisive win in Florida, a state that is home to many white retirees, including from the old industrial states.
Latinos may be the one group in the “new America” that made a difference for Clinton, not only in Colorado, but also in Nevada. Republicans paid a price for Trump’s intemperate comments on immigration and about Mexico.
They also made states like Texas and North Carolina closer, and may have helped secure Clinton’s win in Virginia. In contrast, neither African-Americans or millennials seem to have turned out as heavily, both in numbers and percentage terms, as they did for President Obama. Trump appears to have made some modest gains with both groups, contrary to the conventional wisdom.
Class Warrior
Class has been a bigger factor in this election than in any election since the New Deal era. Trump’s insurgency rode largely on middle- and working-class fears about globalization, immigration and the cultural arrogance of the “progressive” cultural elite. This is something Bill Clinton understands better than his wife.
Trump owes his election to what one writer has called “the leftover people.” These may be “deplorables” to the pundits but their grievances are real – their incomes and their lifespans have been decreasing. They have noticed, as Thomas Frank has written, that the Democrats have gone “from being the party of Decatur to the party of Martha’s Vineyard.”
Many of these voters were once Democrats, and feel they have been betrayed. And they include a large swath of the middle class, whose fury explains much of what happened tonight. Trump has connected better with these voters than Romney, who won those making between $50,000 and $90,000 by a narrow 52 percent margin. Early analysis of this year’s election shows Trump doing better among these kind of voters.
At the same time, however, affluent voters -- those making $100,000 and above -- seem to have tilted over to the Democrats this year. This is the first time the “rich” have gone against the GOP since the 1964 Goldwater debacle. Obama did better among the wealthy, winning eight of the 10 richest counties in 2012. In virtually all these counties, Clinton did even better.
What does this mean for America’s traditional middle class, whose numbers have been fading for a generation? Long the majority, notes Pew, they are no longer, outnumbered by the lower and upper classes combined. Yet like the Anglo population, in this election what’s left of America’s middle class has shown itself not ready to face the sunset.
Now What?
Given the unpredictable nature of Trump, it’s hard to see what he will do. Although himself a businessman, he was opposed overwhelmingly by his own class. Clinton won more support from big business and the business elite. If you had a billionaire primary, Clinton would have won by as much as 20 to 1.
Initially many of those business interests closest to both Obama and Clinton -- Wall Street, Silicon Valley, Hollywood -- will be on the outside looking in. Their advantages from tax avoidance could be lessened. Merger-mania, yet another form of asset inflation, will continue unabated, particularly in the tech and media space.
The clear challenge for (I can’t believe I am writing these words) President Trump will not be so much to punish these enemies, but to embrace those people -- largely middle class, suburban, small town and white -- who are not part of his world, but made him President. If he embraces his role as a radical reformer, he could do much good, for example with a flatter tax system, restoring federalism, seizing the advantage of the energy revolution and reviving military preparedness.
The question is whether he will, or is capable, of doing these things. A Hillary Clinton administration would have been safer, and predictable, but it would not have addressed the very things that made Americans turn to this bizarre political poseur. Now it’s up to Trump to live up to his promise to restore the country’s self-confidence, and, for the rest of us, to make sure he does it in accordance with the Constitution and basic decency.Orbán: Hungary would turn away refugee tide from Turkey
BBJ
Hungary will defend its borders 100%, even if Turkey carries out its threat to release masses of migrants towards the European Union, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán said in an interview with Brazilian daily newspaper Folha de S. Paulo, government web portal kormany.hu announced yesterday.
Prime Minister Viktor Orbán. (Photo: Kormany.hu)
The São Paulo newspaper recalled that the refugee agreement between the EU and Turkey specified the abolition of compulsory visas for Turkish citizens. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has stressed that if Brussels fails to keep to the agreement, Ankara will unleash waves of refugees towards the EU.
The Hungarian prime minister said that he sees it as “impossible” to allow Turkish citizens visa-free travel to Europe, and that European countries will be unable to keep their promise to Turkey. At the same time, Orbán said he does not fear Ankara’s threat, and declared his support for the Turkish president and the stability of Turkey.
“If there is no stability in Turkey, this will be a problem for the whole region,” said Orbán. “We must support the Turkish government.”
Orbán was also asked in the interview whether the arrival of refugees might help resolve demographic problems in the European Union.
“Never,” he replied. “They could cause a more serious problem by building a parallel society in Europe. Migrants arrive with different cultural notions, and such parallel societies are dangerous, destabilizing EU countries.”
Orbán also repeated his support for U.S. presidential candidate Donald Trump in the interview, saying that “Trump’s foreign policy would be the best for us.” He added: “Trump defends the monitoring of migrants. He also opposes democracy building in other countries, and I agree with him on this.”
Meanwhile, as reported by MTI, Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim praised Hungary’s attitude towards the attempted putsch in Turkey on July 15 as “an example that should be followed by other European Union countries.”
Speaking at discussions with Hungarian Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó in Ankara Tuesday, Yildirim described Szijjártó’s visit as a strong expression of solidarity which he valued greatly. He also emphasized that the purges following the attempted putsch would take place within the framework of a democratic state governed by the rule of law, and confirmed that the Hungarian authorities stand willing to cooperate.
Index.hu cited state-run Turkish press agency Anadolu as reporting that Szijjártó voiced Hungary’s support for Turkey in the fight against terrorism, adding that the foreign minister also stressed that the Hungarian government made its position clear from the very start that it regarded the events of July 15 as a terror attack.About
Kickstarter funds will be used to purchase 8 copper brew kettles (20 gallons each) and our heat-recovering pizza oven that will pre-heat our brewing water.
The BYOB kitchen will craft all menu items with the same attention and care as the pizza, too. Using meats, dairy and produce from the Hudson Valley, New Jersey and Long Island as well as the local rooftop farmers "fields" when possible. Rich comfort-food items, light seasonal appetizers & entrees, and even exotic Indian specials rotating weekly will be offered on BYOB's menu. And save room for dessert...
Lovingly stretched, topped and baked for you. A proper, long fermented dough that gets dressed with only the freshest, local, and responsibly handled ingredients.
BYOB is going to feed and fill New Yorkers' bellies and pint glasses for years to come, but first we need your help to get rolling!
Risks and challenges
We are focusing on building a firm foundation for the future of local brewing. For starters, we are going to get a classy, solidly built warehouse in Brooklyn, NY so that we are zoned properly for brewing and to allow plenty of space for everyone to enjoy themselves. We will be signing our lease soon.
Next, we will create over twenty jobs in the hospitality industry and improve the surrounding neighborhood with a unique & comfortable place to meet friends and enjoy life. The funds from Kickstarter will be used to install 8 copper-clad brewing kettles and a heat-recovering wood fired pizza oven. The pizza oven is being designed by a glass furnace manufacturing expert with over 25 years of experience, who also specializes in heat exchange systems and use of alternate fuels. The copper brewing kettles will take 2-3 months to fabricate and have delivered to Brooklyn, NY.
Extra funds have been, and are currently being raised from private investors to fund the construction, permitting, and all other aspects of BYOB.
~ All this will be swiftly and responsibly achieved with the team that has been assembled for BYOB. For starters, Founder Jamie Saurman has been a professional chef for the last 10 years overseeing kitchens, dining rooms and bar programs. His last 5 years have been spent in NYC gaining expertise, experience and energy to build and ensure the success of BYOB.
~ As a certified Project Management Professional, Hemali Saurman brings 7 years of experience in the financial industry working at a start-up company to BYOB's leadership team. Along with a financial background, Hemali also brings street smarts to the team, from the streets of Mumbai, India. And a background full of spices, too.
~ Studio JS2 will be designing, expediting and executing the architecture and permitting process for BYOB. A renowned architecture firm, Studio JS2 has been completing projects and meeting deadlines in NYC for over 20 years.
~ Our entire team has been assembled through trusted contacts and references, and it would be painful to attempt building BYOB with anyone other than our CPA (20+ years NYC experience), Lawyers, Real Estate Brokers, and Liquor License Attorney ( obtained first liquor license for a food truck in NYC! No easy feat.)
So go ahead and pledge any amount!
BYOB will take 6-9 months to fully open our doors, but several Kickstarter Rewards will be fulfilled shortly after our goal is reached. Small-batch early brew sessions are available and and all SWAG / dry goods will be mailed ASAP.
Thanks for your support! Please let us know what you think... we can take it!
info@byobnyc.com
DON"T FORGET THE SWAG
( Stuff - We - All - Get )
SWAG may include, but is not limited to: bottle openers, coasters, key-chains, doo-dads, tchotchkes, trinkets, pens, pencils, stickers, ponies, magnets, and kazoo’s.Adam Lashinsky's upcoming book, Inside Apple, provides an intriguing look into the inner workings at Apple while examining the management and product development strategies they've implemented to create numerous game-changing devices.
Now it's no secret that Apple sweats every last detail when it comes to their products - which if anything, is actually an understatement.
Indeed, Apple's VP of iOS software, Scott Forstall, once explained the extent to which Apple leaves no stone unturned. Speaking to the design of the iOS interface, Forstall said, "I actually have a photographer's loupe that I use to make sure every pixel is right. We will argue over literally a single pixel."
(Example: Why time stands still at 9:42 on the iPhone)
Of course, Apple's attention to detail stretches out far beyond the product itself and even encompasses the packaging said products are shipped in. Is it any surprise that Apple, in addition to its slew of technical and design patents, also has a number of patents pertaining to package design?
While packaging may seem secondary to most consumer electronics companies, Apple takes package design very seriously. From the way Apple packages its Magic Mouse to the iPhone 4S, anyone who has ever opened up an Apple product anytime in the last 15 years or so can attest that Apple's packaging is elegant and reflects a thoughtfulness that most companies don't bother to deal with.
To that end, one of the more interesting anecdotes in Lashinsky's book reveals the existence of a secretive packaging room within Apple HQ that is only accessible to a select few with the requisite security badges.
To fully grasp how seriously Apple executives sweat the small stuff, consider this: For months, a packaging designer was holed up in this room performing the most mundane of tasks - opening boxes.
For Apple, packaging is more than how a product is nestled comfortably inside a box. Consequently, the user experience isn't solely relegated to the device itself, but begins when a consumer picks up the box itself.
In one example illustrating Apple's exhaustive attention to detail, Lashinsky relays how Apple's packaging room at one |
.
Originally drafted by New York in the first round (13th overall) of the 2011 MLS SuperDraft out of Penn State University, Hertzog had not made a first team appearance for the Red Bulls in 2012. Last season, Hertzog featured in five regular season games. Hertzog scored one goal in three MLS Reserve League appearances this year.The Bahrain-based owners of Leeds United have given formal notice that they have begun negotiations to sell the club, which they bought from the previous owner, Ken Bates, only on 21 December. In their financial statements for the year to 31 December 2012, Gulf Finance House (GFH) state that they bought Leeds for "a bargain purchase" and are now holding the club for sale, which they envisage completing within six months to a year.
GFH also revealed for the first time the price they paid for Leeds, "net cash" of $33m (£22m), and they assess the club to be worth immediately $10m (£7m) more than that. Bates owned 73% of the club via his offshore company, Outro, so of that £22m purchase price disclosed by GFH, he would have been paid £16m. He has never revealed how much he paid to buy Leeds, so it is not known whether Bates, a tax exile living in Monaco, made a personal tax-free profit on the sale.
In their financial statements, GFH say without further explanation that Bates was under some duress to sell the club."The bargain purchase was due to pressure on the sellers [principally Bates] to exit their holdings due to change [sic] in their business plans," they say.
GFH make it clear they are seeking almost immediately to sell Leeds. The club's assets, which the accounts assess to be worth $88m (£58m), are noted as "held-for-sale" with "maturity" predicted within six months to one year.
"The group has an active plan to sell its stake in LUFC Holdings [the company which now owns Leeds]," the financial statements say. "Subsequent to the year end, [GFH] has commenced negotiations relating to the sale of its stake in LUFC Holdings."
In February Salem Patel, GFH's chief investment officer, told the Guardian the fund is looking for "strategic investors" who would buy a minority stake, preferably 30%, to reduce GFH's exposure to the price of buying and funding Leeds. Patel said GFH might consider selling a majority stake, but only to an investor with enough money to fund Leeds to success.
Patel said GFH had paid substantial sums already into Leeds because the club had "a cashflow shortfall" due to season ticket income from this and next season having been mortgaged under Bates's ownership to finance building work in the Elland Road east stand.
The GFH financial statements, signed on 23 February, make it clear GFH is actively seeking to sell its stake and has already begun negotiations to do so. Neither Patel nor David Haigh, deputy chief executive of GFH Capital, the subsidiary fund that actually bought Leeds, have said with whom they are negotiating, or on what terms.
The accounts show that GFH, which has had financial difficulties during the property and financial market slumps, recorded in 2011-12 a modest profit of $10m (£7m). The GFH chairman, Esam Yousif Janahi, hailing a "positive turnaround," said the firm had restructured millions of pounds of debt, and he cited the Leeds acquisition as a high point. "LUFC promises to be a high yielding investment opportunity, which GFH is successfully placing with its investors," Janahi stated.
Leeds, managed by Neil Warnock, are 10th in the Championship, having lost at home to west Yorkshire rivals Huddersfield Town on Saturday.Thank you for supporting the journalism that our community needs!
For unlimited access to the best local, national, and international news and much more, try an All Access Digital subscription:
We hope you have enjoyed your trial! To continue reading, we recommend our Read Now Pay Later membership. Simply add a form of payment and pay only 27¢ per article.
*Introductory pricing schedule for 12 month: $0.99/month plus tax for first 3 months, $5.99/month for months 4 - 6, $10.99/month for months 7 - 9, $13.99/month for months 10 - 12. Standard All Access Digital rate of $16.99/month begins after first year.
*Introductory pricing schedule for 12 month: $0.99/month plus tax for first 3 months, $5.99/month for months 4 - 6, $10.99/month for months 7 - 9, $13.99/month for months 10 - 12. Standard All Access Digital rate of $16.99/month begins after first year.
*Introductory pricing schedule for 12 month: $0.99/month plus tax for first 3 months, $5.99/month for months 4 - 6, $10.99/month for months 7 - 9, $13.99/month for months 10 - 12. Standard All Access Digital rate of $16.99/month begins after first year.
*Introductory pricing schedule for 12 month: $0.99/month plus tax for first 3 months, $5.99/month for months 4 - 6, $10.99/month for months 7 - 9, $13.99/month for months 10 - 12. Standard All Access Digital rate of $16.99/month begins after first year.
Thank you for supporting the journalism that our community needs!
For unlimited access to the best local, national, and international news and much more, try an All Access Digital subscription:
We hope you have enjoyed your trial! To continue reading, we recommend our Read Now Pay Later membership. Simply add a form of payment and pay only 27¢ per article.
Thank you for supporting the journalism that our community needs!
For unlimited access to the best local, national, and international news and much more, try an All Access Digital subscription:
We hope you have enjoyed your trial! To continue reading, we recommend our Read Now Pay Later membership. Simply add a form of payment and pay only 27¢ per article.
The Arboc project was among the capital region’s first urban reserves, one that allowed Swan Lake access to customers near Winnipeg and to the modest tax breaks available to status Indians who shop and work there.
If that’s what a small urban reserve can do for Swan Lake, imagine what one at Kapyong Barracks could do for First Nations in general.
As small-time as it is, the tiny urban reserve helped spark Swan Lake First Nation’s renaissance, turning it into one of the best-run and most self-sufficient bands in the province. The small business ventures gave the band capital — cash-flow that helped fund everything from new playground equipment to a wind-farm proposal to the new casino near Carberry. The band was even able to fix up nearly every old house on the reserve. During a visit a couple of years ago, photographer Ruth Bonneville and I coveted one of the cool log cabins the band built for several young families, a kind of test project for a home-building business. It’s pretty rare to be jealous of a rez house.
The Arboc smoke shop, gas station and nearby VLT lounge is a humble little cluster. Its trailer and pumps and low-slung lounge are easy to miss among the shiny new hotels and car dealerships that have popped up along the TransCanada Highway through Headingley.
Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 28/1/2015 (1490 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.
Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 28/1/2015 (1490 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.
The Arboc smoke shop, gas station and nearby VLT lounge is a humble little cluster. Its trailer and pumps and low-slung lounge are easy to miss among the shiny new hotels and car dealerships that have popped up along the TransCanada Highway through Headingley.
As small-time as it is, the tiny urban reserve helped spark Swan Lake First Nation’s renaissance, turning it into one of the best-run and most self-sufficient bands in the province. The small business ventures gave the band capital — cash-flow that helped fund everything from new playground equipment to a wind-farm proposal to the new casino near Carberry. The band was even able to fix up nearly every old house on the reserve. During a visit a couple of years ago, photographer Ruth Bonneville and I coveted one of the cool log cabins the band built for several young families, a kind of test project for a home-building business. It’s pretty rare to be jealous of a rez house.
If that’s what a small urban reserve can do for Swan Lake, imagine what one at Kapyong Barracks could do for First Nations in general.
The Arboc project was among the capital region’s first urban reserves, one that allowed Swan Lake access to customers near Winnipeg and to the modest tax breaks available to status Indians who shop and work there.
Since then, despite molasses-slow bureaucracy and a treaty land claim process that’s essentially stalled, Manitoba has begun to see the next generation of urban reserves, a big step up from the original gas-bar model.
Two years ago, after many stops and starts, Long Plain First Nation won reserve status for its squat office building on Madison Street in the Polo Park area, a block behind the Future Shop. Yellowquill College is ensconced there, a Petro-Canada station looks ready to open any day and there are plans for expansion.
Despite racist rumblings, nothing bad happened. The building didn’t become a slum. The Indian Posse didn’t take over. Everyone paid their bills.
Meanwhile, Peguis First Nation, rolling in millions after winning a decades-long land-claim fight, recently bought MPI’s old licensing centre on Portage Avenue next to the RCMP headquarters. Renovations worth $500,000 are underway. The building is 95 per cent leased. It’s likely Winnipeg’s next urban reserve.
Peguis Chief Glenn Hudson says he’s told the feds and the city he’d like to convert the building to a reserve in a year. That’s crazy talk, but it shouldn’t be.
Canada routinely failed to live up to the simple math laid out in treaties signed more than a century ago, so bands in Manitoba are still owed thousands of acres. At last count, the 15 bands who are part of the 1997 Treaty Land Entitlement Framework Agreement are owed a total of 460,000 acres. Many other bands hold individual land debts.
While we continue to lament high welfare rates and federal "handouts" that form the backbone of many reserve economies, it takes eons for bands to win the very thing that might break that cycle — reserve status for an urban parcel.
Take, for example, Sapotaweyak Cree Nation. In 1998, Sapotaweyak signed its Treaty Land Entitlement agreement, detailing how many acres it was promised in 1874 — more than 100,000 acres — but didn’t get. In 2006, the band bought a old liquor control commission property in Swan River as part of its TLE. Six years later, the band finally reached a deal with the town detailing how the band would pay for municipal services. It took another two years for the feds to award the parcel official reserve status. The process took eight years at best, 140 years at worst.
Want to get a head start on your day? Get the day’s breaking stories, weather forecast, and more sent straight to your inbox every morning.
Sapotawayak was the only band that got new reserve land of any kind under the TLE process last year, evidence the process has ground to a halt.
Chiefs such as Peguis’s Hudson believe urban reserves, and the jobs and revenue they bring, are the key to self-sufficiency for indigenous people and self-government for First Nations.
They’re even more than that, though. Urban reserves are one way to combat the racism we’ve now acknowledged exists in Winnipeg. They can bridge our physical divide, making everyday neighbours out of indigenous people and companies. They are a way to reconcile, to give bands like Peguis back some of their traditional lands — the valuable kind, not the stuff we didn’t want anyway. They are an in-your-face antidote to all the subtle stereotypes — that indigenous people won’t work hard, can’t do deals, don’t want better.
That’s Hudson’s vision for Kapyong Barracks, the former base whose fate is now mired in court challenges and the tedious TLE process. It’s far from certain First Nations like Peguis, Swan Lake or Brokenhead will ever see their claim on Kapyong materialize. But if it does, Hudson envisions the next generation of urban reserve. What started with smoke shops and grew into office buildings could morph again into a real neighbourhood — a combination of condos, apartments and single-family homes, green space, mainstream big-box stores, maybe an educational facility. Imagine if it had a Winnipeg version of Vancouver’s new Skwachàys Lodge, the boutique hotel that showcases indigenous artists.
"I think Winnipeg will be pleased with what we have in our plan. It will blend right in," said Hudson. "When people step off the curb in city of Winnipeg land onto First Nations land, they probably won’t even notice."
maryagnes.welch@freepress.mb.caThe health consequences of meth can go beyond drug addiction — methamphetamine labs create large amounts of toxic waste that can create long-term problems for both future residents and the environment. Now, reports LiveScience’s Sara G. Miller, new data shows that injuries related to meth labs are on the rise in some parts of the nation.
Miller writes that a new Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report shows a spike in meth-related chemical incidents that took place in makeshift home laboratories. After analyzing data from Louisiana, Oregon, New York, Utah and Wisconsin, the CDC found that in 1,325 incidents taking place between 2001 and 2012, 162 people were hurt. The number of injuries requiring hospital care rose to 90 percent between 2008 and 2012, a 15 percent increase from the previous reporting period of 2001 to 2004 — and injuries increased between 2008 and 2012, too.
The report lists burns, respiratory irritation and eye irritation as common forms of injury and recommends that law enforcement officials, 42 of whom were injured in meth lab incidents during the time studied, get better training. Ironically, the law could be stoking the increase in meth lab incidents to begin with: Law enforcement crackdowns on meth production and restrictions on things like pseudoephedrine sales, writes Miller, have given birth to a new production technique responsible for many of the injuries.
The team writes that in 2008, as people figured out new ways to circumvent restrictions, the so-called “shake and bake” method was introduced. The method, in which small amounts of “precursor chemicals” are shaken in a two-liter bottle, can cause burns and environmental damage if the bottle explodes.
WSBT’s Patrick Roth reports that in Indiana, where more meth lab seizures occur than anywhere else in the United States, police are developing interactive maps to help would-be homeowners figure out if their potential purchases are on the site of a former lab.Image caption The sensor chip is implanted close to a tumour
Researchers in Germany have developed a microchip sensor that can be implanted close to a tumour to monitor its growth.
The device tracks oxygen levels in nearby tissue to detect if a tumour is expanding.
Results are then transmitted wirelessly to a patient's doctor - reducing the need for frequent hospital scans.
Future designs will include a medication pump that can deliver drugs directly to the affected area.
Researchers hope this will lead to less aggressive and more targeted cancer treatments.
Medical engineers at the Technical University in Munich developed the device as a way to track and treat tumours that are difficult to reach, or better left alone.
"There are some tumours which are hard to remove - for example, close to the spine. You run the risk of cutting the nerve if you remove them surgically. Or the problem may be that the tumour is growing slowly, but the patient is elderly," said project manager Sven Becker.
"In these cases it's better to monitor the tumour, and only treat it if there's a strong growth phase."
Drug pump
The sensor is implanted next to a tumour, and measures the concentration of dissolved oxygen in nearby tissue fluid. If this drops it can indicate aggressive growth, and doctors can be alerted.
"The microelectronic chip has a set of electrodes that detect oxygen saturation. It transmits this sensor data to an external receiving unit that's like a small box you carry around in your pocket," explained Mr Becker.
"From there it goes into the doctor's PC - and they can look at the data and decide whether the tumour activity is getting worse."
Researchers believe this will reduce the need for frequent hospital check-ups.
"Normally you would have to go to the hospital to be monitored - using machines like MRI to detect the oxygen saturation. With our system you can do it on the go," said Mr Becker.
The team plans to add a medication pump to the chip that can release chemotherapeutic drugs close to a tumour if treatment is needed.
Mr Becker hopes this will prove more effective and less toxic for future cancer patients.
Patients can be treated more quickly and with less side effects, because it's local Sven Becker, Technical University Munich
"In traditional chemotherapy you put drugs into the whole body - which can have awful side effects. We want to add a pump to our chip, so if the sensor detects growth, you can apply microscopic amounts directly to the tumour," he said.
"Patients can be treated more quickly and with less side effects, because it's local."
Development is still in its early stages, but researchers hope to have a device ready for medical use within ten years.Redis is an open source, scalable, in-memory, key/value store. It can store various types of values (Strings, Lists, Sorted Lists, Hashes, Etc...) with built-in commands for each data type. This post is not about setting up Redis or configuring your environment. I am assuming that you already have Redis up and running and that you are working with Node.js to interact with your Redis store. It is sometimes useful to get multiple hashes with all key-value pairs from Redis in one go.
Other types in Redis have commands to get or set multiple values (LRANGE, MGET/SET, Etc...). There is even a command to get all key-value pairs from a single hash (HGETALL) but the command (MHGETALL) does not exist for returning multiple hashes. This post will show you how to implement this as a JavaScript function using the ioredis module with MULTI/EXEC, Pipelining or both. Other options do exist. This is just an example of one possible way to achieve this by writing your own MHGETALL function.
Setup Sample Data
To keep this simple, lets assume that we are building a Redis cache for status updates. Each update will contain two fields ( author and update ).
{ "author":1000, "update":"Redis is awesome!" }
First we will create a few status update hashes in Redis using redis-cli (the command line interface that comes with Redis).
> HMSET post:1000 author 1000 update "Redis is awesome!" OK > HMSET post:1001 author 1000 update "Redis is still awesome!" OK > HMSET post:1002 author 1000 update "Ok you get the point." OK
And just to confirm that our store actually contains the status updates, we can retrieve the updates using the HGETALL Redis command. I'll only retrieve one of these here for your reference.
> HGETALL post:1000 1) "author" 2) "1000" 3) "update" 4) "Redis is awesome!"
Note: At the time of this writing there is not a single command to get all keys from all three status hashes at once. i.e: MHGETALL [<key>, <key>, <key>] where key is the primary key of a hash. In the examples that follow, we will create this function for ourselves.
Working in Node
Step 1: Install the ioredis and, optionally, the hiredis modules...
npm install ioredis
ioredis is the JavaScript module that we will use to connect to our Redis server and execute commands.
npm install hiredis
hiredis is a minimalistic C client library for the Redis database. If you choose not to install this module then ioredis will default to a JavaScript parser.
Note: you can skip this step if you already have the ioredis module installed in your project directory. However, if you skip this step and you don't have it, you will not be able to execute the sample code that follows. Instead you would get an error similar to the this one.
jbiard$ node sample.js
module.js:338
throw err;
^
Error: Cannot find module 'ioredis'
...
at Function.Module.runMain (module.js:501:10)
Step 2: Write some JavaScript code...
Create a new program and enter the sample code shown below. We are creating two different functions that do basically the same thing. In both functions, we are using the Redis API to execute a list of commands and after the commands are executed, Redis returns an array of responses to us. ioredis nicely converts those responses back into JavaScript hashes.
var Redis = require('ioredis'), redis = new Redis(); /* Use the MULTI command to execute mulitple HGETALL commands. */ MHGETALL(['post:1000', 'post:1001', 'post:1002'], function(err, arr) { console.log('Received output from Redis Multi/Exec:'); console.log(JSON.stringify(arr)); }); function MHGETALL(keys, cb) { redis.multi({pipeline: false}); keys.forEach(function(key, index){ redis.hgetall(key); }); redis.exec(function(err, result){ cb(err, result); }); } /* Use a pipeline to execute mulitple HGETALL commands. */ MHGETALL_P(['post:1000', 'post:1001', 'post:1002'], function(err, arr) { console.log('Received output from Redis Pipeline/Exec:'); console.log(JSON.stringify(arr)); }); function MHGETALL_P(keys, cb) { var pipeline = redis.pipeline(); keys.forEach(function(key, index){ pipeline.hgetall(key); }); pipeline.exec(function(err, result){ cb(err, result); }); }
NB: All standard sample code disclaimers apply. This is just sample code. Add your own error checking and otherwise use as-is at your own risk.
Step 3: Run the program to see the output...
To run the code just call node and pass in the name of your program. I called my sample application mhgetall.js. Also, make sure that your Redis server is running and that you have created the sample data noted above. NB: This program assumes that your Redis server is running on the default port on localhost. If your setup is more customized then you will want to review the ioredis documentation to get information on more advanced configurations.
jbiard$ node mhgetall.js
And the output from running this command shows the values retrieved from Redis collected into a single response. (We executed both functions MHGETALL() and MHGETALL_P() to show the output from MULTI/EXEC or Pipeline/EXEC respectively.)
Received output from Redis Multi/Exec: [[null,["author","1000","update","Redis is awesome!"]],[null,["author","1000","update","Redis is still awesome!"]],[null,["author","1000","update","Ok you get the point."]]] Received output from Redis Pipeline/Exec: [[null,{"author":"1000","update":"Redis is awesome!"}],[null,{"author":"1000","update":"Redis is still awesome!"}],[null,{"author":"1000","update":"Ok you get the point."}]]
The choice between MULTI (for transactions) or Pipeline (or both; transactions with pipelining) is up to your specific application and the features you need to implement. For this simple example either approach is fine. Have a read through those former links for reference and consider it in your own implementation.
So, what's up with all those null objects in the array?
Well, that has to do with how ioredis returns results from multi / pipelining. The response from the callback passed to exec() will contain a 2-dimensional array. Per the documentation, each sub-array will contain two elements that correspond with the response for each command in the form of [err, result].
I hope you have found this to be useful.
Cheers!Thousands attend service in Rouen cathedral for Father Jacques Hamel, who was killed while celebrating mass last week
Exactly a week after two terrorists killed Father Jacques Hamel while he said mass in his own church, nearly 2,000 mourners paid their respects to the Catholic priest, described by his sister as “my brother. Everyone’s brother.”
The emotionally powerful ceremony at Rouen cathedral, attended by the French interior minister, Bernard Cazeneuve, and religious leaders including Muslim representatives, took place amid high security.
Hundreds of people who could not get into the cathedral watched the ceremony from under umbrellas on a big screen.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Priests lead the procession as Father Hamel’s coffin is carried to the cathedral. Photograph: Jacky Naegelen/Reuters
Dominique Lebrun, the archbishop of Rouen, told mourners that after his throat was slit, Hamel pushed one of his attackers with his feet, saying: “Get away, Satan.” Praising the murdered clergyman for 58 years of loyal service to the church, he said: “Jacques, you were a loyal disciple of Jesus. Where you went you did good.”
Saluting representatives of the Muslim and Jewish faiths, he called for peace and tolerance adding: “Never again.” It was not a question of forgiving those who had made a “pact with the devil”, but called on those taken by “demonic madness” to remember their mothers “who gave you life”.
Roselyne Hamel, the priest’s elder sister, told the congregation her brother had served in the Franco-Algerian war but had refused an officer’s commission because he would not “order men to kill other men”.
In a tearful tribute, Hamel’s niece, Jessica Delporte, added: “After Charlie Hebdo I posted this phrase [on social media] ‘Oh my God, let’s keep our tolerance and discernment’, never thinking I would have to apply that phrase to myself with so much force and conviction.”
Hamel, 85, was among six people taken hostage when two men who had pledged allegiance to Islamic State stormed the church at Saint-Étienne-du-Rouvray.
The attackers, Adel Kermiche and Abdel Malik Petitjean, both 19, forced the priest to kneel before slitting his throat, then stabbed one of his elderly parishioners. Sister Danielle, one of three nuns present, managed to escape and raise the alarm. The attackers were shot dead as they left the church.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest People watch the service from outside the cathedral. Photograph: Jacky Naegelen/Reuters
Kermiche and Petitjean, who are thought to have met for the first time only days before the attack after making contact on the encrypted messaging app Telegram, had both tried to join Isis in Syria. Kermiche had been released from prison, where he had been awaiting trial for two attempts to join the jihadis, and was wearing an electronic tag at the time of the attack.
Saint-Étienne-du-Rouvray’s Muslims have opposed suggestions that Kermiche could be buried in the town where he killed the local priest.
“Given that he’s a terrorist who has done us much wrong, he doesn’t deserve any respect,” Mohammed Karabila, imam of the mosque at Saint-Étienne-du-Rouvray, told Europe 1 radio. “Having said that, his remains have to be buried somewhere. There will be no official [mosque] representative and no prayer at the mosque.” The town authorities at Saint-Étienne-du-Rouvray have not decided whether to allow the terrorist’s burial in their district.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Police officers watch Muslim worshippers leaving the funeral mass. Photograph: Michel Euler/AP
Three men are in the custody of anti-terrorist police and are being questioned about their connection to the attack. One of them, a 30-year-old cousin of Petitjean, is accused of “association with criminals in relation to an illegal terrorist organisation”. The public prosecutor’s office said the suspect “was perfectly aware that his cousin’s violent plan of action was imminent”, adding that examination of the man’s phone and computer revealed that he knew “a lot more than he wanted to tell police”.
A 17-year-old who tried to reach Syria with Kermiche in 2015 before he was arrested in Switzerland and a 19-year-old are also under arrest.
On Monday evening, Brittany Ferries carried out an exercise with a view to introducing armed sea marshals on board French cross-Channel vessels. No firm plan has been announced to make trained military personnel part of the crew.3D Printering: the final frontier. These are the voyages of another 3D printer hack. Its mission: to explore strange new ways of leveling a print bed.
So far, we’ve had servo probes, Allen key probes, Z-sled probes, inductive and capacitive contactless switches, just to name a few. All of them allow a 3D printer to probe its print bed, calculate a correction plane or mesh, and compensate for its own inherent, time variant, inaccuracies.
These sensors are typically mounted somewhere on the print head and introduce their own sensor offset, which has to be precisely calibrated for the whole thing to work. To eliminate these offsets – and a large part of costly EOL testing and calibration – the Polish 3D printer manufacturer Zortrax uses a smarter approach: Conductive pads on the build plate. During the leveling procedure, the printing nozzle makes contact with these pads, which practically turns the nozzle itself into the probe — offset-free. Makerbot patented a contact sensing solution based on force sensors located in the print head, although similar builds based on limit switches were known before. Other DIY builds use force sensitive resistors (FSR) underneath the build plate to achieve the same. All these techniques are based on the detection of a brief contact between the printing nozzle and the build plate, and are therefore offset-free.
Compelled by the idea of eliminating the last manual calibration step, I wanted to make Zortrax’s method of contact sensing compatible with non-conductive PEI, Garolite and glass build plates. I didn’t want to interfere with the Makerbot patent, and force sensitive resistors would not survive the temperatures of a heated bed. I figured that I could just strap a sufficiently heat resistant piezo sensor to the print bed to sense the little knock the nozzle would make when it collides with the print bed. However, not much sound energy is released when a nozzle runs into a build plate at blazing 1 mm/s. A first test revealed that the knocking sound was too weak to be reliably distinguished from other vibrations in the machine.
Several piezo discs, attached to the bottom of a Prusa MK2a heated bed. The test platform: A Prusa i3
To fix this, I acquired a 10 W structure-borne sound exciter and attached it to the extruder. The exciter allowed me to actively inject a white noise signal into the nozzle. If it was strong enough, this signal would travel through the entire printer and could be picked up by the piezo discs in the print bed, far above the printer’s own noise level. I assumed, that when the nozzle touches the print bed, the transfer function between the exciter and the piezo sensor must change rapidly due to the direct transfer of sound between the two. This change would then lead to a rapid change in the amplitude spectrum the piezo picks up. A little DSP could process the piezo signal, detect these rapid changes in the amplitude spectrum and give back a trigger signal to indicate the collision.
For the required realtime DSP, I hooked up the piezo discs to a plain Teensy Audio Shield equipped with a Teensy 3.1, which practically completed the hardware portion of this project in one step. Using Paul Stoffregen’s amazing DSP library, it took only a few lines of code to run a 256 point FFT on the input signal and a few more to generate a time-averaged amplitude spectrum. The little sketch compares this averaged “frequency fingerprint” of commonly present vibrations to the current spectrum, calculates an overall energy difference between the two, and if that difference exceeds a certain threshold, the Teensy pulls an output pin low, telling the 3D printer controller that the nozzle just touched the build plate. I later added an OLED display and rotary encoder, basically for plotting the signals and for being able to adjust the threshold.
This turned out to work quite well, while submersing the whole printer in a pleasant swoosh noise, but it added quite a bit of additional weight the extruder assembly. Also, these exciters aren’t particularly cheap, and an additional audio amp would be required, too. It wasn’t really it.
It took a while for me to figure out what I would do with the whole project. And then, just when I was about to send it into project-limbo, I had another idea: To save cost and weight, I could use the extruder’s stepper motor as the exciter, the stepper motor driver as the amplifier, and stick with the cheap piezo discs attached to the print bed as microphones. In theory, the 3D printer controller could both generate the noise signal and process the sound signal from the piezos, so the only additional component would be the preamp and the piezo discs.
Yet, it was still unclear if the stepper motor would adapt to become some sort of speaker, so that’s the first thing that needed testing. I hacked together a little noise injector board that would go between the 3D printer controller and the stepper driver. This little hack utilizes an Arduino Pro Mini clone to switch between two modes: A bypass-mode, where it just passes through the signals from the 3D printer controller, and a noise mode, where it streams a pseudo-random sequence of forward and backward micro steps to the motor driver. This, I hoped, would cause the stepper motor to oscillate and produce a noise signal. And well, it did. I turned it on and the extruder motor swooshed with a strong noise, very similar to the exciter I used before, although the extruder’s gears rattled quite a bit.
I tweaked the random sequence to make sure that the stepper motor would never perform an actual full step as a random accumulation of micro steps. Besides that, everything worked surprisingly well. The probing is accurate to a level where it becomes really hard to tell how accurate it actually is. If the nozzle touches down to a sheet of paper and stops once it senses the touch, the paper will slide easily and consistently between the nozzle and the build plate without being stuck. Since then I’ve been using this for several prints, and it works just like regular auto bed leveling probes, although with fewer advantages than expected: It eliminates the offset calibration, but also introduces a threshold value for the touch detection.
From an economical view, this is still a nightmare. On current Arduino-style 3D printer platforms, it takes an additional DSP, DAC, a preamp and the noise injection adaptor to implement this sort of sonic auto bed leveling. Even if the piezo discs are virtually free, everything adds up to about 5 times the cost of a decent capacitive distance switch.
It might make more sense in the not so distant future. We’re beginning to see a new generation of 3D printer controllers that feature a more powerful 32 bit MCU, ideally we want one that supports DSP instructions. Given the availability of cheap STM Nucleo boards with powerful, DSP-enabled ARM Cortex-M4 MCUs, my bet is that insanely powerful 3D printer controller electronics, capable of tricks like this one, are bound to happen rather soon. For now, enjoy the following video of an early test of the sonic auto bed leveling:TAGLIACOZZO, BATTLE OF, 23 AUGUST 1268
Defeat for Conradin, son of Conrad IV (HRE), the last Hohenstaufen in Sicily. He invaded the kingdom of Sicily with German and Spanish allies in 1267, seeking to make good his claim against Charles of Anjou. Suppporters revolted against Charles in Sicily. The battle was fought in central Italy as Conradin advanced south. Charles took position behind the River Salto. Conradin’s men failed to take the bridge but others crossed further up and attacked the Angevins on the flank. Then the bridge was crossed. Charles recovered by leading a charge with a hidden reserve when many of the enemy, thinking victory theirs, pursued Angevins off the field. He then defeated the returning enemy. It was largely a cavalry battle, a costly victory: `never was victory so bloody, for nearly his whole army had fallen’. Conradin fled but was captured and executed in Naples in October. It ended German Hohenstaufen rule in Sicily, leaving the Angevins in control.
Conradin, the last of the Hohenstaufens, together with Frederick of Baden, was in command of 5-6,000 cavalry, mainly Germans and Italians but also including Castilians as well as Sicilians. He found his road blocked by an opposing force of some 3-5,000 French horse under Charles of Anjou, King of Sicily. The French drew up behind the River Salto in three divisions; two formed into column by a bridge while the third, including Charles himself, was secreted behind a fold in the ground about a mile from the flank. Henry of Cousances, commanding the second column, wore the royal surcoat and bore Charles’s standard in order to trick the enemy in to believing the entire French family was in view. Conradin’s army also drew up in three battles.
The Van, led by Henry of Castile, stormed the bridge, while the second and third, under Calvano Lancia and Conradin respectively, managed to ford the river downstream and then wheeled to attack the flank of the enemy battle. Henry of Cousances was finally slain and the French, badly mauled, broke in flight. The royal standard was seized in the confusion. Conradin held some of his men, but most chased after the French and set about looting their camp. It was now that Charles, having impotently observed the rout of his main force, charged up with his division and scattered the few troops who |
conception of education has three main components, each one of which leads to undesirable results by itself, and which work together only by each one interfering with the adequate implementation of the other two? Surely this is a pessimistic fantasy? Do the schools that have been built on this tripartite conception of education &emdash; that is, nearly all modern schools &emdash; fail to provide students with an adequate academic education? Well, there has certainly been a chorus of critics who have vociferously argued over the years that typical schooling leaves students woefully ignorant of their cultural heritage. Do they provide inadequate socialization? Certainly critics have constantly complained about students' alienation on the one hand and their common lack of civic values on the other. And do they provide inadequate individual development of students' potential? We do still hear loud criticism about the irrelevance of much schooling to students' individual needs.
Well, of course there are such criticisms, you might reasonably complain. This is a democracy, after all. Even optimists don't expect perfect implementation of all three ideas. The great success of our education system is to have achieved and generally held a balance among three somewhat distinct aims. Schools provide an exposure to academic material to all students, and clearly allow some to excel in academic work; they socialize all students in a basic way while avoiding fanatical extremes; and they attend to the general development of all children and provide special help to some who clearly need it. Of course there are tensions among the three general educational ideas that drive our schools &emdash; successful education is achieved by finding the right community-supported balance.
I think this complacent view is mistaken, and that the three ideas undermine each other rather than complement each other.
Consider this scenario: Let us say you are a movie fan and enjoy going out to a cinema once each week But the government imposes a new requirement on cinemas. As you come out of the cinema, you will be required to take a test on the movie you have just seen. You will be asked the color of the villain's car in the chase scene, or the adequacy of the motivation of the leading woman's sister, or the gist of the alien's speech before it transmogrified, or the name of the brother-in-law's pet dog, and so on. Your score on the test will determine your salary for the next week, when you will face another test and another salary adjustment. Consider for a moment how such tests and their consequence would likely influence your watching movies. At the very least, they would change what was carefree entertainment into anxiety. You would also spend a lot of effort watching movies trying to second-guess the kinds of questions you are likely to be asked and the focus of your attention would be shifted to fit your expectations of the test.
What does this remind you of? Right. School. The above absurd scenario creates a social institution &emdash; with, no doubt, huge testing services and solemn officials and entrepreneurs setting up test-coaching companies &emdash; which confuses two conflicting aims. There is no problem with having two aims for an institution, except if the aims conflict with each other. If one of our aims for an educational institution is the pursuit of academic knowledge, we will interfere with that in all kind of destructive ways if we then impose a social sorting role on the institution, and use academically inappropriate testing to do that social sorting. Also the social sorting role would be confused because academic prowess&emdash;which we are only marginally testing for any way &emdash; is hardly the most important determiner of social value. That is, this kind of undermining of separate and conflicting aims is precisely what we get if we try to make the school an institution that tries both to socialize and implement the academic ideal at the same time. The result is that neither is adequately or sensibly achieved, as, in the cinema scenario, neither carefree entertainment nor an appropriate manner of determining salaries is achieved.
Yet we have created such an institution and keep trying to make it work to realize conflicting ideals. Adequate socialization requires successfully inculcating a set of beliefs, values, and norms of behavior in the growing child. The academic program is specifically designed to enable the growing child to question the basis for any beliefs, values, and norms of behavior. The two aims pull against each other: the more successfully one socializes, the less one achieves the academic ideal; the more successfully one inculcates disciplined academic thinking, the less easy it is to socialize successfully. Socialization requires acceptance of beliefs, values, and norms that the disciplined academic mind sees as stereotypes, prejudices, and homogenization.
Consider this scenario: You are fifty-five and have had a successful career as a lawyer. You have a spouse and two successful children. You are a pillar of the community, active in church, community center, and children's sports activities. But it has recently become disturbingly clear that you will not remain vigorous forever, and that time is closing in. Something in you is unsatisfied, like a distant echo from a life-path you somewhere missed taking, like a call from another you who was not realized &emdash; but still might be. It is a disturbing call, a distressing echo, that grows louder by the day. Increasingly you feel it is a call from the real you, a call from your buried life; from the you who somehow got lost in all those legal tussles and in the social round and the kids' soccer and ballet and then their colleges and marriages, and now that ghostly you calls to be recognized and brought to life. Well, fortunately, you can enroll in the required government program, ReTRY. ReTRY &emdash; an acronym for Realize the Real You &emdash; is slickly operated by the country's best and most expensive psychologists. It is mandated by law to assist citizens' psychological adjustment to later middle-age. Success in the program is measured by the degree to which people return satisfied to their old routines of life.
Hang on. How can an institution designed to help you find the real you measure success by convincing you that the old you is the real you? Shouldn't you be encouraged to head out yonder to the pearl seas or the South Pacific, or at least take up kayaking or building a Japanese garden? Socializing strives to homogenize; individual development strives to bring out the uniqueness of each person. Hard to aim for both in the same institution and expect success. They constantly pull in opposite directions &emdash; the more you do one, the harder it is to do the other. And we expect our schools to do both successfully.
Consider a third scenario: It is twenty years in the future and the government's educational authorities have become convinced that the route to the fullest development of each individual's potential is to design different kinds of schools to support the main styles of learning and kinds of intelligence people deploy. There are twenty-seven kinds of schools, each designed for one of the twenty-seven distinct intelligences now identified by Dr. Gardner at ground zero. Enormously sophisticated testing apparatus and procedures are applied to children to determine which school would most fully develop their particular strengths. Huge amounts of money have been spent on designing the schools, outside and in, to respond to, and stimulate, the needs of the kinds of students they house. The curriculum in each kind of school is, however, identical. The children follow a rigorous academic program designed to carry their minds from the ignorance and confusion of their originally unschooled condition towards a disciplined understanding of their cultural heritage. There are no electives, until university specialization, because the authorities have also been convinced that the only proper aim of education is to empower children's minds with the best material human beings have created, and that is precisely what the disciplined forms of understanding provide.
Now such a system would surely be self-contradictory. The academic commitment to shaping the mind by teaching disciplined forms of understanding isn't compatible with the belief that the minds of different people can be optimally developed by knowledge chosen to suit their particular style of learning, kind of intelligence, needs and interests. One cannot have two masters, especially when both mandate different things. We can't construct a coherent educational institution using radically different criteria.
But, of course, that's precisely what we require of our schools today. We require that they acknowledge, and accommodate as far as possible, different styles of learning and different ends of the process for different people. "Education" for one child may have a quite different character from that attained by another; quite different "potentials" might be developed and each be an example of successful education. We require also that the academic ideal be acknowledged, which recognizes education only in the degree to which minds are shaped by progress in understanding the range of disciplines. The result, of course, is not a coherent curriculum, but one that tries to accommodate both conflicting principles. The result, also, is perpetual strife by adherents of the conflicting principles, fighting about which should have greater influence over children's education.
Conclusion
We have inherited three foundational ideas about education. Each one of them has flaws, at least one flaw in each being fatal to its ambition to represent an educational ideal we might reasonably sign on to. And the worse news is that each of the ideas is incompatible with the other two. These warring ideas hovered around the cradle of the public schools, proffering their gifts. The schools eagerly took them all, and so education remains difficult and contentious.
References
Bruer, John. (!997). Education and the brain: A bridge too far. Educational Researcher, 26, 8, 4-16.
Deacon, Terrence W. (1997). The symbolic species: The co-evolution of language and the brain. New York: Norton.
Diamond, Jared. (1997). Guns, germs, and steel: The fates of human societies. New York: Norton.
Donald, Merlin. (1991). Origins of the Modern Mind. Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press.
Egan, Kieran. (1988). Primary understanding: Education in early childhood. New York: Routledge.
Fodor, Jerry. (1983). The modularity of mind. Cambridge MA: MIT Press.
Fodor, Jerry. (1985). Précis of 'The modularity of mind.' The Behavioral and Brain Sciences 8, 1-42.
Gardner, Howard. (199). The unschooled mind. New York: Basic.
Hall, G. Stanley. (1904). Adolescence: Its psychology and its relations to physiology, anthropology, sociology, sex, crime, religion, and education. (2 vols.) New York: Appleton.
Havelock, Eric A. (1963). Preface to Plato. Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press.
Havelock, Eric A. (1982). The literate revolution in Greece and its cultural consequences. Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press.
Havelock, Eric A. (1986). The muse learns to write. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Hazlitt, William. (1826/1951). On the ignorance of the learned. In W.E. Williams (ed.) A book of English essays. Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin.
Mithen, Steven. (1996). The prehistory of the mind. London: Thames and Hudson.
Rorty, Richard. (1989). Contingency, irony, and solidarity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques. (1762/1979). Émile: or, on education. (Allan Bloom, trans.) New York: Basic.
Rosenbluth, Vera. (1990). Keeping family stories alive. Vancouver, B.C.: Hartley and Marks.
Stewart, Ian and Jack Cohen. (1997). Figments of reality: The evolution of the curious mind. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.|
Guillermo Jimenez Presents Tom Secker
On this edition of De-Manufacturing Consent Guillermo is joined by Tom Secker, host of ClandesTime and author of the book Secrets, Spies, and 7/7. We discuss the various theories circulating around the Sony hack, who may have ultimately been responsible, and why North Korea is the least likely of culprits. We also explain what the US government has to gain from pinning the attack on the North Koreans, despite their flimsy evidence. As US intelligence agencies and both current and former lawmakers in Washington look to legitimize their "cyber war on terror" and the millions spent on cyber warfare "defense," the reaction to the Sony hack has evidenced the expansive potential for digital false flags.
We also touch on the film The Interview, and how the State Department's involvement in a movie depicting the assassination of a sitting head of state is completely in keeping with the CIA's propaganda efforts in Hollywood.
Lastly, we explore issues of privacy, in both the digital and physical realms, and how this latest event fits into the lingering "Snowden effect" in normalizing surveillance and redefining privacy norms.
Listen to the Preview Clip HereImage caption Letting agency signs are now as common as For Sale signs once were
Average private sector housing rents in England and Wales rose by another 0.7% last month, to hit a new monthly high of £718, a report has said.
It means rents have risen by 4.3% in the past 12 months, with tenants paying an average £29 a month more than they were a year ago.
The figures were compiled by LSL Property Services, which owns a number of estate agents and letting agencies.
LSL said rents had risen fastest in the South East and East Midlands.
David Newnes of LSL said rents were rising everywhere, due to high demand from people who were still unable to buy a home, and were being forced to rent instead.
"In many cases, buying a home is now cheaper on a monthly basis - provided renters can get past the stumbling block of the substantial deposit requirements," said Mr Newnes.
"For the majority, saving a £25,000 deposit is a Herculean task as inflation and rents climb - and most would-be buyers are biting the bullet and prolonging their stay in increasingly costly rental accommodation.
"As things stand, we won't see competition amongst prospective tenants diminish without a substantial expansion in the supply of rental properties available on the market," he warned.
Earlier this month, the housing charity Shelter said private rents had become unaffordable in 55% of council areas in England.
It said homes in these areas cost more than 35% of median local take-home pay.The metabolic disease, type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM), is a major risk factor for Alzheimer's disease (AD). This suggests that drugs such as metformin that are used to treat T2DM may also be therapeutic toward AD and indicates an interaction between AD and energy metabolism. In this study, we have investigated the effects of metformin and another T2DM drug, 5-aminoimidazole-4-carboxamide ribonucleotide (AICAR) in C. elegans expressing human Aβ 42. We found that Aβ expressed in muscle inhibited levamisole sensitive nicotinic acetylcholine receptors and that metformin delayed Aβ-linked paralysis and improved acetylcholine neurotransmission in these animals. Metformin also moderated the effect of neuronal expression of Aβ: decreasing hypersensitivity to serotonin, restoring normal chemotaxis, and improving fecundity. Metformin was unable to overcome the small effect of neuronal Aβ on egg viability. The protective effects of metformin were associated with a decrease in the amount of toxic, oligomeric Aβ. AICAR has a similar protective effect against Aβ toxicity. This work supports the notion that anti-diabetes drugs and metabolic modulators may be effective against AD and that the worm model can be used to identify the specific interactions between Aβ and cellular proteins."Milia" redirects here. For other uses, see Milia (disambiguation)
Milia Milia on the eyelid of an adult male Specialty Dermatology
A milium (plural milia), also called a milk spot or an oil seed,[citation needed] is a clog of the eccrine sweat gland. It is a keratin-filled cyst that can appear just under the epidermis or on the roof of the mouth.[1][2]:780 Milia are commonly associated with newborn babies but can appear on people of all ages.[3]:680 They are usually found around the nose and eyes, and sometimes on the genitalia, often mistaken by those affected as warts or other sexually transmitted diseases. Milia can also be confused with stubborn whiteheads.
In children, milia often but not always disappear within two to four weeks. For adults, they can be removed by a physician (a dermatologist will have specialist knowledge in this area). A common method that a dermatologist will use to remove a milium is to nick the skin with a #11 surgical blade and then use a comedone extractor to press the cyst out.[4]
Additional image [ edit ]
Milk spots (milia) on the nose of a 1-week old infant
See also [ edit ]
References [ edit ]Introducing The Board July 24, 2010
GUADEC 2010 is about to begin and, unfortunately, I will not attend it this year. But I think it’s a good time to introduce a small cool project I’ve been gradually working on in my (rare) spare time. I’d like to present you The Board.
What is The Board? It’s a space for quickly placing daily records: photos, video, audio, text, and more. Think of it as a combination of a note-taking space, a photo or video booth, photo album, sketching board, a digital diary, and (in the future) a nice way to quickly share stuff with your friends. Click on the image above to watch a video showing how the app works now.
The focus is to provide a quick, simple and visually engaging way of keeping small records of your day. I envision The Board as a sort of especial workspace in GNOME. Something that’s “always there” and is tightly integrated with the desktop. For now, it’s simply an app that always runs in full screen — so that I can demonstrate the idea more accurately.
Add to The Board. The Board can be used a quick note taking app. Someone is telling you a phone number you want to take note of? Switch to The Board, press “s” (or use the toolbox) and quickly write down the phone number. You have a favourite photo for the day? Switch to The Board, press “p” and select the photo file (similar thing for video and audio). Want to write down some ideas before you forget them? Switch to The Board, press “t”, and you have a nice lined note paper to write in. Want to record a quick video with a happy family moment? Switch to The Board, press “v”, and you can start recording the video. You got the idea. For now, I have only implemented simple text elements (lined paper and sticky note) and photo. There’s more coming (see “Next steps” below).
One page at a time. You don’t need to remove old things or “manage” the things on The Board. Once you filled the whole screen space, just create another page! Your previous content will be saved and can be easily accessed through the Pages toolbox. You don’t even need to worry about saving your content. The Board saves the latest content of your page every time your change it by editing, adding or removing things, etc.
What is it made of? The Board is built on top of bleeding edge GNOME platform. It’s written in Javascript using the GObject Introspection-based Gjs. The UI is fully written with Clutter and Mx (with some small bits of GTK+ and Clutter-GTK+). It’s a nice example of how you can do cool apps using the GNOME platform nowadays.
What’s the current state? The initial core code and framework is in place. But there are obviously tons of things to be done. The app is not even installable yet! I’m still sketching the API to implement plugins. Video and audio elements are not implemented yet. The graphic design is poor (as I did it myself using some random graphics from internet) and there are lots of open interaction design questions to be sorted out. In order to run the app for development purposes, you’ll need a full GTK+ 3 stack, and latest (as in git clone master) clutter, clutter-gtk, mx, gobject-introspection, and gjs. The official code is in gitorious now.
How can I help? If you want to hack on The Board, grab the code, build it and run it. Play with the app and bring ideas, fix bugs, implement new features, etc. Business as usual. If you’re an interaction designer, you can help by solving some of the hard questions still needing answers in terms of usability and user experience :-) On the graphic design front, I’d really like to have better graphics for all UI elements. I have to find a nice free (as in freedom) font to use in the UI. I’m temporarily using this funny freeware font. Users can help by giving constructive feedback on how we can make The Board more interesting, useful, and exciting. In any case, contact me and we can discuss how and what to do.
So, what are the next steps? As I said before, there are tons of things to be done. Here’s what I have in mind in terms of short-term and long-term roadmap.
Come up with a simple Plugin API. By plugins I mean either the implementation of new types of things to be added to The Board’s pages or new types of background — which can contain animations and react to user events by the way. For example, a background could be a wooden table with a light switch that can be turned on and off. Or the background can change colour depending on the current time of the day.
Integration with other apps. Basically, users should be able to add new things to The Board through existing apps. For example, An Add to the Board option in Nautilus when right-clicking image, video, audio, or text files. Similar thing with apps like EOG or F-Spot — an Add image to The Board option. Integration with web browsers would be nice too: saw an interesting image on a webpage? Just add it to The Board. Or maybe add your text selection as a sticky note in The Board. Still on the app integration front, I’m doing some work to integrate a Cheese dialog into The Board so that you can add photos and videos from webcam without having to switch apps.
Online experience. This is one area that I’m still unsure how to handle. My initial idea is that you can share anything in The Board pages. From a user perspective, you would just add something to The Board and click “Share”. On the server side, I’m thinking of having a WordPress instance with a plugin to present The Board’s custom types just like you see them in your desktop. i.e. sticky notes in The Board should look exactly the same in your “Board webpage”. The advantage of implement this as a WordPress plugin is that it would be installable in a large number of personal servers from day one. Tumblr is definitely the main inspiration in terms of online experience here as it offers a rich media blogging approach.
Anyway, you probably got the idea after reading this (maybe too) long blog post. If you got excited about The Board and want to help with code, graphics, design ideas, or just simple feedback, post a comment here or contact me directly. I’ll be hacking on The Board in my spare time as usual. But things can definitely move much faster if it gets more people involved. If you’re into writing simple and beautiful software using GNOME’s latest technologies, this should be a fun project to contribute to!In the 31 years that the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame has been honoring icons of modern music, it has never inducted more than two women or women-led groups per year, and in several of those years (1986, 1994, 2003-2005) not one woman has been inducted. So Joan Baez being voted in for 2017 as the sole woman—alongside a group that includes Nile Rodgers, Pearl Jam, Tupac, Yes, Electric Light Orchestra and, maddeningly, Journey—is really par for the course, if not a little better than average. Women or women-inclusive groups who were nominated but knocked out of the running this year included Chic, Chaka Khan, and Janet Jackson, who have been nominated but not inducted 11, three, and two times respectively.
It’s a museum called the “Rock & Roll Hall of Fame,” an outdated default moniker for pop music and so, mirroring the relative cultural outdatedness of the Grammys, one might wonder rhetorically why it even matters. Yet for archival purposes in the most prominent museum of its kind, the institution is the kind that builds canons, which in itself asserts a kind of worth for its anointed, even if that worth is, again, relative. Genrewise, the Rock Hall’s staidness is only just beginning to peel back. Tupac is only the first solo hip-hop artist ever inducted, and the fact that Journey was chosen over nominees Kraftwerk—inarguably more important to the progression of contemporary popular music (electronic, hip-hop) than the former group—shows where the Rock Hall voters’s allegiances lie.
The inductees are chosen by a broad coalition of voters in the music industry and a less-weighted public vote—a coalition that, judging by the history of the inductees, we can presume to be mostly older and male and rockist. In the Rock Hall’s own words, voters include “more than 900 historians, members of the music industry and artists—including every living Rock Hall inductee—and the five performers receiving the most votes become that year’s induction class.” And though the museum’s nominating committee generally includes at least a handful of women for voters to choose from, a look at how few women are ever chosen reeks of a kind of tokenism, a putrid notion considering that every woman nominated can feasibly be described, in some way, as a genius.
Women have been historically marginalized in the music industry the same way we’ve been marginalized overall; there are endless stories of women musicians being screwed over for their profits or recognition or label owners or managers or husband-managers, and with this exploitation, other types of abuse has often come. The struggle to make art without gendered interference hasn’t been tamped down just because of stronger equity overall; just this year we’ve had women musicians being sexually assaulted by publicists, the ongoing saga of Kesha v. Dr. Luke and Sony, of pop stars being publicly diminished and doubted after speaking out about their rapes. Women musicians work doubly hard to make music just by rights of being women, and so when it looks like the establishment doesn’t gives nary a shit about that music, it chafes to say the least.
I realize that the induction to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame is largely ceremonial, a chance to wax nostalgic and have a big flossy concert, which by the way, has included far more women representation than the actual inductees through careful programming. But as part of a larger cycle in which even women who’ve made lasting, tangible impact on American culture still can’t depend on their canonical visibility, this kind of marginalization matters.Japanese mobile carrier SoftBank is marking the incoming release of Rogue One: A Star Wars Story by launching a pair of phones that let you choose your Force allegiance. The Star Wars Mobile phones are made by Sharp and come in both Dark and Light side editions.
Here are the unexciting specs:
5.3-inch 1080p IGZO display
Snapdragon 820 processor
22.6-megapixel camera
3,000mAh battery
TV tuner
3GB of RAM
32GB of storage (plus microSD slot)
7.6mm thick, 155g
Here are the exciting Star Wars things:
Live wallpapers that make the phone look like an X-Wing or TIE fighter cockpit
Excessive Android 6.0 skin in both light and dark side themes
Five exclusive metal figurines taken from Rogue One
A Star Wars Movie Player app that lets you watch The Force Awakens until the year 2020
Pre-loaded Star Wars: Force Collection card game with a code for a gold card pack ticket
Star Wars-themed alarm clock app (yes)
Star Wars emoji (of course)
Star Wars ringtones (definitely)
The phones go on sale on December 2nd in Japan, and preorders start today. Are they the (An)droid (smartphone)s you’ve been looking for? Better start planning that move to Japan.New Zealand battled severe storms and violent aftershocks as the country struggled to recover from a devastating earthquake that swallowed roads, twisted railway lines and left towns and cities smashed and deserted.
Tens of thousands of people fled their homes in the middle of the night on Monday to seek higher ground following a tsunami alert covering the entire east coast, although the warnings were later lifted. Across the country, two people have been declared dead.
Kaikoura, the New Zealand tourist town cut off by 7.5 magnitude earthquake Read more
Prime minister John Key was quoted as saying the damage bill from the earthquake was likely to be at least “a couple of billion dollars”.
“It’s hard to believe that the bill is going to be less than a couple of billion,” he said.
The Red Cross flagged a huge humanitarian challenge in the South Island, saying its volunteers were struggling to reach affected regions.
Worst hit was Kaikoura, a coastal town of about 2,000 people famous for whale watching, which had been almost completely isolated with roads closed and phone lines down.
A state of emergency was declared there and six people with significant injuries were airlifted out. Police said one person died in Kaikoura and another in Mount Lyford, a nearby ski resort.
The depth of the devastation has been linked to two significant shakes under the South Island, first a 7.5-magnitude earthquake just after midnight followed by a hefty 6.8-magnitude aftershock during the day.
MarlboroughEmergency (@MarlEmergency) Images as they come in of the #eqnz damage: Slip impact on State Highway 1 pic.twitter.com/KOpahqedg5
Fears of secondary disasters emerged after a landslip blocked the South Island’s Clarence river. Water built up for hours before breaching on Monday, sending a torrent downstream that threatened farms and residents.
Malborough’s Civil Defence force said a “large wall of water” was heading downstream.
“Residents urged to go to higher ground immediately,” it said on Twitter. Sixteen rafters and six kayakers who went missing were later declared safe.
Power was lost in many small South Island towns and parts of the capital Wellington, which sits at the southern tip of the North Island. Recovery operations were stalled on Monday afternoon as heavy rain and wind moved into the most affected areas, with forecasters warning of possible flooding.
Niwa Weather (@NiwaWeather) The region most impacted by #eqnz will have rough weather late today thru Tues. Heavy rain may result in flooding/slips. Strong winds too. pic.twitter.com/OCO6Zlchz0
On the night of the disaster, tsunami sirens sounded in the remote seaside villages around Dunedin on the South Island’s south-east coast and emergency services went door to door evacuating residents. The state of emergency was cancelled just after dawn when the tsunami risk was downgraded.
The US Geological Survey said the quake hit near Hanmer Springs, 95km from Christchurch which is still recovering from the 2011 earthquake that killed 185 people and destroyed many buildings.
On one railway, the line had moved several metres. Photos from the New Zealand Defence Force showed an entire stretch of line that had slipped over a road and on to rocks by the sea.
Key said the quake was the most significant he could remember feeling in Wellington and that his team was clearing up damage in his own offices.
“I know from the Christchurch earthquakes how much it undermines people’s confidence, but I want to reassure people that there will be support there. It was a very significant shock.
“As we have daylight, we can use the military assets we have and others to get a stocktake of the actual damage.”
In Wellington, the quake forced hundreds of tourists on to the streets as hotels were evacuated last night.
Nick Kingstone, a 39-year-old marketing manager living downtown, said the repeated shakes felt like “living on a sleeping dragon who’s waking up”.
Anxiety was high in the capital because there are several fault lines under the city that have not moved for a long time, he said. “When you’re surrounded by quakes and aftershocks it’s hard not to think ‘is this Wellington’s big one?’ Especially as my wife and I have a toddler to care for.”
The aftershocks were “like being on a big cruise ship in big seas, it’s a constant bump and roll,” he said.
Heavy rain and high winds hit the waterfront city by the afternoon. “Let’s hope we don’t have to make shelter in the rain if we need to evacuate tonight,” he said.
There were reports of a train trapped north of Kaikoura, and at least one major building collapsed in the town itself.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest A state highway tunnel near Kaikoura is partially buried after a powerful earthquake hit on Monday. Photograph: David Alexander/AP
St John rescue helicopters have been sent to Kaikoura, loaded with intensive-care medical equipment and extra paramedics to be able to treat patients on the ground, and a number of military helicopters have been sent from Christchurch to assess the damage, re-establish communication and deploy search and rescue teams.
Leigh Smith told the Guardian from Goose Bay, 15 kilometres south of Kaikoura, that “the shaking was massive and violent the noise was horrendous”. Fearing a tsunami, she spent the night in her car at the top of a nearby hill, feeling continual aftershocks.
After returning to her home, she spent “the day with no power, no phone, no reception, no water, and one hell of a mess to clean up inside.”
Accounts of looting also emerged in the aftermath of the quake. New Zealand’s Newshub website reported that a Christchurch family who fled their home returned hours later to find they had been been burgled.
“They’ve just ransacked the house, it’s horrible, it’s terrible,” said Melissa Mill. [We’re] pretty shaken, pretty disgusted, disheartened.”
On the night of the disaster, tsunami sirens sounded in the remote villages and emergency services went door to door evacuating residents. The state of emergency was cancelled just after dawn when the tsunami risk was downgraded.
After being advised to head to higher ground just after 3am, thousands of Wellingtonians drove or walked from low-lying areas to Mount Victoria, Mount Cook and the hills above Lyall Bay.
Simon Morton and his family were woken by the “super slow roller” quake just after midnight. Morton and his wife, Jo, live in the seaside Wellington suburb of Lyall Bay – just seven to eight metres from the sea.
Morton made the immediate decision to evacuate his family to higher ground and packed the family in his truck and drove them to View Street, nearly 80m above sea level. After 40 minutes and no further serious activity, Morton and his family returned home.
Just as he was getting into bed Morton noticed the tide was the lowest he had ever seen. Fearing tsunamis, his wife said it was “very weird” and the couple made the decision to again evacuate their family.
Morton and his family spent the rest of the night on the hill and were joined by around 100 vehicles packed with evacuees, many of whom has brought pets, coffee and food.
New Zealand lies in the seismically active “Ring of Fire”, a 40,000km arc of volcanoes and oceanic trenches that partly encircles the Pacific Ocean. Around 90% of the world’s earthquakes occur within this region.Please enable Javascript to watch this video
RICHMOND, Va. -- Construction began late last week on the permanent wheelchair ramp to Virginia's governor's mansion with zero fanfare after weeks of mild controversy over the new addition to the nation's most historic executive mansion. There was little information publicly released about it - how much it would cost, who would pay for it, what kind of historic scrutiny the plan went through.
There wasn't even a draftsman's rendition of what it would look like widely released, even though it will be one of the more visible changes to the exterior of the mansion in its 202-year history. And even though the plan has been underway since May, I'm told, Governor Terry McAuliffe didn't announce it until October 23, saying, in part:.
Our family is honored to live in a home that holds such a prominent place in the history of Virginia and this nation, and we appreciate sharing this home with our visitors. While the Executive Mansion already meets federal accessibility guidelines, this enhancement will ensure that everyone who visits this historic home will receive a gracious and respectful welcome regardless of their physical limitations.
And six weeks later, construction is underway? For a building this historically significant... really? I don't even see a bid notice until late October.
"Where is the accountability?" asked Betty Markham, a docent who has loved giving tours of the mansion for two decades. "I want to know why? Where is the money coming from? Why is everything such a secret?"
She said any changes at the mansion during previous administrations were discussed openly, in great detail, months ahead of time. Markham, 81, said in this case, she and other tour guides were informed by email that "there would be no tours, we would be closing down, we were having it installed."
When former first lady Roxane Gilmore, who literally wrote the book about the mansion, heard about the new ramp, she wrote letters to the editor about it, telling reporters that the plan needlessly changes the building's exterior when there was a gracious, weatherproof, roll-in basement entrance via elevator that has been in place since she and her husband, Jim Gilmore, oversaw an extensive renovation in 1999.
Hearing about the controversy, I asked the governor's spokesman, Brian Coy, if I could see and film the old wheelchair entrance to share with our viewers.
Coy said he couldn't allow that because it would show some of the governor's family's personal space, and that's one of the reasons why they wanted to change the wheelchair entrance. Then he told me construction was already underway.
What? No way!
So I jetted on down to the mansion so I could film masons and others working on the mostly masonry ramp. Once there I was told that I couldn't come onto the property to film the work going on, which was completely shrouded by a long, green, construction fence.
For a few moments the fence was opened and I could see freshly laid concrete blocks and watch a worker cutting with a masonry chop-s |
that recruit authors who pay to get their articles published. Despite having substandard or no peer view, these "predatory publishers" now comprise an estimated 25 percent of all open-access journals. "Not only do they provide opportunities for the unscrupulous in academia and industry to pad their curriculum vitaes and bibliographies with bogus articles and editorial appointments, they also make it difficult for those involved in the assessment and promotion of scholars to discern value from junk," writes Dr. Caplan.
Research misconduct, like falsifying or fabricating data or concealing serious violations. Fourteen percent of scientists report that their colleagues falsify data, and 72 percent report other questionable practices, according to one 2009 study published in PLoS One.
. Plagiarism, which, according to a 2010 Nature article was "staggering," requiring editors to spend "inordinate amounts of time" checking submissions they receive.
According to Dr. Caplan: "All these polluting factors detract from the ability of scientists and physicians to trust what they read, devalue legitimate science, undermine the ability to reproduce legitimate findings, impose huge costs on the publication process, and take a toll in terms of disability and death when tests, treatments, and interventions are founded on faulty claims."
Dr. Caplan proposes a national meeting of leaders in science and medicine to lead a sustained challenge to proactively and aggressively go after this pollution problem.
"The currency of science is fragile, and allowing counterfeiters, fraudsters, bunko artists, scammers, and cheats to continue to operate with abandon in the publishing realm is unacceptable," he asserts.
###
About NYU Langone Medical Center
NYU Langone Medical Center, a world-class, patient-centered, integrated academic medical center, is one of the nation's premier centers for excellence in clinical care, biomedical research, and medical education. Located in the heart of Manhattan, NYU Langone is composed of four hospitals--Tisch Hospital, its flagship acute care facility; Rusk Rehabilitation; the Hospital for Joint Diseases, the Medical Center's dedicated inpatient orthopaedic hospital; and Hassenfeld Children's Hospital, a comprehensive pediatric hospital supporting a full array of children's health services across the Medical Center--plus the NYU School of Medicine, which since 1841 has trained thousands of physicians and scientists who have helped to shape the course of medical history. The Medical Center's tri-fold mission to serve, teach, and discover is achieved 365 days a year through the seamless integration of a culture devoted to excellence in patient care, education, and research. For more information, go to http://www. NYULMC. org, and interact with us on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube.
Contact:
Lorinda Klein
NYU Langone Medical Center
212.404.3533
917.693.4846
lorindaann.klein@nyumc.org
Elaine Meyer
NYU Langone Medical Center
Department of Population Health
646.501.2895
elaine.meyer@nyumc.orgAward-winning Irish writer Colum McCann has described an attack on him in the US in which he was left with severe facial injuries as “ a shocking, cowardly attack in broad daylight on a busy street”.
Police said the author was beaten on Saturday night in New Haven, Connecticut. They say witness accounts suggest he may have tried to help a woman in a dispute.
In a statement issued through a public relations company this evening, McCann said: “ I was trying to help someone out. I was cold-clocked without warning. I had a severe concussion, a broken cheekbone, some broken teeth and a spirit that has been temporarily bruised.
“But I am recovering quickly and I’ve been overwhelmed by the generous response from friends and strangers alike.”
McCann said that luckily there had been an off-duty paramedic on the street who had come straight to his aid.
“The irony of it all is that I was at a conference on ’Empathy’ at Yale University with a non-profit I’m involved in, Narrative 4.
“I suffered a few injuries but nothing that can’t be quickly healed. If anything, I was shaken out of the ruts of my ordinary perception, and I have been struck the genuine caring nature of people asking about how they can help out.”
McCann said what he thought was “most important about this is that there are others who suffer far worse violence, and I think it’s important that we try to understand that the deep roots of silence are not helpful”.
“We need to speak out against this sort of thing. The police have not yet arrested the attacker but I believe they are very close to pressing charges, using video and witness evidence.
“It could have happened anywhere in the world. The fact that it happened on the edge of one of the world’s foremost colleges campuses simply highlights how prevalent this sort of situation is,” he said.
The novelist said the medical personnel who had helped him were “outstanding”.
“I am deeply thankful to all who have given me support.”
Police said earlier the woman’s companion may be the assailant they’re seeking.
The said the writer had given information to detectives and they had significant leads they hoped would soon lead to an arrest.
McCann is the award-winning author of six novels and two collections of short stories.
His novel Let the Great World Spin won worldwide acclaim, including the International Impac Award 2011, a literary award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and several other major literary prizes.
McCann lives in New York City. He just released the story Gone through the online publisher and subscription service Byliner. It is his first short story in a decade.Authorities say a man and a woman were found dead in an apparent murder-suicide in Holland, Bucks County.It was a son-in-law who made the horrible discovery around 3:50 Saturday afternoon inside a home in the unit block of Lempa Road.His wife sent him over after she hadn't heard from her parents."It's a little bit unbelievable and we're still trying to deal with it," said Amy Rifkind, neighbor.Stunned neighbors identified them as Boris Sereda and his wife Enna. They say Boris had been suffering from a long term illness.Investigators searched the couple's split level home for clues but it appears the 65-year-old husband shot and killed his 61-year-old wife before turning the gun on himself."He had been battling, I believe cancer, for a few years and I heard he took a turn for the worst recently and maybe he was depressed, we're not sure," said Rifkind."They were really nice. I didn't get a chance to really talk to them much but they would always wave to us and they just seemed really friendly," said Liz Rifkind.Action News has learned that Boris was the longtime owner of Sereda Enterprises, a fine jewelry maker on South 7th Street in Center City.He was in business on Jeweler's Row for more than three decades."Family business, good guy, no complaints, no issues, never a problem," said Faust Capobianco, neighbor.Neighbors say they would often see Enna walking with their grandchildren.Bucks County detectives and police brought out boxes of evidence from the couple's home on Sunday.Capobianco, who just spoke with Boris on Saturday, says he's trying to wrap his head around the tragic incident."Like any other conversation, just a normal day. That was what caught everyone on this block off guard - just shocked," he said.An exact cause of death has not yet been determined.Officials are investigating.The Catholic Archbishop of Dublin, Diarmuid Martin, has said the marriage referendum results show that the Catholic Church has a huge task in front of it to get its message to young people.
In an interview with RTÉ News, he said that many of young people who voted Yes were from Catholic schools.
He said the Catholic Church needs "to have a reality check across the board."
Archbishop Diarmuid Martin says the Catholic Church needs to do a reality check https://t.co/FyIKV3PbXP — RTÉ News (@rtenews) May 23, 2015
Following the passing of the referendum on same-sex marriage Archbishops and Bishops of the Church of Ireland said the Church "defines marriage as between a man and a woman, and the result of this referendum does not alter this."
A statement from the Church of Ireland said "We would now sincerely urge a spirit of public generosity, both from those for whom the result of the referendum represents triumph, and from those for whom it signifies disaster" the statement said.
Live: Referendum and by-election counts
Ireland set to vote Yes to same-sex marriage
Campaign was like a social revolution - Varadkar
The Presbyterian Church in Ireland said it was "deeply disappointed and saddened that the Constitution will no longer reflect the historic - and Christian - view of marriage that it is exclusively between one man and one woman."
"While the result is a significant change for Irish Society, as a Church we will continue to reach out to all people, whatever their situation, as all are equally welcome" the statement said.
Bishop Paul Colton of Cork Cloyne and Ross said this evening he is proud to have been the first bishop to have supported the referendum proposal to legalise same-sex marriage.
He echoed Archbishop Diarmuid Martin's statements saying all churches have a long road ahead.
I agree with Archbishop Diarmaid Martin - not just his church, but all churches need a reality check. Churches have a long journey ahead. — paul colton (@b2dac) May 23, 2015
His brother Bishop Michael Burrows of Cashel and Ossory also supported the Yes side in the campaign.
They did so despite the Church of Ireland teaching that marriage can only take place between a man and a woman, a position endorsed by the Church's only woman bishop - Bishop Pat Storey of Meath and Kildare.
No campaign reaction to referendum passing
Leading members of the No campaign have offered their congratulations to the Yes campaign on their victory.
In a statement, Mothers and Fathers Matter said: "This is their day, and they should enjoy it.
"From our point of view, we have represented a proportion of the population greater than those who support any political party.
"One in three Irish people in this campaign was not represented by the political establishment, the media, or the institutions of state.
"We are proud to have fought on behalf of those voices when nobody else would."
Independent Senator Rónán Mullen extended his best wishes to the Yes side.
In a statement, he said: "Our country has divided two-to-one on the proposal to change the meaning of marriage in our society.
"What we are not divided about is how we feel about gay people.
"Every human being has equal dignity and deserves equal respect. We are all committed to that.
"The No campaign was concerned about the profound effects of redefining marriage, and in particular about the consequences for some children who would be less likely to experience the love of a mother and father in their lives in the event of a Yes vote.
"That concern was real and it remains justified."
Independent Senator Rónán Mullen says there is a 'new dynamism' by those in the No campaign https://t.co/0T1urI2mNa — RTÉ News (@rtenews) May 23, 2015
Independent TD Mattie McGrath, one of a few Oireachtas members to call for a No vote, said that "the people have spoken".
He said: "We have to congratulate the Yes side on their victory and hopefully the promises that were made by the Government ministers will be kept now."
Mr McGrath said he never expected the No side to do better than it had.
"I never expected it to be much better, with the whole weight of the political establishment and public sector [in favour], Google, you name it, the Garda Representative Association.
"You couldn't fight that and move that mountain … I thought it might be even worse."Belly-up pro athletes are among the world's saddest washouts, in part because you can't blame them for their own gruesome collapses. It’s a surreal deal: You’re invincible as a kid, invincible as a young man, a millionaire before you know how to file your own taxes and then an undereducated, slow-moving target for anyone hunting money. Or as writer Ben Austen describes NFL players in his piece just out in GQ, they’re “barn-sized marks for any underhanded scammer or well-meaning bumbler.”
Austen hung out with several players who are trying not to become the next broke-dick sob story. (Cautionary tale cited: Warren Sapp and his $1,165.35 in savings and checking against debts of $6.7 million.) His account works out to an unexpectedly humanizing account of the inner lives of pro athletes, who generally refuse to acknowledge their fears. To enroll in a $99,500 MBA program aimed specifically at NFL players means acknowledging, if only tacitly, the fear that their invincibility has limits.
The story might also give you the distinct impression that despite his intentions to the contrary, Bernard Berrian (pictured at top, left) is going to be punching a clock somewhere 10 years from now. Austen lays out this scene at D.C. steakhouse:
In Minneapolis, Berrian was one of the first football players to test a new mouth guard that previously had been worn only by hockey players. He put money in that company, as well as in a package-delivery business and in a management outfit having something to do with an up-and-coming San Francisco boxer. He said he was now considering investing in a Minneapolis restaurant. Jennifer Carter-Scott, who directs the side of STAR MBA that helps people like the McIntoshes start their foundations, overheard Berrian. "Restaurants—not good investments," she cut in. "I know," said Berrian. "No profit margins in restaurants," she trilled as a lesson to everyone at the table. Berrian severed a bite-size parcel from his tract of steak. A minute passed. "I'm going to do the restaurant," he said.
Advertisement
Apparently some four-fifths of NFL players are insolvent within a decade of retirement. This is the peril of ever being exceptionally good at something: It can convince you that you'll be good at whatever you try. If you just learned that you're richer than Warren Sapp, you have your relatively low expectations largely to thank.
Show Yourself the Money [GQ]
Photo credit: APAdjacent to the PVR Anupam miltiplex in south Delhi's Saket neighbourhood stands a tin shack on wooden slabs and decorated with a few torn rugs. In and around this shanty, stray dogs can be seen walking around like disciples of a holy saint.
The shanty belongs to Pratima Devi, who looks older than her 61 years. She has lived here for more than three decades and is a ragpicker. Better known as Amma in the neighbourhood, she earns only to look after hundreds of dogs in the locality.
"I look after over 400 dogs - about 200 around my home. Others are scattered in the courtyard of the PVR complex up to J-block (a little over half a kilometre away). My dogs never bite. They have been sterilised and vaccinated by the MCD (civic body)," Pratima said.
She nurses the injured dogs and feeds them from a civic van in the evenings - the fare includes milk, stew and mutton. Pratima has earned quite a reputation in the locality today and many neighbours make a contribution toward feeding the dogs.
"I was married at the age of seven to a man who was more than 10 years older than me. My husband often came home drunk and used to beat me. My mother and I have suffered at the hands of our in-laws," recounted Pratima, who came to Delhi in the early 1980s from Nandigram in West Bengal.
At the age of 14 she bore her first child who came to Delhi to work as a five-year-old. Pratima had already parted ways with her husband and was working as a domestic in Kolkata. She decided to move to Delhi to be with her older son. She has two more children.
Amma said she has worked as a domestic in model-turned-actor Rahul Dev's home. "He was very fond of my paranthas," she said, adding the actor still comes to visit her. She later ran a tea-stall near PVR for more than 25 years. But popularity came at a price.
"A neighbour who owned a departmental store conspired with two policemen and burnt down my tea-stall along with my house. I was injured and many of my dogs were also burnt. They spared no one," she recalled, while showing burn marks on her feet.
Pratima has now bought a house in Sangam Vihar, some five km away, where her children live today, but she refuses to go as her adopted children - the dogs - are not welcome there.
"My children do not want me to stay with them because of the dogs. And I cannot leave them. Who will take care of the dogs if I leave them," she asked.
Mental health professionals, however, have a different take on the issue. They feel that dogs sometimes fill emotional gaps in people's lives, but add that when socialisation is exclusively limited to pets, there were possibly underlying issues.
"It's like dogs domesticated humans and vice the versa. Most people feel comfortable with animals. Nothing wrong with it, but confining oneself to animals definitely is (not good)," Suyesha Singh Rathore, a counselling psychologist, told IANS.
"During social anxiety, an anxiety disorder in which a person has an excessive and unreasonable fear of social situations, humans often avoid the social interaction for relaxation but unknowingly tend to behave differently. Some prefer talking to walls while others to birds, plants and sometime animals. The most common state is 'parler a chien' (talking to dogs) as social adaptations of dogs and humans are similar enough. The dogs can live perfectly happy lives surrounded by humans and vice versa," Rathore added.
"Fear of being closely watched, judged and criticised by others may lead to anxiety and self-consciousness," she pointed out.
However, there are several reports, including one cited by New York Times, that speaks of nor just the benefits of cuddling a pooch, but also explains the science behind the compelling draw of "puppy eyes" that your pet may subject you to. The feeling of wellness you get while playing with your pet may be rooted in your brain chemistry. And it works both ways.
"The look of love can also be in the dog's eyes. Dogs who trained a long gaze on their owners had elevated levels of oxytocin, a hormone produced in the brain that is associated with nurturing and attachment, similar to the feel-good feedback that bolsters bonding between parent and child."Get the biggest Swansea stories by email Subscribe Thank you for subscribing We have more newsletters Show me See our privacy notice Could not subscribe, try again later Invalid Email
A six-year-old girl carried her baby brother out of a blazing house then went back in to save the rest of her family.
Kelsey Davies was praised for saving the life of 11-month-old Andrew but could not reach her four-year-old brother Jac who died in the horrific blaze.
The children’s mother Jenny Davies, 28, said: “Kelsey was amazing, she picked Andrew up out of his cot and got him out of the house.
“I’m very proud of her but I’ll never get over losing my little Jac.”
Single mum Jenny was asleep downstairs when the blaze broke out while her children were asleep in their bedrooms.
(Image: Rowan Griffiths)
Kelsey helped her mother and brother to safety
Kelsey was the first to wake up and ran to an upstairs window to scream for help.
She grabbed sleeping Andrew and carried him out of the house and into the arms of a neighbour.
Neighbours said Kelsey battled her way back into the house to help her mum and brother Riley, three, to safety.
Two men who live nearby arrived but could not get up the stairs of the four-bedroomed former council house because of the intense heat.
Police confirmed Jac died in the house fire at Pontardawe, near Swansea.
This was the scene outside the house:
Video Loading Video Unavailable Click to play Tap to play The video will start in 8 Cancel Play now
'He was my world'
Heartbroken Jenny said: “He was a handsome, lovely and playful boy with beautiful blonde curls.
“He was my life, my world, my everything.”
Jenny and her three surviving children were treated for smoke inhalation at Morriston Hospital in Swansea.
Kelsey was said to be “inconsolable” after being told her brother had died in the fire.
(Image: Robert Melen)
Close family friend Kim Counsell, 28, said: “Kelsey is the oldest of the children and loves to mother her three little brothers.
“Her first reaction would have been to get them out of the house when she realised it was on fire.
“She went to the window and was shouting: “Help, help, someone please can you help.
“Then she picked Andrew up and carried him out of the house.
“By the time she got outside people were there and she handed him over before going back inside.
“It is an amazing thing for a six-year-old girl to do.”
'A lovely little boy, he loved trains'
Ms Counsell said the fire was at its fiercest close to where little Jac was sleeping.
She said: “I am devastated, he was such a lovely boy.
“We used to call him Jackanory because he was always making up little stories.
“He was always playing with the neighbour’s cat, I saw him chasing it the day before the fire.
“He was a lovely little boy, he loved trains - I can still hear him going choo choo while he was playing.”
(Image: Robert Melen)
Marie Morris, 24, whose son Harry was Jac’s best friend in nursery, also laid flowers outside the fire-damaged house.
She said: “How do I tell a four-year-old that he will never see his best friend again.
“They were always playing together, I’ve tried to explain in simple terms but he doesn’t understand.
“Jac was a lovely little boy, a real character, always smiling and having fun.
“Jenny is a good, caring mum. She will be devastated.”
Police investigation continues
Forensic officers were sifting through the debris to pinpoint the cause of the blaze. A joint examination of the scene by police and fire investigators has now finished.
South Wales fire chief Chris Margetts said: “The blaze was very severe - it may have set off smoke detectors.
“The tragedy happened in a very close community - specialist teams from the fire and rescue service will be working with the community in the coming days.”
HM Coroner has been informed of the death and a post mortem has taken place. A family liaison officer from South Wales Police has been appointed to offer support to the family.
Detective Chief Inspector Esyr Jones, of Swansea and Neath Port Talbot CID, said: "We now await the full fire investigation report which will give us a greater understanding of what happened at the property."
Anyone with information should call police on 101.
Words by Tom BedfordSEOULSEOUL (Reuters) - North Korea's latest weapons test showed it can accurately fire multiple medium-range ballistic missiles, an attack strategy that experts said could test the advanced U.S. THAAD anti-missile system which began to arrive in South Korea on Tuesday.
Advances in North Korea's banned missile program have also caused concern in Tokyo, where sources with knowledge of the government's thinking said a "swarm-like" attack using multiple missiles could overwhelm Japan's already stretched defenses.
Images released by North Korean state media showed leader Kim Jong Un presiding over Monday's simultaneous launch of four ballistic missiles, which landed in seas off Japan's northwest.
ADVERTISEMENT
In response, the United States started the early deployment of its advanced Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) anti-missile system in South Korea on Tuesday, despite angry opposition from China.
THAAD's job is to intercept and destroy a ballistic missile in its final phase of flight, either inside or just outside the earth's atmosphere.
But with its specifications secret and having never been used in wartime, THAAD's ability to deal with a barrage of missiles at the same time is uncertain.
"The use of multiple shots, timed ever-more-closely together, appears destined to rehearse saturating a defensive system by presenting it with an overwhelmingly complex radar picture," Joshua Pollack, editor of the U.S.-based Nonproliferation Review, said of Monday's launch.
South Korean military and intelligence officials said the four North Korean missiles appeared to be an upgraded version of the Scud type - the "ER" or "Extended Range" Scud.
"An advantage of the ER Scud over the Rodong is that the ER Scud is much cheaper," said Jeffrey Lewis of the California-based Middlebury Institute of International Studies.
ADVERTISEMENT
"So North Korea can presumably build more ER Scuds to overwhelm THAAD," Lewis said.
STRIKE CAPABILITY
Most experts believe North Korea would likely need to fire off more than four ballistic missiles at one time to inundate a THAAD battery - perhaps 10, according to Michael Elleman, a U.S.-based rocket expert with the International Institute for Strategic Studies.
"I would be disappointed to learn that four attacking missiles would overwhelm THAAD," he said.
Manufacturer Lockheed Martin declined to comment.
"The specific number of threats (THAAD) can engage at once is classified, but we have successfully demonstrated the ability to engage multiple targets," Pentagon spokesman Gary Ross said.
ADVERTISEMENT
A greater concern than multiple Scud-type missiles would be if North Korea proved the ability to fire simultaneous salvos of other types of missiles that could carry heavier payload, said one U.S. official, speaking on the condition of anonymity.
North Korea theoretically had enough launchers to send at least 36 ballistic missiles of various types at the same time, said Joseph S. Bermudez, a strategic advisor at Allsource Analysis Inc and contributor to the 38 North Korea monitoring project.
To counter that risk, South Korea, Japan and the United States have installed layers of different missile defenses that can work together to reduce the threat.
"If all three nations and their assets are integrated – and they can be integrated, there are systems for doing that – then the system has a synergy that is quite remarkable," Bermudez said.
In addition to the new THAAD system, South Korea also operates a Patriot PAC-3 missile defense system while Japan is upgrading its PAC-3 defenses and mulling a shore-based version of the Aegis missile-defense system used on Japanese ships.
North Korea's actions have also prompted discussions in Tokyo about THAAD, which, because it is already in operation with the U.S. Army, may be an easier-to-deploy alternative to the Aegis system. (For a graphic on THAAD compared with other missile defense systems, click tmsnrt.rs/2mDHPnl)
ADVERTISEMENT
REGIONAL TENSIONS
A deployed THAAD battery comprises four parts: The truck-mounted launcher; eight anti-missile "interceptors" which can destroy an incoming missile; a radar system, and a fire control system which connects the battery to U.S. military commanders.
"The number of interceptors is limited, and the number that one THAAD system could handle at once is limited, too," said Markus Schiller, a rocketry expert based in Germany.
"THAAD has fared well in tests, but has not been used in real combat, under real conditions," Schiller added.
It is THAAD's sophisticated radar, which according to the U.S. Missile Defense Agency is the "largest air-transportable x-band radar in the world", that has spurred tensions with China.
Once fully deployed in South Korea, a THAAD battery could theoretically use its radar to see and monitor activity beyond North Korea, deep into Chinese territory.
ADVERTISEMENT
Russia also worries the deployment could compromise its security, and said it would lead to a stalemate on the Korean peninsula. Separately, Moscow has criticized a ballistic missile defense shield which the United States has activated in Europe as a step to a new arms race.
U.S. Pacific Command said in a statement accompanying the announcement to start deploying THAAD in South Korea that the system is "strictly defensive" and poses "no threat to other countries in the region".
The U.S. military released grainy neon-green night vision video which showed a military transport plane delivering two THAAD trucks to Osan Air Force Base in South Korea.
So far, only the "first elements" have arrived, with the rest due to arrive by April, Yonhap news reported.
The planned location for South Korea's two THAAD launchers in the rural county of Seongju means Seoul is outside of their protective range.
But with so much conventional North Korean artillery pointed at the South Korean capital, just 40 km (25 miles) from the North Korea border, Pyongyang could carry out its threat to turn Seoul into a "sea of fire" by using only its Soviet-era guns.
ADVERTISEMENTSometimes I wonder what it would be like if, every time Nancy Pelosi opened her mouth, there were subtitles saying what she was thinking. Because I get the feeling she leaves a lot unsaid, as she appeared to be doing in her appearance today on This Week with Christiane Amanpour:
AMANPOUR: American people are now occupying Wall Street.
PELOSI: Yes.
AMANPOUR: They are spreading their protests to various other cities in the United States.
PELOSI: Right.
AMANPOUR: They're expressing frustration. They're expressing fear of the joblessness. Do you support them?
PELOSI: Well, I support the -- the message to the establishment, whether it's Wall Street or the political establishment and the rest, that change has to happen. We cannot continue in a way that does not -- that is not relevant to their lives.
I think one of the most angry responses I've seen to actions in Washington came after we passed the TARP bill. And that was the bill that pulled us back from a -- a financial crisis that we -- and this was during the presidency of President Bush.
The thought was that when we did that, there would be capital available and Main Street would benefit from the resources that went largely to Wall Street. It didn't happen. People are angry. I think they're angry that they don't have jobs. And -- and, by and large, that -- there's nothing that makes you angrier than not being able to provide for your family or -- or understand what your prospects are for the future.
And I do think that, from what we saw after TARP, that the focus on Wall Street was one that they thought was a legitimate place to go. Don't do this again. Don't put Main Street at the mercy of Wall Street. And, again, not to paint everyone on Wall Street with the same brush. That would not be fair. But -- but actions were taken that risked our economy and we don't want that to happen again.
AMANPOUR: I just want to get your reaction to some comments by Eric Cantor today. He said, quote: "I'm increasingly concerned about the growing mobs occupying Wall Street and other cities around the
country." And he said: "Believe it or not, some in this town have actually condoned the pitting of Americans against other Americans."
PELOSI: I didn't hear him say anything when the Tea Party was out demonstrating, actually spitting on members of Congress right here in the Capitol. And he and his colleagues were putting signs in the windows encouraging them. But let's not get down to that.
AMANPOUR: But do you think it's...
PELOSI: That is not (INAUDIBLE)...
AMANPOUR: -- pitting Americans against Americans?
PELOSI: Well, that's the American system. It's the democratic system. We don't all agree. We'd have a king if we were all of one mind. We don't. We have different views. And the part of the democracy of our country is the expression that people give -- and the constitution guarantees that.Twenty years ago, Czechoslovakia split in two new countries. If the Czech Republic and Slovakia had stayed together and transformed the impoverished former nation into a multi-ethnic country, both societies would be more democratic today, argues a dual-nationality columnist.
When someone in Hungary uses the word “csehszlovák”, everyone knows that what is being referred to is ugly and dysfunctional, whether it's a product or an activity. This contemptuous epithet, which entered the slang and survives to this day, comes from the era of socialist Czechoslovakia, when Hungarians considered my former homeland an embarrassment that churned out nothing but crap – from cars that were constantly breaking down and leaking tents, to poor services for tourists and its very own dysfunctional nature as a state.
Actually, the Hungarians were right (even if they cannot be all that proud of their own country these days). Czechoslovakia was mostly an awkward, inefficient and undemocratic state, and even the decent 20 years it had after 1918 cannot do much about this fact. So why should I be sorry that it fell apart 20 years ago?
I wouldn’t, however, be sorry if this split had not shrunk the space for democracy, which had got off to quite a good start in the first two years after November 1989.
Looking out for your ‘interests’
But at that time two small states, whose godfathers turned into politicians with a dictatorial bent, were formed, their purpose became not democracy, but what came to be known as the Czech or Slovak “interest”. No one yet knows what that is exactly, but politicians frequently deploy the term to suppress the natural goal of state-building, which ought to be democracy.
If the former Czechoslovakia had survived, it would be impossible to hide behind the word “Czechoslovak interest”, because it would be clear to everyone that such a thing does not exist. The dispute over the democratic nature of the state, in which the nationalists would be clearly visible as those who view democracy as an obstacle, would be fully exposed. In the Czech Republic in particular, this distinction is sometimes very hard to make these days.
A national state based on an ethnic principle – and both our countries are based on it, although the Czech constitution, at least formally, attempts to weaken it – have a worse starting position for building a democracy than the states that make political nationality, not ethnic origin, the basis for citizenship. I am deeply convinced that if Czechoslovakia had stuck to the principle of one political Czechoslovak nation – though one made up of various nationalities – it would be more democratic than our two small states are today.
A “csehüláll” situation
But that probably could not have succeeded. Czechoslovakia was a dictatorship for most of its existence, and faith in its democratic and federal future was too weak following 1989. And so, if the Hungarian language were to preserve the expression “csehüláll”, which is derived from the word “Czech” and has become the term for an idiotic situation, I would have to say we deserve it.
Not just because we are entering the new year, though, I believe that our small world, following the break-up of Czechoslovakia, still has a chance to be a better one, even if 20 years ago the two small states did not get off to the best start. In the end, when all is said and done, their godfathers are probably already finally headed into oblivion.Motorcycles (motorbikes, bikes, cycles) are some of the most affordable forms of motorized transport. They’re the preferred and most common choice in many parts of the world. It is estimated that there are 200 million motorcycles (including mopeds, motor scooters, motorized bicycles, etc) used worldwide – roughly 33 motorcycles per 1000 people. Most of them (58%) are in Asia – Southern and Eastern Asia, and the Asia Pacific countries, excluding Japan. In 2006, China used to have 54 million units in use and production of 22 million units each year. In 2002 India took the first place as the country with the biggest number of motorized bikes in the world, with an estimated 37 million motorcycles/mopeds. There’s specialized gear that you must wear while driving bikes, regardless if it’s for fun or you want to take a long trip, and one important item that you must wear at all times is the helmet. So we’ve made this list of cheap motorcycle helmets, but don’t let “cheap” fool you, they’re also pretty damn awesome (insert smiley face here).
10. Marushin
Source
The Marushin Shivan Dragon Motorcycle Helmet has a lightweight high-impact resistant thermoplastic and fiberglass construction, an anti-scratch slash anti-fog visor, and a D-ring fastening clip. The helmet features fully removable hypoallergenic comfort padding, upper and lower ventilation system with rear exhaust ports. Price: roughly $129.
9. Batman Helmet In Matte Black
Source
The Box BX-2R Batman Motorcycle Helmet is distributed in a choice of two Batman themed designs. This cool looking helmet features a lightweight synthetic shell, removable, washable liner, ACU Gold Standard for use on track, ECER22.05 approval, quick release visor system, 2 point ventilation and removable lining. Price: approximately $65.
8. Red Dragon
Source
This is a DOT approved motorcycle helmet. It features a red dragon breath graphic design, while the motorcycle helmet is DOT approved, light weight for comfort and has an ABS shell. Furthermore, the helmet is fully vented and has adjustable top and chin vents. The high-quality paint job is yet another plus to this affordable motorcycle helmet – $95.99.
7. Box MX-5 Enduro
Source
The Box MX-5 Enduro helmet features a Double D Retention System, adjustable Peak, Multi-Point Venting System for comfort and airflow, removable and washable lining. The helmet is also ECER 22.05 Approved (UK Rd. Legal), ACU Gold Approved and, best of all, comes with a free pair of goggles. It’s also affordable as it costs around $107.
6. LS2 FF351 Rumble
Source
The list of cheap motorcycle helmets continues with this stunning LS2 FF351 helmet that features an aerodynamic HPTT shell construction (High pressure thermoplastic technology), in-and-out air control system, and a SR2S – speed removable ratchet system with soft comfort chin strap padding. In addition, this helmet is hygienically treated with fully removable interior and washable lining, it’s both ACU Gold Approved for track use and ECER 22 – 05 – for road use, features multi-positional clear and anti-scratch |
for a corner. The other was a header from the unimpressive Hateley which Eike was shepherding round the post until it span back and actually rebounded from said woodwork. The referee was a little overfussy in the first half which slightly spoilt the game as a spectacle.In the second half we scored after a neat interchange of passes between Kinky (from a corner) and Flitcroft. The ball was knocked in and Kit Symons rose to nod in his first goal for the club (again after a deflection).QPR's spoiling tactics began to escalate which was a complete surprise to me as I thought they would at least try to play attractive football. Combined with the ref's non-comprehension of the advantage rule, the game descended into a niggly and petulant stop/start affair.Seven QPR players were booked (1 red : Dichio for second bookable offence) and 3 from City. Unlike some comments I heard afterwards (Paul Power's included) I thought the referee was completely justified with all the bookings although I did still feel that he had a bad game. Unless I'm mistaken I think Flitcroft's yellow means another suspension.City cruised to victory for the first time in the Premiership this season and I left with much optimism for our impending victories against Coventry, Everton, Newcastle and The Rags.Is cognitive science full of crap? A biophyics researcher recently asked this of a cognitive science researcher. The latter answered with spirit. My own answer is that of course cog sci is full of crap — except when it's not. Which makes it like most science, only more so.
It started when Cambridge University memory researcher Jon Simons posted a lament about how proposed UK science-funding cuts especially threaten young, developing researchers. The cog-sci debate broke out when University of College London biophysicist David Colquhoun suggested that perhaps precious funding might be better used if less were spent on cognitive science:
I couldn't agree more about the very real danger posed to early-career and even mid-career scientists by the lack of smallish responsive mode grants. But being in a different area, I may see the problem slightly differently. At the risk of being lynched, I'll have to admit that I sometimes sigh when see the next "new phrenology" study come out. Only too often the results are uninterpretable (though university PR departments love the fact that, however trivial, they make headlines). The equipment is enormously expensive and perhaps some of that money could be better spent (for example, on fundamental biophysics!).
When pressed for examples, Colquhoun named a couple of studies, most prominently a 2000 study about the "taxi drivers' hippocampus." He was referring to work at the lab of Eleanor Maguire, who found that London taxi drivers, who to earn their licenses must pass a horrifically difficult navigational and geographic exam called The Knowledge, hadbigger hippocampuses than most people did.
Hippocampuses play an vital role in memory and spatial navigation. As the paper noted, the bigger hippocampi in London cab drivers might mean one of (at least) two things: That memorizing the streets and routes of London made their hippocampuses grow; and/or that having big hippocampuses to start with made you better able to memorize enough routes and streets of the Knowledge to pass it. The paper leaned toward the former explanation.
Colquhoun, however, while admitting he didn't know the study that well, said he was exasperated both with the sorts of big conclusions often produced by brain-imaging studies studies and with the hype they generate. Colquhoun was drawing on a strain of criticism that had already pained Simons and many of his readers. The charge of "new phrenology" carries a special edge, since phrenology, a sort of skull-reading 150 years ago, was an ugly hoax that now looks one step this side of voodoo.
Even if this argument fades at Simon's blog (Simons now has a newborn at home, which might slow things down a bit), it will have legs elsewhere. And well it should. It speaks to two important issues: The difficulty of doing a difficult science well, and the difficulty of writing about it well.
As it happens, I can speak a bit to the taxi-driver example, for a while back back, puzzled over a spectacular spatial memory lapse of my own, I spent a lot of time researching spatial memory and the hippocampus. I also write often about cognitive and behavioral science, and am working on a book right now about behavioral science. And I think Colquhoun has a point. The behavioral sciences, faced with figuring out excruciatingly difficult problems, have often come up with some wacky explanations.
Yet I think Colquhoun overplays his point — and that he chose a poor example. For the taxi-driver study shows not the wacky side but a strong side of recent cog-sci research.
The taxi-driver study got splash precisely because it suggested and framed an interesting hypothesis — perhaps hard memory work grows your hippocampus — in a way that even casual lay readers could understand. And as it happened, the science has held up.
If that 2000 study was the only study, then it wouldn't mean much. As I noted above, its key finding — the big hippocampi in taxi drivers — might have been happenstance, or people with big hippocampi might have been either attracted to taxi driving or had better memories to start with and so could better pass the rigorous navigation test. At the time, Maguire was pushing the edge a bit proposing that the hippocampi had in fact grown.
To her credit, however, Maguire spent much of the following ten years running a bunch of other studies to sieve out those and other confounds. She even did some before-and-after studies that found that taxi drivers' hippocampi grew as they prepped for the test. Taken together, it's a pretty striking body of work that supports her essential claim well. It also supports and gets support from a huge body of other work on memory and the hippocampus. People still debate the hippocampus's core, elemental function. But the taxi driver studies happen to be of real consequence and rigor, part of a thoughtful, thorough, ongoing line of research that ties into other lines. And this time, the simple clean story (e.g., memory demands can grow your hippocampi) seems to be proving scientifically rigorous and relevant.
The very best imaging research does this, as does work in cog sci drawing on other methods. Helen Mayberg's, for instance, is another remarkable line of work that leans heavily on imaging but ties into structural, autopsy, and genetic work to produce real value.
Colquhoun is right in saying there are a lot of crap imaging studies — enough, in fact, that one's first reaction probably should be, "Interesting if true," partly because the press often hypes up the most simplistic ones. This happens when a field races ahead. But sometimes racing ahead is how you distinguish the squishy ground from the solid.
I don't know enough about David Colquhoun's discipline to make a call on whether biophysics deserves funding more than cognitive science. I'd guess that his field has crap studies that get funded and good studies that do not. As to his frustration about hype: I can understand it, and I'd love to see more good ideas on how to check it. But Colquhoun should probably accept the outsized attention to cognitive science as inevitable. Cognitive and behavioral sciences will always get more play, because people are damned interested — as they must be – in what makes other people tick.
To expect otherwise — to expect most people to pay more attention to, say, particle physics or ion-channel dynamics than psychology and cog sci — is to hold expectations defying the evidence.
Mentioned:
Maguire, E. A., Gadian, D. G., Johnsrude, I. S., Good, C. D., Ashburner, J., Frackowiak, R. S., Frith, C. D. (2000). Navigation-related structural change in the hippocampi of taxi drivers. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 97(8), 4398-4403 doi:10.1073/pnas.070039597.
PS: I managed to misspell Colquhoun's last name 11 times in the original. Just fixed them. Apologies to DQ. Mar 10, 2011, 12:49 pm GMTDog owner uses old tennis shoe to create prosthetic paw
After his paw was amputated due to a tumor, Sunny the Golden Retriever has had to wear a prosthetic paw that was constantly breaking.
No longer though, as the dog’s owner stepped in to create a custom prosthetic out of a retired tennis shoe.
With a bit of duct tape and an old Nike Zoom Vapor9, dog owner Don Chernoff created a stand-in paw for Sunny that works much better. Chernoff posted a video to YouTube of his furry friend walking and playing the snow with his new paw equipped.
"Now Sunny is a Nike dog!" Don wrote on YouTube. "Roger Federer would be proud.”
With the new prosthetic, Sunny is able to move around like any other canine. Check out the video below to see it in action.An U.S. Navy F/A-18 F Super Hornet has crashed in the Persian Gulf on Tuesday at about 9:30 A.M. EST, Navy official told USNI News this afternoon.
The crew onboard the two-person Boeing strike fighter ejected out of the aircraft and were safely recovered by crew aboard the USS Theodore Roosevelt (CVN-71), the service said.
“Initial reports indicate both are conscious and alert and without serious injury,” read a Navy statement.
“The crash was not a result of hostile activity.”
The more than $60 million fighter lost power shortly after takeoff from Roosevelt and while the sailors ejected the aircraft safely the plane has been declared a total loss, the service told USNI News.
In December, U.S. Air Force Capt. William Dubois, 30, was killed in an F-16 Fighting Falcon crash as part of OIR and Marine Cpl. Jordan Spears, 21, died after bailing out of a MV-22 Osprey that lost power taking off from USS Makin Island (LHD-8).
The crash is the first operational loss of of a Super Hornet since 2013 and the first Navy F-18 fighter lost since Operation Inherent Resolve (OIR) began last year, according to press reports.
The Super Hornet was assigned to Strike Fighter Squadron 211 “Checkmates” (VFA 211) based in Naval Air Station Oceana, Va.
The squadron is attached to Carrier Air Wing One which is part of the Roosevelt Carrier Strike Group and has been flying against Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) militants since the strike group’s arrival to U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) in April.
The Navy is investigating the cause of the crash.
Several Oceana-based fighters have been involved in crashes over the past three years. In January 2014, a Super Hornet from VFA-143 crashed in a mid-afternoon flight after the pilot ejected. The Navy’s investigation found the pilot lost “situational awareness regarding his altitude, airspeed and rate of descent, descending more than 9,220 feet in just 44 seconds.” The Navy called this a “preventable mishap” caused by a lack of “proficiency and experience,” and the jet was a total loss.
Just five months later, in June 2014, a Super Hornet pilot from VFA-81 was training off the coast of Southern California when the pilot ejected as he approached the carrier USS Carl Vinson (CVN-70) and the jet crashed into the Pacific. In April 2013 a Super Hornet from VFA-103 crashed in the Persian Gulf while operating off USS Dwight D. Eisenhower (CVN-69). And in April 2012 two pilots ejected from a legacy Hornet after both engines failed. The plane crashed into a nearby apartment complex.
In September 2014, two Hornet pilots from West Coast units – VFA 94 and VFA 113 out of Naval Air Station Lemoore – crashed over the Pacific during training. One pilot was rescued, but Lt. Nathan Poloski from VFA-94 died in what the Navy called a tragic accident.
The following is the full statement from U.S. Navy 5th Fleet.
MANAMA, Bahrain – A U.S. Navy F/A-18 F Super Hornet assigned to Strike Fighter Squadron 211 (VFA 211) crashed at 1:30 p.m. (GMT), today, shortly after launching from the aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt (CVN 71) operating in the Arabian Gulf.
The two personnel aboard the strike fighter ejected from the aircraft, survived the crash and were quickly recovered by search and rescue personnel from the ship. The recovered Naval Aviators are being evaluated by medical personnel aboard USS Theodore Roosevelt. Initial reports indicate both are conscious and alert, and without serious injury.
The crash was not a result of hostile activity.
Strike Fighter Squadron 211 is based at Naval Air Station Oceana, Virginia, and is assigned to Carrier Air Wing One. USS Theodore Roosevelt with its embarked carrier air wing is currently in the Fifth Fleet supporting Operation Inherent Resolve, conducting strike operations against ISIL in Iraq and Syria.
The Navy is investigating the cause of the crash.GILGIT: Ambassador of Philippines Domingo D Lucenario Jr, Ambassador of Norway Leif Larsen and the wives of the Malaysian and Indonesian ambassadors were among seven people killed in a helicopter crash in Naltar Valley in the Gilgit-Baltistan region on Friday.
Two pilots and a crew member were among those killed when the Pakistan Army helicopter crash-landed on a school in Naltar Valley, Director-General Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR) Major-General Asim Bajwa said. Media reports identified the two pilots as Major Altamash and Major Faisal.
Injuries were also reported from the incident in which Dutch ambassador Marcel de Vink and Polish ambassador Andrzej Ananicz were injured.
Map showing MI-17 helicopter crash site. ─ Dawn GIS
Bajwa said that six Pakistanis and 11 foreigners were on board the MI-17 helicopter.
The convoy comprised three MI-17 helicopters, one carrying foreign diplomats, one carrying the prime minister and his staff and a third one with senior military officials, Bajwa said.
AFP quoted a statement by the Prime Minister Office as saying that Premier Nawaz Sharif was on a plane, not helicopter, en route to the Gilgit area at the time of the incident, but turned back to Islamabad after news of the crash broke.
A top regional administration official told AFP that the premier was due to inaugurate a chair-lift project at a ski resort in Naltar Valley.
The crashed helicopter was carrying a delegation of ambassadors to inspect projects on a three-day trip to Gilgit-Baltistan, where the foreign envoys were set to meet with the prime minister.
What caused the crash?
Speaking to DawnNews after the incident, DG ISPR said the helicopter crashed due to a technical fault and ruled out the possibility of any terrorist or subversive activity.
He, however, said that as per procedure, a board of inquiry has been constituted to investigate the cause of the crash.
Flame and smoke rises from the site where a military helicopter crashed in Gilgit. - AP
Moreover, the outlawed Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) claimed that the incident was the result of an attack it carried out however this could not be independently verified.
Pakistan Air Force spokesman Group Captain S M ALI, however, strongly ruled out the possibility of any terrorist act behind the crash of M-17 helicopter near Gilgit.
"No, there was no such (terrorist) act. I am witness to the accident, as I had also landed there a while before this unfortunate helicopter crashed — I was watching it land," Ali told Dawn.com on phone from Naltar.
Group Captain Ali said that due to inclement weather the C-130 operation, which was supposed to bring dead bodies, has been deferred till tomorrow. “PAF is in touch with army and Foreign Office for making arrangements,” he added.
This file photo shows Polish ambassador Andrezej Ananicz (C) with his wife (L) and Ambassador of Norway Leif Larsen (R). — Dawn/File
Transporting bodies, injured
Shortly after the incident, the injured were taken to the emergency ward of the Combined Military Hospital in Gilgit, hospital officials said.
Soldiers stand guard outside the Combined Military Hospital where victims of a helicopter crash were brought for treatment in Gilgit on May 8, 2015. — AFP
Moreover, arrangements were being made by the Pakistan Air Force to bring the bodies of the ambassadors and the wives of two other envoys to Islamabad.
Meanwhile, the Foreign Office in Islamabad has informed the respective governments about the tragic incident.
Pakistani soldiers gather beside an army helicopter at a military hospital where victims of a helicopter crash were brought for treatment in Gilgit. — AFP
This picture could not be independently verified.
According to a list of passengers obtained by AFP, the ambassadors of Indonesia, Lebanon, Malaysia, the Netherlands, Romania, Norway, South Africa, the Philippines and Poland were scheduled to fly on the helicopter.
A passenger in one of the helicopters told AFP that the air convoy was supposed to have included four helicopters but the number was later reduced to three.
“It was a diplomatic trip with members of 37 countries in total,” said the passenger who requested anonymity, adding that the school had caught fire after the crash but no children were in class at the time.
“The school, built by Pakistan Air Force for the children of the area, was closed as part of a security plan for the prime minister's visit,” he said.
File photo of pilots Maj Altamash Shaheed and Maj Faisal Shaheed who embraced Shahadat when a helicopter crashed at Naltar.-APP
PM declares one day of mourning
Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif has extended heartfelt condolences on the sad demise of the two ambassadors and the spouses of two other envoys who died in today’s incident and has declared one day mourning in relation to the incident.
He also expressed concern over the conditions of the injured diplomats and prayed for their speedy recovery. He directed concerned authorities to provide the injured diplomats with the best medical treatment.
The premier also directed authorities to dispatch planes and helicopters to evacuate the injured diplomats and transport the bodies to Islamabad.
People visit the embassy of the Philippines where the national flag is at half-mast mourning the reported death of Ambassador Domingo Lucenario Jr in Islamabad. —AP
Additional reporting by Baqir Sajjad Syed
Dawn's past inquiries have revealed that the Russian-made military transport helicopter can carry 32 people, or an equivalent weight of 4,000 kilograms.
The military is hard-pressed with few transport helicopters, most of them aging.From a media release:
CTV officially announced today that CARDINAL, the international success and #1 new Canadian drama series of the 2016/17 broadcast season, returns for a gripping Season 2 on January 4. Strategically scheduled in a Thursday night timeslot immediately following the two biggest shows on television, THE BIG BANG THEORY (8 p.m.) and YOUNG SHELDON (8:30 p.m.), the critically acclaimed series airs Thursdays at 9 p.m. ET/PT on CTV and CTV GO, following a CraveTVTM FIRST LOOK streaming beginning Wednesdays at 9 p.m. ET. CARDINAL is also set to premiere on Super Écran day-and-date with CTV.
Viewers can catch up on Season 1 now on CraveTVTM and in a six-part television event beginning Monday, Dec. 25 at 10 p.m. ET/PT on CTV Two and CTV.ca. Click HERE for the Season 2 trailer.
Directed by Jeff Renfroe (ROGUE), Season 2 of the Directors Guild of Canada(DGC) award-winning series stars Golden Globe®-nominee Billy Campbell (THE KILLING) as John Cardinal and the multiple Genie Award-winning actress Karine Vanasse (REVENGE) as Detective Lise Delorme, as they weave through an intricate investigation that exposes the seedy underbelly of picturesque Algonquin Bay.
Cycle 1 of CARDINAL garnered a worldwide audience after Entertainment One (eOne) successfully licensed the series internationally to more than 100 territories, with additional sales still pending. For eOne, the series has been a hit with international audiences, debuting to critical acclaim and strong ratings. International sales include: Hulu in the U.S., BBC Four in the UK, and Canal Plus in France, Telekom in Germany, Calle 13 in Spain, C More in Scandinavia (Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Norway), and SBS in Australia, to name a few.
Karine Vanasse as Lise Delorme and Billy Campbell as John Cardinal Jonathan Keltz as Kevin Tait Kris Holden-Ried as Scott Lasalle Glen Gould as Jerry Commanda Deborah Hay as Catherine Cardinal Kevin Hanchard as Alan Clegg Bruce Ramsay as Ray Northwind Alex Paxton-Beesley as Red
CARDINAL picks up several months after the events of Season 1. It’s early summer in Algonquin Bay and the blackflies aren’t the only ones out for blood. Detectives John Cardinal (Campbell) and Lise Delorme (Vanasse) find themselves with a strange case on their hands involving a young woman with a gunshot wound to the head. The investigation quickly takes a turn as Cardinal and Delorme uncover a series of disturbing, ritualistic killings that may be connected to their young victim. Cardinal must work to identify the young woman before her attacker strikes again.
Joining Billy Campbell and Karine Vanasse in Season 2 of CARDINAL is an all-star supporting cast that includes Bruce Ramsay (19-2) as Ray Northwind, Alex Paxton-Beesley (PURE) as Red, Jonathan Keltz (REIGN) as Kevin Tait, Kevin Hanchard (ORPHAN BLACK) as Detective Alan Clegg, Kris Holden-Ried (VIKINGS) as Scott Lasalle, and Dan Petronijevic (19-2) as Leon Rutkowsky.
Returning cast members include Deborah Hay (The Anniversary) as Catherine Cardinal, Glen Gould (Rhymes for Young Ghouls) as Det. Jerry Commanda, Kristen Thomson (Away From Her) as Staff Sergeant Noelle Dyson, David Richmond-Peck (ORPHAN BLACK) as Corporal Malcolm Musgrave, and Alanna Bale (PRIME RADICALS) as Kelly Cardinal.
In the premiere episode, entitled “Red” (Thursday, Jan. 4 at 9 p.m. ET/PT on CTV and CTV GO), Detective Jerry Commanda (Glen Gould) finds a confused, red-haired woman alone at a roadside bar with a bullet in her head. Red (Alex Paxton-Beesley) has no memory of who she is, how she got there, or who shot her. Even after the bullet is removed, she can’t remember anything. Commanda turns the case over to Detectives John Cardinal land Lise Delorme, who must protect Red while trying to uncover her identity and shooter.
CARDINAL is produced by Sienna Films and eOne in association with CTV, with the financial participation of the Northern Ontario Heritage Fund Corporation, the Canada Media Fund, and the Cogeco Program Development Fund; and with the assistance of the Ontario Film and Television Tax Credit and the Canadian Film or Video Production Tax Credit. Super Écran has commissioned the series for French-language Canadian broadcast. eOne distributes the series worldwide.
CARDINAL is adapted from the John Cardinal Mysteries series, a series of six bestselling crime novels written by Giles Blunt. Sarah Dodd (MOTIVE, RANSOM) serves as an Executive Producer and writer for Cycle 2. Jennica Harper (MOTIVE), Alison Bingeman (19-2), and Jeff Renfroe co-executive produce the series, with Renfroe directing all six episodes. The drama is executive produced by Sienna Films duo Julia Sereny and Jennifer Kawaja (COMBAT HOSPITAL). For eOne, Jocelyn Hamilton and Armand Leo serve as Executive Producers.While holders FC Bayern München and Real Madrid CF are familiar faces in the UEFA Champions League semi-finals, and Chelsea FC are also perennial contenders, Club Atlético de Madrid are breaking new ground.
Bayern and Madrid both reached the last four in 2012/13 while Chelsea were last involved the previous campaign. In contrast, Atlético have never played in the UEFA Champions League semi-finals and last got to the European Cup's last four in 1973/74, when they ousted Celtic FC and went on to lose the only final replay in the competition's history – against Bayern.
Atlético are making their fourth European Cup semi-final appearance overall, whereas neighbours Madrid are in their record 25th and have advanced to this stage for the fourth year running. However, they have not featured in the final since lifting their ninth European Cup in 2002, going out to FC Barcelona (2011), Bayern (2012) and Borussia Dortmund (2013).
There were contrasting evenings for Madrid and Chelsea on Tuesday; the Blues retrieved a two-goal first-leg deficit against Paris Saint-Germain to oust the French champions on away goals, yet Madrid had to survive a stern examination in Dortmund. Leading 3-0 from the game in Spain, Carlo Ancelotti's team trailed 2-0 by the 37th minute in Germany, only to regroup and edge through.
While Chelsea are in the last four for the seventh time in 11 seasons, Bayern – bidding to become the first side to retain the trophy in the UEFA Champions League era – are semi-finalists for the fourth time in five years having disposed of Manchester United FC on Wednesday.
The open draw – meaning no seeding or country protection – throws up the intriguing possibility of an all-Madrid semi-final. The clubs have met in only one European tie, back in 1958/59 when Madrid won 2-1 at home in their semi-final first leg, lost 1-0 away and finally emerged triumphant in the replay, 2-1.
The other teams have plenty of history between them. Chelsea beat Bayern on penalties in Munich to win the 2012 UEFA Champions League final, but lost to them by the same method in the UEFA Super Cup at the start of this term. Bayern overcame Atlético in that 1974 final and have faced Madrid in no fewer than five European Cup semis, winning four, including the most recent, on penalties in 2011/12.
Should Madrid and Atlético be kept apart in the draw, there may be a final between two sides from the same country – which would be the fifth in UEFA Champions League history and second in succession after Bayern's Wembley defeat of Dortmund last May. Madrid were victorious in the first of those, seeing off Valencia CF in the 2000 showpiece in Paris.
A final triumph for Madrid or Atlético would also strengthen Spain's position as the European Cup's most successful nation; the Liga has 13 victories, one more than Italy and England. Should Bayern prevail again, it would be Germany's eighth win, two more than the Netherlands.
The draw will begin at 12.00CET at UEFA headquarters in Nyon, Switzerland, with Luís Figo assisting UEFA General Secretary Gianni Infantino in conducting it.
The semi-finals will be played on 22/23 April and 29/30 April. For administrative purposes, the last step of the draw will define whether the winner of semi-final 1 or the winner of semi-final 2 will be the designated home team for the final. The 2013/14 UEFA Champions League final will be held at Estádio do Sport Lisboa e Benfica, Lisbon, on Saturday 24 May, kicking off at 20.45CET (19.45 local time).
All draw proceedings will be transmitted live on UEFA.com. Our live DrawCentre will also bring you the build-up and post-draw reaction from Nyon.
Club Atlético de Madrid (ESP)
European Cup semi-final record: W1 L2
Last semi-final appearance: 1973/74 (2-0 on aggregate v Celtic FC)
This season: W8 D2 L0 F22 A5
Top scorer: Diego Costa 7
European head-to-heads
v Real Madrid W1 D0 L2 F3 A4
v Chelsea W1 D1 L1 F6 A7
v Bayern W0 D1 L1 F1 A5
FC Bayern München
European Cup semi-final record: W10 L5
Last semi-final appearance: 2012/13 (7-0 on aggregate v FC Barcelona)
This season: W7 D2 L1 F24 A8
Top scorer: Thomas Müller 5
European head-to-heads
v Real Madrid W11 D2 L7 F33 A26
v Chelsea W1 D1 L1 F6 A7
v Atlético W1 D1 L0 F5 A1
Chelsea FC
European Cup semi-final record: W2 L4
Last semi-final appearance: 2011/12 (3-2 on aggregate v FC Barcelona)
This season: W7 D0 L3 F18 A7
Top scorer: Demba Ba, Samuel Eto'o, Fernando Torres 3
European head-to-heads
v Real Madrid W2 D1 L0 F4 A2
v Atlético W1 D1 L1 F7 A6
v Bayern W1 D1 L1 F7 A6
Real Madrid CF
European Cup semi-final record: W12 L12
Last semi-final appearance: 2012/13 (3-4 on aggregate v Borussia Dortmund)
This season: W8 D1 L1 F32 A9
Top scorer: Cristiano Ronaldo 14
European head-to-heads
v Chelsea W0 D1 L2 F2 A4
v Bayern W7 D2 L11 F26 A33
v Atlético W2 D0 L1 F4 A3The Irish Government is moving closer to a huge sell-off of the public forests, currently managed by Coillte (The Irish Forestry Board), to private investors. An area greater than 1 million acres, equivalent to two medium sized counties, will be lost forever. This will include some of our most valuable native woodlands, wild places and some of the last refuges of our native flora and fauna.
Interest has been expressed by Swiss finance company Helvetia Wealth - who own the International Forestry Fund (IFF) - chaired by Bertie Ahern, (ex-prime minister of Ireland) as well as The China Investment Corporation.
Please sign this petition now to tell the Irish Government that Ireland's Forests are not for sale. These forests are the inheritance of the Irish children and managed wisely can help secure Ireland's social, environmental and economic future. A strong show of support, asserting our rightful ownership of the public forests will make all the difference.
We the undersigned,Wish it be known that the public forests belong to the people of Ireland and under no circumstances should they be sold to private interests as a short-sighted economic reaction.The economy of Ireland under the Gaelic Order was that of the forests. This great resource was the provider of raw materials, medicine, weapons, tools, charcoal and food (in the form of berries, nuts, fungi, fruit, wild animals, etc.) as well as the basis for spirituality and wisdom. No other country has as many placenames connected to the forest with as many as 40,000 still in existence. Our forests are of great cultural and economic importance, therefore in these uncertain times we must retain full control over this most precious resource.The loss of our public forests will mean an area equivalent to two medium sized counties will be gone forever, all the potential benefits to local communities (now needed more than ever) will be lost. Access to rivers and water rights, fishing and hunting rights, wild fruits, nuts, mushrooms and basic access to nature will be removed, as well as the environmental services trees provide.The Irish forests need to be placed in a trust to safeguard them now and into the future. We also wish to see the public forests developed and diversified to maximise their potential multiple benefits for the common good of the Nation. This should focus on the conservation, restoration, and enhancement of our neglected native tree species. The native trees of any place are scientifically recognised to be the most valuable land based habitat for biodiversity and ecosystem services.We hope that you appreciate the seriousness of this matter, that you will reconsider any notion of selling the public forests and proceed to act in the best interests of the Irish people.
"Cad a dheanfaimid feasta gan adhmad?
Ta deireadh na gcoillte ar lar"
"What will we do without wood?, now the forest lies low"
Daibhi OBruadair (circa 1700's), a brehon poet lamenting the loss of the great Irish forests in his famous poem Caoine Cill Chais.
Thank you.Designated as the official legacy project of Dublin City being the European Capital of Science in 2012, the inaugural Festival of Curiosity took place in 2013 and is Dublin’s annual international festival of science, arts, design & technology.
From Playful Days (family programme) to Curious Nights (adult programme) we create, produce & curate unique, visual and interactive cultural experiences in Dublin that merge cutting-edge technology, design, arts and science in playful, immersive & curious ways.
With over 45,000 attendees each year across 14 venues in Dublin City Centre, the festival is Ireland’s annual celebration at the intersection of art, science, technology and design and has quickly grown to be one of the most exciting and innovative festivals of it’s kind in Europe.
The Festival of Curiosity takes a brand new, innovative & research-led approach to audience participation and engagement in science, arts, design & technology for all ages and has sold out every year since it’s inception.
In 2013 the festival was set up with the support of Founding Partners Dublin City Council, The Matheson Foundation, The RDS and Science Foundation Ireland. The festival brings together the most innovative leaders & strategic partners (local, national and international) in Industry, Education, Culture, Government, Media and Philanthropy who believe in forging a brighter future for Ireland and creating a culture of curiosity. Together we believe we can ignite Dublin’s curious heart.Image caption The research team could subvert almost every car control system
The computer systems used to control modern cars are very vulnerable to attack, say experts.
An investigation by security researchers found the systems to be "fragile" and easily subverted.
The researchers showed how to kill a car engine remotely, turn off the brakes so the car would not stop and make instruments give false readings.
Despite their success, the team said it would be hard for malicious attackers to reproduce their work.
Locked in
The team of researchers, led by Professor Stefan Savage from the University of California-San Diego, and Tadayoshi Kohno from the University of Washington set out to see what resilience cars had to an attack on their control systems.
"Our findings suggest that, unfortunately, the answer is 'little,'" wrote the researchers from the Center for Automotive Embedded Systems Security.
The researchers concentrated their attacks on the electronic control units (ECUs)scattered throughout modern vehicles which oversee the workings of many car components. It is thought that modern vehicles have about 100 megabytes of binary code spread across up to 70 ECUs.
This represents an opportunity to head off a problem before it starts, in the not-too-distant future it may represent a real risk to life. Rik Ferguson, Trend Micro
Individual control units typically oversee one sub-system but ECUs communicate so that many different systems can be controlled as the situation demands. For instance, in a crash seat belts may be pre-tensioned, doors unlocked and air bags deployed.
The attackers created software called CarShark to monitor communications between the ECUs and insert fake packets of data to carry out attacks.
The team got at the ECUs via the communications ports fitted as standard on most cars that enable mechanics to gather data about a vehicle before they begin servicing or repair work.
The researchers mounted a series of attacks against a stationary and moving vehicle to see how much of the car could fall under their control.
Image caption All modern cars are fitted with computer control systems
"We are able to forcibly and completely disengage the brakes while driving, making it difficult for the driver to stop," wrote the researchers. "Conversely, we are able to forcibly activate the brakes, lurching the driver forward and causing the car to stop suddenly."
In one attack, the team transformed the instrument panel into a clock that counted down to zero from 60 seconds. In the final seconds the horn honks and as zero is reached the car engine shuts off and the doors are locked.
They found that almost every system in the car, including engine, brakes, heating and cooling, lights, instrument panel, radio and locks was vulnerable.
The team concluded that the car control software was "fragile" and easy to subvert. In some cases simply sending malformed packets of data, rather than specific control code, was enough to trigger a response.
The team are presenting a paper on their results at the IEEE symposium on Security and Privacy in California on 19 May.
"Cars benefit from the fact that they are (hopefully) not connected to the internet (yet) and currently are not able to be remotely accessed," said Rik Fergson, a security analyst at Trend Micro. "So in order to carry out a successful attack you would already need to have physical access to the vehicle, as a break-in or as a mechanic, seem the two most likely scenarios."
"As cars, and everything else in life up to and including even pacemakers or fridges, become steadily more connected and externally accessible, research such as this should be taken increasingly seriously by manufacturers," he added.
"This represents an opportunity to head off a problem before it starts, in the not-too-distant future it may represent a real risk to life."Over the past year, Puerto Rico has been in the headlines for all the wrong reasons. Its current economic crisis, which has been developing and worsening for the past 10 years, has much of the island in despair. According to the Pew Research Center, Puerto Rico’s population has decreased every year since 2006, taking the country’s economy along with it (data from the same study suggests its gross national product has declined 13 percent since 2006). However, there seems to be a silver lining. The financial crisis has turned the culinary scene up on its head — but not for the reasons you might think.
“There are a lot of great restaurants, but the majority of the Puerto Rican public cannot afford them anymore.”
Yareli Manning, owner of San Juan food truck the Meatball Company and co-founder of the organization Food Truck Republic, is emblematic of Puerto Rico’s |
no one would question me like no one would question Dwayne Wade.
Be sure to stay tuned to TalkDG.com for future articles. What are your thoughts on what was said in the article?Apple was confident about its 13-inch MacBook Pro performance for 2013, but the device's actual sales turn out to be weaker than expected, leaving the company still digesting its inventories in the first quarter.
The sources pointed out that Apple's MacBook Pros have strong attraction to consumers, but the devices' high prices are instead pushing consumers away.
Citing supply chain sources, Digitimes reports that Apple is expected to see only modest "single-digit" shipment growth for its notebook lineup in 2013, with the 13-inch MacBook Pro in particular seeing weaker-than-expected sales.The report also claims that Apple will be refreshing its notebook lineup "at the end of the second quarter", which could mean an introduction at the company's Worldwide Developers Conference expected in June.had reported in late December that Apple was planning a June refresh for its notebook lineup, and similar timeframes have been claimed by reliable KGI Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo and Taiwanese newspaper Economic Times Back in mid-February, Apple released a surprise minor update for the Retina MacBook Pro, including a significant price drop for the 13-inch models. Apple also dropped pricing on the high-end MacBook Air at the time, a move that had been at least in part predicted by Digitimes in its late December report.Apple is likely to use Intel's forthcoming Haswell processors in its next-generation notebooks, and Intel will reportedly be releasing the first mobile Haswell chips in late May or early JuneOak Ridge Cemetery is a cemetery located in Springfield, Illinois, in the United States.
The Lincoln Tomb, which serves as the final resting place of Abraham Lincoln, his wife and all but one of his children, is located at Oak Ridge. A number of other prominent politicians and persons from Illinois are also buried at the cemetery.
As a result of Lincoln's Tomb, Oak Ridge is the second-most visited cemetery in the United States, after Arlington National Cemetery.[2]
Oak Ridge is the 3rd and now only public cemetery in Springfield, the other two cemeteries were the City Cemetery and Hutchinson.[3] Oak Ridge was designed by William Saunders as part of the Rural Cemetery Landscape Lawn Style.[3] The location of the cemetery was carefully selected because of the topography, which included rolling hills which was key in the Rural Cemetery Landscape Lawn Style. The many oak trees in the cemetery is how Oak Ridge got its name. The ridge borders low-lying Spring Creek, creating landscaped topography unusual in central Illinois.
The newest section, in the southwest, of Oak Ridge opened after 1945. The design follows the Memorial Park style cemetery in which roadways are wider to accommodate vehicles.[3]
The Cemetery has memorials for the Korean War, World War II and the Illinois Vietnam Veterans Memorial. A museum of Central Illinois African-American history is located adjacent to the cemetery.
Notable burials [ edit ]
Gallery [ edit ]There are so many places pouring craft beer in the city that it is almost impossible to decide where you want to drink sometimes. Do you want to grab a pint? Do you want to just get a sandwich and a growler fill? Better yet, do you hit the busier bars in Manhattan, or do you go to the more quiet sections of Brooklyn or Queens to have a more low key day? With some of our favorite bars residing in Manhattan it can be difficult to bring ourselves to go a little further to the other boroughs of the city, but that was not the case this past Sunday. We have been meaning to check out Tørst since they opened last March. If you have been living under a rock, Tørst is one of the most eclectic tap rooms in the city, offering the awesome and weird from around the world and the biggest selection of Evil Twin beers I have ever seen. Opened by Jeppe Jarnit-Bjergso (the acclaimed gypsy brewer of Evil Twin Brewing) and Daniel Burns (of Momofuku fame), Tørst is a one of kind place and quickly gaining recognition countrywide – even featured on the cover of the latest Draft Mag. With Chef Lange and Adam rolling with me, we met up with our good friend Joey Pepper to get the full scoop on Brooklyn’s newest and coolest bar.
One of the first things you notice entering Tørst is how clean it is. I am told that this is a common look over in Denmark for bars; the reclaimed smooth marble gave off a very inviting feel that any beer drinker can appreciate.
I think my favorite thing about this bar was the the wooden tap handles that have a wood stain according the color of beer within its line. But that is only the start of the magnificent draft system.
Down in the basement, beers from both local and far around the world are ready to be tapped on the twenty one lines, which run through what they call “the Flux Capacitor.”
The pride and joy of this system is the Flux Capacitor. This cluster of gauges and lines allow control of carbon dioxide and nitrogen pressure, as well as temperature control, for every beer poured. Every style is poured to a proper temperature, so if you order a stout it will come out at 45-54 degrees and not ice cold to provide the full flavor of what you are drinking. The human palate was definitely in mind when creating this; hats off to Gabe Gordon of California’s Beachwood BBQ & Brewing for designing this. Now if only it can get us to do some time traveling.
Every beer poured here is served in wine glass. Before you get on your hate wagon let me fill you in.
The designs on the glass were specifically made for Tørst to measure out the proper serving of beer, whether you are having a four, eight, or ten ounce pour. A nice touch if you ask me, and when served in a wine glass you get the full nose of the beer. Haters can go ahead and hate now.
Choosing a beer might be difficult but there is definitely something for everyone here. Whether you are into funky Belgians or American IPA’s, the bartenders at Tørst will get you your fix and point you in the right direction.
After being shown around a bit we decided to grab a seat at one of the many communal tables for some beers and vittles.
Tørst has a little of everything to pair with its draft selection and extensive bottle list. We decided to order some meat and cheese plates.
The meat board consisted of cuts from around NJ and NY.
Paired up with some amazing cheeses and olives that are prepared in house.
Aside from the olives there are some awesome pickled veggies to be had as well.
The house made rye crumble is a must have with any board you get. It is quite filling but the perfect companion to a few beers.
Speaking of beer: I have been on a Gose kick lately so any where I see one, it is a must have for me. This particular one was from Cisco Brewers in Nantucket, Massachusetts. It had the perfect salt profile to it and was a nice started for the afternoon. Highly recommended if you want to explore the style.
You can’t go to Tørst and not have a beer from Evil Twin. Jeppe’s recipes are always unique and tasty. It was nice trying one of his double IPA’s, Yang, and his coveted session brew Bikini Beer.
Aside from a stellar draft list, Tørst boasts quite the bottle list as well. If there is that rare bottle you want to try, chances are they have it here.
Things like this bottle of Mikkeller’s It’s Alive – brewed specifically for Tørst.
There were beers down here that I only ever heard of or read about. It was cool to see some bottles from Against The Grain sitting on the shelf.
Being that this is Jeppe’s bar, you will find every Evil Twin beer you could imagine and then some.
Joey Pepper even has his own beer that is a collaboration between Evil Twin and Sante Adairius Rustic Ales (from California). Those looking to try this blonde ale can head over to Tørst this Sunday for the release party.
Joey wouldn’t let us leave the bottle room until we picked out something to drink back up at the bar.
We went with a bottle of Intense Red, an oude kriek from Drie Fonteinen in Belgium. Just the right amount of sweet and tart, and probably one of the best krieks I have had to date. Thanks for sharing Joey.
What more can I say about Tørst? The staff was great, the beers were fresh, and the food was awesome. This bar is a must for anyone that is really into beer. Everything from the ambiance to the beers poured is something you need to experience if you find yourself in Greenpoint, Brooklyn – or New York City for that matter. I would like to thank Joey Pepper and the rest of the gang at Tørst for having us in; we had a blast checking out Tørst and cannot wait to return for some more beers and good times. Give them a follow on Instagram and Facebook for upcoming events and the rare beers they are tapping. You never know what will be flowing there next.
Tørst
-Brian+1 for having an awesome gif, fuck Megan Fox, lol, that kid rules. Reply
Thread
Link
lol mte. Reply
Parent
Thread
Link
Two Megan Post in a row. Why couldn't the mods combine that shit or something? Reply
Thread
Link
That's not what they do. Reply
Parent
Thread
Link
Awwwww she's such a bumpkin. Reply
Thread
Link
Tonight's True Blood episode was so good! Reply
Thread
Link
OMG I MISSED IT FUCK
it will be on ondemand w/e Reply
Parent
Thread
Link
I missed it, too! It'll be on in less than an hour again. Reply
Parent
Thread
Link
It repeats a couple times throughout the night. Reply
Parent
Thread
Link
they show it again at 10 and 11 central time Reply
Parent
Thread
Link
im waiting for it to come online in a few D:
i just watched all of season one yesterday/today >> Reply
Parent
Thread
Link
eric was delectable Reply
Parent
Thread
Link
I have to wait until tomorrow to watch it :( Reply
Parent
Thread
Link
SO LOLWORTHY OMG Reply
Parent
Thread
Expand
Link
I LOVED when Bill told Sookie to "SHUT UP!" Reply
Parent
Thread
Expand
Link
omg eric <33 Reply
Parent
Thread
Link
Eric with the "Is there blood in my hair? Pam is going to be so mad" was amazing. Reply
Parent
Thread
Expand
Link
ia so much. i love lafayette, eric and pam. Reply
Parent
Thread
Link
I was kind of annoyed, because I hate cliffhanger type endings, it feels like a soap opera. Reply
Parent
Thread
Expand
Link
FUCKING CLIFFHANGER!!!!!!!!!! Reply
Parent
Thread
Link
I don't have HBO. I missed it!!! AHHH!!
Can't wait to watch it. Did they turn LaFayette into a vampire? Reply
Parent
Thread
Expand
Link
i love the gif lmfao Reply
Thread
Link
that picture had me laughing so hard when i first saw it! poor kid. Reply
Thread
Link
Yeah, she sounded sincere, so let's hope it was not just here ~~amazing~~ acting skillz. Reply
Parent
Thread
Link
I think she meant it, I've heard that she's always happy to have pictures with fans etc, plus there are 100000000's of fan photos to prove this theory. Reply
Parent
Thread
Link
ia, that was totally sweet. gosh, I'm starting to like her. Reply
Parent
Thread
Link
I hate her tattoo. Reply
Thread
Link
Which one? She has several. Reply
Parent
Thread
Link
the marilyn? soooooo distracting. Reply
Parent
Thread
Link
What a bitch. Offering to send him a personal apology. Whore. Reply
Thread
Link
lol Reply
Parent
Thread
Link
Kim SamSoon, how I miss it! <3 Reply
Parent
Thread
Link
Aw, that's kind of sweet. Reply
Thread
Link
I want to keep a tally of how many MF posts ontd gets in a day. Reply
Thread
Link
i hear she's actually a really nice person Reply
Thread
Link
She seems like she is! a little dumb but nice. Reply
Parent
Thread
Link
She started that rumor. Reply
Parent
Thread
Link
lol shia said he was so surprised that she was so nice Reply
Parent
Thread
Link
She is and I'm not a megan stan...at all. I recognized her last year walking around all incognito @ comic con and I met her for a brief moment. She was surprisingly really sweet and chill. Reply
Parent
Thread
Link
nice!
comic con was so crowded I wouldn't even have been able to see my own friends last year!
nice icon! <3 Reply
Parent
Thread
Link
ia Reply
Parent
Thread
LinkSoftbank Leads The Round As Oyo Rooms Raises $100M
Gurgaon: Oyo rooms has raised $100 million in a round led by Softbank. The round also saw participation from Sequoia Capital, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Greenoaks Capital, DSG Consumer Partners and Venture Nursery. According to the sources, “The term sheet has been signed and the company is looking at expanding its operations domestically.”
Founded in 2013 by Ritesh Agarwal, Oyo rooms is one of the largest aggregator in Hotel rooms in the country. The company has already raised a total of $125.65 million in four rounds. The company acquired Zo Rooms recently, which almost had a similar revenue.
Living Local Raises $200K From Rattan Chadha
Bangalore: Living Local, hyperlocal social discovery platform, has raised $200,000 in seed round from former CEO of Mexx clothing company, Rattan Chadha. Founded by Neeraj Vasudev and Anubhav Anand in 2014, startup focuses on connecting people to restaurants, street food vendors, nightlife events and other neighbourhood activities.
On the same, Neeraj quoted, “The proof of concept was figured out when we launched the hyperlocal magazine Living Local. Later, we launched the web portal and saw 600 people within suburban Mumbai were active on it. Now we are focusing on designing and launching the app.”
Villgro Invests in Ed-tech Startup Vahan
Chennai: Ed-tech startup, Vahan, has raised an undisclosed amount of funds from Chennai-based social business incubator, Villgro. Founded by Madhav Krishna in 2015, Vahan is a mobile education platform designed to complement instructor-led training for underprivileged communities. It helps adults from low-income groups to learn English to improve their employability.
Twiggle Secures $12.5M From Naspers
Tel Aviv: Search engines on eCommerce platforms often show too many results when looking for a thing. It’s effective if the user is just browsing but gets a little annoying when a user knows what to buy. Twiggle believes they have the solution and so Naspers. The Tel Aviv-based company has raised $12.5 million from Naspers. The round also saw participation from Yahoo Japan, State of Mind Ventures, and Sir Ronald Cohen.
Founded by Amir Konigsberg and Adi Avidor in 2014, the startup is using advanced data science and engineering to develop a new standard of Product Search & Discovery. Nasper’s investment in the company is aimed at launching Twiggle in its eCommerce portfolio companies like Flipkart, Argentina’s Avenida, and Filipino marketplace OLX.IT’S rare that a 110-point win is defined by a smother.
But, Jack Lonie’s want to throw himself at Bomber Jake Melksham’s boot in the third quarter was as influential as any of St Kilda’s 25 goals on Sunday afternoon.
That smother, along with 18 disposals and a brilliant dribble goal, earned Lonie the Round 14 Rising Star nomination.
“The boys were just really happy that I played my role. It was great that it turned into a goal. It’s not something you get a stat for — a kick, mark or handball — it’s just a little one percenter,” Lonie said.
Lonie has kicked just 10 goals across 12 games in his debut season, but it’s his defensive ferocity that’s prompted some Lenny Hayes fans to add a No. 3 to their jumper.
The 174cm forward is ranked No. 1 at St Kilda for applying pressure inside 50 via Champion Data’s gauge and No. 7 across the competition.
“Richo (coach Alan Richardson) keeps telling me that if I keep applying that pressure I’ll keep my spot. I suppose it’s pretty easy, if I just keep putting on pressure I’ll get a game,” he said.
“That’s why I enjoy it and get a lot out of it.”
Lonie is also making an impact in possession of the Sherrin, with his precise left foot feeding key forwards Nick Riewoldt and Josh Bruce.
The former Dandenong Stingray generates a mark from 42 per cent of his kicks that go inside 50 — he’s ranked No. 2 at the Saints for those who had more than 19 of these disposals.
The win over the Bombers was Lonie’s fifth as a Saint, but watching 15 goals sail through after half-time made it the most enjoyable.
“All the guys were really getting up and about. We made sure we kept celebrating our goals because we are building something special and we really wanted to savour that feeling of winning,” he said.
“We brought a complete performance. We worked hard and we deserved it.”
When the Seaford local was selected with pick No. 41 in last year’s draft it was Adam Schneider who showed Lonie the way. It was the veteran who announced Lonie’s good news to the playing group on Monday morning.
“He’s been awesome and I couldn’t thank him enough. He’s a similar player with a great footy brain, so I just try and learn as much from him as possible,” Lonie said.
Originally published as Saint Lonie gets Rising Star nod“Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.” blew away its fall competition with the biggest network drama debut in four years.
The ABC show earned a 4.6/14 in the key 18-49 demo, with 11.9 million total viewers. The previous night, NBC’s “The Blacklist” scored the biggest network debut in a year with a 3.8 rating and 12.6 million total viewers.
The hype — and an “Avengers” connection — paid off big for “S.H.I.E.L.D.” The ratings were welcome news for ABC, which is in fourth place in the key demo.
Also read: Elisabeth Hasselbeck’s Debut Week Gives ‘Fox & Friends’ Ratings Boost
From the earliest numbers Wednesday, it was apparent that “S.H.I.E.L.D.” might not do as well as “The Blacklist” in total viewers. And indeed “The Blacklist” did draw more total audience. But in the end, “S.H.I.E.L.D.’ trounced the strong ratings of the NBC spy drama in the demo that matters most to advertisers.
NBC was first in ratings with a 4.0 rating/11 share in the advertiser-coveted 18-49 demographic and second in total viewers with an average of 12.5 million, according to preliminary numbers.
“The Voice” Tuesday premiere at 8 p.m. earned a 4.6/13 — tying it for highest-rated program of the night with “S.H.I.E.L.D.” — and 14.1 million viewers. The “Chicago Fire” premiere at 10 certainly benefitted from its lead-in, earning a 2.8/8 — up 47 percent from last year — and 9.3 million viewers.
See photos: ‘Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.’ 35 Eye-Popping Stills From ABC’s Superhero Drama
CBS and ABC tied for second in ratings, each with a 2.9/8. CBS was first in total viewers with 16 million. ABC was third in viewers with 8.1 million.
For CBS, the “NCIS” premiere at 8 earned a 3.4/10 — its lowest-rated premiere in six years — but 19.5 million viewers, making it the most-watched program of the night. At 9, “NCIS: LA” premiered to a 3.0/8 and 16.2 million viewers. The “Person of Interest” premiere at 10 earned a 2.3/6 — the series low — and 12.3 million viewers.
For ABC, the debut of “Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.” at 8 earned the aforementioned 4.6/14 — tying for highest-rated show of the night — and 11.9 million viewers. The debut of “The Goldbergs” at 9 earned a 3.2/9 and 9.1 million viewers. At 9:30, “Trophy Wife” debuted to a 2.3/6 and 6.6 million viewers. At 10, the debut of “Lucky 7” earned a 1.3/4 — the lowest-rated fall drama premiere in network history — and 4.6 million viewers.
See video: ‘The Voice’ Season 5 Premiere: Old Is New – and Really Good – Again
Fox was fourth in ratings with a 1.7/5 and in total viewers with 3.7 million. “Dads” at 8 earned a 1.5/5 and 3.7 million viewers. At 8:30, “Brooklyn Nine-Nine” received a 1.8/5 and 4 million viewers. At 9, “New Girl” earned a 2.1/6 and 4.1 million viewers. “The Mindy Project” at 9:30 got a 1.5/4 and 3 million viewers.
Univision was in fifth in ratings with a 1.2/3 and in viewers with 3.1 million.
Telemundo was sixth in ratings with a 0.5/1 and total viewers with 1.2 million.
The CW was seventh in ratings with a 0.4/1 and in total viewers, with 1 million. “Whose Line Is it Anyway” at 8 earned a 0.5/1 and 1.4 million viewers. Following a rerun, “Capture” at 9 received a 0.2/1 and 721,000 viewers.Detroit Tigers outfielder J.D. Martinez, who has a sprained Lisfranc ligament in his right foot, was officially placed on the 10-day disabled list Friday.
The move is retroactive to Thursday.
Tigers manager Brad Ausmus said on March 24 that Martinez would miss three to four weeks because of the injury, which happened when Martinez was making a shoestring catch during a spring training game. Martinez is scheduled to have his cast removed Monday.
Martinez hit.307 with 22 home runs and 68 RBIs in 120 games last season, when the Tigers finished second in the AL Central, eight games behind Cleveland. Martinez missed time last year because of a fractured elbow.
Martinez had 83 homers in the past three seasons since joining the Tigers, and he can become a free agent at the end of this season.read
D2Moddin was a service I wrote to bring Dota 2 custom game modes to the public from May to June 2014. The game modes were based on the game’s seasonal game modes, and were created initially without the support of the developer, Valve. After the massive demand demonstrated by the service, Valve ultimately released the Workshop Tools Alpha far earlier than expected, including an unannounced Source 2 distribution, much to the surprise of the Source and Dota communities. Their in-game custom game system eventually went on to replace D2Moddin.
There was some work towards a system to host the new custom game lobbies on the D2Moddin server network, but I stopped working on it due to the massive resource requirement of the unoptimized early beta Source 2 engine.
Finally we expect Valve to deploy full custom game support and promotion with the full transition from Source 1 DOTA to the new Source 2 engine. We don't think this will happen until early 2015, so sadly, Custom Games are on a back burner for now.
History and People
I began the project after seeing the CustomDOTA video about Fight or Flight. I was looking for a project to work on at the time, and decided to create a platform to bring these game modes to the public. I never expected it to grow to the scale it eventually reached.
The initial release was developed using Meteor which offered rapid prototyping and reactive development at the price of insane performance problems at scale. Read on to find out the technical background of the project.
Release was made under the Masters of Development banner, a group run by Jicyphex. I later left the group along with the developers of the original game modes for various reasons. I was the sole developer at that time. The overwhelming response to the release resulted in a complete crash of the unoptimized Meteor app.
I spent around a week attempting to scale the system, rewriting several parts to no real avail. The result was incredibly expensive over-the-top hosting solutions for what was ultimately a somewhat simple app. It quickly became clear that a full rewrite was necessary. Using different technologies that allowed me to develop every single component of the system from the ground up, I re-wrote D2Moddin in a three day period, while streaming my development, often in nine to ten hour periods.
The re-release went far smoother than the initial release of the platform. Over time I added more features to the system, and several contributors joined the project.
Finally Valve's system was announced and implemented in game, in their Dota 2 Workshop Tools announcement.
Contributors
I was the lead developer for the project, but members of the community contributed with GitHub issue reports, and in particular, I would like to thank the two contributors who joined the project later in its development:
Ilian000 began with contributions to the mod manager and later became a core developer of the project, ultimately re-writing the Windows UI for the mod manager.
began with contributions to the mod manager and later became a core developer of the project, ultimately re-writing the Windows UI for the mod manager. SuricateCan dabbled in just about every area of the system. His most prominent contribution was the core code of the matchmaking and ELO system.
dabbled in just about every area of the system. His most prominent contribution was the core code of the matchmaking and ELO system. jimmydorry created the excellent D2Moddin Stats part of his GetDotaStats website.
created the excellent D2Moddin Stats part of his GetDotaStats website. Medowar was the admin of many of D2Moddin's servers, maintaining most of the European network.
was the admin of many of D2Moddin's servers, maintaining most of the European network. Alex Pronin did a lot of art for the site.
did a lot of art for the site. AD7 concepted the re-design that was in place about 2 weeks before the site ended.
Statistics
About halfway through its lifetime, D2Moddin added a stats API, which jimmydorry used to create the D2Moddin Stats page of the GetDotaStats website. It is a good representation of the popularity of each mod and our overall uptime and player count over time.
Some general stats:
Unique Players : Approx. 174,000
: Approx. 174,000 Max Concurrent : Approx 1,700 players
: Approx 1,700 players Avg. Concurrent : Approx 1,000 players
: Approx 1,000 players Average Concurrent Minimum : Approx 600 players
: Approx 600 players Game Modes: 12 when the project ended.
We had around 13 different servers that were on the network over time. The system load balanced players across the network to support the playerbase.
Reddit Posts
Here are the posts I made on Reddit regarding the project:
The initial announcement was published by Jicyphex and backed by DotaCinema. The combined Reddit hype and DotaCinema followers resulted in a massive amount of traffic. See the details below on the flawed design decisions and my resulting rewrite.
Stream Clips
Sadly there are only two stream clips from the three days of streams.
Developing D2Moddin 1 hour clip
Playing Reflex on the new system just after it was completed.
Technical Details
In every implementation I used MongoDB as the database. This was my first time working with NoSQL and Mongo, but I enjoyed it and will be using it for future projects.
I tried just about every hosting PaaS out there, from Heroku to OpenShift to Modulus. Nothing worked better than bare-metal hosting. I used DigitalOcean droplets for hosting the web and master server. The game servers were hosted on various providers. The key providers were OVH US and UK, and ServerLoft DE.
Meteor.JS Implementation
The original implementation was written in Meteor.JS. It hosted both the website and the master server. It never worked properly for more than 100 players, and discouraged me from using Meteor for any large scale projects until it matures some more in the future. After being forced to learn other web frameworks, however, I enjoy the level of control granted by other frameworks more than Meteor's start-to-finish easy solution. Too much is abstracted here for finely tweaking the system in production.
I will note that Meteor has improved significantly since I worked with it in this project. At this scale though, I still hold that writing a custom implementation will always be the best solution.
.NET Master Server Implementation
I wrote the re-write of the server implementation using C#. Originally I wrote the system using WebSockets.NET but later discovered issues with it. After rotating through a few other options I landed on XSockets.NET which worked very nicely for low level communication. The team has recently released XSockets 4 which I am now using for other projects. It supports RPC, WebSockets, WebRTC, and long polling fallback and is a great solution for communication between web browsers and.NET apps, as well as between.NET and.NET apps.
The system tracked users, lobbies, browsers, and servers. It kept state on everything and was responsible for authentication, distributing updates, interfacing with Amazon S3 for file storage and download authentication, and more. It also tracked load across the system and balanced players onto the available server hardware.
Angular.JS / Node Web Implementation
I needed a quick replacement for Meteor's reactive DOM and easy templating. Angular was a natural choice. I was already working in Node.JS with Meteor, and stepped down to a basic Express.JS and Passport.JS setup for the server. Passport handled the authentication, using MongoDB for the backend.
The web server served the Angular app and managed authentication. It did not interact with the server network like the old Meteor system did.
The Angular app used the simple ng-route router, and Bootstrap for basic styling. I also used PNotify for notifications.
D2MPServer: The Server Manager
While the networking behind the server manager changed between master server implementations, the core code changed very little from the initial release.
The server manager was responsible for:
Building the folder structure (with just the EXE as the base)
Download SteamCMD
Use SteamCMD to bootstrap Steam and the game directories
Download and update Dota2 with SteamCMD
Download the latest reverse engineered Source dedicated server
Patch the Dota 2 client to work as a dedicated server
Track addon versions and download the latest game mode updates (later done without restarting).
Launch SourceDS server instances on demand of the Master server.
This part of the system worked so well that we could just extract the base compiled program into a folder and run it. It would build the entire setup automatically as well as download the latest addon versions. This allowed us to quickly add new servers and scale up without restarting the system.
The Mod Manager
D2Moddin was a step forward from previous services like D2Ware. While D2Ware allowed the Dota 2 client to simply connect to modded Dota 2 servers, it never allowed for client-side file changes or additions. D2Moddin allowed for custom models, maps, textures, animations, characters, allowing for rich experiences rather than simple game modifications.
This required a client-side program that would move files around for the players. As I designed the system with the intent of ease-of-use and simplicity, the manager would have to do everything for the user automatically, and require little to no manual actions to work properly.
Furthermore I wanted to dispel fears of a virus inside the program, so I built it to be as temporary as possible. The launcher EXE was very lightweight and deleted itself after being run. It simply downloaded/updated/ran the actual manager which sat in the user's temporary directory. This allowed it to run with no administrator privileges and could be removed with a single delete operation.
The program sat in the system tray and would exit if the user was disconnected from the site for more than a few minutes.
It would perform the following operations:
Track addon versions (in the addons directory in Dota2).
directory in Dota2). Patch the gameinfo.txt file to add the D2Moddin addon directory to the game's search paths. This was not used during any official matchmaking / lobby games, only during custom games.
file to add the D2Moddin addon directory to the game's search paths. This was not used during any official matchmaking / lobby games, only during custom games. Download compressed addons and extract them to the addons directory
Inform the master server about the status of the player, including the Dota 2 client state as well as the mod installation status.
Send the connect command to the Dota 2 client.
When a user joined a lobby the manager would:
Move the files into the active D2Moddin game mode directory.
Launch Dota 2 in case it was not already running.
When the game started the manager would:
Automatically send the connect command to Dota 2 through steam:// URIs.
Re-send this command whenever the user clicked the reconnect button.
Originally everything was done through the Web UI but later Ilian added a in-app UI for managing mods.
Source Code
As of December 14th, 2014, I have released all of the source code for D2Moddin on GitHub!
Here are the repositories:
The stuff probably doesn't even compile any more, but maybe it will be interesting to someone.
Conclusion
This was my first foray into large-scale service development. I learned a lot about server infrastructures, public relations, scaling networks, developing with speed in mind, and web frameworks. All in all, I enjoyed the experience and will be looking to do fun projects like this again in the future! Thanks again to the community for supporting my work.
Quantum / ParalinERBIL, Kurdistan Region (K24) – On Thursday, Germany opened a military training camp in Erbil to help Peshmerga train with German military equipment.
Peshmerga forces on the front lines associate Germany with their most effective weapon on the ground against Islamic State (IS) suicide trucks, the MILAN anti-tank missile system.
In addition to MILAN, Germany provides Peshmerga with G3 and G36 assault rifles. The AFT Dingo infantry mobility vehicles are also the latest German contribution to Peshmerga forces.
Anwar Haji Osman, the Kurdistan Region's Deputy Peshmerga Minister, stated, "This training will improve the morale of the Peshmerga forces even more."
Osman explained that Kurds have fought an imbalanced war since June 2014. IS militants outgunned Peshmerga by the weaponry they seized from the Iraqi army and Syria. "Our most effective weapon was the morale of Peshmerga," he said. Osman added that he wished more countries would offer training and military equipment to Peshmerga.
Col. Bernd Prill, the German commander of the Kurdistan Training Coordination Center (KTCC), stated that Germans share the same aim with Peshmerga in the fight against IS, "For this reason the German government decided to help the people of Iraq and the autonomous region of Kurdistan to fight our common enemy."
"That is the reason we are standing shoulder to shoulder facing this enemy. It is our clear aim to defeat and destroy Daesh [Arabic acronym for IS]," the German commander added.
Col. Prill highlighted that enhancing Peshmerga's maintenance capability gives them a significant advantage against IS.
Recently, Germany offered a special training program to train Peshmerga soldiers on chemical warfare defense. On Friday, a group of about twenty elite Peshmerga officers will travel to Germany to start their two-week training.
According to Halgurd Hikmat, Peshmerga Ministry spokesperson, Germany has already delivered a supply of chemical defense equipment to Peshmerga and another delivery is soon to arrive in the coming weeks.
A Peshmerga lieutenant chosen for the chemical defense program told K24 on the condition of anonymity that "the Peshmerga officers' ranks range between Second Lieutenant to Captain." He added, "The trainees come from different Peshmerga Brigades and Zeravani forces [militarized police forces]."New Restaurant, Event Space and Underground Music Club Coming to The Brewery District
Bob Breithaupt stands outside 518 South High, the future home of Copious / Notes.
Bob Breithaupt says there’s a need for a solid medium-sized live music venue near Downtown Columbus, and the former Executive Director of the Jazz Arts Group is working with a team to meet that demand with a new space opening later this year. “Notes” is the name of a new underground club that will be opening in the basement of the building located at 518 South High Street, in a former F.O.P. private club space called Clancy’s.
“I got a call at end of 2012 from some guys who were thinking about opening a venue that is a combination of an event space, a restaurant and a bar — and they had actually found a place with an underground club too,” recalled Breithaupt. “They wanted my help in developing it as a jazz club, but I wasn’t really interested in that. I live in that world, but I recognized that what we need are more venus that can do lots of different things.”
So the concept for Notes was expanded |
. These moments of deficiency should be taken as lessons we can learn from and not as absolute defeats we can’t come back from. So I push myself harder, knowing I’m not the best yet, and through that lesson am able to become a better runner, a little more effective, little by little. If there is a way to make life's machine better, it is within these moments of defeat that the cogs that need change are made obvious towards an evolution to a more effective mechanism.
Refinement, failure, acknowledgement, refinement, progress, failure, refinement. These are not simple tasks, the process is long and arduous, and giving up to the arguing in your mind or the distractions constantly begging for your attention is much easier. With my running I understand this is not going to be a one day fix and then 100 miles marathons here I come! No, it’s a life process and commitment to patience with the machine that I am trying to refine into a balance worth attaining. I will have challenges I can conquer, shining moments in the spot light, but those accomplishments would be made neutral, unnoted, far too easy to give credit to, if it wasn’t for the focus, the failures, and the time spent having patience for this process that gives me the perfect balance to cherish my true victories.
- Cammi Bailey, Executive Administrative Assistant, Goddard TechnologiesJarome Iginla has a good shot that usually hits the net. When he misses, however, it could make for a pretty hair-raising experience for those behind the glass.
The Bruins forward got some extra work in on his one-timers Friday in Saskatoon in advance of the Bruins’ preseason finale against the Winnipeg Jets, and he was letting them go. That ended up producing some pretty awesome video.
NESN’s Jamie Erdahl was camped behind the glass behind the net Iginla was shooting at and took cell phone video of the shooting practice when Iginla uncorked one that missed the net. The result was a borderline frightening experience that drilled the glass and left a big puck mark on the glass.
See the shot in the mesmerizing Vine video below.Smoking tolerance level [1= very illegal 5=virtually legal]: 4.6
Legislation: Possession of two ounces or less of marijuana is punishable by up to 180 days in jail and a fine up to $2,000. Possession of greater than two ounces is punishable by up to one year in jail and a fine up to $4,000.
Law Enforcement: Be smart about smoking in public, sorry to say, multiple minorities in a car with weed is not a good idea, especially teenagers.
Where to buy Marijuana in San Antonio, Texas: San Antonio is a city spread over a large area so local malls, skateparks are your best bet, the best weed to be found is around commerce and 24th in the west (not for out of towners!!!). Medium quality herbs can be found just about anywhere there are groups of people just hanging out. Don’t be afraid to ask (use your best judgement).
San antonio, Texas Marijuana Prices:
5g.=$10
Ounce=$45
1/4lb.=$100-$120
Dro:
1g.=$20
Ounce=$400
Strains: Mexican brick weed is everywhere, AK-47, northern lights, blueberry are harder to come by, but can be found if you look hard enough.
WeBeHigh City Tale:
San Antonio is a tourist town and sees many people from all over the globe come to its mecca and enjoy many entertaining events and attractions. The local people are courteous and very hospitable.
San Antonio’s geographical location puts it in a prime location for samplings of some of the finest cannabis to cross the border from Mexico and all parts of South America.
During the 1960s and 1970s the Cannabis was abundant and it’s prices usually hovered around $10 for an ounce of good grade commercial cannabis. Higher Grades of Cannabis featured the Gold’s and Red’s and Sinsemilla’s that one could expect to pay about $25 for an ounce.
The 1980s saw a price jump and a shortage that sent Cannabis to virtually the same prices that we see today. The good grade commercial started to disappear and was being replaced by a more expensive Cannabis. An ounce of commercial grade cannabis soared to over $25 for a quarter ounce and more types of skunk and sinsemilla were costing $150 an ounce.
As the 1990s came to a close the price of a good commercial cannabis began to fall somewhat. The going price for an ounce fell to the 60$ to 80$ range and the sensimillas prices fell to about $100 an ounce.
Toady the prices are still about the same, but sometimes on the right day with the right person selling it to you, you can find some lower grade cannabis for about $50 an ounce but usually no more then $60 an ounce.
‘Hydro’ type cannabis began it’s debut here in south Texas in the late 1990s and is still somewhat common, however, the price for this desirable cannabis is a whopping $125 or more for one-eighth of an ounce.
The local law enforcement in San Antonio is as vigilant as they can be to stop the trafficking that passes through San Antonio on its way to all points north. The police are usually not interested in individual users unless the people make stupid mistakes or hurt someone, they don’t turn a totally blind eye to personal use but they do tend to be somewhat lax in their confrontations with tourist and visitors.
Finding and procuring cannabis in San Antonio, by those visiting, is fairly easy. Most of the cannabis distributors are friendly and kind people who treat visitors with a decent amount of respect. San Antonio is a party town and its cannabis distributors love to show off their stock with plenty of self confidence.
Beside a major tourism industry, San Antonio also hosts many colleges and universities. The night life is a special scene that brings many different professions and cultures together for a great time every night of the week.An 11-year-old girl was sexually assaulted while she was standing with her family at Waterloo station, police said.
The young girl was with relatives at the exit from the Tube when she was targeted by a man who touched her inappropriately.
Just seconds before the man had assaulted another woman in the same area of the station, CCTV shows.
The video footage shows the man walking past the adult victim - who has yet to come forward - and touching her inappropriately.
After the assault on the girl, her family headed to the main concourse of the station and reported the assault to police.
British Transport Police have today launched two appeals to find both the man responsible and the first victim, an unknown woman.
Officers are urging the unidentified victim to contact police as soon as possible.
Investigating officer Detective Constable Suleman Yazdani, said: “This was an upsetting assault for this young girl and we are determined to trace the person responsible.
“I am keen to speak with this man in the CCTV images; I believe he has very essential information that will assist my enquiries.
“I am also very interested to speak with another woman who was walking behind this family as I feel she was also a victim of a similar assault.
“We simply will not tolerate unwanted sexual behaviour on the underground. If you are ever a victim of sexual assault, please report it to us so we can trace and stop these perpetrators.”
Anyone with any information can contact BTP by sending a text to 61016 or by calling 0800 40 50 40 quoting reference 238 of 20/10/2016. Alternatively, information can be passed anonymously to independent charity Crimestoppers on 0800 555 111.In less than a decade, the world's widget makers, entertainers, and beauty products will be focused on three core economies: the United States and China, of course, and in third place and gaining fast: India. They're young. They're the poorest of the big emerging markets, so have lots of momentum on their side. And they're tech savvy smart. India is the new China. If you have something to sell, India is now an on-radar must.
The Boston Consulting Group (BCG) said in a report released on Tuesday titled The New Indian that the country will be the third largest consumer market in the world by 2025.
See: India Is Now The Darling Of Global Markets -- Forbes
Rising incomes is the biggest driver here. Although poor, income distribution is evolving even as the population of one-percenters rises. In 2005, some 44% of the country were considered struggling, with 42% just getting by. Today, the extreme poor rural Indians account for 31% while greater number of them have moved up the ladder, accounting for 45% of the working class. Between 2005 and 2016, what BCG refers to as the "aspirers" -- or the upwardly mobile -- went from 8% of Indian households to 15% and by 2025, 20%. Affluent Indians have gone from 3%, or roughly seven million households back in 2005 to 17 million last year. That is seen rising to 33 million by 2025.
And for the super elite, those who are buying Tata Motors' Jaguars and Land Rovers, the numbers went from 3.1 million in 2005 to 6.5 million last year. By 2025, it will more than double to 15.8 million, based on BCG analysis.
For businesses, these new consumers, and shifting consumer tastes, have big implications for companies looking to build their business in India.
BCG's report said that Indians are no longer as fascinated as they once were with foreign goods. Some 60% prefer and are willing to pay extra for Made in India. They are increasingly interested in learning about their own local roots.
Trends such as family generations splitting up and getting their own homes has been a factor in big cities like Mumbai, but as adult children move out of their parents homes, they need apartments.
Women in India are also becoming more of a force. Women rights are becoming front and center in India, and women are receiving better healthcare than they ever did, and more relevance in the media. The most important factor is educational opportunity, BCG says. From 2005 to 2014, the enrollment rate of girls in secondary education went from 45.3% to 73.7%. It's now greater than that of boys in the high school level.
Younger women have bridged the gap in higher education too. Their enrollment rate is 20% versus 22% for young men. This shift will have a broad impact on societal factors long term, such as workforce demographics and economic independence.
Long term businesses in India may have to "fundamentally rethink their business models, including product offerings, consumer engagement and marketing" to the Indian consumer, the consultant firm believes."Ambiguous" redirects here. For the film, see Ambiguous (film)
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland is noted for its ambiguous central figure, whose head can be viewed as being a human male's face with a pointed nose and chin or as being the head end of an actual [1] Sir John Tenniel's illustration of the Caterpillar for Lewis Carroll'sis noted for its ambiguous central figure, whose head can be viewed as being a human male's face with a pointed nose and chin or as being the head end of an actual caterpillar, with the first two right "true" legs visible.
Ambiguity is a type of meaning in which a phrase, statement or resolution is not explicitly defined, making several interpretations plausible. A common aspect of ambiguity is uncertainty. It is thus an attribute of any idea or statement whose intended meaning cannot be definitively resolved according to a rule or process with a finite number of steps. (The ambi- part of the term reflects an idea of "two", as in "two meanings".)
The concept of ambiguity is generally contrasted with vagueness. In ambiguity, specific and distinct interpretations are permitted (although some may not be immediately obvious), whereas with information that is vague, it is difficult to form any interpretation at the desired level of specificity.
Context may play a role in resolving ambiguity. For example, the same piece of information may be ambiguous in one context and unambiguous in another.
Linguistic forms [ edit ]
Lexical ambiguity is contrasted with semantic ambiguity. The former represents a choice between a finite number of known and meaningful context-dependent interpretations. The latter represents a choice between any number of possible interpretations, none of which may have a standard agreed-upon meaning. This form of ambiguity is closely related to vagueness.
Linguistic ambiguity can be a problem in law, because the interpretation of written documents and oral agreements is often of paramount importance.
Pepe vio a Pablo enfurecido
Interpretation 1: When Pepe was angry, then he saw Pablo
Interpretation 2: Pepe saw that Pablo was angry.
Here, the syntactic tree in figure represents interpretation 2. Structural analysis of an ambiguous Spanish sentence:Interpretation 1: When Pepe was angry, then he saw PabloInterpretation 2: Pepe saw that Pablo was angry.Here, the syntactic tree in figure represents interpretation 2.
Lexical Ambiguity [ edit ]
The lexical ambiguity of a word or phrase pertains to its having more than one meaning in the language to which the word belongs.[2] "Meaning" here refers to whatever should be captured by a good dictionary. For instance, the word "bank" has several distinct lexical definitions, including "financial institution" and "edge of a river". Or consider "apothecary". One could say "I bought herbs from the apothecary". This could mean one actually spoke to the apothecary (pharmacist) or went to the apothecary (pharmacy).
The context in which an ambiguous word is used often makes it evident which of the meanings is intended. If, for instance, someone says "I buried $100 in the bank", most people would not think someone used a shovel to dig in the mud. However, some linguistic contexts do not provide sufficient information to disambiguate a used word.
Lexical ambiguity can be addressed by algorithmic methods that automatically associate the appropriate meaning with a word in context, a task referred to as word sense disambiguation.
The use of multi-defined words requires the author or speaker to clarify their context, and sometimes elaborate on their specific intended meaning (in which case, a less ambiguous term should have been used). The goal of clear concise communication is that the receiver(s) have no misunderstanding about what was meant to be conveyed. An exception to this could include a politician whose "weasel words" and obfuscation are necessary to gain support from multiple constituents with mutually exclusive conflicting desires from their candidate of choice. Ambiguity is a powerful tool of political science.
More problematic are words whose senses express closely related concepts. "Good", for example, can mean "useful" or "functional" (That's a good hammer), "exemplary" (She's a good student), "pleasing" (This is good soup), "moral" (a good person versus the lesson to be learned from a story), "righteous", etc. " I have a good daughter" is not clear about which sense is intended. The various ways to apply prefixes and suffixes can also create ambiguity ("unlockable" can mean "capable of being unlocked" or "impossible to lock").
Syntactic Ambiguity [ edit ]
Semantic ambiguity happens when a sentence contains an ambiguous word or phrase—a word or phrase that has more than one meaning. In "We saw her duck" (example due to Richard Nordquist), the word "duck" can refer either
to the person's bird (the noun "duck", modified by the possessive pronoun "her"), or to a motion she made (the verb "duck", the subject of which is the objective pronoun "her", object of the verb "saw").[3]
Syntactic ambiguity arises when a sentence can have two (or more) different meanings because of the structure of the sentence—its syntax. This is often due to a modifying expression, such as a prepositional phrase, the application of which is unclear. "He ate the cookies on the couch", for example, could mean that he ate those cookies that were on the couch (as opposed to those that were on the table), or it could mean that he was sitting on the couch when he ate the cookies. "To get in, you will need an entrance fee of $10 or your voucher and your drivers' license." This could mean that you need EITHER ten dollars OR BOTH your voucher and your license. Or it could mean that you need your license AND you need EITHER ten dollars OR a voucher. Only rewriting the sentence, or placing appropriate punctuation can resolve a syntactic ambiguity.[3] For the notion of, and theoretic results about, syntactic ambiguity in artificial, formal languages (such as computer programming languages), see Ambiguous grammar.
Spoken language can contain many more types of ambiguities which are called phonological ambiguities, where there is more than one way to compose a set of sounds into words. For example, "ice cream" and "I scream". Such ambiguity is generally resolved according to the context. A mishearing of such, based on incorrectly resolved ambiguity, is called a mondegreen.
Metonymy involves the use of the name of a subcomponent part as an abbreviation, or jargon, for the name of the whole object (for example "wheels" to refer to a car, or "flowers" to refer to beautiful offspring, an entire plant, or a collection of blooming plants). In modern vocabulary, critical semiotics,[9] metonymy encompasses any potentially ambiguous word substitution that is based on contextual contiguity (located close together), or a function or process that an object performs, such as "sweet ride" to refer to a nice car. Metonym miscommunication is considered a primary mechanism of linguistic humor.
Philosophy [ edit ]
Philosophers (and other users of logic) spend a lot of time and effort searching for and removing (or intentionally adding) ambiguity in arguments because it can lead to incorrect conclusions and can be used to deliberately conceal bad arguments. For example, a politician might say, "I oppose taxes which hinder economic growth", an example of a glittering generality. Some will think he opposes taxes in general because they hinder economic growth. Others may think he opposes only those taxes that he believes will hinder economic growth. In writing, the sentence can be rewritten to reduce possible misinterpretation, either by adding a comma after "taxes" (to convey the first sense) or by changing "which" to "that" (to convey the second sense) or by rewriting it in other ways. The devious politician hopes that each constituent will interpret the statement in the most desirable way, and think the politician supports everyone's opinion. However, the opposite can also be true – an opponent can turn a positive statement into a bad one if the speaker uses ambiguity (intentionally or not). The logical fallacies of amphiboly and equivocation rely heavily on the use of ambiguous words and phrases.
In continental philosophy (particularly phenomenology and existentialism), there is much greater tolerance of ambiguity, as it is generally seen as an integral part of the human condition. Martin Heidegger argued that the relation between the subject and object is ambiguous, as is the relation of mind and body, and part and whole.[3] In Heidegger's phenomenology, Dasein is always in a meaningful world, but there is always an underlying background for every instance of signification. Thus, although some things may be certain, they have little to do with Dasein's sense of care and existential anxiety, e.g., in the face of death. In calling his work Being and Nothingness an "essay in phenomenological ontology" Jean-Paul Sartre follows Heidegger in defining the human essence as ambiguous, or relating fundamentally to such ambiguity. Simone de Beauvoir tries to base an ethics on Heidegger's and Sartre's writings (The Ethics of Ambiguity), where she highlights the need to grapple with ambiguity: "as long as philosophers and they [men] have thought, most of them have tried to mask it...And the ethics which they have proposed to their disciples have always pursued the same goal. It has been a matter of eliminating the ambiguity by making oneself pure inwardness or pure externality, by escaping from the sensible world or being engulfed by it, by yielding to eternity or enclosing oneself in the pure moment." Ethics cannot be based on the authoritative certainty given by mathematics and logic, or prescribed directly from the empirical findings of science. She states: "Since we do not succeed in fleeing it, let us, therefore, try to look the truth in the face. Let us try to assume our fundamental ambiguity. It is in the knowledge of the genuine conditions of our life that we must draw our strength to live and our reason for acting". Other continental philosophers suggest that concepts such as life, nature, and sex are ambiguous. Corey Anton has argued that we cannot be certain what is separate from or unified with something else: language, he asserts, divides what is not, in fact, separate. Following Ernest Becker, he argues that the desire to 'authoritatively disambiguate' the world and existence has led to numerous ideologies and historical events such as genocide. On this basis, he argues that ethics must focus on 'dialectically integrating opposites' and balancing tension, rather than seeking a priori validation or certainty. Like the existentialists and phenomenologists, he sees the ambiguity of life as the basis of creativity.
Literature and Rhetoric [ edit ]
In literature and rhetoric, ambiguity can be a useful tool. Groucho Marx's classic joke depends on a grammatical ambiguity for its humor, for example: "Last night I shot an elephant in my pajamas. How he got in my pajamas, I'll never know". Songs and poetry often rely on ambiguous words for artistic effect, as in the song title "Don't It Make My Brown Eyes Blue" (where "blue" can refer to the color, or to sadness).
In the narrative, ambiguity can be introduced in several ways: motive, plot, character. F. Scott Fitzgerald uses the latter type of ambiguity with notable effect in his novel The Great Gatsby.
Mathematical notation [ edit ]
Mathematical notation, widely used in physics and other sciences, avoids many ambiguities compared to expression in natural language. However, for various reasons, several lexical, syntactic and semantic ambiguities remain.
Names of functions [ edit ]
The ambiguity in the style of writing a function should not be confused with a multivalued function, which can (and should) be defined in a deterministic and unambiguous way. Several special functions still do not have established notations. Usually, the conversion to another notation requires to scale the argument or the resulting value; sometimes, the same name of the function is used, causing confusions. Examples of such underestablished functions:
Expressions [ edit ]
Ambiguous expressions often appear in physical and mathematical texts. It is common practice to omit multiplication signs in mathematical expressions. Also, it is common to give the same name to a variable and a function, for example, f = f ( x ) {\displaystyle f=f(x)}. Then, if one sees f = f ( y + 1 ) {\displaystyle f=f(y+1)}, there is no way to distinguish whether it means f = f ( x ) {\displaystyle f=f(x)} multiplied by ( y + 1 ) {\displaystyle (y+1)}, or function f {\displaystyle f} evaluated at argument equal to ( y + 1 ) {\displaystyle (y+1)}. In each case of use of such notations, the reader is supposed to be able to perform the deduction and reveal the true meaning.
Creators of algorithmic languages try to avoid ambiguities. Many algorithmic languages (C++ and Fortran) require the character * as symbol of multiplication. The Wolfram Language used in Mathematica allows the user to omit the multiplication symbol, but requires square brackets to indicate the argument of a function; square brackets are not allowed for grouping of expressions. Fortran, in addition, does not allow use of the same name (identifier) for different objects, for example, function and variable; in particular, the expression f=f(x) is qualified as an error.
The order of operations may depend on the context. In most programming languages, the operations of division and multiplication have equal priority and are executed from left to right. Until the last century, many editorials assumed that multiplication is performed first, for example, a / b c {\displaystyle a/bc} is interpreted as a / ( b c ) {\displaystyle a/(bc)} ; in this case, the insertion of parentheses is required when translating the formulas to an algorithmic language. In addition, it is common to write an argument of a function without parenthesis, which also may lead to ambiguity. Sometimes, one uses italics letters to denote elementary functions. In the scientific journal style, the expression s i n α {\displaystyle sin\alpha } means product of variables s {\displaystyle s}, i {\displaystyle i}, n {\displaystyle n} and α {\displaystyle \alpha }, although in a slideshow, it may mean sin [ α ] {\displaystyle \sin[\alpha ]}.
A comma in subscripts and superscripts sometimes is omitted; it is also ambiguous notation. If it is written T m n k {\displaystyle T_{mnk}}, the reader should guess from the context, does it mean a single-index object, evaluated while the subscript is equal to product of variables m {\displaystyle m}, n {\displaystyle n} and k {\displaystyle k}, or it is indication to a trivalent tensor. The writing of T m n k {\displaystyle T_{mnk}} instead of T m, n, k {\displaystyle T_{m,n,k}} may mean that the writer either is stretched in space (for example, to reduce the publication fees) or aims to increase number of publications without considering readers. The same may apply to any other use of ambiguous notations.
Subscripts are also used to denote the argument to a function, as in F x {\displaystyle F_{x}}.
Examples of potentially confusing ambiguous mathematical expressions [ edit ]
sin 2 α / 2 {\displaystyle \sin ^{2}\alpha /2}, which could be understood to mean either ( sin ( α / 2 ) ) 2 {\displaystyle (\sin(\alpha /2))^{2}} or ( sin ( α ) ) 2 / 2 {\displaystyle (\sin(\alpha ))^{2}/2}. In addition, sin 2 ( x ) {\displaystyle \sin ^{2}(x)} may mean sin ( sin ( x ) ) {\displaystyle \sin(\sin(x))}, as exp 2 ( x ) {\displaystyle \exp ^{2}(x)} means exp ( exp ( x ) ) {\displaystyle \exp(\exp(x))} (see tetration).
sin − 1 α {\displaystyle \sin ^{-1}\alpha }, which by convention means arcsin ( α ) {\displaystyle \arcsin(\alpha )}, though it might be thought to mean ( sin ( α ) ) − 1 {\displaystyle (\sin(\alpha ))^{-1}}, since sin n α {\displaystyle \sin ^{n}\alpha } means ( sin ( α ) ) n {\displaystyle (\sin(\alpha ))^{n}}.
a / 2 b {\displaystyle a/2b}, which arguably should mean ( a / 2 ) b {\displaystyle (a/2)b} but would commonly be understood to mean a / ( 2 b ) {\displaystyle a/(2b)}.
Notations in quantum optics and quantum mechanics [ edit ]
It is common to define the coherent states in quantum optics with | α ⟩ {\displaystyle ~|\alpha \rangle ~} and states with fixed number of photons with | n ⟩ {\displaystyle ~|n\rangle ~}. Then, there is an "unwritten rule": the state is coherent if there are more Greek characters than Latin characters in the argument, and n {\displaystyle ~n~} photon state if the Latin characters dominate. The ambiguity becomes even worse, if | x ⟩ {\displaystyle ~|x\rangle ~} is used for the states with certain value of the coordinate, and | p ⟩ {\displaystyle ~|p\rangle ~} means the state with certain value of the momentum, which may be used in books on quantum mechanics. Such ambiguities easily lead to confusions, especially if some normalized adimensional, dimensionless variables are used. Expression | 1 ⟩ {\displaystyle |1\rangle } may mean a state with single photon, or the coherent state with mean amplitude equal to 1, or state with momentum equal to unity, and so on. The reader is supposed to guess from the context.
Ambiguous terms in physics and mathematics [ edit ]
Some physical quantities do not yet have established notations; their value (and sometimes even dimension, as in the case of the Einstein coefficients), depends on the system of notations. Many terms are ambiguous. Each use of an ambiguous term should be preceded by the definition, suitable for a specific case. Just like Ludwig Wittgenstein states in Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus: "... Only in the context of a proposition has a name meaning."[5]
A highly confusing term is gain. For example, the sentence "the gain of a system should be doubled", without context, means close to nothing.
It may mean that the ratio of the output voltage of an electric circuit to the input voltage should be doubled.
It may mean that the ratio of the output power of an electric or optical circuit to the input power should be doubled.
It may mean that the gain of the laser medium should be doubled, for example, doubling the population of the upper laser level in a quasi-two level system (assuming negligible absorption of the ground-state).
The term intensity is ambiguous when applied to light. The term can refer to any of irradiance, luminous intensity, radiant intensity, or radiance, depending on the background of the person using the term.
Also, confusions may be related with the use of atomic percent as measure of concentration of a dopant, or resolution of an imaging system, as measure of the size of the smallest detail which still can be resolved at the background of statistical noise. See also Accuracy and precision and its talk.
The Berry paradox arises as a result of systematic ambiguity in the meaning of terms such as "definable" or "nameable". Terms of this kind give rise to vicious circle fallacies. Other terms with this type of ambiguity are: satisfiable, true, false, function, property, class, relation, cardinal, and ordinal.[6]
Mathematical interpretation of ambiguity [ edit ]
In mathematics and logic, ambiguity can be considered to be an instance of the logical concept of underdetermination—for example, X = Y {\displaystyle X=Y} leaves open what the value of X is—while its opposite is a self-contradiction, also called inconsistency, paradoxicalness, or oxymoron, or in mathematics an inconsistent system—such as X = 2, X = 3 {\displaystyle X=2,X=3}, which has no solution.
Logical ambiguity and self-contradiction is analogous to visual ambiguity and impossible objects, such as the Necker cube and impossible cube, or many of the drawings of M. C. Escher.[7]
Constructed language [ edit ]
Some languages have been created with the intention of avoiding ambiguity, especially lexical ambiguity. Lojban and Loglan are two related languages which have been created for this, focusing chiefly on syntactic ambiguity as well. The languages can be both spoken and written. These languages are intended to provide a greater technical precision over big natural languages, although historically, such attempts at language improvement have been criticized. Languages composed from many diverse sources contain much ambiguity and inconsistency. The many exceptions to syntax and semantic rules are time-consuming and difficult to learn.
Christianity and Judaiesm [ edit ]
Christianity and Judaism employ the concept of paradox synonymously with 'ambiguity'. Many Christians and Jews endorse Rudolf Otto's description of the sacred as'mysterium tremendum et fascinans', the awe-inspiring mystery which fascinates humans.[dubious – discuss] The orthodox Catholic writer G. K. Chesterton regularly employed paradox to tease out the meanings in common concepts which he found ambiguous or to reveal meaning often overlooked or forgotten in common phrases. (The title of one of his most famous books, Orthodoxy, itself employing such a paradox.)
Music [ edit ]
In music, pieces or sections which confound expectations and may be or are interpreted simultaneously in different ways are ambiguous, such as some polytonality, polymeter, other ambiguous meters or rhythms, and ambiguous phrasing, or (Stein 2005, p. 79) any aspect of music. The music of Africa is often purposely ambiguous. To quote Sir Donald Francis Tovey (1935, p. 195), "Theorists are apt to vex themselves with vain efforts to remove uncertainty just where it has a high aesthetic value."
Visual art [ edit ]
In visual art, certain images are visually ambiguous, such as the Necker cube, which can be interpreted in two ways. Perceptions of such objects remain stable for a time, then may flip, a phenomenon called multistable perception. The opposite of such ambiguous images are impossible objects.
Pictures or photographs may also be ambiguous at the semantic level: the visual image is unambiguous, but the meaning and narrative may be ambiguous: is a certain facial expression one of excitement or fear, for instance?
Computer science [ edit ]
In computer science, the SI prefixes kilo-, mega- and giga- were historically used in certain contexts to mean either the first three powers of 1024 (1024, 10242 and 10243) contrary to the metric system in which these units unambiguously mean one thousand, one million, and one billion. This usage is particularly prevalent with electronic memory devices (e.g. DRAM) addressed directly by a binary machine register where a decimal interpretation makes no practical sense.
Subsequently, the Ki, Mi, and Gi prefixes were introduced so that binary prefixes could be written explicitly, also rendering k, M, and G unambiguous in texts conforming to the new standard — this led to a new ambiguity in engineering documents lacking outward trace of the binary prefixes (necessarily indicating the new style) as to whether the usage of k, M, and G remains ambiguous (old style) or not (new style). Note also that 1 M (where M is ambiguously 1,000,000 or 1,048,576) is less uncertain than the engineering value 1.0e6 (defined to designate the interval 950,000 to 1,050,000), and that as non-volatile storage devices began to commonly exceed 1 GB in capacity (where the ambiguity begins to routinely impact the second significant digit), GB and TB almost always mean 109 and 1012 bytes.
See also [ edit ]The White House is working with the Department of Homeland Security, FBI and others to develop an executive order to counter cybersecurity threats.
The effort follows the Senate’s failed attempt to pass cybersecurity legislation that would have created voluntary security standards for companies operating critical infrastructure, such as the electric grid, water treatment facilities and transportation systems.
But the executive order will not replace the need for cybersecurity legislation. DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano told a Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affair Committee hearing Wednesday that the executive order will be less effective than legislation because it cannot:
• Provide liability protections for certain companies that are victims of cyber attacks.
• Increase criminal penalties for cyber criminals.
• Provide DHS with funding to hire and pay competitive salaries to cybersecurity workers.
“We still need cyber legislation,” Napolitano said.
Sens. Joseph Lieberman, I-Conn., and Daniel Akaka, D-Hawaii, expressed little hope that legislation would pass during the lame duck session following the November elections.
“I would not count on it,” said Lieberman, who introduced the Cybersecurity Act in February. “The sooner the executive branch is ready to try to fill whatever gaps it can, the safer the country will be.”
Caitlin Hayden, spokeswoman for the White House’s National Security Council, said “an executive order is one of a number of measures we’re considering as we look to implement the president’s direction to do absolutely everything we can to better protect our nation against today’s cyber threats.”
Napolitano told senators that in crafting the executive order, the administration has considered what existing authorities federal regulatory bodies have to enforce cybersecurity standards on certain sectors. Republicans who opposed the failed Senate bill argued that any voluntary standards could have been made mandatory for industry under the bill.
Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, earlier this month said an executive order should not be a substitute for legislative action.
Meanwhile, Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., a co-sponsor of the Cybersecurity Act, has asked top companies to share details on their cybersecurity practices and concerns with the bill.
Rockefeller this week sent letters to CEOs of the nation’s 500 largest companies, including Apple, ExxonMobil and AT&T, asking what cybersecurity best practices they use, how those practices were developed, how frequently they are updated and what role the federal government played in developing those practices. Companies were asked to answer eight questions by Oct. 19, including what concerns they have with voluntary security standards for companies operating critical infrastructure.
In the letters, Rockefeller said the filibuster of the Cybersecurity Act was largely due to opposition from business lobbying groups and trade associations, specifically the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
“I would like to hear more — directly from the chief executives of leading American companies about their views on cybersecurity, without the filter of beltway lobbyists,” he wrote.
Rockefeller said many portions of the bill, including the voluntary program, could be implemented via executive order, regulation or Homeland Security Act authorities.
http://www.defensenews.com/article/20120921/C4ISR01/309210002/White-House-DHS-FBI-Drafting-Executive-Order-Cybersecurity?odyssey=mod|newswell|text|FRONTPAGE|pWhy has the GOP been so loose with truth – and ever more so in the 2012 Presidential Campaign? It is a legitimate question to ask given the ever more blatant lies, falsehoods and simpleton deceptions leading up to and during the GOP convention. Even Fox News noted the blatant lying trend with Chris Christie and even more so Paul Ryan’s VP acceptance speech. David Firestone, in analyzing VP-candidate Paul Ryan’s acceptance speech at the Republican Convention, gets at one of the core issues:
|
debut. The Hurricanes are also seeing an uptick in recruiting, bringing in the No. 12 (2014), No. 14 (2013) and No. 10 (2012) classes after signing the No. 33 group in 2011. But here’s the bad news: This is Miami – the No. 3 coaching job in the ACC. The Hurricanes are still looking for their first appearance in the conference championship, and Golden has yet to produce a ranked team in the final Associated Press poll. With the No. 2 roster in the ACC, Miami needs to win at a higher level. Prior to taking over in Coral Gables, Golden took Temple from a 1-11 record in 2006 to a program with back-to-back winning seasons in 2009-10. Some of the Owls’ success under Golden was due to the transition to the MAC, but Golden helped to mold Temple from one of the worst programs back to respectability. 2014 should be a telling year for Golden and his overall leadership at Miami, as the Hurricanes have the talent to win the Coastal. However, enough questions remain that Miami could finish third in the division.
34. Dabo Swinney, Clemson
Record at Clemson: 51-23 (6 years)
Career Record: 51-23 (6 years)
Clemson’s Program Rank: No. 2 in the ACC, No. 20 nationally
Swinney has helped Clemson shake the underachieving label recently, recording a school-record 32 victories over the last three years. The Tigers are 14-2 in the last two seasons of ACC play and have two BCS bowl appearances in three years. Clemson finished No. 8 in the final Associated Press poll in 2013, which is the best final ranking for the program since Danny Ford guided the Tigers to a No. 8 ranking in 1982. Swinney is at his best in the program CEO role. Coordinators Chad Morris and Brent Venables are two of the nation’s highest-paid assistants, and Morris’ arrival in 2011 sparked instant improvement on offense. Prior to hiring Morris, Swinney was just 19-15. One trouble spot for Swinney is his record against rival South Carolina and Florida State. The Gamecocks have won five in a row over Clemson, while the Tigers are 2-4 under Swinney against the Seminoles. In order for Swinney to take the next step as a head coach, he has to consistently beat Florida State and South Carolina.
35. Kirk Ferentz, Iowa
Record at Iowa: 108-79 (15 years)
Career Record: 120-100 (18 years)
Iowa’s Program Rank: (No. 7 in Big Ten, No. 32 nationally)
Ferentz may not be the flashiest coach, but he is easily one of the top-six coaches in the Big Ten. Iowa is a solid job, but it also has its drawbacks. There’s not a ton of in-state talent to build a team, but the Hawkeyes are 15-17 in conference play over the last four years, which is almost equal to Michigan during that span (18-14). Ferentz went 4-19 in his first two years at Iowa, but the Hawkeyes recorded six consecutive bowl appearances from 2001-06, including an Orange Bowl trip after the 2002 season. After missing out on a bowl in 2007, Iowa earned four straight postseason trips from 2008-11, and Ferentz got the program back on track after a 4-8 mark in 2012. With a favorable schedule and 12 starters back, Ferentz should have Iowa in contention for the West Division title in 2014.
36. Jerry Kill, Minnesota
Record at Minnesota: 17-21 (3 years)
Career Record: 144-94 (20 years)
Minnesota’s Program Rank: (No. 11 in Big Ten, No. 56 nationally)
Kill was a successful coach prior to taking over at Minnesota and has guided the Golden Gophers to back-to-back bowl games for the first time sine 2008-09. In five years at Saginaw Valley State (1994-98), Kill went 38-14 and followed that stint with a two-year stop at Emporia State (11-11). From 2001-07, Kill recorded a 55-32 mark at Southern Illinois, which included five consecutive appearances in the FCS playoffs. And in three years at Northern Illinois, Kill went 23-16 with three bowl trips. After a 3-9 mark at Minnesota in 2011, Kill is 14-12 and clearly has the program on the right track. Also, last year’s 4-4 Big Ten mark is the first record of.500 or better in Big Ten play by Minnesota since 2005.
37. Butch Jones, Tennessee
Record at Tennessee: 5-7 (1 year)
Career Record: 55-34 (7 years)
Tennessee’s Program Rank: (No. 7 in the SEC, No. 16 nationally)
In his first year at Tennessee, Jones had a similar overall record to his predecessor (Derek Dooley), but the Volunteers appeared to take a step forward in 2013. Tennessee lost to Georgia by three points in overtime and fell to Vanderbilt 14-10 in late November. The signs of progress were small, but Jones is recruiting at a high level and has a track record of success. From 2007-09 at Central Michigan, Jones went 27-13 and won two MAC titles. At Cincinnati, Jones recorded a 23-14 mark and finished with a 10-4 mark in the Big East over the final two years. Jones is unproven in the SEC, but all signs point to progress on Rocky Top heading into 2014.
38. Brady Hoke, Michigan
Record at Michigan: 26-13 (3 years)
Career Record: 73-63 (11 years)
Michigan’s Program Rank: (No. 2 in Big Ten, No. 10 nationally)
A few years ago, Hoke would have ranked higher on this list. However, Hoke’s stock has been on the decline after finishing 8-5 in 2012 and 7-6 in 2013. Prior to taking over at Michigan, Hoke recorded a 34-38 record in six seasons at Ball State, which included a 12-1 mark in 2008. He went 13-12 in two years at San Diego State and helped the program break an 11-year bowl drought with an appearance in the 2010 Poinsettia Bowl. Hoke went 11-2 in his Michigan debut in 2011 and led the Wolverines to a victory over Virginia Tech in the Sugar Bowl. However, despite back-to-back top-10 recruiting classes, the Wolverines are just 15-11 from 2012-13. Considering the expectations at Michigan, Hoke needs to show the program is headed in the right direction in 2014 to avoid the hot seat.
39. Mark Hudspeth, UL Lafayette
Career Record: 93-33 (10 years)
Hudspeth is a rising star in the coaching ranks and should have his pick of BCS jobs if he’s interested in leaving UL Lafayette after 2014. In three years with the Ragin’ Cajuns, Hudspeth is 27-12 overall and 17-6 in Sun Belt play. UL Lafayette claimed a share of the Sun Belt title in 2013, and the program has three consecutive bowl victories. Prior to his stint with the Ragin’ Cajuns, Hudspeth went 66-21 in seven years with North Alabama. He also has stops in his career at Mississippi State (2009-10), Delta State and Navy. If a SEC job opens this offseason, keep an eye on Hudspeth as a potential replacement.
40. Tommy Tuberville, Cincinnati
Career Record: 139-81 (18 years)
It’s a close call for the top spot among the coaches in the American Athletic Conference. Tuberville and O’Leary are both worthy of the No. 1 spot, but a slight edge goes to Tuberville. The Arkansas native is a proven winner at four stops in his coaching career, starting with a 25-20 stint at Ole Miss. From 1998-2008, Tuberville went 85-40 at Auburn and recorded a 20-17 mark in three years at Texas Tech. Cincinnati went 9-4 in Tuberville’s debut and could be the favorite to win the conference in 2014.
41. Bronco Mendenhall, BYU
Career Record: 82-34 (9 years)
Whether BYU has been an Independent or in the Mountain West, success hasn’t been a problem for Mendenhall. The Cougars won at least six games in each season under Mendenhall in the Mountain West, including back-to-back 11-win campaigns in 2006-07. BYU joined the Independent ranks prior to the 2011 season, and Mendenhall has led the Cougars to at least eight victories in each of the last three years. Mendenhall isn’t flashy, but he’s a proven winner and has guided the program through a transition to the Independent ranks. And look at the schedule for 2014. Could BYU make a run at an unbeaten record?
42. George O’Leary, UCF
Career Record: 124-89 (17 years)
O’Leary quietly continues to build an impressive resume at UCF. The Knights won the American Athletic title in 2013 and finished No. 10 in the final Associated Press poll after beating Baylor in the Fiesta Bowl. UCF has back-to-back double-digit win seasons and has three bowl appearances in four years. Sure, the Knights have three losing records under O’Leary, but this program is never down for long and is among the best in the American Athletic Conference. O’Leary also went 52-33 during eight seasons at Georgia Tech.
43. Bo Pelini, Nebraska
Record at Nebraska: 58-24 (6 years)
Career Record: 58-24 (6 years)
Nebraska’s Program Rank: (No. 4 in Big Ten, No. 17 nationally)
Pelini is still looking for his first conference title or an appearance in a BCS bowl, but he has won at least nine games in each of his six seasons at Nebraska. While nine or ten victories a year works at most programs, is that an acceptable benchmark in Lincoln? Winning at Nebraska in 2014 is probably more challenging than it was in 1995, but according to recruiting rankings, the Cornhuskers have the No. 3 roster in the Big Ten. Although Pelini’s win total has been consistent and has five consecutive finishes in the final Associated Press poll, the expectations are huge at Nebraska. Would a 7-5 or 8-4 record in 2014 force athletic director Shawn Eichorst to rethink the direction of the program?
44. Steve Sarkisian, USC
Record at USC: First Year
Career Record: 34-29 (5 years)
USC’s Program Rank: No. 1 in the Pac-12, No. 4 nationally
Taking over at USC is essentially a homecoming for Sarkisian. The California native was a successful quarterback at BYU and had a short stint in the CFL. Sarkisian’s first college coaching job was at El Camino in 2000, and he landed at USC in 2001-03 and again from 2005-08 under Pete Carroll. In 2009, Sarkisian was hired at Washington, where he inherited a team that finished 0-12 in the season prior to his arrival. Sarkisian brought immediate improvement to Seattle, guiding the Huskies to a 5-7 mark in 2009 and a 34-29 mark in his tenure. Washington played in four consecutive bowl games under Sarkisian, but never finished higher than third in the Pac-12 North. Elevating the Huskies back to Pac-12 respectability was a good sign. However, Sarkisian needs to win at a higher level at USC. With a solid coaching staff and the No. 11 signing class from 2014, it seems Sarkisian is on the right path. And it certainly won’t hurt Sarkisian’s prospects when the sanctions end and USC has a full allotment of scholarships.
45. Mike MacIntyre, Colorado
Record at Colorado: 4-8 (1 year)
Career Record: 20-29 (4 years)
Colorado’s Program Rank: No. 9 in the Pac-12, No. 53 nationally
The arrow is clearly pointing up on MacIntyre’s tenure at Colorado. The Buffaloes were only 4-8 overall and won just one contest in Pac-12 play, but the program took a step forward last year after struggling under Jon Embree. Prior to taking over in Boulder, MacIntyre spent three years at San Jose State, transforming the Spartans from a 1-11 team in 2010 to a 10-2 squad in 2012. According to the recruiting ranks, Colorado’s roster ranks No. 12 in the Pac-12, and standout receiver Paul Richardson must be replaced in 2014. MacIntyre needs time to successfully rebuild Colorado, but with a few breaks this season, the Buffaloes could make a bowl. After all, that isn't impossible considering MacIntyre’s second team at San Jose State made a four-game jump in the win column.
46. Paul Johnson, Georgia Tech
Record at Georgia Tech: 47-32 (6 years)
Career Record: 154-71 (17 years)
Georgia Tech’s Program Rank: No. 9 in the ACC, No. 46 nationally
Johnson has been a successful coach at three different jobs, starting with Georgia Southern in the FCS ranks in 1997. The Eagles went 62-10 under Johnson, which included back-to-back FCS Championships. At Navy, Johnson went 2-10 in his first year (2002) but finished his tenure with a 45-29 record and a No. 24 final ranking in the 2004 Associated Press poll. Johnson was hired at Georgia Tech in 2008 and is 47-32 in six years. Additionally, the Yellow Jackets have not finished under.500 in conference play under Johnson’s watch and won the ACC title in 2009. Despite his success, there seems to be unrest at Georgia Tech. But here's something to keep in perspective: Georgia Tech ranks as the No. 9 job in the ACC. The Yellow Jackets have 19 wins in conference play over the last four years – only Virginia Tech has more during that span in the Coastal Division. Johnson is also regarded as one of the ACC’s top X’s and O’s coaches. Sure, the option might not be the most exciting offense to run at a BCS program, and the recruiting at Georgia Tech isn’t getting any better. However, Johnson has finished first or second (outright or shared) in the Coastal in five out of the last six years.
47. Steve Addazio, Boston College
Record at Boston College: 7-6 (1 year)
Career Record: 20-17 (3 years)
Boston College’s Program Rank: No. 12 in the ACC, No. 60 nationally
Addazio brought instant improvement in his first season at Boston College. The Eagles went 6-18 from 2011-12 under Frank Spaziani, but Addazio guided Boston College to a 7-6 record in 2013. Addazio had plenty of talent in the upperclassmen ranks to help his transition, and his work on the recruiting trail should ensure the Eagles continue to be a factor in the bowl picture. Before taking over at Boston College, Addazio went 13-11 in two years with Temple. The Owls went 9-4 in the MAC in 2011 but slipped to 4-7 in the tougher Big East Conference. As a Connecticut native, Addazio is familiar with the recruiting scene in the Northeast and what it takes to win at Boston College. The Eagles lose several key players from last year’s seven-win team, so some regression in the win total should be expected. However, Addazio has this program trending in the right direction for 2015 and beyond.
48. Pete Lembo, Ball State
Career Record: 104-49 (13 years)
It’s pretty easy to sum up Lembo’s coaching career in this simple statement: Three different head coach jobs, three very successful tenures. Lembo’s first head coaching gig was in 2001 at Lehigh. He guided the Mountain Hawks to a 44-14 record and two playoff appearances in five years. Lembo went to Elon in 2006 and won 35 games in five seasons. Lembo was hired at Ball State in 2011, and the Cardinals have yet to record a losing record under his watch. Ball State is 19-7 over the last two years and has played in back-to-back bowls. There’s no question Lembo is one of the rising stars in the coaching ranks and could be poised for a jump to a BCS program in the next few years.
49. Paul Rhoads, Iowa State
Record at Iowa State: 27-36 (5 years)
Career Record: 27-36 (5 years)
Iowa State’s Program Rank: No. 9 in the Big 12, No. 64 nationally
Rhoads is a good example why records are often deceiving when ranking coaches. On the surface, 27 wins isn’t impressive. However, Iowa State is one of the toughest jobs among BCS programs and ranks No. 9 in the Big 12. Winning big is tough in Ames, and Rhoads has three bowl appearances in five years. Additionally, the Cyclones have only one season of fewer than five wins. Just how difficult is it to win at Iowa State? The program has only two seasons of more than eight wins and only four of the Cyclones’ bowl appearances came before 2000. So while Rhoads may not have the best winning total, he’s keeping Iowa State competitive and in the mix for bowl games. And at a job like Iowa State, some would consider that overachieving.
50. Randy Edsall, Maryland
Record at Maryland: 13-24 (3 years)
Career Record: 87-94 (15 years)
Maryland’s Program Rank: (No. 8 in Big Ten, No. 40 nationally)
Maryland has made steady progress in each of Edsall’s first three seasons and are in good position to make a bowl in 2014. Edsall was hired at Maryland in 2011 after 12 seasons at Connecticut. Under Edsall’s direction, the Huskies went 74-70 and claimed the Big East title in 2010. Edsall never recorded more than nine wins in a season at Connecticut, but he overachieved considering the program hierarchy in the Big East at the time. The Terrapins finished 2-10 in Edsall’s debut but improved their win total to four in 2012 and then seven in 2013. Maryland needs time to transition to the Big Ten, but Edsall is making gains in the right direction.
51. Kyle Whittingham, Utah
Record at Utah: 76-39 (9 years)
Career Record: 76-39 (9 years)
Utah’s Program Rank: No. 11 in the Pac-12, No. 55 nationally
It’s pretty easy to see how deep the Pac-12 is with good coaches when Whittingham ranks No. 10. The former BYU linebacker is 76-39 in nine years in Salt Lake City, which includes a 13-0 record with a Sugar Bowl victory over Alabama in the 2008 season. In their final three years in the Mountain West (2008-10), Utah went 33-6 and lost only three conference games. However, as expected, the transition to the Pac-12 has been a challenge. The Utes went 8-5 in their Pac-12 debut but have posted back-to-back 5-7 records. Additionally, Utah is just 5-13 in conference play from 2012-13. Considering Whittingham’s wins in the Pac-12 have declined in back-to-back years, 2014 will be an important season to show the Utes are back on track. The addition of Dave Christensen as Utah’s offensive coordinator, combined with a little luck on health at quarterback could be enough for the Utes to get back to a bowl.
52. Will Muschamp, Florida
Record at Florida: 22-16 (3 years)
Career Record: 22-16 (3 years)
Florida’s Program Rank: (No. 1 in the SEC, No. 2 nationally)
What a difference a year makes. At this time last season, Muschamp could have ranked in the top half of the coach rankings in the SEC. After 2013, he deserves to be ranked in the bottom four. In his debut with the Gators in 2011, Muschamp went 7-6 and defeated Ohio State in the Gator Bowl. Florida went 11-2 in Muschamp’s second year and finished No. 9 in the final Associated Press poll. The Gators may have caught a few lucky breaks in 2012, especially with a turnover margin that was a +15 and an offense that averaged only 334 yards per game. Even if Florida was a tad lucky in 2012, it’s hard to understand why this team went 4-8 in 2013. Yes, there were injuries and the offense had its share of struggles. However, the Gators recruit at a high level and own one of college football’s best rosters. Simply, going 4-8 at Florida should not happen. But Muschamp has another chance to guide the program back in the right direction, and staff changes to the offense should help. Muschamp is still a bit of a mystery heading into his fourth season, and it’s clear he needs a winning season to avoid hot seat talk in November.
53. Bret Bielema, Arkansas
Record at Arkansas: 3-9 (1 year)
Career Record: 71-33 (8 years)
Arkansas’ Program Rank: (No. 9 in the SEC, No. 25 nationally)
Bielema’s debut at Arkansas did not go well. The Razorbacks finished 3-9 and winless in SEC play. However, there were signs of improvement late in the year. Arkansas seemed to play better over the final three games of the season, taking Mississippi State to overtime and losing to LSU by just four points in Baton Rouge. While the final record was ugly, the late-season improvement is a good sign for 2014. Also, Bielema deserves some time to build the program, as he inherited a team that went 4-8 in 2012 and played that year with an interim coach. Bielema was a successful coach at Wisconsin, winning 68 games in seven years and leading the Badgers to three consecutive Rose Bowl appearances. It’s easy to panic after one bad year of a coaching tenure. However, Bielema has a solid track record and should help Arkansas take a step forward in 2014.
54. Larry Fedora, North Carolina
Record at North Carolina: 15-10 (2 years)
Career Record: 49-29 (6 years)
North Carolina’s Program Rank: No. 5 in the ACC, No. 28 nationally
Fedora could be a spot or two higher on this list, but there’s not much separating the middle of the pack when it comes to ACC coaches. The Texas native has North Carolina on the right track, and the Tar Heels should be in contention for the Coastal Division title in 2014. Fedora’s record at North Carolina is 15-10, with a 9-7 mark in ACC play. The Tar Heels were ineligible to play for the Coastal Division title in 2012 or play in a bowl, but Fedora guided North Carolina to a 5-3 conference record – the first for the program since a 5-3 mark in 2004. Prior to his stint at North Carolina, Fedora coached at Southern Miss and recorded a 34-19 mark with a No. 20 rank in the final Associated Press poll in 2011. If the Tar Heels take a step forward as expected in 2014, Fedora will rank higher on this list next season.
55. Paul Chryst, Pittsburgh
Record at Pittsburgh: 13-13 (2 years)
Career Record: 13-13 (2 years)
Pittsburgh’s Program Rank: No. 7 in the ACC, No. 37 nationally
Coaching uncertainty surrounded Pittsburgh from 2010-12. The Panthers went through three head coaches – Dave Wannstedt, Mike Haywood and Todd Graham – in two seasons. However, Pittsburgh got it right went they hired Chryst. Yes, his record is only 13-13, but this program is on the right track. Chryst went 6-7 in his debut but guided the Panthers to a 7-6 mark in his second year and Pittsburgh’s ACC debut. Prior to taking the top spot with the Panthers, Chryst was a successful offensive coordinator at Oregon State and Wisconsin and spent some time in the NFL with the Chargers. The talent level in the Steel City is promising. Quarterback Chad Voytik, running back James Conner and receiver Tyler Boyd are three potential standout sophomores, and the offensive line seems to be on the right track after struggling over the last few years. Chryst needs more time to build the roster, but all signs suggest Pittsburgh is trending in the right direction going into 2014.
56. Kliff Kingsbury, Texas Tech
Record at Texas Tech: 8-5 (1 year)
Career Record: 8-5 (1 year)
Texas Tech’s Program Rank: No. 6 in Big 12, No. 41 nationally
Kingsbury is a perfect fit at Texas Tech, and the future looks bright for this program with the former Red Raider quarterback at the helm. In his first season as Texas Tech’s coach, Kingsbury led the Red Raiders to an 8-5 record, including a bowl victory over Arizona State. Prior to taking over in Lubbock, Kingsbury worked as an assistant at Texas A&M and Houston under Kevin Sumlin. Despite his lack of experience as a head coach, there’s little doubt Kingsbury has Texas Tech on the right track. And considering Kingsbury’s background on offense, he will have no trouble attracting top quarterbacks and receivers to Lubbock. While the 34-year-old coach ranks No. 8 among his Big 12 peers, the guess here is he climbs this list over the next few seasons.
57. Kevin Wilson, Indiana
Record at Indiana: 10-26 (3 years)
Career Record: 10-26 (3 years)
Indiana’s Program Rank: (No. 14 in Big Ten, No. 69 nationally)
Wilson was a highly regarded assistant prior to his hire at Indiana, and he has made a difference in three years with the Hoosiers. After a 1-11 mark in 2011, Wilson won four games in 2012 and five last season. Indiana was just a couple of plays away from a bowl, as it lost to Minnesota by three points and Navy by six last year. There’s no question Wilson is one of the Big Ten’s top offensive coaches, but the Hoosiers have struggled mightily on defense. Indiana has ranked last in the Big Ten for three consecutive years in yards allowed, and Wilson hired former Wake Forest coordinator Brian Knorr to call the plays in 2014. If Knorr can fix the defense, Indiana has plenty of firepower on offense to reach six wins. However, the Hoosiers drew a tough schedule in realignment, as they will play Michigan, Michigan State, Ohio State and Penn State every season.
58. Mark Helfrich, Oregon
Record at Oregon: 11-2 (1 year)
Career Record: 11-2 (1 year)
Oregon’s Program Rank: No. 2 in the Pac-12, No. 12 nationally
Helfrich had a tough assignment replacing offensive mastermind Chip Kelly in 2013. The Ducks were picked by many as a threat to win the national title, but a late-season injury to quarterback Marcus Mariota hindered the offense in November. Oregon finished 11-2 in Helfrich’s debut and No. 9 in the final Associated Press poll. Despite not getting to the national championship, 2014 was a solid debut for Helfrich in his first season on the sidelines in Eugene. Helfrich needs a little time to put his stamp on the program, and with Mariota returning in 2014, Oregon should in the hunt to win college football’s playoff.
59. Craig Bohl, Wyoming
Career Record: 104-32 (11 years)
It’s not often a coach jumps from the FCS to FBS ranks and takes the top spot in a conference. However, that’s the case with Bohl, as he ranks as Athlon’s top coach in the Mountain West. In 11 years at North Dakota State, Bohl guided the Bison to 104 victories, including three consecutive FCS Championships.
60. Sonny Dykes, California
Record at California: 1-11 (1 year)
Career Record: 23-26 (4 years)
California’s Program Rank: No. 8 in the Pac-12, No. 43 nationally
It seems unfair to rank Dykes at the bottom of the Pac-12, but there’s not a bad coach in the conference. Dykes’ debut at California did not go well, as the Golden Bears finished 1-11 and winless in conference play for the first time since 2001. While the final record was not pretty, California had a handful of injuries to key players on defense, and Jared Goff was a true freshman getting his first snaps at quarterback. Dykes took steps this offseason to ensure last year’s 1-11 won’t be repeated. The defensive staff got a major overhaul and a solid recruiting class will help with the overall depth. Prior to his one season at California, Dykes went 22-15 at Louisiana Tech, including a 17-8 mark over the final two years.
61. Mark Stoops, Kentucky
Record at Kentucky: 2-10 (1 year)
Career Record: 2-10 (1 year)
Kentucky’s Program Rank: (No. 12 in the SEC, No. 47 nationally)
Considering Stoops inherited a Kentucky team that had just four SEC wins in the three years prior to his arrival, it’s tough to judge him based on 2013. The Wildcats went 2-10 and winless in conference play in Stoops’ first season, but there were signs of progress. Kentucky lost two conference games by seven points or less, and Stoops signed another signing class filled with talent. The Wildcats ranked No. 34 nationally in the 247Sports Composite rankings in 2013, but Stoops inked the No. 22 class in 2014. Prior to taking over at Kentucky, Stoops was a successful defensive coordinator at Florida State, and he also had prior stops at Arizona, Miami, Houston and Wyoming. It’s going to take Stoops some time to get the program on track. However, recruiting is going well, and the Wildcats showed signs of improvement last season. If Kentucky takes another step forward in 2014, it’s a good sign for Stoops’ long-term outlook in Lexington.
62. Derek Mason, Vanderbilt
Record at Vanderbilt: First Season
Career Record: First Season
Vanderbilt’s Program Rank: (No. 14 in the SEC, No. 49 nationally)
Mason takes over for James Franklin after a successful stint as Stanford’s defensive coordinator. The Arizona native has been on a steady climb through the ranks as an assistant, spending time at Weber State, Idaho State, Bucknell, Utah, New Mexico State and Ohio. In 2007, Mason joined the Vikings staff and spent three years as a defensive backs assistant in the NFL. Jim Harbaugh hired Mason at Stanford in 2010, and he was promoted to the co-defensive coordinator role in 2011, before taking over the sole play-calling abilities in 2012. Under Mason, the Cardinal finished first in the Pac-12 in total defense in 2012 and second in 2013. Additionally, Stanford’s defenses allowed less than five yards per play from 2012-13. As evidenced by his work under Harbaugh and David Shaw, Mason is a rising star in the coaching ranks and one of the top defensive minds in the nation. However, without any experience as a head coach, it’s hard to place Mason higher in the SEC coach ranks.
63. Dave Clawson, Wake Forest
Record at Wake Forest: First Year
Career Record: 90-80 (14 years)
Wake Forest’s Program Rank: No. 13 in the ACC, No. 71 nationally
After successful tenures at three previous stops, Clawson finally gets his chance to run a BCS program. From 1999-2003, he recorded a 29-29 mark at Fordham. The Rams went 0-11 in his debut and made steady improvement over the next five years, including a 10-3 record with an appearance in the FCS playoffs in 2002. Clawson was hired at Richmond in 2004 and guided the Spiders to a 29-20 record with two playoff appearances. After a one-year stint as Tennessee’s offensive coordinator in 2008, Clawson was hired at Bowling Green and led the Falcons to a bowl game in his debut. Under Clawson’s watch, Bowling Green won 32 games, claimed the MAC title in 2013, and made three bowl trips. Considering his history of improving programs that were struggling prior to his arrival, Clawson is the right pick to take over at Wake Forest.
64. Dan McCarney, North Texas
Career Record: 74-104 (15 years)
McCarney is one of the top coaches from outside the five BCS leagues. The Iowa native went 56-85 at a difficult job (Iowa State) from 1995-2006. The Cyclones went to five bowl games under McCarney and claimed a share of the Big 12 North title in 2004. The Mean Green made steady progress in McCarney’s three seasons and finished 9-4 with a Heart of Dallas Bowl victory in 2013.
65. Terry Bowden, Akron
Career Record: 146-80-2 (20 years)
After a successful stint as Auburn’s coach from 1993-98, it was puzzling to see Bowden not resurface on the FBS level until 2012 when he was hired by Akron. Although he was away from the FBS ranks for 13 seasons, Bowden certainly hasn’t forgotten how to coach. At North Alabama, Bowden recorded a 29-9 record in three years and is 6-18 in two seasons with the Zips. Akron’s win total improved by four games in Bowden’s second year, and the Zips should be in bowl contention in 2014. Could Bowden land at a BCS job in the near future?
66. Tim DeRuyter, Fresno State
Career Record: 20-6 (2 years)
Fresno State is one of the premier programs in the Mountain West, and DeRuyter has continued to add to the foundation Pat Hill built from 1997-2011. In two years with the Bulldogs, DeRuyter is 20-6 and claimed the Mountain West title in 2013. The Bulldogs have to reload in 2014 without quarterback Derek Carr and receiver Davante Adams. However, DeRuyter is the right coach to keep Fresno State among the top programs in the Mountain West.
67. Larry Coker, UTSA
Career Record: 79-30 (9 years)
Coker went 60-15 in six years with Miami, including a national championship in 2001 season. However, that might not be his most-impressive accomplishment. Coker built the UTSA program from scratch, going 4-6 in 2011 and 8-4 in its FBS debut in 2012. The Roadrunners just missed the C-USA West Division title last season with a 7-5 overall record. While Miami dropped off at the end of Coker’s tenure, he’s clearly found a home in San Antonio, and UTSA is poised to be a major factor in Conference USA.
68. Frank Solich, Ohio
Career Record: 124-69 (15 years)
Solich is the longest-tenured coach in the MAC. He has held the top spot at Ohio since 2005 and has earned five consecutive bowl appearances. The Bobcats played for the MAC title in 2006 and 2009 and won 10 games in 2011. Solich may not be flashy, but he certainly knows how to coach. And prior to taking over at Ohio, Solich went 58-19 at Nebraska with three top-10 finishes in the final Associated Press poll.
69. June Jones, SMU
Career Record: 112-82 (15 years)
Progress at SMU has been slower than some may have expected from Jones, but the Mustangs have improved since the Oregon native took over in 2008. Jones transformed Hawaii’s program into a consistent winner in the WAC from 1999-2007, recording a 76-41 record with a Sugar Bowl appearance after the 2007 season. Jones went 1-11 in his debut at SMU, but the Mustangs had four winning seasons from 2009-12. And that’s no small feat considering SMU’s last stretch of four winning years occurred from 1983-86.
70. Ruffin McNeill, East Carolina
Career Record: 30-22 (4 years)
East Carolina heads into the American Athletic Conference with plenty of momentum, as McNeill has the Pirates on the right track after an 11-14 start to his tenure. McNeill is 18-8 over the last two seasons and is a former defensive back with the Pirates, so there’s no question he knows what it takes to win in Greenville. And prior to taking over at East Carolina, McNeill went 1-0 as Texas Tech’s interim coach for the 2009 Alamo Bowl.
71. Willie Taggart, South Florida
Career Record: 18-30 (4 years)
Taggart was one of last season’s top hires and a 2-10 record in his debut shouldn’t diminish |
killed was 28-year-old Feras M. Freitekh, a Jordanian national who first entered the U.S. in 2012 on a student visa to attend flight school, CBS News reported. He was certified as a single-engine pilot last year.
The instructor on board, Arian Prevalla, managed to survive the crash and get out of the plane. He was hospitalized late Wednesday with serious burns.
Prevalla was the first to suggest the crash was not an accident.
Litwin said it was unclear who was at the controls at the time of the crash.
“Being a twin engine aircraft, there are two sets of controllers in such a plane,” he said. “Either one of the two occupants at any time have the ability to control that plane.”
CBS Transportation Safety Analyst Mark Rosenker said one person in a plane with two controls could do damage.
“There are two sets of controls in this particular aircraft, but if someone truly wants to do something nefarious and they’re close enough to the ground as this was, they will succeed in actually taking the airplane down,” Rosenker told WCBS 880’s Alex Silverman.
Two people in a minivan near the crash were traumatized and were also taken to a hospital.
Suheilly Hernandez was in a van near the scene and her three daughters – ages 17, 15 and 5 inside. They were on their way to grab a sandwich.
I just heard by mom panicking, and when I looked up, I saw the crash,” said daughter Kimberlee Rivera, who was in the minivan with sisters Keishla and Karina.
On Wednesday night, they sat around the living room coffee table – telling CBS2’s Layton they couldn’t believe the plane crashed feet away from them. They also couldn’t believe from some minor pain and trauma – they walked away unharmed.
“Today I am a lucky one, me and my girls,” Hernandez said.
Litwin said it is too early to determine more details beyond that the plane crash was deliberate.
“Information indicates that this plane crash was intentional, but I want to be crystal clear — the circumstances beyond that are still being investigated,” Litwin said.
The plane seemed to drop out of the sky with shocking abruptness. It came to rest near an American Eagle Credit Union with 85 employees inside who ran for their lives.
“They didn’t know necessarily that it was a plane that went down,” said Dean Marchessault of the credit union. “All they saw was wreckage. There was a car; there was fire. It’s not unusual sometimes for a plane to be a little bit lower or a little bit louder.”
Sources indicated that student pilot Freitekh is not a suspected terrorist, but that the crash may have been a suicide.
Freitekh’s neighbors in Hartford said they saw him wearing what looked like a pilot’s shirt, and nothing seemed amiss.
“He’s a nice guy. That’s all I can say,” said neighbor Eric Bass. “All I can say is when he came in, he said ‘hello.’”
East Hartford Mayor Marcia Leclerc seemed much more relaxed Tuesday, given where the investigation has led.
“I’m feeling very comfortable that the people that are in place here for this investigation are doing the best that they can do to bring a conclusion to the forefront,” Leclerc said.
Leclerc said there is no ongoing threat to the community.
Questions persisted late Wednesday about motive – was there a fight between the two men, or was there an apparent motive for suicide?
Main Street in East Hartford remained closed between Willow Street Extension and Ensign Street late Wednesday, but police were removing the wreckage and were set to reopen the road.
(TM and © Copyright 2016 CBS Radio Inc. and its relevant subsidiaries. CBS RADIO and EYE Logo TM and Copyright 2016 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.)Success in print publishing does not translate to success in digital publishing, and many common measures for digital success mislead. The primary medium of the future is the unchained Web, and restricting your free content offerings out of fear of cannibalization will only lead to somebody else eating your readers instead. (Part 1 of 2.)
Today, we’re going to look at some charts, comparing Alice Publishing with Bob Publishing. These are both thinly disguised real travel publishers, but as my intention is not to slag or praise any specific companies, I’m using the aliases so we can focus on them as examples. Like the CIA, I will neither confirm nor deny any putative identifications in the comments, and sloppy speculation may lead to waterboardings from fellow commenters. (Obligatory disclaimer: neither Alice nor Bob is my employer, Lonely Planet; and as always, this blog represents no one’s opinions but my own.)
Volume of printed books sold
Both Alice and Bob are big names in travel publishing. According to Bookscan, Alice is a contender for the top spot in much of the world when it comes to volume of printed books sold, shifting around 1.7 million books last year. Bob is a few spots down the pecking order, sellling around 800,000 copies, which is still more than respectable but means they’re only about half of Alice’s size.
Print vs digital revenue (parent companies)
Now shipping around pallets of dead trees is all well and good, but how are they faring at bits and bytes? Neither Alice nor Bob are telling directly, but the publishing conglomerates that own them do, and Alice’s owner is only too happy to tell us they’re the industry leader for the hottest figure in today’s publishing industry, print vs digital revenue, pulling in 33% last year and promising to be the first to break the magical 50% barrier as early as this year. On the other hand, Bob’s corporate masters only managed to reach 20%. Strike two for Bob.
There’s a reason, or actually two, why publishers like the “print vs digital revenue” figure so much. First, the worse your print sales collapse, the higher the share of digital revenue goes. Indeed, Alice’s print sales dropped 14% last year, while poor Bob was whacked by almost 20%, boosting their digital shares by a handy ~4%, a third of the putative growth. And second, “digital” is a sufficiently fuzzy term that it’s pretty easy to redefine it to your advantage. In Alice’s case, its owner’s “digital” revenue includes a giant educational services arm, and would thus better be described as “not print”. Another publisher not considered today goes further and includes all the printed books they sell from their website in their “digital” sales.
E-books vs printed books (estimate)
A more reliable indicator of how well a publisher is actually transferring their readers over from print to paid digital is the split of e-books to printed books. Alas, precisely because this number is nowhere near as flattering, publishers are very reluctant to disclose even volume shares, much less revenue shares or, heaven forbid, actual sales figures, and BookScan doesn’t have any data either. Alice’s owners offer precisely one figure: of all books sold last year, 14% were e-books, and while I’d wager the split for travel guides was more in print’s favor, that’s the best I’ve got. Bob and company are even more tight-lipped, offering up only the meaningless puff of “triple-digit growth in e-book sales”, so I’m going to assume that they managed to pull in the industry average of maybe 8% or so.
Strike three — but Bob’s not out, and in fact, I think Bob is much, much better placed than Alice to survive through the digital revolution. Here’s why:
Millions of readers per year
Around 5 years ago, Alice launched a flashy website with lots of ads and minimal content. It won a bunch of obscure design awards and has been gathering dust ever since: Alexa estimates they get around 1500 visitors a day, which works out to 360,000 a year. With e-books and apps still on the level of a rounding error, Alice’s total number of readers for print and digital combined is thus around 2 million a year.
Bob, on the other hand, has been working on their website since 1996 with a simple two-point philosophy: post everything on your website for free, and don’t worry about cannibalizing your printed books. This is why they now pull in around 3.6 million unique visitors a month, which translates to over 43 million a year, or a total readership of nearly 44 million a year. That’s 22x more than Alice! So when Alice’s brand loses its dominance on bookstore shelves, because there are no more mass-market bookstores and thus no more shelves, which of the two can still connect with readers?
Direct revenue (US$) per reader per format, Alice Publishing
“So what?”, I hear the hard-nosed publisher snort. “Website freeloaders add nothing to the bottom line!” Indeed, when it comes to direct revenue per reader, everybody who buys a book from Alice chips in around $15, buyers of Alice’s e-books pay around $12, and people who download Alice’s apps pay around $6 a pop. People who visit Alice’s website, on the other hand, pay approximately nothing. Isn’t it thus completely contrary to your own interest, downright crazy, to offer free content that drives people away the paid products?
If we were dealing only with printed books, the answer would of course be “yes”. If Bob started giving away their books for free, they would quickly conquer the market and demolish Alice’s sales. But they cannot do this sustainably, because it costs real money to print and distribute books, and that’s why the price of a printed travel guide from any publisher has converged to around $15.
But in the digital world, once you have created a piece of content, there is virtually no cost to distributing an additional copy of it. The equilibrium price is thus zero, and if you don’t distribute your content at that price, somebody else will, and they’ll eat you alive. That’s why Bob is already busily kneecapping Alice’s (already fairly pathetic) app sales by offering their own city apps for free; and that’s why the biggest threat to Alice is not Bob, but Charlie Digital, whose travel website gets more readers every day than Alice gets in a year.
Millions of readers per year, version 2
And the kicker? Charlie, better known as TripAdvisor, made a profit of $177 million last year and is tracking to improve on that this year — and it pulled off this trick without charging for any of its content.
Keep reading for part 2, in which we’ll take a look at why getting readers to pay for their content directly will prove unworkable for the vast majority of publishers, and how the creation of quality content can be funded nonetheless.
AdvertisementsPush it to the Limit!
Obtain all trophies 0.8%
Ultra Rare 4.38%
Ultra Rare
VS Master
Defeat all VS characters 0.9%
Ultra Rare 4.54%
Ultra Rare
Secret Master
Defeat all secret VS characters 0.9%
Ultra Rare 4.57%
Ultra Rare
The End...?
Watch the ending movie 17.7%
Rare 22.45%
Uncommon
Absolute Finesse
Score a condor in a recorded official round 1.3%
Ultra Rare 5.54%
Very Rare
Walking Encyclopedia
Complete the fish encyclopedia 1.8%
Ultra Rare 6.84%
Very Rare
Rank 5 Cleared!
Clear rank 5 of the challenge tournaments 22.3%
Rare 27.69%
Uncommon
Rank 4 Cleared!
Clear rank 4 of the challenge tournaments 28.1%
Rare 34.55%
Uncommon
Rank 3 Cleared!
Clear rank 3 of the challenge tournaments 38.5%
Rare 47.28%
Uncommon
It's a Miracle!
Score an albatross in a recorded official round 6.1%
Very Rare 11.22%
Rare
My First Hole-in-One!
Score a hole-in-one in a recorded official round 12.8%
Very Rare 17.83%
Rare
Inspiring Spiral
Sink the ball with a Spiral Shot in a recorded official round 3.1%
Ultra Rare 9.77%
Very Rare
Bolt from the Blue
Sink the ball with a Rising Shot in a recorded official round 10.1%
Very Rare 18.27%
Rare
Never Misses the Mark
Sink the ball with a Homing Shot in a recorded official round 13.3%
Very Rare 21.48%
Uncommon
Full House
Get all computer-controlled NPCs from challenge
tournament matches to join the gallery 3.1%
Ultra Rare 7.24%
Very Rare
Top Marks
Get all the answers right in the Professor's three quizzes 13.0%
Very Rare 21.23%
Uncommon
Rank 2 Cleared!
Clear rank 2 of the challenge tournaments 49.3%
Rare 60.84%
Common
Rank 1 Cleared!
Clear rank 1 of the challenge tournaments 64.1%
Common 76.17%
Common
Hop, Skip, and a Jump
Successfully perform a shot that skims over water at least
once in a recorded official round 43.5%
Rare 53.58%
Common
Perfect Putting
Successfully perform a putt within par that travels for
over 30ft in a recorded official round 40.8%
Rare 49.59%
Uncommon
Crack Shot
Successfully earn a green in regulation within
3ft of the hole in a recorded official round 66.3%
Common 76.88%
Common
Backspin Virtuoso
Successfully perform a Super Backspin in a recorded official round 32.8%
Rare 41.45%
Uncommon
Rocket Launch
Successfully perform a long drive of 300y or more
in a recorded official round 40.9%
Rare 50.24%
Common
My First Chip-In!
Chip in within par in a recorded official round 68.4%
Common 79.15%
Common
My First Eagle!
Score an eagle in a recorded official round 47.9%
Rare 58.65%
Common
My First Birdie!
Score a birdie in a recorded official round 82.0%
Common 90.16%
Common
My First...Fish?
Catch a fish at a fishing spot 26.8%
Rare 34.79%
Uncommon
My First Cart Ride!
Take a ride in a golf cart 46.2%
Rare 58.69%
Common
Online Debut
Arrive at an online open course 45.6%
Rare 63.05%
CommonThe story of improper touching by reality TV star Josh Duggar is also a story about the improper release of juvenile records, Josh's parents Michelle and Jim Bob said in an interview aired by Fox News on Wednesday.
The Duggars' anger over the release of the records helps to explain why they decided to grant an interview at all.
The family stars in the TLC series "19 Kids and Counting," which remains in limbo while Josh Duggar's past acts of molestation remain national news.
But the family seems to be going on the offensive after two weeks of what the parents called an "unprecedented attack" against them.
Two of the older sisters, Jill and Jessa, also spoke with Fox's Megyn Kelly on Wednesday. Only a brief portion of that conversation was shown on Wednesday night as a "tease" to Friday's edition of Kelly's show.
In the video clip, the sisters focused on the new violation of privacy, not the old violations by their brother. Jill tearfully said, "They can't do this to us. We're victims."
By "they," she meant the officials who released the juvenile records.
Jessa also said, "The system that was set up to protect kids, both those who make stupid mistakes or have problems like this in their life and the ones that are affected by those choices. It's greatly failed."
"There's an agenda" behind the negative attention, said Michelle, who also indicated that some of the scrutiny seems motivated by disrespect for the family's conservative Christian values.
Earlier: Duggar parents address '19 Kids and Counting' scandal in interview
The Duggars "cast themselves as martyrs" in the interview, Washington Post TV critic Hank Stuever wrote.
Josh Duggar molested five girls when he was a teenager, more than a decade ago, Michelle and Jim Bob confirmed in the interview with Kelly.
Four of the five victims were his sisters, his parents said Wednesday.
The parents took disciplinary action and arranged counseling for Josh. Whether they did enough, and soon enough, is now the subject of a spirited public debate that the family never wanted to have.
The incidents of molestation were a well-kept family secret until two weeks ago, when In Touch Weekly published police records obtained through a freedom of information act request.
Juvenile records are usually sealed, and the parents called the release of the records "illegal." Jim Bob said the family feels targeted by the local police chief, and is considering legal action.
The Fox interview appeared intended, at least in part, to draw attention to the circumstances of the juvenile records release, and away from the sexual abuse.
The parents talked about how some of the girls were touched "over their clothes." Some were also touched "under their clothes." In some cases, they were asleep; other times, they were awake.
The girls "didn't really understand" what happened, Jim Bob said at one point.
Critics of the family's handling of the scandal said after the interview that the parents seemed to be minimizing the seriousness of the abuse.
They noted, among other things, that one of the victims was a young child.
"What was just sad to me... was how willfully ignorant the Duggar parents are about child sexual abuse," attorney Lisa Bloom said on "CNN Tonight." "They don't seem to have educated themselves then or now about the facts."
TLC isn't saying anything about the interview, which was arranged by the Duggars' personal public relations advisers, not the cable channel.
And the channel is not planning on saying anything about the future of "19 Kids" anytime soon.
Why hasn't '19 Kids and Counting' been canceled? It's complicated
While there are widespread doubts that TLC will resume production of the show, a spin-off is a possibility.
People magazine reported last month that a spin-off series could "shift focus away from the large brood headed up by Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar, and instead focus on newlyweds Jill and Derick Dillard, and Jessa and Ben Seewald."
No comment about that was included in Wednesday's television interview.
But Jim Bob Duggar did remark to Kelly, "We'll be fine whether they film us or not."A novel, hybrid part-human, part-machine visual system that uses a simple mobile phone camera has been developed to search for evidence of past or present life in planetary analogue sites on Earth. Patrick McGuire from the Freie Universität, Berlin, will present results from this Cyborg Astrobiologist at the European Planetary Science Congress in London on Monday 9th September.
Members of McGuire's team, which include researchers from the Freie Universität, West Virginia University, the Centro de Astrobiología in Madrid and the University of Malta have been working for over a decade towards giving more scientific autonomy to robotic rovers in choosing the most promising sites for geological and astrobiological investigation. In the Cyborg Astrobiologist system, initially the human astrobiologist takes images of his/her surroundings using a mobile phone camera. These images are sent to via Bluetooth to a laptop, which processes the images to detect novel colours and textures and communicates back to the astrobiologist the degree of similarity to previous images stored in the database.
"Over the years, our system has shrunk down from a camera on a tripod and wearable computer, to a small laptop and a phone-cam," said McGuire. "We are now working to speed up the image compression analysis and put the whole system onto a Smartphone -- and eventually onto a Mars rover!"
The robotic rovers currently exploring Mars are heavily reliant on guidance from scientists back on Earth to detect areas that are most interesting for further analysis. The time delay in transmitting and receiving the commands can take between 4 and 24 minutes depending on the relative positions of Earth and Mars on their orbital paths. Exploration would be speeded up significantly if the rovers could identify autonomously unusual colours and textures created by geochemical or biological processes that may be a sign of past or present life.
Tests of the Cyborg Astrobiologist system have been conducted at field sites with similarities to landscapes that are found on Mars, imaging gypsum cliffs, red-bed sandstones, limestones, mudstones and coalbeds. Some rocks have been partly covered with lichen, a life-form that can possibly spread to/from other planets. Matching images with similar features in images from the database has been very successful.
"In our most recent tests at a former coal mine in West Virginia, the similarity-matching by the computer agreed with the judgement of our human geologists 91% of the time. The novelty detection also worked well, although there were some issues in differentiating between features that are similar in colour but different in texture, like yellow lichen and sulphur-stained coalbeds. However, for a first test of the technique, it looks very promising," said McGuire. These results of the Cyborg Astrobiologist's field-work in West Virginia are currently under review for publication by the International Journal of Astrobiology.Well, whaddya know: Will & Grace‘s recent web-based reunion has stirred interest in a full-fledged revival.
TVLine has learned that NBC is in preliminary talks with the sitcom’s six principal players — series creators David Kohan and Max Mutchnick, and stars Eric McCormack, Debra Messing, Megan Mullally and Sean Hayes — about doing a limited-run of original episodes. It’s not clear when the episodes would air and how many there would be.
VIDEOSWill & Grace Revival: New Present-Day Episode Released — Watch Now
An NBC spokesperson declined to comment for this story.
Late last month, the show’s Emmy-winning quartet reprised their roles for a 10-minute, present-day, election-themed video set inside the title characters’ iconic apartment. The project was spearheaded by Kohan and Mutchnick and without the involvement of NBC.
The YouTube-based mini-episode received a rapturous reception from fans, many of whom were eager for more.
VIDEOSGilmore Girls Revival: The Official Trailer Is Finally Here — Watch
“The response has been very overwhelming and really, really heartwarming,” Messing told People.com at the time. McCormack, meanwhile, was upbeat about the possibility of a larger-scale continuation, telling the site, “We’d all be interested to get that call, I think.”
What do you think? Are you hopeful that there’s more W&G coming our way? Weigh in below!
Related stories
This Is Us Sneak Peek: Watch Jack's Soul Die a Little as He Takes a Desk Job
This Is Us Adds American Horror Story Vet Denis O'Hare in Recurring Role
Jennifer Lopez to Star in NBC's Bye Bye Birdie Live! Musical, Airing in 2017The U.S. Department of Agriculture has put in an acquisition request to buy body armor — specifically, “ballistic vests, compliant with NIJ 0101.06 for Level IIIA Ballistic Resistance of body armor,” the solicitation stated.
The request was put in writing and posted on May 7 — just a few days before the same agency sought “the commercial acquisition of submachine guns” equipped for 30-round magazines, Breitbart reported.
The May 7 solicitation reads: “The U.S. Department of Agriculture, Office of Inspector General, [seeks] Body Armor [that’s] gender specific, lightweight, [containing] plate/pad (hard or soft) and concealable carrier. [Also a] tactical vest, undergarment (white), identification patches, accessories (6 pouches), body armor carry bag and professional measurements,” Breitbart reported.
The solicitation also reads that “all responsible and/or interested sources may submit their company name, point of contact and telephone number,” the media outlet reported. And “timely” respondents “shall be considered by the agency for contact,” Breitbart said.
Add it to the list of federal agencies making requests for guns and ammunition in recent months.
Earlier this year, the U.S. Postal Service requested the go-ahead to buy “assorted small arms ammunition,” via a website posting. A year ago, the Social Security Administration put in a request for 174,000 rounds of what that agency described as “.357 Sig 125 grain bonded jacketed hollow-point” bullets.
And the Department of Homeland Security raised eyebrows with its recent request for 450 million rounds — at about the same time the FBI asked for 100 million hollow-point rounds.
On top of that, the Department of Agriculture itself sought 320,000 rounds within the last year or so.
Copyright © 2019 The Washington Times, LLC. Click here for reprint permission.Get the biggest daily stories by email Subscribe Thank you for subscribing We have more newsletters Show me See our privacy notice Could not subscribe, try again later Invalid Email
A homeless drop in centre has been temporarily closed following concerns over safety.
Drug use and aggressive behaviour on site have caused problems for staff and volunteers, the M.E.N understands.
The evening service has now been suspended while charity bosses work to ensure the safety of everyone at the city centre site.
New training will be carried out so that those working with some of the most vulnerable are best equipped to help them.
The Oldham Street service, which is run jointly by charities Coffee 4 Craig and Centrepoint, is expected to reopen in December.
One volunteer said it is feared that needy people have been ‘put off’ from attending the specialist service because of drug dealers ‘taking advantage’ of the vulnerable and acting aggressively on site.
Problems have occurred in the entrance, reception and dining area of the building, they said.
Another volunteer added: “The temporary closure is a short term loss for a long term gain.”
A Centrepoint spokesperson said the charity is not considering hiring security staff at this stage. They said the service will continue on a ‘drop-in’ basis when it reopens and those with substance abuse issues will be signposted to the best possible services to help them.
They added: “The instance of drug usage and dealing did not take place on-site but was outside of the building, not on our site and thus not within our control. Staff moved people away from the front of the building and the police were informed.”
In a joint statement Coffee 4 Craig and Centrepoint said the drop-in service, which is funded by Manchester City Council, has seen a high volume of demand, ‘particularly from people with complex needs’.
They said: “Centrepoint and Coffee4Craig have decided to review the service to make sure all clients receive the support that they need and that all staff and volunteers are able to work in a safe environment.
“In order to do this effectively, we have decided to temporarily suspend the service, with the aim of re-opening by the end of November. Both organisations remain committed to supporting homeless people in Manchester and are confident that the review will improve support for service users, volunteers and staff.”
The seven day a week service for homeless people of all ages opened at Centrepoint’s site at 52 Oldham Street in September. It is intended to help the most vulnerable in society by providing them with a hot meal as well as shower, washing and recreation facilities.Gross margins were 37.9 percent during the quarter, slightly below the 38 percent expected by a StreetAccount consensus estimate — meaning Apple is selling products that are more expensive to make.
This all comes as Apple moves within arm's reach of a trillion-dollar valuation, securing its place as the most valuable public company in the world. Apple shares have risen about 50 percent over the past year, and Apple's market capitalization approached $900 billion after hours on Thursday.
Though the iPhone franchise is somewhat in limbo, there are other factors afoot for Apple. For one, Apple is likely the top beneficiary of U.S. technology companies when it comes to a new Republican tax proposal on overseas cash.
Apple expects a tax rate of 25.5 percent in the coming quarter, compared with the 26 percent it forecast a year ago.
Apple also has a blossoming service business. That division includes content, AppleCare, and Apple Pay, but the App Store is the "jewel" of the services segment, Pacific Crest analyst Andy Hargreaves wrote earlier this year.
Services revenue hit $8.5 billion during the fourth fiscal quarter, an all-time high, and Cook said the company is well on its way to a goal, set in January, to double 2016's services revenue of $24 billion by 2020. Cook said it hit $30 billion in the 2017 fiscal year.
Apple has invested heavily in greater China— historically its third-largest market behind the Americas and Europe — and has a nascent customer base in India.
Sales in China hit $9.8 billion, up 12 percent from a year ago, returning the segment to growth after an extended slump. IPads, particularly, are popular in these regions, and sales grew 39 percent year-over-year in India, Luca Maestri, Apple's chief financial officer, said on a conference call.
The company also showed off other new products in the back half of this year, amid back-to-school shopping season: the Apple Watch Series 3 with a cellular connection, its thinnest and lightest MacBook yet, and the Apple TV 4K. The HomePod speaker is also forthcoming.
The computer market may be shrinking, but Apple is still hitting record sales for its iconic computers: Mac revenue was $7.17 billion, up 25 percent from a year ago, and reached record revenue for the 2017 fiscal year, Maestri said. Other products revenue hit $3.23 billion, up 36 percent from a year ago.
Apple's board also declared a cash dividend of 63 cents per share on Thursday.
Correction: This version corrects the data in the Apple revenue graphic.
Correction: An earlier version of this story said that Apple's market cap hit $900 billion. The company issued a release Friday morning saying it reduced its outstanding shares, so it did not reach $900 billion in valuation.For decades at Maroubra beach in Sydney
there has sat looking out across the foreshore a concrete block. Over the years the tide has washed sand in and out, children have climbed and jumped from it, teenagers have leaned against it and young lovers have lain back for their first kiss.
But, in the middle of a warm December night, during what has been described as a 6-hour escapade involving two artists and a third "police look out" the concrete block was transformed.
Now, sitting in its place is a giant Rubik's Cube. A small piece of geek culture has found its way to the foreshore amid the cool kids with their surfboards, bleached hair and sun tans.
At night...
Note: This post is dedicated to Graham Parkerfor his 26 years of persistence.Saudi Arabia Population 2019
33,862,941
Saudi Arabia, officially known as the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, is the second largest Arab state (the first is Algeria) and comprises the majority of the Arabian Peninsula. Jordan and Iraq are on its north border; Kuwait on its northeast; Bahrain, Qatar and United Arab Emirates to the east; Yemen to its south; Oman to its southeast; and the Persian Gulf and the Red Sea to its east. The population of the country is estimated to be around 34.14 million in 2019.
This country is also reported to have between 3 and 5 million illegal immigrants residing within its borders at any given time. Saudi Arabia is the birthplace of the religion of Islam, which is one of the largest religions in the world. It is also sometimes referred to as “The Land of Two Holy Mosques.” This is because of the two holiest mosques in Islam, the Masjid-e-Nabwi in Medina and the Masjid-al-Haram in Mecca. These features ensure that country additionally receives a large annual number of visiting foreigners who are Muslims every year for the Islamic practices of Haj and Umrah, which are among the five pillars of Islam and must be conducted at least once in a lifetime.
Population Density in Saudi Arabia
The surface area in Saudi Arabia comes to a total of 829,999.94 square miles, or 2,149,690 square kilometers. In combination with the total population within the country, this comes to an approximate population density of 15.61 individuals per square kilometer, or approximately 6 people per square mile.
Exports and Revenue in Saudi Arabia
Saudi Arabia Growth
According to the census held in 2012, the population of the country was estimated to be 29,195,895 - the 43rd largest in the world. But the recent estimates for 2016 indicate the total population has grown to over 31 million. Riyadh, which is the capital of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and also the largest city in the kingdom, is home to over 7 million people. This accounts for over 22% of the population of the whole country.
The population of Saudi Arabia has a growth rate of 1.49%, which is the latest 2014 estimate. This is the 80th highest growth rate of the entire world. The country’s population includes approximately 9 million non-nationals who live in the country legally for work or other purposes. The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia does not provide residency to any foreigners. They are only given visas for their stay in the country but then have to leave when the visa expires if it is not renewed.
Saudi Arabia Religious Notes
Although the government does not hold any census on religion, there is evidence that the country is 100% Muslim. There have been estimates which indicate that the majority are of the Sunni branch of Islam, at 85-90%. The other major Islam group is the Shiites, who comprise the remaining 10-15% of the community. The World Factbook gives similar estimated statistics (Muslim (official; citizens are 85-90% Sunni and 10-15% Shia), other (includes Eastern Orthodox, Protestant, Roman Catholic, Jewish, Hindu, Buddhist, and Sikh)), and also notes that "...most forms of public religious expression inconsistent with the government-sanctioned interpretation of Sunni Islam are restricted; non-Muslims are not allowed to have Saudi citizenship and non-Muslim places of worship are not permitted (2013)."
Population through the Years
The population has been rising significantly over the years. According to a census held many years ago, the population was about 3,121,000. It then underwent a 29.5% increase and jumped up to 4,041,000 in 1960. This growth rate then increased greatly during the next 10 years. By 1980, the population had become 9,801,000 (an increase of 69.8%) and had grown to 16,139,000 in 1990 (a 64.7% increase). At this point, the government realized how drastically their country was becoming overcrowded and started implementing laws to control population growth. As a result, the population only grew by 24.2% in the next decade, with the total number counted at 20,045,000 in 2000. This rate further decreased by 6.4%, with the total population adding up to 29,195,895.
Life Expectancy and Birth Rates
The birth rate in Saudi Arabia is 18.51 births per 1000 people, and the total fertility rate is 2.17 children born per woman. This was an estimate calculated through the results of the census held in 2012. The number of births and deaths per year has been increasing over the past years. Current figures indicate 569,000 births per year and 98,000 deaths per year.
The current median age in Saudi Arabia is 27.5 years of age with a full life expectancy of 75.5 years of age. This is likely influenced by the high performance of improved drinking water and sanitation facility access in the country, as well as a 4.7% GDP expenditure on the health care sector. This has given the country the physician density of 2.57 physicians per 1,000 Saudi Arabian individuals and 2.7 beds available per 1,000 residents.
Demographics
The population is divided among different age groups. The 0-14 age group contains the median amount of the population, comprising 32.4% of the total. The middle age group of 15-64 makes up the greatest share of the total population - about 64.8%. The 65+ age group comprises 2.8% of the total population.
The sex ratio at the time of birth is 1.05 males per female. For the under-15 age group, this ratio is 1.05 males per female; for the 15-64 age group, it is 1.03 males per female; and for the 65+ age group, it is 1.03 males per female. For the total population, the mean ratio is 1.21 males per female.
The only language officially recognized here is Arabic.
Components of Population Change One birth every 51 seconds One death every 4 minutes One net migrant every 5 minutes Net gain of one person every 52 seconds
Source: By B.alotaby [CC BY-SA 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)], from Wikimedia CommonsIn its race against rapidly aging Europe and East Asia, America’s relatively vibrant nurseries have provided some welcome demographic dynamism. Yet, in recent years, notably since the Great Recession and the weak recovery that followed, America’s birthrate has continued to drop, and is now at a record low.
Nowhere is this decline more marked than here in California. Once a state known for rapid population growth, and above-average fecundity, the state’s birthrate is also at a historic low. The results are particularly dismal in coastal Southern California. Los Angeles’ population of people under 17 already has dropped a precipitous 13.6 percent, with drops even among Latinos and Asians, while Orange County has fallen by 6 percent since 2000. The national growth, in contrast, was up 2.2 percent. Despite claims that people leaving California are old and poor, the two most recent years of data from the IRS show larger net losses from people in the 35 to 54 age group. Net out-migration is also larger among those making between $100,000 and $200,000 annually. This is your basic child-bearing middle class.
Why are we eating our seed corn?
Why is this shift to an increasingly child-free population occurring more |
in a kitchen accident with a deep-fryer. Jacobs also sometimes performs as other characters including MC Blowfish, Icey-Michael Boston, The Computer Woman, ButtaFly, and Peanut Hakeem.
Television and film work [ edit ]
Shock G's TV appearances include Showtime at the Apollo in 1992, several The Arsenio Hall Show performances between 1990 and 1994, and several live MTV performances, including MTV Spring Break 1990 in Daytona Beach, Yo MTV Raps (performing live with Ed Lover and Doctor Dré) in 1991, Club MTV Live (with Downtown Julie Brown) in 1992, and MTV Jams in 1994. Most of these consisted of music performances with either Digital Underground or 2Pac, however, on an episode of the 1991 sitcom Drexell's Class Jacobs played a small acting role as a furnace repairman. Within the show's story, the title character, Otis Drexell, insists that the furnace repairman looks exactly like Humpty Hump, but both himself and his coworker (Jason Priestley), have never heard of any such hip-hop artist, especially not one with such a ridiculous name. The episode ends with a live performance of Digital Underground's "No Nose Job" on a cruise ship full of Sports Illustrated swimsuit models, which is presented as a scene from one of Mr. Drexell's dreams.[7]
With his Digital Underground band members, Jacobs appeared in the Dan Aykroyd directed comedy Nothing but Trouble appearing as both Shock-G and Humpty Hump. The group makes a cameo music performance, as well as play a small character role in the film as themselves. Since then, Jacobs has appeared in a handful of music documentaries, including Thug Angel: Life of an Outlaw (2000) about Tupac Shakur, and Parliament Funkadelic: One Nation Under a Groove (1996) about George Clinton & P-Funk, both of which received heavy TV rotation, and both of which relied heavily on Jacobs' commentary.
On June 24, 2011, Shock G was featured on an episode of the podcast "You Had To Be There" with comedians Nikki Glaser and Sara Schaefer.
Albums [ edit ]
Fear of a Mixed Planet (2004 33rd Street Records)
(2004 33rd Street Records) Fear of a Mixed Planet; Bonus Edition (2008 Jake Records)
(2008 Jake Records) with Digital Underground: Main article: Digital Underground § Albums
Production, solo work, and miscellaneous [ edit ]
In addition to his work with Digital Underground, Shock G has found moderate success as a solo artist and music producer. In 1993, Shock G produced Tupac Shakur's breakthrough platinum single "I Get Around" as well as guest starred on the single and music video, and went on to produce Tupac's "So Many Tears" from his multi-platinum 1995 album Me Against the World. Tupac's first published work was while still a member of Digital Underground when he appeared on the 1991 song and video "Same Song", which also appeared in the Chevy Chase, Dan Aykroyd and Demi Moore film Nothing but Trouble. Shock co-produced Tupac's debut album 2Pacalypse Now. Shock G appeared as a producer and guest artist on fellow Oakland-based rap group The Luniz platinum debut release Operation Stackola in 1995, also appearing as a guest emcee in the "I Got 5 on It" Bay Ballers Remix and video.
In 1996 the Wayans brothers' film Don't Be a Menace to South Central While Drinking Your Juice in the Hood featured the Shock-G song "We Got More". The song, which featured Oakland rappers Luniz was used for three different scenes in the film, and is featured in two different places on the soundtrack, making it the only song to appear twice on one soundtrack. In 1998, Prince included the Shock G produced "Love Sign" on his triple-CD Crystal Ball album. Shock G has toured and performed on stage with George Clinton and P-Funk including a guest performance with Clinton at Woodstock 1999.[8]
In 2003, Shock G produced the single "Risky Business" for Los Angeles underground artist Murs, and also appeared in the video, as himself and as Humpty Hump. Murs performed this song live with Shock G at the Paid Dues festival, and also featured him as his stage DJ/music conductor on a 2-month extensive Definitive Jux label U.S. and Canada tour.[9] On January 20, 2009, Shock G's single "Cherry Flava'd Email" was renamed and released as a special edition called "Cherry Flava'd Election" to commemorate the inauguration of President Barack Obama.[10]
Shock G has worked, and finished a voice over for his character in the 2017 Tupac Shakur biopic All Eyez on Me.
Discography [ edit ]
Studio albums [ edit ]
Fear of a Mixed Planet (2004)
Production discography [ edit ]
year, title, artist, (description)
1988, Your Life's a Cartoon, Digital Underground, (song)
,, (song) 1989, Underwater Rimes, Digital Underground, (song)
,, (song) 1989, Doowutchyalike, Digital Underground, (song)
,, (song) 1990, Sex Packets, Digital Underground, (album)
,, (album) 1990, Don't Funk wid the Mo (remix), Monie Love, (song)
(remix),, (song) 1990, What I Won't Do for Love, 2Pac, Schmoovy-Schmoov, (song)
,, (song) 1990, What I Won't Do for Love (Shock-G Remix), 2Pac, Digital Underground, (song)
,, (song) 1991, This Is an EP Release, Digital Underground, (EP)
,, (EP) 1991, Sons of the P, Digital Underground, (album)
,, (album) 1991, Rockin to the PM, Raw Fusion, (song)
,, (song) 1991, Rebel of the Underground, 2Pac, (song)
,, (song) 1991, Words of Wisdom, 2Pac, (song)
,, (song) 1991, Revenge of the Lunatic, 2Pac, Money-B, (song)
,, (song) 1991, Tellin' Time (Mike's Rap), Dr. Dre, Michael Concepcion, (song)
,, (song) 1993, The Body Hat Syndrome, Digital Underground, (album)
,, (album) 1993, I Get Around, 2Pac, Digital Underground, (song)
,, (song) 1993, Get Away (remix), Bobby Brown, (song)
,, (song) 1993, Top of the World, Kenya Gruv, (song, co-producer)
,, (song, co-producer) 1994, Dirty Drawls, Raw Fusion, (song)
,, (song) 1994, Do Your Homework, Raw Fusion, (song)
,, (song) 1995, Fuck the World, 2Pac, Shock-G, (song)
,, (song) 1995, So Many Tears, 2Pac, (song)
,, (song) 1995, Broke Hos, Luniz, (song)
,, (song) 1995, 5150, Luniz, (song)
,, (song) 1995, No Brothas Allowed, No Face, (song)
,, (song) 1995, Smashin' Fruit, No Face, (song)
,, (song) 1995, Nothing Has Changed, No Face feat. Digital Underground, (song)
,, (song) 1996, We Got More, Shock-G feat Luniz, (song)
,, (song) 1996, Future Rhythm, Digital Underground, (album)
,, (album) 1995, Don't Ring My Bell, Luniz, (song)
,, (song) 1996, People Over the Stairs, Shock-G, (song)
,, (song) 1996, Gloomy Sunday, Mystic, (song)
,, (song) 1997, True Playas, Whoridas, (song)
,, (song) 1997, Come N' Bounce, Shay, (song)
,, (song) 1997, Cause I Had To, 2Pac & P-90, (song)
,, (song) 1998, Broad Minded, Saafir, (song)
,, (song) 1998, Sendin' U a Signal, Saafir, (song)
,, (song) 1998, Love Sign, Prince, (song)
,, (song) 1998, Who Got the Gravy, Digital Underground (album)
, (album) 1999, Crawl Before You Ball, Saafir, (song)
,, (song) 1999, Liquid Ho Magnet, Saafir, (song)
,, (song) 1999, Running Man, Saafir, (song)
,, (song) 1999, Lost Files, Digital Underground (album)
, (album) 2000, Do What Ya Want, Rhythm & Green, (song)
,, (song) 2000, Let the Beat Breathe, Esinchill, (song)
,, (song) 2001, Chassy, Mac Mall, (song)
,, (song) 2001, Intro, Mystic, (album intro)
,, (album intro) 2002, Risky Business, Murs, (song)
,, (song) 2004, Smilin' Faces, KRS-One (song)
, (song) 2004, Fear of a Mixed Planet, Shock-G, (album)
Guest appearances [ edit ]
1990, We're All in the Same Gang, Westcoast Allstars, (song & video)
,, (song & video) 1990, Time for Peace, Davey-D feat D.U., Paris, Tech & Sway, (song)
,, (song) 1991, Trapped, 2Pac, (song & video)
,, (song & video) 1991, Throw Your Hands in the Air, Raw Fusion, (video)
,, (video) 1991, Funkintoyoear, Raw Fusion, (song)
,, (song) 1992, Money, Gold Money, (song & video)
,, (song & video) 1993, I Get Around, 2Pac feat. Digital Underground, (song & video)
,, (song & video) 1993, Rhythm & Rhyme, George Clinton, (song)
,, (song) 1993, Paint the White House Black, George Clinton, Ice Cube, Kam, Yo-Yo, Dr. Dre, Public Enemy, Pupa Curly, (song & video)
,, (song & video) 1994, Freaky Note, Raw Fusion, (song & video)
,, (song & video) 1995, I Got 5 on it (remix), Luniz, (song & video)
(remix),, (song & video) 1995, Funk Session, Too Short, (song)
,, (song) 1995, So Many Tears,'2Pac, (song)
, ', (song) 1995, Fuck the World, 2Pac, (song)
,, (song) 1996, Knee Deep (Midnight Mix), George Clinton, (song)
,, (song) 1999, Glayz Donutt Face, C-Funk, (song)
,, (song) 1999, Miss Bartender, Money-B, (song)
,, (song) 1999, Do What You Want to Do, Vitamin C, (song)
,, (song) 2000, No DNA, Clee & Drank-a-Lot, (song)
,, (song) 2002, Wuz Crackulatin', 2wice, (song)
, (song) 2002, Risky Business, Murs, (song & video)
,, (song & video) 2003, Way of Life, Stylophonic, (song)
,, (song) 2004, Hurry Up Run, Shock-G, (song)
,, (song) 2004, Snake and the Apple, Stucky, (song)
,, (song) 2004, At the Next Show, Sir Mix-a-lot, (song)
,, (song) 2005, Career Finders, Perceptionists, (song)
,, (song) 2005, Say What You Say, Soma Rasa, (song)
,, (song) 2005, And 2morrow, various artists, (song)
,, (song) 2005, California Girls Dipped in Chocolate, Slapbak, (song)
,, (song) 2005, Freaky Pumps, Fat Lip, (song)
,, (song) 2005, City to City, Straw, (song)
,, (song) 2005, Love Letters, 2Pac, Rappin' 4-Tay, Assassin, (song)
,, (song) 2006, The Wizard, Mr. Rakafela, (song)
,, (song) 2006, If You're True, InershA, (song)
,, (song) 2006, Pain and Misery (remix), InershA, (song)
, (song) 2006, Shock-G Interlude, 2Pac (song)
, (song) 2007, Shock-G's Outro/Hidden Track, Ássassin, Ray Luv, 2Pac
, 2007, California Dreamin, San Quinn, Assassin, (song)
,, (song) 2007, Plainfield, Bernie Worrell, (song)
,, (song) 2007, Smack Dat Ass, Ditch, (song)
,, (song) 2008, "..Cuz a D.U. Party Don't Stop!", Digital Underground, (album)
,, (album) 2008, Crazy, Maddie Lauer, (song & video)
,, (song & video) 2008, Light of Love feat. Lady Alma, Yameen (song, as keyboardist)
, (song, as keyboardist) 2009, Cherry Flava'd Election, Shock G, (song)
,, (song) 2010, The Greenlight EP, Digital Underground, (album)
,, (album) 2015, The Mini, Angelo Knox (song)
Digital Underground videos [ edit ]
"Doowutchyalike" (1989)
"The Humpty Dance" (1989)
"Doowutchyalike" (video remix) (1990)
"Same Song" (1991)
"Kiss You Back" (1991)
"No Nose Job" (1992)
"Return of the Crazy One" (1993)
"Wussup Wit the Luv" (1994)
"Oregano Flow" (1996)
"Walk Real Kool" (1996)
"Wind Me Up" (1998)
Featured guest video appearances [ edit ]
"We're All in the Same Gang" (1990) Westcoast All-Stars
"Throw Your Hands in the Air" (1991) Raw Fusion
"Trapped" (1991) 2Pac
"Money" (1992) Gold Money
"Close the Crackhouse" (1992) X-Clan
"I Get Around" (1993) 2Pac featuring Digital Underground
"No Brothas Allowed" (1994) No Face
"I Got 5 on it" (1995) Luniz
"Temptations" (1995) 2Pac
"Risky Business" (2003) Murs
"Hit the Streets" (2003) Element
"City to City" (2005) Straw the Vegas Don
"Crazy" (2008) Maddie Lauer
DVDs [ edit ]
Thug Angel: The Life of an Outlaw (2000)
(2000) Tupac: Resurrection (2003)
(2003) Digital Underground: Raw and Uncut (2004)
(2004) Parliament/Funkadelic; One Nation Under a Groove (2005)Since the days of the infamous Briar Patch Incident, the Son'a have earned the reputation as being outcasts of the Alpha Quadrant. Despite this reputation, there's no denying that the Son'a remain at the forefront of medical technology, as well as being in possession of incredibly powerful sensor and energy absorption knowledge. Using these advancements on their vessels makes them formidable foes, capable of outmaneuvering and debilitating most of their enemies. Research of the technology they use has allowed the Alliance to make significant advances in technology, the results of which are contained within.
Season 13.5 brings captains back to the Briar Patch, fighting – among other foes – the Son’a, made infamous by Star Trek: Insurrection. However, this time around, the Alliance has had close to a half-century to study the technologies and tactics that the Son’a use, to learn both how best to counter their insidious tactics and which of the best of their own tricks can be used against them. The fruits of this labor can be obtained from within the Son’a lock box.
Characters may find themselves fortunate enough to win the Son'a Command Science Vessel [T6]. Son'a Command Science Vessels represent the bulk of their fleet. In combat, these ships often find a balance between debilitating their foes and supporting their fellow combat vessels.
Son'a Command Science Vessels come equipped with the Console - Universal - Deep Analytics Sensor Package. When activated, it emanates a field 3km in every direction, which lasts a moderate duration. All allies within this field, including yourself, are granted increased Shield Penetration and Armor Penetration as long as they remain within the field. Meanwhile, all foes within the field will have one beneficial effect removed every second (starting with the longest remaining duration). These enemies will also suffer penalties to ability recharge times.
This console also provides a passive boost to Maximum Auxiliary Subsystem Power, Control Expertise, and Shield Hardness. It may be equipped in any console slot on any Son'a starship. You may only have one of these consoles equipped at a time.
Completing the Starship Mastery Path on the Son'a Command Science Vessel [T6] grants captains access to the following Starship Trait:
Kick Them While They're Down Activating any foe-targeted Control Bridge Officer Ability on an enemy that is affected by a Control ability will grant you an increase to Critical Chance for a moderate period of time. This effect can stack several times.
The release of the Son’a Lock Box also brings the Son'a Intel Battlecruiser [T6] to the Lobi Store in Star Trek Online. These powerful vessels are the vanguard of the Son'a fleet, capable of withstanding heavy fire while simultaneously undermining their foes' ability to put up a strong fight - all without sacrificing offensive firepower.
Son'a Intel Battlecruisers come equipped with the Console - Universal - Subspace Barrier Agitator. Building from their knowledge of dangerous subspace weaponry, the Son'a developed this specialized piece of deflector technology capable of analyzing localized space near an enemy to find weak points in the barrier between normal space and subspace. Then, using an automated quantum drill, these weak points are violently torn open to create volatile anomalies that will seek out enemies and damage them while draining their subsystem energy.
This console also provides a passive boost to Max Shield Subsystem Power, Drain Expertise and Shield Capacity.
This console may be equipped in any console slot, on any Son'a starship. You may only have one of these consoles equipped at a time.
Completing the Starship Mastery path for the Son'a Intel Battlecruiser [T6] grants captains access to the following Starship Trait:
Subspatial Warheads Damage caused by your High Yield Torpedoes and Transport Warheads will cause a Subspace Tear to form near the damaged target. This anomaly will chase down the nearest foe, causing physical damage and draining engine subsystem power to any enemies it encounters.
(** Complete stats and additional information on all of the listed Starships will be contained in a separate Developer Blog.)
In addition to the ships listed above, the Son’a Lock Box also contains the Console - Universal - Sensor Burnout. This power console passively strengthens your drain abilities and increases your chance to critically hit foes, and, in addition, comes with a powerful active ability that burns out the sensors of foes in front of you.
But there’s more to the Son’a Lock Box than just ships and their associated equipment! Not all of the Ba'ku embraced their technology-free lifestyle. Some chose to join alliance worlds and lend their skills. These brave Ba’ku are available from the Ba'ku Duty Officer Cadre, which features a number of popular Duty Officer Roster Active Powers.
Players may also obtain a new set of Genetic Resequencers in order to unlock access to two new Ground Traits and two new Space Traits.
Ground:
Invigorating Radiation After taking Radiation Damage, you heal over time and remove all debuffs.
Introspection While you remain stationary, you gain an increase to outgoing damage and regeneration rate, at the cost of resistance rating.
Space:
Repair Crews While in combat, you gain a stacking hull resistance and regeneration boost.
Reconstructive Radiation After taking Radiation Damage, you heal over time and remove all debuffs.
The Alliance’s best have also been experimenting with and adapting the Son’a Technology and the technology used against the Son’a for more varied uses, and some of the fruit of that labor is new Kit Modules:
Transport Inhibitor While active, the Transport Inhibitor Field will grant dodge chance and teleport immunity to all allies in range, and prevent foes from beaming in fabrications or allies to assist them.
Stasis Drone Summons a drone that will place enemies in stasis fields and attack others with radiation damage.
Isolation Field Generator Deploys a fabrication that stealths all nearby allies while they remain out of combat. Entering combat will give you a short duration damage bonus, but will cancel the stealth.
Rounding out the offerings of new equipment will be new unique Space and Ground Weaponry. When opened, each Isolytic Plasma Weapons Pack will offer the player a choice between Space Beam Weapons, Space Cannon Weapons, or Ground Weapons. Isolytic Plasma Weaponry has a chance to deal plasma damage to the target and pull enemies towards the target hit.
The Lobi Store also has a handful of new entries. The Advanced Isolytic Plasma Dual Beam Bank, Advanced Isolytic Plasma Cannon, Advanced Isolytic Tricobalt Torpedo Launcher, and Console – Universal – Weapon System Enhancer are all a part of the Sensor Modifications Set.
The Advanced Isolytic Weapons, in addition to their normal effects, have additional Armor Penetration every time they critically hit, and have a high amount of innate critical chance. Combining two pieces of this set will grant an increase to Tricobalt Projectile Damage and Plasma Directed Energy Weapon Damage, and combining 3 pieces of this set will grant boosts to your Kinetic Damage Resistance Rating, Weapon Specialization, and Hull Penetration.
For those captains more minded towards fashion, the Son'a Outfit is available to captains of all factions, and will allow you to have a look similar to that that the Son’a had in Star Trek: Insurrection.
For those captains who are looking for more tools to fight the threats out there, the Son’a Lock Box and the new offerings appearing on the Lobi Crystal Store will be coming to PC in the near future.
John “CrypticSpartan” Leavens
Systems Designer
Star Trek OnlineBroadway will shut down Jan. 26 due to the blizzard.
The show won’t go on Jan. 26 on Broadway as all performances have been canceled due to the blizzard.
Only three Broadway productions had previously scheduled performances on Monday evening: “Chicago,” “Mamma Mia!” and “The Phantom of the Opera.”
Ticketholders should contact their point of purchase for information about exchanges.
It is unclear whether similar cancellations will occur on Tuesday, Jan. 27. An official announcement will be made by the Broadway League Tuesday morning.
Disney Theatrical Productions aren’t taking any chances, though. Performances of “Aladdin” and “The Lion King” have already been canceled for Jan. 27. Disney is offering complimentary ticket exchanges for performances, information of which can be found at aladdinthemusical.com/weather and lionking.com/weather, respectively.
Off Broadway productions and nightlife venues, such as Birdland Jazz Club, have also canceled performances for Jan. 26. Broadway's supper club 54 Below has also canceled performances for Jan. 27.Bob McKenzie TSN Hockey Insider Follow|Archive
Summit, anyone?
It's an interesting time for Canada on the international hockey front.
The World Under-17 Challenge just wrapped up Saturday in Sarnia, Ont., with three balanced Team Canada(s) (White, Red and Black) finishing fifth, sixth and seventh, respectively, in the eight-team tournament. Russia beat Team USA for gold; Sweden topped Finland for bronze.
Tonight, in Saskatoon, the Canadian Hockey League's six-game Subway Super Series against a barnstorming Russian all-star team commences, with additional stops in Brandon, Peterborough, Kingston, Bathurst and Rimouski this week and next. Hockey Canada will use the six games involving Canadian all-stars from the Western, Ontario and Quebec Leagues as critical evaluation to determine which players will be invited to mid-December's final national team camp for the 2015 World Junior Championship, where Canada hopes to end a five-year WJC gold-medal drought and win a medal of any colour for the first time in three years.
Now, honestly, a disappointing if not embarrassing result at one entry-level international tourney (U-17), revamped as it was to give Canada a better chance to do well, and a five-year WJC drought that was preceded by a five-year WJC gold-medal bonanza isn't sufficiently disastrous to warrant getting our country's greatest hockey minds together in a formal setting in one room to oversee an overhaul of the Canadian development model.
So let's try to maintain some perspective here.
But that isn't to say we shouldn't, at the very least, maybe just over a cup of coffee, pause for some reasonable discussion, discourse and introspection on how Canadians are going about their hockey business these days.
When it comes to hockey, we have always been a nation of extremes. We're the best; it's our game. Or, after a particularly poor performance or losing streak, we suck; our game is broken.
If you're part of the former camp, you're still dining out on back-to-back gold medals at the 2010 and 2014 Winter Olympics. All is well with our game and pity the fool who suggests otherwise.
If you're a member of the latter group, you take last week's poor World U-17 Challenge results (Team Canada Black, with three of Canada's better 1998-born players, needed overtime to beat Slovakia to avoid finishing in last place), combine that disappointment with the five-year WJC gold-medal drought that includes the unprecedented (since the Program of Excellence was founded in 1982) no medal at all in back-to-back years, and you have the makings of total system failure.
Here's the thing, though.
I'm not even convinced winning international tournaments should be the primary measuring stick for any country's development system. Certainly, you can't ignore results. There's a reason they keep score. But tournament play being what it is, where the margins between success and failure are so fine, there's got to be so much more to it than that.
At the U-17, for example, if Team Canada Black had beaten Team Canada White in overtime of their round-robin game, instead of the reverse happening (White beat Black 5-4), it would have virtually guaranteed one Canadian team in each of the semi-finals. That would have meant, at the very least, one medal and two top-four finishes. The optics wouldn't have been nearly as poor as the 5th, 6th and 7th place finishes.
Also, if we're going to make broad assumptions on the strength, or weakness, of one tournament and hold Team Canada(s) accountable for their performances, should we not delve a little deeper, perhaps make some allowance, for example, for Team Canada White, which was decimated by injuries and lost their top two defencemen and second-line centre before the tourney even began?
To take it a step a further, what if it Patrick Kane has scored the golden goal in Vancouver instead of Sidney Crosby, would it really have said anything different – better or worse -- about how we develop Canadian hockey players?
Okay, so if international tournament results shouldn't be the primary determining factor in measuring relative strengths and weaknesses of development systems, what should it be then?
How about putting individual talent into the NHL? Getting players drafted first overall or in the first round and going on to have long and successful NHL careers?
That's a good one. The quantity and quality of hockey players a country puts at the pinnacle of the hockey pyramid can be an outstanding metric. So as long as Canada continues to produce elite talent as plentiful, smart, speedy and skilled as Connor McDavid, Aaron Ekblad, Nate MacKinnon, Jonathan Drouin, Taylor Hall, Tyler Seguin, John Tavares, Steven Stamkos, Drew Doughty, Jonathan Toews and Sidney Crosby, to name only a few, the Canadian game, the Canadian system, is just fine, isn't it?
I thought about that a lot as I watched Team Canada White, Red and Black grind the gears at the U-17. I thought about how Russia, Team USA, Sweden and Finland all got better team results in Sarnia and I thought, or at least wondered, how many of the individual Americans, Russians, Swedes and Finns from those U-17 teams will be chosen ahead of many of the 1998-born Canadians in the 2016 NHL draft?
There'll be some, of that there is no doubt. Team USA's Max Jones has NHL power forward written all over his game and Russia's Dmitri Sokolov is a dynamic offensive presence. There may be some others.
But it also occurred to me that the "results" of this U-17 tournament may well turn out to be at odds with how the NHL evaluates the 1998-born Canadian talent at the 2016 draft in Buffalo. In other words, as collective as the Canadian failure was in Sarnia, what does it say about the Canadian development system if on draft day the individual Canadian players come out on top in the eyes of the NHL? I mean, Connor McDavid's Team Ontario finished sixth in the 2013 U-17 tourney.
Of course, there's more to winning medals in international tournaments than just developing speedy and skillful hockey players. Getting them to come together as a team quickly and when it matters most is an art form of sorts that often means as much to the final outcome as does the talent of the individual players.
Canada clearly struggled on that front in Sarnia. Perhaps, to a point, understandably so. Team Canada White, Red and Black were up against, for the most part, true national teams of the U.S., Russia, Sweden and Finland.
The Americans play as a real team in the USHL, train and live together in Ann Arbor, Mich. The European teams come together more frequently and for longer periods than the respective Canadian teams, who were assembled after a 108-player, 10-day evaluation camp last summer in Calgary. Most naturally assumed going from the old U-17 format of five regional teams to three balanced, national teams would make for much stronger squads, but what the three Team Canada(s) gained in depth of talent they perhaps lost in cohesion and/or identity.
Besides, if the goal were to win and only win hockey games and tournaments, Hockey Canada would have done the obvious: stack one true national A+ team with the best 22 players, giving itself the best possible chance of beating very good national teams from the U.S. and Europe, and then put together weaker Team Canada(s), B and C, with the remaining 44 players.
Last Friday night, after all three Team Canada(s) lost their quarter-final games, the mood was understandably morose. Hockey Canada vice president of hockey operations and national teams Scott Salmond gathered together all the Canadian coaching and support staffs that night and told them the same thing he would tell anyone who asked the next day:
"If we had 10 objectives going into this tournament, we really feel as though we successfully checked off nine of the 10 boxes. We exposed players and coaches to a whole new program, instituted a lot of different elements that we've never done before, important things we think are going to make us ultimately more successful with this age group in the future at the World Junior U-20 level. The one box we weren't able to check off here was winning and as important as it is for Canadians to win in international hockey, if that were the only goal here, we would have gone about it in a different way. As Canadians, we don't like losing – believe me, I understand that -- but sometimes, in the interest of development, at this age in particular, there may be things more important than winning."
Fair enough. But, for what it's worth, if you're going to make the World Under-17 Challenge a nationally televised event – and it was; the semi-finals and medal games were broadcast live on TSN – it almost behooves you to have one true national team, because Canadian hockey fans, bless them, aren't going to watch USA-Sweden and Russia-Finland in the semi-finals and be happy about it, to say nothing of a USA-Russia gold-medal game.
TV and marketing concerns, as well sparing the battered Canadian international hockey psyche, may not be good enough reasons to eschew "development" at the U-17 for merely a better chance to win. Or maybe it is. That is what Hockey Canada's post-tournament de-brief will be for. We'll see what form this tourney takes a year from now.
So given all of that, in the meantime, can we draw any conclusions from the World U-17 Challenge as it relates to the state of Canada's game, the development of young Canadian hockey players?
Well, keeping in mind we're talking about mercurial 16-year-olds, which is to suggest you could play the tourney all over again next week with wildly divergent results, I'm not sure anyone could make any sweeping pronouncements with any degree of absolute validity. I know I couldn't, especially since I only saw a handful of games (Team Canada White beating Team Canada Black 5-4 in overtime; Team USA absolutely demolishing Team Canada Red 7-3; Team USA having to work a little harder but still fully in control to beat Team Canada Black 4-1 in a quarter-final; Russia breaking open a 1-1 third period tie to whip Team Canada Red 4-1; as well as Team USA's convincing 4-1 semi-final win over Sweden and Russia demolishing Finland 6-1 in the other semi).
But I can tell you what I saw, and what I felt, small sample size be damned.
For the most part, man for man, the Americans and most certainly the Russians and Swedes were superior skaters to the Canadians. They also appeared to be more skillful, if by skillful I mean the ability to give and take passes and makes plays at top speed, than the Canadians. One Canadian coach told me he watched the Swedes practice and was blown away by how few passes were mishandled over the course of a high-tempo practise, using his own CHL team's practice skills as a comparison.
Maybe none of that comes as any surprise to anyone. In spite of however many great successes Canada has had internationally over the years, and there have been many, we've always marveled at what seemed like the superior speed and skill of our opponents. But in the limited games I saw in these particular games in this particular tournament, the difference seemed really striking. Incredibly so.
What was also really noticeable, though, in Team Canada Red's and Team Canada Black's losses to Team USA was how much hungrier the Americans appeared. They won more battles, they were far more tenacious. The consistency of their effort was greater and not by a little either.
Like I said, with players this age you never know what you're going to get from night to night, never mind year to year. My esteemed colleague, TSN director of scouting Craig Button, told me the 1997-born Russian team that won bronze at this tournament a year ago, was soft and often noticeably lacked effort and drive. The 1998-born Russians, who won the gold medal this time, were precisely the opposite. Which is another cautionary note when making any bold pronouncements on the state of anyone's game.
As noted, the Russian speed and skill was eye-popping in Sarnia, but in Russia's semi-final win over Finland, I couldn't have been more impressed with their tenacity. They had voracious hunger for the puck. They were relentless, hard and physical, winning battles, going to the net, playing with as much passion and commitment without the puck as with it. It was every player on every shift for the entire game. It was no small wonder they won the gold medal the next day with a win over the Americans, who had looked like the team to beat all week.
Dare I say it, these Russians played what we like to think is a great Canadian-style game, except with greater speed, skill and strength. I often felt the same way when watching the Americans.
Make of that what you will. These are all merely subjective observations from one person after watching a handful of games involving 16-year-olds in a tournament with a somewhat unusual format (Canada splitting its talent over multiple teams).
If I were to infer to anything from my time at the World Under-17 Challenge, there would be two takeaways:
One, given that Canadians have just one silver and one bronze of the 12 medals up for grabs over the last four years at this event, it would appear obvious that if "winning" is the primary objective, going |
Duranczyk, an associate professor who has taught statistics at the U for 20 years, was one of the first to take the challenge.
She knew, she said, that many students “have difficulty buying their textbooks at the beginning of the semester.” Some would ask if they could get by without it for the first four or five weeks because they were short of cash.
In 2012, she decided to allow some of those students to use an open text called “Collaborative Statistics,” while the rest used a traditional book retailing for about $180. It went so well, she said, that she switched her whole class to the free version the next fall.
The benefits, her students say, are obvious. “It’s free,” said Hayat Mohamed, 22, a senior from Hopkins, who said she’s spent $500 or $600 on textbooks this semester. “I’m thankful for that. … I don’t have to spend more money.”
Another advantage: It’s lighter than lugging around a 600-page book. And easier to search.
Disadvantages? “Um, I don’t think I really [see] a downside,” said Hnong Xiong, 20, a junior from St. Paul.
Some students, though, still prefer to hold the pages in their hands, Duranczyk said. They have the option to buy a printed version for $23.
“I don’t like to read things online that much,” admits Jessica Tilbury, 19, a sophomore from Apple Valley. She bought a print copy so she could highlight it and make notes in the margins.
So did Ibrahim Abdi, a sophomore from Minneapolis; but by midterms, it was still in its plastic wrapper. “I never used it,” he said. “It’s really easy for me to just go online and read.”
Some open texts even allow professors to rearrange and edit the material to their liking.
Millennials push the trend
In part, Ernst says, the “open textbook” movement is a reaction to textbook prices, which have climbed, by one estimate, 800 percent since 1978.
Even with cheaper alternatives, such as used books and rentals, students are straining to cover those costs. More than 60 percent of college students say they have skipped buying at least one textbook because of the cost, according to Ernst.
To Nicole Allen, who leads a national campaign to promote open textbooks, the idea of $200 textbooks is galling in the age of the Internet.
“As a millennial, it’s hard to comprehend,” said Allen, director of open education for an advocacy group called the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC) in Washington.
“We grew up in a world where there’s an expectation that a lot of information is free and easy to get,” she said. “I just couldn’t understand why the knowledge contained in those books was worth that much.”
She compares textbooks to prescription drugs, noting that the people who choose them don’t bear the costs. “They don’t have to pay for it, and they don’t know how much it costs. It’s a similar situation with faculty members.”
She says the University of Minnesota is playing a pivotal role in changing that. “Professors aren’t necessarily going to take recommendations from a student organization on what curriculum to choose,” she said. The U is “a central place … and a trusted place.”
So far, 25 colleges and universities, including the Minnesota State Colleges and Universities system, have joined the U’s growing network of open text supporters.
The publishing industry, meanwhile, insists that it’s not threatened and is adapting.
“The market is moving away from hard-bound textbooks,” said David Anderson, at the Association of American Publishers. In fact, he predicts print textbooks “are going the way of the dinosaur.”
One reason they’re so expensive, he said, is that they’re costly to produce, and “you’ve got about three semesters to recoup your costs and make a profit [before] the used versions flood the market.”
But now, he noted, publishers are producing their own online versions and shifting their attention to digital “extras,” such as interactive study aids and quizzes, to supplement the books.
That’s one reason, he said, that he doesn’t worry about competition from open textbooks.
Without those kinds of extras, he said, “frankly, a book like that for free, I don’t think is worth very much.”
Even supporters say open textbooks won’t put publishers out of business. Most of the titles in the U’s open textbook library are designed for introductory or general ed courses, not advanced ones.
The challenge now, Ernst says, is simply to get the message out. “That there is an option. And open textbooks are an option.”Before this exhibition starts, we must address something very important. As fashion historian Valerie Steele states in her book The Corset: A Cultural History, ‘no one person invented the brassiere. Various types of bust-bodice, soutien-gorge and brassiere had been patented and advertised in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.’ This exhibition does not focus on the invention of the bra or the history of its design, but it will concentrate on the technology which made some of the twentieth century’s most iconic looks possible. These are the developments in fibres and stitching technique which took us from sturdy Edwardian ‘bust improvers’ to the light ‘no-bra’ look of the 1970s, that is popular once again today.
The bra is a unique and important garment, providing a woman with support for her breasts but also shaping the female form to the latest fashionable ideal. Although it plays a vital part in both fashion history and women’s history in the twentieth century, the bra is often overlooked or only discussed from a purely aesthetic or erotic perspective. However, technology’s role in its fascinating history cannot be understated.
In the first decade of the twentieth century, fashionable straight front corsets provided less bust support than women were used to and so the popularity of various types of brassiere increased. These new styles of garment were often worn by fashionable women for modesty under increasingly sheer Edwardian blouses, and also by dress reformers as an alternative to heavily boned corsets. As health was often a focus for underwear advertising at this time, fabrics like wool, cotton and Aertex – which was invented in the UK in 1888 – were sometimes used for these garments as it ensured they were breathable in the summer and warm in the winter.
Jane Farrell-Beck and Colleen Gau state in their book Uplift: The Bra in America that ‘By the mid-1910s, brassieres rather than corsets had become the source of increased business in foundation departments’. The increasing prominence of women in the public sphere – through work and recreation outside of the home – meant that many more were moving over to wearing less restrictive garments and the modern department stores, which were an extremely popular place to shop, were keen to cash in on this trend.League of Angels II found its way to Amzgame, so come help test it to claim exclusive rewards!
Amzgame is excited to announce the release of their first League of Angels II beta server! To give millions of anxious fans yet another reason to try this MMORPG Amzgame is offering exclusive leveling gear and items to help you get started.
PLAY FOR FREE
Learn more about League of Angels II and find how you can claim your in-game rewards just below!
About League of Angels II
Co-published by GTArcade, League of Angels II is the sequel to the ever-popular MMORPG, League of Angels, and features a new storyline, bundles of new quests, and a vast world ready to be explored. Players who hop in-game during the beta will receive exclusive leveling up gear and items to help them guide the way. AMZGame is happy to add League of Angels II to its platform and hopes to see you all in-game!
Claim your key
Quick and easy as always: to get your very own free gift pack simply fill out the form below with your contact info and we’ll send it to you immediately:
Your email address Your name Your email address is only used to prevent multiple requests from the same person. We will not send you any spam or share your info with anyone! We may notify you about future related giveaways. Please read our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use for further questions.
If you want to participate in our game giveaways and get notified about them be sure to subscribe to our newsletter. Filling the form above and claiming this gift pack will NOT subscribe you!
Link to a downloadable.pdf file including your gift pack code will be included in our email. If you have trouble getting your code simply fill this Key Retrieval form and we’ll re-send your key manually as soon as possible.
Important: keys will only work on Servers 1-5!
Code redemption instructions:
Fill out the giveaway form above to claim your code Sign up for LoA II on Amzgame and create a character in the game Click the Event icon in the upper right corner of the screen Paste your New Player Code and click Confirm
Easy peasy!
Note: each account can only redeem this code once, and each code can only be used once! Keys can only be redeemed on Servers 1-5.
Gift pack contents:
Diamond x500
Gold x1,000,000
Stamina x60
Refresh Token x10
Lv.2 EXP Scroll x10
Our gift packs contain everything you need for a good early start in the game, including experience boosts and extra currency to spend.
PLAY FOR FREE
League of Angels II has numerous enhancements and new features worth checking out if you enjoyed the previous game, and we’re certain you’ll enjoy it so go ahead and give it a try!September 25, 2009 - The National
NAZARETH // A local authority in Israel has announced that it is establishing a special team of youth counsellors and psychologists whose job it will be to identify young Jewish women who are dating Arab men and "rescue" them.
The move by the municipality of Petah Tikva, a city close to Tel Aviv, is the latest in a series of separate and little discussed initiatives from official bodies, rabbis, private organisations and groups of Israeli residents to try to prevent interracial dating and marriage.
In a related development, the Israeli media reported this month that residents of Pisgat Zeev, a large Jewish settlement in the midst of Palestinian neighbourhoods in East Jerusalem, had formed a vigilante-style patrol to stop Arab men from mixing with local Jewish girls.
Hostility to intimate relationships developing across Israels ethnic divide is shared by many Israeli Jews, who regard such behaviour as a threat to the states Jewishness. One of the few polls on the subject, in 2007, found that more than half of Israeli Jews believed intermarriage should be equated with "national treason".
Since the states founding in 1948, analysts have noted, a series of legal and administrative measures have been taken by Israel to limit the possibilities of close links developing between Jewish and Arab citizens, the latter comprising a fifth of the population.
Largely segregated communities and separate education systems mean that there are few opportunities for young Arabs and Jews to become familiarised with each other. Even in the handful of "mixed cities", Arab residents are usually confined to separate neighbourhoods.
In addition, civil marriage is banned in Israel, meaning that in the small number of cases where Jews and Arabs want to wed, they can do so only by leaving the country for a ceremony abroad. The marriage is recognised on the couples return.
Dr Yuval Yonay, a sociologist at Haifa University, said the number of interracial marriages was "too small to be studied". "Separation between Jews and Arabs is so ingrained in Israeli society, it is surprising that anyone manages to escape these central controls."
The team in Petah Tikva, a Jewish city of 200,000 residents, was created in direct response to news that two Jewish girls, aged 17 and 19, were accompanying a group of young Arab men when they allegedly beat a Jewish man, Leonard Karp, to death last month on a Tel Aviv beach. The older girl was from Petah Tikva.
The girls involvement with the Arab youths has revived general concern that a once-firm taboo against interracial dating is beginning to erode among some young people.
In sentiments widely shared, Mr Hakak, a spokesman for Petah Tikva municipality, said "Russian girls", young Jewish women whose parents arrived in Israel over the past two decades, since the former Soviet Union collapsed, were particularly vulnerable to the attention of Arab men.
Dr Yonay said Russian women were less closed to the idea of relationships with Arab men because they "did not undergo the religious and Zionist education" to which more established Israeli Jews were subject.
Mr Hakak said the municipality had created a hotline that parents and friends of the Jewish women could use to inform on them.
"We cant tell the girls what to do but we can send a psychologist to their home to offer them and their parents advice," he said.
Motti Zaft, the deputy mayor, told the Ynet website that the municipality was also cracking down on city homeowners who illegally subdivide apartments to rent them cheaply to single Arab men looking for work in the Tel Aviv area. He estimated that several hundred Arab men had moved into the city as a result.
Petah Tikvas hostility to Arab men mixing with local Jewish women is shared by other communities.
In Pisgat Zeev, a settlement of 40,000 Jews, some 35 Jewish men are reported to belong to a patrol known as "Fire for Judaism" that tries to stop interracial dating.
Unusually for a settlement, Pisgat Zeev has attracted a tiny but growing population of Arab families, both from East Jerusalem and from inside Israel. Because Pisgat Zeev sits within Jerusalems municipal borders, Arabs with Israeli residency rights can live there as long as Jewish settlers are willing to rent to them.
One member, who identified himself as Moshe to the Jerusalem Post newspaper, said: "Our goal is to be in contact with these girls and try to explain to them the dangers of what theyre getting themselves into. In the last 10 years, 60 girls from Pisgat Zeev have gone into [Palestinian] villages [in the West Bank]. And most of them arent heard from after that."
He denied that violence or threats were used against Arab men.
Last year, the municipality of Kiryat Gat, a town of 50,000 Jews in southern Israel, launched a programme in schools to warn Jewish girls of the dangers of dating local Bedouin men. The girls were shown a video titled Sleeping with the Enemy, which describes mixed couples as an "unnatural phenomenon".
Haim Shalom, head of the municipalitys welfare department, is filmed saying: "The girls, in their innocence, go with the exploitative Arab."
In 2004, posters sprang up all over the northern town of Safed warning Jewish women that dating Arab men would lead to "beatings, hard drugs, prostitution and crime".
Safeds chief rabbi, Shmuel Eliyahu, told a local newspaper that the "seducing" of Jewish girls was "another form of war" by Arab men.
Both Kiryat Gat and Safeds campaigns were supported by a religious organisation called Yad Lachim, which runs an anti-assimilation team publicly dedicated to "saving" Jewish women.
According to its website, the organisation receives more than 100 calls a month about Jewish women living with Arab men, both in Israel and the West Bank. It launches "military-like rescues [of the women] from hostile Arab villages" in co-ordination with the police and army.
"The Jewish soul is a precious, all-too-rare resource, and we are not prepared to give up on even a single one," says the website.
@thenational.aePut this one in the “Even the great ones screw up every once in a while” file. This is a painting from Norman Rockwell titled People Reading Stock Exchange for one of his many Saturday Evening Post covers. There appears to be nothing unique about it at first glance, just a group of folks hunched around a wall chart that they all find completely absorbing. They all seem perfectly normal until you take a closer look and notice that the young man in the red shirt seems different. You look a bit closer, maybe squint a little until you realize you don’t need to do that to see his abnormality. Yes, he has three legs. Rockwell apparently didn’t notice this until it was pointed out years later and it proved to be a embarrassing episode for him, especially given his reputation for capturing detail in his work.
Some people have tried to explain it away as some sort of subconscious phallic representation which seems like a stretch to me. I think it was merely an oversight although an unusual one. As a casual viewer, it it something that is easy to overlook but I am more amazed that in the process that it simply didn’t register for him that he was creating a most unusual young man. As an artist, it’s reassuring to see someone so meticulous make such an error.
Most artists have at least a handful of such things in their background, pieces with shadows that make no sense in nature or arms that are much too long for any living human. Most go unnoticed. The unfortunate thing is that once they are identified, they become the focal point of that painting forever– something once seen cannot be unseen.
I know that I have several paintings with such mistakes, pieces that, without these flaws being pointed out, are strong and full works. Few people, if any, notice these flaws but for me they are the first things my eyes rest upon in the picture. They don’t bother me as I am sure this bothered Rockwell. I see them as symbols of our humanity, our inherent flawed nature.
We don’t need to point out our flaws. They’re there for all to see. We can only hope people accept us, three legs or two or one. And the three-legged young man here is a refreshing reminder of Rockwell’s humanity.Diablo Canyon, California’s last operating nuclear power plant, will close by 2025. Everyone agrees on that.
But how to replace the plant’s 2.3 gigawatts of energy without adding carbon emissions -- and how to keep its workers and surrounding communities supported through its eventual retirement -- are much more contentious issues.
On Tuesday, the California Public Utilities Commission heard a final set of oral arguments over the proposed decision that will guide Diablo Canyon’s nearly decade-long glide path to closure, and lay the groundwork for PG&E to procure the energy, capacity and reliability resources to take its place.
The initial plan, announced last summer, was a joint settlement agreement between the utility and multiple parties with a stake in its outcome, and included a first-of-a-kind commitment to replace the plant’s capacity with zero-carbon emissions resources. That included a big increase in energy efficiency spending upfront to achieve roughly 2,000 gigawatt-hours of savings through 2024, as well as future procurements of carbon-neutral energy resources at larger scales.
But earlier this month, a CPUC administrative law judge issued a proposed decision (PDF) that made some troubling changes to this framework, said Ralph Cavanagh, energy program co-director for the Natural Resources Defense Council, one of the key parties to the settlement. Tuesday offered NRDC and other groups opposed to the proposal a final chance to air their grievances before the commission makes its final decision.
“I’ve been doing this for 40 years, and this is among the worst proposed decisions I’ve ever seen -- not just because of the outcome, but because of the systematic disregard of the evidence,” Cavanagh said in a Wednesday interview.
NRDC isn’t alone in its criticism. PG&E said it “strongly disagrees” with the changes made to the joint settlement’s employee, community and energy replacement programs; the San Luis Obispo Chamber of Commerce wrote that the proposal would send the region into an "economic tailspin."
These groups all have three major complaints with the proposal, Cavanagh said. First, it fails to include any formal commitments to replacing Diablo Canyon with zero-carbon energy resources. That's an odd exclusion, given that no one opposed that commitment. "So it’s an uncontested recommendation, and I’m cautiously hopeful that the commission will take it up," said Cavanagh.
The proposed decision also fails to include any guidance on funding PG&E’s big initial energy-efficiency push, which is set to start in June 2018, he said. PG&E has volunteered to raise its annual efficiency targets by more than 50 percent to meet a goal of reducing consumption by about 2,000 gigawatt-hours per year by 2024. That’s just a fraction of Diablo Canyon’s 18,000 gigawatt-hours per year, “but it’s a down payment, if you will -- an energy surge, to start no later than June.”
The lack of any specific guarantees on zero-carbon alternatives in either the short or long term raises the fear that Diablo Canyon’s closure could lead to the same problems the state faced back in 2013, when the San Onofre nuclear plant was forced to close without a long-range plan in place, he said.
While the CPUC did instruct Southern California Edison and San Diego Gas & Electric to seek out a large portion of the replacement from zero-carbon resources, including hundreds of megawatts of distributed energy, it also allowed both utilities to add hundreds more megawatts of natural-gas-fired power plants, angering clean energy advocates that had pushed for more zero-carbon alternatives.
Finally, the proposed decision slashes the amount of money that PG&E would be able to raise from ratepayers to support workers and surrounding communities by more than 60 percent, down to $168 million from the $445 million proposed by PG&E, NRDC and union and community groups, he said. That includes a denial of PG&E’s request for $85 million in Community Impacts Mitigation Program funds for San Luis Obispo County and local cities and school districts.
“Having ratepayers take the place of taxpayers in paying for government services is not reasonable, and should not be approved,” California Public Utilities Commission Judge Peter V. Allen wrote in his proposed decision.
But Cavanagh noted that the figure of $168 million “disregards the extensive expert testimony” from PG&E and the unions involved in the settlement, and relies instead on a group called Californians for Clean Nuclear Power, which had lobbied for keeping the plants open, with “no demonstrated expertise whatsoever on worker retention.”
Failing to honor the commitments for workforce retraining and community economic support “would be conducting a gigantic experiment with plant safety and reliability by seeing how workers would react by having a settlement they’ve approved of repudiated.”
The CPUC has a record of making substantial changes to proposed decisions from staff attorneys before putting them to a vote, Cavanagh noted. While there’s no firm deadline for a final decision, “obviously from our perspective, sooner is much better than later. The proposed decision has cast a pall over the workforce and the communities.”As I fly to NYC for the ninth time to host FinovateFall (the biggest ever—Thanks!), I’m in awe of how much the industry has grown since 2007. Fintech wasn’t even a thing then, we were still stuck using the entire six syllables in “financial technology.” And in Sep 2007, we didn’t have a sense of the financial debacle of 2008 we were about to witness, which has shaken things up in many unanticipated ways.
The amount of money going into the sector was a fraction of where we are today. I don’t have good data for 2007, but my guess is that the $12.4 billion raised so far this year is 6x to 8x the amount raised in 2007 (YTD). Is that sustainable? Unlikely, but when you see a single Australian bank (Westpac) spending nearly US$1 billion per year, 80% of it earmarked for new technology, you get a sense of how much pent-up demand there is to modernize financial services.
In total, Celent estimates that worldwide IT spending by banks will be $200 billion this year:
North America = $64 billion
Europe = $64 billion
Asia/Pacific = $70 billion
And that’s banks only. Gartner, which includes securities firms along with banks in its total, says global IT spending will top $500 billion this year.
Similar amounts are spent in the insurance industry where Celent estimates $175 billion will be spent this year:
North America = $79 billion
Europe = $55 billion
Asia/Pacific = $31 billion
Other = $11 billion
Adding it all together amounts to nearly $700 billion annually, or more than $3 trillion in the next five years. I think that explains why $12 billion has been invested by VCs and Private Equity so far this year. Granted, much of the financial institution spend is currently directed internally, but that doesn’t mean it will stay that way. The entire API ecosystem is betting otherwise, and seems to be winning in many industries.
Based on those numbers, I’m not sure if we have a bubble. VC investing is high by historical standards, but given the opportunity, it may be relatively reasonable. It will depend a lot on how much the big spenders decide to outsource. And that’s almost impossible to predict.READER COMMENTS ON
"Invitation to Pre-Inauguration Opening of The George W. Bush Presidential Library..."
(45 Responses so far...)
COMMENT #1 [Permalink]
... Nuisance Man said on 1/10/2009 @ 1:27 pm PT...
HILARIOUS! Thanks, Karen and Brad...
COMMENT #2 [Permalink]
... ShortWoman said on 1/10/2009 @ 3:06 pm PT...
The Waterboarding Pool
-- Because it's not torture
COMMENT #3 [Permalink]
... Agent 99 said on 1/10/2009 @ 3:20 pm PT...
The Executive Privilege Room,
the main body of the structure, into which public access is denied.
.
.
.
COMMENT #4 [Permalink]
... SillyGit said on 1/10/2009 @ 3:52 pm PT...
The Donald Rumsfeld Room Currently displaying known knowns, and known unknowns. Unknown unknowns will be displayed as soon as they are known.
COMMENT #5 [Permalink]
... mick said on 1/10/2009 @ 4:11 pm PT...
The Cave Room.
where visitors can hunt for Osama Bin Laden (warning is may take over seven years to complete with no result.)
COMMENT #6 [Permalink]
... SillyGit said on 1/10/2009 @ 4:17 pm PT...
One more. The John Ashcroft Room -
Where all topless female statues wear tasteful bikini tops.
COMMENT #7 [Permalink]
... Agent 99 said on 1/10/2009 @ 5:26 pm PT...
The Supreme Court Nominations Room,
cloakroom where candidates are prepped for confirmation hearings.
.
.
. Bid to overturn Voting Rights Act
COMMENT #8 [Permalink]
... Ancient said on 1/10/2009 @ 5:39 pm PT...
Just LOVE THAT LAST ROOM people: WHERE ELECTRONIC VOTING MACHINES DON'T COUNT YOUR VOTE! AN, THE SUPREME COURT CHOOSES
YOUR PRESIDENT.
COMMENT #9 [Permalink]
... mick said on 1/10/2009 @ 7:22 pm PT...
a one book library "My pet goat" don't need any rooms.
COMMENT #10 [Permalink]
... Maureen Meyer said on 1/10/2009 @ 7:29 pm PT...
The Dick Cheney Cafeteria, with catering provided by Halliburton and KBR. Try the club sandwich--a bargain at $1,500 (add $30.00 to add a cup of soup and a side salad).
COMMENT #11 [Permalink]
... d said on 1/10/2009 @ 7:33 pm PT...
how about the "Outhouse" where covert agents' covers are blown
COMMENT #12 [Permalink]
... Maureen Meyer said on 1/10/2009 @ 7:34 pm PT...
The Dick Cheney Cafeteria offers weekend specials on desert: yellow cake and shoe fly pie
COMMENT #13 [Permalink]
... Maureen Meyer said on 1/10/2009 @ 7:40 pm PT...
The Dick Cheney Audiovisual Annex: to enter, you need top-level clearance and a current Heritage Foundation or Federalist Society membership card. The Barbara Bush powder room, located next to the Dick Cheney Audiovisual Annex. No Child Left Behind classroom (closed to children under 18)
COMMENT #14 [Permalink]
... Maureen Meyer said on 1/10/2009 @ 7:42 pm PT...
The Florida Alcove, donated by Katherine Harris, and the Ohio Atrium, donated by Kenneth Blackwell
COMMENT #15 [Permalink]
... Maureen Meyer said on 1/10/2009 @ 7:48 pm PT...
The Karl Rove Gallery: currently on display, the world-famous "Mission Accomplished" banner and a photography series called "The Bush Years: Sex, Lies, and Videotape."
COMMENT #16 [Permalink]
... Maureen Meyer said on 1/10/2009 @ 7:51 pm PT...
Exploratorium for Kids: Hands-on learning opportunities for kids. (Suggestion: bring towels and swim suits for the waterboarding exhibit.)
COMMENT #17 [Permalink]
... Maureen Meyer said on 1/10/2009 @ 7:55 pm PT...
The Blackwater Salon: Book clubs are welcome to meet here free of charge. Please sign up early; registration slots are filling up fast. All book choices must be approved by the administration first.
COMMENT #18 [Permalink]
... Maureen Meyer said on 1/10/2009 @ 7:59 pm PT...
The Mike Connell Computer Room: Beginning, intermediate, and advanced classes on the use of computers and other electronic media in politics.
COMMENT #19 [Permalink]
... mick said on 1/10/2009 @ 8:15 pm PT...
THE JEFF GANNON ROOM
(KY optional)
anybody blown
COMMENT #20 [Permalink]
... Off the Grid said on 1/10/2009 @ 11:42 pm PT...
The Mission Accomplished Room
when you turn the door handle a trap door opens and you fall into a bottomless pit.
COMMENT #21 [Permalink]
... NewConstituionalConvention said on 1/10/2009 @ 11:50 pm PT...
The Music Room: Where Bush beats his drum and does his African Jig knowing that he got away with War Crimes and gets to enjoy Secret Service protection and the best health care at taxpayer expense.
COMMENT #22 [Permalink]
... NewConstitutionalConvention said on 1/10/2009 @ 11:58 pm PT...
The Black Site Room: in the Blueprints, but doesn't officially exist.
COMMENT #23 [Permalink]
... Floridiot said on 1/11/2009 @ 4:11 am PT...
The Government is Bad Room: Where all of the Corporations hide their ill gotten gains from taxation. Sorry, Full The John Boner Room: get your kleenex here. The Mental Midget Room: where Mitch McConnell goes to get his talking points from Rove about Obamas new nominees. Sorry, Full
COMMENT #24 [Permalink]
... Luther Weeks said on 1/11/2009 @ 5:06 am PT...
The Pardon Parlor Free admission to those with concealed smoking guns. But hurry expected to fill up by Jan 20th.
COMMENT #25 [Permalink]
... Luther Weeks said on 1/11/2009 @ 5:12 am PT...
The Palin 2012 Room See a painting of the sun in orbit of the earth. Each visitor receives certification as a Foreign Policy expert. Please, no magazines of newspapers.
COMMENT #26 [Permalink]
... Lora said on 1/11/2009 @ 11:40 am PT...
The Language Lab --- where you can don headphones and hear the new pronunciation of words such as "nuclear." The Modern Iraq History Wing, where you can review the background information which led to the Iraq War. Highlights: Learn that Saddam Was Behind 9/11; that Saddam Wouldn't Let The Inspectors In; how the rationale of Eliminate Imminent Danger from WMD's morphed into Elminate the Potential of Future Danger from a Potential WMD Program, and how "Iraq is Swimming in a Sea of Oil" didn't mean that oil had anything to do with why we went to war, that No One Meant to Out a CIA Agent, It Was An Accident, that All The Intelligence Pointed to WMD's; see the satellite photos that "fooled" Colin Powell and were shown to the UN. And much, much more.
COMMENT #27 [Permalink]
... Ancient said on 1/11/2009 @ 12:47 pm PT...
Great list! But hey folks, have you voted for Brad today? http://www.bradblog.com/?p=6801 I did!
COMMENT #28 [Permalink]
... karen from illinois said on 1/11/2009 @ 1:04 pm PT...
the upside down room of nonjustice: whr regular folks r prosecuted for herb, seat belt violations,3 cocktails while driving,not being a corporatation (in general anything the nonjustice department can dream up) while war criminals and the murderers of the constitution stand behind the false media and dance away the night
COMMENT #29 [Permalink]
... Maureen Meyer said on 1/11/2009 @ 3:12 pm PT...
The Ken Lay Memorial Chapel. Gee, doesn't that janitor look awfully familiar? And is that a Rolex he's wearing?
COMMENT #30 [Permalink]
... Agent 99 said on 1/11/2009 @ 4:01 pm PT...
If you register at change.org you can vote for a Department of Peace and Nonviolence... make Walter Cronkite and Yoko Ono very happy, and get Dennis Kucinich in the cabinet....
COMMENT #31 [Permalink]
... Thick-Witted Liberal said on 1/11/2009 @ 5:09 pm PT...
Thank you Karen, but I think it should be spelled "Libary"
COMMENT #32 [Permalink]
... SillyGit said on 1/11/2009 @ 5:58 pm PT...
Brad and John - NEWS FLASH Lee Stranahan has an article up at HuffPo that is of interest. http://www.huffingtonpos...er-fraud-i_b_156972.html Ann Coulter commits voting fraud again. She registered to vote in New Canaan Connecticut using her parent's address, but she does not live there. This is a clear violation of CT's election laws (I lived in CT from 1979 to 2008). It appears that she was also registered to vote in FL (her current real residence) and NY (where she often is). It is believed that she has voted twice in CT while living in NY. If this wasn't enough, she has been using and publicizing an address in FL that is used as a government provided mail drop for victims of domestic violence. I wonder who she did to get set up to use that. Lee ties everything together nicely. The story that prompted Lee was in the New York Daily News and Lee's article has links to all of the pertinent articles and information. Lee mentions the Palm Beach registration story.
COMMENT #33 [Permalink]
... Brian said on 1/11/2009 @ 11:38 pm PT...
The 9/11 Room.
Even though this room is in one of 267 stories, between three towers made of high grade steel and concrete, it may explode to dust and molten lava due to fire...
COMMENT #34 [Permalink]
... Tom Hussein Paine said on 1/12/2009 @ 12:34 am PT...
The GWB IPC International Paralympic Training Center. In recognition of outstanding and relentless scorched earth/grass roots policy of Paralympic athlete recruitment. No one has give so many people from all over the world, the opportunity to potentially represent their country in the world's 2nd biggest sporting event. A wheelchair accessible pool, workout eqipment and gym for potential Paralympians who have been touched by W's wars.
COMMENT #35 [Permalink]
... czaragorn said on 1/12/2009 @ 6:14 am PT...
The Foresight Void Chamber - where you will be able to ponder all the things that no one could possibly have foreseen.
COMMENT #36 [Permalink]
... Floridiot said on 1/12/2009 @ 7:31 am PT...
If the lie-berry doesn't have the "Henry Lee Lucas Memorial Room", I ain't goin'.
The only person Bush commuted to life out of 150 or so executed as Governor of Texas, a man after his own heart. That fact is so damned chilling to me.
COMMENT #37 [Permalink]
... Phil said on 1/12/2009 @ 9:11 am PT...
The Rumsfield Telco FIOS Tap Room
Where all public communications are recorded forever Connected to the... The Michael Connel IT Server Lab
Where government email and websites are overwritten, scrubbed, lost, or hacked Connected to the... The George W. Bush Sewage Treatment Plant
Yes all the grindings of the hard drive platters into sand flow freely here along with the raw sewage, and some unknown poison straight into the sea
COMMENT #38 [Permalink]
... Agent 99 said on 1/12/2009 @ 9:33 am PT...
The Sensory Deprivation Tank Room,
where members of the public can see what it was like to be in his administration.
.
.
.
COMMENT #39 [Permalink]
... disillusioned said on 1/12/2009 @ 9:51 am PT...
The PNAC room, where artifacts from Pearl Harbor and 9/11 are thoroughly intermixed.
COMMENT #40 [Permalink]
... Ancient said on 1/12/2009 @ 10:37 am PT...
Hey 99 @30, I just voted THANKS! http://www.change.org/id...f_peace_and_non-violence Dennis is the only congresscrappers (Hi Zapper) with a pair: http://www.democracynow...._arms_export_and_control
COMMENT #41 [Permalink]
... Gary said on 1/13/2009 @ 8:40 am PT...
The |
go. This would often happen with Class Timetable: one of its primary features is simplicity and ease of use. While many features have been added to it over the years, a lot of feature suggestions would have made the product as a whole more complicated. Sometimes that was OK, but more often than not I opted for simplicity, the feature that kept it unique.
A great product is better than a viral gimmick.
Class Timetable has never made the App Store front page, or had 100,000 downloads in a day - but that doesn’t matter to me. Some apps reach the #1 spot on the charts, only to become wastelands not even a year later. Perhaps they had a funny quip, viral marketing strategy, or just got lucky - but ultimately, they didn’t have any substance, and they didn’t solve a real world problem in a useful way. By making a genuinely great product, you’re designing something that your users keep coming back to again and again. Put in effort where people might not even notice. Focus on solving real problems, and making a product that is so genuinely useful that your users are coming back and bringing others with them. Returning users is a great sign that your product is healthy. As a bonus, there’s a small viral effect that every active user has, and it’s always great to know that your next customer isn’t just replacing someone that left.
Be generous.
When Class Timetable first went on the App Store, it was a paid $1 download. I figured that for the amount of effort I had put in (~500 hours), $1 was a steal. Anyway, in the first week, 4 people bought the app, and the next week, even less than that. Not sure what it feels like to hit the jackpot, but this didn’t quite feel like it. 500 hours is a lot of time to throw down the drain! I could have left it to die a slow death earning $1 a week, but instead I decided to make the app free. I’d created it to solve a real problem, and I figured that others would find it genuinely useful. Almost straight away, downloads started to pick up. 50 downloads a day, then 100, 1000… wow. Had I held onto the amount of hours I put in and not been generous, I very much doubt that downloads would ever have picked up. Soon after, I added an in app purchase enabling extra features, which now has quite a reasonable uptake. Much higher than a few dollars a week anyway. So, don’t be stingy: a product with no paying users is (usually) better than a paid product with no users. It’s much easier to upsell to an existing customer than it is to find an entirely new paying customer.
Take a step back, often.
Sometimes you’re stuck on a problem, and there just don’t seem to be any great solutions: maybe it’s related to a piece of code you’re writing, or decisions around how you’re going to market your app. Then, you start thinking about the problem from a wider perspective. You realize that you won’t need to even write the tricky piece of code if you architect it the right way, and that the marketing decision is one your friend (who has a knack for that sort of problem) would know how to tackle. You could sum it up as ‘taking a step back’ from the problem. In my entire software career, there’s not a second I’ve spent doing this that I’ve regretted. There’s been plenty of times, especially early on, that I wish I did this and never did. I learned the hard way with Class Timetable: with version 1.0, I spent a lot of time just ‘getting stuck in’ and coding it. I solved tricky problems by cutting corners and ‘making it happen’, instead of taking a step back. As long as users never knew, it was fine right? A year or two later, I had to rewrite the entire codebase from scratch - for so many reasons - which was a massive undertaking. Take a step back! It’s worth it.
Today, Class Timetable continues to do well. I’m always looking to the future, whether that means the next iOS upgrade, or a bigger picture of what Class Timetable could evolve into. If you’re studying at school or college, feel free to give it a go - I hope you find it genuinely useful.Macaulay Culkin rose to international fame after starring in the comedy film, Home Alone at the age of ten. The son of a former Broadway actor, he started his show biz career when he was just four years old. Initially appearing in various stage productions, he later shifted his attention toward television. After playing an uncredited part in the 1985 TV movie, The Midnight Hour, he landed his first official acting part in an episode of the series, The Equalizer (1988). That same year, Culkin made his big screen debut in the film, Rocket Gibraltar (1988).
Not long afterward, the young actor received a huge break with Chris Columbus’ comedy flick, Home Alone (1990), which turned him into a young star.
Since then, his filmography has only grown to incorporate more roles on both television and film. Would it surprise you that his net worth is well over $10 million?
Where did his wealth come from? Let’s delve a little deeper into his career to look for the answer.
Macaulay Culkin’s Net Worth 2018 – $15 Million
How did Macaulay Culkin Make His Money and Wealth?
Born on August 26, 1980 in New York City, New York, he is the son of Christopher Cornelius Culkin, a former Broadway actor. For the majority of his early childhood, he lived in a small apartment with his parents and six siblings. Possibly having inherited his father’s performing genes, he started to act at the tender age of four- appearing in a variety of stage productions.
By the mid 1980’s, Culkin started to audition for various television roles. In 1985, he landed his first role- albeit uncredited, in the TV film, The Midnight Hour. From there, he later went on to appear in an episode of the crime drama, The Equalizer in 1988. Over the next year, he took part in a few low budget movies including Rocket Gibraltar (1988), See You in the Morning (1989), and Uncle Buck (1989)- the first of which also served as his big screen debut.
At the age of ten, Culkin came face to face with a huge breakthrough after being cast as the main protagonist of the Christmas-themed comedy film, Home Alone (1990). A massive box office success, it took in $17 million during its opening weekend from 1200 theaters. Number one at the North American box office for twelve consecutive weeks, it instantly propelled the young actor into super fame. Altogether, the movie had grossed $476.7 million at the box office against a budget of $18 million. Despite having only been a grade schooler at the time, Culkin was paid a whopping $100,000 for his role as Kevin McCallister- how many ten-year-olds do you know that are able make six figures?
In 1991, the young blonde received another big break with the comedy drama film, My Girl. Portraying the role of Thomas J. Sennet, an eleven-year-old who is “allergic to everything”, his popular once again surged. Although it didn’t wind up being as big of a blockbuster as his previous movie, it still went on to earn $59.8 million at the domestic box office; the film later yielded an additional $27 million rentals. For his portrayal, Culkin is said to have earned upward of $1 million.
Shortly afterward, he reprised his role as the quick-thinking blonde in the sequel, Home Alone 2: Lost in New York (1992). The second film of the series, it was a huge hit; infact, it soon became the second most commercially successful film of 1992. From a budget of $69 million, the comedy earned $31.1 million during its opening weekend and $173.6 million within the United States by the end of its run; worldwide, it had grossed approximately $359 million. From the first to the second movie, Culkin’s pay took a huge leap- it is rumored that he was paid $4.5 million for taking part in the film.
Following that, his next big project in Hollywood was the psychological thriller, The Good Son (1993), in which he played a psychopathic eleven-year-old. Despite its relatively low ratings, it was a financial success, having earned more than $44.7 million in North America and $15.8 million in the foreign markets; worldwide, it had grossed $60.6 million from a $17 million budget.
In 2003, Culkin starred in the biographical drama film, Party Monster, which was based on the real life story of Michael Alig. Accompanied by a charting sound track, the movie enjoyed a limited release in the United States. Although it ended up being a commercial flop, the young actor still earned a hefty amount from playing the movie’s drug-addled protagonist, approximately $940,000.
The following year, he took part in Brian Dannelly’s teen comedy film, Saved~ alongside Mandy Moore, and Jena Malone. Met with fairly positive reviews, it eventually took in over $10.1 million at the box office against its production costs of $5 million. As one of the main characters, Culkin was allegedly paid a little over $1 million for his role.
From there, it wasn’t until 2007 that Culkin returned on the big screen in the independent film, Sex and Breakfast. Centering around a group of young couples who decide to experiment with anonymous group sex, it premiered in Los Angeles on November 30, 2007.
Although most of his recognizable works have been in Hollywood, the actor has also appeared on television several times throughout the 90’s and 2000’s. Some of his early appearances include those in Wish Kid (1991), Saturday Night Live (1991), Frasier (1994), Will & Grace (2003), and Foster Hall (2004).
In 2009, Culkin landed a recurring role in the NBC drama series, Kings, which is loosely based on the story of King David. Initially met with critical acclaim, its pilot episode garnered well over 6 million viewers that March. Unfortunately, viewership eventually dropped which led it to be cancelled later that summer. Despite being short lived, Kings is said to have earned the former Home Alone star a good chunk of spare change.
From 2005 until 2010, the actor also lent his voice to one of the characters in the stop motion sketch comedy, Robot Chicken. Immensely popular upon debuting on Adult Swim, it won numerous industry awards during its run including five Emmy Awards and an Annie Award. According to various sources, his participation in the popular series earned him over $1.6 million- although this figure has never been confirmed.
From all that’s been said, it can easily be seen that most of Culkin’s wealth came from his successful acting career.
Since 2013, he has also been performing with a comedy rock called The Pizza Underground. Based in New York City, the group is known for parodying various Velvet Underground songs with pizza-themed lyrics. Some of the songs that they’ve sung include Pizza Morning, and Pizza Roles.
According to various sources, approximately $350,000 of his net worth also came from his various endorsements deal in the past- such as those that he had with the telecom giant Orange, and the insurance company Aviva.
How much has he earned per year? In 2011, it’s approximated that he earned close to $950,000. Since then, it seems that his earnings has gone up- in 2011, the figure had increased to $1.1 million, and then again to $1.5 million in 2013. In 2015, it was estimated that he had earned $1.7 million.
How has that affected his net worth? As you can probably guess, his fortune has also only continued to increase. Back in 2012, his net worth was speculated to be around $8.5 million. By 2013, it had grew to $12 million and then to over $13 million in 2014. Currently, it is estimated that Macaulay Culkin’s fortune is around the $15 million mark.
But remember, most of his cash was earned at the peak of his popularity while he was still a child/teen! This only goes to show how successful of a career he had back in the 90’s and 2000’s.
Macaulay Culkin’s Personal Life and FAQ
Is Macaulay Culkin Married?
No, Macaulay Culkin is not married. As of November 2013, he has been dating American singer and actress, Jordan Lane Price.
Having said that, he was married once before to Rachel Miner from 1998 until 2000 (divorced in 2002). Not long afterward, he started to date with actress Mila Kunis, although they eventually split amicably in 2011 after many years together.
Does Macaulay Culkin Have Any Children?
No, Macaulay Culkin does not have any children that we know of.
Did Macaulay Culkin Go to College?
No, the former child actor did not go to college. After studying at the Professional Children’s School (a high school where he met his former wife, Rachel Miner) for several years, he dropped out during his senior year. From there, he focused his attention on his acting career.
Where Does Macaulay Culkin? Pictures of Macaulay Culkin’s House
In 2013, Culkin lived in a $2 million New York City apartment which he had converted into an art studio. Featuring 5,100 square of real estate, the condo (shared with his close friends Toby Goodshank and Adam Green) was described by the former actor as a “playground workspace”.
Since then, he has relocated to Paris, although his exact living quarters have never been disclosed.
What Kind of Car does Macaulay Culkin Drive?
At one point, the former child star was known to have been driving a black Lexus SC430.
Macaulay Culkin’s Career Accomplishments
One of the most popular child actors of the 90’s, Culkin had won a handful of awards even before he had reached his teens. Nominated for a Golden Globe for Best Performance by an Actor in a Motion Picture for his performance in Home Alone, he has also received a CFCA Award, an MTV Movie Award, and a Young Artist Award (among a few other nominations).
Just from the two Home Alone films alone, he had earned well over a few million dollars- by the age of eleven!
How Much Did Macaulay Culkin Earn Last Year?
It has been estimated that he took in a little over $2 million in 2016, although this amount has not been confirmed.
Recent Events
This spring, Macaulay Culkin may have just landed his most bizarre role to date- in a new Father John Misty’s music video, he is seen portraying the role of late rocker Kurt Cobain. At one point in the MV, the former child actor is even seen being whipped by Ronald Mcdonald whilst being tied to a pole.
Aside from that, it looks like he’s been spending some time with Paris Jackson, Michael Jackson’s daughter (he himself is her godfather). Seemingly very close, the two appears to have spent Easter together according to a photo of the two who have since surfaced on the internet.Learn how to enjoy your life to the fullest, even up to high age. Our lifestyle guides tell you how to stay healthy and engaged with your environment. Find out what the newest trends in senior dating are, or which tech device is the right choice for you. Our senior living expert team knows what matters to retirees!
For Caregivers
Your job can be tough. Period.
No matter if you work in an assisted living facility or in a nursing home, we know how demanding, but at the same time rewarding those jobs can be.
We try to make your life a little easier by offering advice to caregivers, ranging from new activities to try in your nursing home or crafts you can keep your seniors engaged with.Oct 29, 2014; Denver, CO, USA; Detroit Pistons forward Josh Smith (6) shoots the ball over Denver Nuggets forward Kenneth Faried (35) during the second half at Pepsi Center. The Nuggets won 89-79. Mandatory Credit: Chris Humphreys-USA TODAY Sports
Pistons open season with lots of ugly shooting and a loss to the Nuggets
Pistons open season with lots of ugly shooting and a loss to the Nuggets by Tim Thielke
Kenneth Faried, via the Nuggets’ official website:
Josh Smith, we let him keep shooting. And he ended up with 25, but he still kept shooting. He shot them out of the game.
Smith’s shooting started hot and then fell off
First quarter: 6-for-10
Third through fourth quarters: 3-for-12
But as Tim noted, Smith didn’t get much help. What he supposed to do?
Kentavious Caldwell-Pope shot 3-for-19. Caron Butler was 0-for-5. Outside of D.J. Augustin (15 points on 10 shots), Smith was left to carry too large a load.
Of course, Smith is all too happy to shoot when opponents let him. Maybe he could have done a better job letting others get involved.
Smith is prone to these types of performances, which feed right into the defense’s hands. Last night wasn’t the perfect example, but it’s an example nonetheless.
Hopefully, Smith takes Faried’s words as a wakeup call and realizes he’s open for a reason. At this point, though, I know that’s beyond wishful thinking.Story highlights Luxturna is the first gene therapy treatment for an inherited genetic mutation
The treatment is set to be available in the first part of 2018
(CNN) The US Food and Drug Administration has approved a gene therapy treatment for patients with a rare inherited eye disease.
Voretigene neparvovec, which will be sold as Luxturna, is made by Philadelphia-based Spark Therapeutics Inc.
The one-time treatment is approved for children and adults with retinal dystrophy due to a mutation of the RPE65 gene, which causes severe visual impairment beginning in infancy. As it progresses, patients experience gradual loss of peripheral and central vision, which can eventually lead to blindness.
There are more than 200 genes that can cause retinal dystrophy. Patients can be tested to determine whether the cause is indeed a mutation of the RPE65 gene and they are thus a potential candidate for this new treatment.
Luxturna is only the third gene therapy approved for use in the United States, preceded by two others this year. However, this is the first to correct an inherited genetic mutation. Some scientists believe that the approval could open the door to other treatments that correct flaws in the inherited genome.
Read MorePatrolling up and down British Columbia's coast with binoculars are a group of dedicated First Nations volunteers that boat right up to armed hunters, often American, in their vessels to dissuade them from killing at-risk grizzlies just for sport.
Called the Coastal Guardian Watchmen, they urge unsuspecting trophy hunters to halt their pursuit of grizzlies as insensitive to First Nations culture, and against tribal law.
“Sometimes it gets nasty,” said Jason Moody, a patroller from Nuxalk Nation in Bella Coola.
"Sometimes you get [trophy hunters] realizing, ‘OK, you guys don’t want the hunting around here. We’ll go somewhere else.'"
Foreign hunters from places like Virginia and Texas pay thousands of dollars to come to B.C.—to be in one of the few places left where the fourth-largest carnivore on the planet can be shot for a trophy head or a bear rug.
Many trophy hunters don't like the altercations with the now 16 native patrollers on the coast.
“It gets tense. Usually just having a presence is enough,” says William Housty, who chairs the Heiltsuk Nation resource management office in Bella Bella, and coordinates many of the indigenous watchmen.
Housty’s biggest worry is intoxicated hunters harming his crews that double as field researchers, quietly collecting grizzly-hair DNA in the woods.
“If there are drunk hunters walking around drinking Jack Daniels — who is to say they won’t shoot one our researchers. That’s one of our biggest beefs with the province,” he said.
The Guardian Watchmen do not have the legal powers to board vessels or enforce conservation laws, but they wish they did. Provincial officers, the Coast Guard and the RCMP are not seen often enough, said Housty.
And many hunters they come across are not carrying provincial licences.
"A lot of the people who come up here don’t actually have tags. They’re poachers,” said Housty.
The wildlife manager recalled an infamous incident in 2013 when NHL player Clayton Stoner let some coastal watchmen on board the famous hockey player's boat to photograph the defencemen’s recent grizzly kill.
NHL defenceman Clayton Stoner posing with a beheaded grizzly in 2013. Photo by Coastal Guardian Watchmen.
The head and claws were removed, and Stoner smiled for the watchmen’s photo snaps that would soon become national news material.
“He let himself be an idiot poster child for the trophy hunt,” laughed Housty.
Stoner defended his bear kill at the time.
“I applied for and received a grizzly bear hunting licence through a British Columbia limited-entry lottery last winter and shot a grizzly bear with my licence while hunting with my father, uncle and a friend in May,” the hockey star said in a statement.
But since that media spectacle, many watchmen admit they’ve only been partly successful in slowing the trophy hunt.
The Guide Outfitters Association says as long as it is kept legal by the B.C. government, their members will continue flying in high-paying hunting clients to kill grizzlies.
“While we try to accommodate [aboriginal] wishes, but until they have jurisdiction, the authority around it is the Crown,” says the association’s executive director Scott Ellis.
“Our guys are still going to operate their businesses."
But Coastal First Nations are now threatening legal action to put an end to the industry.
Lawsuit to stop the trophy hunt?
Coastal First Nations leader Art Sterritt calls the trophy hunt an “affront” to native culture. Hunting to eat is one thing, he says, but to slaughter bears just for their heads and claws is wrong.
Elders are especially offended by the rotting bear flesh left behind by many trophy hunters. Many natives consider this bad luck.
“You’ve got this naked carcass. A bear that’s been denuded like that - they are so close to the physique of a human being,” said Sterritt, with disgust.
“It’s really an affront to our [First Nations] culture.”
He says his political council, which represents seven tidal bands in the region, is now thinking about suing the province to stop the grizzly trophy hunt.
“We think there is a basis for legal action,” said Sterritt last week.
“We’re getting very tired of this conversation, it seems likes with this provincial government it falls on deaf ears. We have seen pictures of our Premier laughing it up with the guide outfitters — it would appear as though they are getting special favours.”
Grizzly bear beheaded and stripped of its fur. Image provided by veteran photographer - Ian McAllister.
Some scientific studies point out that the grizzlies are over-hunted in many parts of B.C. The grizzly hunt is already banned in Alberta, and the bears in Atlantic Canada are extinct.
The BC Liberal government reversed a provincial ban against the trophy hunt in 2001. Then in December 2014, it further allowed a larger portion of the kill licences to go to foreigners via guide outfitters.
"We are continuing to discuss grizzly bear management with the Coastal First Nations, but ask that they respect the province’s authority over the harvest,” said a spokesperson with the B.C. Ministry of Forests, Lands and Natural Resource Operations.
"This government allows a grizzly bear harvest based on the best available science,” he added.
Grizzly counts questioned
The David Suzuki Foundation tracks the science on grizzly bear population levels, and says there’s no question the province is allowing the over-kill of grizzlies in some regions.
“What we know is, more grizzly bears are being killed by trophy hunters in parts of the province than what the B.C. government admits is a sustainable level,” said Faisal Moola, a director general with the foundation.
"Where’s the B.C. government on protecting the bears?" he added.
Over in Hartley Bay, another Coastal Guardian coordinator says his crews will continue the fight to protect the grizzly.
“The word has gotten out. Trophy hunters are not welcome on the central coast,” said Marvin Robinson.
"We will keep any of the trophy hunters out of Gitga’aat territory.”From ABC:
Huckabee recently told CNN, “None of us could’ve predicted what Dumond could’ve done when he got out.”
It’s Bush and the levees all over again. No one could have predicted. Yeah, no one could have predicted that a convicted rapist who mauled a 17 year old high school student would then turn around and maul another woman after he was let out of prison early as a result of Huckabee’s intervention. And now Huckabee is trying to cover up the entire affair. This story isn’t going away. And I’m sure we can expect mom to be starring in many a TV commercial, and doing many a talk show. And when the right-wing noise machine starts attacking mom, like they did the first girl this monster raped, then we’ll see whose side Mike Huckabee is really on.
Now, don’t get me wrong. I don’t think Huckabee thought the man would rape again. I just think that Huckabee didn’t care if the man would rape again. Huckabee was more interested in anti-Bill-Clinton conspiracy theories, the fact that the first womant he man raped was a distant Clinton relative, than he was the danger of putting a convicted rapist back on the street. Huckabee tried to take a cheap shot at Bill Clinton through his raped cousin and a woman is dead as a result. Did Huckabee want her dead? No. But are we really to believe that he’s surprised that a convicted rapist who didn’t do his time then raped (and murdered) again? Oh please.
(And can I just say “kudos” to ABC’s Brian Ross for quoting something on CNN. I don’t think I’ve ever seen one network reference another, or at least very rarely. That was good of him, and very Internet-y.)Thanks to Oddschecker I’ve just been provided some infographics on the wagers being placed on the big middleweight title fight this weekend between Canelo Alvarez and Gennady Golovkin. And we all know how much you nerds like charts...
According to Oddschecker, they have seen just 3,556 bets placed to date on Canelo-GGG, a far cry from the 130,000+ bets placed on Mayweather-McGregor just a couple of weeks ago. That’s a 3655% difference! But of the bets placed, 47% are backing a Canelo win, with 46% putting their money on Golovkin, and the remaining 7% betting on a draw.
We also see from the breakdown that a majority of the bets that are predicting that the fight to end by knockout (based on the number of bets), see it happening in the late rounds — from Round 8 onward.
That’s basically right in line with the general consensus we’ve seen among fans, commentators, and analysts, most of whom don’t see this fight ending quickly. It also starkly contrasts with the KO betting action placed on Mayweather-McGregor, for obvious reasons.Manchester United's reserve team lost to Oldham in the semifinal round of the Lancashire Senior Cup (4-3 on penalties after finishing regulation at 1-1).
United States youth international Matthew Olosunde scored Manchester United's lone goal. Normally we don't post reserve team goals, but this is a pretty nice finish:
Matthew Olosunde's goal against Oldham from tonight pic.twitter.com/5Lpzyb25wO — United Youth (@United_U21) August 2, 2016
Olosunde, a Trenton, New Jersey native, signed with the EPL giants in January after spending time with the New York Red Bulls Academy and U.S. Soccer Residency. He's been a fixture at various levels of the national team program and can play multiple positions (although he's mainly stuck with fullback).
Manchester United youth team coach Nicky Butt praised Olosunde on the club's website, referring to him as "a good player" who they are "really excited about".
There's been a running narrative in the media involving new Red Devils manager Jose Mourinho (never heard of him, I think he's some newcomer) not having a great track record with young players. However, that's not Olosunde's problem at the moment. All he can do is focus on working hard and developing as a player. If he earns a spot with the senior team, he'll get one. If not, then he'll move on.
Scoring goals is a good start on the road to first-team minutes.Roberts decided to attend UCLA and joined the Bruins baseball team as a walk-on outfielder after impressing coaches with his speed and enthusiasm. [2] He hit.331 as a sophomore with 36 stolen bases [4] and as a junior he hit.296 with 28 steals. [4] The Cleveland Indians drafted him in the 47th round of the 1993 MLB draft. [5] He was disappointed with being drafted so low, behind seven other UCLA juniors and his coach told him he needed to improve his defense and that his weak throwing arm was hurting his draft stock. [2] He improved by getting to the ball quicker and was able to lead the Bruins in outfield assists as a senior, [2] while also hitting.353 with 45 steals. [4] He left UCLA as the school's all-time stolen-base leader and graduated with his Bachelor of Arts degree in history in 1995. [6]
Roberts was born in Naha, Okinawa. His African American father, Waymon, was a United States Marine stationed in Japan when he met and married Eiko, Roberts' Japanese mother. Roberts has a younger sister, Melissa. [1] His childhood was spent moving from one military base to another before settling in San Diego, California. [1]
Detroit Tigers Edit
Roberts was selected by the Detroit Tigers in the 28th round of the 1994 Major League Baseball draft[7] and signed with them on June 9, 1994.[8] He began his career with the Jamestown Jammers, the Tigers short-season class "A" team in the New York–Pennsylvania League. Roberts hit.292 with 12 steals for the Jammers, who won the division title with a 42–32 record.[9][10] For the 1995 season, he was promoted to play for the Lakeland Tigers in the Florida State League, where he hit.303 in 92 games with 30 stolen bases, fourth best in the league.[10][11]
In 1996, Roberts was assigned to the Visalia Oaks of the California League. The Oaks were a co-op team made up of players from several organizations. He was frustrated with the assignment and thought about quitting baseball but his father talked him out of it.[12] In 126 games, he hit.272 with 65 stolen bases,[10] which led all of minor league baseball and he scored 112 runs, tops in the Cal League.[11] He appeared in three games for the AA Jacksonville Suns of the Southern League at the end of the season and had two hits in nine at-bats.[10] He also hit a three-run home run in the 15th inning to help the Suns win game 1 of their playoff series.[13] The following season, he remained at Jacksonville and played in 105 games for them, with a.296 average and 23 steals.[10] In 1998, Roberts once again began the season with the Suns. He played in 69 games and hit.326 with 21 stolen bases[10] and was named to the Southern League mid-season all-star team.[11]
Cleveland Indians Edit
In June 1998, Roberts and Tim Worrell were traded to the Cleveland Indians for Gerónimo Berroa.[14] Roberts was traded just prior to the Southern League all-star game and played in the game wearing an Indians hat even though the Indians did not have a Southern League team at the time.[11] He was assigned to the Akron Aeros of the Eastern League where he batted.361 in 56 games with 28 steals.[10] He was promoted to the Buffalo Bisons, the Indians Triple-A team in the International League late in the season.[15] He had only two hits in 15 at-bats for the Bisons[10] but remained with the team in the playoffs, as the Bisons won their first Governors' Cup in nearly 40 years[16] and made it to the Triple-A World Series.[15] Roberts later said that his promotion to Buffalo was exciting to him because he realized he was getting close to the big leagues and his time there allowed him to become a better ballplayer.[15]
Roberts played with Los Cañeros de Los Mochis in the Mexican Pacific League in 1998-99 before wearing the uniform of the Caguas Criollos in Puerto Rico, where he played with Alex Cora and had Joey Cora as general manager. Almost 20 years later Roberts, as manager of the Dodgers, would go on to meet Alex Cora as manager of the Red Sox in the 2018 MLB World Series.
Roberts was a non-roster invitee at Indians spring training in 1999 but was assigned to Buffalo to start the season.[11] In 89 games for the Bisons, he had a.271 batting average with 39 steals.[10] He earned International League all-star honors for the season.[16] His contract was purchased by the Indians on August 7, 1999[11] and he made his major league debut batting leadoff and playing center field for the Indians against the Tampa Bay Devil Rays. In his debut he had three hits in five at-bats and stole a base: he was also picked off once.[17] His first MLB hit was a double to center field in his second at-bat, off of Bobby Witt of the Devil Rays in the second inning.[17] He hit his first home run on August 30 off of Ramón Ortiz of the Anaheim Angels.[18] On September 24, he hit a grand slam homer off of John Hudek of the Toronto Blue Jays.[19] Overall, he was in 41 games for the Indians in 1999 and hit.238 with two homers, 12 RBI and 11 stolen bases.[8] He also appeared in two games of the 1999 American League Division Series (ALDS), going hitless in three at-bats.[20]
Roberts spent most of 2000 back in the minors with Buffalo, where he had a.292 average in 120 games with a career high 13 homers, 55 RBI and 39 steals.[10] He also was second in the league with 93 runs scored.[11] He was called up to the Indians briefly from May 26–29 and then was called up when rosters expanded in September.[11] In 19 games for the Indians, he had only two hits in 10 at-bats while being used primarily as a late-game defensive replacement.[21] After the season, he had surgery on his left shoulder to repair a torn labrum and fraying around his rotator cuff, which caused him to begin the following season on the 60-day disabled list.[11] When he returned on June 24, he was optioned back to the Bisons,[11] where he hit.303 in 62 games.[10] His 97 career steals in parts of four seasons in Buffalo ranks as the tops in franchise history and he would eventually be selected to the Buffalo Baseball Hall of Fame.[16] He was again recalled to the majors in September and had four hits in 12 at-bats in 15 games for the Indians.[8] In parts of three seasons with Cleveland, he hit.242 in 75 games.[8]
Los Angeles Dodgers Edit
Roberts playing for the Los Angeles Dodgers
On December 22, 2001, Roberts was traded to the Los Angeles Dodgers for minor league pitchers Christian Bridenbaugh and Nial Hughes.[22] The 2002 season with the Dodgers was Roberts' first full season on a major league roster and he was the Dodgers leadoff hitter and starting center fielder. He finished the season with a.277 batting average in 127 games with 45 stolen bases.[23] He missed the final seven games of the regular season with a partially torn oblique.[11]
In 2003, Roberts appeared in only 107 games due to neck and hamstring injuries[11] and hit.250 while stealing 40 bases[8] He was the 10th Dodgers player in history with consecutive 40-steal seasons and committed his first career error on April 22 against the Cincinnati Reds, snapping a streak of 406 attempts without an error.[11] He began the 2004 campaign with the Dodgers and hit.253 in 68 games with 33 steals[11] despite missing most of May with a strained hamstring.[11]
Boston Red Sox Edit
On July 31, 2004, the Dodgers traded Roberts to the Boston Red Sox for minor league outfielder Henri Stanley.[24] He played in 45 games for the Red Sox and hit.256.[8] Roberts made a large contribution to the 2004 Red Sox post-season even though he did not play in the 2004 World Series. Most notable was his stolen base against the Yankees in the 2004 American League Championship Series Game 4. The Red Sox were facing elimination in the bottom of the ninth inning, down four runs to three. Kevin Millar drew a walk from Yankees closer Mariano Rivera. Roberts, who had not played in ten days, came in to pinch run with Bill Mueller hitting. Rivera attempted to pick off Roberts three times before, on the first pitch to Mueller, Roberts stole second base, just beating the throw of Yankee catcher Jorge Posada. Following the steal, Mueller singled, Roberts scored from second, and the Sox went on to win the game in 12 innings, beginning their run of eight straight wins culminating in Boston's first World Series title since 1918.[25][26] In 2006, the |
to use the Raspberry Pi to view the screen of another computer, then install the Viewer software. We are just going to install the Server software here.
To install the Server software, type the following into the terminal window, replacing the name of the file with the one listed when you extracted the software:
sudo dpkg -i VNC-Server-5.2.3-Linux-ARM.deb
Before you can use RealVNC Server you must obtain a license key. They are free for private use, and can be obtained from the RealVNC license page. Once you have filled in the form you will see the license key, and it will be emailed to you. Use it to license your software by typing in the following on your Raspberry Pi:
sudo vnclicense -add <license-key>
Where <license-key> is the license key you obtained above.
Installing RealVNC on the Viewing Computer
To make use of VNC you will need Viewer software on another computer. How you install that software depends on what sort of computer you have. You can download a suitable viewer from the RealVNC website.
Running the RealVNC Server
Back on the Raspberry Pi you need to start the VNC Server. You need to first make sure you are in Desktop mode (with the mouse and menus) before starting the VNC Server. If you are not, type'startx' to start it up.
There are two ways of running the server on the Raspberry Pi; Service mode and Virtual mode. With Service Mode you will see exactly what is on the Raspberry Pi's screen. With Virtual mode it is like running another separate computer on your Raspberry Pi - the current user will not be able to see what you are doing.
We are just going to use Service Mode. You can read more about Virtual Mode from the RealVNC instruction page.
First, you must create a new VNC password so that you can log into the VNC server. In a terminal window type the following:
sudo vncpasswd /root/.vnc/config.d/vncserver-x11
You will be prompted to enter the same password twice. This is the password that you need to use in the Viewer to access your Raspberry Pi.
Now you can start the VNC server. Note that you must already have the Raspberry Pi in Desktop mode - otherwise it will not know what to display in the Viewer!
sudo /etc/init.d/vncserver-x11-serviced start
You can set VNC to start every time you start your Raspberry Pi using the following:
sudo update-rc.d vncserver-x11-serviced defaults
Remember that your Raspberry Pi needs to be running in Desktop mode, so you should use the raspi-config command and Enable Boot to Desktop.
Remotely Accessing your Raspberry Pi
You should now be able to access your Raspberry Pi remotely from another computer. Start the VNC viewer on the other computer and enter the IP address of your Raspberry Pi (you can find it from the terminal window on your Raspberry Pi by typing ifconfig).
If the connection is made successfully then your Raspberry Pi's screen will appear on your computer, and you will be able to control it just as though you were using the Raspberry Pi's own keyboard and mouse:
What Next?
You can of course continue to use RealVNC for free, forever! Within your own network at home this is okay and safe, but if you want to be able to access your Raspberry Pi over the internet, then you will need to use encryption to ensure that nobody else is able to intercept what you are seeing. For this you will need to obtain a 'Personal' license from RealVNC. This costs only £19 and is for life too, but well worth it if you want to use encryption, better performance, sharing printers and file transfer. To obtain the license, visit the RealVNC website.On a first glance, Kansas isn't an easy match for Maryland point guard Melo Trimble. The Jayhawks have three athletic and powerful guards of their own and two quality interior defenders in Perry Ellis and Landen Lucas. Their two-point defense is elite, and their three-point defense is solidly above average. They've recently held other point guards to miserable games, ahead of a Sweet 16 bout with Maryland on Thursday.
But Trimble isn't a typical player. Not only is he really good, but what influences Trimble's success or failure goes far beyond simply the caliber of the opposition. After all, he's had some of his most prolific scoring games this season against Maryland's best opponents: 23 points against North Carolina, 24 points (once) against Michigan State and 21 points (once) against Wisconsin, for example.
What makes the biggest difference for Trimble is how teams defend him. On a great many Maryland possessions – probably more than half of them – the Terps bring a big man from their frontcourt to set a high ball screen for Trimble. The goal is to free up Trimble from the guard who's defending him, giving him space to rumble toward the basket and draw a foul, or to draw in a help defender and find an open teammate for a shot. Simple stuff.
How teams can defend Melo Trimble on ball screens
But there are different ways to confront a high ball screen. Without getting too far into the weeds, a defense has a couple overarching types of responses.
One is to play along, with the guard running behind the screen and trying to reconnect with Trimble as quickly as possible. This gives Trimble his space, and it puts a lot of pressure on the guard to recover. If the opposing big man decides to help him, that probably leaves a rolling big man (Diamond Stone or Robert Carter Jr.) open for a pass.
The first time Maryland played Michigan State, back in January, the Spartans defended him that way.
Another is for the opposing big man near the play to "quick-show" – to pretend he's about to come out to challenge Trimble, limiting Trimble's vision and maybe causing a rushed decision, but backpedaling to clog the lane or find his own man. This doesn't kill Trimble, because he's so fast and good at drawing contact that he can out-duel most bigs in close combat.
Another option is to "blitz" – for both the opposing guard and big man to show Trimble their hands and surround him with a rapid double-team. This often leaves the screening Maryland big man (Diamond Stone or Robert Carter Jr., usually) open. So it's dangerous if Trimble can execute a quick bounce-pass to a wide-open big. But that's not always an option, and sometimes the result is simply that Trimble has nowhere to go. The Spartans took that approach this month.
In Maryland's Big Ten semifinal loss to Michigan State, the Spartans harassed Trimble by blitzing him all day, or at least keeping their guards draped close to him with a big close by. Trimble told me after the game he hadn't gotten much of that defense this year, and he struggled with it. A ball-screen blitz puts a lot of strain on Trimble to get the ball out quickly, and it makes it nearly impossible for him, or any guard, to penetrate on his own and create shots near the basket. It turns Trimble into a passer, and good defensive teams can keep a lock on whoever's going to get the ball next.
Why Kansas is the right fit for Trimble to thrive
It has been Kansas' practice this year – based on a review of three recent games– not to pressure ball-handlers too heavily in ball-screen defense. Perhaps that'll change for Trimble, but the Jayhawks make a habit of keeping their big men at home, around the basket, and letting guards Frank Mason, Wayne Selden and Devonte' Graham chase the opposing guards around. This should work for Trimble.
Kansas doesn't, at least from what I've seen, blitz often. It doesn't even "quick-show" or try to create the illusion that its guards are getting any help at the top of the arc against a skilled opposing guard.
Above, Jamari Traylor, one of Kansas' backup bigs, doesn't bounce outside to deny a lane to Wesley Iwundu (No. 25), a 6'7 wing for Kansas State. He sags off, leaving guard Graham (4) to cover him. Graham's vulnerable to a rightward spin move, and Traylor is beaten. Iwundu doesn't score, as Selden (1) eventually helps to defend the basket. But Iwundu gets a really good chance to score. This approach to screen defense, I'm told, is called "staying flat." Maryland feels good about Trimble's ability to play against it.
Kansas does a lot of this. But there are holes in Kansas' ball-screen defense even when the Jayhawks take a more aggressive approach. When they do blitz, show or otherwise somehow double-team the ball-handler, they tend to leave players open in dangerous spots. They certainly did against West Virginia in the Big 12 final.
The Mountaineers' Tarik Phillip doesn't have Trimble's vision. But if this were Trimble with Carter or Stone rolling toward the basket, there'd have been a bounce pass at the end of the drive and an easy dunk.
(To be fair, Kansas has tremendously skilled defenders, and the Jayhawks are going to recover better when they do leave someone open than most college teams will.)
Kansas sometimes does bring its big men out to challenge guards after screens, but not typically as part of a double-team with a guard, and sometimes only if the guard is clearly beaten off the pick. This should be OK, too, because Trimble can take most big men off the dribble.
Trimble is dangerous when he's given space to operate, and Kansas' big men will give Trimble the chance to earn that space, one-on-one, against the Jayhawks' talented guards. There's a lot more to this kind of defense, and a lot of it is well beyond my pay grade to understand, but Kansas plays these situations conservatively.
(Here's a primer on ways to combat the ball screen, if you're interested in learning more. It's complicated, and I can't pretend to have full command of all of it, beyond the point that Trimble clearly does better when he's not blitzed.)
Mason and Graham will probably spend most of the game guarding Trimble, and if he can beat them off the dribble, Ellis, Lucas and Traylor aren't likely to immediately risk leaving their own men open by bouncing out to help, unless Trimble has already beaten his man.
Trimble is best when he brings the game to the other team, and Kansas' style of defense is going to put the ball in his court. The rest, as ever, is up to him.Côte d'Ivoire leads the world in production and export of the cocoa beans
Cocoa beans in a cacao pod showing the outer rind, the seeds, and inner pulp
Ivory Coast (Côte d'Ivoire) leads the world in production and export of the cocoa beans used in the manufacture of chocolate,[1] as of 2012, supplying 33% of cocoa produced in the world. West Africa collectively supplies two thirds of the world's cocoa crop, with Ivory Coast leading production at 1.8 million tonnes as of 2017, and nearby Ghana, Nigeria, Cameroon and Togo producing additional 1.55 million tonnes.[2][3][4] Ivory Coast overtook Ghana as the world's leading producer of cocoa beans in 1978, and today is highly dependent on the crop, which accounts for 40% of national export income.[5][6] The primary non-African competitor of Ivory Coast is Indonesia, which went from having almost nonexistent domestic cocoa industry in the 1970s to becoming one of the largest producers in the market by the early 2000s. According to the UN FAO, Indonesia overtook Ghana and became the second-largest producer worldwide in 2006.[2] (World Cocoa Foundation provides significantly lower figures for Indonesia, but concurs that it is the largest producer of cocoa beans outside West Africa.[7]) Large chocolate producers such as Cadbury, Hershey's, and Nestle buy Ivorian cocoa futures and options through Euronext whereby world prices are set.[4]
Tree [ edit ]
Cocoa pods in varying levels of ripeness growing on the trunk of a tree ( cauliflory ).
Theobroma cacao is shade-loving tree native to the understory of rainforests, growing at low elevation in the foothills of the Andes, and the great South American equatorial river basins the Amazon River Basin, and the Orinoco River Basin. The tree is a choice crop for areas of West Africa with low to slight elevations, good soils, and the constant humidity of the tropics.
Farming and Production [ edit ]
Cocoa bean output in 2012
The crop is grown in Ivory Coast mostly by smallholder farmers planting on 1-3 hectares.[8] The pods containing the beans are harvested when a sufficient number are ripe, opened to separate the seeds and pulp from the outer rind, and the seeds and pulp are usually allowed to ferment somewhere on the farm, before the seeds are dried in a central location. The dried seeds are purchased by a traitant or buyer who travels among villages in an area to weigh, purchase and collect the crop. The traitant then takes the crop to a short-holding warehouse in a major town or city where the major exporters purchase the seeds and arrange for its export from Ivory Coast.
The entire process requires the labored contribution of a variety of workers, from the farmer who owns the fields, to his laborers who may be family members (in most cases), to others in the village who harvest pods to ferment seeds at the same time, to the local buyers, and the middlemen between these purchasers and the exporters who finally get the crop to an export ship.
With some two million children involved in the farming of cocoa in West Africa, primarily Ghana and Ivory Coast, child slavery and trafficking were major concerns in 2018.[9][10] However, international attempts to improve conditions for children were failing because of persistent poverty, absence of schools, increasing world cocoa demand, more intensive farming of cocoa, and continued exploitation of child labor.[9][11]
Child labour in cocoa production [ edit ]
Ivory Coast and other West African cocoa producing nations have come under severe criticism in the west for using child slave labor to produce the cocoa purchased by Western chocolate companies. The bulk of the criticism has been directed towards practices in Ivory Coast. The report "A Taste of Slavery: How Your Chocolate May be Tainted"[12][13][14] claims that traffickers promise paid work, housing, and education to children who are then forced to labour and undergo severe abuse, that some children are held forcibly on farms and work up to 100 hours per week, and that attempted escapees are beaten.[12][13][14][15][16][17][18] A BBC article claimed that 15,000 children from Mali, some under age 11, were working as slaves in cocoa production in Ivory Coast, and Mali's Save the Children Fund director described "young children carrying 6kg of cocoa sacks so heavy that they have wounds all over their shoulders."[19] In 2001 Chocolate Manufacturers Association acknowledged that slaves harvested some cocoa.[17] In 2013, the U.S. DOL's report Findings on the Worst Forms of Child Labor in Côte d'Ivoire stated that 39.8% of children aged 5 to 14 are working children and that they "are engaged in the worst forms of child labor in agriculture, particularly on cocoa farms, sometimes under conditions of forced labor."[20] In December 2014, the DOL's List of Goods Produced by Child Labor or Forced Labor mentioned Ivory Coast among the countries where instances of such working conditions (both child labor and forced labor) are still observed.
A major study of the issue in 2016, published in Fortune Magazine in the U.S., concluded that approximately 2.1 million children in various countries of West Africa "still do the dangerous and physically taxing work of harvesting cocoa". The report was doubtful as to whether the situation can be improved.
"According to the 2015 edition of the Cocoa Barometer, a biennial report examining the economics of cocoa that’s published by a consortium of nonprofits, the average farmer in Ghana in the 2013–14 growing season made just 84¢ per day, and farmers in Ivory Coast a mere 50¢. That puts them well below the World Bank’s new $1.90 per day standard for extreme poverty, even if you factor in the 13% rise in the price of cocoa last year. And in that context the challenge of eradicating child labor feels immense, and the chocolate companies’ newfound commitment to expanding the investments in cocoa communities not quite sufficient.... 'Best-case scenario, we’re only doing 10% of what’s needed.' Getting that other 90% won’t be easy. 'It’s such a colossal issue,' says Sona Ebai, the former secretary general of the Alliance of Cocoa Producing Countries. 'I think child labor cannot be just the responsibility of industry to solve. I think it’s the proverbial all-hands-on-deck: government, civil society, the private sector. And there, you really need leadership.'"[21]
In April 2018, the Cocoa Barometer 2018 report on the $100-billion industry, said this about the child labor situation in West Africa: "Not a single company or government is anywhere near reaching the sectorwide objective of the elimination of child labour, and not even near their commitments of a 70% reduction of child labour by 2020". A report later that year by New Food Economy stated that the Child Labour Monitoring and Remediation Systems implemented by the International Cocoa Initiative and its partners has been useful, but "they are currently reaching less than 20 percent of the over two million children impacted".[22][23]
Pests [ edit ]Sofia Boutella’s Mummy photos from the London set!
Universal Pictures filmed a scene in central London for The Mummy on Sunday and we’ve got the photos! Get your first look at nearly 50 photos of Sofia Boutella as The Mummy in the gallery below! Following those Mummy photos, you’ll also find the previously-posted ones of Tom Cruise and Annabelle Wallis.
The June 9, 2017 release is officially described as follows:
Thought safely entombed in a crypt deep beneath the unforgiving desert, an ancient queen (Sofia Boutella of Kingsman: The Secret Service and Star Trek Beyond) whose destiny was unjustly taken from her, is awakened in our current day, bringing with her malevolence grown over millennia and terrors that defy human comprehension.
From the sweeping sands of the Middle East through hidden labyrinths under modern-day London, The Mummy brings a surprising intensity and balance of wonder and thrills in an imaginative new take that ushers in a new world of gods and monsters.
Tom Cruise stars along with Annabelle Wallis (Knights of the Roundtable: King Arthur, Annabelle), Sofia Boutella (Kingsman: The Secret Service, Star Trek Beyond), Jake Johnson (Jurassic World) and Courtney B. Vance (“American Crime Story: The People vs. OJ Simpson”). Russell Crowe (Gladiator, A Beautiful Mind, Man of Steel) is reportedly in talks to join the cast as Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde.
The Mummy is directed by Alex Kurtzman, who also produces alongside Chris Morgan (Fast & Furious series, Wanted) and Sean Daniel (The Mummy trilogy, The Best Man series). Jon Spaihts (Prometheus) wrote the screenplay, and Bobby Cohen executive produces. It’s being planned as the first film in the Universal Monster cinematic universe with plans for The Wolfman, The Invisible Man, Bride of Frankenstein, and Van Helsing all in various stages of development.
The original monster was made famous on the big screen by Boris Karloff in Karl Freund’s 1932 feature. Subsequent sequels to the original The Mummy saw Tom Tyler (who played Captain Marvel/Shazam in the original 1941 serials) and later Lon Chaney Jr. playing a different mummy than the one Karloff played. Stephen Sommers’ more recent The Mummy and The Mummy Returns films set Arnold Vosloo in the title role. Jet Li then played the villain in Rob Cohen’s The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor.
(Photo Credit: WENN.com)Response from CARMA L, Owner at Motel Hollywood
This is Miss Lovely, the owner of Motel Hollywood. I am sorry to hear about your stay, I agree %100 with you. I am presently onsite and I have shut down the Motel as it is not even close to being acceptable. I will be more personally involved with business matter as of now. I will not be doing business with the public and my property has shut down until futher notice. The Motel is CLOSED for business and PRIVATE PROPERTY SIGNS are on the front of my building. My property is not open to the public and anyone trespassing on my Private Property will be charged if they do not leave immediatly. No visitors are allowed. I will report any changes to the public and notify them on the future plans of my property. Until then, the Motel will be closed. Thank you from the owner, Miss Lovely.This article is for Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's character. For other versions of the character see Versions of James Moriarty.
"He is the Napoleon of crime, Watson. He is the organizer of half that is evil and of nearly all that is undetected in this great city. He is a genius, a philosopher, an abstract thinker. He has a brain of the first order. He sits motionless, like a spider in the centre of its web, but that web has a thousand radiations, and he knows well every quiver of each of them." ―Sherlock Holmes to Dr Watson speaking about Professor Moriarty [src]
Professor James Moriarty, the arch-enemy of the famous Detective Sherlock Holmes, a mathematics professor turned master criminal. His genius is acknowledged by even Holmes himself to be on par with him.
Despite only appearing in two stories, Moriarty has been proven to be the most dangerous of all criminals that Holmes has ever encountered. In the short story "The Adventure of the Final Problem", during a fight with Holmes above the Reichenbach Falls, Moriarty fell to his death.
Biography
Professor Moriarty's first appearance and his ultimate end occurred in Doyle's story "The Final Problem", in which Holmes, on the verge of delivering a fatal blow to Moriarty's criminal ring, is forced to flee to the Continent to escape retribution. The criminal mastermind follows, and the pursuit ends atop the Reichenbach Falls, during which, Moriarty falls to his death while fighting with Holmes. During this story, Moriarty is depicted as something of a Mafia Godfather: he protects nearly all of the criminals of England in exchange for their obedience and a share in their profits. Holmes, by his own account, was originally led to Moriarty by the suggestion that many of the crimes he perceived were not the spontaneous work of random criminals, but the machinations of a vast and subtle criminal ring. In such a way, he is described as a Consulting Criminal, the opposite of Holmes, a Consulting Detective.
Moriarty plays a direct role in only one other of Doyle's Holmes stories: The Valley of Fear, which was set before "The Final Problem," but published afterwards. In "The Valley of Fear", Holmes attempts to prevent Moriarty's agents from committing a murder. Moriarty does not meet Holmes in this story. In an episode where Moriarty is interviewed by a policeman, a painting by Jean-Baptiste Greuze is described as hanging on the wall; Holmes remarks on another work by the same painter to show it could not have been purchased on a professor's salary. The work referred to is La jeune fille à l'agneau; some commentators have described this as a pun by Doyle upon the name of Thomas Agnew of the gallery Thomas Agnew and Sons, who had a famous painting stolen by Adam Worth, but was unable to prove the fact.
Moriarty's family and first name
The stories give a number of contradictory indications about the Professor's family. In his first appearance in "The Adventure of the Final Problem", Moriarty is only referred to as Professor Moriarty, with no first name mentioned. Watson does, however, refer to the name of another family member when he writes of "the recent letters in which Colonel James Moriarty defends the memory of his brother."
Personality
Professor Moriarty was an extremely intelligent person. He is mentioned by Holmes himself as having a mind of the first order. He was a mathematical and scientific genius, having studied at university and having his work on the Binomial Theorem being globally acclaimed. Moriarty, unfortunately, possessed a lust for power that led to criminal practices.
Professor Moriarty impresses Holmes, who is not easily impressed, with his incredible talent at organising elaborate crimes throughout London whilst keeping his own identity and involvement effectively anonymous from the authorities. However, Moriarty's personality speedily developed into that of a calculative, sociopathic megalomaniac.
When he appears in The Final Problem, he is introduced as a ruthless, cunning and decisively malicious person. He expresses his intelligence to Holmes, but also his profound ruthlessness. Moriarty admits that physically duelling with Holmes is considered an extreme measure on his part, but is still entirely willing to resort to it - this means that he is completely willing to go beyond his comfort zone if need be. He is also shown to be abundantly self-confident.
Moriarty's malevolence is shown when, after his famous first encounter with Holmes, he arranges three ways of trying to kill Holmes but simultaneously make it look coincidental or accidental.
Skills
Moriaty is an exceptionally intelligent and cunning criminal genius. He is so smart that even Sherlock Holmes considers Moriaty to be his equal and have a brain of the first order and was very impressed by his intellectual abillities. His cunning intellect is his most dangerous trait.
Moriaty had particularly unparalled mastery of criminal techniques to the point that Holmes even called him as The Napoleon of Crime, with a vast network of criminal followers, and was an exceptional tactician and actor. His strategic and acting capabilities and phenomenal levels of skill and talent for organising criminal activities to perfection throughout even the most powerful and widespread of cities while effectively keeping his identity anonymous was so great that he impresses even Sherlock, who is not easily impressed and was easily able to remain completely unsuspected as the world's only consulting criminal and the most dangerous of all of Sherlock's foes while executing his criminal activities to perfection throughout the extremely large and powerful London city, never actually personally employing the crimes but sending his henchmen and creating the plans to flawlessly complete the assigned crime. Even when the police managed to capture all of his followers, Moriarty somehow escaped and managed to use what remained of his men to very nearly kill Sherlock, by easily tricking Watson into leaving Sherlock so he can confront him with a letter and stationing some of his men to help him should it be needed. His ability to remain unsuspected for his criminal activities and act as a humile man as well as his self control was so great that Holmes said that for calling Moriaty a criminal, Watson would mean uttering a liabel in the eyes of the law and be hauled to the court and pensioned for a year.
Moriaty was also exceptionally knowledgeable and accomplished in academic fields, having received excellent academical education and excelled, with even Sherlock Holmes praising his academical expertise. He was known to have unprecendented talent in mathematic, with particular knowledge and abillity in the Binomial Theorem to the point that he published a treatise on the mathematic field that was deemed to be so profound that it was globally acclaimed when he was still at the age of 21 and later became the most brilliant mathematical professor in the history of an unknown university, all which impressed Holmes himself to the point that he even said Moriaty's exceptional mathematical expertise came from him already having been endowed from birth with what he described as pheneomonal mathematical faculty. Moriaty was also exceptionally compotent and knowledgeable in scientific fields, particularly Astronomy, especially in using mathematics to solve the field's problems, having published the book Dynamics of an Asteroid that was said to contain such rarefied heights of pure mathematics that it is said that there was no man in the scientific press capable of criticizing it and even Holmes was once again impressed by Moriaty's work. He was also very excellent in technology, as he was famous for his technological achievements, although his abillities in technology and achivements in said field are unknown. His ability to publish such renowned books also proved him to be a profilic author.
Although an older man with a frail and aging appearance, and often preferring to deal with problems using his brains rather than fighting head on, considering physical dueling to be an extreme measure that should only be used as a last resort, Moriaty proved to be surprisingly highly deadly in hand-to-hand combat. Moriaty proved he had a very huge amount of skill in martial arts as well as proving to be in excellent physical condition for a man of his age and appearance. His skills and physically fit body made him quite confident in engaging in a fist fight and he is entirely willing to resort to it if pushed or angered, as he fought against the highly martial arts proficient and physical fit Sherlock Holmes in close quarters combat with full confidence in his abilities to handle himself in physical combat and he indeed proved to be so ferocious in a brawl as of having surprised Holmes with his tenacity, as well as being skillful and powerful enough in melee combat to be able to go toe-to-toe with and even almost defeat the renowned detective, as he managed to gain the upper hand and get a grip on him. Sherlock only survived the duel with Moriaty due to using his knowledge of Jujizu to free himself and cause him to lose his balance and fall.
Quotes
Holmes described Moriarty as follows:
"He is a man of good birth and excellent education, endowed by nature with a phenomenal mathematical faculty. At the age of twenty-one he wrote a treatise upon the binomial theorem which has had a European vogue. On the strength of it, he won the mathematical chair at one of our smaller universities, and had, to all appearances, a most brilliant career before him. But the man had hereditary tendencies of the most diabolical kind. A criminal strain ran in his blood, which, instead of being modified, was increased and rendered infinitely more dangerous by his extraordinary mental powers. Dark rumours gathered round him in the University town, and eventually he was compelled to resign his chair and come down to London. He is the Napoleon of crime, Watson. He is the organiser of half that is evil and of nearly all that is undetected in this great city. He is a genius, a philosopher, an abstract thinker. He has a brain of the first order." ―Holmes in "The Final Problem"
Holmes echoes and expounds this sentiment in The Valley of Fear stating:
"But in calling Moriarty a criminal you are uttering libel in the eyes of the law — and there lie the glory and the wonder of it! The greatest schemer of all time, the organizer of every deviltry, the controlling brain of the underworld, a brain which might have made or marred the destiny of nations — that’s the man! But so aloof is he from general suspicion, so immune from criticism, so admirable in his management and self-effacement, that for those very words that you have uttered he could hale you to a court and emerge with your year’s pension as a solatium for his wounded character. Is he not the celebrated author of The Dynamics of an Asteroid, a book which ascends to such rarefied heights of pure mathematics that it is said that there was no man in the scientific press capable of criticizing it? Is this a man to traduce? Foulmouthed doctor and slandered professor — such would be your respective roles! That’s genius, Watson. " ―Holmes in The Valley of Fear
Character significances
Moriarty has several interesting notes as a character in the Sherlock Holmes franchise:
He is very much the mirror image of Holmes himself: both of them are geniuses among their breed, are extremely resourceful, are sophisticated and commit their activities to prevent boredom. However, whilst Holmes is a detective, Moriarty, in contrast, is a criminal.
Moriarty is the only adversary that Holmes genuinely fears and admires (Which is also the way Moriarty views Holmes).
Moriarty is the only villain who drives Holmes the closest to fleeing for his life
He was only introduced at all so that Conan Doyle could move on from the character of Sherlock Holmes.
The idea of the clash between Holmes and Moriarty throughout 'The Final Problem' inspires the notion that Sherlock Holmes went down destroying his true rival. Also, the idea that Holmes went down, ridding the world of the most dangerous and powerful criminal minds of the age - and, against all odds and at the cost of his own life, prevailing over the criminal.
Adaptations
Moriarty has been portrayed in several adaptations of Sherlock Holmes, including novels, films, and TV shows. He is often considered Holmes' arch-enemy, even though he is not a major character in the majority of the original stories.
In other worksSo we know that people are trying to build a real economy on Bitcoin and we know mechanically how Bitcoin is designed to work, but how does it work in practice? For the purposes of this analysis, the two features of money that are most important are its role as a medium of exchange and its role as a store of value. As an economy grows, more Bitcoins will be used in exchange for goods and services, while at the same time, some who use Bitcoin will use their currency as a store of value in order to “save” money. In theory, Bitcoin is admittedly designed to increase in value over time (ie the deflationary model of currency) and therefore, “savers” will be rewarded simply by not spending their Bitcoins. This is a problem we’ll discuss shortly, but until then, I digress.
Over the past decade, the US has a fairly low savings rate compared with the rest of the world. Americans save between 11-12% of GDP per year. If we were to apply this savings rate to Bitcoin, already knowing the future path of the Bitcoin money supply, a problem starts to emerge–were 11.5% of Bitcoins saved per year, by 2021, 95.3% of the entire supply of the currency will have been stashed away as savings rendering commerce effectively impossible. A system of credit can be built on top of the Bitcoin economy (and most likely will be built), but while this can push back the date at which savings account for too large a share of the entire economy, it can only delay the inevitable. At some point, Bitcoins saved will start to approach total Bitcoins in circulation, making commerce effectively impossible.
Bitcoin is Good as Gold
This is in fact how the gold standard worked as money for years. While there is a finite amount of gold on planet earth, humans still have yet to mine all gold, and the supply of gold accordingly increases at some kind of modest annualized rate. When the price of gold spikes, miners are incentivized to increase their exploration and production efforts, and as such, spikes in the price of gold tend to come with spikes in production. Hard-money types tend to hate the growth of the money supply, though they like gold because the supply growth is not controlled by a centralized pseudo-government actor. Because no government controls supply growth, hard-money types are able to ignore the fact that gold’s supply growth tends to be lumpy (ie how the California Gold Rush led to a rapidly increasing money supply and its subsequent end led to stagnation) in focusing on how it is largely immune to inflations.
Bitcoin and gold are similar right now in how “mining” (alongside savings) is incentivized by a rising price. The increase of supply and rising price encourage those who have “saved” to spend by offering a price that is too good to pass up. This theoretically helps maintain a balance between commerce and savings over the long-run; however, we know theory and practice often differ and we’ll soon get to why, but first, let’s talk about how Bitcoin and gold differ. With gold, we have never had to contemplate a date at which the supply in circulation stops increasing, while with Bitcoin the end of supply growth has a known date.
Here’s how the Bitcoin community explains this problem:
Worries about Bitcoin being destroyed by deflation are not entirely unfounded. Unlike most currencies, which experience inflation as their founding institutions create more and more units, Bitcoin will likely experience gradual deflation with the passage of time. Bitcoin is unique in that only a small amount of units will ever be produced (twenty-one million to be exact), this number has been known since the project’s inception, and the units are created at a predictable rate. In fact, infinite divisibility should allow Bitcoins to function in cases of extreme wallet loss. Even if, in the far future, so many people have lost their wallets that only a single Bitcoin, or a fraction of one, remains, Bitcoin should continue to function just fine. No one can claim to be sure what is going to happen, but deflation may prove to present a smaller threat than many expect. Also, Bitcoin users are faced with a danger that doesn’t threaten users of any other currency: if a Bitcoin user loses his wallet, his money is gone forever, unless he finds it again. And not just to him; it’s gone completely out of circulation, rendered utterly inaccessible to anyone. As people will lose their wallets, the total number of Bitcoins will slowly decrease. Therefore, Bitcoin seems to be faced with a unique problem. Whereas most currencies inflate over time, Bitcoin will mostly likely do just the opposite. Time will see the irretrievable loss of an ever-increasing number of Bitcoins. An already small number will be permanently whittled down further and further. And as there become fewer and fewer Bitcoins, the laws of supply and demand suggest that their value will probably continually rise. Thus Bitcoin is bound to once again stray into mysterious territory, because no one exactly knows what happens to a currency that grows continually more valuable. Many economists claim that a low level of inflation is a good thing for a currency, but nobody is quite sure about what might happens to one that continually deflates. Although deflation could hardly be called a rare phenomenon, steady, constant deflation is unheard of. There may be a lot of speculation, no one has any hard data to back up their claims. That being said, there is a mechanism in place to combat the obvious consequences. Extreme deflation would render most currencies highly impractical: if a single Canadian dollar could suddenly buy the holder a car, how would one go about buying bread or candy? Even pennies would fetch more than a person could carry. Bitcoin, however, offers a simple and stylish |
are right; Many of you claim that God is the champion of “the unborn”. Many of you claim God’s laws surpass that of mankind. Which you are entitled to believe in. But you put aside the fact that your religious preferences shouldn’t dictate others’ choices.
The right to abortion, is provided on terms that the woman makes this decision under medical council. The right to abortion doesn’t mean giving a woman the right to kill. It means protecting the woman and the baby by supporting and offering them the best options to health care. It means acknowledging the woman as a human being who knows what is best for herself and her child. Denying her this right means oppressing her by making decisions on her behalf.
Women are such an easy target to project self-righteousness. They always have been. Degrading them based on what they wear, what they do, their jobs etc all have happened and are still happens today. And your movement is just another way to continue this “time-honored tradition”.
But I bring you back to the very question that made me sit down and write to you, pro-life activists, today. Who am I to question the pro-life movement?
I am merely a teenage girl from Atlanta Georgia. And why do I question your movement? It’s not because I am a girl, it’s because I believe both lives of women and children matter. And I don’t see how any religious or governmental documents has greater authority to say otherwise.BOSTON (CBS) — The Celtics could be without two of their best three-point shooters on Tuesday night.
A sore right shoulder kept Kelly Olynk out of Monday’s practice, and his status remains uncertain for Tuesday night’s Game 2 against the Atlanta Hawks. Celtics head coach Brad Stevens told reporters on Monday that Olynyk would be re-evaluated ahead of Game 2 before any decision will be made.
Olynyk played just 12 minutes in Boston’s Game 1 loss on Saturday night before getting hurt, scoring just two points off 1-for-3 shooting to go with an offensive rebound and an assist. He said the soreness in his shoulder is the same that caused him to miss 12 games during the regular season from February 19 to March 16.
Losing Olynyk and his shooting, in addition to already losing Avery Bradley, means Boston will be without two of their best three-point shooters for Game 2. In 69 games in the regular season, Olynyk averaged 10 points per game and led the team by shooting 41 percent from three-point range.
Tune in to Celtics-Hawks Game 2 on 98.5 The Sports Hub — the flagship station of the Boston Celtics. Pregame coverage begins at 6:30pm!I’m writing up my current routine (I know, it’s finally happening!). It took me a while to figure out how to lay it out because I don’t really go by product, I go by product category or function. So, if I want to wash my face depending on what time of day it is, if I wore makeup or sunscreen I’ll reach for different product types. As I was writing I realised that there are a few items in my routine that I do not substitute. I don’t think of them as situation specific, I just think of them as the only product for that job. I have Holy Grails (HG). Huh!
That’s kind of weird for me, because I’ve experimented with products for so long I never thought I’d find anything that’s a HG or a staple for me. Usually what happens is that I’ll buy something, it works great then the seasons change or a month passes then it’s like, “ehhhhhhh, maybe not” and it stops being as effective. So I’ve learned to not get too attached, I know which products are seasonal, or work in certain situations. But a solid all rounder? Never thought I’d have that, now I realise I have seven!
❤
Cremorlab T.E.N. Cremor Cleansing Veil
When she was sending me some skincare products to try in the Clabiane W-Line, my unnie added a few cute extra gifts one of which was this amazing facial wipe. She sent me the big size of 60 sheets and I have to admit even though she raved about them I was kinda meh about trying it. You see, I’ve tried so many wipes and none have been worth using at all. They either don’t clean, or they sting or they require way more rubbing than I’m comfortable with to be effective.
But these wipes? WOW. They’re the stuff of dreams. They are so gentle, and effective and non sticky and non stingy and generally just super pleasant to be around that I carry them with me everywhere. I wouldn’t recommend trying to carry the large size around because it is quite bulky, so when I had the opportunity to order from Peach and Lilly (via the lovely Angela from beautyandthecat) I threw in a few of the mini size to take around with my travelling.
Pricy, but if you’re going to use a wipe, it might as well be these as they are nothing short of perfection.
I’ve already talked about this cleanser in my Hada Labo brand review. It’s boring and unexciting, but it works so well as a second cleanser I can’t really complain at all. Seriously, it cuts through even the most oily first cleansers and makes my skin super happy. I’m sure there are great alternatives, but why fix something that ain’t broken?
Muji Unbleached Cotton Pads
You know how when you use a cotton pad it absorbs like 50% of whatever you’ve poured into it, and you end up wasting the product? Yeah, this doesn’t happen with the Muji Unbleached Cotton Pads. What you put in, you pretty much get it all back out, which is amazing! It’s a little out of the way to get, but its the only item in my stash where I buy in bulk for my Mom and I. It’s effective, cheap and I cannot imagine using any other cotton pad.
Sent to me by my unnie in Kokofash, my skin adores this toner. I wrote a review about it in my Clabaine W-Line review, safe to say as long as I am able I will continue to use this product. For the two weeks I was without it, I legit struggled to maintain glowy skin.
It is super pricy, hard to get, but so worth it, oh my god.
Neutrogena On-the-Spot® Acne Treatment
Benzoyl Peroxide is not available over the counter anymore in the UK for reasons known only to the pharmacies themselves. So when I went over to the US, that was on my list of things to purchase. Obviously, having never used it I had no idea how my skin would react, so I stuck to 2.5% and let me tell you right now my skin LOVES it. Holy crap. I’ve tried all manner of chemical exfoliation in many different ways, and nothing has come close to helping my skin clear up like this product. I use it right after using the Clabiane Toner.
I’m sure there are other brands that work just as well, but this? I bought four tubes, and I kid you not the next time I go over to the US I’m buying twice that many life without this stuff seems unnatural.
May Coop Raw Moisturizer
“Shipping cost how much? I hope it was worth it..” is what my mother said when she saw the shipping envelope from Jude of Fifty Shades of Snail. Well, it was, it was Mom. A few months ago, Jude sent me over some samples of May Coop’s Raw Sauce, and May Coop’s Raw Moisturizer and while I found the Sauce pretty meh, I fell head over heels for the moisturiser. I use this exclusively as a night cream and even though I’m pretty liberal with application, it sinks in very quickly? 10 minute tops.
My HG of HG. This is the perfect heavy/light moisturiser for night that ever was. It sinks into my skin really quickly, leaving it hydrated without a nasty greasy feeling. I wake up with soft, hydrated skin that doesn’t feel oily or heavy. I couldn’t ask for a more perfect cream.
I have to thank Jude and Angela for being my May Coop dealers and enablers, without you, I would have considerably less awesome skin.
Biore UV Aqua Rich Watery Gel Sunscreen
Um. No white cast or greasy feeling? Yeah, okay thanks can I have this forever please? This sunscreen came so highly recommended by so many people, I bought two tubes of it in the hope that it would be my perfect sunscreen. My reasoning was that if it didn’t work for me, I could give it to my family members who I knew would use it.
But, now I’m hoarding it and no-one can have my precious sunscreen. It’s really awesome. Doesn’t dry my skin out, doesn’t make it oily, doesn’t cause breakouts and has ZERO white cast.
So these are my Holy Grail products. The ones that have never failed me, always been reliable and most importantly the ones that work, work! Have you used any of these products? Love them, hate them? Let me know, YMMV (Your Mileage May Vary) is applicable, so my Holy Grail might be someone else’s Holy Fail and that’s totally okay 🙂Yesterday morning, I asked on Twitter:
Does anyone have good writing about fear + programming (and how being afraid to make important changes makes you a worse programmer?)
and
I feel like there’s this really important line between caution (a++ excellent) and fear (which holds you back from doing necessary work)
A lot of super interesting discussion ensued, and I’d like to talk about some of it.
Before I start, Ryan Kennedy linked me to this slide deck of a presentation he gave called Fear Driven Development which I absolutely loved, and I think you should look at it. I think my favorite sentence from that presentation is “Fear creates local maximums.”
I find that when I’m afraid, I become super conservative. WE CANNOT POSSIBLY MAKE THIS CHANGE WHAT IF IT BREAKS?! And this means worse software! It’s actually kind of disastrous. If you’re scared of making changes, you can’t make something dramatically better, or do that big code cleanup. Maybe you can’t even deploy the code that you already wrote and tested, because it feels too scary. You just want to stick what’s sort-of-working, even if it’s not great.
A lot of people brought up tools and processes. (in particular the fantastic Kelsey Gilmore-Innis, who has new-to-me things to say about better processes for testing code every time I talk to her)
Kelsey:
I know you’re talking more psychologically, but this is one of my main reasons I believe investing in tests early is important […] obsessive monitoring, CI, canary deploys, chatops, dogfooding, selfserve infra
So! Here are a few ways tools and processes can make us less afraid:
Version control means that you can make changes to your code without being scared of losing the old version. This one is so basic to me now – I can’t even imagine how afraid I would be if I were programming without version control.
So many people mentioned testing as a way to build confidence. My favorite thing I’ve ever read about testing is this book Working Effectively with Legacy Code, where every chapter title is something that’s scary or difficult about working with legacy code. (He defines “legacy code” as “code without tests”, to give you a flavor). For instance: “I Don’t Understand the Code Well Enough To Change It.“, “How Do I Know That I’m Not Breaking Anything?”, “I Don’t Have Much Time and I Have To Change It.”
This tweet from Uncle Bob Martin, explains this idea pretty well:
Even with good design, w/o tests you will fear change and so the code will rot. With good tests, there’s no fear, so you’ll clean the code.
But testing and version control are not the only tools we have! We can also build
QA environments where breaking things is totally allowed and encouraged
deploys that go out a little bit at a time
the ability to roll back a deploy easily
QA teams, whose job it is to exhaustively test software
tools that will email you if your program throws exceptions
and lots more.
Fear of retribution (and blameless postmortems)
But tools and processes are absolutely not the only thing. Even if I have amazing tools and QA systems and the best deploy tools and well-testing code, I’m still going to make mistakes sometimes. And what happens when I make a mistake is really critical.
Etsy and Google and Stripe (where I work) all have blameless postmortems. This means that if you make a change and that change breaks something, people talk about what happened by focusing on the change and the facts, not on blaming you. (“what about that change caused a problem?” instead of “how did Julia break it?”)
I also realized that this goes much further than programming, and Marc linked me to this amazing site about restorative justice, which you should also go read.
So if you blame people for breaking things, they’ll be more scared to make changes in the future, and you’ll end up with worse programs. Huh.
Irrational fears
One last thing that that Fear Driven Development talk talks about that really resonated with me was – some fears are irrational, and that they can infect other people. If you do a deploy, something goes wrong, and you figure out the cause and fix the problem and nobody yells at you, hopefully future deploys should not be scary!
But because we are only human and not Logical Robots, sometimes they still are, and maybe you’ll feel nervous about doing deploys for a while until you see that things are really usually fine.
I think there’s a lot more to be said about irrational fears, and I would be interested to hear more.
This year was the first year that I worked on large software systems that affect lots of people, and it’s been scary sometimes! Next year will be the second year, and my plan is for it to be easier =)
(thanks to Maggie Zhou and Kelsey Gilmore-Innis and Melissa Santos and many others for all saying excellent things and making me have new thoughts!)
A couple of more talks / posts about fear that I enjoyed:poster="http://v.politico.com/images/1155968404/201705/2457/1155968404_5432126765001_5432099905001-vs.jpg?pubId=1155968404" true Spicer: 'Offensive' to say Trump is 'out of control'
It’s “offensive” to suggest President Donald Trump is out of control, White House press secretary said Friday.
Trump tweeted seven times Friday morning, threatening the former FBI director he fired this week and floating the idea of canceling future White House press briefings because “it is not possible” for the president’s aides to speak “with perfect accuracy” given his activity.
Story Continued Below
“I talked to a former FBI official today who said that the president’s tweet, the implicit threat to former FBI Director James Comey indicates that the president, in his words, is simply ‘out of control,’” CNBC’s Eamon Javers asked Spicer at Friday afternoon’s briefing. “I’d like to get you to respond to that. Is he?”
Spicer had a terse reply. “That’s, frankly, offensive,” he said, pointing to and calling on another reporter to quickly move on from Javers’ line of questioning.
“James Comey better hope that there are no ‘tapes’ of our conversations before he starts leaking to the press!” Trump warned in one of his tweets Friday morning. Spicer refused to expand on the president’s comments at the briefing, repeatedly declining to answer whether the president or any White House staff have recorded private conversations in the Oval Office.
“As a very active President with lots of things happening, it is not possible for my surrogates to stand at podium with perfect accuracy!” Trump wrote in another set of posts. “Maybe the best thing to do would be to cancel all future 'press briefings' and hand out written responses for the sake of accuracy???”The upcoming video anime project based on Idea Factory's Otomate game Hanayaka Nari, Waga Ichizoku is slated for release in December and March.
The first half runs for 50 minutes and comes in a limited first edition and a regular edition. The limited-edition retails for 8,820 yen (about US$110) and includes a Blu-ray Disc and a DVD. It comes in an artbox designed by Yuuya and includes an original drama CD by original scenario writer Ayumi Takagi, a booklet including the script for the drama CD and an original story by Takagi, a Christmas card by animator Maki Fujioka, and an advance ticket form for a Hanayaka Nari, Waga Ichizoku event.
The regular edition includes the first 50 minute DVD and the Christmas Card for the retail price of 4,935 yen (US$62). Both versions of the first volume go on sale on December 21, while the second is scheduled fo March 14.
[Via Ota-suke]$\begingroup$
I think the use of Hydrofluoric Acid was script-driven rather than fact driven: it sounds scary rather than being a good choice. Also, it allows for the possibility of the darkly comic bathtub scene where the acid dissolves a ceramic bath because Jessie ignores Walter's instructions (which establishes Walter's expertise and Jessie's lack of it).
There is no good reason why Pinkman and White pharmaceuticals needed to have hydrofluoric acid, therefore using large quantities of it is somewhat implausible.
Moreover, it probably wouldn't work as well as several alternatives. Hydrofluoric acid is very nasty stuff, but it isn't a strong acid. Even when dilute it will etch glass and ceramics, but it won't dissolve or burn flesh. I once saw a demonstration where a lecturer showed this by spilling some dilute hydrofluoric acid on his hand and then onto a glass surface. The surface was frosted, his hand unharmed (he was very careful to wash the acid off quickly and take appropriate precautions and I don't recommend trying this at home!)
Its danger to people is its toxicity, not its ability to burn: it insinuates itself into the body and destroys connective tissue and bone slowly by interfering with anything containing calcium. Its danger is worse because it doesn't cause immediate damage and you may receive a dangerous dose without noticing. So it is scary but not corrosive.
Other alternatives are better. Concentrated alkalis such as Sodium Hydroxide are readily available and are very good at dissolving flesh (which is why they are commonly used as drain cleaners). But alkalis don't do a good job on bone. Concentrated sulfuric acid is even better as it does a good job on flesh and will, eventually, dissolve the bone as well. Murderers have used both methods to try to dispose of evidence. For example, John George Haigh who used sulfuric acid and left little other than gallstones (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_George_Haigh). Using alkali is often done but tends to leave bone fragments even with sophisticated processes that pressure cook the solution (see http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/explainer/2009/12/soluble_dilemma.html).
So I think the answer is that HF solutions are not a good choice for body disposal as it probably doesn't work well compared to known alternatives.
Update
A lot of the above is theory but good scientists do experiments. So Periodic Videos decided to test this very idea using chicken legs as a model. They compared what happens when raw chicken legs are suspended in strong solutions of HCl, H 2 SO 4 and HF. The HF was the least impressive for flesh-dissolving characteristics, though it did seem to cause other, more subtle damage, to the components of the flesh.
See the actual results here.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
Brexit cheerleader Kate Hoey has faced down unrest in her local party after they backed her reselection to stand in Vauxhall.
The Labour Leave chair sparked controversy for campaigning alongside ex-UKIP leader Nigel Farage on his Thames flotilla during the referendum.
Despite the Vauxhall Labour Party publicly disassociating themselves from her over Brexit and rumours she would be deselected, members have rallied around her so she can fight her eighth election.
A statement released by the branch to the Evening Standard said they had agreed to “work collaboratively” with 70-year-old Ms Hoey, who has held the seat since 1989.
Labour strong-hold Vauxhall voted 77 percent in favour of Remain at the EU referendum.
Her main challenge comes from the Lib Dems who today announced they are targeting her 12,708 majority and will make it one of their key General Election battlegrounds.
A senior Lib Dem campaign source said: “We just can’t believe Labour has been dumb enough to re-select someone who makes Nigel Farage look like a cuddly pro-European. It’s game on in Vauxhall.”
Ms Hoey shrugged off the party’s provocation. She said: “It’s fine. Why wouldn’t they? They’ve got a history of targeting seats.”
The Lib Dems claim their membership in local branch Wandsworth and Vauxhall has doubled since the EU referendum and 2000 people have joined the party since Tuesday.
Membership is said to be up 12 percent in Kingston & Surbiton, 15 percent in Twickenham and up 17 percent in Bermondsey & Old Southwark, which will form the centre of the party’s plans for a revival.Image caption Under the plans Earls Court will be demolished
Plans for a 77-acre redevelopment in Earls Court and West Kensington have been approved by the Mayor of London.
The scheme involves demolishing two estates and the Earls Court Exhibition Centre.
Developers want to create four "villages" and a "high street" and say the plans will create 7,500 homes and thousands of permanent jobs.
But campaigners from Save Earl's Court West Kensington & Gibbs Green estates have opposed them.
'Massive boost'
They argued the loss of Earls Court would damage trade and that the centre should be listed.
London mayor Boris Johnson could have chosen to turn the scheme down or call for a public hearing when he met with his planning team on Wednesday.
He said he was "acutely aware of the concerns" some residents had.
Boris Johnson is condemning this part of London into [being] a playground for the super rich Darren Johnson, Green Party
But, he added: "I'm in no doubt that the development will provide a massive boost not just to this part of the capital, but to London's wider economy as well."
Labour London Assembly Member Tom Copley said on Twitter: "Very disappointed but not at all surprised that the Mayor has approved demolition of Earls Court Exhibition Centre.
"An appalling decision."
And Green Party London Assembly Member Darren Johnson said: "Boris Johnson claims to be a champion of the London economy and making it more attractive to foreign investment.
"Yet he has backed the demolition of the exhibition centres that are estimated to be worth over a billion pounds to London's real economy, that attract one and a half million visitors.
"By backing this proposal, Boris Johnson is condemning this part of London into [being] a playground for the super rich with mostly extortionately priced homes that will not help the vast majority of ordinary people."
The development, straddling the boroughs of Kensington and Chelsea and Hammersmith and Fulham, is expected to take 20 years to complete.THE NEXT AFL football operations manager will be an external appointment as the League looks to fill the position left vacant by Simon Lethlean's shock resignation on Friday.
AFL CEO Gillon McLachlan said the AFL would seek candidates immediately but no timeframe would be set on when the position might be filled.
• AFL executives Lethlean and Simkiss resign
• Read Gillon McLachlan's full statement
• Read Simon Lethlean's full statement
"We will work at the right speed to get the right person," he said.
Lethlean was handed the job in March after Mark Evans joined Gold Coast as CEO following four years in the position.
The football operations manager's portfolio included the development of the AFLW competition, umpiring, talent, coaching and ground operations.
Lethlean was appointed after an extensive career at the AFL overseeing media rights deals and fixturing.
He succeeded Evans, who joined the AFL from Hawthorn.
"We will work through a process. I would go to market as soon as we can for the head of football position. I can say to you that I think that that position now will be filled externally," McLachlan said.
"I don't think we need to fill it immediately. We need to get the right person. Clearly the head of football is an important role for our industry."Intestinal microbes regulate metabolic function and energy balance; an altered microbial ecology is believed to contribute to the development of several metabolic diseases. Relative species abundance and metabolic characteristics of the intestinal microbiota change substantially in those who are obese or have other metabolic disorders and in response to ingested nutrients or therapeutic agents. The mechanisms through which the intestinal microbiota and its metabolites affect host homeostasis are just beginning to be understood. We review the relationships between the intestinal microbiota and host metabolism, including energy intake, use, and expenditure, in relation to glucose and lipid metabolism. These associations, along with interactions among the intestinal microbiota, mucus layer, bile acids, and mucosal immune responses, reveal potential mechanisms by which the microbiota affect metabolism. We discuss how controlled studies involving direct perturbations of microbial communities in human and animal models are required to identify effective therapeutic targets in the microbiota.Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton Hillary Diane Rodham ClintonREAD: Cohen testimony alleges Trump knew Stone talked with WikiLeaks about DNC emails County GOP in Minnesota shares image comparing Sanders to Hitler Holder: 'Time to make the Electoral College a vestige of the past' MORE and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump Donald John TrumpREAD: Cohen testimony alleges Trump knew Stone talked with WikiLeaks about DNC emails Trump urges North Korea to denuclearize ahead of summit Venezuela's Maduro says he fears 'bad' people around Trump MORE are in the lead in a new poll in Illinois.
Clinton takes 51 percent of the vote in the poll, compared to rival Bernie Sanders Bernard (Bernie) SandersSenate Dems seek to turn tables on GOP in climate change fight Bernie Sanders Town Hall finishes third in cable news race, draws 1.4 million viewers Woman to undecided Biden: 'Just say yes' to 2020 bid MORE with 32 percent among self-declared primary voters, according to the poll by Southern Illinois University Carbondale’s Paul Simon Public Policy Institute.
ADVERTISEMENT
Clinton leads among women, according to the poll, but Sanders takes the lead with voters under 35. Clinton also holds a lead with minority voters.
The poll was conducted Feb. 15-20 with a margin of error of 4.7 percent.
Trump leads the Republicans with 28 percent of the vote among those who said they would vote in the Illinois GOP primary. Rival Ted Cruz Rafael (Ted) Edward CruzCornyn less popular than Cruz in Texas: poll Trump unleashing digital juggernaut ahead of 2020 Inviting Kim Jong Un to Washington MORE has 15 percent of the vote. Marco Rubio Marco Antonio RubioWhite House pleads with Senate GOP on emergency declaration Sixteen years later, let's finally heed the call of the 9/11 Commission Schumer urges GOP to reject Trump's 'destructive' national emergency MORE takes 14 percent and John Kasich takes 13 percent.
The poll conducted Feb. 15-20 with a margin of error of 5.6 percent.TORONTO – Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau visited the Muslim Welfare Centre in Toronto on Thursday and took part in their Project Ramadan initiative that assembles food baskets distributed to the needy in the city.
“`Eid Mubarak, everyone. What a pleasure to see the community come together in generosity and support, working hard for our neighbors, working hard for those who are less fortunate,” Prime Minister Trudeau told the Project Ramadan volunteers.
“It really is something that is so typically Canadian to be there for our neighbors,” remarked the Prime Minister. “But it is also at the heart of what it means to be Muslim – to be generous, to be present in your community, to be contributing.”
Established in 2009, Project Ramadan fundraises, assembles and distributes baskets containing staple food items that help recipients – regardless of race, nationality or ethnicity – thus providing healthy, balanced meals during the holy month of Ramadan.
According to Project Ramadan, its mission is ‘to build food baskets that will provide one month’s supply of food, household goods and a little bit of extra happiness to a local Toronto-area family in need.’
As a program of the Muslim Welfare Centre of Toronto (MWC), Project Ramadan brings together hundreds of generous and enthusiastic volunteers from across the city during Ramadan to make this initiative possible.
“This is a perfect example of the strength and resilience of Canada, a place that understands that strength comes through diversity not in spite of it and the more we pull together and help each other out, the better we all are,” said Prime Minister Trudeau.
“It is an extraordinary pleasure for me to celebrating with you all. `Eid Mubarak and Merci beaucoup.”
Project Ramadan is a signature program of the Muslim Welfare Centre (MWC) which was established in 1993 with a simple mantra and mission, “Service to humanity is service to Allah.”
Since its inception, the MWC has created and run many beneficial community programs such as Meals on Wheels for seniors, a free medical clinic for the uninsured, Regent Park meals service, public school nutrition programs and three food banks.
Muslims are the fastest growing religious community in Canada, according to the country’s statistical agency, Statistics Canada.
Canada’s Muslim population increased by 82 percent over the past decade – from about 579,000 in 2001 to more than 1 million in 2011. Muslims represent 3.2 percent of Canada’s total population.Hey, guys! I’m already getting a lot questions about the Disney-Fox merger and what it might mean for Percy Jackson. I have NO inside information of any kind, but here are my thoughts.
First, some background. Disney has always been my children’s book publisher, ever since The Lightning Thief novel came out in 2005. The books were first published under the imprints “Miramax-Hyperion” or “Disney-Hyperion,” but those were just different brands within the Disney empire.
Disney was NEVER involved in the Percy Jackson movies. In early 2004, before the first book was published, Disney movie studios passed on the movie rights, which is how Percy Jackson ended up at Fox. Fox was responsible for both Percy Jackson movies.
Now it appears that many assets from the Fox movie studio will be bought by Disney, assuming regulators let the deal go through. I imagine that includes Percy, which means Percy Jackson, in a way, is “coming home” to Disney. I’m very happy about that. Disney (the publishing side) has been very good to me and a wonderful partner for many years, which is why I keep publishing with them!
Realize, though, that Disney studios are a completely different branch of the corporation from Disney publishing. I don’t know anyone at the studios. I have no relationship with the film side. The merger does not mean that I, personally, am getting back the movie rights. It means they will be owned by a different media conglomeration. The merger also does not mean that I will have any more control or influence over what Disney decides to do or not do with those rights than I did with Fox. That’s simply the nature of how it works when an author sells their movie rights, no matter which author, no matter which studio. (One more time for the folks in the back: THE AUTHOR OF THE BOOK DOES NOT CONTROL THE MOVIE. EVER.)
This merger would certainly give Disney a lot of new material and resources, which is exciting, but Percy Jackson is a tiny, tiny grain of sand in a mountain of larger franchises.
Would it be cool if Disney decided to do a Percy reboot of some sort, and if they did a good job, and if it did well? Absolutely! Is that going to happen? I have no earthly idea, nor am I going to assume that the odds are better at Disney than they were at Fox simply because Disney publishes my books. We’ll just have to see.
So what has changed?
Yesterday, Fox owned the movie rights and I had no information, influence or control over what Fox might do with them.
Today, it appears Disney might be acquiring the rights, and I have no information, influence or control over what Disney might do with them.
But hey, it’s Disney. I will be rooting for the merger to go through, because I think it’ll be awesome for generating cool new content, whether or not that includes Percy.
For more details comments about the movies, check my FAQ.Back in 2012, Dinesh D’Souza released a “documentary” claiming that President Obama held “Third World anti-American” views and was working to systematically weaken and undermine this nation.
Two years later, D’Souza pled guilty to using straw donors to make illegal campaign contributions and was sentenced to eight months in a confinement center and five years of probation.
Those two events are unrelated — D’Souza admitted to making the illegal donations — but he is convinced that he was specifically targeted and persecuted by the Obama administration for having made the anti-Obama film.
Appearing at CPAC on Saturday to promote his latest laughable film, which asserts that the main goal of the Democratic Party from its founding to today has been to “steal America,” D’Souza declared that if his last movie got him “eight months in the slammer, this new movie is gonna earn me life in prison.”
“It is a sordid history of the Democratic Party from the very beginning all the way through Hillary [Clinton],” D’Souza said of his film. “The Democrats want us to believe that they’re the party of equal rights and human rights and civil rights. The truth is the Democrats are the party of slavery, and Indian removal, of broken treaties and the Trail of Tears, they’re the party of segregation and Jim Crow and lynching and the Ku Klux Klan, they’re the party of Japanese internment, and opposition to the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the Fair Housing Bill of 1968.”
“This is their actual history,” he continued, “so what they do is they try to cover it up and the way they try to cover it up is by blaming America, America did this and America did that. But the reality is that America didn’t do it, the Democrats did.”Rockstar has announced a barrage of new GTA V Online features coming through updates this spring including the highly-anticipated heists, a 'High Life' pack consisting of new guns, cars and motorbikes, the option to own multiple apartments and garages and a racing rule change that will level the field.
Here's what you'll get in the High Life Update:
- Bullpup Rifle
Join Independent Minds For exclusive articles, events and an advertising-free read for just £5.99 €6.99 $9.99 a month Get the best of The Independent With an Independent Minds subscription for just £5.99 €6.99 $9.99 a month Get the best of The Independent Without the ads – for just £5.99 €6.99 $9.99 a month
- New wardrobe items
- Dinka Thrust motorcycle
- Three new lavish cars including the Super class Pegassi Zentorn
- Multi-property ownership (meaning you'll be able to store a lot more vehicles)
- New jobs
Heists:
Having previously kept quiet on their arrival date, Rockstar has now confirmed heists will arrive "this spring", allowing players to "team up with their most trusted Crew members or with random other mercenaries in Grand Theft Auto Online to pull off cooperative Heist Missions for glory and profit."
Capture creator:
The creator mode expands to include Capture jobs, letting players "strategically place pick-ups, define weaponry, set location, and tweak tons of other variables" to create jobs for others to take on.
Tweaks addressing feedback from the GTA community:
- A 'Mental State' player statistic - designed to let players see just how passive or psychotically unhinged fellow players in their session really are, and a slew of new Jobs.
- 'Non-Contact' option for races - This will allow you to play standard races with collisions disabled between player vehicles.
According to Rockstar, "Other players will appear as semi-transparent, you'll still be able to collide with non-player traffic, structures and other scenery, but this mode - for those who want to play it - will eliminate the "rubbing is racing" mentality that some wish to avoid."
This follows the option to turn off catch-up and slip-streaming and should make the playing field completely level.
- New call Lester option that will see him throw the cops off your trailer for a fee.
- Bonus RP for players who leave feeback (likes or dislikes) on jobs, races etc.
- Increased GTA$ payouts for Parachute, Races, Deathmatches and LTS Jobs with less than 4 players.
- And finally, if you cheated with your RP count, you're going to pay...
Rockstar: "As part of our ongoing commitment to target cheaters and keep the game as fair as possible, we are closing RP exploits and will be adjusting the RP totals of players who we know for certain to have gained illegitimate RP by cheating. Your RP will only be adjusted if you participated in mods, hacks, DNS redirects, manipulation of cloud files, or other similarly nefarious behavior. If you grinded short legitimate missions or otherwise gained a small amount of RP without modding, your RP should not be affected by this correction."To eliminate as many variables as possible in the simulations, each barrier screw is considered to have an entry pressure that assumes a fully compacted solids bed. In the real world, however, the solids bed isn't fully compacted. Also, all screws were assumed to have a standard diameter of 4.492 in. and an axial barrier length of 45 in. or 10 turns. The screw speed used for the calculations was 100 rpm. Channel width for the unwrapped barrier charts is measured perpendicular to the flight, not circumferentially. Circumferential width—i.e., when the flight is wrapped around the screw—is wider than the perpendicular channel |
had more than 80- and we were building up their characters in social media accounts. They were tweeting about the music they like, interacting with people on the internet. Schizophrenic right? Keep on reading.
Those fake accounts were also using forums in a daily schedule. Because you can’t just become a member of a forum and post a commercialized content about a brand.
Common pages like “love” “woman” “1 Comic Video Everyday” “Chocolate” got very popular. So we –as social media managers- were connecting with the page owners and seeding content with them.
I think the most award-winning great campaign was “Seyfi Solukal” made by Wanda Digital & Grey, which was a great integrated one with viral videos, seyfisolukal.com, a personal Facebook account of Seyfi Solukal and finally a press conference which ended the campaign, telling it was a campaign of Greenpeace.
2010:
The Prize Storm
This is the year that we should hate what we have done. We made to believe brands that “if you give prizes, they will like you” and “the prize storm” began.
So here comes the golden year for “likes” on Facebook brand pages. Microsites developed for special days (Mother’s Day etc.), digital campaigns were hot with banners. I even remember a 100 level game we developed for kids. Started to spend money on Facebook ads, banners who direct to microsite campaign page, Facebook apps and more.
Started to give gifts on microsites and Facebook apps. I remember we even gave a car with a big digital campaign in 2010.
Should not forget bloggers. Digital campaigns with bloggers were so hot in 2010.
“Upload your vacation photo, ask for votes from your friends and win”
The result of 2010 was: there were about 30.000–50.000 people who were winning prizes with “voting” communities. “Voting” on Facebook apps has changed the game. And those people who we call “campaigners” kept winning on every Facebook brand app. There was even a family who kept winning all the time and probably became rich by selling those prizes. The funny thing was, most of the brands couldn’t reach their ultimate target group because of the campaigners. Remember a topic headline “What did I win today?” in a forum? That’s what we did and this was really, really ugly.
In 2010, there were great campaigns which had great traffic, interaction and awards:
Wanda Digital — “En Kafadar”
Deney 7–4129
C-section’s Sprite 15 Dakika -which was also an integrated campaign
2011:
Fewer prizes, more creative campaigns
Brands started to understand “the data is useless which came from Facebook apps or microsites to win prizes” And they were always the same people. This is the year agencies started giving fewer prizes but making more creative & integrated campaigns. A great digital campaign made by C-section which got viral: “Efes Pilsen, Bu Sene O Sene” There were no prizes but it still got millions of traffic with no media budget at all.
Another campaign was “Seninki Kaç Cm?” made by VForViral for Greenpeace which also got viral with a microsite.
The humor was great. Brands started to give up of their “Corporate Language” and this was good.
2012:
The Best Year of Humor
The humor was more than good. Even I had a great account in BLAB: JeansLab which became very popular in advertising agencies with real-time marketing and friendly language. Guess why? Because the brand stood up against “likes” and “votes”, “good morning content” and boring social media content.
This was the year we started talking about “content” more.
“Doritos Akademi” made by DDB was a great integrated campaign which had Youtube videos, print ads, Twitter accounts, banners, Facebook contents, great visuals with TVC. It was live for a year and kept on creating social media content.
Also, let’s not forget about Elit Çikolata with offline & online marketing campaign made by Concept.
But things also started to change in 2012. There were great microsites, still got Facebook apps (Hayatının Oyunu made by 4129) but videos got hotter and hotter.
2013 & 2014: Goodbye Microsites, Hello Videos!
Facebook apps were much, much less. Seeding was already gone, Facebook ads were hot. KPI’s became traffic, interaction, like stats, video views. This might be the year when we said: “if you have no media budget, you may not get traffic or video views.”
Another offline based advertising agency; McCann had a great integrated campaign using digital & offline together got many awards, Eye of The Fan.
This is also the year when digital advertising agencies started making too many videos. Remember “Ben Niye Yokum?” made by C-section for Rock’n Coke festival which got viral and had 15 awards, Kristal Elma Digital Category “The Best“ included. Was there a microsite for the campaign? No need. The brief was announcing the headliners and it was well played.
Let’s not forget about Batesmotelpro when we’re talking about viral in Turkey. I think what they did is a golden story. Started with a non-commercial viral video “Bana Kitap Al” made in 2006 and became a viral video production company for brands within years. And the important thing is that they’ve never lost their humor in years.
A glimpse from 2013 to 2014 is “wow.” This is the time we left Facebook applications and microsites.
2014:
Nothing but videos.
In Kristal 2014,
“The Best Digital Channel Use” is a viral video on Youtube, made by
C-section, for Rock’n Coke (Ben Niye Yokum)
Another one is on Youtube made by Batesmotelpro & Grey, made for Pronet.
“The Best Social Media Application” is a campaign made for Cumhuriyet “Twitter Miwitter” which was a Twitter account with an offline integration made by Concept.
Another winner on “social media application category” is a campaign made for WWF by 4129 based on Snapchat
Here’s another changing: there’s also an online video category in Kristal Elma now.
We should not forget about Wanda Digital’s “14 Kubat” in 2014 made for Turkcell and “Deneysel Bankacılık” made for Garanti by Kompüter.
And appreciate C-section for making a microsite for Coca-Cola “Onun İsmi”
But is it enough? What the hell happened to games, microsites, digital campaigns with banners and ads? What happened to great digital-based campaigns who ruled the internet for a month, for a week? Did users get bored? Add your comment!Shas party leader and Interior Minister Aryeh Deri lashed out recently at “liberal” streams of Israeli Orthodox Judaism, calling them “borderline Reform.”
Deri spoke at a conference earlier this month of the ultra-Orthodox rabbinic organization Benoam.
“Anyone who knows how synagogues are run over there [in the modern Orthodox community], or the conduct of the prayers, I don’t want to say too much, but these are very significant changes,” Deri charged, clarifying he was referring to “knit kippa” wearers, a Hebrew term for adherents of modern Orthodoxy, as distinct from the black skullcaps favored by the ultra-Orthodox community.
Get The Times of Israel's Daily Edition by email and never miss our top stories Free Sign Up
“Even the ‘knit kippot’ today, as some know even in very large communities, mainly in the center of the country, they’re already borderline Reform,” he said in the footage obtained by Channel 2 news.
“It’s true, there are more kippot” in these communities than in American Reform synagogues, Deri went on. “It looks different, it’s more Israeli. But it’s still borderline Reform,” he repeated.
Deri’s directed his comments at rabbis who belong to the Tzohar organization, most of them state-appointed city and council rabbis who nevertheless have sought to create a more welcoming and open state rabbinate.
The Tzohar rabbis, he noted, were at the forefront in the battle against the Shas-backed conversion law that seeks to further restrict access to state-recognized conversions in Israel to rabbinate-approved rabbinic courts.
“Together and in collaboration with the Reform, because they know their intention is to destroy [the rabbinate], they benefited from the baseness of others who were slandering the rabbinate and searching for faults in it,” he told the rabbinic group.
He went on to criticize Tzohar’s policy of refusing pay for weddings, one of several measures the rabbis of the group have undertaken to be more welcoming to non-observant Israeli couples.
“They [do] everything for free, welcoming, lenient and all that, but we all know the truth,” he said.
The Tzohar organization refused to respond to Deri’s comments, telling Channel 2 that “the things that were said, and the person who said them, are not worthy of a response.”
But the news channel cited one official close to the group railing against Deri. “This convicted criminal who is even now suspected of criminal acts is the last person who can preach morals to a large organization of rabbis who are trying to clean the filth left behind by Deri and his friends,” the official said.
Deri offered a laconic response to Channel 2, but posted a longer one on Facebook on Monday evening.
Explaining that he was referring in his talk to “certain communities who call themselves ‘liberal,'” he said his purpose was to warn of the “looming threat to our identities as Jews.”
He added: “I said that those communities that present themselves as religious are turning in liberal directions that in many cases clash headlong into Jewish law and our tradition. I spoke out of a deep concern for the preservation of the Jewish tradition. The early glimmers of Reformism that are appearing in these communities could bring us in a few decades to full Reformism and [cause] serious harm to the Jewish tradition.
“My words were said in pain, and they aren’t new. They are shared by the most senior rabbis of religious Zionism, who spoke out even more harshly and themselves expressed deep concern for the future of the Jewish people,” he insisted.
He concluded: “I have nothing against religious Zionism. We all have a shared goal: to connect Jews to each other, and not to divide…. We will continue to concern ourselves with the spiritual future of our brothers and to love them, even as we express our fear of what may come, and stubbornly insist on restoring the hearts of our lost, beloved brothers to our Father in Heaven.”Home Daily News Lawyer who filed nearly identical briefs…
Legal Ethics
Lawyer who filed nearly identical briefs in 31 appeals gets stayed suspension
Photo from Shutterstock.
An Ohio solo practitioner who filed nearly identical briefs in 31 criminal appeals following guilty pleas has received a stayed two-year suspension.
Lawyer Douglas Alan Milhoan of Middlebranch, Ohio, argued in those appeals that the prison sentence given to his court-appointed clients imposed “an unnecessary burden on state’s resources,” according to the Ohio Supreme Court opinion (PDF) imposing a stayed two-year suspension. The Legal Profession Blog has highlights.
The briefs differed in case-specific information, but all were 10 pages long, repeated the same grammatical errors, failed to include information why incarceration would burden the state, and failed to cite any case law in support of the argument, the Ohio Supreme Court said.
Though the 31 briefs were essentially identical, in 29 of the cases Milhoan had sought extensions of time for filing, according to the court.
Milhoan submitted fee applications in 28 of the cases for an average of 18.49 hours per case, amounting to $924.50 per case. After learning of an investigation, he elected not to file fee applications in about 12 pending appeals he had been appointed to handle.
Milhoan now admits it would have been better to file “Anders briefs” in many of the cases, the opinion says. Anders briefs, the court explains, are named for a U.S. Supreme Court decision allowing lawyers who deem a criminal appeal to be frivolous to notify the court and file a brief that identifies anything in the record that could arguably support an appeal.
There was no evidence any clients suffered harm as a result of the conduct, the court said.
Milhoan told disciplinary officials he had been drinking excessively at the time but had stopped drinking in 2011. His alcohol abuse arose during several challenges in his personal life, including acting as primary caretaker of his mother after she suffered a stroke. He had no prior disciplinary record.
The Ohio Supreme Court said Milhoan’s suspension would be stayed for two years as long as he commits no further misconduct, abides by his contract with the Ohio Lawyers Assistance Program, and makes restitution to the Ohio Public Defender’s Office and the Ashland County auditor.
Milhoan did not immediately respond to a request for comment.This article is about the rocket architecture and proposal. For other uses, see Direct (disambiguation). For the rockets proposed as part of the DIRECT architecture, see Jupiter (rocket family)
DIRECT was a late-2000s proposed alternative heavy lift launch vehicle architecture supporting NASA's Vision for Space Exploration, which would replace the space agency's planned Ares I and Ares V rockets with a family of Shuttle-Derived Launch Vehicles named "Jupiter".
DIRECT was advocated by a group of space enthusiasts who asserted that they represented a broader team of dozens of NASA and space industry engineers who actively worked on the proposal on an anonymous, voluntary basis in their spare time. September 2008, the DIRECT Team was said to consist of 69 members,[1] 62 of whom were NASA engineers, NASA-contractor engineers, and managers from the Constellation Program. A small number of non-NASA members of the team publicly represented the group.[who?]
The project name "DIRECT" referred to a philosophy of maximizing the re-use of hardware and facilities already in place for the Space Shuttle program (STS), hence a "direct" transition. The DIRECT Team asserted that using this approach to develop and operate a family of high-commonality rockets would reduce costs and the gap between retirement of the Space Shuttle and the first launch of Orion, shorten schedules, and simplify technical requirements for future US human space efforts.
Three major versions of the DIRECT proposal were released with the last, Version 3.0, unveiled in May 2009. On 17 June 2009, the group presented its proposal at a public hearing of the Review of U.S. Human Space Flight Plans Committee, a panel reviewing US space efforts, in Washington D.C.[2]
With the October 11th signing of the NASA Authorization Act of 2010 (S. 3729) by President Obama mandating work on the Space Launch System Heavy Lift Launch Vehicle, the DIRECT Team declared their effort a success and disbanded. Some members subsequently announced the formation of a new space technology company: C-Star Aerospace, LLC.[3][4]
Jupiter launch vehicle family [ edit ]
Some envisioned Jupiter configurations, including crew and cargo variants
DIRECT advocated developing a single, high-commonality family of rockets named Jupiter, adapted closely from existing Space Shuttle systems. Each Jupiter launch vehicle would use a "common core stage" consisting of a tank structure based closely on the existing Space Shuttle External Tank with a pair of standard four-segment Solid Rocket Boosters (SRBs) mounted at the sides as on the Space Shuttle. Up to four Space Shuttle Main Engines (SSMEs) from the Space Shuttle Orbiter would be attached to the bottom of the External Tank. The engines would be deorbited along with the expended tank to burn up in the Earth's atmosphere.
For flights lifting payloads massing 70 Tonnes or less, the Jupiter would fly with no upper stage and utilize only three SSMEs. This configuration was designated the Jupiter-130, indicating one cryogenic stage to reach orbital insertion, three SSMEs powering this common core stage and no engines on the upper stage (because there is no upper stage).[citation needed]
For heavier payloads a proposed Jupiter Upper Stage (JUS) would be added atop the tank structure and a fourth SSME would be mounted on the base of the common core stage. This configuration was designated the Jupiter-246, indicating two cryogenic stages to reach orbital insertion, four SSMEs powering the Common core stage and six RL-10 cryogenic engines powering the JUS.[citation needed]
For extra-planetary expeditions, the JUS would serve in a role similar to the Earth Departure Stage planned for Ares V. DIRECT specified existing components for their launch vehicles, but contended that they could incorporate improvements such as the more powerful five-segment SRB and J-2X upper stage engine currently under development for the Constellation Program should they become available.[citation needed]
Crews would be carried atop the launch vehicle in NASA's planned Orion Crew Exploration Vehicle, itself topped by the planned Launch Abort System. Cargo, whether carried behind the Orion spacecraft or alone on a cargo-only launch would be enclosed by a payload fairing.
Many configurations of Jupiter were seen as possible, but the DIRECT version 3.0 proposal, released in May 2009, recommended two: the Jupiter-130 and Jupiter-246, with claimed lift capacities exceeding 70 and 110 tonnes, respectively, to low Earth orbit.[5]
Proposed and Possible Missions [ edit ]
Low Earth Orbit and Unmanned Scientific Missions [ edit ]
Orion spacecraft taking a Space Shuttle Payload Delivery Module (SSPDM) to the ISS, carrying an airlock, the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer and other cargo on a single Jupiter-130. (Artist's conception)
DIRECT asserted that the extra payload capability of the Jupiter-130 would allow for a range of additional cargo payloads to be flown with each Orion crew, a capability which is not possible with the Ares I. The team suggested a number of extra missions which would be enabled by Jupiter in their proposal,[6] including:
New ISS resupply missions with the three ESA/ASI-built Multi-Purpose Logistics Modules
Performing more Hubble Space Telescope Servicing Missions with Orion crews
Launching massive new space telescopes over 8 meters in diameter (more than 3 times the diameter of Hubble)
Perform a Mars Sample Return mission [7] on a single Jupiter launcher, to land on Mars and return a sample of its soil back to Earth for study as early as 2013
on a single Jupiter launcher, to land on Mars and return a sample of its soil back to Earth for study as early as 2013 Launching a human crew to fly around the moon as early as 2013
The DIRECT team asserted that these additional new missions could have been planned and funded due to development cost savings with the Jupiter rocket family compared to the current NASA baseline. They suggested that the proposed new missions and payloads could provide useful employment for many people who were working in the Space Shuttle Program,[citation needed] which was due to end in 2011.
Lunar Mission Architecture [ edit ]
As with NASA's Constellation Program baseline, two launches would be performed for a DIRECT lunar mission. One Jupiter-246 rocket would carry the crew in NASA's planned Orion Crew Exploration Vehicle along with NASA's planned Lunar Surface Access Module lunar lander. Another Jupiter-246 would be launched, its Jupiter Upper Stage (JUS) fully fueled with no payload. This particular JUS would serve as the Earth Departure Stage. The two upper stages would meet in low Earth orbit and the lunar spacecraft would transfer from the spent JUS to the fresh JUS. The assembled Orion/Altair/JUS would leave Earth orbit for the Moon. The JUS would be expended on reaching the moon. After this the spacecraft would enter lunar orbit, and the entire crew would descend to the Moon in the Altair while the Orion remained in lunar orbit.
Following surface exploration, the crew would fly a section of the Altair (the ascent stage) back to the Orion, discard the ascent stage, and put the Orion on a return trajectory to Earth. Before reentry, the Orion would discard its service module, and the crew and Orion capsule would reenter Earth's atmosphere and land with parachutes deployed.[citation needed]
DIRECT calculated that the two Jupiter-246s will be able to send 80.7 t of mass through trans-lunar injection.[8] This compared favorably with an Ares I / Ares V dual launch, as of September 2008, projected to be capable of 71.1 t.[9]
In its various versions and literature, the DIRECT Team postulated other mission architectures, for example using Lagrangian points in the Earth-Moon system as staging sites, as well as developing cryogenic propellant depots in low Earth orbit, to allow spacecraft to re-fuel in space and thus extend their range and capability. However, the primary DIRECT architecture intentionally matched that of NASA's.[citation needed]
Origins and history [ edit ]
1978 image of a Morton Thiokol-proposed In-Line Shuttle Derived launch vehicle. Note white tank.
DIRECT's Jupiter vehicle would have been an "in-line" Space Shuttle-derived launch vehicle. This broad category of Space Shuttle adaptations, postulated since before the first Shuttle launch, removes the winged Space Shuttle Orbiter, moves the liquid main engines to the bottom of the cryogenic tankage (typically proposed to be adapted from the Shuttle external tank), and relocates the payload to above the tankage.
The first official study of the concept was conducted in 1986 by NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in the aftermath of the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster.[10] It was promoted as one of the alternatives for launching unmanned cargo and would have potentially allowed a restarted lunar program as well. There were, however, no funds available to NASA for building any new vehicles while the Space Shuttle program continued. The idea was shelved and NASA concentrated on fixing and operating the Space Shuttle instead.
DIRECT's approach had a resemblance to that of the 1991 National Launch System effort. Proposed jointly by NASA and the Department of Defense as an alternative to the Titan IV, the design was based on the same solid rocket boosters and modified external tank, but instead of the reusable Space Shuttle main engine, specified four of the proposed disposable, less expensive Space Transportation Main Engines. The United States Congress did not appropriate funding for the development. A great deal of reference material exists in the public domain regarding NLS.[11][12][13][14]
NASA's Exploration Systems Architecture Study (ESAS) of 2005 included a similar design to the DIRECT proposal using three Space Shuttle Main Engines (SSME). Known as LV-24 in crew launch form, and LV-25 in cargo configuration, the idea was dismissed because it did not have sufficient performance for the proposed lunar program - however the concept was not considered using an Earth departure stage (EDS).
DIRECT's re-exploration of the SDLV idea began in 2006 in frustration with the high cost and delays of Ares I and worries that any similar issues with the giant Ares V might put the whole Constellation Program in jeopardy. An additional goal was to maintain American ability to launch crews to space with as short a gap as possible after the planned retirement of Shuttle.
DIRECT v1.0 [ edit ]
According to the DIRECT team, the first version of the DIRECT proposal was the product of a three-month study produced by more than a dozen NASA engineers and managers working in their free time, and a small group of engineers and non-engineers outside NASA. DIRECT took the final ESAS recommendation of using the EDS during the ascent phase of the flight to gain additional launch performance on the Cargo LV, and applied this same methodology to the LV-24/25.
The next change in DIRECT's development was in response to NASA dropping the Space Shuttle Main Engine on the Ares V design due to the high manufacturing cost of the SSME engines and the difficulty in producing the required number of units per year with existing manufacturing facilities. NASA specified five RS-68 engines as the core engines for Ares V. The DIRECT proposal specified that its core should include two RS-68 engines. Additional performance for carrying payloads to Low Earth Orbit would be provided by upgrading the main engines with Regenerative Cooling Nozzles to improve their efficiency.
The v1.0 proposal was submitted on October 25, 2006 to NASA's Administrator, Michael D. Griffin, and a wide range of industry, political and advocacy groups involved in the Constellation program.
Criticism of v1.0 [ edit ]
In late 2006, the head of the ESAS Study, Dr. Doug Stanley, declared that the DIRECT v1.0 proposal could not work as it relied on overly optimistic and speculative performance specifications for an upgraded RS-68 Regen engine. Stanley produced official specifications from Rocketdyne about the RS-68 Regen upgrades as evidence for his point.
DIRECT v2.0 [ edit ]
Expanded diagram of the DIRECT v2.0 Jupiter-232 configuration
Direct v2.0 proposed to use a human-rated version of the existing RS-68 engine design.
On May 10, 2007, a revised DIRECT proposal was released. To address criticism of relying on engine studies rather than working engines, DIRECT v2.0 specified human-rating the standard performance RS-68 as used on existing Delta IV launchers and for the upper stage chose the lower of two specifications of J-2X engine which Rocketdyne is currently developing for NASA's Ares launchers. DIRECT v2.0 introduced a scalable, modular family of Shuttle-derived launch vehicles, starting with the Jupiter-120 and Jupiter-232.
According to the proposal, the single-stage Jupiter-120 could achieve low Earth orbit with two standard ablative RS-68 engines, while an extra RS-68 was required on the core stage of the heavier two-stage Jupiter-232. The Earth Departure Stage for Jupiter-232 now required two standard J-2X engines instead of one.[15]
The DIRECT team produced a 131-page DIRECT v2.0 exploration architecture study that was released on September 19, 2007 at the AIAA "Space 2007" Conference in Long Beach, California. According to the group, this paper was created within a nine-month study. The paper provided detail on how the launch vehicles would be one component of a wider-reaching architecture for enabling the US to maintain the International Space Station (ISS), fly lunar missions, and provide additional capabilities for the NASA human spaceflight program. These capabilities included missions to Mars, Lagrangian point staging architecture options, and mission architectures for visiting Near-Earth object destinations.[16]
Criticism and Rebuttal of v2.0 [ edit ]
In June 2008, David King, director of NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center stated that NASA has considered DIRECT as well as many other rocket proposals, and that the Ares family was the right set of rockets for the mission.[17] "DIRECT v2.0 falls significantly short of the lunar lander performance requirement for exploration missions as specifically outlined in Constellation Program ground rules. The concept also overshoots the requirements for early missions to the International Space Station in the coming decade. These shortcomings would necessitate rushed development of a more expensive launch system with too little capability in the long run, and would actually increase the gap between space shuttle retirement and development of a new vehicle. Even more importantly, the Ares approach offers a much greater margin of crew safety - paramount to every mission NASA puts into space."
In July 2008, following NASA statements of no special studies on DIRECT, the space agency released some internal studies conducted in 2006 and 2007.[10][18][19][20] Nearly a year later, on May 18, 2009, the DIRECT team released a rebuttal to the charges raised by NASA, concluding: "NASA’s October 2007 analysis of DIRECT, on the surface, appears to be a carefully executed analysis of the DIRECT architecture and its central launch vehicle, Jupiter. However, a closer examination of the document reveals significant flaws in the evaluation of DIRECT that set up a scenario where DIRECT would inevitably look inferior when compared to Ares. The errors are so numerous that the only conclusion possible is that this document cannot be used to properly assess the value of the DIRECT alternative."[21][22]
DIRECT v3.0 [ edit ]
Expanded diagram of the DIRECT v3.0 Jupiter-130 configuration
To save development time and costs, Direct v3.0 proposed to use "off the shelf" Space Shuttle Main Engines which were already human-rated.
On 29 May 2009, DIRECT spokesperson Stephen Metschan gave a presentation to the 28th Annual International Space Development Conference in Orlando, Florida entitled, "Direct 3.0: Landing Twice the Mass on the Moon at Half the Cost."[23] In April 2009, following NASA trade studies comparing use of the Space Shuttle Main Engine (SSME) to the originally planned RS-68 engine for Ares V, the DIRECT Team announced that future DIRECT proposals would recommend SSME as the core-stage engine.[24] The engine change was due to concerns that the ablatively-cooled RS-68 would not survive the intense heat produced by the nearby exhaust plumes of the Space Shuttle SRBs. DIRECT asserts that the higher cost of the regeneratively cooled SSME will be offset by the time and money saved by not human-rating the RS-68. Similarly, for the upper stage, the DIRECT Team recommends using six of the flight-proven RL10B-2 engine.
In May 2009 the Office of Science and Technology Policy announced the Review of United States Human Space Flight Plans Committee to be chaired by Norman R. Augustine.[25] On 17 June 2009, team member Stephen Metschan presented the DIRECT v3.0 concept to the Committee, which was formed to offer independent advice to the incoming Obama Administration.[2][26] The Committee's final report did not directly compare DIRECT to the Constellation Program, but did offer budget, schedule, and mission combinations where a shuttle-derived launch vehicle could be used.[27][28]
On 19 January 2010, amid rumors that NASA would propose a DIRECT-like inline launch vehicle, the DIRECT team made a presentation to NASA Associate Administrator for Exploration Systems Mission Directorate, Douglas Cooke, and NASA Associate Administrator for Space Operations, William H. Gerstenmaier, in a meeting convened by NASA Administrator Charles F. Bolden, Jr.[29]
Design Considerations [ edit ]
Pegasus barge delivers a Space Shuttle External Tank to the Vehicle Assembly Building at Kennedy Space Center in Florida from the Michoud Assembly Facility in Louisiana. DIRECT would use the existing barge to transport its planned similar tank from Michoud. barge delivers a Space Shuttle External Tank to the Vehicle Assembly Building at Kennedy Space Center in Florida from the Michoud Assembly Facility in Louisiana. DIRECT would use the existing barge to transport its planned similar tank from Michoud.
Integrated Approach [ edit ]
According to the DIRECT team, many NASA engineers and managers supported the concept and completed a cost analysis comparison with NASA's current Constellation program and a detailed series of evaluations for supporting facilities such as data on the existing manufacturing facilities for the External Tank at the Michoud Assembly Facility and the various launch-processing facilities currently at the Kennedy Space Center. DIRECT proposed to re-use nearly all of the existing facilities with minimal modifications in contrast to the Ares I and Ares V rockets which would have required extensive modifications and replacements over existing facilities.
The DIRECT's core stage would have remained at the existing 8.41 m (27.6 ft) diameter of the Shuttle's External Tank compared to 10.06 m (33.0 ft) for Ares V. The DIRECT team claimed that by not increasing the core stage diameter the existing External Tank manufacturing tooling at the Michoud Assembly Facility, the existing Pegasus barge used to transport the tank from Michoud to Kennedy Space Center, the existing work platforms in the Vehicle Assembly Building, the existing Mobile Launcher Platforms and Crawler-Transporters, and parts of the structure of the existing Fixed Service Structure and Flame Trenches at Launch Complex 39 could be used without major modifications.[citation needed]
The Space Launch System, NASA's eventual successor to Ares, retained the Space Shuttle tankage diameter of 8.41 m (27.6 ft). [30]
Controversy and Criticism [ edit ]
Ares I/Ares V Cost and Schedule vs. DIRECT [ edit ]
Ares I/V Costs [ edit ]
One of the strongest programmatic criticisms with the Ares I and Ares V architecture was the high cost for both developing two new launchers and for operating two concurrent programs. The cost concerns were cited in GAO Reports to Congress[31] noting that the Ares I alone was expected to cost up to $14.4 billion to develop. Former NASA Administrator Michael D. Griffin confirmed that the total cost for developing both Ares launchers would be $32 billion, indicating that the Ares V would be more expensive to develop than the Ares I.
Ares I Schedule [ edit ]
The schedule for Ares I incurred several delays since the inception of the new lunar program. The original intent in the Exploration Systems Architecture Study (ESAS) Report was to have a crewed flight as early as mid-2011 after the Space Shuttle retirement in 2010. A subsequent official NASA schedule had a 65% confidence that the first manned flight of Ares I with Orion (Orion 2) would occur in March 2015.[32][not in citation given]
A critical activity of Ares I development was the schedule for the J-2X upper stage engine and the five-segment version of the SRB. Engineers were concerned about thrust oscillation and Orion-Ares I integration. In 2008, Lockheed Martin requested that NASA redesign Ares I in order to end integration risks with the Orion crew capsule. The combined test results from the Ares I-X launch and the Ares I static test firing indicated that thrust oscillation was not a critical issue, according to program engineers.[33]
DIRECT Self Comparison to Ares [ edit ]
DIRECT contended that the requirement to develop 5-segment SRBs and the J-2X upper stage engine for Ares I in order to fly the first Orion was directly responsible for the delays in schedule and the comparatively high development costs. All-new manufacturing at the Michoud Assembly Facility and launch facilities at Kennedy Space Center would also be required for Ares I. In contrast, DIRECT proposed to reuse the existing 4-segment fully human rated Space Shuttle Solid Rocket Booster and Space Shuttle Main Engine. DIRECT also proposed reuse of existing manufacturing to build a modified variant of the existing Space Shuttle External Tank. Only moderate modifications would be required at Kennedy Space Center to enable launches. DIRECT’s proposal for a single launch vehicle were intended to remove the program risks associated with the possible cancellation of the Ares V launcher due to budgetary constraints.
DIRECT asserted its Jupiter launchers would avoid the delays of Ares I by not requiring the J-2X on the first-generation Jupiter-130 vehicle, by not requiring the five-segment SRB and by providing more than 60 t of lift performance that would ameliorate weight issues on the Orion design.
DIRECT also claimed that money would be saved by avoiding a parallel development of the Ares V booster, since the Jupiter family would represent a single rocket family program. The group suggested that the money saved on Ares V be reused to speed development work of such other elements as the Orion, the Jupiter-130, launch facility modifications and all associated systems. A significant cash injection was expected to allow the schedules of all those elements to be trimmed substantially, allowing full operational capability of an Orion/Jupiter-130 system to perform 6-person crew rotations and cargo deliveries to the ISS by 2013.[citation needed]
Cost Savings and Space Shuttle Gap [ edit ]
Proponents asserted that the DIRECT proposal would enable NASA to fulfill the mandate of the Vision for Space Exploration sooner and more safely than the planned Ares I and Ares V, at a lower cost and with less programmatic risk due to a simpler approach which decreases new development efforts. Advocates said the DIRECT proposal would allow NASA to provide sufficient money to continue funding programs beyond launch vehicle development and operation, including extending its participation in the International Space Station, which was scheduled to end in 2016 as of 2009. The DIRECT proposal also suggested that NASA could use costs savings from the DIRECT proposal to accelerate the VSE's schedule for returning to the Moon and to potentially fly other missions such as servicing missions to the Hubble Space Telescope. In contrast to these claims, NASA senior manager for the STS program, John Shannon stated that he thought the DIRECT proposal underestimated the costs for the Jupiter rocket family.[34]
Orbital Assembly Steps [ edit ]
The DIRECT proposal required more orbital assembly steps than the proposed Constellation Program. In Constellation, after Low Earth Orbital rendezvous of Ares I and Ares V, the Orion Crew Exploration Vehicle (approximately 22 t[35]) from the Ares I would invert and dock with the Altair lunar lander (approximately 44 t[36]) which would still be attached to the Ares V Earth Departure Stage. In the case of DIRECT, the combined mass of Orion and Altair would exceed the carrying capacity of the Jupiter-130. If a Jupiter-130 were launched with Orion and a Jupiter-246 launched with Altair, the Jupiter Upper Stage (JUS) with Altair would have insufficient propellant to push Altair/Orion beyond Earth orbit. Thus, the DIRECT baseline was to launch two Jupiter-246s, one with a partially fueled (75 t) JUS carrying Orion/Altair and the other with only a fully fueled (175 t) JUS.[8] After orbital rendezvous, the Orion would invert and re-dock with Altair much like in the Apollo Program and Constellation Program. However, with DIRECT, the crew in Orion would have to separate Orion/Altair from the first JUS and dock Altair to the second JUS. The second JUS would have enough remaining propellant to serve as the Earth Departure Stage. The first JUS would be discarded in Low Earth Orbit, while the second would be discarded after its Earth departure burn.
Jupiter Upper Stage Mass [ edit ]
The Jupiter Upper Stage (JUS) mass to propellant capacity has been regarded as realistic. Minimal upper stage mass is desirable so that the stage may propel the Orion and Altair spacecraft out of Earth orbit, but the JUS would need to be large enough to carry enough propellant to both achieve low Earth Orbit and to serve as the Earth departure stage. The DIRECT v3.0 JUS had a putative mass of 11.3 t for a propellant capacity of 175.5 t. While claiming a design heritage from the Centaur series of upper stages, DIRECT specifically cited new materials, new welding techniques, and a common bulkhead separating the Liquid Oxygen and Liquid Hydrogen tanks as sufficient to account for the low stage mass. Bernard Kutter of United Launch Alliance described the even more radical DIRECT v2.0 JUS |
Untapped source for cloud start-ups
Java PaaS providers are now plentiful (Heroku, OpenShift,CloudBees, CloudFoundry et al), allowing Java developers to join the ’cool kids’ of Ruby, Python, PHP etc. I don’t think the industry has realised the impact of this but you’ve now got another possible 9-10 million developers who will be very comfortable in creating
applications for the cloud and starting to think deeply about that little start-up they always wanted.
Polyglot acceptance and rise of NoSQL
Polyglot programming on the JVM will continue to creep into the mainstream – combining languages such as Groovy, Scala, Clojure, JRuby with Java gives the developer the flexibility they need for their different problem domains.
Although many mainstream developers don’t have a need to use Cloud/Mobile/functional programming/NoSQL right now (lots of polling at conferences has told me that <5% of the developer population use any combination of these areas) – these are all exciting areas that continue to grow and move into the mainstream.
Oracle/Java community relationship thaws to benefit all
Oracle will continue to work with the Java community to improve relations and to push resources out. Although there is still miscommunication on both sides from time to time, it’s fair to say that things are improving which can only be good for the Java ecosystem. The steward of Java and the 9-10 million developers need to have good relations if Java is going to remain vibrant.
Businesses come back to Java
More organisations are going to shift back to the JVM. The stability and scalability it offers is still the best out there as sites like Twitter have discovered in 2011.
One bad thing
The Oracle/Google does not look like being resolved any time soon. This still continues to have a negative impact on the developer community and beyond. Is there a point where the negative impact outweighs a potential gain? Not sure.FINAL FANTASY XIV Updated (Oct. 6)
FINAL FANTASY XIV was updated at the time below.
[Date & Time]
Oct. 6, 2016 12:15 a.m. (PDT)
[Affected Service]
FINAL FANTASY XIV
[Update Details]
◆FINAL FANTASY XIV Hotfixes (Oct. 6)◆
■ The brightness of the images that represent the objectives in "Wondrous Tails" has been adjusted.
■ The following issues have been addressed.
・An issue in “Alexander - The Eyes of the Creator” and “Alexander - The Eyes of the Creator (Savage)” wherein if a player executes a pet action on a player that is carrying the power generator, the “Transporting” status would wear off.
・An issue in “Alexander - The Heart of the Creator (Savage)” wherein the sound effect that triggers upon the destruction of the “Multifield” was incorrect.
・An issue in “Seal Rock (Seize)” and “The Fields of Glory (Shatter)” wherein a player would be teleported to an enemy’s base when using the action “Return”.
・An issue with Frontline wherein members would not be replenished properly before the start of the battle, even if the group did not have enough members.
・An issue in “The Fold” wherein the KO’d party would be given the option to return their home point.
・An issue with certain shops wherein if a player changes the quantity of an item they wish to purchase, that same change will take effect on a different item from another category.
・An issue wherein the Aquarium furnishing is unsellable in that, when sold to NPC shops, it is sold for 0 Gil and cannot be bought back.
* The sale of the Aquarium was temporarily disabled on Sep. 29, 2016, but players will now be able to sell an Aquarium without any issues.
・An issue wherein players were unable to sell the item “Modern Aesthetics - Samsonian Locks” through the market boards.
・An issue wherein the Profanity Filter would filter unnecessary text.
・An issue with the map wherein the list of areas under “The Black Shroud” would list a blank area.
・An issue wherein if a player shuts down their game via “Exit Game” under “System,” while in the “Wolves' Den Pier” area, the game client would not shut down properly and the player would receive an error. (PlayStation®4 only)
・An issue wherein if a player speaks to the NPC “Jalzahn” in the “North Shroud” area while in possession of a relic weapon nexus, selecting the “Zodiac Weapon Recreation“ option would cause the game to lock up and become unresponsive.
・An issue wherein canceling the changes made to a playlist on the Orchestrion without saving after changing a registered song to a different song would result in the game client crashing.
・An issue wherein the game client would crash if a player teleported to an housing area under certain conditions. (Windows only)
・An issue wherein servers would crash under certain conditions.
・An issue wherein certain text was incorrect.Multiple fights, a small fire, and eleven arrests occurred outside NYU last night, where about one hundred people gathered to protest—and counter-protest—the appearance of Vice co-founder and self-described "Western Chauvinist" provocateur Gavin McInnes.
McInnes, who recently founded the Proud Boys, an online organization whose motto is "West Is Best," was invited to speak at an event hosted by the NYU College Republicans. Word of his appearance spread earlier in the day through a "Disrupt Gavin McInnes at NYU” Facebook event, organized by the NYU Anti-Fascists.
"Come to Kimmel, Rosenthal Pavilion to let NYU know that we will not stand for bigotry, racism, homophobia, transphobia, misogyny on our campus," the Facebook description read.
The first round of fighting broke out around 6:30, as McInnes and members of the Proud Boys arrived outside of Kimmel Hall. Some protesters charged the group, while many in the crowd shouted “Fuck you, Nazis.” McInnes was allegedly pepper sprayed at some point, and a man in a Make America Great Again hat was seen throwing a punch. A few minutes later, protesters burned a red MAGA hat—though it was unclear whether it belonged to the puncher.
Gavin McInnes & Proud Boys Get Into A Fist Fight And Was Pepper Sprayed.. #GavinAtNYUpic.twitter.com/NHCY9sspw2 — Luke Rudkowski (@Lukewearechange) February 3, 2017
McInnes was eventually escorted into the building, but many of the Proud Boys were unable to make it inside. About ten of them gathered around the corner to express their disappointment about not seeing the talk, and their general frustration with a leader who they felt abandoned them. One of the Proud Boys urged the others to join him in battling the “faggots wearing black that won’t let us in,” then, perhaps believing that I fit the bill, ended up taking a few swings at me (see the last few seconds of below video). He ended up shoving me into a tree, though some of his fellow Proud Boys did attempt to restrain him. The man was later arrested for punching a DNAinfo reporter.
A distraught "Proud Boy" outside the NYU protest pic.twitter.com/GOmu8RebbV — Jake Offenhartz (@jangelooff) February 3, 2017
An NYPD spokesperson said the eleven people arrested face various charges, including criminal mischief, resisting arrest, criminal possession of a controlled substance, disorderly conduct, and harassment.
Other interactions were less violent. At times during the night, McInnes supporters and protesters engaged in seemingly civil conversation outside of Kimmel Hall. One man, who asked only to be identified as Charles for fear of retribution, stood as a barricade between two opposing voices, nodding his head at their dialogue. Asked if he identified himself with either group, Charles said that “both sides have some good points,” and that he was “in no way taking sides.”
To be sure, the premise that there are two legitimate sides to this debate is itself a major point of contention. Anti-fascist activists—or antifa—believe that white supremacists should be denied a platform by any means necessary, and many of the black-clad demonstrators noted that it was critical to keep such dangerous ideologies out of the mainstream in the coming years.
While McInnes rejects the white supremacist descriptor, his comments made in recent articles for Taki's Magazine include suggesting Muslims are “more violent” due to inbreeding, referring to Asians as “slopes,” and defending the use of the N-word. He’s also written for VDARE.com, which the Southern Poverty Law Center identifies as a "White Nationalist" hate group. For many in the crowd, the ideology espoused by McInnes and his fan-club qualified as white supremacy, regardless of what the group preferred to call themselves.
“I’m not really into this Alt-Right talk,” said Najieb Isaac, an anti-police brutality activist with Why Accountability. “Wherever Nazis are, we will be.”
Mark Phelam, a Clinton Hill resident who remembers demonstrating against the Vietnam War, said that he was still making up his mind about the efficacy of these protests. “I think a lot of this channeling allows Donald Trump to do a lot more,” he said. “But by the same token, this phenomenon has to be smashed—you can’t allow a mainstream platform for straight up fascists and Nazis, and the idea that people are going to debate their ideas is outrageous. But it’s still tricky.”JAFFA, Israel – Despite a lack of information on the killings, Arab social media has been laden with accusations of “Christian terror” regarding the case of an imam and his friend who were gunned down Saturday in Queens, NY shortly after leaving a mosque where they were reciting afternoon prayers.
The victims were identified by the NYPD as Imam Maulama Akonjee, 55 and Thara Uddin, 65. Both men were shot at close range, just a block away from the mosque. The imam was pronounced dead at the scene, while Uddin died four hours later at Jamaica Hospital.
The shooter, according to Deputy Inspector Henry Sautner from the 106th precinct, remains at large. According to Sautner, the shooter is believed to be a “male with medium complexion dressed in a dark polo shirt and shorts.”
The authorities added that the motive has not been determined, but community members, predominantly Muslims, are calling the murders a hate crime, with some going so far as to blame Donald Trump.
“That’s not what America is about,” Khairul Islam, 33, a local resident, told the Daily News. “We blame Donald Trump for this. Trump and his drama have created Islamophobia.”
Arab social media users decried the act as “Christian terror,” which was one of the hashtags trending on Twitter in Arabic.
“Religious incitement threatens the unity of the American nation, and that’s all because of Trump’s terrorist statements,” Said Aljabarti tweeted. “He’s the first to be blamed.”
الفتنة الطائفية تهدد نسيج ووحدة المجتمع الأمريكي وهذا بسبب تصريحات ترامب الإرهابية هو المسؤول الأول عن ماحدث اليوم — Said⚓ (@SaidAljabarti) August 14, 2016
Mohammed wondered: “What is it, if not Christian terror?”
مش ده يبا الارهاب المسيحي — Tariq Suleiman (@tarkgaid) August 14, 2016
Under the hashtag Christian_terror, Nasser bin hala wrote, “We did not see the media dealing with the story. Is the reason that the murderer is a non Muslim and the murdered is Muslim”
#مقتل_امام_في_نيويورك#الارهاب_المسيحي
لم نرى وسائل الإعلام تنشر هذا الخبر هل السبب أن القاتل غير مسلم والمقتول مسلم؟ — ناصر بن هلا (@binhalaa) August 14, 2016
Abo Sharshab wrote: “May Allah bless the soul of the imam_killed-_in_new York. Are we excepted to see a book of the liberal pigs condemning the American education system and Christian_radicalism or Christian_terror?”
Sabry Solimsn asked: “People, who is the terrorist?”
مين الارهابى يابلد — Sabry Solimsn (@SabrySolimsn) August 14, 2016
“He’s American? Then he’s not a terrorist,” Gamer commented sarcastically. “Is he an Arab or a Muslim? Then he is a terrorist, hell yes. Come on, just report that it’s an act of terror against innocent people! You crap news networks.”
امريكي ؟ مو ارهابي.
عربي او مسلم ؟ اووهه هذا ارهابي يلا طلعوا الخبر واكتبوا اعتداء ارهابي على ابرياء..!!!! 😒قنوات اخبار زباله — لا احد (@gamer123_3li) August 14, 2016
“If the killer were a Muslim we would hear reports of victims of a terror attack,” Salem wrote.
https://twitter.com/sa_mu2iri/status/764580787765276672
“Why don’t they just say that terrorism is their thing?” Yussef Abdullah asked.
https://twitter.com/yousef3bdullah7/status/764581300024053760
“Anything can be expected in America,” Saad Farij tweeted. “There’s plenty of weapons, plenty of anarchy and Islamophobia. May Allah punish them.”
@skynewsarabia في أميركا توقع اي شي يسوونه السلاح متوفر فوضى وحقد على المسلمين حسبي الله عليهم — سعد فراج السبيعي (@saadfarij44) August 13, 2016
Abdulla Oteibi wrote: “Don’t they kill enough people in Muslim countries, now they have to finish the job with those who are over there? Allah, do justice. They have cheapened Muslim blood. Allah, we have nobody but you.”
ما سدهم القتل في بلاد المسلمين كملوا على الي عندهم اللهم اكفناهم بما شئت…رخص دم المسلم..لا حول ولا قوة إلا بالله. — عبدالله العتيبي (@abosoweer1122) August 13, 2016
“Citizen” tweeted: “Will this terrorist be jailed in Guantanamo? Will he be tortured at Abu Ghraib?”
https://twitter.com/aal974141/status/764610311768924161
“This is just one out of millions of Muslims killed by America,” Alsaheer wrote. “What’s the difference?”
هذا واحد من ملايين المسلمين اللي قتلتهم امريكا ، ما هو الفرق — alsaheer (@alsheer2) August 14, 2016
Ali Alshahree commented sarcastically: “Poor sod, he’s mentally unstable. He couldn’t find anybody else so he murdered him. Just a loony.”
حرام عليكم هو واحد معتوه ما لقي غير هذا فقتله هو معتوه ٍ — علي محمد الكلثمي (@Pi7DDTCCJNwPd7F) August 14, 2016
Following the incident, the hashtag #terrorists_killed_Imam_in_NY was launched.
“The American police attack a Saudi woman, and terrorists murder an imam in New York, and yet there’s one idiot who blames our religious education,” Saad Altuwaim wrote.
#الشرطة_الأمريكية_تعتدي_على_سعودية#ارهابيون_يقتلون_امام_مسجد_في_نيويورك
وبعد هذا يجيك واحد أهبل ومدرعم يتهم حلقات التحفيظ ومناهج التعليم. — سعد التويم (@altuwaim_s) August 13, 2016
Another wrote: “You won’t find their secularists blaming their curriculum or their churches. The voice of the hypocrites is heard only in the context of Islam.”
#ارهابيون_يقتلون_امام_مسجد_في_نيويورك ولن تجد العلمانيين بتهمون مناهجهم ولا كنائسهم المنافقون خنجرهم فقط على الاسلام — تفكير (@mrtah49) August 14, 2016
“There’s no fuss following this ugly crime, but had it been a priest, the entire world would have been up in arms,” Ben Sabih wrote. “Has the blood of Arabs and Muslims become so cheap?”
#ارهابيون_يقتلون_امام_مسجد_في_نيويورك ولن تجد العلمانيين بتهمون مناهجهم ولا كنائسهم المنافقون خنجرهم فقط على الاسلام — تفكير (@mrtah49) August 14, 2016
“No liberal will use this hashtag,” Mona wrote. “For them, there’s not a single word of criticism to be said about America.”The first ever whiskey based on Mike Mignola’s legendary Hellboy comic book character was announced officially today by Dark Horse Comics, XXX Distillery LLC and Prestige Imports LLC. Hellboy Hell Water Cinnamon Whiskey is a craft distilled, small batch, naturally flavored cinnamon whiskey retailing for $19.99 for a 750ml bottle. The 66.6 proof Hellboy Hell Water Cinnamon Whiskey is available nationally and can be ordered at www.hellboyhellwater.com.
“It’s appropriate that Hellboy Hell Water Cinnamon Whiskey was made in the Smokey Mountains,” said Dark Horse Comics Publisher Mike Richardson. “At 66.6 proof, Hellboy Hell Water packs a punch worthy of Mike Mignola’s iconic creation.”
Hellboy Hell Water is micro-distilled, hand bottled and styled in the old traditional process of making Southern Corn Whiskey. Old fashioned corn whiskey uses only the finest corn, natural ingredients, spring water, glassware and craftsmanship.
"We’re very excited about the success and potential of our hand crafted whiskeys, especially that of Hellboy Hell Water Cinnamon Whiskey,” said Teddy Jones, XXX Distillery, Sevierville, Tennessee. “At XXX Distillery of Tennessee, we take great pains to ensure the quality and taste of our products are second to none. If you put Hellboy Hell Water Cinnamon Whiskey up against any other, there's no comparison. It's the finest cinnamon whiskey on the market, period."
Since Mike Mignola’s Hellboy first hit the stands in 1994, it has become a cultural sensation, racking up a dozen Eisner Awards and inspiring numerous spinoffs, from a novel line, to video games, to animated films and live action feature films. Hellboy has also inspired a draft ale, a wine and now Hellboy Hell Water Cinnamon Whiskey.The last thing I wanted to be doing was analysing the manifesto of a mass murderer. However, on Sunday, with depressing inevitability, it began emerging that links were being made with the Oslo atrocities and violent video games. I won't be re-treading old scientific arguments here. But what follows is a run down of every mention of video games in the manifesto and the context in which it appears.
Too Long Didn't Read
No one is expected to read all of this. All quotes from the manifesto are in italics and mentions of games are in bold - just scroll to those. The extra information is given so that there can be no confusion about the context in which the games are mentioned. There are also a few parts regarding the killer's stated motives - none of which are remotely linked to gaming.
The following is long but note that the document it is based upon is over three quarters of a million words in length (769,412 according to Word). That's the size of eleven lengthy doctorate theses.
Games
He mentions six games in total: two Dragon Age games (point and click Dungeons and Dragons-type adventures), World of Warcraft (the most popular online fantasy roleplay adventure game ever), Bioshock and Fallout - New Vegas (acclaimed adventure shooters) and Modern Warfare 2 (very popular First Person Shooter game) - one of the top five selling media of all time along with Thriller, Titanic and Avatar.
The upshot is that just ten minutes scanning the document shows that all mentions of games are completely incidental to the manifesto. In most cases he uses them as a pretence for spending ages on the computer, plotting. At worst he cites Modern Warfare 2 as a training aid for target practice - but this is a minescule reference embedded in an almanac of warfare. He mentions the rest in the context of taking a break from a hard day's plotting in much the same way that most gamers would take a break and unwind from work. I do that.
For people to leap upon the needle-like gaming references within the manifesto is to demonstrate a god-like myopia towards the haystack that enshrouds them.
He mentions modern warfare extensively throughout the manifesto - but not the game - the actual 'art' of warfare with detailed schematics, shopping lists, manufacture, arms dealers and anything else you can imagine. He was doing this long before Call of Duty was invented.
Religious references
Unfortunately, thanks to the Australian Christian Lobby, it needs to be mentioned that for any 'Christian' organisation to use the manifesto as a tool for pushing its own agenda beggars belief. Despite several Christian entities already citing specific quotes from within the manifesto in an effort to distance the killer from Christianity, the document is dripping in Christian justification. At one point there is a 10-page section citing Christian and bible references to justify the atrocities. Throwing stones in glass houses? Please don't.
Stats
Ultimately, in the 1528-page document, there are nine places with mentions of World of Warcraft, (one of which also mentions Bioshock and Fallout 3). Modern Warfare is mentioned in five different sections while Dragon Age is mentioned on its own once. If anyone finds any more, please let me know. I'd be surprised if there were more than twenty in total. I'd be staggered if I missed the one which said, 'actually forget everything else, I just want to copy the No Russian level from Call of Duty.'
The manifesto
The following contains long quotes from the manifesto. Some are unrelated to gaming, others shed some light on his motivations. All gaming references are included but this is no way an exhaustive analysis of the massive document. It took four hours just to skim it!
Here are the opening paragraphs.
Italics denotes quotes from the document.
Skip to the next section if and when you become satisfied that he wasn't motivated or influenced by violent games.
"The men the European public admires most extravagantly are the most daring liars; the men they detest most violently are those who try to tell them the truth."
After years of work the first edition of the compendium "2083 - A European Declaration of Independence" is completed. If you have received this book, you are either one of my former 7000 patriotic Facebook friends or you are the friend of one of my FB friends. If you are concerned about the future of Western Europe you will definitely find the information both interesting and highly relevant.
I have spent several years writing, researching and compiling the information and I have spent most of my hard earned funds in this process (in excess of 300 000 Euros). I do not want any compensation for it as it is a gift to you, as a fellow patriot.
Much of the information presented in this compendium (3 books) has been deliberately kept away from the European peoples by our governments and the politically correct mainstream media (MSM). More than 90% of the EU and national parliamentarians and more than 95% of journalists are supporters of European multiculturalism and therefore supporters of the ongoing Islamic colonisation of Europe; yet, they DO NOT have the permission of the European peoples to implement these doctrines.
The compendium, - "2083 - A European Declaration of Independence" - documents through more than 1000 pages that the fear of Islamisation is all but irrational. It covers the following main topics:
1. The rise of cultural Marxism/multiculturalism in Western Europe
2. Why the Islamic colonization and Islamisation of Western Europe began
3. The current state of the Western European Resistance Movements (anti-Marxist/anti-Jihad movements)
4. Solutions for Western Europe and how we, the resistance, should move forward in the coming decades
5. + Covering all, highly relevant topics including solutions and strategies for all of the 8 different political fronts
The compendium/book presents advanced ideological, practical, tactical, organisational and rhetorical solutions and strategies for all patriotic-minded individuals/movements. The book will be of great interest to you whether you are a moderate or a more dedicated cultural conservative/nationalist.
Included are also demographical studies, historical statistics, forecasts and insights on various subjects related to the ongoing and future struggle of Europe. It covers most topics related to historical events and aspects of past and current Islamic Imperialism, which is now removed or falsified by our academia by instruction of Western Europe's cultural relativist elites (cultural relativism=cultural Marxism). It offers thorough analysis of Islam, which is unknown to a majority of Europeans. It documents how the political doctrines known as multiculturalism/cultural Marxism/cultural relativism was created and implemented. Multiculturalists/cultural Marxists usually operate under the disguise of humanism. A majority are anti-nationalists and want to deconstruct European identity, traditions, culture and even nation states.
As we all know, the root of Europe's problems is the lack of cultural self-confidence (nationalism). Most people are still terrified of nationalistic political doctrines thinking that if we ever embrace these principles again, new "Hitler's" will suddenly pop up and initiate global Armageddon... Needless to say; the growing numbers of nationalists in W. Europe are systematically being ridiculed, silenced and persecuted by the current cultural Marxist/multiculturalist political establishments. This has been a continuous ongoing process which started in 1945. This irrational fear of nationalistic doctrines is preventing us from stopping our own national/cultural suicide as the Islamic colonization is increasing annually. This book presents the only solutions to our current problems.
You cannot defeat Islamisation or halt/reverse the Islamic colonization of Western Europe without first removing the political doctrines manifested through multiculturalism/cultural Marxism...
Does gaming appear to be an influence? It's not mentioned once and is completely irrelevant to his context.
There then follows detailed information on the distribution of his book; a thesis on "political correctness" which includes profiles of 'Cultural Marxists'; a thesis on historical revisionism and Marxist/multiculturalist propaganda plus criticism of Islam.
These aren't the ramblings of a deranged lunatic. Each section has a full bibliography. As a thoroughly researched thesis goes, it looks legitimate and almost impressive. But it's galactically one-sided and equally unbalanced. And evil.
The following section goes into how the Crusades weren't as bad as is widely thought.
280 pages in and we get to the next 'book': a review and analysis of Europe's current problems. That lasts for some 500 pages!
There is still no mention of gaming.
Next up is 'Book 3' which is, "A Declaration of pre-emptive War"
At page 812, he starts mentioning a European Military Order re-emerging - with special reference to the Knights Templar who are "sworn to protecting Christian pilgrims visiting the Holy Land after the Crusaders re-captured Jerusalem from the Muslims". A modern version of the knights prove to be very inspirational to him.
The book morphs into military tactics and planning with advice on credit checking and personal behaviour. It's here we see the first mention of games. On page 842:
3.26 Avoiding suspicion from relatives, neighbours and friends
Present a "credible project/alibi" to your friends, co-workers and family. Announce to your closest friends, co-workers and family that you are pursuing a "project" that can at least partly justify your "new pattern of activities" (isolation/travel) while in the planning phase.
F example, tell them that you have started to play World of Warcraft or any other online MMO game and that you wish to focus on this for the next months/year. This "new project" can justify isolation and people will understand somewhat why you are not answering your phone over long periods. Tell them that you are completely hooked on the game (raiding dungeons etc). Emphasise to them that this is a dream you have had since you were a kid. If they stress you, insist and ask them to respect your decision. You will be amazed on how much you can do undetected while blaming this game. If your planning requires you to travel, say that you are visiting one of your WoW friends, or better yet, a girl from your "guild" (who lives in another country). No further questions will be raised if you present these arguments.
Blaming WoW is also quite strategic due to another factor. It is usually considered "tabu" or even shameful in our society today to be hooked on an MMO. By revealing "this secret" to your close ones you are therefore (to them at least) entrusting them with your innermost secret. Usually they will "contribute" to keeping this secret for you which can be very beneficial. (If people from your "secondary" social circle ask them they will even usually "lie" on your behalf (giving you alibi), in order to keep your MMO project a secret.
So he says gaming is a good public excuse to mask all the time spent plotting.
This leads into a section titled, "Avoid exposing your political conviction" which includes the following:
Long term covers:
Say you play WoW (World of Warcraft) or another MMO and have developed an addiction for it. Say that are going to play hardcore for the rest of the year and it is no point trying to convince you otherwise. Inform them that you will be busy doing that in the future etc. Tell them that you are ashamed of it and you don't want to talk any more about it. Make them swear to not tell anyone! (you just effectively prevented any more questions from that person AND made the individual assist you in protecting your cover from everyone else)
Say you think you are gay and are in the process of discovering your new self and that you don't want to talk any more about this issue. Tell them that you are ashamed of it and you don't want to talk any more about it. Make them swear to not tell anyone! (your ego is likely to take a dent unless you are secure in your own heterosexuality, because they will actually believe you are gay. However, it's an extremely effective strategy for stopping questions and prevent people from digging in your life when you don't want them to.
Once again, gaming is referenced as a way of masking one's activities. As is feigning coming to terms with being gay.
Subsequent sections include: Avoid ending up on watch lists and How to stay motivated for longer periods - perform a daily mental check and Motivational music tracks, artist: Saga
Should we blame Saga?
He then goes into; Equipment - weapons/ammo/armour etc. It's incredibly detailed and features a full shopping list. Any notion that he's re-living some fantasy from a game or from a Schwarzenegger movie are way off the mark. He knows exactly what he's talking about.
However, he then goes into describing A Justiciar Knights introduction to ballistic armor, which has a hint of comic book super villain about it. However, he backs everything up with modifications to existing body armor using an intricate level of detail. It goes into the physics of body armor and even how to sew extra pouches into it. This evolves into martial arts and personal training and turns into the description of a Justiciar Knights' martial art which utilises the special armor's special spikes and features. Next is a section on dieting and body building.
At page 900 we reach the next gaming reference:
Marksmanship training
Target practise is likely going to be a problem for many people in certain countries (urban Europeans like us, ouch:). Consider taking a vacation to a country where you are able to train in marksmanship or join a gun club. Simulation by playing Call of Duty, Modern Warfare is a good alternative as well but you should try to get some practise with a real assault rifle (with red point optic) if possible. There are select 2nd or 3rd world countries that offer arrangements where you can practise with an assault rifle. Try avoiding Muslim and African countries (unless you are travelling in a group) as they are very racist/discriminating towards Europeans. There are security courses which is arranged by various security companies around the world as well. Lots of opportunities for those of us with creativity and enough cash:)
End note 1: I will try to order a one week "shooting vacation" in a Christian African country. I will try to find a "gun resort" with access to assault rifles. I may bring my own "red point" aim in order to get used to it.
End note 2: As i have now acquired a legal semi automatic Ruger Mini 14 I can legally practice at the gun range. Full auto training is not really required.
This is cited as one of the most damning references to gaming in the whole manifesto, but ultimately he's just thrown it into the mix as a form of target practice.
The next section concerns 'Packing Gear' and he endorses practices from the boy scouts. This is followed by extended war preparation notes which include how to buy arms on the black market and create weapon caches. It's all incredibly detailed. Next comes risk analysis of various criminal gangs around Europe plus details of Europe's primary targets. A new section delves into 'Shock Attacks'. What follows is a bomb-making guide which is the main reason we can't link to this document (it's illegal). Part of this section lists major power stations throughout Europe and the effects of radioactivity. It's followed by a sizeable section on ranks and medals and uniforms.
On page 1130 a section begins, "European political solutions for the future". The next eight pages deal with reform of the church. It morphs into instructions on forming the ideal society. There's a section on the importance of Facebook on page 1268.
On page 1273 discussion turns to "Western European Civil War Phase 2" from years 2030-2070. It goes into everything from insurgency to future financial investments. Phase 3 of the war will last from 2070 - 2083. Apparently.
On page 1283 there is another brief mention of Modern Warfare 2 - it's in the following context:
Training Facilities
Traditional military training facilities focused on physical conditioning and skills training. Newer facilities make extensive use of computer simulations of various kinds to provide more hours or training in more realistic situations at lower cost and with lower risk to personnel.
Temporary arrangements can be made with the local gun club, the local gym and an internet cafwhich facilitates multiplayer Modern Warfare 2 simulation.
Another passing mention of MW2 in terms of a potential training tool.
This is followed by notes on funding and militia building.
On page 1324 there begins a section on Christian justification of the struggle. It has ten pages of Bible quotes and historical justifications for atrocities. This is followed by more pages on how the Knights Templar are servants of Jesus.
There follows an interview with a 'freedom fighter' (page 1376).
Following this is a long section about the killer called: "Your personal life and convictions". It takes the form of a long and detailed interview. Among the questions are:
Q: What tipped the scales for you? What single event made you decide you wanted to continue planning and moving on with the assault?
A: For me, personally, it was my government's involvement in the attacks on Serbia (NATO bombings in 1999) several years back. It was completely unacceptable how the US and Western European regimes bombed our Serbian brothers. All they wanted was to drive Islam out by deporting the Albanian Muslims back to Albania...
... I spent three years were I focused on writing the compendium, 2083. During a 12 month period in the beginning, I also played World of Warcraft part time (which had been a dream for some time - hardcore raiding:). I lived very ascetic and relatively isolated in this period. These three years would also contribute to detach myself from my "old life". It's a process I used in order to isolate myself from most of my network, in preparation for the coming operation. I feel that this period was needed in order to completely "detach myself from "the game", my "former shallow consumerist lifestyle " in order to ensure full focus on the matters at hand.
Q: I guess you wanted to tell your friends about this. Has it been hard to live a "double life", hiding your true political conservative revolutionary convictions?
A: At first it was extremely hard to avoid the temptation to tell your closest friends. I decided however to withhold all relevant information from them and everyone, not because I didn't trust them, but rather because I wanted to avoid incriminating them. Revealing sensitive information to any of them would put them in a difficult spot, because they would be required by law to report this info to the authorities. It would also pose a serious threat to me if they decided to tell anyone. Adding any cell commanders on MSN or other online networks would be completely idiotic and reckless and would violate my oath. As such, I therefore only corresponded with moderate people who had no clue whatsoever about my clandestine activities. After all, a Justiciar Knight is not an ideologically insecure individual. A Justiciar Knight does not rely on constant babysitting or "patting on the back". He is self driven and ideologically confident with proven daily rituals/meditation which keeps him going.
A couple of my friends have their suspicions though. However, I have managed to channel these suspicions far away from relating to my political convictions. Instead they suspect that I am playing WoW (and trying to hide it) and a couple of them believe that I have chosen semi-isolation because of some alleged homosexual relationship which they suspect I am trying to hide, LOL. Quite hilarious, as I am 100% hetero, but they may continue to believe what they want as it prevents them from asking more questions;)) My goal is obviously to prevent my closest network from asking specific questions, and it has worked perfectly so far.
A passing reference to WoW again.
Q: What motivates you? How have you managed to stay focused and motivated for more than 8 years? Is it bitterness and hate towards the so called "cultural Marxist/multiculturalist elites" or perhaps towards Islam?
A: No, not at all. In fact, if they (the cultural Marx |
we knew they were going to be legendary creatures, which meant they could serve as commanders.
Meanwhile, I was trying to play up the idea that the gods were intrinsically tied to enchantments and that the enchantments represented the gods' impact on the mortal world. The two problems had one solution: rather than search out god supertypes, have the gods be able to search out enchantments. That would reinforce the god/enchantment connection while also making them backward compatible.
Two other small changes. One, the cost was changed from to. Second, we decided to try making the gods have the God creature type. While I really wanted to be able to use God as the creature type, there was one other ulterior motive. "Legendary Enchantment Creature" took up a lot of space and Spirit didn't fit. Wouldn't you know, "God" just made it.
Helo (version 3)
5WW
Legendary Enchantment Creature – God
6/6
Other creatures you control get +1/+1.
Devotion—At the beginning of your upkeep, search your library for a white enchantment card with converted mana cost less than or equal to the number of white mana symbols in the casting costs of permanents you control and cast it without paying its mana cost. Shuffle your library.
The next change came after we added devotion to the set. We were looking for a mechanic to represent the denizens' faith in their gods and using a revamped chroma (from Eventide) seemed like a good fit. We limited the search for mana costs of permanents you controlled on the battlefield and gave it a new name. As you can see, we chose "devotion." Note that in this version, devotion is used as an ability word, just as chroma was.
Helo (version 4)
5WW
Legendary Enchantment Creature – God
5/9
When CARDNAME enters the battlefield you may search your library for a white Aura with converted mana cost less than or equal to your devotion to white and put it onto the battlefield.
Opponents can only cast one spell per turn and can attack with only one creature per turn.
This version had a few changes. Having the enchantment searching trigger every turn ended up being too powerful. To fix this, we did two things. First, we made the search a one-time, enter-the-battlefield trigger. Second, we limited the search to Auras. Why Auras? At this point, we had realized that we were putting a lot of focus on Auras and it felt like a safer subset to search for.
The power/toughness was changed from a 6/6 to a 5/9. I believe originally all the gods were 6/6 and this was us trying to vary them a bit to give them each a different feel. Next, devotion was changed from an ability word to a keyword. You can see we jumped right to "devotion to COLOR." Finally, we changed the global ability from Glorious Anthem to a Rule of Law/Dueling Grounds effect that only worked on the opponent. The idea was that when Heliod (I mean Helo) was around, your opponents were limited to one cast spell and attacking creature per turn.
Helo (version 5)
5WW
Legendary Enchantment Creature – God
5/9
When CARDNAME enters the battlefield you may search your library for a white Aura with converted mana cost less than or equal to your devotion to white and put it onto the battlefield.
Whenever a source deals damage to you or to CARDNAME, you may have CARDNAME deal that much damage to that source's controller.
The only thing that changed with this version is the global static ability. Now, instead of restricting your opponent, it had more of an Eye for an Eye effect, which hurt your opponent for hurting you.
Helo (version 6)
5WW
Legendary Enchantment Creature – God
5/9
When CARDNAME enters the battlefield you may choose a white Aura card you own from outside the game with converted mana cost less than or equal to your devotion to white and put it onto the battlefield.
Whenever a source deals damage to you or to CARDNAME, you may have CARDNAME deal that much damage to that source's controller.
Here's where we started to figure out that the gods weren't quite as sexy as we wanted. Our solution was to try a version where the Aura you got didn't have to be in your deck. Essentially, we turned the Gods into Wishes that could seek out whatever Aura you needed at the time. The plan was, of course, for tournaments to restrict the search to the sideboard.
It's at this point that the file got handed from design to development. In my write-up for the design handoff, I said that while I was happy with the set as a whole, I felt that the one area that still needed work was the Gods. I knew they were going to be a focal point for the set and I explained that we hadn't quite found the right execution yet but that I was going to continue to work to find a solution. In his final pass on the design file, Aaron had made the same note that the Gods had to be a home run and that the current versions weren't yet close.
Helo (version 7)
4WWWW
Legendary Enchantment Creature – God
5/8
Celestial (You may cast this card from Nyx. If it would enter the battlefield any other way, it goes to Nyx instead. If the card would leave the battlefield, it goes to Nyx instead. Your devotion to white reduces its cost by that much W.)
As long as CARDNAME is in Nyx or on the battlefield, whenever damage is dealt to a white creature you control, you may have CARDNAME deal that much damage to that source's controller.
With the Theros file out of my hands, I was able to focus on the one area I hadn't quite cracked yet. One Tuesday afternoon, I took my design team (and by this, I mean not the design team of Theros, but the collected groups of designers that work in R&D under Mark Gottlieb and myself) and gave us the task of coming up with something out of the box. I wanted flavorful and "out there." The design handoff had been too tame. I wanted to try something really crazy.
And my team delivered. We came up with something pretty out there. Here's how these Gods worked. You cast them and they immediately went to Nyx. Nyx was a brand new zone that we created. While the God was in Nyx, he or she had a global static effect. The Eye for an Eye effect changed so now it did damage whenever your white creatures were damaged.
You could then cast the god from Nyx and put them onto the battlefield, where they would function as creatures. Notice that your devotion to the God's color made it cheaper to cast. Then, if anything happened to your God that would make it leave the battlefield, it returned to Nyx. This obviously made it very hard to completely get rid of the Gods. Mostly, you could force them back to Nyx, where they would have to be played again.
The final changes were a shift from to and a change from 5/9 to 5/6.
Heliod (version 8)
4W
Legendary Enchantment
Heliod is indestructible.
Whenever damage is dealt to a white creature you control, you may have Heliod deal that much damage to that source's controller.
Heliod is a 5/8 creature with vigilance as long as your devotion to white is 6 or more. It's still an enchantment.
From this point on, the changes to the card were being made by Erik Lauer and his development team (Doug Beyer, Zac Hill, Dave Humpherys, Tom LaPille and Shawn Main).
The first thing Erik and team did was to get rid of the Nyx zone. They liked the general sense that the God had an enchantment effect and, with work, most likely using devotion, could become a creature, but they felt making a brand-new zone to pull this off was unnecessary.
The first attempt to do this was to change the Gods to legendary enchantments that under the right conditions could turn into creatures. They were made indestructible to keep players from having to deal with the following:
"Hello, I am Heliod, lord of the gods!"
"Naturalize."
The creature's stats and global static ability stayed the same, although the team added a creature keyword to each God. Heliod (and note he is now Heliod) got vigilance. The condition to turn the Gods into creatures was having a devotion to the god's color of six.
Heliod (version 9)
4W
Legendary Enchantment Creature – God
5/8
Vigilance
Heliod is indestructible.
Whenever a source deals damage to a white creature you control, you may have Heliod deal that much damage to that source's controller.
As long as your devotion to white is 5 or less, Heliod isn't a creature.
It was at this point that I made mention to Erik that we hoped the Gods would be able to serve as commanders and, in general, we wanted them to have power and toughness printed on the card, as we really were interested in playing up their role as enchantment creatures. Erik happily obliged as he and his team had come to the same conclusion and made it such that lack of devotion turned them into noncreatures. It was also at this point that the devotion required to make the God a creature was lowered from six to five.
Heliod (version 10)
5W
Legendary Enchantment Creature – God
7/5
Vigilance
Heliod is indestructible.
Creatures can't attack block creatures you control or attack you or Planeswalkers you control unless their controller pays 2 for each such creature.
As long as your devotion to white is 5 or less, Heliod isn't a creature.
This version had the development team changing the global static ability to a Propaganda-like effect. Also, the cost went from to and from a 5/8 to a 7/5.
Heliod (version 11)
3W
Legendary Enchantment Creature – God
7/5
Vigilance
Heliod is indestructible.
Your opponents' permanents enter the battlefield tapped, and their creatures don't untap as normal during the uptap step. At the beginning an opponent's upkeep, he or she may pay 1 per creature to untap those creatures.
As long as your devotion to white is 5 or less, Heliod isn't a creature.
The development team then changed the effect and the cost. The effect became a Kismet-like ability while the mana cost went from down to.
Heliod (version 12)
3W
Legendary Enchantment Creature – God
7/5
Vigilance
Heliod is indestructible.
As long as your devotion to white is five or less, Heliod isn't a creature.
Each creature your opponents control has "At the beginning of your upkeep, tap this creature unless you pay 1."
I believe this change was addressing the problem that the rules text was getting lengthy. Instead of making everything enter the battlefield tapped, this version just taps everything unless the cost is paid. It's a little different, but it captures the same basic effect with a lot fewer words.
Heliod (version 13)
3W
Legendary Enchantment Creature – God
7/5
Vigilance
Heliod is indestructible.
As long as your devotion to white is five or less, Heliod isn't a creature.
At the beginning of your upkeep, put a 1/1 white Disciple enchantment creature tokens onto the battlefield.
Now the ability changes to a triggered ability that makes tokens—Disciple tokens no less. (Note that design and development will name tokens something that sounds good and the creative team will later figure out what creature type they actually are.)
Heliod (version 14)
3W
Legendary Enchantment Creature – God
7/5
Vigilance
Heliod is indestructible.
As long as your devotion to white is less than six, Heliod isn't a creature.
Untapped creatures you control get +0/+2.
2W: Put a 1/1 white [Disciple] enchantment creature token onto the battlefield.
In this version, development made a few changes. First, it went back from having devotion of five to devotion of six. Development changed the global static ability to a Castle-like toughness pumper. The team then tried something new, adding an activated ability. Note that the activated ability was what the triggered ability was in the previous version.
Heliod (version 15)
3W
Legendary Enchantment Creature – God
7/5
Heliod is indestructible.
As long as your devotion to white is less than five, Heliod isn't a creature.
Attacking creatures you control have first strike.
2W: Put a 1/1 white [Disciple] enchantment creature token onto the battlefield.
And we're back to devotion of five. I should point out here that the best way to figure out what the right number is supposed to be is to keep shifting it around during playtests to get a feel for what works best. The other change is that the global static ability now gives attacking creatures first strike. I assume this change was made to try and make the card more aggressive. The previous toughness-pumping version encouraged Heliod's controller to sit back on defense while this version encouraged being more offensive.
Heliod (version 16)
2W
Legendary Enchantment Creature – God
5/6
Indestructible
As long as your devotion to white is less than five, Heliod isn't a creature.
Attacking creatures you control have first strike.
3W: Put a 1/1 white [Disciple] enchantment creature token onto the battlefield.
This version is mostly development tweaking numbers. The mana cost drops from to, the stats change from 7/5 to 5/6, and the activation cost to make the tokens rises from to. The one other change is a subtle one. We made the decision to turn indestructible into a keyword starting with Magic 2014,so "Heliod is indestructible" turns into just "Indestructible."
Heliod (version 17)
3W
Legendary Enchantment Creature – God
5/6
Indestructible
As long as your devotion to white is less than five, Heliod isn't a creature.
Creatures you control have vigilance.
3W: Put a 1/1 white [Disciple] enchantment creature token onto the battlefield.
The development team didn't like how the first strike was playing so it changed the ability to vigilance. The "attacking creatures" clause was dropped because it doesn't interact correctly with vigilance.
Heliod (version 18)
3W
Legendary Enchantment Creature – God
5/6
Indestructible
As long as your devotion to white is less than five, Heliod isn't a creature.
Creatures you control have vigilance.
2WW: Put a 2/1 white Cleric enchantment creature token onto the battlefield.
This change is solely about the activated ability. First, the activation cost was changed from to. Then, the tokens finally get an official creature type (you can tell because it is no longer in brackets, which means "not yet decided"). They are now Clerics and remain enchantment creatures.
Aelion, God of the Sun (version 19)
3W
Legendary Enchantment Creature – God
5/6
Indestructible
As long as your devotion to white is less than five, CARDNAME isn't a creature.
Creatures you control have vigilance.
2WW: Put a 2/1 white Cleric enchantment creature token onto the battlefield.
Heliod gets the new name of Aelion and is now officially God of the Sun.
Heliod, God of the Sun (version 20)
3W
Legendary Enchantment Creature – God
5/6
Indestructible
As long as your devotion to white is less than five, Heliod isn't a creature. (Each W in the mana costs of permanents you control counts toward your devotion to white.)
Other creatures you control have vigilance.
2WW: Put a 2/1 white Cleric enchantment creature token onto the battlefield.
And now we get to the final version. Heliod is back to being Heliod and the card is given proper templating and reminder text.
Here is what the card looked like in print:
The Gods Must Be Crazy
I hope today's article gave you a better insight into how much cards can shift during design and development, especially when the card is as important as one of the Gods of Theros. I'm curious if you liked this format, as it is something I could do again in a future article. As always, please send me feedback through my email, the thread of this article, or through any of my social media (Twitter, Tumblr, Google+, and Instagram).
Join me next week when I talk about how a card can be different things to different players.
Until then, may you have some of your own Heliod stories.
Drive to Work #106—Games with R&D
In this first podcast today, I look back at R&D and talk about the many games we played. This podcast has a little history and a lot of talk about goofing off.
Drive to Work #107—Design Skeleton
My second podcast today talks about an important design tool called the design skeleton.The National Association of Realtors has a blunt message for Zillow Group, the country’s leading online real estate portal: Don’t bother participating in any NAR events this year.
As reported by the real estate news site Inman, the NAR has decided to ban Seattle-based Zillow from exhibiting or sponsoring the organization’s events this year.
“It’s unfortunate that NAR felt it necessary to deny our application to exhibit at their 2016 events,” a Zillow spokeswoman said in a statement emailed to GeekWire. “We look forward to seeing all our industry partners at one of our many upcoming Zillow Group events.”
The NAR, along with its partner Move Inc., are currently locked in a bitter — and costly — legal battle with Zillow. The case centers around the hiring by Zillow of two former Move employees, Curt Beardsley and Errol Samuelson.
Move sued Zillow and Samuelson in March 2014, just 12 days after Samuelson joined Seattle-based Zillow. A King County Superior Court Judge later barred Samuelson from performing many of his key duties as Zillow’s Chief Industry Development Officer, sidelining the exec for a year. Move later sued Beardsley in December 2014, alleging that the former Move executive destroyed key documents on his way out the door to Zillow.
Earlier this month, a King County Superior Court Judge denied Move Inc.’s motion for sanctions against its real estate rival Zillow after a lengthy hearing on allegations that two former Move executives hired by Zillow purposefully destroyed evidence in the case. However, citing the actions of Zillow executive Beardsley, the judge granted Move a jury instruction that will allow the jury to infer that “the missing evidence would have benefitted plaintiffs’ case or alternatively hurt the defendant’s [case.]”
The National Association of Realtors represents more than 1.1 million real estate brokers, appraisers and property managers, key customers of Zillow which sells advertising and other services to the real estate community. The organization hosts regular events for the real estate community, including a mid-year meeting earlier this month where Zillow was prevented from participating.
The NAR’s big Realtors Conference & Expo will be held in Orlando in November, with the event featuring speakers such as former general Colin Powell and activities at Universal Studios.1 of 6 View Caption
Scott Sommerdorf | The Salt Lake Tribune UFA fire investigator Don Buckley - in the Santa suit - works with other investigators Scott Sommerdorf | The Salt Lake Tribune UFA fire investigator Don Buckley - in the Santa suit - works with other investigators Scott Sommerdorf | The Salt Lake Tribune UFA firefighters on the roof investigate a two-alarm fire at the Loveland Living Aquar Scott Sommerdorf | The Salt Lake Tribune UFA firefighters scale a ladder on their way to the roof to investigate a two-alarm fi Scott Sommerdorf | The Salt Lake Tribune UFA fire investigator Don Buckley - in the Santa suit - works with other investigators Scott Sommerdorf | The Salt Lake Tribune UFA fire investigator Don Buckley - in the Santa suit - works with other investigatorsWASHINGTON (Reuters) - FBI Director James Comey told U.S. lawmakers on Thursday that FBI employees who mishandled classified material in the way Hillary Clinton did as secretary of state could be subject to dismissal or loss of security clearance.
Comey addressed the issue at a House of Representatives committee hearing that lasted nearly five hours after House Speaker Paul Ryan said in a letter to Director of National Intelligence James Clapper that Clinton should be denied classified briefings during her campaign for the presidency.
Comey, who said on Tuesday he would not recommend that the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee face criminal charges, was asked at the hearing if Clinton should face administrative punishment for the way she handled her email. “I don’t think that’s for me to recommend,” he said.
Comey did say his employees in the Federal Bureau of Investigation would face discipline for the same behavior.
“They might get fired, they might lose their clearance, it might get suspended for 30 days,” Comey said. “There would be some discipline.”
Presidential candidates normally get access to classified information once they are formally nominated. As director of the FBI, Comey does not have the authority to revoke Clinton’s security privileges.
A group of Republican senators on Thursday asked the State Department to immediately suspend clearances for Clinton and several current and former aides based on the agency’s findings.
The State Department said on Thursday it would conduct an internal review of Clinton’s handling of the emails now that the FBI investigation was over. The department said in April it had suspended plans for a review at the FBI’s request.
Related Coverage FBI director says Clinton did not lie, break law in email handling
“I cannot provide specific information about the Department’s review, including what information we are evaluating. We will aim to be as expeditious as possible, but we will not put artificial deadlines on the process,” State Department spokesman John Kirby said in a statement.
A Clinton spokesman on Thursday criticized the congressional hearing for its “partisan motivations,” and expressed confidence that Comey’s testimony had shut down any lingering “conspiracy theories” on the matter.
“Director Comey’s testimony clearly knocked down a number of false Republican talking points and reconciled apparent contradictions between his previous remarks and Hillary Clinton’s public statements,” spokesman Brian Fallon said in a statement.
The issue of Clinton’s use of private email servers has cast a cloud over her campaign for the Nov. 8 presidential election, raising questions among voters about her trustworthiness and judgment and giving her Republican presidential rival, Donald Trump, an avenue of attack.
‘APOLITICAL, PROFESSIONAL’ INVESTIGATION
Comey’s testimony marked the first time he took questions publicly since his announcement the FBI was not recommending charges against Clinton. U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch accepted the FBI recommendation and was to appear at another hearing next Tuesday.
Comey had disappointed some Republicans by only rebuking Clinton, not recommending charges against her, for what he called her “extremely careless” handling of classified information while using private email servers.
Under persistent questioning at the hearing of the House Oversight Committee, Comey said Clinton did not break the law.
Director James Comey is sworn in before testifying at a House Oversight and Government Reform Committee on the "Oversight of the State Department" in Washington U.S. July 7, 2016. REUTERS/Gary Cameron
“The question I always look at is, is there evidence that would establish beyond a reasonable doubt that somebody engaged in conduct that violated a criminal statute. And my judgment here is there is not,” Comey said.
Comey also said Clinton knew her email server at her home in Chappaqua, New York, was not authorized to receive classified information.
But Clinton may not have had sufficiently sophisticated understanding to know the emails that passed through her personal server were classified, Comey said. Only three of the FBI-reviewed emails were explicitly marked as classified and those were marked with a “C” in the body of the email, not in the header, he said.
Comey said his FBI team conducted its investigation of Clinton “in an apolitical and professional way” and he had no reason to believe she had lied to the FBI. Clinton had said publicly she never sent or received any classified information.
‘IF YOUR NAME ISN’T CLINTON’
“I think there is a legitimate concern that there is a double standard, if your name isn’t Clinton or you are not part of the powerful elite that Lady Justice will act differently,” U.S. Representative Jason Chaffetz, chairman of the House Oversight Committee, said to Comey at the beginning of the hearing.
A Democratic member of the committee, Representative Elijah Cummings of Maryland, defended Comey’s actions by saying: “I firmly believe your decision was based on conviction, not convenience.”
Comey, a Republican who was appointed by Democratic President Barack Obama and also served in the administration of former Republican President George W. Bush, has built a reputation as a straight shooter who does not bend to pressure from either party.
He has differed sharply with the Obama administration, including over the case of General David Petraeus, who pleaded guilty after he knowingly shared classified information with his biographer and lover. Comey recommended Petraeus be charged with a felony, but then-Attorney General Eric Holder downgraded the charge to a misdemeanor.
Slideshow (5 Images)
The hearing took place as Trump met with Republican lawmakers on Capitol Hill to get them behind his candidacy, discussing a variety of issues, including his campaign style.
“I’m going to make you proud,” Trump told House Republicans, according to a participant, Representative Bill Flores.Four hundred white-clad Torontonians are expected to gather next Tuesday for the city’s first flash-mob picnic. While the details of Dîner en Blanc are secret and in flux, a few things are known.
New York City helds its first Diner en Blanc in August. ( CINDY ORD / GETTY IMAGES ) For Diner en Blanc in Niagara-on-the-lake, organizers closed part of the street and held it under the clock tower. ( NATASCHIA WIELINK PHOTO )
The dinner is invite only. Around 6 p.m. Sept. 27, a text message will tell people where to gather for dinner. It will be somewhere central that’s about a 15-minute walk from the nearest subway stop. People will bring their own food. Organizers will provide a cash wine bar and DJ.
Article Continued Below
“The idea was to essentially bring the flash mob event to Toronto, but to do it in some legal capacity,” Suresh Doss, one of the organizers, said in an email. Dîner en Blanc was born in a public park in Paris in 1988 and now draws almost 10,000 people. It has prompted offshoots around the world. Canada’s first pop-up dinner was in Montreal in 2009. Ontario’s first was in Niagara-on-the-Lake on Aug. 11. Quebec City launched its own Aug. 18. New York City got in on the movement with an Aug. 25 dinner in front of the World Financial Center. Guests brought their own folding tables and chairs. The pop-up dinner has three basic rules: Everyone wears their most elegant whites, the event happens rain or shine (or snow?), and the location stays secret until the last minute. “The Niagara event tweaked the rules a bit and we’re doing the same,” acknowledged Doss. The Niagara-on-the-Lake’s Chamber of Commerce hosted its Dîner en Blanc for 400 people divided into 50 tables of eight, legally with a special occasion permit.
Article Continued Below
Executive director Janice Thomson said they invited the chamber’s 520 members to go online and register. People paid $10 each and could preorder wine from 22 area wineries. “In other countries you bring your own table and chair,” noted Thomson. “People brought their own food to ours. We thought that was enough.” The chamber provided tables, chairs, peaches and live music. People gathered at restaurants, bars and private cocktail parties near Niagara-on-the-Lake to await the text message telling them where to go. The dinner was held on a closed section of the street underneath the clock tower. “Frankly it was perfect and everyone said it was a magical night,” said Thomson. “We had a full moon and beautiful weather. By 8:30, it was beautiful. People brought tablecloths, linen, china, crystal and flowers. There were lots of feather boas and tiaras.” While the Niagara event had perfect summer weather, who know what will happen next Tuesday in Toronto. “If it rains, you’re supposed to just bring a black umbrella,” advised Thomson. Doss wasn’t the only Torontonian thinking about bringing Dîner en Blanc here. Dick Snyder, editor of City Bites, and CBC journalists Carole Ito and Lara O’Brien from The Current, came up with the same idea Monday night at Sweaty Betty’s bar and started putting out feelers. “We said `How will be know if anybody else is doing this?’” laughed Snyder when told about next week’s event. “The first thing I said is we’ve got to get Suresh (Doss) on board.” jbain@thestar.ca www.twitter.com/thesaucylady Where will it be? Grass or concrete? The big question is whether Toronto’s Dîner en Blanc will go the park route or set up on concrete. If the organizers want something bucolic, they’d do well to congregate at the lovely Evergreen Brick Works. But the location, off Bayview Ave. south of Pottery Rd., is awkward to get to on foot. It makes more sense to book a corner of a city park, like Riverdale, Trinity Bellwoods or Sorauren. Preferably with a view of the CN Tower. If organizers want a grittier vibe, Nathan Phillips Square is ideal. Hey, maybe Rob and/or Doug Ford will wander by. And there’s always underutilized Yonge-Dundas Square, too. Either way, noise complaints shouldn’t be a problem. This flash-mob picnic for 400 (complete with DJ) promises to be over by 9 p.m.Alex Rodriguez plans to retire after his contract with the New York Yankees ends following the 2017 season, the designated hitter told ESPN on Wednesday.
"I won't play after next year," Rodriguez said. "I've really enjoyed my time. For me, it is time for me to go home and be Dad."
Rodriguez's retirement will end what has been a legendary career full of controversy. The veteran slugger will turn 41 on July 27, and he is signed through next season -- the final year of a 10-year, $275 million contract.
Editor's Picks Low-key retirement announcement another example of a more humble A-Rod Buster Olney looks at how Alex Rodriguez has changed since returning to baseball in 2015, expresses his admiration of the late Joe Garagiola and more.
He missed the entire 2014 season after being suspended for the use of performance-enhancing drugs.
Rodriguez enters 2016 with 687 career home runs, 3,070 hits and 2,055 RBIs. He needs just 28 home runs to pass Babe Ruth for third on the all-time list. He is 69 away from passing Hank Aaron for second, and he needs 76 more to overtake Barry Bonds and become the all-time home run king.
"It's been a lot of fun," Rodriguez said. "It has been very challenging at times, but it has been an incredible learning experience. I would say that the two years that I've probably enjoyed the most were my first when I was 19 and won the batting title with [Ken] Griffey and last year. The contrast of those two, at 40 and 18 or 19. It is hard to believe."
The 20-year veteran was one of baseball's most improbable success stories in 2015, turning back the clock in several offensive categories after serving the yearlong ban. Rodriguez tallied his highest number of home runs (33) and runs scored (83) since 2008, his most at-bats (523) and games played (151) since 2007, and his best slugging percentage (.486) since 2010.
His 33 home runs last season were the sixth-most in MLB history for a player 39 or older.
In recent years, the Yankees have had retirement tours for Mariano Rivera and Derek Jeter. Given Rodriguez's up and down history, he is not expecting the same time of treatment, despite how much he has rehabilitated his image.
"I'm certainly going to enjoy, but hopefully it is just low-key," Rodriguez said. "I haven't thought that far ahead, to be honest with you."
Alex Rodriguez told ESPN on Wednesday that he will retire after his contract is up after the 2017 season. He needs just 28 home runs to pass Babe Ruth for third on the all-time list. G Fiume/Getty Images
Later on Wednesday, Rodriguez told two New York tabloids that, "I'm thinking in terms of my contract, which ends in 2017. After that, we'll see what happens."
His spokesman, Ron Berkowitz, confirmed Rodriguez's retirement plans to The Associated Press.
Although he loved his experience as an analyst, A-Rod said he doesn't know if he wants to pursue a career in TV after he retires. Rodriguez could try to own a team, but he declined to really entertain that possibility, at least at this point.
"I'm still at first base; I have a lot of work to do," Rodriguez said. "I think MLB, [commissioner] Rob [Manfred], [COO] Tony Petitti and [MLB chief communications officer] Pat Courtney, those people deserve a lot of credit for even allowing me to come back and even continue my career."
Rodriguez will have made $420 million in salary by the end of the 2017 season -- the first American professional team athlete to pass the $400 million salary mark. The next closest is the NBA's Kevin Garnett at $326 million.
A year ago, Rodriguez was looked upon as a pariah entering spring training for the Yankees after his suspension. He rehabilitated his image throughout the year, but felt a real connection to fans, he said, after his work on Fox during the playoffs.
"I get treated better today than before my screw-ups," Rodriguez said. "That is hard to believe and it is hard to comprehend sometimes, but I'm grateful for it."NEARLY TWO DECADES after he last sent Calvin and Hobbes exploring, Bill Watterson got an offer he decided not to refuse.
Webcartoonist Dave Kellett had done a voice-only interview with Watterson for his new comics documentary, “Stripped.” Now, Kellett had an even bolder proposal: Would Watterson — who retired his beloved “Calvin and Hobbes” strip in 1995 — consider providing the film’s poster art?
“Aside from supplying a few sentences to the documentary, I’m not involved with the film, so Dave’s request to draw the poster came completely out of the blue,” Watterson tells Comic Riffs early Wednesday afternoon. “It sounded like fun, and maybe something people wouldn’t expect, so I decided to give it a try.
“Dave sent me a rough cut of the film and I dusted the cobwebs off my ink bottle.”
Soon, Watterson was rendering an image that never would have passed the syndicate censors during his “Calvin and Hobbes” days: An adult springing to full-color life in all his dorsal nudity.
“Given the movie’s title and the fact that there are few things funnier than human nudity, the idea popped into my head largely intact,” Watterson tells The Post. “The film is a big valentine to comics, so I tried to do something really cartoon-y. I had thought of having it colored with off-registered printing dots like newspaper comics, but Dave asked if I’d paint it instead, and I think he made the right call.”
“Stripped,” by Kellett and fellow L.A.-based filmmaker Frederick Schroeder, features more than 60 cartoonists who talk about the state of the comic-strip industry. In the film, Watterson eloquently speaks to the emotional bond that readers form with comic-strip characters as a function of the daily strip ritual.
In a rare interview, Comic Riffs first heard from Watterson in 2011, when the cartoonist spoke to The Post about his professional admiration for “Cul de Sac” creator Richard Thompson. That same year, in support of the Team Cul de Sac charity for Parkinson’s research, Watterson created his first public art since the mid-’90s.
Next month, the work of Watterson and Thompson will go on exhibit in a two-man show at the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum at the Ohio State University in Columbus. “His originals are just incredible to see up close,” Watterson said to Comic Riffs last year of Thompson’s work.
As for his second public artwork since 1995, Watterson tells The Post today: “It’s a silly picture that sums up my reaction to the current publishing upheaval, so I had a good time, and I hope it brings the film some attention.”
The “Stripped” DVD will be available April 2.Autoplay next video
If you want to come around
she said
bring a bottle of booze
and ring the bell twice
so you brought
a bottle of scotch
and rang twice
and she opened the door
and said
come in
and so you closed the door
and followed her
along the passageway
to the main room
and you heard the Mahler playing
and she took the scotch
and poured two large glasses
and said
sit down on the sofa Honey
and she gave you the glass
and you sipped
and she sat down next to you
and put her hand
on your thigh and squeezed
and she always managed
to get you stirred
and you smiled at her
and the Mahler symphony
was playing in the background
and you associated
that symphony
with sex
and sex with her
and each movement
of the symphony
suggested a given act
and as she moved
in on you
you almost drowned
in her scent
and the scotch
was on her breath
and her blue eyes
stared into yours
and her fingers moved
into your pants
for the prize
and you wondered
who the conductor was
on the Mahler record
and the same Monet print
hung on the wall
the one of some garden
and flowers
and she said
are you ready Honey?
And you said sure
and she took you
along the passage
to her room and bed
|
as humans in a human community, but as a species in a much larger community that must work together. All the working parts are necessary to stabilize the ecosphere so that we can have a sustainable economy, a so called steady state economy in perpetuity. That’s a huge challenge. Theoretically we’re up to it, but in practical terms I don’t think many people are even aware that this is the challenge ahead of us.
Chris: I think in many ways what you're describing for me is this rising out of our biological programming, so that’s rising up out of our brainstem and amygdala out the pure emotional centers coming up into – you mentioned a lot of left brain attributes. I want to throw a few on the right side as well so to also live with love and acceptance and in relationship with a sense of awe and beauty, gratitude. These are also all the things that I derive, Bill, as a child and a young boy from being out in nature. I was truly in awe and inspired by the things around me even without being able to name them or classify then our anything.
Dr. Rees: You're absolutely right, Chris. Those are things that humans – again, those are unique human attributes that we can experience nature in a spiritual way far above and beyond that of any - that any other species can do. But again, if we slip into this blind dedication to the growth imperative, then we foreclose the option and the opportunity for people to experience nature in a way that you’re just describing. You know, you're right, humans will not protect anything that they do not love, and the more we alienate ourselves from the beauty of nature, the more we alienate ourselves from the absolutely exquisite ways in which ecosystems self-maintain and self-produce – I mean, the world is producing itself. An amazing thing.
Earth isn’t just a planet that happens to be a great place for life. Life has created the planet on which we live. Not the rocks, but the living film over the surface of the Earth is a creation of life itself and needs an abundance of life to keep self-producing. It has made possible most of the things that we require. The oceans, the compositions of the ocean, preindustrial were a product of living processes – the chemical composition. The atmosphere, all of the oxygen is a product of photosynthesis, and the existence of photosynthesis made possible the existence of air breathing animals such as you and I. And so this system is a self-producing system that needs a very wide selection of its components to continue doing that.
It is a miracle. It is something to be absolutely mind blown about. And as a kid, I’m just like you. I’m growing up on a farm, and then doing my PhD work in the artic north. I used to almost weep – well, I did weep on a couple of occasions at beautiful things that I saw. It is an inspiration, but it’s an inspiration for the very few who have access to it any longer. In many respects urbanization is a terrible thing because what urbanization has done is alienate people both spatially and psychologically from the wonders that can be found in the natural environment. Fewer and fewer people are able to experience anything like I did on a farm in Southern Ontario. It gave me my academic life. And today people grow up in cities devoid of nature and the rest of the possibility even of experiencing the kind of emotive response I did, and realizing that I’m made out of the planet through the food I helped to grow on my plate. It sounds trite, I suppose, but to me it was an epiphany in my life just to recognize as a ten-year-old boy that I am of the Earth. That I am a product of the very food that I have grown with the soil and sun that we had on that farm.
Chris: Well, Bill, thank you so much for your work today in the world and also for your time today here on this podcast. It’s very inspiring, and I love to close with those particular words because it’s really – if we don’t become back in relationship, fall back in love, in awe, with this extraordinary planet we will discover, my view, rather rudely just how important that really was. And that’ll be a fairly horrible moment for humans at some point in the future to look back and say, oh man, we blew that. And so we haven’t blown it yet, and that’s why I continue to do my work, have podcasts like this. For anybody listening, there are still things you can do. Bill, for you own work or for work that you think is really pushing in the right direction, what can people do, and how they can possibly contribute to or follow the footprint project or other project you have in mind?
Dr. Rees: Well, what can people do? The first thing we must remember is that no one of us can do anything on his own that makes much difference. So one of the tendencies of the neoliberal economic paradigm is to say this is an individual responsibility. But it isn’t. Individuals can change their lifestyles, but if no one else does then it’s not going to make much difference. So we are in a collective problem. This is a collective problem that demands collective solutions. So the best things that people can do is to convince other people to engage politically in the kinds of things that are required to turn things around for all of us.
No individual can implement the necessary carbon taxes and other environmental fees necessary to reduce pollution and consumption. No individual can implement the public transit systems that we absolutely require if we’re going to convince people to abandon private automobiles. No individual can introduce the kind of international governance regimes that will protect our common property resources. So the first thing to underscore here is that these are all collective problems that require collective solutions. And that really means political advocacy, it means personal commitment to engaging in our local, state, or provincial or national politics and on the global scene to make this a better planet for all of us. And without that sense of shared responsibility, without that sense of connectedness to other people, I don’t think we’re going to be able to pull this off with any degree of grace whatsoever. So my advice is essentially political advice, these are political issues and we need to join together in resolving things in our mutual benefit.
Chris: With that, Bill, thank you so much for your time today. We’ve been talking with Dr. William Rees and he of the ecological footprint. Please look that up. We’ll have all the links at the bottom of this podcast. Bill, thanks again.
Dr. Rees: I am very glad to have been here. Bye-bye now.Body cords: The body cords are the cords below the marker line in part 1. They act as one and shouldnt be separated.
Left working cord: The left working cord is simply the cord that is currently to the left of your body cords.
Right working cord: The right working cord is simply the cord that is currently to the right of your body cords.
Position your cord like shown in part 1. Notice where I marked my length with the marker. We will be working with the cord above the line created with the marker. Like shown in part 2, you're going to take the left working cord and thread it underneath the body cords. Now take your right working cord and thread it under the cord you just brought over from the left side, and continue it over the body cords. Now continue that same cord from part 3 up and through the loop as shown in part 4 of the picture. This diagram simply shows you what the first cobra braid should look like. Notice: I kept the marker line relatively close to the top of the braid. Make sure it's in the braid somewhere or you could mess up your measurement.
You can find the in-depth, more detailed version of this tutorial over on my blog:
http://www.dudediy.com/how-to-make-a-paracord-pouch-for-altoids-tin/Announced in August, when Joss Whedon signed an exclusive deal with Marvel Studios, ABC’s ‘S.H.I.E.L.D.’ will mark the return of the director to television. This return will give us a glimpse into the world of the Strategic Homeland Intervention Enforcement Logistics Division (aka S.H.I.E.L.D.), one of the peace-keeping bodies in the Marvel Universe. Things have been well on their way towards production for some time now, especially after ‘Stargate Universe’ and ‘Eureka’ actress Ming-Na and Marvel movie veteran Clark Gregg, who will be reprising his role as Agent Phil Coulson, signed on to the project. According to a new report from Comic Book Resources, this pilot is already well on its way to begin shooting, just in time for the fall 2013 season.
Thanks to a new listing on Television Show Auditions, a site for casting calls, we’ve discovered that cameras on Whedon’s new show could roll as soon as mid-January in Los Angeles. The small blurb calling for extras gives this bit of information about the show that we basically already know:
“’S.H.I.E.L.D.’ will be set in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, sharing constancy with the films in that franchise. ‘S.H.I.E.L.D.’ will be independent from The Avengers film, and people who haven’t seen the Marvel movies can jump right in and understand the storylines. There will generally be new characters and agents who are not superheroes, and even though they are a large organization, they will be underdogs since they still exist in that superhero universe.”
Joss will be directing the series pilot and if it gets picked up, his brother Jed Whedon and Jed’s wife Maurissa Tancharoen will become the showrunners. With ‘S.H.I.E.L.D.’ shooting so soon, it’s very possible that it could be a part of ABC’s spring upfront presentations. Alternatively, they could save it for a premiere at San Diego Comic Con to test it in front of fan audiences before showing it to the masses. Either way, this thing is very much becoming a reality sooner rather than later. True believers out there have reason to rejoice.This article is about the Biblical story. For other uses, see Tower of Babel (disambiguation)
The Tower of Babel (Hebrew: מִגְדַּל בָּבֶל, Migdal Bavel) as told in Genesis 11:1–9 is an origin myth meant to explain why the world's peoples speak different languages.[1][2][3][4]
According to the story, a united humanity in the generations following the Great Flood, speaking a single language and migrating eastward, comes to the land of Shinar ( שִׁנְעָר). There they agree to build a city and a tower tall enough to reach heaven. God, observing their city and tower, confounds their speech so that they can no longer understand each other, and scatters them around the world.
Some modern scholars have associated the Tower of Babel with known structures, notably the Etemenanki, a ziggurat dedicated to the Mesopotamian god Marduk by Nabopolassar, the king of Babylonia circa 610 BCE.[5][6] The Great Ziggurat of Babylon was 91 metres (300 ft) in height. Alexander the Great ordered it to be demolished circa 331 BCE in preparation for a reconstruction that his death forestalled.[7][8] A Sumerian story with some similar elements is told in Enmerkar and the Lord of Aratta.[9]
Biblical narrative [ edit ]
German Late Medieval (c. 1370s) depiction of the construction of the tower.
1 And the whole earth was of one language, and of one speech.
2 And it came to pass, as they journeyed from the east, that they found a plain in the land of Shinar; and they dwelt there.
3 And they said one to another, Go to, let us make brick, and burn them throughly. And they had brick for stone, and slime had they for morter.
4 And they said, Go to, let us build us a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven; and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth.
5 And the LORD came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of men builded.
6 And the LORD said, Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language; and this they begin to do: and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do.
7 Go to, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another's speech.
8 So the LORD scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of all the earth: and they left off to build the city.
9 Therefore is the name of it called Babel; because the LORD did there confound the language of all the earth: and from thence did the LORD scatter them abroad upon the face of all the earth.
Genesis 11:1–9[10]
Etymology [ edit ]
The phrase "Tower of Babel" does not appear in the Bible; it is always "the city and the tower" ( אֶת-הָעִיר וְאֶת-הַמִּגְדָּל) or just "the city" ( הָעִיר). The original derivation of the name Babel (also the Hebrew name for Babylon) is uncertain. The native, Akkadian name of the city was Bāb-ilim, meaning "gate of God". However, that form and interpretation itself are now usually thought to be the result of an Akkadian folk etymology applied to an earlier form of the name, Babilla, of unknown meaning and probably non-Semitic origin.[11][12] According to the Bible, the city received the name "Babel" from the Hebrew verb בָּלַ֥ל (bālal), meaning to jumble or to confuse.[13][14]
Composition [ edit ]
Genre [ edit ]
The narrative of the tower of Babel (Genesis 11.1–9) is an etiology or explanation of a phenomenon. Etiologies are narratives that explain the origin of a custom, ritual, geographical feature, name, or other phenomenon.[15]:426 The story of the Tower of Babel explains the origins of the multiplicity of languages. God was concerned that humans had blasphemed by building the tower to avoid a second flood so God brought into existence multiple languages.[15]:51 Thus, humans were divided into linguistic groups, unable to understand one another.
Themes [ edit ]
The story's theme of competition between God and humans appears elsewhere in Genesis, in the story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden.[16] The 1st-century Jewish interpretation found in Flavius Josephus explains the construction of the tower as a hubristic act of defiance against God ordered by the arrogant tyrant Nimrod. There have, however, been some contemporary challenges to this classical interpretation, with emphasis placed on the explicit motive of cultural and linguistic homogeneity mentioned in the narrative (v. 1, 4, 6).[17] This reading of the text sees God's actions not as a punishment for pride, but as an etiology of cultural differences, presenting Babel as the cradle of civilization.
Authorship and source criticism [ edit ]
Tradition attributes the whole of the Pentateuch to Moses; however, in the late 19th century, the documentary hypothesis was proposed by Julius Wellhausen.[18] This hypothesis proposes four sources: J, E, P and D. Of these hypothetical sources, proponents suggest that this narrative comes from the J or Yahwist source. The etiological nature of the narrative is considered typical of J. In addition, the intentional word play regarding the city of Babel, and the noise of the people's "babbling" is found in the Hebrew words as easily as in English, and is considered typical of the Yahwist source.[15]:51
Comparable myths [ edit ]
Sumerian and Assyrian parallel [ edit ]
There is a Sumerian myth similar to that of the Tower of Babel, called Enmerkar and the Lord of Aratta,[9] where Enmerkar of Uruk is building a massive ziggurat in Eridu and demands a tribute of precious materials from Aratta for its construction, at one point reciting an incantation imploring the god Enki to restore (or in Kramer's translation, to disrupt) the linguistic unity of the inhabited regions — named as Shubur, Hamazi, Sumer, Uri-ki (Akkad), and the Martu land, "the whole universe, the well-guarded people — may they all address Enlil together in a single language."[19]
In addition, a further Assyrian myth, dating from the 8th century BC during the Neo-Assyrian Empire (911-605 BC) bears a number of similarities to the later written Biblical story.[20]
Mexico [ edit ]
Various traditions similar to that of the tower of Babel are found in Central America. Some writers[who?] connected the Great Pyramid of Cholula to the Tower of Babel. The Dominican friar Diego Durán (1537–1588) reported hearing an account about the pyramid from a hundred-year-old priest at Cholula, shortly after the conquest of Mexico. He wrote that he was told when the light of the sun first appeared upon the land, giants appeared and set off in search of the sun. Not finding it, they built a tower to reach the sky. An angered Lord of the Heavens called upon the inhabitants of the sky, who destroyed the tower and scattered its inhabitants. The story was not related to either a flood or the confusion of languages, although Frazer connects its construction and the scattering of the giants with the Tower of Babel.[21]
Another story, attributed by the native historian Fernando de Alva Cortés Ixtlilxóchitl (c. 1565–1648) to the ancient Toltecs, states that after men had multiplied following a great deluge, they erected a tall zacuali or tower, to preserve themselves in the event of a second deluge. However, their languages were confounded and they went to separate parts of the earth.[22]
Arizona [ edit ]
Still another story, attributed to the Tohono O'odham people, holds that Montezuma escaped a great flood, then became wicked and attempted to build a house reaching to heaven, but the Great Spirit destroyed it with thunderbolts.[23][24]
Nepal [ edit ]
Traces of a somewhat similar story have also been reported among the Tharu of Nepal and northern India.[25]
Africa [ edit ]
According to David Livingstone, the Africans whom he met living near Lake Ngami in 1849 had such a tradition, but with the builders' heads getting "cracked by the fall of the scaffolding".[26]
Other traditions [ edit ]
In his 1918 book, Folklore in the Old Testament, Scottish social anthropologist Sir James George Frazer documented similarities between Old Testament stories, such as the Flood, and indigenous legends around the world. He identified Livingston's account with a tale found in Lozi mythology, wherein the wicked men build a tower of masts to pursue the Creator-God, Nyambe, who has fled to Heaven on a spider-web, but the men perish when the masts collapse. He further relates similar tales of the Ashanti that substitute a pile of porridge pestles for the masts. Frazer moreover cites such legends found among the Kongo people, as well as in Tanzania, where the men stack poles or trees in a failed attempt to reach the moon.[21] He further cited the Karbi and Kuki people of Assam as having a similar story. The traditions of the Karen people of Myanmar, which Frazer considered to show clear 'Abrahamic' influence, also relate that their ancestors migrated there following the abandonment of a great pagoda in the land of the Karenni 30 generations from Adam, when the languages were confused and the Karen separated from the Karenni. He notes yet another version current in the Admiralty Islands, where mankind's languages are confused following a failed attempt to build houses reaching to heaven.
Historical context [ edit ]
Hanging Gardens of Babylon (19th century illustration), depicts the Tower of Babel in the background. (19th century illustration), depicts the Tower of Babel in the background.
Biblical scholars see the Book of Genesis as mythological and not as a historical account of events.[27] Nonetheless, the story of Babel can be interpreted in terms of its context.
Genesis 10:10 states that Babel (LXX: Βαβυλών) formed part of Nimrod's kingdom. The Bible does not specifically mention that Nimrod ordered the building of the tower, but many other sources have associated its construction with Nimrod.[28]
Genesis 11:9 attributes the Hebrew version of the name, Babel, to the verb balal, which means to confuse or confound in Hebrew. The first century Roman-Jewish author Flavius Josephus similarly explained that the name was derived from the Hebrew word Babel (βαβὲλ), meaning "confusion".[29]
Destruction [ edit ]
The account in Genesis makes no mention of any destruction of the tower. The people whose languages are confounded were simply scattered from there over the face of the Earth and stopped building their city. However, in other sources, such as the Book of Jubilees (chapter 10 v.18–27), Cornelius Alexander (frag. 10), Abydenus (frags. 5 and 6), Josephus (Antiquities 1.4.3), and the Sibylline Oracles (iii. 117–129), God overturns the tower with a great wind. In the Midrash, it said that the top of the tower was burnt, the bottom was swallowed, and the middle was left standing to erode over time.
Etemenanki, the ziggurat at Babylon [ edit ]
Reconstruction of the Etemenanki, which was 91 metres (300 ft) in height.
Etemenanki (Sumerian: "temple of the foundation of heaven and earth") was the name of a ziggurat dedicated to Marduk in the city of Babylon. It was famously rebuilt by the 6th-century BCE Neo-Babylonian dynasty rulers Nabopolassar and Nebuchadnezzar II. According to modern scholars, such as Stephen L. Harris, the biblical story of the Tower of Babel was likely influenced by Etemenanki during the Babylonian captivity of the Hebrews.[5]
Nebuchadnezzar wrote that the original tower had been built in antiquity: "A former king built the Temple of the Seven Lights of the Earth, but he did not complete its head. Since a remote time, people had abandoned it, without order expressing their words. Since that time earthquakes and lightning had dispersed its sun-dried clay; the bricks of the casing had split, and the earth of the interior had been scattered in heaps."[30]
In 2011 scholars discovered, in the Schoyen Collection, the oldest known representation of the Etemenanki.[31] Carved on a black stone, The Tower of Babel Stele (as it is known) dates from 604–562 BCE, the time of Nebuchadnezzar II.[32]
The Greek historian Herodotus (440 BCE) later wrote of this ziggurat, which he called the "Temple of Zeus Belus", giving an account of its vast dimensions.
The already decayed Great Ziggurat of Babylon was finally destroyed by Alexander the Great in an attempt to rebuild it. He managed to move the tiles of the tower to another location, but his death stopped the reconstruction.
Isaac Asimov speculated that the authors of Genesis 11:1–9 were inspired by the existence of an apparently incomplete ziggurat at Babylon, and by the phonological similarity between Babylonian Bab-ilu, meaning "gate of God", and the Hebrew word balal, meaning "mixed", "confused", or "confounded".[33]
In other sources [ edit ]
Book of Jubilees [ edit ]
The Book of Jubilees contains one of the most detailed accounts found anywhere of the Tower.
And they began to build, and in the fourth week they made brick with fire, and the bricks served them for stone, and the clay with which they cemented them together was asphalt which comes out of the sea, and out of the fountains of water in the land of Shinar. And they built it: forty and three years were they building it; its breadth was 203 bricks, and the height [of a brick] was the third of one; its height amounted to 5433 cubits and 2 palms, and [the extent of one wall was] thirteen stades [and of the other thirty stades]. (Jubilees 10:20–21, Charles' 1913 translation)
In Pseudo-Philo, the direction for the building is ascribed not only to Nimrod, who is made prince of the Hamites, but also to Joktan, as prince of the Semites, and to Phenech son of Dodanim, as prince of the Japhetites. Twelve men are arrested for refusing to bring bricks, including Abraham, Lot, Nahor, and several sons of Joktan. However, Joktan finally saves the twelve from the wrath of the other two princes.[34]
Josephus' Antiquities of the Jews [ edit ]
The Jewish-Roman historian Flavius Josephus, in his Antiquities of the Jews (c. 94 CE), recounted history as found in the Hebrew Bible and mentioned the Tower of Babel. He wrote that it was Nimrod who had the tower built and that Nimrod was a tyrant who tried to turn the people away from God. In this account, God confused the people rather than destroying them because annihilation with a Flood hadn't taught them to be godly.
Now it was Nimrod who excited them to such an affront and contempt of God. He was the grandson of Ham, the son of Noah, a bold man, and of great strength of hand. He persuaded them not to ascribe it to God as if it were through his means they were happy, but to believe that it was their own courage which procured that happiness. He also gradually changed the government into tyranny, seeing no other way of turning men from the fear of God, but to bring them into a constant dependence on his power... Now the multitude were very ready to follow the determination of Nimrod and to esteem it a piece of cowardice to submit to God; and they built a tower, neither sparing any pains, nor being in any degree negligent about the work: and, by reason of the multitude of hands employed in it, it grew very high, sooner than any one could expect; but the thickness of it was so great, and it was so strongly built, that thereby its great height seemed, upon the view, to be less than it really was. It was built of burnt brick, cemented together with mortar, made of bitumen, that it might not be liable to admit water. When God saw that they acted so madly, he did not resolve to destroy them utterly, since they were not grown wiser by the destruction of the former sinners [in the Flood]; but he caused a tumult among them, by producing in them diverse languages, and causing that, through the multitude of those languages, they should not be able to understand one another. The place wherein they built the tower is now called Babylon, because of the confusion of that language which they readily understood before; for the Hebrews mean by the word Babel, confusion. The Sibyl also makes mention of this tower, and of the confusion of the language, when she says thus:--"When all men were of one language, some of them built a high tower, as if they would thereby ascend up to heaven; but the gods sent storms of wind and overthrew the tower, and gave everyone a peculiar language; and for this reason it was that the city was called Babylon."
Greek Apocalypse of Baruch [ edit ]
Third Apocalypse of Baruch (or 3 Baruch, c. 2nd century), one of the pseudepigrapha, describes the just rewards of sinners and the righteous in the afterlife.[16] Among the sinners are those who instigated the Tower of Babel. In the account, Baruch is first taken (in a vision) to see the resting place of the souls of "those who built the tower of strife against God, and the Lord banished them." Next he is shown another place, and there, occupying the form of dogs,
Those who gave counsel to build the tower, for they whom thou seest drove forth multitudes of both men and women, to make bricks; among whom, a woman making bricks was not allowed to be released in the hour of child-birth, but brought forth while she was making bricks, and carried her child in her apron, and continued to make bricks. And the Lord appeared to them and confused their speech, when they had built the tower to the height of four hundred and sixty-three cubits. And they took a gimlet, and sought to pierce the heavens, saying, Let us see (whether) the heaven is made of clay, or of brass, or of iron. When God saw this He did not permit them, but smote them with blindness and confusion of speech, and rendered them as thou seest. (Greek Apocalypse of Baruch, 3:5–8)
Midrash [ edit ]
Rabbinic literature offers many different accounts of other causes for building the Tower of Babel, and of the intentions of its builders. According to one midrash the builders of the Tower, called "the generation of secession" in the Jewish sources, said: "God has no right to choose the upper world for Himself, and to leave the lower world to us; therefore we will build us a tower, with an idol on the top holding a sword, so that it may appear as if it intended to war with God" (Gen. R. xxxviii. 7; Tan., ed. Buber, Noah, xxvii. et seq.).
The building of the Tower was meant to bid defiance not only to God, but also to Abraham, who exhorted the builders to reverence. The passage mentions that the builders spoke sharp words against God, saying that once every 1,656 years, heaven tottered so that the water poured down upon the earth, therefore they would support it by columns that there might not be another deluge (Gen. R. l.c.; Tan. l.c.; similarly Josephus, "Ant." i. 4, § 2).
Some among that generation even wanted to war against God in heaven (Talmud Sanhedrin 109a). They were encouraged in this undertaking by the notion that arrows that they shot into the sky fell back dripping with blood, so that the people really believed that they could wage war against the inhabitants of the heavens (Sefer ha-Yashar, Chapter 9:12–36). According to Josephus and Midrash Pirke R. El. xxiv., it was mainly Nimrod who persuaded his contemporaries to build the Tower, while other rabbinical sources assert, on the contrary, that Nimrod separated from the builders.[28]
According to another midrashic account, one third of the Tower builders were punished by being transformed into semi-demonic creatures and banished into three parallel dimensions, inhabited now by their descendants.[35]
Islamic tradition [ edit ]
Although not mentioned by name, the Quran has a story with similarities to the biblical story of the Tower of Babel, although set in the Egypt of Moses: Pharaoh asks Haman to build him a stone (or clay) tower so that he can mount up to heaven and confront the God of Moses.[36]
Another story in Sura 2:102 mentions the name of Babil, but tells of when the two angels Harut and Marut taught magic to some people in Babylon and warned them that magic is a sin and that their teaching them magic is a test of faith.[37] A tale about Babil appears more fully in the writings of Yaqut (i, 448 f.) and the Lisān al-ʿArab [ar] (xiii. 72), but without the tower: mankind were swept together by winds into the plain that was afterward called "Babil", where they were assigned their separate languages by God, and were then scattered again in the same way. In the History of the Prophets and Kings by the 9th-century Muslim theologian al-Tabari, a fuller version is given: Nimrod has the tower built in Babil, God destroys it, and the language of mankind, formerly Syriac, is then confused into 72 languages. Another Muslim historian of the 13th century, Abu al-Fida relates the same story, adding that the patriarch Eber (an ancestor of Abraham) was allowed to keep the original tongue, Hebrew in this case, because he would not partake in the building.[28]
Although variations similar to the biblical narrative of the Tower of Babel exist within Islamic tradition, the central theme of God separating humankind on the basis of language is alien to Islam according to the author Yahiya Emerick. In Islamic belief, he argues, God created nations to know each other and not to be separated.[38]
Book of Mormon [ edit ]
In the Book of Mormon, a man named Jared and his family ask God that their language not be confounded at the time of the Tower of Babel. Because of their prayers, God preserves their language and leads them to the Valley of Nimrod. From there, they travel across the sea to the Americas.[39]
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints teaches that the Tower of Babel story is historical fact. "Although there are many in our day who consider the accounts of the Flood and tower of Babel to be fiction, Latter-day Saints affirm their reality."[40]
Confusion of tongues [ edit ]
This article is about the origin myth. For the film, see The Confusion of Tongues
The confusion of tongues (confusio linguarum) is the origin myth for the fragmentation of human languages described in the Book of Genesis 11:1–9, as a result of the construction of the Tower of Babel.
Biblical account [ edit ]
Genesis 11:1 claims that prior to the event, humanity spoke a single language. In the confusion of tongues, this language was split into seventy or seventy-two dialects, depending on tradition. This has sometimes been interpreted as being in contradiction to Genesis 10:5,
Of these were the isles of the nations divided in their lands, every one after his tongue, after their families, in their nations.
Subsequent interpretation [ edit ]
During the Middle Ages, the Hebrew language was widely considered the language used by God to address Adam in Paradise, and by Adam as lawgiver (the Adamic language) by various Jewish, Christian, and Muslim scholastics. Dante in the Divina commedia implies however that the language of Paradise was different from later Hebrew by saying that Adam addressed God as I rather than El.[41][better source needed][dubious – discuss]
Before the acceptance of the Indo-European language family, these languages were considered to be "Japhetite" by some authors (e.g. Rasmus Rask in 1815; see Indo-European studies). Beginning in Renaissance Europe, priority over Hebrew was claimed for the alleged Japhetic languages, which were supposedly never corrupted because their speakers had not participated in the construction of the Tower of Babel. Among the candidates for a living descendant of the Adamic language were: Gaelic (see Auraicept na n-Éces); Tuscan (Giovanni Battista Gelli, 1542, Piero Francesco Giambullari, 1564); Dutch (Goropius Becanus, 1569, Abraham Mylius, 1612); Swedish (Olaus Rudbeck, 1675); German (Georg Philipp Harsdörffer, 1641, Schottel, 1641). The Swedish physician Andreas Kempe wrote a satirical tract in 1688, where he made fun of the contest between the European nationalists to claim their native tongue as the Adamic language. Caricaturing the attempts by the Swede Olaus Rudbeck to pronounce Swedish the original language of mankind, Kempe wrote a scathing parody where Adam spoke Danish, God spoke Swedish, and the serpent French.[42]
The primacy of Hebrew was still defended by some authors until the emergence of modern linguistics in the second half of the 18th century, e.g. by Pierre Besnier [fr] (1648–1705) in A philosophicall essay for the reunion of the languages, or, the art of knowing all by the mastery of one (1675) and by Gottfried Hensel (1687-1767) in his Synopsis Universae Philologiae (1741).
Linguistics [ edit ]
Historical linguistics has long wrestled with the idea of a single original language. In the Middle Ages, and down to the 17th century, attempts were made to identify a living descendant of the Adamic language.
Multiplication of languages [ edit ]
The literal belief that the world's linguistic variety originated with the tower of Babel is pseudolinguistics, and is contrary to the known facts about the origin and history of languages.[43]
In the Biblical introduction of the Tower of Babel account, in Genesis 11:1, it is said that everyone on Earth spoke the same language, but this is inconsistent with the Biblical description of the post-Noahic world described in Genesis 10:5, where it is said that the descendants of Shem, Ham, and Japheth gave rise to different nations, each with their own language.[2]:26
There have also been a number of traditions around the world that describe a divine confusion of the one original language into several, albeit without any tower. Aside from the Ancient Greek myth that Hermes confused the languages, causing Zeus to give his throne to Phoroneus, Frazer specifically mentions such accounts among the Wasania of Kenya, the Kacha Naga people of Assam, the inhabitants of Encounter Bay in Australia, the Maidu of California, the Tlingit of Alaska, and the K'iche' Maya of Guatemala.[44]
The Estonian myth of "the Cooking of Languages"[45] has also been compared.
Enumeration of scattered languages [ edit ]
There are several |
for all the same reasons our plain callback example was terrible.
So clearly it is not the better way. So what is?
Deferreds as a dataflow abstraction.
Here you have a acyclic directed graph of data through the callback chain. The individual operations being performed is less important than the flow of information through the structure. An event causes a result to be available, it is put into the deferred and moves along the directed graph through the callback chain until an error is encountered. Then we move to the errback chain will proceed until the error has been handled at which point we can go back to the callback chain, or until we run out of errbacks.
The result from one operation flows directly into the next.
getPage ( getFirstStyle ( parse ( getPage ( "http://example.com" ) ) )
The above is a dataflow program. Our imperative example from earlier is not, because the grouping of operations is a side effect of style, any number of operations could be interspersed which may or may not have side effects that influence future operations.
d = getPage ( "http://example.com" ) d. addCallback ( parse ) d. addCallback ( getFirstStyle ) d. addCallback ( getPage ) d. addCallback ( printResult )
Now, everything is in order, related operations are close, and the structure of higher level operation is broken up into discrete and independently testable units.
By this point I hope I have made it obvious about why “thinking in Deferreds” is better than “thinking in callbacks” but if I have not imagine this example from a fictional streaming API and maybe you’ll understand why “thinking in dataflows” is a good thing.
urls. flowTo ( getPage ). flowTo ( parse ). flowTo ( getFirstStyle ). flowTo ( getPage ). flowTo ( stdout ) urls. put ( "http://example.com" ) urls. put ( "http://google.com" )
Now we have encapsulated not only how we handle one result, but rather a potentially infinite number of events. Now we have the potential for building some realtime distributed systems.
That is all.
Go read about Storm and OrcFor years, many have predicted the announcement of an Apple TV SDK. We all know it’s coming. It has to. And it will be amazing when it happens… whenever that is.
Everything is in place for Apple to kick-start the next generation of television, completely leap-frogging the current, pathetic crop of “smart TVs” like the iPhone did with its “smart phone” predecessors. All they need to do is open up the ecosystem.
But rather than simply wait for the future, we can take matters into our own hands, with class-dump and some reverse-engineering chutzpah.
Voila! A class dump of the Apple TV private framework headers
That’s right: this edition of NSHipster covers a topic so obscure, it doesn’t even officially exist.
Back Row is a private framework used in the Apple TV user experience. Its name is a reference to Front Row, an application included in OS X Tiger – 10.6 that paired with the Apple Remote to transform the Mac into a couch-friendly media center.
The original Apple TV could be described as a “short Mac Mini”, which ran a modified version of Front Row on a stripped-down build of OS X. It was little more than an iTunes remote, streaming content from a shared iTunes library on a separate computer.
The second generation of the device took a smaller form factor, shifting its focus from media storage and management to on-demand streaming. The second generation Apple TV user interface reflected this in both its design and implementation. BackRow was ported from OS X to iOS, as it transcended its original role coordinating iTunes libraries to become an extensible platform for streaming media appliances.
Back Row & UIKit
Back Row (name prefix: BR ) bears a striking resemblance to UIKit, with many of the familiar metaphors and conventions of iOS development.
Here’s a brief list of some Back Row classes & protocols and their UIKit equivalents:
Back Row UIKit <BRResponder> <UIResponder> <BRAppliance> <UIApplication> BRController UIViewController BRMenuController UITableViewController BRControllerStack UINavigationController BRGridView UICollectionView BRListView UITableView
Apple TV Appliance Structure
In the current Apple TV interface, the home screen contains a grid of rectangular icons, similar to the home screen on iOS. Each icon corresponds to an appliance.
Why an appliance and not an application? An appliance is more limited in what it can do as compared to an application. On iPhone or iPad, applications range from social media clients and photo tools to games and musical instruments. Whereas on Apple TV, an appliance consists of a series of remote-friendly menus, lists, and grids, which ultimately lead to media playback of some form. When it comes to appliances, (audio / video) content is king.
When an appliance launches, it displays a list of BRAppliance Category items. Each category has its own name, identifier, and preferred ordering. When a category is selected, the appliance calls - controller For Identifier:args:, which returns a BRController object.
An appliance also has an optional top Shelf Controller, which is what displays at the top of the home screen when the app is highlighted.
Pushing and popping controllers is managed by a shared BRController Stack. When a controller is selected with in a list, it is pushed onto the stack. When the user presses the Menu button, the stack is popped.
A typical controller consists of a menu list on the right, with some kind of complimentary view on the left.
On top-level controllers, this sometimes takes the form of a BRMarquee Stack, which animates a Cover-Flow-style sequence of preview images for each of the controllers.
For controllers listing media that can be played, the complimentary view usually shows a preview image, along with meta data in a BRMetadata Control, such as runtime, date created, and other relevant information.
iTunes store controllers also use a horizontally-stacked layout, with media information at the top, with related titles listed below.
Points of Interest
Diving into the class dump of the Apple TV frameworks reveals a treasure trove of interesting tidbits. With only undocumented header files to go by, there’s still a lot of mystery to what all’s in these private frameworks, or how they fit together. However a thoughtful analysis of class and method names offers some workable clues into their inter-workings.
Here are some of the more interesting parts of the Back Row framework headers (again, all of this is complete speculation):
BRURLImage Proxy : A protocol that encapsulates the process of loading and displaying images at various dimensions.
: A protocol that encapsulates the process of loading and displaying images at various dimensions. BRKeyboard : It’s always fascinating to see how Apple architects controls. Keyboards populate and manage interactions with the grid view of character and action keys, and are divided into classes for Roman and Japanese scripts.
: It’s always fascinating to see how Apple architects controls. Keyboards populate and manage interactions with the grid view of character and action keys, and are divided into classes for Roman and Japanese scripts. BRState Machine : No other Apple frameworks expose a class for state machines. LATVLease Agent is a subclass in the Apple TV framework that appears to negotiate the terms of iTunes movie rentals.
: No other Apple frameworks expose a class for state machines. is a subclass in the framework that appears to negotiate the terms of iTunes movie rentals. BRMapping Dictionary : A new and useful-looking collection class that functions as an NSMutable Dictionary, but also allows for an NSValue Transformer to be set for each key ( -transformed Value For Key:for Object: in addition to -value For Key: )
: A new and useful-looking collection class that functions as an, but also allows for an to be set for each key ( in addition to ) BRMerchant : What you might expect in terms of a class representing a store client, with some interesting class methods. itms is in reference to the iTunes Music Store, but what’s sedona and flagstaff? They’re probably codewords for streaming services that fall under the umbrella of the iTunes store.
: What you might expect in terms of a class representing a store client, with some interesting class methods. is in reference to the iTunes Music Store, but what’s and? They’re probably codewords for streaming services that fall under the umbrella of the iTunes store. <BRControl Factory> <BRMetadata Populator> & BRControl Mediator : Factories, Populators, and Mediators are not commonly seen design patterns in Apple frameworks, although they are described in the Cocoa Fundamentals Guide.
Building Your Own Apple TV App
In the immortal words of Jeff Goldblum: “Life finds a way”.
Undeterred by the litigious shadow of Apple Inc., nor the undocumented wilds of a private API, a cadre of jail-breaking homesteaders have cracked the nut on Apple TV development with promising results.
One of the most polished among them is UitzendingGemist led by none other than Eloy Durán of CocoaPods fame, along with Kevin Bradley and Michael Gile.
As you can see from this video of an early version, you can run your very own applications on a jail-broken Apple TV (OS 5.0.1 or compatible). The code is relatively straightforward, fetching a catalog of media files from the Dutch public broadcasting site UitzendingGemist.nl, and playing them on demand.
It’s hard to say what it will take for Apple to open up the Apple TV ecosystem. Is it a matter of getting the APIs documented and ready for public use? Is there a process underway to refactor Back Row into UIKit? Or is everything pretty much ready, and it’s just a matter of other business pieces falling into place?
Only time will tell.
In the meantime, you can get a head-start on what will almost certainly be a gold-rush on the scale of the first generation of iPhone apps.An image appeared recently on the GW2 Tumblr that has been making some waves around the speculation circuits. It consists of a charr, presumably the currently missing (presumed Lost In The Mists) Rytlock Brimstone, surrounded by flames and wearing a blindfold with a mysterious symbol. A caption, presumably in Rytlock’s voice, informs the reader that… well, see for yourself:
A number of theories have emerged within the GW2 community as to why Rytlock may be wearing a blindfold. One of the more interesting ones is that, while in the Mists, Rytlock found himself face-to-face with one or more of the gods. Part of the reasoning for this is the likelihood that a ritual to remove ghosts from Tyria would send them to the place where human souls are supposed to go when they die: the Underworld, to be judged and sorted into the appropriate realm for their reward or punishment by Grenth. Therefore, it stands to reason that on emerging from the portal, Rytlock would have emerged in Grenth’s domain – and, being Rytlock, he would likely have responded by immediately demanding to see (and possibly challenge) whoever was in charge. As we know from the story of Malchor, it is not possible for a mortal to look upon the gods for long without losing their sight. (Possibly in the sense of the visage of the god being burned onto the viewer’s retina.)
One continuation of this line of speculation is that Rytlock may have come to some sort of accord with the god or gods in question. While the charr would never accept the gods as masters, they do seem to be growing to accept the worshipers of the gods as potential allies rather than enemies. Thus, they may be willing to accept a non-hostile relationship with the gods, as long as it is also a relationship of partners rather than as worshipers or servants. From the perspective of the gods, there has been an indication from the developers that the withdrawal of the gods from Tyria is, at least in part, to encourage humans to make their own way and solve their own problems without the oversight of the gods. If the gods feel that it is time their ‘children’ achieved independence, it seems unlikely that they would be looking for new worshipers from a race that has already claimed their independence (with the overthrow of the Flame Legion) and shows no need or desire for guidance from anyone.
Another parallel has been drawn with the last time a major character began wearing a blindfold after a life-changing event: Kormir, after having the misfortune to be captured by demons that, in her own words, “have a taste for eyes”. So, in one line of speculation, we have two means, both connected to the gods, that a mortal can find themselves without sight.
Kormir’s blinding is revealed.
What if this isn’t a coincidence?
While blinding is apparently the result of looking upon the gods, this property is not shared among the fallen gods like Abaddon and Dhuum – or at least, we were able to fight them in Guild Wars 1 without physical characters having to put up with a permanent 90% miss chance. However, it is likely the ambition of both to return to full divinity, and a revitalised Abaddon or Dhuum would not have any qualms about using this quality as a weapon. Thus, the warcry of “Abaddon will eat your eyes!” may be a prediction of what will happen when Abaddon inevitably (in the minds of his followers) regains his full divinity: any mortal who stands against him will be blinded by his divine aura. Abaddon will not literally pluck out the eyes of his enemies as a light snack – instead, the warcry is a metaphor for how the sight of a fully reconstituted Abaddon will consume the vision of all who look upon him.
Varesh delivers her prophecy.
So, why do his demons eat eyes? As the demons are not gods, they lack both the blinding glamour associated with full divinity, and any reasonable expectation of gaining it. However, through ritually ingesting the eyes of captured enemies, the demons are able to grant these unlucky individuals a foretaste of the darkness that will come to all of Abaddon’s foes in the event of his victory. Essentially, the enactment of the literal interpretation of the metaphor serves as a symbolic representation of the idea behind the metaphor. Afterwards, for as long (or short) as the victim continues to live, they will thus serve as examples and harbingers of the fate that waits for all of Abaddon’s enemies. Of course, perhaps the demons genuinely do simply enjoy the taste of eyes…
In addition to this ritual significance, the blinding of captured enemies also has a practical effect. If, for whatever reason, an enemy of Abaddon is not to be put to death immediately, blinding them in this fashion serves as a means of preventing their victim from being able to fight directly again, even if they somehow escape (or are rescued from) their captors.
Unless, of course, their victim has other means of perceiving the world… like the members of a certain profession from Tyria’s history:An Iraqi counterterrorism soldier stands guard near Islamic State graffiti in Fallujah, Iraq, on June 27. (Hadi Mizban/AP)
At a campaign rally outside Fort Lauderdale, Fla., on Wednesday, Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump repeatedly suggested that there were deep links between President Obama and the Islamic State militant group, also known as ISIS.
“In many respects, you know, they honor President Obama. He is the founder of ISIS," Trump said at one point.
Later, he added that his rival in November's election, whom he called "crooked Hillary Clinton," was the co-founder of the Islamic State.
[Fact Checker: Trump’s claim that Obama is ‘founder’ of ISIS: An interview with Joby Warrick]
This isn't the first time that Trump has implied a link between the U.S. president and the Islamic State. The businessman-turned-politician later explained his comments in an interview with CNBC, saying that he meant only that Obama's Iraq policies had helped contribute to the rise of the militant group — a common charge from many critics of Obama.
However, Trump has long been accused of using innuendo to peddle conspiracy theories. And conspiracy theories about U.S. backing of the Islamic State play into a complicated real-world situation — not just among Trump's American audience, but also in the Middle East, where the fight against the Islamic State is actually taking place.
In Iraq and other parts of the Arab world, there is a widely held belief that the United States is covertly aiding the Islamic State. Iraqis say they base their suspicions, in part, on videos that purport to show evidence of this alliance. U.S. military officials say the allegation is too far-fetched to merit a response. (Liz Sly and Jason Aldag/The Washington Post)
Theories that the United States somehow backed the Islamic State have long been widespread in Iraq, with several videos online alleging to show "proof" of the relationship. “It is not in doubt,” a Shiite militia commander named Mustafa Saadi told The Washington Post last year. Saadi claims that his friend saw U.S. helicopters delivering bottled water to Islamic State positions.
This purported U.S. support was all that stood between the Islamic State and defeat, he asserted. "They are weak," Saadi said. "If only America would stop supporting them, we could defeat them in days."
At the same time, details of Obama's Muslim heritage are still fodder for rumors and debate in the Middle East. Some view Obama as a Sunni Muslim who supports the Muslim Brotherhood (and perhaps, by some extrapolation, the Islamic State), but a prominent and contradictory theory is that Obama is actually a Shiite Muslim, bent on supporting Iranian domination of the Middle East.
(In reality, Obama is a practicing Christian, and he has said that his late Muslim Kenyan father — from whom he was estranged — became an atheist later in life.)
Trump is not the first to single out Clinton, a former secretary of state, as an alleged "co-founder" of the Islamic State, either. In 2014, a number of Arabic-language social media users shared screen shots and excerpts of a Hillary Clinton "autobiography" that they called "Password 360." In one passage, Clinton appears to write that the United States, with the help of the Muslim Brotherhood, helped create the Islamic State.
The thing is, there is no "Password 360." Clinton's memoir is called "Hard Choices," and it does not contain the passage that was being shared. The hoax appears to have begun on obscure Egyptian websites before spreading to more mainstream outlets: The Lebanese Foreign Ministry even summoned the U.S. ambassador to explain the rumor, prompting the U.S. Embassy in Beirut to release a statement calling it a "pure fabrication."
There are plenty in the Middle East who play down these rumors or mock them. The response to the allegations involving Clinton and the creation of the Islamic State was telling; Arabic-speaking social media users began their own satirical Twitter hashtag to share their absurd, made-up excerpts from fake Clinton memoirs. The Middle East is fertile ground for conspiracy theories, and people are used to batting them away.
But even if not everyone believes in these theories, they muddy the water for positive U.S. involvement in the fight against the Islamic State. “What influence can we have if they think we are supporting the terrorists?” Kirk Sowell, an analyst based in neighboring Jordan who publishes the newsletter Inside Iraqi Politics, told The Post last year.
The focus on conspiracy theories in the Middle East comes from a troubling history of real conspiracies — ones in which the West was often complicit. However, the U.S. involvement in the creation of the Islamic State is both more complicated and more mundane. Many analysts would argue that the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 was a key catalyst for events that ultimately led to the creation of the Islamic State. Despite Trump's repeated attempts to assert the opposite, records show that he did not oppose that invasion. Obama, however, did oppose it.
And while Trump told CNBC that Obama's 2011 move to withdraw U.S. troops from Iraq is why he considers the U.S. president the founder of ISIS, BuzzFeed News notes that the real estate tycoon had repeatedly called for an immediate withdrawal of troops from Iraq around that time. Moreover, Obama withdrew the troops to meet a deadline set in a 2008 agreement reached with Iraq by his predecessor, George W. Bush.
1 of 60 Full Screen Autoplay Close Skip Ad × What Donald Trump is doing on the campaign trail View Photos The GOP presidential nominee is pressing his case ahead of Election Day. Caption The GOP presidential nominee is pressing his case ahead of Election Day. Nov. 7, 2016 Donald Trump speaks during a campaign event at SNHU Arena in Manchester, N.H. Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post Buy Photo Wait 1 second to continue.
More on WorldViews
The ‘Obama is a Muslim’ conspiracy theory is still reverberating in the Middle East
3 times U.S. foreign policy helped to create the Islamic StateWHICH side are you on? Are you with Donald Trump, or with the Washington insiders who want to undo his election? Do you favor the legitimate president of the United States, or an unelected “deep state” — bureaucrats, judges, former F.B.I. directors, the media — that’s determined not to let him govern? Are you going to let a counterrevolution by elites bring down a man who was elevated to the White House precisely because the country knows that its elite is no longer fit to govern?
This is how the debate over Donald Trump’s mounting difficulties is being framed by some of my fellow conservatives, from Sean Hannity to more serious pundits and intellectuals.
The problem is that the framing doesn’t really fit the facts. Yes, there are real elites in American politics: There is a Republican establishment (well, of sorts), a media-industrial complex, and a bipartisan consensus around certain areas of social and economic and foreign policy. Yes, many of these elites have made terrible mistakes over the last 15 years without seeming to learn anything. Yes, Trump won in part because, unlike Marco Rubio and Jeb Bush and Hillary Clinton, he promised a new synthesis, a populist alternative, on domestic issues and foreign affairs alike.
But Trump is not actually governing as a populist or revolutionary, and the rolling crises of his first four months are not really about resistance to an “America First” or “drain the swamp” agenda, no matter what his fund-raising emails insist.Just two days before the release of a new Dutch report on the 2014 downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 over eastern Ukraine, the Russian Defense Ministry once again suggested that Kiev forces were responsible.
According to spokesman Major General Igor Konashenkov, the Ukrainian side is withholding crucial radar data. He insinuated that Kiev is to blame, rather than Russian-backed separatists or even Russian servicemen fighting an unacknowledged war in eastern Ukraine.
“It is not by chance that the Ukrainian side is withholding data that would establish a complete picture of the disaster,” Konashenkov was quoted by the RIA Novosti news agency as saying at a Monday press conference.
The flight was tracked by Ukrainian radar and air defenses, and guided by Ukrainian air traffic controllers, Konashenkov said, before pointing out that Kiev's behavior is reminiscent of an incident in 2001 when the Ukrainian military shot down a Russian Tu-154 passenger jet.
During the conference, the Defense Ministry put forth its own radar data — which was allegedly discovered in recent weeks in the memory banks of a civilian radar station near the border with Ukraine — purportedly showing MH17 could not have been shot down from the separatist side, as has been alleged. The new Russian account completely dropped allegations of Ukrainian Su-25 fighter jets in the area.
An investigation into the culprit by the Dutch government is expected to be released on Sept. 28.
The issue of who shot down MH17 has become one of major geopolitical significance, and a point of key contention between Russia and the West over Moscow's role in the ongoing Ukrainian crisis. Each side has offered multiple theories to suit their respective narratives.
Last year, the Dutch Safety Board released findings into the cause of MH17's demise. While a guilty party was not named, the board concluded that the Boeing 777 aircraft was downed by a Russian-built Buk anti-aircraft missile launcher. Both Ukraine and Russia use such systems.
The manufacturer of the Buk system, sanctioned defense firm Almaz-Antey, got ahead of the Dutch report hours before it was released by sharing the results of its own internal investigation. Their conclusion: Only an out of service Buk system used by Ukraine could have been responsible.
The core of Almaz-Antey's claim rested on the shrapnel pattern found in the damaged metal hull of MH17. The company's claim both contradicted findings presented at a press conference three month's earlier, and the findings of the Dutch report.End of a Star's Life : Readings: Schneider & Arny: Unit 66
For stars less than about 25 solar masses the end of their lives is to evolve to white dwarfs after substantial mass loss. Due to atomic structure limits, all white dwarfs must mass less than the Chandrasekhar limit. If their initial mass is more than the Chandrasekhar limit, then they must lose their envelopes during their planetary nebula phase till they are below this mass limit. An example of this is the Cat's Eye Nebula shown below:
At what stage a star leaves the AGB (Asymptotic Giant Branch) and becomes a white dwarf depends on how fast it runs out of fuel in its core. Higher mass stars will switch from helium to carbon burning and extend their lifetimes. Even higher mass stars will burn neon after carbon is used up. However, once iron is reached, fusion is halted since iron is so tightly bound that no energy can be extracted by fusion. Iron can fuse, but it absorbs energy in the process and the core temperature drops.
After evolving to white dwarfs, stars with original masses less than 25 solar masses slowly cool to become black dwarfs and suffer heat death.
Stars greater than 25 solar masses undergo a more violent end to their lives. Carbon core burning lasts for 600 years for a star of this size. Neon burning for 1 year, oxygen burning about 6 months (i.e. very fast on astronomical timescales). At 3 billion degrees, the core can fuse silicon nuclei into iron and the entire core supply is used up in one day.
An inert iron core builds up at this time where successive layers above the core consume the remaining fuel of lighter nuclei in the core. The core is about the size of the Earth, compressed to extreme densities and near the Chandrasekhar limit. The outer regions of the star have expanded to fill a volume as large as Jupiter's orbit from the Sun. Since iron does not act as a fuel, the burning stops.
The sudden stoppage of energy generation causes the core to collapse and the outer layers of the star to fall onto the core. The infalling layers collapse so fast that they `bounce' off the iron core at close to the speed of light. The rebound causes the star to explode as a supernova.
The energy released during this explosion is so immense that the star will out shine an entire galaxy for a few days. Supernova can be seen in nearby galaxies, about one every 100 years (therefore, if you survey 100 galaxies per year you expect to see at least one supernova a year). One such supernova (1991T) is shown below in the galaxy M51.
Supernova Core Explosion :
Once the silicon burning phase has produced an iron core the fate of the star is sealed. Since iron will not fuse to produce more energy, energy is lost by the productions of neutrinos through a variety of nuclear reactions. Neutrinos, which interact very weakly with matter, immediately leave the core taking energy with them. The core contracts and the star titers on the edge of oblivion.
As the core shrinks, it increases in density. Electrons are forced to combine with protons to make neutrons and more neutrinos, called neutronization. The core cools more, and becomes an extremely rigid form of matter. This entire process only takes 1/4 of a second.
With a loss of pressure from core, the unsupported regions surrounding the core plunge inward at velocities up to 100,000 km/s. The material crashes into the now-rigid core, enormous temperatures and pressures build up, and the layers bounce upward. A shock wave forms, which accelerates and, within a few hours, explodes from the surface of the star rushing outward at thousands of km/sec.
This entire process happens so fast that we can only follow it using supercomputer simulations. Maps of density and flow show the details in regions where observations can not be made.
As the outer layers are blasted into space, the luminosity of the dying star increases by a factor of 108 or 20 magnitudes. In 1987, a supernova exploded in our nearest neighbor galaxy. That supernova, designated SN1987A (the first one discovered in 1987) was visible to the naked eye, rising to a maximum brightness 85 days after detonation with a slow decline over the next 2 years. The light curve for SN1987A is shown below:
Although a supernova is extremely bright, only 1% of its energy is released as optical light. The rest was released as neutrinos and kinetic energy to explode the star. Most of the initial luminosity is the shell of the star expanding outward and cooling. After a few hundred days, this shell of expanding gas has cooled to be almost invisible and the light we see at this point is due to the radioactive decay of nickel and cobalt produced by nucleosynthesis during the explosion.
Neutrinos and Gravity Waves :
Supernova are the most energetic events in the Universe and provide an opportunity to observe two very elusive phenomena, neutrinos and gravity waves.
The collapse of a supernova core produces a flood of those very strange particles, neutrinos. Neutrinos interact very weakly with matter. Under most conditions, matter is transparent to neutrinos. During the high densities of a supernova core collapse, some of the neutrinos provide the pulse to starts the outward moving shock wave. But most of the neutrinos zip out of the supernova core. Thus, when a supernova explodes, huge numbers of neutrinos pour into space, streaming across the Galaxy passing through dust, gas, nebula unhindered. Even if the supernova is obscured, the neutrinos will rain down on the Earth.
However, because neutrinos are weakly interacting, they are also just as difficult to detect. Our best neutrino `telescopes' are large tanks of water buried deep underground such as the Super Kamiokande in Japan. Water contains lots of protons in the form of hydrogen atoms. Neutrinos from a supernova explosion travel at or very near the speed of light and carry a lot of energy. On rare occasions, a neutrino will hit a proton in the tank of water (the more water, the greater the chance). This collision will produce a positron which recoils with such high speed that it emits a brief flash of light known as Cerenkov radiation. The detector tank of water is buried deep in the Earth to eliminate cosmic rays and other interactions that would distort the detection of the neutrinos. Only neutrinos can reach to such depths.
The supernova SN1987A was the first recorded neutrino detection of an astronomical event (most neutrinos detected are from the Sun). Twelve neutrinos were detected 3 hours after the supernova was seen in the optical. The neutrino detections also give us valuable information on the neutrino itself. Until recently, we did not know if the neutrino has zero mass (like the photon and, therefore, travels at the speed of light) or if it has a small mass and must travel less than the speed of light. If neutrinos are massless, then they would arrive at the Earth at the same time. The more massive the neutrino, the more spread out their arrival times. The results from these experiments showed that the neutrino has a very small mass, a surprise to the world of particle physics.
Another exotic technique to study supernovae is through the use of gravitational radiation. During the core collapse of the supernova, vast amounts of matter are moved about at enormous speeds. The dense mass is surrounded by a strong gravitational field. Einstein's general theory of relativity describes gravity as curves in the fabric of space. Vigorous changes in gravity will produce `ripples' in the geometry of space, and these ripples can propagate outward at the speed of light, called gravity waves.
Gravity waves can be detected by the effects they have on other masses. For example, two masses will vibrate when a gravity wave passes, so sensitive measurements of their motion with lasers will detect the motion. Currently our technology is unable to detect gravity waves, but a new system (LIGO) is currently under construction for use at the turn of the century.
Nucleosynthesis :
There are over 100 naturally occurring elements in the Universe and classification makes up the periodic table. One of the great successes of stellar evolution theory was the explanation of the origin of all these elements. Some of the elements were formed when the Universe was very young. The era immediately after the Big Bang was a time with matter was densely packed and temperatures were high (ten's of millions of degrees). Fusion in the early Universe produced hydrogen, helium, lithium, beryllium and boron, the first 5 elements in the periodic table.
Other elements, from carbon to iron, were formed by fusion reactions in the cores of stars. The fusion process produces energy, which keeps the temperature of a stellar core high to keep the reaction rates high. The fusing of new elements is balanced by the destruction of nuclei by high energy gamma-rays. Gamma-rays in a stellar core are capable of disrupting nuclei, emitting free protons and neutrons. If the reaction rates are high, then a net flux of energy is produced.
Fusion of elements with mass numbers (the number of protons and neutrons) greater than 26 uses up more energy than is produced by the reaction. Thus, elements heavier than iron cannot be fuel sources in stars. And, likewise, elements heavier than iron are not produced in stars, so what is their origin?
The construction of elements heavier than involves neutron capture. A nuclei can capture or fuse with a neutron because the neutron is electrically neutral and, therefore, not repulsed like the proton. In everyday life, free neutrons are rare because they have short half-life's before they radioactively decay. Each neutron capture produces an isotope, some are stable, some are unstable. Unstable isotopes will decay by emitting a positron and a neutrino to make a new element.
Neutron capture can happen by two methods, the s and r-processes, where s and r stand for slow and rapid. The s-process happens in the inert carbon core of a star, the slow capture of neutrons. The s-process works as long as the decay time for unstable isotopes is longer than the capture time. Up to the element bismuth (atomic number 83), the s-process works, but above this point the more massive nuclei that can be built from bismuth are unstable.
The second process, the r-process, is what is used to produce very heavy, neutron rich nuclei. Here the capture of neutrons happens in such a dense environment that the unstable isotopes do not have time to decay. The high density of neutrons needed is only found during a supernova explosion and, thus, all the heavy elements in the Universe (radium, uranium and plutonium) are produced this way. The supernova explosion also has the side benefit of propelling the new created elements into space to seed molecular clouds which will form new stars and solar systems.Scott Olson / Getty Images A police officer and protesters videotape each other during a demonstration in Chicago on May 18, 2012
When protesters gather in Chicago this week to express their views about the NATO summit, people will be able to videotape the police and post videos of any police misconduct. Recording the police used to be illegal in Illinois. But this month, a federal appeals court ruled that a state wiretap law prohibiting it conflicts with the First Amendment.
A legal battle has been raging over whether people have the right to make video recordings of the police in public places. The video takers and their supporters insist that recording the police is citizen journalism protected by the First Amendment. But police across the country have insisted it is not — and have been arresting the video makers. The legal tide now appears to be turning decisively in favor of the right to take video of the police. This month, the video takers scored two big new wins — the ruling in Chicago and an important statement from the U.S. Department of Justice in a Baltimore case.
(MORE: Cohen: Strip Searches: The Supreme Court’s Disturbing Decision)
It is hard to believe, in this YouTube age, that taking video of people in public could be a crime. But the police are serious about not wanting to be recorded — and they have been making arrests to prove it. In 2010, Maryland resident Anthony Graber was charged with violating wiretap laws and threatened with as much as 16 years in prison for videotaping his own traffic stop. This month, twin teenagers in Mississippi said they were arrested and taken to jail for recording the police investigating a shooting at their apartment complex.
Eager as the police have been to declare this kind of recording criminal, the courts have been more skeptical. When Graber was prosecuted for making his video of the state trooper who pulled him over, the judge threw out the charges. Last summer, the Boston-based U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit ruled that the police violated the First Amendment rights of Simon Glik, who was arrested for making a cell-phone video of police forcefully arresting a suspect on the Boston Commons. In March, Boston agreed to pay Glik $170,000 in damages and legal fees for infringing on his right to record the police.
This month’s new legal victories strongly bolster this emerging legal right. In the Chicago case, the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals blocked the state from using a wiretap law — which prohibits audio recording of anyone without their permission — to arrest people who take video of the police in public. Using wiretap laws in this way, the court said, “restricts far more speech than necessary to protect legitimate privacy interests.”
Last week, the Department of Justice made its views on the issue known in a Baltimore civil lawsuit. A man named Christopher Sharp is suing the Baltimore police for destroying the video archive on his smart phone after he recorded officers arresting his friend. In a letter to the police department, the Department of Justice stated that the right of people to take videos of the police in public places is “firmly rooted in long-standing First Amendment principles.”
The main reason the battle over recording the police is so important — and so highly contested — is that videos like these get results. That was clear last November, when a video of a campus officer at the University of California at Davis casually pepper-spraying student protesters went viral, and the university was pressured to suspend the chief of police — who later resigned — and two officers. In another high-profile case, a New York City police officer who was captured on video shoving a bicyclist to |
he must first amass the funds for a lawyer and court costs. If his income is moderate (or low) and is already being reduced by a child support payment, he has little or no ability to fund any legal action.
Further, when feminists claim that fathers get “custody” of their children whenever they ask for it, they’re including joint custody agreements. These are nothing more than maternal custody/paternal visitation rewritten to recognize the father as a legitimate parent and afford him the ability to make decisions regarding the child’s medical care and school attendance. The living arrangement of the child is the same as when a mother has full legal custody, so the difference is mainly on paper.
This situation means that women do not have to be financially stable to be awarded custody of their children, while fathers have to have enough money to pursue legal action before the court will even consider awarding them custody.
The result has been an increase in single mother households living under the poverty level, eligible for and collecting government assistance. According to the latest data from the U.S. census bureau, custodial mothers are more likely than custodial fathers to:
Not have jobs and not have enough non-employment income to be above the poverty level without being employed
Earn low income even if employed
Have custody of four or more children
Combine joblessness with multiple child custody
Become custodial parents as teens.
Single fathers report more income from employment (wages and salaries or self-employment) and savings and investment (interest, dividend, rental, and other property income), while single mothers report much more income from assistance sources (for example, unemployment, workers’ compensation, public assistance, alimony, and child support). This difference is in part due to the requirement that fathers prove themselves fit parents in order to obtain custody, while mothers do not face such expectations unless custody is contested in court. Social attitudes also play a role in this; a mother living in poverty is considered a victim of abandonment and financial neglect by the estranged father of her children. A father living in poverty is considered a deadbeat who won’t man up and take care of his family. Even though both parents have the same capacity to obtain employment and earn a living, only one is held responsible for doing so.
Cutting fathers out of their children’s’ lives can have significant negative impact on the child. Research by Cynthia Harper of the University of Pennsylvania and Sara S. McLanahan of Princeton suggests that boys are significantly more likely to end up in jail or prison by the time they turn 30 if they are raised by a single mother. Bruce Ellis of the University of Arizona found that about one-third of girls whose fathers left the home before they turned 6 ended up pregnant as teenagers, compared with just 5 percent of girls whose fathers were there throughout their childhood. A study by Mary Corcoran and Roger Gordon of the University of Michigan shows that receipt of welfare income has negative effects on the long-term employment and earnings capacity of young boys. That study also found that both boys and girls were twice as likely to become unwed teen parents if raised in a fatherless home. Fathers’ rights groups have sought to remedy the courts’ senseless handling of child custody by introducing and advocating for legislation to change the standard custody arrangement following an uncontested divorce. These laws, introduced in the United States, Australia, and Canada, would ensure equal time with each parent. This would also change how child support is handled, as equal time between the parents would mean that neither should be faced with a greater share of the child’s living expenses. This would limit reasons for assigning a child support obligation to factors like differences in income or other personal resources.
Feminist groups have opposed the introduction of laws related to equally shared parenting using writing that uses a dishonest representation of the law as an every-case imperative, and demonization of fathers as deadbeats and abusers to argue against the proposed standard.
Michigan NOW against shared parenting law (Note that Michigan NOW has scrubbed the original of this post from the ‘net. The original link, http://www.now.org/nnt/03-97/father.html, still comes up in searches of Michigan NOW’s content, ((screenshot)) is widely referenced, and is quoted all over, but there is now no example of it in its original form.
Feminist groups state that if shared parenting were ordered, fathers would not provide their share of the daily care for the children. The National Organization For Women and the American Bar Association also question the motives of those promoting shared parenting, noting that it would result in substantial decreases in or termination of child support payments.
Feminist arguments include claims that equally shared parenting laws would force judges to place children in abusive homes, and that men only want custody of their children to get out of paying child support. However, proposed laws would not make the equal time standard a set-in-stone requirement, but merely the default in uncontested cases. If a parent does not want that arrangement, he or she can contest it in court. If both parents agree that they want a different arrangement, they can sign a contract to that effect, as well.
While feminists accuse fathers of being deadbeats who have abandoned their children, available information shows that to be untrue.
40% of mothers reported that they had interfered with the non-custodial father’s visitation on at least one occasion, to punish their ex-spouse
Between 25% & 33% of mothers denied visits
90% of the violence and kidnapping we have seen are in sole custody situations in which the sole custodial parent fears losing his or her custody status, or the parentectomized parent kidnaps the child away from the sole custody parent who possessively blocks the visiting parent from access.
– Frequency of Visitation by Divorced Fathers: Differences in Reports by Fathers and Mothers – Sanford H. Braver, Ph.D., Sharlene A. WoIchik, Ph.D., Irwin M. Sandler, Ph.D., Bruce S. Fogas, Ph.D., Daria Zvetina, M.Ed.
Unilateral abuse of parental custodial power is more common in court ordered sole custody situations.
– Child Custody and Parental Cooperation – Frank Williams, M.D., Dir. Psychiatry
“Perhaps half of the mothers valued the father’s continued contact with his children, and protected the contact with care and consideration. One-fifth saw no value in this whatsoever and actively tried to sabotage the meetings by sending the children away just before the father’s arrival, by insisting that the child was ill, or had pressing homework to do, by making a scene, or by leaving the children with the husband and disappearing. In between was a large group of women who had many mixed feelings about the father’s visits, resenting the father’s excessive gift-giving and his freedom from domestic responsibilities. These irritations were expressed in their difficulties in accommodating the different schedules of the other parent to make the visit possible and to protect the child’s access to both parents, in forgotten appointments, in insistence on rigid schedules for the visits, in refusal to permit the visit if the father brought along an adult friend – in a thousand mischievous, mostly petty, devices designed to humiliate the visiting parent and to deprecate him in the eyes of his children.”
– Surviving the Breakup – Joan Berlin Kelly and Judith S. Wallerstein
The former spouse [mother] was the greatest obstacle to having more frequent contact with the children
– Increasing Our Understanding of Fathers Who Have Infrequent Contact With Their Children – James R. Dudley, Professor, University North Carolina
70% of fathers felt they had too little time with their children.
Very few of the children were satisfied with the amount of contact with their fathers, after divorce.
Few men can afford to legally contest every infringement of the visitation agreement.
-Visitation and the Noncustodial Father – Mary Ann P. Koch, Carol R. Lowery, Journal of Divorce, Vol. 8, No. 2, Winter 1984)
That’s not fathers abandoning their children, but mothers refusing to allow their children time with their fathers. This puts fathers in the position of having to take legal action, or tolerate being evicted from their children’s lives by custodial mothers.
While feminists accuse fathers of being abusive, data from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services shows that the majority of child abusers are women.
The above list of links does show a decline in percentage, but some of that can be accounted for by an overall decline in child abuse in the U.S. over the past 5 years.
Study: Child abuse on decline in U.S. (CBS)
Child Abuse Rate In The U.S. Drops For 5th Straight Year (Huffington Post)
Statistics showing that women are more than half of abuse perpetrators in the U.S. directly contradict NOW’s inference that routinely assigning custody to mothers following divorce would prevent children from being placed in abusive homes. One could even come to the conclusion that routinely assigning custody to mothers puts children at greater risk, yet nobody is proposing that mothers be cut out of their children’s lives to eliminate that risk.
Baseless accusations and conditions which aren’t gender specific are not legitimate reasons to oppose instituting equally shared parenting as the applied custody arrangement in uncontested divorces. As a society, we’ve seen the negative effects of cutting either parent out of the child’s life. Wouldn’t it be most beneficial to the child to ensure that he or she receive the benefit of both parents whenever possible?
If the best interest of the child really is the standard feminists embrace, the most sensible way they can show that is by ceasing to oppose equally shared parenting initiatives. That opposition is not rooted in concern over abuse, but self-serving bigotry against men.
bySince the eruption of the Arab Spring in 2011, centralized military power has broken down in North Africa, the Levant, and Yemen, and several weak Arab states have turned to local militias to help defend regimes. While these pro-government militias can play important security roles, they have limited military capacity and reliability. Transitioning militia fighters into national guard forces with formal ties to the national command structure can overcome some of these limitations, but the shift must be accompanied by a wider commitment to security sector reform and political power sharing.
The Growing Role of Militias
Some militias are tied to ruling parties and draw fighters directly from regime supporters. Others are made up of former rebel factions or defectors from terrorist and insurgent groups, and they often seek to retain their autonomy even as they avow loyalty and service to the state.
In many Arab countries, including Iraq, Libya, Syria, and Yemen, militias play an important role in counterinsurgency and counterterrorism operations.
Militias are often cheaper and more flexible than regular security forces, and they have greater local knowledge, allowing them to operate effectively in areas where regular security forces cannot.
Militias often lack professionalism and can commit violence against civilian populations while allowing regimes plausible deniability and immunity from international censure for human rights violations.
Reliance on militias is risky. Militias may refuse orders or turn against their state sponsors. Even if militias are loyal, they often lack training and equipment necessary to confront stronger enemies. And their proliferation risks further fracturing the state’s monopoly over the use of force.
How National Guards Can Help Ensure Stability
Frederic Wehrey Frederic Wehrey is a senior fellow in the Middle East Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. His research deals with armed conflict, security sectors, and identity politics, with a focus on Libya, North Africa, and the Gulf. More > @FWehrey
National guards can provide formal and legal linkages between local militia fighters and the state. Organizing national guards along provincial or municipal lines can help to maximize local support while at the same time tethering local forces to a national command structure.
The new corps can only be effective if they are launched as part of broader security sector reforms. Successful integration of national guards will require adjustments in the culture and training of the main security organs in order to reduce distrust and interservice competition.
National guard programs must be launched in concert with political reform and power sharing. National guards can bolster federal arrangements that allow for regional autonomy while helping to guarantee fighters’ loyalty to the state and strengthening political cohesion. But military devolution alone is not a substitute for political accommodation between the central government and ethnosectarian or regional minorities.
Introduction
Faced with national armies that have broken down to varying degrees, Iraq, Libya, Syria, and Yemen have increasingly turned toward alliances with armed militias to ensure security.
The fragmentation of the armies—which began in Iraq with the U.S. toppling of Saddam Hussein in 2003 and elsewhere with the revolutions of 2011 and 2012—was precipitated by confrontations with popular protests and escalating battles with insurgent groups, many tied to Islamic radicalism. But internal cleavages, including clan rivalries in Yemen, town- and region-based fissures in Libya, and sectarian defections in Syria and Iraq, hastened the breakdowns.
Many of the pro-government militias that are now allied with these beleaguered Arab states are organized on the basis of entrenched ethnosectarian or tribal relations. These forces supplement and at times even stand in for the weak or absent army and police as providers of local security.1 Moving forward, militias could form the basis for the creation of new national guard corps. This approach would capitalize on the militias’ local bases of support while integrating them under the national command structure.
Iraq, Libya, Syria, and Yemen have increasingly turned toward alliances with armed militias to ensure security.
The national guard concept faces many hurdles, as seen during its consideration in Iraq and Libya. The guard structure raises significant questions about accountability and the cohesion of the state overall; the forces could well weaken rather than strengthen the state. But properly constructed, they could serve as tentative first steps on the long path toward new power-sharing arrangements that favor inclusion and local representation over exclusion and repression by the center. In this sense, they may represent the best hope for restoring stability in these fragile nations.
Ultimately, the creation of national guards must be linked to reforms in other arenas if the approach is to be successful. A key priority is reform within the security sector itself, involving the establishment of cultures of cooperation instead of competition and the solidification of chains of command and oversight between the militias and the regular security services. Another imperative is political reform, affecting the way power is distributed and the accommodation of ethnosectarian minorities and other peripheral groups within the state.
The Evolving Role of Militias
Arab rulers have always had ambivalent relationships with militias and other armed nonstate actors. The medieval Arab historian Ibn Khaldun posited an inherent tension and rivalry between the state and warlike tribes that roamed the hinterlands.2 Yet states often turned to tribal chieftains, warlords, and criminal gangs to help collect taxes, impose order, and suppress revolts. The Ottoman, British, and French empires all recruited tribal forces to help exercise control.3
Upon gaining independence in the early to mid-twentieth century, Arab rulers tried very hard to approximate Max Weber’s famous definition of the state as a monopoly over legitimate force, building up national armies that were essential for survival in a region marred by frequent interstate wars. These armies were also employed to suppress internal opposition and rebellions against the state. Military officers saw themselves as holding a unique and privileged position and often seized power for themselves in the name of the nation. Consequently, coups became a recurrent feature of Arab politics from the 1930s to the early 1970s. From the 1950s to the 1970s, some regimes associated with the radical pan-Arab socialist camp tried to insulate themselves from military coups by setting up party-based militias, modeled roughly on the Soviet Union’s popular committees and militias. Regular army officers resisted what they saw as the trespass of untrained civilians onto their professional terrain. These militias were often little more than collections of party thugs who brutalized opposition figures.
By the 1970s and 1980s a new, two-tiered model for organizing security services had emerged in many Arab states. The innermost layer was made up of heavily armored praetorian guards and intelligence services, whose members were often drawn from rulers’ close kin and associates. Their primary responsibility was to prevent coups and internal plots. The outer layer was composed of the army and police, which could be deployed in case of foreign wars and against popular revolts. This division of labor, though, had a number of problems, including inducing interservice competition and mistrust and hampering actual combat effectiveness.4
That structure is still largely in place in Egypt, Algeria, Jordan, and the Gulf Arab monarchies, where armies remain intact, albeit bloated. These national militaries have limited power-projection capabilities, with some niche exceptions in special operations and air forces. Their most important roles continue to be preventing coups and extracting rents for loyalist constituencies.5
But in Iraq, Libya, Syria, and Yemen, where armies have broken down, the prominence of pro-government militias highlights a troubling dilemma. On the one hand, they are playing important roles in counterinsurgency and counterterrorism, often in areas where the regular security services cannot or will not operate. Many of these militias draw from former rebel factions and defectors from insurgent groups, giving them unique knowledge of local conditions and terrain.6 In 2015, Shia militias in Iraq helped recapture the northern city of Tikrit from the self-proclaimed Islamic State, and militias from Misrata, a coastal town in western Libya, helped battle Islamic State forces that had occupied part of the neighboring town of Sirte and surrounding villages.
On the other hand, there are a number of inherent risks in mobilizing these nonstate actors. Governments can use militias as proxies, attacking civilians while maintaining a degree of credible deniability and avoiding international censure. The militias themselves often lack training and professionalism, making them prone to human rights violations and general criminality.
Syria’s shabiha (ghosts) militias illustrate this conundrum. These militias originated in smuggling and racketeering networks that operated under the protection of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s regime, and the shabiha have provided a measure of protection for minority Alawite and Christian communities from the onslaught of the Islamic State and other Sunni Islamist radicals. But the militias have also been implicated in atrocities like rape, torture, and mass killings.7
Reliance on militias can subvert efforts to reestablish the state’s monopoly over the use of force.
In a wider sense, reliance on militias can subvert efforts to reestablish the state’s monopoly over the use of force. In Yemen, for instance, the government sanctioned the emergence of the Popular Committee militia movement in 2011 to combat the encroachment of al-Qaeda-affiliated Ansar al-Sharia radicals in the southern governorate of Abyan. The committees succeeded at repelling Islamist advances and gained a measure of popular support by rolling back the imposition of Islamic law. But while the committees espoused loyalty to the government in Sanaa, they became increasingly predatory toward civilians, using violence to settle personal and tribal vendettas and demand a greater share of government patronage.8 During the Houthi rebel advances of early 2015, the Popular Committee militias were a key element in President Abd Rabbu Mansour Hadi’s defense efforts.9
In several Arab states, the idea of shifting informal fighters into formally constituted national guard forces has been floated at various times as a way to ameliorate some of these problems. A national guard would formalize and legalize the existing relationships between states and pro-government militias. By providing a vehicle for recruiting, absorbing, and mobilizing militias as auxiliaries to the regular army, they would also allow weak central governments to more effectively combat terrorist groups and insurgencies.
Yet efforts to build national guard corps in Libya and Iraq have so far failed. In both cases, there was resistance not only from some prospective members of the national guard but also from political factions, members of the regular armed forces, and communal groups. In Libya, more secular factions and the old officer class opposed the national guard program, which they saw as a bid by Islamist militias to challenge the regular army. Similarly, in Iraq, where the national guard was meant to empower Sunnis to join the fight against the Islamic State, the idea fell victim to parliamentary disputes about its scope and role, particularly from Kurdish and Shia factions. Examining these abortive efforts can help elucidate the potential of national guards to rebuild Arab states, as well as their limitations.
The Iraqi National Guard: A Harness on Sunni Power?
In late 2014, as Iraq struggled to contain the advances of the Islamic State, Iraqi and U.S. officials called for the creation of a national guard as a way to integrate Sunni tribal militias into the national command structure.
The proposal had much in common with what was known as the Sunni Awakening of the mid-2000s, when the United States backed the formation of Sunni militias to help defeat al-Qaeda in Iraq. But the idea of a new Iraqi national guard faced many hurdles and has failed to materialize.
The Sunni Awakening Experience
Militias have been prominent in Iraq since the removal of former president Saddam Hussein in 2003. The United States immediately dismantled Iraq’s army and police force, seeing them as a redoubt of loyalism to the old regime and fearing that they could be the source of military coups. The Shia and Kurdish parties that dominated Iraq’s newly installed government relied on their own autonomous militia forces: the two leading Kurdish parties each had their own peshmerga units, and the major Shia political parties had their own armed factions, such as the Badr Corps (now the Badr Organization) of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (since renamed the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq). Other militia forces emerged organically to provide security and political muscle for new political aspirants like Muqtada al-Sadr, a radical Shia cleric, and his Mahdi Army.
Meanwhile, in Sunni areas in the north and west of Iraq, insurgents, Islamists, and tribal militias quickly filled the vacuum, intending to frustrate the designs of the Shia-dominated government and the United States. Washington failed to commit sufficient resources to help disarm, demobilize, and reintegrate former army officers or militia fighters in these regions into civilian life. Moreover, legacies of distrust hampered efforts to incorporate these forces into a cohesive Iraqi army: Shia political parties were hesitant to give up their autonomous militia forces, while Sunnis with military experience were reluctant to work with what they deemed unprofessional and untrained civilians, many of whom had been allied with Iran and the United States.
By 2006, Iraq was in a full-fledged ethnosectarian war. Sunni insurgents used improvised explosive devices, bombings, and suicide attacks against Shia, Kurdish, and American targets. The government waged its own dirty war of abductions, torture, and assassinations against suspected Sunni terrorists, often using Shia militias who acted in concert with Interior Ministry forces.
It was in this context that the United States began to actively recruit and empower Sunni tribes as a means of weaning them away from the insurgency. The Sunni Awakening hinged on a crucial bargain between the United States and the tribes: the United States provided weapons and jobs and effectively shielded the tribes from interventions by Shia militias and Iraqi security forces, and the tribes essentially became self-governing and responsible for rooting out insurgents. Support from Jordan and Saudi Arabia was crucial to building and maintaining links to the western Sunni tribes. By the end of 2007, the militias had taken in over 65,000 men in arms across seven Iraqi provinces.10
This approach initially seemed to be effective. Violence in Iraq dropped dramatically in 2007 and 2008 and the civil war appeared at an end. Many observers today point to the example of the Awakening as a possible model for a future national guard force in Iraq.
But the central government in Baghdad was not fully a party to the negotiations between the United States and the Sunni leadership and never embraced the Awakening plan. As U.S. forces withdrew from Iraq in 2009 and 2010, the Iraqi government appeared to renege on promises to integrate the largely Sunni force into the apparatus of the state. Only a handful of former Awakening fighters were inducted into the police, army, or elsewhere in the government. Most were simply dismissed or offered menial positions. The government of then prime minister Nouri al-Maliki began to attack prominent Sunni militia leaders, indicting and arresting them on charges of terrorism or political subversion.
By the end of the decade, disaffected tribes began to drift back into collaboration with the remnants of Hussein’s Baath Party forces that were still hiding out in the Sunni north and with radical groups like the Islamic State, which originated as al-Qaeda in Iraq and grew immensely strong with the opportunity to establish a safe haven in Syria when the civil war erupted there in 2011.
Meanwhile, the intermingling of state and nonstate armed forces allied with the government continued. On the one hand, Maliki took control of elite special operations forces that were drawn from the ranks of Shia militias and specially trained and equipped by the United States; he also commanded local militia forces tied to him directly through patronage and patrimonial networks. On the other hand, other Shia militias associated with Maliki’s rivals, such as Sadr’s Mahdi Army, appeared to dissolve, while the ranks of the Iraqi army and other Iraqi Security Forces branches continued to expand with Western support.
Combating the Islamic State
The sudden advances by the Islamic State on Anbar and Nineveh Provinces in western Iraq in the summer of 2014 betrayed just how unstable this arrangement really was. Regular Iraqi troops proved poorly trained and undisciplined; they quickly scattered and fled. By some estimates, 300,000 of the men on the roster of Iraq’s security forces, or 30–40 percent of the total force, were phantom personnel who never actually served.11
Nonstate Shia militia forces stepped up to fill the breach. Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the foremost Shia religious authority in Iraq, issued a fatwa (religious edict) calling for Iraqi civilians to take up arms in self-defense. The dormant Mahdi Army quickly reconstituted itself, standing at the barricades in Baghdad and nearby Samarra. Iran dispatched the special forces unit of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the Quds Force, to help organize, equip, and train Shia militias, which came to be known as the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF, or Hashd al-Shaabi).12
In August 2014, as the United States began to offer air support to Iraqi forces fighting against the Islamic State, Washington sought to induce the Iraqi government to reach out to the estranged Sunni community. U.S. President Barack Obama specifically mentioned U.S. support for an Iraqi national guard (ING) as a means to help Iraq’s “Sunni communities secure their own freedom” from the Islamic State in a September 10, 2014, statement.13
Many U.S. commentators likened the idea of the ING to the U.S. National Guard. Additionally, many linked the new ING to the 2006 Sunni Awakening. Offering military and financial aid through the ING would encourage Sunni tribal factions to turn against the Islamic State militants. As the ING was envisioned, the militias would be placed under the supervision of provincial governors and could be called up by the central government to serve as auxiliaries to the regular army.14
Neither the PMF nor the ING initiative was on strong legal footing. The Iraqi constitution specifically prohibits the formation of militias outside the framework of the armed forces (with an exception for the Kurdish peshmerga forces).15
Still, the ING initially seemed to be off to a good start. Newly elected Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi expressed support for the idea and a draft bill was introduced in the Iraqi legislature in October 2014.16 Iraqi and U.S. government officials met with leaders of major western tribes.17 Some 2,000 volunteers emerged from Anbar Province.18 In the northern city of Kirkuk, tribesmen volunteered to fight the Islamic State under the supervision of Anwar Assi, the leader of the Ubayd tribe.19 U.S. officials met directly with tribal leaders in Anbar, including Ahmed Abu Risha, whose brother had spearheaded the Awakening until his assassination in 2007.20
Yet the early momentum behind the proposed national guard quickly faded. The ING faced significant resistance within Abadi’s own camp. Abadi’s first nominees for the crucial positions of defense and interior minister were blocked; the draft ING bill itself languished in parliament. Ultimately, the Defense Ministry post was filled by an established Sunni politician who had little sway in the crucial provinces where the Islamic State had gained a foothold. An affiliate of the Islamic Supreme Council took the Interior Ministry, reinforcing the close ties between the government and Shia militias.21
Sunnis themselves saw the ING as a vehicle to demand significant autonomy and power sharing, comparable to what they had received from the United States in 2006. Some Anbar tribes made their participation in the ING contingent on the removal of Shia militias from their province.22 As it was, the Shia-dominated government distrusted the Sunnis’ intentions and was wary of establishing a force that could counterbalance the central government or even come to ally with the Islamic State.
Geopolitical factors exacerbated such fears. While Iraq’s central government has become more and more reliant on Shia Iran, particularly in regard to building up the PMF militias, the United States planned to enlist Sunni Arab states, namely Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates, to provide training and support for the ING.23 This raised the possibility that the ING would serve as a proxy for the United States and Sunni Arab states within Iraq’s domestic political arena.
Moreover, many Iraqis saw the ING as another step in the fragmentation of Iraq as a whole. Upon learning of the possibility of new Sunni militias, leaders of Iraq’s Turkoman minority, for instance, clamored for their own militia units.24
The Shia-dominated government distrusted the Sunnis’ intentions and was wary of establishing a force that could counterbalance the central government or even come to ally with the Islamic State.
As hope for a formally constituted ING faded in late 2014, the informal Shia PMF militias continued to grow with Iranian support. Yet the PMF has also exhibited some of the fundamental problems of discipline and training typical of part-time militia forces. During the March 2015 assault on Tikrit, the combined regular security services and PMF fighters enjoyed a clear numerical advantage, yet failed repeatedly against tough resistance from Islamic State fighters. The PMF’s autonomy also complicated efforts to coordinate between Iraq and the United States. Some PMF units closely tied to Iran chose to quit the fight rather than cooperate with U.S. plans to provide air cover for their assault. The United States has insisted on engaging only the formal Iraqi security services, not PMF units, in its train-and-equip programs.25
Even more significantly, PMF militias have been implicated in a campaign of terror against Sunnis suspected of sympathizing or cooperating with the Islamic State. Eyewitnesses have described militiamen looting property and carrying out illegal detentions and extrajudicial killings against Sunnis. Given the relationship between the central government and the PMF, these could well be deliberate attempts to intimidate Sunnis and possibly drive them from their homes.26
Naturally, reliance on Shia militias served to deepen Sunnis’ feelings of alienation from the central government and may even have pushed them further into the arms of the Islamic State. While a handful of Sunni tribesmen did apparently join the government’s campaign in Tikrit, the overall impression of the PMF as a collection of distinctly Shia militias is inescapable.27 In his March 2015 assessment of the situation in Iraq, U.S. General David Petraeus, who oversaw the 2006 surge of American forces in Iraq, specifically cited these Iranian-backed forces as a more significant threat to Iraq’s future than the Islamic State itself.28 For its part, the central government appears to be either unwilling or unable to put a stop to the militias’ atrocities.29
The Libyan National Guard: A Failed Effort to Regularize Militia Power
Muammar Qaddafi, Libya’s longtime leader, feared coups and, with the exception of elite security brigades commanded by his sons, he kept the regular army weak. After the 2011 revolution, what had been a highly centralized but ill-equipped and underfunded national military and police force devolved into a fragmented and informal security sector that was polarized along regional lines. The army all but collapsed; it was a largely hollow force, heavy at the top with senior officers but bereft of leadership at the junior and middle levels. Real authority resided in numerous revolutionary battalions and companies—the localized militias that had fought Qaddafi and filled the security vacuum after his ouster. In the revolution’s wake, the militias seized armories, airports, and ministries.
As Libya’s transitional governing authorities started putting militias on the payroll, the number of revolutionary fighters swelled far beyond those who had actually fought the dictator. The question of how to demobilize and integrate these fighters into a more formal structure has bedeviled successive governments in post-Qaddafi Libya.
One attempt to resolve this dilemma was made by the United Nations Support Mission in Libya (UNSMIL), which in late 2012 floated a national guard–like concept called the Libya Territorial Army, to be composed of three revolutionary brigades that would act as an interim stabilizer while the regular national army was being trained and bolstered.30 The idea was to create a standing military force consisting primarily of recruits from various state-sponsored militias. In interviews, Libyan proponents of the plan drew direct parallels with the U.S. experience in militia integration after the American Civil War, as well as that of the Territorial Army, a part-time, volunteer force that was integrated into the British Army in the early twentieth century, and the Home Guard in Denmark, which incorporated anti-Nazi resistance militias into a national command structure after World War II.31
In April 2013, then prime minister Ali Zeidan proposed a separate national guard scheme that was backed in principle by UNSMIL. The Libyan National Guard (LNG) was meant to carry out nationwide policing functions while the regular security services were still being trained and equipped.
Even as a potential stopgap, the LNG program was highly controversial. Unresolved questions about its purpose, composition, command and oversight, and relationship to the regular army eventually torpedoed the proposal in late 2013. The idea remains on the table with one of the factions in Libya’s civil war, but it is still plagued by uncertainties about its scope and mandate.
Militias by Another Name: The Precedent of the Libya Shield Force
In an initial statement in April 2013, Zeidan argued that the LNG would accommodate so-called freedom fighters who had battled Qaddafi’s forces and opted not to join the regular army after his fall. The force would be used to protect forests, roads, oil installations, and service projects in the desert regions as well as electricity and communications transmission towers and all other vital facilities located outside Libya’s cities. It could also be assigned to augment the army and police if the need arose.32
A critical point of dispute was whether the LNG would permit whole revolutionary factions to remain intact as units. The architects of the plan insisted that people would join the LNG as individuals and would be assigned to mixed units to prevent replicating the factional militia structure within the new force. But many critics of the plan were not convinced. Secular-leaning politicians from the National Forces Alliance (NFA), a coalition of more than 50 parties, saw the proposal as an attempt by Islamists to create their own militias, albeit under a more formal name.33 For their part, the officers of the regular army, which numbered roughly 35,000 soldiers in 2012, feared competition for resources and authority from the LNG, which was also planned to be 35,000-men strong.34
Most important though, many of its critics believed that the national guard was simply a duplication of the Libya Shield Force (LSF) project, which arose in 2011 but fragmented in 2014 after the start of Libya’s civil war between what are known as the Operation Dawn and Operation Dignity factions. The LSF was in many respects the first test of militia integration in the period preceding the national guard project—and its collapse carries a number of important lessons.
The LSF was initially a bottom-up initiative by regionally affiliated militias, particularly those in Misrata that were aligned with Salim Juha, a former army officer and well-regarded revolutionary leader. The idea was to supplant the defunct regular army, which many revolutionaries—especially Islamists—believed was dominated by officers from the Qaddafi-era and bloated at the senior ranks. The transitional government under then prime minister Abdel-Rahim el-Keib officially recognized the LSF in April 2012, subordinating it to the chief of staff of the armed forces and authorizing direct cash payments to militia heads.
A fundamental flaw of the LSF was that certain commanders allowed militias to join its regionally aligned divisions en masse, preserving their autonomy and social and tribal cohesion. This was not Juha’s original intent; he had insisted that the Shields would break up the militias by incorporating individuals, not entire units.35 But in Juha’s home city of Misrata, also home to Libya’s most powerful militias, this insistence created tension. A schism emerged between the city’s two Shield divisions, the Libya Shield West under Muhammed Musa and the Third Force, which had ties to Juha. Musa had taken entire brigades from Misrata and surrounding areas (Zliten and Khoms, as well as Hun, to the south) and incorporated them into the Shield. Out of Misrata’s 230 brigades, roughly 70 incorporated themselves into the Shields as whole units, not as individuals.
There was also tension between the LSF and the national military. The thirteen LSF divisions were nominally headed by regular army colonels. But in actuality the militia heads called the shots. The average salary provided by the Libyan government to LSF members vastly exceeded that provided to even senior officers in the regular army.36 In interviews, Shield commanders and members said they saw themselves as the sole army for the country, while denigrating the remnants of the “official army” as corrupt and incompetent.
In some areas, the Shields did contribute to public security. The LSF proved valuable to the National Transitional Council, which ruled Libya after Qaddafi was overthrown but lacked an army capable of extending its authority into Libya’s southern and western peripheries, where outbreaks of communal and tribal infighting erupted in Kufra, Sabha, and the Nafusa Mountains throughout 2012 and into 2013. LSF forces intercepted cross-border drug trafficking and mediated intratribal conflict. In the west, the Libya Shield West protected the road from Tripoli to Tunis for at least two years.
But in other areas, they had a more malign effect. Using the official writ of the chief of staff and their affiliation with one of the LSF divisions, militias were free to pursue agendas that were parochial, ideological, and in some cases criminal. Some were perceived as having a distinctly Islamist hue. And as time wore on, some became political. In April and May 201 |
Children in Waco.
Looking for some notoriety, Kolb was unprepared for the negative reaction, which started locally and spread like wildfire across the Web.
"I wasn't expecting the reactions we got," company owner Brad Kolb told KWTX-TV last week. "It was more or less something we put out there to see who noticed it."
Kolb addressed the controversy in a video posted Sunday titled "How Far Is Too Far?"
"What began as an experiment in getting reaction from our local community quickly changed to a nationwide response to a disturbing social issue that too many are faced with today," Kolb said.
He added that the company and its employees -- one of whom posed for the vinyl wrap -- "do not condone abusive behavior in any form to any individual," and called on people to "let's us know what motivates you to act."
Saying his company has "embraced the situation as an opportunity to help victims of abuse all over the country," Kolb said he had partnered with the Waco-based Advocacy Center for Crime Victims and Children to raise money and awareness. The firm has also posted names and phones numbers of local and national groups that help abuse victims.
Kolb also conducted a poll that asks whether the decal should be left on the truck, removed or auctioned on eBay, with the proceeds going to the charity.
Hornet said it has "not profited by one penny on this," noting that it made only one decal and did not plan to manufacture more for sale.
Regardless, most reactions have been fiercely negative.
"I am not sure who is worse, the disgusting people who created that sign, or the apologists who are trying to justify that behavior. You all make decent people sick," Meredith Prechter Young commented on the company's Facebook page.
The liberal group MoveOn.org has posted a petition calling on Hornet to remove the decal, saying "Using imagery of a hog-tied women on the back of a pick up truck is unacceptable in today's climate of violence against women."
Hornet acknowledged the "negative publicity" Monday evening, calling it "not unwarranted." But it added, "we would like to respectfully remind the public that, threats and personal attacks on our employees are also a form of abuse that many of our critics have voiced such outrage and concern over."
Read or Share this story: http://usat.ly/1fSHXksImage copyright PA Image caption Ed Miliband singled out Sports Direct in his criticism of zero-hours contracts
Labour leader Ed Miliband has accused Sports Direct of using Victorian practices for hiring thousands of workers on zero-hours contracts.
In a speech, he said the firm was a "terrible place to work". Labour claims 17,000 of its 20,000 UK employees are not guaranteed regular hours.
Mr Miliband promised to ban "the exploitation of zero-hours contracts".
Sports Direct, one of the UK's biggest employers, said it was continuing to review "core employment procedures".
Zero-hours contracts do not guarantee regular work for employees. Sick pay is often not included although holiday pay should be, in line with working time regulations.
'No security'
The BBC's political correspondent Chris Mason said research conducted by Labour concluded that 17,000 of the company's 20,000 employees in the UK were hired on the controversial contracts.
Image copyright Getty Images Image caption Sports Direct is "a terrible place to work" for many staff, Mr Miliband claimed
Speaking to the West Midlands Labour Party conference in Coventry, Mr Miliband took aim at what he calls "a zero-zero economy - of zero-hours contracts and zero tax for those at the top".
Mr Miliband pledged that, under a Labour government, "if you work regular hours you will have a legal right to a regular contract".
Business and Enterprise Minister Matthew Hancock insisted that the government was already taking action.
"We're already tackling the abuse of zero-hours contracts - after 13 years of Labour doing absolutely nothing about it," Mr Hancock said.
He also accused some Labour councils of continuing to use the contracts.
Zero-hours contracts
Image copyright Getty Images
Zero-hours contracts, or casual contracts, allow employers to hire staff with no guarantee of work.
They mean employees work only when they are needed by employers, often at short notice. Their pay depends on how often they work.
Some zero-hours contracts oblige workers to take the shifts they are offered; others do not.
Sick pay is often not included, although holiday pay should be, in line with working time regulations.
Focusing on the high street sports chain, the Labour leader said Sports Direct "has predictable turnover, it has big profits but, for too many of its employees, it is a terrible place to work".
"We cannot go on with an economy that allows businesses to use zero-hours contracts as the standard way of employing people month after month, year after year."
"These Victorian practices have no place in the 21st Century."
Sports Direct did not comment on Mr Miliband's remarks, but highlighted a recent statement in which the firm set out changes it was making.
A spokesman said: "The company will continue the process of reviewing, updating and improving our core employment documents and procedures across our entire business beyond its existing compliant framework."We are beginning to see the first real signs of the global oil markets moving rapidly back into balance. OPEC, which produces approximately 40 percent of the world’s oil supply, cannot meet future oil demand on their own.
• On May 11th the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) reported that U.S. crude oil production declined by 206,000 barrels per day over the six weeks ending May 5, 2016.
• In the same weekly report:
o U.S. crude oil inventories unexpectedly fell by 3.41 million barrels during the week ending May 6, 2016
o Gasoline inventories declined by 1.231 million barrels
o Distillate stockpiles fell by 1.647 million barrels
• The International Energy Agency (IEA) say the annual summer spike in demand for transportation fuels has begun.
When the oil markets are oversupplied, the speculators which control the oil futures markets tend to ignore supply outages that they consider short-term. For example, the forest fires in Alberta that shut-in more than a million barrels per day of Canadian heavy oil products in early May did not seem to have much impact on the price of oil. As supply and demand move back into balance, an outage of that size will send the NYMEX strip prices sharply higher. The oil sands projects shut in by the fires are now coming back on-line, but it will take months before production is fully restored. Related: Oil Climbs Higher As Goldman Sachs Sees Glut Shift To Deficit
Nigeria has much bigger problems
On Friday, May 13 an explosion closed a second Chevron facility in Nigeria, Africa's biggest oil producer. The explosion was the result of an attack by militants who are upset with their government. 70 percent of Nigerians live on less than $1/day. They see the "Top 1 Percenters" living like kings, while they have trouble finding enough food to eat. Apparently, they have money enough for guns and explosives.
Exxon Mobil also reported on May 13 that a drilling rig damaged a pipeline, shutting off more production of crude. Nigeria's oil production was already down 600,000 barrels per day before these two incidents, primarily the result of militant attacks. Shell is now evacuating workers from its offshore Bonga oilfield following a militant threat. Shell's Forcados export terminal has been shut down since a February bombing. To say Nigeria is a mess is an understatement.
Adding to the country’s problems is the fact that they are over a year behind in paying invoices for oilfield services. Schlumberger Ltd. (SLB) has pulled personnel and equipment out of Nigeria, apparently tired of running up the bad debts.
Venezuela: Another OPEC nation on steep decline
Latin American oil production is now down close to 500,000 bpd from year ago levels.
On May 6, Bloomberg reported that Halliburton (HAL) has joined rival Schlumberger in curbing activity in Venezuela due to lack of payment during the oil industry’s worst financial crisis.
"During the first quarter of 2016, we made the decision to begin curtailing activity in Venezuela," Halliburton, the world’s second-largest oil services provider, said May 6th in a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. "We have experienced delays in collecting payment on our receivables from our primary customer in Venezuela. These receivables are not disputed, and we have not historically had material write-offs relating to this customer," the company said.
Halliburton’s receivables in Venezuela rose 7.4 percent in the first quarter to $756 million compared to the end of 2015, representing more than 10 percent of its total receivables, the Houston-based company said. If you own Halliburton stock, prepare yourself for a big bad debt expense later this year. Related: Saudi Arabia Loses Top Credit Rating from Moody’s
On the demand side of the equation, May is the beginning of an annual spike in demand for hydrocarbon based liquid fuels. In their monthly Oil Market Report dated May 12, 2016 the International Energy Agency (IEA) forecasts that demand will increase by 1.66 million barrels per day from the first quarter of this year to the third quarter.
If history repeats itself, the demand spike will be even larger. In 2010, the final year of the last major oil price cycle, the IEA began the year forecasting a 1.0 million barrel per day increase that year. Actual demand growth was 3.3 million barrels per day. The forecast error made in 2010 was that IEA’s formula for calculating demand, did not consider the impact of lower fuel prices on demand. I believe they’ve made the same mistake this time around.
Key points from the IEA report:
• Global oil demand growth for 1Q16 was revised upwards to 1.4 mb/d, led higher by strong gains in India, China and, more surprisingly, Russia. Russia had a cold winter and they still use a lot of oil for space heating.
• Oil inventory builds are beginning to slow in the OECD; in 1Q16 they grew at their slowest rate since 4Q14 and in February they drew for the first time in a year.
• “Changes to the data in this month's Oil Market Report confirm the direction of travel of the oil market towards balance. The net result of our changes to demand and supply data is that we expect to see global oil stocks increase by 1.3 mb/d in 1H16 followed by a dramatic reduction in 2H16 to 0.2 mb/d.”
• “We have left unchanged our outlook for global oil demand growth in 2016 at a solid 1.2 mb/d. However, for 1Q16 revised data shows demand growing faster at 1.4 mb/d, in spite of the northern hemisphere winter being milder than usual. This strong 1Q16 performance might raise expectations that demand will remain at this stronger level causing us to raise our average figure for 2016.” As you can see by this statement, IEA is already seeing the error in their forecasting model. Like most government agencies, they will never come out and say they screwed up.
During the first quarter, oil prices were under pressure from predictions that China’s demand for oil would soften this year. Chinese demand growth has slowed down from the rapid pace of the prior ten years, but it is still going up. This is thanks in part to sales of SUVs that are still climbing in China. Apparently the Chinese people are becoming more status driven (like Americans), owning an SUV in China indicates your family has joined the Upper Middle Class.
Per the IEA report, India is rapidly becoming the leader in global demand growth. Oil demand in India increased by 400,000 barrels per day year-over-year in the first quarter. Related: Does Tesla Care About Its Stock Price?
(Click to enlarge)
Conclusion: History Repeats Itself
I have worked in the upstream energy sector for 38 years. During my career the industry has survived six major and a few minor oil price cycles. It will survive this one because the products made from crude oil, natural gas and natural gas liquids (NGLs) are critical to the world economy. Our high standard of living depends on a steady supply of oil.
Oil price cycles do not end well. The big ones, and this is one of the biggest ever, overshoot the mark and result in a supply shortage. With OPEC now producing flat out, there is very little excess production capacity in the world. After the end of 2016, when oil supply and demand are back in balance, all significant supply outages (i.e. Canadian fire, Nigerian militants, ISIS attacks in the Middle East, etc.) will send crude oil prices skyrocketing. The Wall Street analysts that are saying we will never see oil over $100/bbl again will be eating those words.
Oil prices do not go up or down in a smooth line, as you can see in the chart above. Investors that can look past the short-term noise and invest in the best companies will harvest market beating gains as this cycle moves back to the long-term trend.
By Dan Steffens for Oilprice.com
More Top Reads From Oilprice.com:Soon mother and calf would be heading south, to the krill-rich waters of the Southern Ocean and Antarctica, sharing their endless migration with thousands of their kind. Having been looked in the eye by a humpback, it's impossible to stand by idly as the latest Southern Ocean whaling season begins. If they are there now, my mother and calf may encounter humans who are not harmless tourists: the Japanese whalers bent on killing them, ostensibly in the name of science, while upholding spurious national honour in the face of global condemnation. Despite a challenge now before the International Court of Justice, Japan continues to insist on slaughtering humpback, minke and southern right whales, dismissing international outrage over its policy. As in previous years, this summer Japanese whalers will be confronted by vessels of the radical activist organisation Sea Shepherd, now en route to the whaling zone. I believe Sea Shepherd protesters have a just cause, but that their vigilante methods are wrong. They take reckless and often violent actions that provoke ugly and dangerous confrontations to disrupt the whalers and maximise media coverage. The Japanese whalers retaliate in kind. Ships and property on both sides are damaged but, worse, people are injured and, before long, could be killed.
What's really needed in those cold, unforgiving waters is the rule of law, backed by a respected presence. The Australian government has the resources to do this. The Australian Customs Service has a 105-metre vessel, the Ocean Protector, specifically fitted out for deep-water fisheries patrol. Its intended role is upholding Australia's Southern Ocean economic interests, especially the prevention of illegal fishing affecting the Australian economic exclusion zones around Heard and Macquarie Islands. It also can assist other countries with adjoining economic rights. The Ocean Protector therefore can protect Australia's interests regarding the operations of Japanese whalers and help keep the peace between whalers and Sea Shepherd activists bent on confrontation. But this summer it will be in warm Indian Ocean waters, deployed against people smugglers for Operation Sovereign Borders. Instead, Environment Minister Greg Hunt announced last Sunday that, from January to March, a long-range Airbus A-319 aircraft will fly over the whaling zone. Hunt confirmed there will be no official sea-level presence there this season. While this is Australia's first such presence of any kind since 2008, the Abbott government's decision sets aside an election Coalition promise to ''ensure that resources devoted to patrolling illegal foreign fishing are not diverted to other activities. This includes ensuring that the Ocean Protector is provided with sufficient funding to devote an adequate level of patrol days in southern waters every financial year.'' In the Ocean Protector's absence, there's not just a risk of slaughter of the great whales of the Southern Ocean, there's a real risk of collision, which could lead to injury or to a loss of life at sea. These aren't my words: Hunt himself rightly said this back in February. The only thing that's changed since is the government.
Hunt defended the new government's breached promise by saying that an aircraft could cover a very large area and many contact points for the whaling fleet, not just one. But, surely, what would be most effective are aircraft and the Ocean Protector operating in tandem in the confrontation zone, their joint presence deterring both whalers and protesters from illegal and dangerous actions. Aeroplanes can't intervene when tempers boil over: the Ocean Protector can. In these pages in October, I praised Hunt for his passionate anti-whaling stand. To his great credit, he treats whale conservation as a mainstream political matter, and fought for his election promise to be honoured fully. But I worried then that not all Hunt's colleagues share his vision: sadly, I was right. If the government has gambled that this will upset only hard-core greenies who would never vote Coalition, it's seriously mistaken. The anti-whaling message resonates strongly in middle Australia, too. Whales in waters under Australian jurisdiction, most likely including my gentle humpback mother and calf, deserve protection from man's destructive hand. This responsibility should not be abdicated by our government to Sea Shepherd vigilantes. With whalers and protesters likely to start clashing next week, it's already too late to redeploy the Ocean Protector to the Southern Ocean this season. But next year must be different.
Hunt's promise-breaking colleagues should remember that, while whales don't vote, millions of Australians who want them conserved do. Terry Barnes is a former ministerial adviser to Tony Abbott.Click to email this to a friend (Opens in new window)
Nearly 12 years after the original, Disney and Pixar have debuted a new teaser trailer for the upcoming prequel to “Monsters, Inc.” called “Monsters University” – in four versions.
“Billy Crystal’s an amazing comedic actor,” remarked Dan Scanlon, Director, Disney•Pixar’s Monsters University. “He gave us so much fun material, we decided to cut four slightly different versions of the trailer. We are so happy to have him back as Mike!”
Here are all four variations of the teaser, with a different line from Mike Wazowski / Billy Crystal in each:
The film follows familiar characters Mike Wazowski and James P. Sullivan before the days of working at Monsters, Incorporated, while still in college, as they become friends.
“Monsters University” is directed by Dan Scanlon (“Cars,” “Mater and the Ghostlight,” “Tracy”) and produced by Kori Rae (“Up,” “The Incredibles,” “Monsters, Inc.”). The film opens in U.S. theaters on June 21, 2013, and will be shown in Disney Digital 3D in select theaters.
I saw this teaser prior to tonight’s screening of “Brave” and not only did it look great in 3D, but also gathered plenty of laughs from the viewing audience. Mike and Sulley will certainly be welcomed back to the big screen next year.Environmentalists have a bit of a problem when it comes to practicing what they preach.
According to a North Dakota Fox affiliate, the North Dakota Access Pipeline protesters left enough trash to fill 250 trucks. The same protesters who stood their ground in Standing Rock to prevent the final 1.5 miles of a 1,700-mile pipeline from being built have become the thing they hate: polluters.
“Standing Rock Environmental Protection Agency and Dakota Sanitation are working together to try and advert an environmental tragedy,” says Tom Doering, Morton County Emergency Manager. “There’s a lot of work to be done.”
Cleanup efforts have been stymied by the weather where trash has been frozen creating “massive chunks of junk.”
The Army Corps. of Engineers have closed the 50-acres of once pristine land where grass has been removed or destroyed. “The unauthorized placement of structures, vehicles, personal property, and fires” have created soil erosion from a lack of vegetation. If the trash remains, a spring flood could send toxic sludge into the neighboring Cannonball River and Lake Oahe. These are the same bodies of water that NoDAPL protesters argued the pipeline would pollute.
President Trump issued an executive order in the early weeks of his presidency to finish construction of both the Dakota Access pipeline, but also the Keystone XL pipeline. Environmentalists will more than likely continue to protest the construction of both pipelines, and risk further environmental calamity as a result of their inability to dispose of waste properly.
Latest VideosWhen cycling reaches newspaper front pages it’s usually the sporting kind. The last couple of weeks have been an exception, with blanket coverage of the trial of Charlie Alliston, convicted last week over the death of Kim Briggs after he struck her on his bike.
This piece isn’t about the facts of this very tragic case. It’s about the aftermath, more specifically the repeated call in some part of the media for something to be done about what these articles believe is a particular problem of reckless and law-flouting cyclists.
Much of this is perhaps predictable – I’ve written previously on the particular way cycling and cyclists are often dealt with in the media and public debate – but it’s worth pointing out the peculiarly one-sided and fact-avoidant tone of much of the recent discussion.
It’s also worth countering some of the myths again propagated about cycling, because it’s not just pundits who have been making themselves look silly; a few politicians who should have known much better have also got involved.
Two points before I begin. First – and this cannot be stressed enough – I am not seeking to excuse or mitigate Alliston’s actions, or those of other riders who behave in a potentially reckless manner. I have utter sympathy for the loved ones of Kim Briggs.
This piece is only intended to provide context as to where the problem on danger on the roads really lies.
I am not seeking to excuse or mitigate Alliston’s actions, or other riders' who behave in a potentially reckless manner
Also: when I refer to a cyclist, I mean someone who happens to be riding a bike at that moment. They are not different, or apart, or special. The great majority of regular adult cyclists in the UK also drive cars. Like me, they’re also very likely to use trains, buses, planes, all the rest of it. This is a debate about modes of transport, not tribes.
The anti-cycling backlash is disproportionate and ill-informed
As an experiment I looked through the news feeds of all UK police forces for the fortnight following the first day of the Alliston trial, and compiled details of the serious road incidents they cited.
It found that over the period, eight pedestrians had been killed after being hit by car drivers, and 27 were seriously injured, in five of these cases the motorist fleeing the scene. Two cyclists were killed (one in a hit and run) and four badly hurt, two again by drivers who did not stop.
Three motorcyclists died after colliding with cars, and 26 people in motor vehicles died in various other collisions (I excluded single-vehicle crashes).
Other incidents included a 12-year-old girl pushed off her bike by a man, after which she was almost hit and killed by a car, and a six-year-old boy run over and trapped under a mobility scooter, the driver of which then left the scene (at a presumably sedate pace).
Beyond the horrible crash on the M1 which killed eight people, none of these, that I saw, made the front pages – or any pages – of the national newspapers.
To me, this shows that the supposed “problem” of dangerous cyclists, as identified by such disparate sources as the Times leader column, Adam Boulton and Tony Blackburn, is less serious than billed.
To stress again: this is not to excuse or mitigate what Alliston did. It is simply to place it in the wider context of the everyday, normalised and largely ignored daily carnage on our roads.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest A sign warns cyclists of a £30 fine for cycling on the pavement in St James’s Street, Brighton. Photograph: Alamy Stock Photo
There is not an epidemic of dangerous cycling on the roads
Even some of the more sensible post-trial commenters felt obliged to note, with a weary sigh, that cyclists can be a particularly lawless bunch overall. My esteemed and wise colleague, David Shariatmadari, contrasted the anarchic world of bikes with the “rigorously tested and policed” arena of driving.
There’s a flaw with this argument: there’s no evidence it’s true. Yes, a percentage of cyclists ride like idiots, and their actions can cause injury and, more often, intimidation or alarm.
But the same can be said for just about every form of transport. As I’ve written before, I strongly suspect cyclists who rush through red lights are likely to drive a car equally stupidly. It’s about idiots, not the mode of travel that happen to be using at the time.
And there is a lot of stupidity in cars. Speeding and phone use at the wheel is less visible than a cyclist sailing across a red, but (for reasons of physics rather than morals) is much, much more likely to kill or maim someone else.
Those who think licensing cars and testing drivers curbs lawlessness should follow the Twitter feed of the joint Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire and Hertfordshire roads policing unit, an endless daily list of uninsured, illegally-modified or otherwise dangerous vehicles.
For more context, consider this. Earlier this month Essex police had a single day of action in Clacton – a town of about 20,000 people – connected to poor driving. It found 116 speeding offences, 12 drivers with no insurance, 18 with no MOT, seven using phones, and 11 cars seized for faults or illegal modifications.
Rushed laws are bad laws
As any politician will tell you, the classic example of this was the 1991 Dangerous Dogs Act, a rushed and confused measure introduced following a series of high-profile attacks by a handful of breeds.
This has not stopped several commentators, including a Times editorial, demanding a change to the admittedly ancient and arcane laws which saw Alliston convicted under an 1861 measure barring “wanton and furious” driving.
It’s worth noting that Briggs’ widower, Matt, has also suggested a law change, and that it is clear why he might think this.
I’d make just two points. First, there is a reason there has never been a specific law targeting cyclists who kill – it happens very occasionally, usually between zero and two times a year in Britain (as against 300 or so killed by motor vehicles), and prosecutions resulting from these are still rarer.
Second, there is a much better argument for a wholesale revamp of road laws to better protect all vulnerable road users, whether pedestrians, cyclists or motorcyclists.
A BBC study found that fewer than half of driver convicted of offences in which a cyclist died went to jail. Other research has found large numbers of drivers keep their licences even after being repeatedly convicted of law-breaking. In 2015 a van driver, Christopher Gard, killed a cyclist as he sent a text at the wheel. It emerged in court Gard had six previous convictions for using a phone as he drove.
If you want to use law to make the roads safer, this might seem a better place to begin.
There is no powerful cycling lobby, or even many cyclists
This is one of the more curious arguments from the cycle sceptics, and again it’s nonsense. Cycling UK (formerly the CTC), named by the usually sensible Boulton as “a well-resourced lobbying organisation”, has an annual income of about £5m, precisely 10% that of the powerful Cats Protection League.
One of the reasons there is so much media misinformation about cycling is that virtually no one cares about the subject, and even politicians make regular howlers about it.
The usually reasonable Labour MP Wes Streeting used the Alliston case as a reason to tweet that there was need for “better enforcement of brakes, lights and helmets”, somehow not noticing helmets are not a legal requirement to be enforced.
But more than that, the idea that the UK is menaced by an advancing tide of reckless cyclists ignores the fact that cycling levels across the country have stayed largely static for years, and remain pitifully low, at about 1% or so or all trips.
Yes, there are more cyclists now in London, where most of the commentators live. But if you live in, say, Burnley where, the 2011 census shows, precisely 397 of the town’s 63,000 commuters cycle to work, the whole argument probably seems like an odd irrelevance.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Photograph: Martin Godwin for the Guardian
It’s missing the point on an industrial scale
Last week, figures from Public Health England showed 6 million middle-aged people in England are currently getting more or less no exercise, at massive risk to their health.
If you talk to just about any public health expert they will tell you two things. First, the pandemic of avoidable ill-health caused by sedentary lifestyles will, if unchecked, pretty soon bankrupt the NHS and social care systems.
They will also tell you that the best way to get people active is exercise which forms part of their everyday life, such as active travel, and that cycling is ideal for this.
About 85,000 people in England and Wales die each year from illness connected to inactive living. Obsessing about the supposed dangers caused by cycling, rather than the many, provable benefits it brings, strikes me as extremely odd.Return to Transcripts main page
THE SITUATION ROOM
Former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto Assassinated; Interview With Ron Paul
Aired December 27, 2007 - 16:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
WOLF BLITZER, CNN ANCHOR: Happening now: breaking news -- Benazir Bhutto holds Pakistan's president responsible for her assassination in an e-mail sent only weeks before her death. We're going to bring you an exclusive look at that never-before-seen e-mail and an interview with the man who received and who let me in on his chilling secret.
Plus, all the latest developments on the killing of the former prime minister and the danger that could spread in her homeland and around the world.
President Bush calls Benazir Bhutto's murder a cowardly act. It's also a troubling new setback for his war on terror and for his controversial ties to the Pakistani leader, Pervez Musharraf.
Also this hour, the terror threat front and center on the U.S. campaign trail. We will hear from the presidential candidates, including my interviews with Republicans Rudy Giuliani and Ron Paul.
I'm Wolf Blitzer. You're in THE SITUATION ROOM.
We want to welcome our viewers in the United States and around the world.
In just a moment, my exclusive report on Benazir Bhutto casting blame for her own assassination two months before it happened. It's a story I was asked to report to the world if -- if Bhutto were killed.
But, first, an update on what's happening in Pakistan right now. The body of the opposition leader, Benazir Bhutto, lies in a casket. Her assassination today is triggering protests and fears of widespread violence and chaos before critical January 8th elections in that country.
It's a startling new jolt of instability in a nuclear-armed Muslim nation, a vital U.S. ally in the war on terror, and also the possible hiding place of Osama bin Laden.
This is a photo of the former Pakistani prime minister riding in a van right before she was killed, waving to crowds. She and at least 22 others were killed during a suicide bomb attack at a campaign rally Bhutto had just addressed. But it also appears she died of bullet wounds -- the Associated Press quoting a doctor who treated Bhutto as saying she had a bullet in the back of the neck that damaged her spinal cord and another that pierced the back of her shoulder and came out her chest. Pakistan's GEO TV released this footage of a gun, saying it's believed to be the weapon used to kill Benazir Bhutto. The Pakistani president, Pervez Musharraf, has declared a three-day mourning period and is vowing to go after the terrorists he blames for Bhutto's killing.
But, in death, Bhutto is casting blame for her assassination on President Musharraf.
Let's get to our exclusive report now on Bhutto's grim warning of what might happen to her and why. Her fears of an assassination have now come true. And only now can I reveal to you what I know. This is a story she wanted me to tell the world on her behalf if she were killed. This past October, Bhutto sent an e-mail to her longtime friend in Washington, her U.S. spokesman, Mark Siegel.
Addressing the danger she faced in her homeland, Bhutto wrote these words. And let me quote them precisely: "Nothing will, God willing, happen. Just wanted you to know, if it does, in addition to the names in my letter to Musharraf of October 16, I would hold Musharraf responsible. I have been made to feel insecure by his minions. And there is no way what is happening, in terms of stopping me from taking private cars or using tinted windows or giving jammers or four police mobiles to cover all sides, could happen without him."
At Bhutto's request, Mark Siegel forwarded that e-mail to me the day he received it, back on October 26. But he told me I could not report on it unless Bhutto was killed.
In a moment, we will get reaction from Pakistan's ambassador to the United States. Ambassador Durrani is standing by live.
But let's get to the man who received that e-mail from Benazir Bhutto, Mark Siegel, who sent it off to me.
Mark, thanks very much for coming in.
I know you and Benazir Bhutto were close for 25 users. You had a longstanding relationship with her. My deepest condolences to you on the death of your friend.
But give us the context of this e-mail that you received from her. This was two months ago.
MARK SIEGEL, FRIEND OF BENAZIR BHUTTO: Wolf, Benazir was -- was very concerned by the lack of security that she had on -- on her arrival in Karachi on October 18.
The circumstances around the assassination attempt on the night of the 18th, the morning of the 19th, was very, very suspicious. There was no investigation. Contrary to anything the ambassador might later say, there was no investigation of that horrendous killing, which killed 179 people.
The -- there -- she had asked that Scotland Yard and the FBI be involved, be brought in for forensic help for the investigation. The government of General Musharraf absolutely refused to have Scotland Yard or the FBI brought in.
As we prepared for the campaign, former Prime Minister Bhutto was very concerned that she was not getting the security that she had asked for and that her husband had asked for. It was very, very specific that they had asked for jammers to -- to set off IEDs. That was denied to be allowed in by the government of General Musharraf.
She had asked for special vehicles. That was denied to her. She had asked for special tinted cars. She had asked for four police vehicles to surround her at all times. She basically asked for all that was required for someone of the standing of a former prime minister. All of that was denied to her.
She sent me the e-mail because she...
BLITZER: Well, let me interrupt -- let me interrupt for a moment, Mark, because I just want to be precise.
This was two months ago, October 26, that she sent you that e- mail. Based on what you know -- and I know you were in contact with her a lot over these two months -- did she not get any of those extra security precautions that she sought?
SIEGEL: She got some police protection, but it was sporadic and erratic. She did not get the jammers that were necessary for the IEDs. She did not get the protection that she thought was necessary.
And she became increasingly concerned that this was not getting any better, but actually getting worse, as she toured the country in preparation for the January 8 election, which she thought was basically rigged from the top down and the bottom up. But she was going to fight the fight, because she was willing to sacrifice everything for the cause of democracy in Pakistan, and has been for most of her life.
BLITZER: I don't know...
SIEGEL: And, today, she paid with her life.
BLITZER: I don't know, Mark, if you saw that picture that was taken of her only moments before she was killed. She was standing up in a -- in the -- in this van, going through the -- the sunroof, which, I have to tell you, given what happened to her upon her return to Karachi after eight years in exile -- and more than 100 people, as you point out, were killed then -- and we're showing our viewers that -- that pictures right now -- some would argue that was pretty reckless on her part, to be going up and speaking like that through -- unprotected in a van sunroof.
SIEGEL: Benazir Bhutto believed in democracy and she believed in speaking to the people.
It's not reckless to go out and touch the people. Don't blame the victim for the crime. The person that was supposed to be protecting Benazir Bhutto and the other candidates was the government of Pakistan, was the government of General Pervez Musharraf. Don't blame the victim. Blame them.
BLITZER: No, we're not blaming the victim. But we're just pointing out that, only moments before she was killed, she was seen in this -- in this picture standing up through the sunroof in this van.
Let me bring the ambassador, Mahmud Ali Durrani, into this conversation.
Mr. Ambassador, you have heard the complaints. I want to get your reaction.
MAHMUD ALI DURRANI, PAKISTANI AMBASSADOR TO UNITED STATES: Well, I respect Mr. Siegel. He's a very knowledgeable man, indeed, and he got this mail from Benazir Bhutto. That is also true. I'm aware of that.
But I think it is a bit naive if you try and blame the government of Musharraf or the government of Pakistan that this happened because there were inadequate protection. When she came to Karachi -- let me put the record straight for everybody -- that there were, I think, a sea of security people.
There was -- she was surrounded by police vehicles. And, had it not been one of the police vehicles which took the blast in Karachi, unfortunately, she would have died there. There was a bubble around her of security. The PPP insisted that they have their own private loyalists around |
most powerful, actor in the situation: The courts.
Consider this statement from paragraph 8,
It is common ground that the father has not spent any meaningful time with the children since December 2010. Whilst a number of attempts were made to facilitate supervised contact after that date, none were successful.
What Altobelli is hiding is that since proceedings began in the courts, before December 2010, the only access the father was allowed by the courts was supervised contact; that the mother prevented this access means that she overrode court orders and the fact that there was no sanction on the mother indicates the courts, by de facto, allowed this to happen.
So the courts provided the mother with unfettered access to the children to break the law by alienating them from their father; and made sure that the father could not interfere to protect his children.
The fifth reason may seem philosophical in nature, but its relevance is seen in Altobelli’s angst.
Rather than being a venue for deciding, with proper rules of argument, what happened in the past, the Family Court’s focus is on what will happen in the future. That the law makers thought this possible, never mind practical, is arrogance beyond description.
Altobelli shows his difficulty with his task in paragraph 82 of his judgement: “On the one hand it was clear that I was contemplating orders that would probably mean these children would not see their father for many, many years, and possibly mean they would not see him ever again. On the other hand Dr K. was stating that in his expert opinion it was likely these children would, one day in the future, want to re-establish a relationship with their father, and make their own decisions. This might happen as early as the children’s adolescence, or during their adult years, or perhaps not at all.”
Clearly, Altobelli has no clue as to the outcome of his decision. Equally as clearly, the expert Dr K is more expert at hedging his bets than predicting the outcome for these children. The only firm statement from the two future gazers is that the possibilities are many, but don’t hold them to that.
The eye to the future, however, is what allows Altobelli to sidestep the mother’s breaching of court orders during this lengthy case, and her refusal to comply with any orders that allow the children access to the father. In other words, the potential harm in a possible future overrides the very real harm that has happened illegally to date.
However clever Altobelli and Dr K might be, they have no idea what events are in store for the members of the family over the next three weeks, never mind years of constant change as the children mature. To assess how a child will react to something at age 14, when you’ve met them for a day at age 7 or 8 is impossible. There certainly is no single study, never mind a body of evidence, that would support Dr K’s views or Altobelli’s decision.
Altobelli’s conscience clearly doesn’t sit well with him. He therefore writes a letter which is to be given to the children when they turn 14 years old, urging the children to consider seeing their father.
The responsibility, therefore, will fall on a 14 year old child to request Relationships Australia therapists to facilitate some sort of communication with the father, irrespective of the fallout that will occur when the mother finds out. That is, of course, assuming that the mother, who knows about the letter, takes the children to the therapist.
Altobelli again shows his complete inability to assess the future circumstances when he states, “The role of the children’s mother in facilitating or obstructing this [the children reading the letter] is something neither Dr K. nor I can predict or control.”
This brings us to the sixth reason why the court is corrupt: bigotry in the form of misandry informs its decision. I don’t say this simply because the father, being male, lost the case.
Consider how flummoxed Altobelli and Dr. K. were by the mother’s intransigence. Yet the father was not allowed to have his children because, in paragraph 55, Altobelli states: “He [the father] could not convincingly articulate how, for example, he would deal with two alienated children with whom he no longer had a relationship, and who did not want to be there with him.”
For my money, that simply puts the father in the same boat as Altobelli and Dr. K.: he doesn’t know how to stop the mother’s manipulation either. But let us not forget that the father has a bigger problem than the magistrate. His problem in reality is this: how does he counter the mother’s manipulations while the court’s interference empowers her?
Clearly the unstated issue here is that the mother is, after all, the mother; and therefore her relationship with the children comes first.
She didn’t just fail to “convincingly articulate”; she positively assured them that she will make all efforts to continue to break the law by refusing to allow access, and backed up these words by breaking the law. Whatever harm the father might inadvertently do, the mother guarantees intentional harm by deliberately breaking the law.
In other words, Altobelli’s orders are designed to make the mother’s illegal behavior legal. Even if Altobelli’s motivation is blindly gynocentric in its intent, and that’s being kind, it is misandric in effect.
Also consider again the inability to predict the future. What does not come up once in Altobelli’s ruminations about the future is that the father might not be available because of the future choices he might make in his life. No, the magistrate simply assumes that the father will remain, like a stuffed toy, in the cupboard awaiting a summons to participate in a relationship with his children. The father has no other purpose in life.
This brings us to the seventh and final reason why the law is a failure. Altobelli cites the law as directing him to considered these children’s best interests, and not children in general’s best interests.
For this reason he can ignore yet another question: How did the mother know she could be confident that her intransigence would win the day? In most other legal situations defying the court is a recipe for disaster.
Consider another recent case, Summerby v Cadogen that was decided by the Full Court of the Family Court of Australia in October 2011 (Thackery, Strickland, & Young, 2011).
In this case a mother was ordered on four separate hearings to let a father see his child. After each hearing she simply refused to obey the orders. The result, eventually, was to make her illegal behaviour legal by again ordering that the father be banned from seeing the child. This final decision was approved by the Full Court.
So cases like Summerby v Cadogen, and this one, Gaylard v Cain, whether read in the press or heard about on the grapevine, can give a mother full confidence to make baseless accusations to get complete access to their own children. From that position, the mother can win the day by simply refusing to cooperate with the courts and let the children see their father. The courts might threaten. There might be a bit of bluster and criticism.
But, at the end of the day, the courts will most likely fold into a ‘tactical retreat’. So, by feigning a focus on these particular children each time, the court can pretend blindness to its own systemic bigotry, and how spiteful mothers can easily use this to their own ends.
This case shows that the Family Court, and the laws that support it, are fundamentally corrupt. It intentionally and deliberately ignores the damage that it does to fathers and their children. Instead, it uses all the sanctimony it can wring out of “the best interests of the child” to deflect criticism while it makes bad decisions based on ideology, pop psychology and arrogance.
Bibliography
Altobelli, M. (2012, May 30). Gaylard v Cain. Retrieved June 7, 2012, from Australian Legal Information Institute: http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/cases/cth/FMCAfam/2012/501.html
Thackery, Strickland, & Young, J. J. (2011, October 20). Summerby v Cadogen. Retrieved June 12, 2012, from http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/cases/cth/FamCAFC/2011/205.htmlI've had this game since launch and the current price drop to 20 is extremely good value. It is the game I keep coming back to play for psvr. The T Flight Hotas 4 controls for it are awesome! The game had a rough launch with server issues and it was patched. The single player game Burn Circuit is worth the price. For players that wish to play multiplayer it is important to join the ps4 and discord communities, and add players via friend request on ps4. Weds nights, and Sun afternoon are best times to find random games...but to game daily, and hourly its best to know the regular players since the psvr community is still small and spread out over several games, AND time zones!!! This game is a complete blast to play, once you understand all the controls (and there is a lot of them), it is definitely Overwatch meets Descent for psvr and it runs so smooth. For me, its def a top 5 psvr game right now, despite its rough launch issues that have been fixed. Read updated review at thevrgrid for another opinion. But I cannot stress enough how fun this game is once you learn it, and chat with its community. Maybe the coolest player base I have ever chatted with on-line.
Read moreTwo Ontario real estate agents are under investigation by the provincial real estate council after issuing tweets that included #AmberAlert — a hashtag trending on Friday after a car was stolen with a four-year-old girl inside it.
Royal LePage representatives Mark Hulst and Wilma Fournier removed the posts later in the morning, about two hours before the child was found unharmed.
Both the agents and the firm apologized, saying that a third party advertiser handled the brokerage's social media presence.
"Please bear with us as we are waiting for Rayman Solutions to write a proper apology for this horrible mistake," Fournier tweeted Friday afternoon. "We are terribly embarrassed."
'Reprehensible opportunism'
The Real Estate Council of Ontario received at least two complaints about the postings.
It's the first time the council — which oversees about 75,000 real estate agents — says it has encountered this, a practice dubbed by social media experts as hashtag hijacking.
"From our perspective as the regulator, this is reprehensible opportunism on the part of these two registrants," said Kelvin Kucey, the council's deputy registrar of regulatory compliance. "We are pleased, to some degree, that they have seen the error in their judgment and they have withdrawn those statements on public media."
When something like this happens — and it's a very serious hashtag and it's used in an inappropriate way — it works against the company. - Lowell Brown, social media strategist
The investigation will look into how and why this happened — and, if the Realtors are found to be in the wrong, there are "a full spectrum" of consequences, Kucey said. Those include a warning on the lighter end of the scale, while a fine could issued for more serious violations.
"In this instance, there is the potential of consumer harm, because one of the tweets advertised an open house and obviously we have concern on that particular client of that brokerage."
How would this happen?
There's a risk to outsourcing social media strategy if a company has not done its research on the agency it's hiring, social media strategist Lowell Brown said.
Lowell Brown, social media strategist and CEO of Going Social, said companies should research to whom they're outsourcing their brand management. (CBC)
Reputable companies know that co-opting a trending hashtag for their own promotion often backfires, because it's seen as being in poor taste, the CEO of Going Social said.
"They want more people seeing their posts in the hopes that, hey, this turns into business for them," he said. "The problem is when something like this happens — and it's a very serious hashtag and it's used in an inappropriate way — it works against the company."
Brown said he understands that not every company has the time, education or manpower to run its own social media accounts.
But he said that his advice would be to stay away from third party firms that jump on trending hashtags, unless they're being used in a conversational way.
"It can hurt them [and] they end up having to respond to it, to react to it, to apologize," he said. "There are people who are upset, because they see this was in really bad taste whether it was done accidentally or not."
Royal LePage Canada announced Friday afternoon that it planned to sever its relationship with Rayman Solutions, the company it says issued the tweets on behalf of the brokerage.
Fournier apologized after taking down the initial tweet, saying it was sent by advertiser Rayman Solutions. (Twitter)
"This was a lapse in judgment on the part of the brokerages' third party marketing agency, who created and implemented the Twitter posts without their review or approval," the statement said. "This type of behaviour does not reflect the values and code of conduct of Royal LePage and we are deeply embarrassed and sorry for the offence this has caused."
A staff member at Rayman Solutions who answered the phone there did not identify himself and would not agree to an interview. Instead, he apologized for the tweets and hung up.WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Americans enter the holiday season in a dark mood, with economic worries, security fears and a lack of confidence in government fueling growing pessimism, according to a Reuters/Zogby poll released on Wednesday.
People pose for photos outside the Macy's department store in front of their traditional Christmas window displays, in New York, November 18, 2007. Americans enter the holiday season in a dark mood, with economic worries, security fears and a lack of confidence in government fueling growing pessimism, according to a Reuters/Zogby poll released on Wednesday. REUTERS/Chip East
The Reuters/Zogby Index, which measures the mood of the country, fell for the third consecutive month, dropping from 96 in October to 94.9 on new growth in the number of Americans dissatisfied with the economy and pessimistic about the future.
President George W. Bush rebounded slightly from last month’s record low, with the number of Americans who give him positive marks climbing to 28 percent from 24 percent. But Congress remained stuck with a dismal positive rating of 11 percent, tying its record low.
“For the third straight month, Americans have a sense that things are not getting better, they are getting worse,” pollster John Zogby said.
Rising gasoline prices, a mortgage loan crisis and talk of a recession spooked the markets and hurt American confidence in the economy, he said, while concerns linger about a potential conflict with Iran, unrest in Pakistan and the Iraq war.
“All that bad news has a cumulative effect. It feeds and festers,” Zogby said. “The mood is driven by the economy, but Americans clearly don’t have much faith in their governmental institutions either.”
The poll found 40 percent of Americans expect a recession in the next year, up from 31 percent last month, and 39 percent plan to spend less during the holiday season, up from 31 percent a month ago.
Ratings for U.S. economic policy fell, with the number calling it poor jumping from 28 percent to 32 percent. A big majority of Americans are still confident their children will have a better life, but the number fell slightly from 63 percent to 61 percent.
Meanwhile, the number of Americans who felt “very” safe from foreign threats fell to 25 percent from 29 percent, and the number who felt “not very” or “not at all” safe from those threats rose to 20 percent from 16 percent.
The number of Americans who believe the country is on the right track fell from 26 percent to 24 percent in the last month, with about two-thirds believing it is headed in the wrong direction.
“Americans are getting squeamish. They are not hearing encouraging news or feeling like there is a light at the end of the tunnel,” Zogby said.
A majority of Americans, 55 percent, still rate their personal finances as good, up slightly from 54 percent last month, and two-thirds of Americans say they are very proud of their country.
The Index combines responses to 10 questions on Americans’ views about their leaders, the direction of the country and their future. Index polling began in July, and that month’s results provide the benchmark score of 100.
A score above 100 indicates the public mood has improved since July. A score below 100 shows the mood has soured, and a falling score like the one recorded this month shows the nation’s mood is getting worse.
The RZI is released the third Wednesday of each month.
The telephone poll of 1,009 likely voters, taken last Wednesday to Friday, had a margin of error of plus or minus 3.1 percentage points.The two “big and bright” phrases will appear in the 2013 campaign along with “Root. Root. Root.” Some ads will urge fans to “Get Ready to Root. Root. Root.” and will include a familiar expression addressing the coming season: “It’s a Whole New Ballgame.”
The Astros’ ad initiatives are under the purview of Kathleen Harrington Clark, who joined the team in March as vice president for marketing and strategy after working for the last decade as a marketing consultant and, before that, for companies like Compaq.
The 1.6 million fans who attended the Astros’ home games in 2012 “are our core, who root for their baseball team regardless of record,” Ms. Clark said. They are “the same fans who sing the loudest to ‘Deep in the Heart of Texas,’ ” she added, and “the base where we start going up from.”
The “Whole New Ballgame” tack is “honest and upfront,” Ms. Clark said, acknowledging that the team is “in a rebuilding mode” under Jim Crane, who became the owner in November 2011. The change in ownership was contingent on the Astros’ leaving the National League Central for the American League West as part of Major League Baseball’s plans to rebalance its 30 teams.
Photo
Because baseball is heavily based on tradition, Ms. Clark said, it may take some fans time to adjust to the Astros’ playing in the American League after “we’ve been a National League city for 50 years.”
But it should help, she said, that “we’ll be bringing in teams people want to see,” like the Boston Red Sox, the Detroit Tigers, the New York Yankees and the Texas Rangers, a natural intrastate rival.
The Astros’ opening game on April 2 will be against the Rangers, and what was called the Lone Star Series when the games were interleague will be more important now that they are intraleague, Ms. Clark said. The Astros are scheduled to play 10 games at home against the Rangers.
Newsletter Sign Up Continue reading the main story Please verify you're not a robot by clicking the box. Invalid email address. Please re-enter. You must select a newsletter to subscribe to. Sign Up You will receive emails containing news content, updates and promotions from The New York Times. You may opt-out at any time. You agree to receive occasional updates and special offers for The New York Times's products and services. Thank you for subscribing. An error has occurred. Please try again later. View all New York Times newsletters.
“We’re going to fill the ballpark with American League lore: the Babe Ruths, the Bob Fellers,” said Lowell Williams, the owner of Lowell Williams Design in Austin, Tex., who worked with Ms. Clark on the 2012 and 2013 campaigns.
Advertisement Continue reading the main story
“I’m a native Houstonian, and I went to the first game in the Astrodome,” Mr. Williams said. “I was there for the disco era, with the rainbow jerseys.
“As a fan,” he added, “I want to hear from management that they’re going to rebuild the team, and rebuild it from the ground up.”
The “Root. Root. Root.” idea “was really embraced by the fans, who saw it for what it was,” Mr. Williams said. “It wasn’t promising a better season. It was asking you for your support, to ‘root, root, root for the home team,’ from the song you sing at every baseball game forever.”
In 2013, the Astros will offer “a new logo, new uniforms, a new manager and a new league,” he added. “If there ever was a case for the phrase ‘It’s a Whole New Ballgame,’ this is it.”
“If we win, great,” Mr. Williams said. “In the meantime, we’ll have some fun.”
The Astros spent about $100,000 during the 2012 season on advertising, Ms. Clark said, in addition to commercial time and ad space obtained through deals with Fox Sports Houston and The Houston Chronicle.
She said the team’s budget would increase next season, “but not to a large degree.” It will also have a new television partner, Comcast SportsNet Houston, owned by the Astros, the Houston Rockets and Comcast.Want more recent gaming news? Head here.
We all know that Mario’s been through a lot:
But have you seen him like this? Click on the pictures for a higher resolution.
Edit: With the overwhelming popularity of this post, we decided to post even MORE!
“Turnip Murder” by Nonie
[Source ]
“Super Mario Bros. 2” by Rex Hackelberg
[Source ]
“Return” by Misha
[Source ]
“Donkey Kong & Mario” by Bob Dob
[Source ]
“Super Mario Bros. 3” by Gabe Swarr
[Source ]
“Super Mario World” by Mike Mitchell
[Source ]
“Empire” by Misha
[Source ]
Untitled by Malinko
[Source ]
“The M.K.” by Jose Emroca Flores
[Source ]
Untitled by Handre de Jager
[Source ]
My favorite is probably “Super Mario World” by Mike Mitchell, solely because Yoshi is wearing a pair of Air Force Ones. What about you?Two years after Rogers Sportsnet anchor Damian Goddard was sacked soon after coming out in favour of “traditional” marriage, the Canadian Human Rights Commission has dismissed his longstanding claim that the firing was discriminatory.
In a decision released this week, the commission threw out the sportscaster’s case against Rogers Communications Inc. after finding no link between “the complainant’s religion and the termination of his employment contract,” according to Mr. Goddard.
“Even though the human rights commission has made their decision, I’m not finished in getting the truth of the matter out,” said the former host of Connected, speaking from his Oakville home.
In a May 2011 Twitter post, Mr. Goddard wrote “I completely and whole-heartedly support Todd Reynolds and his support for the traditional and TRUE meaning of marriage.”
The message was issued in response to widely criticized comments by hockey agent Todd Reynolds, in which he claimed that same-sex marriage “will always be wrong.”
Sportsnet immediately distanced itself from Mr. Goddard’s tweet and, on May 12th, publicly announced the sportscaster’s dismissal.
“[I]n recent weeks it had become clear that he is not the right fit for our organization,” Sportsnet spokesman Dave Rashford said in a statement issued at the time.
“Mr. Goddard is aware of the reasons — which are well documented — why he is no longer with Sportsnet,” the company added.
Mr. Goddard is aware of the reasons — which are well documented — why he is no longer with Sportsnet
Mr. Goddard took his case to the Canadian Human Rights Commission in June of that year, with his lawyer, William Gale, alleging in a statement that Rogers violated Mr. Goddard’s freedom of religion and “cemented the impression that his Catholic beliefs are inappropriate and grounds for dismissal.”
In the years since leaving Rogers, Mr. Goddard has become a public face for anti-same-sex causes. In 2011, he began appearing in ads sponsored by the National Organization for Marriage, a U.S.-based group advocating against same-sex marriage and gay adoptions.
He also established DamianGoddard.com, a multimedia website and blog designed to “embolden people to live out their faith in this world.”
“To this day, I believe my firing was the making of me … I am forging ahead on a spiritual journey through a treacherous wilderness that appears to be claiming many souls,” reads a brief bio on the site.
On Tuesday, Mr. Goddard said he was looking into appealing the commissions’ decision.
“If we turned the tables, and someone had been fired for tweeting for gay marriage … what ground would that hold up on?” he said.
National PostThis isn’t to attribute the dearth of charm to some cultural and social declension, although clearly charm—with its emotional, even aesthetic, detachment—could hardly have retained its social sway after that most overwrought of decades, the 1960s. Any culture that celebrates youth necessarily provides stony soil for charm, which is by definition a quality reserved for adults: the young can be charming, which is an inadvertent attribute; they cannot have charm.
Of course, all of these social and cultural shifts, which are themselves inimical to charm, are rooted in a more basic change—the ever-widening infection of social relations by market values. That development, whether good or ill, indisputably makes for blunter and more crudely utilitarian manners. After all, in a way, charm is just small talk.
More important, charm, for all its appeal, isn’t a moral virtue—it’s an amoral one. Americans, especially American men, have always been, for some very good reasons, ambivalent about charm. It’s an attribute alien to many men because they are ingenuous, a quality that can itself be either admirable or unlovely. Many American military men deserve our esteem; the many I have known indeed do, but I have never met one with an ounce of charm. Indeed, what American hero has possessed it? The quintessential modern American hero, the eternally jejune and earnest Charles Lindbergh, who became a god when not yet a man, was in every way the antithesis of charm. America’s entire political history has been in some basic way a struggle between Jefferson—self-righteous, humorless, prickly, at once intellectually ardent and woolly—and Hamilton, a man foreign-born, witty, stylish, coolly brilliant, generous, possessed of a rare rapport with and an understanding of women. And just as Hamilton’s political vision triumphed, so did Jefferson’s political style. To be sure, we’ve always had sports heroes—Sonny Jurgensen, John McEnroe, Jim McMahon, Arnold Palmer—whose sly irony and authority-defining insouciance lends them the adolescent glamour of Peck’s Bad Boy, a posture that, while sometimes winning, can be mislabeled as charm. (Its limits are clear in the persona of a non-sportsman exemplar, Bruce Willis.) Indeed, sports—youngsters’ games pursued in earnest—essentially lack charm. The seriousness with which American men take sports both confirms and exacerbates their suspicion of charm.
So there’s nothing new about the troubled relationship between men and charm. The dearth of charming American leading men seems acute now, but only for a brief cultural moment, from the mid-1930s to the early 1940s, did American movies elevate male charm—not coincidentally, during a time when middle-class women made up the pictures’ largest audience. Even then the roster of charming lead actors was pretty much limited to Grant (foreign-born and -raised, and entirely self-invented—a man without a country), Gable (endearing, although his charm was always at war with his compulsion to establish his masculinity), William Powell (a bit asexual), and—strange but true—the perennially underrated Fred MacMurray. As for most other male stars, even of romantic comedies, which was the only genre that celebrated charm, the distinction that separates youth from age applies: Jimmy Stewart in his fumbling ineffectuality and Gary Cooper in his galumphing diffidence could be charming—the modifier boyishly naturally appends itself—but they didn’t have charm.
In the old days, the phrase a charming man was often code for “a gay man,” and undoubtedly the undying but unfounded speculation about Grant’s bisexuality is based on the suspicion that no man so charming could possibly be heterosexual. There is no getting around the basic womanliness of charm. One of the three most important virtues in a man, according to Christopher Hitchens—among the very few charming men I’ve known—is the ability to think like a woman. (The other two are courage, moral and physical, and a sense of the absurd.) Certainly this is one reason many men find charm so alien and alienating. But a man’s ability to think like a woman, and its concomitant—an understanding of and interest in women—is probably rooted not in sexuality but in a sympathetic relationship with his mother or other women who raised him. That today foppishness, campiness, and a proclivity to dish get conflated with male charm indicates, as does the notion of Vaughn as a contemporary Garner, the culture’s incomprehension of that quality.No more lost settings. LOK THEM IN!
Adjust your effects, tone, or volume while protecting your settings during transport or at your next gig. Just pull up the Loknob®, twist into the new position, and release to 'lok' in your setting.
"Musicians spend a lot of time dialing in their tone. Amps, guitars, and pedals can get knocked around during a show or even on the way to the next gig. The Loknob keeps your controls where you set them."
—Erick Coleman, guitar repairman and StewMac tech advisor
Invented by a musician for musicians
Easy to install, the spring-loaded Loknob retrofits most amps, pedals, guitars, mixing boards, and PA heads. Reusable with no modifications required.
Anodized aluminum.
Wide 3/4" Loknob is for guitars, amps, and pedals with large knobs. 3/4" diameter x 7/8" tall (19.05mm x 22.23mm) #1150 fits 6mm split shaft pot with M7 x 0.75 thread* #1153 fits 1/4" solid shaft with 3/8 x 32 thread* * Includes a universal adapter for pots with a different thread.
Narrow 1/2" Loknob is for most pedals, mixing boards and custom guitar builds. 1/2" diameter x 7/8" tall (12.70mm x 22.23mm) #1154 fits 6mm split shaft pot with M7 x 0.75 thread #1156 fits 1/4" solid shaft with M7 x 0.75 thread
Note: Alpha pots are M8 x 0.75 thread and will not fit the Loknob.NEW DELHI -- A six-year-old girl was abducted and raped on Holi by a man in Govindpuri in south Delhi, but the police cannot trace the accused. It has been nine days since the incident on 13 March, and the child is recovering at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) hospital.
She was allegedly picked up by the man while she was playing outside her house. The class I student was then dropped off by her rapist around 10.30 pm that night, and her parents found she was bleeding from her private parts. The only clue the police have in the case is that the child identified the man as "Mantra". However, they have no idea who he might be, according to reports.
A case of rape has been registered in the matter, and the unidentified accused has also been charged with the Protection Of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) act. Cops have reportedly questioned several people in the matter but no arrests have been made yet.
Also On HuffPost:0 SHARES Facebook Twitter Google Whatsapp Pinterest Print Mail Flipboard
*The following is an opinion column by R Muse*
It has been a long time coming, but under President Obama’s directions, Israel discovered there is a price to pay for aggression against Palestinians and lying to America to garner even more billions of dollars to support its belligerence, greed, and inhumanity.
Israel typically banks on its “close relationship” with America to wage war against Palestinians with impunity, and no pushback from the United Nations, but after lying to President Obama a couple of months ago, that “special relationship” was dealt a dose of reality about what happens when a “close friend” lies to get American taxpayers’ money.
Yesterday, Friday, despite laughable pressure from private citizen Trump, and “furious lobbying” by Israel, America did not stop the United Nations Security Council from officially condemning Israel for encroaching on Palestine land. Obviously, there was a little more involved than “just” the President’s frustration over Israel’s continued aggression into Palestine in refusing to “shield Israel” from a United Nations’ condemnation. And let’s be perfectly clear, the Security Council condemned Benjamin Netanyahu for illegally seizing Palestinian land to build “Israeli” settlements and nothing else; something the Israelis promised America would cease while they were begging for $38 billion.
Of course, a U.N condemnation doesn’t carry any punitive consequences, but America not stopping the Security Council from acting was significant. It was also punitive in that for the first time in history America did not condone Israel’s aggression by typically blocking the Security Council’s statement that Israel’s aggression into Palestine is illegal. At least for once, Israel did not get the friend treatment, and rubber-stamp, for its illegal annexation of Palestinian land or crimes against Palestinians.
The American abstention was no surprise to anyone paying attention to the tension between the Obama Administration and Israel that occurred a couple of months ago. In early October the White House strongly condemned Israel for lying to America in order to secure an additional $38 billion in military aid. The situation was a typical one where a close friend smiles and shakes your hand warmly while accepting a very generous gift, and then spits in your face; it is the kind of friend Israel really is to America.
The White House condemned its “good friend” Israel after the Netanyahu administration announced plans to create new settlements on the West Bank. At the time of the announcement in October, the Obama Administration “harshly condemned” Israel’s planned expansion for violating the Jewish state’s pledge not to construct any more “new settlements;” a pledge that was critical to “securing” the $38 billion military aid package. There is a reason Republicans revere Netanyahu; his word was only good until it was guaranteed the Americans would cut a “big” check to support more Israeli aggression.
At the time, Netanyahu’s announcement was a slap in America’s face because the President had just met with the Israeli during a United Nations meeting. The President expressed his, and the rest of the civilized world’s, concern and regret that Israel continued encroaching into Palestinian territory and undermining any hope or chance of a peaceful resolution to the long-simmering conflict.
It is a conflict that ends if Israel conceded that Palestinians deserve exactly what America provided for the Jews; a homeland. President Obama was particularly infuriated because he had just signed off on a $38 billion gift “amid assurances from Netanyahu that Israel wanted peace” and supported the fictional “two-state solution;” a solution they always support when they want tens-of-billions more of Americans’ money.
At the time of Israel’s announcement to expand its aggression in Palestine, a spokesman for the State Department, Mark Toner, said,
“It is disheartening that while Israel and the world mourned the passing of President Shimon Peres, and leaders from the U.S. and other nations prepared to honor one of the great champions of peace, plans were advanced that seriously undermine the prospects for a two-state solution that he [Peres] so passionately supported.”
Experts believed that the Obama Administration’s condemnation in October was a sign that the President would “lay down guidelines for a proposed peace agreement” before his tenure as President was over; “either in a speech, or less likely, by backing a resolution at the United Nations Security Council.”
The abstention on Friday allowing the United Nations’ resolution to condemn Israel was tantamount to “backing a resolution” and it was the least America could do; and likely the last time America will ever, ever again dare disobey the foreigner Benjamin Netanyahu.
Dirty Don Trump had been conspiring with the Republican senator from Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, to pressure the Obama Administration into giving its blessing to accelerated Israeli aggression against Palestinians; Trump told Obama to veto the U.N. resolution. After the U.N. vote, dumb Donnie took to his favorite media outlet, Twitter, to issue an important press release warning the United Nations that “things will be different after January 20.”
Trump wasn’t the only American angry that President Obama defied the Israeli who still believes he dictates American foreign policy, and activity on the United Nations Security Council. The incoming Senate Minority Leader representing Israel, Chuck Schumer (D-Netanyahu) said, “It is extremely frustrating, disappointing and confounding that the administration has failed to veto this resolution.”
Apparently, Schumer, like Trump and Netanyahu, believes that Israel lying to abscond with $38 billion of American taxpayers’ money should have been sufficient reason to give America’s blessing to continue aggressive annexation of Palestinian lands.
There was support for America’s humanity, though, and it naturally came from the rest of the world and organizations that comprehend Israeli aggression is contrary to Netanyahu’s lying claim he wants peace or supports a two-state solution.
A Washington-based organization, J Street, that advocates for a two-state solution and agrees with every nation except Israel said the resolution:
“Conveys the overwhelming support of the international community, including Israel’s closest friends and allies, for the two-state solution, and their deep concern over the deteriorating status quo between Israelis and Palestinians and the lack of meaningful progress toward peace.”
The United States ambassador to the U.N., Samantha Power, portrayed the abstention as consistent with the rest of the world’s and Obama Administration’s disapproval of settlement-building. She also said that the United States remained committed to its “steadfast support” for Israel and was wise to remind the Security Council “that Israel received an enormous amount of American military aid;” she regrettably stopped short of reiterating that Netanyahu lied two months ago to get the increase in military aid to the tune of $38 billion.
Ms. Power said the United States did not veto the resolution as it did “under President Obama in 2011” because Israel was accelerating its enc |
idea of manifest destiny -- Americans asserting their will on the natural resources of the country. And people really believed in that.
Margaret O'Mara, Historian: The Grand Coulee Dam starts a process of transforming the whole river system into a working landscape like never before. The New Deal was a radical idea. Roosevelt really redefined what the balance is between the individual good and the collective good.
Narrator: Its power would help win a war and unite a nation, but its construction would leave a region bitterly divided.
Steven Hawley, Writer: Who controls the water and the natural resources of the West? I think there is an attitude amongst the managers of the river and they simply said, "we stole these rivers fair and square and we're not giving them back, not without a fight."
D.C. Jackson, Historian: It's supposed to be for everyone. It's easy to say that it's a public resource. But everyone has a different vision of what they think that public interest should be.
Narrator: For some, the Grand Coulee Dam would be an engine of growth and prosperity, for others it would come to symbolize heartbreak and betrayal.
In the end, it was an out-sized statement of American power and prestige, a monument to noble ideals and unintended consequences.
Richard White, Historian: There is a way in which people hate the dams and are proud of the dams, ways in which people imagine a Columbia running free, but they could not live without the Columbia's electricity. That river is our most profound dreams for what we can become and our deepest regrets about what we've done. We've woven them together and we're never going to be able to take them apart.
Narrator: On a blisteringly hot day in July of 1918, a weathered Model T Ford drove down 1st Avenue in the dusty little town of Ephrata, Washington, and pulled up in front of the offices of a local lawyer named William Clapp. On the side of the car, a small sign read "The Wenatchee Daily World. The World's Greatest Daily Paper."
The car belonged to a restless 40-year-old editor and publisher named Rufus Woods. A part-time school teacher, failed attorney, and veteran of the Alaskan gold rush, he had finally found his calling at the helm of eastern Washington's first daily newspaper, founded in 1905.
Woods had turned the failing paper around with a mix of shrewd business acumen, a strong regional focus, and a dash of showmanship. Early subscribers received a free set of dishes. Others, free knives. Papers were sometimes delivered on horseback and in one stunt, Woods painted a pony of his with zebra stripes for extra publicity.
Three years after buying the paper, Woods had boosted circulation by 600%.
Paul C. Pitzer, Historian: Rufus Woods had a vision. His vision was to create something of what he called north central Washington. He was in competition with Spokane on the east side of the state and of course Seattle on the west side of the state. He used to travel around looking for stories.
Narrator: The town fathers of Ephrata gathered in Clapp's office that day were worried about the future of their region, tired of it being seen as a desolate backwater, without big industries or farms. Then Billy started talking about building a dam on the Columbia River at the mouth of what was called the Grand Coulee.
Blaine Harden, Writer: Grand Coulee is basically a big ditch, a really big ditch. And the thought was that you could divert water out of the river up into that big ditch and then using gravity, feed that water down across the country where the soil was great and all it needed was water.
William Lang, Historian: He sells it as a great location because of this wonderful landscape that has been completely scoured out by these floods that ravaged the area thousands of years ago. And so it creates these huge dry coulees and he sees the ability to make these into reservoirs to capture the water from a dammed Columbia. And this one spot makes it possible to dam the river up for miles and miles and miles.
Narrator: The plan the boosters hatched called for water to be pumped out of the lake formed by the dam, up over the rim of the river's canyon, and into the Grand Coulee, which would become a new, huge reservoir. From there, the water could be fed by gravity down a sloping plateau to the south, irrigating more than 1,000,000 new acres of land.
Wilfred Woods, Son of Rufus Woods: In 1918, Billy Clapp told my father about this great idea of a Grand Coulee Dam. Well, it was really in 1918 a fantastic dream to build a project of that size.
Narrator: Rufus Woods' hometown of Wenatchee was a modest agricultural community that had recently diverted some water from the river for its emerging apple industry, but it yearned to truly harness the Columbia and put it to work.
It was a vision as old as the river itself.
Lying in the rain shadow created by the Cascade Mountains to the West, which trapped the moisture-rich winds coming in from the Pacific, eastern Washington contains some of the driest land in an already parched American West. "It is a desert pure and simple," one 19th century surveyor noted, "an almost lifeless, waterless desert."
Coursing through this barren and mostly uninhabited landscape, for 1,200 tantalizing miles, ran one of the greatest sources of water in the world -- the Columbia River.
Draining a watershed of more than 258,000 square miles, including the Canadian Rockies, the river's cold, crystalline waters flowed south into the United States, then curved in a huge bend around what was known as the Columbia Basin, before turning west and cutting through the Cascades to the Pacific.
For a millennium, the Columbia had been a meeting place for a diverse community of people, all drawn to the river's primordial energy.
Margaret O'Mara, Historian: The Columbia was a place of work. It was the economic lifeline of a region. You have native fisheries, you have the river itself being a source of food, a hub of the trade routes, the way that these different native communities communicated with one another and traded with one another... It's this place of astounding size, of beauty, and of endless resources.
Narrator: After running some of the Columbia's terrifying rapids, the American explorers Meriwether Lewis and William Clark responded with a mixture of awe and hatred for the river, calling it "incredible," "inconceivable," and "horrid."
More welcoming were the Native people -- the Yakima, Walla Walla, and Umatilla -- who sustained themselves on the astonishing annual runs of salmon, relying on the fish for their diet, their trade, and as inspiration for their culture.
Richard White, Historian: It's a place of incredible abundance which links both the land and the sea and which really for Indian peoples is ideal because the salmon will always return every year at the same time. It's a system that Indian peoples will live on for centuries.
Narrator: Born in the gravel beds and clear water of the upper Columbia, the young salmon rode the swift moving currents to the Pacific Ocean, there to grow for five years, until being called back to the place of their birth, this time to reproduce and die.
The salmon's journey back up the Columbia was one of the epic migrations in all of nature, as they fought against the current, as far as 900 miles, braving any obstacle in their drive to finally come home.
Indians were not the only people drawn to the annual bounty of the salmon. New waves of Americans followed in Lewis and Clark's wake, reaping their own huge harvest of fish, building the towns of Portland and Seattle, working the river with steamboats and barges, and settling the basin with small towns like Wenatchee.
But once the pioneers left the river behind, and tried to farm the more forbidding lands of the interior, the harsh reality of the climate quickly reasserted itself.
Blaine Harden, Writer: Eastern Washington had good soil, but no water. And the people who moved there realized that that was critical failure of, of trying to build a life there. There were dry land farmers. And they would come in, after there had been a, a couple years of good rain. And they would do okay. And then the rain would fizzle down to its usual eight to ten inches a year. And so they wouldn't do very well, they moved on mostly, or they stayed and were poor.
Narrator: That summer of 1918, as Rufus Woods listened to Billy Clapp and his friends lay out their plans, he began pacing around the lawyer's small office, unable to control his excitement.
No longer would his region have to suffer as an isolated backwater. The hydro-power from this miraculous dam would transform their region at last.
Steven Hawley, Writer: It became almost an obsession, this idea that if they could just control this river, they could have a kind of Garden of Eden. You know the inland empire with crops, orchards, farms a kind of Shangri-La of agricultural and industrial delights that would build a new civilization.
Blaine Harden, Writer: Rufus Woods pitched the dam as a scientific marvel, the answer to all their prayers about the future, as something that God himself wanted done and he just needed to get the federal government to come in, pay for it, and let the locals run with the advantages that would come from it. And that's the way he sold it.
Narrator: Woods quickly gained an important ally in James O'Sullivan, a hard-charging, cantankerous Ephrata lawyer who became so convinced of the irrigation possibilities of the dam that he was willing to neglect his career, and even his family, to see it come true.
The boosters called themselves the Dam University, and although they had no technical know-how, and no powerful political connections, they shared a dream about Grand Coulee Dam and the waters it would unleash to make their desert bloom.
If they could find the money to build it, they might at last conquer the wild Columbia.
Wilfred Woods, Son of Rufus Woods: Oh my, what a stream. My dad called it the imperial Columbia. And it's true, it's a tremendous stream.
D.C. Jackson, Historian: It's just one huge, free-flowing river. It's the largest in the West, much larger than the Colorado, just a tremendous waterway.
William Lang, Historian: We've got an enormous amount of water because of it catching all of the Pacific snow and rain and all of this water falling in about 600 miles.
Richard White, Historian: This river quite literally... it'll eat through mountain ranges, it'll eat through the Cascades. This is an incredibly powerful natural force. And it will drop with a power that is almost beyond belief.
Narrator: It was the Columbia's raw energy that Rufus Woods imagined Grand Coulee would convert to a productive use.
Throughout the 1920s however, he often found his crusade for the dam falling on deaf ears.
William Lang, Historian: Rufus Woods recognized that he had to find a way to get the government to actually invest in something as big as he had in mind. And what he had in mind was huge, it was bigger than anything else that had been built...
Paul C. Pitzer, Historian: The early promoters hoped that a large dam would generate a great amount of power which could be sold and the money from the selling of the power would be used to support the irrigation.
Richard White, Historian: To understand the promoters of the dam, you have to realize that they thought about electricity the same way the public today thinks about the Internet. This is not just a technology. These are machines that are going to transform society itself.
Narrator: Stacked up against Woods and the other members of the Dam University were groups like the powerful Spokane Chamber of Commerce, and private utilities such as Washington Water Power Company, and Puget Sound Power and Light -- all of which had their own hydro-electric and irrigation projects and their own agendas.
D.C. Jackson, Historian: Private power companies see this as competition. They don't want this. And the big argument against it is that it's just... doesn't make financial sense.
Blaine Harden, Writer: At the time that he was proposing building the biggest dam in the history of the world, there were only a couple hundred thousand people living in eastern Washington.
Richard White, Historian: As critics of the project say about the power, who's the electricity for, is it for jackrabbits? There's nobody out there to consume it. And they're right.
Wilfred Woods: My Dad was fighting the power company in Spokane all this time... it was a long, long battle. And it was a classic case of the little guys against the big guys and no money against big money. There were national magazines writing big exposes about "The White Elephant in the Desert" as well as a lot of Republican legislators in Congress who were fulminating against the use of public funds for that dam.
Narrator: The nation, it seemed, wasn't ready for Grand Coulee Dam.
Then, in 1929, the stock market crashed, plunging the nation into Depression. Scorching winds turned the drought-ravaged western prairie into a Dust Bowl.
Blaine Harden, Writer: My father was working on a farm. And he had got a letter from his father telling him not to come back to the home place, cause there was no money, there was no food. And my grandfather told my dad to go west to find a job. So my father took the money he had, that he'd made baling hay and bought a sandwich in a rail yard, and hopped in a boxcar. In the boxcar, he said that they were regular people, well-educated people, as he described them... He said there was even lawyers. He just, he was just part of this huge slipstream of unemployed people.
Narrator: The dark clouds of the Dust Bowl actually brightened the prospects for Grand Coulee Dam.
The economic crisis brought a renewed focus on large irrigation projects, and a new President into office.
As a life-long Republican, Rufus Woods had opposed Franklin Roosevelt's election, but during FDR's frenetic first months in office, Woods came to appreciate his call for bold action.
Blaine Harden, Writer: FDR comes into office and the Great Depression bottoms out. The idea for the dam was floating around in Washington for years. The Army Corps of Engineers had written a report about how to dam the river all the way up and down. Roosevelt was desperately searching for shovel ready projects that could employ lots of people and have long-term use. The dam made a lot of sense then.
D.C. Jackson, Historian: Roosevelt put himself on the side of these huge resources like the Columbia River. And so the stake for him was going up against the plutocrats of Wall Street that controlled the private power industry. So he had a real vested interest in developing these large hydroelectric power dams as a way of demonstrating the importance of public power. And the Columbia offered one of the great opportunities for that.
William Lang, Historian: Whether you were vested in this dam or not, it, it meant that something new and something big and something promising was going to happen.
Narrator: From Wenatchee, Woods and his allies felt some cause for hope. With Roosevelt on their side, their dream of turning their town into a great metropolis, and the desert into a garden, at last seemed possible.
For his part, the President saw the dam and irrigation project as fitting into his administration's vision for what was called a "planned promised land."
Paul C. Pitzer, Historian: And the idea was to create a number of small towns around the project area and they would have the power from the dam, they would have the water from the river, so that you would have a community that would not suffer any of the problems of economic shifts up and down over the years. That was the goal.
Narrator: In mid-June of 1933, with the nationwide unemployment rate at 25%, Congress approved one of Roosevelt's most ambitious programs -- the Public Works Administration. The President was authorized to spend, at his discretion, up to $3.3 billion on new infrastructure projects around the country.
The Bureau of Reclamation, the huge federal builder of water projects in the West, came up with a plan for the entire dam and reservoir at a cost of $162 million.
FDR was determined to get it off the ground, but was unable to pay for the entire project all at once, so on July 26th he approved $63 million in start-up funds for the Grand Coulee Dam.
D.C. Jackson, Historian: But once you commit a small amount, small being $63 million, it's going to be much harder to sort of pull the plug on it. You commit a sizable amount, but not the total to get the project going, with the idea that down the road you would be able to bring it to completion.
Narrator: Half of the dam was to be built on the Colville Indian Reservation, home to a confederation of twelve Northwestern tribes, including the Chief Joseph band of the Nez Perce, which had fought a famous war against the United States in 1877.
Blaine Harden, Writer: In the years before the dam construction began, some lawmakers said, "how are we going to compensate the Indians, because you know half of the dam's on, on their land." And some grudging consideration was given to this idea and some promises were made.
Colleen F. Cawston, Colville Tribal Member: I've heard that what was implied we would receive is the ability to irrigate our land and electricity at a rate that would be much more affordable.
Narrator: On July 16, 1933, a group of dignitaries, including Washington governor Clarence Martin, and Jim James, chief of the San Poil Indians from the Colville Reservation, gathered on the banks of the Columbia to mark the start of construction.
With Chief James holding it, the governor drove in the first stake, inaugurating what would become the largest irrigation and hydroelectric project in the country.
To realize its Olympian goals, the Grand Coulee's vast reservoir would inundate Indian communities, submerge sacred fishing spots and ancestral burial grounds, and erect an impenetrable barrier denying salmon access to their network of spawning grounds in the upper Columbia.
But none of that mattered during the dark days of 1933.
There was little consideration of the extraordinary changes that Grand Coulee would have on America's wildest stream -- on its rapids and waterfalls, its fish and the native peoples whose world revolved around it.
Rufus Woods and FDR's engineers believed that they could achieve miracles with the Columbia. And they were ready to begin.
Wilfred Woods, Son of Rufus Woods: It's a story that really wouldn't have happened without a lot of dreaming on a lot of people in central Washington that dreamed about a big thing. And it finally happened thanks to a depression. Amazing, isn't it?
Richard White, Historian: Grand Coulee is going to be the biggest thing on earth. These are not people who thought small. It's a very big dam and the dreams around it were as big as the dam itself. And what it's going to deliver to the United States is, first of all, jobs, which is the only thing they could be certain of, it's going to take a lot of people a long time to build this, but after that it's going to create farms, and beyond that, it's going to produce electricity. It can power pumps that can bring water into kitchens. It can provide electric lights so that people can extend their days and not sit around by kerosene and coal lamps. It can provide washing machines. It can make housewives' and farm wives' lives incredibly easier. There just seems to be no end of the good things that can come out of Grand Coulee Dam.
Narrator: By July of 1933, thousands of hungry, desperate men had flooded into eastern Washington, lured by the promise that Grand Coulee Dam would create as many as 100,000 jobs.
The Wenatchee World urged the laborers to wait and file applications with the Bureau of Reclamation -- but the men came anyway.
Blaine Harden, Writer: The people came up to the dam, working men, many of whom had ridden boxcars from other parts of the country. They slept in their cars. They slept in the street. They slept in caves near the town. They slept in the boxes that dance hall pianos came in.
Narrator: Anxious to avoid having their much-touted jobs project turn into a shanty town of unemployed men, the federal government released another million dollars for preliminary excavation, but it took time to get the workforce organized.
Ed Kern, Dam Worker: Well, see the depression was so bad, ya know, I was just outta high school. I was still 19 years old. And, well what there to do. I walked down there, hey, there's a whole block of people waiting ahead of me, see. Trying to get on. So I just waited and waited and waited, and finally my turn came. He looks at me, he says, what can you do? Are you a carpenter? No. Are you a welder? No. Trade? No. Well then we got nothing for you but labor. That's when he put me down with the rock gang. He said, it's going to be hard, hard work, and he proved it to me.
Narrator: Once the project finally got underway, the sheer scale of the obstacles became apparent.
The construction site was hundreds of miles from the nearest big city, without decent roads or rail connections. Steep hillsides plunged down to the water's edge, and the dam would have to stretch beyond the river on both sides, almost a mile across in total.
To contain the impulsive Columbia, and create the reservoir needed for power and irrigation, the dam would need to rise 550 feet in the air, and back water up for hundreds of miles, all the way to the Canadian border.
D.C. Jackson, Historian: The river has a huge flow. And the key to waterpower is flow times drop. And because you have this huge flow, even a relatively modest drop, you can get a lot of power. But when you build up 500 feet of drop, then you get a lot of power.
Narrator: To convert the power of the Columbia into electricity, the river would be funneled into tubes, called penstocks, that would then use the Grand Coulee's height to force the water at high speed through 12 turbines encased in power-houses at the base of the dam.
D.C. Jackson, Historian: What does a turbine do? There are those blades which move and pass the water through them. That's how the waterpower's converted into this rotating mechanical power. And then those turbines, they have a, a shaft. And they go up and then they turn the generators. And the generators are big magnets that revolve around and then there's the copper. And as those turn, they generate electricity.
Narrator: Operating at full capacity, the dam would be capable of producing almost 2,000 megawatts, enough power to run entire cities.
Unlike the soon to be completed Hoover Dam, which combined size with an elegant arch design that pressed against the walls of a steep canyon, Grand Coulee Dam would rely on only one thing to stop the river -- its enormous mass.
Paul C. Pitzer, Historian: A gravity dam uses basically the weight of the dam to keep it there. It's just a big block that sits in the river and there it is.
Blaine Harden, Writer: What was different about Grand Coulee, it was just bigger, much, much bigger than any other gravity dam had ever been. And the river itself, the water they were holding back was a larger, more powerful river than had ever been dammed before.
Narrator: On August 4th, 1934, shortly after construction began, the Grand Coulee Dam site received a surprising visitor.
Blaine Harden, Writer: Roosevelt showed up, which was completely unexpected for the President of the United States to come to this godforsaken corner of, of Washington state, when there was almost nothing to show for it. There was just dust and a hole in the side of the river. But he was there to talk about what could be and what this big project represented as part of the New Deal.
Narrator: "We are going to see with our own eyes electricity made so cheap that it will become a standard article of use not only for manufacturing but for every home," proclaimed the President, with his wife Eleanor looking on. "I know that this empty desert country is going to be filled with men, women, and children who will be making an honest livelihood and doing their best to live up to the American standard of living and American standard of citizenship."
Blaine Harden, Writer: He talked about it as a, sort of planting a seed for a new future for that region and for all of the West. He looked on it as, as the perfect symbol of what he was trying to do. "Look at all these men who have jobs," he said, "sitting in the back of an open roadster, surrounded by dust and not much else."
Mary Henning, Grand Coulee Resident: I was ten years old and here came Franklin Roosevelt. This hillside was just covered with people that came from all over. We're in the midst of this terrible Depression and, I mean, here you are in this open field and... the cars and people were just everywhere. And they were so excited. The idea that there was going to be some employment, there was gonna be something to do and there was gonna be a paycheck. Of course, we believed in Franklin D. Roosevelt. We just knew something wonderful was going to happen.
Narrator: By January of 1935, Grand Coulee had finally become the epic public works project that its boosters had promised. 2,500 men worked on the dam, with hundreds more pouring in every month, all employed by a conglomerate of three companies known by the acronym MWAK.
The company's superintendent was a profane, hard-drinking and former ironworker named Manley Harvey Slocum. Partially crippled from a gas explosion in his youth, Slocum's gnarled hands and stooped walk hid an iron determination.
Known affectionately by his men as Harvey, he had proven himself on dams in California and in the jungles of Panama. Though he never made it past the 8th grade, what Slocum knew how to do was build.
D.C. Jackson, Historian: Harvey Slocum, he's the superintendent at the dam site. He's in charge of making this thing work, you know, on a day-to-day level. He's a bit of a roustabout, he would go on his binges, he would have his drunks, and that was, you know, one of those things, maybe you paid a price. The workers, they know how to work hard or not work so hard depending upon whether they think they're being treated fairly. And having a superintendent who is willing to go out on a drunk every once in a while, well they might feel, hey, there's a guy who is on our side.
Narrator: Slocum's biggest challenge was to divert the flow of the river, allowing workers to dig out the mud and expose the granite bedrock on which the dam would rest.
To start, they needed to build cofferdams -- temporary structures that would keep the river at bay. The first would run along the west bank, pushing a third of the river out of the way, and be anchored by a large piece of the foundation, known as 'Block 40.'
Once the work on the west side was complete, another set of cofferdams would extend out from the east side of the river, diverting the flow over the recently completed foundation.
D.C. Jackson, Historian: Once you've built the west side, and then you've got the foundation that's stable enough so that you can actually run water over it, then you go and you do it on the other side. And you use that big center block, that... that 'Block 40' as sort of the one that connects the two together.
Narrator: Complicating Slocum's already daunting task was the unpredictable power of the Columbia.
In the spring, the flow of the river could sometimes surge dramatically, as snowmelt and rain would suddenly turn the already muscular waterway into a raging torrent. The cofferdams had to be built quickly during low water months. If not finished in time, the spring runoff would tear them to pieces.
Racing against the clock, more than 1,200 men worked in continuous shifts, driving huge interlocking steel pilings deep into the river's bottom with steam hammers, nervously watching for the river to rise.
On March 23rd, 1935, only 90 days after they started, workers completed the west side cofferdam. And just in time. That spring the river peaked at 32 feet above its normal height.
The fragile cofferdams held for a time, until one night they suddenly ruptured, and 15,000 gallons a minute came pouring in.
Roused from his bed, still wearing his red pajamas, Harvey Slocum rushed to the dam site, where his men threw anything they could find into the river to stop the leak -- mattresses, canvas, building materials, even sagebrush. Only more pilings, and a supply of bentonite, a mineral that forms a thick paste when mixed with water, finally staunched the flow.
Against all odds, the cofferdams had controlled the surging Columbia, but one critical issue remained. In 1933, FDR had been able to commit only a portion of the dam's cost, planning to get the rest from Congress at a later date.
Now, in April of 1935, the President's strategy was derailed by the U.S. Supreme Court, which struck down his right to spend money on dams without Congressional approval.
D.C. Jackson, Historian: The Supreme Court, which is rather conservative at this point, says to have FDR allocate that money, that's not going to be enough. Congress is going to have to specifically vote to authorize these dams.
Narrator: In June, the administration asked Congress to fund Grand Coulee -- as well as twenty other dams around the country.
With James O'Sullivan working feverishly behind the scenes, the bill sailed through the Senate, but Republican forces in the House, led by representative Francis Culkin of New York, insisted that Grand Coulee be voted on separately.
Not content to argue solely on the House floor, Culkin took to the radio, claiming that the entire Grand Coulee project would destroy fruit farmers in California, squander federal resources on what he called "a vast area of gloomy table lands," and destroy the Columbia's entire $300 million salmon industry. And he went still further, denouncing the dam as a "dangerously un-American exercise in socialism."
Joining the frantic lobbying with characteristic gusto, Rufus Woods had the World print an eight-page special edition that extolled the benefits of the dam, emblazoned with the banner headline, "TWO MILLION WILD HORSES." He made sure every member of Congress received a copy.
Congressman Sam Hill led the counter-attack by playing down the irrigation possibilities of the dam, and promoting the benefits of Grand Coulee's massive public power. Finally, 61% of the House agreed, and the bill become law on August 30th, 1935.
With the river contained by the cofferdams and its political fate secured, the dam could now rise to its full height and attempt to realize its even loftier ambitions.
In December of that year, as more than a thousand spectators looked on, Washington Governor Clarence Martin, dressed in overalls and rubber boots, spread the first bucket of concrete on the dam. When the ceremony was complete, a representative from MWAK handed the governor a check for 75 cents, covering his wages for one hour as a common laborer.
D.C. Jackson, Historian: You don't build this as one single, massive structure. If you did that, you would get all kinds of cracks -- like sidewalks. You know concrete, as it hardens, it will naturally shrink a little bit and when you build a sidewalk you build those cracks into it. At Grand Coulee they want to make sure that they don't get cracking, so you put it into... to these discrete blocks about 50 foot square things, which there are hundreds of them, that make up the dam.
Narrator: Trestles built on top of the foundation brought concrete to the site, and cranes lowered it down in huge buckets to be spread onto the dam. Each new pour added a five-foot layer. 72 hours later, the process was repeated.
Ed Kern, Dam Worker: We had to scrub the concrete like, with big wide brushes... remember, concrete forms a scum. And we had to brush it off... and that's all we did, we went from one block to the other and kept cleaning up. I want to tell you, that was a 24-hour job and that contract had to be done at a certain time and they pushed it and then pushed it. They worked the death of us. And no breaks. No breaks at all. You work till noon and have half an hour... till night. That was it. I got so tired. Wouldn't I like to have a break? Oh, my... no no. There were no breaks in those days.
Narrator: By June of 1937, trestles spanned the entire river. The following February, the foundation was complete -- 14 months ahead of schedule.
It would take millions of cubic yards of concrete to finish the job, but what was being called "the biggest thing on earth" was at last taking shape.
The year before the foundation of the dam was finished, Arno Harden had arrived at the dam site looking for a job.
Blaine Harden, Writer: My dad went up to Grand Coulee with his brother Albert. And my father worked at the dam for three months and he thought it was just too dangerous to work down there, it's just so big. And the river's so powerful and noisy. It's, it's just scary. I mean, he wasn't terrified of the place, he just... didn't think the odds were good for survival if you worked at the lowliest job.
Narrator: For every thousand cubic yards of concrete poured, or million dollars expended, men paid with their lives. They were knocked off the steep walls of the foundation and impaled on rebar, drowned in the frigid waters of the Columbia, or in one horrible incident, ripped apart by a heavy conveyor belt. By the time the foundation was complete, 60 men had died. In the midst of the Depression, there were always new workers to take their place.
And they kept on coming, completely transforming the area around the dam. In the canyon, closest to the river, the Bureau of Reclamation had erected two all-electric, model communities for their skilled employees. Called Engineers Town and Mason City, they boasted houses with carefully tended lawns, tree lined streets, flower-growing contests, and laws against drinking.
Up in the hills, beyond the western edge of the canyon, the mass of common laborers, who were mostly single, found what lodgings they could in the raucous and ramshackle boomtown of Grand Coulee, which featured a larger collection of saloons and brothels than any other town in the West.
The heart of this Sodom and Gomorrah in the desert was B-Street, a dilapidated collection of false-fronted bars and crib-houses.
Blaine Harden, Writer: B Street was unpaved, mud in the winter, dust in the, in the summer. And it was lined by dance halls.
Stewart Whipple, Dam Worker: We'd drive up there and park close to the bars and see all the activity. Of course I was too young to get into any of those places. And then they had great jazz music, and we'd go through the alley and listen -- the doors would be all open because it'd be 100 degrees outside. Music was going on until two in the morning. And then of course, we never parked there in front of the door of these bars because the fights would come out, and you didn't want anybody landing on the hoods of the car.
Lawney Reyes, Writer/Grand Coulee Resident: Lots of times, uh, you'd be walking down the street and they had these swing doors leading into the tavern and you'd see two guys fighting come rolling out onto the boardwalk, and they'd be beating each other to death. And after they got through doing that then they'd go back in and drink some more.
Blaine Harden, Writer: More alcohol was consumed per capita in B Street than any other place in the state of Washington. They fought over the women in town. My father saw a shooting. He said knifings were common. Trucks used to go up and down the street from the, the state health department, telling people to be quiet and avoid activity that spread social diseases.
Narrator: Far from the din and depravity of B Street, the foundation of the dam now spanned the river, and in the summer of 1938, the time had come to raise it 550 feet into the air.
Seeking to reduce costs, MWAK accepted an offer to merge with the huge conglomerate run by the industrialist Henry Kaiser that had just finished building Hoover Dam.
The new, even larger corporation was called Consolidated Builders Incorporated, or CBI.
Their bid of $34,400,442 won the contract to finish the dam, and over the next year and a half, the work went on, around the clock, as thousands of men per shift swarmed over the structure. Seen from a distance, the dam seemed to pulsate with energy, as if it were alive. Brightly illuminated by thousands of floodlights at night, it was filled with surreal shadows and otherworldly hues.
Lawney Reyes, Writer/Grand Coulee Resident: We had never seen anything like this before. We had never seen so many people before... but it was really something to see... they had at one time close to 8,000 workers, you know, here.
Narrator: As the huge structure continued to rise out of the river, the massive penstocks were installed to funnel water to the generators, the cofferdams removed, and the spillway and powerhouses at the base of the dam constructed.
Superintendent Harvey Slocum never saw the dam take shape. During one particularly hot spell in Grand Coulee, he |
Park in South Melbourne is known for its cafe culture, boutique shopping experiences and the expansive lake which sprawls through the middle of the suburb. Channel 9's renovating show The Block has been madly building four luxury apartments in Albert Park for its 2014 series. In the 2010-11 financial year, 6,745 Albert Park taxpayers recorded a total taxable income of $734 million and an average individual taxable income of $108,807. 18. Double Bay, Sydney, New South Wales Image: Flikr/Daniel Peckham With luxury cars lining its streets, upmarket eateries and luxury brands filling the shopfronts Double Bay is where the rich show off their wears. It's a place to be seen. The 3,235 taxpaying residents in the eastern Sydney suburb accumulated a combined total taxable income of $351,990,440 million in 2010-11, making the average individual's taxable income $108,807 for the financial year. 19. Malvern, Melbourne, Victoria Image: Google Maps South of Melbourne's CBD, the suburb of Malvern is known for its parks, gardens and high-end shopping. In 2010-11 the 7,715 taxpaying residents of the historic suburb had an average annual taxable income of $105,932. 20. Killara, Sydney, New South Wales Image: Belle Property. Another suburb on Sydney's North Shore, Killara's wide, leafy streets, proximity to the city and also to some of Sydney's most prestigious private schools, it attracts many affluent family types. In 2010-11 Killara's 8,105 taxpaying citizens recorded an average annual taxable income of $103,254. 21. Centennial Park and Paddington, Sydney, New South Wales Image: Bresic Whitney Just outside the city, Centennial Park is a lifestyle suburb, with expansive parkland, an elite pony club and sprawling heritage homes. Neighbouring suburb Paddington is widely regarded as a trend setting suburb, with narrow streets made up of terrace homes and renovated workers' cottages. Paddington's shopping strip is also one of Sydney's best with international designers and local boutiques both vying for attention. In 2010-111 the average annual income for the 2021 postcode was $102,634. 22. North Sydney, New South Wales Image: Realestate.com.au On Sydney Harbour's foreshore, the north side of the bridge has stunning views looking back towards the CBD. North Sydney, which includes Lavender Bay, McMahons Point and Waverton has some incredible properties, fancy schools, and top notch restaurants. Back in 2010-11 the 9,590 North Sydney based taxpayers racked up a combined total taxable income of $983,358,553 and had an average annual individual income of $102,540. 23. Roseville and Castle Cove, Sydney, New South Wales Image: Realestate.com.au Located on Sydney's Upper North Shore, Roseville is characterised by its Federation homes, manicured gardens and tree lined streets. The suburb also one of Sydney's last remaining independent cinemas. Roseville Cinema was originally built in the early 1900s and regularly screens art-house films. Castle Cove is a suburb which lives up to its name, it has a castle and waterfront status. The sandstone Innisfallen Castle is a heritage listed 21 hectare estate, was last offered up for sale in 2011. The 8,780 taxpaying residents of Roseville and Castle Cove had an average annual taxable income of $102,371 and a combined total taxable income of $898.8 million. 24. Balmain, Sydney, New South Wales Shutterstock In Sydney's inner west, Balmain is known for its fantastic restaurants, cafe culture, and prime boutique shopping options. In 2010-11 Balmain's taxpaying residents had an average annual income of $102,356. 25. Canterbury, Melbourne, Victoria House on Mont Albert Road. Image: onthehouse.com.au Just scraping into the top 25 richest suburbs in Australia, the streets of Canterbury in Melbourne's south east are framed with deciduous trees and established residences. According to Realestate.com.au the median price for a four bedroom home in the suburb is $2.1 million. The suburb's millionaire's row, Mont Albert Road is often called 'The Golden Mile' and is back-to-back mansions. In 2010-11 5,535 taxpayers recorded a total combined taxable income of $565.6 million and the average annual income was $102,204.
Business Insider Emails & Alerts Site highlights each day to your inbox. Email Address Join
Follow Business Insider Australia on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram.Image caption South Sudan's former rebel soldiers deny previous charges of abuses
Five health workers have been killed when South Sudan soldiers attacked a hospital in revenge for the deaths of eight members of the security forces, the local MP has told the BBC.
David Mayo said the fighting was still going on and urged the army to be withdrawn.
Local community leaders confirm that the hospital in the village of Lorema, Eastern Equatoria state, was attacked.
But the state governor denied the reports.
Louis Obong told the BBC that no hospital had been attacked and the security situation was "normal".
An army spokesman said he was investigating the reports and any soldier who had committed abuses would face justice.
'Indiscriminate shooting'
The soldiers were deployed after eight of the governor's bodyguards were killed when they were sent to track down cattle rustlers.
The BBC's Nyambura Wambugu in South Sudan says many residents of the mountainous area around Lorema are heavily armed, including with rocket-propelled grenades, left over from the two-decade civil war against the north.
Mr Mayo said that 13 soldiers were currently being treated in hospital, in the state capital, Torit.
But he blames the soldiers for the violence, saying they opened fire indiscriminately when they arrived in Lorema, before going on to attack the hospital and set fire to local homes.
One doctor, one patient and four nurses died, he said.
Human rights groups have accused South Sudan's army, made up of former rebels, of committing numerous abuses against civilians since independence in 2011 - charges the army has strongly denied.
Our reporter says there is a long history of cattle raiding in Eastern Equatoria, as in many other parts of the country.
Cattle lie at the heart of life for many communities in the country which has hardly any banks - they represent wealth, a dowry, property and a source of food in the lean season.
A single cow can be worth hundreds of dollars depending on its colouring.A 100-year-old ghost town founded during the California Gold Rush is being modernized for the “green rush” after a cannabis company purchased all the land, buildings and businesses for $5 million.
On Thursday, American Green, a marijuana technology company, announced they purchased a small town in San Bernardino County with the intention of turning it into the “the country's first energy-independent, cannabis-friendly hospitality destination.”
Read more
"The Cannabis Revolution that's going on here in the US, has the power to completely revitalize communities in the same way gold did during the 19th century,” David Gwyther, chairman and president of American Green, said in the announcement.
Located on the border of Nevada and California, the desert town of Nipton has a population of around 20 people, according to the Los Angeles Times. The town also comes with its own water supply, a general store, an RV park, a campground and a five-room hotel from 1904.
Last year, the previous owner, Gerald Freeman, placed the entire town on the market for $5.2 million dollars because he was too old to maintain it anymore. He told the Las Vegas Journal-Review that he wanted to sell it to “someone who’s committed to sustainability of the human race.”
American Green, the largest and second oldest publicly traded cannabis company in the US, said they bought the town as part of a 120-acre land purchase. The company plans to keep the existing structures intact and build new ones that they hope will attract tourists and boost the local economy.
"This acquisition allows us to channel the myriad interests in cannabis production and consumption for an immediate positive impact to this community's members and to cannabis consumers across the country,” Gwyther said in a statement.
The company said it will start by bottling and distributing water infused with Cannabidiol (CBD), a cannabis compound that is believed to have medical benefits without making people feel “stoned.” Then, the company plans to spend $2.5 million over the next 18 months to revitalize the town, according to Bloomberg.
The company wants to develop the nearby aquifer system and expand the town’s existing solar farm to create a completely energy-independent town.
Tony Castrignano, who is the owner of the realty company making the sale, told the Las Vegas Journal Review that the current photovoltaic system provides up to 45 percent of the energy the town needs.
Ultimately, the company plans to host other marijuana-friendly businesses and events in town, including CBD and mineral baths, cannabis-product retail outposts, artists-in-residence programs, culinary events and Bed-and-Breakfast lodging.
After just one week of recreational marijuana sales supplies are drying up https://t.co/y0zvWTBAOM — RT America (@RT_America) July 11, 2017
Project manager Stephen Shearin said he hopes the work they are doing in Nipton will inspire other companies.
“We thought that showing that there was a viable means of having a cannabis-friendly municipality and further making it energy independent could be a way of really inspiring folks to say, ‘Why can’t we do that here?’” Shearin told Bloomberg.
Shearin said he wants to "create a community that is accepting and understanding" of marijuana use.
"The [idea] here isn't to create 'Woodstock 2017,'" Shearin said. "It's about creating an environment where people come to work and share in a community."
Both Nevada and California are among the four US states to have legalized marijuana. The drug is still illegal under federal law.Dozens of French politicians have sent a draft resolution calling for the impeachment of President Francois Hollande to the High Court, national media report. The MPs accuse the leader of disclosing confidential information to the press.
“A copy of the draft resolution to the High Court was filed [by the members of the National Assembly],” the lower house of the French parliament, according to documents seen by AFP.
The High Court is a special jurisdiction responsible for ruling on the impeachment of the president.
The politicians referred to a 2014 legislation which states that a president can be removed from office if there is a "breach of their duties that is clearly incompatible with the exercise of their mandate."
The letter was also reportedly sent to the National Assembly, which will deliver it to President Hollande and Prime Minister Manuel Valls.
The draft resolution included “79 original signatories” from Republican MPs, with others to be added later, according to the document. It said at least 152 Republicans supported the step.
However, a parliamentary source told AFP that the court will only count the 79 submitted signatures.
Sarkozy blasts ‘irresponsible’ Hollande after Putin cancels visit https://t.co/Mg3vSQn9qTpic.twitter.com/S4ai5oBSDZ — RT (@RT_com) October 12, 2016
The resolution says it is based “on serious breaches of his [Hollande’s] duties shown by the President of the Republic, in particular by clear violations of defense secrecy.”
“It [the resolution] expresses our deep conviction that a president must not, cannot and simply does not have a right to say anything in relation to his responsibilities as head of state and army chief,” the document added.
The document is the initiative of Pierre Lellouche, a member of Les Républicains (the Republicans) party.
Among the politicians who signed the resolution are ex-Prime Minister Francois Fillon, who served in the presidency of Nicolas Sarkozy. Fillon, however, said that the procedure is unlikely to be a success “because the majority of parliament is necessary” to demand impeachment. The National Assembly currently has 577 members.
Read more
An additional impetus for politicians to proceed with the resolution was the release of a new book, ‘A President Shouldn’t Say That…’, in October. It was written by journalists Gerard Davet and Fabrice Lhomme, who have met with Hollande 61 times since he became president. The book contains private conversations with the leader in which he made a number of controversial statements.
In one of the meetings, Hollande reportedly said there is a “problem with Islam, no one doubts it.” Referring to Muslim women, the French president said that “the veiled women of today will be the Marianne of tomorrow,” referring to a statue which stands in the Place de la Republique in Paris and serves as a symbol of France, liberty, and reason. The French president went on to elaborate on what he meant – that Muslim women can fully integrate into France if they remove their headscarves and veils.
READ MORE: ‘Problem with Islam’: Tell-all book reveals Hollande’s views from migrants to Sarkozy
Speaking on immigration – another hot topic in France – Hollande said in one of the cited public speeches that he believes there are “too many immigrant arrivals who should not be there.”
With elections looming next year, Hollande is in third place in the race to choose the next head of state, behind former Prime Minister Alain Juppe and Sarkozy. He has already been declared the most unpopular French president in history, according to numerous polls.
An Ipsos poll from October this year showed that 70 percent of the population are “unsatisfied” with Hollande, while another 26 percent are “neither satisfied nor unsatisfied” – meaning just 4 percent of the population support the president.At first glance, the new bill sounds perfectly innocuous. "H. R. 2378 -- Currency Reform for Fair Trade Act" was on the agenda of the US House of Representatives late last Wednesday afternoon. Fair trade -- who could object to that?
But as the representatives started debating, it didn't sound harmless anymore. In fact, it sounded like war.
"International trade is a high-stakes, cutthroat business. And every time we simply talk, the other side acts. And every time they act, an American loses a job," said Xavier Becerra, a Democratic congressman from California.
Timothy Murphy, a Republican from Pennsylvania, went one step further: "We are about to lose our position as a global leader when next year China overtakes us as the biggest manufacturer in the world. The trouble is that China has never really accepted the basic rules of fair trade."
Democrat Linda Sanchez from California argued: "Opponents say that this bill will start a trade war. I say, we are already in a trade war. And China is using cannons and we're standing here shooting (air gun) pellets."
Verbal Attacks
There was one verbal attack right after the other, for roughly an hour. Speaker after speaker condemned the alleged "currency manipulators" from China who supposedly subsidize their products by keeping their currency artificially low. They all want to see H. R. 2378 passed into law.
A closer look at the fine print also reveals that the draft legislation is far from harmless. The bill calls for the US Department of Commerce to start imposing -- even without approval by US President Barack Obama -- punitive tariffs on certain countries. The initiative specifically targets countries that have "a fundamentally undervalued currency," "persistent global current account surpluses" and very large currency reserves -- in other words, China.
The bill passed the House by a vote of 348 to 79. "This is a stronger message than any previous one," says Nicholas Lardy from the Peterson Institute for International Economics.
Rediscovering Protectionism
The trade conflict between Beijing and Washington has thus entered a new, acute phase. One month before the high-stakes mid-term congressional elections, America's representatives, alarmed by nearly 10 percent unemployment and a gloomy economic outlook, have rediscovered an old friend: protectionism.
At the same time, they have pointed the finger once again at their favorite enemy: China. They are demanding that China finally adjust its currency so that Chinese products are no longer much cheaper than those manufactured by its US competitors.
Things are heating up in the conflict between the US and China: verbally, legally and politically. The economic power of the 20th century wants to cut the 21st century's economic giant down to size. The question is whether it is even still strong enough to do so -- and whether such a conflict won't end up harming everyone.
For a long time, the US economy has been dependent on cheap products made by the Chinese and on their currency reserves that bolster the value of the dollar. Until now, both sides have benefited from this system. One side lived beyond its means and paid with printed pieces of paper called dollars, the other side used this paper to purchase US government bonds, allowing it to accumulate huge currency reserves.
But things can't continue like this forever. Imbalances in world trade are growing increasingly large, and the global currency system is getting out of control.
American Hypocrisy
There is, however, also a fair amount of hypocrisy behind the latest American initiative. Nobody has controlled the currency markets as much as the US has in the past. The US Federal Reserve still continues to print dollars to finance skyrocketing government debt. The fact that this erodes the value of the US currency is something that the Americans seem not to care about. Of course, this makes imports into the US more expensive, but it also makes American exports cheaper and enhances the competitiveness of US companies.
Ultimately, though, exchange rates reflect the interconnectedness of today's world. When one side wins, the other loses, and vice versa. Recently, the euro suddenly rose, even though only a few months ago the financial world was speculating over the decline of the European common currency -- and the problems of the euro-zone countries have by no means been solved. The European Central Bank under President Jean-Claude Trichet is still purchasing government bonds from ailing euro countries to help maintain their value.
Nonetheless, risk premiums for Irish government bonds soared to new heights last week as the cost of bailing out the country's troubled banks rose to a massive 45 billion. In a number of euro-zone countries, tens of thousands have taken to the streets to protest planned austerity measures, giving rise to doubts over whether the proposed restructuring of state finances in these countries will actually succeed. That would normally be enough to drag down the euro -- if the economic outlook in the US weren't even gloomier.
Upside Down
Japan is also facing major difficulties. The economy still hasn't managed to recover, and the country continues to suffer from deflation and enormous government debt. Normally, all of this would pull down the value of the Japanese currency, but the exchange rate of the yen to the dollar is also rising because the Chinese, out of fear that the US currency will continue to fall, are increasingly investing their currency reserves in yen as well.
Nothing is as it should be on the global currency markets. It seems as if the world has been turned upside down -- and has become very dangerous. Indeed, for better or for worse, the well-being of entire countries depend on the value of these currencies, meaning that instability on the currency markets also threatens the structure of the global economy.
If the exchange rates are manipulated, imbalances increase and problems become more marked -- until they ultimately escalate. That would threaten to spark a currency crisis that could bring down entire economies.
Sucked into the Maelstrom
By itself, no country or currency zone could escape the maelstrom of such a crisis, as all countries are interconnected via their exchange rates. This is partly what makes it so dangerous when a country devalues its currency to boost its economy. If one side secures such a competitive advantage for itself, it automatically puts the other side at a disadvantage. If the other side reacts with a devaluation, this triggers a downward spiral where everyone is the loser. Economists call such a fateful development a deflationary spiral, a term from a dark, bygone era of economic history. It's a term which suddenly appears to be relevant again.
Brazilian Finance Minister Guido Mantega is already talking about an international currency war. "The advanced countries are seeking to devalue their currencies," Mantega said in a speech last week. "This threatens us because it takes away our competitiveness."
Brazil intends to resist a looming revaluation of its currency. Earlier, Japan massively intervened on the currency market.
Switzerland also sees itself as a victim of the weak euro and dollar. A great deal of capital is flowing into the country, threatening the competitiveness of the alpine nation's export industry. Time and again over the past few months, the Swiss central bank has purchased euros in an attempt to clip the wings of the soaring Swiss franc.Are we recruiting too many students to graduate programs in science? Despite the lack of academic positions for independent scientists, there is a case for training more students – and training them better
Ponzi schemes are typically scams that involve the recruitment of investors, who initially receive high returns for their investments and recruit other investors – until this pyramid collapses, and those at the bottom end up losing all their money. Meanwhile, those at the top of the pyramid disappear with the "earnings". Does this bear any similarity to the pyramidal systems that exist in the sciences at academic institutes and universities?
At universities across the globe, there are principal investigators or professors who run research labs. To carry out their ideas, they need to recruit students who are able to carry out the experiments and test the validity of their hypotheses. But will these students, at the lower rungs of the totem pole, eventually turn into professors? Or will their investments be wasted treadmilling in a career leading nowhere?
Having talked to scientists from more than a dozen countries, I think it's clear that the system of scientific research bears far too much similarity to Ponzi schemes.
A devil's advocate might counter that in every type of occupation there is a pyramidal system, with fewer managers on the top and many laborers on the bottom of the pay scale. That only a relatively select few – the very top students – will make it through successful post-doctoral stints to academic positions.
Yes, this is true – but it's also not the problem.
The problem, as I see it, is the misrepresentation of students' career options to them. Or more accurately, the general failure to inform students (as well as post-doctoral fellows) of their career options and train them for a wide variety of scientific careers, including the many opportunities that exist outside academia. It is also necessary to unequivocally explain the possibilities (statistically or specifically) that a student has to obtain an independent academic research position.
I am well aware that economic considerations play a major role in career decisions. Medical students in the US bank on income from future practice to cover their heavy student loans. The notion of viewing education and career training as a literal – rather than metaphoric – investment has become so well entrenched in American culture that parents aspire to send their children to expensive private universities not necessarily because they will receive a better education or training, but because tables show that they will earn more when they land their first job.
It is clear that science and scientific research is a labor of love. The training period is exceptionally long, and the earnings meager compared to other professions – especially during training. I accepted my own position as an independent assistant professor at the ripe old age of 37 – and I did only a single four-and-a-half year post-doctoral stint (nowadays, two or three post-doctoral positions are quite common). True, had I not served three years in the military and spent a year back-packing in South America, I might have shaved off a few years. Nonetheless, it is not at all uncommon for researchers to receive the reins to their own laboratory well into their fourth decade. This means that a school-teacher, having potentially graduated and begun a teaching career at age twenty-two, has already accumulated twenty years' worth of pension by the time a scientist is even eligible for a pension plan.
What do I propose? I have two key recommendations. My first idea, which is certainly not original – I am merely jumping on what I see as a worthy bandwagon – is to provide far better training for students. Many universities are already employing career development plans to help their graduates prepare for a wide range of science-related jobs. This includes mentorship, exposure and encouragement for students to explore teaching positions (including elementary and high school), editorial work, science policy and public health, and of course, industry.
ScienceCareers has developed a free web-based Independent Development Plan that can be used by students to match their strengths and interests and help set and measure their goals. When all is said and done, though, the responsibility lies with the mentors to encourage all science-related jobs – or perhaps any jobs at all. Senior scientists need to recognize that in this system, not all trainees (in fact very few of them) will end up as their personal "scientific clones." As such, I am very glad that a visionary student in my own department has helped make me more aware of these new student training programs – and that I am in a position of sufficient authority to make this a priority for my own departmental graduate program.
My second suggestion might seem counter-intuitive – as though I'm trying to work my own Ponzi scheme. I am of the opinion that despite dwindling academic job prospects, this country and the world needs more scientists with PhD degrees, not fewer. Although for the most part careers in science are unlikely to lead to high-paying salaries, society benefits greatly from churning out more scientists with advanced degrees. Critical thinkers who have a working knowledge of the intricacies of scientific research can be the very best ambassadors for science. Whether they become politicians, businesspersons or leaders in any other occupation, their support for science could be the key to the future of science. So in some respects, I almost view a graduate degree in science as a form of national (or international) service – poor pay, but something to be proud of and with great benefits for society as a whole.
However, both of my suggestions have to be implemented simultaneously; without preparing graduate students for a wide range of science-related and other careers, there's clearly no point encouraging more students to do advanced science degrees.
Steve Caplan is a principal investigator and associate professor of biochemistry and molecular biology at the University of Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha, Nebraska. You can find him on Twitter at @caplansteveAlong with former Federal Reserve Board chairman Alan Greenspan, Rubin and Summers compose the high priesthood of the bubble economy. Their policy of one-sided financial deregulation is responsible for the current economic catastrophe.
-- Dean Baker
I led with a quote from Dean Baker because he has credibility -- he saw the housing bubble for what it was in 2002 -- but it's hardly a controversial pronouncement. Any fair reading of recent history supports Baker's claim: Greenspan, Rubin, and Rubin's protege Summers deregulated banks and opposed efforts to regulate them--actions that led directly to the financial crisis. In addition to deregulation, the other tenets of the Church of Rubinism, like the Washington Consensus, have been discredited.
But the story of Rubinsism isn't just about a discredited ideology; it's also about conflict of interest, corruption, and corporate incest. And the story is ongoing.
Obama chose as his top economic advisors Summers and Tim Geithner, a protege of both Summers and Rubin whose fingerprints are also all over the crisis. That Obama did so -- and did so with little opposition -- shows the power that Wall Street sholds within the Democratic Party. We may finally be waking up to Wall Street's corrosive impact on our party, but what Robert Kuttner wrote two years ago still holds true:
A mark of Wall Street's ubiquitous power in defining the limits of the politically thinkable is that its power is hardly noticed. The personification of this power is Robert Rubin.
Given Bill Clinton's desire to move the party to the center, it was perhaps inevitable that he would align himself with Rubin. But he didn't officially team up with him during his first run for president. Indeed, during his campaign he struck populist notes and took positions that couldn't have thrilled Rubin. It was only after his winning campaign that he and Rubin joined forces.
It was in the two and a half months between winning the 1992 election and being sworn into office that Bill Clinton did a U-turn on the economy. He had campaigned promising to revise NAFTA, adding labor and environmental provisions and to invest in social programs. But two weeks before his inauguration, he met with then-Goldman Sachs chief Robert Rubin, who convinced him of the urgency of embracing austerity and more liberalization. Rubin told PBS, "President Clinton actually made the decision before he stepped into the Oval Office, during the transition, on what was a dramatic change in economic policy."
One of Clinton's goals was to end the GOP's longtime fund-raising dominance on Wall Street. The mere presence of Rubin in his administration was enough to impress Wall Street, and his policies were a surefire way to get corporate cash flowing into Democratic campaign coffers. Rubin became assistant to the president for economic policy, then Treasury Secretary. From those perches he pursued his patented form of neoliberalism, a shaky stool whose legs were deregulation of markets, budget austerity, and especially trade. He convinced Clinton to move on NAFTA before he moved on health care, but the notorious NAFTA was only part of Rubin's effort to "liberalize" trade:
Mr. Rubin pushed developing countries to open their markets to foreign competition while privatizing state-dominated economies. This approach eventually became known as the Washington consensus and gained deep traction in Latin America, East Asia and Eastern Europe, regions where Citigroup later aggressively pursued new business.
Rubin was unabashed in pushing policies that enriched his once and future employers:
Rubin tends to get a free pass on actions that, in lesser men, would be seen as plain conflicts of interest. For example, Goldman Sachs, which Rubin left to join Clinton, was a prime underwriter of Mexican bonds both before and immediately after the passage of NAFTA, as Faux points out in his book, The Global Class War. Goldman was also the investment bank that underwrote the privatization of the Mexican national phone company, Telmex, in the late 80s. After NAFTA created a gold rush of foreign money into Mexico, enriching Goldman Sachs and its clients and triggering an unsustainable speculative boom followed by a crash, Rubin promoted the bailout of Mexico that made foreign bondholders whole. A little-noticed provision of NAFTA permitted foreign banks to acquire Mexican ones. In 2001, Rubin, back in the private sector, negotiated Citigroup's $12.5 billion acquisition of Mexico's leading bank, Banamex.
Rubin's actions that most directly led to our current crisis were those involving regulation, or lack thereof. It was during Rubin's tenure that people were sounding the alarms about the dangers posed by derivatives. Rubin--along with his deputy Summers and Greenspan--opposed the effort to regulate them.
The most important challenge was that posed by derivatives. In 1998 the head of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, Brooksley Born, had called for such regulation—a concern that took on urgency after the Fed, in that same year, engineered the bailout of Long-Term Capital Management, a hedge fund whose trillion-dollar-plus failure threatened global financial markets. But Secretary of the Treasury Robert Rubin, his deputy, Larry Summers, and Greenspan were adamant—and successful—in their opposition. Nothing was done.
Rubin is known for his charm, self-deprecation, and mellow temperament--traits often credited for his success. But the effort to regulate derivatives aroused his anger.
At an April 21, 1998, meeting with Brooksley Born, the chairwoman of the commodities commission, Mr. Rubin made no secret of his feelings about her proposal. “It was controlled anger. He was very tough,” Mr. Greenberger recalls. “I was at several meetings with him, and I’ve never seen him like that before or after."
Rubin had many critics at the time and has even more now. It's hard to find a progressive economist or even a left-leaning one who praises Rubin's trade policies, which hurt workers in the US and in developing countries. And his fetish for balanced budgets came at the expense of social programs. Joe Stiglitz, who chaired Clinton's Council of Economic Advisors, says Rubin pushed deficit reduction "too far."
Stiglitz went on to wish, with hindsight, that instead of devoting tax revenues to deficit reduction, "Clinton had used the additional funds to finance more investments in R&D, technology, infrastructure and education. & GDP in the year 2000 would have been higher, and the economy's growth potential would have been stronger."
The economic growth under Clinton, said Stiglitz, was due primarily to "the technological innovations -- the computer revolution -- and the process of globalization, changes in the economy that were proceeding before Clinton took office." Dean Baker concurs, pointing out that it was massive consumption driven by the dot-com boom-bubble that led to economic growth:
Rather than investment driving growth during the Clinton boom, the main source of demand growth was consumption. Consumption soared during the Clinton years because the stock market bubble created $10tn of wealth. Stockholders consumed based on their bubble wealth, pushing the saving rate to record lows, and the consumption share of GDP to a record high.
The growth under Clinton-Rubin was unsustainable because it rested on not just the dot-com bubble but also on Rubin's high-dollar policy, which in the short term led to cheap imports and low inflation. But, in addition to killing manufacturing jobs by putting downward pressure on wages, it contributed to a massive trade deficit, which in turn led to a decline in the value of the dollar. Baker:
Rather than handing George Bush a booming economy, Clinton handed over an economy that was propelled by an unsustainable stock bubble and distorted by a hugely over-valued dollar.
But whatever the causes, the nineties economy grew, and a guru was born. When he retired midway through Clinton's second term, the president called Rubin the greatest Treasury Secretary since Alexander Hamilton. He handed off the position to his protege Larry Summers, who picked up where Rubin left off.
A long-time target of Rubin's was the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933, which limited the kind of conflict-of-interest-tainted speculation that had contributed to the Great Depression. The law prevented speculative investment banks from joining with government-supervised and-insured commercial banks. Over the years regulatory exceptions had weakened Glass-Steagall, but the Financial Services Modernization Act killed it. The bill was concocted by Summers and Greenpsan. In his book, "The Age of Turbulence," Greenspan describes this "unsung moment of policymaking."
As it happened, October 14th was the day slated for Larry and me to have our weekly breakfast. We looked at each other and said, "We have to settle this thing."...After an hour or two we divided the pie. Treasury and the Fed came together on a single bill, and up it went to Capitol Hill, where it passed. Historians view the Financial Services Modernization Act as a milestone of business legislation, and I'll always remember it as an unsung moment of policymaking for which there ought to be a little song.
Summers's and Greenspan's bill was known in known in some circles as the "Citigroup Authorization Act" because it served so beautifully the interests of Sandy Weill's emerging behemoth. When Congress passed the bill in November 1999, Citigroup had recently announced a new hire.
Rubin had stepped down as treasury secretary that July. His new job, announced in late October, was chairman of Citi's executive committee. Rubin's initial annual compensation was around $40 million.
Fast forward some nine years to 2008. Plagued by scandal, Larry Summers was no longer president of Harvard, a job he'd gotten with the help of Rubin, one of only seven members of the Harvard Corporation. Summer had spent much of his post-Harvard life working for an elite hedge fund. Citigroup, meanwhile, was on the brink of collapse.
Citigroup’s stock has plummeted to its lowest price in more than a decade, closing Friday at $3.77. At that price the company is worth just $20.5 billion, down from $244 billion two years ago. Waves of layoffs have accompanied that slide, with about 75,000 jobs already gone or set to disappear from a work force that numbered about 375,000 a year ago.
Rubin, a wise old man of the party, hadn't been much in the news in the intervening years, although he'd made news in 2001 when he tried to get an official at Treasury to convince bond-rating agencies not to downgrade the corporate debt of the infamous Enron, a debtor of Citigroup. The controversy would've harmed a lesser figure, but Rubin made it through unscathed.Also he made period pronouncements. Early in 2008, for example, as the housing bubble burst and threatened the financial system, he claimed that there was, in fact, no crisis but rather a cyclical "periodic disruption" that followed "periodic excess." He did find a scapegoat, however, the uneducated electorate:
And the economic problems that he did acknowledge were blamed on just about everyone but the major U.S. financial players. Rubin said part of the problem is that we need a "more educated electorate" to hold politicians accountable.
Now attention focused on Rubin's role in wrecking Citigroup. During his tenure shareholders had endured losses of more than seventy percent. A devastating piece in the Times revealed what it called Rubin's "pivotal role" alongside CE Charles Prince in causing "the bank’s current woes, by drafting and blessing a strategy that involved taking greater trading risks to expand its business and reap higher profits."
The story quotes a former Citigroup exec who says it was Rubin, not Prince, primarily responsible for Citibank's intense focus on the now-notorious collateralized debt obligations, or C.D.O.’s, bundles of mortgages and other forms of debt that were resold to investors. (AIG's use of C.D.O.'s helped to bring it down.)
“Chuck Prince going down to the corporate investment bank in late 2002 was the start of that process,” a former Citigroup executive said of the bank’s big C.D.O. push. “Chuck was totally new to the job. He didn’t know a C.D.O. from a grocery list, so he looked for someone for advice and support. That person was Rubin. And Rubin had always been an advocate of being more aggressive in the capital markets arena. He would say, ‘You have to take more risk if you want to earn more.’ "
Federal regulators decided in the fall to give Citi $306 billion in loans and securities and a direct investment of about $20 billion. Rubin--who recently resigned from Citigroup after "earning" well over $100 million there--has denied he contributed in any way to Citi's downfall. He's clearly fighting to |
completely wrong purposes. While it definitely has its place, this appears to be a really misunderstood loop.
If you need to iterate an Object, using a for..in loop fills the need. However, under no circumstance should you be iterating an array using a for..in loop. This is due to the fact all enumerable properties are checked, duplicates of properties are checked and THEN the loop begins enumerating.
Use a DOM DocumentFragment
This one time at band camp, I inserted lots of HTML directly into my DOM
That orange head girl from American Pie
If you’re not using DocumentFragments when inserting multiple HTML elements into your DOM, then rinse your mouth out with soap and come back when you’re done.
Essentially a DocumentFragment is a DOM node that lives outside of your actual DOM and exists solely in memory, it is kind of like a ghost, a representation of a real DOM without all of that UI overhead. Something that can be treated like the actual DOM and once you’re done, inserted into the real DOM or discarded.
This means you can modify the contents of a DocumentFragment by inserting multiple pieces of HTML into them without causing page reflows which will result in better performance than directly modifying the DOM multiple times in a short period of time.
Consider the following unrealistic example
[code]
// Assuming you have an element with the ID of ‘content’
var content = document.getElementById(‘content’);
var myFragment = document.createDocumentFragment();
for (var i = 0; i <= 50; i++) {
var div = document.createElement(‘div’);
div.textContent = ‘This is my inner HTML being added to my DIV (‘+i+’)’;
myFragment.appendChild(div);
}
content.appendChild(myFragment);
[/code]
You can see we are looping 50 times and creating a DIV, modifying its text node and then appending it to the fragment. Once the loop is done we insert the fragment into the page and we just avoided a potential reflow nightmare by batching our inserts into one operation. High five!
The opposite of this example is less pretty and makes me cringe thinking about it where we would loop 50 times and on each successful loop we would insert a DIV into the page causing a reflow each time. BAD!
Don’t touch my DOM, bro
Please don’t touch this unless you absolutely need too.
MC Hammer on modifying the style attribute of a DOM element in Javascript.
As promised earlier, I was going to explain why you shouldn’t modify the style property of an element unless you absolutely need too or you have a death-wish. The reason is simple: depending on what it is you are trying to do, you are going to cause reflow’s and repaints; left, right and centre.
What is a repaint/refresh?
When the appearance of an element is changed, the background colour for example, it causes that element to be redrawn aka repainted, refreshed. Your browser basically says, “Oh, cool, you’ve changed your appearance, let me check it and update your mugshot” – changes that affect the visibility of an element cause a repaint.
But the thing that makes a repaint one of the second most expensive operations is that in most browsers the repaint isn’t isolated to just the one element, the browser must validate the visibility of all other nodes in the DOM tree. If you have a lot of elements, that’s one expensive operation. Check please.
What is a reflow?
The most expensive operation of em’ all, the infamous reflow. Essentially when the dimensions of an element change, its position or anything else that affects its size or position within the page, it causes a waterfall of shitty performance to rain down on your page. All child nodes, element ancestors and elements following the element have their details recalculated. Effectively the entire page is re-rendered.
What causes a reflow?
Far too many things can cause a reflow.
Resizing the window
Changing a font
CSS pseudo classes like :hover
Changing the class attribute
Calculating offsetWidth and offsetHeight
And the biggest one: modifying the style attribute of an element
I suggest reading up on Google’s great document entitled Minimizing browser reflow it has some great tips if you’re wondering how you can mitigate reflow and make your application faster.
If you need to modify the style of an element, try and use a CSS class instead. This means you can make multiple modifications to an element in one go, similar to that of the DocumentFragment which allows you to batch changes and apply them all at once.
Use event delegation
Instead of attaching an event to multiple nodes in your DOM, event delegation works on the premise of listening for an event change on a parent node and then listening for changes bubble up from one or more child nodes.
My Mama always said, Javascript performance was like a box of chocolates; you never know what you’re gonna get.
Forrest Gump
The jQuery way
In jQuery event delegation is dead simple to do by writing something like the following:
[code]
$(‘#links’).on(‘click’, ‘a’, function(e) {
// This code listens for events triggered on links within our DIV
});
[/code]
This is opposed to listening for an event on links or a particular class. Event delegation if you use jQuery is one of the best habits to get into as a developer. In most cases there should be no reason not to use.
The native way
As always with most jQuery methods, there is a relatively easy native way of doing the same thing (only the performance is better). Event delegation in conventional Javascript is actually a bit more convoluted, but results in better performance.
[code]
document.getElementById(‘links’).addEventListener(‘click’, function(event) {
if (event.target && event.target.nodeName === ‘A’) {
// Event triggered
}
});
[/code]
There is a rather interesting JSPerf test here (that I didn’t create) which compares jQuery event delegation to native event delegation and the results definitely speak for themselves.
requestAnimationFrame is your friend
If you have the urge to perform animations in Javascript, then you have probably used a setTimeout or setInterval to achieve this. This is bad for a whole number of reasons, the biggest one being they will suck performance from your visitors browser and flatten their little phone batteries.
Don’t do it this way
[code]
setInterval(function() {
// Maybe an animation in here?
}, 1000/60);
[/code]
If you are still using timers in this way, then stop and take a breather. Then read the documentation on requestAnimationFrame.
The benefits of requestAnimationFrame
They are browser optimised, so they can operate in most cases at 60fps (aka the sweet spot for animation)
Animations taking place in inactive tabs are stopped. Meaning if a user navigates away from your tab and you have an animation, it releases the stronghold it has on the CPU.
Because of the aforementioned performance and respect, battery life and page responsiveness are better on low-end devices and mobile browsers.
If you must animate using Javascript, do it this way
[code]
function myFunc() {
// Do whatever
requestAnimationFrame(myFunc);
}
requestAnimationFrame(myFunc);
[/code]
The idea is you call requestAnimationFrame initially to kickstart the process and then call the requestAnimationFrame from within the function being called thus creating a loop.
Browser support is pretty good, the only caveat being support is nonexistent in IE9 and below, but a polyfill can take care of that for you.
Switch it up
That’s one small step for a if, one giant leap for switch statements
Neil Armstrong
Did you know that multiple if statements can hamper Javascript performance? And that using switch/case statements in most cases I have tested results in better performance?
The reason for switch/case statements being more performant is the browsers engine is able to optimise a switch/case statement better and this is actually the case in most languages (PHP especially).
I created a JSPerf test here showing the differences between if statements and switch/case statements. You can see that the if statements are definitely slower.
Too many elements
Did you know the more elements you have in your DOM, the heavier your application will be? As a general rule of thumb the more DIV’s and span tags, etc you have in your page, the larger the DOM tree grows.
This section on Yahoo’s developer documentation under performance gives you a little insight into what happens and how big Yahoo’s own homepage is in terms of number of elements.
Conclusion
There is plenty more I could go on about, but the point was just wanting you as a developer to be more aware of certain pitfalls and performance traps you might not realise you are falling into. Not to mention, advocating the use of native Javascript over libraries like jQuery which can on one hand make things easier for you, but also cost you performance points.
I would like to point out prematurely optimising an application for the sake of gaining a little bit of performance is not what I am advocating here. You should always use the appropriate tools, benchmark and analyse your code for actual performance problems and optimise that way. Don’t solve problems before you have them, but at the same time, don’t knowingly write code you know is bad and will end up causing you problems for the sake of readability or time.
I am just trying to get developers thinking about all of the different ways you can skin a cat in Javascript and to think about the trade offs. This isn’t a religious guide advocating that you should do something my way or no way. I am just legitimately concerned we are in an era of developers who lack proper understanding of the underlying languages they are using, in this case: Javascript.
Some modifications have been made to this article since it was originally published. There were a couple of inaccuracies in the section on loops which have been rectified, one such embarrassing mistake was calling.length on an Object. I fixed them instead of leaving them to prevent confusion. Thank you to all who pointed this out.Reader Jeannie clued me into this Facebook post by David Wolfe (which has subsequently been deleted.)
My first question- as I assume many people’s first question will be – is who the hell is this guy? Let’s start with who he thinks he is, from his website:
David “Avocado” Wolfe is the rock star and Indiana Jones of the superfoods and longevity universe. The world’s top CEOs, ambassadors, celebrities, athletes, artists, and the real superheroes of this planet—Moms—all look to David for expert advice in health, beauty, herbalism, nutrition, and chocolate!
Right, sure, we’ll go with that for right now.
My second question, then, is that if so many people are clamoring for his advice, why is he forcing it on Adele using Facebook? That’s just tacky as hell.
spot reducing is not possible At first glance this looks like basic fat shaming with a side of complete incompetence. David wants us to think that he is a credible health and wellness expert, despite the fact that he is peddling spot reducing using a cheesy clickbait title and before and after drawings in lieu of pictures (probably because we’ve known for years that– which is to say that there is no exercise that will “target” and remove belly and back fat) and he wants us to think that something that a credible health expert would do is fat shame Adele on Facebook. I’m sure he is the hero of internet trolls everywhere.
But look again. He’s not just fat shaming, he is trying to trade on Adele’s actual fame to get attention for himself (which you wouldn’t think he would need to do, considering how famous and in demand his bio suggests he is.) What happened here is that Adele, an extremely talented not-thin person, managed to rise above the oppressive systems that work to keep not-thin people from being able to share their talent. And David decided to use her, to try to trade on her hard-won fame, to..what…prove that he doesn’t understand how the human body works? This is bullshit and it’s wrong. As far as I’m concerned anyone who is an actual health and wellness expert would not want or need to spend their time fat-shaming talented fat people.
Like my work? Want to help me keep doing it? Become a Member! For ten bucks a month you can support size diversity activism, help keep the blog ad free, and get deals from size positive businesses as a thank you. Click here for details For ten bucks a month you can support size diversity activism, help keep the blog ad free, and get deals from size positive businesses as a thank you.
Book and Dance Class Sale! I’m on a journey to complete an I’m having a sale on all my books, DVDs, and digital downloads to help pay for it. You get books and dance classes, I get spandex clothes and bike parts. Everybody wins! If you want, I’m on a journey to complete an IRONMAN triathlon, andon all my books, DVDs, and digital downloads to help pay for it. You get books and dance classes, I get spandex clothes and bike parts. Everybody wins! If you want, you can check it out here!
I’m training for an IRONMAN! You can follow my journey at www.IronFat.comAs part of our ongoing effort here at Current Configuration to make your life not only better, but also 10% more crunchy, we’re offering you this first installment of what will be an ongoing series of Essential Life Lessons. Kicking off this series will be a critical but even-handed examination of a common misunderstanding that occurs in a realm of many misunderstandings: the bathroom.
Put simply, there is a right way to hang the toilet paper, and a wrong way. Read on to determine the status of your own roll.
Toilet paper has a natural curve, a way of being that lends itself to certain orientations on the toilet paper spool.* If handled with skill and knowledge, it can provide an abundance of both sanitation and comfort, quilted together in each square of pillowy ply. If handled with clumsy ignorance, or worse, carelessness, it will beset the user with pain, filth, and frustration. Don’t let it end this way, with you curled on the tile floor of the stall, weeping in frustration, covered in wasted papier de toilette. To convince you, we’ve created some diagrams, harnessing the power of SCIENCE, to demonstrate the natural benefits of the over hanging method. First, we examine the optimal viewing benefits of the over hanging method.
Below are examples of the helpful and fruitful over-hung method on the left and the annoying and detrimental under-hung method on the right.
Notice the dramatic difference in the amount of visible toilet paper. Ironically, it is the over-hung toilet paper that has both the most visible free sheetage and the least amount of sheetage free from the roll to do it. Now, this may not seem like a big deal on its own, but in these extra sheets lies your undoing. Observe.
We here at Current Configuration, for the purposes of ease and expediency, do the one-handed tear (okay, really, it’s just me, but bear with me, er, us). The one-handed tear is a quick maneuver that takes advantage of the perforated squares, allowing your bundle of toilet paper to be liberated with one quick swipe of the arm. This is the foundation of bathroom ease, the cottony bedrock on which enjoyment rests in the restrooms of many nations.
The one-handed tear relies on a quick and forceful motion directed either away from or towards the tear-er. The forces applied in this motion are great and, like the atom, are not to be trifled with. The natural curve of the over-hung method allows the roll to stand fast after a one-handed tear, but the under-hung method creates a calamitous tendency in the roll. This tendency can only lead to this:
Wasted paper, frustration, the destruction of our forests. While we realize that it is possible to execute a one-handed tear on an under-hung roll, this is a game of sanitary Russian roulette. You are bound to lose eventually, and there is no re-rolling an unwound toilet paper roll. The results will only cause you grief. Don’t let this happen to you. Restroom attendants, janitors, maids, facilities crews, and responsible toiletowners take note: Don’t use the under-hung method for your toilet paper rolls. It leads to the destruction of our precious resources and the pillars of civilization as we know it!
*Does that thing have a proper name?
IMPORTANT UPDATE: Because you demanded it, we bring you the Overhanging Public Service Hanger Brochure.“Matt’s relationship status has been changed to ‘single’ :(.” The first time I saw this on Facebook I nearly choked on my bagel. Not only was Matt experiencing the black pit we call “breaking up,” but he had to face the uncomfortable reality that his new status was being shared in real-time with 437 of his friends, co-workers, and associates.
I felt terrible for him, even thought about giving him a consolatory call…until I found out from a mutual friend that his status change was actually his cowardly method for breaking up with his girlfriend. No phone call, no meeting, just a quick status change to let his partner know that things just weren’t working out.
The amazing part of this story is that most of you reading it probably aren’t all that shocked. It’s not the first time you’ve heard of this dastardly deed or something similar. Somewhere along the line it became acceptable to hide behind the curtain of technology when faced with the unpleasantness of ending a relationship.
There’s no doubt that breaking up is hard. We’ve all been there. The awkwardness, hurt feelings, disappointment and vows of future singleness often play out like a heartbreaking movie scene — except it’s real, and instead of getting to fast forward to the happy ending, you’re stuck in the queasy-stomach present. The truth is, no one likes a breakup, but ending relationships well is a necessary part of life and a skill every man should know how to carry out with dignity and respect.
The following are some guidelines to follow when faced with ending a relationship. These guidelines will hopefully help you end a relationship like a man, rather than a Matt:
1) Talk Early and Often – The time of the actual breakup should not be the first time your partner is made aware that you have issues with how things are going. A good friend of mine is fond of saying that relationships are much like driving a car. As long as small steering corrections are made as one rolls down the road, a large jerk of the wheel should never be required.
So, rather than staying silent and suffering through a dreadful relationship until you can’t take it anymore, bring up issues with your partner as they come along. The prospect of conflict can be incredibly uncomfortable for some, but everyone deserves to hear where they are falling short. Real men aren’t afraid to clearly communicate their grievances when it is necessary.
If the relationship must be ended, your partner may still be hurt, but at least you will be able to lay out a strong case as to why you would be better apart than together.
2) Always End It in Person – There is nothing more cowardly and pathetic than ending a relationship over the phone, or even worse, through an e-mail or text message. Yet, more and more men are finding this an acceptable medium for cutting ties.
If you can’t handle the prospect of ending a relationship in person, you shouldn’t start one in the first place.
Set a time and place to meet, and make sure that you give her your full attention (no texting or checking e-mail in the middle of the discussion). She deserves it. Will the situation be awkward and uneasy? Absolutely. But, being a man means giving everyone you enter into a relationship with the basic respect that comes with a face-to-face discussion.
3) Be Clear – The breakup is not the time to be vague or mysterious. Your lady friend will most likely want some specific reasons why you want to end the relationship, so be ready to provide them. A non-answer like, “I’m just not feeling it anymore,” only shows that you are either a coward or a narcissist, but definitely not a man. You don’t necessarily need a record of wrongs, but having a mental list of things that led you down this road will help the discussion move in the right direction.
One of the most telling signs that a break-up was not handled in the proper manner is when your partner walks away still unsure of exactly where the relationship stands or why things played out the way they did. A real man will leave a relationship settled in a way that the woman understands why things were ended – she may not agree, but she is not confused, and if there are things for her to work on, she knows about them.
4) Be Considerate – While clarity is necessary, being cruel is not. Breaking up is hard enough without being demeaned or berated in the process. The breakup is not the time to be telling her that the dress she wore on your anniversary actually did make her look fat or that you’ve met dogs with better breath.
If possible, point out some of the positive things that came out of the relationship. Unless it was awful from beginning to end, there are most likely some good attributes of your partner that can be mentioned. In the end, try to be as much of a gentleman when ending the relationship as you were when you started it.
5) No Hanging Chads – No one likes uncertainty. Remember the hanging chad controversy during the 2000 presidential election? The most frustrating aspect of the situation was not being able to tell who citizens had actually voted for. In the same way, men often leave the relationship in an unsettled manner with words that indicate a possibility of picking things up again in the future. Is it over? Is it not? No one knows.
While phrases like, “Maybe down the road,” or “Just not right now,” may seem like a kinder, gentler way of breaking up, they are actually quite cruel if they are not an accurate representation of your feelings. It may sound brutal, but if you don’t see the relationship ever going anywhere, don’t leave even a glimmer of hope when you breakup.
If you aren’t clear, your partner may think you’re simply wanting a break, that things will come around when you’ve had a little time to cool down. She’ll spend her time waiting on you to get through your “phase” while all along you’re wanting to get far, far away. Be fair to your partner and cut ties completely so they can go on with their lives and you can go on with yours.The Escrache is an Intervention on Collective Ethics
Diego Benegas
The escrache is a particular political demonstration that emerged in Argentina in the turn of the century by the organization H.I.J.O.S. The members of H.I.J.O.S. started the escraches as a way of showing to the community the presence of unpunished criminals of the dictatorship (1976-1983). Since then, many other collectives and individuals have used it as a way of public demonstration. I analyze the escraches of H.I.J.O.S. based on a series of interviews to members of the organization, some published material, and declarations. The escraches have been characterized as public shaming, and have been linked with other kinds of public ritual. I argue that they constitute an original form of collective action that builds community and intervenes in the social process of construction of ethics. Aiming to build social condemnation, the escrache interpellates the neighbors as ethical subjects. The spread of the escraches as forms of public action might be pointing to the tension between collective and individual responsibility as a key aspect of the social crisis in 21st century.
A kind of collective action
Form The escrache is a form of collective action that appears in Argentina at the end of the 20th century. The word comes from lunfardo, slang from Buenos Aires city, and means to uncover in public (ref). The escrache as a specific kind of political action started by the organization H.I.J.O.S., initially composed by children of persons disappeared by the last dictatorship in Argentina (1976-1983). After H.I.J.O.S., many other organizations and individuals have used this kind of political action and the genre has spread across social groups in different contexts and struggles. This paper looks at the escrache as the members of H.I.J.O.S. conceive it in order to analyze its characteristics and the mechanisms of its action.
Scholars have associated escraches with different kinds of collective action. Susana Kaiser signals its resemblances with the marking of the houses of lepers in medieval times in Europe (2002, 500). Analyzing the escraches as a communication strategy, Kaiser reflects on the effects of the escraches in bringing back issues of the past and challenging "impunity and political amnesia" (ibid). Her analysis of opinions of non participants bring to the discussion several aspects of which two are most related to our question on how the escraches accomplish their objectives. Kaiser signals that the escraches have "brought back the past into the public sphere" (511), installing a discussion that is not easy to disregard by the media. The second aspect is that escraches have been successful at informing people. The author mention a fact that will be crucial in our discussion, she affirms, "HIJOS [sic], thus, has forced people to publicly define their positions" (ibid). She asks questions about it, but does not develop all the consequences of this statement. I will come back to this aspect in the discussion of interpellation.
Other author that has studied escraches is Diana Taylor (2002). She defines the escraches as "acts of public shaming" and affirms that they constitute a "form of guerrilla performance" (Taylor 2002, 151). Exploring the way memory of traumatic events gets transmitted through performance, Taylor traces the genealogies of style between the activism of the mothers and grandmothers of the disappeared, the activism of the generation of the 1970s, and the style of political demonstration that H.I.J.O.S. exhibit in the escraches.
The author traces the different genealogies in the activism of H.I.J.O.S., the resemblances with the strategies of Madres de Plaza de Mayo, an organization of mothers of disappeared, and how it also resembles the persecution and "public relations war". She differentiates the actions of human rights organizations from the state terrorism campaign based on the fact that human rights movements target "individuals responsible for gross crimes against humanity" (163) and that their actions do not engage in violence, for their activism claims "for institutional justice, not private vengeance" (ibid).
These differences are paramount and must never been forgotten. Yet the escraches differ from the strategies of state terrorism in one more aspect, a crucial one. Escraches aim to produce a different subjectivity, opposed to the one produced by state terrorism. The escrache builds community intervening in the social process of construction of ethics.
Building up an escrache
The members of H.I.J.O.S. describe different kinds of escrache. There are different kinds of them, and every regional group has a different way of realize them. Some groups rely more in the use of the street demonstration and some on poster campaigns. Moreover, this form of collective action has evolved over the time and has changed according to the social and political evolution of the country. However, we can point to certain characteristics that are shared throughout the organization and that give this form of action its cohesiveness. I describe here some of the characteristics that are present in many of the descriptions that the members of the organization provide of them.
The first task to do for an escrache is gathering information about the person to be targeted. This includes information about his action during the dictatorship, his involvement in state terrorism, the crimes for which he was tried and information about the trial. H.I.J.O.S. relies usually in the archives of Madres de Plaza de Mayo for this data collection. It is important to say that the majority of the persons that are targeted by H.I.J.O.S.'s escraches have been tried and sentenced. Therefore, the information about the judicial trials is, theoretically, public, and even if it is not of easy access, it can be gathered from the courts. However, in some states, there is no so much information available, either because there were no trials, or (and) because the information was (conveniently) lost. In those cases, the task of gathering information can be both the principal and the most difficult one.
A particular piece of the gathering of information is to find the most current photograph possible of the targeted person. This is signaled always in the interviews. The current picture is the link between the information of the history, the trial, the past, and the everydayness of the life in the neighborhood. In the task of building bridges between the quotidian and the extraordinary, the picture puts a face to the information that, talking about concentrations camps, torture, disappearances, remains otherwise abstract and out of the world of the everyday.
The second task of the escrache is the preparation for the actual street demonstration. This process, called pre-escrache, consists in working in the neighborhood where the targeted criminal lives calling for popular participation. For this task, H.I.J.O.S. opens the participation to different social actors interested. In this way, artists, neighborhood associations, different kinds of organizations, groups, and also individuals take part. The "Mesa de Trabajo de Escraches" in Buenos Aires City is a collective organization of this kind. When they decide the place to work, they usually move the meeting place to that neighborhood and have their meetings, moving in this way, their base of operations. In this way they aim to involve the social actors of the neighborhood in their task.
Working in the neighborhood involves tasks of many different kinds. Some of them include working with the children of the neighborhood in the public parks, calling the old people of the neighborhood to talk about their memories, contacting the different organizations of the neighborhood to talk about their current issues. All this different activities involve working in the public space of the neighborhood and in different ways, reconstructing the collective memory of the area. With all this collective work, when the day of the escrache comes, a multitude of groups, organizations, and individuals are gathered in an action that becomes entangled with their lives in the most immediate way.
An important task is to publicize information: when, where, and why the escrache will be made. To this end, poster campaigns are broadly used. Some of the posters rely on the iconography of criminal persecution. The posters have the face of the targeted person, his name, address, and telephone number. They mention the history of the crimes of that person and the reasons for his freedom - the laws or presidential pardon that allowed him to be free. They also include the date, time, place of the demonstration.
The day signaled for the escrache, the members of H.I.J.O.S. together with all the people that want to join them gather in some place in the neighborhood and make a demonstration that usually goes from a central park in the neighborhood, transiting the streets and ending in the house of the targeted person. These demonstrations have a mixed climate that resembles somehow both parade and a political demonstration like a union strike. It is part of the tradition of public demonstrations in Argentina the use of drums. However, different drums and different kinds of rhythms mark a union demonstration from a carnival. Escraches rely more on this second aesthetics. They are noisy, colorful, and quite musical. It is common the presence of pigs-on-wheels and different giant dolls and effigies. The other element that is almost always present is the police safeguarding some perimeter of the house of the targeted person. This contributes to make sure the feeling is not that of the carnival. Many times the courts have declared escraches illegal and the police have been instructed to repress the people demonstrating at the least sign of violence or misconduct.
Perhaps this is the reason why H.I.J.O.S. makes so strict rules for the escraches. They instruct the participants with a series of rules and regulations that maintain the performance very well defined. The participants are not allowed to shout slurs other than specific ones, i.e., genocida (genocidal criminal), assassin, murderer, or torturer. They instruct the participants not to damage the property of the neighbors. The only place that is painted is the pavement of the public street, with one exception: red watercolor will be splashed to the front of the house of the targeted person. This is the mark of the escrache.
The demonstration ends usually in front of the house of the targeted person, or as close as the police allow it. In this moment they read a manifest with all the information about the person, the reasons to be there, and this is usually linked to the political situation of the country at that moment. The chanting "we will always come back" is also present as a promise and opening.
Many times the members of H.I.J.O.S. state that the post-escrache, the period that follows the actual demonstration, is the most important. They affirm that is when the escrache produces its effect. Recollections of what happens when H.I.J.O.S., always with the promise of return, leaves the neighborhood, include stories of the neighbors making the targeted person pay for the cleaning of the common building, or the story about the neighbors photocopying and distributing on their own, H.I.J.O.S.'s pamphlets, or neighbors refusing to engage with that person in different ways. This is regarded as the most important moment for a variety of reasons, but principally because that is the moment when memory and justice is not a question of H.I.J.O.S. only, but of the people in the community on their own.
Understanding its mechanism
With this description, we can see that the aim of the escrache is not only to target the person that is hiding a crime, but also intervene in the community that hosts him. It is not important that the targeted person is at home, in actuality, they usually are not at home. In addition, there is not so much to say to that person and the confrontation face to face, regarded by some members of H.I.J.O.S. as an extremely powerful moment, is not per se the most effective aspect of the action.
However, the community that hosts him - the community in which this person is part - is a central actor and the most important addressee of the escrache. All the previous work in the neighborhood talks about a work that exceeds the actual expressive moment and points to a face of the escrache as a collective intervention in the community. See for example, the poster campaigns, the different workshops in the neighborhood, and even the important place that the histories of neighbors "on their own" continuing the escrache. The escrache aims the criminal, but its most important target is the community that hosts him, because it is the community that is allowing him, and certifying him too, as a respectable person, a good neighbor, and perhaps exemplary member of his community. This is the intervention the escrache makes on community ethics.
The work of the escrache points to change the relative positions of the members of the community. To analyze this we have to see how is the situation that allows the criminals to hide and the justice to pardon them. In this sense, the escrache is the action that expressed the diagnostic that H.I.J.O.S. realizes of the state of society in regards to ethics. There is a situation similar to uncertainty but more complex. A kind of split of the opinions and judgment that resembles what Diana Taylor describes as "percepticide" for the field of perception. The members of the neighborhood know who that person is, but at the same time, they do not. This is difficult to think in case of a singular person and we would need to start hypothesizing pathological states like Freud's Verdreigung. However it is simpler to think it at the level of the community. Some people know something, some others know something else, some know about the past of this person, some know about the laws, some have suspicions. But all of these partial knowledges are isolated and not working together. Repression does not cancel knowledge; it makes it un-operative by isolation from other pieces of information, opinion, and action, that would make it worth. In this way, the knowledge is already in the community, but paralyzed and with no consequence.
The escrache changes the positions of the neighbors by bringing together all these knowledges and making them real in the ritual action of putting all together in the public street. In this sense, the performance of the demonstration, that shows people that are willing to risk facing the police to enact what they believe is fair, acquires its maximum strength.
The members of the community find themselves with all these pieces of information, that now are all linked together and, moreover, regarded as true by the action in public. In this sense, what they before only suspected is now confirmed; and what they did not know before and could not ask, has been established as an issue for public discussion. In addition, the neighbors find themselves participating (whether part of the demonstration or from the balconies) in an action that expresses the existence of injustice. So they have the reasons, the permission, and the model for possible collective actions. The resource to claim ignorance of the facts is closed for the neighbors that now have to make a choice about what to do with that knowledge. If the spectacle of the disappearances inscribed knowledge to be regarded as non-existent, the spectacle of the escraches (re)inscribes knowledge but this time to be regarded as real.
Perhaps the most important of the stated goals of the escrache of H.I.J.O.S. is to promote social condemnation of the crimes of the dictatorship. In this way, the escrache interrogates the concept of justice and ethics. We can see justice in at least two ways. Justice is an area of social life over which the state establishes its action. In this sense justice pertains to the bureaucratic administration that makes of it its goal. The legal system, the congress, the law, the courts, the police, and prisons are part of this machinery of administrating justice over society. However, we can also see justice as a process of conflicts and consensus that happens continuously across the whole society. From this perspective, the state justice is but one part of the process, and even as it is an influential one, justice is not its monopoly.
The escrache intervenes in the process of production of social ethics. The escrache asks the neighbors to enact in public their opinion on an ethical issue. Thus, the escrache makes the neighbors participate in the process of production of collective ethics; if their opinions count for somebody, then they are part of the process.
The escrache assumes the presence of social networks in the community. It is at the interior of the neighborhood that the ethical judgments will be produced. Ethical judgments - the substance of the social process of production of ethics - happen in every social interaction in the everydayness. Jokes, gossip, rumor |
terrible name, Low Intensity Functional Training) This class offers a mix of strength work and metabolic work but no names go on the board, no specific time is prescribed for the WO. A coach takes folks through a typical warm-up, then describes the elements to be trained that day. Perhaps it is DL’s, rope climbs and 50M sprints. After a form review folks begin working their way through the WO, perhaps they perform 3 reps of DL at 75-80% of 1RM. They then work a rope climb (with or without feet based on strength & skill level) then they will walk to the end of a 50M course, and sprint to the other end. That’s one round…but no one cares because we are not keeping track. The class is about fun, community and getting some work done. When you remove the competitive element form errors magically resolve because people are not worried about being “beat”, they are concerned about doing it right. This is our fastest growing class and everyone from beginners to seasoned veterans love it. Men will indeed “Die for points” and not surprisingly they will also ignore coaching and safety at the same time. LIFT addresses this issue while allowing folks to get an outstanding workout.
7-Personal training. Many gyms do not offer this service…you are leaving money on the table if you do not, but what do I know?
This is the current incarnation of our gym, it will likely grow and modify over time but it is again an outgrowth of wanting to be both financially successful AND to do good by our clients. The Performance, Health & Longevity orientation combined with Dave Werner’s Athletic Skill Standards has driven our development and I’d say it’s been pretty damn successful thus far. A wisely constructed program really does offer amazing ROI and I believe optimizes not only Performance, Health and Longevity but also profitability. Perhaps this will be the 5th component of fitness “being profitable so you can remain in business and continue to help people…”
Related Post: An Interview with Chris SpeallerShare. Shooters rule by Pokemon made a big impression. Shooters rule by Pokemon made a big impression.
According to The NPD Group, Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare was the top-selling game for November 2016.
Nipping at Call of Duty's heels was Battlefield 1, which dropped down one place from last month, where it was the best-selling game for October 2016.
Exit Theatre Mode
Pokemon Sun and Moon had strong showings, especially considering digital sales for the 3DS games weren't included in NPD's numbers. According to the release, Sun and Moon had the strongest launch of any Pokemon game in the franchise's history, beating out Black and White "despite having 19 fewer days in market" during their launch month.
Here are the top 10 games by revenue for November 2016:
Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare
Battlefield 1
Pokemon: Sun
Pokemon: Moon
Titanfall 2
NBA 2K17
Madden NFL 17
Watch Dogs 2
Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
FIFA 17
The NPD Group blamed the 19% year-on-year decline in spending on games on last year's strong November showing, during which games like Black Ops III, Fallout 4, and Star Wars: Battlefront released as "full priced console new releases."
Exit Theatre Mode
Hardware sales also saw a decline over the same period last year. Overall, spending was down 35%, with "growth in portable hardware sales" offset by a drop in console spending, "particularly on the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One."
After 4 straight months at the top of console sales, the Xbox One was unseated. Sony's PlayStation 4 was November's best-selling console, and lifetime sales of the PS4 have now exceeded 50 million.
November's best selling console SKU was the 500GB Uncharted 4 PS4 bundle, which accounted for "30 percent of all hardware units sold."
Seth Macy is IGN's weekend web producer and just wants to be your friend. Follow him on Twitter @sethmacy, or subscribe to Seth Macy's YouTube channel.So today we’re doing something a little different. I just got my RG Unicorn in the mail, and I thought since the kit is brand-spankin’ new and there aren’t all that many reviews of it out there yet, I’d snap it together and write this. It’s not every day I get to actually write about something that hasn’t already been out for half a decade, ahem.
I was lucky enough to snag one of the last of these “Premium Boxes”. I’m really not sure why I cared enough to buy both this and the regular version. Other than the artwork on the front, the only difference is this:
The box contents are exactly the same. Given my well-documented soft spot for Unicorn mode, I kind of wanted the premium version, but it’s really not that big of a deal if you missed it, unless you’re the completist collector type, in which case, have fun with the scalpers on eBay.
Here’s what’s in the box. It’s a surprisingly manageable number of sprues, but as you can see, there’s a ton of parts per sprue. For some reason, four of the sprues have a number 1 next to their letter, but there’s no number 2. I wonder if this means we’ll get 2s of these sprues with future variants like the Banshee that’s inevitably coming (and it better not be a frickin’ P-Bandai release, either.)
Here’s a look at the B sprue, which I’m guessing everyone has seen by now. It really does consist of clear red and opaque grey plastic, although, as you can see in the previous picture, most of the psychoframe parts are on their own sprue.
Also this.
Yep, nearly everything in the instructions is translated to English. I’m not 100% sure, but I think Bandai started this with the High Resolution Barbatos, and apparently it’s now happening with the RGs as well. The translations are good, and while I never felt like I needed them, they’re nice to have as they do further clarify certain things, and I’d always wondered what exactly all that text said. It’s also cool to see Bandai finally acknowledging that they’re actually selling to an international market.
Unsurprisingly, the build starts with the feet and then you work your way up. The feet are only marginally more complex than what you’d expect – there’s your inner frame part from the B sprue plus a bunch of armor, and that’s it. For some reason, the instructions don’t have you attach the two armor plates on the side that rotate for the transformation yet. This is kind of a running theme with this build – everything works fine, but the order you do it in is sometimes a bit odd. Case in point:
The next thing you build after the feet is one leg, or most of it anyway, and then you build the ankle to go with it.
At this point it really kind of struck me how similar to the MG so much of this kit is. Look at the assembly for that floating armor piece that goes on top of the foot here – it’s almost exactly the same.
Next you put it all together and start on the second leg. Here’s a shot of the completed leg with all the parts for the other one next to it, to give you an idea of just how complex this thing is.
If you’ve built a Unicorn before, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that the legs are by far the most involved part of this kit. I didn’t clock myself, but I think it took me close to an hour to get one leg assembled, and they do literally everything the legs on the MG do, except, well… better.
Note the knee bend of nearly 180 degrees, for example. And speaking of the knees, the way the transformation in this version works is that there’s a mechanism that causes that infamous psychoframe piece to move outward when you pull the flap with the thruster away from the calf. It’s still a bit difficult to do and the knee armor still doesn’t properly attach to it (plus it has a tendency to pop off), but it’s infinitely better than the screaming nightmare of frustration that is the MG’s legs. All that, and they bend farther as well.
Note also the panel lines on the sides of the lower legs mimicking the opening panels for unchained mode on the PG version.
Obviously the waist section is next. Look at all these parts. Since all of the skirts transform individually, you’ll be working on this for a while.
Perhaps my favorite part about this section is the way the front skirts transform. Even on the PG Unicorn these are a problem; the moving panel is on a hinge and keeps popping off. The way it’s done here, it’s nearly impossible for this panel to detach itself. You do have to pry at it a bit to get it out, but it never comes off.
The side skirts, conversely, are a bit of a problem. They’re really tight, and I’ve had them pop off when I tried to transform them.
Far more importantly, though, I finally managed to take a legs and skirts picture where the top isn’t out of focus. Are unicorns supposed to be good luck or something?
Uh, moving along, we’ve got the torso, and here’s where I kind of figured out how this kit is different from previous RGs and what makes it work.
It’s actually more obvious in the legs, but here’s where I noticed it – the Unicorn’s inner frame isn’t so much plugged together out of the parts on the B sprue as a sizeable portion of it is actually built during assembly. They did something similar previously with the Sinanju, but of course on that kit it was a way to recycle the Mk-II frame. Here it’s a necessary part of the design because so many things have to move for the transformation. You’ll also notice the contents of the box are quite heavy when you first pick them up – there’s several sprues of ABS plastic here. Hopefully that means we’ll see the use of that material more frequently again in the future.
Anyway, as you can see, you put together some of the torso first, then you attach the inner frame of the arms, and then the rest of the torso basically in modules. When it’s all done, it transforms with an ease that’s almost irritating if you’ve built previous versions of the Unicorn. The shoulder vulcans pop up like it’s the most natural thing in the world, and you can’t help but wonder why this was ever a problem on other kits.
The arm assembly is similarly modular. First you build the wrist sections and the beam tonfa holders separately. I’m very happy to report that the parts with those triangular flaps on the sides of the beam tonfa holders stay in place very securely. Owners of the MG kit know why I’m pointing this out.
Next you attach a bunch of small armor parts here and there and then the two larger assemblies shown above. And you’re done.
The transformation of the arms isn’t particularly problematic on the MG and PG Unicorns either, but Bandai’s designers still managed to add a small twist here.
The part at the bottom of the beam tonfa actually functions as a locking mechanism that you fold out, then transform everything, then snap back in place. This way, the arms don’t collapse into Unicorn mode every time you pose them. Works beautifully.
Speaking of the arms and everything that’s great about them, here’s a shot of all the hands you get with this kit.
Open, closed and weapon holding for the left and right, all fixed pose. If you’re a fan of the RG articulated hands, you’re probably not happy about this, but me, I think this is what should come with every damn Gunpla kit. The articulated hands are ugly, and they don’t frickin’ work. I really, really hope this is a sign of things to come.
Anyway, up next is the shoulder armor. If you’re like me, you might have noticed in pictures of this kit that the shoulders look a bit too bulky, especially in Unicorn mode. That’s because all of this crap is in there.
Not only is it a lot of parts, it’s also really difficult and fiddly to put together. This was actually the only part of the build that gave me trouble. The tradeoff, though, is yet another section that transforms extremely well. You just open up the top, rotate the vent on the side and move the top back down. Done.
And what does that get us? Yep, another headless Hessian.
The head isn’t as complicated as you’d think. Clearly they decided it just wasn’t going to be possible to have it “transform” so much as be disassembled and put back together, which is pretty much how the transformation works.
The kit comes with foil stickers for both sets of eyes and the cameras. As you can see, the cameras are molded in clear green, so there really wasn’t any need for those stickers, but I did use the one for the eye slit in Unicorn mode to make it pop more. Plus obviously the one for Destroy mode.
Note also that the transforming horn works quite well in this version. You usually have to wiggle the halves around a bit to get them in place, but there’s hardly any visible gap. Hard to say if that’ll still work with the foil stickers for the gold side on there – I didn’t use them here as I’ll probably paint these parts. I do think I’ll be using the transforming horn, though. It works fine. Which is, of course, pretty amazing.
No proper slits on the face mask in Destroy mode, though. That’s a pretty disappointing omission.
And here’s your Beast of Possibility sans backpack. You see that gap on the horn? Yeah, me neither.
From what I remember, the backpack is basically the same as on the MG. The big difference being that you can actually transform it without the beam saber handles popping off. It should be pretty obvious from these pictures that that comes at a cost, though – the proportions are very different as the handles and the parts they’re mounted on are much, much bigger compared to the backpack than on the larger scale versions of the suit.
And here we are, about to heave the customary “now for the accessories” sigh.
Here’s what you get, aside from the aforementioned hand options. No surprises, of course – there’s the shield, the magnum, the bazooka and a (very strong) action base adapter. I’m also convinced at this point that the whole thing where the Unicorns almost all come with four sabers and only two effect parts is some sort of in-joke at Bandai because whaddayaknow, they did it again. Also, no spare ammo clips for the weapons, though you can mount the ones they do come with on the rear skirts.
The weapons, as you can see, are basically scaled-down versions of their MG counterparts. There are very few alterations, like the fact that the ammo clip for the magnum isn’t made up of individual shells, but for the most part, they’re the same.
What really frustrates me about this is the fact that for some reason, all these parts come on the same sprue and are molded in the same color. Color separation is a big part of what sets the RG line apart from others, but for some reason, they decided to make these weapons just solid lumps of grey even though they’re made up of enough parts to allow for something more interesting.
Sure, you can paint all that, but this is an RG kit, it’s not supposed to need painting.
The shield is basically the same as the MG shield. Lots of parts underneath. I’m not a big fan of the way it attaches to the arm, though, it ends up being too far away from it. You also can’t attach it to the back for some unfathomable reason.
Well, and that’s it. I’m not doing a full-blown photoshoot just yet because I still need to sticker this kit and I’m thinking I’ll make an exception and actually panel line it as well – I never do this with RGs because I think they look cluttered as it is, but I think this one could use it. Anyway, as you can see, the kit can actually do a full split and it can almost pull off the Seed pose, though the feet won’t quite move enough.
So does this kit live up to the hype? For the most part. When it was first announced, everyone basically expected it to be the ultimate RealGrenade, and instead it’s now the sturdiest, most poseable and most easily transformable kit of the Unicorn in existence. And it’s a really fun build too, at least if you like ’em complex – it took me something like 7-8 hours to put it together, but just because there’s so many parts. Except for the shoulder armor, it’s not difficult or frustrating at all, just time consuming.
But is it perfect? No. Sorry. No, it’s not. First of all, it still has parts that pop off when you transform it, especially around the knees. Secondly, while poseability is certainly fine, a lot the joints are too tight for their own good. I’m terrified I’ll break something everytime I move the arms, and it makes posing the kit kind of a chore.
And thirdly, I really think the transformation comes at something of a cost to the kit’s appearance. The proportions are clearly off because they had to cram so much into such a small-scale kit – everything feels too bulky, especially the shoulders and the lower halves of the arms. This is especially odd because the legs are actually more or less accurate, and you’d think that would be the hardest part to get right.
The bottom line is, though, that this certainly is a step up in engineering for Gunpla, and I’m as amazed as anyone that Bandai pulled it off. This really wasn’t supposed to work. So if you’re a fan of the Unicorn Gundam, I’m afraid I have to tell you you’ll need this one as well, along with what I have to assume is several others that you already have. It’s a really special kit, and you kind of have to build it to believe it.
AdvertisementsAfter receiving flak from many sections of the party for his controversial remarks that Rahul Gandhi ought to apologize to the Muslim community for his equally controversial ‘ISI in touch with disgruntled Muslim youth’ remarks at a public rally, controversial Minister Jairam Ramesh distanced himself from his extremely controversial remarks.
During an interaction with Congress party workers and assorted Rahul Gandhi loyalists, the Union Rural Development Minister found himself on the backfoot and turned contrite. “I agree I f***ed up,” Jairam told hurt members of the Rahul Gandhi fan brigade. “No question of it, my statement has hurt the entire party and if you want me to apologize, I will apologize.” The MIT trained Minister also went on to credit Rahul Gandhi for asking him to apologize. “I spoke to Rahul after I made those remarks and he told me that what I said was nonsense. I am grateful for Rahul once again showing me the right path.”
Jairam Ramesh’s controversial remarks had triggered disquiet across the country with hot-headed members of the TNYC picketing the house of Bangalore based Ramesh Ramanathan, an I-banker turned social worker who runs the NGO, Janagraha. Later Ramesh Ramanathan said he was expecting the attacks. “With a name like that, and with Bangalore being so close to Chennai, I knew I was toast, yaar,” he told The UnReal Times. Chennai based Tennis great, Ramesh Krishnan, was also accosted by some disgruntled TNYC youth, according to reports.
In related news, the UPA regime is mulling a new scheme “Rajiv Gandhi Rahul Gandhi Bhashan Suno Yojana”, under which anyone who can sit through five minutes of Rahul Gandhi’s speech will get Rs. 500 and a voucher to have biryani at any restaurant of their choice. “It is a brilliant scheme that admirably combines the twin goals of poverty alleviation with Gandhi family marketing. First, only the truly desperate will want to avail of the scheme, thus minimizing targeting errors. Second, we can hope to fill venues for Rahul baba’s rallies to at least 35% capacity after spacing out chairs,” a senior Congress leader privy to the scheme revealed.
(With inputs from columnist, Shefali Vaidya)Legislation introduced in California to rein in police use and misuse of asset forfeiture laws in order to take people's money and property (often without ever charging with them with a crime) has seen some significant changes in the Assembly since we've previously reported on it.
A not-small amount of the text of Senate Bill 443 has been removed as opposition by law enforcement agencies and prosecutors has grown. Gone is the requirement that local law enforcement agencies follow some of California's more restrictive forfeiture rules. Police departments in California (and other states) often bypass state regulations by participating in the Department of Justice's "Equitable Sharing" asset forfeiture program. The DOJ version of the program has looser requirements and often lets police departments keep a greater portion of the money than state rules do. Gone is the requirement that a big chunk of the money would go to a state-controlled asset forfeiture fund to manage distribution. These were all ways to try to reduce the "profit motive" for police to try to seize whatever they could on the most specious of justifications by eliminating the amount of money they would be able to keep.
But the most important component of SB 443 remains: Prosecutors will actually have to convict people of crimes before law enforcement agencies will be able to permanently keep cash and assets they seize during arrests, even if they partner with the feds. For that reason, organizations like the asset forfeiture reformers of the Institute for Justice (IJ) continue to support the bill.
The bill had already passed the California Senate (with only one vote of opposition) but is now dealing with some heavy opposition from the law-and-order folks lobbying the Assembly. Their opposition efforts are being bolstered by the federal government officials warning that too many restrictions on asset forfeiture will threaten California's participation in federal sharing programs entirely, potentially causing a loss of tens of millions of dollars in state revenue.
The Institute for Justice this week passed along some communications from opponents trying to scare legislators away from reform. The possibility of losing federal dollars obviously contributed to the decision to eliminate the state-level asset forfeiture fund. The federal rules require that law enforcement agencies maintain their own asset forfeiture funds in order to participate in the federal program. Shifting some of the money back into the state would have run afoul of these rules. That's exactly what happened with New Mexico's reforms, which actively forbid law enforcement agencies from maintaining asset forfeiture funds. A representative from the U.S. Treasury warned that the same thing could happen to California.
But perhaps it's best that the complicated state distribution program was eliminated. Do we need even more state bureaucracy managing things? Such a shift could possibly create just a new set a bad financial incentives rather than eliminate the current ones.
Nevertheless, it turns out just requiring a citizen to be convicted of a crime before the government can keep his or her stuff may be too much for the federal government's liking. The Institute for Justice provided a copy of an e-mail from a Treasury representative sent out last week that warned, "I highly doubt our federal agencies can figure out whether a conviction occurred in a timely manner. I'm not sure they would have the resources, desire, or technical capability. … Accordingly, I think I would still advise our policy officials here that it would be prudent not to share with agencies should this law be passed."
I spoke with Lee McGrath, legislative counsel for the Institute for Justice, this morning, and he helped me navigate through the bill's changes. He found the Treasury's argument illogical. California law already requires that seizures of assets worth less than $25,000 can only be kept if there's a conviction. No doubt this law is one reason why local police bypass state rules and partner with the feds, but McGrath's point is that the idea that it's too hard to keep track of whether or not a person is convicted before taking his or her stuff is absurd.
"We have figured it out in California," he said. "We do it all the time when the seizure is less than $25,000. What's so tough about that? They want to continue the idea that somebody could lose their property without even being charged, never mind being convicted of a crime."
Opponents are nonetheless using the potential loss of revenue in their lobbying efforts, pointing out to legislators how much money their districts have raked in from the federal asset forfeiture program. McGrath describes it (in a release from IJ) as a "desperate and cynical attempt to derail civil forfeiture reform in California."
Voting on the amended bill is scheduled for tomorrow. If it passes it will have to head back to the Senate because of the changes. The version the Senate approved was much stricter than this amended bill, so McGrath predicted it would likely survive if it makes it out of the Assembly.Advanced Arduino Hacking Bringing Serious Developer Tools and Techniques to Arduino, the Popular Single-Board Platform by Maik Schmidt
You want to get into this popular open-source electronics prototyping platform, but you don’t want to have to work with development tools designed for artists and hobbyists. Maik shows you how to develop software for Arduino in a professional way.
The Arduino was made for beginners. The microcontroller board has a lot of built-in mechanisms that prevent beginners from destroying it accidentally, and its development environment is as simple as possible. On the web and in your favorite book store you can find countless tutorials and books for beginners. Simplicity is the basis of the Arduino’s popularity.
But simplicity is a double-edged sword. As the Arduino became more popular, advanced developers and even experts started to have a look at it and quickly got disappointed by the development environment’s limited capabilities and the lack of advanced documentation.
In this article I’ll try to fill some of those gaps. You’ll learn how to develop software for the Arduino in a professional way. For example, you’ll see how to manage your Arduino projects with a good old Makefile that you can easily integrate into your favorite IDE. In addition, you’ll learn that the Arduino platform supports nearly all features of the current C++ standard and that it’s advantageous to use these features for programming embedded systems.
But first we’ll take a close look at the Arduino IDE’s internals. Then once we’ve seen how it turns our sketches into executable code, we’ll create a Makefile to bypass it completely.
What’s Wrong With The Arduino IDE?
One of the reasons of the Arduino’s success is its beginner-friendly integrated development environment (IDE). For people who have never written any software, the Arduino IDE is a perfect starting point. It offers only features that you absolutely need: compile a program, transfer it to the Arduino board, and monitor the serial port. Also the IDE has basic support for grouping a set of files into a project, it supports syntax coloring, and it helps you to quickly find example projects and documentation.
All this is helpful for beginners and useful for small projects, but as soon as your projects become more sophisticated you’ll need a more elaborate programming environment. You’ll probably want to use your favorite text editor or IDE and you may need a more flexible build process. For example, if you’re developing a video game for one of the great Arduino video game shields, you’ll need tools that turn bitmap graphics into C/C++ source code. These tools should be part of your automatic build process, and it’s difficult to add them to the original IDE.
So let’s see how the Arduino IDE turns your sketches into binary code for the Arduino board.
Behind the Scenes
People sometimes seem to be a bit irritated when it comes to the language the Arduino gets programmed in. That’s mainly because the typical sample sketches look as if they were written in a language that has been exclusively designed for programming the Arduino. But that’s not the case—it is plain old C++ (which implies that it supports C, too). To turn C++ code into machine code the Arduino can execute, we need a suitable compiler.
Every Arduino uses an AVR microcontroller designed by a company named Atmel. (Atmel says that the name AVR does not stand for anything.) These microcontrollers are very popular, and many hardware projects use them. One of the reasons for their popularity is their excellent tool chain, based on the GNU C++ compiler tools and optimized for generating code for AVR microcontrollers.
That means you feed C/C++ code to the AVR compiler and it does not translate it into machine code for your computer but for an AVR microcontroller. This is called cross-compiling and is the usual way to program embedded devices.
For nearly all GNU development tools—such as gcc, ld, or as—there’s an AVR pendant: avr-gcc, avr-ld, and so on. You can find them in the hardware/tools/bin directory of the Arduino IDE. The IDE is mainly a graphical wrapper that helps you to avoid using the command-line tools directly. Whenever you compile or upload a program using the IDE, it delegates all work to the AVR tools.
As a serious software developer, you should enable the IDE’s verbose output, so you can see all command-line tool invocations. Load an arbitrary sketch and hold down the Shift key when you click the Verify/Compile in the IDE’s toolbar. The output in the message panel should look similar to the picture.
The command invocations look a bit weird at first, because of the names of the many temporary files that are created. You should still be able to identify all compile and link steps that are necessary to build even a simple sketch like the blinking LED example. That’s the most important thing that the Arduino team did: they hid all these nasty details well behind the IDE, so even people with no software development experience are able to program the Arduino.
So to compile and upload Arduino programs yourself you have to perform the same steps as the IDE; that is, you have to invoke the AVR tools in the right order and for the right files. In principle you could do this manually, but it’s much more efficient to use a Makefile for this task.
Do It Yourself
Now that we know how the Arduino IDE works internally we will bypass it and use make for compiling, uploading, and monitoring our programs. Make is a project management tool that has been around for decades and helps you to build executables from source files. It knows a lot of rules for turning C/C++ files into object files, for example, and it has some clever algorithms for calculating dependencies between your project’s files, so it only compiles source files if needed.
In contrast, the Arduino IDE always recompiles your sketch and all the system libraries it needs. This usually happens very fast on a modern computer, but it is not necessary and in some cases it might be even annoying. Also it’s hard to automate tasks with the IDE. For example, you might have completed a successful project and now you have to transfer the same software to a bunch of Arduinos. In this case you want to compile your program only once and then upload it to as many devices as you like.
In a typical development cycle for an Arduino program you compile the program and upload it to an Arduino board. Then you usually start a serial monitor to see what’s happening. So our perfect Makefile should support the following targets:
all: This is the default target in nearly all Makefiles on this planet and it builds the whole project.
clean: Sometimes it’s good to start from scratch and this target deletes all build artifacts.
upload: Upload the software to an Arduino board and compile it if necessary.
monitor: This target opens a serial monitor and connects it to the Arduino.
upload_monitor: This is a convenience task that uploads a program and opens a serial monitor.
Writing Makefiles isn’t fun, but fortunately Alan Burlison did all the hard work for us already. He created a master Makefile that you can include into your own Makefile, so you only have to adjust some settings. I had to add some minor changes to the master Makefile, and you can download my version (together with all the other code I use in this article) from github.
Let’s see how to actually use make to compile a simple Arduino program.
Hello, world!
One of the simplest Arduino programs possible is the following:
void setup() { Serial.begin(9600); } void loop() { Serial.println("Hello, world!"); delay(1000); }
It initializes the serial port and then it outputs the text “Hello, world!” endlessly in a loop. Here’s our project’s Makefile:
# Your Arduino environment. ARD_REV = 22 ARD_HOME = /Applications/Arduino.app/Contents/Resources/Java AVR_HOME = $(ARD_HOME)/hardware/tools/avr ARD_BIN = $(AVR_HOME)/bin AVRDUDE = $(ARD_BIN)/avrdude AVRDUDE_CONF = $(AVR_HOME)/etc/avrdude.conf # Your favorite serial monitor. MON_CMD = screen MON_SPEED = 9600 # Board settings. BOARD = diecimila PORT = /dev/tty.usbserial-A60061a3 PROGRAMMER = stk500v1 # Where to find header files and libraries. INC_DIRS =./inc LIB_DIRS = $(addprefix $(ARD_HOME)/libraries/, $(LIBS)) LIBS = include../Makefile.master
As you can see you only have to define a few variables: ARD_REV specifies the revision of the Arduino IDE you have installed. Although you no longer have to use the IDE to compile your programs, you still need an installation of the IDE to have all tools and libraries available. ARD_HOME has to point to the IDE’s installation directory.
If your program uses the serial port, set MON_CMD to your favorite serial monitor. Also you should set MON_SPEED to the baud rate you’re using in your program. Unfortunately, serial monitors often differ in their invocation syntax, so you might have to change the master Makefile to get your preferred serial monitor running. Here’s the relevant portion of the master Makefile:
upload : all - pkill -f '$(MON_CMD).*$(PORT)' - sleep 1 - stty -f $(PORT) hupcl - $(AVRDUDE) -V -C$(AVRDUDE_CONF) -p$(MCU) -c$(PROGRAMMER) \ -P$(PORT) -b$(UPLOAD_SPEED) -D -Uflash:w:$(IMAGE).hex:i monitor : $(MON_CMD) $(PORT) $(MON_SPEED)
Adjust the monitor target to your needs and notice that the upload target removes all running serial monitor processes from the process list using pkill. Depending on your UNIX flavor you also might have to change the pkill and stty calls. For example, Mac OS X usually does not have a pkill command, but you can install it. Also stty’s command switch '-f' is named '-F' on Linux systems.
Back to our master Makefile’s configuration. With the BOARD variable you define which type of Arduino board you’re using. You can find a list of all supported boards in hardware/boards.txt in the IDE’s installation directory. PORT contains the name of the serial port you have connected your Arduino to.
Finally you can tell the compiler where to look for header files and libraries using INC_DIRS and LIB_DIRS. With LIBS you can define a set of libraries that should be linked to your project. If you need the libraries for LCD and EEPROM, for example, set LIBS to “LiquidCrystal EEPROM”. You can find many useful libraries in the libraries folder of the IDE’s installation directory.
Don’t forget to include the master Makefile at the end and then run your Makefile for the first time:
maik> make... avr-size build/HelloWorld.hex text data bss dec hex filename 0 2106 0 2106 83a build/HelloWorld.hex
If everything goes fine you will see a lot of output that is very similar to the IDE’s verbose output. In fact it is nearly the same. A major difference is that you will see the output of the avr-size command at the end. This tool tells you how much memory your program will use on the Arduino and it also tells you which parts of the memory it occupies. This can be a helpful debugging aid if you ever use too much memory. And believe me: sooner or later you will!
You might have noticed that we did not specify a target when we invoked make. If you do not specify a target make will run the all target by default. In our case this target builds the whole project. It creates a directory named build in your project’s directory. There you can find all artifacts that make created during the build process. Most files are system files and libraries needed by all Ardunio programs and they do not differ from project to project. Only files starting with “HelloWorld” were built specifically for our project.
All files ending with eep, elf, and lst are binary files that you probably know from other build processes. Only HelloWorld.hex might be new to you and you might wonder where the final executable file like a.out is? The answer is simple: HelloWorld.hex is the final executable. It contains all the data that we will upload to the Arduino.
Now run the upload target and you should see something like this (I’ve shortened some path names for clarity):
maik> make upload pkill -f'screen.*/dev/tty.usbserial-A60061a3' sleep 1 stty -f /dev/tty.usbserial-A60061a3 hupcl avrdude -V -Cavrdude.conf -patmega168 -cstk500v1 -b19200 \ -P/dev/tty.usbserial-A6 -D -Uflash:w:build/HelloWorld.hex:i avrdude: AVR device initialized and ready to accept instructions Reading | ############################################### | 100% 0.02s avrdude: Device signature = 0x1e9406 avrdude: reading input file "build/HelloWorld.hex" avrdude: writing flash (2106 bytes): Writing | ############################################### | 100% 1.60s avrdude: 2106 bytes of flash written avrdude: safemode: Fuses OK avrdude done. Thank you.
Here you can see the avrdude command in action. This tool is responsible for loading code into the Arduino, and you can use it for programming many other devices, too. Study the output carefully to see where make uses our former variable definitions such as PORT.
Finally we should test if our program actually does what it’s supposed to do. Invoke make monitor and your serial monitor should open and print lots of “Hello, world!” messages.
That’s it! You’ve compiled and uploaded your first Arduino program without starting the Arduino IDE. Also you’ve monitored your program’s output from the command line and did not use the IDE’s serial monitor. You’re well prepared for the next steps!
So let’s build a more sophisticated project: a park distance control system. We |
"The current generation of the Long March series mainly consists of small and medium sizes of carrier rockets and the new generation will cover all types and have more technological advancement in terms of its engines and accessories," Song Zhongping, a military expert who used to serve the PLA Rocket Force, told the Global Times.
The current series of Long March rockets has undergone four generations and 17 types, with 12 of them in service and another two under development, the report said.
The rockets have been launched 252 times and have sent 344 spacecraft into orbit, Long explained, adding that the Long March's precision, launch rate and carrier capacity are advanced.
Carrier rockets are expected to carry heavier payloads at a lower cost, Song said, and that the new-generation homemade carrier rockets would make the transition from micro-rockets to heavy rockets, which could attract a broader global market.
China has been developing reusable carrier rocket technologies and is experimenting with vertical landing and parachute landing to reduce costs, China Central Television reported in July.In a bizarre news that makes one wonder whether to cringe in disgust or laugh in mirth, a South American Lungfish reportedly made way into a Brazilian man's anus and used it as a temporary abode. Needless to say, his predicament was further worsened when the big fish refused to come out and had to be surgically removed by a bunch of giggling nurses.
Although it is not known how the giant lungfish that lives in swamps and slow-moving waters found its way deep in to the man's anus, it is understood that it found the place quite comfy and decided to set shop. Realising that he had no choice, but to get the big fish surgically removed by experts, he approached the Hospital Universitário (University Hospital) in Londrina, Brazil, Live Leak reported.
While, the surgical team dealt with the task at hand, they sure weren't professional enough to refrain from laughing at the pain, or rather the giant lungfish, in the man's ass. In fact, during the surgery, which has been immortalised in the form of a video, the nurses can be heard laughing. In particular, a female voice can be heard taking exceptional merriment at the Brazilian man's plight.
Towards the end of the surgery, gasps can be heard as the still alive giant lungfish gets pulled out of the man's bum and many of the onlookers are seen filming the procedure on their phones. The fish was euthanized after getting pulled out.
The unidentified man from Londrina in Brazil and his anus have now become viral sensations, since its appearance on LiveLeak. The video, which is extremely graphic, was initially posted to Best Gore.
Although the news makes an average human shiver in wonder, this is not the first time a fish was lodged in a man's anus. Back in 2013, The Sun had reported that a Chinese man from the south eastern province of Guangdong was admitted to a local hospital after he inserted a live, 20-inch-long eel into his anus. The man, who was trying to recreate a scene from a porn movie he saw, had to undergo an overnight surgery to have the fish extracted.Devoted fans like Luther Washington said Prince's "Rally 4 Peace" concert Sunday was just what Baltimore needed to heal after massive protests shook the city in recent weeks.
Outside Royal Farms Arena, Washington was part of a celebratory crowd of thousands who waited peacefully for the doors to open.
Washington and his wife, Beate — who paid about $200 apiece for floor seats to the show — felt the expensive tickets were worth the price to see the mercurial and unpredictable artist, who pledged a portion of the proceeds would go to Baltimore-based youth charities.
"This city could use a little joy, a little healing; Prince will do that," said Washington, a 44-year-old broadcaster from Odenton. "Music is medicine. People want to reflect a little bit. His message has always been in his lyrics, if you just look deep enough."
Many adhered to the Purple One's request to wear gray "as a symbolic message of our shared humanity and love for one another." But plenty in the audience wore colorful outfits that reflected the full swing of spring — a red strapless dress, T-shirts and cargo shorts, and an L.A. Dodgers jersey.
Prince's "Rally 4 Peace" benefit concert took place at Baltimore's Royal Farms Arena May 10, 2015.
Nikki Harris, a 36-year-old mother of three boys from Baltimore's Northwood neighborhood, said she spent three days crocheting an image of Prince in purple and white yarn on the back of her camouflage jacket. Harris said she participated in a peaceful protest about a week ago as a way to force the city to become a better place to raise her sons.
"I didn't know it was a rally for peace," she said. "When I found out, it only made me happier to come."
The audience spanned a wide range of ages and backgrounds, much like Prince's fanbase. Many were surprised to see Baltimore's State's Attorney Marilyn J. Mosby invited on stage shortly after Prince began to perform around 9 p.m. A spokeswoman for Mosby — an avid Prince fan — said late Sunday the tickets were a Mother's Day gift from her husband, Councilman Nick Mosby.
This city could use a little joy, a little healing; Prince will do that. — Devoted Prince fan Luther Washington
Earlier this month, some applauded Mosby as she announced charges for all six officers involved in the arrest of Freddie Gray. Prosecutors say he died after sustaining a spinal cord injury while in police custody. Mosby has faced criticism about rushing to her decision to charge the officers. Others have accused her of having a conflict of interest. She denies those claims.
Lifelong friends, Catherine Tipton, of Ashburn, Va., and Amy Fanning, of Washington, D.C., said they first bonded over Prince 30 years ago, and they've seen others unite around his music.
"His genre of music is so diverse, and so, too, are his fans," Tipton, 46, said.
Added Fanning, 46, "That's why we weren't nervous to come, because we knew everyone was coming for good reasons."
The two-and-a-half-hour concert — announced on short notice last week — followed a tumultuous time in Baltimore in the weeks since Gray's death. The demand for answers in Gray's death sparked unrest that led to about 150 vehicles being set on fire and 15 buildings burned on a single night in late April.
Noche Diaz joined about a half-dozen protesters who called on those gathered to continue to push for social justice, and handed out literature for the Revolutionary Communist Party. Diaz, who said he moved to West Baltimore from New York City about three weeks ago, said the public pressure is what led to charges against officers involved in Gray's arrest.
"We're here to remind people that just because there are charges, there's not justice," Diaz said. "People can celebrate tonight, but the fight has to continue."
Prince — whose performance was the first time he's played in Baltimore in 14 years — surprised many when he announced the concert and released a song, titled "Baltimore," an upbeat toe-tapping ode to ending police brutality.
He played the song shortly after taking the stage, and invited Mosby to join him, where she waved to the crowd but didn't offer remarks.
The song opens with a cheery "Baltimore" before moving onto heavier lyrics: "Nobody got in nobody's way, so I guess you could say it was a good day, at least a little better than the day in Baltimore. Does anybody hear us pray, for Michael Brown or Freddie Gray? Peace is more than the absence of a war." Portions — such as, "If there aren't no justice than there ain't no peace" — recall the chants heard around the city during the weeks-long peaceful protests.
Prince had previously said he wanted the concert to be a "catalyst for pause and reflection following the outpouring of violence that has gripped Baltimore and areas throughout the U.S."
He made brief remarks from the stage, telling the crowd: "The system is broken. It's going to take the young people to fix it this time. We need new ideas, new life.... The next time I come to Baltimore I want to stay in a hotel owned by you."
As promised, the concert featured special musical guests with rapper Doug E. Fresh and R&B singers Estelle and Miguel joining Prince on stage. Prince delivered many fan favorites with hits, including "When Doves Cry" and "Little Red Corvette."
It's unclear what portion of the tickets — which cost between $22 and $497 before fees — will be donated or to which charities the funds will go.
The first hour of the show was offered for free online on Tidal, the music streaming service backed by entertainment mogul Jay-Z. Tidal committed to match money donated through its website to the "Baltimore Justice Fund." That fund, created by the Open Society Institute-Baltimore, says its mission is to improve police accountability and increase racial justice.
ywenger@baltsun.com
twitter.com/yvonnewenger
wesley.case@baltsun.com
twitter.com/midnightsunblogThe almond paste-filled cream bun stirred up emotions Friday after a bakery in southern Sweden aimed its miniature version of the popular calorie bomb at women, calling the sized-down delight “the girl semla”.
Critics immediately took to social networks to express their outrage, calling it “disgusting” and “sexist”.
“I think this is a good example of how you, without any real intention, still manage to oppress women,” a person who spotted the offending bun in the bakery’s shop window told Swedish daily Sydsvenskan.
The head of the bakery, Ida Kristensson, first tried to defend the choice of name for the miniature bun, but finally gave in to the criticism.
“The name was never meant to encourage or apply guilt (on women), which in itself would have been contradictory seeing we’re running a bakery. But of course I take your well-founded criticism to heart and I apologise. As of tomorrow, our tiny semla will be named ‘the mini semla’,” she wrote on Facebook late Friday evening.Saint Petersburg has always played a key role in connecting Russia to the rest of the World. This was, after all, the city's "raison d'être", the reason it was built from scratch on a swamp by Czar Peter the Great about three hundred years ago.
In a way, airports and aircraft are today what ports and ships where in the times of Peter the Great and, while St.Petersburg might no longer be the main entry point into Russia for foreign travelers (its airport currently ranks third in traffic after Moscow's Domodedovo and Sheremetyevo airports) this idea underlies the new terminal project that is being completed by British architecture firm Grimshaw Architects.
The new terminal, that just opened on December 4th, gets its inspiration from the city's beautiful architecture and emphasizes the airport's role as a place of arrival, as a gateway, as opposed to many airports where the focus is on departures, on the "air side".
The new terminal building has been designed to let in as much natural light as possible, as the architects put it, taking inspiration from the city's golden domes and spires, that reflect the Northern sunlight, as well as in the angular geometry of Soviet architecture and the city's lay-out, spread over many islands on the river Neva.Eid holidays will be from July 5 to July 8
The government on Tuesday announced a four-day holiday for Eidul Fitr across the country, Express News reported.
The interior ministry has issued a notification in this regard. The holidays will be observed from July 5 to July 8, the notification said.
Ministry gears up efforts for one Eid across country
Meanwhile, the Ministry of Religious Affairs has geared up efforts to achieve a consensus so that people can celebrate Eid on the same day throughout the country.
For this purpose it will approach clerics in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (K-P), especially from Masjid Qasim Khan, where the evidence of sighting the moon for Ramazan and Shawwal often contradicts with the findings of the Central Ruet-e-Hilal Committee.
Pakistan Meteorological Department had on Friday said Eidul Fitr will likely be on July 6. The Met Dept said the chances of Eid moon being sighted on July 5 are extremely high. The Eidul Fitr moon will likely be visible in Balochistan’s Jiwani and Pasni coastal lines.
Following the Central Ruet-e-Hilal Committee’s announcement, the first day of Ramazan was observed on Tuesday, June 7, across Pakistan.
Earlier, more than 50 muftis issued a fatwa against Mufti Shahabuddin Popalzai of Masjid Qasim Ali Khan, saying he always announced the start of Ramazan and Eid celebrations a day before the Ruet-i-Hilal Committee.
Eid likely to be on July 6: Met dept
In the presence of the Ruet-i-Hilal Committee, announcing the start of Ramazan or Eid celebrations separately in Peshawar amounted to interference in state affairs, said the clerics.
The country celebrated Eid on three different days in 2014 because the committee and religious scholars from K-P failed to reach a consensus on the sighting of the Shawwal moon.
Read full storyNot to mention the foreign language prerequisite: “You must speak fluent otaku/fujoshi.“
When most people imagine a university class about anime and manga, they probably imagine a laid-back, easy way to snag some college credits. And that makes sense; a course about anime and manga can’t possibly be that hard… can it?
Well, at one unnamed Japanese university, their anime and manga class is serious business. One student tweeted the online syllabus for the anime and manga class, and it’s intense.
▼ The course syllabus. It can’t be that hard, right? (Translation below.)
Course Outline/Methods:
In this course we will look at anime as a subject in film and art, examining trends and analyzing important works from the 2000s, as well as older anime such as Gundam and Evangelion. Other titles we will explore include: Star Driver, Code Geass, Lucky Star, Durarara!!, Monogatari Series, Tiger & Bunny, Penguindrum, and PSYCHO-PASS among others. We will also discuss moe culture, social gaming, fujoshi culture, cosplay, and symbolism in manga. *Notice: This is a class intended for people very familiar with anime and manga. You must speak fluent otaku/fujoshi in order to attend. Class/Educational Goals:
To be able to analyze and comprehend anime on a variety of different levels. Grading/Evaluation Criteria:
Reports: 50%
Exams: 50% Extracurricular Requirements:
#1. You must watch 20 or more anime episodes per week, typically late into the night.
#2. You must read 10 or more books per month, including the reference materials assigned in class which you either purchase or borrow from the library
#3. You must have current or past experience with “visual culture” (film, art, etc.).
#4. You must be able to use the internet and social media. *Notice: Requirement #1 is a prerequisite for the class.
Yikes! I don’t know about you, but I when I started reading that, I thought this would be an “easy A” class. Then my eyes grew wider with despair the further I got down. Fluent in otaku/fujoshi? 20 episodes per week?! Is this a college class or anime bootcamp?
And for those who think 20 episodes per week isn’t that bad, keep in mind that these aren’t all 20–30- minute episodes. Some of them can get up to an hour long each, and that’s only for the first watch through. Since the class requires students to analyze the shows, certain episodes will probably have to be rewatched several times, turning a once-pleasurable activity into potential torture.
Here’s how Japanese netizens reacted to seeing such an intense anime course:
“Man, I really want to take that class!”
“Wait… 20 anime per week? That’s almost three episodes every day!”
“What a grueling pace. Are they training for the anime olympics or something?”
“Hey, this isn’t supposed to be fun. It’s school!”
“Pfft, I watch over 30 per week. I’d get an A+ easily.”
As funny as it may sound, anime/manga classes are popping up more and more at universities all over the world. Taiwan’s prestigious Cheng Chi Univeristy offers a manga course that thousands apply for each year, and Japan’s Senshu University has a class specifically focused on boy’s love.
At this point it feels like it’s only a matter of time before universities eventually offer degrees specializing in manga/anime. Although we’re not exactly sure what you could you do with that major after graduation besides becoming an incredibly knowledgeable yet incredibly unemployable hikikomori.
Source: Twitter/@ne__fu (deleted) via My Game News Flash
Featured/top image: quickmeme"Donald Trump can make fun of the injury that crushed the side of my face and took the sight in my right eye all he wants -- I've dealt with tougher opponents than him," Sen. Harry Reid said. | Getty POLITICO Playbook Exclusive: Reid hits back at Trump
Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid punched right back at Donald Trump for poking fun at his grisly eye injury, calling the GOP presidential nominee a "con artist" and rapping Republican leaders for not getting answers from the New York billionaire.
"Donald Trump can make fun of the injury that crushed the side of my face and took the sight in my right eye all he wants -- I've dealt with tougher opponents than him," Reid said in a statement to POLITICO Thursday night. "I may not be able to see out of my right eye, but with my good eye, I can see that Trump is a man who inherited his money and spent his entire life pretending like he earned it. In Searchlight, we learned a thing or two about hard work that Trump may not have learned at his boarding school."
Story Continued Below
This is the second cycle in a row that Reid (D-Nev.) has engaged in nearly daily hand-to-hand combat with the Republican nominee. In 2012, Reid floated rumors that Mitt Romney failed to pay any income tax -- genteel stuff compared to his war with Trump. Reid is retiring in January after 33 years in Congress.
Reid was responding to a Washington Post story Thursday night, in which Trump said "Harry Reid? I think he should go back and start working out again with his rubber work-out pieces." Trump was asked what he thought about the rail-thin Reid saying the real-estate mogul was "not slim and trim."
Of course, Reid relishes these battles. He has been a top attack dog for Barack Obama, and now, with 53 days until the election, he's stepping up his game for his former Senate colleague, Hillary Clinton.
Harry Reid: 'Trump is a human leech' poster="http://v.politico.com/images/1155968404/201609/3496/1155968404_5126666427001_5126657070001-vs.jpg?pubId=1155968404" true
"Trump rips off working people with scams like Trump University," Reid said. "And while the people he ripped off suffer, Trump sits at the posh resort he bought with his daddy's money, with no understanding of the misery he caused. Now, Trump's business interests in foreign countries and his Ponzi-scheme fraud of a 'charity' make clear that Trump intends to scam all of America just like he rips off hard-working people. Trump can insult me all he wants but the American people deserve answers to these questions: Why did Trump appear to use his charity to enrich himself and bribe elected officials who were investigating his scams? Why does Trump refuse to cut ties with business interests that would allow him to exploit American foreign policy to enrich himself? What is Trump hiding in his tax returns?"
He added, "We know how to spot a con artist in Las Vegas. And Donald Trump is a con artist.”
**SUBSCRIBE to POLITICO Playbook: http://politi.co/1M75UbXThis is me blatantly showing off, I apologize for nothing, especially not posting in multiple threadsBEHOLD MEGADORF™FUN FACTS ABOUT THE MEGADORF™:*The MEGADORF™ stands 72 zlevels tall*The MEGADORF™ has the ability to drink and piss water or magma(but not both at once).*The MEGADORF™ has room for over 300 dwarves if the rooms were constructed and could easily be self supported out of the farming area in the beard(if someone bothered to irrigate more of it).*The MEGADORF™ has pump stacks reaching down to a cavern lake and the magma sea which require around 1.5k power which is supplied by ground level windfarm.*The MEGADORF™ required over 45k blocks, 7k raw stone, and 5k metal bars to build.*The MEGADORF™ was carved by someone with no artistic talent or experience in three dimensional modeling.*The MEGADORF™ claimed 65 dwarf lives in its construction and in excess of 200 pet lives.The Broncos on Tuesday signed offensive lineman Antonio Johnson to their practice squad and released outside linebacker Danny Mason.
Johnson, a 6-foot-5, 310-pound undrafted rookie from North Texas, spent the offseason and training camp with the Saints, but was released in the first round of roster cuts. He went on to spend two days on the Steelers’ practice squad in early September before being cut.
The Broncos signed Mason, a rookie from Texas A&M-Commerce, to a future contract in January and he played in two preseason games — at Seattle and at Houston. He was released in September when they had to trim the roster to 75 players. Mason was re-signed to the practice squad five days later.
In other news, former Colorado State-Pueblo linebacker Chase Vaughn signed with the Winnipeg Blue Bombers of the Canadian Football League. He was in camp with the Broncos the past two years.
Nicki Jhabvala: njhabvala@denverpost.com or @NickiJhabvalaThe race between Republican Karen Handel and Democrat Jon Ossoff is heating up ahead of the June 20th special election for Georgia's 6th district.
A new poll of 745 likely voters released Friday by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution shows Ossoff with a larger-than-expected seven-point lead.
He’s capturing about 13 percent of Republican voters and 50 percent of independents – a crucial voting bloc that leans to the right in the state. It shows almost no crossover on the flip side; only 3 percent of Democrats say they’re backing Handel. Ossoff gets support from 44 percent of white voters, a big number for a Democrat in Georgia.
According to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Ossoff is leading among female voters 60% to 34%, while Handel has male voters, 52% to 41%.
The poll was conducted June 5-8, and has a margin of error of 4%. Additionally, 5% of those polled had not yet decided on a candidate.
Let's look at a slightly broader picture, however.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports that early voting in the runoff election has been surprisingly strong:
Almost 63,000 people had already voted in the contest by Wednesday morning, easily surpassing the first round of early voting in April when about 55,000 people cast ballots.
Most of this early voting took place prior to the new poll, where Ossoff has gotten a bump.
Another poll released Thursday, conducted by WSB, Landmark Communications, has Handel under Ossoff by just 2.5% (49.6% - 47.1%). The poll features an admittedly smaller sample size of 420, and a margin of error of 4.78%. 3.3% of voters were undecided in that poll.
The sparse polling has had Ossoff in some kind of lead since the beginning of May:
According to CNN, this is the "most expensive House race in history," with both sides having raised a combined total of nearly $40 million.Note: We’ve since cleaned up this code, added view options and released it as a cheap plugin on the Unity Asset Store.
Working on the content tools for our current project I needed enum flags, unfortunately the Unity Editor doesn’t natively support those. Looking around I found a few implementations of enum flags as dropdowns similar to the layer mask dropdown in Unity itself. While that’s pretty neat it has the disadvantage that you don’t have a quick overview over which flags are on and which are off. To that end I’ve built a new custom PropertyDrawer that displays EnumFlags as a neat row of toggle buttons:
All you need is two scripts and an attribute. Also note that your enum needs to start with 1, not 0 and that each value needs to be a power of two (1, 2, 4, 8 etc.)
And here’s the code:
EnumFlagAttribute.cs
This file needs to go in a regular scripts folder (not Editor!). It creates the [EnumFlags] attribute.
using UnityEngine; public class EnumFlagAttribute : PropertyAttribute { public EnumFlagAttribute() {} }
EnumFlagDrawer.cs
This one goes into an Editor folder. It manages the display of fields that have the [EnumFlags] attribute.
using System; using UnityEditor; using UnityEngine; [CustomPropertyDrawer(typeof(EnumFlagAttribute))] public class EnumFlagsAttributeDrawer : PropertyDrawer { public override void OnGUI(Rect _position, SerializedProperty _property, GUIContent _label) { int buttonsIntValue = 0; int enumLength = _property.enumNames.Length; bool[] buttonPressed = new bool[enumLength]; float buttonWidth = (_position.width - EditorGUIUtility.labelWidth) / enumLength; EditorGUI.LabelField(new Rect(_position.x, _position.y, EditorGUIUtility.labelWidth, _position.height), _label); EditorGUI.BeginChangeCheck (); for (int i = 0; i < enumLength; i++) { // Check if the button is/was pressed if ( ( _property.intValue & (1 << i) ) == 1 << i ) { buttonPressed[i] = true; } Rect buttonPos = new Rect (_position.x + EditorGUIUtility.labelWidth + buttonWidth * i, _position.y, buttonWidth, _position.height); buttonPressed[i] = GUI.Toggle(buttonPos, buttonPressed[i], _property.enumNames[i], "Button"); if (buttonPressed[i]) buttonsIntValue += 1 << i; } if (EditorGUI.EndChangeCheck()) { _property.intValue = buttonsIntValue; } } }
I hope you enjoy it. And if you’ve got comments or ideas, let me know!
– Martin
Update: Note about the Unity Asset Store release of an updated version of this code added.The death of former British Prime Minister Margret Thatcher has sent ‘Ding Dong The Witch Is Dead’ spirally back into the UK chart.12 hours after the death of the ‘Iron Lady’ was made public the classic ‘Wizard of Oz’ song ‘Ding Dong The Witch Is Dead’ has become one of the biggest selling songs in the UK today.The song was composed by Harold Arlen with lyrics by E.Y. Harburg in 1939 for ‘The Wizard of Oz’ and first recorded by Billie Burke and Judy Garland for the movie.Arlen also recorded a version of his song with Barbra Streisand in 1966. It was included on Barbra’s 2002 ‘Duets’ album.The Fifth Estate had the biggest cover-version of the song in 1967.In 2000, British band Hefner used a piece of ‘Ding Dong The Witch Is Dead’ on the end of their song ‘The Day That Thatcher Dies’.The Judy Garland version of the song has climbed to no. 27 on the UK iTunes chart today.More from Noise11.comFormer WBO heavyweight champion Tommy Morrison died in an Omaha, Neb., hospital late Sunday night. He was 44.
Morrison's longtime promoter, Tony Holden, said Morrison died at 11:50 p.m. with his wife, Trisha, beside him.
Morrison tested positive for HIV in 1996 before a fight with Arthur Weathers, effectively ending his boxing career. In the years that followed, he denied having HIV and also challenged the existence of the virus.
Trisha Morrison, who married Morrison in 2011, picked up that fight, and in a recent interview with ESPN.com insisted that Morrison had Guillain-Barre Syndrome, not HIV.
Holden declined to comment Monday on the cause of Morrison's death.
"I don't know what the official cause of death at the hospital will be," he said.
"You prepare for things like this, and still you feel like you got hit by a truck when you hear the news."
Tommy Morrison in April 2011 at an event in Parsippany, N.J. Bobby Bank/Getty Images
In 1993, Morrison beat George Foreman to win the WBO heavyweight title, only to lose it to unheralded Michael Bentt in a defeat that scuttled a showdown with Lennox Lewis. Morrison would fight Lewis in 1995, getting knocked out in the sixth round in Atlantic City, N.J.
Morrison won his first 28 professional fights, beating faded champions such as Pinklon Thomas along the way. His career reached its apex in the summer of 1993 with the unanimous decision over Foreman, then in the midst of a comeback, to claim a vacant title.
Morrison's license was quickly suspended in 1996 by Nevada after his positive HIV test, and the ban was, in effect, upheld by every other sanctioning body. Morrison said at a news conference he'd never fight again, blaming his plight on a "permissive, fast and reckless lifestyle.''
His lifestyle never changed, though, even when he stepped away from the ring.
He had already run afoul of the law in 1993, when he pleaded guilty to assaulting a college student. He also dealt with weapons charges and multiple DUI incidents over the years. He was sentenced to two years in prison in 2000, and another year was added to his sentence in 2002 for violating parole.
When he was released, Morrison said his HIV tests had resulted in false positives, and he wanted to resume his career. He passed medical tests in Arizona -- even as Nevada stood by its decision -- and returned to the ring. Morrison fought twice more in his career, winning once in West Virginia and for the final time in Mexico. He finished with a record of 48-3-1 with 42 knockouts.
He also gained fame for his role in the 1990 movie "Rocky V," in which he portrayed Tommy Gunn, a rookie boxer who is trained by Rocky Balboa (Sylvester Stallone). Gunn goes on to win the heavyweight title and then later fights and loses to his mentor.
Morrison was born in Arkansas and grew up in Oklahoma.
Information from The Associated Press was used in this report.When Chris Ballard was hired by the Indianapolis Colts earlier this offseason, the move was almost universally praised. One of the things that many people pointed out was that Ballard will likely put together a very good scouting staff in Indy, which is a big benefit.
That obviously hasn’t happened yet, but there’s already talk about who Ballard might bring in. CBS Sports’ Jason La Canfora recently wrote a piece in which he updated some of the rumblings about the Colts’ scouting department.
The first thing that La Canfora noted in relation to the Colts was that it’s unclear whether these changes will happen right away:
The Bills and 49ers are both interested in bolstering their front offices following a regime change. It remains to be seen how many execs can be brought in, and leagues sources indicated the Colts may have to essentially stick with much of their scouting core for another year with that personnel still being under contract.
La Canfora then mentioned a few people of interest to keep an eye on for the Colts, guys who Chris Ballard apparantly could be looking to bring in:
But league sources indicated that new Colts GM Chris Ballard is very bullish on bringing in Seattle executive Ed Dodds. The Seahawks senior personnel consultant is an uber-scout who would be in line for a promotion with the Colts and industry sources would be surprised if that doesn’t go down. Ballard is also very high on Rex Hogan, the Jets’ director of college scouting, but he has time on his contract remaining and might not be as available. Ballard would be wise to reunite with several of the personnel men he was with back in his early days with the Chicago Bears, and one of them, Morocco Brown, could also be under consideration with the 49ers.
It sounds like the most certain of all of those possibilities could be Ed Dodds, as La Canfora says that people would be surprised if he doesn’t wind up with the Colts. He’s currently a national scout and senior personnel executive with the Seahawks, though it’s unclear what role he would take on with the Colts if he were hired. There are other names to keep an eye on too, such as Rex Hogan and Morocco Brown, and I’m sure there are other guys that Chris Ballard is interested in too.
It’s widely expected that Ballard will begin to make changes to his scouting and personnel department after the draft, and it’s entirely possible that some of the names mentioned by La Canfora are a part of that. But it’s also possible that some of the guys currently with the Colts will stick around, too.
Ballard hasn’t made changes yet because this isn’t the time of year to do so - since in January and February scouts are very much in the midst of the draft process changes aren’t typically made then but rather after the draft. So that’s why Ballard hasn’t made changes yet, but it also gives him the chance to get to know the scouts already with the Colts and evaluate them to see which ones are worth keeping around.
Regardless of how many of the team’s current scouts and personnel guys are kept around (the most notable personnel guy is Jimmy Raye, the team’s VP of Football Operations), there will still likely be at least some changes made as Ballard looks to retool his scouting department. That factor has been praised as a big plus for hiring the GM, and we’ll likely see that begin this offseason after the draft. We now have a few names to keep an eye on in connection to the Colts in this regard.Photo credit: Gage Skidmore via Flickr/CC BY
Texas Governor Rick Perry is indeed, as many news outlet have noted, "coming out swinging" in the presidential primaries. He's already called for a moratorium on all regulations, blasted the chairman of the Federal Reserve as "treasonous", and, now, he's stating outright that he believes global warming is a hoax stirred up by scientists who "manipulated data".
That's right, folks. It is officially now acceptable for a mainstream presidential candidate -- and a potential frontrunner by many counts -- to deny a scientific body of evidence unequivocally agreed upon by the nation's, and the world's, science institutions. It is now acceptable to put bizarre conspiracy theories ahead of science itself. Here's the Associated Press:
Rick Perry says he does not believe in global warming. The newest Republican presidential candidate also says he would not have signed the debt-ceiling compromise brokered by Republicans and Democrats. The Texas governor made the comments as he launched a two-day New Hampshire campaign tour. He was speaking at a packed breakfast event with business leaders Wednesday. Perry said global warming is based on scientists manipulating data. He said he wouldn't devote federal resources to battling the environmental concern.
Now, I realize this isn't news, insofar as it concerns Perry's beliefs. He has long denied the science of climate change, often vocally so. But it marks a new chapter -- a new low, really -- for what is, any way you cut it, an extremist, conspiratorial view: that conniving, greed-stricken scientists have concocted a nefarious plot to convince the world that global warming is real. This is literally what Rick Perry believes, and it was once relegated to the fringe.
Compare that to Mitt Romney or John Huntsman, who say that they accept that climate change is real, but won't take action to address it. But Perry joins a growing list of increasingly mainstream candidates who hold extreme views about climate that aren't anchored in reality: Michele Bachmann is a famous climate naysayer, and Ron Paul has also described global warming as a hoax.
The fact is, extreme, evidence-free denial of climate change is ebbing into the mainstream right now, primarily because high-profile politicians and pundits are repeating climate misinformation like a mantra. Gone are the days when politicians needed to feign an understanding of climate issues, and to merely sow doubt as to whether action was needed. Gone are the days of Luntz and his memos. Remember, the U.S. Republican party is still the only major political party in the world that denies climate change. Today we face a rising tide of mindless reactionaries for whom climate denial is deeply and unshakably ideologically ingrained. And Rick Perry is now leading the charge.
More on Climate Denial
Dick Cheney Ushered in Era of GOP Climate Denial : NY Times...
Why Are The Republicans The World's Only Major Political Party...Three simple ways to inspect a Webpack bundle
Jannik Hell Blocked Unblock Follow Following Jan 25, 2017
Webpack is a module bundler which means that it bundles together all of your JavaScript files to one or multiple files commonly named bundle.js.
To inspect this bundle in terms of file size and composition there are three tools I find very helpful.
Webpack Visualizer
I use Webpack Visualizer pretty heavily. It gives you a nice visual overview about the parts of your bundle.
Webpack Visualizer takes a webpack-stats.json file that Webpack generates with the following command:
webpack --profile --json > webpack-stats.json
Drag & Drop this file into the Webpack Visualizer site to get the following result:
Webpack Visualizer output
Webpack Analyzer
The Webpack Analyzer gives you a more comprehensive analysis of your bundle.
It draws a graph of all dependent modules in your application which is awesome for projects with less dependencies. Graphs of projects with a lot of dependencies seems eventually more confusing than meaningful to me.
Module dependency graph in Webpack Analyzer
It also shows descriptive warnings and errors of your Webpack build as well as hints how to optimize your Webpack build.
Webpack Analyzer takes a webpack-stats.json file that Webpack generates with the following command:
webpack --profile --json > webpack-stats.json
When you upload or Drag & Drop this file into the Webpack Analyzer you’ll get the following |
" are very useful for finding that information. For example, the link en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Researching_with_Wikipedia&oldid=101425275 is for a specific version of this page created at 22:13 on 17 January 2007; 101425275 is the article version number. The link will display the article as it existed at that time; no later revisions will be included in the text.
Wikipedia:Wikipedia as an academic source pages contains examples of academic publications that used Wikipedia as a source.
Further help
Frequently asked questions (FAQ)
FAQ index: Index of all Wikipedia FAQ pages
Other help and feedback
There is an established escalation and dispute process within Wikipedia, as well as pages designed for raising questions, feedback, suggestions and comments, and community discussion. (See About Wikipedia).
Facilities for help for users researching specific topics can be found at:
Wikipedia:Requested articles—to suggest or request articles for future.
Wikipedia:Reference desk—to ask for help with any questions, or in finding specific facts.
Wikipedia:Help desk—Wikipedia's general help desk, if other pages haven't answered your query.
Because of the nature of Wikipedia, it's encouraged that people looking for information should try to find it themselves in the first instance. If, however, you come across valid information missing from Wikipedia, be bold and add it yourself so others can gain from your research, too!
See alsoFrom B List to B+
In November of 2010, the USA network announced that they were going to make a prequel movie to accompany their hit series Burn Notice in the spring of 2011. I am a fan of the show, well mostly I’m a fan of any show that has to do with spies, explosions or yogurt, but the thing that really sparked my interest about this movie was that it would focus on the character Sam Axe, who is portrayed by Bruce Campbell.
I was overcome by a sense of pride. It felt like all of the years I have been rooting for the underdog of actors and now the mainstream finally seems to have taken a liking to him, too. He has been a member of the cast since the show’s inception and the character he plays exudes all of the characteristics that make any of Campbell’s characters memorable. He is charismatic and charming but always with that evil twinkle in the eye that begs the question, “What’s he really up to?” Campbell’s characters radiate a smarminess that is rather unique to his work. This makes him a great character actor and it is always nice to see someone do well – that is if you like the person. Bruce Campbell captured my heart with the Evil Dead films and I have been rooting for him (well, for his career) ever since. Thinking about this prompted me to compile a list of reasons why Bruce Campbell is awesome.
#5 He writes books which are funny and self deprecating. They are also strangely informative. In his book If Chins Could Kill, he gave up the fake blood recipe that they used in Evil Dead. Thank you, Bruce, for some great (and certainly offensive) Halloween costumes (not to mention all of my stained clothing).
#4 He doesn’t take himself too seriously. I mean, the man was in an Old Spice commercial and made a movie called The Man With the Screaming Brain.
#3 He is super approachable and will talk to you about anything. Once Charles Moran inquired of Mr. Campbell about his feelings on hot dogs at a book signing which prompted a conversation about baseball games. The entire Q&A was full of odd and eccentric questions which were answered in a light and humorous way. He really knows how to work his audience.
#2 He made it cool for dudes to use the word “groovy!” Basically what I am talking about is with enough charisma and confidence you can say whatever you like.
And the #1 reason I think Bruce Campbell is awesome….
Bruce Campbell taught many of the men of my generation how to be a dude! “You see this, this is my boomstick!” or “First you wanna kill me, now you wanna kiss me. Blow.” Enough said. He taught them how to be a bit more…sleazy. I mean that in a good way. Not all girls want a clingy John Cusack at their window blasting Peter Gabriel after being repeatedly asked to go away.
It’s called a restraining order.
And for that I thank you, Mr. Campbell!Nigel Farage confidently declared yesterday that he was “certain” the Highlands would elect one Ukip MSP next month – and that the party was “pushing close” for two.
The party leader highlighted the region’s “history of Euroscepticism” as he took to the campaign trail in Inverness city centre.
The anti-EU party has installed its controversial Scottish leader David Coburn, who has hit the headlines this week after being labelled “gaffe-prone” in a letter signed by 10 members, at the top of its Highland list.
Mr Farage brushed off the criticism of Mr Coburn yesterday, however, saying: “It’s a group of people whose names you’ve never heard of, who are disappointed they haven’t found themselves in winnable positions.
“Petty jealousy happens in all walks of life. It’s irrelevant.”
The pair received a mixed response as they spent about an hour speaking to voters at the sun-kissed Eastgate end of the Highland capital’s High Street.
Mr Farage posed for “selfies” and was hailed as “the only one who will tell the truth” by backers – but was heckled by others, including one man who said: “Away you go guys, disappear”.
A couple of Scottish independence supporters attempted to gatecrash the party, waving a large “Yes” flag above Mr Farage, before a Ukip activist grabbed it and ran away.
Mr Farage told the Press and Journal he believed many in the Highlands backed his goal of Britain quitting the European Union, known as “Brexit”.
He said: “One of the difficulties in Scotland is that there are so few voices in favour of Brexit among the political class.
“Amongst the Scottish population, actually there’s quite a lot of people who favour Brexit, and actually in the Highlands and islands, the fishing communities etcetera, there are some very strong feelings on this issue.
“The Highlands has a history of Euroscepticism. Don’t forget in ’75, Orkney and Shetland was the only part of the UK that voted to come out. Again, that was fisheries then and it’s fisheries again in spades now, isn’t it, given what’s happened.”
The Ukip leader believed Mr Coburn would soon be representing the area at Holyrood, and that he would not be the only one.
He said: “Actually, having somebody with David’s profile here, I think we can get two here. I do, just looking at the numbers.
“One opinion poll that said we could get seven seats. Things look pretty hopeful here, pushing close up on two. So let’s see.
“One, I’m certain we’re going to do, and if we get two, I’d be thrilled.”Japanese designer Kosho Tsuboi has created a concept epaper calendar he calls the Magic Calendar which syncs with a smartphone. The calendar was designed as part of Google's Japanese Android Experiments, where ideas are submitted to improve the convenience of our lives.
Magic Calendar is a device shaped like an idea according to Tsuboi. "What if there is a calendar that combines the merit of both paper and smartphone?" With a paper calendar, schedules are written by hand and the calendar is always available and easy to view. Meanwhile, the calendar on a smartphone provides easier schedule management, but you have to take out the smartphone every time you need it, unlock it and launch the application.
When installing a dedicated Android smartphone application, pairing a smartphone and Magic Calendar allows your schedule to appear on the surface of Magic Calendar. Since Magic Calendar uses high-definition electronic paper which requires little electricity, it will be able to be used for three months with one charge.
The designer says "I want to make existence like "intermediate between paper and device". I conceived Magic Calendar as one form of the future where the Internet dissolves in every substance of daily life."
The Magic Calendar will be further developed although there are no details yet of commercial availability. The current version uses a low reflection display, but will continue to be developed so that it can be brought closer to the texture of paper when high-definition electronic paper can be used in the future. The calendar syncs to Google Calendar to allow constant updating of the paper-like calendar, providing both technology and the old-style feel of a paper calendar hanging on a wall.
Source and top image: Android Experiments OBJECTHousing conditions and human presence have been shown to have an influence on daily amount of activity in herbivores. Only few studies on the behavior of cats and interactions between cat and human were conducted, and these few works are referred to cats housed in laboratories. At the same way, only few and conflicting reports about the presence of circadian rhythms in cats are present. In view of this incomplete literature, the main aim of our study was to investigate the influence of different housing conditions on daily rhythm of total locomotor activity (TLA) in cats.
For this purpose, 10 clinically healthy adult domestic cats were used. They were divided into 2 equal groups living with their owner in their home. Group A lived in 80-100 m2 house and had free daily access to 20-40 m2 garden from 08:00 to 9:00. Group B lived in 200-250 m2 house, had free access to 2000-2500 m2 garden all day, and from 21:00 to 08:00 they were kept outside. Our results showed that in group A, that live in strong symbiosis with owners respect to group B, the amount of activity was higher during the photophase. This supporting the view that domestic cats adapt their lifestyle with their owners. Group B exhibited the highest level of locomotor activity during the scotophase. Moreover, a robust daily rhythmicity of TLA was observed in group B; on the contrary, in group A, TLA showed no daily rhythmicity. Our findings underline the high influence of human presence and care on the amount of activity and daily rhythm in cats.Published online 3 September 2008 | Nature | doi:10.1038/news.2008.1077
News
Gas can be stored in dry water
'Dry water' looks like a powder - but a quick squeeze is enough to release the fluid. A. Cooper et al / ACS
Methane and natural gas are usually shipped around in pressurized pipelines and canisters. But chemists have now developed a new way to transport the gases: as a powder.
Andrew Cooper and his colleagues at the University of Liverpool, UK, have found that they can trap methane in a bizarre material dubbed 'dry water', a mixture of silica and water that looks and acts like a fine white powder1. The methane reacts with the water to produce a crystalline material called methane gas hydrate, in which individual methane molecules sit inside ice-like cages of water molecules.
In principle, this could offer a way to store methane conveniently for use as a vehicle fuel. Methane-powered vehicles produce less pollution than those running off petroleum fuels.
“It looks like a powder, but if you wipe it on your skin, it smears and feels cold.” Andrew Cooper
University of Liverpool, UK
Natural gas is mostly methane, and so the new material could even be used as an alternative to pipelines to ship it from gas fields. "This is a very important issue", says E. Dendy Sloan, a specialist in natural hydrates at the Colorado School of Mines in Golden, who was not connected with the research. About 70% of the world's natural-gas stores, says Sloan, are in small, remote reservoirs from which it is not economical to run a pipeline.
The paradox of dry water
Methane gas hydrate forms naturally when water is mixed with methane at high pressure and low temperature. Huge deposits of the crystalline substance exist in the deep sea, where they could provide vast fuel reserves. But rising global temperatures increase the chances of the hydrate decomposing, releasing the greenhouse gas and accelerating further warming. This mechanism has been proposed as a cause of dramatic environmental change in the distant past.
Using methane gas hydrate as a kind of'solid methane' for storage and transport has been mooted before. The Japanese company Mitsui Engineering and Shipbuilding has a pilot project for producing natural-gas hydrates on board ships that would then transport the gas from remote marine deposits — and using some of the stored gas to power the ships themselves.
The problem is that the hydrate forms only under cold, pressurized conditions, and then very slowly. Typically, a skin of the material forms at the surface of water and prevents further growth. The formation rate can be speeded up by vigorously mixing the gas with water, but that is costly and cumbersome.
Cooper and his colleagues have got round this problem by finding a way to break the water up into many tiny, stable droplets, massively increasing the surface area in contact with gas. They do this by converting water to 'dry water' by stirring it up with a special form of silica, called hydrophobic fumed silica.
This consists of tiny grains of silica – the same basic material as sand – coated with a chemical layer that makes them water-repellent. The silica particles cover the surface of water droplets and stop them from coalescing.
"If you've ever seen water drops in dry dust, it's the same thing", says Cooper. "They form a ball with the dust on the surface." The resulting 'dry water' is a very odd substance. "It looks like a powder", says Cooper, "but if you wipe it on your skin, it smears and feels cold" as the water is released.
The researchers found that their powder soaks up large quantities of methane at water's normal freezing point, producing crystalline methane gas hydrate within the silica-coated drops. A litre of methane gas can be stored in about 6 grammes of the material. This storage capacity, they say, is very close to the target set by the US Department of Energy for such materials, and compares well with that of other candidate storage media.
And crucially, it is made from cheap raw materials, helping to make this method economical relative to other, more exotic potential methane-capture materials such as designed molecular frameworks2.
Cool it down, whizz it up
But there remain many obstacles to making this a viable industrial process. For one thing, the hydrate remains stable only if kept cold. It must be refrigerated to about minus 70°C at atmospheric pressure, although this temperature threshold is higher if the hydrate sits within an environment of pressurized methane. The methane is released again if the material warms up.
Cooper says that, by using salts dissolved in water, his group has recently developed hydrates that remain stable at room temperature. But it's hard to make stable 'dry water' from this mixture. That's the next step, which Cooper admits is "very difficult".
Another problem is that the droplets start to coalesce and therefore react more slowly with methane after several cycles of gas uptake and release. But the original fine powder can be regenerated by whizzing the mixture again in a blender — handy, but not if it has to be done too regularly.
"In general with gas storage, it's difficult to hit all the targets at once", says Cooper, adding that "we're not anywhere close to working out the economics of this method yet".There will be no bridges being built in Philadelphia during the Democratic National Convention this year. Instead, a four-mile wide, eight foot tall border wall will surround the compound to prevent commoners from entering the premises.
Worried abt th fence Trump will erect?Welcome 2 th Dem's fence in Philly! pic.twitter.com/Z46wWBnBVp — #StillNeverHillary (@BKrab1) July 24, 2016
The familiar temporary 8 foot high security fence up again,from Broad&Pattison down to 95 ramps for DNC @FOX29philly pic.twitter.com/3LXOzf8ncX — Steve Keeley (@KeeleyFox29) July 20, 2016
DNC Builds fence to protect themselves for 4 days. Call Trump Racist for border fence plan to protect Americans. pic.twitter.com/oSAdDMjeTg — Family for Trump (@TheresaMechele) July 25, 2016
Surely this will keep out the thousands of angry Bernie Sanders supporters who feel as though the system was rigged against them since the beginning.LUCKNOW: Making mockery of the public health system in Uttar Pradesh, driver of a surgeon was seen assisting during a surgery in a government hospital in Fatehpur district on Sunday evening. That's not all. He was assisting a private surgeon not authorised to work in a government hospital. The patient's attendants were made to pay Rs 4,000 for a surgical procedure that is provided free in government hospitals. A preliminary probe by the chief medical officer has found the allegations prima facie true.The patient- 65-year-old Radhey Lal- was suffering from prostate problem and required surgery. He was admitted under Dr DK Verma who operated on the patient on Sunday morning before going on leave. Later the patient felt uneasiness and Dr SN Gupta, who was on duty, found him with abdominal distention and obstructed urine passage.The patient was taken for a second surgical procedure by Dr Gupta when a private doctor, Dr RN Tripathi, joined him. A few minutes later, Dr Verma's driver went into the operation theatre. Peeping into the OT, the family members found the driver assisting the private doctor.As they raised an alarm, attendants of patients along with media persons barged into the OT. Acting on the reports by the local media, district magistrate Abhay asked chief medical officer (CMO) Dr KL Verma to probe the allegations. Additional CMO, Dr RS Sachan found the allegations prima facie true."We found a private doctor was present and many witnesses confirmed presence of the driver inside the OT. The patient's family members also claimed they had paid Rs 4,000 for the surgery. Dr Gupta failed to convincingly answer certain queries," Dr Sachan told TOI.The CMO said the final report would be prepared once the statement of the primary surgeon - Dr DK Verma- is recorded. "He is on leave and has expressed inability to come. Till we get his side of the story, we cannot submit the final report. Chief medical superintendent of the hospital is away and has been admitted to a hospital after an accident," he said.Both the CMO and additional CMO said Dr Verma should not have taken up the surgery since he was going on leave.This is not for the first time such a lapse has come to light in UP. In July, a 24-year-old man died in the district hospital in Ambedkarnagar after being administered an injection by a ward boy. In Bulandshahr too, sweepers, ward boys and pharmacists were seen earlier attending to accident victims.Principal secretary (health) Pravir Kumar said appropriate action would be taken against the doctors if they are found guilty.Feds Say It's Classified Info To Say Who We're At War With
from the why,-we've-always-been-at-war-with-eurasia dept
At a hearing in May, Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., asked the Defense Department to provide him with a current list of Al Qaeda affiliates.
The Pentagon responded – but Levin’s office told ProPublica they aren’t allowed to share it. Kathleen Long, a spokeswoman for Levin, would say only that the department’s “answer included the information requested.”
Jack Goldsmith, a professor at Harvard Law who served as a legal counsel during the Bush administration and has written [6] on this question [7] at length, told ProPublica that the Pentagon’s reasoning for keeping the affiliates secret seems weak. “If the organizations are ‘inflated’ enough to be targeted with military force, why cannot they be mentioned publicly?” Goldsmith said. He added that there is “a countervailing very important interest in the public knowing who the government is fighting against in its name."
Back in May, we noted the oddity of the charges in Bradley Manning's trial, in which he was accused of aiding three different "enemies," with the last one being. Specifically, he was accused of aiding Al-Qaida, Al-Qaida of the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP, which is different than AQ itself) and... mystery enemy. Back at the beginning of July, the government quietly dropped the charge against the classified enemy, so that's no longer in play in that case. That said, apparently this concept of classifying who we're at war with wasn't just limited to the Manning trial. ProPublica has the ridiculous and frightening tale of finding out that the answer to the simple question of who the US is at war with, is apparently classified as well The Pentagon also went on to tell ProPublica that revealing who we're actually at war with would do "serious damage to national security." The main reason? They think those groups would use the info asand allow them to recruit more. But that's ridiculous, since those groups are alreadyby the US:It really goes beyond that when you think about it. This lack of transparency out of some silly fear that these groups would use it to build up their own reputation is just wacky. It leaves open suchloopholes for abuse by the government.Every time we talk about things like this, people trot out the same old joke: it really means that "the public" is "the enemy." That, obviously, is an exaggeration, but the level of secrecy around all of these kinds of efforts -- in the mistaken belief that letting anyone know who you're fighting and what you're doing will somehow undermine the whole campaign -- is entirely antithetical to the kind of example we should be setting around the globe. And, of course, it's doubly ironic that the very same people who are defending this lack of transparency are the ones who trot out the "if you've done nothing wrong, you've got nothing to hide." The obvious response, then, is that we should be asking exactly what our government is trying to hide, because it sure sounds like they've done a lot of things wrong.
Filed Under: classified, enemies, national security, warCity Club Apartments CBD Detroit to be built at Washington Park Avenue
Project will have 288 units and retail space
$70 million development received $1 million in brownfield funding
A groundbreaking event is planned in the next 30 days for hundreds of new apartments on the site of the former Statler Hotel in downtown Detroit, the project's developer said Tuesday.
The newly branded City Club Apartments CBD Detroit, being developed by Detroit-based City Club Apartments LLC, is expected to have 288 units and 12,000 square feet of retail space.
Workers have been at the project site at Washington Boulevard and Park Avenue for several weeks doing preconstruction work.
Jonathan Holtzman, founder and CEO of City Club Apartments LLC, said in a statement to Crain's that "significant details" about retail and restaurant tenants are expected to be announced at the groundbreaking. A date for the event has not been set, although a spokesman said it's expected next month.
In June, the approximately $70 million development received $1 million in brownfield funding. In a May interview, Holtzman said construction would take about 16 months to complete, with the first apartments being available within a year of construction beginning.
Last year, Holtzman, the former CEO of multifamily real estate giant Village Green Cos., split from the Farmington Hills-based company that traces its roots back to Holtzman's grandfather, Joseph. He then founded City Club Apartments with Canadian investor Alan Greenberg.
The company said it has $2 billion in real estate assets and $500 million under development or construction in Cincinnati, Detroit, Chicago, Pittsburgh, Minneapolis, Kansas City, Louisville and along the East Coast.Officials last week announced plans to honor unrepentant terrorist leader Oscar Lopez Rivera as their first ever “National Freedom Hero” at this year’s National Puerto Rican Day Parade on June 11.
The words “disgrace” and “outrage” do not come close to describing the insanity, insult and pain that honoring this terrorist thug brings to our family, the families of all FALN victims and all Americans. The idea is truly sickening.
New York City was the epicenter for the most horrific of the 120-plus bombings by Lopez’s Puerto Rican terrorist group, the Armed Forces for National Liberation (FALN). One of those bombings killed our 33-year-old father, Frank Connor, and three other innocent people.
Why would anyone in New York salute this man — particularly in the midst of our nation’s war on terrorists? Worse, City Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito chose to make this Alice-in-Wonderland announcement at One World Observatory, the very site of the most horrific terror attack in our nation’s history.
It’s also where my father’s godson, Steve Schlag, was murdered, along with 3,000 other civilians and the true hero first-responders. And where a threat by Lopez’s FALN prompted an evacuation of the World Trade Center in 1977.
And consider: Lopez refused President Bill Clinton’s 1999 clemency grant and chose to stay in prison rather than renounce violence. Yet President Barack Obama offered an unconditional second offer of clemency to Lopez just before leaving office. He’ll be freed next week.
Then the city in which our father was born, raised, worked and was murdered — a city bloodied by the most savage of all terrorist attacks on 9/11 — will play host to honoring him. What’s going on?
From 1974 to 1983, the FALN waged a merciless, bloody war against the United States, attacking civilians mainly in New York and Chicago. On Jan. 24, 1975, the FALN launched its most deadly attack, the infamous lunchtime bombing of Fraunces Tavern — murdering my father and three other innocent men. It was supposed to be the day we would celebrate my brother’s 11th birthday, and my 9th.
An FALN communique that day took credit for the attack, calling it a blow against “reactionary corporate executives.” In fact, my dad was born to immigrants and raised in working-class Washington Heights, very near where several of the FALN members were from.
In the early ’80s, 11 FALN members were arrested, tried and convicted of (among other serious felonies) weapons possession and seditious conspiracy. Lopez was convicted in 1981 and sentenced for crimes including seditious conspiracy, interference with interstate commerce by threats or violence, carrying firearms during the commission of those two crimes and interstate transportation of stolen vehicles.
There was testimony by a cooperating FALN insider that Lopez was personally involved in bombing and incendiary attacks, trained members in bomb-making techniques and had been a prime recruiter for the FALN.
In 1987, he was sentenced to an additional 15 years for participating in a conspiracy to escape.
Yet Viverito and her ilk call Lopez a “National Freedom Hero.” They are deranged.
Some claim he is a “freedom fighter” for Puerto Rican independence against US colonialism of the island. But aside from being a terrorist, what has he done to support “freedom” in Puerto Rico?
The FALN’s first attack, in December 1974, targeted the NYPD, severely maiming Angel Poggi, a young NYPD officer of Puerto Rican descent on his first day on the job. Is this the act of a hero of the Puerto Rican people? Lopez has never represented Puerto Ricans. Never more than 5 percent of them have ever voted for independence from America, and in 2012 fully 60 percent voted for statehood.
Further, Lopez and the FALN’s vision of “freedom” never involved freedom at all for Puerto Ricans but subjugation in a Cuba-like state. It is no coincidence Lopez’s FALN comrade — convicted fugitive bomb-maker William Morales — has been a guest of Cuba for over 30 years. Lopez, Morales and their Marxist comrades were never about freedom, but tyranny.
Lopez never expressed regret nor sought forgiveness, not even in his 2013 autobiography. Nor did he ever cooperate with authorities to bring closure to unsolved FALN crimes.
Despite all this, New York will host a parade that lauds this Marxist terrorist. Couldn’t they find anyone else to honor?
New Yorkers should be fuming. The NYPD and FDNY should refuse to participate. And President Trump should press Cuba to return Morales to face justice. If our father were alive today, he wouldn’t recognize his own city.
Joseph Connor’s next book will be “Wall Street Terror,” written with Jeff Ingber.In October 2015, Nexusguard, a systems security company that specializes in DDoS defense, started accepting bitcoin as a form of payment after one of their large international clients requested assistance when their servers came under a DDoS attack.
Speaking to Bitcoin Magazine, Xenophon Giannis, vice president of Nexusguard, explained why they turned their attention to the digital currency.
“We needed to accept a large payment and did not have the luxury to wait the standard five days for a wire transfer,” said Giannis. “The bitcoin transfer was completed in less than one hour.”
Since that first foray into the world of digital currency payments, Nexusguard has made Bitcoin an essential part of its brand strategy and has worked with other companies in the bitcoin space.
For example, BitMinter, one of the first bitcoin mining pools, found that it also needed a way to ensure its position and security. BitMinter began in June 2011 and at its peak, it controlled 10 percent of global computing power for bitcoin mining, making it an attractive target for competitors and attackers alike. Nexusguard was able to deliver critical stability and maximum up-time for BitMinter, ensuring a predictable cash flow, uninterrupted by attacks.
And BitMinter was able to pay in bitcoin.
While BitMinter wasn’t the use-case that got the bitcoin ball rolling with Nexusguard, BitMinter was the first bitcoin-centered client account with the company.
“After they became a customer,” said Giannis, “they were thrilled that we would accept bitcoin as a form of payment, enabling us to keep them as a loyal client and fan of Nexusguard.”
BitPay’s Email Billing Tool
Typically, when it comes to accepting payment from international clients, most companies opt for electronic bills or wire transfers. These both have their shortcomings: higher processing costs, fraud, delays in payment, payments that arrive with less than the full amount due and little or no information about fees.
For processing bitcoin payments, Nexusguard turned to BitPay. Established in 2011, BitPay provides merchants with an email billing tool that they can use for invoicing via bitcoin, enabling them to eliminate the transfer wait times, high fees and complex processing steps involved in international wire transfers. Nexusguard is one client taking advantage of the email billing tool to bypass the legacy international transfer system.
“Bitcoin billing is especially popular among merchants that provide consulting, freelance work or software as a service,” BitPay Marketing Associate James Walpole told Bitcoin Magazine. “The transactions these firms accept through our email billing tool make up more than 10 percent of our total processing volume in USD terms and the average order size of a B2B billing payment is twenty five times the size of an average consumer bitcoin payment.”
As well as providing its services to clients such as Nexusguard, BitPay billing is also attracting smaller clients who want to reach people across the world in a fast, secure and convenient way. Latin America is one area that is experiencing the greatest transaction growth with a year-over-year increase of 1,747 percent in 2015.
“The region is experiencing rapid growth in ecommerce and mobile phone use, but credit card payments are still only available to a fraction of the total population,” said Walpole. “That’s part of the reason why bitcoin makes sense for Latin America’s online consumers and for international businesses that want to reach Latin American markets.”
The Future
The fact that Nexusguard accepts bitcoin as payment has made it easier for companies in the space, like BitMinter, to pay them in a far more convenient way, without having to go through the additional hassle of converting bitcoins to U.S. dollars. As more companies discover and accept bitcoin, they begin to realize the potential for them to attract and retain a broader clientele.
“Our five years of experience in bitcoin payment processing has helped us build a strong case that bitcoin can solve old problems for ecommerce and B2B payments in new ways,” said Walpole. “We’ll continue to reach out to more merchants like Nexusguard who can save money, reduce payment fraud and reach a global customer base by adding bitcoin as a payment option.”A Consumer Economy at a Standstill
This recovery is wonderful in every way, except the important ones. It is like a shiny new airplane. It has glossy aluminum wings. It has plush seats in the first class section. Trim stewardesses serve drinks. Movies are available on demand in all sections.
A majority of those polled by Bloomberg think things are great; 61% said they thought they economy had taken off and was flying high. Stocks are up. Commodities are up. And here’s another Bloomberg headline: “Global investors give Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke top marks…”
The recovery has won the approval of economists and the public. It has almost everything going for it. It just won’t fly!
Comes news this morning that the US economy is still on the runway. This report from the AP explains why:
“Consumers slashed their borrowing in July by the largest amount on record as job losses and uncertainty about the economic recovery prompted Americans to rein in their debt.
“Economists expect consumers will continue to spend less, save more and trim debt to get household finances decimated by the recession into better shape. Such behavior, though, is a recipe for a lethargic revival, because consumer spending accounts for 70 percent of economic activity.
“The Federal Reserve reported Tuesday that consumers in July ratcheted back their credit by a larger-than-anticipated $21.6 billion from June, the most on records dating to 1943. Economists had expected credit to drop by $4 billion.”
Hey, not bad…economists were only off by 430%. Consumers are paying down debt more than four times faster than they thought. Partly because they want to. And partly because they have to. They don’t want to borrow…and banks don’t want to lend to them anyway. Consumer credit is falling at a 10% annual rate, based on July figures. Credit card debt is going down at an 8% rate.
When they pay down a dollar’s worth of debt that is one dollar less in the consumer economy. But it’s also a dollar that is not borrowed. Where the consumer spent all his income two years ago…and borrowed more so that he could increase his consumption even further…now, he doesn’t borrow…and he doesn’t spend all his income either. Now, the money that used to pour into consumer spending leaks out.
As we reported yesterday, personal spending is dropping…the figures were down in four of the last six quarters – something that has never happened before, since they began keeping records in 1947. And the level of consumer spending is down 33% from a year ago – with discretionary spending now down to a level it hasn’t seen in 50 years.
Of course, that’s just what we’ve been saying. The great credit expansion began in 1945. It ended in 2007. Credit will contract for many years. One study, also reported here, suggested that consumers would spend 14% less – even after the economy was back on its feet. We estimate that the total level of debt must go down below 200% of GDP. If that’s correct, we need to pay down about $25 trillion of debt. That won’t be easy and it won’t be quick.
And it will mean high levels of joblessness for a long time. Already, two out of five working-age Californians are unemployed. The other three are working the shortest workweeks in history. No wonder; with spending dropping, sales are falling. So businesses don’t need so many people to make, ship, sell and service their products. Then, of course, when they lay off workers to cut expenses, the unemployed workers have to cut spending!
How is it possible for a consumer economy to grow when consumers are spending less money? Of course, it’s not. This is not a genuine recovery…it’s an impostor. A fraud. A recovery impersonator.
While the private sector is paying down debt, the public sector is adding debt at a ferocious pace – about $150 billion per month. Public spending isn’t the same as private spending. It is usually spending for things that people wouldn’t buy if they had a choice.
And it comes with a whole new risk attached – the risk that the feds will inflate their way out of debt rather than pay it off.
Government spending does not bring a durable, real prosperity. (If it did…think how easy it would be to make people rich; governments love to spend money!) It may look like a recovery. It may have shiny wings and spiffy-looking stewardesses. But it won’t fly.
The World Economic Forum has taken the United States down from the number one position. America is no longer the world’s ‘most competitive’ economy. That title goes to Switzerland.
Meanwhile, the US banking system is rated #109 in the world – just below Tanzania.
“More than one in four US banks announced an unprofitable quarter,” Strategic Short Report’s Dan Amoss tells us.
US banks became leveraged casinos during the bubble years. They’ve still got a lot of leverage…and are still trying to relive those glory days when players lined up to spin the wheel…and free drinks flowed by Niagara Falls.
Dan will certainly find the best way to play the downfall of US banks – after all, he did call the collapse of Lehman six months early – leading his readers to as much as a $200,000 profit. Look for regular updates on the banking industry from Dan in these pages…
Until tomorrow,
Bill Bonner
The Daily ReckoningErik Karlsson has officially put the NHL on notice.
“It’s Erik Karlsson’s world and we’re all just living in it,” an Ottawa Senators blogger by the name of Bonk’s Mullet so eloquently noted on Twitter. It’s easy to see why Karlsson’s play would warrant such a reaction, with five points in four postseason games on the back of some awe-inspiring displays of tremendous skill.
In a way, it’s a shame it’s taken until the playoffs – i.e. the post-award voting period – for the rest of the league to see just how dominant he is because it would have made the Norris Trophy voting no contest. But even if he doesn |
italize democracy. Under these vague headings she crammed expanding renewable energy, fighting climate change, funding infrastructure, universal preschool and childcare, making college affordable, paid sick days, paid family leave, equal pay for women, services for the addicted and mentally ill, a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants, a ban on discrimination against gay and transgender people, and automatic voter registration.
The national-security section of the speech was optimistic, but exceedingly vague, with talk of meeting emerging threats with “creative and confident leadership.” Clinton summed up her accomplishments as secretary of state this way: “I’ve stood up to adversaries like Putin and reinforced allies like Israel. I was in the Situation Room on the day we got bin Laden.” Other than a vow to “rein in banks that are still too risky,” Clinton did not inveigh against the rich and powerful. Yet no one could accuse Clinton of not having an agenda; none of the Republican candidates has offered such a barrage of proposals. Recent polls have shown that most voters do not find Clinton trustworthy. She is apparently betting that policy and substance can be a substitute for character and personality.Concerns over fraudulent voting have grown since the 2016 election, with President Trump himself claiming that millions of people voted illegally. The Onion debunks some common myths about voter fraud.
MYTH: There are thousands of documented cases of people voting under fake names
FACT: There are thousands of documented cases of people voting under Hispanic names
Advertisement
MYTH: On Election Day, people are bussed in from different states in order to vote multiple times
FACT: No bus has ever achieved speeds high enough to accomplish this
MYTH: It’s easy to vote using a deceased person’s name
FACT: While it’s actually quite difficult, voting under the name of a deceased person can be a touching and poignant tribute to a loved one who has passed
Advertisement
MYTH: Fraudulent votes are delegitimizing our elections
FACT: Fraudulent candidates are delegitimizing our elections
MYTH: After voting, many people get back in line wearing a big cowboy hat and handlebar mustache
Advertisement
FACT: Three children covered by a long overcoat pretending to be an adult is a much more common technique
MYTH: Voter ID laws reinforce a racist system
FACT: Most things reinforce a racist system
MYTH: Widespread voter fraud is one of the most pressing issues facing the United States
Advertisement
FACT: Widespread belief in voter fraud is one of the most pressing issues facing the United States
MYTH: Thousands of dead people voted in last year’s election
FACT: We are all much closer to death after last year’s electionThe Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer USS Porter (DDG-78) arrived in Spain on Thursday to being its ballistic missile defense mission.
Porter will join USS Donald Cook (DDG-75) and USS Ross (DDG-71) in the forward-deployed naval force at Naval Station Rota to carry out the European Phased Adaptive Approach to BMD.
USS Carney (DDG-64) will arrive later this year.
The four ships, which have had their Aegus combat systems upgraded to handle BMD threats, will be responsible for NATO missile defense, maritime security operations, bilateral and multilateral training exercises, and NATO operations and deployments, according to a Navy statement.
Donald Cook arrived in Spain early last year and has gone out on months-long patrols before returning to its home in Rota. Having four destroyers based out of Rota will give the U.S. 6th Fleet flexibility to send the ships out to a variety of locations for a range of missions while at the same time providing a large umbrella of protection for European allies, the Navy statement said.
The European Phased Adaptive Approach (EPAA) is meant to provide protection from short- and medium-range ballistic missile threats originating in the Middle East. EPAA also includes the deployment of land-based Aegis Ashore stations in Romania and Poland.Dogs are being used to search the Grenfell Tower following the horrific fire (Picture: London Fire Brigade)
London Fire Brigade are working tirelessly in horrific circumstance following the Grenfell Tower fire.
Firefighters have been on the scene on Latimer Road, north Kensington, since around 1am on Wednesday morning.
The operation has seen firefighters helped by police, Urban Search and Rescue modules, Metropolitan Police Disaster Victim Identification team and even fire dogs.
Specially-trained dogs are assisting in the slow and painstaking search process because they are lighter than humans and can cover areas more challenging to access – such as the horrendously damaged upper floors of the 24-storey tower block.
Just like their human counterparts, canine crew from London Fire Brigade and the MET’s urban search and rescue team are given specialist equipment, including little boots to protect their feet from heat, glass and other sharp objects.
The dogs are able to reach parts of Grenfell Tower inaccessible to firefighters (Picture: London Fire Brigade)
Although the task looks incredibly dangerous, there has been no report of injury to any fire dog while working in the UK, according to the London Fire Brigade.
Advertisement
Advertisement
Fire investigation dogs are used in a variety of scenarios are trained to identify a variety of ignitable substances.
Their sense of smell is often more accurate than specifically designed technology and they can even help to determine whether a fire has been started deliberately.
Sadly, London Fire Commissioner Dany Cotton said crews are not expecting to find any survivors, though the search is continuing to identify those who remain unaccounted for.
While the official death toll stands at 30, there are fears the fire claimed more than 100 lives, but the scale of the damage means authorities are finding it extremely difficult to find and identify remains.
Emergency services with a rescue dog at Grenfell Tower in west London after a fire engulfed the 24-storey building (Picture: PA)
Firefighters and sniffer dogs inspect debris at the foot of Grenfell Tower on June 15 (Picture: Getty)
The use of fire investigation dogs will help to speed up the process and allow crew to explore damaged corners of the building that a human would simply be unable to reach.
London Fire Commissioner Dany Cotton said: ‘This is a large building, there will be a large amount of building work required internally.
‘Before we do that, we are going to utilise some specialist dog training teams that we have, that will go through the building and the surrounding area looking for any identification of people.’
A police search dog is used to survey the damage to Grenfell Tower (Picture: PA)
A police sniffer dog searches debris that fell at the base of the fire-gutted Grenfell Tower in London (Picture: AP)
She said ‘a good half’ of the building had yet to be searched in detail, adding: ‘It is the upper floors which will be more challenging and will need some additional shoring up for us to be able to get in there.’
Advertisement
Advertisement
Ms Cotton added: ‘This will be a detailed fingertip search. Obviously this will be a very slow and painstaking process.’
Fire dogs are selected at an early age and are trained using positive reinforcement techniques.
They live with their respective handlers and are provided with specially adapted transportation and kennels while on duty.
A search dog joins firefighters as they continue to deal with the remains of Grenfell Tower in Latimer Road, White City, London (Picture: National News)
Residents living near Grenfell Tower said they remain ‘devastated’ as they questioned how the tragedy could happen in London’s richest borough.
Nearby streets in west London remain covered in posters of missing people.
Flowers and candles have been left outside the Pig and Whistle pub, along with a sign explaining where to donate items.
Candles, flowers and messages remain outside a nearby hall, along with signs demanding ‘justice for Grenfell’.
Parts of the area remain cordoned off, with police guarding the scene.
As firefighters keep searching the charred ruins of the Grenfell Tower public housing complex with sniffer dogs and drones, Metropolitan Police commander Stuart Cundy said there was ‘a risk that, sadly, we may not be able to identify everybody.’
Experts said the intensity of Wednesday’s fire at the 24-storey building will make naming victims extremely difficult, drawing comparisons to the 2001 World Trade Center terror attacks in New York, where 40% of the victims were never identified.
A search dog joins firefighters as they continue to deal with the remains of Grenfell Tower in Latimer Road (Picture: Twitter)Someone threw bricks through the glass door and a window of the Colorado Democratic Party headquarters in west Denver early this morning.
No one was inside the office at 777 Santa Fe Drive when the incident happened. Police said they received the first call about the damage at about 2 a.m.
Sherry Jackson, executive director of the Colorado Democratic Party, was the first person to arrive at work this morning and found the front door boarded up.
A Denver police officer who responded to the destruction arranged the boarding, Jackson said.
“There was no entry — nobody was able to get in,” she said. “We found two bricks on the floor of the office.”
The projectiles did not have any notes or messages attached to them, she said.
“We cleaned up the glass, and we didn’t stop working,” Jackson said. “We just kept going.”
A glass company has assessed the damage, and preparations for permanent repairs are underway, Jackson said.
The office, which has been at the location for more than five years, has, like other nearby businesses, been tagged by graffiti in the past. It has not had any windows broken or other deliberate damage before, Jackson said.
The property destruction has not yet resulted in an arrest, police said, and a motive in the case isn’t clear.
Kieran Nicholson: 303-954-1822 or knicholson@denverpost.comJanuary 4, 2016; Oakland, CA, USA; Charlotte Hornets center Frank Kaminsky III (44) shoots the basketball against Golden State Warriors forward Draymond Green (23) during the fourth quarter at Oracle Arena. The Warriors defeated the Hornets 111-101. Mandatory Credit: Kyle Terada-USA TODAY Sports
The Charlotte Hornets are in a strange state. The integration of new players, as well as the development of some of last season’s second unit, will be critical to the success of the Hornets this season.
Last season the Charlotte Hornets were desperately unlucky. If they win one more game, they move to third in the East and the playoffs take a different shape. Instead they finished sixth and the Miami Heat, who won the same number of games as the Hornets, beat them in seven games.
Most teams have quality starters, Charlotte is no exception. Kemba Walker, Courtney Lee, Marvin Williams, Cody Zeller and Nicolas Batum played well.
The second unit from last year was good, Jeremy Lin, Al Jefferson, Frank Kaminsky, Jeremy Lamb and Spencer Hawes. It is a very difficult task to win the NBA Finals without a deep bench.
As a fan of basketball, it is good to see the conference so close. If I was a Charlotte fan, I would have been devastated.
Moving on to this season, the starters are mostly the same, Walker, Williams, Zeller and Batum are back. Michael Kidd-Gilchrist comes back from injury to replace Lee. Charlotte needs to concentrate on the growth of the second unit to improve their standing this coming season.
That starting five will compete with most teams in the league, who then are the players that are going to step up night after night off the bench? What are their roles? Where will the new players fit in?
Charlotte have added some quality to their bench and are developing some good younger players. Here is how I see their bench roles.
Frank Kaminsky
Frank Kaminsky is one of the new breed of player, the 7-footer with range on his shot. Kaminsky had a productive rookie season. Kaminsky played 81 of a possible 82 games with Charlotte last season, even starting three of them.
Last year’s ninth overall pick had a season which showed why he was picked that high. In 21.1 minutes per contest, Kaminsky averaged 7.5 points, 4.1 rebounds and 1.2 assists. Granted these are not Karl-Anthony Towns numbers, but that is why Kaminsky did not go No. 1.
While last season was a good rookie year, Kaminsky needs to step his game up this year. He hit 0.8 three point field goals a game on 2.5 attempts. This is just less than 34 percent but Kaminsky needs to be good for 37-38 percent from three, taking three or four shots per game from three.
Kaminsky also needs to work on his rim protection. His 0.5 blocks per game last year where he predominately played power forward was not enough. As a 7-foot power forward, Kaminsky needs to form a wall on defense with whoever is playing next to him at center.
Jeremy Lamb
The ex-Oklahoma City Thunder guard had his best season in his four-year career last season with Charlotte. He had career highs in points (8.8), rebounds (3.8) and blocks (0.6). He went close to career highs with assists and steals as well.
However, Jeremy Lamb has to step it up again. Jeremy Lin has gone to the Brooklyn Nets and Charlotte have recruited solid guards in the offseason that I will go into later.
Lamb needs to step up to more than 10 points per game, improving his three-point shot which was his worst since his rookie season (30.9 percent).
Lamb needs to keep his rebounds at about four per game but will need to improve his read of the play on defense, upping his steal numbers to more than one per game. These are small adjustments but remember that Charlotte finished sixth in the East last year.
Had they have won one more game they were third. Small adjustments in the NBA can have massive ramifications.
Spencer Hawes
Spencer Hawes needs to outplay the new addition of Roy Hibbert to get some quality playing time again to revive his career. Since leaving the Philadelphia 76ers, where he was averaging a career-high 13.5 points per game, Hawes has struggled.
He signed a multi-year deal with the Los Angeles Clippers and only scored 5.8 points per game.
When he was traded by the Clippers to Charlotte his shooting went from 5.8 to 6.0 points per game. Hawes needs to capture some of the form that he had in Cleveland and at the Philadelphia 76ers before that.
Yes, Hibbert has replaced Al Jefferson, but Hawes needs to show that he wants it more than Hibbert, who is coming off a poor year with the Los Angeles Lakers.
This year the Hornets have plenty of size, Hibbert is 7-foot-2, Hawes is 7-foot-1, Cody Zeller, Mike Tobey and Kaminsky are all 7-foot-0 and Christian Wood is 6-foot-11. Hawes is going to have plenty of competition for minutes and needs to step up.
Ramon Sessions
For me, Ramon Sessions is one of the most underrated backup point guards in the league. This journeyman has played for seven different teams in nine seasons.
All through these changes, Sessions has averaged 10.9 points, 2.8 rebounds and 4.2 assists per game.
This is a major upgrade for Charlotte at backup point guard. Last season Kemba Walker only had Jorge Gutierrez and Brian Roberts as backup. Now they have Sessions, who was one of the better players for the Washington Wizards last season despite playing behind John Wall.
Sessions has a steady hand and will guided the second unit of the Hornets with great surety. He will give the younger players confidence and will find the open man.
Marco Belinelli
Marco Belinelli is a player who is going to help the Charlotte Hornets through his shooting. Belinelli is a career 38 percent three point shooter who will help space the floor for Sessions.
With Belinelli sniping from beyond the arc, Kaminsky should start to get more open looks too. Defenders need to respect Belinelli and with his shooting, Charlotte just got a whole lot harder to defend.
Belinelli has played with some of the best in the game. He has played with Tim Duncan, Tony Parker, Joakim Noah and Rajon Rondo, to name but a few. The experience that he brings to Charlotte is important as well.
Roy Hibbert
Are the Charlotte Hornets the team that will give Roy Hibbert some currency back in the league? His last four years he has been paid more than $13.5 million per season. Last year he was the second-highest paid player for the Lakers at $15.5 million, trailing only Kobe Bryant.
Well, unfortunately money needs to be earned and 5.9 points, 4.9 rebounds, 1.2 assists and 1.4 blocks per game is not good enough. As a result, while Timofey Mozgov signed a four-year $64 million deal, Hibbert could only land a $5 million for one year with Charlotte.
For a two-time All-Star who is already top-70 all-time for total blocks, this has to hurt. Hopefully, Hibbert and the second unit can click as a defensive unit and he can get back to near his best form.
I would not be surprised if Hibbert and Cody Zeller battle it out for the starting position at center mid way through the year and this would only benefit the Charlotte Hornets.
Christian Wood
The final player that I want to focus on for the Charlotte Hornets is second-year player Christian Wood. Wood only played 17 games for Philadelphia last year but has shown something that leads me to believe that he will contribute.
He has desire and passion to go with his size and could be the x-factor that the top teams look for. Wood will not start for this team, he will probably only play half the games this year for Charlotte.
The games that Wood does play will have him coming on for three to four minute bursts, just giving the team a burst of energy.
He may not average more than 3.6 points and 2.2 rebounds but that is OK. He is going to be the electricity when needed in a season that can become a grind.
Yes, the Charlotte Hornets lost a number of players at the end of last season. They have retooled well and should get over the 50-win mark to get themselves a better seeding in the playoffs.The Mechromancer is Borderlands 2's latest creation, and as such everybody has to have it. Although the character was made public long ago, much mystery has surrounded her skillset. Until yesterday, that is, when her skill tree was made public. We wasted no time in devising the best builds for the character.
Although Gaige is primarily a "pet" class thanks to her ability to summon the Deathtrap robot, she can be surprisingly good at drawing aggro and tanking. Her Deathtrap minion makes her all the more effective when it comes to drawing attention away from your teammates, and staying alive once you have all of the enemies focused on you. If you'd like to tank with the Mechromancer, use the following build:
Close Enough (3/5)
Cooking Up Trouble (2/5)
Fancy Mathematics (2/5)
The Better Half (3/5)
More Pep (3/5)
Myelin (2/5)
Shock Storm (4/5)
Smaller, Lighter, Faster
Anarchy
Pre-Shrunk Cyberpunk
Typecast Iconoclast
Rational Anarchist
Death From Above (4/5)
The Nth Degree
With Claws
This bulid eschews any focus on Deathtrap to instead increase the power and versatility of your guns. Your bullets will richochet off of walls and even off of enemies themselves, giving them increased chance to strike. Whenever your bullets hit the head, they'll emit a powerful electrical shock. Finally, the Ordered Chaos tree will give you the Anarchy ability, which will make your bullets much more deadly before eventually culminating in a super-powerful melee move.
If you'd rather focus more on Deathtrap than your guns, use the following build:
Close Enough (4/5)
Cooking Up Trouble (1/5)
Fancy Mathematics (2/5)
Buck Up
The Better Half (2/5)
Upshot Robot
Potent As A Pony
Explosive Clap
Made of Sterner Stuff
20% Cooler
Sharing Is Caring
More Pep (3/5)
Myelin (2/5)
The Stare
Strength of Five Gorillas (3/5)
Shock Storm (2/5)
Electrical Burn (2/5)
Shock And AAAGGGGGHHHHHH
Evil Enchantress (2/5)
One Two Boom
This build spreads a nice array of abilities between you and Deathtrap, but still focuses primarily on staying alive via stronger shields and health while dealing elemental and melee damage to your enemies.
If you want to go with a jack of all trades build, use the following build:
Cooking Up Trouble
Buck Up
The Better Half (4/5)
Upshot Robot
Potent As A Pony (2/5)
Unstoppable Force (2/5)
More Pep
The Stare
Shock Storm (4/5)
Electrical Burn (2/5)
Evil Enchantress (2/5)
Shock And AAAGGGGHHHHH
Anarchy
Smaller, Lighter, Faster
Preshrunk Cyberpunk (4/5)
Robot Rampage
Annoyed Android (2/5)
Typecast Iconoclast (3/5)
This build will give you the basics of each ability, without delving into the depths of each tree. You'll be able to use each of Deathtrap's essential abilities and dole out some elemental damage, but your overall build will lack any one specific focus.Borrowers and homeowners haunted by thoughts of another hike in interest rates just days before Halloween may have been reassured to hear Bank of Canada governor Stephen Poloz held rates steady yesterday.
But those hoping for a simple answer on the trajectory of future interest rates have every reason to remain unnerved.
Only days before the little ghosts and goblins walk the streets, our chief central banker declared economic conditions to be distinctly abnormal.
Uncanny economy
While Poloz and his deputy, Carolyn Wilkins, painted a revealing picture of the bank's behind-the-scenes thinking on Canada's economic future, their image showed they and their advisers remain baffled by the peculiar persistence of low inflation and static wages in this strengthening economy.
"When you're in a situation that's different from normal — which we are — you use your models as a guide but you expect deviations in behaviour relative to those models," Poloz said.
"The question is, how much of a deviation?"
Even at the best of times, trying to model the future of an economy that's constantly changing must be a frightening task.
Minister of Finance Bill Morneau, pictured, included some stimulative spending plans in his fall fiscal update that could affect Bank of Canada governor Stephen Poloz's future decisions on interest rates. (Adrian Wyld/Canadian Press)
Only the day before Poloz spoke, Finance Minister Bill Morneau made changes of his own that could add to future inflation, using his fall fiscal update to increase the low income tax credit and increase child benefits.
Several reporters seemed to be tempting Poloz into a conflict with Morneau at yesterday's news conference.
Poloz refused to be drawn, stubbornly keeping central bank policy and politics apart.
While one must accept the idea that central bankers must avoid stepping into politics, monetary and fiscal policy cannot be divorced.
Spooky interaction
The fascinating thing about trying to understand economic and monetary policy is that the whole system is a series of interlocked feedback loops, like an occult Rube Goldberg machine, where adjusting one small part changes the entire pattern.
A case in point was the rise of the Canadian dollar, which Wilkins said had a significant effect on inflation. But it seems just talking about it had an effect yesterday. Minutes after the bank released its monetary policy report, the loonie began to plunge, at one point down nearly a full U.S. cent.
Poloz and his deputy, Carolyn Wilkins, walk through autumn leaves on their way to answer questions about yesterday's monetary policy report. (Sean Kilpatrick/Canadian Press)
But in "different from normal" times, keeping up with such changes isn't the only difficulty for Poloz, Wilkins and their team.
One of those differences they described was the high level of debt that could make the entire Canadian economy more sensitive to small changes in interest rates than it would be under normal conditions.
"When households are more indebted, what happens is that any particular increase in interest rates is going to have a bit more of an impact on the amount of money they have at the end of the day to spend on other things," Wilkins explained.
"The ability of households to borrow more money to get more credit to buy new things is also going to be more constrained," she said. That's significant in an economy where borrowing has become an unusually important part of retail and real estate sales.
Eerie inflation
Another strange thing about the current economic picture is that inflation, not just in Canada but around the world, remains mysteriously low, Poloz said. The bank now expects inflation won't hit its two per cent target range until the second half of next year, cooling market expectations for immediate interest rate hikes.
The other uncanny factor being pondered by the bank is why wages remain persistently low. This may be partly due to the chilling effect of a long period of underemployment, which could also help hold rates down. As those underemployed or discouraged workers get drawn into the economy by businesses seeking to expand, the economy's capacity actually grows.
That's what the governor has characterized as the "sweet spot," where the economy is able to grow without forcing the central bank to raise rates.
If that turns out to be true, that's good news for Canadian borrowers.
But asked directly whether interest rates, and thus mortgage rates, would go up in December, Poloz was as cagey as ever, hinting a rate rise could be delayed by nine months or come as soon as December.
"The homeowner should acknowledge," he said, "that if the economy continues to do well, as it has been, less monetary stimulus is likely to be needed in the future."
Translation? If the economy remains strong, expect rates to rise.
For underemployed people looking for good work, for large and small businesses, and for the sake of Canada's economic future, such continued strength would be a treat.
But for the one in three Canadians already feeling the pinch of higher interest rates, it could be a personal nightmare.
Follow Don on Twitter @don_pittis
More analysis from Don PittisThere are over 400 documented cases of women disguising themselves as men and fighting as soldiers on both sides during the Civil War. The case of Albert Cashier, born "Jennie Hodgers" with a female sex assignment, is one of the most famous because Cashier continued to live as a man after the war and was not discovered until a couple of years before his death. His consistent and nearly life-long commitment to a male identity has prompted some contemporary scholars to think of Cashier as a transgender man.
Cashier was born on December 25, 1843 in Clogherhead, County Louth, Ireland. Not much is known about his early life, as the only account available was given by Cashier when he was suffering from dementia in 1913.
This much is certain—on August 6, 1862, Albert Cashier, a resident of Belvidere, Illinois, enlisted in the 95th Illinois Infantry. Although he was the shortest soldier in the regiment, and kept mostly to himself, Cashier was accepted as “one of the boys” and considered to be a good soldier.
Cashier’s regiment was part of the Army of the Tennessee and fought in over 40 engagements, including the siege of Vicksburg, the Battle of Nashville, the Red River Campaign, and the battles at Kennesaw Mountain and Jonesborough, Georgia. There is an account of Cashier being captured and escaping by overpowering a prison guard, but no further details of this event exist.
Cashier served a full three year enlistment with his regiment until they were all mustered out on August 17, 1865 after losing a total of 289 soldiers to death and disease.
After the war, Cashier returned to Illinois where he settled in Saunemin. He continued his identity as a man, and held many different jobs, including farmhand, church janitor, cemetery worker, and street lamplighter. Cashier also voted in elections at a time when women did not have the right to vote and collected his veteran’s pension.
In November of 1910, Cashier was hit by a car and broke his leg, at which time his sex assigned at birth was discovered. The local hospital agreed not to divulge his sex assignment, and he was sent to the Soldiers and Sailors Home in Quincy, Illinois to recover. Cashier remained a resident of the home until March of 1913, when due to the onset of dementia, he was sent to a state hospital for the insane. Attendants there discovered his sex assignment and forced him to wear a dress. The press got a hold of the story and soon everyone knew that Private Albert Cashier had been born as Jennie Hodgers.
Many of his former comrades, although initially surprised at this revelation, were supportive of Cashier, and protested his treatment at the state hospital. When Cashier died on October 10, 1915, he was buried in his full uniform and given a tombstone inscribed with his male identity and military service.Researchers at Durham University have drawn up the first ever 'Arctic Map' to show the disputed territories that states might lay claim to in the future.
The new map design follows a series of historical and ongoing arguments about ownership, and the race for resources, in the frozen lands and seas of the Arctic.
The potential for conflicts is increasing as the search for new oil, gas and minerals intensifies.
The move to comprehensively map the region illustrates the urgent need for clear policy-making on Arctic issues – an area rich in natural resources. The Durham map shows:
where boundaries have been agreed
where known claims are
the potential areas that states might claim
Director of Research at the International Boundaries Research Unit (IBRU), Martin Pratt says: "The map is the most precise depiction yet of the limits and the future dividing lines that could be drawn across the Arctic region.
"The results have huge implications for policy-making as the rush to carve up the polar region continues.
"It's a cartographic means of showing, and an attempt to collate information and predict the way in which the Arctic region may eventually be divided up. The freezing land and seas of the Arctic are likely to be getting hotter in terms of geopolitics; the Durham map aims to assist national and international policy-makers across the world."
It's a year since Russia planted a flag on the seabed, underneath the North Pole, highlighting its claim to a huge chunk of the Arctic.
The Russian demands relate to a complex area of law covered by the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea Convention (UNCLOS). Under that law, any coastal state can claim territory 200 nautical miles (nm) from their shoreline (Exclusive Economic Zone, EEZ) and exploit the natural resources within that zone. Some coastal states have rights that extend beyond EEZ due to their continental shelf. Areas of the seabed beyond the continental shelf are referred to as 'The Area' and any world state – landlocked or not – has equal rights in this area.
The continental shelf is the part of a country's landmass that extends into the sea before dropping into the deep ocean. Under UNCLOS, if a state can prove its rights, it can exploit the resources of the sea and the seabed within its territory.
Russia claims that its continental shelf extends along a mountain chain running underneath the Arctic, known as the Lomonosov Ridge. Theoretically, if this was the case, Russia might be able to claim a vast area of territory.
The IBRU map shows what is currently possible and what might be permissible in terms of territorial claims under international law. It also highlights the areas of land and sea where clashes of interest are likely.
A new survey by the US Geological Survey estimates that a fifth of the world's undiscovered, technically-recoverable resources lie within the Arctic Circle. The Lomonosov Ridge is just one area of contention between countries. Other disputes involve Canada, USA, (Greenland) Denmark, Iceland and Norway.
The problem with claims is that they must be verified by geological, geomorphological and bathymetric analysis (sub-sea surveys), and it's not an easy or quick process to verify claims.
The new map will help politicians to understand areas of maritime jurisdiction and the methodology employed could be vital in helping to settle future sea territorial disputes.
Conservationists want laws to protect the North Pole region and climate change is likely to bring further pressure as ice melts and the seas open up to exploration.What's up with my network? Some services seem broken? Things are very slow? Is there something wrong? Run the Netalyzr. We test your Internet connection for signs of trouble. Understand your connectivity. A detailed report shows performance & security issues.
Learn more, see an example report, check out the NetaMap, look at the FAQ, or try the commandline client. Netalyzr works on any computer with a Java runtime and on Android devices.
Please enable JavaScript in order to run Netalyzr.
Please note: Netalyzr is not only a debugging tool — it is also the foundation of a comprehensive measurement study compiling a survey of the health of the Internet's edge. By running Netalyzr and helping us spread the word you are contributing crucially to the quality of our study. Thanks for your help!Get the biggest Liverpool FC stories by email Subscribe Thank you for subscribing We have more newsletters Show me See our privacy notice Could not subscribe, try again later Invalid Email
It is bad, bad, bad news for Liverpool that Daniel Sturridge is facing up to another month on the sidelines.
Not so much because the Reds will be without far and away their best striker and one of the top forwards in the Premier League.
But Sturridge’s continued absence will have an ongoing effect on the way Brendan Rodgers’ side play.
Teams will be able to keep on pushing tight on Liverpool’s forward line and closing the spaces.
Opponents will look to pin the Reds back in midfield and that won’t give their creative players much room in which to manoeuvre.
Believe me, there’s nothing better as a defender knowing you are playing against forwards who are not going to beat you in a foot race.
It helps a defence compact the game and that is going to detract from way Rodgers’ likes to set up his teams.
I can’t see the Reds playing both Mario Balotelli and Rickie Lambert up front. It will be one or the other.
For me, Lambert did nothing wrong against West Bromwich Albion last time out and, with Balotelli still finding his feet at Anfield, would appear the better bet at QPR this afternoon.
Could Steven Gerrard be pushed further upfield into his old attacking position?
That’s possible, but it doesn’t overcome the fact he still won’t have anybody to pass to.
Gerrard has the ability to pick holes in a defence for quick strikers to run on to, but neither Lambert nor Balotelli are that type of player.
Well, there’s Fabio Borini. I had a go at him for staying but he may soon be in the side by default.
If Borini is going to play, it won’t be on his own. In that case, Rodgers could revert to the diamond at Loftus Road – although it didn’t work too well at Upton Park last month.
I’ve seen QPR play a few times this season and they aren’t great.
In fact, they are playing like a team who realised they were lucky to get out of the Championship by winning a play-off final during which they had been completely outplayed.
It may have been a bit nervy towards the end, but Liverpool gained a much-needed victory on their last outing against West Brom.
Even without Sturridge, I’d expect them to win today.
Despite their poor start, Liverpool are only a point off fourth place.
Victory today will keep them moving in the right direction.
Madrid match will be a night to remember
It’s going to be a fantastic night at Anfield on Wednesday when Real Madrid come to town.
The old stadium has really missed such occasions.
It truly is a special atmosphere that only people who have experienced it will fully understand.
There’s that element of it being dark and under floodlights – which players absolutely love.
Plus it is a visit of the current Champions League holders.
That said, I think Liverpool have a much better chance of taking something from the game than many believe.
Real are beatable.
Defensively they are not all that great, and for me it will be about which team keeps the ball better and dominates possession.
If Liverpool can stop the service to Gareth Bale, Cristiano Ronaldo and Karim Benzema, then they will have a chance of getting at the Madrid back line.
I wouldn’t sign either Sergio Ramos or Pepe, while Iker Casillas is something of a busted flush now.
Real have tempestuous defenders.
They are weak mentally and have a capacity of losing it in spectacular fashion – the Reds will have to put them in such a position.
Of course, Liverpool aren’t exactly brilliant at the back themselves, which gives them all the more reason to play five in midfield.
I’d have Joe Allen and Adam Lallana in there alongside Steven Gerrard, Jordan Henderson and Raheem Sterling with probably Mario Balotelli the lone striker up front.
Hodgson calls it wrong again
What on earth was Roy Hodgson playing at by revealing Raheem Sterling mentioned he may not be at full fitness?
If a player is feeling an injury or is fatigued, it is honest of him to mention that to his manager.
That kind of thing happens all the time. We just don’t hear about it.
The problem is Hodgson decided to announce it to the world. But for what purpose?
It has just led to the England boss and the Football Association discussing it for two or three days.
If only they’d spent as long talking about what went wrong at the World Cup, perhaps the national team would be further down the line in terms of progress.
Sterling had a little problem. But the furore that has followed has turned the situation into something like Watergate. And Hodgson is to blame.
Part of the problem is the fact England are going to walk their way to Euro 2016.
It isn’t doing them any favours and, with precious little to talk about, even the most trivial issue is being highlighted to a ridiculous degree.
In terms of on-field action, England aren’t in a competitive group and it isn’t preparing their players for what will come in the finals themselves.
The same cannot be said for the Republic |
car accidents, disabled vehicles, debris, and other impediments to the free flow of traffic. They are often the first responders at the scene of an accident (or obstruction), and in turn summon paramedics, firefighters, tow truck drivers or Caltrans personnel. The CHP files traffic collision reports for state highways and within unincorporated areas. The CHP responds to and investigates all accidents involving school buses throughout the state including incorporated cities.
CHP also has Multidisciplinary Accident Investigation Teams (MAIT) for the investigation of traffic collisions.[5]
Special responsibilities [ edit ]
The CHP also publishes data on traffic accidents in California from a database called SWITRS (Statewide Integrated Traffic Records System).
Members of the CHP SWAT Team
After the September 11, 2001 attacks the CHP became responsible for securing and patrolling a number of potential terrorist targets in California. These sites include nuclear power plants, government buildings, and key infrastructure sites. The CHP also maintains a SWAT team on 24‑hour stand‑by to respond to any terrorist activity.
In September 2005, the CHP sent its two Mobile Field Forces (highly trained and equipped quick reaction/deployment teams for civil disturbances and/or disasters) to the Gulf Coast to assist in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Before the United States National Guard arrived, the CHP had four patrol helicopters over Marianna, Florida, more than eighty vehicles on the ground, and more than 200 officers and other staff, including a SWAT team, deployed in New Orleans.[6]
The CHP also has officers assigned to drug task forces and other criminal investigative task forces throughout the state, and maintains highly trained Warrant Service Teams (WST) throughout each of its Divisions. These teams serve high-risk felony arrest and search warrants generated as a result of CHP investigations, and the WST assists local, state, and federal law enforcement agencies to serve the same type of high-risk warrants. CHP investigators also work closely with agents of the State Bureau of Investigation, Office of the Attorney General.
Additionally, the CHP has dozens of narcotic patrol and explosive detection K‑9 teams stationed throughout the state.
One of the California Highway Patrol's additional responsibilities includes a governor protection detail.
Somewhat controversially, the cities of Oakland and Stockton have contracted with the California Highway Patrol to assist their police departments with local patrol duties, including traffic stops and responding to 911 calls.[7][8][9]
Pay and pensions [ edit ]
Average officer pay was $118,000 in 2014.[10] By law, salaries are set by an average of the five largest police departments in the state.[11] In 2012, the top paid CHP officer received $483,581, 44 other officers earning over $200,000, and over 5,000 officers receiving at over $100,000.[11] In 2011, CHP officers earned $82.4 million in overtime, triple the amount in the second largest state, and with one officer earning over $93,000 in overtime alone.[11] Officers are strictly prohibited from working more than 16.5 hours at a time before having to take a minimum 8 hour break.[11]
In 1999, Governor Gray Davis signed SB 400, which allowed CHP officers to retire at age 50 and continue receiving as much as 90% of their peak pay as a pension.[12] This raised the pension earned for 30 years of service from an average of $62,218 to $96,270.[12] Officers' average retirement age is 54.[12] The private market cost for a similar annuity is $2.6 million.[12] Benefits promised by the State of California are currently $241 billion greater than funds it has actually committed to CalPERS.[12]
Organization [ edit ]
California Highway Patrol Headquarters in Sacramento, CA.
CHP Commisioner Warren Stanley
The CHP is led by the Commissioner, who is appointed by the Governor of California. The Deputy Commissioner is also appointed by the Governor and the Assistant Commissioners are appointed by the Commissioner.
In 2008, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger appointed Joe Farrow to succeed Mike Brown as CHP Commissioner.[13]
Hierarchy [ edit ]
Commissioner of the Highway Patrol - Warren Stanley [14] [15] Deputy Commissioner of the Highway Patrol - Scott Silsbee Professional Standards and Ethics Division Office of Community Outreach & Media Relations Assistant Commissioner, Field Operations - Nick Norton Northern Division Valley Division Golden Gate Division Central Division Southern Division Border Division Coastal Division Inland Division Protective Services Division Office of Air Operations State Security Division Assistant Commissioner, Staff Operations- Amanda Ray Office of Employee Safety and Assistance Administrative Services Division Enforcement & Planning Division Information Management Division Special Counsel to the Commissioner
Rank structure [ edit ]
Traditions [ edit ]
CHP uniforms are traditionally khaki-colored with campaign hat and blue-and-gold trouser stripe. Command officers wear a tan combination cap. The dress uniform includes a forest green jacket and royal blue tie (bow tie for motor officers). Cold weather and utility uniforms are dark blue.
California Highway Patrol campaign hat.
Leather gear is black basketweave leather with brass snaps and buckles.
Standard traffic enforcement patrol vehicles are required by state law to have a white door with, in the case of the CHP, a star. The CHP operates traditional black and white as well as all-white patrol vehicles.
The California Highway Patrol is one of the few organizations to continue to use the older toll-free "Zenith 1‑2000" number. With the falling cost of telephone area code 800 and 888 numbers, most organizations have chosen to switch to one of the newer numbers and discontinue use of the Zenith service, which requires operator assistance. The CHP's traditions include its own radio codes, widely adopted by local agencies. The most important is 11‑99, which signifies that an officer needs emergency assistance or that an officer is down.
In 1981, a charitable foundation called the 11‑99 Foundation was founded to provide benefits and scholarships to officers and their families. The members of the foundation's board of directors have provided over $16 million in assistance to current, retired, and those fallen in the line of duty CHP employees and their families. The organization's name is taken from the radio code.[16] There has been some mild controversy over whether the issuing of metal license plate frames to members of this foundation, often seen installed around the rear license plate, might result in any special treatment of member motorists by CHP officers.
Seven points of the CHP badge [ edit ]
CHP badge. This is for retired officer #11643. Active duty badges are exactly the same, with the "Retired" banner not applied.
The badge of the California Highway Patrol is a gold seven-point star with the California state seal in the center, and a ribbon with the rank of the badge holder on the bottom. The star points have oak leaves in them, and badges are made of 14k gold-filled brass. A patch facsimile is worn on tactical and utility uniforms, and optionally on the cold weather jacket. The cap piece is a golden winged wheel with banners stating the agency name.
Character: The qualities of moral strength, vigor, and stability (11:00)
Integrity: The moral defense against corrupting influence (1:00)
Knowledge: Acquaintance with facts and laws, combined with the awareness and understanding that sustain an officer through daily duties (9:00)
Judgment: The ability to apply knowledge to the best advantage of all concerned (3:00)
Honor: Highest esteem for the principles upon which the California Highway Patrol has been built (7:00)
Loyalty: Faithfulness to the precepts of the Highway Patrol and to fellow officers (5:00)
Courtesy: Respect for law and order and for the individual (6:00)
Code of honor [ edit ]
The CHP has a code of honor. It states:
“ I, a member of the California Highway Patrol, subscribe in word and deed to the following: To serve the United States of America and the State of California honestly, and conscientiously; and fulfill my oath as a soldier of the law; To uphold and maintain the honor and integrity of the California Highway Patrol; Be loyal to my fellow officers; respect and obey my seniors in rank; and enforce the law without fear, favor, or discrimination; Assist those in peril or distress, and, if necessary, lay down my life rather than swerve from the path of duty; My personal conduct shall at all times be above reproach and I will never knowingly commit any act that will in any way bring discredit upon the California Highway Patrol or any member thereof; To all of this I do solemnly pledge my sacred honor as an Officer of the California Highway Patrol. ”
Fallen officers [ edit ]
Since its establishment in 1929, 226 officers have died in the line of duty. The top three frequent causes of line of duty deaths to date are (in order of cause): Automobile/Motorcycle Accidents, Gunfire, and Vehicular Assault (i.e., struck by drunk driver, reckless driving, or hearing and/or visually impaired drivers).[17] 1964 was the deadliest year, in which eight officers died in the line of duty; 1970 and 1978 were the second deadliest years, in which seven officers died in the line of duty.
Mexico Liaison Unit [ edit ]
The "Mexico Liaison Unit" is a Border Division Unit based in San Diego. Since the CHP has no jurisdiction directly in Mexico, officers from the Unit work closely with Mexican authorities to recover stolen vehicles and assist with other law enforcement issues. The purpose of the "Mexico Liaison Unit" is to develop and maintain positive working relations with Mexican authorities in order to:
Locate and identify stolen U.S. vehicles taken to Mexico
Identify vehicle thieves and ensure their prosecution, either in Mexico or California
Provide assistance to Mexican and U.S. authorities
The unit was originally established in 1958 and only consisted of one officer. It was discontinued in the 1970s, and reestablished in 1980. The unit now consists of one sergeant and six officers, all of whom are fluent in Spanish.[18]
A CHP unit at the scene of an accident
Scandals [ edit ]
Officer Peyer Scandal [ edit ]
In 1988, CHP officer Craig Peyer, a 13-year veteran of the CHP, was convicted for the first-degree murder of 20-year-old Cara Knott, who was pulled over for an alleged traffic violation by Peyer on December 27, 1986, in a marked CHP patrol vehicle. Peyer attempted inappropriate advances on Knott, but Knott rebuffed him, leading Peyer to bludgeon her with his flashlight, strangle her to death with a rope, and then toss her corpse over the abandoned bridge on which Peyer had directed Knott to stop.
Subsequent investigative media efforts uncovered multitudes of young women who experienced similar inappropriate advances from Peyer during traffic stops. A documented pattern in CHP records of Peyer stopping and detaining young women similar to Knott eventually surfaced during an internal investigation, but all complaints filed with the internal affairs department of CHP against Peyer by these women were dismissed due to Peyer's "stellar" reputation within CHP. The traffic tickets from the night of the Knott incident, as well the officer logbook, were discovered to contain false information authored by Peyer. As of 2014, Peyer is still in prison denying he killed Knott. His next parole hearing is set for 2027.
Newhall incident [ edit ]
On April 6, 1970, four California Highway Patrol officers were killed in a 4½‑minute shootout in the Newhall region of Southern California. The incident is a landmark in CHP history because of both its emotional impact and the procedural and doctrinal reforms implemented by the CHP in the incident's aftermath.
The shootout occurred in a restaurant parking lot just before midnight. Officers Walt Frago and Roger Gore were alerted by radio of a vehicle carrying someone who brandished a weapon. They spotted the car, fell in behind, called for backup, and began the stop procedure. When the suspects' vehicle came to a halt in the parking lot, the driver was instructed to step out of the vehicle and spread his hands on the hood. Gore approached him and Frago moved to the passenger side. The passenger side door suddenly swung open and the passenger sprung out, firing at Frago, who fell with two shots in his chest. The gunman, later identified as Jack Twinning, then turned and fired once at Gore, who returned fire. In that moment the driver, Bobby Davis, turned and shot Gore twice at close range. Both officers died instantly.
When Officers James Pence and George Alleyn drove in moments later, they could not see suspects or other officers, but both immediately came under fire. Pence put out an 11‑99 call ("officer needs help, emergency") then took cover behind the passenger door. Alleyn grabbed his shotgun, and positioned himself behind the driver-side door. Both officers were mortally wounded in the ensuing exchange, and one suspect was hit.
Civilian Gary Kness saw the gunfight as he drove along The Old Road and stopped to help. Kness ran toward the gun battle as shots were still being fired.
"I was driving to work as a computer operator when I turned the corner on the Old Road and saw the gunfire, I saw two CHP cars and a red car. I always say my brain said to get out of the way, but my feet ran the wrong way."[19]
Kness tried to drag the mortally wounded Alleyn out of the line of fire. When one of the two assailants began firing at him, Kness grabbed a CHP shotgun lying on the ground and aimed it at one of the gunmen. The shotgun was empty, however. Kness grabbed Alleyn's service pistol from the ground, aimed with both hands and fired, hitting gunman Bobby Augusta Davis in the chest. When Davis kept advancing toward him, Kness tried to shoot again, but the CHP pistol was out of bullets.
"I was upset there weren't four or five more rounds in there. After that, I ran and jumped in a ditch. The dumbest thing is, I still had the service revolver in my hand. I was afraid when more police came they'd think I was one of the gunman. So I put it behind me and said, 'They went that way.'"[19]
Suspects Jack Twinning and Bobby Davis escaped, later abandoned their vehicle and then split up. For nine hours, officers blanketed the area searching for the killers. Twinning broke into a house and briefly held a man hostage. Officers used tear gas before storming the house, but Twinning committed suicide with the shotgun he stole from Frago. Davis was captured, stood trial and convicted on four counts of murder. He was sentenced to death, but in 1972, the California Supreme Court declared the death penalty to be cruel and unusual punishment and in 1973, the court commuted his sentence to life in prison.
Of the incident, Ronald Reagan, who was governor of California at the time, said the following words: "If anything worthwhile comes of this tragedy, it should be the realization by every citizen that often the only thing that stands between them and losing everything they hold dear... is the man wearing a badge."[20]
An emotionally charged follow-up investigation followed the incident, but eventually led to a complete revision of procedures during high-risk and felony stops. Firearms procedures have also changed fundamentally due to this incident, and physical methods of arrest have been improved. The police baton and pepper spray have been added to the officer's arsenal, with more in‑depth training in their use.[21]
The 25th anniversary of the Newhall Incident was observed on April 6, 1995, at the present Newhall Area office, where a brick memorial pays tribute to Officers James Pence (6885), Roger Gore (6547), Walt Frago (6520) and George Alleyn (6290). The memorial once stood at the former Newhall office, but was rebuilt at the new site, about one mile (1.6 km) from the scene of the slayings.[22]
Mergers [ edit ]
On July 12, 1995, the California State Police, which was a separate agency, was merged into the CHP, thus greatly expanding the agency's mandate.[3] In addition to safety on the state highway system, it is now responsible for the safety of all elected state officials and all people who work in or are utilizing a state building in California, such as the State Capitol Building in Sacramento.
It has also been discussed to merge the Law Enforcement Division of the California Department of Fish and Wildlife into the California Highway Patrol.[23][24] By doing so, this may allow for better protection of California's environment and natural resources. The underfunded CDFW Law Enforcement Division[25][26][27] has faced low numbers of Game Wardens also known as Wildlife Officers for the last ten years; a similar idea is already in place in Oregon and Alaska, where the Oregon State Police[28] and Alaska State Troopers[29] serve as game wardens under a separate fish and wildlife division within the two departments.
Weapons [ edit ]
The current department issued firearm for CHP officers is the Smith & Wesson M&P40, which replaced the Smith & Wesson Model 4006 TSW in 2017. Each CHP patrol car is equipped with a Remington Model 870 Police Magnum 12-gauge shotgun and a SIG Sauer SIGM400 rifle in.223 Remington. Less-lethal weapons include oleoresin capsicum spray, less-lethal shotguns and side-handle batons. The ASP, Inc. Expandable Straight Baton is authorized as an optional piece of equipment. Additionally, all officers are authorized to carry a Taser. As of early 2009, officers have been allowed to mount weapon-mounted lights to their pistols.
Vehicles [ edit ]
Origins [ edit ]
When motor vehicles in California were first seen as needing legislation, law enforcement agencies began to patrol using motorcycles, cars and trucks.[30]:9 Motorcycle officers in 1920 Fresno, started a group to assist each other and promote road safety - the Joaquin Valley Traffic Officer's Association - led by Harry Wilson who they elected as president. They renamed themselves the California Association of Highway Patrolmen in 1921, and became the California Highway Patrol in 1927 under the auspices of the Department of Motor Vehicles.[30]:10
Motorcycles [ edit ]
Through the public competitive bidding process, the Harley-Davidson motorcycle was selected as the primary enforcement motorcycle for the California Highway Patrol in 2013.[citation needed]
These replacement enforcement motorcycles will replenish the Department's aging motorcycle fleet. In a cost-saving move, the CHP previously deferred the purchase of replacement motorcycles and has not purchased enforcement motorcycles since January 14, 2011. As a result, approximately 20 percent of the current fleet has logged 100,000 plus miles – well exceeding the manufacturer's warranty.[citation needed]
CHP's motorcycle program enhances public safety. Motorcycle officers are able to effectively enforce traffic laws in areas in which enforcement by four-wheel vehicles is impractical. Motorcycles can access scenes of accidents and natural disasters more quickly and work commute traffic in way that is unique to the motorcycle. Additionally, motorcycles play a special role in dignitary protection.
The CHP has approximately 415 enforcement motorcycles working the roads throughout California. The CHP purchased 121 of the Harley-Davidson enforcement motorcycles to replace motorcycles that have high mileage or have been damaged in traffic collisions. As of June 2013, approximately 22 percent of the CHP's motorcycle fleet is over 100,000 miles with more than half of those over 125,000 miles. On average, a CHP enforcement motorcycle is driven 14,000 miles per year.
The Harley-Davidson FLHTP Enforcement Motorcycle price per unit is $28,381.00. This includes a 3 year/60,000 mile warranty that covers all service and repairs.
Early motorcycles used included Indian, Harley-Davidson and Henderson manufactured bikes during the 1920s and 30s;[30]:18, 20, 23 though by 1941, the main manufacturers used at the training academy were Harley-Davidson and Indian.[30]:30
In the 1970s, CHP decided to renew their Harleys fleet and tested many motorcycles such as Honda 750 four, Suzuki 850, Moto Guzzi and finally Kawasaki Z900 and then 1000C1 made famous in CHiPs.
In 1998, CHP began using the BMW R1100RT-P, with features including a helmet interface for communications, two batteries, and a top speed of 130 miles per hour (210 km/h).[31][32]
Vehicles [ edit ]
California Highway Patrol cruiser on display at Public Safety Day in Lakewood, California
The Department of General Services is responsible for selecting a vehicle based on price, performance and payload capacity for the CHP. The bid specifications require a pursuit-rated, rear-wheel drive or all-wheel drive that can carry at least 1,500 pounds, the approximate weight of four officers, their equipment, and the police vehicle equipment.
As of July 2013, CHP had not purchased patrol vehicles since January 2011 and their fleet was rapidly aging. On average, CHP patrol vehicles are driven 33,000 miles per year. Half of their 2,153-vehicle fleet had over 100,000 miles as of June 2013. After 100,000 miles, the warranty on CHP vehicles expires, forcing CHP to pay for maintenance costs. In July 2013, the CHP was authorized to purchase up to 751 new vehicles to begin replacing its aging fleet, starting with cars that have the highest mileage.
Through a public, competitive bidding process, the Ford Police Interceptor Utility Vehicle (Explorer) was selected as the new enforcement vehicle for the CHP in 2013. The Ford Police Interceptor Utility Vehicle is All Wheel Drive and powered by a V6, 3.7 Liter engine. It is a Flex Fuel vehicle that can use gasoline or E85 and gets 16 mpg city and 21 mpg highway.
Several Dodge Charger Police Packages were also purchased for testing.
The Ford Crown Victoria Police Interceptor averaged 14 mpg city and 21 mpg highway. The new Ford Police Interceptor Utility Vehicle costs $26,578, which includes a 5-year, 100,000-mile warranty. The Department was paying $24,043 for the Ford Crown Victoria Police Interceptors and recently spent hundreds of thousands of dollars per month to maintain all vehicles no longer covered by warranty. Several vehicles were allocated to public affairs officers and are used for recruiting purposes. An example of these vehicles can be seen at the California State Fair and other venues. CHP also uses Chevrolet Silverados, Dodge Rams (for commercial vehicle enforcement), Ford Expeditions, and Dodge Durangos for their divisions that snow frequently or have certain terrains to permit off-road driving.
In July 2016, it was announced that the CHP would be taking delivery of 516 2016 Dodge Chargers.[33] These cars are hoped to be more reliable than the Ford Police Interceptor Utility Vehicle, which have been plagued with various recalls and breakdowns, most notably, transmission failures.
In 2017, it was announced that the CHP were going to start using Chevrolet Tahoe Police Patrol Vehicles (PPV) for rural and resident posts. This is because of their ability to carry a larger "basic load" of normal issue equipment, equipment that may be only in a few cars, and / or not carried by patrol cars at all, in a more urban setting.
Aircraft [ edit ]
CHP AS 350 B3 in flight.
The CHP utilizes both helicopters and fixed-wing aircraft. In 2017 the fleet consisted of:[34]
Rogue officers [ edit ]
George Gwaltney [ edit ]
A former officer from Barstow, was convicted on May 10, 1984, in federal court, for the on‑duty rape and slaying of 23-year-old Robin Bishop on January 11, 1982. He had reported finding a dead body off a deserted strech of interstate 15 on that same day he had murdered her with his service weapon. Gwaltney was tried twice for this murder at the San Bernardino County Court House, the first trial ended with the jury deadlocked 8-4 and the second 7-5. The district attorney attempted to try Gwaltney a third time, but a Superior court judge dismissed the murder charge. Since Gwaltney was allowed to walk away as a free man for the first two state trials, the FBI stepped in to take over the case. The FBI was able to piece together the events leading up to the slaying and the on duty rape of the Utah native, Robin Bishop and interrogating Gwaltney's alibi, Preston Olson and his mother. There was more forensic evidence that the FBI succeeded on getting to build their case against Gwaltney and soon his story started to fall apart piece by piece. After the six-month investigation done by the FBI, George Michael Gwaltney was arrested at his desert hometown in Barstow and tried in federal court at the U.S District Court in Los Angeles, where he was represented by a public defender whom he chose not to have Gwaltney testify just as he had done in the previous two state trials. He was found guilty of the slaying, rape and the deprivation of Robin Bishop's civil rights while on duty. He was the first California Highway Patrol officer to be charged with the indictment of violating the civil rights of Robin Bishop as well as being the first CHP officer to commit a murder while on duty. Following the conviction, Gwaltney was subsequently sentenced to 90 years, being eligible for parole after serving at least 30 years. Gwaltney died in federal custody from a heart attack.[35]
Craig Peyer [ edit ]
A former officer from Poway, is serving a 25-years-to-life prison sentence for the on-duty strangulation and murder of 20-year-old Cara Knott on December 27, 1986. After she was killed, Knott's body was discarded over an abandoned highway bridge. Peyer was convicted of first-degree murder in 1988. Though he has maintained innocence ever since, Peyer has been denied parole consistently.[36] In 2004, the parole board offered Peyer the chance to prove his alleged innocence by providing a DNA sample to compare against a drop of blood found on Cara's shoe, using modern DNA profiling. Peyer declined to provide a sample, nor explain why he declined to do so.
Brad Wheat [ edit ]
Brad Wheat, an off duty California Highway Patrol Officer got into a dispute outside of a "Get Ripped Nutrition" in Martell, Amador County, California on August 4, 2018. He had a weapon and the store owner was going to call 911 before he shot the owner, his wife, and himself. The owner managed to escape despite his injury and called 911. Brad's wife, and Brad were killed instantly.
This section may need to be updated since the situation is still breaking.
Michael Joslin [ edit ]
A former officer from Pioneer was arrested for continuously molesting and raping a 12-year-old girl on August 13, 2018. He was charged with oral copulation with a minor under 14, lewd acts with a child under 14, continuous sexual abuse of a child, penetration with a foreign object and rape. The Amador County Sheriff's Department was tipped off by a local Church pastor after the victim and her mother came forward with the alleged abuse. The Amador County Sheriff's detectives and the department learned that the alleged molestation had been taking place for the past year. Joslin was employed with the California Highway Patrol Amador area office until Aug. 14, when he was removed from the position. From July 1, 2009, until March 2, 2016, he was employed at the San Andreas area office. He graduated from the CHP Academy in West Sacramento on June 18, 2007. Joslin appeared in court and pleaded not guilty to the charges he had against him and was ordered to turn in his firearms. A protective order was imposed on Joslin in court, prohibiting him from contacting the victim in any capacity. He is currently being held at the Amador County Jail awaiting his bail and arrangement proceedings scheduled for October 1.
This may need to be updated until further notice.
Media references [ edit ]
Programs [ edit ]
The CHP hosts or partners with numerous programs for public safety education and community involvement.
Youth programs [ edit ]
Start Smart- a class for prospective and new teen drivers
Every 15 Minutes- a two-day anti-drunk driving presentation for high school students
Impact Teen Drivers- a nonprofit against teen distracted driving that is partnered with the CHP
Make the Right Turn- aimed at educating 11- to 14-year-olds about drugs and peer pressure
Be An Explorer- a law enforcement career exploration program for teens
Sober Graduation- promoting sober driving and the use of a designated driver for teens
Red Ribbon Week- a week in October dedicated to education about the dangers of illicit drugs for students of all ages
Vehicle Theft Recognition and Awards Program [ edit ]
10851 Award for Superior Efforts in Vehicle Theft Arrests and Recovery. The CHP developed the 10851 Awards Program to recognize the superior efforts made by CHP and allied law enforcement personnel who have met specified criteria toward the reduction of stolen vehicle crimes. This includes actual arrests made of suspects charged with California Vehicle Code Section 10851 - Vehicle Theft. The CHP, in conjunction with the California State Automobile Association, presented an estimated 2,009 awards in 1995 to the more than 170 allied agencies participating in the 10851 Awards Program.[37]
California Highway Patrol 10851 Award Pin
Other Programs [ edit ]
Highway Safety Corridor Program- promoting caution on roads with high accident rates
Senior Volunteer Program- senior citizens can help out in the community
Designated Driver Program- program to reduce drunk driving incidents through using a designated driver
Origins of the California Highway Patrol's name [ edit ]
When the CHP was formed, there were discussions as to what to call this new agency. The consensus was for the name "California Highway Patrol". The American Automobile Association (AAA) is a private organization which provided, among other things, roadside assistance to their members. At that time, the AAA had a fleet of trucks which patrolled the roads so they could assist their members. These trucks carried a sign which said "Highway Patrol". The CHP organizers decided it would be best to contact the AAA to see if they would object to the state using this name. The AAA considered the idea, and gave their consent.[38]
See also [ edit ]
References [ edit ]
Further reading [ edit ]The first thing I hear in the morning are birds. The birds are wrong. This bed is wrong. The air is wrong. I don't belong here.
I managed to make it half way through the semester. Attending classes I've already taken, taking test I've already written. I didn't expect Haven and Beacon to share curriculums this closely.
I hate this place. I hate this school. I hate this plan. But most of all, I hate her.
Then why are we sharing a bed.
"What. The. Hell." A livid Emerald exclaims in a deep voice.
Oh right, that's why.
I sit up, exposing Cinder's and my body to make it very clear to Emerald what we did. I hate Cinder, but I wanted to piss off Emerald so much more. Plus we were drunk out of our gourds during last night's post midterm celebration.
I flash the thief a smug smile before getting up and projecting a nightgown for myself as I walk to the showers. I can faintly hear Emerald trying to get words out and Cinder telling her to settle down. I make sure I'm alone in the shower before dropping my illusion. Once I'm under the water I start to let my mind wander.
This morning almost felt right. Feeling a warm body next to mine again. If it wasn't for those damn birds ruining the illusion. I thought for a moment I was back. I miss my old team. I miss…her. I wonder if she's moved on yet. Probably.
I clench my fist and let the shower hide the few tears I let out.
I don't know why I care. Roman called about the biggest score in the world and I made the plan to fake my death within an hour. If I loved her I wouldn't have hurt her so easy. It doesn't matter now. There's a job to do.
"I don't care! You promised me you'd have twice this much by now!" Cinder is yelling at Roman over her scroll. It makes me want to stab her a lot more than normal. "There's a large shipment coming to Vale in a few weeks alongside the Vacuo students. Round up as many local White Fang as there are available and get that warehouse filled." She didn't wait for him to respond. If I know Roman he slammed the scroll down, himself.
Cinder took a deep breath before turning to us. "We're heading back to Vale a bit ahead of schedule. However, I want you two to keep your hands clean until we set back up in the dorms."
I can't help but smile widely. I wouldn't need to stay trapped at Beacon, I could head out to Vale and stay with Roman most of the time.
"I'll make the arrangements. You three prepare to qualify for the tournament. I've uploaded the short list of teams I want joining us in Vale…Emerald will ensure all others fail to perform at their best." Cinder instructed as she went back to fiddling with her scroll.
I really couldn't care less about all this, but I have gotten to know how these three fight. I feel that might be useful down the line. I've also pieced together Emerald and Mercury's story but I still have no clue about Cinder. I can't get even a hint at who or what she was a couple years ago. She knows Mistral well enough, but that's about all I can deduce. It bothers me, not knowing someone. Especially someone who could easily stab me in the back.
"Neo." I perk up at the sound of my name. Cinder sat in her bed, wearing a silk gown, staring at me. "I need to unwind." She says very directly. I can see Emerald seething from behind Cinder. I roll my eyes and crawl out of my own bed. I don't mind that much. It pisses off Emerald and I don't like sleeping alone.
Time passes and we have our fun. I think Emerald cried herself to sleep. Cinder isn't too big on reciprocating, but I get enough. Still. I hate her. I hate this plan. I hate this school. I hate this place.
The last thing I hear before falling asleep are birds. The birds are wrong.Celebrity culture is hardly a new thing. People are fascinated by how the rich and famous carry on with their lives – how they dress, what they eat, what they say.
A new course at UBC Okanagan is taking a look at one of the world’s most famous soccer stars: Cristiano Ronaldo.
Luis Aguiar, an associate professor of sociology at UBCO, has created a fourth-year level course centred around the man some call simply CR7.
Ronaldo has 100 million fans on Facebook. There’s a museum dedicated to his career in Funchal, Portugal.
He’s also not just one of the world’s best players, but he’s also a major cultural influencer, Aguiar said.
“Ronaldo is regularly followed by the paparazzi and scrutinized for his hairstyle, physique, celebrity status, and love life,” Aguiar said in a release from UBC.
“In this case, I’m interested in how Ronaldo has been used to construct several discourses about who he is, what makes him distinct as a footballer, what is his relationship to Portugal, Madeira (his hometown) and his Portuguese identity.”
Aguiar is also from Portugal.
“While I’m an admirer of Ronaldo, I’m also a sociologist interested in understanding the social and economic forces driving the various constructions of this athlete and what this says about our contemporary values and culture,” he said in the release.Yu Darvish was all alone. Sitting in front of his locker in the Texas Rangers’ spring training clubhouse, the pitcher arranged his belongings hastily, kept his eyes trained on the floor, and, with his unruly bedhead and a slight frown, wafted a kind of late-teenage surliness. He wanted to flee. Nearby, a phalanx of beat reporters — some American, some Japanese — huddled together, staring at him, unsure whether to approach. Darvish, the Rangers’ biggest star, is a mercurial presence and an object of fascination. A 6-foot-5, 27-year-old Japanese ace of Iranian patrimony, he has a rock star’s extracurricular interests and a wildly entertaining game. (His eephus-like 60 mph curveball, offset by a high-90s heater, is the stuff of viral GIFs.) And his continued excellence isn’t so much a key to the Rangers’ success as a prerequisite for even discussing it. So when Darvish has some aches and pains, people around the team grow uneasy, and on that late March morning, word had leaked that all was not well. Darvish was feeling lousy, and he had asked to be scratched from his scheduled start. Yu Darvish had a stiff neck.
A stiff neck for Yu Darvish may be big news, especially during spring training, but it is not simple news to convey. Darvish isn’t shy, but he speaks very little English, and the Rangers’ training staff, coaches, players, and Dallas-area beat reporters speak even less Japanese. When your team’s star pitcher motions to his neck and seems to indicate something is wrong, you probably want to know exactly where it hurts. So when Darvish has a stiff neck, or Darvish needs to discuss pitching strategy, or Darvish wants to crack a joke, some coach or front-office staffer will invariably turn around and call out, “Kenji!” Most of the time, he’s already there.
That morning, as Darvish sat at his locker, Kenji Nimura, a diminutive 42-year-old former high school teacher, was standing a few feet away, chatting in Spanish with pitchers Alexi Ogando and Joakim Soria, their conversation punctuated by loud, excited laughter. But as the beat reporters crept closer to Darvish for an impromptu press conference, Nimura’s face dropped into a more sober cast. He walked over to the pitcher, took up his familiar position at Darvish’s side, and began fielding questions.
“What happened to your neck?” one of the reporters asked.
Darvish, who understands English much better than he speaks it, didn’t need the question to be translated. He replied curtly.
“Slept wrong,” Nimura said a second later, aping Darvish’s shrug.
“How concerned are you about this?” another reporter jumped in.
This time Nimura repeated the question |
1993, agents from the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms made a surprise raid on the compound, trying to execute a search warrant. But during the raid gunfire erupted, killing four agents and six members of the religious sect.
That led to a 51-day standoff, ending April 19, 1993, when the complex caught fire and burned to the ground. The government claimed the Davidians committed suicide, shooting themselves and setting the fire. Survivors said the blaze was started by tear gas rounds fired into the compound by government tanks, and that agents shot at some who tried to flee. Reno had authorized the use of the tear gas to end the standoff and later called the day the worst of her life.
"It was a dangerous situation," Reno said of the incident during a 2005 lecture at Duke University. "The tragedy is that we will never know what was the right thing to do."
Things got no easier after Waco. In 1995 Reno was diagnosed with Parkinson's after noticing a trembling in her left hand. She said from the beginning that the diagnosis, which she announced during a weekly news conference, would not impair her job performance. And critics — both Republicans and Democrats — did not give her a pass because of it.
Republicans argued she should have sought appointment of an independent counsel to investigate allegations of Clinton-Gore fundraising violations. Democrats, meanwhile, grumbled that she failed to act as a team player.
In early 2000, Reno tried to negotiate the return to Cuba of 5-year-old Elian, who had been rescued after his mother and others drowned trying to boat from Cuba to Florida. He had been placed in the care of a Miami uncle, but his father, who lived in Cuba, wanted him returned to the island.
When Reno decided talks had broken down that April, she ordered an early morning raid by federal agents who seized the boy, provoking the ire of Miami's Cuban-American community. Reno insisted that Elian should be with his father — she even kept a snapshot of a smiling Elian in his father's arms near her home computer.
Reno said later that federal officials tried until the last minute to negotiate a voluntary handover and avoid the raid — where Elian was found hiding in a closet and confronted by an agent with a gun.
"We have been to great lengths to resolve this case in the least disruptive manner possible," she said at a news conference following the raid.
As attorney general, Reno was derided by late night talk show hosts for her homely appearance, short wash-and-wear haircut and simple black pumps. Comedian Will Ferrell memorialized her in a "Saturday Night Live" skit called "Janet Reno's Dance Party" and Reno visited the skit the night she left the Justice Department in January 2001.
Reno began her career in Miami in the mid-1960s and had her first encounter with the "glass ceiling," getting passed over for a job at a law firm because she was a woman. She later made partner. In 1972, she lost a race for a Miami-area legislative seat but learned the importance of sticking to her principles from mentor John Orr, a former state lawmaker.
"Don't equivocate, don't pussyfoot, don't talk out of both sides of your mouth and you'll wake up the next morning feeling good about yourself," he told Reno. It became one of her favorite sayings.
After losing that election, Reno was hired by the Dade State Attorney's office, where she established herself as an organized and competent lawyer. In 1978, when State Attorney Richard Gerstein decided to step down, Reno was named his successor.
As prosecutor, Reno built programs to help reform drug dealers and combat domestic violence. Another program strong-armed deadbeat dads into paying child support, inspiring a rap song named after her.
It included the line: "All the money you get, all the checks you make; Janet Reno will make sure and take."
She also weathered a 1980 riot after an all-white jury acquitted five police officers for the beating death of a black insurance salesman. Eighteen people were killed in the rioting and crowds chanted Reno's name, accusing her of being a racist and demanding her resignation. Reno refused.
"To resign was to give into anarchy," she said.
Reno eventually won the support of the city's black community, attending countless community meetings, church services and parades.
Her last foray into politics was the race for Florida governor. Known for being down-to-earth — her home number was listed in a city directory both before and after Washington — and even folksy, she crisscrossed the state to campaign in a red Ford Ranger pickup truck. But Reno lost the primary to Tampa lawyer Bill McBride despite her name recognition. Republican Gov. Jeb Bush defeated McBride to win a second term.
After retiring from politics, Reno served on the boards or as an adviser to several organizations. In 2004 she joined the board of the New York-based Innocence Project, which works to free prisoners who can be proven innocent through DNA testing.
She also spent more time with her family. Shy and admittedly awkward, Reno never married but remained extremely close to her tight-knit family.
Asked to describe her legacy after ending her gubernatorial campaign, Reno quoted George Washington: "If I were to write all that down I might be reduced to tears. I would prefer to drift on down the stream of life and let history make the judgment."
___
Associated Press writers Ken Thomas and Jessica Gresko contributed to this report.Copyright 2016 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.Mike & Mike discuss the latest with New York Giants defensive end Jason Pierre-Paul reporting to the team for the first time since injuring his hand. (1:16)
Jason Pierre-Paul underwent a physical and provided the New York Giants with all of the medical records related to injuries he suffered in a July 4 fireworks accident that resulted in his right index finger being amputated, a league source said.
In addition, the Giants were sent a tape of Pierre-Paul doing conditioning work and defensive line drills, as well as lifting weights under the supervision of John Blake, a former Oklahoma head coach and a defensive assistant for the Dallas Cowboys under Barry Switzer.
Editor's Picks Graziano: And now, the next steps for JPP and Giants Jason Pierre-Paul has decided to rejoin the Giants and take a physical, but there's still a good deal of work to be done before he can practice and play. High on that list is having a conversation about money.
The source said Pierre-Paul's first visit to the team Monday was to provide the Giants a chance to evaluate Pierre-Paul so they can make an informed decision about how to proceed.
"He could play this week, but he probably wont," the source said. "If it was up to him, he would wrap his hand in a cast and play."
The Giants open the season Sunday at Dallas.
Jason Pierre-Paul submitted medical records related to injuries suffered in a fireworks accident and took a physical with the Giants, a league source said. Al Bello/Getty Images
The Giants used their franchise tag on Pierre-Paul, who has yet to sign the one-year, $14.8 million tender. There could still be a dispute over the Giants' ruling on his physical and how long they believe it will be before he can play, in addition to the hand injuries. Pierre-Paul did not participate in the Giants' offseason program or training camp.
The Giants could attempt to place him on the non-football injury list if they believe it will be at least six weeks before he's ready to play. They will not be obligated to pay him his salary if he's placed on that list. Pierre-Paul hasn't signed the franchise tender so he can maintain some control over his return to the field.A Wisconsin couple's act of compassion could end up costing them big time.
Throughout the past year and a half, Brenda Konkel and Robert Bloch of Madison have been allowing homeless people to store belongings in lockers on their front porch and letting those without shelter sleep there, too, according to the Madison Capital Times. But after a neighbor complained to the City of Madison that Konkel and Bloch were providing such services, local authorities concluded the couple was breaking the law. If Konkel and Bloch don't get rid of the lockers and stop allowing guests to sleep on their front porch this week, they'll be facing a $300 daily fine.
Matt Tucker, the city's zoning administrator, said legal occupants are the only ones who can use storage facilities on a residential property, and only those who share the space within a given home can choose to sleep outside of it.
But to Konkel -- who wrote on Facebook that at least 60 people have taken advantage of the services she and Bloch provide -- the couple is simply providing a resource that others are not.
"These are human beings," she told the Capital Times. "If the city and the county aren’t doing this, why prevent us from doing it?"
Konkel and Bloch have taken up a cause affecting a growing number of Madison residents. A point-in-time survey showed that 831 individuals were unsheltered in Dane County (the county in which Madison falls) in January of last year -- up from 566 in 2010.
Local legislation limiting individual efforts helping the homeless is not as uncommon as some may think. In fact, in about the last year alone, 33 U.S. cities have passed measures that restrict feeding the homeless in public locations. Some of those advocating on behalf of the homeless have also pointed to a rise in laws that have made it harder for the poorest Americans to find or create their own affordable housing.
While current city law has hindered Konkel and Bloch's ability to help the homeless in Madison, however, many in the community have expressed support for the couple's efforts.NEW DELHI: The central ministry of urban development has commissioned a survey on the situation of sanitation in 75 major cities including 53 that have a population of over 10 lakh each.Since the start of the Swachh Bharat Mission in October 2014, this is the first time the government has launched such a survey. The parameters of the survey have been aligned with the objectives of the Swachh Bharat Mission with more focus on solid waste management which is adversely impacting cleanliness in urban areas.The proposed survey and subsequent ratings to be completed in January 2016 is aimed at fostering a spirit of competition among major cities and state capitals in 29 states and Chandigarh to ensure sanitation in urban areas.In this survey for rating of 75 major cities that account for over 50% of the country’s total urban population, solid waste management is being given 60% weightage followed by 15% each for availability and use of household individual toilets and public and community toilets besides 5% each for city level sanitation plans and information, education and behaviour change communication (IEBC) activities. Under the Swachh Bharat Mission, about Rs 37,000 crore of the project cost of Rs 62,009 crore is to be spent on solid waste management.In the last survey for ranking of 476 cities with a population of above one lakh each before the launch of the mission, solid waste management had a weightage of only 13%.Swachh Bharat Mission is aimed at ensuring door-to-door collection, transportation and scientific disposal of municipal solid waste in all the 83,000 wards in urban areas by 2019 besides construction of one crore household individual toilets and over five lakh public and community toilet seats.The survey agencies will collect necessary data from urban local bodies besides through direct observation and citizen feedback through questionnaires. A minimum of 15 respondents have to be reached out in each ward for feedback.The synth pioneer had a secondary career as a leading stunt pilot. Here he tells Luke Turner why he gave up, the exhilaration of nearly dying, and why he wants to take to the skies again
Music got in the way of me being a professional pilot
I wanted to be a pop star, a pilot, or a racing car driver. All very similar schoolboy ideas! I decided to go for the pop star and managed to do it fairly quickly, but by the time I wanted to be a pilot I was too old, and racing cars are a similar thing, you have to start really young. I did karting, and I was in the air cadets, so I was covering all the bases to a certain point. And then I reached puberty, and it was all about getting the girls. What's going to be best for that? A pop star really isn't it? I'll go that way. When I talk about it, it is all very childish, I like being a racing driver, I think I'll be a pop star. I guess with most people end up doing what they do rather than choosing it, even if they're happy doing what they do.
I gave up flying because I'd lost so many close friends
I haven't done flying for a few years now. The big thing was that I was an air display pilot, and I used to teach aerobatics and formation flying in World War Two aeroplanes. And then, one by one all my friends were killed in crashes. In a very quick period I was fine fine fine fine, then all of a sudden it just went. One particular person died, and my brother had a big crash and was lucky to get away with it. Where before my wife didn't mind me doing it, but when this one particular person died, the first person she'd known who'd been killed in a crash, then all of a sudden she was done with it. She didn't want me to fly at all. There was a different atmosphere at home. That coincided with my own feelings that I felt like I'd pushed my luck. Everyone I knew apart from two or three people who I was distantly connected to had died. I don't have a photograph in my house of my flying friends where everyone is still alive. I'm the only one still alive out of six or seven people. I started to wonder if it was down to luck.
You have to have an arrogance and confidence to do it at all
You've got to think you know what you're doing. You have to. Because if you don't think that you hesitate, and it's all split second stuff.
Flying made me feel alive more than being Gary Numan the pop star
I had a lot of hairy moments. Yeah, close calls. But it's exciting you know. Jesus Christ, your heart's going and I loved it. It was that that made me feel like I was living, more than I'd ever done from anything else, including being on stage. If you make a mistake now, then you are going to die. You're not going to be embarrassed, you're probably going to die in a great big fiery ball on the ground.
You make mistakes when you no longer want to do it
I remember the a long time a time ago, there was a man called Brian Lecomber, he writes books and he's also a brilliant aerobatic pilot, and he said the day you start to hope you get around a manoeuvre, rather than know, get out. I remembered that, and I think it was brilliant advice. I remember diving in for a manoeuvre, the ground was coming up, and looking at all the dials and thinking, have I got that right? So I needed to take a break. I still miss it. The sound of it, the smell, the people
Air shows went from something I was proud to be in, to depressing
I loved going to air shows, you'd bond really tightly with your team mates - it's an extreme thing to be doing, and you trust our life to them. And then it ended. I'd turn up and not know anyone. It got depressing. I'd sit down in the pilot’s tent and there'd be all these people I'd not recognise. You'd look forward to someone turning up to have a chat with them, and they'd be dead.
Once you've been a stunt pilot, normal flying seems really tame
The safety aspect comes from being an air display pilot. You're flying at low level, and the margins for error are so small, that you only need to have one tiny problem with the aeroplane then that's it. So there was a luck element. The thing about flying around in a Cessna is you have to be really unlucky to have a bad accident. Even if the engine stops you come down so slowly... To an aerobatics pilot, who's used to fast, furious upside-down stuff, if you're in a Cessna and have a problem you just stick it in a field somewhere.
So many planes were wasted at the end of the war
They were pushing them cliffs or off the side of ships because it was cheaper to do that than scrap them. I've got a friend who makes Spitfires. I don't think the two-seater Spitfires work with the double bubble cockpit, but a Mustang does. I had a go on a Mustang once. Absolutely brilliant.
Modern planes, you can't get in unless you're in the air force
That rules them out straight away, though I have been lucky enough to fly in three, a Tornado, a Hawk and a Phantom, before they retired. That was through air show connections, a pilot asked me if I wanted a go. In the Hawk we went up to a firing range and I was firing the gun, I've got it filmed on camcorder.
Losing a plane is like losing a lady
Some people at Chichester own my old Harvard. They use it all the time and it's still in the same colours that I painted it. I've got a boat now, and I've been out in it a few times and my old aeroplane has come over. It's like seeing your ex with another man. I might buy it back one day, though I'd need to sell a few more albums.
Even the most scary moments were what made flying special
I remember once at an air show I'd just come out of a loop on a really rally windy day. I'd come up, and was on my way back down. I'd been a little too lazy on the top and I was a little bit closer to the ground than I wanted to be. I'd still got enough in hand, but this is where you've got to get it right. But on the way back down there was a gust, and it was if a giant hand had got the wing. If you hang onto the stick, the amount of pressure you put on, means you're going to die. You've got that fraction of that second to unload the wing, and get back on again, so you don't hit the ground. But it's moments like that where you're absolutely on the edge of living and not living... can you imagine the excitement? I love it. Loved it, loved it. To be able to think in that situation, that quickly, all of it goes through your head, what's going on, what do to about it, what the implications are. You get it right and you're away with a grin on your face, you get it wrong and you're dead. That decision-making in those kind of situations is as much the appeal of it as simply being in an aeroplane and flying around.
Long distance flying was terrifying, but in a less exciting way
We had an engine coming apart over the Arctic and had to divert into a place called Frobisher Bay. There's an 80-odd per-cent VD rate because nobody can get out, and there's all these Eskimos wandering around pissed and violent all the time. A bizarre place. Then we went from San Francisco to Hawaii, which is a long stretch over water. 2,500 miles in an aircraft designed to do 1,000. Both the engines quit about halfway over and it turned out to be water vapour that had clogged up a little inlet which is supplying ram air into one of the extra fuel tanks we'd put in. It wasn't heated, and because we were above the cloud level the water particles had frozen in the intake tubes. We didn't know that, we just knew they'd stopped. So we're coming down, it was terrifying, but what can you do? You just think about surviving the crash, which is unlikely because you're going to hit the water. You can't put the lights on because then you'd have to lower the undercarriage, and if you have the wheels out when you hit the water it'll rip you apart. It's different from being at the bottom of the loop because you've got a long time to think about it. It's much harder. It made me think I should have been a fighter pilot rather than a bomber pilot.
My pilot hero is Stanford Tuck
He was a World War Two fighter pilot. Also Chuck Yeager and Adolf Galland. I used to read endless biographies of pilots. I had some friends in the RAF and they brought me some amazing books about the art of dogfighting. I had a friend who was a test pilot at Boscombe Down, and we'd have these conversations where you learn so much that a normal civilian pilot would never have the chance to hear, all these brilliant tips.
These things are hard to do when kids come along
When the weekend comes along you want to see your children. You can't drag them off to airfields, living out dad's dream. Maybe when they're older, but then I'm 60-plus - I've got my last few years of doing all this young man's stuff. My life before was full of macho, exciting things, one thing after another. Then children come along and you have to cut back, your life has to be about what they need and they want. I try really hard to find ways of dovetailing all of it together; children, career, hobbies, plus having a time as a couple. It's a weird thing; it's no less challenging, but it is different rewards. I'd like to somehow tap into what I had before and satisfy that part of me which is still there, and wanting to get out. I really want to do paramotoring.
And I do want to get back into flying
But I've been away for it now for about three years. And I'm talking about getting back into it now. Not display flying necessarily. I'm going do go down to my local field, and go up with an instructor, and see how I feel.
Gary Numan's Pleasure Principle tour starts tonight in Brighton, and continues around the country through November and December. For full dates visit Gary Numan's websiteU.S. Supreme Court
Missouri v. Illinois, 200 U.S. 496 (1906)
Missouri v. Illinois
No. 4, Original
Argued January 2-4, 1906
Decided February 19, 1906
200 U.S. 496
Syllabus
Missouri filed its bill in this Court to enjoin Illinois and the Sanitary District of Chicago from discharging sewage through an artificial channel connecting Lake Michigan with the Desplaines River, a tributary of the Illinois, the latter of which empties into the Mississippi River above St. Louis, claiming that such sewage so polluted the water of the Mississippi as to render it unfit to drink and productive of typhoid fever and other diseases. Illinois denied the jurisdiction of this Court, and the allegations of the bill, and alleged that, if the conditions complained of at St. Louis existed, they resulted from discharge of sewage into the Mississippi by cities of Missouri and from other causes for which Illinois was not responsible. A demurrer was overruled, with leave to answer, 180 U. S. 180 U.S. 208; after answer and taking of proof, including much expert testimony as to effect of sewage on water and health, held that:
This Court has jurisdiction and authority to deal with a question of this nature between two states which, if it arose between two independent sovereignties, might lead to war.
In such a case, while this Court cannot take the place of a legislature, it must determine whether there is any principle of law, and if any, what, on which the plaintiff state can recover.
Every matter which would be cognizable in equity if between private citizens in the same jurisdiction would not warrant this Court in interfering if such matter arose between states; this Court should only intervene to enjoin the action of one state at the instance of another when the case is of serious magnitude, clearly and fully proved, and in such a case, only such principles should be applied as this Court is prepared deliberately to maintain.
While a state may have relief in this Court against another state to prevent it from discharging sewage through an artificial channel into, and thereby polluting the waters of, a river flowing through both states and on which the complainant state relies for water supply, if the alleged facts as to such pollution are not fully proved, and it also appears that such pollution might result from the discharge of sewage by cities of the complainant state into the same river the bill should be dismissed, but in this case without prejudice.
The reasons on which prescription for a public nuisance is denied or granted to individuals against the sovereign power to which he is subject have no application to an independent state, but it would be contradicting a fundamental principle of human nature not to allow effect to the lapse of time. The fixing of a definite time, however, is usually for the legislature, and not for the courts.
Page 200 U. S. 497
The mere fact that the drainage canal, constructed by authority of Illinois and also under authority of an act of Congress, brought water from the Lake Michigan watershed into the watershed of the Mississippi does not, in the absence of proof of the deleterious effects of such water, render the canal an unlawful structure the use whereof should be enjoined at the instance of another state in the Mississippi watershed.
The facts, which involved the right of the defendants to discharge the sewage of Chicago through an artificial channel into the Desplaines River, which empties into a tributary of the Mississippi River, are stated in the opinion of the Court.
Page 200 U. S. 517
MR. JUSTICE HOLMES delivered the opinion of the Court.
This is a suit brought by the State of Missouri to restrain the discharge of the sewage of Chicago through an artificial channel into the Desplaines River, in the State of Illinois. That river empties into the Illinois River, and the latter empties into the Mississippi at a point about forty-three miles above the City of St. Louis. It was alleged in the bill that the result of the threatened discharge would be to send 1,500 tons of poisonous filth daily into the Mississippi, to deposit great quantities of the same upon the part of the bed of the last-named river belonging to the plaintiff, and so to poison the water of that river, upon which various of the plaintiff's cities, towns, and inhabitants depended, as to make it unfit for drinking, agricultural, or manufacturing purposes. It was alleged that the defendant sanitary district was acting in pursuance of a statute of the State of Illinois, and as an agency of that state. The case is stated at length in 180 U. S. 180 U.S. 208, where a demurrer to the bill was overruled. A supplemental bill alleges that, since the filing of the original bill, the drainage canal has been opened and put into operation, and has produced and is producing all the evils which were apprehended when the injunction first was asked. The answers deny the plaintiff's case, allege that the new plan sends the water of the Illinois River into the Mississippi much purer than it was before, that many towns and cities of the plaintiff along the Missouri and Mississippi discharge their sewage into those rivers, and that, if there is any trouble, the plaintiff must look nearer home for the cause.
The decision upon the demurrer discussed mainly the jurisdiction of the court, and, as leave to answer was given when the demurrer was overruled, naturally there was no very precise consideration of the principles of law to be applied if the plaintiff should prove its case. That was left to the future,
Page 200 U. S. 518
with the general intimation that the nuisance must be made out upon determinate and satisfactory evidence, that it must not be doubtful, and that the danger must be shown to be real and immediate. The nuisance set forth in the bill was one which would be of international importance -- a visible change of a great river from a pure stream into a polluted and poisoned ditch. The only question presented was whether, as between the states of of the Union, this Court was competent to deal with a situation which, if it arose between independent sovereignties, might lead to war. Whatever differences of opinion there might be upon matters of detail, the jurisdiction and authority of this Court to deal with such a case as that is not open to doubt. But the evidence now is in, the actual facts have required for their establishment the most ingenious experiments, and for their interpretation the most subtle speculations, of modern science, and therefore it becomes necessary at the present stage to consider somewhat more nicely than heretofore how the evidence in it is to be approached.
The first question to be answered was put in the well known case of the Wheeling bridge. Pennsylvania v. Wheeling & Belmont Bridge Co., 13 How. 518. In that case also, there was a bill brought by a state to restrain a public nuisance -- the erection of a bridge alleged to obstruct navigation -- and a supplemental bill to abate it after it was erected. The question was put most explicitly by the dissenting judges, but it was accepted by all as fundamental. The Chief Justice observed that, if the bridge was a nuisance, it was an offense against the sovereignty whose laws had been violated, and he asked what sovereignty that was. 13 How. 54 U. S. 561; Daniel, J., 13 How. 54 U. S. 599. See also Kansas v. Colorado, 185 U. S. 125. It could not be Virginia, because that state had purported to authorize it by statute. The Chief Justice found no prohibition by the United States. 13 How. 508. No third source of law was suggested by anyone. The majority accepted the Chief Justice's postulate, and found an answer in what Congress had done.
It hardly was disputed that Congress could deal with the
Page 200 U. S. 519
matter under its power to regulate commerce. The majority observed that, although Congress had not declared in terms that a state should not obstruct the navigation of the Ohio by bridges, yet it had regulated navigation upon that river in various ways, and had sanctioned the compact between Virginia and Kentucky when Kentucky was let into the Union. By that compact, the use and navigation of the Ohio, so far as the territory of either state lay thereon, was to be free and common to the citizens of the United States. The compact, by the sanction of Congress, had become a law of the Union. A state law which violated it was unconstitutional. Obstructing the navigation of the river was said to violate it, and it was added that more was not necessary to give a civil remedy for an injury done by the obstruction. 13 How. 54 U. S. 565-566. At a later stage of the case, after Congress had authorized the bridge, it was stated again in so many words that the ground of the former decision was that "the act of the Legislature of Virginia afforded no authority or justification. It was in conflict with the acts of Congress, which were the paramount law." 59 U. S. 18 How. 421, 59 U. S. 430.
In the case at bar, whether Congress could act or not, there is no suggestion that it has forbidden the action of Illinois. The only ground on which that state's conduct can be called in question is one which must be implied from the words of the Constitution. The Constitution extends the judicial power of the United States to controversies between two or more states, and between a state and citizens of another state, and gives this Court original jurisdiction in cases in which a state shall be a party. Therefore, if one state raises a controversy with another, this Court must determine whether there is any principle of law, and, if any, what, on which the plaintiff can recover. But the fact that this Court must decide does not mean, of course, that it takes the place of a legislature. Some principles it must have power to declare. For instance, when a dispute arises about boundaries, this Court must determine the line, and, in doing so, must be governed by rules explicitly
Page 200 U. S. 520
or implicitly recognized. Rhode Island v. Massachusetts, 12 Pet. 657, 37 U. S. 737. It must follow and apply those rules even if legislation of one or both of the states seems to stand in the way. But the words of the Constitution would be a narrow ground upon which to construct and apply to the relations between states the same system of municipal law in all its details which would be applied between individuals. If we suppose a case which did not fall within the power of Congress to regulate, the result of a declaration of rights by this Court would be the establishment of a rule which would be irrevocable by any power except that of this Court to reverse its own decision, an amendment of the Constitution, or possibly an agreement between the states, sanctioned by the legislature of the United States.
The difficulties in the way of establishing such a system of law might not be insuperable, but they would be great and new. Take the question of prescription in a case like the present. The reasons on which prescription for a public nuisance is denied or may be granted to an individual as against the sovereign power to which he is subject have no application to an independent state. See 1 Oppenheim, International Law 293, §§ 242, 243. It would be contradicting a fundamental principle of human nature to allow no effect to the lapse of time, however long, Davis v. Mills, 194 U. S. 451, 194 U. S. 457, yet the fixing of a definite time usually belongs to the legislature, rather than the courts. The courts did fix a time in the rule against perpetuities, but the usual course, as in the instances of statutes of limitation, the duration of patents, the age of majority, etc., is to depend upon the lawmaking power.
It is decided that a case such as is made by the bill may be a ground for relief. The purpose of the foregoing observations is not to lay a foundation for departing from that decision, but simply to illustrate the great and serious caution with which it is necessary to approach the question whether a case is proved. It may be imagined that a nuisance might be created by a state upon a navigable river like the Danube, which would
Page 200 U. S. 521
amount to a casus belli for a state lower down unless removed. If such a nuisance were created by a state upon the Mississippi, the controversy would be resolved by the more peaceful means of a suit in this Court. But it does not follow that every matter which would warrant a resort to equity by one citizen against another in the same jurisdiction equally would warrant an interference by this Court with the action of a state. It hardly can be that we should be justified in declaring statutes ordaining such action void in every instance where the circuit court might intervene in a private suit upon no other ground than analogy to some selected system of municipal law and the fact that we have jurisdiction over controversies between states.
The nearest analogy would be found in those cases in which an easement has been declared in favor of land in one state over land in another. But there the right is recognized on the assumption of a concurrence between the two states, the one, so to speak, offering the right, the other permitting it to be accepted. Mannville Co. v. Worcester, 138 Mass. 89. But when the state itself is concerned, and by its legislation expressly repudiates the right set up, an entirely different question is presented.
Before this Court ought to intervene, the case should be of serious magnitude, clearly and fully proved, and the principle to be applied should be one which the court is prepared deliberately to maintain against all considerations on the other side. See Kansas v. Colorado, 185 U. S. 125.
As to the principle to be laid down, the caution necessary is manifest. It is a question of the first magnitude whether the destiny of the great rivers is to be the sewers of the cities along their banks or to be protected against everything which threatens their purity. To decide the whole matter at one blow by an irrevocable fiat would be at least premature. If we are to judge by what the plaintiff itself permits, the discharge of sewage into the Mississippi by cities and towns is to be expected. We believe that the practice of discharging into the river is
Page 200 U. S. 522
general along its banks, except where the levees of Louisiana have led to a different course. The argument for the plaintiff asserts it to be proper within certain limits. These are facts to be considered. Even in cases between individuals, some consideration is given to the practical course of events. In the black country of England, parties would not be expected to stand upon extreme rights. St. Helen's Smelting Co. v. Tipping, 11 H.L.C. 642. See Boston Ferrule Co. v. Hills, 159 Mass. 147, 150. Where, as here, the plaintiff has sovereign powers and deliberately permits discharges similar to those of which it complains, it not only offers a standard to which the defendant has the right to appeal, but, as some of those discharges are above the intake of St. Louis, it warrants the defendant in demanding the strictest proof that the plaintiff's own conduct does not produce the result, or at least so conduce to it, that courts should not be curious to apportion the blame.
We have studied the plaintiff's statement of the facts in detail, and have perused the evidence, but it is unnecessary for the purposes of decision to do more than give the general result in a very simple way. At the outset, we cannot but be struck by the consideration that, if this suit had been brought fifty years ago, it almost necessarily would have failed. There is no pretense that there is a nuisance of the simple kind that was known to the older common law. There is nothing which can be detected by the unassisted senses -- no visible increase of filth, no new smell. On the contrary, it is proved that the great volume of pure water from Lake Michigan which is mixed with the sewage at the start has improved the Illinois River in these respects to a noticeable extent. Formerly it was sluggish and ill smelling. Now it is a comparatively clear stream to which edible fish have returned. Its water is drunk by the fishermen, it is said without evil results. The plaintiff's case depends upon an inference of the unseen. It draws the inference from two propositions. First, that typhoid fever has |
size and complexity of the thing you are building and the other things that it connects to.
Increasing the size of a software application doesn’t just linearly increase the overall size of the work. It adds extra complexity around regression testing, integration, data structure and setup, and technical debt.
The bigger your chunk of work, the more likely you are to make bad decisions, cause a mess and break other people’s things. Moving in small steps is always better.
That’s why people are doing Continuous X
Smart people in Agile these days are all about Continuous X. Continuous integration. That means many small frequent code merges. Continuous Delivery. That means many small frequent deployments to production. Continuous Testing. That means running many small tests on a regular basis, instead of one big ugly batch of testing at the end.
This is small batch size at work. It’s not just about the actual software coding, it’s about the whole process.
Small batch size is not just about coding, it’s about everything
The concept of small batch size should permeate the whole software development lifecycle.
You don’t just code in small batches; you test in small batches. You design in small batches. You experiment in small batches. You write stories in small batches. You build backlogs in small batches. You release in small batches. You make decisions in small batches. You scale up infrastructure in small batches. You gather analytics in small batches. You fund work in small batches. You talk to your customers in small batches. You hire people in small batches. You plan your roadmap in small batches.
There are no activities in software development that are not improved by decreasing the batch size. It is always more, not less efficient than large batches.
I would take Small Batch Size over anything else
It is not explicitly mentioned in the Agile Manifesto, and it is not mentioned at all in the Lean Software Development Principles (strangely), but I think Small Batch Size is really the most powerful and effective idea in Agile. I would take it over the others any day of the week.
If I had to choose between a project that could make changes all the time at any time, but only did one big bang release after 12 months, or a project that couldn’t change designs or requirements within an iteration, but had 52 one week iterations, I would take the latter any day.
Similarly for efficient collaboration. Small batch size doesn’t just beat these things, it makes most of their problems redundant.
Agile is about breaking work into small pieces
That’s because despite what some people think, Agile is not fundamentally about being able to change. It is about breaking up big projects, loaded up with uncertainties and risks and uninformed decisions, and breaking them into many tiny pieces. Each piece having a tiny fraction of the cost, uncertainty, and risk of the bigger project (even a proportionally sized part of the bigger project).
The ultimate goal is a what the Kanban and Lean purists call “Single Piece Flow” or “One Piece Flow”, where the batch size becomes as small as is logically possible.
At this point, for software, we are not even really talking about batches and discrete units at all. It is a more continuous (in the strict mathematical sense) state of affairs.
Last I checked, Amazon did 14,000 software releases a day (true story), and that was a couple of years ago. It’s probably well over 20,000 per day now. Is anyone really even noticing or counting? Each release is probably minuscule (changing a number in a config file, restarting a machine image in a farm of 10,000 virtual machines).
Can you imagine writing a requirements document for these changes? Putting together a release runsheet or a project plan? The human administration of these changes would be orders of magnitude larger than the actual changes themselves. This is true small batch size. The smart kids on the block are doing it, and you should too.An investigative journalism center is passing off as fact a report by the Hamas-tied Council on American-Islamic Relations that hate crimes against American mosques jumped sharply in 2015 and continue to occur at historically high rates — about once every three days.
ProPublica is a New York City-based nonprofit journalism center partially funded by billionaire George Soros that shares data-driven investigative stories with newspapers of all sizes and local TV stations across the United States.
See list of more than 100 U.S. newspapers, websites and TV stations that “partner” with the Soros-backed ProPublica.
But ProPublica‘s newest project on hate crimes is raising eyebrows because of its reliance on a questionable source for its data. The report says more than 370 “hate incidents” directed at U.S. mosques and Islamic centers have been catalogued by CAIR since April 2013.
“Most of the incidents are threats to worshippers’ lives or acts of vandalism,” according to the report, which depends solely on CAIR for its list of anti-Muslim hate crimes.
CAIR, which ProPublica refers to as simply “a civil rights group,” has been tied to the extremist Muslim Brotherhood and the terrorist organization Hamas. Federal prosecutors named CAIR as an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation trial that was prosecuted during the Bush administration, and nearly a dozen of CAIR’s leaders and former leaders have been charged and/or convicted of terror-related crimes.
See WND’s Rogues’ Gallery of terror-tied CAIR officials.
The ProPublica reporting contains an interactive map that shows where and when hate crimes and incidents allegedly occurred. In Washington State, for example, three incidents were logged:
Jan 2017 – Man charged with hate crime in alleged assassination threats against Bellevue mosque.
Sept. 2014 – Burbank, CA man protests outside the Islamic Center in West Richland, WA.
July 2015 – Hate message scrawled on Spokane Muslim center.
The report quotes Zainab Arain, a coordinator at CAIR who oversees the reports, as saying the organization saw a spike in hate incidents against mosques “during election years and after news coverage of major terrorist attacks.”
One revealing statement in the article says: “Note: ProPublica has not researched whether any updates or follow-ups to these articles exist.”
In other words, ProPublica did very little of its own independent research to confirm CAIR’s findings, or to determine whether there were any updates or changes in the original stories, notes Philip Haney, a former Homeland Security officer who co-authored the whistleblower book “See Something Say Nothing.”
Haney said many supposed anti-Muslim “hate crimes” reported in the wake of President Donald Trump’s election were reported as fact but later turned out to be fake reports. CAIR, however, never followed up to inform its followers on Twitter and Facebook that many of these initial complaints of “Islamophobia” were in fact pure fiction.
“Can we trust an organization that was proven by the Department of Justice to be directly involved in the support of Hamas? That to me is the fundamental question,” Haney said. “We should have never moved away from that fundamental question. Whether or not CAIR has any legitimate place in the social, political and law enforcement arenas of our country when that organization has already been proven by the DOJ to be affiliated with the known terror group Hamas should have been addressed a long time ago, and the fact that it has not been addressed from either a political or law-enforcement perspective means that nothing they say should be trusted because we have never resolved the issue of their relationship with Hamas.”
Clare Lopez, vice president of research and analysis for the Center for Security Policy, said CAIR has no conscience in its brazen attempt to make Muslims the victims, even as dozens were mowed down in Barcelona Thursday, innocent victims of yet another Islam-inspired terror attack.
“Hundreds of people are lying dead and grievously injured in actual deadly attacks by Islamic terrorists all over Western Europe, Israel, and the U.S. as well. The Islamic State, a jihadist would-be caliphate, claims responsibility for some of them – but the inspiration in every case comes from the doctrine, law and scripture of Islam. That CAIR, a HAMAS front group, could even think to whine about some graffiti and a few protests at a time like this seems to me obscene.”
The media and government ambivalence toward CAIR is similar to what is now happening with Antifa, the radical left-wing group that goes around the country adding violent fuel to peaceful protests, Haney said.
“They did not have a permit to protest at Charlottesville and yet all the focus has been on the white supremacists and Nazis. The whole equation is incomplete and our whole country is on a course that’s going to run us right off a cliff because we’re not addressing these challenges to our constitutional republic with courage and honesty,” Haney said. “We’re allowing groups like CAIR and Antifa and Southern Poverty Law Center to set the agenda.”
Dr. Mark Christian, founder of the Global Faith Institute, said Islam is not only attacking the West but also abusing the freedoms it finds here, “using it all for their own good and own agenda.” This is part of what the Muslim Brotherhood terms “civilization jihad.”
“Unfortunately it is working,” said Christian, formerly Mohamed Abdullah, who grew up in Cairo, Egypt, the son of a prominent Muslim Brotherhood father before converting to Christianity in his late 20s and later moving to America.
“You are a bigot, a racist, anti-American, anti-Constitution, anti-First Amendment and Bill of Rights if you dare say one thing critical about Islam,” Christian said.
Many prominent politicians in the U.S. and Europe have fallen for this line, Dr. Christian says. It started with President Bush saying Islam is a “religion of peace,” and it gained more adherents during the Obama administration.
“Hillary Clinton said terrorism has nothing to do with Islam and people blaming Islam for terrorism leads to more terrorist attacks and putting us all in harm’s way,” he said.
“All of the above is false and based on nothing other than Muslim Brotherhood front groups engaging in their civilization jihad by using the American media as their own private propaganda machine.
“The Muslim Brotherhood, aka CAIR, is basically abusing our own system to cripple us and make us all more susceptible and vulnerable, soft targets for their jihadists,” Christian added. “The end result is simple – they, the Islamists, win and get their agenda of supremacy accomplished and we lose everything, our freedom included.”
All of the freedom-snatching policies will be implemented under the guise of hate speech, he said.
“The events of last week play right into their propaganda narrative and I would not be surprised if we learn down the road that the Islamists’ hands were somehow involved in what took place in Charlottesville,” Christian said. “I would also not be surprised to see more events like last weekend’s organized and exploited in the future.”
By accusing its critics, and implying that all criticism of Islam amounts to hate-speech, groups like CAIR are able to silence their opponents and implement de facto blasphemy laws against Western citizens. Islamic blasphemy laws make up the cornerstone of Shariah in Muslim countries.
Dr. Christian said he ran into this pro-Islamic censorship Friday on Twitter, following the Barcelona terror attack.
“At that exact same time the top-trending tweet on Twitter was someone saying ‘I hope Trump is assassinated.’ That was in the same minute that my tweet was removed where I was saying nothing other than ‘this carnage and hate of Islam has to be defeated.’
“Twitter removed my tweet and I received a notice saying it had to be removed because it violated their rules against hate speech.”
“So, are they going to be pushing for blasphemy laws in the West? Absolutely, and they will do it under the guise of hate speech.”
Lopez said efforts by CAIR and by the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, which is the Brotherhood’s water boys at the United Nations and among Western courts, seek to silence all criticism of Islam. This not only violates the U.S. First Amendment, but serves to advance the objectives of Islamic law (Shariah), under which the capital “crime” of slander is defined as essentially “anything that a Shariah-compliant Muslim would dislike.”
“That sweepingly subjective definition, of course, includes speaking truth about Islam and those who wage jihad in its name,” she said.
ProPublica has received funding from the Soros’s Open Society Foundations, the Knight Foundation, MacArthur Foundation, Pew Charitable Trusts, Ford Foundation, the Carnegie Corp., Hewlett Foundation, Sandler Foundation and Atlantic Philanthropies. In 2010, it received a two-year contribution of $125,000 each year from Soros’s Open Society Foundations.
“CAIR is Hamas, they were founded by two former Hamas agents, Nihad Awad and Omar Ahmad,” Haney said. “They, along with the whole Islamic Shura Council of North America, were wiretapped by the feds in 1993 in Philadelphia talking about forming a Hamas-type organization that would defend the interests of Islam in America called the Islamic Association for Palestine, which later became CAIR.
“We have known who these people were for 25 years. Why are we still listening to them and giving them positions of influence within American culture?” he added. “Until we resolve that, it’s just going to get worse. They were just invited to the State Department last week to meet with [Secretary of State Rex] Tillerson’s boys and present their grievances about the situation in Jerusalem and the mosque there.”Rooftop solar is becoming as “common as insulation” in some parts of Australia, a new report has found, with 14 suburbs now recording penetration above 50 per cent, and many others recording uptake far above their state’s average, sometimes as high as 65 per cent.
The report is the Climate Council’s latest round-up of data on the performance of renewable energy in Australia’s states and territories. As you can see in the table below, at the state and territory level, South Australia, Queensland, and Western Australia all have a higher share of Australia’s solar PV installations than their share of the population (Table 3).
But in terms of the percentage of households with solar PV, South Australia and Queensland are still leading the country, with PV penetration levels fast approaching one-third of all households. Western Australia comes in at third place, with solar PV panels on one in five households.
In the suburbs of Australia, the data tells a slightly different story, with some postcodes charting a solar PV penetration rate much higher than the average of the state or territory they are located in.
As you can see in the table below, there are now 14 postcodes in Australia where half or more of households have rooftop solar PV.
Angle Vale in South Australia and Leinster and Sir Samuel in Western Australia are leading the charge with 65 per cent. “In these suburbs,” the report says, “rooftop solar could soon be as common as home insulation.”
Interestingly – and in contradiction of now less commonly espoused claim that rooftop solar is a middle class luxury – the report also notes that suburbs with highest levels of rooftop solar PV generally have low to medium income levels and tend to be located in the outer metropolitan “mortgage belt”, or in regional areas.
It says that factors encouraging higher levels of solar uptake are likely to include level of home ownership, building suitability, energy bills as a proportion of household income and renovation
activity.
New suburbs, meanwhile, are being built with 100 per cent solar: “Denman Prospect in Canberra, will be the first suburb in Australia to require a minimum of 3kW of solar PV on every house,” the report says.
And Breezes Muirhead in Darwin, which is being developed by Defence Housing Australia, plans to include a 4.5kW solar system and charging points for electric vehicles on each house – features anticipated to save residents over $2,000 a year on their electricity bills.
All up, the report says Australia remains a world leader in household solar PV, with double the rate of take-up (15 per cent of households on average) compared to the next country, Belgium where about 7.5 per cent of households have solar.
But it said that the increasingly low amount solar households were being paid for the energy they exported to the grid was starting to change consumer behaviour.
Currently, the amount solar households receive for excess electricity fed into the electricity grid currently ranges from premium levels (between 44-60 cents per kilowatt-hour offered in the ACT, New South Wales, Queensland, Victoria and South Australia, but most of these tariffs are soon to end), to rates of between 5-8 cents per kilowatt-hour.
“The disparity between feed-in tariff rates and retail electricity prices is a key driver for battery storage systems,” the report says.Devon Randall is associated with San Diego due to her time at The Lost Abbey and Pizza Port Solana Beach, but she was actually born and raised on L.A.’s Westside in Santa Monica and Brentwood. It took a remarkable opportunity for the UC Berkeley grad, who majored in Mass Communications, to return home. Now Randall is head brewer for Arts District Brewing, an ambitious establishment that houses skee-ball, ping-pong, cornhole, and darts, but isn’t just fun and games. Learn more about Randall’s approach to beer, which is serious, but approachable.
Josh Lurie: At what point did it start to seem like you might actually brew for a living?
Devon Randall: I knew that I wanted to almost right away. Before I even actually got a job brewing, I kind of started thinking, “I wonder if I can do this and make a living.” Then I started asking questions, talking to people, and finding out that indeed people do make a living doing this. At that point, I didn’t have doubts anymore. That was probably around the time I moved over to Pizza Port and got my first head brewer position. That was the first time I went on salary. Beginning brewing positions are notoriously underpaid. It was kind of a hard thing to see making that much forever. Once I had a little more responsibility after moving over to Pizza Port, that’s when I thought, “Oh right, now my parents are going to believe that I can do this for a career.”
JL: What’s the first beer you ever brewed, either professionally or homebrew?
DR: The first homebrew I did was an amber ale, and I thought it was pretty good, but I’m sure it was total junk. I remember doing some things wrong, now that I know more about it, but I remember I packaged it up into bottles and gave it to a bunch of friends and family on Valentine’s Day. I don’t know if anybody actually liked it, but I thought it was wonderful.
JL: What did you call it?
DR: I don’t think I had a name for it. It was a recipe from Home Brewing Supply. It was Sunset Amber Ale, somebody else’s recipe.
JL: The one in Culver City?
DR: Yeah, Pacific Gravity’s home base.
JL: Was your first job brewing professionally at Pizza Port, or were you working somewhere before then?
DR: I worked at a warehouse for The Lost Abbey. They’re the first ones who gave me a paid position in a brewery. Before that, I had worked at beer bars, bartending. Lost Abbey gave me my first shot, and working in the warehouse was not terribly fun. Labeling or building paletts for distribution all day. It gives you a good idea what that’s about. If there were a pallet wrapping competition, I would totally win it. I wrapped hundreds, thousands of pallets. It gives you a little idea of how distribution works. We had seven distributors in different states and different areas of the state. It was an interesting introduction to that, that I wouldn’t have had otherwise. It was very lonely and dark. I started at Lost Abbey in March, and they started paying me in May. I was part-time until August. By September I started moving over to the cellar side.
JL: What years would this have been?
DR: 2010. It was months of working alone. I had a high school reunion, and a few of my friends were going to medical school or graduating from dental school or getting married and having babies, and I was like, “I make $10/hour in a warehouse alone.” It was a little bit of a moment, not totally of doubt, but a hard moment. “I live in an 8×10 room in someone else’s apartment and have no money. I hope this works out.” Eventually it did, but it was tough. I was thrilled. I was having a great time.
JL: Were you living in San Marcos, or somewhere else?
DR: While I was living in Pacific Beach, I also worked at Solana Beach as a bartender. I went full-time at Lost Abbey and moved up to Escondido and lived with Ryan Fields, who’s down at Beachwood Blendery now. We were roommates for a couple years. I lived there while I worked at Lost Abbey and bartended at Solana Beach. It came full circle. I was working both jobs, bartending two days a week and working at Lost Abbey three days a week. I just remember really preferring to go to Lost Abbey. Monday, Wednesday, I was bartending, so Tuesday, Thursday, Friday, I was at Lost Abbey, and I way preferred those days, even though they were longer and I made less money.
JL: Who do you continue to look to for guidance or mentorship?
DR: When I was first starting, the packaging manager Gordon Gerski gave me a lot of guidance. The head brewer there, Mike Rodriguez, taught me how to clean tanks. I remember it really well because it was Labor Day. Tomme said, “You can all come in on Labor Day, or you can take it off.” We weren’t really at the point of getting paid holidays for us little hourly employees, but he was like, “We have work to do, if you want to come in. If you don’t want to come in, don’t come in.” I showed up, Gordon showed up, and Mike showed up. He’s now over at Urge. There was a lot of work to do. Mike was like, “Let me show you how to clean tanks, and you can do the next one by yourself.” Now I spend a lot of time training my assistant, and the assistants that I’ve had. I felt like they needed someone to start cleaning, so they set me to it. From then on, I’ll clean any bright tanks or anything else that needs to be cleaned. That got me started going to the cellar.
JL: I imagined that was popular, that you volunteered for that duty.
DR: Yeah. Totally, and it was exciting for me. From there, I ended up doing barrels and any special operations or bottling line. I would go where needed, pulling samples for Tomme to try and blend. I got to be in on that, which was huge, and really fun, and really interesting. Then I left Lost Abbey to go to Pizza Port. Who trained me how to really make wort is Yiga Miyashiro. Lost Abbey, I would come in and brew for a few hours, but didn’t really have the intimate, one-on-one time with someone for a couple months, until I got to Pizza Port. Yiga really trained me how to be on the brew stand and how to be in control of your own system.
JL: What does a beer have to be for you to make it here at Arts District? What are the criteria for beer that go into your tanks?
DR: I try and keep a balanced tap list. If we went through the tap list right now, I’ve got a couple nitro options, some light options. A hibiscus beer is subbing as a fruit beer right now. The one thing that’s missing is a strong, dark beer. Oatmeal stout is pretty strong, but not that strong. The porter I have coming up is a little bit stronger. It’s in the 7s. I’m skeptical about putting really strong beers on because midnight on Saturday, anecdotally, I’ve heard stories from bartenders about people coming up and ordering four glasses of Azrael, a 12% Belgian strong, and four shots of Jameson. That beer went really fast. The batch was gone in three or four weeks.
JL: Is the smoked beer the most recent that you brewed?
DR: That’s the most recent beer that’s been on tap. We’ll be transferring the ginger lime saison later this week. It’s been a creative week.
JL: What inspired the ginger lime saison?
DR: Moscow Mule, the cocktail.
JL: What beer styles and specific beers do you enjoy drinking when you’re not drinking Arts District beers?
DR: I go to Highland Park Brewery pretty often because they’re by my house. They’re walking distance, so I love drinking their beers. Hello L.A. is their classic IPA, or the one I see on most often. It’s got Citra and Mosaic. Eagle Rock’s Revolution is also one of my favorites. I should go out more.
JL: How do you stay up on what’s happening with hops and different ingredients?
DR: We do have guest beers on here, so that’s pretty helpful. We do try and keep it pretty local. We have Angel City on pretty regularly. They do a really good black lager. We try to rotate our neighbors. Phantom Carriage Berlinerweisse is also on. There are opportunities to try new beer here.
JL: The experience at Arts District Brewing isn’t like a lot of breweries around town.
DR: No, it’s not a tasting room. It’s a bar. It’s totally different. A lot of people were turned off of that initially. The beer community expected to show up and have a nice curated experience, and we had lines out the door. It wasn’t the same. It kind of reminds me of going to Ballast Point in Little Italy. It’s cool. It would be a lot cooler to me if it weren’t crowded at all, but then that’s not a good business model. If it were empty and someone was sitting there really describing the beers, that’s more of the experience I think a lot of people are imagining that they’ll get. It’s just not a tasting room. It’s uniting all sorts of other crowds of people.
[Randall walks me to the back of the patio to share an additional upcoming concept.]
This is going to be the same design as everything out there. It’s a little bit smaller. Capacity will probably be 30 people. There’s one bar, six taps. They’re working on getting a to-go license, like a bottle shop. At this point, there will be bottles, special stuff that we don’t have in there, as well as anything special from the brewery, either small-batch or barrel-aged. And hopefully we’ll have really beer-centric people. They’re going to have spirits back there, but no cocktails. We’ve got a Boilermaker menu, which is the idea of a shot and a beer after work, which is normally PBR and whiskey. We’ve been changing that around and doing a Boilermaker menu with only house beer and really paying attention to the pairing. I’ve seen other places do it. Verdugo Bar has a little menu like that. We’ll have that available back here, but we won’t have full-on cocktails. It will be a little different. The working title for it right now is The Study.
JL: How did the opportunity with Arts District Brewing come about for you?
INTERVIEW CONTINUED ON THE NEXT PAGEFullback John Kuhn (left) could be throwing plenty of lead blocks for Eddie Lacy this season. Credit: Mark Hoffman
By of the
Green Bay — At possibly the most collision-based of positions, one in which a player's willingness to hit can fade fast, fullback John Kuhn actually has become a more physical lead blocker even in his 30s.
Kuhn had fewer misses than ever before in the running game last season for the Green Bay Packers.
This summer, the sound of his pads cracking against linebackers in the fierce half-line drill has been a fascinating soundtrack of training camp.
The book on Kuhn since he arrived in Green Bay on waivers in September 2007 and began to play basically has remained the same. Personnel men around the NFC North admired his versatility and pass blocking but were lukewarm about his run blocking.
"He's not a hammer," one division scout said late in the 2011 season. "But he can get in the way."
Kuhn's job description before 2013 included far more than just lead blocking. The Packers' zone scheme didn't feature much downhill blocking by the fullback, and Kuhn also was a regular on the four core special teams.
"Back then, I played a lot of special teams and was leaner, thinner, faster," Kuhn said. "Now I play about two a game, and my roles on special teams are less-designed for open-field running."
When the Packers drafted big back Eddie Lacy a year ago and incorporated almost as many gap and power runs as zone, the 6-foot Kuhn gradually increased his career-long weight of 250 pounds to 255 at the end of last season.
He has been playing at about 257 this summer and, according to his coaches, has been thumping defenders like never before.
"That's been a huge emphasis for me the last year and a half," Kuhn said this week. "I'm not going to say I wanted to be the old-school fullback type, but it was more directed toward being able to knock guys out of the hole. I feel I have become a better blocker in recent years."
Sam Gash, the new running backs coach, made two Pro Bowls as a bone-crunching fullback from 1992-2003.
In his early discussions with Kuhn, Gash discovered a nine-year veteran open to many of his ideas, including striking with elbows down and tight before exploding upward into the defender almost like a bench press.
He also has seen that Kuhn still digs contact.
"I definitely feel like he's better," said Gash. "From what I saw, I think his desire to hit at the point is outstanding this year. John's different in the fact he's in great shape and has done a great job taking care of his body."
Offensive coordinator Tom Clements, who has watched Kuhn since his arrival, said there's no doubt his run blocking has picked up.
Over his career, Kuhn has been used as a fullback, an I-back, a one back and a third-down back. The Packers won the Super Bowl with him protecting Aaron Rodgers on third down.
Bright and adaptable, Kuhn has added weight and sculpted his body to fit a changing role.
"With explosive backs like Eddie, DuJuan (Harris) and James (Starks), they don't need too much space," said Kuhn. "Twelve to 18 inches takes a hole from here to there so they can make a big, big gain.
"We've gotten bigger and stronger to emphasize we do have a big, strong running back. The rest of our offense should emulate that type of running style.
"We still have the best quarterback in the NFL, and we are going to pass the ball a lot. If we're going to do 75 plays a game like Coach Mike (McCarthy) wants, there's going to be a lot of running as well.
"We want to be really good at the run this year."
The litmus test for a fullback always has been the isolation play in which he's slamming downhill into a linebacker who's charging to meet him in the hole.
Based on years of punishing head-on crashes, Kuhn divides linebackers into two categories.
"Some are just barreling down trying to take inches away from your side and you're barreling down trying to take inches away from their side," said Kuhn. "That's primarily where you put your shoulder into them.
"If you're going against a jump-around guy, more of a shaker, a guy who wants to give you less of his body, then it's hand placement. You have to make sure you sustain your block so you can't go barreling in with your shoulder because he'll make you miss."
The Journal Sentinel has been tracking "bad" runs for more than 15 years. After having allowed an average of 4.2 in his first six years, Kuhn was judged to be responsible for only one last year.
"He's either going to stalemate or he's going to push the guy out of the hole," said Lacy. "It's very rare that you'll see him get hit and get pushed back in the hole.
"I couldn't line up and run into a linebacker every single play if they paid me $30 million. For as many years...and you still can go up and deliver that kind of blow, it says something about him and his competitive spirit."
Kuhn, who outlasted ex-teammates Korey Hall and Quinn Johnson at the position, mentioned former Packer Vonta Leach, Lorenzo Neal and Dan Kreider as lead-blocking fullbacks during the past decade that he respects.
"My whole career has been get your guy as best you can," said Kuhn. "When all else fails, hang on to your guy; don't let him make the tackle.
"Now Coach Sam has introduced some things where I can play more aggressive."
Julius Peppers, who outweighs Kuhn by about 30 pounds, has taken on blocks by him in practice and games.
"He lowers the boom," said Peppers. "Very powerful, very compact. Low center of gravity and he packs a punch."
Obviously, Kuhn has limitations in speed, athleticism and catching radius. The Packers also have become less reliant on two-back formations.
It's perfectly understandable that Kuhn's playing time has been greater in games 9-16 than in games 1-8 over the last three seasons. When the Wisconsin winter sets in, Kuhn's value increases.
In April, Kuhn re-signed for one year at $1.5 million less on average than he was making. Three weeks shy of his 32nd birthday, he understood.
He also is well aware of what scouts have said over the years about his less-than-robust style of run blocking.
"The first look somebody gets of you lasts," said Kuhn. "It'd be nice if I could change some of their minds."
In the last 20 years, nine fullbacks have been voted to more than one Pro Bowl. William Henderson (2004) and Kuhn (2011) were the only Packers. Kuhn really wants another.
"You get later in your career, you start talking about legacy and lasting impressions," said Kuhn. "I think multiple Pro Bowls says a lot."
"The fans are great. Fans appreciate the work I've done throughout my career. I'd like to play as long as I'm healthy and as long as they'll let me and I'm still having fun.
"I still love playing football."This app is temporarily unavailable. I'm sorry! Please note that this is an early preview of the application. It can stop working anytime and there may be bugs so that some claimed features may not be working. This is just a client for the Specter API and you have to have access to some API endpoints if you want the app to do something useful. If you have any problems, see in-app Help page or write an e-mail to specterapp@outlook.com. Known issues: - only first 21 threads are visible - if your device has little RAM available and you will try to capture or open media to create a new message, the application can be terminated by operating system and the message discarded What's coming: - creating new accounts - saving messages to history (and syncing with OneDrive) - camera on the first page - better viewing of messages - notifications - swipe actions - login via Windows Hello™ Navigation: To easily navigate using the hamburger menu, you can swipe from the left edge to open the pane and then swipe up or down to select the target page. -------------------- The name Snapchat is a copyright of Snapchat™, Inc. This application is in no way affiliated with, authorized, maintained, sponsored or endorsed by Snapchat™, Inc or any of its affiliates or subsidiaries.PARIS — The French government has presented its plan to legalize same-sex marriage and adoption to Parliament for debate.
Justice Minister Christiane Taubira told the national assembly Tuesday that the bill constitutes an “act of equality. … Finally, marriage will be a universal institution.”
“We have never underestimated the importance of this reform,” Taubira said of the plan that’s divided the Catholic-majority country.
President Francois Hollande’s “marriage for everyone” pledge has seen hundreds of thousands of supporters and opponents take to the Paris streets in separate demonstrations in the past two weeks.
More than 125,000 people marched in Paris Sunday in support of the bill that would legalize marriage and adoption for same-sex couples.
Article continues below
Demonstrators waved banners emblazoned with phrases such as “Equality of rights is not a threat” as they began marching Sunday from Denfert-Rochereau square in the southern part of the city.
Two weeks earlier, a crowd estimated at 340,000 turned out for a demonstration to oppose the marriage equality bill.
About 63 percent of French people favor legalizing same-sex marriage, according to a survey released Saturday, up from 60 percent in December.
The bill is set to be debated over two weeks.
Associated Press contributed to this report.
This Story Filed UnderThe SEC released a comment on conference expansion Sunday.
University of Florida president J. Bernard Machen, chair of the SEC Executive Committee, released this statement: “The SEC Presidents and Chancellors met today and reaffirmed our satisfaction with the present 12 institutional alignment. We recognize, however, that future conditions may make it advantageous to expand the number of institutions in the league. We discussed criteria and process associated with expansion. No action was taken with respect to any institution including Texas A&M.”
What does that mean?
Simple. The SEC wants Texas A&M, but doesn’t want to be seen as the culprit in the breakup of the Little 12 (Big XII or whatever, it is these days).
The statement makes things very clear. Everyone in the SEC is satisfied with the present alignment. Schools like Alabama and Florida are topping the $100 million athletic department budget mark. The SEC has claimed five straight BCS crowns (well, until the NCAA decides what it will do in is sweeping cheating probe of SEC member Auburn.) Things are looking good for the SEC.
However, everyone knows the Big Ten and Pac-12 are in a war with the SEC. Both conferences are trying to reclaim dominance—and the best way to do that is with money.
Like Cicero said, unlimited money forms the sinews of war.
The SEC must respond to the growing television contracts and the threat to its college football dominance. One of the best moves it could make would be a deep penetration into the football crazy and large television markets of Texas.
However, the SEC isn’t going to announce it wants Texas A&M until A&M requests admission. Such a situation would mark a change in “future conditions.” For all the SEC knows, the Aggies might fold again to the wishes of the Longhorns and the |
reflects the collective accomplishments and spirit of our entire community—faculty, students, alumni, staff, and leadership."
Here is a breakdown of some of the initiatives on improving the Johns Hopkins undergraduate experience over the past few years:
Undergraduate Research
Johns Hopkins has strengthened its traditional commitment to opportunities for undergraduates to conduct original research and scholarship and pursue original artistic creations. It is not unusual at Johns Hopkins to find undergraduate students working alongside pre-eminent faculty or even Nobel laureates to answer tough questions and uncover cutting-edge solutions to the world's most pressing issues.
Among the newer programs in the Krieger School of Arts and Sciences are the Dean's Undergraduate Research Awards and the Andrew W. Mellon Arts Innovation Grants. In the Whiting School of Engineering, the SPUR initiative sends highly qualified students to the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, where they have worked on projects such as advanced prosthetics, computer vision, and secure mobile communications.
These add to opportunities that have long been available through the Provost's Undergraduate Research Awards, created in 1993, the Woodrow Wilson Fellowships, the William F. Clinger Jr. Award, the Bander Family Fund for independent summer projects, and apprenticeships in labs and research projects throughout the university.
There are even courses focused on original research. In "Phage Hunting I and II," freshman biology students isolate, characterize, and sequence the genomes of previously unidentified bacteriophages. Engineering students work in teams to design medical devices and attack other technology problems as early as their freshman year.
In the Classroom
Undergraduates are more likely now to be closely engaged with their professors, a result of efforts at Homewood to enhance teaching and learning through smaller classes and engineering research tutorials.
An expanded slate of Freshman Seminars allows students to start thinking across disciplines and explore topics such as tombs in ancient Greece, climate change, or slavery and cinema. The Gateway Sciences Initiative has generated innovative technology and educational techniques for introductory science courses.
The university now offers the nation's first undergraduate minor in computational medicine, as well as new minors in social policy and visual arts, and an interdisciplinary major in medicine, science and humanities.
Students are increasingly exposed to education and research that lies at the crossroads of multiple disciplines, including through the arrival of more than a dozen new Bloomberg Distinguished Professors, who teach undergraduates as part of their cross-specialty collaboration.
More than 450 students major in public health and receive instruction from faculty members from the Bloomberg School of Public Health; hundreds more work with faculty in clinics and laboratories at the Bloomberg School and the School of Medicine.
Academic Facilities
The newest academic facility for undergraduates is the just-opened Film Center, a joint effort of Johns Hopkins and the Maryland Institute College of Art; the center is housed in the former Centre Theatre in Baltimore's Station North Arts and Entertainment District. It joins the recently completed, environmentally progressive Brody Learning Commons, a technology-driven collaborative learning and study space, and the Undergraduate Teaching Laboratories, built to facilitate interdisciplinary study and research in the life sciences.
A better-than-new $73 million renovation of Gilman Hall, the landmark 1915 humanities building on the Homewood campus, was completed in 2010.
Outside the classroom
The university has also turned its focus to the co-curricular experience, expanding opportunities for local and international internships, developing ways for undergraduates to learn about, get involved in and contribute to Baltimore, and growing its programs on diversity and inclusion. Two years ago, the university created an office to coordinate LGBTQ student life. Last spring, it staged the first of its Race in America Forums, a new series designed to share thoughts and advance the dialogue on race relations around the country.
For years, students have managed the Milton S. Eisenhower Symposium and Foreign Affairs Symposium lecture series, and university-sponsored speaker events also draw many attendees.
The Johns Hopkins athletics program was the second-most successful in all of NCAA Division III last year and produced one of just 30 nominees nationwide for the NCAA Woman of the Year award.
Financial support for students
These enhancements have been accompanied by investments in financial aid for undergraduates. Over the past five years, institutional grant aid has increased 38 percent, from $55.1 million to $75.9 million a year. Nearly all of that increase was in need-based aid. The past four freshman classes have been admitted to Johns Hopkins need-blind, allowing the university to admit excellent students without regard to their families' ability to pay.
Student aid is one of the priorities of the university's current Rising to the Challenge fundraising campaign.
Admissions
The focus on undergraduate academics and student life appears to be resonating with potential students, said David Phillips, vice provost for admissions and financial aid.
"Applications for the class of 2019, which has just arrived on campus, numbered nearly 25,000, a record number and our strongest applicant pool ever," Phillips said. "Top students from across the country and around the world see themselves at Johns Hopkins."Developer Elmington Capital seeks approval of $43 million in tax-exempt bonds to help fund projects
Elimngton Capital plans to preserve this 30-year-old private residence on the property at 1205 Robinson Road in Old Hickory, Tenn.. (Photo: Davidson County Assessor of Property) Story Highlights The apartment units would target households earning below 60 percent of the areas' median incomes.
The 210 apartments planned at 1205 Robinson Road in Old Hickory will target seniors age 62 and older.
Elmington Capital is seeking approval for issuance of $43 million in tax-exempt bonds to help fund the projects.
Monthly rents for the 270 units planned at 2034 Pittway Drive in East Nashville will range from $600 to $900, Metro Councilman Scott Davis said.
One of Nashville’s biggest developers of affordable housing is pursuing a pair of new apartment projects, including one targeting seniors, that could bring nearly 500 new units to two area communities.
On May 3, Elmington Capital Group will go before a city board seeking approval for issuance of at least $43 million in tax-exempt bonds to help fund its purchase of the sites and development of the complexes. The apartment units would target households earning below 60 percent of the areas' median incomes.
In early fall, Elmington hopes to start work on a 210-unit community on 10 acres at 1205 Robinson Road in Old Hickory that would target seniors age 62 and older. The developer also has 18.25 acres at 2034 Pittway Drive off of East Trinity Lane in East Nashville under contract with plans to start building 270 apartment units in early-to-mid fall.
Those projects plus another 267 apartment units that Elmington plans at its proposed Hermitage Flats community on Old Hickory Boulevard in Hermitage should add much-needed inventory to Nashville's dwindling affordable housing stock. As of year's end, the average monthly apartment rent across the Nashville area was a near record $1,114, reflecting largely higher lease rates of the new units that are being built.
Larry H. Hagar (Photo: Submitted)
"Almost 90 percent of the new supply is in the luxury end of the market and this new supply in the affordable side will help alleviate tightness in that price range," said Woody McLaughlin, a member of the Greater Nashville Apartment Association's statistics committee who tracks developments in the market.
The site at 1205 Robinson Road is zoned for apartments or condos. Metro Councilman Larry H. Hagar said Elmington plans to preserve a 30-year-old, nearly 6,000 square foot residence on the property.
"It's an icon for that area — it's been there for a long time," Hagar said, adding that Elmington has discussed using the home of seller Lana Robinson for meeting rooms, an exercise room, a coffee shop and offices.
The site is adjacent to the Old Hickory Towers high-rise apartments for elderly and disabled low-income tenants, and across Robinson Road from the Life Care Center of Old Hickory Village skilled nursing facility.
Scott Davis (Photo: Submitted)
East Nashville Metro Councilman Scott Davis said he understands that monthly rents for the apartments that Elmington plans for 2034 Pittway Drive would start around $600 for a one-bedroom unit and be between $700 and $750 for a two-bedroom apartment and $800 and $900 for a three-bedroom unit.
"This reinforces mine and Mayor Barry's commitment to affordable housing," said Davis, who sponsored a legislation that Metro Council passed granting specific plan zoning for Elmington's project in his district.
Elmington owns or manages 20,000 apartment units across 13 states, half of which fall under some type of affordable housing classification. That includes 290 units at the Park At Hillside apartment complex at 1501 Hillside Ave. in Nashville's Edgehill neighborhood, which the developer bought for $20.3 million in October.
Elmington is seeking Metro Health and Educational Facilities Board approval for issuance of at least $18 million in tax-exempt bonds for the Old Hickory project plus another $25 million for the East Nashville project.
The developer is also pursuing approval for issuance of at least $25 million in tax-exempt bonds to fund purchase of land and construction of the 267-unit Hermitage Flats apartments at 5646 Old Hickory Blvd. in Hermitage.
The Health and Educational Facilities Board of the Metropolitan Government of Nashville and Davidson County issues private activity or tax-exempt bonds for purposes of developing affordable rental properties. A public hearing is required because the bonds are being issued through a public or government agency with proceeds from sale of such bonds to be used for construction of the affordable housing apartments.
Reach Getahn Ward at gward@tennessean.com or 615-726-5968 and on Twitter @getahn.
Elmington Capital has 18.25 acres at 2034 Pittway Drive in East Nashville under contract with plans to start building 270 apartment units in early-to-mid fall. (Photo: Davidson County Assessor of Property)
&amp;amp;amp;nbsp; &amp;amp;amp;nbsp; &amp;amp;amp;lt;!--iframe--&amp;amp;amp;gt; &amp;amp;amp;nbsp;
Read or Share this story: http://tnne.ws/2pFEHptCan Texas navigate one of the nation's most challenging schedules and make enough improvements on the offensive side of the football to reach the postseason this fall?
Fox Sports senior college football analyst Bruce Feldman likes the strides the program has made heading into Charlie Strong's third season and believes the Longhorns could be a quality team if the right buttons are pushed. A strong start is key, he says, for a group in need of an early boost of confidence.
Here are Feldman's thoughts on Texas in 2016 from Friday's mailbag:
"I definitely think Texas is on the right track. I was the sideline reporter for UT's Thanksgiving game against Texas Tech. The Horns lost that game and were decimated by injuries like I'd never seen one team go down on a given night like that, but from being around UT that week, I got a sense of how good those freshmen are. Malik Jefferson leads what should be a terrific young group of linebackers while Davante Davis and Holton Hill are solid corners with sophomore Kris Boyd giving them a third good CB. Jason Hall played banged up last year and will be a third-year starter and anchors the middle.
"Obviously, the big key will be who the triggerman is for the offense. My hunch is true freshman Shane Buechele will win the job. He fits the new system best. He's the most accurate of the QBs, which is crucial and he's got enough savvy to handle this situation at least to some degree.
The schedule is not forgiving though, with Notre Dame as the opener. Then they get a more manageable game against UTEP and a trip to a rebuilding Cal team. After that, it's trips to Oklahoma State and then OU in Dallas. Just coming out of that 3-2 would be a very nice start. If they can do that, given how young this team will be, Charlie Strong should be in good shape. If they're 1-4 -- which isn't out of the question, given that Cal is road game and the Bears just landed a talented grad transfer QB in Davis Webb -- then things could get dicey.
"My prediction at this point for the Horns is 7-5."Imran Yousuf, a U.S. Marine who served in Afghanistan, is being praised as a hero for opening a door in Orlando’s Pulse nightclub, allowing dozens to flee as jihadist terrorist Omar Mateen opened fire on the LGBT club’s dance floor.
Yousuf, who was working as a bouncer at Pulse on Saturday night, told CBS News that he knew the bullets were “high-caliber” the second he heard the first shots. And he knew to run to a staff door that had been blockaded by club patrons looking to flee. Running to the back of the room, Yousuf never saw Mateen.
“Everyone froze. I’m here in the back and I saw people start pouring into the back hallway, and they just sardine pack everyone,” he explained. “And I’m screaming ‘Open the door! Open the door!’ And no one is moving because they are scared. There was only one choice,” he continued, “Either we all stay there and we all die, or I could take the chance, and I jumped over to open that latch a we got everyone that we can out of there.”
Yousuf estimates that “over 60, 70” people ran out through the door he opened. “I wish I could have saved more to be honest,” he adds. “There are a lot of people that are dead… there are a lot of people that are dead.”
The Marine Corps Times identifies Yousuf as a former engineer equipment electrical systems technician for the Marines who returned to civilian life in May. He served in Afghanistan in 2011 and was awarded the Navy and Marine Corps Achievement Medal, Sea Service Deployment Ribbon, Korean Defense Service Medal and Afghanistan Campaign Medal.
Following the media attention surrounding Yousuf, he posted a message on Facebook urging the attention to center around those who died, not his actions that night. “I am more than grateful for my life and those that were able to stand today because of my actions but I want everyone to recognize that their shouldn’t be a label for things like this,” he said of being called a “hero.” ” I have lost a few of my friends that night which I am just finding out about right now and while it might seem that my actions are heroic I decided that the others around me needed to be saved as well and so I just reacted.”
“I do appreciate the love and support and thank all of you from the bottom of my heart but please, this is not about me,” he requests.
Yousuf was not the only American service veteran on the scene that night, during the deadliest mass shooting in the history of the United States. 29-year-old Antonio Davon Brown was killed by gunfire at Pulse. Brown served in both Afghanistan and Iraq and served in the ROTC while at Florida A&M University. A service member who served in the ROTC with Brown wrote in a message on Twitter that she was devastated by the loss of her “battle buddy.” “CPT Antonio Brown survived Iraq and Afghanistan to die like this,” she added.
49 people died on Sunday night, all between the ages of 19 and 50 years old.G. Č. | 25. novembar 2016. 00:06 |
Od stalnog dopisnika: Pariz
NEZAVISNOST Kosova protivna je međunarodnim zakonima, poručio je vodeći kandidat desnice za predstojeće predsedničke izbore u Francuskoj Fransoa Fijon.
U televizijskoj debati pred drugi krug unutarstranačkih izbora francuskih Republikanaca, koji će biti održan u nedelju, Fijon je, odgovarajući na pitannje o politici koju namerava da vodi prema Rusiji ukoliko bude izabran, imajući u vidu da mu je ruski predsednik Putin pružio podršku, između ostalog rekao i sledeće:
- Naravno da ne podržavam okupaciju Krima, kao što, uostalom, možemo da se zapitamo i oko nezavisnosti Kosova koja je u potpunoj suprotnosti s međunarodnim pravom.
Fransoa Fijon je u svojoj kampanji, inače, poručio da namerava da otopli odnose s Moskvom, zbog čega je ruski predsednik uputio niz komplimenata na njegov račun.
Bivši francuski premijer, tokom čitavog Sarkozijevog petogodinjeg mandata od 2007. do 2012. godine, osvojio je u prvom krugu unutarstrana~kih izbora protekle nedelje ubedljivo najviše glasova, 44 odsto. Drugoplasiranom Alenu Žipeu poverenje je dalo 28 odsto glasača, dok su ostali ispali iz trke.
Fijonu je, u međuvremenu, podršku dao i bivši predsednik Sarkozi koji nije uspeo da se plasira u drugi krug, i trenutno je veliki favorit da bude izabran za kandidata desnice koja ima velike izglede i za konačni trijumf na izborima u maju sledeće godine.Lost Generation was the generation that came of age during World War I. Lost Generation may also refer to:
Art, entertainment, and media [ edit ]
Comics [ edit ]
Marvel: The Lost Generation, a 12-issue limited series published by Marvel Comics
Films [ edit ]
The Lost Generation (1968 film), Hungarian film
(1968 film), Hungarian film Feng shui er shi nian (1983), Hong Kong-Taiwanese film written and directed by Chia Chang Liu, alternately titled in English, The Lost Generation, and titled worldwide in English, Women in Love
Literature [ edit ]
The Lost Generation (book), a 2006 biographical book by David Tremayne
(book), a 2006 biographical book by David Tremayne The Lost Generation (novel series), a novel series by Hikmet Temel Akarsu
Music [ edit ]
Groups and labels [ edit ]
The Lost Generation (band), a Chicago soul group
Albums [ edit ]
Songs [ edit ]
Other uses [ edit ]
Down to the Countryside Movement, young Chinese civilians during the Cultural Revolution moved to the countryside for agricultural work instead of education
The "lost" generation, 1930–1970, mid-20th-century Mormons who wrote for a national audience and lost close ties to their church
The lost generation, African-American children growing up in Prince Edward County, Virginia from 1959 to 1964, many of whom could not attend school when the county closed all of its public schools (to avoid racial integration) and founded private schools where only whites could attendThe former Spurs boss is confident the club have what it takes to finish in the Champions League places again this season, despite starting their campaign poorly
Former Tottenham manager Harry Redknapp is confident the club can finish in the top four for the second season in a row.Mousa Dembele opened the scoring for Spurs before Robert Snodgrass levelled things late on to give Norwich a hard-fought point at White Hart Lane on Saturday, leaving new boss Andre Villas-Boas without a win since taking over from the 65-year-old in the summer.Asked where Tottenham would finish this season, Redknapp told the BBC: "Top four, no danger."Redknapp also admitted it was difficult watching his former team in action. However, he thinks they have signed a great player in Dembele, a midfielder who he scouted while he was Spurs boss.He said: "It was difficult today, it's the first time I've actually watched them. It was difficult. But it's finished."It's not something I look at and feel any bitterness about what they do or what they don't do, life moves on. They've got a new manager now, they've got new team. I can watch it in the cold light of day and be constructive."It's been difficult, but they've lost a couple of good players. I think [Rafael] van der Vaart and [Luka] Modric are two absolute top class players, but the boy they've brought in today, Dembele, I think is top class as well."Great goal, amazing skill. I would have gone for Dembele, he was a player we talked about a lot. I think he'll do great for Tottenham."Villas-Boas revealed after the match with Norwich that Brad Friedel will retain his place in goal despite the deadline-day signing of Hugo Lloris from Lyon."Brad Friedel was top class," Redknapp added. "He's a great professional, a great guy. I can't remember him making too many mistakes. He was great for us all last season and he's carried it on again this year, so it'll be difficult to leave him out of the team. I mean, what has he done wrong?”Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper (and former mayor of Denver) wants to make his state the bike capital of America.
The Denver Post reports, that this week at Las Vegas bike trade show Interbike, Hickenlooper unveiled a $100 million plan to be implemented over the next four years that would improve Colorado’s bicycle infrastructure.
“Biking can be such a positive force, and I think being the best biking state is going to fuel economic growth and tourism. It’s going to lead us toward a cleaner environment, and it’s going to help us be the healthiest state in America,” Hickenlooper said at the event.
State DOTs across the U.S. have been looking more stale after years of highway-focused investing, and the Colorado Department of Transportation isn’t an exception. The agency hasn’t shifted policies to match the state’s growing, younger urban population, which is more keen on public transit and alternative modes of transportation.
The Post reports:
The Colorado Pedals Project hinges on a cultural shift at CDOT.
Gart and Dan Grunig, the head of bike-advocacy group Bicycle Colorado, can share a dozen stories of Colorado towns bisected by highways — including Gunnison, Steamboat Springs and Winter Park — struggling against byzantine, autocentric transportation department regulations when trying to solve even simple problems such as securing a pedestrian crossing.
At the Vegas event, Hickenlooper cited Denmark, where more than half of commuters bike to work, and one-quarter of all transportation spending is directed toward bikes.
“Denmark clearly shows the benefits of making these long-term investments within narrow, achievable plans,” Hickenlooper said. “(The country) creates bicycle-friendly communities and infrastructure that far outweigh the costs.”Shocking new footage has surfaced that appears to show a 747-400 cargo crashing at Afghanistan?s Bagram Airport which killed seven people.
DRAMATIC footage has emerged that is believed to be of a US cargo airline crash that killed all seven crew members on board.
The civilian cargo plane owned by an American company crashed at Bagram Air Field, north of the Afghan capital, soon after takeoff, killing all seven people aboard,on Tuesday.
In the video, which military sources told Fox News may have been taken from the dashboard camera of a service member, the Boeing 747-400 takes off, then appears suspended in the air for a moment before turning and nose-diving into the ground, bursting into flames.
While the Taliban quickly claimed responsibility for downing the jet, NATO said in a statement that the Taliban "claims are false''.
The coalition says the cause of the crash was being investigated by emergency crews that rushed to the site, but there was no sign of insurgent activity in the area at the time.
The plane - owned by National Airlines, an Orlando, Florida-based subsidiary of National Air Cargo - was carrying vehicles and other cargo, according to National Air Cargo vice president Shirley Kaufman.
She said those killed were four pilots, two mechanics and a load master, who was responsible for making sure that the weight and balance of the cargo is appropriate.
Five of the seven fatalities were from Michigan, said Kaufman.
"We are not yet releasing the identities of the colleagues we lost out of respect for their families who need a little more time to reach other loved ones,'' she said in an email.
The US National Transportation Safety Board and the Afghanistan Civil Aviation Authority are investigating the crash, she said.
with APbased totally on the algorithm called PoI (proof of importance) and is designed to be utilized in numerous offerings aside from cryptocurrency. API features have already been released so that you can develop applications as without problems as making a website by means of using them. as a result of the usability of APIs, a lot of NEM associated offerings are arising in Japan., also known as proof-of-importance. this means that (in contrast to Bitcoin 0.20% and Ethereum 4.95% ),is environmentally pleasant and more secure. unlike mining Bitcoin 0.20% and Ethereum 4.95%, community preservation does not require loads and lots of strength-hogging mining machines.0.53% node may be run on a laptop as simple and reasonably-priced as a Raspberry Pi, which is most effective $35 and takes up very little electricity.NEM 0.53% is also advanced in protection. It uses EigenTrust++ for node recognition, which isn't always used in another cryptocurrency and strengthens the safety of the network significantly. It also uses localized spam safety, which shuts down spammers, and only the spammers, when the community is at full potential. each is most effective located in NEM 0.53%.0.53% became constructed with a -tier design in thoughts as properly. if you need a wallet, you don’t want a complete node and a copy of the blockchain. as an alternative, you can just connect with any node and feature access to all the identical capabilities without trusting it."The price went down inside the final 3 days from 0.19 to 0.179 and it's an excellent second to buy motive as you can see in the graph it indicates that the quantity is increasing will take time to attain $1 but can upward thrust to 0.30 in the next 2 weeks what will growth your investment by using 50% for the long time can upward thrust by way ofThe summer long rumor of Roberto Luongo returning to the homeland here in South Florida have been quiet for well……not long enough it seems. According to the USA Today, the holdup is Dale Tallon’s unwillingness to part ways with future NHLer Nick Bjugstad. Bjugstad a 6′ 5″ 215 lb center is going back to the University of Minnesota this season, rather than attempt to make the Florida Panthers roster and good for him. He wants a chance to win a collegiate championship, and he has every right to do so.
As for Dale’s stubborness I applaud him. We have no idea what the ceiling might be for Bjugstad. Never mind it would appear that the Panthers prospect pool is rich in men down the middle, everyone knows, a good center is hard to find. It’s even harder to find 2,3 or 4. With Bjugstad and Jonathan Huberdeau lining up as the top two centermen in the future, it appears that the Panthers are getting their ducks in a row.
As for Vancouver general manager Mike Gillis and his demands for a prospect as part of a deal, the longer this goes, the less control he has. It’s clear that Bobby Lou’s days with the Canucks are numbered. He said so himself after a recent poker tournament he attended. While we don’t know what the ceiling is for Bjugstad, we do know this. Roberto Luongo is 33 years old. He puts up great numbers in the regular season, and seems to have difficulty winning the big game in the post season. Drama has filled his past, and whether that’s been lit with a match by the Vancouver media isn’t known for sure, but we don’t need drama here in South Florida. That’s what South Beach is for.
I can’t blame Luongo for wanting to come back to Florida. What’s not to like? Year round golf, tennis, beaches. And most important of all no state income tax!
Alas, I can think of $6.7 million reasons why Dale needs to hold his ground. Should this trade ultimately be made, two years from now the Panthers will find themselves in the exact same position that Vancouver is in. It will be very difficult to trade a goaltender with eight years left on an inflated contract.
And no Stanley Cup.
Thanks for reading. We welcome your comments and opinions.State legislative leaders and election officials have not decided if they’ll tell a federal judge that they’ll draw new maps for this fall’s elections for Wake County Board of Commissioners and school board.
On Friday, U.S. Chief District Court Judge James C. Dever III said he needs an answer by July 18 on whether Senate Leader Phil Berger, House Speaker Tim Moore and the State Board of Elections will come up with new maps. New districts are needed following a July 1 federal appeals court ruling that the state legislature’s maps for Wake County are unconstitutional.
The General Assembly is not scheduled to return until January, so a special session would be needed to approve new Wake maps this year. Spokespeople from Berger’s and Moore’s offices said Monday that their legal teams are reviewing Dever’s order.
If state legislators don’t act, then the State Board of Elections can use a section under state law authorizing it “to make reasonable interim rules and regulations” when county maps are declared unconstitutional. Josh Lawson, general counsel for the State Board, said Monday that it’s a question of logistics, legal authority and willingness.
Sign Up and Save Get six months of free digital access to The News & Observer
Lawson said the board’s staff has to see if it can logistically and legally create new maps. Then, he said, the State Board, which plans to meet July 18, has to decide if it’s willing to create new districts.
“We have reached no definite conclusions at this point,” Lawson said.
Dever wrote in his order Friday that he’d draw up the maps himself if the state didn’t create new districts. All nine school board seats and five Board of Commissioners seats are scheduled to be on the Nov. 8 ballot.
In 2013, the General Assembly redrew the lines for all nine Wake school board seats, turning two into regional districts that each covers about half the county. In 2015, state legislators changed the Wake commissioner lines to match those used by the school board.
On July 1, a U.S. Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals panel ruled 2-1 that the maps can’t be used in November. Dever is charged with carrying out the appellate decision.
The Wake County Board of Elections held an emergency meeting Monday with its attorney to discuss Dever’s order.
Dever has requested Wake election officials provide him by July 18 with information on any applicable upcoming deadlines and whether it’s feasible to hold a new primary election for Wake commissioners. The Wake board is the lone defendant in the lawsuit because it’s charged with implementing the state maps.
The plaintiffs in the lawsuit want election officials to reinstate the 2011 maps that the school board and commissioners had adopted before they were replaced by state legislators. But Wake election officials said they don’t have the authority to make that decision.
“Our position all along has been we don’t draw maps,” said J. Brian Ratledge, chairman of the Wake board. “We’re not the arbiters really of this dispute.”
The Wake board will meet Wednesday to continue discussing the case. Ratledge said they may have more then to publicly share, including whether the Wake board will appeal the appellate decision.
“Hopefully we’ll have a little bit clearer picture in terms of where things are Wednesday,” Ratledge said. “Hopefully we’ll be in a position where we can inform the public on where we’re headed.”Following a three-game stretch in which the Pens went 0-2-1 and scored a total of three goals, center Evgeni Malkin had a message to his team.
“When you lose a couple games and aren’t playing right everyone gets nervous, coaches, players, the organization,” Malkin said Friday following the team’s practice. “We know we can come back. I believe this team has good guys and good players. We need to support each other, relax and we’ll be back.”
Malkin didn’t just talk the talk. He walked the walk.
The 28-year-old Russian posted two goals and four points as the Pens responded with an offensive explosion and two huge victories on back-to-back nights Saturday in St. Louis, 4-2, and Sunday against Florida, 5-1.
“It doesn’t matter what team we play. If we play right and play our game we’ll beat any team in the league,” Malkin said. “We showed the last two games how we can play. We need to keep that same focus.”
The Pens dominated one of the best teams in the NHL in their own barn when they topped the Blues at Scottrade Center.
Winger Blake Comeau, who was moved to right wing with Malkin in the past two contests, led the way with two goals and three points. Pittsburgh built a 4-0 lead late in the third period before the Blues connected on two late goals.
“It felt good to be able to contribute,” Comeau said after the game. “We weren’t scoring a lot of goals lately, so sometimes it’s nice to switch things up and hopefully spark something.”
Less than 24 hours later the Pens faced a Panthers team that was quietly emerging as a playoff wild card threat. This time Malkin took charge with two goals, three points and five shots.
The Panthers had a 27-15 edge in shots over the Pens as the final minute of the second period was ticking down. However, Pittsburgh had a 1-0 lead. Malkin put the dagger in Florida’s back when he stole a turnover in the neutral zone, skated hard to the net and sniped a hard backhand shot through the legs of goalie Al Montoya to give the Pens a 2-0 lead with 26 seconds left in the middle frame.
“Any time you score in the last minute of a period it’s always important,” Malkin said. “We led 1-0 and the second period was tough for us. We didn’t play right. With each goal the team relaxed more.”
Also encouraging was the Pens’ power play, which had gone nine straight games without a goal, went 2-for-6 over the two-game stretch (though it could have been 3-for-6 as Brandon Sutter scored a goal just a millisecond after a power play expired).
The Pens have tried different things and tinkered with their man-advantage. But what worked was going back to Square 1. Malkin was placed back at the point and Sidney Crosby was put on the halfwall. It’s a look the team used all of last year and at the start of the current season.
“(The power play) went a long time without scoring,” Malkin said. “We talked a lot about it last week. I’m playing point, like when we started at the beginning of the season and the same five guys. We wanted to move the puck, not just the puck, but move our bodies, too. You see it’s working.”
The Pens weren’t happy with their three-game skid. But, as captain Sidney Crosby pointed out during the malaise, facing adversity isn’t always a bad thing. It’s how you respond that counts.
“It’s how you handle it and how you find a way to get out of it,” Crosby said.
Malkin’s message to his teammates during the adversity was to relax and stick together. Then he went out and led the charge.
“We relaxed on the ice and in the locker room,” Malkin said. “There’s lots of pressure for us from the media, fans, everybody. We know how good we are. We just needed to focus and play all 60 minutes. The last two games we played very well.”When it comes to social dilemmas, there are four types of people, experimental economists say.
By Nathan Collins
(Photo: Oiluj Samall Zeid/Flickr)
Are people fundamentally selfish, or are they cooperators? Actually, it’s kind of an odd question—after all, why are those the only options? The answer is that those options are derived in large part from philosophy and classical economic theory, rather than data. In a new paper, researchers have flipped the script, using observations of simple social situations to show that optimism, pessimism, envy, and trust, rather than selfishness and sacrifice, are the basic ingredients of our behavior.
ADVERTISEMENT Thanks for watching! Visit Website
That conclusion advances wider “efforts toward the identification of basic behavioral phenotypes,” or categories of behavior, and the results could be usefully applied in social science, policy, and business, Julia Poncela-Casasnovas and her colleagues write in Science Advances.
Classical economic theory has something of a bad reputation these days, and not without reason. For one thing, most economic theory assumes people are rational, in the sense that they are strategic and maximize their payoffs in all that they do. The list of objections to that approach is long and well-documented, but there’s a counter objection—amid a slew of objections and anecdotes, there’s little in the way of a cohesive alternative theory.
ADVERTISEMENT Thanks for watching! Visit Website
ADVERTISEMENT Thanks for watching! Visit Website
Optimism, pessimism, envy, and trust are the basic ingredients of our behavior.
Poncela-Casasnovas and her colleagues’ experiments are, they hope, a step toward such a theory. Their idea was to put ordinary people in simple social situations with economic tradeoffs, observe how those people act, and then construct a data-driven classification of their behavior.
To that end, the researchers recruited 541 people at a fair in Barcelona and paired them up to play a series of 13 to 18 games for points which they could exchange for lottery tickets. Each player could choose one of two actions, corresponding to whether they chose to cooperate or not. Although the rewards were chosen at random, the games typically imposed some sort of tradeoff—for example, mutual cooperation might produce a good payoff for both players, but one player could score more points by taking advantage of another’s cooperation. (“Games,” by the way, is economist-speak for situations where a person’s payoffs depend on all the |
of cards and/or goals.
-- Version 0.7.0 (beta) released, with support for The Brink of War expansion, and online multiplayer. There are several known bugs in this release, but they should only occur with certain combinations of cards and/or goals. 2010-01-06 -- Version 0.6.1 released, with a fix to the two-player advanced game action selection GUI and a new military strength indicator.
-- Version 0.6.1 released, with a fix to the two-player advanced game action selection GUI and a new military strength indicator. 2009-12-19 -- Version 0.6.0 released, with several AI improvements, GUI changes, undo turn support, and load/save support.
-- Version 0.6.0 released, with several AI improvements, GUI changes, undo turn support, and load/save support. 2009-09-23 -- Version 0.5.4 released, to fix crashes when changing game settings on some machines.
-- Version 0.5.4 released, to fix crashes when changing game settings on some machines. 2009-09-16 -- Version 0.5.3 released, with several GUI improvements and some minor bug fixes.
-- Version 0.5.3 released, with several GUI improvements and some minor bug fixes. 2009-09-03 -- Version 0.5.2 released immediately after 0.5.1, to fix a crippling resize bug introduced in 0.5.1.
-- Version 0.5.2 released immediately after 0.5.1, to fix a crippling resize bug introduced in 0.5.1. 2009-09-03 -- Version 0.5.1 released, fixing several bugs, some of them important especially to European users.
-- Version 0.5.1 released, fixing several bugs, some of them important especially to European users. 2009-09-03 -- Added links to a mirror site hosted by "Chairman Kaga" from BoardGameGeek.
-- Added links to a mirror site hosted by "Chairman Kaga" from BoardGameGeek. 2009-09-02 -- First version (0.5.0) released.
Downloads
Source code
The following package contains the source code, card images, and neural networks. It should compile fairly easily on any Linux or other Unix-like system. You will need the GTK libraries and headers, etc, to compile it.
Windows
The following is a Windows self-extractor that contains everything needed to play.
Mac OS X
The following is a pre-compiled binary for Mac machines running OS X. It should have all the necessary libraries and no longer uses the old GTK Framework.
FAQ
See the FAQ for some common gameplay questions and answers.
See also
Rio Grande Games is the publisher and holds all the copyrights for the images and card names. They have graciously given permission for me to distribute these, though they may not be redistributed or used for any other purpose.
Tom Lehmann is the designer of Race for the Galaxy.
The rules are available from Rio Grande Games.
BoardGameGeek entry for Race for the Galaxy
Donations
Some people have asked about donations. I am very grateful for the support! If you have a PayPal account and would like to help support, you can send funds to my account at "keldon@keldon.net". Thanks a lot!
Contact
Feel free to contact me at keldon@keldon.net with questions, suggestions, or other comments.Microsoft is soon going to make it compulsory for the manufacturers of Windows 10 PCs, tablets and smartphones to include TPM (Trusted Platform Module) for bolstered security.
In a TechNet post which covered the topic of TPM 2.0 compliance for Windows 10 devices in the future, Microsoft said it would be introducing the cast-iron requirement for systems to include TPM on the day before the anniversary of Windows 10's launch.
Redmond stated: "All shipping devices for Windows 10 across all SKU types must be using TPM 2.0 discrete or firmware from July 28, 2016. This requirement will be enforced through our Windows Hardware Certification program."
TPM is already present on a large number of business-targeted computers and notebooks, where security is always a heightened concern, but it's not so common for consumer machines. That will all change soon enough.
Pi exception
All hardware running Windows 10 desktop editions – that's Windows 10 Home, Pro, Education and Enterprise – must implement TPM 2.0 and ship with it enabled, along with all Windows 10 Mobile devices.
The exception to the rule is Windows 10 IoT Core where TPM will remain optional, so the likes of the Raspberry Pi won't be bound by this new Redmond directive.
TPM encompasses a raft of security mechanisms designed to protect a device from tampering and would-be intruders if the hardware falls into the wrong hands, and the newer TPM 2.0 standard offers a number of clear advantages over TPM 1.2 including support for SHA-256 hashing.
It can be implemented either in discrete form (a separate chip) or as firmware TPM.
Via: PC WorldAny effort to rethink and strengthen social development must include an examination of how individuals and communities can develop the capacity to advance on their own, something that can perhaps best be encouraged by promoting a new conception of learning and the generation of knowledge at the community level.
Such ideas were among those offered in a statement of the Baha’i International Community to the 54th Commission for Social Development, which is scheduled to take place 3-12 February 2016 and has as its theme “rethinking and strengthening social development in the contemporary world.”
“The adoption of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development has transformed the landscape in which social development is pursued,” says the statement, which is titled “Collective Learning, Collective Will: Strengthening the Foundations of Social Development.”
“The central task before the international community, then, is building capacity in increasing numbers of individuals, communities and institutions, with the ultimate objective of promoting universal participation in the construction of that world.”
In this regard, “conceiving of development as learning – approaching it as a process of generating and applying knowledge about the dynamics of social change in specific settings” will be critical in encouraging the participation of individuals and communities in their own social development,” says the statement.
“Within a mode of learning, plans grow organically over time and exist to be modified in light of the ultimate goal of sustainable community development. Visions and strategies are re-examined time and again and modifications are made as tasks are accomplished, obstacles removed, resources multiplied, and lessons learned. Haphazard change is avoided and continuity of action is maintained.”
Moreover, the statement continues, “patterns of learning at the local level, no matter how essential, will remain limited if they are not connected to global processes concerned with the prosperity of humanity as a whole. In this sense, UN bodies, such as the Commission, could well conceive of themselves as learning entities dedicated to the systematization of a growing worldwide experience made possible by the participation of increasing numbers of collaborators. Such an approach defies categorization as either “top-down” or “bottom-up”; rather, it is one of reciprocity and interconnectedness.”
The entire statement can be read here.Enough already with the public option!
It is not the be-all and end-all of health-care reform. It is not the long-awaited safety net for the uninsured. And if, as many liberals hope, it turns out to be nothing more than Medicare for All, it won't do anything to hold down long-term growth in health spending.
The public option is nothing more than a political litmus test imposed on the debate by left-wing politicians and pundits who don't want to be bothered with the real-life dynamics of the health-care market. It is the Maginot Line of health-care policy, and just like those stubborn French generals, liberal Democrats have vowed to defend it even if it means losing the war.
So there was Howard Dean, the former Democratic Party chairman, over the weekend declaring that health reform without a public option simply isn't worth doing. My colleague Ezra Klein pointed out on his must-read blog that Dr. Dean's fascination with a public option is rather recent since it was nowhere to be found in the reform plan he proposed when running for president in 2004.
Or how about MSNBC's Rachel Maddow, who opined that the failure to deliver on a public option would represent nothing less than the "collapse of political ambition" for American liberalism?
The public option has become for the left what "death panels" have become for the right -- an easily understood metaphor that can be used to wage an ideological war over the issue of Big Government, and mostly a sideshow.
The case for a public option begins with the unassailable observation that our system of private health care and health insurance has not been effective in restraining the growth of medical expenditures.
Some of that cost growth has to do with an aging population and technological gains that have dramatically increased the number of cures and treatments. But those same cost drivers can be found in other advanced countries, including those with government-run health-care systems.
Liberals have a point when they argue that the price competition in our private markets is something less than robust.
Because consumers don't pay out of pocket for much of their health care, they don't shop around for bargains the way they do for cars or toilet paper. Nor is it clear that people would flock to the heart surgeon in town who advertises bargain-basement rates.
Competition is also imperfect because many regions of the country have dominant hospital chains that can virtually dictate rates to private insurers. You simply could not offer a competitive insurance product in Northern Virginia, for example, if Inova's Fairfax Hospital weren't in your network. And in many rural communities, there's only one hospital.
Drug companies have monopoly pricing power for drugs under patent for which there is no substitute. Ditto for medical-equipment makers with the latest imaging machines or artificial hip joints.- Advertisement -
A fish rots from the head
Andy Worthington is a superb reporter who has specialized in providing the facts of the US government's illegal abuse of "detainees," against whom no evidence exists. In an effort to create evidence, the US government has illegally resorted to torture. Torture produces false confessions, plea bargains, and false testimony against others in order to escape further torture.
For these reasons, in Anglo-American law self-incrimination secured through torture has been impermissible evidence for centuries. So also has been secret evidence withheld from the accused and his attorney. Secret evidence cannot be confronted. Secret evidence is distrusted as made-up in order to convict the innocent. The evidence is secret because it cannot stand the light of day.
The US government relies on secret evidence in its cases against alleged terrorists, claiming that national security would be threatened if the evidence were revealed. This is abject nonsense. It is an absurd claim that presenting evidence against a terrorist jeopardizes the national security of the United States.
- Advertisement -
To the contrary, not presenting evidence jeopardizes the security of each and every one of us. Once the government can convict defendants on the basis of secret evidence, even the concept of a fair trial will disappear. Fair trials are already history, but the concept lingers.
Secret evidence murders the concept of a fair trial. It murders justice and the rule of law. Secret evidence means anyone can be convicted of anything. As in Kafka's The Trial, people will cease to know the crimes for which they are being tried and convicted.
This extraordinary development in Anglo-American law, a development demanded by the unaccountable Bush/Obama Regime, has not resulted in impeachment proceedings; nor has it caused an uproar from Congress, the federal courts, the presstitute media, law schools, constitutional scholars, and bar associations.
- Advertisement -
Having bought the government's 9/11 conspiracy theory, Americans just want someone to pay. They don't care who as long as someone pays. To accommodate this desire, the government has produced some "high value detainees" with Arab or Muslim names. But instead of bringing these alleged malefactors to trial and presenting evidence against them, the government has kept them in torture dungeons for years trying to create through the application of pain and psychological breakdown guilt by self-incrimination in order to create a case against them.
The government has been unsuccessful and has nothing that it can bring to a real court. So the Bush/Obama Regime created and recreated "military tribunals" to lend "national security" credence to the absolute need that non-existent evidence be kept secret.
Andy Worthington in his numerous reports does a good job in providing the history of the detainees and their treatment. He deserves our commendation and support. But what I want to do is to ask some questions, not of Worthington, but about the idea that the US is under terrorist threat.
By this September, 9/11 will be eleven years ago. Yet despite the War on Terror, the loss of Americans' privacy and civil liberties, an expenditure of trillions of dollars on numerous wars, violations of US and international laws against torture, and so forth, no one has been held accountable. Neither the perpetrators nor those whom the perpetrators outwitted, assuming that they are different people, have been held accountable. Going on 11 years and no trials of villains or chastisement of negligent public officials. This is remarkable.
The government's account of 9/11 implies massive failure of all US security and intelligence agencies along with those of our NATO puppets and Israel's Mossad. The government's official line also implies the failure of the National Security Council, NORAD and the US Air Force, Air Traffic Control, Airport Security four times in one hour on the same morning. It implies the failure of the President, the Vice President, the National Security Adviser, the Secretary of Defense.
Many on the left and also libertarians find this apparent failure of the centralized and oppressive government so hopeful that they cling to the official "government failure" explanation of 9/11. However, such massive failure is simply unbelievable. How in the world could the US have survived the cold war with the Soviets if the US government were so totally incompetent?
- Advertisement -
If we attribute superhero powers to the 19 alleged hijackers, powers in excess of V's in V for Vendetta or James Bond's or Captain Marvel's, and assume that these young terrorists, primarily Saudi Arabians, outwitted Dick Cheney, Condi Rice, The Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Tony Blair, along with the CIA, FBI, MI5 and MI6, Mossad, etc., one would have expected the President, Congress, and the media to call for heads to roll. No more humiliating affront has ever been suffered by a major power than the US suffered on 9/11. Yet, absolutely no one, not even some lowly traffic controller, was scapegoated and held accountable for what is considered to be the most extraordinarily successful terrorist attack in human history, an attack so successful that it implies total negligence across the totality of the US government and that of all its allies.
This just doesn't smell right. Total failure and no accountability. The most expensively funded security apparatus the world has ever known defeated by a handful of Saudi Arabians. How can anyone in the CIA, FBI, NSA, NORAD, and National Security Council hold up their heads? What a disgraced bunch of jerks and incompetents.
What do we need them for?
Next Page 1 | 2When Microsoft released the Windows 10 Mobile upgrade back in March, it was available to a fairly short list of devices compared to the promise of all devices running Windows Phone 8.1. Those unsupported devices, however, were offered a workaround by upgrading through the Release Preview ring of the Insider Preview.
Microsoft announced today that the workaround will no longer work. If you have an unsupported device and you're on Windows 10 Mobile, you won't receive any updates beyond build 10586. If you use the Windows Device Recovery Tool to roll back to Windows Phone 8.1, you will not have the option to upgrade your device back to Windows 10 Mobile.
Of course, there is a reason for this. The Release Preview ring was designed to offer early access to cumulative updates, or anything that non-Insiders are going to eventually get their hands on. Microsoft allowed unsupported devices to continue getting the 10586 builds, since they were supported during the Preview period. Those devices were never supported for any of the Anniversary Update previews, so now that the Anniversary Update is in the Release Preview ring, 10586 is not.
Microsoft has been very clear that unsupported devices would not have a path beyond 10586 since the very beginning; however, the company did not, and would not, say whether build 10586 would continue to be available once the Anniversary Update was.
In fact, we've been trying to ask Microsoft about this for weeks, hoping to offer users a "last chance" to upgrade, rather than having the opportunity taken away without warning.
For those that are already on Windows 10 Mobile with an unsupported device, we've reached out to Microsoft to confirm whether or not there will be any future cumulative updates for build 10586. Clearly, the probable answer is no, but Windows 10 for PCs will most certainly have updates for the build (businesses need them; in fact, there are still 10240 updates rolling out), and since Windows 10 is developed in parallel with Windows 10 Mobile, anything is possible.
Nevertheless, if you're on an unsupported device, you no longer have an upgrade path to Windows 10 Mobile. However, if your Windows phone doesn't use a Snapdragon S4 chipset, has 1GB RAM or more, and 8GB of internal storage or more, there's always a chance that it can be added to support, much like the Yezz Billy 4.7 was.This is such a delicious piece of video. I watched it twice, just to see Joe Heck stutter and stumble around his answers to this constituent, a small business owner who is already benefiting from the Affordable Care Act.
Greg Sargent:
The constituent, a self-described “business person,” says the law has already saved him money and will save him more in the future, adding that it has already bent the cost curve. “Why would you oppose the ACA at every turn?” the man asks. “Why would you oppose something that’s helping me now?” What this sort of encounter confirms, as another similar moment with GOP Rep. Patrick McHenry of North Carolina did recently, is that we may now be heading into new political territory when it comes to Obamacare. Polls continue to show the law remains unpopular and that public confusion about it remains rampant. But now that the law’s concrete benefits are kicking in, it may be harder for Republicans to explain their continuing drive to repeal it, particularly to constituents who understand what repeal would take away from them. We’re a long way from the anti-Obamacare town halls of the magical Summer of ’09.
Yes, indeed we are, though that doesn't stop Rep. Heck from pulling out the same old boring and tired arguments about how it will cost employers with more than 50 employees more, or how it was "passed in the middle of the night" with no Republican votes, or how the rate band compression will end up being more costly. And so on. Yawn.
One of the more interesting facets of Heck's response was how quickly he was willing to toss small businesses under the bus in favor of large ones. In the video, he acknowledges the business owner is benefiting, but quickly follows that up with the warning that those poor large corporations will suffer so small business can benefit. This tracks closely with the US Chamber of Commerce and NFIB opposition to the ACA, but those organizations are now reaping the whirlwind they sowed.
For businesses, the stakes amid all this disruption are enormous. They are keenly interested in tax reform and immigration reform. They would like to see more federal spending on infrastructure and less on entitlements, and less federal regulation across the board. They don't like brinkmanship on budget and debt issues, or the more routine dysfunction that has stalled transportation and agriculture legislation important to both parties and much of the private sector. And as most business groups have made crystal clear, they really, really don't like the Affordable Care Act, better known as Obamacare. Yet there is little to no business support for the latest tea-party-driven crusade to block any funding bill that includes money for the health care law, even if it means the government would shut down when the fiscal year ends Sept. 30. Bruce Josten, executive vice president for government affairs at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, calls that "not the politically astute thing to do." Bill Miller, senior vice president in charge of outreach to Congress and the administration at the policy-oriented Business Roundtable, says his group considers that strategy unrealistic and is now focused on trying to shape ACA regulations.
Awwww, what's that saying about dancing with the devil? Something about being burned? I have bad news for these guys. It's going to get worse, not better. For example, conservative radio pundit Mark Levin has a new book out this week, test-driving even more bad conservative ideas in the form of what he calls "The Liberty Amendments." If these ideas catch on, we're all screwed except for maybe a handful of billionaires.
The book, which offers ten constitutional amendments, evokes a certain idealism that would be endearing if the consequences to the lives of millions weren't so horrific. Levin's proposals, of course, set the conservative media's heart aflutter. Rush Limbaugh gave the book a ringing endorsement, saying on his radio program: "The Constitution's bastardized. It's been bastardized for years. It's been shredded for years. It needs to be reaffirmed. And Levin's book is a series of ideas of how to do it that involves the American people." Levin isn't just another radio host, as Republican National Committee chair Reince Priebus recently said he was receptive to the idea of Levin and Sean Hannity moderating a 2016 Republican presidential primary debate. In The Liberty Amendments, Levin lays out a conservative dystopian nightmare. Among the most toxic of his ideas would be the redefinition of the Commerce Clause to wipe out nearly all the hard fought protections of the 20th century. By arguing that the federal government's powers under Article 1, Section 8 have been unjustly expanded by the Supreme Court, Levin implicitly acknowledges this debate is over. Instead of accepting this, Levin seeks to alter the clause by limiting the definition of interstate commerce explicitly to "preventing states from impeding commerce and trade between and among the several States."
You thought Barry Goldwater was bad? The John Birch Society? Strap in, folks, because it's about to get much, much worse at the hands of those like Rep. Joe Heck who are so willing to bearhug terrible policy in the name of billionaire backing.Labour's "ambition" is to write off all student debt, which would cost £100bn, shadow education secretary Angela Rayner has said.
The Labour MP said it was a "huge amount" and the party would not commit to doing it "unless we can afford to".
The Conservatives said it was a "shambolic" proposal, which Labour had no idea how to fund and would lead to higher taxes.
Labour has pledged to scrap university tuition fees if it wins power.
But leader Jeremy Corbyn went further in an interview with the NME during the election campaign, suggesting existing debts could be wiped.
He told the music magazine: "There is a block of those that currently have a massive debt, and I'm looking at ways that we could reduce that, ameliorate that, lengthen the period of paying it off, or some other means of reducing that debt burden.
"I don't see why those that had the historical misfortune to be at university during the £9,000 period should be burdened excessively compared to those that went before or those that come after. I will deal with it."
'Frankenstein's monster'
The Greens were the only party at the general election to include a commitment to wipe all student debt in their manifesto.
Quizzed by the BBC's Andrew Marr on how much it would cost, Ms Rayner said: "It is a huge amount, it is £100bn, which they estimate at the moment, which will increase.
"It's a huge amount of money but we also know a third of that is never repaid."
Image copyright PA Image caption Lord Adonis has called for tuition fees to be scrapped
Ms Rayner said Mr Corbyn had said it was an "ambition", but she added "we will not announce that we're doing it unless we can afford to do that".
She added: "I like a challenge, Andrew, but we've got to start dealing with this debt crisis that we're foisting on our young people. It's not acceptable.
"They are leaving university with £57,000 worth of debt, it's completely unsustainable and we've got to start tackling that."
Last month, the Student Loan Company said that outstanding debt on student loans had increased by 16.6% to £100.5bn at the end of March.
Only about a third of the students who have taken out £9,000-a-year loans are expected to pay them back fully, meaning the government will have to pick up part of the bill.
Lord Adonis, who came up with the student fees policy as Tony Blair's policy director, has called for them to be scrapped or vastly reduced, saying in an article for the Guardian that he had never meant to create a "Frankenstein's monster of £50,000-plus debts for graduates on modest salaries".
He blamed "greedy" university vice-chancellors, who successfully lobbied the coalition government to increase the £3,000 cap on fees to £9,000.
'Taxes on families'
Conservative First Secretary of State Damian Green, who is effectively Theresa May's second-in-command, has called for a "national conversation" on tuition fees, to consider whether they should be paid out of taxes.
Angela Rayner has previously called on the government to reverse the abolition of student maintenance grants to help the most disadvantaged students.
She also wants to reduce the interest rate that students have to pay on their loans, which has gone up to 6.1%.
Asked by Andrew Marr if fewer working class youngsters were getting into university education as a result of tuition fees, she said: "I don't believe that that's the case actually, but I do believe that many working class and part-time and older mature students are actually leaving university."
Conservative MP Luke Hall said Ms Rayner's comments contradicted Mr Corbyn's claim that fewer people from disadvantaged backgrounds were going to university.
He said: "The truth is that the number of people going to university from disadvantaged backgrounds has never been higher.
"Now Labour are making shambolic promises to spend £100bn extra, without any idea of how to fund it, that could only be paid for through higher taxes on families.
"This government is committed to making sure that everybody has the chance to go to university no matter their background, so that we can build a country that works for everyone."Advocates for people of color and immigrants protesting police brutality showed up to the NYPD’s annual “National Night Out Against Crime” to outline their “vision of safety” for their communities, which they said should center on community investments rather than a heavy police presence.
“Night Out For Safety and Liberation,” established by the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, an Oakland, Calif.-based organization that advocates for racial and economic justice for low-income individuals and people of color, is an annual event that occurs on the first Tuesday of August.
The New York Worker Center Federation, a multiracial movement of workers and immigrants organizing across sectors and issues, has been running the New York City event for three years. This year, the event took place in Brook Park in the South Bronx.
While the NYPD’s “National Night Out Against Crime” unites local precincts and residents every Aug. 1, the activists believe safety comes from having basic needs met, including quality schools, clean water and affordable housing.
Basma Eid, lead trainer for Enlace — part of Workers Center Federation — said they are shifting the conversation about “what safety is, what safety looks like.”
“It’s always imposed on us and the police, they talk about building partnerships with the community but at the same time, they are the ones who are policing us, that are putting our communities behind bars, that are enforcing a racialized criminal justice system,” Eid said following the event. “And so for us, we want them to understand that we don’t want more cops in our neighborhoods.”
She called for “better investments” in education, housing and healthcare — which she said were lacking in the South Bronx and other neighborhoods.
After icebreakers in the park, they marched to the “National Night Out” event hosted by the 40th precinct on Brook Avenue between East 137th and East 138th streets.
They yelled, “Black lives! Matter!,” “Whose streets? Our streets!,” “Our city! Our fight!,” “Escucha, escucha! Estamos en la lucha!” (“Listen, listen! We are in the struggle!) and “El pueblo, unido, jamás será vencido!” (“A united people and community shall never be defeated!”).
When they arrived, police officers blocked them from entering until their boss informed them they had to let them in. As they marched and chanted, attendees looked on with curiosity. The music was turned up to drown out the marchers, but they still charged ahead even as their chants became inaudible.
After they crashed the NYPD event, they marched back to the park.
One of the marchers yelled, “Who killed Eric Garner?,” “Who killed Ramarley Graham?” and “Who killed Sandra Bland?” — referring to the deaths of black individuals at the hands of the police on Staten Island, in the Bronx and in Waller County, Texas, respectively. Each time, the marchers responded, “The police!” and “The NYPD!”
Albert Saint Jean, a New York City organizer for the Black Alliance for Just Immigration — who is from Haiti and resides in Brooklyn — blasted the controversial “broken windows” policing method that targets smaller crimes to stave off larger ones. And he lamented gentrification “creeping into our neighborhoods,” with white people “free to do as they please.”
“We ourselves always have to question our own humanity and our own rights to be places,” Saint Jean said. “It’s to the point where they harass us so much that we even feel like we did something wrong. We walk around already feeling guilty having done nothing.”AwesomeCon was a unique experience for us at Tech Void, and we weren’t exactly sure what to expect. It’s not a consumer tech event, and most of the scene revolves around hands-on meta hobbies like trading card games, ink-drawn comicbook art, and beautiful, sexy, and awesome hand-sewn costumes.
Of course, celebrities from the sci-fi films and television were also in Washington this weekend, bringing the characters to life out of their written origins. Cary Elwes (The Princess Bride), Jewel Staite (FireFly), Kevin Sorbo (Hercules), and even Ghostbuster Ernie Hudson were nearby. Even Sean Astin, the renowned hobbit, made an appearance. And several Power Rangers? Between the amazing costumes (and there were many) and the plethora of creative materials and artists, it was a brilliant experience to say the least.
Below you’ll find our grand photo album of what and who we saw there:AngelicView: That’s what she said to herself, after her experience. This woman, who had been abused as a child, found herself with increasing amounts of anger and frustration and realized that she was turning into her parents. She decided she was going to commit suicide in order to save her own children from the pain that she had to endure. As she was planning her mode of exit, she suddenly had an SOBE (Spontaneous Out of Body Experience) where she was taken “home”.
During her experience, she realized that (yes) she had planned this life, including all the up’s and down’s. Her intention in this planning was to overcome the hurt and end the cycle of abuse.
On the night this happened I was sitting outside alone deciding my life ending alternatives and instantaneously went out of my body and into an unearthly place so beautiful (no words to describe the beauty) with a river of music. Each note and tone had a color associated with it. I was filled with boundless joy and a happiness I had never known. As I touched this flowing river I became part of it.
There ARE colors we don’t get to experience on earth and music we have yet to hear.
There was no time measurement. it could have been a second, a minute, or an hour or days that I was there.
After playing in the river for whatever time I did, a strong white light came onto me and I was transported to “heaven” or what I DO KNOW is HOME. There was a cloaked spirit leading me through the most wondrous (again, no eartly words to describe) crystal palace with angels I did not see but heard, singing and I knew it was the music of the spheres.
This knowledge came to me along with the knowledge that we make all of our decisions ALL of the time, free will.
I had chosen my childhood horrors and needed to heal and change for my children, not leave them.
As this and so much more knowledge was imploding me, it was the same as a veil being lifted, my memories of this place and this knowledge was coming back.
At the same time soooo much love came flooding into me and around me, I was part of everything that was happening, I was loved and the love and kept hearing the words although not with my ears that “Love is the Answer”.
And then I was back in my body, full of love.
When I did go to sleep that night and for 3 nights after, each time I fell into sleep, I shot through a tunnel of light to a room where I was with the same cloaked spirit. This was a “healing” room, which I just knew, but not told. Each time I came here I was laid on a table and the other spirits (also cloaked) put me into a deep healing sleep. Each time I woke, I was back in my body on earth.
After this experience, I just wanted to go back to my real home and feel that love again. I had a lot of work to do to repair my family, but my first priority was myself. I went into therapy and with a lot of work and determination was able to repair the damage my anger had done to my life and my children’s lives. I quit speaking to my parents after confronting them with the truth of their choices, for 18 years.
My mother had a massive heart attack and had fallen face first onto a parking lot bumper which in turn brought on dementia.
My Forgiveness was for me. I fought with unconditional love for my parents, but knew my earth time was running short after my mothers catastrophe.
I have been reunited with my parents and 5 of my 7 siblings for the last 3 years. A forgiving choice of unconditional love. Love Is The Answer.
I had chosen the life I had lived.
AngelicView: She says that she gained unbelievable knowledge while she was there, and she is now attempting to write it all down. One thing she does share with us is this: “Part of the knowledge unveiled was that we are not limited to this or any other life we have or will have. We do not ever die, our spirit is not destructible.”
Source
AdvertisementsScientists have confirmed the extra-terrestrial origin of dozens of tiny fragments found near Chebarkul Lake in Russia's Chelyabinsk region. Local opportunists meanwhile began selling alleged pieces of the space rock in a bid to make a quick fortune.
“We have just finished the research and confirm that the fragments found by our expedition in the area of Chebarkul Lake are meteorite by nature,” Viktor Grohovsky of the Ural Federal University told RIA.
The space object exploded into at least seven large pieces and hundreds of small ones, researchers claimed. One of the big fragments fell into the Chebarkul Lake, and is believed to have formed an ice-hole 8 meters in diameter.
The team was not allowed to inspect the ice crater itself, but around the hole scientists collected several dozens small fragments of the rock about 0.5 – 1 centimeter in diameters which were sent for examination.
So far the researchers were able to confirm the samples’ celestial origin out of the 53 small particles sampled.
“This is a stone meteorite, an ordinary chondrite. We have diagnosed all the common minerals found there- the metallic iron, and olivine, and sulfite,” Grohovsky elaborated. The scientists at the “Nanotech” center evaluated that over eight percent of the mass of the examined samples consisted of these metals.
The researchers aim to conduct further analysis before registering “Chebarkul Meteorite” in the international catalogue.
Earlier, a team of Emergency Ministry divers have examined the floor bed of the lake in search of the meteorite, but were unable to find anything resembling a big fragment of the rock, which is now rumored to further break-up upon impact.
Meanwhile, residents of the region are still speculating about the incident and putting forward their own theories on what really happened, RT producer Lida Vasilevskaya reported from Chelyabinsk.
“No, it definitely wasn’t a meteor. I don’t know what it was, but not that,” one local stated. “It was a stage for a missile. For sure!” another claimed.
A rock estimated to weigh around 7,000 tons and be traveling at 40,000mph exploded over the Urals Mountains on Friday, scattering debris for miles and injuring some 1,240 people, including 299 children.
An ice hole in Lake Chabarkul, Chelyabinsk Region, where pieces of a meteorite could allegedly fall December 15. (RIA Novosti)
Scientists have confirmed the extra-terrestrial origin of dozens of tiny fragments found near Chebarkul Lake in Russia's Chelyabinsk region.(Image courtesy of the press service of the Ural Federal University, photo by Alexandra Khlopotova)
Small 0.5-1 cm pieces of black matter resembling rock were found around the ice hole caused by the meteorite. (Image courtesy of the press service of the Ural Federal University, photo by Alexandra Khlopotova)
Meteorite rush
Over the weekend, dozens of sale offers popped up in Russian social networks and auctions with people claiming to have found or bought a fragment of the Chelyabinsk meteor. Although there’s no way to verify the authenticity of the samples offered, some of the sellers ask over $4,000 a piece.
Several vendors claim to be employees at the Chelyabinsk zinc factory, which was rumored to have been devastated by one of the large meteor fragments. One of the sellers who claims he got his 263-gram piece from the factory rubble even described it as smelling of |
en when he passed the test was the closest he had hoped to come to romance. Now he was to share his life, such as it was, with a girl he hardly knew.
Isriun’s palm was clammy against his, sacred cloth wrapped about their clasped hands to make a clumsy bundle. They gripped each other, and were tied together, and pressed together by the wishes of their parents, and bound together by the needs of Gettland, and still it felt as if there was an unbridgeable chasm between them.
‘Oh, He Who Sprouts the Seed, grant them healthy issue… ‘
Yarvi knew what every guest was thinking. Not crippled issue. Not one-handed issue. He stole a glance sideways at this small, slight, yellow-haired girl who should have been his brother’s wife. She looked scared and slightly sick. But who wouldn’t, being forced to marry half a man?
This was everyone’s second best. A day of celebration mourned by all. A tragic compromise.
‘Oh, She Who Guards the Locks, keep safe their household… ‘
Only Brinyolf the Prayer-Weaver was enjoying himself. He had spun one ponderous blessing for Isriun at her betrothal to Yarvi’s brother and now – to his delight if not hers – got the chance to construct a second. His voice droned on, exhorting Tall Gods and Small Gods to grant fertility in their fields, and obedience in their slaves, and no one would have been surprised by a plea for regularity in their bowels next. Yarvi hunched his shoulders, swamped by one of the heavy furs his father used to wear, dreading the magnitude of Brinyolf’s blessing at the wedding itself.
‘Oh, She of the Ewer, pour prosperity upon this royal couple, upon their parents and their subjects, and upon all of Gettland!’
The prayer-weaver stepped back, smug as a new parent, his chin vanishing into the roll of fat beneath it.
‘I shall be brief,’ said Mother Gundring, with the slightest knowing glance at Yarvi. He spluttered on a stifled laugh, then caught his mother’s eye upon him, cold as the winter sea, and had no need to stifle another.
‘A kingdom stands upon two pillars,’ spoke the old minister. ‘We already have a strong king.’ No one laughed. Admirable self control. ‘Soon, gods willing, we will have a strong queen also.’ Yarvi saw Isriun’s pale throat flutter as she swallowed.
Mother Gundring beckoned forward Yarvi’s mother and his Uncle Odem, the one person who looked happy to be in attendance, to give their blessing by placing their hands upon the bundle. Then with an effort she lifted high her staff, tubes and rods of the same elf-metal as the Black Chair gleaming, and called out, ‘They are promised!’
So it was done. Isriun was not asked for an opinion on the matter, and neither was Yarvi. It seemed there was little interest in the opinions of kings. Certainly not of this one. The audience, a hundred strong or more, served up restrained applause. The men – heads of some of Gettland’s greatest families, sword-hilts and cloak-buckles set with gold – beat approval on broad chests with heavy fists. On the other side of the hall the women – hair glistening with fresh oil and their household keys hung on best jewel-lustred chains – tapped fingers politely in their scented palms.
Mother Gundring unwrapped the sacred cloth and Yarvi snatched free his good hand, sticky-pink and tingling. His uncle seized him by the shoulders and said into his ear, ‘Well done!’, though Yarvi had done nothing but stand there and sing some promises he hardly understood.
The guests filed out, and Brinyolf closed the doors of the hall with an echoing clap, leaving Yarvi and Isriun alone with the gods, the Black Chair, the weight of their uncertain future, and an ocean of awkward silence.
Isriun rubbed gently at the hand that had held Yarvi’s, and looked at the floor. He looked at the floor too, not that there was anything so very interesting down there. He cleared his throat. He shifted his sword belt. It still hung strangely on him. He felt as if it always would. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, at last.
She looked up, one eye shining in the heavy darkness. ‘Why are you sorry?’ Then she remembered to add uncertainly, ‘my king?’
He almost said That you’ll have half a man for a husband, but settled for, ‘That you’re passed around my family like a feast-day cup.’
‘On feast-day, everyone’s happy to get the cup.’ She gave a bitter little smile. ‘I’m the one who should be sorry. Imagine me a queen.’ And she snorted as though there never was a more foolish joke.
‘Imagine me a king.’
‘You are a king.’
He blinked at that. He had been so fixed on his shortcomings it had never occurred she might be fixed on her own. That thought, as the misery of others often can, made him feel just a little better.
‘You manage your father’s household.’ He looked down at the golden key hanging on her chest. ‘That’s no small task.’
‘But a queen manages the business of a country! Everyone says your mother has a high art at it. Laithlin, the Golden Queen!’ She spoke the name like a magic spell. ‘They say she’s owed a thousand thousand favours, that a debt to her is a matter for pride. They say her word is valued higher than gold among merchants, because gold may go down in worth but her word never does. They say some traders of the far north have given up praying to the gods and worship her instead.’ She spoke faster and faster, and chewed at her nails, and tugged at one thin hand with the other, eyes opening very wide. ‘There’s a rumour she lays silver eggs.’
Yarvi had to laugh. ‘I’m reasonably sure that one’s false.’
‘But she’s raised granaries and had channels dug and brought more earth under the plough so there’ll never again be a famine that forces folk to draw lots to see who must find new homes across the sea.’ Isriun’s shoulders drifted up as she spoke until they were hunched about her ears. ‘And people flock to Thorlby from across the world to trade, so the city’s tripled in size and split its walls and your mother’s built new walls and split them again.’
‘True, but—’
‘I’ve heard she has a mighty scheme to stamp every coin of one weight, and these coins will pass through all the lands about the Shattered Sea, so that every trade will be made with her face, and make her richer even than the High King in Skekenhouse! How will … I?’ Isriun’s shoulders slumped and she flicked at the key on her chest and set it swinging by its chain. ‘How can the likes of me—’
‘There’s always a way.’ Yarvi caught Isriun’s hand in his before she could get her vanishing nails to her teeth again. ‘My mother will help you. She’s your aunt, isn’t she?’
‘She’ll help me?’ Instead of pulling her hand away she drew him closer by it. ‘Your father may have been a great warrior but I rather think he was your less fearsome parent.’
Yarvi smiled, but he did not deny it. ‘You were luckier. My uncle’s always as calm as still water.’
Isriun glanced nervously towards the door. ‘You don’t know my father like I do.’
‘Then … I’ll help you.’ He had held her hand half the morning and it could have been a dead fish in his clammy palm. Now it felt like something else entirely – strong, and cool, and very much alive. ‘Isn’t that the point of a marriage?’
‘Not just that.’ She seemed suddenly very close, taper-light reflected in the corners of her eyes, teeth shining between parted lips.
There was a smell to her, not sweet and not sour, he could not name it. Faint, but it made his heart jump.
He did not know if he should close his eyes, then she did, so he did, and their noses bumped awkwardly.
Her breath tickled at his cheek and made his skin flush hot. Frighteningly hot.
Her lips just barely brushed his and he broke away with all the dignity of a startled rabbit, caught his leg on his sword and nearly fell over it.
‘Sorry,’ she said, shrinking back and staring at the floor.
‘It’s me who should be sorry.’ For a king Yarvi spent a great deal of his time apologizing. ‘I’m the sorriest man in Gettland. No doubt my brother gave you a better kiss. More practice … I suppose.’
‘All your brother did was talk about the battles he’d win,’ she muttered at her feet.
‘No danger of that with me.’ He could not have said why he did it – to shock her, or as revenge for the failed kiss, or simply to be honest – but he held up his crooked hand, shaking his sleeve free so it was between them in all its ugliness.
He expected her to flinch, to pale, to step away, but she only looked thoughtfully at it. ‘Does it hurt?’
‘Not really … sometimes.’
She reached out, then, sliding her fingers around his knobbled knuckles and pressing at the crooked palm with her thumb while the breath stopped in his throat. No one had ever touched that hand as if it was just a hand. A piece of flesh with feelings like any other.
‘I heard you beat Keimdal in the square even so,’ she said.
‘I only gave the order. I learned a long time ago that I’m not much good at fair fights.’
‘A warrior fights,’ she said, looking him in the eye. ‘A king commands.’ And with a grin she drew him up the dais. He went uneasily, for even though this was his hall, with every step he felt more like a trespasser.
‘The Black Chair,’ he muttered as they reached it.
‘Your chair,’ said Isriun, and to his horror she reached out and swept her fingertips down the perfect metal of the arm with a hiss that made Yarvi’s skin prickle. ‘Hard to believe it’s the oldest thing here. Made by the hands of elves before the Breaking of the World.’
‘You’re interested in the elves?’ he squeaked, terrified she might make him touch it or, more awful yet, sit in it, and desperate for a distraction.
‘I’ve read every book Mother Gundring has about them,’ she said.
Yarvi blinked. ‘You read?’
‘I once trained to be a minister. I was Mother Gundring’s apprentice, before you. Bound for a life of books, and plants, and soft words spoken.’
‘She never said so.’ It seemed they had more in common than he had imagined.
‘I was promised to your brother, and that was the end of it. We must do what’s best for Gettland.’
They gave much the same sigh at much the same time. ‘So everyone tells me,’ said Yarvi. ‘We’ve both lost the Ministry.’
‘But gained each other. And we’ve gained this.’ Her eyes shone as she gave the perfect curve of the Black Chair’s arm one last stroke. ‘No mean wedding present.’ Her light fingertips slipped from the metal and onto the back of his hand, and he found that he very much liked having them there. ‘We were meant to discuss when we’ll be married.’
‘As soon as I get back,’ he said, voice slightly hoarse.
She gave his withered hand one last squeeze then let it fall. ‘I’ll expect a better kiss after your victory, my king.’
As he watched her walk away Yarvi was almost glad neither one of them had joined the Ministry. ‘I’ll try not to trip over my sword!’ he called as she reached the doorway.
She smiled at him over her shoulder as she slipped through, the daylight setting a glow in her hair. Then the doors shut softly behind her. Leaving Yarvi marooned on the dais, in the midst of all that silent space, his doubts suddenly looming even higher than the Tall Gods above. It took a fearsome effort to turn his head back towards the Black Chair.
Could he truly sit in it, between gods and men? He, who could hardly bring himself to touch it with his crippled joke of a hand? He made himself reach out, his breath coming shallow. Made himself lay his one trembling fingertip upon the metal.
Very cold and very hard. Just as a king must be.
Just as Yarvi’s father used to be, sitting there with the King’s Circle on his furrowed brow. His scarred hands gripping the arms, the pommel of his sword never far out of reach. The sword that hung at Yarvi’s belt now, dragging at him with its unfamiliar weight.
I didn’t ask for half a son.
And Yarvi shrank from the empty chair with even less dignity than when his father still sat in it. Not towards the doors of the Godshall and the waiting crowd beyond, but away towards the statue of Father Peace, pressing himself to the stone and working his fingers into the crack beside the giant leg of the patron god of ministers. In silence the hidden door sprang open, and like a thief fleeing the scene of his crime Yarvi slipped into the blackness beyond.
The citadel was full of secret ways, but nowhere so riddled as the Godshall. Passages passed under its floor, inside its walls, within its very dome. Ministers of old had used them to show the will of the gods with the odd little miracle – feathers fluttering down, or smoke rising behind the statues. Once blood had been dripped on Gettland’s reluctant warriors as the king called for war.
The passageways were dark and full of sounds, but Yarvi had no fear of them. These tunnels had long been his domain. He had hidden from his father’s blazing anger in the darkness. From his brother’s crushing love. From his mother’s chill disappointment. He could find his way from one end of the citadel to the other without once stepping into the light.
Here he knew all the ways, as any good minister should.
Here he was safe.
5. DOVES
The dovecote was perched in the top of one of the citadel’s highest towers, streaked inside and out with centuries of droppings, and through its many windows a chill wind blew.
As Mother Gundring’s apprentice, feeding the doves had been Yarvi’s task. Feeding them, and teaching them the messages they were to speak, and watching them clatter into the sky to take news, and offers, and threats to other ministers about the Shattered Sea.
From the many cages ranked around the walls they looked down on him now, the doves, and one great bronze-feathered eagle which must have brought a message from the High King in Skekenhouse. The one person in the lands around the Shattered Sea who had the right to make requests of Yarvi now. Yet here he sat against the dropping-speckled wall, picking at the nail on his shrivelled hand, buried beneath a howe of demands he could never fulfil.
He had always been weak, but he never felt truly powerless until they made him a king.
He heard shuffling feet on the steps and Mother Gundring ducked through the low doorway, breathing hard.
‘I thought you’d never get here,’ said Yarvi.
‘My king,’ replied the old minister once she had the breath. ‘You were expected before the Godshall.’
‘Aren’t the tunnels meant for a king’s escape?’
‘From armed enemies. From your family, your subjects, not to mention your bride-to-be, less so.’ She peered up at the domed ceiling, at the gods painted there as birds, taking to a brilliant sky. ‘Were you planning to fly away?’
‘To Catalia, perhaps, or the land of the Alyuks, or up the Divine River to Kalyiv.’ Yarvi shrugged. ‘But I don’t have two good hands, never mind two good wings.’
Mother Gundring nodded. ‘In the end, we must all be what we are.’
‘And what am I?’
‘The King of Gettland.’
He swallowed then, knowing how disappointed she must be. How disappointed he was himself. In the songs great kings rarely crawled off to hide from their own people. He caught sight of the eagle as he looked away, huge and serene in its cage.
‘Grandmother Wexen has sent a message?’
‘A message,’ echoed one of the doves in its scratching mockery of a voice. ‘A message. A message.’
Mother Gundring frowned up at the eagle, still as a stuffed trophy. ‘It came from Skekenhouse five days ago. Grandmother Wexen sent to ask when you would arrive for your test.’
Yarvi remembered the one time he had seen the First of Ministers, a few years before when the High King had visited Thorlby. The High King had seemed a grim and grasping old man, offended by everything. Yarvi’s mother had been obliged to soothe him when someone did not bow in quite the manner he liked. Yarvi’s brother had laughed that such a feeble little wisp-haired man should rule the Shattered Sea, but his laughter died when he saw the number of warriors that followed him. Yarvi’s father had raged because the High King took gifts and gave none. Mother Gundring had clicked her tongue and said, The wealthier a man is, the more he craves wealth.
Grandmother Wexen had scarcely left her proper place at the High King’s side, ever smiling like a kindly grandparent. When Yarvi knelt before her she had looked at his crippled hand, and leaned down to murmur, My prince, have you considered joining the Ministry? And for a moment he had seen a hungry brightness in her eye which scared him more than all the High King’s frowning warriors.
‘So much interest from the First of Ministers?’ he muttered, swallowing an aftertaste of that day’s fear.
Mother Gundring shrugged. ‘It is rare to have a prince of royal blood join the Ministry.’
‘No doubt she’ll be as disappointed as everyone else that I’ve taken the Black Chair instead.’
‘Grandmother Wexen is wise enough to make the best of what the gods serve her. As must we all.’
Yarvi’s eyes slid across the rest of the cages, seeking a distraction. Pitiless though they were, the eyes of the birds were easier to bear than those of his disappointed subjects.
‘Which dove brought the message from Grom-gil-Gorm?’
‘I sent it back to Vansterland. To his minister, Mother Scaer, carrying your father’s agreement to a parley.’
‘Where was the meeting to be?’
‘On the border, near the town of Amwend. Your father never reached the place.’
‘He was ambushed in Gettland?’
‘So it appears.’
‘It does not seem like my father, to be so keen to end a war.’
‘War,’ croaked one of the doves. ‘End a war.’
Mother Gundring frowned at the grey-spattered floor. ‘I counselled him to go. The High King has asked for all swords to be sheathed until his new temple to the One God is completed. I never suspected even a savage like Grom-gil-Gorm would betray the sacred word given.’ She made a fist, as though she would strike herself, then slowly let it uncurl. ‘It is a minister’s task to smooth the way for Father Peace.’
‘But had my father no men with him? Had he—’
‘My king.’ Mother Gundring looked at him from under her brows. ‘We must go down.’
Yarvi swallowed, his stomach seeming to jump up his throat and wash his mouth with sour spit. ‘I’m not ready.’
‘No one ever is. Your father was not.’
Yarvi made a sound then, half a laugh, half a sob, and wiped tears on the back of his crooked hand. ‘Did my father weep after he was betrothed to my mother?’
‘In fact, he did,’ said Mother Gundring. ‘For several years. She, on the other hand… ‘
And Yarvi gurgled up a laugh despite himself. ‘My mother’s even meaner with her tears than her gold.’ He looked up at the woman who had been his teacher, would now be his minister, that face full of kindly lines, the bright eyes filled with concern, and found he had whispered, ‘You’ve been like a mother to me.’
‘And you like a son to me. I am sorry, Yarvi. I am sorry for everything but … this is the greater good.’
‘The lesser evil.’ Yarvi fussed at his stub of a finger, and blinked up at the birds. The many doves, and the one great eagle. ‘Who will feed them now?’
‘I will find someone.’ And Mother Gundring offered her bony hand to help him up. ‘My king.’
6. PROMISES
It was a great affair.
Many powerful families in the far reaches of Gettland would be angered that news of King Uthrik’s death had barely reached them before he was burned, denying them the chance to have their importance noted at an event that would live so long in the memory.
No doubt the all-powerful High King on his high chair in Skekenhouse, not to mention the all-knowing Grandmother Wexen at his elbow, would be far from delighted that they received no invitation, as Mother Gundring was keen to point out. But Yarvi’s mother forced through her clenched teeth, ‘Their anger is dust to me.’ Laithlin might have been queen no longer but no other word would fit her, and Hurik still hovered huge and silent at her shoulder, sworn forever to her service. Once she spoke it was a thing already done.
The procession passed from the Godshall through the yard of the citadel, grass littered with the sites of Yarvi’s many failures, under the limbs of the great cedar his brother used to mock him for being unable to climb.
Yarvi went at the fore, of course, his mother overshadowing him in every sense at his shoulder and Mother Gundring struggling to keep up behind, bent over her staff. Uncle Odem led the king’s household, warriors and women in their best. Slaves came behind, collars rattling and their eyes on the ground where they belonged.
Yarvi glanced up nervously as they passed through the one entrance tunnel, saw the bottom edge of the Screaming Gate gleam in the darkness, ready to drop and seal the citadel against any enemy. It was said to have been let fall only once, and that long before he was born, but still he swallowed as he always did when he passed beneath it. A mountain’s weight of polished copper hanging by a single pin tended to rattle the nerves.
Especially when you were about to burn half your family.
‘You’re doing well,’ Yarvi’s uncle whispered in his ear.
‘I am walking.’
‘You are walking like a king.’
‘I am a king and I am walking. How could it be otherwise?’
Odem smiled at that. ‘Well said. My king.’
Over his uncle’s shoulder Yarvi caught Isriun smiling at him too, the torch she carried setting a gleam to her eyes and the chain about her neck. Soon the key to the treasury of Gettland would hang upon it, and she would be queen. His queen, and the thought gave him hope amidst his fears like a spark in the darkness.
They all carried torches, a snake of lights through the gathering gloom, though the wind had snatched out half the flames by the time the procession passed through the city’s gates and onto the bare hillside.
The king’s own ship, the best in Thorlby’s crowded harbour, twenty oars upon a side and its high prow and tail carved as finely as anything in the Godshall, was dragged by honoured warriors to the chosen place among the dunes, keel grinding out a snaking trench in the sand. The same ship in which King Uthrik had sailed across the Shattered Sea on his famous raid to Sagenmark. The same ship which had wallowed low in the water with slaves and plunder when he returned in triumph.
On its deck they laid the pale bodies of the king and his heir upon a bier of fine swords, for Uthrik’s fame as a warrior had stood second only to his dead brother Uthil’s. All Yarvi could think was how that showed great warriors die no better than other men.
And usually sooner.
Rich offerings were placed about the dead in the manner the prayer-weaver judged the gods would most appreciate. Weapons and armour the king had won in battle. Armrings of gold, coins of silver. Treasures heaped glittering. Yarvi put a jewelled cup in his brother’s fists, and his mother put a cloak of white fur over the dead king’s shoulders, and placed one hand upon his chest, and stood looking down, her jaw clenched tight, until Yarvi said, ‘Mother?’
She turned without a word and led him to the chairs on the hillside, the sea wind catching the brown grass and setting it thrashing about their feet. Yarvi squirmed for a comfortable position in that hard, high seat, his mother motionless on his right with Hurik a huge shadow behind her, Mother Gundring perched on a stool at his left hand, her staff clutched in one bony fist, the twisted elf-metal alive with reflected flames from the rustling torches.
Yarvi sat between his two mothers. One who believed in him. One who had given birth to him.
Mother Gundring leaned close then and said softly, ‘I am sorry, my king. This is not what I wanted for you.’
Yarvi could show no weakness now. ‘We must make the best of what fate serves us,’ he said. ‘Even kings.’
‘Especially kings,’ grated out his mother, and gave the signal.
Two dozen horses were led onto the ship, hooves clattering at the timbers, and slaughtered so their blood washed the deck. All agreed Death would show King Uthrik and his son through the Last Door with respect, and they would be acknowledged great among the dead.
Uncle Odem stepped out before the ranks of battle-ready warriors massed upon the sand, a torch in one hand. With his silvered mail and winged helm and red cloak snapping he looked like a son, and brother, and uncle of kings indeed. He nodded solemnly to Yarvi, and Yarvi nodded back, and he felt his mother clutch his right hand and squeeze it hard.
Odem set the torch to the pitch-soaked kindling. The flames licked about the ship and in a moment it was all ablaze, a sorrowful moan drawn from the crowds – from the honoured and wealthy upon the high terraces before the walls of Thorlby, the crafters and merchants below them, the foreigners and peasants below them, the beggars and slaves scattered in whatever crevices the wind allowed them, each person in the place the gods had reckoned proper.
And Yarvi had to swallow, because he realized of a sudden that his father would never come back and he truly would have to be king, from now until he was burned himself.
He sat there, cold and sickly, a drawn sword across his knees, as Father Moon showed himself and his children the stars came out, and the flames of the burning ship, and the burning goods, and his burning family lit up the faces of the hundred hundred mourners. As scattered lights showed in the stone buildings of the city, and the wattle hovels huddled outside the walls, and in the towers of the citadel upon the hill. His citadel, although to him it had always had the look of a prison.
It took a hero’s struggle to stay awake. He had barely slept last night, or any night since they put the King’s Circle on him. The shadows in the cold depths of his father’s yawning bedchamber seemed crowded with fears, and by ancient tradition there was no door he could bolt since the King of Gettland is one with the land and the people and must hide nothing from them.
Secrets, and bedroom doors, were luxuries reserved for luckier folk than kings.
A queue of proud men in their war-gear and proud women with keys polished, some of them sore trouble to King Uthrik while he lived, filed past Yarvi and his mother to wring their hands, and press gaudy grave gifts on them, and speak in swollen terms of the dead lord’s high deeds. They lamented that Gettland would never see his like again, then remembered themselves and bowed and mouthed ‘my king’ while behind their smiles no doubt they wondered how it might be made to profit them to have this one-handed weakling in the Black Chair.
Only the occasional hiss passed between Yarvi and his mother. ‘Sit up. You are a king. Do not apologize. You are a king. Straighten your cloak-buckle. You are a king. You are a king. You are a king.’ As if she was trying to convince him, and herself, and the world of it against all the evidence.
Surely the Shattered Sea had never seen so cunning a merchant, but he doubted even she could sell this.
They sat until the flames sank to a flickering, and the dragon-carved keel sagged into whirling embers, and the first muddy smear of dawn touched the clouds, glittering on the copper dome of the Godshall and setting the sea-birds calling. Then his mother clapped her hands and the slaves with clinking collar-chains began to dig the earth over the still-smouldering pyre, raising a great howe that would stand tall beside that of Yarvi’s uncle Uthil, swallowed in a storm, and his grandfather Brevaer, and his great-grandfather Angulf Clovenfoot. On down the coast marched the grassy humps until they were lost among the dunes, diminishing into the fog of time before She Who Writes entrusted woman with the gift of letters, and ministers trapped the names of the dead in their high books.
Then Mother Sun showed her blinding face and put fire upon the water. The tide would soon be draining, carrying with it the many ships drawn up upon the sand, sharp-tailed so they could slip away as swiftly as they arrived, ready to sweep the warriors to Vansterland to rip their vengeance from Grom-gil-Gorm.
Uncle Odem climbed the hill with fist firm on sword’s hilt and his easy smile traded for a warrior’s frown.
‘It is time,’ he said.
So Yarvi stood, and stepped past his uncle, and held high his borrowed sword, swallowing his fears and roaring into the wind as loud as he could. ‘I, Yarvi, son of Uthrik and Laithlin, King of Gettland, swear an oath! I swear a sun-oath and a moon-oath. I swear it before She Who Judges, and He Who Remembers, and She Who Makes Fast the Knot. Let my brother and my father and my ancestors buried here bear witness. Let He Who Watches and She Who Writes bear witness. Let all of you bear witness. Let it be a chain upon me and a goad within me. I will be revenged upon the killers of my father and my brother. This I swear!’
The gathered warriors clashed the bearded heads of their axes against their helms, and their fists against their painted shields, and their boots against Father Earth in grim approval.
Yarvi’s uncle frowned. ‘That is a heavy oath, my king.’
‘I may be half a man,’ said Yarvi, struggling to get his sword back into its sheepskin-lined sheath. ‘But I can swear a whole oath. The men appreciated it, at least.’
‘These are men of Gettland,’ said Hurik. ‘They appreciate deeds.’
‘I thought it was a fine oath.’ Isriun stood near, yellow hair streaming in the wind. ‘A kingly oath.’
Yarvi found he was very glad to see her there. He wished no one else had been, then he could have kissed her again, and probably made a better effort at it. But all he could do was smile, and half-raise his half-hand in an awkward farewell.
There would be time for kisses when they next met.
‘My king.’ It seemed even Mother Gundring’s eyes, forever dry in any smoke or dust or weather, held tears. ‘May the gods send you fine weatherluck, and even better weaponluck.’
‘Don’t worry, my minister,’ he said, ‘there’s always the chance I’ll survive.’
His true mother shed no tears. All she did was fasten his twisted cloak-buckle yet again and say, ‘Stand like a king, Yarvi. Speak like a king. Fight like a king.’
‘I am a king,’ he said, however much of a lie it felt, and he forced through his tightened throat, ‘I’ll make you proud,’ even though he had never known how.
But he looked back, as he walked with his uncle’s gently steering hand upon his shoulder, the soldiers forming snakes of glimmering steel as they filed towards the water, and he saw his mother clutch Hurik by his mail and drag him close, strong man though he was.
‘Watch over my son, Hurik,’ he heard her say in a choking voice. ‘He is all I have.’
Then the Golden Queen was gone with her guards and attendants and her many slaves towards the city, and Yarvi was striding through the colourless dawn towards the ships, their masts a swaying forest against the bruising sky. Trying to walk the way his father used to, eager for the fight, even though he was weak-kneed, and sore-throated, and red-eyed, and his heart was crowded with doubts. He could still smell the smoke.
He left Father Peace to weep among the ashes, and hastened to the iron embrace of Mother War.
7. MAN’S WORK
Each wave born of Mother Sea would lift him, roll him, tug his sodden clothes, make him twitch and stir as if struggling to rise. Each wave hissed back out would drag the body down the beach and leave it grounded, tangled hair stuck with froth and sand, limp as the knots of seaweed on the shingle.
Yarvi stared at him, wondering who he was. Or had been. Boy or man? Had he died running or fought bravely?
What was the difference now?
The keel ground against sand, the deck shuddered, Yarvi stumbled and had to clutch at Hurik’s arm to steady himself. With a clunk and clatter the men shipped their oars, unhooked their shields, and sprang over the ship’s sides into the surf, sullen at being last to land, too late for any glory or plunder worth the taking. Crewing the king’s ship would have been a high honour in King Uthrik’s reign.
No honour at all in King Yarvi’s.
Some men took the prow-rope and hauled the ship past the floating corpse and higher up the beach, others unslung their weapons and hurried towards the town of Amwend. It was already burning.
Yarvi chewed at his lip as he made ready to clamber over the side with some shred of kingly composure, but the handle of his gilded shield twisted in his weakling’s grip, tangled with his cloak and nearly dumped him face-first in the brine.
‘Gods damn this thing!’ Yarvi tugged the straps loose, dragged the shield from his withered arm and flung it away among the sea-chests the men sat on while they rowed.
‘My king,’ said Keimdal. ‘You should keep your shield. It’s not safe—’
‘You’ve fought me. You know what my shield’s worth. If someone comes at me I can’t stop with sword alone I’m better off running. I’ll run faster without my shield.’
‘But, my king—’
‘He is king,’ rumbled Hurik, pushing his thick fingers through his white-streaked beard. ‘If he says we all put aside our shields, it must be so.’
‘Those with two good hands are welcome to theirs,’ said Yarvi, slithering into the surf, cursing as another cold wave soaked him to the waist.
Where sand gave way to grass some new-made slaves were roped together, waiting to be herded aboard one of the ships. They were hunched and soot-smeared, wide eyes full of fear or pain or disbelief at what had surged from the sea and stolen their lives. Beside them, a group of Yarvi’s warriors diced for their clothes.
‘Your Uncle Odem asks for you, my king,’ said one, then got up frowning and kicked a sobbing old man onto his face.
‘Where?’ asked Yarvi, his tongue sticking in his mouth, it was suddenly so dry.
‘On top of the holdfast.’ The man pointed up towards a drystone tower on a sheer rock above the town, waves angry about its base on one side, a frothing inlet on the other.
‘They didn’t close the gates?’ asked Keimdal.
‘They did, but three of the headman’s sons were left in the town, and Odem slit one’s throat and said he’d kill the next if the gate wasn’t opened.’
‘It was,’ said one of the other warriors, then chuckled as his number came up. ‘New socks!’
Yarvi blinked. He had never thought of his smiling uncle as a ruthless man. But Odem had sprouted from the same seed as Yarvi’s father, whose rages he still carried the marks of, and their drowned brother Uthil, at the memory of whose peerless swordsmanship old warriors in the training square still came over dewy-eyed. Sometimes calm waters hide fierce currents, after all.
‘A curse on you!’
A woman had tottered from the line of slaves as far as the ropes would allow, bloody hair plastered against one side of her face.
‘Bastard king of a bastard country, may Mother Sea swallow—’
One of the warriors cuffed her to the ground.
‘Cut her tongue out,’ said another, jerking her back by her hair while a third drew a knife.
‘No!’ shouted Yarvi. The men frowned at him. If their |
girl on the stairs, as well as the option to adopt a doll with the warning that "these porcelain beauties are not just ordinary dolls, they MAY have human spirits attached to them."
There's something uniquely creepy about the ghost cams: regardless of what they capture or not, they are the otherworldly survivors of a long-forgotten era, an alternate online reality. And yet they're still running, whether anyone is watching or not. They're a time-consuming way to creep yourself out (the internet Ouija board offers more immediate thrills), but they're fascinating as a kind of internet antique.
As with the haunted doll house, these neglected sites have "taken on a life of their own:" tranquil on the surface, but with the potential to turn sinister any minute.
Homepage image: Craig y Nos Castle. Charles Pritchard/FlickrLast week, jittery representatives of the students’ union at London’s South Bank University removed atheist posters featuring the Flying Spaghetti Monster (FSM) — and initially lied about the reason, according to the British website politics.co.uk.
The posters had been put up at a Freshers’ Fair (a new-student orientation event) by a secular student group, the South Bank Atheist Society.
Union officials at the London South Bank University removed the posters from the society’s stall overnight and then barred representatives from printing off more, citing the visibility of Adam’s genitals as offensive.
Right. Because we all know that Leonardo da Vinci Michelangelo, whose depiction of Adam (taken from his Sistine Chapel masterpiece) we’re talking about here, was an infamous pornographer who gave Adam a massive erection (topped only by the holy boner of Jesus).
Oh, wait.
The students promptly called the officials’ bluff, offering to blur or cover up Adam’s limp and not-very-noodly appendage, and were then told that, actually, the problem with the poster was that (wait for it) it might be offensive to the religious.
Said South Bank Atheist Society president Cloe Ansari,
“This incident is just one of a catalogue of attempts to censor our society. I never expected to face such blatant censorship and fragile sensibilities at university. I thought this would be an institution where I could challenge beliefs and in turn be challenged. All I have seen is religious sensibilities trumping all other rights with no space for argument, challenge or reasoned debate.”
Recently, England repeatedly made international headlines because of censorship decisions regarding religion. Last fall, secular students at the London School of Economics were told they were not allowed to wear Jesus and Mo T-shirts at an LSE Freshers’ Fair (the school has since apologized, more or less ). Two weeks ago, Channel 4 reported on another Jesus and Mo controversy, and decided that it would show just one innocuous panel from the comic strip — but only after after the station’s graphics department placed a large black blob over the Mohammed character
Writing for the Huffington Post, Rory Fenton, president of the National Federation of Atheist, Humanist and Secular Student Societies in the UK and Ireland, says he’s hardly surprised by the latest dustup:
South Bank’s Atheist Society are no stranger to hostility from their students’ union. When they were formed last year and affiliated to their union, they were accepted only on the condition that they didn’t criticize religion or hold debates with religious groups, which is as absurd as telling the Socialist Society to steer clear of critiquing capitalism. Despite hopes that a new academic year would bring a more reasonable union committee, the group has faced constant opposition. Since the start of their first term, they have seen their posters torn down and stamped on the day they are put up, including posters simply showing Brian Griffin, Family Guy‘s atheist talking dog. I attended a meeting last term at which their union accused them of picking on Christians for a poster stating, “We may not be able to turn water into wine but we do like wine, join us in the bar next Thursday.”
As for the confiscation of the FSM posters,ACCORDING to gossip rules, Jennifer Aniston's love life has to be seen through the prism of her failed marriage to Brad Pitt and his now happy life with Angelina Jolie.
Every boyfriend she's dated since her divorce seems to be code for either she's over Brad or secretly trying to win him back.
So it's fitting that her engagement to Justin Theroux comes days after the world was whipped into a frenzy by rumours Pitt and Jolie were set to wed in the south of France.
Aniston, 43, said yes to a marriage proposal from her actor boyfriend, Justin Theroux, 41, on Friday.
"Justin Theroux had an amazing birthday on Friday, receiving an extraordinary gift when his girlfriend, Jennifer Aniston, accepted his proposal of marriage," the actor’s representatives told People magazine.
Aniston's publicist separately confirmed the news soon after.
Rumours that the couple's 15-month relationship was on the rocks were rampant, but the couple are indeed going strong and will marry in the near future.
They began dating after they shot movie Wanderlust together and there are rumours they are planning to wed in Greece later on this year.
Aniston and Pitt tied the knot in 2000, but divorced five years later. Pitt went public with his and Jolie's relationship soon after and they are now raising six children together.
Originally published as Jennifer Aniston gets engagedThis article is about real estate mortgage lending. For mortgages in general and their legal structure, see Mortgage law. For mortgage loans secured on ships, see Ship mortgage. For other uses, see Mortgage (disambiguation)
A mortgage loan or, simply, mortgage () is used either by purchasers of real property to raise funds to buy real estate, or alternatively by existing property owners to raise funds for any purpose, while putting a lien on the property being mortgaged. The loan is "secured" on the borrower's property through a process known as mortgage origination. This means that a legal mechanism is put into place which allows the lender to take possession and sell the secured property ("foreclosure" or "repossession") to pay off the loan in the event the borrower defaults on the loan or otherwise fails to abide by its terms. The word mortgage is derived from a Law French term used in Britain in the Middle Ages meaning "death pledge" and refers to the pledge ending (dying) when either the obligation is fulfilled or the property is taken through foreclosure.[1] A mortgage can also be described as "a borrower giving consideration in the form of a collateral for a benefit (loan)".
Mortgage borrowers can be individuals mortgaging their home or they can be businesses mortgaging commercial property (for example, their own business premises, residential property let to tenants, or an investment portfolio). The lender will typically be a financial institution, such as a bank, credit union or building society, depending on the country concerned, and the loan arrangements can be made either directly or indirectly through intermediaries. Features of mortgage loans such as the size of the loan, maturity of the loan, interest rate, method of paying off the loan, and other characteristics can vary considerably. The lender's rights over the secured property take priority over the borrower's other creditors, which means that if the borrower becomes bankrupt or insolvent, the other creditors will only be repaid the debts owed to them from a sale of the secured property if the mortgage lender is repaid in full first.
In many jurisdictions, it is normal for home purchases to be funded by a mortgage loan. Few individuals have enough savings or liquid funds to enable them to purchase property outright. In countries where the demand for home ownership is highest, strong domestic markets for mortgages have developed. Mortgages can either be funded through the banking sector (that is, through short-term deposits) or through the capital markets through a process called "securitization", which converts pools of mortgages into fungible bonds that can be sold to investors in small denominations.[2]
Mortgage loan basics [ edit ]
Basic concepts and legal regulation [ edit ]
According to Anglo-American property law, a mortgage occurs when an owner (usually of a fee simple interest in realty) pledges his or her interest (right to the property) as security or collateral for a loan. Therefore, a mortgage is an encumbrance (limitation) on the right to the property just as an easement would be, but because most mortgages occur as a condition for new loan money, the word mortgage has become the generic term for a loan secured by such real property. As with other types of loans, mortgages have an interest rate and are scheduled to amortize over a set period of time, typically 30 years. All types of real property can be, and usually are, secured with a mortgage and bear an interest rate that is supposed to reflect the lender's risk.
Mortgage lending is the primary mechanism used in many countries to finance private ownership of residential and commercial property (see commercial mortgages). Although the terminology and precise forms will differ from country to country, the basic components tend to be similar:
Property: the physical residence being financed. The exact form of ownership will vary from country to country, and may restrict the types of lending that are possible.
Mortgage: the security interest of the lender in the property, which may entail restrictions on the use or disposal of the property. Restrictions may include requirements to purchase home insurance and mortgage insurance, or pay off outstanding debt before selling the property.
Borrower: the person borrowing who either has or is creating an ownership interest in the property.
Lender: any lender, but usually a bank or other financial institution. (In some countries, particularly the United States, Lenders may also be investors who own an interest in the mortgage through a mortgage-backed security. In such a situation, the initial lender is known as the mortgage originator, which then packages and sells the loan to investors. The payments from the borrower are thereafter collected by a loan servicer. [3] )
) Principal: the original size of the loan, which may or may not include certain other costs; as any principal is repaid, the principal will go down in size.
Interest: a financial charge for use of the lender's money.
Foreclosure or repossession: the possibility that the lender has to foreclose, repossess or seize the property under certain circumstances is essential to a mortgage loan; without this aspect, the loan is arguably no different from any other type of loan.
Completion: legal completion of the mortgage deed, and hence the start of the mortgage.
of the mortgage. Redemption: final repayment of the amount outstanding, which may be a "natural redemption" at the end of the scheduled term or a lump sum redemption, typically when the borrower decides to sell the property. A closed mortgage account is said to be "redeemed".
Many other specific characteristics are common to many markets, but the above are the essential features. Governments usually regulate many aspects of mortgage lending, either directly (through legal requirements, for example) or indirectly (through regulation of the participants or the financial markets, such as the banking industry), and often through state intervention (direct lending by the government, direct lending by state-owned banks, or sponsorship of various entities). Other aspects that define a specific mortgage market may be regional, historical, or driven by specific characteristics of the legal or financial system.
Mortgage loans are generally structured as long-term loans, the periodic payments for which are similar to an annuity and calculated according to the time value of money formulae. The most basic arrangement would require a fixed monthly payment over a period of ten to thirty years, depending on local conditions. Over this period the principal component of the loan (the original loan) would be slowly paid down through amortization. In practice, many variants are possible and common worldwide and within each country.
Lenders provide funds against property to earn interest income, and generally borrow these funds themselves (for example, by taking deposits or issuing bonds). The price at which the lenders borrow money therefore affects the cost of borrowing. Lenders may also, in many countries, sell the mortgage loan to other parties who are interested in receiving the stream of cash payments from the borrower, often in the form of a security (by means of a securitization).
Mortgage lending will also take into account the (perceived) riskiness of the mortgage loan, that is, the likelihood that the funds will be repaid (usually considered a function of the creditworthiness of the borrower); that if they are not repaid, the lender will be able to foreclose on the real estate assets; and the financial, interest rate risk and time delays that may be involved in certain circumstances.
Mortgage underwriting [ edit ]
During approval of the mortgage, a mortgage underwriter verifies the financial information that the applicant has provided as to income, employment, credit history and the value of the home being purchased.[4] An appraisal may be ordered. The underwriting may take a few days to a few weeks. Sometimes the underwriting process takes so long that the provided financial statements need to be resubmitted so they are current.[5] It is advisable to maintain the same employment and not to use or open new credit during the underwriting process. Any changes made in the applicant’s credit, employment, or financial information can result in the loan being denied.
Mortgage loan types [ edit ]
There are many types of mortgages used worldwide, but several factors broadly define the characteristics of the mortgage. All of these may be subject to local regulation and legal requirements.
Interest: Interest may be fixed for the life of the loan or variable, and change at certain pre-defined periods; the interest rate can also, of course, be higher or lower.
Term: Mortgage loans generally have a maximum term, that is, the number of years after which an amortizing loan will be repaid. Some mortgage loans may have no amortization, or require full repayment of any remaining balance at a certain date, or even negative amortization.
Payment amount and frequency: The amount paid per period and the frequency of payments; in some cases, the amount paid per period may change or the borrower may have the option to increase or decrease the amount paid.
Prepayment: Some types of mortgages may limit or restrict prepayment of all or a portion of the loan, or require payment of a penalty to the lender for prepayment.
The two basic types of amortized loans are the fixed rate mortgage (FRM) and adjustable-rate mortgage (ARM) (also known as a floating rate or variable rate mortgage). In some countries, such as the United States, fixed rate mortgages are the norm, but floating rate mortgages are relatively common. Combinations of fixed and floating rate mortgages are also common, whereby a mortgage loan will have a fixed rate for some period, for example the first five years, and vary after the end of that period.
In a fixed rate mortgage, the interest rate, remains fixed for the life (or term) of the loan. In case of an annuity repayment scheme, the periodic payment remains the same amount throughout the loan. In case of linear payback, the periodic payment will gradually decrease.
In an adjustable rate mortgage, the interest rate is generally fixed for a period of time, after which it will periodically (for example, annually or monthly) adjust up or down to some market index. Adjustable rates transfer part of the interest rate risk from the lender to the borrower, and thus are widely used where fixed rate funding is difficult to obtain or prohibitively expensive. Since the risk is transferred to the borrower, the initial interest rate may be, for example, 0.5% to 2% lower than the average 30-year fixed rate; the size of the price differential will be related to debt market conditions, including the yield curve.
The charge to the borrower depends upon the credit risk in addition to the interest rate risk. The mortgage origination and underwriting process involves checking credit scores, debt-to-income, downpayments, assets, and assessing property value. Jumbo mortgages and subprime lending are not supported by government guarantees and face higher interest rates. Other innovations described below can affect the rates as well.
Loan to value and down payments [ edit ]
Upon making a mortgage loan for the purchase of a property, lenders usually require that the borrower make a down payment; that is, contribute a portion of the cost of the property. This down payment may be expressed as a portion of the value of the property (see below for a definition of this term). The loan to value ratio (or LTV) is the size of the loan against the value of the property. Therefore, a mortgage loan in which the purchaser has made a down payment of 20% has a loan to value ratio of 80%. For loans made against properties that the borrower already owns, the loan to value ratio will be imputed against the estimated value of the property.
The loan to value ratio is considered an important indicator of the riskiness of a mortgage loan: the higher the LTV, the higher the risk that the value of the property (in case of foreclosure) will be insufficient to cover the remaining principal of the loan.
Value: appraised, estimated, and actual [ edit ]
Since the value of the property is an important factor in understanding the risk of the loan, determining the value is a key factor in mortgage lending. The value may be determined in various ways, but the most common are:
Actual or transaction value: this is usually taken to be the purchase price of the property. If the property is not being purchased at the time of borrowing, this information may not be available. Appraised or surveyed value: in most jurisdictions, some form of appraisal of the value by a licensed professional is common. There is often a requirement for the lender to obtain an official appraisal. Estimated value: lenders or other parties may use their own internal estimates, particularly in jurisdictions where no official appraisal procedure exists, but also in some other circumstances.
Payment and debt ratios [ edit ]
In most countries, a number of more or less standard measures of creditworthiness may be used. Common measures include payment to income (mortgage payments as a percentage of gross or net income); debt to income (all debt payments, including mortgage payments, as a percentage of income); and various net worth measures. In many countries, credit scores are used in lieu of or to supplement these measures. There will also be requirements for documentation of the creditworthiness, such as income tax returns, pay stubs, etc. the specifics will vary from location to location.
Some lenders may also require a potential borrower have one or more months of "reserve assets" available. In other words, the borrower may be required to show the availability of enough assets to pay for the housing costs (including mortgage, taxes, etc.) for a period of time in the event of the job loss or other loss of income.
Many countries have lower requirements for certain borrowers, or "no-doc" / "low-doc" lending standards that may be acceptable under certain circumstances.
Standard or conforming mortgages [ edit ]
Many countries have a notion of standard or conforming mortgages that define a perceived acceptable level of risk, which may be formal or informal, and may be reinforced by laws, government intervention, or market practice. For example, a standard mortgage may be considered to be one with no more than 70–80% LTV and no more than one-third of gross income going to mortgage debt.
A standard or conforming mortgage is a key concept as it often defines whether or not the mortgage can be easily sold or securitized, or, if non-standard, may affect the price at which it may be sold. In the United States, a conforming mortgage is one which meets the established rules and procedures of the two major government-sponsored entities in the housing finance market (including some legal requirements). In contrast, lenders who decide to make nonconforming loans are exercising a higher risk tolerance and do so knowing that they face more challenge in reselling the loan. Many countries have similar concepts or agencies that define what are "standard" mortgages. Regulated lenders (such as banks) may be subject to limits or higher-risk weightings for non-standard mortgages. For example, banks and mortgage brokerages in Canada face restrictions on lending more than 80% of the property value; beyond this level, mortgage insurance is generally required.[6]
Foreign currency mortgage [ edit ]
In some countries with currencies that tend to depreciate, foreign currency mortgages are common, enabling lenders to lend in a stable foreign currency, whilst the borrower takes on the currency risk that the currency will depreciate and they will therefore need to convert higher amounts of the domestic currency to repay the loan.
Repaying the mortgage [ edit ]
In addition to the two standard means of setting the cost of a mortgage loan (fixed at a set interest rate for the term, or variable relative to market interest rates), there are variations in how that cost is paid, and how the loan itself is repaid. Repayment depends on locality, tax laws and prevailing culture. There are also various mortgage repayment structures to suit different types of borrower.
Principal and interest [ edit ]
The most common way to repay a secured mortgage loan is to make regular payments toward the principal and interest over a set term.[citation needed] This is commonly referred to as (self) amortization in the U.S. and as a repayment mortgage in the UK. A mortgage is a form of annuity (from the perspective of the lender), and the calculation of the periodic payments is based on the time value of money formulas. Certain details may be specific to different locations: interest may be calculated on the basis of a 360-day year, for example; interest may be compounded daily, yearly, or semi-annually; prepayment penalties may apply; and other factors. There may be legal restrictions on certain matters, and consumer protection laws may specify or prohibit certain practices.
Depending on the size of the loan and the prevailing practice in the country the term may be short (10 years) or long (50 years plus). In the UK and U.S., 25 to 30 years is the usual maximum term (although shorter periods, such as 15-year mortgage loans, are common). Mortgage payments, which are typically made monthly, contain a repayment of the principal and an interest element. The amount going toward the principal in each payment varies throughout the term of the mortgage. In the early years the repayments are mostly interest. Towards the end of the mortgage, payments are mostly for principal. In this way the payment amount determined at outset is calculated to ensure the loan is repaid at a specified date in the future. This gives borrowers assurance that by maintaining repayment the loan will be cleared at a specified date, if the interest rate does not change. Some lenders and 3rd parties offer a bi-weekly mortgage payment program designed to accelerate the payoff of the loan.
An amortization schedule is typically worked out taking the principal left at the end of each month, multiplying by the monthly rate and then subtracting the monthly payment. This is typically generated by an amortization calculator using the following formula:
A = P ⋅ r ( 1 + r ) n ( 1 + r ) n − 1 {\displaystyle A=P\cdot {\frac {r(1+r)^{n}}{(1+r)^{n}-1}}}
where:
A {\displaystyle A} P {\displaystyle P} r {\displaystyle r} Annual Rate)/12 n {\displaystyle n}
Interest only [ edit ]
The main alternative to a principal and interest mortgage is an interest-only mortgage, where the principal is not repaid throughout the term. This type of mortgage is common in the UK, especially when associated with a regular investment plan. With this arrangement regular contributions are made to a separate investment plan designed to build up a lump sum to repay the mortgage at maturity. This type of arrangement is called an investment-backed mortgage or is often related to the type of plan used: endowment mortgage if an endowment policy is used, similarly a Personal Equity Plan (PEP) mortgage, Individual Savings Account (ISA) mortgage or pension mortgage. Historically, investment-backed mortgages offered various tax advantages over repayment mortgages, although this is no longer the case in the UK. Investment-backed mortgages are seen as higher risk as they are dependent on the investment making sufficient return to clear the debt.
Until recently[when?] it was not uncommon for interest only mortgages to be arranged without a repayment vehicle, with the borrower gambling that the property market will rise sufficiently for the loan to be repaid by trading down at retirement (or when rent on the property and inflation combine to surpass the interest rate)[citation needed].
Interest-only lifetime mortgage [ edit ]
Recent Financial Services Authority guidelines to UK lenders regarding interest-only mortgages has tightened the criteria on new lending on an interest-only basis. The problem for many people has been the fact that no repayment vehicle had been implemented, or the vehicle itself (e.g. endowment/ISA policy) performed poorly and therefore insufficient funds were available to repay balance at the end of the term.
Moving forward, the FSA under the Mortgage Market Review (MMR) have stated there must be strict criteria on the repayment vehicle being used. As such the likes of Nationwide and other lenders have pulled out of the interest-only market.
A resurgence in the equity release market has been the introduction of interest-only lifetime mortgages. Where an interest-only mortgage has a fixed term, an interest-only lifetime mortgage will continue for the rest of the mortgagors life. These schemes have proved of interest to people who do like the roll-up effect (compounding) of interest on traditional equity release schemes. They have also proved beneficial to people who had an interest-only mortgage with no repayment vehicle and now need to settle the loan. These people can now effectively remortgage onto an interest-only lifetime mortgage to maintain continuity.
Interest-only lifetime mortgage schemes are offered by two lenders currently – Stonehaven & more2life. They work by having the options of paying the interest on a monthly basis. By paying off the interest means the balance will remain level for the rest of their life. This market is set to increase as more retirees require finance in retirement.
Reverse mortgages [ edit ]
For older borrowers (typically in retirement), it may be possible to arrange a mortgage where neither the principal nor interest is repaid. The interest is rolled up with the principal, increasing the debt each year.
These arrangements are variously called reverse mortgages, lifetime mortgages or equity release mortgages (referring to home equity), depending on the country. The loans are typically not repaid until the borrowers are deceased, hence the age restriction.
Through the Federal Housing Administration, the U.S. government insures reverse mortgages via a program called the HECM (Home Equity Conversion Mortgage). Unlike standard mortgages (where the entire loan amount is typically disbursed at the time of loan closing) the HECM program allows the homeowner to receive funds in a variety of ways: as a one time lump sum payment; as a monthly tenure payment which continues until the borrower dies or moves out of the house permanently; as a monthly payment over a defined period of time; or as a credit line.[7]
For further details, see equity release.
Interest and partial principal [ edit ]
In the U.S. a partial amortization or balloon loan is one where the amount of monthly payments due are calculated (amortized) over a certain term, but the outstanding balance on the principal is due at some point short of that term. In the UK, a partial repayment mortgage is quite common, especially where the original mortgage was investment-backed.
Variations [ edit ]
Graduated payment mortgage loan have increasing costs over time and are geared to young borrowers who expect wage increases over time. Balloon payment mortgages have only partial amortization, meaning that amount of monthly payments due are calculated (amortized) over a certain term, but the outstanding principal balance is due at some point short of that term, and at the end of the term a balloon payment is due. When interest rates are high relative to the rate on an existing seller's loan, the buyer can consider assuming the seller's mortgage.[8] A wraparound mortgage is a form of seller financing that can make it easier for a seller to sell a property. A biweekly mortgage has payments made every two weeks instead of monthly.
Budget loans include taxes and insurance in the mortgage payment;[9] package loans add the costs of furnishings and other personal property to the mortgage. Buydown mortgages allow the seller or lender to pay something similar to points to reduce interest rate and encourage buyers.[10] Homeowners can also take out equity loans in which they receive cash for a mortgage debt on their house. Shared appreciation mortgages are a form of equity release. In the US, foreign nationals due to their unique situation face Foreign National mortgage conditions.
Flexible mortgages allow for more freedom by the borrower to skip payments or prepay. Offset mortgages allow deposits to be counted against the mortgage loan. In the UK there is also the endowment mortgage where the borrowers pay interest while the principal is paid with a life insurance policy.
Commercial mortgages typically have different interest rates, risks, and contracts than personal loans. Participation mortgages allow multiple investors to share in a loan. Builders may take out blanket loans which cover several properties at once. Bridge loans may be used as temporary financing pending a longer-term loan. Hard money loans provide financing in exchange for the mortgaging of real estate collateral.
Foreclosure and non-recourse lending [ edit ]
In most jurisdictions, a lender may foreclose the mortgaged property if certain conditions occur – principally, non-payment of the mortgage loan. Subject to local legal requirements, the property may then be sold. Any amounts received from the sale (net of costs) are applied to the original debt. In some jurisdictions, mortgage loans are non-recourse loans: if the funds recouped from sale of the mortgaged property are insufficient to cover the outstanding debt, the lender may not have recourse to the borrower after foreclosure. In other jurisdictions, the borrower remains responsible for any remaining debt.
In virtually all jurisdictions, specific procedures for foreclosure and sale of the mortgaged property apply, and may be tightly regulated by the relevant government. There are strict or judicial foreclosures and non-judicial foreclosures, also known as power of sale foreclosures. In some jurisdictions, foreclosure and sale can occur quite rapidly, while in others, foreclosure may take many months or even years. In many countries, the ability of lenders to foreclose is extremely limited, and mortgage market development has been notably slower.
National differences [ edit ]
A study issued by the UN Economic Commission for Europe compared German, US, and Danish mortgage systems. The German Bausparkassen have reported nominal interest rates of approximately 6 per cent per annum in the last 40 years (as of 2004). German Bausparkassen (savings and loans associations) are not identical with banks that give mortgages. In addition, they charge administration and service fees (about 1.5 per cent of the loan amount). However, in the United States, the average interest rates for fixed-rate mortgages in the housing market started in the tens and twenties in the 1980s and have (as of 2004) reached about 6 per cent per annum. However, gross borrowing costs are substantially higher than the nominal interest rate and amounted for the last 30 years to 10.46 per cent. In Denmark, similar to the United States mortgage market, interest rates have fallen to 6 per cent per annum. A risk and administration fee amounts to 0.5 per cent of the outstanding debt. In addition, an acquisition fee is charged which amounts to one per cent of the principal.[11]
United States [ edit ]
The mortgage industry of the United States is a major financial sector. The federal government created several programs, or government sponsored entities, to foster mortgage lending, construction and encourage home ownership. These programs include the Government National Mortgage Association (known as Ginnie Mae), the Federal National Mortgage Association (known as Fannie Mae) and the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation (known as Freddie Mac).[2]
The US mortgage sector has been the center of major financial crises over the last century. Unsound lending practices resulted in the National Mortgage Crisis of the 1930s, the savings and loan crisis of the 1980s and 1990s and the subprime mortgage crisis of 2007 which led to the 2010 foreclosure crisis.[2]
In the United States, the mortgage loan involves two separate documents: the mortgage note (a promissory note) and the security interest evidenced by the "mortgage" document; generally, the two are assigned together, but if they are split traditionally the holder of the note and not the mortgage has the right to foreclose.[12] For example, Fannie Mae promulgates a standard form contract Multistate Fixed-Rate Note 3200[13] and also separate security instrument mortgage forms which vary by state.[14]
Canada [ edit ]
In Canada, the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC) is the country's national housing agency, providing mortgage loan insurance, mortgage-backed securities, housing policy and programs, and housing research to Canadians.[15] It was created by the federal government in 1946 to address the country's post-war housing shortage, and to help Canadians achieve their homeownership goals.
The most common mortgage in Canada is the five-year fixed-rate closed mortgage, as opposed to the U.S. where the most common type is the 30-year fixed-rate open mortgage.[16] Throughout the financial crisis and the ensuing recession, Canada’s mortgage market continued to function well, partly due to the residential mortgage market's policy framework, which includes an effective regulatory and supervisory regime that applies to most lenders. Since the crisis however, the low interest rate environment that as arisen has contributed to a significant increases in mortgage debt in the country.[17]
In April 2014, the Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions (OSFI) released guidelines for mortgage insurance providers aimed at tightening standards around underwriting and risk management. In a statement, the OSFI has stated that the guideline will “provide clarity about best practices in respect of residential mortgage insurance underwriting, which contribute to a stable financial system.” This comes after several years of federal government scrutiny over the CMHC, with former Finance Minister Jim Flaherty musing publicly as far back as 2012 about privatizing the Crown corporation.[18]
In an attempt to cool down the real estate prices in Canada, Ottawa introduced a mortgage stress test effective 17 October, 2016. Under the stress test every home buyer with less than 20% down payment (high ratio) undergo a test where borrowers affordability is judged based on mortgage rate of 4.64% with 25 years amortization if they want to get a mortgage from any federally regulated lender.This stress test has lowered the maximum mortgage approved amount by almost 20% for all borrowers in Canada. Maximum amortization on home mortgages has been reduced back to 30 years instead of 35.
United Kingdom [ edit ]
The mortgage industry of the United Kingdom has traditionally been dominated by building societies, but from the 1970s the share of the new mortgage loans market held by building societies has declined substantially. Between 1977 and 1987, the share fell from 96% to 66% while that of banks and other institutions rose from 3% to 36%. There are currently over 200 significant separate financial organizations supplying mortgage loans to house buyers in Britain. The major lenders include building societies, banks, specialized mortgage corporations, insurance companies, and pension funds.
In the UK variable-rate mortgages are more common than in the United States.[19][20] This is in part because mortgage loan financing relies less on fixed income securitized assets (such as mortgage-backed securities) than in the United States, Denmark, and Germany, and more on retail savings deposits like Australia and Spain.[19][20] Thus, lenders prefer variable-rate mortgages to fixed rate ones and whole-of-term fixed rate mortgages are generally not available. Nevertheless, in recent years fixing the rate of the mortgage for short periods has become popular and the initial two, three, five and, occasionally, ten years of a mortgage can be fixed.[21] From 2007 to the beginning of 2013 between 50% and 83% of new mortgages had initial periods fixed in this way.[22]
Home ownership rates are comparable to the United States, but overall default rates are lower.[19] Prepayment penalties during a fixed rate period are common, whilst the United States has discouraged their use.[19] Like other European countries and the rest of the world, but unlike most of the United States, mortgages loans are usually not nonrecourse debt, meaning debtors are liable for any loan deficiencies after foreclosure.[19][23]
The customer-facing aspects of the residential mortgage sector are regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), and lenders' financial probity is overseen by a separate regulator, the Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA) which is part of the Bank of England. The FCA and PRA were established in 2013 with the aim of responding to criticism of regulatory failings highlighted by the financial crisis of 2007–2008 and its aftermath.[24][25][26]
Continental Europe [ edit ]
In most of Western Europe (except Denmark, the Netherlands and Germany), variable-rate mortgages are more common, unlike the fixed-rate mortgage common in the United States.[19][20] Much of Europe has home ownership rates comparable to the United States, but overall default rates are lower in Europe than in the United States.[19] Mortgage loan financing relies less on securitizing mortgages and more on formal government guarantees backed by covered bonds (such as the Pfandbriefe) and deposits, except Denmark and Germany where asset-backed securities are also common.[19][20] Prepayment penalties are still common, whilst the United States has discouraged their use.[19] Unlike much of the United States, mortgage loans are usually not nonrecourse debt.[19]
Within the European Union, covered bonds market volume (covered bonds outstanding) amounted to about EUR 2 trillion at year-end 2007 with Germany, Denmark, Spain, and France each having outstandings above 200,000 EUR million.[27] Pfandbrief-like securities have been introduced in more than 25 European countries—and in recent years also in the U.S. and other countries outside Europe—each with their own unique law and regulations.[28]
Recent trends [ edit ]
Mortgage rates historical trends 1986 to 2010
On July 28, 2008, US Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson announced that, along with four large U.S. banks, the Treasury would attempt to kick start a market for these securities in the United States, primarily to provide an alternative form of mortgage-backed securities.[29] Similarly, in the UK "the Government is inviting views on options for a UK framework to deliver more affordable long-term fixed-rate mortgages, including the lessons to be learned from international markets and institutions".[30]
George Soros's October 10, 2008 The Wall Street Journal editorial promoted the Danish mortgage market model.[31]
Malaysia [ edit ]
Mortgages in Malaysia can be categorised into 2 different groups: conventional home loan and Islamic home loan. Under the conventional home loan, banks normally charge a fixed interest rate, a variable interest rate, or both. These interest rates are tied to a base rate (individual bank's benchmark rate).
For Islamic home financing, it follows the Sharia Law and comes in 2 common types: Bai’ Bithaman Ajil (BBA) or Musharakah Mutanaqisah (MM). Bai' Bithaman Ajil is when the bank buys the property at current market price and sells it back to you at a much higher price. Musharakah Mut |
That question might have made sense when Darwin first came up with the hypothesis, but this is the twenty-first century. We can read the genes. Human beings and chimpanzees have 95% shared genetic material. It's over."
Well, it's over, unless you're crazy like a human (ironically, more evidence that the human brain was fashioned by a sloppy and alien god). If you're crazy like a human, you will engage in motivated cognition; and instead of focusing on the unthinkably huge heaps of evidence in favor of evolution, the innumerable signs by which the fact of evolution has left its heavy footprints on all of reality, the uncounted observations that discriminate between the world we'd expect to see if intelligent design ruled and the world we'd expect to see if evolution were true...
...instead you search your mind, and you pick out one form of proof that you think evolutionary biologists can't provide; and you demand, you insist upon that one form of proof; and when it is not provided, you take that as a refutation.
You say, "Have you ever seen an ape species evolving into a human species?" You insist on videotapes - on that particular proof.
And that particular proof is one we couldn't possibly be expected to have on hand; it's a form of evidence we couldn't possibly be expected to be able to provide, even given that evolution is true.
Yet it follows illogically that if a video tape would provide definite proof, then, likewise, the absence of a videotape must constitute definite disproof. Or perhaps just render all other arguments void and turn the issue into a mere matter of personal opinion, with no one's opinion being better than anyone else's.
So far as I can tell, the position of human-caused global warming (anthropogenic global warming aka AGW) has the ball. I get the impression there's a lot of evidence piled up, a lot of people trying and failing to poke holes, and so I have no reason to play contrarian here. It's now heavily politicized science, which means that I take the assertions with a grain of skepticism and worry - well, to be honest I don't spend a whole lot of time worrying about it, because (a) there are worse global catastrophic risks and (b) lots of other people are worrying about AGW already, so there are much better places to invest the next marginal minute of worry.
But if I pretend for a moment to live in the mainstream mental universe in which there is nothing scarier to worry about than global warming, and a 6 °C (11 °F) rise in global temperatures by 2100 seems like a top issue for the care and feeding of humanity's future...
Then I must shake a disapproving finger at anyone who claims the state of evidence on AGW is indefinite.
Sure, if we waited until 2100 to see how much global temperatures increased and how high the seas rose, we would have definite proof. We would have definite proof in 2100, however, and that sounds just a little bit way the hell too late. If there are cost-effective things we can do to mitigate global warming - and by this I don't mean ethanol-from-corn or cap-and-trade, more along the lines of standardizing on a liquid fluoride thorium reactor design and building 10,000 of them - if there's something we can do about AGW, we need to do it now, not in a hundred years.
When the hypothesis at hand makes time valuable - when the proposition at hand, conditional on its being true, means there are certain things we should be doing NOW - then you've got to do your best to figure things out with the evidence that we have. Sure, if we had annual data on global temperatures and CO2 going back to 100 million years ago, we would know more than we do right now. But we don't have that time-series data - not because global-warming advocates destroyed it, or because they were neglectful in gathering it, but because they couldn't possibly be expected to provide it in the first place. And so we've got to look among the observations we can perform, to find those that discriminate between "the way the world could be expected to look if AGW is true / a big problem", and "the way the world would be expected to look if AGW is false / a small problem". If, for example, we discover large deposits of frozen methane clathrates that are released with rising temperatures, this at least seems like "the sort of observation" we might be making if we live in the sort of world where AGW is a big problem. It's not a necessary connection, it's not sufficient on its own, it's something we could potentially also observe in a world where AGW is not a big problem - but unlike the perfect data we can never obtain, it's something we can actually find out, and in fact have found out.
Yes, we've never actually experimented to observe the results over 50 years of artificially adding a large amount of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere. But we know from physics that it's a greenhouse gas. It's not a privileged hypothesis we're pulling out of nowhere. It's not like saying "You can't prove there's no invisible pink unicorn in my garage!" AGW is, ceteris paribus, what we should expect to happen if the other things we believe are true. We don't have any experimental results on what will happen 50 years from now, and so you can't grant the proposition the special, super-strong status of something that has been scientifically confirmed by a replicable experiment. But as I point out in "Scientific Evidence, Legal Evidence, Rational Evidence", if science couldn't say anything about that which has not already been observed, we couldn't ever make scientific predictions by which the theories could be confirmed. Extrapolating from the science we do know, global warming should be occurring; you would need specific experimental evidence to contradict that.
We are, I think, dealing with that old problem of motivated cognition. As Gilovich says: "Conclusions a person does not want to believe are held to a higher standard than conclusions a person wants to believe. In the former case, the person asks if the evidence compels one to accept the conclusion, whereas in the latter case, the person asks instead if the evidence allows one to accept the conclusion." People map the domain of belief onto the social domain of authority, with a qualitative difference between absolute and nonabsolute demands: If a teacher tells you certain things, and you have to believe them, and you have to recite them back on the test. But when a student makes a suggestion in class, you don't have to go along with it - you're free to agree or disagree (it seems) and no one will punish you.
And so the implicit emotional theory is that if something is not proven - better yet, proven using a particular piece of evidence that isn't available and that you're pretty sure is never going to become available - then you are allowed to disbelieve; it's like something a student says, not like something a teacher says.
You demand particular proof P; and if proof P is not available, then you're allowed to disbelieve.
And this is flatly wrong as probability theory.
If the hypothesis at hand is H, and we have access to pieces of evidence E1, E2, and E3, but we do not have access to proof X one way or the other, then the rational probability estimate is the result of the Bayesian update P(H|E1,E2,E3). You do not get to say, "Well, we don't know whether X or ~X, so I'm going to throw E1, E2, and E3 out the window until you tell me about X." I cannot begin to describe how much that is not the way the laws of probability theory work. You do not get to screen off E1, E2, and E3 based on your ignorance of X!
Nor do you get to ignore the arguments that influence the prior probability of H - the standard science by which, ceteris paribus and without anything unknown at work, carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas and ought to make the Earth hotter.
Nor can you hold up the nonobservation of your particular proof X as a triumphant refutation. If we had time cameras and could look into the past, then indeed, the fact that no one had ever "seen with their own eyes" primates evolving into humans would refute the hypothesis. But, given that time cameras don't exist, then assuming evolution to be true we don't expect anyone to have witnessed humans evolving from apes with our own eyes, for the laws of natural selection require that this have happened far in the distant past. And so, once you have updated on the fact that time cameras don't exist - computed P(Evolution|~Camera) - and the fact that time cameras don't exist hardly seems to refute the theory of evolution - then you obtain no further evidence by observing ~Video, i.e., P(Evolution|~Video,~Camera) = P(Evolution|~Camera). In slogan-form, "The absence of unobtainable proof is not even weak evidence of absence." See appendix for details.
(And while we're on the subject, yes, the laws of probability theory are laws, rather than suggestions. It is like something the teacher tells you, okay? If you're going to ignore the Bayesian update you logically have to perform when you see a new piece of evidence, you might as well ignore outright mathematical proofs. I see no reason why it's any less epistemically sinful to ignore probabilities than to ignore certainties.)
Throwing E1, E2 and E3 out the window, and ignoring the prior probability of H, because you haven't seen unobtainable proof x; or holding up the nonobservation of X as a triumphant refutation, when you couldn't reasonably expect to see X even given that the underlying theory is true; all this is more than just a formal probability-theoretic mistake. It is logically rude.
After all - in the absence of your unobtainable particular proof, there may be plenty of other arguments by which you can hope to figure out whether you live in a world where the hypothesis of interest is true, or alternatively false. It takes work to provide you with those arguments. It takes work to provide you with extrapolations of existing knowledge to prior probabilities, and items of evidence with which to update those prior probabilities, to form a prediction about the unseen. Someone who does the work to provide those arguments is doing the best they can by you; throwing the arguments out the window is not just irrational, but logically rude.
And I emphasize this, because it seems to me that the underlying metaphor of demanding particular proof is to say as if, "You are supposed to provide me with a video of apes evolving into humans, I am entitled to see it with my own eyes, and it is your responsibility to make that happen; and if you do not provide me with that particular proof, you are deficient in your duties of argument, and I have no obligation to believe you." And this is, in the first place, bad math as probability theory. And it is, in the second place, an attitude of trying to be defensible rather than accurate, the attitude of someone who wants to be allowed to retain the beliefs they have, and not the attitude of someone who is honestly curious and trying to figure out which possible world they live in, by whatever signs are available. But if these considerations do not move you, then even in terms of the original and flawed metaphor, you are in the wrong: you are entitled to arguments, but not that particular proof.
Ignoring someone's hard work to provide you with the arguments you need - the extrapolations from existing knowledge to make predictions about events not yet observed, the items of evidence that are suggestive even if not definite and that fit some possible worlds better than others - and instead demanding proof they can't possibly give you, proof they couldn't be expected to provide even if they were right - that is logically rude. It is invalid as probability theory, foolish on the face of it, and logically rude.
And of course if you go so far as to act smug about the absence of an unobtainable proof, or chide the other for their credulity, then you have crossed the line into outright ordinary rudeness as well.
It is likewise a madness of decision theory to hold off pending positive proof until it's too late to do anything; the whole point of decision theory is to choose under conditions of uncertainty, and that is not how the expected value of information is likely to work out. Or in terms of plain common sense: There are signs and portents, smoke alarms and hot doorknobs, by which you can hope to determine whether your house is on fire before your face melts off your skull; and to delay leaving the house until after your face melts off, because only this is the positive and particular proof that you demand, is decision-theoretical insanity. It doesn't matter if you cloak your demand for that unobtainable proof under the heading of scientific procedure, saying, "These are the proofs you could not obtain even if you were right, which I know you will not be able to obtain until the time for action has long passed, which surely any scientist would demand before confirming your proposition as a scientific truth." It's still nuts.
Since this post has already gotten long, I've moved some details of probability theory, the subtext on cryonics, the sub-subtext on molecular nanotechnology, and the sub-sub-subtext on Artificial Intelligence, into:
Demands for Particular Proof: Appendices.The fluid, which defies everyday laws of motion, is a rare achievement and provides a platform to study an otherwise hypothetical form of matter
Scientists have created a fluid with negative mass – but what does it tell us?
Scientists have created a fluid that exhibits the bizarre property of “negative mass” in an experiment that appears to defy the everyday laws of motion.
Push an object and Newton’s laws (and common experience) dictate that it will accelerate in the direction in which it was shoved.
“That’s what most things that we’re used to do,” said Michael Forbes, a physicist at Washington State University and co-author of the paper, which shows that normal intuitions do not always apply to physics experiments. “With negative mass, if you push something, it accelerates toward you.”
Negative mass has previously cropped up in speculative theories, including those suggesting the existence of wormholes, a form of cosmological shortcut between two points in the universe. Just as electric charge can be either positive or negative, matter could, hypothetically, have either positive or negative mass.
For an object with negative mass, Newton’s second law of motion, in which a force is equal to the mass of an object multiplied by its acceleration (F=ma) would be experienced in reverse.
Theoretically, this sounds straightforward, but picturing how this behaviour would work in the real world is bewildering, even for experts.
“It’s very counterintuitive and weird,” said Jon Butterworth, a physicist at University College London, who was not involved in the latest work.
For instance, you might expect a ball with negative mass to be repelled from the Earth’s surface, but theory predicts that it would behave just like ordinary matter and fall downwards.
No fundamental particles with negative mass have ever been discovered, meaning that there have never been any experimental insights into how they might behave – if, indeed, they exist. The latest study provides a new platform to study this hypothetical form of matter, by showing that under certain precise conditions, normal particles can be made to behave as though they had negative mass.
“It provides another environment to study a fundamental phenomenon that is very peculiar,” said Forbes.
The experiment, described in the journal Physical Review Letters, created the conditions for negative mass by cooling rubidium atoms to just above absolute zero, creating something called a Bose-Einstein condensate.
In this cooled state, particles move extremely slowly and, following the principles of quantum mechanics, behave like waves. This state of matter is already known to exhibit strange properties such as superfluidity, in which a liquid can creep up the sides of jars and over the top.
The cooling was achieved by using lasers to slow the particles until they were confined in a laser trap, less than 100 microns across. Breaking the trap causes the rubidium atoms to rush out, expanding in a spherical formation.
However, when researchers applied a second set of lasers that kicked the atoms back and forth within the trap, they started to behave as though they had negative mass on exiting the trap.
“Once you push, it accelerates backwards,” said Forbes, who acted as a theorist analysing the system. “It looks like the rubidium hits an invisible wall.”
Martin McCall, a professor of theoretical optics at Imperial College London, described the paper as a neat demonstration of a system exhibiting “effective negative mass” – something that has only rarely been created before in laboratory conditions.
But does it tell us anything about the possibility of cosmological wormholes or how hypothetical exotic particles might behave? “Personally I doubt it,” said McCall.Labour and the Conservatives agree on the need for a UK Bill of Rights The government should adopt a Bill of Rights for the UK, a cross-party committee of MPs and peers has urged. The Joint Committee on Human Rights said the bill should go further than current human rights legislation. The bill should give greater protection to groups such as children, the elderly and those with learning difficulties, it said in a report. Labour and the Conservatives agree on the need for a new Bill of Rights, but differ on what areas it should cover. The Conservatives have said they would bring in such a bill to replace the Human Rights Act. 'Vulnerable people' The committee said the bill should include rights to housing, education and a healthy environment. Its report referred to a survey conducted in 2006 when more than three-quarters of the people polled agreed that "Britain needs a Bill of Rights to protect the liberty of the individual". The report said the new Bill should include all the rights spelt out in the Human Rights Act and then enshrine others in law. HAVE YOUR SAY A Bill of Rights is a good idea in an age when people are under increasing threat of exploitation Stuart, Bristol The report said: "We recommend for inclusion, amongst others, the right to trial by jury, the right to administrative justice and international human rights as yet not incorporated into UK law. "We believe that there is a strong case for... detailed rights for children, and we recommend that the public should be consulted about including specific rights for other vulnerable groups." The Bill would also encompass Britons' social and economic rights, including the right to health, housing, education and an adequate standard of living, the report said. The committee said these elements would help to distinguish the Bill of Rights from current human rights legislation. "Rights such as the right to adequate healthcare, to education and to protection against the worst extremes of poverty touch the substance of people's everyday lives. "And it would help to correct the popular misconception that human rights are a charter for criminals and terrorists," it went on. 'Little person' Andrew Dismore, chairman of the joint committee, said a Bill of Rights would be a "constitutional landmark". "It would provide a framework both for protecting the liberty of the individual against the intrusion of state power, and for protecting the 'little person' against powerful interests," he said. But Shami Chakrabarti, director of campaign group Liberty, said that while the committee had made "vital contributions to our freedom and security", this latest ambition would be hard to achieve. "Building on existing protections is a noble aspiration which will be difficult to fulfil as long as so many other politicians denigrate our existing Bill of Rights - the Human Rights Act - in thought, word and deed," she said. The government said last year it would look into the possibility of a new Bill of Rights.
E-mail this to a friend Printable version Bookmark with: Delicious
Digg
reddit
Facebook
StumbleUpon What are these?Once An Object Of Reverence, Brazilian Soccer's A Punchline
It's been over a month since the World Cup ended in Brazil, but the shame of the country's blowout loss remains. Once, Brazilians were welcomed in other countries with talk of Brazil's soccer dominance; now, everyone merely speaks of their historic defeat against Germany.
AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
Finally this hour, drama from the world of soccer. It's been over a month since the World Cup ended in Brazil, and Brazilians are facing up to an uncomfortable new reality. NPR's Lourdes Garcia-Navarro sent this story from São Paulo on how Brazilians are sick of hearing about these two numbers - 7 to 1.
LOURDES GARCIA-NAVARRO, BYLINE: It's a moment Brazilians would rather forget. In fact, inside Brazil, no one really talks about it.
(SOUNDBITE OF WORLD CUP ANNOUNCERS)
GARCIA-NAVARRO: Brazil's stunning defeat by Germany in the semifinals of the World Cup. It's now referred to here simply by the numbers 7 to 1 - no need for further explanation, or more importantly, discussion. But while Brazilians inside Brazil can practice willful amnesia, no such luck for those traveling abroad.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: Hi how are you?
IRANI SCARBOSSA: I'm good, thank you. And you?
GARCIA-NAVARRO: That is Irani Scarbossa, a Brazilian who lives in London. The first inkling that something had changed for Brazilians, she says, started pretty early after that game.
SCARBOSSA: I have a very close friend who's German, and then she was the first one to come to me and kind of apologize for the result.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: Scarbossa says she wasn't offended and she brushed it off. She's not a soccer fanatic, she tells me. Then she went to work the next day and people wouldn't stop talking about it.
SCARBOSSA: Really, like everyone apologizing saying they were sorry.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: By the end of the day, she'd had enough.
SCARBOSSA: And I was getting kind of annoyed by that. And everyone was just like making silly jokes or pretending it was really bad for me.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: It hasn't stopped since. Every time she meets someone and says she's Brazilian, they mention it. The way she shuts them up - by reminding people that Brazil is still a five-time world champion.
So you went from someone who didn't really care about soccer to now having to defend Brazil's honor?
SCARBOSSA: Yes, because that's the way they stop talking about it.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: It wasn't always this way. Brazilians I've spoken to talk with nostalgia about the days before the great defeat. Then, they'd show up in any country, hop in a cab and immediately the wave of love came cresting over them.
(Portuguese spoken.)
GARCIA-NAVARRO: Everyone revered us because we had the best football in the world. Talking about football, we were seen as an excellent country, says Aarao Miranda. He's a lawyer, he travels a lot. But this summer, he was unfortunate enough to be in Germany on vacation during that ill-fated game on the eighth of July.
(Speaking Portuguese.)
GARCIA-NAVARRO: We started watching and suddenly - goal, goal, goal. We went up to the room during halftime because we were ashamed. When we woke up the next morning, everyone at the hotel knew we were Brazilian, he says, and they wouldn't leave them alone. At breakfast, he says, it was, so sorry for the humiliation, so sorry for your defeat. Oh, you are Brazilians? Poor guys. He, too, resorted to changing the subject.
Ana Claudia Sniesko has just come back from traveling, and she says the defeat is still on everyone's mind. But it's also led to some bonding experiences.
(Speaking Portuguese.)
GARCIA-NAVARRO: I was on a tour bus and an Argentinean guy behind me was lamenting, talking about the Germany and Argentina final, she says. And I joined the conversation, telling him to just stop complaining. That's nothing, I told him. What about me who's Brazilian? She got a hug in return.
Others, though, are choosing to deal with a future of endless rehashes in a different way.
(Speaking Portuguese.)
GARCIA-NAVARRO: Lawyer Aarao Miranda says if I go back to Germany, I will probably not tell them I'm Brazilian. Lourdes Garcia-Navarro, NPR News, São Paulo.
Copyright © 2014 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by Verb8tm, Inc., an NPR contractor, and produced using a proprietary transcription process developed with NPR. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.Mexican police launched a manhunt for a gunman who shot and wounded a US consulate official who was driving out of a parking garage in the western city of Guadalajara.
The consulate posted a video on Facebook showing the attacker, dressed in blue, waiting outside a shopping centre's garage on Friday, raising his gun and firing at the car before fleeing.
"An official from the US consulate was wounded by a shot from a firearm... According to the medical report, he is in stable condition," Mexico's attorney general's office said in a statement.
The motive was not immediately known.
Moments before the shooting, the official, who was wearing shorts and a sleeveless shirt, paid his parking ticket at an automated machine, according to another video. After the official walks away, the gunman is seen following him.
READ MORE: Meet the man cleaning up after Mexico's murders
The FBI offered a $20,000 reward for information about the attacker.
The US embassy declined to give more details about the shooting or the official's title and identity.
In 2010, a consular official, her husband, and the spouse of another consular official were killed in two simultaneous attacks in the northern city of Ciudad Juarez, which at the time was considered the world's murder capital amid an ultra-violent drug war.
A year later gunmen from the Zetas drug cartel opened fire on a vehicle of two US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents in the northern state of San Luis Potosi, killing one of the officers.
Este es el hombre por quien se ofrecen 20 mil dólares de recompensa por disparar contra oficial en @USCGGuadalajara pic.twitter.com/3XxvvDiE8F — Embajada EU en Mex (@USEmbassyMEX) January 7, 2017
In 2012 two US officials, widely reported to be CIA agents, and a Mexican marine were wounded when they were shot at by federal police officers as they were driving in the central state of Morelos.
Fourteen officers were initially accused of attempted murder, but they were later put on trial on charges of using excessive force, with officials saying it was a case of mistaken identity.
In a case that caused friction between the US and Mexican governments in 1985, undercover US agent Enrique "Kiki" Camarena was tortured and killed by the Guadalajara drug cartel.Kristoff straggled up the stairs, his exhausted mind looking forward to nothing more than the soft feather bed that awaited him. Creating a business wasn't easy. It was less taxing on his muscles, perhaps, than a day of chopping ice, but it was mentally exhausting. At least with ice-harvesting, there was little doubt of the final result. There was no guarantee of success when forming a company.
Thanks to Queen Elsa, he had his permit, at least. A quick investigation into Drexel's practice had resulted in the utterly shocked administrator being fired, a fact that have Kristoff no small amount of satisfaction. Unsurprisingly, his replacement had been only too willing to give the aspiring businessman a permit.
Making it up the stairs, he threw open the door to his bedroom and collapsed onto the sheets in a disjointed heap. He would lie here, just for a minute before undressing...
\
"Get up."
A spasm of pain above his stomach prevented Krisotff from rising fully. He opened his eyes...and received the shock of his life.
Five men in black cloaks were surrounding his bed, all of them armed with blades of cold steel. The nearest man had his weapon aimed at Kristoff's chest; it was shearing through his shirt and had just penetrated the top of his skin.
His heartbeat raced. Was he still dreaming? He didn't think so. What the hell were a group of armed men doing in his bedroom?! Sweat began to pour down Kristoff's cheeks.
They didn't want to kill him. He'd be dead already if that was the case. Kristoff tried to think of what the hell these men could want with him. An idea he couldn't pinpoint lurked at the edge of his mind, but the panic flowing through him made it impossible to concentrate.
Damn! He knew he had no choice. Kristoff could hold his own in a tavern brawl, but he wasn't a trained warrior. He would have absolutely no chance against five determined attackers, even if a sword point wasn't already lodged in his chest. That itself was pain enough for a lifetime. Kristoff couldn't imagine how much agony he would experience if the blade plunged completely into his body.
"Tie his arms."
\
Home. Anna had gone her entire life without having one. True, the orphanage had given her a roof over her head and a bed to lie on, but she couldn't truly have called it home.
This was home. It was more than just the Castle that surrounded her and the fine silken sheets that she was lying on. Elsa's arms, currently wrapped around her in a loving embrace, were what made it truly real.
"I'm going to miss you...so much," Anna whispered. It was their last hour together before Elsa took off to see the trolls. It would only be two days of separation, but their time apart would be painful nonetheless. Evidently, the Queen shared that sentiment.
Elsa squeezed her tighter, and Anna found herself burying her forehead into the Queen's neck. Despite her previous intimacy with various women, snuggling had been a new experience for Anna. Her previous partners had been all too happy to fuck her, but cuddling...not so much.
She loved laying beside her lover, taking in Elsa's wintery scent. Anna was the Queen's Knight and personal attendant, her premier bodyguard. Yet the Knight never felt safer than when she was wrapped in her Queen's arms.
Thankfully, Elsa seemed to enjoy snuggling just as much as her partner. Anna had never before truly experienced the sensation of comforting physical contact with someone she loved. For the Queen, it was a different story. Elsa had been embraced by her parents countless times during her childhood, of course. But for over five years, she hadn't been able to so much as hug another human being. As close as she had been with Kai and Gerda, it simply wasn't appropriate for a monarch to hug her staff.
Such physical isolation had left Elsa with a powerful yearning for another's embrace, and it was a void that Anna was only too glad to fill.
"You'll be fine," Elsa whispered back. "Since the rebellion, the Castle's been secured to almost a ridiculous level. Stay here, and you'll be safe." The Queen paused. "Promise me you'll stay here. If something happened-" she stopped herself.
If something happened to you, I could never forgive myself. Anna knew exactly what her Queen had been about to say.
"I promise. And the same goes for you! I'm not the one flying across the country," Anna pointed out.
From her position beneath Elsa's neck, Anna could feel the monarch's muscles move as her lips curled into a slight smile. "You're also not the one with godlike ice powers," Elsa noted. "I...I should get going. It's almost noon. If I want to be back before tomorrow night..."
Sighing, Anna began to disentangle herself from Elsa's embrace. "I know."
Planting a last kiss on Anna's forehead, the Queen withdrew her arms and rose from the bed. With a swift movement of her hands, a new ice dress replaced her bedgown.
The sight of Elsa clothed in her element never failed to take Anna's breath away. The Knight was aware that she herself was an attractive woman, but Anna knew that she couldn't hold a candle to her lover when it came to looks. Her Queen was beauty personified.
She ran to Elsa, claiming the Queen's lips in a fierce kiss. Anna hung onto her consort as tightly as she could without causing injury, as if her stronger grip would delay the moment of parting. Unfortunately, it was time to let Elsa go. The Queen was doing this for her, after all, and it wouldn't be fair to force her to spend more than one night away from the Palace.
Still, the monarch was the one to pull back. "I love you, Anna." She placed a final kiss on the Knight's forehead before making her way out onto their balcony. Anna resisted the urge to follow.
A blizzard was raging: the first of the year. It was the earliest snowstorm Arendelle had seen in a decade, yet it was as strong as any natural storm Anna had seen over the past year. Already, the kingdom below was covered in a sea of white.
"This isn't your doing, is it?" the Knight asked playfully. For anyone else, this storm would put a stop to all but the most important travels. All it did for Elsa, however, was to make the journey more enjoyable.
The Queen smirked. "You insult me, dear Anna. If I was to create a storm, it would be much more powerful than this."
Without another word, Elsa took off flying through the air.
Anna stood there for several minutes, staring at the trail of snow that the Queen left behind.
\
The first few hours of the day passed quickly for Anna. Following Elsa's departure, she made her way down to the courtyard to get in some training. Drell had been kind enough to develop exercises that limited the Knight's reliance on her superhuman strength and speed, forcing her to depend on technique and finesse to succeed. Based upon skill alone, Anna could now consider herself an expert warrior, but there was still more than one person at the Castle who would be able to best her if she lost her magic.
When she finally had enough, the Knight made her way up to the Royal Chambers to wash herself before going down to the dining hall for lunch. It was lonely eating without Elsa, but it still felt good to eat after a morning of hard work.
Then her day went to hell.
It started with an innocent knock on the dining room door; the guards opened it to admit a young maid. Anna smiled as she recognized Kayla, her eyes fixed to the floor as she carried the Knight's requested dessert of chocolate ice cream.
"Hi!" Anna greeted.
Kayla let out a sharp gasp, her arms involuntarily jolting. A loud crash sounded as the tray fell to the ground, shattering the bowl and scattering glass and melted ice cream across the floor.
"Kayla!' the Knight sprang to her feet and hurried over to the girl. "Are you alright?" Anna did a quick examination of the maid's arms, noting with relief that her skin was free of any glass shards.
Hurriedly, Kayla dropped to her knees and began to scoop the mess back into the tray. With a gentle touch, Anna brushed the girl aside and did it herself. Her skin was durable enough to the point that it faced little threat from broken glass, and with her speed everything but the melted ice cream was placed back onto the tray within seconds.
"I'm so sorry, milady," Kayla finally managed. "Thanks for the assistance."
"It's no problem," Anna assured her as she handed the tray back to the younger woman. "I startled you. Are you sure that you're fine?" It wasn't like Kayla- or any maid- to be clumsy enough to drop a tray just because of a friendly greeting.
Kayla frowned. "Yes, milady. It's just...ever since the attack, I've been a little jumpy." She didn't need to elaborate. Elsa had told her how she had saved the young maid from being violated by one of the mercenaries. It would have been worse had the Queen not intervened, of course, but understandably Kayla seemed to have not escaped the incident mentally unscathed.
"Elsa told me," Anna said simply. "I...well I'm not an expert, but I've had my fair share of unpleasant experiences. If you ever want to talk...I mean, we're already talking, of course, but if you wanted to discuss...what happened, my door's always open."
Kayla smiled hesitantly. "...Thanks, milady. I'll keep that in mind. Oh! One of the servants told me to give you this. Someone left it at the front gate for you. She didn't say what her name was, but she said it was important." Reaching into her pocket, she pulled out a sealed letter. Lady Anna was written on the front.
"Thanks," Anna replied as Kayla bowed slightly and returned to the kitchens. Who would have sent her a letter? Kristoff was her only friend in the city, and as reclusive as he could be, the ice harvester wasn't the type to simply hurry off without even leaving a name.
Without further preamble, she opened the letter.
Lady Anna,
You have proven a worthy adversary, but your interference in our plans must come to an end. We have captured your friend Kristoff, and though we take no pleasure in hurting an innocent, we will kill him if our demands our not met.
At midnight, you shall come to the forest behind the Castle and make your way to the shore of the lake. You will be alone, and unarmed. At some time past midnight, we will reveal ourselves, holding your friend at blade-point as we approach. The very second we see that you have not abided completely by our terms, he will die.
We do not wish to kill you. Perhaps, when you learn the truth behind our intentions, you will see fit to aid us. If not, you will be taken into custody.
His life is in your hands.
There was no signature at the bottom.
\
"You do not understand what you are asking for, Your Majesty."
Elsa frowned. She and Pabbie were speaking privately, sitting in small leather chairs inside the Grand Troll's wooden hut. At first, he and his fellows had |
2 missile crisis, the Pentagon did not believe that the installation of Soviet missiles in Cuba altered the global balance of nuclear terror. It is unlikely that any significant threat would have materialized if the 41 governments deposed by the United States had remained in office until voted out or overturned without U.S. help.
In both the United States and Latin America, economic interests are often seen as the underlying cause of U.S. interventions. This hypothesis has two variants. One cites corruption and the other blames capitalism. The corruption hypothesis contends that U.S. officials order interventions to protect U.S. corporations. The best evidence for this version comes from the decision to depose the elected government of Guatemala in 1954. Except for President Dwight Eisenhower, every significant decision maker in this case had a family, business or professional tie to the United Fruit Company, whose interests were adversely affected by an agrarian reform and other policies of the incumbent government. Nonetheless, in this as in every other case involving U.S. corporate interests, the U.S. government would probably not have resorted to intervention in the absence of other concerns.
The capitalism hypothesis is a bit more sophisticated. It holds that the United States intervened not to save individual companies but to save the private enterprise system, thus benefiting all U.S. (and Latin American) companies with a stake in the region. This is a more plausible argument, based on repeated declarations by U.S. officials who seldom missed an opportunity to praise free enterprise. However, capitalism was not at risk in the overwhelming majority of U.S. interventions, perhaps even in none of them. So this ideological preference, while real, does not help explain why the United States intervened. U.S. officials have also expressed a preference for democratic regimes, but ordered interventions to overthrow elected governments more often than to restore democracy in Latin America. Thus, this preference also fails to carry much explanatory power.
An economist might approach the thorny question of causality not by asking what consumers or investors say about their preferences, but what their actions can help us to infer about them. An economist’s approach might also help in another way, by distinguishing between supply and demand. A look at the supply side suggests that interventions will occur more often where they do not cost much, either directly in terms of decision makers’ time and resources, or in terms of damage to significant interests. On the demand side, two factors seem to have been crucial in tipping decision makers toward intervention: domestic politics and global strategy.
Domestic politics seems to be a key factor in most of these cases. For example, internal documents show that President Lyndon Johnson ordered U.S. troops to the Dominican Republic in 1965 not because of any plausible threat to the United States, but because he felt threatened by Republicans in Congress. Political competition within the United States accounts for the disposition of many U.S. presidents to order interventions.
The second key demand-side factor could be called the global strategy effect. The United States in the 20th century defined its strategic interests in global terms. This was particularly true after World War II when the United States moved rapidly to project its power into regions of the earth on the periphery of the Communist states where it had never had a presence before. In the case of Latin America, where the United States faced no foreseeable military threat, policy planners did nonetheless identify potential future threats. This was especially true in the 1960s, after the Cuban Revolution. The United States helped to depose nine of the governments that fell to military rulers in the 1960s, about one every 13 months and more than in any other decade. Curiously, however, we now know that U.S. decision makers were repeatedly assured by experts in the CIA and other intelligence gathering agencies that, in the words of a 1968 National Intelligence Estimate, “In no case do insurgencies pose a serious short run threat...revolution seems unlikely in most Latin American countries within the next few years.” Few challenged the idea that leftist regimes would pose a secutiry threat to the United States. threat…revolution seems unlikely in most Latin American countries
Thus, in a region where intervention was not very costly, and even major failures unlikely to damage U.S. interests, the combination of domestic political competition and potential future threats—even those with a low probability of ever materializing—appear to explain most of the 20th century US interventions.
It is difficult to escape the conclusion that U.S. interventions did not serve U.S. national interests well. They generated needless resentment in the region and called into question the U.S. commitment to democracy and rule of law in international affairs. The downward trend in the past decade and half is a positive development much to be encouraged.
CHRONICLING INTERVENTIONS
U.S. DIRECT INTERVENTIONS
Military/CIA activity that changed governments
COUNTRY YEAR EVENT SUMMARY Cuba 1898-1902 Spanish-American War 1906-09 Ousts elected Pres. Palma; occupation regime 1917-23 U.S. reoccupation, gradual withdrawal Dominican Rep 1916-24 U.S. occupation 1961 Assassination of Pres. Trujillo 1965 U.S. Armed Forces occupy Sto Domingo Grenada 1983 U.S. Armed Forces occupy island; oust government Guatemala 1954 C.I.A.-organized armed force ousts Pres. Arbenz Haiti 1915-34 U.S. occupation 1994 U.S. troops restore constitutional government Mexico 1914 Veracuz occupied; US allows rebels to buy arms Nicaragua 1910 Troops to Corinto, Bluefields during revolt 1912-25 U.S. occupation 1926-33 U.S. occupation 1981-90 Contra war; then support for opposition in election Panama 1903-14 U.S. Troops secure protectorate, canal 1989 U.S. Armed Forces occupy nation
U.S. INDIRECT INTERVENTION
Government/regime changes in which U.S. is decisiveNokia's involvement with Google's Android can only be described as one big "what if." Ahead of Microsoft's deal to buy it, Nokia was testing Android phones, but the only thing that's come from that is the Nokia X, an entry-level Android device aimed at luring feature phone owners into the smartphone era. However, it's been designed to play second-fiddle to Microsoft's Windows Phone software and Nokia's own higher-end phones. Its future is also one big question mark now that Microsoft's taken the reins.
Nokia's newly-spun-off technologies group — which has long run separately from the phone business, but has provided it with software and hardware features over the years — is now its own startup. And its first new project since the Microsoft-Nokia deal closed is a homescreen launcher for Android phones called Z Launcher. It's been designed not only as the primary way people find apps and contacts, but also a demo of what the team can do now that it's no longer tied to other parts of the company.
Nokia wants to be the first thing you see
The idea behind Z Launcher, which is named after a gesture that lets you write out letters right on the screen instead of typing on a keyboard, is to give you a running list of apps and contacts that changes based on where you are and what you're doing. You can also scribble out a letter in the middle of your homescreen to search what's installed on your phone, or things on the internet through Google suggest.
At its core, the app is just a very simple and uninteresting list of app names and their icons that sit on your homescreen, with a clock and calendar that sit on the top. Google's standard row of apps stay the same on the bottom, which Nokia's augmented with a list of apps you can scroll through in alphabetical order. Missing currently are any support for widgets — including Google's search bar — but it might not be like that forever.
Brook Eaton, the lead product manager of Nokia's emerging platforms group says the idea for Z Launcher stemmed from the company's research. Nokia was tracking an increase in the number of apps people were using and saw a potential organization problem his group could solve. Instead of going after folders, Nokia went after the first thing people see when they unlock their phone — the homescreen.
Those choices for which six apps or contacts get shown at any given time are made using a number of attributes. That includes what time of day it is, where you are using your phone's location, and who you've been talking to based on your phone's call logs. Over time the app is also able to better guess what you do based on your usage history, Eaton promises. But if it can't, you can just start writing right on the screen to pull up what you want. Behind the scenes, the company's using MyScript for the handwriting recognition. You can jot one or more letters, either at once or in succession, and remove whatever you've written with a back swipe.
Start writing on your screen to search
On a Nexus 5 I tested a "pre-beta" version of the software on, the handwriting recognition worked well, as long as you kept it short. It handled one and two letter scribbles just fine, but the error rate went up when pushing it to three or four letters. Eaton says that the system's been designed so that you're very rarely writing more than one letter, especially once the system begins learning which apps you're using on a regular basis.
All this usage information is being kept private and on the device, at least for now. The main goal, Eaton says, is to get the product out there and make it better as what the company views as a big beta test; that's in part because Z Launcher won't work with all phones. From the outset, it will work on Samsung's Galaxy devices like the S4 and S5, as well as Google Nexus devices, like the Nexus 5. Nokia also isn't putting it somewhere like Google's Play Store just yet; people will need to download and install it from Nokia's Z Launcher site.
Nokia could also bring Z Launcher over to iOS, though Apple's system does not yet allow third-party apps to change the look and feel of the homescreen. Eaton said the company is at least "looking at" iOS as a possibility, but did not offer what such an app would look like, or how it would function. Future plans may also involve sniffing for recognized Wi-Fi networks to personalize suggestions for apps — something like linking up with a networked sound system like Sonos, or a video streaming app when you're at home.
"We're unhandcuffed."
Z Launcher joins a host of other app launchers, that have been around for longer, and arguably do more. Eaton and company are making no claims of doing more than Yahoo's Aviate, Cover, or EverythingMe, but says that it can hone and add to Z Launcher over time. Moreover, he says it's just the first of what will hopefully be many new consumer-facing projects that may never have seen the light of day under Nokia's previous structure.
"At the end of the day, we're now able to explore new ways to get to market, which we didn't have to first deliver in house," Eaton says. "We're unhandcuffed."
Update June 20th, 5:09PM: Nokia's closed up the "pre-beta" of Z Launcher for now. The company has not said whether it will open it up again ahead of a broader release.Green Flash Cosmic Ristretto will join the brewery’s year-round lineup in February, 2016. A graduate of the brewery’s small-batch “Genius” program.
Green Flash Cosmic Ristretto‘s base is a baltic porter, that has been infused with espresso, candi sugar, and lactose milk sugar. The beer first appeared as a part of the brewery’s pilot beer program, available in the San Diego tap room. “Ristretto” is a strong espresso drink.
Marvel at its rich black appearance with bruleed edges and mocha-colored beer foam. Breathe in its coffee aroma and sweet malts, and savor its smooth, espresso, chocolate flavor.
Green Flash Cosmic Ristretto will be a 22 ounce bottle and draft offering, starting in February, 2016.
Style: Baltic Porter (w/ Espresso)
Availability: 22oz Bottles, Draft. Year-round
Release: February, 2016
8.2% ABVPhoto: Toyota Toyota Research Institute CEO Gill Pratt announced an impressive line-up of engineers and executives to head its technical leadership team and advisory board.
Advertisement
Toyota revealed more details about its ambitious AI and robotics effort yesterday at CES in Las Vegas. Dr. Gill Pratt, who leads the effort as CEO of the newly formed Toyota Research Institute (TRI), announced an impressive line-up of engineers and executives to head its technical leadership team and advisory board. Among the hires is James Kuffner, who until recently led Google’s robotics program and will focus on cloud computing at TRI. The advisers include notable technologists like Rodney Brooks from Rethink Robotics and Marc Benioff from Salesforce.
Late last year, Toyota unveiled a US $1 billion program to advance AI and robotics, hoping to make cars safer and smarter, and also develop useful, reliable home robots to assist people. TRI established a research partnership with Stanford and MIT and will open offices near those institutions in Palo Alto, Calif., and Cambridge, Mass., respectively. The automaker, which apparently holds more autonomous car patents than any other company, says it has nearly 30 projects ready to be developed in collaboration with the Stanford and MIT researchers.
At CES, Dr. Pratt described the motivations that led to the establishment of TRI. One of its mandates is enhancing safety, with the ultimate goal of “creating a car that is incapable of causing a crash.” Other mandates involve increasing access to vehicles to people who cannot drive, developing mobility technology for indoor applications, and accelerating scientific discovery using AI and machine learning.
Photo: Evan Ackerman/IEEE Spectrum From left: Gill Pratt, Larry Jackel, Eric Krotkov, James Kuffner, John Leonard, Hiroshi Okajima, Russ Tedrake, and Brian Storey.
He then introduced the initial members of the TRI technical team:
Eric Krotkov, Former DARPA Program Manager―Chief Operating Officer
Larry Jackel, Former Bell Labs Department Head and DARPA Program Manager―Machine Learning
James Kuffner, CMU Professor and former head of Google Robotics―Cloud Computing
John Leonard, Samuel C. Collins Professor of Mechanical and Ocean Engineering, MIT―Autonomous Driving
Hiroshi Okajima, Project General Manager, R&D Management Division, Toyota Motor Corporation―Executive Liaison Officer
Brian Storey, Professor of Mechanical Engineering, Olin College of Engineering―Accelerating Scientific Discovery
Russ Tedrake, Associate Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, MIT―Simulation and Control
After the presentation, we got a chance to speak with some of the team members. We asked James Kuffner, who was part of the original self-driving car team at Google and more recently led its scattered robotics division after Andy Rubin abruptly abandoned it in 2014, what he was looking foward to with his new position at TRI:
“It’s a great opportunity that’s more focused [than Google’s robotics program] and I do think that under Gill’s leadership we’ll be able to make a big difference. I feel that creating a new team and going for big goals with lots of unsolved research problems is something that keeps me going and I’ve been doing that for a couple years at Google and now I’m excited to explore some new technologies and learn a lot of new things.”
We also spoke to MIT’s Russ Tedrake (who, along with MIT colleague John Leonard and Olin professor Brian Storey, will work part time with TRI while maintaining their university roles). Tedrake led the MIT team at the DARPA Robotics Challenge, and at TRI he plans to extend the research he was doing in his lab, focusing on robustness analysis of complex robotics, control, and vision systems:
“This is the best of both worlds for me. It’s the ability to do something big here with actually a direct connection to what I’ve been doing in lab.... I think that robotics is obviously in this huge upper trajectory but if things start failing, if people start realizing that your demos are not products, I think that the whole field could burst. So I think that robustness is the major thing separating academic research from product and this is chance to address that head-on.” “Home robots may be even more personally prized in our future than cars have been in our past.” —Gill Pratt, Toyota Research Institute
In addition to a technical leadership team, TRI also assembled an advisory board, whose members include:
John Roos, former CEO of Wilson Sonsini and former U.S. Ambassador to Japan. Currently, General Partner at Geodesic Capital, a late stage venture capital firm and Senior Advisor at Centerview Partners, a preeminent mergers and acquisitions advisory firm―Chairman
Rodney Brooks, former director of the MIT Computer Science and AI Lab, founder of iRobot and Founder, Chairman and CTO of Rethink Robotics―Deputy Chairman
Marc Benioff, CEO of Salesforce.com
Richard Danzig, Former U.S. Navy Secretary
Bran Ferren, former President of R&D at Walt Disney Imagineering and Chief Creative Officer of Applied Minds
Noboru Kikuchi (planned), Emeritus University of Michigan Professor, head of Toyota Central Research and Development Lab and the Toyota Research Institute of North America
Fei-Fei Li, director of the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (SAIL)
Daniela Rus, director of MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory
In his CES speech, Dr. Pratt explained that in the 1930s, Toyota, then a manufacturer of fabric looms, saw the revolutionary potential of automobiles and decided to enter the car industry, a bold move that proved immensely profitable. “It is entirely possible that robots will become for today’s Toyota what the car industry was when Toyota made looms,” he said. TRI will focus on mobility not only outdoors but indoors as well, a need “fueled by our aging society,” Dr. Pratt added. “Home robots may be even more personally prized in our future than cars have been in our past.”
[ Toyota ]The Greek capital has been invaded by talking frogs, dyed lambs and marble tents. But many locals are furious at the ‘colonial attitudes’ of the German art extravaganza
‘Hello, hello,” croaks a voice in the undergrowth. “This is Ben!” I’m in the lower gardens of the Byzantine and Christian Museum in Athens, where the sound of frogs and froglike voices seems to be coming from the flowers, bushes and trees that line its manmade waterway. It is a bizarre experience in what is otherwise an oasis of calm. But this amphibian chorus is actually a work of contemporary art, a piece of “sonic graffiti” emanating from 24 speakers concealed in the greenery. Why is this august museum – famed for its religious art, its ancient manuscripts, icons and ceramics – venturing into such strange new territory? Because Documenta has come to town.
Documenta is the year’s most anticipated art event and, for the first time, the disorientating extravaganza has spread itself across a guest city as well as Kassel, the German town where it was born 10 years after the second world war. “We wanted to be open to contemporary art,” says Katerina Dellaporta, the Athens museum’s director. “But how much the average Greek is open to it is another question.”
Dellaporta’s world has changed in ways both big and small. Those who might never have ventured into the venue – diverse groups of Britons, Germans and natives – are now among its most faithful visitors. At odd hours, they can be glimpsed working their way around the gardens, ears cocked. Described as “a reverie”, the work was conceived for the mega art show by the late US artist Ben Patterson. It is a nod not only to Aristophanes’s comedy The Frogs, but to the ancient Ilissos river that the museum’s gardens reputedly straddle. Patterson has joyfully played on the fact that, in the 5th century BC, the area was known as Frog Island.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Migration blues … some of the 54 lambs in Africa Blessing by Aboubakar Fofana. Photograph: Stathis Mamalakis
This is the 14th Documenta. Its original mission, in a town that had felt the full force of Allied air raids, was to bring modern western art to audiences denied its pleasures by the Third Reich’s ban on works it regarded as degenerate. Such was its success that it became a five-yearly institution.
From the outset, the dual location has been controversial. No other edition has faced such expectation of failure or success. The double act was announced at the height of rancour between Germany and Greece, the EU’s strongest and weakest members. Anxiety abounded. As the contemporary art show birthplace and traditional home, Kassel feared the loss of visitors to Athens, while the latter fretted about hosting an event that was as big and potentially burdensome as the 2004 Olympics – for many the single largest cause of Greece’s near-bankrupt state.
The wisdom of transplanting an organ of such scale and scope to what the German media mockingly called a Schuldenland, or debtor country, was also questioned. How could Greece – the antithesis of German fiscal rectitude, the embodiment of failure in Europe – possibly rise to the challenge of offering itself as a place for major discussion on global contemporary art?
For Adam Szymczyk, Documenta 14’s artistic director, navigating such chasms has not been easy. The Polish curator has described the event as the equivalent of the international art world’s conscience, “with each edition mirroring, witnessing and fiercely commenting on its time”. As the meeting point of the economic and migrant crises that have consumed Europe, Athens offered “fertile land” to explore the global complexities of possession and dispossession, displacement and debt.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Ibrahim Mahama’s performance piece Check Point: Prosfygika, in the central square of Athens. Photograph: Anadolu Agency/Getty
Despite a budget of €37m – at least half of which has been directed to hosting the event in the austerity-ravaged Greek capital – it has also offered plenty of ground for disagreement and heated debate. Documenta 14’s launch in Athens last month (the second part opens in Kassel on 10 June) came amid accusations of “colonial attitudes” with some employees complaining of exploitation and being deliberately misled over invigilator fees. Even the exhibition’s working title, Learning from Athens, was called condescending.
Graffiti castigating the spectacle as “Crapumenta 14” soon appeared. “I refuse to exoticize myself to increase your cultural capital. Signed: The People,” has been a particular favourite. While Giorgos Kaminis, the city’s mayor, maintained Documenta was fantastic for tourism (as Aegean Airlines’ new and fully booked Kassel to Athens route has proved), critics complained that it amounted to the worst kind of crisis tourism.
“There’s anger because they haven’t taken circumstance into account,” says Nadja Argyropoulou, a curator in Athens. “Their theory is beautiful, radical and timely, but they didn’t mingle or take the leap into the everyday or address the reality here. Circumstance is what humbles theory and makes art as important as real life.”
For detractors, Szymczyk had become the embodiment of the corporate, neo-liberal order he professes to abhor, a purveyor of the worst kind of soft German power. Not only was the exhibition abstruse, it had committed the cardinal sin of omitting Greek artists and curators. “There are so many names,” Argyropoulou says. “People who should have been in it but were never approached. But please also write that we want them to succeed. If they fail, it is us who will be left with their ruins of contemporary art – and in a country that is continually looking to its past, with unresolved questions of identity, that would be disastrous.”
At 46, Szymczyk has a reputation as a maverick. His desire to surprise, pushing the boundaries of art, has won him praise. Choosing to split the show is his riskiest move yet. Almost all of the 160 participating artists are unknowns, although curators contend they pull off the not inconsiderable feat of talking truth to power. Until a week before the opening, most of the exhibition’s 40 venues – facilities offered by the Greek state – had still not been pinned down.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Daniel Knorr’s installation Artist Book. Photograph: Milos Bicanski/Getty
But for all the tumult, which has clearly shaken his team, Szymczyk remains convinced that doubling Documenta’s perspective was the right thing to do. “Athens is one of the most interesting cities in Europe,” he says, sipping coffee in a 1930s building that serves as one of Documenta’s offices. “It is one of the very few places currently reinventing itself. The city is fertile ground for people and ideas. It has been pretty much wasted in the last 10 years.”
At a time of populism and confused political agendas, Athens seemed the perfect counterpoint to distinctly provincial Kassel. “I didn’t think Kassel was the best place to think about global ideas and politics. I felt it needed another place to keep it in check.”
Up close Szymczyk has the air of a young David Bowie; his hair flopping in layers around his face, his eyes a combination of mischief and mystery. Tall and exceptionally thin, he is wearing a Guatemalan sash just above his waist when we meet, and a pair of noticeably scuffed fake crocodile skin boots. The artists are finding Athens “extremely enjoyable” though challenging as well. He himself is transfixed with the idea of western civilisation being embedded in a monument on a rock. And the numbers are good: in a matter of weeks, over 100,000 have seen the show, although most aren’t Greeks but foreigners who have flown in.
While the newly opened Museum of Contemporary Art – housed in a former brewery and known as EMST – is the main venue and will send a selection of its own collection to Kassel, Documenta has been deliberately scattered across Athens, which is a chaotic place at the best of times.
Visitors were recently directed to “a specially prepared orchard pasture” at the city’s Agricultural University to view 54 lambs, each representing a country on the African continent, and dyed by the Malian artist Aboubakar Fofana differing shades of indigo to highlight the perils of migration. In fact, migration is a central theme, with the Berlin-based Kurdish artist Hiwa K, who fled Iraq in 1996, presenting some of the best work. A video retraces his steps to freedom via Greece, while his one-room apartment currently graces the courtyard of the Benaki Museum.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Risk-taker … Adam Szymczyk speaks at the opening. Photograph: Louisa Gouliamaki/AFP/Getty Images
Meanwhile, the Anishinaabe-Canadian artist Rebecca Belmore has carved a marble tent – the refuge of refugees world wide and symbol of the migrant crisis in Greece. It has been pitched, to the consternation of classical purists, within perfect view of the Periclean masterpiece that is the Acropolis.
Helena Papadopoulou, who runs Radio Athènes, an institute for the advancement of contemporary visual art, is among those who believe the split was inspired. “Greece has always focused on its ancient heritage at the expense of contemporary art,” she says. “What Documenta has done is emancipate the scene and energise people, and create a curiosity for Athens as a place where contemporary art can also be enjoyed. It has been hugely positive.”
The sad reality is that most Greeks won’t see Documenta 14, unable to identify with an exhibition that often feels lost in its own jargon. The German juggernaut will pass through – transforming venues like the Byzantine and Christian art museum – and then be largely forgotten. But for those who do attend, the otherworldly, almost dreamlike quality of the Athens leg may ultimately be its legacy, one that seeps into the conscience long after the viewing.
“You feel Europe’s problems here,” says Els Van den Berg, a Dutch cultural policy-maker who flew in for the show. “You feel the poverty, you feel this atmosphere of loss,” she adds, as she excitedly makes her way from one venue on a potholed boulevard to another. “This is a Documenta that is deliberately disorientating. The experience as a whole, the curatorial story, is stronger than the works of art. That’s what makes it all so positive. ”FORGE
9/8/12 UPDATE
Forge will not reach its Kickstarter goal by 9AM tomorrow morning. To make sure those of you wanting to continue playing and keep your Founder's perks are able to do so, we have partnered with PlaySpan/UltimatePay to enable you to Pre-Order Forge directly from our website. Because the physical rewards are no longer available, the in-game rewards have been reduced in cost substantially.
We hope all of you that chose to support us here will do so directly on our website, and look forward to chatting with all of you via our official forums there soon. To Pre-Order from us directly, go to:
http://account.playforgewar.com/Products.aspx
NOTE: It is important to remember that Kickstarter will not charge you for any pledge made here as the project will not reach its goal. You have not yet been charged and won't be charged through any action taken here on Kickstarter. The pre-order link above is the only place where you will be charged and is necessary to continue to enjoy the Founder's perks and help support Forge last stage of development. Thanks!
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
A note about DLC: More mini-expansion than required addon, and it never provides any gameplay advantage. You can read more in the FAQ below.
8/30/12 UPDATE
Forge is on Steam Greenlight and needs your vote!
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=91594665
8/24/12 UPDATE:
Anyone that pledges $15 or more will be given (as quickly as we see the pledge, create your key, and send it to you) access to the Alpha Preview which is now live!
PLEASE NOTE: We have to manually create and send every key for every pledge. Though we will do our best to be immediate, especially during sleeping hours PST we will be unable to deliver Alpha keys. Rest assured that the moment someone is able to return to key distribution duty your keys will be sent as quickly as possible.
We've sent out over 1600 keys already (everyone that has already pledged is getting theirs) and are looking forward to sending out even more. Play a bit, let us know what you think, and tell your friends. We need your help to make this campaign a success.
Read the rest of the update here:
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/166522941/forge/posts/295208
8/14/12 UPDATE:
We spent a little time with TotalBiscuit last week, giving him an early look at Forge. You can watch the video here:
Other reaction from the press:
MMORPG - "Face-Punchingly Good PVP"
Read more by following this link:
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/166522941/forge/posts/286027
We're also happy to officially announce that we'll be partnering with Gameservers.com to provide Dark Vale hosted servers in many world-wide locations. Find out more at this link:
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/166522941/forge/posts
Other Videos:
8/5/12 UPDATE:
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/166522941/forge/posts/280980
Also, just a first glimpse at the very much work in progress map, Capital Siege.
FORGE - CLASS BASED MULTIPLAYER COMBAT
FORGE plays like a third person shooter, but with the abilities, strategy and pace of MMO PvP combat. It is built with a focus on fun and accessibility, but with the attention to detail and balance of a deep, competitive game. Whether you're new to first person shooters and MMOs, or a veteran, FORGE will be easy to pick up yet offer much to learn as you play.
FORGE places you into an epic fantasy setting, taking on the role of a warrior from a culture unlike any you’ve seen, fighting for your right to return home.
FORGE is built to be enjoyable even if you have only a limited amount of game time available each night, keeping the low time requirements and ease of access of a traditional first-person-shooter (FPS). Skill is the only determining factor between victory and defeat, not whether you were able to grind out a set of armor or weapons better than your opponents.
Everything is packaged with AAA quality assets inside Unreal Engine 3, produced by some of the best talent in the industry, and delivered to you at an indie price.
Step into the role of the Assassin, Pathfinder, Pyromancer, Shaman or Warden (and soon Ravager) and dominate your opponents in a variety of gameplay modes.
This game is built for gamers that live for player-vs-player combat, but wish that all the weight of the endless grind and treadmill caused by typical MMO design would get out of the way.
One note: Everything you see here and on the game's website, has been built uniquely for Forge, whether in game or not. This isn't just an idea pitch, we're deep in production as our gameplay video shows.
DARK VALE GAMES
Like many in this industry, we’re not just developers, we’re gamers. We do this for a living because we’re passionate about the product as much as the process. We’ve been in your guilds, in your raids, and in your arenas and battlegrounds.
Like you, we’ve been on the forums, at conventions, or just talking with the guild about our hopes for each MMO game that’s been released in the last many years. We talked about how it ‘should be’, what we hoped it ‘will be’, and were always disappointed with what it ended up ‘being’. Not that they’re not great games, but the PvP experience left much to be desired.
So, we’re building what we believe the PvP experience should be. This is the game we as gamers, and developers, want to play and think you will too.
We’re here on Kickstarter to finish what we started; to build a game free of the pressures of outside publishers, investors, or anyone that has a tendency to mess up a beautiful project.
We need your help. We’ve already got a lot done, but we need you to get us over the finish line.
FORGE – AMAZING MULTIPLAYER
Having tried every MMO or MOBA style game that has been released in the last many years, it became apparent that to get the title we wanted to play, one we believe we’re not alone in wanting to play, we needed to build it.
Our key goals:
▪ Class Based
▪ MMO Style Abilities
▪ Even Playing Field for All Players
▪ Skill is the Only Determining Factor in Victory or Defeat
▪ Zero Grind
▪ Meaningful Progression and Customization Without Violating Any of the Above
There is much more under the hood we feel we’ve learned from more than a century of combined game development experience, and almost as much time spent playing these titles as well, but these are the key facets behind FORGE that make it the amazing title that it is.
All of this is built on the Unreal Engine 3 for amazing visuals and rock solid gameplay, realized in a world rich with its own lore and history. While we have a grand vision for where FORGE will take all of us, we’re starting off with the purest version of FORGE we can provide to let you, and us, play the game we’ve all been waiting for.
GREAT, I GET IT….TELL ME MORE ABOUT THE GAME!
FORGE is set in an epic fantasy universe. It’s a multi-player FPS, using a third person camera, that focuses on MMO style abilities, fluid combat, and instanced PVP. The game will launch with 5 different classes and 4 unique maps. Players can choose from the Assassin, Pathfinder, Pyromancer, Shaman, and Warden classes, each with their own summonable companion.
At launch, FORGE will offer players the option of 4 maps, each with their own distinct gameplay – Capital Siege, Field of Ruins, Forest Ambush and Ymil’s Throne. Each class will offer players 8 unique abilities to choose from in battle, with 1 additional ability specific to their companion to assist them on the battlefield. Unlike most MMOs, there will be ZERO GRIND in FORGE. Every player is on a level playing field from their first game forward, no matter how many games their enemies have played.
Skill, yours, is what counts: No tab targeting. Movement is no longer on rails: Block an incoming attack by (crazy idea) blocking. No one you meet will have an advantage over you due to time spent or gear acquired. Stuns, interrupts, heals and protection, all of these tools are at your disposal, but their success is completely dependent on your skill in using them.
Zero Grind: Nothing is worse than a friend noticing a game you’re playing and mentioning they’d love to play it with you, only to find they have months of grinding to max level ahead of them before they can even begin the months of grinding the best gear that they need to be an effective partner. The endless treadmill of “win new gear! Why? So you can win more gear later!” just isn’t compelling enough. We’ll give you a reason to progress, but for customization, not power increases. The grind is dead. You’re just as powerful on your first login as you will be on your last, but with ever increasing, equally powerful options to choose from.
Instanced Combat: We don’t believe that multiplayer combat without set team sizes and timed objectives provides the best PvP experience. You end up with massive stalemates as two groups stand staring at one another with the occasional ranged volley going back and forth. Battles usually result only when one side has the other so outnumbered that they are able to ‘zerg’ the smaller group. That’s just not competitive. It may be enjoyable in a different sense, but it’s not what we crave or want to deliver.
FORGE focuses on skirmish sized battles where every player counts, while providing objectives and time limits to ensure that the fighting is intense and constant.
Stunning: Because we’re not designing a massive, open world game where you may encounter 50 to 100 other players at a time, we’re able to focus on high quality art assets from the very beginning without bringing your machine to its knees. FORGE is beautiful, in every last detail, and thanks to the scale of combat, none of this detail is compromised.
|
take it.
"Now, I wasn't trying to do a Schindler's List you-are-there-under-the-barbed-wire-of-Auschwitz. I wanted the film to be more entertaining than that.... But there's two types of violence in this film: There's the brutal reality that slaves lived under for... 245 years, and then there's the violence of Django's retribution. And that's movie violence, and that's fun and that's cool, and that's really enjoyable and kind of what you're waiting for."
That said, Tarantino is clear about what — for him — is acceptable violence in a movie and what crosses a line.
"The only thing that I've ever watched in a movie that I wished I'd never seen is real-life animal death or real-life insect death in a movie. That's absolutely, positively where I draw the line. And a lot of European and Asian movies do that, and we even did that in America for a little bit of time.... I don't like seeing animals murdered on screen. Movies are about make-believe.... I don't think there's any place in a movie for real death."
Watch Clips 'Sure It's Her' 'Sure It's Her' 'I'm Curious' 'I'm Curious'
In the case of Django, Tarantino tells Fresh Air host Terry Gross that he was much more uncomfortable with the prospect of writing the language of white supremacists and directing African-Americans in scenes depicting slavery on American soil than he was about any physical violence being portrayed. His anxiety about directing the slavery scenes was so great, in fact, that he considered shooting abroad.
"I actually went out after I finished the script... with Sidney Poitier for dinner," he says. "And was telling him about my story, and then telling him about my trepidation and my little plan of how I was going to get past it, and he said,... 'Quentin, I don't think you should do that.... What you're just telling me is you're a little afraid of your own movie, and you just need to get over that. If you're going to tell this story, you need to not be afraid of it. You need to do it. Everyone gets it. Everyone knows what's going on. We're making a movie. They get it.'"
Interview Highlights
On the catchphrase 'The D is silent'
"I thought everyone would know how to say the name 'Django.' Even if it wasn't from the spaghetti westerns, at least from Django Reinhardt you would know how to say it. And people would read the script [and say], 'Oh! D-jango Unchained. OK!" And people would say it all the time. Frankly, I considered it an intelligence test. If you say D-jango you're definitely going down in my book."
On conventional slave narratives on screen
There haven't been that many slave narratives in the last 40 years of cinema, and usually when there are, they're usually done on television, and for the most part... they're historical movies, like history with a capital H. Basically, 'This happened, then this happened, then that happened, then this happened.' And that can be fine, well enough, but for the most part they keep you at arm's length dramatically.
"There haven't been that many slave narratives in the last 40 years of cinema, and usually when there are, they're usually done on television, and for the most part... they're historical movies, like history with a capital H. Basically, 'This happened, then this happened, then that happened, then this happened.' And that can be fine, well enough, but for the most part they keep you at arm's length dramatically. Because also there is this kind of level of good taste that they're trying to deal with... and frankly oftentimes they just feel like dusty textbooks just barely dramatized."
On giving an enslaved character a heroic journey
"I like the idea of telling these stories and taking stories that oftentimes — if played out in the way that they're normally played out — just end up becoming soul-deadening, because you're just watching victimization all the time. And now you get a chance to put a spin on it and actually take a slave character and give him a heroic journey, make him heroic, make him give his payback, and actually show this epic journey and give it the kind of folkloric tale that it deserves — the kind of grand-opera stage it deserves."
On how Westerns from different decades reflect the concerns of their times
"One of the things that's interesting about Westerns in particular is [that] there's no other genre that reflects the decade that they were made or the morals and the feelings of Americans during that decade [more] than Westerns. Westerns are always a magnifying glass as far as that's concerned.
"The Westerns of the '50s definitely have an Eisenhower, birth of suburbia and plentiful times aspect to them. America started little by little catching up with its racist past by the '50s, at the very, very beginning of [that decade], and that started being reflected in Westerns. Consequently, the late '60s have a very Vietnam vibe to the Westerns, leading into the '70s. And by the mid-'70s, you know, most of the Westerns literally could be called 'Watergate Westerns,' because it was about disillusionment and tearing down the myths that we have spent so much time building up."
On his early introductions to African-American culture
"[My mother's] boyfriends would come over, and they'd... take me to blaxploitation movies, trying to, you know, get me to like them and buy me footballs and stuff, and... my mom and her friends would take me to cool bars and stuff, where they'd be playing cool, live rhythm-and-blues music... and I'd be drinking... Shirley Temples — I think I called them James Bond because I didn't like the name Shirley Temples — and eat Mexican food... while Jimmy Soul and a cool band would be, you know, playing in some lava lounge-y kind of '70s cocktail lounge. It was really cool. It made me grow up in a real big way. When I would hang around with kids I'd think they were really childish. I used to hang around with really groovy adults."You know what makes me absolutely lose my mind?
Bankers who call themselves “Christians”. I realize historically that there may have been small pockets of people who identified as being both a banker and a Christian, but these days, it’s almost widely accepted. I mean, just the other day I saw an advertisement for the Fellowship of “Christian” Bankers! Even worse, they weren’t meeting at the Episcopal church– they were meeting at the Presbyterian church!
I think the fact that we’re seeing more people identify as “Christian Bankers” as if there’s such a thing (there isn’t), is a sign of just how corrupt society has become. Scripture warns us that when the end times are upon us, we’ll be seeing more of this kind of thing– people will exchange truth for a lie, and that they’ll have no desire to live out true Christianity.
Those days are upon us, my children. Instead of truth, people in today’s culture just want their ears tickled with false teaching that caves to the pressure of culture instead of remaining true to the Bible. People just want a “feel good” Gospel (which isn’t really a Gospel) without ever challenging them to actually obey scripture (hat tip, Dr. James White). Such is the case with these so called “Christian bankers” and all the supposed “Christians” who invite them into the Kingdom of God.
Let me be clear: you have NO RIGHT to be inviting these people into the Kingdom! If you invite them in and refrain from judging them in lieu of letting God work on their hearts, it’s simply proof that you’re not a true Christian either. You emergent and progressive leaders (aka, wolves in sheep’s clothing) who keep going out into the streets and saying “God is throwing a banquet, and you’re are invited to come in!” are every bit as much the problem as the “Christian” bankers themselves.
Honestly, the term “Christian Banker” outright disgusts me. Why someone would want to pair the words together is sick, sick, sick.
Be not deceived: there’s no such thing as a Christian Banker, and scripture makes that clear.
In Ezekiel chapter 18 we see it in no uncertain terms:
“He eats at the mountain shrines.
He defiles his neighbor’s wife.
12 He oppresses the poor and needy.
He commits robbery.
He does not return what he took in pledge.
He looks to the idols.
He does detestable things.
13 He lends at interest and takes a profit.
all these detestable things, he is to be put to death; his blood will be on his own head.”
That’s right: charging interest on a loan is “detestable”, otherwise translated as an “abomination”. The penalty? Death. This abomination is exactly how bankers make a living, and it’s sick.
So no– don’t try to give me your liberal nonsense that it’s possible to be a banker and a Christian at the same time. It’s not. If you think that, it’s only because you reject scripture and therefore reject God.
And no, don’t try to tell me that this passage might have a specific historical context instead of being a blanket prohibition for all times, all places, and all situations. We all know that there’s no reason to study the historical context any deeper than the surface of the English text.
No, don’t try to tell me that there might be reasons, completely known only to God, as to why some people are bankers. I don’t care why– and I don’t care if I don’t know why, it’s still an abomination worthy of death. God will not take into account any additional factors when judging, and neither must we.
No, this is not an area where Christians can disagree and still maintain fellowship with one another, or still have Christian charity towards one another. There is no “third way” on this issue, and if you try to find one, it’s only because you’re ashamed of the Gospel of Jesus and would rather deny him before men than take a stand against banking.
And, don’t even get me started on what I think you should do if your college age child tells you that they seem to have a natural affinity for accounting, because you probably won’t like the cold, hard truth I’ll tell you.
Instead of inviting bankers to join everyone else in experiencing Jesus and to therefore see that he is altogether wonderful, and instead of trusting that Jesus will reveal to their hearts whether or not he wants them to abstain from banking, it is my job to pronounce loud and clear that:
BANKERS ARE OUT and they are NOT WELCOME at this banquet.
It’s that simple– and if you disagree with me, it’s probably because you don’t really love Jesus (and you’ll have an eternity in hell to wish you had listened to me).KetMoRee Thai Restaurant and Bar is suspended from selling alcohol for the next 30 days and will face a two-year probation period as the California Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control delivered the restaurant a suspension notice Thursday afternoon.
The notice follows several months of investigation by the ABC and Davis Police Department after KetMoRee was the scene of the fatal stabbing of Peter Gonzales on Sept. 19. Gonzales — a 23-year-old college student from Los Angeles — was in Davis with his family to attend his sister’s wedding, planned later that weekend.
Six suspects were arrested on murder and criminal street gang charges following the stabbing, and await a preliminary hearing in May. All six are alleged members of Norteño-affiliated street gangs in Vacaville.
A sit-down restaurant by day and dance club by night, KetMoRee was deemed by the ABC to be a “disorderly house” after the investigation revealed more than 20 calls from the restaurant to police for fights, assaults, and public drunkenness between January 2013 and September 2015.
“If any further fights or public disturbances occur, the ABC has the authority to revoke their license,” said John Carr, information officer with the ABC.
After the 30-day liquor license suspension, KetMoRee will be on probation for two years during which it will be required to adhere to a tighter set of rules for its security staff.
On Wednesdays through Saturday nights as well as anytime the restaurant hosts deejays or karaoke, the owner has agreed to provide at least four uniformed security guards licensed by the California Department of Consumer Affairs. Security also will be required to patrol the vicinity until 30 minutes after closing time.
The fatal stabbing sparked larger discussions for a potential ordinance on nightclubs to combat crime stemming from downtown nightlife. The Davis City Council passed a moratorium on new bars and restaurants exceeding 2,500 feet in September and is scheduled to weigh in on a new closures times and permits for bars in April.‘Cotton Sweatshirt’ is an oxymoron. Cotton is the last material you want to be wearing if you’re gonna get wet, either through sweat or rain. It’s highly absorbent, which is why bath towels are cotton, and it retains moisture with the best of ‘em. With good reason outdoorsmen and Special Forces soldiers alike will tell you the maxim: cotton’s rotten.
The Rucking Hoodie, built out of Polartec, is a sweatshirt that wicks your sweat away and prevents the absorption of moisture.
Fair warning: it makes a terrible bath towel, so don’t plan on using it for that. But if you go for a ruck, and you sweat, then you hit the bar, you’ll be glad you aren’t wearing rotten cotton.
Ruck Hard, Play Hard.
PRIMARY FEATURES
Heavyweight performance that still weighs less than your average hoodie
Stretchy, breathable and abrasion resistant
Fast drying & moisture wicking
Durable exterior, soft interior
Simple design without hood strings
Kangaroo Pocket at the perfect height for your hands
Subtle GORUCK spearhead on the bottom seam
Made in USA: Compare our pricing and performance to other brands made overseas with huge margins on top of many middlemen and this piece would cost 3x what it does now. Welcome to building the best in the United States of America.
MaterialsSANTIAGO (Reuters) - Chile has declared a state of emergency after a late frost caused an estimated $1 billion worth of damage to fruit crops, potentially hitting wine production and impacting trade from one of South America’s top fruit exporters.
The affected central region is the main fruit and wine producing area in Chile, the world’s No.7 wine producer. It includes vineyards owned by prominent local wine labels Concha y Toro and Valle San Pedro.
Among the wine varieties, the early grapes such as Chardonnay and Pinot Noir have been hardest hit. Chile is best known for its Carmenere grape variety, as well as Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot. Wine-making is an important part of the country’s manufacturing sector.
“These frosts are the worst that agriculture has faced in 84 years, impacting the area from Coquimbo to Bio Bio,” the national agricultural society said.
Fruit and wine are some of Chile’s largest industries after copper. Fruit exports were worth $4.3 billion in 2012 and wine exports were valued at $1.8 billion, according to government figures. Agriculture Minister Luis Mayol said 30 percent of the fruit that Chile exports has been affected and pledged aid for farmers.
He said the government will give its estimate on the cost to industry in the next two weeks.
Fruit trade association Fedefruta has given an early estimate of up to $1 billion of damage from the extensive cold snap in late September.
It estimates the frost damaged between 35 percent and 61 percent of stone fruit crops, 57 percent of almonds, 48 percent of kiwi crops and 20 percent of table grapes.
However, Fedefruta said most crops had not yet reached full flower and it was not yet possible to give an exact damage forecast.
Locally-listed producer Fruticola Viconto said in a statement that recent low temperatures, especially last weekend, had hit about 45 percent of its production of peaches, cherries and other fruit.
Vegetables such as lettuce and squash had also been affected but there was still time for them to recover, agriculture minister Mayol said.
“That type of crop recovers quicker and has already been replanted,” he said, adding that there would likely be a delay of 15 to 20 days in their harvesting.
Farmers warned that jobs would be at risk and that prices of produce would rise as a result of the frost damage.
That could impact on inflation currently around 2.2 percent, unemployment, and provide a further brake on Chile’s economy, which has slowed this year as investment cooled.
“The good news is that there exists a strong commitment from the government authorities, the bank and the unions to help the affected producers,” said Patricio Crespo, head of the national agriculture society, which held an emergency meeting with the government and creditors on Wednesday.NEW DELHI: With the EU turning a cold shoulder to a visit offer by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, India will wait for the 28-nation body to take the next step, even as India intensifies its ties with individual European nations."The EU has put a bilateral issue over multilateral engagement,” said high level sources in government. "They should take the next step.' There are indications that trade talks between the two sides may be initiated as a way to overcome the current awkwardness.Modi's first visit to Europe in April will cover France and Germany but skip Brussels. The EU refused to respond to a visit request by India a couple of months ago, which prompted India to cancel any plans by Modi to visit Brussels. Sources said while the EU's top leadership, Donald Tusk, president of the European Council and Jean Claude Juncker, president of the European Commission, had signaled their interest in the summit, the foreign policy chief Frederica Mogherini was opposed to it.As former Italian foreign minister, she has been deeply critical of India on the issue of the criminal case against two Italian marines.Italian marines Latore Massimiliano (left) and Salvatore Girone (right) are escorted by Indian police outside a court in Kollam, on May 25, 2012. The two Italian marines have been charged with killing two fishermen who were allegedly mistaken for pirates and shot dead from an Italian oil tanker Enrica Lexie off the Kerala coast. (Getty Images/AFP file photo)Since the last India-EU summit in 2012, both sides have stayed away from top level formal engagement. This in itself was unusual, given that the practice has been to hold annual summits. Modi met the former EU chief, Herman van Rompuy in a pull-aside meeting on the sidelines of the G-20 summit in Brisbane in November, which was the first time the idea of a summit in 2015 was mooted.Both sides have been struggling for years now to complete a broad-based free trade agreement. The India-EU FTA has been held up over EU demands for lower tariffs on auto components and wines, while India has had no success in persuading EU to allow more temporary work visas for Indian nationals.The Modi government is seen as being more pro-trade than the previous UPA, but there is no indication they will accede to all of EU's demands. The summit would have given both sides an opportunity to work on both multilateral (FTA talks) as well as bilateral (marines) issues.The refusal to the Indian summit, say officials, is likely to affect the EU a lot because India has been focusing on engaging individual countries thus far, having found it tough going with the EU. The EU, say sources here, just made itself a little more irrelevant to India.CBS has sold more than half its advertising inventory for the 2013 broadcast of Super Bowl XLVII in New Orleans, Advertising Age reports. CBS also could sell-out levels approaching 80% in the next few weeks, CBS EVP sports ad sales John Bogusz said. “We are over 50% sold in the game, and we have a number of active negotiations … that will get us closer to 80% sold,” he added — possibly in “a week or two.” Car advertising is driving the pace, notwithstanding GM’s recent decision to forgo Super Bowl ads next year. Hyundai, Audi and others appear to have picked up the slack. GM blamed the high cost of ads — which buyers say range between $3.7 million and $3.8 million per 30-second spot for companies buying multiple ads. Even so, Bogusz said the auto category “is extremely healthy and it has been active.” He also said “We do have movies in the game and … we are in active negotiations with beverages.” The Super Bowl has been the most watched TV broadcast each year for the past three games, which has spurred marketers to buy early and networks to boost rates.Story highlights Hezbollah: The EU's decision was "written by American hands using Israeli ink"
The Lebanese Shiite group has been supporting the Syrian regime
A Syrian opposition group says praises the EU's decision but says it can go further
Kerry: The move will allow European agencies to crack down on Hezbollah's fundraising
Hezbollah denounced the European Union's decision to list its military wing as a terrorist organization, calling the move "aggressive and imbalanced."
The Iranian-backed Lebanese Shiite group is already viewed as a terrorist organization by the United States and Israel. In recent months, it has joined forces with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in that country's ongoing civil war.
Hezbollah issued a statement Tuesday saying the EU's decision Monday was "written by American hands using Israeli ink" and that "all (that) was left for the Europeans to do was to sign the document and approve the legislation."
Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati said he hoped that the European Union had read data and facts about Hezbollah more thoroughly before making the decision, the state-run National News Agency reported. The report did not specify what data about Hezbollah the prime minister was referring to.
The EU move
The European Union agreed to target just the military component, a European diplomat told CNN. Critics of such an approach say designating part of an entity isn't effective or practical.
But Israeli Justice Minister Tzipi Livni's spokeswoman called the decision "correct and just," adding that it "puts an end to the wrong argument" that Hezbollah's military activities are absolved by the group's political status.
"Even if Hezbollah is a political party, that does not whitewash and make legitimate their terrorist activities," the spokeswoman said.
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said the move "will have a significant impact on Hezbollah's ability to operate freely in Europe by enabling European law enforcement agencies to crack down on Hezbollah's fundraising, logistical activity and terrorist plotting."
"As Hezbollah has deepened its support for the brutal Assad regime and worked to expand its global reach through increased involvement in international criminal schemes and terrorist plots around the world, a growing number of governments are recognizing Hezbollah as the dangerous and destabilizing terrorist organization that it is," Kerry said.
The Syrian National Coalition, an affiliation of Syrian dissident groups, praised the EU's move -- but said the group could do more.
"We urge the European Union to extend their decision to include all of Hezbollah political officials who are part of the decision making" of the party's military wing, the SNC said in a statement Tuesday.
The SNC also called for "the trial of all of Hezbollah's officials for their crimes of terrorism committed against our Syrian people and on our soil."
Donilon: Hezbollah not a'responsible political actor'
Hezbollah was formed after Israel invaded Lebanon in 1982 to go after the Palestine Liberation Organization. The group has been accused of high-profile terror attacks over the years.
"Hezbollah first gained notoriety in 1983 after it bombed the United States Embassy in Beirut -- an attack that killed 63 people," wrote Tom Donilon, President Barack Obama's former national security adviser, in a New York Times column this year.
"Shortly thereafter, Hezbollah bombed the American and French Marine Barracks in Beirut, killing 241 Americans and 58 French service members with one of the largest explosive devices ever detonated during a terrorist attack."
The group also conducted a series of kidnappings, airplane hijackings and bombings in the 1980s and 1990s, Donilon wrote.
He said the group has tried to portray itself as a political entity focused on social services and defending the country.
"But it is an illusion to speak of Hezbollah as a responsible political actor," Donilon said. "Hezbollah remains a terrorist organization and a destabilizing force across the Middle East."Bitcoin price jumps six percent as US Marshals’ auction comes to a close
It’s after 5 p.m. ET in New York, which means winners of the auction of seized Silk Road bitcoins conducted by the U.S. Marshals Service are starting to be notified.
There were nine blocks of 3,000 bitcoins up for grabs as well as one block of 2,656.51306529. The bitcoin total, 29,656.51306529 coins, is worth about $18.9 million at the current exchange rate.
Advertisement
The price paid for the coins, as well as the winning bidders, is still unknown. A spokesperson for the Marshals Office said that it would not be releasing any details of the auction today and remained vague about what and when it would say in the future.
So far, a few people have come forward to say that they lost, including Barry Silbert’s Bitcoin Investment Trust syndicate.
Announcement: The SecondMarket / Bitcoin Investment Trust bidding syndicate for the US Marshals bitcoin auction was outbid on all blocks — Barry Silbert (@barrysilbert) June 30, 2014
Alex Waters posted a screenshot on Reddit of the email he received about his losing bid, which he said was between $400 and $500. Coinfire also reported that Josh Jones, co-founder of DreamHost, also lost his bid in that range as well.
Rumors on Twitter suggest that the losing bid prices could have been as high as $665, well above the $570 market price on Friday when they had to place their bids.
@barrysilbert brother Alan reveals approximate average Bitcoin bid price from @secondmarket syndicate was $665: https://t.co/FadTOKzsRd — Generalstuff (@Generalstuff101) June 30, 2014
Thanks to all the speculation and uncertainty though, the price has jumped from $598 to $639 today. If the feds had dumped all of the coins on the market, the price would’ve surely dropped. But instead, the rumors of failed bid prices above market cost is driving demand.
Here’s what the price has looked like in the past 24 hours:
We’ll be monitoring this story for updates as winners and losers come forward.WARREN — Mark Marvin’s Downtown Development Group LLC purchased the Robins Theatre building and plans to turn the decades-dormant venue into a downtown entertainment hub that will be managed by Sunrise Entertainment.
“We feel it’s going to be a linchpin to the revitalization of downtown and bring it back to its previous glory,” Marvin said Tuesday. “We purchased it because it fits in with the rest of the projects we’ve done to get foot traffic and people downtown.”
According to the Trumbull County Auditor’s website, DDG purchased the building at 160 E. Market St. for $375,000 from Heritage Galleria Ltd. Marvin, whose downtown properties include the Mahoning and Atrium buildings, as well as the site of Nova Coffee Co., estimated the cost between $5 million and $7 million to reopen the 1,500-seat theater. The main expenses will be updating the heating, ventilation and air conditioning as well as electrical work.
“The space itself is not in as bad of condition as people would believe,” Marvin said. “The beauty of the place is still evident … There are some sound issues and lighting issues that the modern day presents to us that we have to fit into a theater built in 1923, but none of it is insurmountable.”
Sunrise Entertainment, which presents the River Rock at the Amp series at the Warren Community Amphitheatre and has promoted concerts and theatrical events at Packard Music Hall in Warren and Powers and Stambaugh auditoriums in Youngstown, will operate the venue once restoration is complete.
Marvin said he has worked with Sunrise co-founder Ken Haidaris on other projects and his knowledge of the entertainment side made him willing to proceed.
“If I couldn’t book that side of it and have someone I felt comfortable doing it with, I would have walked away from the project,” Marvin said. “The idea is not only to restore this crown jewel but also to use this crown jewel. If you restore it and don’t use it, it’s essentially money lost … We’ve proven on both sides what he does best and what I do best that we have the ability to come in and make this project work, and that’s what’s different from other people who’ve come in and tried to do something.”
Haidaris added, “The goal is to drive traffic to Warren, to get people walking the streets again in downtown Warren, have a drink, have a bite to eat, use the parking deck. Downtown is beautiful, but it doesn’t have the energy it needs. This will do that. It’s the tipping point.”
In recent years, the Robins Project has organized volunteer cleanup efforts at the theater and partnered with The New School in New York City to develop potential uses for the space.
Robins Project organizer Melissa Holmes said, “We all hoped and prayed that one day a private developer would come along and infuse this project with the capital it needs to be restored. Mark Marvin has a vision of a revitalized downtown Warren and has put his money where his mouth is. It is an exciting moment to know that the dream of restoring the Robins will finally become a reality.”
The smaller theater fills a niche for shows that aren’t big enough to play Packard, Powers and Stambaugh, which each hold more than 2,000 people, Haidaris said. He and Marvin envision the space being used for concerts and comedy shows as well as movies. They also want it to be used by schools that might not have adequate theater spaces and for other community events.
The building also includes office and retail spaces that currently are occupied. Marvin said there are no changes planned for those tenants in 2018.
The theater will operate as a private-public partnership, Marvin said, and more details about that partnership and the renovation process will be revealed at a press conference scheduled for Feb. 6.
Maintenance and cleanup work will start next week. Marvin said some factors are beyond their control, but he estimated the renovation project will take between 18 and 24 months to complete.
“Hopefully, we’ll be having an opening event two years from now,” Marvin said.
agray@tribtoday.comTo many who have witnessed its brutal tactics and religious extremism, the Islamic State, or ISIS, seems uniquely baffling and unusually dangerous. According to its leaders’ own statements, the group wants to eliminate infidels, impose sharia worldwide, and hasten the arrival of the Mahdi. ISIS' foot soldiers have pursued these goals with astonishing cruelty. Yet unlike the original al Qaeda, which showed little interest in controlling territory, ISIS has also sought to build the rudiments of a genuine state in the territory it controls. It has established clear lines of authority, tax and educational systems, and a sophisticated propaganda operation. It may call itself a “caliphate” and reject the current state-based international system, but a territorial state is what its leaders are running. As Jürgen Todenhöfer, a German journalist who visited territory in Iraq and Syria controlled by ISIS, said in 2014, “We have to understand that ISIS is a country now.”
Yet ISIS is hardly the first extremist movement to combine violent tendencies, grandiose ambitions, and territorial control. Its religious dimension notwithstanding, the group is just the latest in a long line of state-building revolutionaries, strikingly similar in many ways to the regimes that emerged during the French, Russian, Chinese, Cuban, Cambodian, and Iranian revolutions. These movements were as hostile to prevailing international norms as ISIS is, and they also used ruthless violence to eliminate or intimidate rivals and demonstrate their power to a wider world.
The earlier episodes are reassuring when contemplating ISIS today. They show that revolutions pose serious dangers only when they involve great powers, since only great powers have proved capable of spreading their revolutionary principles. ISIS will never come close to being a great power, and although it has attracted some sympathizers abroad, just as earlier revolutions did, its ideology is too parochial and its power too limited to spark similar takeovers outside Iraq and Syria.
History also teaches that outside efforts to topple a revolutionary state often backfire, by strengthening hard-liners and providingSAN JOSE (CBS SF) — A proposed measure for Santa Clara County would provide up to $950 million to address the lack of housing, an issue that has become a major concern among residents.
The county’s board of supervisors will vote on the proposal Tuesday to decide whether the measure will be presented to voters in November.
“We need this stable revenue source to even begin to fill the enormous need we see everyday on our streets,” Santa Clara County board president Dave Cortese said during a news conference this morning in San Jose.
County residents have identified housing as the primary issue in recent surveys commissioned by the county surpassing crime and traffic, a finding Cortese hasn’t seen before while serving in office.
If approved, the measure would be funded through property taxes by taking $12.66 from every $100,000 in assessed valuation of a home, Cortese said.
The supervisor would like to see $700 million of the total directed to extremely low-income and homeless people and the remaining $250 million for first-time homebuyers and a new work force proximity housing program, which would provide loans for people who work in the county but live outside of the area, he said.
The program could bring 2,000 households to the county within 20 miles of their jobs and in return ease freeway congestion, Cortese said.
The funds would be divided among the county’s 15 cities and Cortese sees the money getting distributed based on the competitiveness of each jurisdiction in putting projects forward.
Today’s news conference was held at the Japantown Senior Apartments, an affordable housing project that is home for six formerly homeless veterans.
San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo attended the opening for the senior apartments, where he heard from people overcoming obstacles to find a home, but there were many more who have contrasting stories.
“We have an opportunity now with this measure to change the narrative in this valley, to have a transformative impact,” Liccardo said, adding the city has more than 4,000 homeless people.
The county has the fourth largest homeless population across the country, Chavez said.
The county’s Homeless Point-In-Time Census and Survey last year showed that of the 6,556 homeless people in the area, 4,627 of them were without shelter and 700 were veterans.
Homelessness also affects the environment when people without shelter occupy creek beds that can result in tons of trash, degraded water quality and damaged ecosystems, Santa Clara Valley Water District board chairwoman Barbara Keegan said.
“These encampments may be out of sight but they are not out of mind,” Keegan said.
The Health Trust CEO Fred Ferrer also bolstered the measure by equating housing with health care, as people who suffer from a chronic condition and live outside are more challenged in getting treated.
People who live with HIV and AIDS need to refrigerate their medication that needs to be taken with food. If they don’t have a home and struggle to find their next meal, taking the medicine won’t be as effective,
Ferrer said.
The Health Trust provides housing opportunities for 800 low-income
clients in the county with HIV and AIDS, according to Ferrer.Donald Trump continues to bypass both the media and popular pollsters by creating his own provocative public surveys, each loaded with at least 30 questions. And here comes the fifth one: With signature grass-roots flair, Mr. Trump’s newest poll asks voters to weigh in on his upcoming debate with Hillary Clinton, now just six days off, and a crucial event for both nominees.
“To prepare for the biggest night of our campaign, I’m turning to the very people who have humbled me and gotten me to where I am today. You,” Mr. Trump advises participants. “I want your honest input. If you disagree with something, tell me you disagree. Look, I never made it in business surrounding myself with people who tell me what I want to hear. Our campaign is about telling it like it is — and that’s not changing.”
The survey itself was created by campaign manager Kellyanne Conway, a veteran pollster herself. It asks for practical input on 14 policy items, from illegal immigration to the $19 trillion federal debt. But it also seeks advice on a broader scope. Should Mr. Trump defend his agenda, attack Mrs. Clinton’s ideas or present an equal balance between the two? Here’s a few more questions from the poll, verbatim:
“Do you think Trump should refer to Hillary as ‘Crooked Hillary’ on stage?
“Should Trump call out Hillary’s reluctance to say ‘radical Islamic terrorism’ and her underlying fear of being politically incorrect?
“Should Trump criticize the Clinton Foundation’s corruption, and urge the Clintons to shut it down and return all foreign donations?
“Should Trump force Hillary to answer questions about her email scandal that the press still won’t ask?
“Should Trump contrast his America-first foreign policy with Hillary’s globalism?
“Should Trump focus on his own experience living the American Dream, and his desire to make it accessible for all Americans?”
The four previous Trump polls sought public input on the candidate’s overall campaign strategy, the news media, Mrs. Clinton’s ideas and major issues.
MCCAUL’S TIMELY INPUT
Just in time, perhaps. House Committee on Homeland Security Chairman Michael T. McCaul reveals a new nonpartisan counterterrorism protocol on Tuesday, titled “A National Strategy to Win the War Against Islamist Terror.” The work has significant public outreach; an afternoon press conference is scheduled at the U.S. Capitol, with an event at the American Enterprise Institute to follow.
“The strategy outlines how we can reverse the tide of terror. This is also a guide for the next president of the United States, who must be clear-eyed about the nature of the threat and prepared to confront it decisively,” says Mr. McCaul. “Make no mistake, this war will be long, and it will test America’s resolve.”
His outline strategy includes promising, practical ideas with an eye on asymmetric engagement — including advice on helping local communities on how to spot warning signs of dangerous activities sooner, plus “counter messaging of terrorist propaganda.”
NOW THERE’S A THOUGHT
“In presidential elections, traditionally it’s the economy, stupid. But if there’s one thing that trumps the economy, it’s whether you live or |
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.