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-1295 DAC at 2mg per week or
2. GHRP Product (GHRP-6, GHRP-2 or Ipamorelin) at 200mcg once per day. Intermediate Peptide Cycle for Muscle Building 1. GHRP Product at 200mcg +
Mod. GRF 1-29 at 100mcg (2 times per day) or
2. GHRP Product at 200mcg +
CJC-1295 DAC at 100mcg per day (2 times per day). Advanced Peptide Cycle for Muscle Building 1. GHRP Product at 200mcg +
CJC-1295 DAC at 100mcg (2 times per day) +
IGF-1 at 50mcg after workouts or
2. GHRP Product at 200mcg +
Mod. GRF 1-29 at 100mcg (2 times per day) +
PEG-MGF at 200mcg after workouts. Muscle Building Injection Routines while using peptides for beginners CJC-1295 DAC ◦2mg taken once per week, at any time of day. GHRP + GHRH (once per day) ◦Inject your dosage (ensuring you have not consumed any food/beverages for at least 1 hour before, an optimal time would be first thing in the morning). ◦Ingest a protein only or protein and carbohydrate meal afterward to create an insulin spike. ◦Do weight training in the hours afterwards. Muscle Building Injection Routines while using peptides for Intermediate users GHRP + GHRH (twice per day) ◦Inject your GHRP + GHRH peptides together in the same syringe (ensuring you have not consumed any food/beverages for at least 1 hour before, an optimal time would be first thing in the morning). ◦Ingest a protein only or protein and carbohydrate meal afterward to create an insulin spike. ◦Do weight training in the hours afterwards. ◦at least 1 hour after your dinner (or last meal of the day), take your second GHRP + GHRH injection. ◦If you are trying to control your body fat then have a protein only meal 20-30 minutes afterwards, otherwise a protein/carbohydrate meal will create a better insulin spike. Muscle Building Injection Routines while using peptides for Advanced users GHRP + GHRH + IGF-1 Follow the same routine as shown above for "intermediate" persons. However, as soon as possible after your weight training you should also inject 200mcg of PEG-MGF (IGF-1e) and/or 50mcg of IGF-1 LR3 preferably into a muscle (although due to the long half-life of both products, sub-q injections are also acceptable). If injecting intramuscularly, you should make sure that the muscle you are injecting into is not covered by a thick layer of fat. Usually due to the length of insulin syringe needles, injections are therefore limited to the biceps for most persons. While GHRP + GHRH can be injected each day with great benefit, even if you don't do weight training on that day. On the other hand, IGF-1 LR3 and MGF injections should be reserved for post-workout only. Anti-Aging properties of peptide use For the Anti-Aging crowd, we recommend choosing only 1 peptide, rather than a combination. The reason for this is that as you get older your GH levels decline rapidly and therefore you will benefit from any kind of GH increase meaning there is no need to overdo things with multiple peptides. If you wish to use more than one peptide, we recommend cycling a GHRP product (GHRP-6, GHRP-2 or Ipamorelin) every 3-6 months with CJC-1295 DAC for two reasons. The first reason is that CJC-1295 DAC is a GHRH (growth hormone releasing hormone) acting directly at the pituitary, while GHRP products indirectly stimulate GH by causing the release of Ghrelin. Rotating the products would therefore ensure one method of GH stimulation does not get "worn out" from repeated exposure to the peptides. The second reason is that even though CJC-1295 DAC has been proven safe in much higher dosages than we recommend, since it causes a continual GH release (GH bleed) no one can be certain how continual use would affect the pituitary in the long-term, so it's a case of being "better safe than sorry" and never using it for longer than 6 months at a time without a break. Diet Considerations when using peptides for Anti-Aging For CJC-1295 DAC there are no particular diet restrictions that need to be followed due to its long half-life. For GHRP products the following should be observed as insulin and fatty acids can blunt the release of GH in the body and therefore make your injections less effective: •Avoid eating/drinking anything high in fat for 3 hours before your injection and anything high in carbohydrates for 1-2 hours (always do your injection on an empty stomach). •Wait at least 20 minutes after your injection before eating/drinking anything with calories. Anti-Aging Peptide Injection Amounts 1. CJC-1295 DAC taken at 2000mcg (2mg) once per week or
2. GHRP Product (GHRP-2, GHRP-6 or Ipamorelin) taken at 200mcg per day. Anti-Aging Injection Routines CJC-1295 DAC ◦2mg taken once per week, at any time of day. GHRP-2, GHRP-6 or Ipamorelin Example 1 - Night Time Injection (recommended to reduce possible tiredness during day). ◦Ensure you have an empty stomach (i.e. 2-3 hours since your last meal). ◦Inject your GHRP peptide and go straight to bed. Example 2 - Morning injection ◦Take your injection of the GHRP product first thing in the morning at 100mcg. ◦Wait at least 20 minutes before having breakfast or any beverages (including coffee/tea).
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March 30, 2016, 4:11 PM GMT / Updated March 30, 2016, 4:44 PM GMT By Erik Ortiz
Two white police officers involved in the fatal shooting of an unarmed black man in Minneapolis last fall won't face charges, prosecutors announced Wednesday.
The decision not to criminally charge Officers Mark Ringgenberg and Dustin Schwarze in connection with 24-year-old Jamar Clark's death came after weeks of racial tension that saw an 18-day encampment outside of a police precinct and clashes between demonstrators and cops.
Activists demanded an independent investigation after Jamar Clark was shot during an altercation with police in Minneapolis. Kenya McKnight
Hennepin County Attorney Mike Freeman said the Nov. 15 shooting was justified, and Clark was not handcuffed when he was taken to the ground and shot.
Clark was struck in the head during what police say was an early-morning struggle between him and the officers amid a domestic dispute between him and his girlfriend.
“Criminal charges are not warranted against either officer,” said Freeman, who also released ambulance video from the scene showing part of the incident.
Freeman had the final decision in filing charges after he said he would go the unorthodox route and not rely on a grand jury — the first time in at least 40 years that one wasn't used in a police shooting case in Hennepin County, prosecutors said.
The grand jury method has been used in other high-profile cases of police-involved shootings that have more recently failed to result in indictments.
For instance, grand juries declined to bring charges against the officer who shot 12-year-old Cleveland boy Tamir Rice or the Ferguson, Missouri, cop who fatally shot 18-year-old Michael Brown.
“I felt it was more transparent and more accountable,” Freeman said Wednesday of not using a grand jury.
Clark was a suspect in an assault against his girlfriend when police confronted him, and authorities say he was interfering with paramedics who were treating her.
Freeman said Ringgenberg and Schwarze told him to take his hands out of his pocket, and Schwarze took his handcuffs out; he was not not able to get them on him.
As part of the chaotic struggle, which was recounted by Freeman, Schwarze maintained control of Clark's hand and heard Ringgenberg say, "He's got my gun."
Schwarze said he put the gun to the edge of Clark's mouth. "Let go or I'm going to shoot you," he said.
"I'm ready to die," Ringgenberg said Clark told him, according to Freeman.
Schwarze heard Ringgenberg say, "Shoot him" — prompting the firing of the gun.
Clark was shot 61 seconds after police first approached him. No weapon was found on him, Freeman said.
Related: 'Black Lives Matter' Protesters March Out of Mall of America, Demand Justice
Members of the community had said Clark was handcuffed when he was shot, although the local police union had disputed the claim and said Clark was going after one of the officer's guns.
Freeman during the news conference acknowledged the contradictory eyewitness testimony, but said ultimately Clark's DNA was found on the grip of Ringgenberg's gun, mace container and holster.
The aftermath of the shooting boiled over in the following days when officers used pepper spray to disperse crowds who hurled bottles, rocks and bricks during protests and five people were wounded when gunfire erupted at a Black Lives Matter rally.
Four people were charged, and Freeman at the time agreed that the shooting appeared to be racially motivated since three of the suspects were white and one was Asian.
Ringgenberg and Schwarze are seven-year police veterans and had served in Minneapolis for just over a year. They had been on paid leave following the investigation but have since returned to desk duty.
Ringgenberg had no complaints filed against him with Minneapolis police's internal affairs unit, according to a records summary released in November.
Related: Eight Arrested as Police Tear Down Minneapolis Black Lives Matter Protest Camp
Schwarze, meanwhile, was named in an excessive force lawsuit filed less than two weeks before Clark's death. The suit involved his time in 2011 as an officer in the Minneapolis suburb of Richfield, when he used a stun gun during a traffic stop and was accused of threatening to beat the car's occupants, the complaint says.
Freeman acknowledged Wednesday that police are faced with difficult choices when they must make split-second decisions in potentially fatal situations. But officers can also work to "reduce the number of situations where guns are discharged," he said.
"Nationally, this job has only become more challenging due to the lack of trust between the community and police," the prosecutor said, adding that police "must be willing to tactically withdraw, and if force is necessary, they need to use the lowest level of force possible."8 Tips To Make The App Store App Review Process Less Painful
Drkc Blocked Unblock Follow Following Dec 20, 2016
You’ve designed a brilliant app and signed up for the Apple Developer Program, and now it’s time to publish it to the App Store. The app review process can be tedious because you have to comply with all of Apple’s rules in order for your app to be available in their store… and there’s a lot of rules. Eventually you’ll get the hang of it, but even seasoned developers sometimes get their app rejected by Apple. I’ve been publishing apps to the App Store for four years, so I wanted to share some tips I’ve found useful to help make this process as simple as possible for you.
1. Test your application
If your application requires an internet connection to work, does it open without crashing when there is no internet connection? Can it run without issues on an iPad if it was specifically built for an iPhone? Are 4-inch displays (iPhone SE) properly supported?
One of the first things you should focus on is ensuring you have a quality product. Having a quality app will save you a ton of development time, minimize app rejections due to crashes, and you’ll have happier users. Make sure your app is thoughtfully tested both programmatically (with unit tests and UI tests) and manually before submitting.
2. Automate the delivery process
You’re going to do a lot of repetitive tasks, so why not automate them using a continuous delivery tool?
Fastlane, a continuous delivery tool
Fastlane is used by thousands of mobile developers. It requires minimum configuration and is much simpler than configuring continuous integration servers because it runs locally in your machine. It uses a file called Fastfile where you can specify what steps you want it to do:
Just a bit of ruby
The Fastfile above describes a beta distribution process using the beta lane. The application is first compiled using gym, then uploaded to Crashlytics. You can create complex lanes to run your tests, build the project, and notify the team that a build is being processed, all with a line of code. Pretty cool, huh?
3. Beta test your application
There’s no better way to get feedback and catch some extra bugs than allowing people to do it for free. There are many options out there like Crashlytics, HockeyApp, etc. To use these services, you’ll either need to have an Apple Enterprise account or specify which users are going to be able to test your app outside the App Store. If you’re not using an enterprise account, you’ll need to add the Unique Device Identifiers (UDIDs) for users’ devices to your distribution certificate, which can be a tedious process.
Testflight
Testflight is another option to test your app (if you don’t mind longer review and build processing waits, that is) because you can have up to 2,000 beta testers with any kind of developer account.
When using Testflight there are two kinds of test groups: internal and external. Internal testers are usually part of the development crew, marketing team, or the group who owns the application because they will have some extra permissions for the app depending on their role. Any new build is available for them immediately after it’s finished processing in iTunes Connect.
In the case of the external testing group, your build will first be reviewed by Apple every time your app version changes.
The review process is much less strict than the one for the App Store and usually only takes 1–2 days.
4. Know what to expect in the review process
Before 2016, the review process was very, very slow. Waiting a week for an app to be reviewed was the norm. Some major companies with fast release cycles even accommodated their release schedule for this limitation:
“A lot of the way that we build software for iOS is controlled around the fact that you have a one-week release cycle,” said Maddern, whose team has done work for Uber Technologies Inc. and Foursquare Labs Inc.
Apple has done a good job making the process much faster. As a result, now it only takes an average of 1–2 days (based on my experience). I usually check App Review Times website to have an idea of how long I’ll have to wait.
5. Read the app store guidelines
If you haven’t read the App Store guidelines at least once, take a look at them. If your app idea doesn’t comply with those rules, it probably won’t make it to the App Store. Another interesting page is the App Store Review Guidelines History, where you can easily see the diff between the updated guidelines versus previous versions.👌
6. Look for the most common reasons for rejection
Definitely take a look at this and stay away from them. As of now, this list constitutes 67 percent of all rejections:
Most common reason for rejections
Here are some additional things to keep in mind based on what I’ve encountered personally:
Remove all placeholder content. Even if you specify you want to release the app manually and not when the review process is approved, you need to have real content.
If users are able to post content, have a reporting mechanism.
Disable unused application services both on identifiers in the developer profile and in Xcode under capabilities.
Don’t use Apple logos. For example, if you want to indicate an audio streaming action, don’t use the Airplay logo even if it might be more intuitive for users.
If your app has a login screen, be sure to leave a demo account under app review information on iTunes Connect.
If your app gets rejected, work with the Apple review team and carefully read the reasons behind it. You can always appeal a decision if you truthfully believe you were complaint with the guidelines, or if you feel like they made a mistake when rejecting your app. Just make sure to be respectful.
7. Set the app metadata
Besides the usual App Store optimization techniques (like using 100 characters under the keywords section), you should put the most important keywords in the application title.
Help your reviewers better review your application by leaving test credentials if your app has any kind of login screen.
Apps that use a single sign-on mechanism from social media apps are included in this requirement
Also, you can leave a note about anything the reviewers should know when they review your app. Trust me, they actually read it.
8. Know the review steps
Prepare for Submission: Set all the app metadata, like descriptions and screenshots.
Set all the app metadata, like descriptions and screenshots. Waiting for Review: App will be reviewed in the next 1–2 days. You can still make changes to the app metadata.
App will be reviewed in the next 1–2 days. You can still make changes to the app metadata. In Review: The changes to some of the app metadata (like screenshots) are frozen. You’ll need to reject the app to update the screenshot and wait another 1–2 days.
The changes to some of the app metadata (like screenshots) are frozen. You’ll need to reject the app to update the screenshot and wait another 1–2 days. Pending Developer Release: This only happens if you selected Manually release this version. The app was approved. You can now release it when you’d prefer.
This only happens if you selected Manually release this version. The app was approved. You can now release it when you’d prefer. Processing for App Store: Will be available soon.
Will be available soon. Ready for Sale: Live in the App Store.
Apple Review Steps
If you’re facing extenuating circumstances, you can request the review of your app to be expedited by completing a form. Expedited reviews are granted on a limited basis, so not every request will be approved. I’ve used this before and mine was granted so it just depends.
Bonus: Keep your app in the App Store
Congrats! Your app has been approved and the world has yet another app to choose from in the App Store. 🎉 But be careful, your app can be removed from the App Store for a number of reasons… So please don’t send push notifications promoting your new Android version of the app :]
I hope you found the tips useful! If you want to add any additional insights, or if you have an experience with Apple’s review process, I’d love to hear it!
Stay engaged with Propeller on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.The U.S. has historically led the way in the air travel sector, from the early days of rapid industry development following the Wright brothers' success at Kitty Hawk to air travel's glory days during the Pan Am era. But over the past two decades, America has fallen farther and father behind when it comes to the quality of commercial airline service. Today, instead of leading the industry or even treading water to keep up, east Asian and southwest Asian air carriers have bolted ahead of their Western competition by light years. By many accounts, several European carriers occupy the second tier of international airlines, leaving U.S. airlines in a distant third-tier. If American air carriers want to at least stay relevant, or better yet catch up, they first need to wake up, recognize the trends, dump the delusional corporate talking points, and fundamentally change the nature of the products and quality of the service they offer.
As a Diamond Medallion on Delta Air Lines, that airline's uber-elite frequent flier tier, I frequently find myself face-to-face with Delta's CEO, Richard Anderson, as he delivers a recorded greeting for passengers at the beginning of every flight's video safety presentation. Before each flight even takes off, passengers are remind of just how 20th century Delta Air Lines is via this dated and bland greeting from the company's chief executive. While Mr. Anderson and Delta's team of inside-the-box executives and marketers evidently thought that adding this short recorded message from the top was a net plus, I would venture to bet that the growing legions of ultra-savvy modern travelers, like me, see it instead as yet another reminder of just how old-school this airline's internal thinking -- and the external manifestation of that internal thinking - really is.
The problem with Mr. Anderson's attempt at being up close and personal with his passengers is similar to what has gone wrong with U.S. airlines generally -- the product seems to be a result of generic internally-generated notions of what customers today must like instead of being the outgrowth of a substantive consumer engagement process, true creative talent or revolutionary thinking. So what would be a better welcome message for Delta passengers than the monotonous voice of a dull CEO that could have been plucked straight from Central Casting's "generic corporate executive" actor database? Well, for starters just about anything; but to be more specific, any celebrity, even a "D-List" celebrity (NOT Kathy Griffin, though) would be better than Mr. Anderson. A sports star, a cartoon character, or even nobody would be better than what they currently have, or better yet a mix of all of the above. Surprise us! It does, after all, become quite annoying and frustrating to be forced to watch the same ill-conceived, boring video message on every single Delta flight.
Why harp on this one tiny aspect of one airline's customer experience? Because it's illustrative of the overall trend of poor product and service outputs by all major U.S. airlines. It's the tip of the iceberg, and by iceberg we're talking one the size of the entire continent of Antarctica. That's just one small example, but I could go on and on about how sub-par Delta's service is compared to their trendy international competition. So why not just fly another airline if you're unhappy with Delta's offerings, you ask? Well, internationally I certainly do most of the time. However, domestically we're stuck with only a few choices of air carriers who are allowed to monopolize the U.S. air travel market. And unfortunately, the level of service is indistinguishable among them all. If the likes of Singapore Airlines, Emirates, or Qatar Airways were allowed to operate domestic flights, I predict that they would shut down the likes of Delta, United, American, and US Airways in a heartbeat.
But what's so different about these international air carriers and why can't it be replicated here at home in the U.S.? That's an excellent question, and I think the primary answer is the standard of service they offer, which begins with the attitude of the company's employees. As any frequent international traveler can tell you, when you approach a ticket counter at one of these true five-star global airlines or when you board one of their aircraft, the attitude of the agents and crew is fundamentally different than the attitude of U.S. airline staff. While the latter are all too often preoccupied with personal conversations, checking text messages, and/or taking a defensive stance towards customers, the former are relaxed, pleasant, elegant, and always available to serve with a smile. And while many American airline staff are quite pleasant and do provide exceptional customer service too, the frequency of below-average service, in my experience and in the experience of most of my fellow jet-setting friends and associates, is far greater with domestic air carriers than with the above-named international carriers and many others.
American airline employees frequently cite the crap they have to put up with from passengers as an excuse for why they are always on the defensive, in a foul mood, or copping an attitude from time to time with their carrier's customers. I have no doubt that American travelers can dish out their fair share of unreasonableness, especially when dealing with the stress of air travel these days. But I don't think that there is anything unusual about the American air travel experience that isn't replicated across the globe. European, Arab, and Asian passengers get testy too, they make unreasonable demands, and they surely pull their fair share of frustrating stunts that airline staff could cite as an excuse for poor attitudes and poor service. But I still just do not see a trend of the agents and crews at these top-tier airlines abroad reacting or conducting themselves in the same ways. Instead, the trend outside of the U.S. is to respond with grace, poise, a smile, and a workable solution. And even when that workable solution isn't what the customer originally wanted, the first three qualities are usually enough to maintain a happy passenger and smooth sailing on to the next treasured customer and his myriad issues.
In sharing this constructive criticism, I am by no means indicting airline employees, although some on automatic defense may take this article as such no matter how many preemptive disclaimers I include. I've never been an airline employee, only a super-frequent customer and passenger of many airlines, both domestically and internationally. And I don't know whether the fault for trending sub-par service with U.S. air carriers lies with the attitude of employees or the culture and decisions propagated by senior management that result in those attitudes and the corresponding level of service. But as with most widespread and systemic problems, I strongly suspect there's enough responsibility to go around. I am just reporting what we customers are experiencing, and no amount of excuses can change the fact that we are indeed experiencing a significantly lower level of service on American air carriers than we experience on many international carriers with the same issues and challenges.
But all hope is not lost, and American companies have an incredible ability to bounce back from tough times and shoot to the top of an industry once again by fundamentally changing the way they do business, market their products, and serve their customers. Apple, anyone? There are literally hundreds of ideas and suggestions that could help improve U.S. air carriers' level of customer service, improve the air travel products they offer, and significantly boost their overall customer experience and corresponding level of satisfaction. But here is just a sampling of the type of solutions that U.S. airline executives need to start seriously considering if they ever hope to re-enter the top tier of global air carriers.
First, U.S. airlines need to start focusing on the customer. As simple as that seems, it is simply not done systemwide with any major U.S. airline, despite what the bland corporate taking points and public relations propaganda of each may emphatically declare. Even as one of Delta's most elite customers, I have never once been asked for feedback on their service in any substantive and meaningful way that has convinced me that it would actually be listed to or considered by someone with authority with in the company. And I certainly do have plenty of suggestions and advice to offer the open ear! But despite the extensive experience of frequent travelers on the consumer side of the airline industry, no airline employee has ever asked for any substantive feedback on my flying experience with them.
Note the emphasis on "substantive" above. Sure, I get a generic email survey after every few flights, but who seriously believes that those are anything but a pathetic attempt at passenger mollification themselves? Perhaps someone who spends tens of thousands of dollars on your airline (and others) each month for both myself and others would know a little something about what it would take to get me to spend more, or what it would take to make you my exclusive airline partner. However, this simple notion of substantive engagement of an airline's most valuable consumers seems to fly right over the heads of airline executives.
And focusing on the customer should involve more than just soliciting genuine feedback (in a genuine way!). All U.S. airlines could use a systemwide re-training in true first-rate customer service using the world's true top-tier airlines as a model to aspire to. Just because an airline has been around for 70 years does not mean that it can't stand to learn a whole lot from an airline that has only been around for 7 years.
In addition to employee behavior and etiquette, that may also mean allowing airline employees, especially on-board crew, to perform better by lightening their responsibility load so that the are better able to focus on customer experience with grace, poise, and a smile. The key is delivering a top-tier experience the overwhelming majority of the time (95-98%), not some of the time or even most of the time. All it takes to reverse the positive impression given by dozens of good employees is one or two other employees with an slight attitude or who are too busy discussing workplace issues to notice a passenger approaching the counter or still within earshot.
Second, air carriers need to fundamentally reform their loyalty programs. There's nothing more frustrating for a loyal frequent flier than to be stuck in a coach seat when they can see empty first and business class seats at the front of the plane. As someone who is the target of airlines' calculations about the likelihood of business travelers' willingness to pay for more expensive seats in first or business, I can assure you that the math here is flawed. Neither I nor my company is ever going to pay $5,000 for a plane ticket, but if you leave that extra seat in business class open because you were hoping that I would change my mind at the last minute, you're not only going to not earn the extra revenue by holding out but you're also going to cultivate a number of seething loyal customers who are sitting back in coach and thinking about that empty business class seat for their entire flight and beyond.
Another example of misguided loyalty program restrictions involves the fare classes that must be available for award ticket redemption. Passengers just don't understand how there can be plenty of seats open on a flight, even within a few days of departure, but not any seats open in the right fare class for redeeming award travel. Although airlines may have their own reasons for limiting award seat capacity, the mantra of "perception is reality" drives customer satisfaction and loyalty more than anything, and the perception that an airline is unreasonably restricting award travel availability breeds resentment among an otherwise loyal customer base.
Now this is not an example of something that foreign air carriers do that American carriers do not, but it is an example of a way in which American carriers can recover lost status and step out ahead of their international competition. If even one carrier did this domestically, they could also step out ahead of all of their fellow U.S. airline brethren and quickly become the an industry innovator and leader here at home. All it takes is one to break the mold, and the gratitude, loyalty, and business of zillions of savvy modern travelers is theirs for the taking.
Third, there is a lot more than airlines can do to improve the on-board experience for passengers, some of which may even save them some good money along the way. However, most of these improvements require a little outside-the-box creative thinking on the part of corporate bureaucracies that are not usually accustomed to such innovative thinking. For instance, Delta has experimented a little with sponsored product offerings on-board its flights and in its SkyClubs. Lately I have consistently found promotional boxes of men's grooming products in Delta lounges, and over the holidays Delta partnered with Ebay to have that company sponsor free in-flight wifi for all passengers.
There's no reason that such a samples-for-promotional-opportunities program could not be taken several steps beyond its current timid experimental phase, or to a more fully developed level with any air carrier. Allowing companies and designers to include promotional items and sample products in first and business class comfort kits would surely be a welcomed opportunity for many up-and-coming businesses to gain exposure to a clientele with greater than average disposable income. And such a set of partnerships would enable the airline to perk up its offerings to its premium passengers and possibly even cut out the costs associated with such offerings.
Similarly, Etihad Airways features pleasant, lightweight artwork on the otherwise blank surfaces on some of its aircraft. If an airline did not want to pay to outfit its planes with something interesting to look at instead of a blank wall, it could easily use the space to offer advertising opportunities. Instead of traditional ads that may annoy passengers or cheapen the appearance of a cabin, the airline could require a more creative approach to an advertising concept or simply allow companies to sponsor displays of genuine art, especially local or unique themed works. A whole host of other creative, mutually beneficial partnerships between airlines and ground-based businesses could also be envisioned to take advantage of airlines' untapped assets (i.e., blank spaces, undivided passenger attention, etc.).
The bottom line here is that product offerings from American air carriers are still greatly underdeveloped; but the good news is that there is still a lot of untapped potential. Likewise, the standard of service offered on U.S. airlines is sub-par compared to their international competition; but the good news there is that this is a fixable problem, as long as airline executives are willing to drop the generic corporate talking points and take an honest look at what they offer compared to their more innovative competitors in the same industry worldwide. They also need to substantively engage and truly listen to those who know what repeat customers want and expect - the customers themselves.Upgrading to an Open Beta Supporter Pack is like you purchased that pack initially. This means that if it gives you less points than the pure-points pack would have, then points will be deducted to make it fair. Note that to upgrade between tiers of packs that have cosmetic weapon effects, those effects must be in your microtransaction stash for it to succeed.
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Lead Developer. Follow us on: Twitter Facebook | Contact Support if you need help! Last bumped on Nov 27, 2016, 7:41:39 AM Posted by Chris
on Grinding Gear Games on
If only it were possible to do this with the CB packs : (
Still waiting on those tab bundle sales! IRON MAN Posted by Dreggon
on on Quote this Post
Will you be adding a way to upgrade multiple packs? I have like 4 $20 dollar packs on my account, and I want to apply all of them towards a Divine Pack. Standard: ArcingTalon Posted by Sorites118
on on Quote this Post
" Sorites118 Will you be adding a way to upgrade multiple packs? I have like 4 $20 dollar packs on my account, and I want to apply all of them towards a Divine Pack.
Yes, I also would like to know if this is possible. I hope we can get clarification on this. Yes, I also would like to know if this is possible. I hope we can get clarification on this. Posted by vinsimbulan
on on Quote this Post
" vinsimbulan " Sorites118 Will you be adding a way to upgrade multiple packs? I have like 4 $20 dollar packs on my account, and I want to apply all of them towards a Divine Pack.
Yes, I also would like to know if this is possible. I hope we can get clarification on this. Yes, I also would like to know if this is possible. I hope we can get clarification on this.
Yes, I have multiple $50 packs and it seems a bit unfair that I have to spend another $60 to get a divine pack. I'm hoping this is not intended. Yes, I have multiple $50 packs and it seems a bit unfair that I have to spend another $60 to get a divine pack. I'm hoping this is not intended. Posted by illskills
on on Quote this Post
Yeah really, I've spent $150 all together. I can't add them all up and pay the difference for an Exalted pack? Posted by DefendtheWeak
on on Quote this Post
Awesome news, I'll buy the Devine Pack and probably upgrade it later to the Exalted Pack. :)
*EDIT*
BTW I finally got my signed stuff last week. *GettingSuperExitedAgain* :D Last edited by sToRmInG on Jun 9, 2013, 10:41:04 AM Posted by sToRmInG
on on Quote this Post
at long last! although i miss the cheaper end packs like one for 15 or 25$ forgot the supporter pack in CB Posted by Ward
on on Quote this Post
" illskills " vinsimbulan " Sorites118 Will you be adding a way to upgrade multiple packs? I have like 4 $20 dollar packs on my account, and I want to apply all of them towards a Divine Pack.
Yes, I also would like to know if this is possible. I hope we can get clarification on this. Yes, I also would like to know if this is possible. I hope we can get clarification on this.
Yes, I have multiple $50 packs and it seems a bit unfair that I have to spend another $60 to get a divine pack. I'm hoping this is not intended. Yes, I have multiple $50 packs and it seems a bit unfair that I have to spend another $60 to get a divine pack. I'm hoping this is not intended.
Not only this, but it also appears that I don't have the packs of lower value than the only offered upgrade(divine)? Not only this, but it also appears that I don't have the packs of lower value than the only offered upgrade(divine)? Posted by illskills
on on Quote this PostTHE HAGUE, Netherlands - Dope-selling coffee shops in Amsterdam won't be shutting their doors to foreign visitors any time soon, a huge relief to the hundreds of thousands of tourists who enjoy a toke or two in the Dutch capital alongside their excursions on the canals and to the museums.
Amsterdam welcomed Tuesday changes in the national government's drug policies as a green light to let tourists keep rolling in to the city's 220 world famous cafes that sell cannabis, marijuana and pre-rolled joints alongside cups of coffee.
On Monday night, Justice Minister Ivo Opstelten sent a letter to Parliament announcing he was scrapping a nationwide rollout of the so-called "weed pass" that was designed to keep non-Dutch residents out of coffee shops.
Beginning earlier this year in the south of the country, locals had to apply for a pass to get into such shops, but non-Dutch residents were barred in an effort to crack down on crime and traffic problems caused by people travelling from neighbouring countries like Germany and Belgium to buy produce they could not legally get their hands on back home.
Opstelten says he still wants only Dutch residents allowed into coffee shops, but is leaving it up to local authorities to enforce the ban.
"We are happy with the plans presented by Minister Opstelten because he is focused on trying to decrease criminality around coffee shops," Amsterdam municipality spokeswoman Tahira Limon told The Associated |
[HuffPost]
WHY EARLY POLLING STILL MATTERS - Lee Miringoff: "Poll Watcher Season is upon us big time. And, with it comes both the good and the bad. Each election cycle resurrects some oldies about the failings of public polls and typically ushers in a few new critiques. Expect 2016 to follow the same pattern….Pre-election polls are not predictive even though many continue to treat them that way. Common sense tells us that a poll conducted substantially before voting cannot be predictive. Without pre-election polls, we would be clueless about the surprising and lasting electoral appeal of Donald Trump….Public polls help us understand the emergence and decline of different candidates and also let the public in on the secret that campaign pollsters and strategists see in their private poll data. [HuffPost]
MORE OF THIS WEEK'S POLLS
-The public's worries about terrorism are starting to subside [Gallup]
-Democrats continue to shift further to the left. [Gallup]
-Republicans are on board for tougher background checks, as long as they don't think it's coming from Obama. [HuffPost]
-National polls show Trump maintaining a nearly 20-point lead over with Cruz. [HuffPost]
-Sanders is making gains in national primary polls, but Clinton still has a solid lead. [HuffPost]
THIS WEEK'S 'OUTLIERS' - Links to the best of news at the intersection of polling, politics and political data:
-Ted Cruz is poll testing attacks on Donald Trump in Iowa. [RCP]
-GOP pollster Dave Sackett warned the NRCC that Ted Cruz's nomination could hurt down ballot candidates. [Politico]
- Amy Walters looks at how turnout could affect Iowa and New Hampshire. [Cook Political Report]
-David Wasserman breaks down the number of delegates in each state. [Cook Political Report]
-The anti-establishment vote is on the rise, but establishment voters are still holding their own in early primary states. [Monmouth]
-Keith Gaddie and Kirby Goidel look at the decline of the working class white vote in American politics. [HuffPost]
-Republican primary voters think of Ted Cruz as a "true conservative," but Donald Trump as "strong." [YouGov]
-Margie Omero (D) argues that partisanship is behind Americans' continued divide over gun laws. [HuffPost]
-Mark Mellman (D) debunks a poll Donald Trump used to justify his attitude towards Muslims. [The Hill]
-Shawn Zeller asks if 2016 could be the final year for the telephone poll. [Roll Call]
-Stephanie Slade looks at why polling has become less accurate and more riskier. [Reason]Police union representatives gathered behind mayoral candidate Leticia Van de Putte on the steps of City Hall Tuesday morning as she thanked the San Antonio Police Officers Association (SAPOA) for their endorsement.
The announcement comes while the police union negotiates its contract with the City of San Antonio. There had been a sense that the two sides were becoming close to an agreement after a year of sporadic, tense negotiating as they prepare for their next meeting on March 31.
The concern is that this may mean a new contract will have to wait until after the May 9 City Election.
Neither Van de Putte nor SAPOA President Mike Helle said they think the endorsement would effect talks at the negotiating table, but Helle said “we’re hoping that at least, maybe, it will create more synergy with current Mayor Ivy Taylor … we can cut to the chase and get the deal done.
“We look forward to some fresh air,” he added.
Van de Putte, a former state Senator, was described by union leaders as a “long time friend” of the union.
“I believe that (negotiations) are moving forward very rapidly and I’m hoping that we’ll come to a resolution,” Van de Putte said after the announcement. “It’s gone on far too long. I’m hoping that it’ll get done quickly. If not, though, it will be my highest priority for me as soon as I’m sworn in as mayor.”
The City’s latest proposal comes with an equivalent of a 10.8% pay increase – realized through periodic bonuses and raises – and the concession that the City will pay for 100% of police officer health insurance premiums while family members, should they choose to use SAPOA insurance, will be responsible for their own.
The police union has asked for 13.4% increases in wages over that time, and an actual wage increase rather than a onetime lump sum payment once it agrees on the new contract.
“Technically, we’re really kinda far apart on a lot of things,” Helle said. “We’re not interested in bonuses.”
“One of the things that draws our attention to Leticia is that, she said it here today, ‘We don’t sue family,'” Helle said, referring to the lawsuit the City has brought against the police and fire union’s 10-year evergreen clause, which allows the current contract to be in place for 10 years until a new agreement is reached. “That was one of the things that Mayor Taylor really failed on – she was an advocate of the lawsuit.”
The lawsuit, filed in November 2014, asks for a declaratory judgment from a state district court judge that the evergreen clause in both collective bargaining agreements is unconstitutional.
“As I announced in February, I did not seek, nor interview, nor would I have accepted the endorsement of any organization with whom we are currently negotiating a $500 million contract,” stated Mayor Taylor in an email. “How I and the city conduct negotiations won’t change. Last week, the city and the union moved closer to an agreement and I remain confident that a deal can be reached by the Match 31 deadline. Our public safety and fiscal responsibility deserves and needs the security of that resolution.”
Read more: City of San Antonio Files Suit Against Police, Fire Unions
Van de Putte also said that too much of the negotiations were played in the media and away from the negotiating table. A holiday truce called by Mayor Taylor to halt advertisements and personal attacks, largely against City Manager Sheryl Sculley, went largely ignored by union members.
“This should never have gotten to this point in the first place and to resolve any difficult negotiation, it should not be done in the press,” Van de Putte said. “As candidate Van de Putte or as Mayor Van de Putte, I’m not going to negotiate through the press.
“I believe that it’s in the best interest for the people of this community for this contract to be resolved in a way that’s fair,” she added. “Quite frankly I have been extremely disappointed to see it get to such a personal and sometimes disrespectful level.”
*Featured/top image: Leticia Van de Putte accepts the endorsement for her mayoral campaign from the police union on the steps of City Hall. Photo by Iris Dimmick.
RELATED STORIES:
Read all the stories on the City and police union negotiations in the Rivard report archive.
City Offers Police Union a Better Wage and Benefits Deal
Police Union Counters City Proposal
City Drops Premium Demand on Police Union Members
Independent Financial Reviews Support City Vs. Police Union
Mayor Tables Union Lawsuit DiscussionAshampoo® - We Make Software!
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Malkin arrived in the NHL with a splash and has made plenty of waves ever since.
Malkin arrived in the NHL with a splash and has made plenty of waves ever since.
The native of Magnitogorsk, Russia, was selected with the No. 2 pick in the 2004 NHL Draft by the Pittsburgh Penguins, after the Washington Capitals selected Alex Ovechkin. Malkin played two more seasons in Russia before coming to North America for the 2006-07 season. However, his NHL debut was delayed until Oct. 18, 2006, because of a shoulder injury sustained in training camp, but he scored against future Hall of Fame goaltender Martin Brodeur of the New Jersey Devils in his first game. Malkin went on to set a modern-day NHL record with goals in the first six games of his career; the only other player to accomplish the feat was Joe Malone of the Montreal Canadiens in 1917-18, the League's inaugural season.
That was the first of many notable NHL accomplishments for Malkin, who went on to win the Calder Trophy as the NHL's top rookie following a 33-goal, 85-point season in 2006-07. He has won three Stanley Cup championships with the Penguins (2009, 2016, 2017) as well as the Hart Trophy as the NHL's MVP (2011-12), the Art Ross Trophy as the League's leading scorer twice (2008-09, 2011-12), the Ted Lindsay Award as the top player in the NHL as selected by the players (2011-12) and the Conn Smythe Trophy as playoff MVP (2009).
Malkin also has won three gold medals, four silver medals and three bronze medals playing for his country at the IIHF World Under-18 Championship, the World Junior Championship and the World Championship.
Malkin has been one of the top playmakers and scorers in the world, eluding defenders with finesse and power moves to create scoring chances. He has surpassed 100 points in a season three times (2007-08, 2008-09 and 2011-12), including an NHL career-high 113 points in 2008-09, and scored 50 goals in 2011-12.
He has produced in the Stanley Cup Playoffs as well. Malkin won the Conn Smythe Trophy in 2009 with a 14-goal, 36-point postseason performance that helped Pittsburgh dethrone the defending champion Detroit Red Wings.
He had 18 points (six points, 12 assists) in the 2016 playoffs as the Penguins again won the Stanley Cup, then led all scorers in 2017 with 28 points (10 goals, 18 assists) to help Pittsburgh become the first team to repeat as champion since the Red Wings in 1997 and 1998.
NOTES & TRANSACTIONSThe duo came together twice at Spa, with Ocon claiming Perez “tried to kill me” and the Mexican subsequently defending himself.
It came after Perez and Ocon rowed in Canada, collided in Azerbaijan and the clashed again in Hungary - with Force India bosses enforcing team orders after the Spa clash.
After the race in Belgium, Ocon called Wolff to discuss the incidents and growing tension, particularly as Wolff had experienced dealing with Lewis Hamilton’s and Nico Rosberg’s difficult relationship when they were teammates at Mercedes.
“It was probably the first thing I did was to call him [Wolff] and see how they dealt with Lewis and Nico back then,” Mercedes junior Ocon told Motorsport.com.
“Definitely I asked for advice and they [Mercedes] were there to help me. I had their point of view, I had Force India’s point of view.
“It’s always helpful to get different point of views, but especially from Mercedes. They are world champions so they know what they are talking about.
“I can’t go into detail [about the advice] but it was just a good help. You take it because it’s always good advice.”
Ocon, who finished eighth in the drivers' standings, said he and Perez had put the incidents behind them and moved on.
“It’s important we have respect for each other and it’s important for the team that there is a good atmosphere and we work together to develop the car correctly,” he said.
“We are maybe not going to go on holidays together, but we get along well.”In combing through the results of the 2012 election -- apparently finally complete, nearly two months after the fact -- I continue to find many similarities between 2012 and 2004 and one enormous difference.
Both of the elections involved incumbent presidents with approval ratings hovering around or just under 50 percent facing challengers who were rich men from Massachusetts (though one made his money and the other married it).
In both cases, the challenger and his campaign seemed confident he was going to win. and had reasonable grounds to believe so.
In both elections, the incumbent started running a barrage of negative ads defining the challenger in the spring. And in both elections, the incumbent had at least one spotty debate performance.
In both elections, each candidate concentrated on a more or less fixed list of target states, and in both elections the challenger depended heavily on outside groups' spending that failed to achieve optimal results.
The popular vote margins were similar -- 51 to 48 percent for George W. Bush in 2004, 51 to 47 percent for Barack Obama in 2012.
The one enormous difference was turnout. Turnout between the 2000 and 2004 elections rose from 105 million to 122 million, plus 16 percent. Turnout between the 2008 and 2012 elections fell from 131 million to 128 million, minus 2 percent.
Turnout is a measure of organization but also of spontaneous enthusiasm.
In 2004 John Kerry got 16 percent more popular votes than Al Gore had four years before. But he lost because George W. Bush got 23 percent more popular votes than he had four years before.
Kerry voters were motivated more by negative feelings for Bush than by positive feelings for their candidate. They disagreed with Bush's major policies and disliked him personally. The Texas twang, the swagger, the garbled sentence structure -- it was like hearing someone scratch his fingers on a blackboard.
Bush voters were more positively motivated. Political reporters had a hard time picking this up. His job rating was weak, but Bush voters tended to have a lot of warmth for him.
He had carried us through 9/11, he had confronted our enemies directly, he had pushed through with bipartisan support popular domestic measures like his education bill and the Medicare prescription drug benefit.
His criticism of his opponents was measured and never personal, and he blamed none of his difficulties on his predecessor (who had blamed none of his on his).
This affection evaporated pretty quickly, in the summer of 2005, with scenes of disorder in the streets of Baghdad and New Orleans. But it was there in 2004 and you can see it in that 23 percent turnout increase.
The 2012 election was different. Barack Obama got 6 percent fewer popular votes than he had gotten in 2008. And Mitt Romney got only 1 percent more popular votes than John McCain had four years before.
In retrospect, it looks like both campaigns fell short of their turnout goals. Yes, examination of election returns and exit polls indicates that the Obama campaign turned out voters where it really needed them.
That enabled him to carry Florida by 1 percent, Ohio by 3 percent, Virginia by 4 percent, and Colorado and Pennsylvania by 5 percent. Without those states he would have gotten only 243 electoral votes and would now be planning his presidential library.
But the conservative bloggers who argued that the Obama campaign's early voting numbers were below target may have been right. If Mitt Romney had gotten 16 percent more popular votes than his predecessor, as John Kerry did, he would have led Obama by 4 million votes and won the popular vote 51 to 48 percent.
Romney, like Kerry, depended on voters' distaste for the incumbent; he could not hope to inspire the devotion Bush enjoyed in 2004 and that Obama had from a diminished number in 2008.
But, to continue this counterfactual scenario, if Obama had won 23 percent more popular votes this year than in 2008, he would have beaten Romney by 85 million to 69 million votes and by 54 to 44 percent.
In reality, Obama's vote and percentage went down. Considering what happened in Bush's second term, that suggests a course of caution and wariness for the re-elected president and his party.
Michael Barone,The Examiner's senior political analyst, can be contacted at mbarone@washingtonexaminer.com. His column appears Wednesday and Sunday, and his stories and blog posts appear on washingtonexaminer.com.A state judge set a $2,000 bail Tuesday for a 64-year-old Baton Rouge man who has spent nearly 46 years in prison for a rape conviction that the judge recently threw out.
Wilbert Jones, who remained calm throughout the hearing, is expected to be released from prison Wednesday into the waiting arms of family and friends who said they have been praying for this day.
"He already requested gumbo," Jones' niece, Wajeedah Jones, said outside the 19th Judicial District Courthouse where District Judge Richard Anderson set her uncle's bail.
Anderson tossed out Jones' 1974 rape conviction on Oct. 31, ruling that the state withheld "highly favorable" evidence from the defense. That evidence, the judge said, probably would have resulted in a different outcome at his trial.
Jones was found guilty of aggravated rape and sentenced to life in prison.
East Baton Rouge Parish prosecutors are appealing to the Louisiana Supreme Court the decision to throw out Jones' conviction
Jones' attorneys with Innocence Project New Orleans argued before Anderson Tuesday that Jones is not a flight risk and poses no danger to society. They asked him to either release Jones outright or set a nominal bail. Assistant District Attorney Dana Cummings said too small a bail would be disrespectful to the rape charge and seriousness of the case.
Before the judge set the bail amount, Hunt Correctional Center Warden Timothy Hooper testified that Jones has been a model prisoner and is someone who is looked up to by his fellow inmates.
"He's been locked up for 45 years. It's going to be hard for him," Hooper said of what Jones faces outside of the prison walls. The warden said Jones has participated in re-entry classes.
Jones' older brother, Plem Jones, said he and his wife will take Wilbert Jones in and make sure he makes all future court appearances. His next court date is Jan. 23.
"We're ready for him to come home," Plem Jones' wife, Wilda Jones, testified.
+2 Judge hears arguments in Baton Rouge man's 1971 rape case; he's serving life, wants new trial A jury may not have convicted Wilbert Jones of abducting and raping a nurse in 1971 if it had heard that several weeks later, a "strikingly si…
Wajeedah Jones, the daughter of Plem and Wilda Jones, lives on the same street as her parents and said she has no fear for her children when it comes to Wilbert Jones.
Pastor Randy Currier, who ministered at Hunt Correctional for 20 years, said Jones was a regular Bible study attendee and was pleasant, respectful and genuine.
"He didn't ever complain. He always had a smile on his face," Currier testified.
After Anderson set Jones' bail, Wilda Jones shed tears outside the courtroom.
"Wonderful! Wonderful! So happy! Probably going to have a party," she said.
"Oh man! It's like a weight has been lifted off of me," Plem Jones added. "I knew this day would come one day. I just didn't know when."
Plem Jones said his brother has no bitter feelings, but he has cried over the years.
"He's been so humble," Plem Jones said.
Wajeedah Jones called Wilbert Jones the missing piece to their family.
"It means the world to us," she said of his impending release from prison.
Innocence Project New Orleans has worked on Jones' case since 2003, said Emily Maw, the group's director. Sometimes it takes the courts a long time to recognize and right a wrong, she added.
+2 Baton Rouge man serving life sentence in 1971 kidnap, rape seeks new trial Wilbert Jones has spent more than 45 years behind bars for a rape the Baton Rouge man and his attorneys contend he didn't commit, but the man …
Jones was convicted of abducting a young Baton Rouge General Center nurse from the hospital parking lot at gunpoint on Oct. 2, 1971, and raping her. Just 27 days later, a young woman who was visiting Our Lady of the Lake Regional Medical Center was kidnapped from that hospital's parking lot at gunpoint and raped.
Arnold Ray O'Conner's fingerprints were found on the Our Lady of the Lake victim's car, but he was never charged despite being arrested. O'Conner, 63, also of Baton Rouge, was convicted, however, of armed robbery in a September 1973 home invasion rape near Baton Rouge General.
Anderson ruled the state was legally obligated to turn over information about the Oct. 29, 1971, incident at Our Lady of the Lake to the Jones' trial attorneys but failed to do so. The judge said there were a "plethora of similarities" between the Baton Rouge General rape victim's description of her attacker and O'Conner's characteristics. He also said there were "striking similarities" between the two October 1971 rapes.
In his ruling last month, Anderson described the state's case against Jones as "weak, at best" and said it rested solely on the victim's testimony and "questionable identification" of Jones. The woman died in 2008.
Prosecutors have said they cannot retry the case without her.In late 2010, avant-garde fashion designer Mildred Von Hildegard of Mother of London hit the headlines after her bizarre, asymmetrical leather harness jacket — something Marilyn Manson might wear while reading erotic novels on the toilet, perhaps — was ripped off by one of Willow Smith's stylists. Nine-year-old Willow — daughter of Will Smith — had no idea it was a fake when she posed on the red carpet at the American Music Awards. Nonetheless, lawyers started contacting Von Hildegard — did she want to sue the Smiths?
But Von Hildegard let it go. "All I could think about was this really pretty little girl wearing my design, with a grin on her face, and that warmed my heart," she says, sporting a vegan's complexion and a T-shirt by heavy metal band Blind Guardian.
Like Willow, Von Hildegard, who lives in a craftsman house on a hill in Chinatown, knows what it feels like to be a young fashionista with outré tastes. "In high school I had shaved eyebrows and Klingon hair, shaved way up above my hairline," she says. At age 17 she became legally emancipated from her parents in Columbus, Ohio, and moved to New York City, becoming famous on the goth scene for her insane fembot club attire. "Back then I was wearing mostly hardware," she explains. "Plastic creations, and sockets."CAIRO (Reuters) - A climate of fear that kept Egyptians compliant during the 30-year rule of Hosni Mubarak is creeping back into daily life, less than three years after the revolt that toppled him.
Egyptian army soldiers guard with armoured personnel carriers (APC) in front of the main gate of Torah prison where former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak is detained in, on the outskirts of Cairo, August 21, 2013. REUTERS/Amr Abdallah Dalsh
Ordinary people like Mohamed, who runs a tiny Cairo shop selling mobile phone accessories, now lower their voices if they oppose the army’s overthrow last month of their first freely-elected president, Mohamed Mursi.
“It is about the principle that we stood in line and voted freely for the first time and this happens,” whispered Mohamed, who declined to give his second name. “People who speak about justice now do not dare to say it out loud, in case people accuse them of being terrorists.”
While activists critical of the army-backed government are obvious targets for intimidation, now ordinary Egyptians also avoid the noisy, boisterous discussion of politics that was common between the fall of Mubarak and that of his Islamist successor on July 3.
From mass arrests of Muslim Brotherhood leaders to the re-appearance of plain clothes enforcers on the streets of Cairo, a chill wind is blowing down the Nile.
Many Egyptians lambasted Mursi’s Brotherhood for economic incompetence and trying to grab excessive power during his year in power. But now the language is much more serious: the government accuses the Brotherhood of “terrorism” as it tries to crush the movement by rounding up hundreds of leading members.
At least 900 people have been killed since security forces broke up two pro-Mursi camps on August 14. Allies of the Brotherhood, Egypt’s oldest and best-organized Islamist organization, put the toll at 1,400.
A muted public response to Wednesday’s court ruling that Mubarak should be released from jail has added to a sense that the authoritarian order is making a comeback, threatening the freedoms that were the main dividend of the uprising that began on January 25, 2011.
Media are now dominated by those backing the army’s line that it removed Mursi in response to popular protests demanding his departure that began on June 30.
“I can sense, smell and very much tell that these are old Mubarak people coming to take their revenge on the Muslim Brotherhood,” said Khaled Dawoud, a liberal who backed Mursi’s overthrow but has since criticized the spread of violence.
“It is so obvious with the pro-Mubarak people who are filling the TV right now. They don’t even want to consider January 25 a revolution. They say June 30 is the only revolution.”
The Brotherhood, which kept large protest camps going for six weeks in Cairo to demand Mursi’s reinstatement, is now struggling to get people out. There have been no major protests for days. The marches have fizzled out since Sunday when rumors spread that government snipers were posted on rooftops.
The authorities have tightened their grip with dawn-to-dusk curfews. The emergency rule that lasted throughout the Mubarak era is back, at least for a month. Police who melted away in the face of public anger in 2011 appear invigorated by the new political climate, paraded as heroes on state television.
WIDENING THE NET
As the authorities widen their net to include regional and lower-ranking Brotherhood members, other Islamist parties worry that their own members will be hauled in.
Younes Makhyoun, leader of the Nour Party which follows the puritanical Salafi approach to Islam, voiced concerned that the political security apparatus that once hunted religious groups and government critics will make a comeback.
Islamist movements, like any that tried to offer a serious alternative to Mubarak’s military-backed party, were outlawed for decades. Like the Brotherhood, they were among the biggest beneficiaries of the 2011 uprising that allowed them to set up political parties and campaign openly for the first time.
Now, their members face citizen’s arrests at the makeshift checkpoints that have sprung up around Egypt, manned by pro-government vigilantes. Some Egyptians recognize these as the pro-Mubarak “baltagiya”, or thugs, who clashed with protesters during the 18-day revolt that ousted the former leader.
“Thugs have attacked them in the street, then handed them over to the police stations, then accusations have been fabricated against them - that they had weapons or were taking part in acts of sabotage,” Makhyoun told Reuters.
“We need guarantees from the authorities to the Egyptian people: that the gains of the January 25 revolution cannot be violated, especially in the field of freedoms, human rights, and freedom of expression.”
The crackdown on the Islamists has divided liberals in much the same way that it has polarized Egypt. Loath to endure Islamist rulers, elected or not, some liberals who joined the 2011 protests now side wholeheartedly with the army.
Egyptian state television has resumed its role as the mouthpiece of those in power. Channels emblazoned with banners reading “Egypt fighting terrorism” flicker on screens in Cairo’s street cafes, in bakeries and in barber shops.
A recent poll by the Arab American Institute suggested a huge majority of Egyptians had confidence in the military.
It is far from uncommon to hear Egyptians, whose economy was brought close to bankruptcy by persistent instability, hark back to Mubarak’s era as a time when they at least earned a living.
“The Brotherhood were a problem for this country. God has taken revenge on them,” said Haj Abdelfattah, 71, smoking his waterpipe as he sat on a plastic chair and sold overripe fruit by the road. “They acted for themselves, not Egypt.”
LIBERAL CRITICS FEEL THE HEAT
But some of the liberals who initially welcomed the army’s move against Mursi have been dismayed by the ensuing bloodshed. The army has promised fresh elections but critics fear they will pay a political price for their opposition.
Mohamed ElBaradei, a Nobel peace prize winner and the most prominent liberal to endorse Mursi’s overthrow, resigned as interim vice president early in the crackdown and left for Europe days later. He now faces a lawsuit raised by a private citizen who accuses him of “betrayal of trust”.
This points to the prospect of a new wave of politically-motivated suits. Under Mursi, Brotherhood supporters had brought a series of cases against opposition figures, in what critics called a form of political intimidation.
By contrast, Mubarak is close to being freed with charges ranging from corruption to complicity in the killing of protesters so far failing to stick.
“I have not been sent to trial but I am getting enough charges of treason and defecting and jumping off board, and this is discomfiting talk,” said Dawoud, who quit as spokesman for ElBaradei’s National Salvation Front as the death toll rose.
Like ElBaradei, Dawoud has become something of a pariah in the ranks of his former brothers-in-arms in Tamarud, the youth movement that led the protests against Mursi and welcomed the army’s intervention against him.
“Tamarud is finished... They issue statements that call on the army to do even more,” he said. “It is a major disappointment to me that some liberal and nationalist parties that had defended the goals of human rights and democracy... have suddenly decided to swallow this.”
The backlash is such that critical journalists and broadcasters have been silenced or forced off the air. Government officials have railed against the foreign press, accusing it of sympathizing with the Brotherhood and underplaying attacks on churches and the deaths of police.
Some foreign correspondents say they have been beaten while out reporting or faced pressure from vigilantes accusing them of being spies.
Activists say their efforts to condemn the extensive nature of the arrests, or the deaths of 38 people in custody, have been met with accusations of political bias.
“There are fears or threats of arrest by loyalists of the former regime against the revolutionary youth and activists... The atmosphere of fear and terrorizing of activists who speak out about anything - this is widespread,” said Mohamed Adel, media coordinator for the Egyptian Centre for Economic and Social Rights.
“Some big journalists... are being threatened and told you are either with us or with the enemy.”
Sitting in his shop, worried about getting home before curfew, Mohamed sees only dark days ahead for Egypt.
“The barrier of fear is returning. It is coming back stronger than before. The police were humiliated after the January 25 revolution and they want to restore their authority... The excuse will be anti-terrorism, the same excuse Bashar al-Assad uses in Syria,” he said. “We’ll end up a jungle like Syria.”After reporting on yet another failure of a Foxtel iQ3 set top box, I posted my story to the Foxtel Community earlier today only to have the post removed by Foxtel within hours of it going up.
My original story which can be read here generated a response from Foxtel.
In an email the Company who are looking to float in the second half of 2016 the Company asked me to resubmit my complaints so that they can “Follow up” and fix the problems associated with my original complaint.
This follows almost an hour on the phone with the pay TV Company on Saturday. (Maybe they should write notes on their customer profiles so they know exactly how complaints about poor service are being handled”.
Foxtel, who after deciding that I needed yet another Foxtel iQ3 box during my original call to the Company then sent me an engagement email, it said:
‘Allied Express will be delivering your Foxtel TV Kit between 2pm and 7pm today.
If you haven’t previously selected for the unit to be left without a signature, please ensure that someone is available to accept delivery.
To track your delivery in real time, click on http://logistics.foxtel.com.au/sik/TRACK?d=FSIK10530275&p=2088
The only problem is that like their iQ3, and their customer database it appears that Foxtel’s logistic tracking system is also stuffed with this error message appearing when one tries to search for the tracking information.
In addition and after five attempts to find my identity on Saturday, and above all my Foxtel account on the Companies database, an account which I have had for more than 20 years I got this email from Foxtel three days after my original call.
Remember this is a Company owned by two major Australian organisations Telstra and News Corporation.
Hi David,
You’ve just sent us a request to help find your lost username. (My lost username. I have been using this email and user name for more than two decades. It was also given to the Philippines based support operator on three occasions).
They go on to say Here it is: [email protected]
Keep it safe and sound
“Your username is a pretty important piece of information”.
In mid-February Foxtel is set to report their latest numbers.
Of late they have been dishing out cheap subscription offers in an effort to lift their subscription numbers that are getting pummelled by Netflix Stan and of late Amazon Prime who unlike Foxtel who charge over $100 for content are charging sub $5 for a subscription that gives one access to thousands of movies.
According to the Financial Review 50% shareholder in Foxtel, Telstra was keen to bring Fox Sports, which is wholly-owned by News Corp, in with the Telstra and News-owned Foxtel through a merger, and the telco would sell down its stake.
An integrated Fox Sports and Foxtel was expected to make the investment more attractive for new shareholders because of the value of live sports in Australia. [Fox Sports has secured long-term agreements for rugby union, National Rugby League, Australian Football League and A-League.]
It is understood in a Foxtel public listing, Telstra would sell down, taking its stake to 19 per cent, News Corp would hold a controlling 51 per cent and 30 per cent would be free float.
That would mean about a $1.5 billion to $2 billion raising, depending on several factors including the new entity’s debt load.
The AFR went on to say that Foxtel needs cash to invest in new technology and fight a wave of disruption from the likes of Netflix and Stan, which is 50-50 owned by Fairfax Media and Nine Entertainment.Texas Rangers rumors: Joakim Soria is drawing interest from Toronto, the Angels, and the Tigers, according to Jon Paul Morosi and Ken Rosenthal:
Angels, Blue Jays, Tigers have been in contact with Rangers regarding reliever Joakim Soria, sources tell @Ken_Rosenthal and me. @FOXSports1 — Jon Morosi (@jonmorosi) July 11, 2014
Soria has been terrific this year, even though there are a dearth of save opportunities for Ranger pitchers, and Soria has a team option for 2015 at $7 million, which makes him a more attractive trade target than a rent-a-pitcher would be.
Of course, that 2015 option makes Soria more attractive to the Rangers, as well, and as they reportedly see themselves as contenders for 2015, it seems likely they will want a significant package in order to part with Soria.
Neither the Angels nor the Tigers have real strong farm systems, but Toronto has some intriguing players in the minors, and would seem to be the best fit.
Jason Frasor and Neal Cotts are also supposedly available and are free agents after the season, so a team likely for a wholesale upgrade to its pen could look to add one or both of those pitchers, as well as Soria.The 28-year-old Seidenberg is a veteran of 374 regular season NHL games and has compiled 18 goals, 98 assists and 116 points in his seven NHL seasons. This season marked Seidenberg’s first with the Bruins, as he was traded from Florida to Boston with Matt Bartkowski at this year’s trade deadline (March 3, 2010), |
of two hiding in the bunch, the other died after spending a week in her refrigerator.
The woman’s discovery is only the latest in a series of disturbing finds in fruit across multiple states.
Deadly: Black widow spiders have enough venom to kill children and the elderly if bitten
‘I saw the spider come up [over the grapes],’ she told ABC27. ‘I quickly dropped the colander and screamed.’
Ms Whalen explained her initial instinct was to flush it down the sink, but she instead she trapped it in a plastic container and looked for a similar spider online.
It didn’t take long for her to discover she had a brush with a juvenile black widow spider.
Horrified: Yvonne Whalen explains who the creepy crawler climbed out from the bunch of grapes as she washed them
Shocked: She dropped the colander and screamed, her suspicions were soon confirmed with an online search
‘Had I known this could happen, I would have paid much more attention,’ she added.
Ryan ‘The Bugman’ Bridge, a local insect expert, confirmed the woman’s suspicions to the station.
‘They are dangerous,’ he said, ‘they are venomous.’
Trapped: Ms Whalen fought her initial instinct to flush the spider down the drain, instead saving it to confirm it was a black widow
Local expert: Ryan ¿The Bugman¿ Bridge confirmed the spider was 'unmistakeably' a black widow
Ms Whalen notified Giant, the supermarket where she bought the grapes, and explained she only wanted to make sure this did not happen to anyone else.
‘I gave them a call to let them know that I found the spider, I wasn't expecting anything in return,’ she said.
The chain sent her a gift card and pledged to be more diligent inspecting fruit, according to the station.
Spiders have also been discovered in grapes in Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri and Wisconsin, according to Food Safety News.
It is not uncommon for the deadly creatures to be found in grapes, according to Fox News.
Black widows are immediately noticeable because of the red mark on the back of their otherwise all-black bodies.LAPD to pay $10 million in traffic ticket quota controversy
Dennis Zine, a former City Council member and career LAPD motorcycle officer, said the settlement calls into question LAPD’s traffic division management. Zine is also incensed that Capt. Nancy Lauer, who ran the LAPD’s West Traffic Division at the time of the allegations, has been promoted.
The ticket controversy has been a black eye for the Los Angeles Police Department. Ticket quotas are against state law. After the officers’ allegations were made public, LAPD officials met with police union representatives and signed a letter emphasizing that the department prohibits quotas.
The settlement, approved unanimously, brings to more than $10 million the amount of taxpayer money spent on payouts and legal fees from the ticket quota cases. But that number could grow because one more officer's case is still pending.
The Los Angeles City Council on Tuesday agreed to pay nearly $6 million to a group of police officers who accused their superiors of imposing a secret traffic ticket quota system on the Westside.
“This whole thing clearly shows me that management did not do what they needed to do and taxpayers are footing the bill for that,’’ said Zine, who lost a bid for city controller in this year’s municipal elections.
Matthew McNicholas, one of the officers’ attorneys, called the action “a very fair” resolution. “These guys had targets put on their backs and nothing happens to this captain. In fact, she’s since been promoted. The message that sends from the department is, ‘We do what we want, how we want.’”
The $5.9 million settlement approved Tuesday resolves a pair of lawsuits filed in 2010 by 11 LAPD officers assigned to a motorcycle unit. In the lawsuits, the officers detailed what they claimed were strict demands for tickets placed on them by Lauer.
The lawsuits alleged that Lauer, who ran the division starting in 2006, required officers to write at least 18 traffic tickets each shift and demanded that 80% of the citations be for major violations.
Officers who failed to meet the alleged ticket minimums or raised concerns about them were reprimanded, denied overtime assignments, given undesirable work schedules, and subjected to other forms of harassment, according to the lawsuits. In a few instances, Lauer allegedly tried to kick officers out of the motorcycle unit, the lawsuits claim.
In a statement, Chief Charlie Beck defended the division’s practices. Management set “goals” to reduce traffic violations that resulted in serious injury and death, Beck said, but the jury in a separate 2009 case interpreted that as quotas, he said.
“We do not agree with the original jury’s findings,” he said. “Unfortunately the large jury award in the earlier court case made settling this case the most prudent business decision.”
Lauer, who currently runs one of the department’s patrol divisions, said she instructed officers to ticket illegal driving but did not set quotas.
The focus at West Traffic Division “was always on reducing traffic collisions and saving lives,” Lauer said. “We saw too many innocent people die at the hands of speeding and other dangerous drivers.”
The payment is the latest fallout from Lauer’s time at the helm of the traffic division, which patrols for traffic violations throughout the city’s Westside.What is with Emily Gilmore and those jeans?
We know what you’re thinking: what is with Emily Gilmore and those jeans?
Gilmore Girls costume designer Brenda Maben recently gave all the dish to Vulture on how the character’s looks have evolved since you last saw them.
Lorelai is all business.
Well, not completely. But she has grown up a lot.
“I don’t want to say that she’s turning into her mom or anything like that, which is not the truth, but she’s just a teeny bit more sophisticated. I think she’s taken a bunch of really good trips to New York.”
Rory is quite fashionable.
“She’s traveled the world and she’s been hanging out with Logan a lot. He’s pretty worldly. He lives in England. She’s made a little bit of money, so she spent it on a good pair of shoes. They’re just a little higher end because I think that, being around her grandmother and her grandfather, she knows to buy the best and it will last.”
Emily is going casual.
Brenda couldn’t say much, but she did explain, “It will all be crystal clear.”
Don’t worry though — Emily is still Emily. “You can take away almost everything, but she’s still going to be Emily Gilmore.”
Dean Looks hot.
“I do have to say that he looks fantastic. Oh, man. Oh, buddy”
Jess is tre classy.
“He’s matured, as do we all. He likes button-up shirts. He is into leather.”
Logan is into the finer things in life.
Surprise, surprise, Logan’s “all about the handmade, custom-made suits, all about the cashmere sweater. He’s all about the good things.”
Luke hasn’t changed a bit.
Although Brenda did admit that they tried to mix things up, but it just didn’t feel right.
“There was a time where we didn’t put the hat on him and it just didn’t seem Luke-ish.”
We can’t wait! How many more hours left?!
[related_post themes=”flat”]The city is preparing to sell the first properties that will be part of a broader redevelopment near Old Town Mall planned to bring more homes, offices and a grocery store to the area.
Oldtown Senior LLC, an affiliate of a team that includes Henson Development Co., Beatty Development, Mission First Housing Group and the Commercial Group, has agreed to buy three parcels for $400,000. The agreement, approved by the Board of Estimates on Wednesday, is a sign of commitment toward at least part of the project.
The city is still negotiating the sale of other properties associated with the redevelopment, but Dan Henson of Henson Development Co. said the developers asked to move forward with this subset, so they can meet a deadline to apply for low income housing tax credits.
They are planning to build an 81 subsidized apartments for seniors with retail, community and green space on the lots, some of which will replace units in other public housing developments.
The parcels, which include 400 Mott Street, 470 Old Town Mall, and part of another nearby block, were valued at $250,000 in a September appraisal, according to the agenda. Henson said the sales price was based on an earlier estimate and developers decided to move forward anyway in order to meet an end of October deadline for the tax credits.
"We didn't want to go back and change it because we think our budget can handle it," Henson said.
nsherman@baltsun.comMark Tenally/Associated Press
The last undefeated team in the NFL fell on Sunday as the Pittsburgh Steelers beat the Kansas City Chiefs on the road.
Right now, there doesn't seem to be a clear favorite for the Super Bowl. A bunch of teams can make a case for the Lombardi Trophy, while few teams are out of the playoff push (in fact, all but three have at least two victories after six weeks).
Here's a look at the projected power rankings following this week's edition of Monday Night Football, which features the Indianapolis Colts traveling to face quarterback Marcus Mariota and the Tennessee Titans. Note that the Titans, who are 8.5-point favorites, are predicted to win.
Then, we'll take a look at three teams whose rankings may require further explanation.
Projected Week 7 Power Rankings After Monday Night Football
1. Kansas City Chiefs (5-1)
2. Philadelphia Eagles (5-1)
3. Pittsburgh Steelers (4-2)
4. Carolina Panthers (4-2)
5. Washington Redskins (3-2)
6. Seattle Seahawks (3-2)
7. Buffalo Bills (3-2)
8. Los Angeles Rams (4-2)
9. Minnesota Vikings (4-2)
10. New England Patriots (4-2)
11. Cincinnati Bengals (2-3)
12. Atlanta Falcons (3-2)
13. Denver Broncos (3-2)
14. New Orleans Saints (3-2)
15. Houston Texans (3-3)
16. Green Bay Packers (4-2)
17. Jacksonville Jaguars (3-3)
18. Detroit Lions (3-3)
19. Tennessee Titans (3-3)
20. Dallas Cowboys (2-3)
21. New York Jets (3-3)
22. Miami Dolphins (3-2)
23. Baltimore Ravens (3-3)
24. Los Angeles Chargers (2-4)
25. Oakland Raiders (2-4)
26. Arizona Cardinals (3-3)
27. Tampa Bay Buccaneers (2-3)
28. Chicago Bears (2-4)
29. Indianapolis Colts (2-4)
30. New York Giants (1-5)
31. San Francisco 49ers (0-6)
32. Cleveland Browns (0-6)
New England Patriots at No. 11
This stat from the NFL Research team is pretty concerning if you are a New England Patriots fan:
The Pats need to shore up their pass defense if they are going to be a legitimate Super Bowl contender. They can outscore teams like the New York Jets or Tampa Bay Buccaneers, but teams with better offenses (such as the Kansas City Chiefs, who beat the Pats 42-27 in the season opener) pose problems.
Of course, quarterback Tom Brady looks like the best quarterback in the NFL yet again, and the Pats' pass-catching crew might be the best in football, so they'll likely waltz into the playoffs. However, giving up 300-plus passing yards every week isn't a long-term recipe for success.
Miami Dolphins: No. 22
The Miami Dolphins are the only winning team in the bottom half of these power rankings, and it may seem odd considering that they just overcame a 17-0 deficit to defeat the defending NFC champion Atlanta Falcons in their own building.
That being said, the Dolphins offense still has significant issues. It has scored just 58 points through five games, or an average of 11.6 per contest. That's not going to cut it going forward.
Furthermore, there's a significant correlation between the rushing of running back Jay Ajayi and the team's success. He's rushed for 329 yards in three Dolphins wins (109.7 per game) compared to just 62 in Dolphin losses (or 31 per contest).
Simply put, if teams play the run and stop Ajayi, then they should halt the entire Dolphins offense. Furthermore, the Dolphins' remaining five road games are against teams with.500 records or better, so regression may lie ahead.
Washington Redskins: No. 5
Washington, which is 3-2, is ranked fifth in the above rankings, ahead of four teams with four wins apiece.
A closer look at its schedule reveals why.
The Redskins' losses were to two 5-1 teams: the Kansas City Chiefs and the Philadelphia Eagles. The Chiefs game was tied at 20 until seconds remaining in regulation, and Washington had the ball down 22-17 with two minutes left against Philadelphia before the Eagles forced a fumble and scored a game-sealing touchdown.
They beat the 4-2 Rams on the road and crushed the Oakland Raiders at home. A close victory over the winless San Francisco 49ers didn't inspire confidence, but San Francisco has lost five of its six games by three points or fewer. It also didn't help that the 'Skins were without the services of cornerback Josh Norman, who is recovering from chest injuries.
Ultimately, Washington looks like a well-rounded team that could return to the playoffs after barely missing the postseason last year.As far as Memory choices for the PS vita or PS TV...There isn't Any.... That's right you can only use Their specific memory and it is pricey even after the system has been out a while, Now i ran into a few problems Read on and i will explain.
First I Ordered that PS TV Bundle it came with a 8gb memory stick also note i got stuck paying a extra thirty dollars for the bundle because amazon was temporarily out of stock..and there was only one new bundle left at the time for 130 seems like trickery to me but i got it anyways.. Did one day shipping it got here hooked everything up just fine but the moment i started using the supplied 8gb vita memory to download games such as sword art online and soul sacrifice delta i started getting errors and had to delete the games and then re-download them, The card worked for another 2 days with various errors.
Then BOOM. It stopped working all together Tried everything. safe mode, reformatting which it would not let me do
Such a headache it was. So i contacted Amazon and they decided to give me a 20 percent discount which allowed me to put 7 bucks with it and get this 16gb...Not MY Account has not Been credited yet but i am waiting, I Also kept the chat log in-case they say they did not agree to the discount. But i am pretty sure they will come through. But it was all a big headache and If you Get a PS TV Bundle Beware the memory card may be utter garbage.... Maybe Sony had only surplus memory laying around and threw them in the bundle to save money because this New 16gb is working like a charm.... I Hope it stays that way.
Also note a 8gb card isn't really that good for downloading games won't hold much and also seen though this card says 16gb you only get 14gb but that's how it goes with all memory storage. I Hope this reviews helps someone Out.
Also if you plan on using your pc to back up your games from your ps tv memory card be prepared to wait 50 minutes a game and a backup of everything takes about a hour and ten minutes but when you try to restore it to the ps tv it will take 7 Hours No Joke. i thought i had wrong stuff setup but not that is the standard time it takes for the ps tvWhat does the American surrender monkey call it when he is defeated in the Iraq War, and he is forced to retreat? A real country can accept defeat like a man, admit that it lost and it is retreating, as even someone as weak as Gorbachev did when he pulled Soviet troops out of Afghanistan.
But American surrender monkeys have no dignity or honor, they cannot face the hard facts that they lost the Iraq war. So the chief surrender monkey president George Bush comes up with new expression for the American retreat, that begins next year, he calls it a “time horizon.”
Bush agrees to time ‘horizon’ on Iraq troop cuts By TERENCE HUNT – 2 days ago WASHINGTON (AP) — President Bush and Iraq’s prime minister have agreed to set a “general time horizon” for bringing more U.S. troops home from the war, a dramatic shift from the administration’s once-ironclad unwillingness to talk about any kind of deadline or timetable.
I wonder, does it make American retarded public feel better, that the defeat and retreat from Iraq is called a “general time horizon”? Are you really so pathetic that you have to be told such dumb obvious lies meant for a child, so that you don’t cry and run away and hide your face in your pillow to cry all night?
“Dear Toothfairy, thank you for taking my teeth and leaving me a quarter, and thank you for calling America’s retreat from Iraq a ‘general time horizon.’ I believe you! Yours, Uncle Sam”
American surrender monkeys really are pathetic people. But you also are funny people too. I was writing about you before in The eXile, and I stopped for reasons that are not so important. Let us say just that Yasha Levine and me “buried the hatchet” to use the words of Yasha.
So I am back, when I have time, to laugh my ass off at retarded loser nation, America, who just a few years ago went around the world starting wars because it calls itself “the world’s only superpower,” and now is in retreat fleeing back to America as “world’s only surrender monkeys.” Even a silly third world country Iran scares a shit out of American surrender monkeys.
Top surrender monkey commander Admiral Mike Mullen said yesterday he already is raising the white flags to Iran, because he is so scared of losing a third war.
Mullen says he ‘doesn’t need’ a war in Iran Jul. 20, 2008 Associated Press The Pentagon’s top military officer Adm. Mike Mullen on Sunday discussed the fallout from a potential attack against Tehran by either the US or Israel. “Right now I’m fighting two wars and I don’t need a third one.”
Yeah, if I am losing two wars against even weaker loser opponents, I also will not want to start a third one. I will run away and maybe call police or call my daddy for help.
You see, this is the only way to teach bloodthirsty American dumbshits that they should not be starting wars up, and telling everyone how to run their own countries. Like a misbehaving child, you have to kick a shit out of the Americans to teach them, because that is the only way Americans learn. Americans always think they are tough guys, they talk so much bullshit all the time, so if you put them in their place and smack them around a little bit, then you see, that they are just very sad pathetic and weak, running away from fights and telling each other lies about “general time horizon” to make each other feel better.
For me, what shows how far America really is falling is that now people of New Hampshire are begging for gasoline from Venezuelan enemy, Hugo Chavez:
CONCORD, N.H. (AP) — Two years ago, New Hampshire refused to accept heating oil from Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, the pro-Castro U.S. critic who once called President Bush “the devil.” But with fuel prices rising, well, free oil is free oil. With the state’s blessing, New Hampshire residents will be receiving some of the fuel this winter. New Hampshire becomes the last state in the Northeast to embrace the offer. “A lot of people have said, `We need help and we value any help we can get,'” said Amy Ignatius, director of New Hampshire’s office of energy and planning.
I guess when supposedly proud beggars of New Hampshire say “Live free or die” what they mean is “live on free gasoline from America’s enemy or die.”
“Seriously Mahmoud, all you have to do is offer them a free tank of gas, and they’re on their knees begging to surrender! Ha-ha-ha!”
Jesus, you Americans have no dignity at all. You are biggest fags in the world, rolling over to your enemy just for a free tank of gasoline. Fucking pathetic.
Write to Vlad Kalashnikov at kalashnikov@exiledonline.comOklahoma Land Rush of 1889 A land rush in progress Date April 22, 1889 Location Central Oklahoma Also known as Oklahoma Land Rush
The Oklahoma Land Rush of 1889 was the first land rush into the Unassigned Lands. The area that was opened to settlement included all or part of the present-day Canadian, Cleveland, Kingfisher, Logan, Oklahoma, and Payne counties of the US state of Oklahoma.[1] The land run started at high noon on April 22, 1889, with an estimated 50,000 people lined up for their piece of the available two million acres (8,000 km²).[2]
The Unassigned Lands were considered some of the best unoccupied public land in the United States. The Indian Appropriations Act of 1889 was passed and signed into law with an amendment by Illinois Representative William McKendree Springer, that authorized President Benjamin Harrison to open the two million acres (8,000 km²) for settlement. The Homestead Act of 1862, signed by President Abraham Lincoln, allowed legal settlers to claim lots up to 160 acres (0.65 km2) in size. Provided a settler lived on the land and improved it, the settler could then receive the title to the land.[2]
Boomers and Sooners [ edit ]
A number of the people who participated in the run entered the unoccupied land early and hid there until the legal time of entry to lay quick claim to some of the most choice homesteads. These people came to be identified as "Sooners". This led to hundreds of legal contests that arose and were decided first at local land offices and eventually by the U.S. Department of the Interior. Arguments included what constituted the "legal time of entry".[3] While some people think that the settlers who entered the territory at the legally appointed time were known as "boomers", the term actually refers to those who campaigned for the opening of the lands, led by David L. Payne.[4]
The University of Oklahoma's fight song, "Boomer Sooner", derives from these two names.[5]
Rapid growth [ edit ]
By the end of the day (April 22, 1889), both Oklahoma City and Guthrie had established cities of around 10,000 people in literally half a day. As Harper's Weekly put it:
At twelve o'clock on Monday, April 22d, the resident population of Guthrie was nothing; before sundown it was at least ten thousand. In that time streets had been laid out, town lots staked off, and steps taken toward the formation of a municipal government.[6]
Many settlers immediately started improving their new land or stood in line waiting to file their claim. Many children sold creek water to homesteaders waiting in line for five cents a cup, while other children gathered buffalo dung to provide fuel for cooking.[7] By the second week, schools had opened and were being taught by volunteers paid by pupils' parents until regular school districts could be established. Within one month, Oklahoma City had five banks and six newspapers.[7]
On May 2, 1890, the Oklahoma Organic Act was passed creating the Oklahoma Territory. This act included the Panhandle of Oklahoma within the territory. It also allowed for central governments and designated Guthrie as the territory's capital.[8]
In popular culture [ edit ]
See also [ edit ]
Nannita Daisey, believed to be the first woman laying claim on Oklahoma landChucklefish is pleased to announce that Robit Studios are now taking pre-orders for their upcoming game, Treasure Adventure World, with a fresh new website and trailer to kick things off!
Pre-ordering doesn’t just give you access to the game when it launches, there’s a whole bunch of rewards for going beyond the first tier! Higher tier rewards include a full download of the game’s soundtrack, access to a private development blog where you get exclusive new media, a signed original sketch from the developer, you could even be put in the game as a fully interactive NPC!
Please give the game a look! Not only is it a lot of fun in its own right, but supporting Treasure Adventure World supports Chucklefish too!
You can pre-order the game here!
And if you want to be an absolute champion, please also vote the game up on Steam Greenlight here!
Thanks guys! Your support is much appreciated!EUROMENE is a network of researchers and clinicians from 17 European countries and one COST (Cooperation in Science and Technology) near neighbor country on ME/CFS supported by the European COST program within Horizon 2020 (http://www.cost.eu/COST_Actions/ca/CA15111).
The aims of EUROMENE are to foster strategies for collaboration and harmonization of diagnosis and research, and to compile an inventory of clinical and scientific data in ME/CFS. The Biomarker working group will also try to develop guidelines for the usage of biomarkers and synchronization of biomarker research.
As a first step, a database for active biomarker research in Europe was established called the EUROMENE ME/CFS Biomarker Landscape project. To achieve this, EUROMENE members performed a search for publications on biomarkers within their countries. The search strategy used the medical subject headings (MeSH) term “chronic fatigue syndrome”, which includes myalgic encephalomyelitis, and the respective country, and selected all publications from the last 5 years (2012–2016). The searches were reviewed by members of the biomarker working group. Studies not involving patients with ME/CFS, non-biomarker, and sole treatment studies were excluded, only one review article was included.
1 1 1 Country Category Study references Belgium Metabolic [27] Immunologic [3] France Metabolic [28, 29] Germany Metabolic [30] Immunologic [4–7] Neurologic [23] Ireland Immunologic [8] Italy Metabolic [31–34] Infection [18, 19] Latvia Infection [20, 21] Netherlands Metabolic [35, 36] Norway Metabolic [37] Immunologic [9, 10] Neurologic [24, 25] Poland* Immunologic [11] Serbia Metabolic [38] Spain Metabolic [39] Immunologic [12] Infection [22] Sweden Immunologic [13] UK Metabolic [40, 41] Immunologic [14–17] Neurologic [26] A total number of 39 studies were identified. Studies were categorized as being immunological, infection-related, metabolic or neurological. We summarize the findings in Fig., which shows the number and type of studies identified in each country, represented by pie charts—their sizes being proportional to the number of identified studies, and their pieces representing the distinct categories of the studies. The number of research groups working on ME/CFS biomarkers in the EU countries is also illustrated in Fig.. Countries from which no publications on ME/CFS biomarker could be retrieved are shown in light green/grey, and European countries not participating in the EUROMENE are shown in white. The references listed per countries are shown in TableTOWNSVILLE footy fans can show their true North Queensland colours at a pre-game party as the city’s three premier rugby league teams fight for finals glory.
The Townsville Bulletin will host a support rally on Friday to show off the city’s spirit ahead of the Cowboys’ NRL and under-20s do-or-die preliminary finals on Saturday and the Blackhawks tilt at premiership glory on Sunday.
The rally will be held at Townsville Bulletin Square from 12-2pm and will have an array of speakers to pump up the crowd, including radio personality Glenn ‘Minty’ Mintern, and Cowboys legends Brent Tate and Aaron Payne.
Tate admitted he would love to be pulling on a jersey again for the game against the Melbourne Storm on Saturday night.
“There are a whole raft of emotions that go into a week like this and it’s a great opportunity for me to share what it takes to prepare for a game,” he said.
“I really wanted to win a competition when I played for the Cowboys because I know what the team means to the people, and that has not been lost on the players.
“They really do want to do well for the people of North Queensland.”
Minty said he had not seen such belief in the Cowboys since their first grand final appearance in 2005.
“The finals are away from home but we need to still fire up here,” he said.
“It’s about making us loud and proud here in the North so the boys are going to get that feeling when they travel down south.”
There will be a free sausage sizzle and free face painting from Queensland Amusements.
Three lucky readers will also have the chance to win a signed Cowboys jersey or runner-up prize of a 20 Years in the Saddle limited edition leather-bound book.
The competition will close and be drawn at 12.30pm at the Square. Winners must be present to claim their prize.
To enter, fill in an entry form printed in the Bulletin all this week (page 39 today) and bring it into the newspaper’s office at Level 2, 538 Flinders St before 11am Friday or to Townsville Bulletin Square at 12pm.Diamond runners: Aviation Police used to transport high-price jewelry Copyright by KRQE - All rights reserved Video
ALBUQUERQUE (KRQE) - It was a city program that had the makings of a Hollywood heist movie.
Bags and briefcases packed full of up to a million dollars worth of jewelry, were flying in to the state's largest airport. On the ground, the high-price cargo was loaded up and transported in secret operations called "diamond runs," which ended at stores across the metro under the escort of a special police force.
But this story isn't fiction, and the police force used to do it should have been protecting one of New Mexico's most important properties: the Albuquerque International Sunport.
Through public records and interviews with current and former employees, a KRQE News 13 investigation has exposed a little known city program that had on-duty Albuquerque Aviation Police Department officers running high-priced jewelry in and out of town more than a dozen times, instead of protecting the Sunport.
The true story is one of the latest to come out of the Albuquerque Aviation Department. Their specialized police force is now facing possible restructure following a recent personnel investigation that lead to the suspension of the man leading the force: Aviation Police Department Chief Marshall Katz.
"He called it, 'Diamond Runs.'"
A former Aviation police officer, Eldon Martinez says he was familiar with "diamond runs," a practice that he says never sat right with him.
"There was a lot of shady things," said Martinez in an interview with KRQE News 13.
While he claims he refused to go, Martinez says "diamond runs" were common amongst his co-workers. He says the runs were secretive and dangerous. Martinez also claims that on-duty aviation cops were ordered to do it while they should have been working at the Sunport.
"That was one of the major reasons that I left," said Martinez of his retirement.
After 17 years of service, Martinez says he retired from Aviation Police in good standing. He says he left, in part, because he claims he was asked to do things that police officers should do.
"Almost illegal type of activities," said Martinez.
More than 30 officers make up the city's Aviation Police force. The department's administrative control and budget is completely separate from Albuquerque Police (APD.) Aviation Police serve as the first responders to all airport emergencies.
"There's multi-million dollar aircraft there and that's a big responsibility," said Martinez. "And of course the traveling public."
According to the department's standard operating procedures, Aviation Police's sole duty is to protect the Sunport property and the five to six million passengers that move through the facility each year.
However, KRQE News 13 spoke to several current and former Aviation officers who say for years, they were forced to take on-duty assignments that felt more like private security and errand running.
Officers say "diamond runs" were some of those jobs that felt like private security.
"Gemologists or the carrier of the jewels would fly into the Sunport and we were to escort that individual directly to the arrival level … and take him throughout the city," said Martinez.
Four officers who feared retaliation and didn't want to speak on camera told KRQE News 13 that officers used Aviation Police cars while on the clock to escort jewelers to stores in Uptown and northwest Albuquerque.
The 50 to 60 pound bags of high-priced jewelry were taken to stores including Helzberg Diamonds, Shelton Jewelers and Kay Jewelers.
Officers say some of the runs took Aviation cops more than 60 miles away from the Sunport, the place they were being paid public money to protect.
"Some of the officers, especially the younger officers would run up to Santa Fe," said Martinez.
Some officers told KRQE News 13 that they took the jewelry cases by themselves, describing drop-offs in jewelry store bathrooms and random street-side locations.
"It was a do this or get fired, basically.. is how officers felt," said Martinez.
Martinez says he and other officers felt that way because the Aviation Police chief was the person assigning "diamond runs."
"It was ordered by the top man," said Martinez.
The Chief
Chief Marshall Katz has lead Aviation Police for 14 years. Before joining the department in 2002, Katz worked for APD for 22 years.
Katz is well known throughout the airport. Many travelers can spot him greeting people in the Sunport's "Great Hall." Katz is also proud of his work.
"I love my job, I love being a police officer, love helping people, I love solving their problems," said Katz.
However, Katz is also controversial. The city recently suspended Katz for 45 days after an investigation found that he was inappropriately using city resources. In the investigation, Katz admitted to using his assistant to tend to his personal business, which included writing letters to for varying matters like scholarship letters of reference.
Katz also admitted that he has dispatched Aviation police officers to friends and business associates around Albuquerque to take down police reports for them.
Katz declined to comment on the specific points of the investigation, but he says he is fighting his suspension.
"The people who know me, support me 100-percent," said Katz.
"Diamond runs" weren't part of the city's investigation. According to Katz, the practice was on the books.
"We were paid to provide security for a diamond broker, at some point, the union and the officers felt uncomfortable, we stopped doing it," said Katz.
Public Records
Through a New Mexico Inspection of Public Records (IPRA) request, KRQE News 13 obtained a copy of a contract, proving that the "diamond run" program was on the city's books.
Copyright by KRQE - All rights reserved The Aviation department signed its agreement with Orion Security Services in 2010.
Copyright by KRQE - All rights reserved The Aviation department signed its agreement with Orion Security Services in 2010.
The contract, dated from December 2010, shows that Aviation Department's director, Jim Hinde, signed off on the "diamond run" program, which allowed officers to work as jewelry escorts for a Dallas-based company called "Orion Security Services. The contract, or "revenue agreement," authorized the use of Albuquerque Aviation Police officers as "independent contractors." It also waved Orion Security Services' liability if an officer was hurt on the job.
>>VIEW: Albuquerque Aviation's signed revenue agreement with Orion Security Services (PDF.)
Records obtained by KRQE News 13 show two-years worth of work orders from Orion Security Services, city bills collecting payments and checks from Orion Security Services that covered the cost of the so-called "diamond runs".
>>VIEW: Aviation Department's invoices, checks & work orders with Orion Security Services (PDF.)
Documents show some of the runs started at the Sunport and ended at Albuquerque-area jewelry stories. But other work orders show work that had nothing to do with the Sunport. Some runs are shown to have officers starting at stores in Santa Fe and traveling to metro-area hotels. Other documents merely list "out of town" as the final destination, making it impossible to know where the officer went.
Most of the time, the city wasn't reimbursed for mileage either, even though officers used city cars and fuel.
Aviation Department's Response
Director Jim Hinde runs the Sunport. He also oversees Aviation Police. Hinde signed off the the "diamond run" program, after he says he was approached by Chief Marshall Katz. According to Hinde, Katz was approached by Orion Security Services, which requested the service.
"I was aware that possibility of it going off property," said Jim Hinde, the director of Albuquerque's Aviation Department.
KRQE News 13 reporter Chris McKee asked director Hinde if he was "OK" with the idea of Aviation officers traveling off property, within the city of Albuquerque.
"Yeah I was OK with it," said Hinde.
Copyright by KRQE - All rights reserved Jim Hinde is the director of Albuquerque's Aviation Department.
Copyright by KRQE - All rights reserved Jim Hinde is the director of Albuquerque's Aviation Department.
Hinde says he wasn't aware that officers were leaving the city and traveling to Santa Fe, though. He says he saw the program as an opportunity for officers to get paid for extra work, if they wanted it. In theory, each run also made the Aviation Department a small fraction of money.
"Again, they're (Aviation Police) providing the service, it's generating revenue."
However, it wasn't much money. Aviation officers likely transported millions of dollars worth of jewelry over the course of two years. The Sunport's take was about $1,800.
While officers who spoke to KRQE News 13 claim that they didn't get any extra pay for the "diamond runs," Hinde claims that most of the money earned was paid out as overtime. However, he admitted to KRQE News 13 that some of it may not have been.
"Marshall did indicate that if we had more than enough staff here, they would do the service with on-duty officers," said Hinde.
Both director Hinde and Chief Katz says the "diamond run" program did not put the officers or the Sunport in danger.
"Do you think that was in the best interests of public safety?" asked KRQE News 13's Chris McKee.
"No, it was just a requested service that we were able to provide," said Hinde.
Chief |
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Subscribe nowRelatively high but static proc chance, with a significant cooldown. Most trinkets and caster procs fall into this category. For example, a trinket may have a 30% chance to proc on hit, with a 55sec cooldown. This lets us balance the trinket with a pretty safe assumption of procing about once per minute. Unfortunately, since it’s so reliable, it doesn’t really feel like a random proc, but rather like an On Use trinket that’s just on auto-cast. The uptime won’t increase significantly with any stats with this type of proc.
Relatively low proc chance with some normalization based on weapon speed, typically referred to as ‘PPM’ (procs per minute). Most melee weapon enchants fall into this category. For example, a weapon enchant may have 3 PPM. That checks your weapon speed, and gives your attacks a % chance based on that. If you have a 3.6speed weapon, your attacks will have a 3(PPM) * 3.6(weaponspeed) / 60 (sec per min) = 18% chance. All your white and yellow attacks with that weapon will have an 18% chance to trigger the enchant. Despite being supposedly ‘3 PPM’, that really will result in significantly more than 3 procs per minute, since all of the special attacks can proc it. Since there is no cooldown involved here, this type of enchant can feel random and streaky, instead of reliable. That isn’t necessarily a bad thing though, as you are just as likely to get lucky and get several procs in a row, which can be exciting. Some stats, primarily haste, will increase the frequency of these procs. However, since they vary heavily based on weapon speed, and how many special attacks you’re doing, these can proc significantly more or less for one class/spec/weapon than another, making them difficult to balance.
Windsong is 2 Real PPM, and Elemental Force is 10 Real PPM.
Come patch 5.1, Dancing Steel and Jade Spirit will be 2 Real PPM, River's Song will be 4 Real PPM, and Colossus will be 6 Real PPM
Regardless of how you’re attacking or healing, slow or fast, with DoTs or direct heals, whatever, you can expect to get the same proc frequency, on average.
Dual wielding and having both weapons enchanted with the same enchant will double the frequency of procs that you get.
This Real PPM is increased by your haste %. (The highest of your melee, ranged, or spell haste is chosen).
Simple as that. Whether you’re an Affliction Warlock dealing very frequent DoT ticks and Malefic Grasp ticks, or a Holy Paladin casting purely Holy Lights, or a Combat Rogue quickly attacking and using specials, or an Enhancement Shaman attacking with slow melee attacks and spells, or a Shadow Priest channeling Mind Sear on fifty Onyxian Whelps, you’ll get 2*Haste Windsong procs or 10*Haste Elemental Force procs per enchant per minute.
We’re excited to see how this proc system works out. If it works well, we may start using it for more types of procs. Feedback about how it feels is most welcome.
It can proc from any damage/healing event. It keeps track of the last time it had a chance to proc for that enchant.
It calculates the difference in time since the last chance to proc. It uses that time to determine the chance for that event to trigger a proc.
For example, if you have 22% Haste, it was 1.4sec since the last chance to proc, and you’ve got Windsong, then the chance to proc is 2(ppm) * 1.22(haste) * 1.4(time since last chance) / 60 (sec per min) = 5.693%.
The ‘time since the last chance to proc’ is capped at 10sec, so that your first attack of a fight isn’t a guaranteed proc.
We recently hotfixed the Windsong and Elemental Force weapon enchants to improve their performance for many users. The important part for most players is that Windsong is now a useful enchant for all classes and specs (save Hunters who use scopes, and Death Knights who use Runeforging), since it will trigger on all damage or healing, be it spell, melee, or ranged, and direct or periodic. Elemental Force will also trigger from all damage, so is useful for all damage dealers.Additionally, these two enchants use a new system for triggering, which we wanted to give some details on. These are the gritty details, which you do not need to understand in order to use these enchants, but we wanted to lay them out for the benefit of the theorycrafting community. If mathy simulations and modeling aren’t your thing, none of this will matter much to you.We have had various methods for triggering procs throughout WoW’s history. Most procs fall into two categories for the past few years:So, there are pros and cons of both of those types of procs. We’re trying a new system for these enchants. This new system, nicknamed Real PPM, aims to give the random nature of procs, the scaling with haste, and the ability for us to balance them assuming a standard proc frequency. Here’s the short version of how you can expect them to function:Here are even more nitty gritty details, if you’re interested:If you have any questions about this, please feel free to post them here, and we’ll try to answer them.The simple example of calculating and formatting a bill for a video store opened my refactoring book in 1999. If done in modern JavaScript, there are several directions you could take the refactoring. I explore four here: refactoring to top level functions, to a nested function with a dispatcher, using classes, and transformation using an intermediate data structure.
Many years ago, when I was writing the refactoring book, I opened the book with a (very) simple example of refactoring some code that calculated a customer's bill for renting some videos (in those days we had to go to a store to do that). I was contemplating this refactoring example recently, in particular how it would look if it were written in modern JavaScript.
Any refactoring is about improving the code in a particular direction, one that suits a development team's coding style. In the book the example was in Java, and Java (particularly then) suggests a certain style of coding, an object-oriented style. With JavaScript, however, there is a lot more options about what kind of style to go for. While you can do a Java-like OO style, particularly with ES6 (Ecmascript 2015), not all JavaScript pundits favor that style, many indeed consider using classes to be a Bad Thing.
This initial video store code To explore further, I need to introduce some code. In this case a JavaScript version of the original example I wrote back at the turn of the century. function statement(customer, movies) { let totalAmount = 0; let frequentRenterPoints = 0; let result = `Rental Record for ${customer.name}
`; for (let r of customer.rentals) { let movie = movies[r.movieID]; let thisAmount = 0; // determine amount for each movie switch (movie.code) { case "regular": thisAmount = 2; if (r.days > 2) { thisAmount += (r.days - 2) * 1.5; } break; case "new": thisAmount = r.days * 3; break; case "childrens": thisAmount = 1.5; if (r.days > 3) { thisAmount += (r.days - 3) * 1.5; } break; } //add frequent renter points frequentRenterPoints++; // add bonus for a two day new release rental if(movie.code === "new" && r.days > 2) frequentRenterPoints++; //print figures for this rental result += `\t${movie.title}\t${thisAmount}
` ; totalAmount += thisAmount; } // add footer lines result += `Amount owed is ${totalAmount}
`; result += `You earned ${frequentRenterPoints} frequent renter points
`; return result; } I'm using ES6 here. The code operates on two data structures, both of which are just lists of json records. A customer record looks like this { "name": "martin", "rentals": [ {"movieID": "F001", "days": 3}, {"movieID": "F002", "days": 1}, ] } The movies structure looks like this { "F001": {"title": "Ran", "code": "regular"}, "F002": {"title": "Trois Couleurs: Bleu", "code": "regular"}, // etc } In the original book, movies were just present as objects in the java object structure. For this essay I prefer passing in the json structure as a parameter. I will assume using some kind of global lookup, such as a Repository, is not appropriate for this application. The statement method prints out a simple text output of a rental statement Rental Record for martin Ran 3.5 Trois Couleurs: Bleu 2 Amount owed is 5.5 You earned 2 frequent renter points This output is crude, even by the standards of example code. Could I not even be bothered to format the numbers decently? Remember, however, that the book was written with Java 1.1, before String.format was added to the language. That may partially forgive my laziness. The statement function is an example of the smell Long Method. Just its size is enough to make me suspicious. But just because code smells bad isn't enough of a reason on its own to refactor it. Poorly factored code is a problem because it's hard to understand. Code that's hard to understand is hard to modify, whether to add new features or to debug. So if you don't need to to read and understand some code, then its poor structure won't harm you and you can happily leave it alone for a while. So to trigger our interest in this code fragment, we need a reason for it to change. Our reason, as I used in the book, is to write an HTML version of the statement method, something that prints out something like this. <h1>Rental Record for <em>martin</em></h1> <table> <tr><td>Ran</td><td>3.5</td></tr> <tr><td>Trois Couleurs: Bleu</td><td>2</td></tr> </table> <p>Amount owed is <em>5.5</em></p> <p>You earned <em>2</em> frequent renter points</p> As I indicated earlier, in this essay I'm exploring a number of ways in which I can refactor this code to make it easier to add additional output renderings. All of these have the same start: breaking down the single method into a set of functions to capture different parts of the logic. Once I've done this break down, I'll explore four different ways these functions can be arranged to support alternative renderings.
Decomposing into several functions Whenever I work with a overly long function like this, my first thought is to use to look for logical chunks of code and turn them into their own functions using Extract Method. [1] The first such chunk that catches my eye is the switch statement. function statement(customer, movies) { let totalAmount = 0; let frequentRenterPoints = 0; let result = `Rental Record for ${customer.name}
`; for (let r of customer.rentals) { let movie = movies[r.movieID]; let thisAmount = 0; // determine amount for each movie switch (movie.code) { case "regular": thisAmount = 2; if (r.days > 2) { thisAmount += (r.days - 2) * 1.5; } break; case "new": thisAmount = r.days * 3; break; case "childrens": thisAmount = 1.5; if (r.days > 3) { thisAmount += (r.days - 3) * 1.5; } break; } //add frequent renter points frequentRenterPoints++; // add bonus for a two day new release rental if(movie.code === "new" && r.days > 2) frequentRenterPoints++; //print figures for this rental result += `\t${movie.title}\t${thisAmount}
` ; totalAmount += thisAmount; } // add footer lines result += `Amount owed is ${totalAmount}
`; result += `You earned ${frequentRenterPoints} frequent renter points
`; return result; } My IDE (IntelliJ) offers to do this refactoring automatically for me, but it doesn't do it correctly - its JavaScript abilities aren't as solid or as mature as its Java refactoring. So I do this the manual way, which involves looking at the data used by the candidate extraction. There are three bits of data there: thisAmount is the value being calculated by the extracted code. I can initialize it within the function and return it at the end
is the value being calculated by the extracted code. I can initialize it within the function and return it at the end r is the rental being examined in the loop, I can pass that in as a parameter.
is the rental being examined in the loop, I can pass that in as a parameter. movie is the movie for the rental, which is a temp made earlier on. Temporary variables like this usually get in the way when refactoring procedural code, so I prefer to first use Replace Temp with Query to turn them into a function that I can call within any extracted code. Once I've done the Replace Temp with Query the code looks like this. function statement(customer, movies) { let totalAmount = 0; let frequentRenterPoints = 0; let result = `Rental Record for ${customer.name}
`; for (let r of customer.rentals) { let thisAmount = 0; // determine amount for each movie switch ( movieFor (r).code) { case "regular": thisAmount = 2; if (r.days > 2) { thisAmount += (r.days - 2) * 1.5; } break; case "new": thisAmount = r.days * 3; break; case "childrens": thisAmount = 1.5; if (r.days > 3) { thisAmount += (r.days - 3) * 1.5; } break; } //add frequent renter points frequentRenterPoints++; // add bonus for a two day new release rental if( movieFor (r).code === "new" && r.days > 2) frequentRenterPoints++; //print figures for this rental result += `\t${ movieFor (r).title}\t${thisAmount}
` ; totalAmount += thisAmount; } // add footer lines result += `Amount owed is ${totalAmount}
`; result += `You earned ${frequentRenterPoints} frequent renter points
`; return result; function movieFor (rental) {return movies[rental.movieID];} } Now I extract the switch statement. function statement(customer, movies) { let totalAmount = 0; let frequentRenterPoints = 0; let result = `Rental Record for ${customer.name}
`; for (let r of customer.rentals) { const thisAmount = amountFor (r); //add frequent renter points frequentRenterPoints++; // add bonus for a two day new release rental if(movieFor(r).code === "new" && r.days > 2) frequentRenterPoints++; //print figures for this rental result += `\t${movieFor(r).title}\t${thisAmount}
` ; totalAmount += thisAmount; } // add footer lines result += `Amount owed is ${totalAmount}
`; result += `You earned ${frequentRenterPoints} frequent renter points
`; return result; function movieFor(rental) {return movies[rental.movieID];} function amountFor (r) { let thisAmount = 0; // determine amount for each movie switch (movieFor(r).code) { case "regular": thisAmount = 2; if (r.days > 2) { thisAmount += (r.days - 2) * 1.5; } break; case "new": thisAmount = r.days * 3; break; case "childrens": thisAmount = 1.5; if (r.days > 3) { thisAmount += (r.days - 3) * 1.5; } break; } return thisAmount; } } I now turn my attention to calculating the frequent renter points. I can do a similar extraction of its code function statement(customer, movies) { let totalAmount = 0; let frequentRenterPoints = 0; let result = `Rental Record for ${customer.name}
`; for (let r of customer.rentals) { const thisAmount = amountFor(r); frequentRenterPointsFor (r); //print figures for this rental result += `\t${movieFor(r).title}\t${thisAmount}
` ; totalAmount += thisAmount; } // add footer lines result += `Amount owed is ${totalAmount}
`; result += `You earned ${frequentRenterPoints} frequent renter points
`; return result; … function frequentRenterPointsFor (r) { //add frequent renter points frequentRenterPoints++; // add bonus for a two day new release rental if (movieFor(r).code === "new" && r.days > 2) frequentRenterPoints++; } Although I've extracted the function, I don't like the way it works by updating the parent-scoped variable. Such side-effects make code hard to reason about, so I alter it so that it has no side-effects in its body. function statement(customer, movies) { let totalAmount = 0; let frequentRenterPoints = 0; let result = `Rental Record for ${customer.name}
`; for (let r of customer.rentals) { const thisAmount = amountFor(r); frequentRenterPoints += frequentRenterPointsFor(r); //print figures for this rental result += `\t${movieFor(r).title}\t${thisAmount}
` ; totalAmount += thisAmount; } // add footer lines result += `Amount owed is ${totalAmount}
`; result += `You earned ${frequentRenterPoints} frequent renter points
`; return result; … function frequentRenterPointsFor(r) { let result = 1; if (movieFor(r).code === "new" && r.days > 2) result ++; return result ; } I take the chance to clean up the two extracted functions a bit, while I understand them. function amountFor(rental) { let result = 0; switch (movieFor(rental).code) { case "regular": result = 2; if (rental.days > 2) { result += (rental.days - 2) * 1.5; } return result; case "new": result = rental.days * 3; return result; case "childrens": result = 1.5; if (rental.days > 3) { result += (rental.days - 3) * 1.5; } return result; } return result; } function frequentRenterPointsFor(rental) { return (movieFor(rental).code === "new" && rental.days > 2)? 2 : 1; } There is more I could do with these functions, especially amountFor, and that was something I did do in the book. But for this essay I won't examine the body of these functions any further. That done, I go back to the body of the function. function statement(customer, movies) { let totalAmount = 0; let frequentRenterPoints = 0; let result = `Rental Record for ${customer.name}
`; for (let r of customer.rentals) { const thisAmount = amountFor(r); frequentRenterPoints += frequentRenterPointsFor(r); //print figures for this rental result += `\t${movieFor(r).title}\t${thisAmount}
` ; totalAmount += thisAmount; } // add footer lines result += `Amount owed is ${totalAmount}
`; result += `You earned ${frequentRenterPoints} frequent renter points
`; return result; A general tactic I like to use is getting rid of mutable variables. There are three here, one is collecting up the final string, the other two calculate values that are being used in that string. I'm ok with the first, but would like to eradicate the other two. To start doing that I need to split the loop. First I simplify the loop and inline the const. function statement(customer, movies) { let totalAmount = 0; let frequentRenterPoints = 0; let result = `Rental Record for ${customer.name}
`; for (let r of customer.rentals) { frequentRenterPoints += frequentRenterPointsFor(r); result += `\t${movieFor(r).title}\t${amountFor(r)}
` ; totalAmount += amountFor(r); } // add footer lines result += `Amount owed is ${totalAmount}
`; result += `You earned ${frequentRenterPoints} frequent renter points
`; return result; I then split the loop into three parts. function statement(customer, movies) { let totalAmount = 0; let frequentRenterPoints = 0; let result = `Rental Record for ${customer.name}
`; for (let r of customer.rentals) { frequentRenterPoints += frequentRenterPointsFor(r); } for (let r of customer.rentals) { result += `\t${movieFor(r).title}\t${amountFor(r)}
`; } for (let r of customer.rentals) { totalAmount += amountFor(r); } // add footer lines result += `Amount owed is ${totalAmount}
`; result += `You earned ${frequentRenterPoints} frequent renter points
`; return result; Some programmers worry about the performance implications of refactorings like this, in which case take a look of an old but pertinent article on software performance That split allows me to then extract functions for the calculations. function statement(customer, movies) { let result = `Rental Record for ${customer.name}
`; for (let r of customer.rentals) { result += `\t${movieFor(r).title}\t${amountFor(r)}
`; } result += `Amount owed is ${ totalAmount ()}
`; result += `You earned ${ totalFrequentRenterPoints ()} frequent renter points
`; return result; function totalAmount () { let result = 0; for (let r of customer.rentals) { result += amountFor(r); } return result; } function totalFrequentRenterPoints () { let result = 0; for (let r of customer.rentals) { result += frequentRenterPointsFor(r); } return result; } Being a fan of collection pipelines, I'll also adjust the loops to use them. function totalFrequentRenterPoints() { return customer.rentals.map((r) => frequentRenterPointsFor(r)).reduce((a, b) => a + b, 0) ; } function totalAmount() { return customer.rentals.reduce((total, r) => total + amountFor(r), 0); } I'm not sure which of those two pipeline styles I prefer most.
Examining the composed function So now lets look at where we are. Here is all the code. function statement (customer, movies) { let result = `Rental Record for ${customer.name}
`; for (let r of customer.rentals) { result += `\t${movieFor(r).title}\t${amountFor(r)}
`; } result += `Amount owed is ${totalAmount()}
`; result += `You earned ${totalFrequentRenterPoints()} frequent renter points
`; return result; function totalFrequentRenterPoints () { return customer.rentals.map((r) => frequentRenterPointsFor(r)).reduce((a, b) => a + b, 0) ; } function totalAmount () { return customer.rentals.reduce((total, r) => total + amountFor(r), 0); } function movieFor (rental) { return movies[rental.movieID]; } function amountFor (rental) { let result = 0; switch (movieFor(rental).code) { case "regular": result = 2; if (rental.days > 2) { result += (rental.days - 2) * 1.5; } return result; case "new": result = rental.days * 3; return result; case "childrens": result = 1.5; if (rental.days > 3) { result += (rental.days - 3) * 1.5; } return result; } return result; } function frequentRenterPointsFor (rental) { return (movieFor(rental).code === "new" && rental.days > 2)? 2 : 1; } } I now have a nicely composed function. The core code of the function is 7 lines, and is all concerned with formatting the output string. All the calculation code is moved to its own set of nested functions, each of which is small and clearly named to show its purpose. But I'm still not quite in a position to write the html emitting function. The decomposed functions are all nested inside the overall statement function, this makes it easier to extract the functions as they can refer to names inside the function scope, which includes each other (such as amountFor calling movieFor ) and the supplied parameters customer and movie. But I can't write a simple htmlStatement function that references those functions. To be able to support some different outputs using the same calculations, I need to do some further refactorings. Now I reach a point where I have several options of which refactorings to do depending on how I like to factor my code. I'll run through each of these approaches next, explaining how each one works, and then compare them once I'm done with all four.
Using a parameter to determine the output One route I could take is to specify the output format as an argument to the statement function. I would begin this refactoring by using Add Parameter, extracting the existing text formatting code, and writing some code at the start to dispatch to the extracted function when the parameter indicates it. function statement(customer, movies, format = 'text' ) { switch (format) { case "text": return textStatement(); } throw new Error(`unknown statement format ${format}`); function textStatement() { let result = `Rental Record for ${customer.name}
`; for (let r of customer.rentals) { result += `\t${movieFor(r).title}\t${amountFor(r)}
`; } result += `Amount owed is ${totalAmount()}
`; result += `You earned ${totalFrequentRenterPoints()} frequent renter points
`; return result; } I can then write the html generating function and add a clause to the dispatcher. function statement(customer, movies, format = 'text') { switch (format) { case "text": return textStatement(); case "html": return htmlStatement(); } throw new Error(`unknown statement format ${format}`); function htmlStatement() { let result = `<h1>Rental Record for <em>${customer.name}</em></h1>
`; result += "<table>
"; for (let r of customer.rentals) { result += ` <tr><td>${movieFor(r).title}</td><td>${amountFor(r)}</td></tr>
`; } result += "</table>
"; result += `<p>Amount owed is <em>${totalAmount()}</em></p>
`; result += `<p>You earned <em>${totalFrequentRenterPoints()}</em> frequent renter points</p>
`; return result; } I might fancy using a data structure for the dispatcher logic. function statement(customer, movies, format = 'text') { const dispatchTable = { "text": textStatement, "html": htmlStatement }; if (undefined === dispatchTable[format]) throw new Error(`unknown statement format ${format}`); return dispatchTable[format].call();
Using top-level functions The problem with writing a top-level html statement function is that the calculation functions are nested inside the text statement function. So an obvious way to proceed is to move them to the top context. To do this, I begin by looking for function that doesn't refer to any others, in this case movieFor Whenever I move functions around, I like to do it by first copying the function to the new context, fitting it to that context, and then replacing the original function body with a call to the moved function. function topMovieFor(rental, movies) { return movies[rental.movieID]; } function statement(customer, movies) { // [snip] function movieFor(rental) { return topMovieFor(rental, movies) ; } function frequentRenterPointsFor(rental) { return (movieFor(rental).code === "new" && rental.days > 2)? 2 : 1; } I can compile and test at this point, which will tell me if the change in context has caused any trouble. Once that's done I can then inline the forwarding function. function movieFor (rental, movies) { return movies[rental.movieID]; } function statement(customer, movies) { // [snip] function frequentRenterPointsFor(rental) { return (movieFor(rental, movies ).code === "new" && rental.days > 2)? 2 : 1; } There's a similar change inside amountFor As well as the inline, I also renamed the top-level function to match the old name, so the only difference is now the movies parameter. I then do that with all the nested functions function statement (customer, movies) { let result = `Rental Record for ${customer.name}
`; for (let r of customer.rentals) { result += `\t${movieFor(r, movies).title}\t${amountFor(r, movies)}
`; } result += `Amount owed is ${totalAmount(customer, movies)}
`; result += `You earned ${totalFrequentRenterPoints(customer, movies)} frequent renter points
`; return result; } function totalFrequentRenterPoints (customer, movies) { return customer.rentals.map((r) => frequentRenterPointsFor(r, movies)).reduce((a, b) => a + b, 0) ; } function totalAmount (customer, movies) { return customer.rentals.reduce((total, r) => total + amountFor(r, movies), 0); } function movieFor (rental, movies) { return movies[rental.movieID]; } function amountFor (rental, movies) { let result = 0; switch (movieFor(rental, movies).code) { case "regular": result = 2; if (rental.days > 2) { result += (rental.days - 2) * 1.5; } return result; case "new": result = rental.days * 3; return result; case "childrens": result = 1.5; if (rental.days > 3) { result += (rental.days - 3) * 1.5; } return result; } return result; } function frequentRenterPointsFor (rental, movies) { return (movieFor(rental, movies).code === "new" && rental.days > 2)? 2 : 1; } Now I can easily write the html statement function function htmlStatement(customer, movies) { let result = `<h1>Rental Record for <em>${customer.name}</em></h1>
`; result += "<table>
"; for (let r of customer.rentals) { result += ` <tr><td>${movieFor(r, movies).title}</td><td>${amountFor(r, movies)}</td></tr>
`; } result += "</table>
"; result += `<p>Amount owed is <em>${totalAmount(customer, movies)}</em></p>
`; result += `<p>You earned <em>${totalFrequentRenterPoints(customer, movies)}</em> frequent renter points</p>
`; return result; } Declaring some partially-applied local functions When using a global function like this, parameter lists can get rather long. So sometimes it can be useful to declare a local function that calls the global function with some, or all, of the parameters filled in. That local function, which is a partial application of the global function, can then be used later on. There's various ways to do this in JavaScript. One is to assign the local functions to variables. function htmlStatement(customer, movies) { const amount = () => totalAmount(customer, movies); const frequentRenterPoints = () => totalFrequentRenterPoints(customer, movies); const movie = (aRental) => movieFor(aRental, movies); const rentalAmount = (aRental) => amountFor(aRental, movies); let result = `<h1>Rental Record for <em>${customer.name}</em></h1>
`; result += "<table>
"; for (let r of customer.rentals) { result += ` <tr><td>${ movie(r).title}</td><td>${ rentalAmount(r) }</td></tr>
`; } result += "</table>
"; result += `<p>Amount owed is <em>${ amount() }</em></p>
`; result += `<p>You earned <em>${ frequentRenterPoints() }</em> frequent renter points</p>
`; return result; } Another is to declare them as nested functions. function htmlStatement(customer, movies) { let result = `<h1>Rental Record for <em>${customer.name}</em></h1>
`; result += "<table>
"; for (let r of customer.rentals) { result += ` <tr><td>${movie(r).title}</td><td>${rentalAmount(r)}</td></tr>
`; } result += "</table>
"; result += `<p>Amount owed is <em>${amount()}</em></p>
`; result += `<p>You earned <em>${frequentRenterPoints()}</em> frequent renter points</p>
`; return result; function amount() {return totalAmount(customer, movies);} function frequentRenterPoints() {return totalFrequentRenterPoints(customer, movies);} function rentalAmount(aRental) {return amountFor(aRental, movies);} function movie(aRental) {return movieFor(aRental, movies);} } Yet another approach is to use bind. I'll leave you to look up that one - it's not something I'd use here as I find these forms easier to follow.
Using classes Object-orientation is familiar to me, so it's a not surprise that I'm going to consider classes and objects. ES6 introduced good syntax for classical OO. Let's look at how I'd apply it to this example. My first step is to wrap the data in objects, starting with the customer. customer.es6… export default class Customer { constructor(data) { this._data = data; } get name() {return this._data.name;} get rentals() { return this._data.rentals;} } statement.es6… import Customer from './customer.es6'; function statement( customerArg, movies) { const customer = new Customer(customerArg); let result = `Rental Record for ${customer.name}
`; for (let r of customer.rentals) { result += `\t${movieFor(r).title}\t${amountFor(r)}
`; } result += `Amount owed is ${totalAmount()}
`; result += `You earned ${totalFrequentRenterPoints()} frequent renter points
`; return result; So far the class is just a simple wrapper over the original JavaScript object. I'll next do a similar wrapper with the rental. rental.es6… export default class Rental { constructor(data) { this._data = data; } get days() {return this._data.days} get movieID() {return this._data.movieID} } customer.es6… import Rental from './rental.es6' export default class Customer { constructor(data) { this._data = data; } get name() {return this._data.name;} get rentals() { return this._data.rentals.map(r => new Rental(r));} } Now that I have classes wrapped around my simple json objects, I have a target for a Move Method. As with moving functions to the top level, the first function to work with is one that doesn't call any others - movieFor. But this function needs the list of movies as context, which will need to be made available to the newly created rental objects. statement.es6… function statement(customerArg, movies) { const customer = new Customer(customerArg, movies ); let result = `Rental Record for ${customer.name}
`; for (let r of customer.rentals) { result += `\t${movieFor(r).title}\t${amountFor(r)}
`; } result += `Amount owed is ${totalAmount()}
`; result += `You earned ${totalFrequentRenterPoints()} frequent renter points
`; return result; class Customer… constructor(data, movies ) { this._data = data; this._movies = movies } get rentals() { return this._data.rentals.map(r => new Rental(r, this._movies ));} class Rental… constructor(data, movies ) { this._data = data; this._movies = movies; } Once I have the supporting data in place, I can move the function. statement.es6… function movieFor(rental) { return rental.movie ; } class Rental… get movie() { return this._movies[this.movieID]; } As with the move I did earlier, the first step is to put the core behavior in the new context, fit it into that context, and adjust the original function to call the new one. Once this is working, it's relatively easy to inline the original function calls. statement.es6… function statement(customerArg, movies) { const customer = new Customer(customerArg, movies); let result = `Rental Record for ${customer.name}
`; for (let r of customer.rentals) { result += `\t${ r.movie.title}\t${amountFor(r)}
`; } result += `Amount owed is ${totalAmount()}
`; result += `You earned ${totalFrequentRenterPoints |
in coal to electricity, but by 2000, the conversion efficiency was raised to 35%. This improvement in efficiency allowed the continuing decrease in electricity prices. With lower prices, more individuals and businesses were able to afford electricity, and more technology using electricity became feasible. Cheap electricity allowed goods to be produced at prices that workers could afford, and the system tended to grow.
For oil, the price of oil remained relatively flat in inflation-adjusted terms for a very long time, even as engineers developed ever-more-efficient devices to use that oil.
We ran into our initial problems extracting oil cheaply in the early 1970s, after US oil production started to decline (Figure 4).
Back in the 1970s, we were able to work around the price spike by bringing oil production online in several additional places, including the Alaska, the North Sea, and Mexico. Unfortunately, those areas are now declining as well. Thus, we are increasingly forced to extract oil from areas that are high priced either (a) because of high extraction costs (such as the tight oil now being extracted in the United States) or (b) because of high indirect costs (such as the need for desalination plants and food subsidies in the Middle East). These can only be funded if oil prices are high, allowing governments to collect high levels of taxes.
There is considerable evidence that high oil prices are associated with recession. The Great Recession of 2007-2009 was associated with a huge spike in oil prices. I have written about the way high oil prices contribute to recession in a peer-reviewed article published in the journal Energy called Oil Supply Limits and the Continuing Financial Crisis. James Hamilton has shown that has shown that 10 out of 11 US recessions since World War II were associated with oil price spikes. Hamilton also showed that the effects of the oil price spike were sufficient to cause the recession of that began in late 2007.
Now the cost of oil production is high, and electricity prices have stopped falling. We read U. S. electricity prices may be going up for good, from the L. A. Times. It should be no surprise that economic growth is now a problem.
7. In historical periods, defaults were mostly associated with the transfer of ownership of various productive assets (such as land and factories) from one owner to another. Now, we are vulnerable to changes that could ultimately cut off oil and electricity, and thus bring the system down–not just transfer ownership.
The kinds of things that could bring the system down are diverse. They include:
War in the Middle East that would vastly disrupt oil exports. We do not have alternative suppliers–the world would have to do without part of its supplies. We are vulnerable now, because oil exporters are getting “squeezed” by prices that have not risen substantially since 2011. This makes it harder for Middle Eastern countries to fund their budgets, making wars and civil disorder more likely.
A spike in oil prices, perhaps caused by a war in the Middle East, that would vastly disrupt oil exports. Oil importing countries would head back into recession, with many layoffs. Governments are in worse shape for fighting this situation than they were in 2007-2008.
An increase in interest rates. While Quantitative Easing and Zero Interest rate policy may not look like they are doing much, an increase in interest rates would not work well at all. With higher interest rates, governments would owe more in interest payments, so would need to raise taxes (leading to recessionary effects). The monthly payments required for buying high-priced goods (from cars, to houses, to factories) would rise, cutting back on demand, also tending to lead to recession.
A decrease in lending, or even a failure of debt to keep rising, would also be a problem. Janet Yellen’s recent IMF speech highlighted the possibility of using regulation to prevent excessive debt. Unfortunately, increasing debt is very much needed to keep oil prices high enough to enable extraction at today’s high cost levels. See my post The Connection Between Oil Prices, Debt Levels, and Interest Rates. If debt levels drop, we run the danger of oil prices dropping as dramatically as they did in late 2008, when lending froze up.
8. The world is now filled with a large number of people in powerful positions who mistakenly think they know answers to questions, when they really do not. The problem is that researchers tend operate in subject-matter “silos.” They build models based on their narrow understanding of a problem. These models may temporarily work, but as we reach limits in a finite world, these models produce misleading results. The users of these models do not understand the problem and make decisions based on badly flawed models.
Economists do not understand energy issues. They seem to think that their models, which ignore energy issues, are fine. All they need to do is fine-tune regulation, or tweak interest rates, and everything will be fine. Unfortunately, these economic models no longer work, as I explained in a recent post, Why Standard Economic Models Don’t Work–Our Economy is a Network.
In fact, the issue is more basic than just bad models that economists are using. The whole “peer-reviewed paper” system, with its pressure to write more peer-reviewed papers, each resting on prior peer-reviewed papers, is flawed. Models are built and used endlessly, in part because that is the way things have been done in the past. Once an approach is used frequently, everyone assumes it is correct. Models can and do have short term-predictive power, but that fact does not mean that the approach works for the long term.
The problem we are running into is the fact the world is finite. Growth can’t continue indefinitely. The way that the physical world enforces the end to growth is not obvious, until we start hitting the limits. The limits are cost of production limits for oil and for our supply of stable grid electricity. (I have talked about selling prices, but selling prices are not really the limits, in themselves. It is the fact that with higher costs of production, either selling prices must go up, or profits and the ability to invest in new production must go down–that is the problem. Right now, the rising cost of production of oil is being hidden in prices that are too low for oil producers. So many assume we don’t have a problem. The issue of adequate government funding is also mixed into the price/cost of production issue.)
Models that are no longer correct fill every area of study, from actuarial models, to financial planning models, to economic models, to models forecasting future oil and gas production, to climate change models.
Some models are deceptively simple–the idea that the number of years of future production of oil (or gas or coal) can be estimated by [Amount of Resources / Current Annual Production] is a simple model. Unfortunately, this model doesn’t work, because we can never get enough investment capital to extract all of the fossil fuel that seems to be available–the price can never go high enough, and stay high enough. High prices simply bring on recession. See my post, IEA Investment Report – What is Right; What is Wrong.
In fact, it is pretty hard to find any model that continues to work, as we reach limits in a finite world. This is not intuitively obvious. If a model worked before, why wouldn’t it work now? Researchers and well-meaning leaders follow models that sort of worked in the past, but don’t really model the current situation. Thus, we have well-meaning leaders, doing their best to make things better, inadvertently making things worse. In a finite world, everything is “connected” to everything else, so things that look beneficial from one perspective can have a bad outcome viewed another way. For example, a reduction in carbon dioxide emissions from closing coal plants risks major electrical outages is New England and seems likely to raise electricity prices. Such changes push the economy toward recession, and perhaps ultimately toward collapse.
Governments are one area squeezed by higher oil and electricity costs. As governments cut back, whether these cut backs are in education, unemployment benefits, military spending, or healthcare spending, there are indirect effects on the economy as a whole. The problem is that government spending creates jobs. As government spending is cut, it pushes the economy toward contraction–even if part of today’s spending is clearly wasteful. It creates a conundrum–fixing one problem makes another problem worse.
Conclusion
We live in perilous times. We have leaders who think they know the answers but, in fact, they do not. The debt problems we face now are not just overspending problems; they are signs that we are reaching limits of a finite world. World leaders do not seem to understand this connection. It is not even clear that they understand the connection of debt problems to the need for cheap-to-produce, high-quality energy products.
World leaders are nevertheless convinced that they know the answers, based on complex, but very flawed, models. Unfortunately, actions taken based on these models have a good chance of making the situation worse rather than better. For example, trying to tie a world economy closer together, when it is already heading toward collapse, seems like a recipe for disaster.
I find Christine Lagarde’s use of numerology in her January 14, 2014 speech at the National Press Club Luncheon disturbing. Is she trying to signal some “in crowd” to make different decisions, in advance of a big IMF announcement? Or is numerology being used for prediction? Such an approach to forecasting would seem to be even worse than using models based on silos of limited understanding.0 Shares 0
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Read the previous part: "The Bank of Canada"
A very large number of Canadians have been unable to imagine the size of (even) the visible fraud perpetrated upon them under the name of The Mike Duffy Trial.
In what may fairly be called the fascist press of Canada the issue has been spray-painted “cover-up”. Mr. Duffy’s personality has been the chief subject of discussion by core writers... as a way to divert attention? Even beyond that, commentators are trapped in the almost irrelevant: Mike Duffy’s personality, media career, and Senate behaviour.
The trial was not really a result of Mike Duffy’s personality nor of the lax and permissive boundaries of personal expenditure and public action in the Canadian Senate.
The truth about the Mike Duffy trial
The trial was the product of the vicious, conspiratorial, vengeful, punitive nature … of what may fairly, I think, be called the criminal Conservative Party Machine seeking to dominate public consciousness.
The Machine, I allege, was headed by Stephen Harper, prime minister, and Nigel Wright, PMO chief of staff (long time advocate, friend, and supporter of Stephen Harper).
The Machine set to work to use a thoroughly corrupted RCMP force (which it may have additionally coerced and suborned) and Prosecutorial Services which may, in fact, have acted criminally in a major breach of ethical standards and, therefore, in a major Breach of Trust … and may also have been suborned.
Beyond the Machine, Defence lawyer Donald Bayne satisfied what is said to be the first duty of a Defence lawyer: defence of the accused. He served his client well, in defence. But that, I submit, is all he did. He did not, I believe, serve justice well nor the Canadian people – who had to be an unstated principal in the case. How did he lapse?
In the service of justice he should have elected Trial by Jury. A jury would quickly have seen through Prosecution’s deceptions and would have been – in fact – a body of representative Canadians dealing with the criminal Conservative Party Machine: shaping a much more convincing acquittal of Mike Duffy than one by a somewhat (I believe) dubious judge in the Club of Higher Court Judges in Canada (which is not a body presently in very good odour).
In the service of the Canadian people, Donald Bayne – in addition - might well have examined and cross-examined a good deal more searchingly than he did. He might – just for instance – have kept Nigel Wright on the stand for two or three days longer, grilling him closely. To this observer, Nigel Wright was given “the billionaire treatment” on the stand (and, it now seems, off the stand as well!).
The Opposition Parties in the House of Commons – all of them – failed the Canadian people monumentally. They failed to produce available information over two and a half years before the trial. They failed to tear apart the fraudulent RCMP actions and then the wholly sham Prosecution case.
They failed in the House of Commons, in the press and media, and in the streets. What Donald Bayne revealed of Conservative Party Machine dirty tricks had to be available earlier – in large part – to the Opposition Parties. Anyone who knows Ottawa knows few secrets are kept there. For nearly two and a half years in Ottawa – oozing from the PMO, leaking from the Senate, spilling from RCMP headquarters, pulsing through the Ottawa Grapevine - leads must have been available to the Opposition Parties … which they chose to ignore. Why?
The greatest failure of the Mike Duffy affair may well be the failure of the Opposition Parties to be “on” all the materials and events and to protect Canadian rule of law and democracy. Their role was a shameful, wholly inadequate role. Were they playing to new rules in Ottawa in an atmosphere of clubby entitlement and sleazy “cooperation”? Even now, with the truth about criminal action exposed (and unpunished) they are mute.
The court, and the proceedings there
Very serious questions must be asked about the timing and the scheduling of the trial. Was there major political manipulation on behalf of what I call the Conservative Party Criminal Machine? Somehow, the Ontario Higher Court System produced a meaningless recess – months long - in the midst of the trial. The recess just happened to permit the Federal Election to be held before the full story was told of the Conservative Machine’s vicious lawlessness.
The recess permitted the Conservative Party to return strongly to the House of Commons. If the trial had continued normally and had ended before the Federal Election, election results would likely have been very, very different.
Are we to conclude that the criminal Conservative Party Machine not only escaped from the scandal unscathed but also was permitted to shape, in part, the membership of the present House of Commons?
The judge without a jury. What happened?
The judge on such a trial is key. His (her) powers are huge. The judge becomes “seized” with the action – which means he/she becomes the exclusive power in relation to conduct and outcome. That is so for two simple reasons: first, he or she is the best and most fully informed about all spoken (and unspoken) aspects of the process. Secondly (as a result of centuries of experience) the judge cannot be moved from a trial once seized with it because the more excellent a judge’s work, the more desperate, often, are some to have the judge removed. And so the only person who can move such a judge is that judge himself or herself.
When a judge is moved in the midst of a process in Canada, for instance by promotion, reasonable and prudent Canadians may suspect the move is a combination of coercion and bribery. Judges were moved/promoted – for instance - in the midst of action in the BC Rail Scandal trial (ended 2010) and in the (Alberta) Jessica Ernst case against the Alberta government, its Regulator, and the huge oil giant Encana (still in process).
No such attempt was made to move Justice Charles Vaillancourt. I am tempted to say “there was no need to move him”; but that would probably be unfair. He did attend closely to Defence lawyer Donald Bayne’s clear and sharp depiction of the fraudulent processes used to entrap Mike Duffy. And Justice Vaillancourt cleared Mr. Duffy of all 31 charges against him.
But he stopped there – at the point he needed to go beyond merely upholding the (mostly) excellent Defence presentation.
At the point Justice Vaillancourt stopped, he had (I suggest) a major role to play, which he obviously rejected. A judge in a higher court in Canada is not just a receiver of information and a referee in a judicial combat. At crucial times he or she must insist upon the fullness of the law in the light of new events, circumstances, or conditions revealed in the community served – that expose serious criminality and serious threats to the peace, tranquility, and safety of the people. The judge doesn’t, of course, write new law, but requires action to assure that the rule of law is honoured and fully exercised in relation to the matter before the court.
Justice Vaillancourt revealed in his written judgement that he was aware of the ugly misuse of power by the RCMP and the Prosecution service, as well as the almost incredible and ugly manipulations of Nigel Wright and his cronies on behalf of (and possibly with) their direct employers, Stephen Harper and the Conservative cabinet. Justice Vaillancourt has been publicly praised for his “scathing indictment” of the PMO and Nigel Wright acting as Stephen Harper’s chief of staff.
But I believe thoughtful Canadians will conclude Justice Vaillancourt left his task dangerously incomplete [and one can only ask Why].
Justice Vaillancourt should have forcefully recommended that appropriate Law Enforcement entities review (as publicly as possible) the behaviour of RCMP actors, Prosecution Services personnel, selected Senators, as well as Nigel Wright, Stephen Harper and related personnel in the PMO – with a view to determining if criminal charges should be laid against any or many of them. Justice Vaillancourt should have made the recommendation in such a way that it could not be ignored. He could have done it in terms of genuine alarm at the apparent epidemic of criminality at highest levels in the conduct of the nation’s affairs.
The organized, pre-meditated, interwoven, relentless, and destructive intention to do deeply unlawful things by people in places of highest trust should have alarmed and outraged Justice Vaillancourt – as it must alarm and outrage every Canadian who learns of it. And Justice Vaillancourt should have acted very forcefully….
Why didn’t he?
No one could have criticized him for demanding action in that circumstance. If criminals have escaped “the Duffy Affair”, a considerable part of the reason, I suggest, must be laid at the feet of Charles Vaillancourt.
One wants to believe that – within the limits of his talent – Justice Charles Vaillancourt is an honest man and an honest judge. But what was he doing sanctioning a recess of several months in the midst of the trial, a recess that proved advantageous to the Conservative Party? And why did he end his judgement without directly addressing what he almost certainly believed was evidence pointing to criminal behaviour among the accusers? The questions are too important to avoid.
Just as one other inaction cannot be avoided.
The Liberal government led by Justin Trudeau has done nothing whatever about what is almost assuredly major criminal activity in the conduct of government. Surely that is a matter of the first importance. Where are the Liberal MPs in the House of Commons? Are they all (as all the Conservative government MPs were – with the exception of Brent Rathgeber) happy, well-fed, voluntarily bound-and-gagged non-entities, doing nothing but mouthing the propaganda of their “leaders”?
Why is it in the interest of the Liberal Party to shield criminal activity in the former Conservative government? Is there an alliance of the apparent foes that will only become clear with time?
The examination here looks at the public betrayal and criminal activity imbedded in the Mike Duffy Affair – betrayal and criminal activity (so far) blandly accepted in silence by every MP in the House of Commons. Perhaps things are even worse than they look. Perhaps the Liberal government led by Justin Trudeau will reveal to us an on-going intention in Ottawa to criminalize our democracy … permanently … and will make clear to us that we have – even in this column – only scratched the surface….When police seized an estimated 4,000 books from Occupy Wall Street's "People's Library" during the eviction of the camp at Zuccotti Park on 15 November, it drew condemnation from a host of writers and organisations, including the American Library Association and author Salman Rushdie.
The staff of Michael Bloomberg, the New York mayor who ordered the eviction, attempted to defuse the row by promising that property from Zuccotti Park "including the OWS library" was safely stored at a sanitation department garage and could be collected.
But when the librarians arrived to survey what remained of the books, some signed copies given by authors, including one donated the previous day by Philip Levine, the US poet laureate, they found "it was clear the books had been treated as trash", they said.
At an emotional press conference on Wednesday, the librarians laid the torn and damaged books they were able to recover from the garage on a table taking up much of a cramped room in an office block in Madison Avenue.
It was a sorry sight. Only 1,273 books - a third of the stock - were returned to them, they said, and around a third of those were damaged beyond repair. Only about 800 are still usable. About 2,900 books are still unaccounted for.
The librarians, authors and supporters spoke of the loss of what had become a potent symbol of the Occupy movement and called on Bloomberg to restore the library and a public space in which people can use it.
Norman Siegel, the former director of the New York Civil Liberties Union and civil rights attorney who chaired the meeting, said he was not aware of any other instance where a city or state had destroyed a library.
"History informs us that when books are burned there is almost immediately or subsequently universal condemnation of that act. Here, the Bloomberg adminstration lost, damaged and possibly destroyed books. That is wrong."
Siegel described the library as an impressive catalogue of books, including titles such as Shakespeare's Macbeth and Othello, Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment, the autobiography of Andrew Carnegie and even Bloomberg's own work, "Bloomberg on Bloomberg".
Siegel called on the mayor to replace "every single book" and to provide a space for a library. He said: "Bloomberg's administration needs to acknowledge that wrong has been committed and that should never happen again in this great city. We also want space for the People's Library."
One by one, the activists involved in building the library spoke of what it meant for the movement.
Mandy Henk, a professional librarian said: "I poured my heart and soul into this library. The heart of this movement is ideas and literature and sharing. The destruction of the library is an attempt to silence and destroy our movement. What type of people are we if we can't create a public space where we can share books and ideas with each other?"
Daniel Norton, a student in library science from the University of Maine at Augusta, said the library was "the creation of a community through a conversation and sharing ideas."
He accused Bloomberg of a "crusade to destroy a conversation" where people came to engage with each other.
William Scott, a professor of English at the University of Pittsburgh, said that Michael Bloomberg had a building named after him at Johns Hopkins University where the mayor and future businessman had studied. Scott said: "This man threw away so many precious books. They embodied all the values that we struggle to defend in our country."
Scott, who is spending his sabbatical with Occupy, has told of how during the raid, he watched as Stephen Boyer, a poet and OWS librarian, read poems aloud from the Occupy Wall street poetry anthology to the riot police.
Writing in the Nation, Scott said: "As they pushed us away from the park with shields, fists, billy clubs and tear gas, I stood next to Stephen and watched while he yelled poetry at the top of his lungs into the oncoming army of riot police. Then, something incredible happened. Several of the police leaned in closer to hear the poetry. They lifted their helmet shields slightly to catch the words Stephen was shouting out to them, even while their fellow cops continued to stampede us."
He recounted how the next day, an officer who had been guarding the entrance to Zuccotti Park said he was touched by the poetry and moved at how they cared enough about books to risk arrest to defend them.
Books were not the only items destroyed in the raid. One activist said she had never seen a computer come out of the sanitaion department that was not destroyed.
Gideon Oliver, a lawyer form the New York chapter of the National Lawyers Guild, described the destruction of the library as "illegal and unconscionable" and said they were looking into ways it might be addressed.
• Watch video of the NYPD and Department of Sanitation destroying the OWS People's Library tent and throwing away all the books
• This article was amended on 17-18 January 20122. The original named Norman Siegel as Seigel, and named Mandy Henk as Hink. William Scott was reported as saying that Michael Bloomberg studied at the University of Pittsburgh; he actually named Johns Hopkins. The number of books estimated to have been destroyed in the raid has also been revised, from 5,000 to 4,000.Opposition leader hints at big changes under a future Labor government and says households should be encouraged to generate their own power
The Labor leader Bill Shorten has called for significant changes to the rules governing the national electricity market, saying they are biased in favour of big energy generators to the detriment of households.
He said the national electricity market (NEM) rules are designed to help the big companies recoup the money they spent on purchasing government assets, rather than encourage households to generate their own power, and they need to change faster to adapt to consumer needs.
His comments hint at a possible overhaul of the NEM’s governance structure under a future Labor government, because the current rule-making process is too cumbersome and slow, with suggested rules changes taking years to be introduced.
Daniel Andrews defends claims that civil liberties a 'luxury' in fight against terrorism Read more
Labor had promoted a similar idea in the lead-up to the 2016 election, with its call for an electricity modernisation review, but now the Finkel review has been released it would be used to guide such a review.
In a speech to the Australian Financial Review’s National Energy Summit in Sydney on Monday, Shorten recommitted Labor to negotiating a “fair-dinkum” clean energy target with the Turnbull government, saying “it’s time to put away the weapons of the climate change wars” and work together to find a way forward.
He said the media and business can all share the blame for Australia’s lost decade of energy policy development, but “we need to stop spoiling for a fight and start seeking a solution”.
“The scare campaigns and hyper-partisanship that got Australia into this mess, will not get us out of it,” he will say.
“That’s why, a bit over four months ago, before the chief scientist released his report, I wrote to the prime minister offering an olive branch.
“I said Labor was prepared to move from our preferred position of an emissions intensity scheme and negotiate a fair-dinkum clean energy target.
“That offer was greeted with some cynicism in the media. But let me be crystal clear – I made that offer in good faith, and that offer still stands.”
Shorten said Australia needs to resolve the current “gas crisis” and do more to drive investment in renewable energy that delivers more reliable electricity, and if Labor wins the next election it will organise Australia into a series of renewable energy zones – as recommended by the chief scientist, Alan Finkel – that identify wind, solar, pumped hydro and geothermal resources, and connect them to the existing network.
“These zones would be based on both existing generation and storage in the area – and the potential for future development,” he said.
Australia's politics only barrier to clean energy system, report finds Read more
“Identifying these zones – from eastern Queensland, north-east New South Wales, west Victoria, the Eyre Peninsula in South Australia and the entire state of Tasmania – will also plant a flag for investors – signalling future sites for job-creating projects.”
Shorten also said Labor will free up the Clean Energy Finance Corporation to invest in more generation and more storage.
“Under Labor, the return benchmark for the CEFC was set at the weighted average of the Australian government bond rate.
“Under this government, it was initially increased to the weighted average plus 4% to 5% and is now set at the average plus 3% to 4%.
“Setting the return benchmark too high defeats the driving purpose of the CEFC and it holds back the crucial investment Australia needs – right now – in new generation and storage.
“This is why a Labor government would restore the original benchmark return of the Clean Energy Finance Corporation, to invest in more generation, more storage and more jobs.”Amateur divers who found one of the richest treasure wrecks off the coast of Devon are now convinced the 16th century ship was one of the dreaded Barbary pirates, and that its intended cargo was English slaves, bound for the slave markets of North Africa.
Although historians at the British Museum were initially deeply sceptical of the claim, hundreds of pieces of gold found on the seabed will go on display at the museum next week with a label acknowledging the possibility that the wreck off Salcombe could have been a pirate ship, and even a Barbary corsair.
The amateur divers who found the ship are convinced that research on the wreck is uncovering a largely forgotten history of human misery.
The idea of white slavery, overshadowed by the unarguable brutality of centuries of the trade in black slaves, is now mainly dismissed as the stuff of Victorian novels, while the "Barbary corsairs" became pantomime figures. The terror of the pirate raids remains a vivid folk memory on Mediterranean islands, but it has largely been forgotten that they also raided as far north as the coast of Scotland, in search not of ships or gold but human booty.
However, academics are re-examining the subject, with startling results. Linda Colley's recent book, Captives, draws together hundreds of accounts of capture by pirates, and the desperate pleas to parliament for help from those left behind.
The divers' claims for the Salcombe wreck are backed by another academic, Robert Davis of the University of Ohio, who is also completing a study of the white slave trade. He believes that in the 250 years from 1580 more than a million Europeans were kidnapped for slavery or ransom.
The wreck was located six years ago by Neville Oldham, a former Grenadier Guard and retired builder, and his friend, Ron Howell. The ship had broken up almost without trace -only one chunk of oak has been recovered despite meticulous seabed surveys, but a wealth of contents has been raised, including cannons, personal possessions such as Dutch porcelain and pipes, and the largest haul of 17th century Islamic gold ever found in British waters.
Both men, who have formed a local group of amateur underwater archaeologists, are convinced the ship was a xebec, the fast, light, triangular-sailed craft, rowed by slave crews, used by the Barbary pirates. The scatter of cannon is unusual, suggesting that they were mounted only at the fore and aft of the ship, leaving space clear for the oars. They believe the reason no other timbers have been recovered is because the light shallow hulled ship would have turned turtle and been broken up on the rocks, rather than sinking in one piece like the heavy European ships.
The story of the shipwreck has been taken up by documentary film makers, and will be seen on BBC 2 next Friday. The film crew commissioned tests on the one piece of timber recovered, which suggest a north African origin.
Mr Oldham said he suspected a pirate connection as soon as he realised that all the beautiful gold coins and jewellery they had found were chopped in half - in order, he believes, to divide the spoil between the pirates.
The gold will go on display at the British Museum from January 14. The museum historians describe it as: "A unique find in the history of Britain. It provides us with tangible evidence of a flourishing trade taking place between Morocco and Europe from the late 16th century. The fragmentary condition of the gold jewellery and ingots suggests that this may have been a hoard of bullion, exported with the intent of melting it down. The identity of the ship is not known: it may have been an English or Dutch vessel, or a ship of the Barbary pirates."
They will go no further on the nature of the "flourishing trade", but Mr Oldham is convinced he knows the truth.
"The fact that people have forgotten about this doesn't mean it never happened," he said. "History is written by rich people. When the rich were captured they were ransomed. When the poor were taken they disappeared without anyone recording their names."
· White Slaves, Pirate Gold - Timewatch, 9pm Friday January 10, BBC 2South Korea Arrests First Female President Over Bribery Allegations, Political Favors
South Korea’s first female president, Park Geun-hye was arrested Friday morning in Seoul over bribery allegations which led to her impeachment and removal from office earlier this year.
The Daily Caller reports:
According to Reuters, Park was arrested after the Seoul Central District Court sided with prosecutors, claiming the 65-year-old former president posed a flight risk and could potentially tamper with evidence involved in the ongoing investigation. Park is accused of colluding with friend and advisor Choi Soon-sil of soliciting donations from Korean businesses, most notably Samsung, to foundations friendly to Park’s legislative agenda in exchange for political favors. The warrant for her arrest dictates she be held for 20 days, which prosecutors will use to continue to build a case against the disgraced politician.
Does this story sound eerily familiar? She sounds like the Hillary Clinton of South Korea. Soliciting donations from businesses to foundations, political favors etc.
The Clinton Foundation was a way for Hillary to sell out our country while she served in government. Millions of dollars flowed through the Clinton Foundation from foreign governments. In fact, new emails discovered by Judicial Watch show Clinton Foundation donors were given special treatment. Where is the justice? When will the Clinton’s have to answer for their foundation?Doctor visits must be so terrifying when you’re a famous athlete. The second you hit it big as a fighter or baseball player or track and field star, it seems there’s always some medical professional trying to shoot you up with one mysterious injection or another. Happens all the time, if you believe the version of events offered by athletes like UFC heavyweight Alistair Overeem or baseball star Barry Bonds.
Think you’re getting some harmless vitamins? No way, pal. To hear some athletes tell it, they can hardly walk down the street without being pumped full of performance-enhancing substances against their will. These poor, poor souls. All they want to do is stay clean, and this cruel world of ours just won't let them.
Isn’t it funny how this never seems to happen to normal people? Most of us just don’t seem to receive free pharmaceuticals with such regularity. Most of us could go our whole lives and never run into the kind of doctors who, when questioned under oath, are suddenly unable to recall whether they told us what was in the shot they were about to give us. Then again, most of us aren’t looking for those sorts of doctors.
According to what Overeem and his counsel told the Nevada State Athletic Commission during a hearing on Tuesday to address his recent failed drug test, the Dutch fighter ran into this familiar brand of trouble when he received what he thought was an anti-inflammatory injection from Dr. Hector Oscar Molina. The chemical cocktail that Molina administered to treat a rib injury also contained testosterone, the good doctor told the NSAC, though he was conveniently unable to remember whether he’d mentioned that fact to the enormous man whose body he was about to inject it into.
If that seems odd to you, you aren’t alone. There are a lot of oddities at work here. The NSAC also thought it strange that Overeem -- a man who knew he was subject to random testing as part of his conditional license -- wouldn’t want to know more about exactly what was in that syringe. Medical professionals such as MMA Junkie columnist Dr. Johnny Benjamin also thought it was strange that Overeem’s doctor would mix testosterone in with an anti-inflammatory, which is, to say the least, not a standard practice among reputable doctors.
Then again, reputable isn’t the first word that leaps to mind when you look at Molina’s track record. Almost as soon as he was finished stammering his way through a series of non-committal, unconvincing answers before the NSAC, a few quick Google searches revealed that he’d previously been fined $25,000 by the Texas State Board of Medical Examiners for supplying prescriptions to strangers through online pharmacies. He’s also involved in something called the "Men’s Performance Enhancement Clinic," which boasts on its website of its "anti-aging, wellness, weight loss programs and testosterone replacement therapy for men of all ages."
There’s nothing there about his expertise treating rib injuries, but how could you go wrong with a doctor who was, according to reports, sued just last year for improperly performing a plastic surgery procedure known as the "Brazilian Butt Lift"?
Interestingly enough, Overeem doesn’t seem particularly ticked off at the man whose creative syringe use cost him absurd amounts of money and did untold damage to his reputation. While most people might be looking to sue the person who snuck enough testosterone into their system to elevate their levels to more than twice the NSAC limit (which is, let’s not forget, already uncommonly high), Overeem said he didn’t feel betrayed by Molina since there was "no evil intent" on the doctor’s part. Presumably Molina didn’t have any evil intent when he allegedly screwed up that Brazilian Butt Lift either, but it didn’t stop the victim of it from holding him accountable.
And let’s be very clear: accountability is what we’re after. It’s also what’s completely missing so far. Overeem refuses to take any real responsibility for his testosterone levels, since it was all his doctor’s fault. The doctor doesn’t want the blame, so he claims he can’t remember whether he and his patient had a conversation about the course of treatment they were about to begin. Overeem’s lawyer tried to convince the NSAC that it wasn’t a big deal anyway, because he was only using the mystery injection to treat an injury, which, by the way, he sustained while entertaining the masses. In other words, stop worrying about what’s in the man’s bloodstream and just enjoy the show.
What’s really amazing is that, despite its decision to keep Overeem out of action for at least the next nine months, the NSAC seemed partially moved by this argument. Commission members actually referred to Tuesday’s ridiculous buck-passing session as a "superlative" presentation, and they couldn’t stop praising Overeem for being such an all-around good guy through it all. Yes, he tried to avoid yet another drug test, according to NSAC executive director Keith Kizer, but he had a good excuse. Matter of fact, he had several. And sure, he engaged the services of a doctor most of us wouldn’t trust to treat an ingrown toenail, but at least he showed up at the hearing and didn’t call any of the commissioners ugly names |
Contents
ControlRenderingCompatibilityVersion Setting in the Web.config File
ClientIDMode Changes
HtmlEncode and UrlEncode Now Encode Single Quotation Marks
ASP.NET Page (.aspx) Parser is Stricter
Browser Definition Files Updated
System.Web.Mobile.dll Removed from Root Web Configuration File
ASP.NET Request Validation
Default Hashing Algorithm Is Now HMACSHA256
Configuration Errors Related to New ASP.NET 4 Root Configuration
ASP.NET 4 Child Applications Fail to Start When Under ASP.NET 2.0 or ASP.NET 3.5 Applications
ASP.NET 4 Web Sites Fail to Start on Computers Where SharePoint Is Installed
The HttpRequest.FilePath Property No Longer Includes PathInfo Values
ASP.NET 2.0 Applications Might Generate HttpException Errors that Reference eurl.axd
Event Handlers Might Not Be Not Raised in a Default Document in IIS 7 or IIS 7.5 Integrated Mode
Changes to the ASP.NET Code Access Security (CAS) Implementation
MembershipUser and Other Types in the System.Web.Security Namespace Have Been Moved
Output Caching Changes to Vary * HTTP Header
System.Web.Security Types for Passport are Obsolete
The MenuItem.PopOutImageUrl Property Fails to Render an Image in ASP.NET 4
Menu.StaticPopOutImageUrl and Menu.DynamicPopOutImageUrl Fail to Render Images When Paths Contain Backslashes
Disclaimer
ControlRenderingCompatibilityVersion Setting in the Web.config File
ASP.NET controls have been modified in the.NET Framework version 4 in order to let you specify more precisely how they render markup. In previous versions of the.NET Framework, some controls emitted markup that you had no way to disable. By default, ASP.NET 4 this type of markup is no longer generated.
If you use Visual Studio 2010 to upgrade your application from ASP.NET 2.0 or ASP.NET 3.5, the tool automatically adds a setting to the Web.config file that preserves legacy rendering. However, if you upgrade an application by changing the application pool in IIS to target the.NET Framework 4, ASP.NET uses the new rendering mode by default. To disable the new rendering mode, add the following setting in the Web.config file:
<pages controlRenderingCompatibilityVersion="3.5" />
The major rendering changes that the new behavior brings are as follows:
The Image and ImageButton controls no longer render a border="0" attribute.
and controls no longer render a attribute. The BaseValidator class and validation controls that derive from it no longer render red text by default.
class and validation controls that derive from it no longer render red text by default. The HtmlForm control does not render a name attribute.
control does not render a attribute. The Table control no longer renders a border="0" attribute.
control no longer renders a attribute. Controls that are not designed for user input (for example, the Label control) no longer render the disabled="disabled" attribute if their Enabled property is set to false (or if they inherit this setting from a container control).
ClientIDMode Changes
The ClientIDMode setting in ASP.NET 4 lets you specify how ASP.NET generates the id attribute for HTML elements. In previous versions of ASP.NET, the default behavior was equivalent to the AutoID setting of ClientIDMode. However, the default setting is now Predictable.
If you use Visual Studio 2010 to upgrade your application from ASP.NET 2.0 or ASP.NET 3.5, the tool automatically adds a setting to the Web.config file that preserves the behavior of earlier versions of the.NET Framework. However, if you upgrade an application by changing the application pool in IIS to target the.NET Framework 4, ASP.NET uses the new mode by default. To disable the new client ID mode, add the following setting in the Web.config file:
<pages clientIDMode="AutoID" />
HtmlEncode and UrlEncode Now Encode Single Quotation Marks
In ASP.NET 4, the HtmlEncode and UrlEncode methods of the HttpUtility and HttpServerUtility classes have been updated to encode the single quotation mark character (') as follows:
The HtmlEncode method encodes instances of the single quotation mark as '.
method encodes instances of the single quotation mark as '. The UrlEncode method encodes instances of the single quotation mark as %27.
ASP.NET Page (.aspx) Parser is Stricter
The page parser for ASP.NET pages (.aspx files) and user controls (.ascx files) is stricter in ASP.NET 4 and will reject more instances of invalid markup. For example, the following two snippets would successfully parse in earlier releases of ASP.NET, but will now raise parser errors in ASP.NET 4.
<asp:HiddenField runat="server" ID="SomeControl" Value="sampleValue" ; />
Notice the invalid semicolon at the end of the HiddenField tag.
<asp:LinkButton runat="server" ID="SomeControl" onclick="someControlClicked" style="display:inline; CssClass="searchLink" />
Notice the unclosed style attribute that runs into the CssClass attribute.
The browser definition files have been updated to include information about new and updated browsers and devices. Older browsers and devices such as Netscape Navigator have been removed, and newer browsers and devices such as Google Chrome and Apple iPhone have been added.
If your application contains custom browser definitions that inherit from one of the browser definitions that have been removed, you will see an error. For example, if the App_Browsers folder contains a browser definition that inherits from the IE2 browser definition, you will receive the following configuration error message:
The browser or gateway element with ID 'IE2' cannot be found.
Note The HttpBrowserCapabilities object (which is exposed by the page's Request.Browser property) is driven by the browser definitions files. Therefore, the information returned by accessing a property of this object in ASP.NET 4 might be different than the information returned in an earlier version of ASP.NET.
You can revert to the old browser definition files by copying the browser definition files from the following folder:
Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.50727\CONFIG\Browsers
Copy the files into the corresponding \CONFIG\Browsers folder for ASP.NET 4. After you copy the files, run the Aspnet_regbrowsers.exe command-line tool.
System.Web.Mobile.dll Removed from Root Web Configuration File
In previous versions of ASP.NET, a reference to the System.Web.Mobile.dll assembly was included in the root Web.config file in the assemblies section under. In order to improve performance, the reference to this assembly was removed.
The System.Web.Mobile.dll assembly is included in ASP.NET 4, but it is deprecated. If you want to use types from the System.Web.Mobile.dll assembly, add a reference to this assembly to either the root Web.config file or to an application Web.config file. For example, if you want to use any of the (deprecated) ASP.NET mobile controls, you must add a reference to the System.Web.Mobile.dll assembly to the Web.config file.
ASP.NET Request Validation
The request validation feature in ASP.NET provides a certain level of default protection against cross-site scripting (XSS) attacks. In previous versions of ASP.NET, request validation was enabled by default. However, it applied only to ASP.NET pages (.aspx files and their class files) and only when those pages were executing.
In ASP.NET 4, by default, request validation is enabled for all requests, because it is enabled before the BeginRequest phase of an HTTP request. As a result, request validation applies to requests for all ASP.NET resources, not just.aspx page requests. This includes requests such as Web service calls and custom HTTP handlers. Request validation is also active when custom HTTP modules are reading the contents of an HTTP request.
As a result, request validation errors might now occur for requests that previously did not trigger errors. To revert to the behavior of the ASP.NET 2.0 request validation feature, add the following setting in the Web.config file:
<httpRuntime requestValidationMode="2.0" />
However, we recommend that you analyze any request validation errors to determine whether existing handlers, modules, or other custom code accesses potentially unsafe HTTP inputs that could be XSS attack vectors.
Default Hashing Algorithm Is Now HMACSHA256
ASP.NET uses both encryption and hashing algorithms to help secure data such as forms authentication cookies and view state. By default, ASP.NET 4 now uses the HMACSHA256 algorithm for hash operations on cookies and view state. Earlier versions of ASP.NET used the older HMACSHA1 algorithm.
Your applications might be affected if you run mixed ASP.NET 2.0/ASP.NET 4 environments where data such as forms authentication cookies must work across.NET Framework versions. To configure an ASP.NET 4 Web application to use the older HMACSHA1 algorithm, add the following setting in the Web.config file:
<machineKey validation="SHA1" />
Configuration Errors Related to New ASP.NET 4 Root Configuration
The root configuration files (the machine.config file and the root Web.config file) for the.NET Framework 4 (and therefore ASP.NET 4) have been updated to include most of the boilerplate configuration information that in ASP.NET 3.5 was found in the application Web.config files. Because of the complexity of the managed IIS 7 and IIS 7.5 configuration systems, running ASP.NET 3.5 applications under ASP.NET 4 and under IIS 7 and IIS 7.5 can result in either ASP.NET or IIS configuration errors.
We recommend that you upgrade ASP.NET 3.5 applications to ASP.NET 4 by using the project upgrade tools in Visual Studio 2010, if practical. Visual Studio 2010 automatically modifies the ASP.NET 3.5 application's Web.config file to contain the appropriate settings for ASP.NET 4.
However, it is a supported scenario to run ASP.NET 3.5 applications using the.NET Framework 4 without recompilation. In that case, you might have to manually modify the application's Web.config file before you run the application under the.NET Framework 4 and under IIS 7 or IIS 7.5.
The next two sections describe changes that you might need to make for different combinations of software.
Windows Vista SP1 or Windows Server 2008 SP1, where neither hotfix KB958854 nor SP2 are installed. In this configuration, the IIS 7 configuration system incorrectly merges an application's managed configuration by comparing the application-level Web.config file to the ASP.NET 2.0 machine.config files. Because of this, application-level Web.config files from the.NET Framework 3.5 or later must have a system.web.extensions configuration section definition (the element) in order not to cause an IIS 7 validation failure.
However, manually modified application-level Web.config file entries that do not precisely match the original boilerplate configuration section definitions that were introduced with Visual Studio 2008 will cause ASP.NET configuration errors. (The default configuration entries that are generated by Visual Studio 2008 work correctly.) A common problem is that manually modified Web.config files leave out the allowDefinition and requirePermission configuration attributes that are found on various configuration section definitions. This causes a mismatch between the abbreviated configuration section in application-level Web.config files and the complete definition in the ASP.NET 4 machine.config file. As a result, at run time, the ASP.NET 4 configuration system throws a configuration error.
Windows Vista SP2, Windows Server 2008 SP2, Windows 7, Windows Server 2008 R2, and also Windows Vista SP1 and Windows Server 2008 SP1 where hotfix KB958854 is installed.
In this scenario, the IIS 7 and IIS 7.5 native configuration system returns a configuration error because it performs a text comparison on the type attribute that is defined for a managed configuration section handler. Because all Web.config files that are generated by Visual Studio 2008 and Visual Studio 2008 SP1 have "3.5" in the type string for the system.web.extensions (and related) configuration section handlers, and because the ASP.NET 4 machine.config file has "4.0" in the type attribute for the same configuration section handlers, applications that are generated in Visual Studio 2008 or Visual Studio 2008 SP1 always fail configuration validation in IIS 7 and IIS 7.5.
Resolving These Issues
The workaround for the first scenario is to update the application-level Web.config file by including the boilerplate configuration text from a Web.config file that was generated automatically by Visual Studio 2008.
An alternative workaround for the first scenario is to install Service Pack 2 for Vista or Windows Server 2008 on your computer or to install hotfix KB958854 (https://support.microsoft.com/kb/958854) to fix the incorrect configuration-merge behavior of the IIS configuration system. However, after you perform either of these actions, your application will likely encounter a configuration error due to the issue described for the second scenario.
The workaround for the second scenario is to delete or comment out all the system.web.extensions configuration section definitions and configuration section group definitions from the application-level Web.config file. These definitions are usually at the top of the application-level Web.config file and can be identified by the configSections element and its children.
For both scenarios, it is recommended that you also manually delete the system.codedom section, although this is not required.
ASP.NET 4 Child Applications Fail to Start When Under ASP.NET 2.0 or ASP.NET 3.5 Applications
ASP.NET 4 applications that are configured as children of applications that run earlier versions of ASP.NET might fail to start because of configuration or compilation errors. The following example shows a directory structure for an affected application.
/parentwebapp (configured to use ASP.NET 2.0 or ASP.NET 3.5)
/childwebapp (configured to use ASP.NET 4)
The application in the childwebapp folder will fail to start on IIS 7 or IIS 7.5 and will report a configuration error. The error text will include a message similar to the following:
The requested page cannot be accessed because the related configuration data for the page is invalid.
The configuration section 'configSections' cannot be read because it is missing a section declaration.
On IIS 6, the application in the childwebapp folder will also fail to start, but it will report a different error. For example, the error text might state the following:
The value for the 'compilerVersion' attribute in the provider options must be 'v4.0' or later if you are compiling for version 4.0 or later of the.NET Framework. To compile this Web application for version 3.5 or earlier of the.NET Framework, remove the 'targetFramework' attribute from the element of the Web.config file
These scenarios occur because the configuration information from the parent application in the parentwebapp folder is part of the hierarchy of configuration information that determines the final merged configuration settings that are used by the child web application in the childwebapp folder. Depending on whether the ASP.NET 4 Web application is running on IIS 7 (or IIS 7.5) or on IIS 6, either the IIS configuration system or the ASP.NET 4 compilation system will return an error.
The steps that you must follow to resolve this issue and to get the child ASP.NET 4 application to work depend on whether the ASP.NET 4 application runs on IIS 6 or on IIS 7 (or IIS 7.5).
Step 1 (IIS 7 or IIS 7.5 only)
This step is necessary only on operating systems that run IIS 7 or IIS 7.5, which includes Windows Vista, Windows Server 2008, Windows 7, and Windows Server 2008 R2.
Move the configSections definition in the Web.config file of the parent application (the application that runs ASP.NET 2.0 or ASP.NET 3.5) into the root Web.config file for the.NET Framework 2.0. The IIS 7 and IIS 7.5 native configuration system scans the configSections element when it merges the hierarchy of configuration files. Moving the configSections definition from the parent Web application's Web.config file to the root Web.config file effectively hides the element from the configuration merge process that occurs for the child ASP.NET 4 application.
On a 32-bit operating system or for 32-bit application pools, the root Web.config file for ASP.NET 2.0 and ASP.NET 3.5 is normally located in the following folder:
C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.50727\CONFIG
On a 64-bit operating system or for 64-bit application pools, the root Web.config file for ASP.NET 2.0 and ASP.NET 3.5 is normally located in the following folder:
C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework64\v2.0.50727\CONFIG
If you run both 32-bit and 64-bit Web applications on a 64-bit computer, you must move the configSections element up into root Web.config files for both the 32-bit and the 64-bit systems.
When you put the configSections element in the root Web.config file, paste the section immediately after the configuration element. The following example shows what the top portion of the root Web.config file should look like when you have finished moving the elements.
Note In the following example, lines have been wrapped for readability.
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <!-- The root web configuration file --> <configuration> <configSections> <sectionGroup name="system.web.extensions" type="System.Web.Configuration.SystemWebExtensionsSectionGroup, System.Web.Extensions, Version=3.5.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31BF3856AD364E35"> <sectionGroup name="scripting" type="System.Web.Configuration.ScriptingSectionGroup, System.Web.Extensions, Version=3.5.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31BF3856AD364E35"> <section name="scriptResourceHandler" type="System.Web.Configuration.ScriptingScriptResourceHandlerSection, System.Web.Extensions, Version=3.5.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31BF3856AD364E35" requirePermission="false" allowDefinition="MachineToApplication" /> <sectionGroup name="webServices" type="System.Web.Configuration.ScriptingWebServicesSectionGroup, System.Web.Extensions, Version=3.5.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31BF3856AD364E35"> <section name="jsonSerialization" type="System.Web.Configuration.ScriptingJsonSerializationSection, System.Web.Extensions, Version=3.5.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31BF3856AD364E35" requirePermission="false" allowDefinition="Everywhere" /> <section name="profileService" type="System.Web.Configuration.ScriptingProfileServiceSection, System.Web.Extensions, Version=3.5.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31BF3856AD364E35" requirePermission="false" allowDefinition="MachineToApplication" /> <section name="authenticationService" type="System.Web.Configuration.ScriptingAuthenticationServiceSection, System.Web.Extensions, Version=3.5.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31BF3856AD364E35" requirePermission="false" allowDefinition="MachineToApplication" /> <section name="roleService" type="System.Web.Configuration.ScriptingRoleServiceSection, System.Web.Extensions, Version=3.5.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31BF3856AD364E35" requirePermission="false" allowDefinition="MachineToApplication" /> </sectionGroup> </sectionGroup> </sectionGroup> </configSections>
Step 2 (all versions of IIS)
This step is required whether the ASP.NET 4 child Web application is running on IIS 6 or on IIS 7 (or IIS 7.5).
In the Web.config file of the parent Web application that is running ASP.NET 2 or ASP.NET 3.5, add a location tag that explicitly specifies (for both the IIS and ASP.NET configuration systems) that the configuration entries only apply to the parent Web application. The following example shows the syntax of the location element to add:
<location path="" inheritInChildApplications="false" > <!-- Additional settings --> </location>
The following example shows how the location tag is used to wrap all configuration sections starting with the appSettings section and ending with system.webServer section.
<location path="" inheritInChildApplications="false" > <appSettings /> <connectionStrings /> <system.web> <!-- Removed for brevity --> </system.web> <system.codedom> <!-- Removed for brevity --> </system.codedom> <system.webServer> <!-- Removed for brevity --> </system.webServer> </location>
When you have completed steps 1 and 2, child ASP.NET 4 Web applications will start without errors.
ASP.NET 4 Web Sites Fail to Start on Computers Where SharePoint Is Installed
Web servers that run SharePoint have a Web.config file that is deployed at the root of a SharePoint Web site (for example, c:\inetpub\wwwroot\web.config for Default Web Site). In this Web.config file, SharePoint sets a custom partial-trust level named WSS_Minimal.
If you try to run an ASP.NET 4 Web site that is deployed as a child of this type of SharePoint Web site, you will see the following error:
Could not find permission set named 'ASP.NET'.
This error occurs because the ASP.NET 4 code access security (CAS) infrastructure looks for a permission set named ASP.NET. However, the partial trust configuration file that is referenced by WSS_Minimal does not contain any permission sets with that name.
Currently there is not a version of SharePoint available that is compatible with ASP.NET. As a result, you should not attempt to run an ASP.NET 4 Web site as a child site underneath SharePoint Web sites.
The HttpRequest.FilePath Property No Longer Includes PathInfo Values
Previous versions of ASP.NET included a PathInfo value in the value returned from various file path-related properties, including HttpRequest.FilePath, HttpRequest.AppRelativeCurrentExecutionFilePath, and HttpRequest.CurrentExecutionFilePath. ASP.NET 4 no longer includes the PathInfo value in the return values from these properties. Instead, the PathInfo information is available in HttpRequest.PathInfo. For example, imagine the following URL fragment:
/testapp/Action.mvc/SomeAction
In earlier versions of ASP.NET, HttpRequest properties have the following values:
HttpRequest.FilePath: /testapp/Action.mvc/SomeAction
HttpRequest.PathInfo: (empty)
In ASP.NET 4, HttpRequest properties instead have the following values:
HttpRequest.FilePath: /testapp/Action.mvc
HttpRequest.PathInfo: SomeAction
ASP.NET 2.0 Applications Might Generate HttpException Errors that Reference eurl.axd
After ASP.NET 4 has been enabled on IIS 6, ASP.NET 2.0 applications that run on IIS 6 (in either Windows Server 2003 or Windows Server 2003 R2) might generate errors such as the following:
System.Web.HttpException: Path '/[yourApplicationRoot]/eurl.axd/[Value]' was not found.
This error occurs because when ASP.NET detects that a Web site is configured to use ASP.NET 4, a native component of ASP.NET 4 passes an extensionless URL to the managed portion of ASP.NET for further processing. However, if virtual directories that are below an ASP.NET 4 Web site are configured to use ASP.NET 2.0, processing the extensionless URL in this way results in a modified URL that contains the string "eurl.axd". This modified URL is then sent to the ASP.NET 2.0 application. ASP.NET 2.0 cannot recognize the "eurl.axd" format. Therefore, ASP.NET 2.0 tries to find a file named eurl.axd and execute it. Because no such file exists, the request fails with an HttpException exception.
You can work around this issue using one of the following options.
Option 1
If ASP.NET 4 is not required in order to run the Web site, remap the site to use ASP.NET 2.0 instead.
Option 2
If ASP.NET 4 is required in order to run the Web site, move any child ASP.NET 2.0 virtual directories to a different Web site that is mapped to ASP.NET 2.0.
Option 3
If it is not practical to remap the Web site to ASP.NET 2.0 or to change the location of a virtual directory, explicitly disable extensionless URL processing in ASP.NET 4. Use the following procedure:
In the Windows registry, open the following node:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\ASP.NET\4.0.30319.0
Create a new DWORD value named EnableExtensionlessUrls. Set EnableExtensionlessUrls to 0. This disables extensionless URL behavior. Save the registry value and close the registry editor. Run the iisreset command-line tool, which causes IIS to read the new registry value.
Note Setting EnableExtensionlessUrls to 1 enables extensionless URL behavior. This is the default setting if no value is specified.
Event Handlers Might Not Be Not Raised in a Default Document in IIS 7 or IIS 7.5 Integrated Mode
ASP.NET 4 includes modifications that change how the action attribute of the HTML form element is rendered when an extensionless URL resolves to a default document. An example of an extensionless URL resolving to a default document would be http://contoso.com/, resulting in a request to http://contoso.com/Default.aspx.
ASP.NET 4 now renders the HTML form element's action attribute value as an empty string when a request is made to an extensionless URL that has a default document mapped to it. For example, in earlier releases of ASP.NET, a request to http://contoso.com would result in a request to Default.aspx. In that document, the opening form tag would be rendered as in the following example:
<form action="Default.aspx" />
In ASP.NET 4, a request to http://contoso.com also results in a request to Default.aspx. However, ASP.NET now renders the HTML opening form tag as in the following example:
<form action="" />
This difference in how the action attribute is rendered can cause subtle changes in how a form post is processed by IIS and ASP.NET. When the action attribute is an empty string, the IIS DefaultDocumentModule object will create a child request to Default.aspx. Under most conditions, this child request is transparent to application code, and the Default.aspx page runs normally.
However, a potential interaction between managed code and IIS 7 or IIS 7.5 Integrated mode can cause managed.aspx pages to stop working properly during the child request. If the following conditions occur, the child request to a Default.aspx document will result in an error or in unexpected behavior:
An.aspx page is sent to the browser with the form element's action attribute set to "". The form is posted back to ASP.NET. A managed HTTP module reads some part of the entity body. For example, a module reads Request.Form or Request.Params. This causes the entity body of the POST request to be read into managed memory. As a result, the entity body is no longer available to any native code modules that are running in IIS 7 or IIS 7.5 Integrated mode. The IIS DefaultDocumentModule object eventually runs and creates a child request to the Default.aspx document. However, because the entity body has already been read by a piece of managed code, there is no entity body available to send to the child request. When the HTTP pipeline runs for the child request, the handler for.aspx files runs during the handler-execute phase. Because there is no entity body, there are no form variables and no view state, and therefore no information is available for the.aspx page handler to determine what event (if any) is supposed to be raised. As a result, none of the postback event handlers for the affected.aspx page run.
You can work around this behavior in the following ways:
Identify the HTTP module that is accessing the request's entity body during default document requests and determine whether it can be configured to run only for managed requests. In Integrated mode for both IIS 7 and IIS 7.5, HTTP modules can be marked to run only for managed requests by adding the following attribute to the module's system.webServer/modules entry:
precondition="managedHandler"
This setting disables the module for requests that IIS 7 and IIS 7.5 determine as not being managed requests. For default document requests, the first request is to an extensionless URL. Therefore, IIS does not run any managed modules that are marked with a precondition of managed Handler during initial request processing. As a result, managed modules will not accidentally read the entity body and thus the entity body is still available and is passed along to the child request and to the default document.
If the problematic HTTP modules have to run for all requests (for static files, for extensionless URLs that resolve to the DefaultDocumentModule object, for managed requests, etc.), modify the affected.aspx pages by explicitly setting the Action property of the page's System.Web.UI.HtmlControls.HtmlForm control to a non-empty string. For example, if the default document is Default.aspx, modify the page's code to explicitly set the HtmlForm control's Action property to "Default.aspx".
Changes to the ASP.NET Code Access Security (CAS) Implementation
ASP.NET 2.0, and by extension the ASP.NET features that were added in 3.5, use the.NET Framework 1.1 and 2.0 code access security (CAS) model. However, the implementation of CAS in ASP.NET 4 has been substantially overhauled. As a result, partial-trust ASP.NET applications that rely on trusted code running in the global assembly cache (GAC) might fail with various security exceptions. Partial-trust applications that rely on extensive modifications to machine CAS policy might also fail with security exceptions.
You can revert partial-trust ASP.NET 4 applications to the behavior of ASP.NET 1.1 and 2.0 using the new legacyCasModel attribute in the trust configuration element, as shown in the following example:
<trust level= "Medium" legacyCasModel="true" />
When you revert to the legacy CAS model, the following old CAS behaviors are enabled:
Machine CAS policy is honored.
Multiple different permission sets in a single application domain are allowed.
Explicit permission assertions are not required for assemblies in the GAC that are invoked when only ASP.NET or other.NET Framework code is on the stack.News » California BOE Prepares Marijuana Tax Stamps, Just In Case
The California Board of Equalization has convened a task force to research and find options for taxing recreational marijuana should Proposition 19 pass. The state could see a windfall of $1 billion in sales tax revenues, according to some sources, and is preparing to be in position to do just that.
Current polls in California put the measure at a coin toss and the BOE wants to be prepared should the measure pass and marijuana become legalized. Any income from marijuana would be welcome in the purple train wreck that is California’s budget (estimated at $20 billion in the red).
The BOE task force has visited several Oakland dispensaries to gather information about sales.
[source East Bay Express]
Tags: California, legalization, tax stampNews
BNZ Crusaders sign Bryn Hall for 2017
Details Published: 09 June 2016
The BNZ Crusaders have secured the services of halfback Bryn Hall for the 2017 season.
Hall currently represents the Blues in the Investec Super Rugby Competition and was the captain for North Harbour in the most recent national provincial competition. His move to the Crusaders will help to fill the gap left by Andy Ellis' decision to retire at the end of this season.
BNZ Crusaders Head Coach Todd Blackadder said it was the experience and leadership that Hall offers, which make him an ideal replacement for Ellis.
"With Andy's departure there is no doubt that we lose a significant amount of leadership and maturity but Bryn is the ideal person to fill that gap, both on the field and off it. We have two very talented halfbacks in Mitchell Drummond and Leon Fukofuka, and Bryn will bring his own set of impressive skills to contribute to and compliment the group. We can see him being a great fit in our environment," Blackadder said.
Hall's experience includes 4 Super Rugby seasons, 38 provincial caps, and captaining the Junior All Blacks in the 2012 IRB Junior World Championship.
Hall said he was grateful for his time at the Blues but excited about the upcoming opportunity: "I will obviously be sad to leave the Blues where my Super Rugby career kicked off, however I am thrilled to have been offered this opportunity to join the Crusaders and continue progressing my playing career there."A law enforcement source tells CBS News that so far nothing of real significance has been found on the San Bernardino terrorist's iPhone, which was unlocked by the FBI last month without the help of Apple.
It was stressed that the FBI continues to analyze the information on the cellphone seized in the investigation, senior investigative producer Pat Milton reports.
Investigators spent months trying to gain access to data on the locked iPhone used by San Bernardino gunman Syed Rizwan Farook, believing that it might hold information on the plans or contacts of the attackers, who killed 14 people on December 2, 2015.
Apple was fighting a court order to assist the FBI in bypassing the phone's security measures. On March 28, the FBI announced that it had managed to unlock the phone and was dropping the court fight with Apple.
The FBI has not disclosed what method it used to access the data on the iPhone but the method is believed to have been developed by a third party, a private entity, the government has refused to identify.
FBI Director James Comey said last week that the bureau has not decided whether to share details with Apple about how it hacked into Farook's iPhone 5c. "If we tell Apple, they're going to fix it and we're back where we started," Comey said. "As silly as it may sound, we may end up there. We just haven't decided yet."A new facility at Northern Kentucky University will bring students and the community closer to the stars than ever before.
The Julie and David Schneider Observatory will provide a research laboratory for NKU students and faculty as well as for community members. The facility opened on Aug. 26.
“We are grateful for the Schneider Observatory, which will provide our faculty and students with improved research opportunities and allow us to grow outreach to our community partners,” said Dr. Katherine Frank, Dean of the College of Arts & Sciences.
Located on the roof of Founders Hall, the tallest academic building on NKU’s Highland Heights campus, the 1,000 square-foot observatory features a retractable roof and eight permanent telescopes.
The rooftop is an ideal location for observing celestial bodies due to both the height of the building and NKU’s location atop a hill. The observatory is located approximately 921 feet above sea level.
“It’s a marvelous site,” said Dr. Charles Hawkins, professor emeritus in NKU’s Department of Physics, Geology and Engineering Technology. “Pretty much any direction that you would want to look, you’ll see wide open sky.”
The observatory is made possible by a gift from Julie and David Schneider, NKU alumni and supporters.
Julie Schneider earned a B.A. of History in 1987, and David Schneider earned a B.A. of Science in physics and mathematics in 1986.
Julie Schneider is owner and operator of Schneider Homes Inc. and Castle Bluff Developments. David Schneider is CEO of Walton-based Rem-Brands and holds several chemical patents. In 2010, he was named Outstanding Alumnus for the College of Arts & Sciences.
It was as an undergraduate student at NKU that David Schneider “caught the bug” for observing the universe through a telescope. Now, he hopes to pass that love of learning on to a new generation of students.
“Julie and I hope many will enjoy the Schneider Observatory for years to come,” he said. “I am certain that as the observatory is available over the years, many others interested in our amazing universe will catch the bug and continue the dream.”
From NKUMaybe the doctors who operated on Geno Smith’s broken jaw also fixed his arm.
The Post spotted the Jets quarterback completing every pass Saturday during a game of catch with a buddy just two days after he underwent surgery to fix his jaw, which was busted by a teammate in a locker-room brawl.
His cheeks swollen, Smith — who had a dismal 59.7 percent completion rate last season — bragged about his tossing talent in the parking lot of his apartment complex in Whippany, NJ.
“I feel great. You see me throwin’, right?” he told The Post, his speech slightly slurred by the swelling.
He was shirtless and strangely wearing eye-black tape during the casual toss.
He had a message to Jets fans regarding his six- to 10-week layoff: “Get ready for me to come back.”
But it remains to be seen whether his teammates even want him back. While keeping virtually silent about their signal caller, they have been phoning IK Enemkpali, the linebacker who punched him, in droves.
“They called to see how I’m doing and called to check on me,” said Enemkpali, who was cut from Gang Green after Tuesday’s tussle.
Smith’s jaw was not wired shut — surgeons implanted metal plates and screws — but it might as well have been Saturday when it came to answering questions about the fisticuffs.
“No comment,” Smith said.
When the reporter persisted, he said politely, “You’re on private property, and I’ve been nice, but I don’t want to call the cops on you.”
Enemkpali reportedly socked the third-year QB in the kisser in a dispute over a $600 debt.
Smith had pledged to show up at a Texas football camp organized by Enemkpali in July, but backed out after the death of a friend, sources said.
The quarterback never made good on a pledge to reimburse Enemkpali for the cash he laid out for Smith’s air travel, then allegedly taunted the linebacker in the locker-room standoff.
Enemkpali has been picked up by ex-Jets coach Rex Ryan, who now leads the Buffalo Bills.Mervyn King, the Bank's governor, said the economy would shrink by 2 per cent next year, with the downturn hitting those working in the managerial, services and financial sectors.
He said "the world had changed" in the wake of the global financial crisis and that "people should be concerned" about the difficult times ahead.
Analysts warned that whereas in the recessions of the early 1980s and 1990s, when manufacturing and manual workers were the hardest hit, the recession of 2009 would impact particularly badly on households dependant on the "white collar" professions.
This time around, the recession has its roots in the financial services, with thousands of jobs already having been cut from investment banks and other |
Pass the morning of the Fourth of July and an American flag flew atop Ebbetts Peak near the road. It was hot and the land was dry and we felt like Americans, fortunate and free. From there we had a long runnable section on a narrow tread lined with wildflowers, passing beneath Reynolds and Raymond Peak in the Mokelumne Wilderness.
Jeff’s calf was tight and nagging him and I had a few hotspots on my feet that I put duct tape on (as the thru hikers suggested) but otherwise we were holding up pretty well. My stomach was definitely not 100% but the real challenge was all mental. Our bodies didn’t naturally want to push hard like we were, day after day, and it was only our will that kept us rising to our feet each morning for another long effort. That will was tested even more when self-talk came chattering away, “I should be doing better than this.” “Why the hell does this feel so hard?” “I suck at fastpacking!”
The runnable sections helped with keeping things positive, though the heat was constantly draining, mentally and physically. As always, our simple act was a stark life lesson—if you just put one foot in front of the other, one step a time, you’ll eventually get where you want to go. Though the going felt painfully slow at times, we were making progress; each high point and look back revealed a distance that felt unfathomable. We were accomplishing something big, for us at least. At a top of a big climb near the Nipple, with massive Upper Blue Lake on one side and the pair of Lost Lakes on the other, we could look to the farthest distant peaks to the south and know with hard-earned satisfaction that we’d started on the far side of them.
We came upon more thru hikers and stopped and chatted. Jeff gave them a packet of Trail Butter to try and they loved it, of course; it’s an easy sell. It was interesting to observe all the hikers we encountered and see what gear they were using, what the trends were. Almost 100% of the folks we saw wore trail running shoes. The days of hiking boots, for the long-distance trails, at least, seemed to be over.
One final climb of the day, up and over the shoulder of the Elephant’s Back in the setting sun, lay between us and a wonderful Fourth of July meal at Carson Pass. Jeff’s dad, Bill, was able to make it and so he, Elaine, Jeff, and I sat at a picnic table in the cool evening and ate delicious food and drank Sierra Nevada Pale Ale while Galileo looked on longingly. We offered food to a thru hiker and so he joined us and regaled us with his tales of his months in the woods.
After dinner, Jeff and I did our little resupply for the last day, said our goodbyes to his parents, and then walked into the woods off the parking area and crashed out on the ground for one final night.
Day 5: Carson Pass to Emerald Bay, Lake Tahoe
We awoke early, before the sun rose, like usual—a necessity to make our miles each day. The night had been rough. My body was finally protesting the long days with aches and pains as I lay there, trying to rest. I woke up with throbbing hips and sore legs and feet, which was also due to the very small foam camping pad I was using that I’d cut down to a ridiculously small size to save weight. Next time I would definitely make some different gear choices as, again, it all comes down to the details.
It was a challenge to force ourselves up and out, but we did, of course; no quitting so close to the end. It was the last day and we were ready to be done, ready to celebrate the journey with Jeff’s family and relatives after our triumphant finish at Emerald Bay. The first section from Carson Pass to Echo Summit was quick and very runnable, though it illustrated the inexact nature of mileage. On the official trail sign at Carson, it read 12.5 miles to Echo and at Echo the official trail sign said 11 to Carson; then our PCT Half Mile maps (the standard maps used by the majority of thru hikers) read somewhere around 16. It was a good reminder not to get too wrapped up in the numbers; you’ll get there when you get there.
Before reaching Echo Summit, the Tahoe Rim Trail joined the PCT and I thought about being out there in two month’s time, in the midst of the Tahoe 200. It was a frightening to think about how far we’d come already and to try to do that and more in a race effort. We could finally see Lake Tahoe itself and were awed yet again by the scale, even having both been there many times before.
Jeff’s brother, Brad, and childhood friend, Denver, met us at Echo Summit for a visit and some refreshments in the mid morning; Denver would continue on with us to the finish but Brad had other obligations. The crowds were increasing as we traveled north, especially being Fourth of July weekend. When we passed through Echo Lake and the marina area, it was madness. What a insane juxtaposition to go from complete wilderness and solitude to a teeming, spring break-esque, party scene. We moved through as quick as we could although the trails were packed, too, on the climb up to Aloha Lake. Although the change in population on the trail was a bit jarring, it is always good to see people enjoying the mountains.
One big climb and even-bigger descent lay between us and our finish line at Emerald Bay. Dick’s Pass, the last time the PCT goes over 9,000 feet going north, was a suitable and grand last high point, and we had to work for it.
I was not feeling very good, especially mentally. The combination of intense heat, dehydration, and a bad stomach had worn me down and my duct-tape bandages had become crusty and irritated my feet worse than ever. That was definitely a huge takeaway for the Tahoe 200: take care of your feet, and everything else, early and often and don’t let things get out of control. I got separated from Jeff and Denver for a while and then we somehow leapfrogged and missed each other again, each time adding to my frustration. I wanted so badly to be out of the relentless, roasting sun. After 190-some miles, I fell down for the first time of the trip and sat in the hot dust, cursing and annoyed. I gritted my teeth on the climb following that, though, and really pondered my situation.
I chose to do this, I thought. I am incredibly fortunate and lucky to be doing this! …and for many reasons: I am financially stable enough and have a job flexible enough to even take the time off to make this happen, I am physically fit and healthy enough to make this happen, and I am alive! That’s nothing to scoff at; we know how many have gone too soon.
As I winced every few steps at the pain in my feet, I thought, There are crippled and sick and impoverished people who will never be able to do something like this. There are dead people who can’t feel the blissful sting of a blister—or a quad cramp, or the blazing sun—just for ONE minute! To feel alive like that even for a single second, some people will never feel that!
I sat underneath a huge, ancient juniper tree on the rocky slopes leading to Dick’s Pass, pondering these things. They spurred me on and made me embrace the sensations I was feeling, pain and all. Singing helped, too. Between heavy breaths, I belted out verses of Bruce Springsteen’s The River, over and over, with the Desolation Wilderness stretched out below me.
At the very top of the pass my great friend, Tony Barbero (of “Things Done Changed” fame), suddenly appeared out of the trees, a surprise he’d been planning since I’d told him our itinerary. Jeff and Denver caught up and the four of us enjoyed the views and the company. It was the final high perch of the trip and Jeff and I soaked it in, gazing south toward where we’d started, far beyond what our eyes could see. It was hard to grasp the distance we’d come, and easy to be amazed at what your two feet and some determination can do.
The final descent was pure hell. We’d been on some really technical, rocky trails but the last few miles and 3,000 feet were the worst of all. I suffered my way down the big, boulder-y drop-offs, feeling like we were coming full circle from Yosemite’s treacherous tread. Trekking poles solidified themselves as essential gear, taking weight off beaten quads and thrashed feet. There is an art to trekking poles; when used properly they are a true blessing.
Jeff’s mom and dad were waiting for us with food and a cooler of beers as we came trotting down the popular Eagle Falls Trail into the parking lot. Luckily most of the crowds had cleared out by the early evening but Highway 89 was still humming with Tahoe summer traffic. We said cheers and drank a beer or two, cracked into the chips and guacamole, and took some pictures. Then we headed to Jeff’s relatives’ house on the lake. The journey wouldn’t be over until we’d fully submerged in Lake Tahoe itself, so we wasted little time in stripping down and taking the plunge. Standing on the dock in the setting sun, towels around us, we could finally celebrate.
On the trail, we accomplished what we had set out to do. We wanted to be broken down and have our egos and mental and physical abilities put through the ringer. Check. We wanted a break from the often-stressful circus of modern life. Check. We wanted to share the experience with family and friends and dogs, like Elaine, Bill, and Galileo, and Tony and Denver. Check.
Day trips may feed the soul and be essential, rejuvenating forays but multi-day outings have a special effect. Why? Because in being out for longer, you make yourself more vulnerable to the experience and nature, and therefore, are able to gain more in return.
Call for Comments (from Meghan)NASA has once again postponed the launch of a small rocket from the coast of Virginia tonight, blaming cloudy skies at observation locations. The craft — a Terrier-Improved Malemute sounding rocket — was set to create multicolored clouds high in the sky for the purposes of studying our planet’s ionosphere and aurora, but the mission has been repeatedly scrubbed a short time before launch due to bad weather.
When the launch does eventually go ahead, the rocket will release canisters filled with various chemicals, forming green and red artificial clouds that may be seen along the US East Coast. It’s all part of a plan to study how particles move in the upper atmosphere, which could help us better study the aurorae and the parts of our atmosphere that are electrically charged by solar and cosmic radiation.
Don’t worry, the chemicals the rocket is releasing are in no way toxic to your health. They’re vapor tracers — gases that create visible clouds high in the sky. They’re made of barium, lithium, and tri-methyl aluminum. Those chemicals may not immediately sound familiar but you have likely seen them in action before — in fireworks. And fireworks usually release a whole lot more of these gases than a typical NASA mission, according to the space agency.
NASA has been deploying vapor tracers for a while now using sounding rockets, the small vehicles designed to take instruments to sub-orbital space. Though NASA is testing out a new method for getting those vapor tracers into the upper atmosphere. Normally, the tracers were released directly from the rocket’s main payload, but this mission’s rocket is carrying up a specialized contraption called the “multi-canister ampoule ejection system.” After launch, the instrument will fling out multiple canisters filled with the tracers, in order to cover a wider area of the sky.
A total of 10 canisters, each about the size of a soda can, will be deployed about 4 to 5.5 minutes after launch, NASA says. The multicolored clouds they create will give researchers visual cues to help them track the movements of particles at high altitudes and test out if our models of these particle motions are correct. And these clouds should be pretty high up, too, since the canisters will release the tracers between 96 and 124 miles up. If skies are clear, the clouds could be seen from New York to North Carolina.
NASA has been trying to get this sounding rocket up for a while now. The launch was originally scheduled for May 31st, but it has been repeatedly postponed due to bad weather. The space agency also tried on the evening of June 11th and 12th, but launches were canceled, first due to wayward boat within the launch range, and then because visibility was too poor for the rocket’s tracers to be seen from observation stations. Tonight’s launch was slated to get off the ground sometime between 9:04PM and 9:19PM ET, but was scrubbed when the clouds didn’t clear up in time.Some of the OpenMDAO team worked on a Hyperloop model in their spare time. The initial results from the activity are pretty encouraging. Although not everything worked out as well as had been guessed in the original Tesla/Space-X proposal, it still seems feasible from a technical standpoint.
This model mostly focused on the design/sizing of the pod itself from an aerodynamic and thermodynamic cycle perspective. This allowed us to make some estimates about the required tube sizes and theoretical maximum speeds achievable for such a system. It looks like you’ll be able to about Mach.85, and the tube will need to be about 4 meters in diameter. These results are highly preliminary, and there is still lots of work that needs to be done on this model. But this plugin is a solid start. If there is a lot of public interest, we may continue working on it. We’re also very open to any outside contributions on this effort!
Check out the github repository or review the docs we put together for the plugin.Extremist group Gun Owners of America (GOA) endorsed Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz, noting that he is the only candidate "who has completed and returned the GOA presidential survey on the Second Amendment." GOA opposes any background checks on gun sales and advocates for guns in kindergarten classrooms, while the group's leader Larry Pratt has suggested mass shootings are staged by the government and has past ties to white supremacist and anti-Semitic organizations.
GOA: "Cruz Has Been A Strong Advocate For Second Amendment Rights As A U.S. Senator, And He Will Continue To Defend Our Gun Rights From The Oval Office"
GOA Endorsed Cruz In Statement That Pushed Conspiracy Theories And Bashed Undocumented Immigrants. In a September 8 statement, GOA endorsed Cruz, citing the conspiracy theory that the United Nations Arms Trade Treaty will lead to gun registration in the United States and praising Cruz for opposing the Affordable Care Act, which GOA says "will facilitate the disarmament of millions of gun owners once the law is fully implemented." GOA also claimed to be working with Cruz to stop the "Obama Administration's gun ban that is (and will) affect millions of military veterans and senior citizens," and praised the Texas senator's hardline immigration stance by writing, "He has opposed efforts to reward millions of illegal aliens with citizenship and voting rights, given that the majority of them are anti-gunners who have ignored and flouted our laws":
Gun Owners of America is proud to endorse Senator Ted Cruz for the office of President of the United States. While there are many candidates in the race, Ted Cruz is the only one who has completed and returned the GOA presidential survey on the Second Amendment. Cruz has been a strong advocate for Second Amendment rights as a U.S. Senator, and he will continue to defend our gun rights from the Oval Office. Ted Cruz has promised gun owners that, as President, he will remove the United States as a signatory nation to the anti-gun Arms Trade Treaty -- a U.N. treaty that would fully implement a system of gun owner registration if ratified by the U.S. Senate. [...] As a U.S. Senator, Ted Cruz has demonstrated a willingness to fight for our Second Amendment rights. He is working with GOA on legislation to repeal the Obama Administration's gun ban that is (and will) affect millions of military veterans and senior citizens. He has opposed efforts to reward millions of illegal aliens with citizenship and voting rights, given that the majority of them are anti-gunners who have ignored and flouted our laws. [...] It was Senator Cruz who led the filibuster fight in 2013 against funding the anti-gun ObamaCare law, which will facilitate the disarmament of millions of gun owners once the law is fully implemented. [...] We need a stalwart defender of the Second Amendment in the White House, and Ted Cruz will help shoulder the burden of fighting against the gun grabbers dedicated to eviscerating the Second Amendment. [Gun Owners of America, 9/8/15]
For more information about conspiracy theories surrounding the Arms Trade Treaty click here.
For more information about false claims the Affordable Care Act threatens gun rights click here.
Cruz Has A Close Relationship With GOA, Despite The Group's Extremism
Cruz Participated In GOA Town Hall Meeting And Said Group Was "Critical" To His Election As Senator. During a May 27 "Tele-Town Hall" appearance, Cruz praised GOA, saying the group "endorsed me early on when I ran for the Senate and played a critical part in helping get me elected" and also invoked Ronald Reagan to say "one of the things I love about GOA is GOA has never been accused of painting in pale pastels":
CRUZ: Let me start by just saying thank you to all the men and women of Gun Owners of America. GOA endorsed me early on when I ran for the Senate and played a critical part in helping get me elected and sending me from the state of Texas to represent 27 million Texans and to stand up and to fight for our rights and I'm grateful to be with each of you because the men and women on this call are fighters, you are men and women of action, you are patriots, and this is the time when that is exactly what is needed in our country. [...] CRUZ: I believe our country is at a crisis point where it is now or never. And I also believe that 2016 is an election very much like 1980. I think there are striking similarities between Jimmy Carter and Barack Obama and the way to win is just like Ronald Reagan said, to paint in bold colors and not pale pastels. I think if we nominate another candidate in the mold of a Bob Dole or a John McCain or a Mitt Romney, all of whom are good, honorable men, but what they did didn't work. Every time we run to the mushy middle we lose and I agree with Ronald Reagan who said we must paint in bold colors and not pale pastels, that's why I'm running and that's one of the things I love about GOA is GOA has never been accused of painting in pale pastels. [Gun Owners of America, 5/27/15, via Media Matters]
Cruz Praised GOA To The New York Times. In an April 2013 profile of GOA and its leader Larry Pratt, Cruz called GOA "strong defenders of the Second Amendment":
"They are strong defenders of the Second Amendment," said Senator Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas, who received donations from the group during his primary campaign and is its key ally in the Senate. [The New York Times, 4/3/13]
GOA Extremism In The Gun Debate: End Background Checks On Gun Sales And Put Guns In Churches And Schools
GOA: Abolish Background Checks On Gun Sales To Eliminate "The Illusion That Government Can Protect Us." In an interview with conservative news website Breitbart News, Pratt "made clear that GOA opposed" background checks on gun sales:
On August 31, Breitbart News spoke with Gun Owners of America's (GOA) executive director, Larry Pratt, about background checks for gun purchasers, and he made clear that GOA opposed them when they were first introduced under President Bill Clinton and that GOA believes they should be abolished now. [...] We asked Pratt what GOA would like done regarding background checks. He said, "We should get rid of background checks, and we should destroy the databases that have been used to run those background checks and the databases holding names of gun owners that have, for certain, been created illegally." Pratt said he hopes getting rid of background checks will help destroy "the illusion that government can protect us," and that the elimination of background checks can be followed by the elimination of gun-free zones, where mass murderers ply their trade. He said that "would be a huge step in reducing what dirtbags can do when they decide to go out on a murder spree." [Breitbart.com, 8/31/15]
Pratt Blamed Slain Charleston Pastor For The Murder Of His Congregants. After a man murdered nine people in a racially motivated attack at a church in Charleston, South Carolina, Pratt blamed Rev. Clementa Pinckney's advocacy for stronger gun laws while serving in the South Carolina Senate, arguing, "Ideas have consequences, and that's what we are talking about -- the idea of gun control is deadly":
PRATT: [The parishioners] would have at least had a chance if they had a firearm to respond to the threat. As it was, their pastor, who was also a state senator, was a leading anti-Second Amendment advocate who had supported disarmament of people in the state of South Carolina. Ideas have consequences, and that's what we are talking about -- the idea of gun control is deadly. [Sky News, 6/24/15]
Pratt: Put Guns In Kindergartens To Stop School Shooters. During a September 17, 2013, appearance on CNN's Crossfire, Pratt said he "would strongly encourage" allowing guns in kindergartens:
[CNN, Crossfire, 9/17/13]
Pratt's Inflammatory Interpretation Of The Second Amendment
Pratt: "The Second Amendment Was Designed For People Just Like The President And His Administration." During a June 4 appearance on fringe radio program The Roger Fredinburg Show, Pratt endorsed the notion that the Second Amendment allows for the violent overthrow of government, claiming that it was "designed" for people like President Obama:
ROGER FREDINBURG, HOST: I think the next revolution is going to start and be won by people with rifles and Leupold [brand] scopes. I don't think it's going to be won by guys in the trenches with machetes. PRATT: We figured that that was kind of what they were up to and the Second Amendment was designed for people just like the president and his administration. And, yes, if The New York Times and the Rolling Stone and whoever else wants to have a hissy-fit, yes our guns are in our hands for people like those in our government right now that think they want to go tyrannical on us, we got something for 'em. That's what it's all about. The Second Amendment is not about hunting, it's not about target shooting, it's about Democrats who want to take our rights. [The Roger Fredinburg Show, 6/4/15, via Right Wing Watch]
Pratt Has Repeatedly Claimed That Politicians Should Fear Being Shot By A GOA Supporter If They Pass Laws Regulating Firearms. [Media Matters, 11/20/14]
Pratt's Extremism: Mass Shooting False Flags, An Obama-Fomented Race War, And Past Links To White Supremacists
Pratt: "We Have To Admit" That The Aurora, Colorado Movie Theater Mass Shooting Could Have Been Staged By The Government. During a discussion of the July 2012 mass shooting that left 12 dead and scores wounded, Pratt said on conspiracy theorist Alex Jones' radio show, "Now we have to admit that maybe this is something that our government is capable of." [Genesis Communication Network, The Alex Jones Show, 7/27/12]
Pratt Agreed With Fringe Radio Host That Obama Would Foment Race War Between "Christian, Heterosexual White Haves" And "Black, Muslim And/Or Atheist... Have-Nots." During a February 2013 appearance on conspiracy theorist Stan Solomon's radio show, Pratt said that the host was not "stretching" to predict that Obama would foment a race war between "Christian, heterosexual white haves" and "black, Muslim and/or atheist -- not that there's much difference -- black have-nots":
SOLOMON: I've said on this show on a couple of occasions that I believe that in the year 2013, we're going to see an explosion of attacks on haves by have-nots. But specifically on white haves by black have-nots and more specifically on Christian, heterosexual white haves by black, Muslim and/or atheist -- not that there's much difference -- of black have-nots. Now that's being whatever, but it's just what I see. I believe if you are a white person in this country, and this by the way holds for all quality people of any color, but I'm saying specifically if you are a white, heterosexual, Christian, working, married person, if you don't have a gun on you, know how to use it and make sure that everyone in your family who is of age has a weapon and knows how to use it, there is at least a substantial chance that you and/or some member of your family will be hurt and/or killed. PRATT: I don't think there's anything stretching to say that. I think there are people that really want to bring violence about because they see that as the engine of social change. That's exactly the target for the Alinsky-ites. And I think they must figure that they've got their guy in power and they will then have at least some of the agencies of the police powers of the state at their back and this is the time to go for it. [Right Wing Watch, 2/27/13]
Pratt Was Forced To Leave Presidential Campaign Of Pat Buchanan After His Past Ties To White Supremacists Were Revealed. Pratt, who was a co-chairman of Buchanan's 1996 presidential run, was forced out of the campaign after it was revealed he spoke at white supremacist gatherings:
Last week, Larry Pratt, a co-chairman of the Buchanan campaign, took a leave of absence after the disclosure that he had spoken at rallies held by leaders of the white supremacist and militia movements. Mr. Pratt, executive director of Gun Owners of America, said in an interview that he did not know the other speakers. He also said he did not harbor anti-Semitic or racist views, although his articles on gun ownership often appear in The Jubilee, a tabloid published in California by leaders of the Christian Identity movement, a white supremacist organization. [The New York Times, 2/18/96, via Media Matters]
Boston Globe: Participants At Rallies Included Individuals With Ties To The Ku Klux Klan And The Aryan Nation. In a follow-up to The Times report, Boston Globe discovered that Pratt spoke before high-profile figures in the white supremacist movement:
Prominent participants at that meeting included Pete Peters, head of a group called Christian Identity, former Ku Klux Klan leader and Aryan Nation official Louis Bream and Aryan Nation founder Richard Butler. The Center for Public Integrity report also said Pratt attended a meeting in 1995 with militia leader Bo Gritz, at which racist and anti-Semitic material was available. [The Boston Globe, 2/17/96, via Media Matters]
Pratt "Seemed To Justify" The Oklahoma City Bombing In Speech Before Adherents To The Racist Christian Identity Movement. According to a 2014 Rolling Stone profile of Pratt, three days after Timothy McVeigh bombed the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building on April 19, 1995, killing 168 people, Pratt suggested that the bombing may have been a justified response to the Waco standoff:
On the afternoon of the Oklahoma City bombing, Pratt was in Washington, D.C., demonstrating in front of FBI headquarters for its role in the Waco tragedy. Three days later, Pratt spoke before a gathering of 600 Christian Identity adherents and assorted radicals convened by Pete Peters at the Lodge of the Ozarks in Branson, Missouri. Pratt addressed the "Biblical Mandate to Arm" and seemed to justify McVeigh's act of terror, at the time the bloodiest in American history. According to an account by Michael Reynolds in Playboy, Pratt told the gathered, "The government behaves as a beast. It did in Waco, and we have somebody, whoever it might have been, whatever group it might have been, assuming they can't rely on the Lord to take vengeance." [Rolling Stone, 7/14/14]
Pratt Directed GOA To Donate Money To White Supremacist Group. Rolling Stone's profile of Pratt directed GOA to donate "tens of thousands of dollars" to a white supremacist group:
But the NRA stopped short of supporting the Christian Identity lawyer Kirk Lyons, who was representing multiple victims of Waco. Pratt and the GOA had no such compunction and donated tens of thousands of dollars to Lyons's white supremacist organization CAUSE (short for the Aryan bastions of Canada, Australia, the United States, South Africa and Europe), "Not $50,000 -- but a lot of money for us," Pratt told Rolling Stone in 1995. [Rolling Stone, 7/14/14]
Pratt Was A "Contributing Editor" To Anti-Semitic Publication. Rolling Stone reported that Pratt was a "contributing editor" for a publication of United Sovereigns of America:The UNHCR fears that asylum throughout Europe could be curbed if more countries follow Sweden's lead and impose stricter entrance requirements.
“Unfortunately, it looks as though those wishing to gain asylum to Sweden will have to present valid identification,” Mattias Axelsson, spokesperson for UNHCR in northern Europe told the Swedish news agency, TT.
“There is a tremendous strain to be on the run and you can not expect that those who are entitled to asylum will also have the right documents with them from the beginning - it is quite impossible.“
“But that's where we find ourselves now, unfortunately. We look on this with growing concern, “Axelsson said.
The ID requirements follow Sweden's decision to reduce the number of asylum seekers coming into the country, due to an accommodation shortage.
They will apply to trains, buses and ferries from abroad, including Germany, but will have the biggest effect on passengers travelling from Denmark.
The plans have been criticized by various operators and unions warning of travel chaos in the busy commuter region.
More than 150,000 refugees have travelled to Sweden in the past year.
But the country has seen a nationwide dip in the number of people claiming asylum in recent weeks, following news of the tighter border checks and a government announcement that it would cut the number of residency permits made available.Image caption Shirley Williams with the skeleton of the Neolithic woman nicknamed Blodwen
The skeleton of a woman who lived 5,500 years ago has gone on display in her home town, more than a century after she was discovered.
Blodwen is the nickname given to a Neolithic skeleton found on Little Orme in Llandudno, Conwy county, in 1891.
Until now, the remains have been housed at a museum in Bacup, Lancashire.
The exhibition forms part of a three-month tomb builders' display at Llandudno Museum.
It also celebrates the Council for British Archaeology's national festival in the last two weeks of July.
The skeleton was discovered in a fissure by an engineer excavating quarry works, who then donated her to the museum in his home town of Bacup.
Carbon dating tests carried out at Oxford University have revealed that Blodwen died around 3510 BC, aged somewhere between her late fifties and early sixties.
Image caption The skeleton was found in a deep fissure on the Little Orme, Llandudno
Orthopaedic examinations show that she was about 5ft (1.52m), powerfully built, and her bone structure suggests she was accustomed to carrying heavy loads, both on her head and in her arms.
There are signs, however, that this lifestyle took its toll on Blodwen, with clear evidence of severe arthritis in her neck and knees.
At the time of her death she was also suffering from secondary cancer, although it is not obvious whether it was this which killed her.
Pig bones dating from the same period found close to Blodwen's skeleton would seem to suggest that she came from a farming background.
'Pastoral life'
Shirley Williams, Museum Education Officer for Llandudno Museum, organised the exhibition to form part of the Festival of British Archaeology, including getting the Bacup Natural History Society to agree to the loan of Blodwen.
She, said: "She was found in a deep fissure on the Little Orme, and way down below her were the bones of ancient animals - hyena, rhinoceros, bear.
Image caption "Blodwen" was discovered on the Little Orme in 1891 At 60 or so, she would almost certainly have been an elder of her community, and someone who would have been looked up to a great deal Adele Thackray, Cadw
"She was found midway and above her there was a bronze age spear head but the radio carbon testing found she was actually older than the spear head."
Ms Williams said it would be "great" if she could stay in Llandudno, but said Bacup was very interested in keeping Blodwen.
Adele Thackray, the field monument warden for north west Wales for Cadw, the Welsh heritage body, said: "During the Neolithic period we start to see a cross-over from a semi-nomadic hunter-gathering society to a more settled, pastoral way of life.
"The pig bones found with Blodwen seem to suggest that she was part of this new farming society, and that impression is backed up by isotope tests on her bones which show that she ate more meat and cultivated crops than fish and wild plants."
She added that the manner of Blodwen's burial pointed towards "a more settled society, fixed around a locality".
"Her extraordinary age for the time could also have a lot to do with her memorial - at 60 or so, she would almost certainly have been an elder of her community, and someone who would have been looked up to a great deal."
She also has a presence on both Facebook and Twitter, as Blodwen Chardon, named after the Chardon Trust, which runs the museum.President Obama is said to have known the whereabouts of Osama bin Laden since September but chose to wait until May to authorize action against him. Why the delay? Could it perhaps have been to provide a super-timely news hook for the rollout of Jonathan Wells’ new book, The Myth of Junk DNA? If so, an additional note of congratulation is owed to Mr. Obama.
How do you think OBL’s body was identified? By a comparison with his sister’s DNA, evidently those non-coding regions singled out by Darwin defenders, among the pantheon of other mythological evolutionary icons, as functionless “junk.” Indeed, the myth has featured in news coverage of Osama’s death. Reports the website of business magazine Fast Company:
Because your parents give you some of their DNA, they also give your siblings some of the same genetic code — which is why sibling DNA tests work. They sometimes concentrate on areas of the genome called “junk DNA” which serves no biological function but still gets passed along to offspring. By testing for repeat strands of DNA code in these areas, it’s possible to work out if two individuals are related as siblings.
The Toronto Star strikes a similar note:
When testing against a relative’s DNA, scientists often look to parts of the genome described as junk DNA which are passed on to all offspring.
Readers of this space and of Dr. Wells’ book, published this month, will know how thoroughly the myth has already been debunked in peer-reviewed scientific literature. Unfortunately, the news hasn’t yet reached the general interest media, and it continues as what Richard Dawkins might call a powerful “meme” in the public’s thinking about evolution. In fact, in Daniel Dennett’s book Darwin’s Dangerous Idea, junk DNA is given as one of the scientific predictions made for Darwinian evolution by Dawkins himself.
If Darwin is right, there ought to be huge swaths of ancestral garbage cluttering the genome, serving no purpose other than to identify otherwise unidentified forensic remains. So if those huge swaths turn out after all to be vitally important to the functioning organism, what does that say about Darwin’s theory? Ah, that’s exactly the question addressed in Jonathan Wells’ book.
Let’s see how many Darwin lobbyists have the guts and honesty to acknowledge that another icon has fallen. They have not, on the whole, left themselves a lot of room for deniability on this.Once again, Sarah Palin has made her critics look like idiots. A fake controversy (I like the neologism, fakeroversy) was generated when PETA expressed outrage over a picture of Palin posted of her Down syndrome son Trig standing on his service dog, named Jill Hadassah, a black Labrador.
…liberals went crazy. PETA and several other animal rights groups denounced Palin: “It’s odd that anyone — let alone a mother — would find it appropriate to post such a thing, with no apparent sympathy for the dog in the photo,” PETA President Ingrid Newkirk said in a statement to POLITICO. “Then again, PETA, along with everyone else, is used to the hard-hearted, seeming obliviousness of this bizarrely callous woman,” Newkirk said. She pointed to an interview Palin gave in 2008 at a farm while turkeys were slaughtered in the background as an example of past differences between the animal rights group and the former vice presidential candidate.
The only problem is that this outrage is entirely fake. Labs and some other large dog breeds are entirely fine being stepped on by children – they are big, tough, and love children. Erick Erickson of Redstate quickly dug up and tweeted a picture that Ellen Degeneres, a former PETA “Woman of the year” had tweeted of the very same practice:
Holy crap. Imagine the outrage if @SarahPalinUSA’s kid did *this*. Oh, wait…. pic.twitter.com/KTeZTZNunW — Erick Erickson (@EWErickson) January 2, 2015
BUSTED! (Great work, Erick!)
Sarah didn’t take long to fire back on Facebook:
Dear PETA, Chill. At least Trig didn’t eat the dog. Hey, by the way, remember your “Woman of the Year”, Ellen DeGeneres? Did |
[ edit ]
Although the Roman inquisitions worked moderately and guardedly during the remainder of the pontificate of Paul III, they became an essential part of the structure of Rome when Paul IV, who became pope in 1555, launched the Counter-Reformation that Paul III began. Later, in 1588, Pope Sixtus V officially organized the inquisitions into the Congregation of the Holy Roman and Universal Inquisition or Holy Office. It is important to note, however, that this was only one of fifteen administrative departments of the papal government and was not the sole operating body of the Church.
"Heresies" of the Italian Inquisitions [ edit ]
Even though the inquisitions in Spain prosecuted a small quantity of Reformers, the Roman inquisitions were the first to target intentionally and specifically the "heresy" of Protestantism. These inquisitions and their subordinate tribunals were generally successful in keeping any substantial Protestant influence from spreading throughout Italy. Protestants in the decades and centuries to come would use this relatively short-lived persecution as the basis for their accusations about the awful "Inquisition." Protestant movements were reduced by around 1600, so for the duration of the 17th century the Roman inquisitions turned their focus to offences other than Protestantism, notably "magical" heresy.
In many trials involving "witchcraft" or "sorcery," “the inquisitors understood very well that the lack of catechesis or consistent pastoral guidance could often result in misunderstandings of doctrine and liturgy, and they showed tolerance of all but the most unavoidably serious circumstances. Thus, although both the Spanish and Roman inquisitions prosecuted the offenses of witchcraft and sorcery very early and vigorously, they also were the first courts to be skeptical of the evidence and mechanism of witchcraft accusations, and they consistently offered the most lenient treatment to marginal cases".
Italian historian Andrea Del Col estimates that out of 62,000 cases judged by Inquisition in Italy after 1542 only 2% (ca. 1250) ended with death sentence.[37]
Evolution of the Holy Office [ edit ]
By the turn of the 18th century, the Congregation of the Holy Office had virtually no power or influence outside the Papal States. Its main function shifted yet again to the investigation of clerical immorality and corruption and to the censoring of printed books, the latter of which was the key responsibility of the Congregation of the Index. By 1860, the restrictions placed upon ecclesiastical authority and the emerging national Italian state only further reduced the activities of the Holy Office. With its powers reduced to the weakened Papal State, the Office became an advisory committee to the late 19th century popes, where it played a far greater advisory than executive role.
In 1965 Pope Paul VI changed the Office's name to The Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith and abolished the Congregation of the Index entirely in 1966. Since then, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith has functioned as a papal advisor on theological matters and on matters of ecclesiastical discipline. "Although its work is regular, the Congregation can now hardly be thought of as an Inquisition".
The Creation of "The Inquisition" [ edit ]
The modern day notion of a unified and horrible "Inquisition" is an assemblage of the "body of legends and myths which, between the sixteenth and the twentieth centuries, established the perceived character of inquisitorial tribunals and influenced all ensuing efforts to recover their historical reality". "The [assembled] myth was originally devised to serve variously the political purposes of a number of early modern political regimes, as well as Protestant Reformers, proponents of religious and civil toleration, philosophical enemies of the civil power of organized religions, and progressive modernists..." It was the relatively limited persecution of Protestants, mostly by the inquisitions in Spain and Italy, that provoked the first image of "The Inquisition" as the most violent and suppressive vehicle of the Church against Protestantism. Later, philosophical critics of religious persecution and the Catholic Church only furthered this image during the Enlightenment.
Catholic opposition to the Spanish Inquisition [ edit ]
"...an early major source of anti-Inquisition propaganda happened to be Catholic in origin. With the outstanding exception of the Holy Roman Empire, every significant Catholic state in Europe, including France, was at some time hostile to Spain." Contemporary political scientist Niccolò Machiavelli (in The Prince) suggested that King Ferdinand of Spain (who originated the Spanish Inquisition) used religion to his political and financial advantage. Italians under Spanish rule repeatedly revolted against the imposition of a Spanish Inquisition (such as revolts in Naples in 1547). Unpaid Spanish and Germanic mercenaries of the King of Spain (Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor) sacked Rome ten years after Luther posted his theses, besieging the Pope and ending Rome's pre-eminence in the Renaissance. Italian diplomats expressed a low opinion of the Spanish and their Inquisition. Internal criticism of Spanish policies in the Americas was cited by foes of the Inquisition.
"A Protestant Vision..." [ edit ]
"When the printing press first began to form public opinion... the most diligent victims of the Inquisition happened to be supporters of the Reformation, and they set about convincing Europe that Spain's intentions... were now directed against Christian truth and liberty." The Inquisition was characterized by clerical organization and support of the inquisitions in Spain and Italy, their "united" success in suppressing Protestant doctrines, and the fear of The Inquisition being initiated elsewhere. "Propaganda along these lines proved to be strikingly effective in the context of the political conflicts of the time, and there were always refuges from persecution to lend substance to the story." "As a Protestant vision of Christian history took shape in the 16th century, the contemporary inquisitions were identified with the inquisitorial tribunals of the medieval past, and the Protestant Reformers with earlier victims of The Inquisition". Catholic defenders of the inquisitorial process used the same argument – that the Reformers were no different from medieval heretics and should be prosecuted in the same manner – thus perpetuating the idea of a continuous, masterminded Inquisition. Both sides made emotional appeals; "Thus alongside various kinds of theological and personal polemic, a war of martyrologies commenced."
The Revolt of the Netherlands [ edit ]
The Netherlands and Spain came to share rulers by marriage and inheritance among royal families. The Dutch chaffed under the shared monarchy; their many states wanted to retain traditional autonomy while the crown sought centralized authority. The animosity between the King and the Netherlands had complex origins - political, economic, cultural, religious and personal.
By around 1550, the Dutch "printing press and propaganda turned to the service of political reform, with The Inquisition as a major focus, on…a wide scale and with…devastating effects".[a] Even though the Dutch organized their own state-run inquisitions, it was feared that King Philip II would implement a new "Spanish Inquisition" in the Netherlands to eliminate Protestantism. Popular literature, circulating pamphlets, and other images painted the picture of a widespread, awful "Spanish Inquisition." A decree of the Spanish Inquisition signed by the King of Spain in 1568 declared most Dutch lives and property forfeit. The decree was not determined to be a forgery until the 20th century. Such anti-inquisition propaganda motivated all citizens. Eventually, "The Inquisition" became viewed as the primary instrument of Catholic tyranny, not only of Protestants, but also of freedom of thought and religion in general. However, exporting the Inquisition to the Netherlands was never in the plans of the Spanish Habsburg rulers, at least after the time of Charles V.[citation needed] The Dutch Inquisition was killing heretics much faster than the Spanish Inquisition.
Montanus [ edit ]
In 1567 A Discovery and Plaine Declaration of Sundry Subtill Practices of the Holy Inquisition of Spain was published under the pseudonym Reginaldus Gonzalvus Montanus. While authorship is disputed, it was probably written by Antonio del Corro and/or Casiodoro de Reina, both previously Spanish Catholic monks who became Protestants and fled the Inquisition. The former was a theologian, close relative of an inquisitor and ferocious enemy of the Spanish Inquisition in its campaign to destroy Protestantism. The latter was a student of the Bible from childhood, later translating the Bible into Spanish. Montanus' text was "brief, intelligently designed, and written in a lively and engaging style." It was simultaneously accurate about Inquisitional practices (perhaps published for the first time) and misleading. "Taking some of the most extreme of Inquisitional practices as the norm, Montanus portray[ed] every victim of the Inquisition as innocent, every Inquisition official as venal and deceitful, [and] every step in its procedure as a violation of natural and rational law". The text included 12 case histories of Lutheran martyrs of the Inquisition which were widely read into the early 19th century. The document, along with a number of successive publications, was reprinted and translated throughout Europe and became the definitive source on The Inquisition for many years; "histories" about The Inquisition written after 1567 relied on Montanus as their main source. The Spanish Inquisition, regarding its procedures as secret, never disputed Montanus. In a public relations war of the press the Spanish Inquisition forfeited.
For reasons of history England and France were particularly receptive to Montanus. English monarchs alternated between persecuting Catholics and persecuting Protestants. The French could not agree on a jurisdiction; parlementary and royal inquisitions had both failed.
A more balanced history awaited the publication of Philipp van Limborch in 1692. Juan Antonio Llorente later published a more detailed, if exaggerated, history through his access to the archives of the Spanish Inquisition.
William of Orange [ edit ]
Also cited as one of the most famous documents supporting the myth of "The Inquisition" is the Apologie[60] of William of Orange, published in 1581. Written by the French Huguenot Pierre Loyseleur de Villiers, the Apologie presented a horrifying narrative of the Spanish Inquisition. This document preserved and reinforced all of the anti-"Inquisition" propaganda generated at the beginning and throughout the Dutch revolt.
William of Orange had been a personal friend of his King from childhood. Nonetheless he became the leader of the Dutch revolt. The King put a price on his head, leading to his assassination. de Villiers had been William's chaplain. The Apologie was William of Orange's rebuttal of the charges made against him (and thus against the revolt). The assassination and rebuttal made William of Orange a martyr, unifying the opposition in a very long war which ultimately lead to the formation of Belgium and the Dutch Republic as separate countries.[62][63][64][65]
The Black Legend [ edit ]
During this time, England, under the rule of the Protestant Queen Elizabeth I and threatened with military attacks from Spain, found a new surge of nationalism being fueled by anti-Catholic propaganda centered on a series of books and pamphlets that detailed the horror of the "Spanish Inquisition". Peters writes, "An image of Spain circulated through late 16th-century Europe, borne by means of political and religious propaganda that blackened the characters of Spaniards and their ruler to such an extent that Spain became the symbol of all forces of repression, brutality, religious and political intolerance, and intellectual and artistic backwardness for the next four centuries. Spaniards... have termed this process and the image that resulted from it as 'The Black Legend', "la leyenda negra".
Henry Kamen has criticized the concept, "Persistent employment of the [Black Legend] label for ideological ends in order to rebut any criticism of Spain's imperial record has made it both unsuitable to use and inaccurate. In any case many of Spain's actions... were all too real and no "legend"." "At all times, imperial nations tend to suffer... in the arena of public opinion, and Spain was no exception, becoming the first victim of a long tradition of polemic that picked on the Inquisition as the most salient point of attack."
The Enlightenment and Art [ edit ]
By the 17th century, "The Inquisition" provided political and philosophical thinkers with an ideal symbol of religious intolerance. These philosophers and politicians passionately denounced "The Inquisition," citing it as the cause for all the political and economic failures in countries where "Inquisitions" were held. From these debates on toleration, "The Inquisition" was presented by French philosophes as the worst of any religious evil to ever come out of Europe. Additionally, writers, artists, and sculptors of the 17th and 18th centuries used "The Inquisition" as one of their main inspirations, retaliating against "The Inquisition's" suppression of creativity, literature, and art. These artistic images have arguably become some of the most long-lasting and effective perpetuators of "The Inquisition" myth.[b]
See also [ edit ]
Notes [ edit ]
^ Losing a battle of the press was not inevitable. By 1487 many presses operated in Spain and tax policies favored printers, foreign and domestic. Queen Isabel was fond of literature, music and paintings. ^ Francisco Goya, Philipp van Limborch, "Incredible as it may seem, in the age of the printing press not a single authentic Spanish image of the Holy Office saw the light of day. In the battle of images, the Inquisition was a clear loser." Images of the Spanish Inquisition by Pedro Berruguete Bernard Picart (and perhaps Francisco Rizi?) may be historically inaccurate.
References [ edit ]A 150-pound tortoise got its 15 minutes of fame in California over the weekend after it was spotted wandering the streets of the city of Alhambra and "taken into custody" by police.
The roaming reptile, named Clark, was reunited with its human family on Sunday after it was spotted near the intersection of Sixth Street and Norwood Place, in the southeastern part of the city, at around 1 p.m. Saturday and retrieved by police.
Someone cornered Clark until officers arrived, Alhambra Police Department Sgt. Esther Rodriguez told ABC News in a Sunday interview.
Ducklings Rescued From Storm Drain Reunited With 'Mama'
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"Since he was kind of heavy, two officers picked him up, put him in our trunk and transported him to our station," where he was placed in a kennel until Los Angeles County Animal Care and Control arrived shortly afterward, Rodriguez said.
News of the situation spread after a posting on the department's Facebook page.
"Which is faster? The tortoise did try to make a run for it; but, our officers are pretty fast. Almost had a pursuit!" read the Saturday posting on the Alhambra Police Department's Facebook page, adding that two officers were needed to take it "into custody" because it weighed so much and handcuffs weren't practical.
Readers responded with their own humorous replies, including one woman who wrote that she had seen the tortoise on the road on Saturday.
"I saw about (four) people around him who didn't know what to do and so I pulled over. He was friendly though and was eating grass and leaves and moving at a fast clip. the dude can move!" she wrote.
Several other posters offered to take the creature in if it couldn't be returned to its rightful owner. Luckily, the tortoise was claimed by its owner around noon on Sunday, Rodriguez said.
When it initially updated the story on its Facebook page, Alhambra Police said the animal was named Dirk. It later corrected the posting, saying it received incorrect information, and the tortoise's name is Clark.CLOSE USA TODAY Sports' Bob Nightengale looks back at the tragic death of Miami Marlins pitcher Jose Fernandez.
Miami Marlins starting pitcher Jose Fernandez during an August 29 game against the New York Mets, nearly one month before he died in a tragic boating accident. (Photo: Brad Penner, USA TODAY Sports)
Miami Marlins pitcher Jose Fernandez had cocaine and alcohol in his system when he and two friends were killed in a September boating accident, according to an autopsy report obtained by USA TODAY Sports on Saturday.
Fernandez’s blood alcohol content was.147, according to the toxicology results included in the report by the Miami-Dade County. Florida law states a BAC of more than.08 is considered boating under the influence.
The medical examiner extracted blood from a vein (.147) and fluid taken from Fernandez's eye (.160) to determine the pitcher's blood alcohol level.
It is not clear who was piloting the boat when Fernandez, 24, and his two friends, Jesus Macias, 27, and Eduardo Rivero, 25, were killed in the morning hours of Sept. 25. The boat, a 32-foot SeaVee named "Kaught Looking" owned by Fernandez, hit a jetty off South Beach at high speeds.
Cocaine was also found in the system of Rivero, who had a blood alcohol content of.065. Macias' BAC was.044. All three were found to have sustained blunt-force injuries to the head.
Officials had previously said that the three died from blunt-force injuries, not drowning. The autopsy report details the injuries to Fernandez, including facial lacerations and broken bones in his face that led to swelling of the brain (cerebral edema) and bleeding in the area between the skull and scalp (subgaleal hemorrhage). The impact also caused chest trauma that led to excess fluid in the lungs (pulmonary edema).
The three were at a bar where alcohol was served shortly before the accident took place, and a receipt for alcohol purchased at the bar was found in one of their pockets, according to an affidavit obtained by USA TODAY this week.
"This recklessness was exacerbated by the consumption of alcohol by the operator, whoever that was," Eleventh Judicial Circuit of Florida judge Martin Zilber wrote in the affidavit.
Fernandez, who defected from Cuba in 2008, was the National League Rookie of the Year in 2013 and a two-time All-Star.Lars Gonall: Welcome to the hell pit, or as it’s more commonly known, Spectrum Spectator. I’m Lars Gonall and with me as always is my spectrum life-partner Daisy Wences. For those of you at home wondering why I’m glistening like a dew-kissed lawn, the environment systems in our building decided to start freaking out today and while they claim it’s safe for us to go ahead and record the show, it is stupid hot in our studio right now.
Daisy Wences: And here I thought that healthy glow was because you saw our special guest backstage.
Lars: I would normally snark back at this juncture, but I’m pretty sure I’m sweating out large portions of my brain function. I don’t know how you still look so put together.
Daisy: I grew up on Vosca. This is basically sweater weather for me.
Lars: Guess that explains why you had a steaming bowl of kacho for lunch.
Daisy: Damn straight. Best thing to eat on a hot day is spicy soup. My grandfather taught me that. The more you sweat, the more it can evaporate and cool you off.
Lars: Spectrum Spectator, come for the reviews, stay for the folksy wisdom.
Daisy: Thanks for reminding me that we should probably actually do some reviewing. On today’s Spectrum Spectator, we turn our focus entirely towards the recent spate of documentaries and reality shows that premiered this month.
Lars: Note that we didn’t set out to do a theme show, but there was such a glut of quality recently it just worked out that way. You wanna go first, Daisy, so I can chug this liter of hydro-gel?
Daisy: And maybe we can get a towel for you. With how quickly that puddle of sweat is growing, I think electrocution is as likely to kill you as overheating at this point.
Lars: Spectrum Spectator, come for the reviews, stay for the death pool.
Daisy: Speaking of things that refuse to die, I had the pleasure of watching One World at a Time: An Inquiry into Project Archangel, a sweeping epic that explores in detail the history of the Synthworld from its earliest conception to its current controversial status. Just like the artificial planet itself, One World is quite daunting in size. Clocking in at over thirteen hours long, the documentary does take some significant time investment, but the choice of directors Cambio Astley and Viktoria Hampton to focus on the people actually building the world, rather than the typical political drama, give the piece a vitality that’s hard not to get caught up in. These are people who have given their lives to make the impossible a reality, and their passion for the project is captivating.
Even more impressive may be just how balanced the whole vid feels. There’s very little sugarcoating going on. Engineers discuss missteps. Project leads candidly talk about mistakes. During one of the standout moments in the piece, Imperator Salehi admits to mishandling how the initial scheduling and financing needs were presented to the public. Combine all those exclusive interviews with gorgeous shots of the construction site itself and an almost lyrical editing style, and you really get a sense of why so many people believe in the Synthworld dream.
Lars: I feel like I’ve seen half of it already, just thanks to the sheer volume of clips that have been passed around.
Daisy: And to be fair, I think that’s how most people are going to wind up watching it.
Lars: It’s actually how I wound up watching the documentary Bullet Catcher. A bunch of people had forwarded me clips of some of the metalworking sequences and I was like, okay, I’m in. Normally, I’m not a huge fan of these artisan and craftsmen-type vids, but there was something about mixing in the seedy underworld of Spider that just did it for me.
Daisy: This was actually shot by an outlaw, right?
Lars: Yeah, Marviana ‘Deadeye’ Gerhart. Turns out she’s as good at aiming a camera as she is a gun. Which from the Advocacy report I looked up, she is very good at. The whole piece is composed of these static shots from unique perspectives while the main subject, Three-Fingered Jack, narrates the story of his life crafting and repairing armor for the worst of the worst. There’s this stark contrast between the beautiful artistry in what he’s creating, and some of the upsetting stories he shares about his time on Spider.
And what was really interesting is that even though you see him throughout, you never actually see him talk. There’s no standard cut away to an interview. While that seems bizarre, it ends up working really well and sort of makes it feel like you’re inside Jack’s head. Later on, I learned that not only was this an artistic choice but also a practical one. Turns out that since Jack is never actually identified as the speaker, there’s some plausible deniability. It was the only way he would agree to be part of the project.
Daisy: I almost had the same thing written into my contract when I started here.
Lars: That would have been the smart way to go. Your reputation is pretty much ruined.
Daisy: It’ll be interesting to see what happens with this film when award season rolls around.
Lars: Yeah. Pretty much all of the people who worked on it would be arrested if they’re seen in the UEE. I heard that the distributor, Golden Path, was even contacted by the Advocacy for questioning.
Daisy: Speaking of intense invasive questioning, what do you say to bringing out our guest?
Lars: I almost hate to do it to him since the green room has air conditioning, but I figure if anyone can face uncomfortable environmental conditions it’s him.
Daisy: You may know him from his recent stint on the sixth season of the hit reality show, Frontier Colony; please join me in welcoming Naizen Blunk.
Lars: Great to have you on Spectrum Spectator, Naizen.
Naizen Blunk: Thanks so much for having me on.
Daisy: Of course, we are huge fans of yours. It was heartbreaking when you had to leave the colony in last week’s episode.
Naizen: It was pretty heartbreaking for me too. I’ve been wanting to be on Frontier Colony since it first premiered, so to have to leave four weeks in was really disappointing.
Lars: I’ve been dying to hear your take on the whole “Carrot Incident.”
Naizen: Once I stopped being worried that I was dying, I was pretty embarrassed about the whole thing. Here I’m supposed to be the colony’s farming expert, and I nearly poison everyone with the first crop that I grow. I guess I’m just thankful that no one else ate the carrots before I did.
Daisy: It was so funny the way they wound up editing that scene of you trying it for the first time. You looked so happy, but the music suddenly got sinister. It was the most afraid of a carrot I’ve ever been.
Lars: And so it turned out that the moon’s soil was toxic?
Naizen: Yup. But only when mixed with water. That’s why none of my initial scans showed anything. If there was one silver lining to this whole thing it’s that they’re actually talking about changing the way soil sampling is done so that hopefully this sort of thing will be less likely to happen in the future.
Lars: When did you know that you were off the show?
Naizen: As soon as they told me that I was too sick to be treated at the outpost. The producers are pretty serious about preserving the purity of the colony. When they say no outside contact, they mean it. After they drop you off, you’re on your own.
Daisy: So does that mean that you have no idea what happens on the episode premiering today?
Naizen: Yup. After I was emergency lifted to the hospital, I wasn’t allowed contact with any of the colonists or show staff, so I’ll be watching just like all of you. All I know is that they’re doing that special tie in with the Consolidated Outland’s new colony ship, the Pioneer.
Lars: We have to take a quick break, but when we come back, I definitely want to hear your predictions.
Daisy: Yeah, what do you think is going to happen with Clair and Aiden?
Lars: And which module do you think the colonists are going to choose to add with the Pioneer?
Naizen: Wait … Clair and Aiden? Are they a thing?
Daisy: Okay. We definitely have a lot more to discuss.
Lars: Stay right there for more when Spectrum Spectator returns.CSources2 is a jailbreak app that’s helpful for anyone who adds third-party repos to Cydia. It allows you to manage and backup your third-party sources and even toggle them off without completely removing them.
Needless to say, for someone like me who has no less than a dozen third-party Cydia sources configured, CSources2 is a blessing. Have a look at our video walkthrough to see how it works, and why you might need it.
Once CSourcesc2 is installed, you’ll find a new app icon on your Home screen. Launch the app, and you’ll be met with a bland looking interface.
Design is definitely not one of CSources2’s strong points, so just keep that in mind. Although it works well enough, the design is definitely off-putting and could cause a new user to avoid it altogether. That’s unfortunate, because even in its ugly state, the app is very useful.
To add a new Source, tap the ‘+’ button in the upper left-hand corner, type in the source URL, and tap the Add It! button. Once the repo is added, you should see it appear in the list of sources.
Each source features a dedicated switch to toggle it on or off in Cydia. Once you toggle a switch or make any changes, tap the Apply button in the upper left-hand corner to apply the changes in Cydia.
You can also tap on a source to load additional information about that source. Here, you can insert notes, which is handy for describing the reason why the repo was added in the first place. All too often, I find myself with repos configured, and I have no idea why I ever added them. This will help a lot in this regard.
Now it’s just a matter of opening Cydia, and verifying that the sources that you toggled on or off have appeared or disappeared respectively. CSources2 completely eliminates the need to manage sources within Cydia.
What’s even greater is the fact that you can back up your sources to iCloud or include them with an iTunes backup. You can also browse the file system and backup the app’s plist file manually if you want to.
It’s not very obvious, but the ‘i’ icon in the bottom right-hand corner is used for managing backups and performing restores. It’s also the place where you can learn more about CSources2’s general functionality.
Be sure to watch my full video walkthrough above for a look into why CSources2 is so handy. Reading about it is one thing, but actually seeing it work in action allows you to appreciate how powerful a tool like this really is.
Again, if you add third-party repos to Cydia, you should seriously think about giving CSources2 a try. It’s a tweak that I plan on using permanently going forward. In fact, I’ve manually removed all of my sources from Cydia, and have added them to CSources2.
What do you think about CSources2? It’s a $1.99 tweak and it’s available right now on the BigBoss repo. Sound off down below with your comments.By now, many of you loyal KrebsOnSecurity readers have seen stories in the mainstream press about the coordinated global law enforcement takedown of Darkode[dot]me, an English-language cybercrime forum that served as a breeding ground for botnets, malware and just about every other form of virtual badness. This post is an attempt to distill several years’ worth of lurking on this forum into a narrative that hopefully sheds light on the individuals apprehended in this sting and the cybercrime forum scene in general.
To tell this tale completely would take a book the size of The Bible, but it’s useful to note that the history of Darkode — formerly darkode[dot]com — traces several distinct epochs that somewhat neatly track the rise and fall of the forum’s various leaders. What follows is a brief series of dossiers on those leaders, as well as a look at who these people are in real life.
ISERDO
Darkode began almost eight years ago as a pet project of Matjaz Skorjanc, a now-36-year-old Slovenian hacker best known under the hacker alisas “Iserdo.” Skorjanc was one of several individuals named in the complaints published today by the U.S. Justice Department.
Iserdo was best known as the author of the ButterFly Bot, a plug-and-play malware strain that allowed even the most novice of would-be cybercriminals to set up a global cybercrime operation capable of harvesting data from thousands of infected PCs, and using the enslaved systems for crippling attacks on Web sites. Iserdo was arrested by Slovenian authorities in 2010. According to investigators, his ButterFly Bot kit sold for prices ranging from $500 to $2,000.
In May 2010, I wrote a story titled Accused Mariposa Botnet Operators Sought Jobs at Spanish Security Firm, which detailed how several of Skorjanc’s alleged associates actually applied for jobs at Panda Security, an antivirus and security firm based in Spain. At the time, Skorjanc and his buddies were already under the watchful eye of the Spanish police.
MAFI
Following Iserdo’s arrest, control of the forum fell to a hacker known variously as “Mafi,” “Crim” and “Synthet!c,” who according to the U.S. Justice Department is a 27-year-old Swedish man named Johan Anders Gudmunds. Mafi is accused of serving as the administrator of Darkode, and creating and selling malware that allowed hackers to build botnets. The Justice Department also alleges that Gudmunds operated his own botnet, “which at times consisted of more than 50,000 computers, and used his botnet to steal data from the users of those computers on approximately 200,000,000 occasions.”
Mafi was best known for creating the Crimepack exploit kit, a prepackaged bundle of commercial crimeware that attackers can use to booby-trap hacked Web sites with malicious software. Mafi’s stewardship over the forum coincided with the admittance of several high-profile Russian cybercriminals, including “Paunch,” an individual arrested in Russia in 2013 for selling a competing and far more popular exploit kit called Blackhole.
Paunch worked with another Darkode member named “J.P. Morgan,” who at one point maintained an $800,000 budget for buying so-called “zero-day vulnerabilities,” critical flaws in widely-used commercial software like Flash and Java that could be used to deploy malicious software.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, Mafi’s reign as administrator of Darkode coincided with the massive infiltration of the forum by a number of undercover law enforcement investigators, as well as several freelance security researchers (including this author).
As a result, Mafi spent much of his time devising new ways to discover which user accounts on Darkode were those used by informants, feds and researchers, and which were “legitimate” cybercriminals looking to ply their wares.
For example, in mid-2013 Mafi and his associates cooked up a scheme to create a fake sales thread for a zero-day vulnerability — all in a bid to uncover which forum participants were researchers or feds who might be lurking on the forum.
That plan, which relied on a clever watermarking scheme designed to “out” any forum members who posted screen shots of the forum online, worked well but also gave investigators key clues about the forum’s hierarchy and reporting structure.
Mafi worked closely with another prominent Darkode member nicknamed “Fubar,” and together the two of them advertised sales of a botnet crimeware package called Ngrbot (according to Mafi’s private messages on the forum, this was short for “Niggerbot.” The password databases from several of Mafi’s accounts on hacked cybercrime forums included variations on the word “nigger” in some form). Mafi also advertised the sale of botnets based on “Grum” a spam botnet whose source code was leaked in 2013.
SP3CIAL1ST
Conspicuously absent from the Justice Department’s press release on this takedown is any mention of Darkode’s most recent administrator — a hacker who goes by the handle “Sp3cial1st.”
Better known to Darkode members at “Sp3c,” this individual’s principal contribution to the forum seems to have revolved around a desire to massively expand the membership of the form, as well as an obsession with purging the community of anyone who even remotely might emit a whiff of being a fed or researcher.
Sp3c is a well-known core member of the Lizard Squad, a group of mostly low-skilled miscreants who specialize in launching distributed denial-of-service attacks (DDoS) aimed at knocking Web sites offline.
In late 2014, the Lizard Squad took responsibility for launching a series of high-profile DDoS attacks that knocked offline the online gaming networks of Sony and Microsoft for the majority of Christmas Day.
In the first few days of 2015, KrebsOnSecurity was taken offline by a series of large and sustained denial-of-service attacks apparently orchestrated by the Lizard Squad. As I noted in a previous story, the booter service — lizardstresser[dot]su — was hosted at an Internet provider in Bosnia that is home to a large number of malicious and hostile sites. As detailed in this story, the same botnet that took Sony and Microsoft offline was built using a global network of hacked wireless routers.
That provider happens to be on the same “bulletproof” hosting network advertised by sp3cial1st. At the time, Darkode and LizardStresser shared the same Internet address.
KMS
Another key individual named in the Justice Department’s complaint against Darkode is a hacker known in the underground as “KMS.” The government says KMS is a 28-year-old from Opelousas, Louisiana named Rory Stephen Guidry, who used the Jabber instant message address “k@exploit.im.” Having interacted with this individual on numerous occasions, I’d be remiss if I didn’t explain why this person is perhaps the least culpable and yet most interesting of the group named in the law enforcement purge.
For the past 12 months, KMS has been involved in an effort to expose the Lizard Squad members, to varying degrees of success. There are few individuals I would consider more skilled in tricking people into divulging information that is not in their best interests than this guy.
Near as I can tell, KMS has worked assiduously to expose the people behind the Lizard Squad and, by extension, the core members of Darkode. Unfortunately for KMS, his activities also appear to have ensnared him in this investigation.
To be clear, nobody is saying KMS is a saint. KMS’s best friend, a hacker from Kentucky named Ryan King (a.k.a. “Starfall” and a semi-frequent commenter on this blog), says KMS routinely had trouble seeing the lines between exposing others and involving himself in their activities. Here’s one recording of him making a fake emergency call to the FBI, disguising his voice as that of President Obama.
KMS is rumored to have played a part in exposing the Lizard Squad’s February 2015 hijack of Google.com’s domain in Vietnam. The message left behind in that crime suggested this author was somehow responsible, along with Sp3c and a Rory Andrew Godfrey, the only name that KMS was known under publicly until this week’s law enforcement action.
“As far as I know, I’m the only one who knew his real name,” King said. “The only botnets that he operated were those that he social engineered out of [less skilled hackers], but even those he was trying get shut down. All I know is that he and I were trying to get [root] access to Darkode and destroy it, and the feds beat us to it by about a week.”
The U.S. government sees things otherwise. Included in a heavily-redacted affidavit (PDF) related to Guidry’s case are details of a pricing structure that investigators say KMS used to sell access to hacked machines (see screenshot below)
Many other individuals operating under a number of hacker names were called out in the Justice Department press release about this action. Perhaps some of them are mentioned in this subset of my personal archive of screen shots from Darkode |
8 to 2004 the president of the Romanian Space Agency. In 2000 he was appointed Associate Professor on Geopolitics within the Faculty of International Business and Economics, Academy of Economic Studies in Bucharest and in 2004 he was elected COPUOS's Chairman of the Scientific and Technical Subcommittee. He was then elected as COPUOS's top level chairman, serving from 2010 to 2012, and also elected as the president of the ASE with a three-year mandate.
Prunariu has co-authored several books on space flight and both presented and published numerous scientific papers. His education includes a degree in aerospace engineering in 1976 from the Politehnica University of Bucharest. His Ph.D. thesis led to improvements in the field of space flight dynamics.
Deflection methods [ edit ]
A number of methods have been devised to 'deflect' an asteroid or other NEO away from an Earth-impacting trajectory, so that it can entirely avoid entering the Earth's atmosphere. Given sufficient advance lead time, a change to the body's velocity of as little as one centimetre per second will allow it to avoid hitting the Earth.[135] Proposed and experimental deflection methods include ion beam shepherds, focused solar energy and the use of mass drivers or solar sails.
Initiating a nuclear explosive device above, on, or slightly beneath, the surface of a threatening NEO is a potential deflection option, with the optimal detonation height dependent upon the NEO's composition and size. In the case of a threatening "rubble pile", the stand off, or detonation height above the surface configuration has been put forth as a means to prevent the potential fracturing of the rubble pile.[136][137] However, given sufficient advance warning of an asteroid's impact, most scientists avoid endorsing explosive deflection due to the number of potential issues involved.[29] Other methods that can accomplish NEO deflections include:
Gravity tractor [ edit ]
An alternative to an explosive deflection is to move a dangerous asteroid slowly and consistently over time. The effect of a tiny constant thrust can accumulate to deviate an object sufficiently from its predicted course. In 2005 Drs. Ed Lu and Stanley G. Love proposed using a large, heavy unmanned spacecraft hovering over an asteroid to gravitationally pull the latter into a non-threatening orbit. The method will function due to the spacecraft's and asteroid's mutually gravitational attraction.[29] When the spacecraft counters the gravitational attraction towards the asteroid by the use of, for example, an ion thruster engine, the net effect is that the asteroid is accelerated, or moved, towards the spacecraft and thus slowly deflected from the orbital path that will lead it to a collision with Earth.[138]
While slow, this method has the advantage of working irrespective of an asteroid's composition. It would even be effective on a comet, loose rubble pile, or an object spinning at a high rate. However, a gravity tractor would likely have to spend several years stationed beside and tugging on the body to be effective. The Sentinel Space Telescope's mission is designed to provide the required advance lead time.
According to Rusty Schweickart, the gravitational tractor method also has a controversial aspect because during the process of changing an asteroid's trajectory, the point on Earth where it would most likely hit would slowly be shifted temporarily across the face of the planet. It means the threat for the entire planet might be minimized at a temporary cost of some specific states' security. Schweickart recognizes that choosing the manner and direction the asteroid should be "dragged" may be a difficult international decision, and one that should be made through the United Nations.[139]
An early NASA analysis of deflection alternatives in 2007, stated: "'Slow push' mitigation techniques are the most expensive, have the lowest level of technical readiness, and their ability to both travel to and divert a threatening NEO would be limited unless mission durations of many years to decades are possible."[140] But a year later in 2008 the B612 Foundation released a technical evaluation of the gravity tractor concept, produced on contract to NASA. Their report confirmed that a transponder-equipped tractor "with a simple and robust spacecraft design" can provide the needed towing service for a 140-meters-diameter equivalent, Hayabusa-shaped asteroid or other NEO.[141]
Kinetic impact [ edit ]
Deep Impact being crashed into Comet Tempel 1 in July 2005 (photographed from a companion spacecraft), an example of a technique that can alter a NEO's trajectory.
When the asteroid is still far from Earth, a means of deflecting the asteroid is to directly alter its momentum by colliding a spacecraft with the asteroid. The further away from the Earth, the smaller the required impact force becomes. Conversely, the closer a dangerous near-Earth Object (NEO) is to Earth at the time of its discovery, the greater the force that is required to make it deviate from its collision trajectory with the Earth. Closer to Earth, the impact of a massive spacecraft is a possible solution to a pending NEO impact.
In 2005, in the wake of the successful U.S. mission that crashed its Deep Impact probe into Comet Tempel 1, China announced its plan for a more advanced version: the landing of a spacecraft probe on a small NEO in order to push it off course.[142] In the 2000s the European Space Agency (ESA) began studying the design of a space mission named Don Quijote, which, if flown, would have been the first intentional asteroid deflection mission ever designed. ESA's Advanced Concepts Team also demonstrated theoretically that a deflection of 99942 Apophis could be achieved by sending a spacecraft weighing less than a tonne to impact against the asteroid.
ESA had originally identified two NEOs as possible targets for its Quijote mission: 2002 AT4 and (10302) 1989 ML.[143] Neither asteroid represents a threat to Earth. In a subsequent study, two different possibilities were selected: the Amor asteroid 2003 SM84 and 99942 Apophis; the latter is of particular significance to Earth as it will make a close approach in 2029 and 2036. In 2005, ESA announced at the 44th annual Lunar and Planetary Science Conference that its mission would be combined into a joint ESA-NASA Asteroid Impact & Deflection Assessment (AIDA) mission, proposed for 2019–2022. The target selected for AIDA will be a binary asteroid, so that the deflection effect could also be observed from Earth by timing the rotation period of the binary pair.[138] AIDA's new target, a component of binary asteroid 65803 Didymos, will be impacted at a velocity of 22,530 km/h (14,000 mph)[144][145][146]
A NASA analysis of deflection alternatives, conducted in 2007, stated: "Non-nuclear kinetic impactors are the most mature approach and could be used in some deflection/mitigation scenarios, especially for NEOs that consist of a single small, solid body."[140]
Funding status [ edit ]
The B612 Foundation is a California 501(c)(3) non-profit, private foundation. Financial contributions to the B612 Foundation are tax-exempt in the United States. Its principal offices are in Mountain View, California;[115] they were previously located in Tiburon, California.[147]
Fund raising has not gone well for B612 as of June 2015. With an overall goal to raise US$450 million for the project, the foundation raised only approximately US$1.2 million in 2012 and US$1.6 million in 2013.[2]
Foundation name [ edit ]
The B612 Foundation is named in tribute to the home asteroid of the eponymous hero of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's best-selling philosophical fable of Le Petit Prince (The Little Prince).[29][30][35][118] In aviation's early pioneer years of the 1920s, Saint-Exupéry made an emergency landing on top of an African mesa covered with crushed white limestone seashells. Walking around in the moonlight he kicked a black rock and soon deduced it was a meteorite that had fallen from space.[148][149]
That experience later contributed, in 1943, to his literary creation of Asteroid B-612 in his philosophical fable of a little prince fallen to Earth,[149] with the home planetoid's name having been adapted from one of the mail planes Saint-Exupéry once flew, bearing the registration marking A-612.
Also inspired by the story is an asteroid discovered in 1993, though not identified as posing any threat to Earth, named 46610 Bésixdouze (the numerical part of its designation represented in hexadecimal as 'B612', while the textual part is French for "B six twelve"). As well, a small asteroid moon, Petit-Prince, discovered in 1998 is named in part after The Little Prince.[150][151]
See also [ edit ]
References [ edit ]
This article incorporates public domain material from websites or documents of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.
Notes
^ [52] entered Earth's atmosphere on October 7, 2008,[53] and exploded over the [54] The asteroid was identified about 19 hours before impact by [55][56] Although officials in the U.S. Government were advised of the impending impact, no warning was provided to the Sudanese Government. According to Donald Yeomans, head of NASA's Near Earth Objects Program at the [57] 2008 TC 3, an 80-tonne, 4.1-meter (13 ft) diameter asteroid,entered Earth's atmosphere on October 7, 2008,and exploded over the Nubian Desert in Sudan. It was the first time an asteroid impact had been predicted prior to its entry into the atmosphere as a meteor, and its discovery and impact prediction were considered a "remarkable feat" considering its small four meter size.The asteroid was identified about 19 hours before impact by Richard Kowalski of the Catalina Sky Survey near Tucson, Arizona, in the United States.Although officials in the U.S. Government were advised of the impending impact, no warning was provided to the Sudanese Government. According to Donald Yeomans, head of NASA's Near Earth Objects Program at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, "NASA alerted the White House, the National Security Council, the Pentagon, the State Department, and the Department of Homeland Security... But no one from the United States alerted Sudan because the two countries did not have diplomatic relations".
CitationsYou must enter the characters with black color that stand out from the other characters
Message: * A friend wanted you to see this item from WRAL.com: http://wr.al/17nqP
— A man's body was stranded on a cargo plane for two days after Delta Airlines mistakenly rerouted the flight that was supposed to carry it to Nashville from Raleigh for a funeral.
A four-year battle with leukemia claimed the life Bryant Lee Raburn, 31, a student from Middle Tennessee State University who recently moved to North Carolina to spend his final days with his family.
Raburn died Tuesday at his parents' home in Raleigh. "I performed CPR until emergency workers got there, but he ended up passing away," said David Rhodes, Raburn's stepfather.
Rhodes had made arrangements for the body to be flown from Raleigh to Nashville for the funeral, but the body didn't arrive as planned.
"Bryant was rerouted to Salt Lake City in a cargo hold, and we didn't know how to get him to Nashville," said Rhodes. According to Rhodes, hours spent on the phone with Delta got him nowhere. "I was stonewalled everywhere I called," he said.
Finally, Rhodes traveled to the Nashville airport himself to work with operating managers to find a new flight that would get his stepson's body to Tennessee in time for the funeral.
A tight transfer in Atlanta ended up being the only way to get the body to the funeral in time. Raburn's body arrived for the funeral just one hour before the service was supposed to start.The threat posed by people on New Zealand's terror watchlist has increased this year, Prime Minister John Key says.
Photo: RNZ / Alexander Robertson
About 40 people suspected of raising money for Islamic State (IS) or trying to go to Syria to fight are on the watchlist.
Mr Key revealed today a small number were considered more dangerous than others and were being monitored both physically and electronically, 24 hours a day.
He said a "small group" was under the 24-hour surveillance, but he would not reveal the specific number.
"We're constantly reviewing the list because [if] we say there are 30 or 40, [it] doesn't mean there have to be 30 or 40 - if there are more, there are more.
"It's a very intensive process, once you start having 24-hour surveillance on people, but we can't abdicate our responsibilities. I mean, if we think there's a serious risk then we have to monitor that and we have to do something about it."
He said the government would still have to have legal authority to carry out surveillance on family members or associates.
"So, you know, warrants are generated. We don't live in a police state, so to be monitored your actions would have to support the creation of that warrant."
Photo: SUPPLIED
While authorities were aware some people in New Zealand were actively raising money to support IS, Mr Key said it was not always straightforward to secure a conviction.
He said activity supporting terrorist activities, including fund-raising, was an offence under the Terrorism Suppression Act.
He had asked his officials why no further action had been taken, if authorities knew it was taking place.
"It stands to reason we do everything we can and if we can take a successful prosecution, we will.
"And that's one of the questions I always ask my officials - how rapidly can we effectively get these people behind bars if there's a serious case?"
He said the main issue was people could go to court and make a case the authorities had somehow misinterpreted what they were doing.
"The authorities will act but they'll only act at a time when they're absolutely sure they can get a successful prosecution, because a lot of these people obviously aren't aware that they're being monitored.
"If we do ultimately bring that to their attention, then who knows where that really goes?"
'It's the ones that we don't know about'
Earlier, he told Morning Report his own concerns were never about the people under surveillance because they were being watched right around the clock.
"One or two of them are quite threatening individuals, but I just hasten to say people should take some confidence from the fact they're under 24-hour surveillance so their capacity to do a lot is limited.
"My concerns always are not about the people that we know about, it's the ones that we don't know about."
Mr Key said there would be no change in New Zealand's role in Iraq following a United Nations resolution over the Paris attacks.
"On the military front we're not looking to do any different... there's no intention to move beyond where we're at, because where we're at is a pretty decent contribution and I think recognised as such."
Photo: New Zealand Defence Force
The UN Security Council, which includes New Zealand, voted unanimously to call on member states to act against IS.
New Zealand troops are training Iraqi soldiers to fight against IS and Mr Key said that role would not be expanded.
"We have different options available to us than say a country like the United States, that can have air strikes, or France for instance, we just don't have that capability.
"The point is, do we want to be there forever, and I think that's the real risk, that you get stuck there forever.
"It's quite a commitment, it's well over 100 people, it costs quite a lot and we're making a difference, but at some point we should come and go from that scenario."
24-hour surveillance 'not the new normal'
Constant surveillance of people believed to be a security threat to New Zealand was unusual for this country, but one security expert said this was not "the new normal".
Professor Robert Ayson - a professor of Strategic Studies at Victoria University - told RNZ today people who were put on such a watchlist were at the "highest level of concern", but the fact it was only a few people, as the Prime Minister said, suggested the threat was not huge.
"In a country of 4.5 million people, having one or two people under constant watch doesn't suggest something particularly massive, and it's pretty modest compared to other liberal democracies around the globe."
He said other countries such as the US, Britain and France had been carrying out similar surveillance for "significantly longer".
Prof Ayson said this case was the first time he had heard of 24-hour surveillance in New Zealand for security issues, although he said certain criminal cases would have a similar level of snooping.
But he added it did not necessarily suggest a permanent shift in New Zealand's spying situation.
"People talk about these things as if they are the new normal, but I don't fully accept that. The IS situation in Iraq and Syria is quite fluid, the issue of foreign fighters connecting themselves with IS is quite fluid."
He said new levels of technology allowed all sorts of surveillance possibilities, but it was still a hugely labour-intensive task keeping track of somebody's every movement, with people needed to watch the footage and analyse the data, as well as carry out any physical surveillance.
Prof Ayson also backed up the Prime Minister's comments that it was the people the security forces didn't know about who were the real issue.
"You never know when people take it upon themselves to change their mind or whatever. You can have all the surveillance power in the world, and it will not necessarily make you any safer from people you don't know about."First published Mon May 12, 2003; substantive revision Thu May 11, 2017
Arthur Schopenhauer was among the first 19 th century philosophers to contend that at its core, the universe is not a rational place. Inspired by Plato and Kant, both of whom regarded the world as being more amenable to reason, Schopenhauer developed their philosophies into an instinct-recognizing and ultimately ascetic outlook, emphasizing that in the face of a world filled with endless strife, we ought to minimize our natural desires for the sake of achieving a more tranquil frame of mind and a disposition towards universal beneficence. Often considered to be a thoroughgoing pessimist, Schopenhauer in fact advocated ways — via artistic, moral and ascetic forms of awareness — to overcome a frustration-filled and fundamentally painful human condition. Since his death in 1860, his philosophy has had a special attraction for those who wonder about life’s meaning, along with those engaged in music, literature, and the visual arts.
Exactly a month younger than the English Romantic poet, Lord Byron (1788–1824), who was born on January 22, 1788, Arthur Schopenhauer came into the world on February 22, 1788 in Danzig [Gdansk, Poland] — a city that had a long history in international trade as a member of the Hanseatic League. The Schopenhauer family was of Dutch heritage, and the philosopher’s father, Heinrich Floris Schopenhauer (1747–1805), was a successful merchant and shipowner who groomed his son to assume control of the family’s business. A future in the international business trade was envisioned from the day Arthur was born, as reflected in how Schopenhauer’s father carefully chose his son’s first name on account of its identical spelling in German, French and English. In March 1793, when Schopenhauer was five years old, his family moved to the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg after the formerly free city of Danzig was annexed by Prussia.
Schopenhauer toured through Europe several times with his family as a youngster and young teenager, and lived in France (1797–99) [ages 9-11] and England (1803) [age 15], where he learned the languages of those countries. As he later reported, his experiences in France were among the happiest of his life. The memories of his stay at a strict, Anglican-managed boarding school in Wimbledon were rather agonized in contrast, and this set him against the English style of Christianity for the rest of his life.
The professional occupations of a merchant or banker were not sufficiently consistent with Schopenhauer’s scholarly disposition, and although for two years after his father’s death (in Hamburg, April 20, 1805; possibly by suicide, when Schopenhauer was seventeen) he continued to respect the commercial aspirations his father had had for him, he finally left his Hamburg business apprenticeship at age 19 to prepare for university studies. In the meantime, his mother, Johanna Henriette Troisiener Schopenhauer (1766–1838), who was the daughter of a city senator, along with Schopenhauer’s sister, Luise Adelaide [Adele] Lavinia Schopenhauer (1797–1849), left their Hamburg home at Neuer Wandrahm 92 and moved to Weimar after Heinrich Floris’s death, where Johanna established a friendship with Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832). In Weimar, Goethe frequently visited Johanna’s intellectual salon, and Johanna Schopenhauer became a well-known writer of the period, producing a voluminous assortment of essays, travelogues, novels (e.g., Gabriele [1819], Die Tante [1823], Sidonia [1827], Richard Wood [1837]), and biographies, such as her accounts of the German art critic, archaeologist, and close friend, Carl Ludwig Fernow (1763–1808), and of the Flemish painter, Jan van Eyck (c.1390–1441), published in 1810 and 1822 respectively. Her complete works total twenty-four volumes.
In 1809, Schopenhauer began studies at the University of Göttingen, where he remained for two years, first majoring in medicine, and then, philosophy. In Göttingen, he absorbed the views of the skeptical philosopher, Gottlob Ernst Schulze (1761–1833), who introduced him to Plato and Kant. Schopenhauer next enrolled at the University of Berlin (1811–13), where his lecturers included Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762–1814) and Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768–1834). His university studies in Göttingen and Berlin included courses in physics, psychology, astronomy, zoology, archaeology, physiology, history, literature, and poetry. At age 25, and ready to write his doctoral dissertation, Schopenhauer moved in 1813 to Rudolstadt, a small town located a short distance southwest of Jena, where he lodged for the duration in an inn named Zum Ritter. Entitling his work The Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason (Über die vierfache Wurzel des Satzes vom zureichenden Grunde), it formed the centerpiece of his later philosophy, articulating arguments he would later use to criticize as charlatans, the prevailing German Idealistic philosophers of the time, namely, his former lecturer, J. G. Fichte, along with F. W. J. Schelling (1775–1854) and G. W. F. Hegel (1770–1831). In that same year, Schopenhauer submitted his dissertation to the nearby University of Jena and was awarded a doctorate in philosophy in absentia.
Leaving his mother’s apartment in 1814 where he had been residing briefly, Schopenhauer moved to Dresden, where he lived until 1818. There he developed ideas from The Fourfold Root into his most famous book, The World as Will and Representation, that was completed in March of 1818 and published in December of that same year (with the date, 1819). In sympathy with Goethe’s theory of color, he also wrote On Vision and Colors (1816) during this time. In Dresden, Schopenhauer developed an acquaintance with the philosopher and freemason, Karl Christian Friedrich Krause (1781–1832), who had also been one of Fichte’s students in Berlin, whose own panentheistic views appear to have been influential. Panentheism (i.e., all-in-God), as opposed to pantheism (i.e., all-is-God), is the view that what we can comprehend and imagine to be the universe is an aspect of God, but that the being of God is in excess of this, and is neither identical with, nor exhausted by, the universe we can imagine and comprehend. As we will see below, Schopenhauer sometimes characterized the thing-in-itself in a way reminiscent of panentheism.
After a year’s vacation in Italy and with The World as Will and Representation in hand, Schopenhauer applied for the opportunity to lecture at the University of Berlin, the institution at which he had formerly studied, and where two years earlier (1818), Hegel had arrived to assume Fichte’s prestigious philosophical chair. His experiences in Berlin were less than professionally fruitful, however, for in March of 1820, Schopenhauer self-assuredly scheduled his class at a time that was simultaneous with Hegel’s popular lectures, and few students chose to hear Schopenhauer. Two years later, in 1822, he left his apartment near the University and travelled to Italy for a second time, returning to Munich a year later. He then lived in Mannheim and Dresden in 1824 before tracing his way back to Berlin in 1825. A second attempt to lecture at the University of Berlin was unsuccessful, and this disappointment was complicated by the loss of a lawsuit that had begun several years earlier in August, 1821. The dispute issued from an angry shoving-match between Schopenhauer and Caroline Luise Marguet (d. 1852), a 47-year-old seamstress, that occurred in the rooming house where they were both living. The issue concerned Ms. Marguet’s conversing loudly with her associates in the anteroom of Schopenhauer’s apartment, making it difficult for him to concentrate on his work. The conversations were apparently a matter of routine that built up Schopenhauer’s animosity, leading to the explosive confrontation.
Leaving Berlin in 1831 in view of a cholera epidemic that was entering Germany from Russia, Schopenhauer moved south, first briefly to Frankfurt-am-Main, and then to Mannheim. Shortly thereafter, in June of 1833, he settled permanently in Frankfurt, where he remained for the next twenty-seven years, residing in an apartment along the river Main’s waterfront from 1843 to 1859 at Schöne Aussicht 17, a few minutes walking distance from Frankfurt’s Judengasse. His daily life, living alone with a succession of pet French poodles (named Atma and Butz), was defined by a deliberate routine: Schopenhauer would awake, wash, read and study during the morning hours, play his flute, lunch at the Englisher Hof — a fashionable inn at the city center near the Hauptwache — rest afterwards, read, take an afternoon walk, check the world events as reported in The London Times, sometimes attend concerts in the evenings, and frequently read inspirational texts such as the Upanishads before going to sleep.
During this later phase of his life, Schopenhauer wrote a short work in 1836, Über den Willen in der Natur (On the Will in Nature), that aimed to confirm and reiterate his metaphysical views in light of scientific evidence. Featured in this work are chapters on animal magnetism and magic, along with Sinology (Chinese studies). The former reveals Schopenhauer’s interest in parapsychology; the latter is valuable for its references to the preeminent Neo-Confucian scholar, Zhu Xi (1130-1200), as well as to influential writers on Asian thought from the period such as Robert Spence Hardy (1803–1868) and Issac Jacob Schmidt (1779–1847).
Shortly thereafter in 1839, Schopenhauer completed an essay of which he was immensely proud, “On the Freedom of Human Will” (Über die Freiheit des menschlichen Willens), that was awarded first prize in a competition sponsored by the Royal Norwegian Society of Sciences and Letters in Trondheim. A year later, he complemented this with a second essay, “On the Basis of Morality” (Über die Grundlage der Moral) that was not honored with an award by The Royal Danish Society of the Sciences in Copenhagen, even though it was the sole submission in their essay competition. The Society claimed that Schopenhauer did not answer the assigned question and that he gravely disrespected philosophers with outstanding reputations (viz., Fichte and Hegel). In 1841, Schopenhauer defiantly published both essays together as Two Fundamental Problems of Ethics (Die Beiden Grundprobleme der Ethik). There soon followed an accompanying volume to The World as Will and Representation, that was published in 1844 along with the first volume in a combined second edition.
In 1851, Schopenhauer published a lengthy and lively set of philosophical reflections entitled Parerga and Paralipomena (appendices and omissions, from the Greek), and within a couple of years, he began to receive the philosophical recognition for which he had long hoped. The recognition was stimulated by a favorable review of his philosophy published in 1853 without signature in the Westminster Review (“Iconoclasm in German Philosophy,” by John Oxenford), that, acknowledging the centrality of “Will” within Schopenhauer’s outlook, drew insightful parallels between Schopenhauer’s and Fichte’s more well-known thought. A year after the third edition of The World as Will and Representation appeared in 1859, Schopenhauer died peacefully on September 21, 1860, in his apartment in Frankfurt at Schöne Aussicht 16. He was 72. After his death, Julius Frauenstädt (1813–1879) published new editions of most of Schopenhauer’s works, with the first complete edition (six volumes) appearing in 1873. In the 20th century, the editorial work on Schopenhauer’s manuscripts was carried forth in authoritative depth by Arthur Hübscher (1897–1985).
Schopenhauer donated his estate to help disabled Prussian soldiers and the families of those soldiers killed, who had participated in the suppression of the 1848 revolution. An assortment of photographs of Schopenhauer was taken during his final years, and although they reveal to us an old man, we should appreciate that Schopenhauer completed his main work, The World as Will and Representation, by the time he had reached the age of thirty.
Schopenhauer’s PhD dissertation of 1813, The Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason, examines what many philosophers have recognized as an innate tendency to assume that in principle, the universe is a thoroughly understandable place. His dissertation, in effect, critically examines the disposition to assume that what is real is what is rational. A century earlier, G.W. Leibniz (1646–1716) had defined the principle of this assumption — the principle of sufficient reason — in his Monadology (1714) as that which requires us to acknowledge that there is no fact or truth that lacks a sufficient reason why it should be so, and not otherwise.
Although the principle of sufficient reason might seem to be self-evident, it does yield surprising results. For example, we can appeal to this principle to argue that there can be no two individuals exactly alike, because there would otherwise be no sufficient reason why one of the individuals was in one place, while the other individual was in another. The principle also supports the argument that the physical world was not created at any point in time, since there is no sufficient reason why it would be created at one point in time rather than another, since all points in time are qualitatively the same. Moreover, if the principle of sufficient reason’s scope of applicability is assumed to be limitless, then there is a definite answer to the question, “Why is there something, rather than nothing?” Schopenhauer was keen to question the universal extension of the principle of sufficient reason, mainly owing to his advocacy of Kant’s view that human rationality lacks the power to answer metaphysical questions, since our knowledge is limited by our specific and narrowly-circumscribed capacities for organizing our field of sensation.
Schopenhauer observed as an elementary condition, that to employ the principle of sufficient reason, we must think about something specific that stands in need of explanation. This indicated to him that at the root of our epistemological situation, we must assume the presence of a subject that thinks about some object to be explained. From this, he concluded that the general root of the principle of sufficient reason is the distinction between subject and object that must be presupposed as a condition for the very enterprise of looking for explanations (The Fourfold Root, Section 16) and as a condition for knowledge in general.
Schopenhauer’s claim that the subject-object distinction is the most general condition for human knowledge has its theoretical source in Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, for Kant similarly grounded his own theory of knowledge upon a highly-abstracted, formalized, and universalized subject-object distinction. Kant characterized the subjective pole of the distinction as the contentless transcendental unity of self-consciousness and the objective pole as the contentless transcendental object, that corresponds to the concept of an object in general (CPR, A 109). The general root of the principle of sufficient reason, as Schopenhauer characterizes it, is at the root of Kant’s epistemology as well.
Following the demanding conceptions of knowledge typical of his time that had been inspired by René Descartes’s (1596–1650) quest for certainty (see Descartes’s “method of doubt” and his “cogito” [Latin, for “I think”]), Schopenhauer maintained that if any explanation is to be genuine, then whatever is explained cannot be thought to have arisen by accident, but must be regarded as having been necessary. Schopenhauer’s investigation into the principle of sufficient reason can thus be alternatively characterized as an inquiry into the nature of the various kinds of necessary connection that can arise between different kinds of objects.
Inspired by Aristotle’s doctrine of the four basic kinds of explanatory reason or four [be]causes (Physics, Book II, Chapter 3), Schopenhauer defines four kinds of necessary connection that arise within the context of seeking explanations, and he correspondingly identifies four independent kinds of objects in reference to which explanations can be given:
material things abstract concepts mathematical and geometrical constructions psychologically-motivating forces
Corresponding to these four kinds of objects, Schopenhauer links in parallel, four different kinds of reasoning. He associates material things with reasoning in terms of cause and effect; abstract concepts with reasoning in terms of logic; mathematical and geometrical constructions with reasoning in reference to numbers and spaces; and motivating forces with reasoning in reference to intentions, or what he calls moral reasoning. In sum, he identifies the general root of the principle of sufficient reason as the subject-object distinction in conjunction with the thought of necessary connection, and the fourfold root of the principle of sufficient reason as the specification of four different kinds of objects for which we can seek explanations, in association with the four independent styles of necessary connection along which such explanations can be given, depending upon the different kinds of objects involved.
One of Schopenhauer’s most significant assertions is that the four different modes of explanation only run in parallel with each other, and cannot coherently be intermixed. If we begin by choosing a certain style of explanation, then we immediately choose the kinds of object to which we can refer. Conversely, if we begin by choosing a certain kind of object to explain, we are obliged to use the style of reasoning associated with that kind of object. It thus violates the rationality of explanation to confuse one kind of explanation with another kind of object. We cannot begin with a style of explanation that involves material objects and their associated cause-and-effect relationships, for example, and then argue to a conclusion that involves a different kind of object, such as an abstract concept. Likewise, we cannot begin with abstract conceptual definitions and accordingly employ logical reasoning for the purposes of concluding our argumentation with assertions about things that exist.
With this set of regulations about what counts as a legitimate way to conduct explanations, Schopenhauer ruled out the often-cited and (especially during his time) philosophically often-relied-upon cosmological and ontological arguments for God’s existence, and along with them, all philosophies that ground themselves upon such arguments. He was adamant that the German Idealist outlooks of Fichte, Schelling and Hegel rested upon explanatory errors of this kind, and he regarded those outlooks as fundamentally wrongheaded styles of thought, for he saw their philosophies as being specifically grounded upon versions of the ontological argument for God’s existence. His frequent condemnation of German Idealism was advanced in light of what he considered to be sound philosophical reasons, despite his ad hominem attacks on Fichte, Schelling and Hegel.
Schopenhauer can be called a Kantian in many respects, but he did not always agree with the details of Kant’s arguments. As noted, Schopenhauer’s teacher in Göttingen was G. E. Schulze, who authored in 1792, a text entitled Aenesidemus, that contains a criticism of the Kantian philosopher, Karl Leonhard Reinhold (1757–1823). Reinhold was a defender of Kant, and was known for his Philosophy of the Elements (Elementarphilosophie) that was expressed, along with some earlier writings, in Reinhold’s 1791 work, The Foundation of Philosophical Knowledge (Fundament des philosophischen Wissens).
Schulze’s critique of Kant is essentially the following: it is incoherent to posit as a matter of philosophical knowledge — as Kant seems to have done — a mind-independent object that is beyond all human experience, and that serves as the primary cause of our sensory experience. Schulze shares this criticism of Kant with F. H. Jacobi, who expressed the same objection five years earlier in David Hume on Faith, or Idealism and Realism, a Dialogue [1787] in an appendix entitled “On Transcendental Idealism.” Schulze argues that Kant illegitimately uses the concept of causality to conclude as a matter of strong epistemological requirement, and not merely as a matter of rational speculation, that there is some object — namely, the thing-in-itself — outside of all possible human experience, that is nonetheless the cause of our sensations.
Schopenhauer concurs that hypothesizing a thing-in-itself as the cause of our sensations amounts to a constitutive application and projection of the concept of causality beyond its legitimate scope, for according to Kant himself, the concept of causality only supplies knowledge when it is applied within the field of possible experience, and not outside of it. Schopenhauer therefore denies that our sensations have an |
oves…a scary proposition, but in Doc Rivers I trust. Los Angeles wins, 4-3.
(2) Golden State Warriors vs. (3) Houston Rockets
Mark Jackson and the Warriors haven’t forgotten that February night where the Rockets lit them up and drained 23 threes. It remains to be seen if there’s any bad blood left over after the late-game fouling, but the bigger story is, of course, the fact that these two franchises made the biggest moves this summer. Which one filled the more needed hole, Iguodala or Dwight? Maybe the answer to that question is the best center in the NBA, but the Warriors have the most well-rounded six-man rotation in all of the NBA. The Oracle crowd will be crazy (again), and there’s no way that Houston takes one in Oakland. Golden State wins, 4-2.
CONFERENCE FINALS
Miami Heat vs. Indiana Pacers
For the third consecutive season, I see the Heat and Pacers will square off. And really not much has changed… The Heat have added and lost a couple role players and Indiana still has a strong core. The big question once we get this late in the playoffs is how will Dwyane Wade’s knees hold up? Erik Spoelstra is convinced that it “wasn’t an issue of knee wear and tear” last year but his style of play certainly doesn’t promote longevity. Maybe he’ll develop a better outside shot but this series will be the real test of Wade and the future of the Biggest Three. Bosh has been impressive in the pre-season, so if Wade does have issues, (he and) LeBron will pick up the slack…as always. Miami wins, 4-3.
Golden State Warriors vs. Los Angeles Clippers
maybe the slimmed down Bogut), defensive stalwarts (Bogut and Iguodala), and a sixth man who can do some of everything (Barnes) if he isn’t starting games. In terms of this specific series, the two best teams in California both showcase two high-flyers in Iguodala and Griffin so the NBA will have no shortage of fans tuning into these games. Doc has Having grown up a baseball player, I’m quite superstitious and don’t want to jinx my Warriors but they finally have the pieces for more than a one-and-done. Health is the only thing in the way for a team that has shooters (Curry, Thompson), post scorers (Lee…andthe slimmed down Bogut), defensive stalwarts (Bogut and Iguodala), and a sixth man who can do some of everything (Barnes) if he isn’t starting games. In terms of this specific series, the two best teams in California both showcase two high-flyers in Iguodala and Griffin so the NBA will have no shortage of fans tuning into these games. Doc has the right attitude going into LA and might win 2014 Coach of the Year, but Mark Jackson has proven to be the perfect fit for the Warriors. Redick’s 37 percent from three is no match for Curry and Thompson’s 40+ percent from three. Put Iguodala on CP3 if you have to and shut down any playmaking on offense. All homerism aside, the Warriors are the better team. I’m ready for floods of disagreement, but these Warriors have Finals-worthy talent. Golden State wins, 4-2.
NBA FINALS
Miami Heat vs. Golden State WarriorsAndy Rubin, Google’s (GOOG) top mobile-phone executive, likes to talk about everything being “Android-ized.” Android has become the top smartphone operating system in the United States, but Google’s ambitions for it go well beyond tablet computers and smartphones, even beyond the mobile Web.
With its forthcoming Google Wallet payment service, an Android smartphone will become a credit card. Now Google says Android can also become the first mass-market bridge between the virtual world and the physical world, allowing smartphone apps to control light bulbs, home appliances, and even medical devices.
At its annual I/O developer conference last month, Google announced a program called Android@Home, a system that will allow Android phones and tablets to turn on household lights, activate speakers in a wireless stereo system, or analyze the calories burned on a gym exercise bike. The first Android@Home products are LED light bulbs embedded with technology that can be controlled by an Android device. Built by a Florida company called Lighting Science Group, they will go on sale by December.
But Android’s executives say their ambition goes beyond turning a smartphone into a universal remote that could switch on the kitchen coffeemaker from your upstairs bedroom.
“These are fantastic windows into the virtual world,” said Joe Britt, the director of Android@Home, holding out a Nexus S smartphone during a recent interview at the Googleplex. “But that’s the limitation, right? It’s the virtual world.
“Why not enable any physical device that exists to be influenced by or monitored by or controlled by a user, in a way that’s as convenient as possible? And in doing that, because (Android is) a platform for applications, we enable a whole new universe of application types that developers can create.”
Hoping to spark a wave of creativity similar to what Apple (AAPL) started when it opened the iPhone apps store, Google distributed hundreds of circuitry kits to developers at last month’s I/O conference. The Android Open Accessory Development Kit (ADK) allows Android’s software to operate and communicate with motors, sensors, controllers and relays, allowing developers to create an interface in which a smartphone app could control or collect data from a thermostat, a lawn irrigation system or a group of lighting fixtures.
“The opportunity exists to dramatically change how you control your home,” said Tom Benton of Lighting Science. Over time, “we’re talking about the elimination of the wall switch.”
With more than 400,000 Android devices being activated worldwide every day and a global community of 450,000 independent Android software developers, Google hopes appliance manufacturers will be willing to embed the company’s “Tungsten” control technology in their products, and that consumers will be willing to spend the money to buy Google’s wireless control “bridge” that will connect individual appliances to an Android device through a home Wi-Fi network.
“For many of these concepts, the stars need to align a bit in terms of critical mass,” acknowledged John Lagerling, director of global partnerships for Android.
Google is hardly the first company to come up with the idea of a universal remote to control household appliances. IBM, Microsoft and other companies have promoted the idea, and a Southern California company called Smarthome has been designing, building and selling home control and automation products since 1992.
While the technology is not a major problem, Scott Burnett, director of IBM Global Consumer Electronics Industry, said “one of the looming issues for the industry is the business model — how do I make money? — whether from the perspective of the device maker, the service provider or others in the value chain.”
Adding to the uncertainty about Android@Home is that Google has not yet revealed the device the wireless bridge network will use, nor its price. The initial LED lighting products, although far more efficient and longer-lasting than an incandescent bulb, aren’t cheap — LSG’s household bulbs retail for about $22 to $35 each before energy rebates; the company has not set prices for those with the Android@Home technology added.
But by starting with the low-hanging fruit — “Everybody can change a light bulb,” Britt said — Google hopes the payoff in energy savings, convenience and novelty will encourage manufacturers and consumers to jump onboard.
By throwing the door open to the creativity of independent developers, Google hopes to see software apps for the physical world just as ingenious as some of the hundreds of thousands of mobile apps for the virtual world that have been concocted in recent years.
Imagine, Android engineers say, a home alarm system that turns off automatically as you arrive home because your smartphone knows where you are. Or, Android developers could write apps to harness the computing power of the Internet cloud to reduce a home’s power and water consumption.
“When the rainy season starts, the Internet knows when that is,” Britt said. “We can automatically adjust how much water you’re using. If you understand when the most efficient time to use energy is, you can schedule times when your dishwasher runs or your washing machine runs. Those are the examples of control applications that, if wrapped in the appropriate user interface so they are very simple and transparent, this technology enables.”
Far more ambitious apps are possible. Scientists at UC Berkeley are using the Android ADK to discover ways to help control mechanical “exoskeletons” that would support the legs of paraplegics, allowing them to stand and walk. Medical sensors connected to an Android smartphone could allow diabetics to monitor their blood sugar, or anyone to monitor their sleep patterns, Langerling said.
Britt, who met Rubin when both worked for Apple two decades ago, has a pedigree in mobile-software technology. Rubin and Britt, along with Matt Hershenson, in 1999 founded Danger, a startup that created the T-Mobile Sidekick before Microsoft bought the company in 2008. Rubin left Danger to found Android in 2003, which Google bought two years later.
“I would come over here (to Android) to see Andy and Matt and have lunch, and the stuff they were working on was always extremely interesting to me, so last November I joined,” Britt said. “I’ve been having a blast. It’s a fantastic place. It’s a crazy place in a really good way.”
Contact Mike Swift at 408-271-3648. Follow him at Twitter.com/swiftstories.Stephan Ridgway / Flickr, CC For years, Apple has said very little about persistent rumors that its iPhone text messaging system in some way discriminates against Android users, either by delivering messages to them late or not delivering them at all.
Now an Apple customer support employee has admitted to Lifehacker's Adam Pash that, in fact, "a lot" of users have this problem: If you switch from an iPhone to an Android, iMessage won't deliver texts from iPhone users to your new Android phone.
There is no fix in sight, Pash says he was told. (At Business Insider, I've had a version of this problem firsthand: My iPhone colleagues get my texts immediately; those on Android seem to get them later, up to a few minutes behind.)
The issue was raised earlier this year by The New York Times, Mashable and Fast Company. The latter went so far as to allege, "Apple is punishing you for ditching your iPhone by cutting you off from your friends, and they want to make it feel like you need to be on an Apple device to talk to the people you care about."
We spoke to Apple recently and it pointed us to this customer support page which instructs users how to turn off iMessage so that other iPhones don't continue to try to deliver messages to your disused iMessage address. The technical issue here is that iMessage is not the same as a regular mobile phone text. It's a separate, different system. Texts get "stuck" briefly or permanently inside iMessage when they're directed to someone who has switched their number to an Android phone because they're trying to find your old, inactive iMessage address.
Apple's customer support was initially useless when Pash called for help. Pash writes:
Apple Support: "Can you try deleting the contact from your new iPhone and re-adding it?"
Me: "I can't tell everyone I know to delete and re-add me as a contact."
Eventually, the service rep admitted there was a problem. Pash writes:
This is a problem a lot of people are facing.
The engineering team is working on it but is apparently clueless as to how to fix it.
There are no reliable solutions right now — for some people the standard fixes work immediately; many others are in my boat.
This is, apparently, a key admission from Apple. Previously the company had advised people to actively switch off iMessage before disposing of their old iPhone in favor of an Android. Its help page hints at how long the Android text issue lasts, too:
If you want to transfer your SIM card or phone number to a device that doesn't support iMessage
Go to Settings > Messages and turn off iMessage if you plan to transfer your SIM card or phone number from an iPhone to a device that doesn't support iMessage. If you don't, other iOS devices might continue to try to send you messages using iMessage, instead of using SMS or MMS, for up to 45 days.
We asked Apple for further comment but did not immediately get a response.'I can't feel anything from the waist down', reveals Russia's glamorous Olympic skier Maria Komissarova after breaking her spine at Sochi
Maria Komissarova fractured 12th dorsal vertebrae in lower-middle back
The 23-year-old said she cannot 'feel her body below her belly button'
Doctors have said she is permanently paralysed from the waist down
Accident occurred on a series of jumps near the top of the course
Russian president Vladimir Putin visited Komissarova after operation
A Russian skier who was hospitalised after a serious accident at the Sochi Winter Olympic Games will never walk again, it emerged today.
Maria Komissarova, 23, is in a German clinic after suffering a fractured spine in a crash during a training run for the ski cross event in Sochi.
The Russian Freestyle Federation confirmed today that Miss Komissarova is permanently paralysed, citing her doctors in Germany.
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Tragic accident: Russian freestyle skiing pin-up girl Maria Komissarova, 23, is paralysed from the waist down after a training accident in Sochi Raunchy: Prior to the Winter Olympics, freestyle skiier Maria Komissarova was one of a number of Russian athletes who posed in sexy outfits to show off their femininity
Ski-cross is one of the most frenetic and risky events of the Games, where four skiers race together down a slope filled with jumps, obstacles and banked corners.
During the main competition, six skiers race against each other, with the top three advancing through the heats to the final.
Normally during practice runs, skiers are on the course themselves, or traveling down the mountain in loosely packed bunches.
International Ski Federation spokeswoman Jenny Wiedeke said the accident occurred on a series of jumps near the top of the course and that Komissarova fell while exiting the third jump.Our rating: By: Daniele Antonietti Version #: 1.0 Date Released: 2011-07-06 Developer: Price: 0.00 User Rating: Loading... Loading... Download App
Photo Quiz Challenge is a remarkably basic game in which you are presented with a photo for a limited amount of time, and then have to answer a question related to that photo. You have 3 lives, and as you successfully answer questions, the time limit for viewing the photos decreases.
Sure, it may not sound remarkable, but the positive feeling of brain-training you get from it means that it’s the kind of game that you’ll be dipping into at regular intervals, just because it feels a good massage of the mind.
The 1000-odd photos in the database are all run-of-the-mill images, which they should be considering you’re meant to be scrutinising the photo rather than admiring it. At first, you may find yourself baffled at the questions it asks and think, ‘How the hell am I meant to know how many people wore bracelets in the photo? I was looking at how many of them were wearing **cking earrings!’ Before long though, you’ll see improvement, as you learn to scrutinise the photos with the efficiency of a detective on speed. And this is a satisfying feeling.
The game is accompanied by goofy sound-effects, and a basic tribal beat which is presumably meant to focus your mind by sending you into some kind of trance. Not sure if this works, and hopefully an upcoming update will give you the option to listen to your iPod while playing the game.
Photo Quiz Challenge is compatible with Game Center, meaning that your scores automatically get submitted to the Global leaderboards (I’ll take this chance to brag that I’m currently ranked 6th in the world). You can also play online against friends and strangers, doubling the intensity of what is already a brain-straining game.
At the outset, this appears to be a fairly linear game, but its brain-training effect is surprisingly addictive; not in that Tiny Tower wasting-your-life-away kind of way, but in a way that actually feels like your mind is having a work-out. The option to submit your own photos to be included in the next update suggests that this game is going to develop and improve as time goes by; also, having your face in an iPhone game could be quite satisfying in a cheap, pathetic kind of way.Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. said Thursday he has directed U.S. attorneys across the country to review and possibly refile charges in ongoing drug cases so that low-level, nonviolent offenders will not face severe mandatory sentences.
The policy change will be applied to suspects in drug cases who have been charged but not yet tried, as well as to individuals who have been convicted but not yet sentenced. The directive does not affect offenders already sentenced or serving time in prison.
As part of a sweeping new policy shift, Holder announced last month that, in future drug cases, low-level, nonviolent suspects would no longer be charged with offenses that impose severe mandatory sentences. The new directive marked an expansion of that effort, ordering U.S. attorneys to apply the policy retroactively.
“I am pleased to announce today that the department has issued new guidance to apply our updated charging policy not only to new matters, but also to pending cases where the defendant was charged before the policy was issued but is still awaiting adjudication of guilt,” Holder said in a speech at the annual conference of the Congressional Black Caucus.
Justice Department spokesman Brian Fallon said department officials do not know how many people will be affected by the new policy. He said Holder has asked for a survey of his 94 U.S. attorneys to determine how many cases will be affected retroactively.
View Graphic Drug offenses account for 17%, or nearly one in five, of those in state prisons, according to national incarceration data.
“By reserving the most severe prison terms for serious, high-level or violent drug traffickers or kingpins, we can better enhance public safety,” Holder said in his speech. “We can increase our focus on proven strategies for deterrence and rehabilitation, and we can do so while making our expenditures smarter and more productive.”
The Justice Department’s new policy applies to offenders with no ties to gangs or large-scale drug organizations and those whose offenses did not involve the use of a weapon or violence. Under the guidelines, the offender also cannot have sold drugs to minors or have a significant criminal history.
“Some federal drug statutes that mandate inflexible sentences — regardless of the individual conduct at issue in a particular case — do not serve public safety when they’re applied indiscriminately,” Holder said in his speech.
Holder sent a three-page memorandum explaining the new retroactive guidelines to his prosecutors on Aug. 29. The memo instructs prosecutors not to “disturb the sentence in a case in which the sentence has been imposed.”
In the case of a defendant who was convicted but has not been sentenced, the U.S. attorney has prosecutorial discretion about whether to apply the new guidelines.
The cost of incarceration in the United States was $80 billion in 2010, according to Justice officials. While the U.S. population has increased by about a third since 1980, the federal prison population has grown by 800 percent, and federal prisons are operating at nearly 40 percent over capacity.
Although the United States is home to 5 percent of the world’s population, almost a quarter of the world’s prisoners are in U.S. prisons, according to the Justice Department. There are more than 219,000 federal inmates, and almost half of them are serving time for drug-related crimes.
The new sentencing guidelines are part of a comprehensive prison reform that Holder said he wants to be part of his legacy as attorney general.
Last month, Holder announced that the Justice Department would not challenge laws legalizing marijuana in Colorado and Washington as long as those states maintained strict rules regulating the sale and distribution of the drug.
Supporters of the new state laws had argued that hundreds of millions of dollars had been wasted on a failed war against marijuana that has filled U.S. prisons with low-level, nonviolent offenders.Belgian man who skipped paying for 100 restaurant bills is killed BelfastTelegraph.co.uk He was an unrepentant gastronomic freeloader, from lobster right up to the after-dinner brandy, always enjoying the bounty to the fullest. https://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/world-news/belgian-man-who-skipped-paying-for-100-restaurant-bills-is-killed-29945283.html https://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/incoming/article29945282.ece/9a1d8/AUTOCROP/h342/shutterstock_118942609.jpg
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He was an unrepentant gastronomic freeloader, from lobster right up to the after-dinner brandy, always enjoying the bounty to the fullest.
Titus Clarysse was infamous in and around the northern Belgian town of Ghent for walking into any restaurant of his choosing, ordering whatever his tummy and palate craved and walking out without paying.
“Curse him? Maybe. But kill him? That makes no sense,” said Tim Joiris, head of the Ghent region restaurant and hotel federation.
Two days after the 35-year-old Clarysse was found dead in his apartment, investigators on Thursday were looking for suspects in what spokeswoman Annemie Sirlippens called “a case of murder or manslaughter.”
Newspapers reported Clarysse was stabbed — a detail police would not confirm — on Monday night. There was no immediate indication of the motive and Sirlippens refused to provide more details.
Clarysse's gastronomic past, though, was the stuff of lore.
“We are talking about 100 incidents spread over several convictions,” Sirlippens said, and at least a half-decade of gastronomic and financial excess.
Joiris knows, since he had enough restaurant owners complain. “It was trouble for everyone. And what's worse, for long nobody knew how really to deal with it.”
Restaurants in Ghent, a medieval university town with gabled fronts and terraces on cobblestones, attract an international and varied clientele.
“In the end, we knew his face, but you know, on a busy terrace in summer, full of people, he knew how to blend in,” Joiris said.
Several convictions did not stop him and tales of freeloaders being forced to do the dishes “are a myth,” Joiris said. “He did it all, the grand restaurants, the terraces. He really tried them all.”
Clarysse was called a “tafelschuimer” — someone who takes everything, even the crumbs, off the table.
De Standaard newspaper reported he was living on municipal welfare and often seemed to have the wrong kind of friends. It was unclear whether his death was linked to his freeloading.
“We are not talking about an aggressive guy. He was just happy-go-lucky about it,” Joiris said. And Clarysse never held back.
“He was asking for it all — the whole menu,” Joiris said, chuckling in remembrance.
“He would sit and wait after the meal — another beer, a brandy.”
Belfast Telegraph DigitalPacific Gas and Electric has installed temporary light fixtures at its Shotwell Street yard that the company said are an attempt to ramp up security measures, in part as a result of recent conversations with neighbors about homeless encampments in the area.
The lights elicited a mixed reactions from those living in the tents, some of whom consider the bright lights harassment.
A video taken by Amos Gregory, a Navy Veteran, muralist, and advocate for the homeless, during a night walk on October 5 along Shotwell Street between 18th and 19th streets shows what appear to be floodlights pointed directly at a 10-tent encampment located on the sidewalk adjacent to the facility.
The fenced off PG&E center is split into two yards, separated by Folsom Street. Lights have been placed at the Folsom Street entrance to PG&E’s yard – wedged between Folsom and Harrison Streets– where a large encampment existed for months.
That encampment has been cleared, but tents continue to line the sidewalk along PG&E’s other yard, located between Folsom and Shotwell streets. Lights have also been set up there.
“It’s the way they are all angled at us, it’s like spotlight that is extremely bright,” said a woman named Jessica, who camps out directly across from the light fixture.
The lights are indeed new, confirmed PG&E spokesperson Andrea Menniti, and follow months of discussions that included “the police department, city leaders, nearby businesses and neighbors” on how to “keep the area safe and secure and address the issue of camps near our facility.”
Menniti said that the lights are part of a pilot program that was launched “a few months ago” and that the light fixtures on Folsom and Shotwell streets are temporary as the company is “figuring out the best solution” for addressing security issues on its property. The latter will likely involve the installation of additional lights around PG&E premises, along Folsom and Harrison streets, she said.
The lights’ primary function, said Menniti, is to offer additional protection to PG&E employees – who frequent the yard at all hours– as well as to customers who enter and exit the facilities. Menniti said that PG&E already has a round-the-clock security officer patrolling the yards as well as security cameras. Spiked fences run around the perimeters of the yards.
But Gregory called the bright lights and persistent buzzing of a generator that powers them a nuisance and said it adds to the harassment of the campers.
Many of those who are now in the spotlight say that they too, are bothered.
Jessica said the lights offer extra security to the campers because ”you can see what’s going on around you,” but they also interrupt her sleep.
A friend of Jessica’s, who gave his name as PJ, called the installation of the lights “psychological warfare.”
“They don’t want to let us rest,” said PJ, adding that he believes the lights were installed to encourage the campers to move over to other streets.
But not everyone in the encampment agrees. “There’s a lot of working women out here, in a way, the lights are respecting them –they keep them from getting raped or mugged, they deserve security,” said a man who lives in the encampment but declined to give his name.
The man called the light fixture a “big ass spotlight,” but said it doesn’t bother him much. “We don’t sleep much at night anyway.”
Instead, he wishes the company would work with the city to improve the conditions of the campers.
“Why don’t they ask the city to give us public toilets? Can we put in a request for regular street lights?” He wanted to know.
Jessica said she is not against the installation of street lights to ensure pedestrian safety, but called the overhead floodlights “a little over done.”
The woman has bounced between the 19th Street encampments on Shotwell and Folsom streets for some two and a half years, and said that security has never been an issue at PG&E.
“Nobody messes with PG&E’s stuff. They have fences, they have cameras – I’ve never heard of anybody going over the fences or messing with their stuff,” she said. “I think they put [the lights] there to put us on the spot. We are now so much more visible to the public.”
She is worried that the lights will give the company more reason to ask for her camp’s removal.
“They have to come out of pocket to do all this extra security because we are here – eventually they’ll be like, ‘we can’t spend any more money, they need to go,’” she said. “It’s giving them a reason, another complaint.“
When asked about security concerns at the facility, Menniti said she did not know of any recent break-in attempts. However, neighborhood safety is the company’s concern, she said.
When asked about the morality of the lights, Sam Dodge, deputy director of the Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing, said that as property owners, the company “needs to take responsibility there and they have to find the right mix of stewardship and making it safe with lighting with other kinds of amenities.”
Still, Dodge said he wasn’t sure that installing the floodlights, used by the company for emergency repairs, is the right solution.
“I’ve seen some pictures of them and the generators seem loud and the lights seem bright. I don’t know if they found the right mix,” he said.
For now, Menniti said that the company is still working with the city in the “long process of figuring out the best fit for lights for neighbors, the community, employees and our customers.”Image caption This is the first Dreamliner passenger flight since January
An Ethiopian Airlines 787 Dreamliner has flown from Addis Ababa to Nairobi, the first commercial flight by the Boeing aircraft since all 787s were grounded in January.
The 50 planes around the world were grounded due to battery malfunctions that saw one 787 catch fire in the US.
Over the past week teams of Boeing engineers have been fitting new batteries to the aircraft.
This was after aviation authorities approved the revamped battery design.
The Ethiopian Airlines plane took off at 09:45 local time (07:45 GMT) and landed in Nairobi, Kenya, some two hours later.
Engineering team
Each 787 has two of the lithium-ion batteries which caused problems.
In addition to new versions of the batteries which run at a much cooler temperature, the batteries are now enclosed in stainless steel boxes.
These boxes have a ventilation pipe that goes directly to the outside of the plane. Boeing says this means than in the unlikely event of any future fire or smoke, it would not affect the rest of the aircraft.
At the scene Flight ETH 801 between Addis Ababa and Nairobi wasn't exactly a run-of-the-mill flight. For starters, it was full of Boeing executives and the boss of Ethiopian Airlines. Several passengers on board asked me what was going on, why was the BBC on a routine flight in Africa? Many didn't realise that they were the first passengers to fly in a Dreamliner since it was dramatically grounded in January. There were plenty who knew about the safety scare surrounding the plane, although only a couple that we spoke to said it had made them a little more tentative about flying. Boeing still has a huge job on its hands, convincing passengers that its most high-profile, most hi-tech airliner is safe. Two senior Boeing executives went out of their way this week to tell me that they'd happily put their family on the plane. It's the kind of quote that sounds good. Still, Boeing will be desperately hoping that its Dreamliner nightmare doesn't come back to haunt it.
Boeing said it put 200,000 engineer hours into fixing the problem, with staff working round the clock.
On Thursday, the US Federal Aviation Administration issued a formal "air worthiness" directive allowing revamped 787s to fly.
Japanese airlines, which have been the biggest customers for the new-generation aircraft, are expected to begin test flights on Sunday.
A total of 300 Boeing engineers, pooled into 10 teams, have in the past week been fitting the new batteries and their containment systems around the world.
Boeing is expected to complete repairs on all 50 of the grounded Dreamliners by the middle of May.
In addition to the Dreamliners in service with airlines, Boeing has upgraded the 787s it has continued to make at its factory in Seattle since January.
The Dreamliner entered service in 2011. Half of the plane is made from lightweight composite materials, making it more fuel efficient than other planes of the same size.
The two lithium-ion batteries are not used when the 787 is in flight.
They are operational when the plane is on the ground and its engines are not turned on, and are used to power the aircraft's brakes and lights.O'Connell St Source: Sam Boal/RollingNews.ie
THE AMERICAN INSTITUTE of Architects (AIA) is teaming up with Dublin architects to help re-imagine part of the city centre.
The Framework project is a collaboration between architects, Dublin City Council, Dublin Town, community and business leaders, the general public and others.
The focus area is the Dublin One District from O’Connell Street running as far as Capel Street and from Parnell Street to the Quays.
Source: Dublin Town
Representatives from the AIA will visit Dublin from 9-13 March to engage with local stakeholders and members of the public before devising a plan for the future vision of the area. This is the first time the AIA’s design assistance team programme has conducted a project like this outside North America.
A public consultation workshop will take place at the Gresham Hotel on O’Connell Street on Friday, 10 March at 6pm.
Dublin Town has encouraged as many people as possible to attend this consultation. In a statement, the group said: “The more attendees at this workshop, the more beneficial it will be to the Dublin One area and the city centre in general.”
Speaking about the project, Dublin architect Ali Grehan said: “Places often struggle because individuals and organisations are pulling in different directions and design solutions are imposed from above.
“The AIA design assistance programme brings these diverse people together at the earliest stage to agree the issues, prepare the process and implement lasting design solutions.
“The programme has a proven track record in delivering great outcomes for communities, which is why we’re collaborating with the AIA in introducing the programme to Dublin.”
‘A vibrant European city destination’
Richard Guiney, CEO of Dublin Town, said the work done by the AIA in other locations “speak for themselves”.
We are sure that the report that they will provide for us in Dublin will yield valuable inputs combining both innovative ideas and best international thinking. Dublin One is a key district in Dublin city centre which has enormous potential to be a beacon of imaginative regeneration that is also sympathetic to its heritage.
“We are confident that with the co-operation of its stakeholders the district will once again be a key vibrant European city destination,” Guiney said.
AIA design in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Source: AIA
AIA design at Tecnologico de Monterrey, Mexico Source: AIA
Joel Mills, senior director at the AIA, said the organistion is ”proud” to be part of the initiative.
“Through the design assistance process, we hope to empower the citizens of Dublin to envision a future for Dublin One and begin building that future together,” Mills said.
The AIA team will present their recommendations to the Lord Mayor of Dublin Brendan Carr at a public event in the Gresham Hotel at 6pm on Monday, 13 March.
People can register to attend the public consultation workshop here.It seems like not every cute little robot has to go the way of Sony's AIBO. Nao, the product of French startup Aldebaran Robotics, has successfully negotiated its way to a second generation — fittingly dubbed the Nao Next Gen — coming with numerous hardware and software upgrades. The processor inside is now a 1.6GHz Intel Atom chip, which may not sound like much computational power, but is enough to handle two simultaneous HD video streams from the upgraded cameras in the new Nao. Software-wise, the Aldebaran team has added Nuance voice recognition for better communication with humans, an improved walking algortihm, and smart torque control to refine the bot's body coordination.
The Nao Next Gen launches three years after the original Nao's debut and continues to target the same markets: research and educational institutions, personal wellbeing, and individual developers who may apply to join the Nao Developer Program. Aldebaran Robotics says it has sold 2,000 units of Nao so far, though the goal for Nao Next Gen will surely be exponentially higher.The characters on “Seinfeld” could have really used the level-headed advice that Amy Dickinson offers in her “Ask Amy” column. And now, they’re getting some.
A person writing under the name “Feeling Foolish” asked her how to handle a situation involving a “famous local sports figure” he met in his gym locker room, who then goes on to date his ex-girlfriend.
Yes, this is basically the plot of Seinfeld’s “The Boyfriend” (parts one and two), starring former baseball star Keith Hernandez.
Tribune Media Services pulled the letter on Friday, editor Tracy Clark told The Post. “It was reminiscent of a Seinfeld episode,” she said.
The company substituted in another letter but not before numerous publications printed the Seinfeld plot.
“Every once in awhile, I get punked by a villainous, fun-loving reader,” Dickinson wrote on her site Monday.
She added: “Honestly, I can’t believe I missed this one, because I have absorbed enough Seinfeld episodes to power a parallel universe of columns based only on Seinfeld plotlines.”
Here’s the query:
Dear Amy: I recently ran into a famous local sports figure at my gym. I didn’t want to bother him, but much to my surprise he approached me. Turns out he knew me from my profession. He asked if I wanted to go out for coffee, and we exchanged numbers. A few days later we had coffee, and I thought it was pretty cool that he considered us friends. Then everything changed. He told me he was interested in taking out a woman we ran into. She is my ex-girlfriend and we’ve remained good friends. He asked me a couple of times if I wouldn’t mind if he asked her out. I reluctantly said no. I made plans with him, and then after talking to my ex I found out that he ditched our plans to go out with her. The next day he called me and asked if I could help him move some furniture. I barely know the guy, next thing he will be asking me to drive him to the airport. Two friends of mine warned me not to trust this guy. What’s the deal — am I being too rash or should I dump the guy as a friend? — Feeling Foolish
And here is Amy’s response:
Dear Foolish: The good news here is that you won’t have to dump the guy as a friend because he is not a friend. He’s an opportunist who just keeps asking you for stuff. I suspect that when you turn down his generous offer to let you move furniture for him, you’ll likely never hear from him again.
Did you hear that? Keith Hernandez is “an opportunist.” But Hernandez, who has said he makes $3,000 a year in royalties from his Seinfeld appearances, did show up again during the season finale.
Ask Amy has been trolled in a similar manner before. Last year, someone wrote in describing the plot of the movie “The Room.” Again |
solutions to customers in business, finance and government, improving their operational efficiency and providing deep insights that lead to well-informed, confident decisions. IHS Markit has more than 50,000 key business and government customers, including 80 percent of the Fortune Global 500 and the world’s leading financial institutions. Headquartered in London, IHS Markit is committed to sustainable, profitable growth. IHS Markit is a registered trademark of IHS Markit Ltd. All other company and product names may be trademarks of their respective owners © 2016 IHS Markit Ltd. All rights reserved.American actor
Charles Stanley Dutton (born January 30, 1951) is an American stage, film, and television actor and director, best known for his roles as "Fortune" in the film Rudy, "Dillon" in Alien 3, and the title role in the television sitcom Roc which originally ran on the Fox network from 1991 until 1994.
Early life and education [ edit ]
Dutton was born January 30, 1951, on the East side of Baltimore, Maryland. His father was a truck driver. In his youth, Dutton dropped out of school before finishing middle school. He had a short-lived stint as an amateur boxer with the nickname "Roc." When he was 17, he got into a fight which resulted in the death of a man Dutton claimed had attacked him. Dutton was convicted of manslaughter, and spent seven years in prison.
Prison conviction [ edit ]
Several months into his second prison term, Dutton was sentenced to six days of solitary confinement, which allowed prisoners to take one book. By accident, he grabbed an anthology of black playwrights. He enjoyed the plays so much that, upon his release from confinement, he petitioned the warden to start a drama group for the Christmas talent show. The warden agreed on the condition that Dutton go back to school and get his GED. Dutton accomplished that and went on to eventually complete a two-year college program at Hagerstown Junior College (now Hagerstown Community College) in Hagerstown, Maryland, graduating with an Associate of Arts degree in 1976. Upon his release, he enrolled as a drama major at Towson State University (now known as Towson University) in the Baltimore suburb of Towson, Maryland, where he graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1978. After his time at Towson, Dutton earned a master's degree in acting from the Yale School of Drama in 1983.[1]
Career [ edit ]
In 1984, Dutton made his Broadway debut in August Wilson's Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, winning a Theatre World Award and a Tony Award nomination for Best Actor. In 1988, Dutton played a killer in the television miniseries The Murder of Mary Phagan opposite Jack Lemmon and Kevin Spacey. In 1990, Charles earned a second Best Actor Tony nomination for his role in another Wilson play, The Piano Lesson. From 1991-1994, he starred in the Fox television series Roc. Dutton co-starred in Alien 3, the debut film of director David Fincher, then co-starred in 1993's Rudy. Other films he has appeared in include Get on the Bus; A Time to Kill; Cookie's Fortune; Crocodile Dundee II; Cry, the Beloved Country; Surviving the Game, Menace II Society, Secret Window and A Low Down Dirty Shame.
Dutton won Outstanding Guest Actor Emmy Awards in 2002 and 2003 for his roles in The Practice and Without a Trace. He was previously nominated in 1999, for his guest-starring role as Alvah Case in the HBO prison drama Oz in its second-season premiere episode. For this role, he was also nominated for an NAACP Image Award. Also in 1999, he starred in an ensemble cast in Aftershock: Earthquake in New York in which he played the Mayor of New York City. Dutton gained acclaim for his comedy show Roc shown on FOX television (but produced by HBO) from 1991–1994, especially mid-run when the show was broadcast live. His work in this role won him an NAACP Image Award. He co-starred in the popular but short-lived 2005 CBS science fiction series, Threshold.
In 2000, Dutton directed the HBO miniseries The Corner. The miniseries was close to his heart for Dutton grew up on the streets of East Baltimore. It was adapted from The Corner: A Year in the Life of an Inner-City Neighborhood (Broadway Books, 1997) by David Simon (a reporter for the Baltimore Sun) and Ed Burns (a retired Baltimore homicide detective). The Corner won several Emmys in 2000, including Best Miniseries. Dutton won for his direction of the miniseries. He worked with Simon previously in a 1996 episode of Homicide: Life on the Street.
He starred as Montgomery County, Maryland Police Chief Charles Moose in the 2003 made-for-TV movie D.C. Sniper: 23 Days of Fear, and appears in Season 2 of The L Word. Dutton also appeared in "Another Toothpick," an episode of The Sopranos. He guest starred on House M.D. as the father of Doctor Eric Foreman (Omar Epps) and on Sleeper Cell: American Terror as the father of undercover FBI agent Darwyn Al-Sayeed. He also directed two episodes of Sleeper Cell.
On October 9, 2007, HBO announced that it had arranged a deal with Dutton where he would develop, direct and star in series and movies for the network.[2] He also appeared in the 2007 film Honeydripper. On February 14, 2013 Dutton returned to TV in Zero Hour playing the role of a priest. In 2013, Dutton played Detective Margolis in the horror film The Monkey's Paw.[3]
Career [ edit ]
In 1984, Dutton made his Broadway debut in August Wilson's Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, winning a Theatre World Award and a Tony Award nomination for Best Actor. In 1988, Dutton played a killer in the television miniseries The Murder of Mary Phagan opposite Jack Lemmon and Kevin Spacey. In 1990, Charles earned a second Best Actor Tony nomination for his role in another Wilson play, The Piano Lesson. From 1991-1994, he starred in the Fox television series Roc. Dutton co-starred in Alien 3, the debut film of director David Fincher, then co-starred in 1993's Rudy. Other films he has appeared in include Get on the Bus; A Time to Kill; Cookie's Fortune; Crocodile Dundee II; Cry, the Beloved Country; Surviving the Game, Menace II Society, Secret Window and A Low Down Dirty Shame.
Dutton won Outstanding Guest Actor Emmy Awards in 2002 and 2003 for his roles in The Practice and Without a Trace. He was previously nominated in 1999, for his guest-starring role as Alvah Case in the HBO prison drama Oz in its second-season premiere episode. For this role, he was also nominated for an NAACP Image Award. Also in 1999, he starred in an ensemble cast in Aftershock: Earthquake in New York in which he played the Mayor of New York City. Dutton gained acclaim for his comedy show Roc shown on FOX television (but produced by HBO) from 1991–1994, especially mid-run when the show was broadcast live. His work in this role won him an NAACP Image Award. He co-starred in the popular but short-lived 2005 CBS science fiction series, Threshold.
In 2000, Dutton directed the HBO miniseries The Corner. The miniseries was close to his heart for Dutton grew up on the streets of East Baltimore. It was adapted from The Corner: A Year in the Life of an Inner-City Neighborhood (Broadway Books, 1997) by David Simon (a reporter for the Baltimore Sun) and Ed Burns (a retired Baltimore homicide detective). The Corner won several Emmys in 2000, including Best Miniseries. Dutton won for his direction of the miniseries. He worked with Simon previously in a 1996 episode of Homicide: Life on the Street.
He starred as Montgomery County, Maryland Police Chief Charles Moose in the 2003 made-for-TV movie D.C. Sniper: 23 Days of Fear, and appears in Season 2 of The L Word. Dutton also appeared in "Another Toothpick," an episode of The Sopranos. He guest starred on House M.D. as the father of Doctor Eric Foreman (Omar Epps) and on Sleeper Cell: American Terror as the father of undercover FBI agent Darwyn Al-Sayeed. He also directed two episodes of Sleeper Cell.
On October 9, 2007, HBO announced that it had arranged a deal with Dutton where he would develop, direct and star in series and movies for the network.[4] He also appeared in the 2007 film Honeydripper. On February 14, 2013 Dutton returned to TV in Zero Hour playing the role of a priest. In 2013, Dutton played Detective Margolis in the horror film The Monkey's Paw.[5]
Filmography [ edit ]
Film [ edit ]
Television [ edit ]Clandestine contacts could explain worsening relationship with US but do not seem to have yielded any results
The Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, has been talking to the Taliban for several months in an attempt to broker a last-minute peace deal before his term expires, the New York Times reports, citing Afghan and western officials.
If confirmed, the clandestine contacts could explain his hardening stance towards Washington in recent weeks, which has further soured an already difficult relationship.
The outreach to the Taliban began last November, just as Washington believed a deal for a long-term US military presence in Afghanistan was about to be signed.
After a national gathering convened to discuss the bilateral agreement endorsed it, Karzai surprised allies and much of his own cabinet by rolling out a new list of conditions.
The strategic deal is still unsigned, and billions of dollars in military and civilian aid linked to it are also in limbo.
Since then, relations between Kabul and Washington have deteriorated further with the revelation that Karzai suspects the US is behind many insurgent-style attacks, including a recent suicide assault on a restaurant in the Afghan capital that killed prominent members of the international community and two US citizens.
He has also ordered the release of dozens of prisoners considered by the US to be dangerous Taliban fighters. His office insists they are innocent men locked up by the US under false pretences.
Afghanistan will vote for a new president in April. But the two-stage system and delays getting ballot boxes from across the country could mean that Karzai will remain in post for several months after.
The contacts with the Taliban do not appear to have yielded any concrete results, the New York Times reported, with neither actual talks nor firm plans for any on the table.
A presidential spokesman confirmed the talks, which he described as among the most serious of the last decade.
"These parties were encouraged by the president's stance on the bilateral security agreement and his speeches afterwards," Aimal Faizi told the paper. "The last two months have been very positive."
He was not available for comment on Tuesday.
There were meetings with influential leaders in Dubai and Riyadh, the report said, but contacts had "fizzled out" and the group had no plans of negotiating with the Afghan government, if they ever did.
The Taliban have long said getting rid of foreign troops is one of their main objectives, and if their links with Karzai contributed to slow progress on the long-term partnership deal with the US, it could potentially be part of a military strategy.
Although the Taliban maintained unofficial contacts with some senior Afghans over the decade since they were toppled, efforts to broker peace talks to end the conflict through negotiations have been tortuous and so far yielded little more than set-backs and dead ends.When Occupy Wall Street began in September, its great innovative strength — and what enabled it to be picked up on and repeated across America, and around the world — was that it broke with the tired old model of one-day protests, with their limited opportunities for creating bonds and exchanging ideas, and, as I saw it, specifically involved young people, who were educated, but in debt and unemployed, refusing to be the atomized collateral damage of a capitalist system that is discarding more and more of its own people, taking to the streets and public spaces (or “private” spaces that can be claimed by the public), and refusing to go home.
With yesterday’s eviction of Zuccotti Park, in New York, and the ban on protestors camping there in future, part of the “Occupy” movement — the geographical part that involved physically occupying a location — may have been broken, but the impulse that drove large numbers of people, let down by society, to refuse to stay at home and self-medicate in silence and isolation, was not.
Moreover, the boot of authority — wielded, appropriately, by New York’s billionaire mayor, Michael Bloomberg — that crushed the encampment in Zuccotti Park, may, we hear, have also been the spearhead of a national campaign to rid America of its myriad other untidy occupations, with Oakland Mayor Jean Quan, explaining, in an interview with the BBC shortly before a wave of raids broke up “Occupy” encampments across the country, “I was recently on a conference call with 18 cities across the country who had the same situation,” and an anonymous Justice Department official apparently also explaining that “each of those actions was coordinated with help from Homeland Security, the FBI and other federal police agencies.”
However, even if this is the case, it still does nothing to answer any of the fundamental questions raised by those who have occupied parks and public spaces from New York to Oakland, and from Portland to Miami. Where are the jobs? Why are we still fighting pointless wars? Why are the 1 percent getting richer, while we are left with nothing? As Chris Hedges wrote after the New York eviction:
Welcome to the revolution. Our elites have exposed their hand. They have nothing to offer. They can destroy but they cannot build. They can repress but they cannot lead. They can steal but they cannot share. They can talk but they cannot speak. They are as dead and useless to us as the water-soaked books, tents, sleeping bags, suitcases, food boxes and clothes that were tossed by sanitation workers Tuesday morning into garbage trucks in New York City. They have no ideas, no plans and no vision for the future.
So what’s next?
Intriguingly, as Robert Mackey noted on Monday on the New York Times‘ The Lede blog, Adbusters, the Canadian, anti-consumerist magazine that launched Occupy Wall Street by issuing a call in July “for protesters to ‘flood into Lower Manhattan’ on Sept. 17 and set up a camp modeled on the occupations of Cairo’s Tahrir Square and the plazas of Spanish cities,” issued a new “tactical briefing” on Monday, just hours before the Occupy Wall Street camp was evicted, suggesting that “it might be time for the protesters to ‘declare victory’ and scale back the camps before winter sets in.”
In the briefing, Adbusters noted, “as winter approaches an ominous mood could set in … hope thwarted is in danger of turning sour, patience exhausted becoming anger, militant nonviolence losing its allure. It isn’t just the mainstream media that says things could get ugly.”
As Mackey explained, Adbusters‘ founder, Kalle Lasn, first suggested that it “might be time for a tactical retreat” in an interview with CBC Radio earlier this month, saying, ”Now that winter is approaching, I can see this first wild, messy, crazy occupation phase kind of slowly winding down,” and, in an interview with the Guardian last week, Lasn added, “The other side is owning the narrative right now. People are talking about drugs and criminals at OWS.”
There is certainly some truth in this observation, although it should also be noted that at least part of this perceived problem could have been thrown back at the critics. “Violent anarchists” may be difficult to package for the mainstream, but homeless people, some with challenging mental health issues, and/or drink and drug problems, who have been drawn to Occupy camps throughout the US and elsewhere, are part of the same fallout from a heartless society that Occupy Wall Street was inspired to address in the first place — and I hope that, at some point, the plight of the homeless will once more be raised.
Last week, however, Kalle Lasn, focusing specifically on the need for a positive response to the negative publicity generated by right-wingers, suggested to the Guardian, “Why not, as a grand gesture, declare victory? I love the idea that some diehards will dig in through the snow. This is what happens in movements and revolutions, they have this crazy wild state a the beginning where nobody knows that going on.” And this was followed up in the briefing on Monday that coincided with Zuccotti Park’s eviction:
We declare “victory” and throw a party … to celebrate, commemorate, rejoice in how far we’ve come, the comrades we’ve made, the glorious days ahead … Then we clean up, scale back and most of us go indoors while the die-hards hold the camps. We use the winter to brainstorm, network, build momentum so that we may emerge rejuvenated with fresh tactics, philosophies, and a myriad projects ready to rumble next Spring.
There is, I believe, something to be said for this, and, in the New Republic last week, Kalle Lasn made a point of telling intern Thomas Stackpole just how far the movement had already come. “They have been successful in launching a heavy duty conversation in America about the state of America,” Lasn said. “It doesn’t get any better than that.”
It may not get any better for a start, but that’s what the last two months have been — a start. For further progress, the movement must now, it seems, see if it can find new geographical locations, or move into new and previously uncharted territory.
The Occupy movement’s first post-eviction test will come tomorrow, in the November 17th day of action that was called before the eviction, with three aims, as follows (details from the Occupy Wall Street website):
BREAKFAST: Shut Down Wall Street – 7:00 a.m. Enough of this economy that exploits and divides us. It’s time we put an end to Wall Street’s reign of terror and begin building an economy that works for all. We will gather in Liberty Square at 7:00 a.m., before the ring of the Trading Floor Bell, to prepare to confront Wall Street with the stories of people on the frontlines of economic injustice. There, before the Stock Exchange, we will exchange stories rather than stocks. LUNCH: Occupy The Subways – 3:00 p.m. We will start by Occupying Our Blocks! Then throughout the five boroughs, we will gather at 16 central subway hubs and take our own stories to the trains, using the “People’s Mic”. Bronx (Fordham Rd; 3rd Ave, 138th Street; 163rd and Southern Blvd; 161st and River – Yankee Stadium), Brooklyn (Broadway Junction; Borough Hall; 301 Grove Street; St Jose Patron Church,185 Suydam St, Bushwick), Queens (Jackson Heights/Roosevelt Ave; Jamaica Center/Parsons/Archer; 92-10 Roosevelt Avenue, Jackson Heights), Manhattan (125th St. A,B,C,D; Union Sq. (Mass student strike); 23rd St and 8th Ave) and Staten Island (St. George, Staten Island Ferry Terminal; 479 Port Richmond Avenue, Port Richmond). DINNER: Take The Square – 5:00 p.m. At 5 pm, tens of thousands of people will gather at Foley Square (just across from City Hall) in solidarity with laborers demanding jobs to rebuild this country’s infrastructure and economy. A gospel choir and a marching band will also be performing. Afterwards we will march to our bridges. Let’s make it as musical a march as possible — bring your songs, your voice, your spirit! Our “Musical” on the bridge will culminate in a festival of light as we mark the two-month anniversary of the #occupy movement, and our commitment to shining light into our broken economic and political system.
While these events involve direct action, other aspects of the movement’s capacity to survive will have to involve other elements of the movement that have been taking place over the last two months, some of which were highlighted in an article at the weekend by Daniel Massey for Crain’s New York Business.
New territory
In a fascinating article, Massey noted that, even before the eviction, the ad hoc leaders who have emerged over the last eight weeks were “laying plans to spread the occupation to other city neighbourhoods,” and to “build an infrastructure that can sustain the movement beyond the park and make Occupy Wall Street not just symbolic but intrusive” — exactly what is needed after Mayor Bloomberg’s actions.
Yotam Marom, a 25-year-old writer, teacher and musician from Hoboken, N.J., said, “We’re thinking about actions that truly disrupt business as usual in a way that forces people with power to stop in their tracks. We need to be attacking banks, not just by dancing around in lobbies, but by stopping them from doing things.”
Massey added that organizers “are discussing how to halt foreclosures, develop banking alternatives and figure out what the movement means in the world of politics,” and that additional occupations were also under discussion, including ones “aimed specifically at reclaiming foreclosed homes,” which would be a powerful development, given America’s scandalous foreclosure crisis, and the lack of joined-up thinking that involves banks making people homeless, but then leaving houses empty.
Massey noted that one of the movement’s great strengths has been its daily general assembly meetings, which he described as “the hallmark of the movement’s horizontal structure, where issues are debated and decisions made,” and it is clear that, without these, something hugely important will be lost, as Nicole Carty, a 23-year old Brown University graduate, explained. Carty said that her political activism “was sparked by a class on globalization and social conflict,” and said of Occupy Wall Street, “Usually when we think of leadership, we think of authority, but nobody has authority here. People lead by example, stepping up when they need to and stepping back when they need to.”
She decried the movement not as leaderless but as “leaderful,” and added that observers tended to “confuse its non-hierarchical structure with a leadership vacuum.” Crucially, she mentioned not only how the general assemblies were open to the public, but also how its 84 working groups were as well, and while the central focal point of Zuccotti Park may have been swept away, it is obviously much easier for these groups to continue.
As Daniel Massey explained, even before the eviction, while the mainstream media was focused on the park — and had begun to focus on negative aspects of the movement’s existence (crime, for example) — organizers were “quietly building the movement beyond it,” with most of the organizing “taking place elsewhere: at a public atrium at 60 Wall St., in a conference room at the Professional Staff Congress’ lower Broadway headquarters, in various coffee shops that surround the park and, increasingly, in neighborhoods from the Bronx to Brooklyn.”
It is this latter point that I find particularly interesting, as hinted at in the neighborhood aspects of the planning for the November 17 action, and spelled out further in the article. To Nelini Stamp, a 23-year old native New Yorker, described as “a canvasser for the Working Families Party who has become a conduit between the city’s institutional left and the [Occupy] movement,” this involves “expanding general assemblies to workplaces, public-housing complexes and Appalachia, to give people tools to organize themselves.” She explained, “The model of the general assembly can be really important to a lot of people across the country. People have become so disconnected — ‘I’m so stressed out, I can’t pay my bills.’ But if you can teach them that model, they can start talking to each other.”
Already, as Massey noted, “occupations have sprouted up in Sunset Park, Bushwick, Bedford-Stuyvesant, the Bronx, Harlem, Washington Heights and Jackson Heights,” with protesters “beginning to talk about providing services to underserved communities throughout the city.” In addition, Occupy’s outreach team just launched Occupy Your Block, described as “a program to link the occupiers to community organizations across the boroughs,” and which, if handled well, could also be significant, and tie in the with the need to highlight and campaign against the epidemic of foreclosures.
As Michael Premo, a 29-year-old multimedia artist who “has been at the forefront of actions protesting foreclosures,” said, “We’ve occupied Wall Street. Now, why is it relevant to your community? We need to be working with communities to contextualize the larger movement within the context of their everyday realities.”
Daniel Massey also spoke to 27-year old Sandy Nurse who has “put her experience growing up on military bases and working in international aid to use by coordinating logistics for Occupy protests,” and spoke about the need to work more closely with the 500 or so other occupations that have sprung up across the country and around the world. “The movement has grown beyond the walls of this occupation,” she said. “We’re seeing the start of a national movement.”
Massey also spoke to George Martinez, an adjunct professor of political science at Pace University and a cultural ambassador for the US Department of State, who was also looking beyond Zuccotti Park. He helped to organize the Sunset Park and Bronx occupations and, with the aim of connecting occupations across the country, “traveled to Detroit and Pittsburgh to deliver supplies and support to occupations in those cities.”
In the New York Times today, many of these themes resurfaced. As the Times put it:
In New York … and in other cities, dozens of organizers maintained that the movement had already reshaped the public debate. They said it no longer needed to rely solely on seizing parks, demonstrating in front of the homes of billionaires or performing other acts of street theater. They said they were already trying to broaden their influence, for instance by deepening their involvement in community groups and spearheading more of what they described as direct actions, like withdrawing money from banks, and were considering supporting like-minded political candidates.
Moreover, “some acknowledged that the crackdowns by the authorities in New York and other cities might ultimately benefit the movement, which may have become too fixated on retaining the territorial footholds.” Han Shan, an activist in New York, said, “We poured a tremendous amount of resources into defending a park that was nearly symbolic. I think the movement has shown it transcends geography.”
The Times also pointed to a concrete manifestation of the movement’s broad influence, noting that union officials in Ohio said that it played a part last week “when Ohio residents voted overwhelmingly to repeal a state law limiting the collective bargaining rights of public workers.” Damon Silvers, the policy director of the AFL-CIO union, said, “They helped define what it was that was going on, and gave people a sense that you can do something about it.”
As the movement grapples with the loss of its symbolic center, I think that the above demonstrates how much it has already grown, and how shifting the focus onto specific economic targets, and community needs, while still maintaining an interest in direct action and general gatherings — means that its future should be secure.
Andy Worthington is the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison (published by Pluto Press, distributed by Macmillan in the US, and available from Amazon — click on the following for the US and the UK) and of two other books: Stonehenge: Celebration and Subversion and The Battle of the Beanfield. To receive new articles in your inbox, please subscribe to my RSS feed (and I can also be found on Facebook, Twitter, Digg and YouTube). Also see my definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, updated in June 2011, “The Complete Guantánamo Files,” a 70-part, million-word series drawing on files released by WikiLeaks in April 2011, and details about the documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” (co-directed by Polly Nash and Andy Worthington, and available on DVD here — or here for the US). Also see my definitive Guantánamo habeas list and the chronological list of all my articles, and, if you appreciate my work, feel free to make a donation.(CNN) Former President Barack Obama defended his signature health care achievement on its seventh anniversary Thursday as the House of Representatives prepares for a major vote to repeal it.
He called the fight "about more than health care," but rather, "the character of our country."
"We finally declared that in America, health care is not a privilege for a few, but a right for everybody," Obama said in a statement.
He cautioned that Republicans and Democrats working to build on the law should "start from the baseline that any changes will make our health care system better, not worse for hardworking Americans."
It's highly unusual for a former president to make such a public and political statement less than 100 days after leaving office, signaling Obama's concern for the law's future.
Read MoreA pair of ‘black swans’ is materializing right in front of, without you realizing it!?
In retrospect people will ask: “How come, we didn’t recognize it in a timely manner?” While in fact, our own evolution including technology is just a process of change, loosely pointing to some future revelation and always clear in hindsight. It is our mind, distracting us from the ever-occurring change aka the “flow” of life, inducing disruption at all times. Hence, a paradigm shift means adjusting our collective point of view— seeing the world as it is today.
Started by an anonymous person or group named Satoshi Nakamoto, it was the financial crisis of 2008, that successfully gave birth to Bitcoin. If you had an eye on the economical development post 2008 — it becomes clear that most parts of society are still stuck in the paralyzing aftershock phase, forgetting simply to breath. Necessary decisions have not been made or were deferred — with best regards to our future generations.
At this point in time, decisions (breathing) can not be delayed any further without risking our own existence. The financial card house is breaking into pieces as we speak. Yet, it is not in our best interest to preserve it, but to reveil some usable alternatives.
Bitcoin provides (one) such an alternative. An independent way of running essential social functions like money outside the hegemonic structures. It is a lifeline, that possibly can save the world from drowning in the inevitable case of collapse. People around the world will then be able to benefit from the mere existence of Bitcoin, even if they do not take part in it today.Something I hope WT will keep in mind, now that they've done a quick Friday update with the possibility of more details on Monday. This applies to any timeframe, btw:
On bad timeframes, but one where things aren't delay for very long periods, we have what we saw last week. A wait until the last minute for an update, but that post simply gave a new time for the actual update. And then there was another post delaying it until the next day - and it didn't happen until late that day! Now, consider the customers. They get understandably worried as we approach Sunday night (the original deadline), and then get even more frustrated as follow-up deadlines are missed.
Now, compare that to this past week. Once again the update deadline was on a Sunday, but WT gave a very brief update on Friday instead of waiting for the last minute. So before the worry would begin that a deadline may be missed, we already got one.
Yes, it was short. It was also useful. After all, while I had reported here about what a pretty small number of treg testers had reported on Slack, I had no way to know if that was representative of all testing. With WT's post, we now know it was.
So, just with that, they fulfilled the announced update before the deadline with useful info. But because they weren't ready with more detail (this did not surprise me as I had a rough idea of when testers got the latest firmware and figured they want more reports first), they announce yet another update for, hopefully, late Monday night. This probably means sometime after midnight, Tuesday morning.
Thus we get two updates. The total info would probably be exactly the same. But that would be true if updates were given every week instead of, say, once a month - the total info at the end of each month would be the same whether divided up or done all at once.
But people will be far happier to see new info more often. So I really hope they will continue to consider that as we wait for general shipping.
Of course, it isn't going to make people happy who only care about an actual shipping announcement. That will happen when it happens. In the meantime, this approach to updates at least reduces frustration for most.Weddings are a celebration of love between two people and offer the rest of us to be super cunty about the way the couple went about it. Case in point: Matt and Amber, real-life newlyweds who recently shared the details of their nuptials on the Internet. Got your beach umbrellas ready? It's time to throw some shade.
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Matt and Amber went with a goth theme for their wedding, which is what probably helped them end up on Offbeat Bride, the blog for "different" weddings. While the bat decorations were kinda cute and black lace appropriately romantic for the concept, these elements were overshadowed by overtly socially conscious touches that'll make a bitch snicker. (To the left is a trailer of their special day.)
1.) Point out how "green" you're being.
This works particularly well if it's in regards to something that will never get thrown away, like a wedding dress.
I wore a custom-designed eco-friendly hemp-silk corset dress with black lace sleeves and skirt panels.
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2.) Use kale.
It's not as good as lentils, but it comes pretty close.
We had no bridesmaids, groomsmen, or flowers (my bouquet was made of kale).
3.) Offer a menu that is exclusively, and at once, gluten-free and vegan.
Nothing says, "This day is about me not you," like completely robbing your gift-giving guests of real food (read: something that involves cheese).
For dinner, we had an entirely gluten-free vegan buffet, and for dessert, two types of gluten-free vegan cupcakes. (Since I'm a chef, I co-created the dinner menu and the cakes with our caterer and cake baker.) We even had vegan wine.
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4.) Make sure no one will dance.
And that they will go home with a headache.
We hand-picked every single song played that night, and we didn't hold back from playing exactly what we wanted (a mix of rock, metal, goth, industrial, electronic, '80s, and more). For instance, we played Nine Inch Nails, Type O Negative, and H.I.M. songs.
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5.) Quote Ayn Rand in your vows.
Among others.
We wrote our entire ceremony from scratch, including quotes by Steven Pinker, Ayn Rand, Vladimir Nabokov, and Trent Reznor. We read poems by Pablo Neruda ("Sonnet XVII") and e.e. cummings ("somewhere i have never travelled").
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6.) Put Trent Reznor's finger prints all over this thing.
When we exchanged rings, Matt said "You're the queen and I'm the king," and I replied with "Nothing else means anything." (It's a lyric from the Nine Inch Nails song "We're In This Together.")
7.) Eat in front of your guests before they've been served.
And make it the one and only gluten-free and vegan thing that isn't disgusting.
For our unity ceremony, we made (and took a bite of) a peanut butter and jelly sandwich!
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Image via RoboLab/Shutterstock
Amber & Matt's irreverent and elegantly gothy wedding [Offbeat Bride]By Matt Arco and Brent Johnson | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com
What do you call it when hundreds of New Jersey's politicians and business leaders take the same, crowded, alcohol-filled train to Washington D.C.?
One of the Garden State's oldest, weirdest, and often-derided political traditions.
Thursday marks the 80th annual Walk to Washington, also known as "the Chamber train," a trip along the Northeast Corridor rail line to the nation's capital sponsored by the New Jersey Chamber of Commerce. The attendees — state lawmakers, business people, lobbyists, and political candidates — all cram into the same Amtrak train en route to dinner at a D.C. hotel with the the state's members of Congress. Gov. Chris Christie will be the keynote speaker at the dinner.
Here is a closer look at the event.The iron has been given the boot while the cat managed to claw its way in after thousands of Monopoly fans voted online for what stays and what goes when it comes to one of the world's most popular board games.
A new cat token bagged 31% of a Facebook vote held by game makers Hasbro, trumping a robot, a guitar, a helicopter and a diamond ring.
[Related link: Play Monopoly game online]
The little-loved iron token took a paltry 8% of the vote after it was put up for elimination along with the wheelbarrow and boot.
It means production of the iron token will cease, with updated lines in the shops later this year.
The Hasbro game, first on sale in 1935, has gone through a few changes over the years, but this was the first time players had a say.
Fans from 185 countries voted to save their favourite tokens and to nominate a new entry.
The cat will now feature alongside the race car, thimble, wheelbarrow, top hat, battleship, boot and the Scottie dog tokens. Ultimately the dog proved to be a clear favourite with players with a resounding 29% of the vote.
Eric Nyman, senior vice president of Hasbro gaming said: "We know that cat lovers around the world will be happy to welcome the new cat token into the Monopoly game.
"While we’re a bit sad to see the iron go, the cat token is a fantastic choice by the fans and we have no doubt it will become just as iconic as the |
The smell of bacon wafts through the most unorthodox office in Schembechler Hall on a spring morning in Ann Arbor. Separated from the rest of the staffers, Fergus Connolly can stand in his doorway in the corner of Michigan's football facility and keep an eye on the team's buffet-style training table.
The L-shape desk tucked inside is decorated with stacks of journal articles and other reading material. Two wardrobe-sized, metal bookshelves sit on the other side of the room, crammed full of an eclectic collection that ranges in subject from ancient Chinese medicine to general systems theory to one on the psychological effects of training a soldier to kill. On top of the shelves are heart rate variability monitors and GPS tracking devices and tools for recording sleep habits. He has at his disposal elsewhere in the building a number of other fancy gadgets and data-gathering tools.
The real estate and the resources are well and good, but Connolly didn't request any of them when he followed Jim Harbaugh from the San Francisco 49ers to work for him as Michigan's director of football performance. (In fact, the only thing he asked for specifically when taking the job was an overstuffed, backside-swallowing black recliner that formerly sat in the boss' office. Harbaugh obliged.) That's because what Connolly learned while picking up a master's degree in advanced manufacturing and a doctorate in computer science before entering the sports world is that the finest technology in the world is only as effective as the person driving it.
"There are no answers in the data," he says in a distinctively Irish brogue that might be more out of place than anything else inside the room. "They help you ask better questions."
College athletic departments have spent the better part of a decade shelling out big money to add state-of-the-art technology in search of a competitive edge on the field and in recruiting. In the rush to keep up with the Joneses, sports scientists say that many schools neglected to invest in the personnel and the time it takes to understand how to make the most of all those fancy, new gadgets.
Connolly is part of a small wave of sports scientists who have come from overseas in hopes of explaining the philosophy that gave birth to the boom of tech in sports before schools get frustrated with their gadgets and throw them away. They're here to invade a sporting culture that has become smitten with collecting data and teach coaches how to use them as one piece of a bigger puzzle. And they're worried that they're running out of time.
"Because there hasn't been overwhelming success, some of the coaches are growing skeptical of the sports scientist," says Greg Haff, president of the National Strength & Conditioning Association. "I think we're at a crossroads."
The road here can be traced back to the other side of the world a little more than 40 years ago. After an embarrassing medal shutout at the 1976 Olympic Games, Australia decided to invest money in creating better athletes. The Australian Institute of Sports opened in the early '80s with the idea that to make the most of a population smaller than the state of California, they would have to maximize the potential of all their athletes and keep them healthy. Sports science was a component from the beginning.
The Aussies studied the shortcomings of their athletes and developed tools such as GPS trackers to search for ways to fix those issues. By the time the country hosted its own Olympics in 2000, the Australians finished fourth among all countries with 58 medals -- ahead of dozens of nations with larger gene pools. Other small, wealthy countries took notice. Similar institutes of sport started to pop up around the world and further developed the study of sport performance.
By the time colleges and pro teams in the U.S. started to explore the field, the fitness technology industry was booming. The companies selling their devices had well-oiled marketing arms to convince clients that their particular product was the elixir that would lead them to success. In places where those magic potions haven't produced results, organizations are growing skeptical of data-minded outsiders and returning their faith solely to the instincts coaches develop from years of experience.
Connolly and company say the elixir approach is the opposite of the model under which those tools were originally developed. Instead of identifying a weakness and building something to try to assess ways to make it better, many schools and pro teams are buying tools they think will provide answers before they even know the question.
"If the only thing you have is a hammer, then everything looks like a nail," Connolly said. "The key is being able to identify the issue and coming up with a solution. Like a skilled craftsman, you have to go back to your toolbox and you pick the right tool to fix it."
Fergus Connolly stands out for his distinctive Irish accent, as well as for bringing new ideas from the San Francisco 49ers to Michigan. Still, technology only goes so far. "There are no answers in the data," he says. "They help you ask better questions." Photo by David Turnley/Courtesy of Fergus Connolly
In this case, the toolbox is filled not just with GPS trackers, sleep pods and motion capture systems but also with people -- nutritionists, athletic trainers, strength and conditioning experts, sports psychologists and the actual coaches. The structure of the nation-run sports institutes placed all those specialists under the same roof to try to create a holistic approach to helping athletes physical and mentally.
Less than a year ago, Penn State hired Dave Hamilton -- an Englishman who started his career in the sports institutes of Scotland and England -- to bring that approach to all 31 teams on its campus. Football coach James Franklin, who won a Big Ten title in 2016, sees Hamilton as a valuable resource and sounding board to help keep his players as healthy and strong as possible. He said what he appreciates most about Hamilton is that he isn't selling his services as that fix-all elixir.
"Sports science provides a piece of information," Franklin said. "As you take those pieces and combine it with the experience you've gained over so many years, that's one more slice of the pie that you can use as a tool. The people that try to sell it like that lose coaches and lose the people that understand and respect the game."
Hamilton said his biggest focus since taking the job at Penn State in September has been to get all of the different groups that can be valuable resources to the athletes on the same page.
"The whole idea is that people currently work in silos and we're not maximizing their skill sets or the practice that supports a program," he said. "It takes technology and collaboration, but collaboration is the most important piece."
For example, let's say a football team has a habit of giving away leads in the fourth quarter. The strength coach sees a group that is not in good enough shape. The nutritionist sees an inefficient system for replenishing fluids at halftime. The sports psychologist sees a mental block in high-pressure situations. Hammer. Nail.
Perhaps a heart rate-variability monitor shows the boys are in fine shape and more conditioning during the week would actually be hurting their ability to recover to full strength by game day. Instead, the GPS tracker shows that in games in which they blow a late lead, the players are traveling much farther than usual in the second and third quarters. The game film confirms that they are getting caught out of position in those spots and that's what is making them expend too much energy.
The problem is tactical, not physical, but it would've been nearly impossible to identify without some help from technology and someone who knew how to interpret it.
Collaborating, of course, requires that all parties are speaking the same language. That might be the biggest obstacle remaining in the path of the sports science industry's fully taking hold in college athletic departments.
Dave Hamilton has brought sports science to Penn State, but he knows that for it to be successful in Happy Valley, everyone has work together. "It takes technology and collaboration, but collaboration is the most important piece," he says. Courtesy of Dave Hamilton
There are some Americans who are well-versed experts in the holistic model born overseas, but the majority of sports scientists are still trained in countries where football isn't a game played with an oblong pigskin and the culture of college-based sports doesn't exist.
When Oregon athletic director Rob Mullens was looking to hire someone to oversee the Ducks' new and fully tricked-out performance center last spring, his friends in the industry told him he better prepare for an international search. Mullens eventually landed on Scottish-born Andrew Murray, who was working in Qatar at the time. Murray said learning to speak football has been his biggest adjustment to life in the States so far.
"I learned some Arabic to manage when I was working in Qatar. I think I learned that quicker than I learned football," Murray said. "But now I watch a game and it means something. By no means is it native yet. I've probably got pidgin football at the moment. I'm on my way."
Notre Dame was one of the first colleges to adopt the sports institute philosophy when it hired Duncan French in January 2016. Mike Harrity, who oversees the sports science initiative at Notre Dame, said he was looking first and foremost for someone with a coaching mentality so that he could communicate effectively. French recently left South Bend for a similar position with the UFC, and Harrity is using similar criteria to find a replacement.
American-born experts like Haff, the head of National Strength & Conditioning Association, say that opening lines of communication needs to be a two-way street. Haff moved to Australia several years ago to figure out what they were doing to produce so many effective sports scientists. He said the biggest difference he's discovered is that those who want to be coaches Down Under take classes on sports science to learn the basic vernacular and value of using data to help their athletes.
The structure of sport abroad has a different hierarchy than college sports, in which the head coach has control over every facet of his or her players' development. Haff said if head coaches don't buy into the idea that sports science can be helpful, it doesn't stand a chance to survive.
Coaches who don't have a scientific background can easily forget that there is no cure-all solution to the problems they face. Each individual athlete comes with his or her own set of variables. Learning styles, sources of stress, injury history and personality types all factor into the best ways to troubleshoot the performance of an individual and the team.
That leads up back to Fergus Connolly's office and his lone request upon arriving at Michigan: the massive black recliner stationed opposite his desk. The chair -- which Harbaugh sat in while watching film before Connolly managed to snag it -- is not for him, but for any player or coach who comes to visit.
The folly in relying on technology alone, he says, is that it makes most people think that problems can be solved in isolation, like you could by switching a line of code on a computer. Human beings are far more complex machines. Only after taking some time to see the broader picture can Connolly and others in the field start to pull from the vast array of tools and knowledge at their disposal to search for an answer.
"The idea was that if they have a comfortable chair to sit in, the athletes that come in to talk will stay for an extra 10 or 20 minutes and maybe I'll learn a bit more about them," Connolly said. "That's the most important tool I've got."Rice Apples (1777). Sweet Potato Custard (1870). Ice Cream No. 3 (1899) For the past couple of months, librarians and staff at the Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library at Duke University have chosen vintage recipes from their extensive cookbook collection and tried them out in a project that feels a little like America's Test Kitchen meets Antiques Roadshow.
They've been blogging about the history of the recipes, their cooking methods, and how the dishes turned out. If you don't count the Goblin Sandwich (a halved donut filled with deviled ham, avocado and Worcestershire sauce) many of these recipes would be perfect for the Thanksgiving table.
Rubenstein Library Test Kitchen: Apple Kuchen
Intern Patrick Dollar kicked things off with a recipe found tucked away in the papers of Ted Minah. Minah was director of the Duke University dining halls for close to thirty years, beginning in 1946.
Dollar reports, "By his retirement in 1974, Minah had transformed the dining halls at Duke University from a small operation to 12 dining halls serving approximately 15,000 meals each day."
"The context for the recipe collection wasn’t clear," writes Dollar, noting that the recipe was designed to feed four to six people, not thousands of hungry Duke students.
Like many older recipes, it was short and to the point – no lengthy descriptions of methods or ingredients to coddle the home cook. I did encounter an interesting culinary term I’d never seen before, but which continues to appear in other archival collections I’m processing: Oleo. Oleo was a common colloquial term used to refer to margarine, whose full name is oleomargarine. I admit that I strayed from the recipe and used butter rather than margarine, but that substitution didn’t seem to hurt the recipe. Overall, the recipe was perfect for fall – the tart apples, cinnamon, and somewhat unusual cake batter made a tasty seasonal treat. The recipe was easy and quick to make, used common ingredients found in any grocery store, and should appeal to even the pickiest eater.
Rubenstein Library Test Kitchen: Rice Apples (1777)
Library Director of Communications Aaron Welborn wanted to try something truly old-school.
"When the idea for this series of blog posts was first proposed, one of the names we considered calling it was 'Antiquarian Culinarian,' with the idea of recreating the flavors of times gone by," writes Welborn.
Browsing the library catalog for cookbooks of yore, I came across a title that looked promising: The Young Ladies’ Guide in the Art of Cookery, Being a Collection of useful Receipts, Published for the Convenience of the Ladies committed to Her Care, by Elizabeth Marshall (T. Saint: Newcastle, England: 1777). The 200-page volume is part of the collections of the Sallie Bingham Center for Women’s History and Culture, and it’s one of many titles the Bingham Center holds that offer a fascinating window into the domestic and social life of women in the eighteenth century. Marshall (1738-?) ran a cooking school in Newcastle-upon-Tyne from 1770 to 1790. Such schools were not uncommon at the time and catered to women who aspired to work as housekeepers or cooks for the wealthier class. As Marshall explains in her preface, the book came about after frequent solicitations from her former pupils to put her most sought-after recipes in writing:
"There are entries on how to make Herring Pudding, Calf’s Foot Jelly, Stewed Turbot’s Head, Eel Pye, and something called 'White Soop,'" notes Welborn. "Inspired by the changing of the seasons, I opted for something a little more autumnal (and less zoological): Rice Apples! The recipe not only looked relatively easy and tasty, but it also presented a rare opportunity to use my apple-corer, a handy but sadly neglected implement in my kitchen that only gets a chance to shine once every couple of years."
Here is a translation of the recipe, and notes about how Welborn made the dish.
"Quite delectable, by Jove!" concludes Welborn. "The apples were tender and sweet, and the milky-rice-breadcrumb mixture was like an envelope of bread pudding. The sherry added a subtle boozy kick that seemed especially English. I would have no qualms serving this to company, however high or low their station."
Rubenstein Library Test Kitchen: World War 1 Soldiers' Soup
Elizabeth Dunn is a Research Services Librarian at the library. She chose a recipe from Allied Cookery, a book written to raise funds to provide food and clothes to French soldiers, their families and others affected by World War I. Dunn was drawn to the historical significance of the time in which the recipe was written:
The impact of the damage was all the more horrific because these were France’s most fertile agricultural regions. With the buildings destroyed and the farm implements, livestock, and food stores seized, the surviving farmers could not produce food. With armies to supply, shortages were a real danger. Allied propaganda posters encouraged citizens to grow vegetable gardens and to restrict their consumption of wheat, meat, sugar, fats, and fuel. (French propaganda posters included the wine and tobacco products so badly needed by the military!) Fittingly, the recipes in this cookbook emphasize vegetables, beans, and soups. The section on meats includes many dishes using the less choice bits: tripe, kidneys, sheep’s head and the like. I decided to try the Soldiers’ Soup (Soupe à la Battaille); it seemed altogether fitting when highlighting a World War I cookbook and also potentially tasty.
"The ingredients were, for the most part, easily obtained at my usual supermarket," writes Dunn. "I was unable to find chervil for the garnish, and so simply left it out. The note at the bottom suggests that 'a bone of ham or the remains of bacon improve this soup immensely.' I therefore purchased a bone of ham from our local HoneyBaked Ham. The instructions were extremely simple to follow and it is easy to imagine an army cook preparing the soup over an open fire using vegetables that had been requisitioned from nearby farms."
Read Dunn's specific cooking instructions.
How was it?
"The flavor was absolutely delightful—a fresh vegetable taste with a little smoky depth from the ham and a creaminess from the potatoes," writes Dunn. "I shredded the ham and served it on the side, but the soup was delicious without it. My husband ate three full bowls. I would rate this soup a five out of five. Without the ham, it would be a perfect vegan dish. It makes so much that I refrigerated enough for another two or three meals and froze several large containers for later consumption. Civilians were called upon to sacrifice for the war effort, but preparing and eating this soup was no sacrifice whatsoever!"
Here are more recipes from the series:Gov. Rick Scott is expected to sign the state budget for the year beginning July 1 today along with vetoing millions of dollars in programs and projects from the $77.1 billion spending plan approved last month by lawmakers.
The election-year budget now before Scott is the largest in state history, and tea party conservatives clamoring for smaller government would undoubtedly rally behind a bounty of vetoes, similar to the $615 million in programs and projects Scott erased his first year as governor.
But voters in some political toss-up areas might welcome an infusion of Tallahassee dollars, potentially giving the governor incentive to go light on vetoes, say some analysts. Last year, Scott erased $368 million in spending with his veto pen.
Florida TaxWatch, the business-backed policy organization, recently highlighted almost $121 million in budget “turkeys” that it recommended the governor veto.
The blueprint for the 2014-15 fiscal year includes $500 million in cuts to taxes and fees which Scott made a priority with lawmakers. It also sets aside $3.1 billion to the state’s reserves, while also increasing state dollars for social services, universities and public schools, including a 2.6 percent per-pupil increase for Florida’s 2.7 million school children.
Most of the school increase will come from local school districts’ property taxes, not state dollars, a disparity seized on by Democrats to accuse Republicans of supporting what amounts to a tax increase.
Of the $574.8 million boost for schools, almost $400 million stems from local property taxes – with collections growing as post-recession property values rise.
But lawmakers, helped by a $1.2 billion surplus this year, also spent freely on hometown projects with leaders acknowledging there was pent-up demand following the austerity of the recession years.
Millions of dollars of state cash poured into local arts programs, social services, roads and water projects. These provisions are certain to draw sharp scrutiny from Scott, causing supporters of many items to make last-hour sales pitches to the governor’s office.
Palm Beach County drew its share of spending, local officials acknowledge.
There’s $6 million for Palm Beach State College’s proposed Loxahatchee Groves campus, vetoed three times in recent years by Scott and his predecessor, former Gov. Charlie Crist, now Scott’s leading Democratic opponent.
The county also is looking to land $7.1 million in the budget to begin moving the 4th District Court of Appeal from an outmoded and moldy building on Palm Beach Lakes Boulevard to a still undecided downtown location.
Money for roads, water projects, beach restoration and social services around the county also is tucked into the spending plan.Jason Miller/Getty Images
Toronto Raptors guard Kyle Lowry may want out of LeBron James' conference.
Following the Cleveland Cavaliers' sweep of Toronto on Sunday, Marc Stein of ESPN reported, "Late-season rumbles that Kyle Lowry will give legit thought to a free-agent switch to the West are sure to rise in volume after this series."
Lowry suffered an ankle injury in Game 2 of the series and watched his teammates lose Games 3 and 4 from the sidelines.
Toronto has developed into a consistent playoff presence in the East largely because of the backcourt combination of Lowry and DeMar DeRozan. However, James and the Cavaliers continue to serve as a roadblock following this year's sweep and last season's six-game triumph in the Eastern Conference Finals.
It's not as though James is the only superstar Lowry has to deal with in the East, as point guards such as John Wall and Isaiah Thomas litter the landscape. Still, the Western Conference is also loaded with contenders and All-Stars, and the No. 3 seed Raptors finished with the same record, 51-31, as the West's Nos. 4 and 5 seeds, the Los Angeles Clippers and Utah Jazz.
Lowry, who averaged a career-best 22.4 points and 7.0 assists per game this season, is familiar with the West from his time on the Houston Rockets and Memphis Grizzlies.
He is also 31 years old, dealt with injuries this season (60 games played) and has never won a title. The Raptors appear to have a defined playoff ceiling following their exits the last two seasons, and a switch to the West could open additional opportunities for Lowry to pursue his first ring.Houston (CBS HOUSTON) – There was a picture tweeted out over the weekend that, if it is to be believed, shows 30 of the team’s color rush uniforms for the 2016 season. On the card that sent out the color next to the Houston Texans logo is a blue very similar to the Houston Oilers Columbia Blue.
With just this tweet to give us information, let me talk to myself a bit to answer some of your questions. (Question in Bold).
How trustworthy is this tweet?
The twitter account is freshly minted on twitter, created in April 2016 and the first tweet coming out Thursday, April 14th, but let’s pretend this is a 100% real information card and a completely true leak.
What Are The Color Rush jerseys?
Thursday night is when the NFL has decided to rush out these new Color Rush uniforms. They did it to very mixed results, including the first game with the Bills vs Jets that saw red jerseys vs. green jerseys that caused some problems for colorblind NFL Fans. Those teams kick off the season on Thursday Night football in week 2 and according to the graphic, will wear the same colors.
Have The Texans Ever Worn Columbia Blue?
The Texans have never worn a jersey in the theme of the Houston Oilers, so we’re not sure what the look will entirely look like. But from what we’ve learned from last year’s look, the helmet won’t change. There is a chance that the Texans could have a Steel Blue helmet with a Columbia Blue jersey, pants, and socks.
When Will The Texans Wear Their Color Rush Jerseys?
The Texans have two Thursday Night Football games (one is played on a Saturday, but they are still calling it Thursday Night Football) this season. They play the Patriots in week 3 and week 16 against the Cincinnati Bengals. We don’t know what week the Texans would wear their color rush jerseys.
What Would The Other Team Be Wearing?
If they play the Patriots, it would be New England wearing red and the Texans in the blue. If it is week 16 against the Bengals we’re not quite sure what the Bengals would wear with this graphic. It is white with the Bengal stripes. Are they going with a white Bengal tiger look? We don’t know.
Is this the worst idea ever?
Possibly.
Are these the cutest cubs ever?
Absolutely.
How sure are we about any of this?
We are completely guessing at a lot of things. We’ll know more when the NFL officially announces who will wear what.
Will the NFL will go with the full one color leotard look like they had last year?
Last year teams looked horrible in these one color systems. We’ll see if they force that on the teams again, or if they do the right thing and just give teams a new interesting jersey and allow them to pair them with appropriate pants and socks. I suggested this last year.
Where are the Tennessee Titans and Washington Redskins on the card?
There are only 30 teams on the card that “NFL Leaks” tweeted out. The Titans and Redskins are not on the image tweeted out. The Redskins do not have a Thursday night game scheduled. The Titans do play on Thursday night in week 9 against the Jaguars. Likely they will wear the same uniform they wore last year.
What is with the Ravens?
The Ravens logo just has an image of the Maryland Flag next to it and the phrase: “Flag Colors To Be Decided” which would imply the Ravens will be wearing one of the Maryland flag colors for their jersey. Let’s just hope it’s not like the University of Maryland did
Why are the Raiders gold?
This is actually a throwback style look for the Raiders. They had gold in their logo in the early 1960’s. So we can assume this will be a ‘throwback’ style much like the Texans are doing.
What do you think the Texans jerseys will look like?
Thank you for asking.
You’re welcome.
It was really nice of you to consider me to create a mock up.
Well, I thought you had the time and the skills.
I do.
Okay, will you just show me what you think already!?
Yeah, sorry. Here you go:
Those are awful.
I know. But if we go by how the previous Color Rush jerseys have been done, this is the horribleness that we are looking at.
What should it look like?
Well, now that you mention it. I’ve got two options.
Great! Can we see them?
Sure.
I doubt that they will go with the Oiler blue helmet. So the one on the right seems like a more likely option. But either of these is much better than the leotard look. Let’s just hope something good comes out of this.
How many J.J. Watt Oiler Blue jerseys will be sold?
All The JERSEYS! There is no chance those jerseys are in stock after the week of the game. None.
Of all the possible Color Rush jersey matchups, which one would you want to see the most?
The Seattle Seahawks neon green vs. the neon orange of the Miami Dolphins. This would break twitter. It would be glorious.
We have a lot of time until we really know, but there are a ton of possibilities on what could happen and I will be spending all my free time doing photoshop mock ups until they release the official jerseys.
What should we do once they announce the official jerseys?
Once they do release the official jerseys, I’ll be sure to come back and heavily criticize them.These American League team-by-team recaps focus on the first five rounds of this week's MLB Rule 4 draft, although I'll mention lower picks as appropriate if it's a player of note or someone I thought was worthy of a higher pick. The National League version will appear on Friday.
Baltimore Orioles | Boston Red Sox | Chicago White Sox | Cleveland Indians | Detroit Tigers | Houston Astros | Kansas City Royals | Los Angeles Angels | Minnesota Twins | New York Yankees | Oakland A's | Seattle Mariners | Tampa Bay Rays | Texas Rangers | Toronto Blue Jays
Baltimore Orioles
The Orioles scored big with their first pick, Georgia prep lefty D.L. Hall (first round), who ranked eighth on my board. He's an athletic kid with a plus fastball and curveball already, average changeup, and a good delivery. The O's have had trouble developing pitchers, notably because they've changed a lot of kids' mechanics, but if they just let Hall be he should dominate the low minors. The O's also took Canadian shortstop Adam Hall (second round), no relation to D.L., who wasn't on my top 100; he's an average runner with some bat speed but a wrap and a linear approach that doesn't look as if it'll produce power, and I think he's maybe 50/50 to stay at short.
Zac Lowther was taken in competitive balance round B after the second round (2B), which made him the highest-drafted player ever from Xavier University. He's a big, thickset lefty who'll pitch at 89-90 mph as a starter to go with a plus breaking ball, probably in a back-end starter, but he might be more valuable in a relief role. Jacksonville University right-hander Mike Baumann (3) has touched 97 mph with his fastball and sits mid-90s as a starter with an assortment of not-average secondary pitches, although his slider might get there in time. Given his delivery and below-average command, the consensus on Baumann had him as a two-pitch power reliever in pro ball. Right-hander Jack Conlon (4) has a big arm, throws 92-95 mph with some sink, and shows an above-average breaking ball, but he has a violent delivery with a head-whack and he'll need a lot of cleaning up to start. Lamar Sparks (5) is an upside play, a high school outfielder who can run and has a 70 arm with average present power and a swing that works but the usual questions about how advanced the bat is right now.I met George Carter when he was 10 years old, at a banquet where his organization, Kids Rethink New Orleans Schools*, was receiving an award. The “Rethinkers” are young people who came together in 2006, after Hurricane Katrina, to ensure that students’ voices would be heard in the rebuilding of public schools. George joined when he was just 8 years old, following his older sisters and brothers who were leading the Rethink cause. He was the youngest of the group, and hence was dubbed a “Pre-Thinker.”
His thoughts helped mold the organization, which took on school administrations by demanding healthier foods for school lunches and safer learning environments. He loved gardens. He believed they could be a calming presence for young students, especially those recovering from the most traumatic storm disaster the U.S. has known. His thought seeds grew into the kind of ideas and projects that helped earn Rethink an award that night on Oct. 25, 2009.
After the banquet, he posed with his friends holding the plaque and then pranced around the room gathering roses from each table’s centerpiece arrangement. He told me that he was going to be a biologist when he grew up. He decorated himself with the roses and asked me to take pictures of him.
Today, there’s another picture of him I can’t get out of my head, though. It shows George’s body lying on the ground, partially obscured by a cop car. Police around him are scribbling notes.
George was found dead from gunshot wounds yesterday morning. He was 15. His killing was added to an obscene murder count in New Orleans that I find no value in enumerating here. Suffice to say that it is high. Another black life was ended before it could reach its potential.
I’m not writing about George to say he was some exceptional young man. Hundreds of black teenagers and young adults have been killed in New Orleans over the years, and all of their lives matter, whether they were drug dealers or burgeoning biologists. Two women were found dead in New Orleans within 24 hours of George’s death, and I’m as saddened by their killings as I am of George’s. Many people were shot and killed in the four years I lived there, some of whom I knew personally, but all of them equally heart-breaking.
But I want to tell you about George, because his ideas about the transformative energy of gardens needs to live on.
This is George sharing his garden theory, when he was just in fourth grade:
To me I think all schools should have gardens because you can use the plants, and plants give you oxygen. I like to go out in the garden because it calms me down. … If you just had a fight, you can just go in the garden, calm down, eat some strawberries, and you’ll feel safe because you’ll be around nature. And nature, it won’t hurt you.
“This insight was one of the first that connected the idea of school gardens and fresh food to school to the prevention of school violence,” said Jane Wholey, one of Rethink’s founders.
While supplying school students with fresh fruit sounds like common sense, it wasn’t the practice in New Orleans schools (nor in many other schools across America). One of the primary ways that George and the Rethinkers thought they could reform schools was to convince them to provide healthier lunch options. So they did their own study. In 2010, the Rethinkers — aged 10 to 17 — visited various schools across the city, surveying students about their feelings about their school lunches. To little surprise, they found that most kids found their lunch disgusting.
Next step: The Rethinkers stepped to Aramark, the company contracted to provide food for the schools’ lunch programs. George was part of a round of negotiations that led to Aramark agreeing to purchase locally grown fruits, vegetables, meat, and fish for school lunches. No more of the canned, processed stuff. Aramark signed and sealed this contract in 2011, during a press conference organized and coordinated by the Rethinkers themselves. It was hosted at the Hollygrove Farmers Market, and for their guests — a packed room — they served strawberries.
This was all captured in the HBO documentary, The Great Cafeteria Takeover, which is part of its “The Weight of the Nation” series on obesity.
The kids’ logic, as expressed by Rethinker Ashley Triggs in the film: “When people don’t eat, they act out. When they act out, they get in trouble. When they get in trouble, they get suspended, so they need to eat.”
Companies like Aramark had gotten away with providing cheap, processed foods to schools for so long because no one had challenged them on it. Its bottom line did not figure in kids acting out and getting suspended. This macroeconomics lesson was explained by George’s older brother Vernard Carter, another Rethink co-founder, in the doc:
People are putting money before people’s lives and thinking that as long as they have money they’re OK. That makes me wonder what is going on with the world? Why are people leaning towards more of these beliefs? Why aren’t they leaning more towards humane ideals that keeps the human population flourishing and keeps us going?
These were thoughts and values that circulated within the Carter family. They did not arrive at this academically. George’s older brother Victor and sister Victoria were recently the first in their family to go to college. And yet academics have drawn the same conclusions. A study last year from Joan Luby, a researcher from Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis, found that:
The effects of poverty on hippocampal development are mediated through caregiving and stressful life events further underscores the importance of high-quality early childhood caregiving, a task that can be achieved through parenting education and support, as well as through preschool programs that provide high-quality supplementary caregiving and safe haven to vulnerable young children.
George didn’t need an empirical study to understand this, though. He was connecting these dots in elementary school. His thoughts on these matters continued to evolve.
In 2012, George sat on a panel for a conference called “Root Of It All: The State of Mental Health of New Orleans’ Youth,” which was sponsored in part by the Deep South Center for Environmental Justice. MSNBC TV news host Melissa Harris-Perry was one of the keynote speakers. When George spoke, he emphasized the stressful environment of schools in his city. Compounding that were the new mandatory standardized tests, which George and his peers found inflexible if not counterproductive to their educational pursuits.
Said George, “If I get stressed I won’t be able to do my work, if I don’t do my work, I’ll probably flunk a class or drop out of school. If I drop out of school I’ll be on the streets. If I’m on the streets I’m gonna be homeless, dead, or in prison.”
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He told the conference that New Orleans schools needs support teams in the classrooms that can help with tutoring and serving the students “healthy snacks” throughout the day, because — you know, “when people don’t eat, they act out. …”
“Students and teachers should work together to make the environment healthier,” said George, his voice deeper and more confident than when I first met him at the awards banquet.
As George aged, his interests expanded from biology and gardens to architecture, law, and justice. He started an internship this year through his school with the Capital Post-Conviction Project of Louisiana, which provides legal defense for people who’ve been sentenced to death. His first day was Monday. He was killed before he could make it to his second day. As of this writing, the police have no suspects or motives. According to nola.com he was found on a “narrow street bordered by a fenced-in field on one side and overgrown trees, weeds, and vegetation on the other.”
“I’m afraid to walk down this street,” a woman told the reporter. “The streetlights don’t work, the city don’t cut this. … They could just snatch you and pull you into the bushes.”
The city could honor George’s legacy by converting those bushes into a garden, perhaps with strawberries.
George Carter’s family is accepting contributions to cover funeral expenses. Rethink is processing these donations and 100 percent of funds received will go to the family. Go here to donate.
(*My wife, Thena Robinson Mock, is the former executive director of Kids Rethink New Orleans Schools. One of our first dates was at the awards banquet where I met George.)For football fans on Merseyside, international breaks can be very boring indeed.
England beating Lithuania? Meh. Most Liverpool fans aren't all too bothered, unless one of Jurgen Klopp's key players gets injured..
But for the most part |
to address the FBI’s news that they’ve found emails relevant to their investigation of her private server.
Clinton said that “we deserve the full and complete facts immediately” from the FBI and called on James Comey to publicly disclose more details.
She took reporters’ questions and said, “People a long time ago made up their minds about the emails. I think that’s factored into what people think and now they’re choosing a president.”
Clinton was specifically asked about at least one device belonging to Huma Abedin being the source of some of these new emails (thanks to that, um, other thing). Clinton said, “We’ve heard these rumors, we don’t know what to believe.”
All in all, the press conference lasted under four minutes long.
Watch above, via CNN.
[image via screengrab]
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Follow Josh Feldman on Twitter: @feldmaniac
Have a tip we should know? tips@mediaite.comIslamic State (Isis) has released a new execution video in which an alleged Russian hostage is beheaded in revenge for air strikes on the extremist group in Syria.
The video, Dear Russians, shows the man identified as Haroun wearing an orange jumpsuit and "confessing" in Russians to be a spy working for the FSB, Russia's security services. He says he was sent to Syria by Russian intelligence and threatens the country for its bombing campaign in Syria and Iraq, according to Rita Katz, terrorism analyst at SITE intelligence group.
The next scene shows the man kneeling on the shores of a lake and behind him standing a knife-wielding IS fighter. The jihadist utters a few threatening sentences in Russian then proceeds to execute the man with his knife. If confirmed, it would be the first time the jihadist group has beheaded a Russian citizen.
Russia launched air strikes in late September in a bid to support Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. IS claimed responsibility for an improvised bomb that brought down the Metrojet Russian plane in Egypt's Sinai killing 224 people on board in October. In the latest issue of its propaganda online magazine Dabiq, the extremist group published a photo of a Schweppes soft drink can which it claimed was the improvised explosive device (IED) that downed the plane.
In the issue, IS said it initially decided to bring down a plane "belonging to a nation in the American-led Western coalition against the Islamic State" after discovering a way to compromise security at Egypt's Sharm el-Sheikh International Airport.
The target was changed to a Russian plane after President Vladimir Putin decided to attack the jihadist group with air strikes in Syria and Iraq, says IS. Russia's security chief admitted a terror act brought down the plane, saying a bomb went off after traces of explosives were found in the wreckage of the A321 plane.How did it feel to make the final five on the latest season of RuPaul's Drag Race?
Derrick Barry / Credit: Logo
I was ecstatic to make the top five on RuPaul's Drag Race. You can count them on one hand! Of course, the goal is top four, top three and to win, but I'm very happy with my place on the race.
You openly admitted on the show this is a world you're pretty new to - how difficult a challenge was it to take part in the series?
This was all extremely challenging. I'm used to painting the same face for a living. I've built a career impersonating Britney Spears and I've worked for years to perfect my act. Trying new things on Drag Race was a challenge I was willing to accept. I may not have been ready, but I had to trust my jump to soar to new heights.
What was your favourite challenge to be a part of, and which did you find the most difficult?
My favourite was the photoshoot challenge in episode one! I was so confident and felt on top of my game. Bitch Perfect was so fun too! I'll always love the political challenge because Bob and I won.
My least favourite was the Wizards of Drag because I felt defeated. Wizard of Oz is my favourite movie, but I've always liked Dorothy the best. Winning the lip sync that week turned it all around.
You were critiqued by the judges for your makeup a few times and did in your final episode draw on some eyebrows - will you be taking your drag makeup further in the future?
Yes, the judges told me I was pretty every episode, but wanted me to push it further. I blocked my brows and got sent home! (laughs) I'm experimenting with my brows to this day, yet I'm mostly a fan of blocking out only half of my brow. That's my drag. However, I'm definitely comfortable to try new things and I have the show to thank for that journey.
How did you find the response from viewers throughout the season?
I could talk about the trolls, but I'd rather focus on what truly matters... The fans! I've either doubled, tripled or quadrupled my fanbase on every social networking site. I wanted to do the show to reach more people and I accomplished that goal. The positive outcomes will always outweigh the negatives.
Now you have your own single out, 'BoomBoom' featuring Chris Cox - how did that track and collaboration come about?
Chris and I are both represented by Michael Benedetti of Executive PR and Talent. We met a few years ago and discussed a collaboration. I went to Chris' studio in Vegas and he played me the music. Right away I came up with a melody and sang, 'You wanna come on over to'. I knew it was going to be a hookup song.
My partners Nick San Pedro and Mackenzie Claude were also there in the writing session. Mack contributed a big portion of the lyrics and Chris helped us fine tune everything. It all happened so organically and effortlessly. I've always wanted to release an album and I'm so proud that 'BoomBoom' is my debut single.
You've just recently been in the UK for DXP16, how exciting was that?
I had an amazing time at DXP16! It was my debut in Manchester and the fans were on another level! I also love working with my RPDR sisters. Willam, Alaska and Adore are a few of my favourites. I've worked with all of them separately in other shows so it was a dream gig to work with them all at once. I will always love doing Britney for the fans, but 'BoomBoom' fills me with so much life, love and energy. I finally feel like a popstar coming into my own.
Another thing people find really interesting is you being part of a trouple - why should people be more open to this type of relationship?
I can't speak for everyone, but this is what works for us. Nick and I were together for five years and Mack came along and it all just happened naturally. In my experience, it was difficult to find a loyal partner in the gay community. People always had one eye on me and another on the door. Either waiting to walk out or waiting to see who else walks in. Our relationship is committed and it's only the three of us. It's a safer way not only sexually, but also having two loving, loyal partners to look out for my best interests, inspire me and uplift me. The creativity is always flowing in our home.
What should we expect from Derrick Barry throughout the rest of the year?
EVERYTHING! I'm excited to branch out to all avenues. Film, television, theatre, music, dance, etc. I have my eye on all of it. I wanted to do Drag Race to open me up to new horizons and I'm loving all of the opportunities that are coming my way. I'm blessed and grateful to be living my dreams. I'm living proof that anyone can 'Make It Happen'. Thank you Mariah Carey for inspiring me to make my dreams a reality.
RuPaul's Drag Race returns later this year for it's second All Stars season.
by Daniel Falconer for www.femalefirst.co.uk
find me on and follow me onThe Bucs best players are setting the tone at practice and Dirk Koetter couldn’t ask for anything more at this point.
After laughing off the idea that Jameis Winston, who’s known to arrive at the facility at dawn, could possibly wear himself out by training too hard before practice, the head coach pivoted to the defensive side of the ball. At which point he praised Gerald McCoy.
“I worry about (Winston) staying out there after practice for an hour in the sun talking to too many people. But I don’t worry about him being in here working on his craft,” Koetter said Thursday. “I think that’s a huge, huge positive and you want the leader of your team to be one of the hardest workers.
“While we’re on that subject, Gerald McCoy could not be setting a better practice pace than he is. That guy is dominating in practice every day. When your best players are also your best practice-players, it sets a great example for your team.”
As it relates to team leadership, the focus over the past week has been on Winston – from his command of the offense to his motivational text messages to teammates off the field. But this wasn’t the first time someone deflected leadership praise from Winston to McCoy. In fact, Koetter seemed to be echoing Winston’s remarks from the first training camp practice last Thursday.
The second-year quarterback said he sought out advice from the four-time Pro Bowler this offseason.
“I talked to him after the season just to get his insight on how I was as a leader,” Winston said last Thursday. “Gerald is a great leader to this team. You should’ve seen him out here working with Noah Spence and Kourtnei Brown – the things he put into these players. Even me, when I first got here he put so much into me.
“I just told him, ‘Keep doing it, bring it up a notch, step it up’, just like I have to do, just like we all have to.”
McCoy hasn’t let up. The defensive captain can be seen running through extra reps after practice most days and it’s reflective of his continued dominance in his seventh camp.
“Gerald is playing tremendous football,” said Ali Marpet, who often lines up against McCoy. “I mean he’s so freaking fast and he’s messing up a lot of things were doing. But its only making us better, which is awesome. He’s going to give a lot of people problems this year.”
Added Lavonte David, who has a unique view of McCoy and the defensive line when they take the field: “His get off is amazing, his motor is amazing and he’s disrupting plays in the backfield. That’s the way it’s supposed to be. We expect Gerald to do that but it’s not going unnoticed.
“Great things to come from him this season.”
That would be a great start for the Bucs defense.AMD has fired their guns and announced the latest Radeon R9 and R7 series graphic cards. Rival NVIDIA has been silent about the announcement but leaks from Videocardz (via Enet) and Fudzilla reveal that the green team could possibly be preparing a legion of high to mid-range cards to compete against the AMD Volcanic Islands.
NVIDIA Possibly Preparing GeForce GTX 770 Ti and Several Mid-Range Cards
NVIDIA launched their GeForce 700 series in late Q2 2013 which included three new cards, the GeForce GTX 780, GeForce GTX 770 and GeForce GTX 760. It looks like more are yet to come since a leaked GPU-Z shot unveils a brand new yet cut down GK110 part known as the GeForce GTX 770 Ti consisting of 1920 Cuda Cores, 160 TMUs and 48 ROPs. Actually, the site has mentioned the card to be known as GeForce GTX 780i but we know from past experience that this is not NVIDIA’s type of naming scheme so the GeForce GTX 770 Ti seems more plausible yet i won’t place my bet on it.
Nevertheless, the specifications that are mentioned highly resemble those of a crippled GK110 core but featuring faster clock speeds of 1033 MHz base and 1150 MHz GPU boost which are the highest native frequencies we will get to see on a GK110 based GPU. The memory consists of a 3 GB VRAM linked to a 384-bit bus interface running at the standard 6008 MHz clock speed, pumping out 288.4 GB/s bandwidth. Some performance estimates show that the GeForce GTX 770 Ti would be atleast 10% slower than the GeForce GTX 780 but with faster clock speeds, we might even end up seeing a less than 5% difference in various titles as we saw with GeForce GTX Titan vs GTX 780 comparisons.
What would the card compete against? From a quick look at the specifications, i think the card would compete against the AMD Radeon R9 290 (Non-X). Currently, the Hawaii Pro based Radeon R9 290 is sandwiched between the GeForce GTX 780 and GeForce GTX 770. The GeForce GTX 770 Ti would be placed directly against it while the GeForce GTX 780 would try its luck to compete against the Radeon R9 290X which is going to be close to GTX Titan in terms of performance. There are no details regarding price and launch but in addition to the GK110 based GPU, NVIDIA might have a few more possible solutions to place against the R7 mainstream cards.
AMD Radeon R9 290X AMD Radeon R9 290 GeForce GTX 780 GeForce GTX 770Ti/780i GPU Codename Hawaii Hawaii GK110 GK110 GPU Process 28nm 28nm 28nm 28nm Stream Processors/TMUs/ROPs 2816/176/44 2560/-/40 2304/192/48 1920/160/48 Base Clock 800 MHz – 863 MHz 1033 MHz Turbo Clock 1000 MHz + – 902 MHz 1150 MHz VRAM 4 GB 4 GB 3 GB 3 GB Memory Bus 512-Bit 512-Bit 384-Bit 384 Bit Memory Clock 1125-1250 MHz – 6 GHz (effective) 6 GHz (effective) Power Configuration 8+6 Pin 6+6 Pin 8+6 Pin 8+6 Pin PCB VRM 5+1+1 5+1+1 6+2 6+2 Die Size ~424mm2 ~424mm2 551mm2 551mm2 Launch Date October 2013 Q4 2013 23rd June May 2013 Q4 2013 Launch Price $599 $449 $649 $449
NVIDIA’s current GeForce GTX 760 falls in the $249 price range and has virtually no competitor from the new Radeon lineup. The Radeon R9 270X is $50 cheaper yet a bit slower while the R9 280X based on the Tahiti XT chips is a bit faster yet $50 more expensive. NVIDIA was said to have a GeForce GTX 750 TI a while ago but we never saw that GPU getting announced. The Sub-$199 price market has been flooded with new cost effective solutions from AMD with the R7 series and NVIDIA couldn’t just leave the whole market alone since that is basically the cash cow for both companies. We believe that more cost effective GeForce 700 series cards from NVIDIA could be on the verge in Q4 2013 or they could completely skip them for now and release new faster models next year when Maxwell is about to be released.Uber driver Janis Rogers picked up a fare in Virginia and drove her nearly eight hours and 400 miles to Brooklyn, in what is believed to be the longest Uber ride on record.
Then the 64-year-old turned right around and drove back to her home in Newport News, Va.
Even more impressive, she did it all without stopping to use the restroom!
“I was wide awake and kept on going. I don’t have a problem with going for a long time,” she laughed.
The fare was a young woman outside a Ben & Jerry’s in Williamsburg, Va., who said she needed to get to Bedford-Stuyvesant to see her boyfriend. It was June 9 at 11:51 a.m.
The bill for the grueling 397-mile, 7-hour-42-minute jaunt: $294.09.
A New York City yellow cab making the same trip in reverse would cost $1,182.
But the rider wasn’t exactly pinching pennies. If she had been, she could have taken a plane for $188, a train for $95, and a bus for only $45.
Rogers, a friendly Southerner, said she was happy for the long-distance haul, a departure from the average Uber ride of 5.4 miles.
Rogers said her passenger looked “about 19 or 20” with “long brown hair.”
“She was pretty. She was sitting outside with a suitcase and a bag,” Rogers drawled. “I did not get her name. I think she had been Ubering up the coast.”
Rogers said that when the stranger got in the car, she asked, “How far north can you take me?”
“I said, ‘Well, I’m not doing too much today, so I’ll take you all the way.’
“She said, ‘Really? That would be great.’”
The woman then curled up in a blanket Rogers keeps in the back seat of her 2005 Prius and “slept the entire way.”
“She didn’t seem excited to see her boyfriend,” Rogers recalled. “She was kind of blasé. She looked tired.”
Rogers reached her Putnam Avenue destination by nightfall. The two said goodbye — no tip was offered — and Rogers turned right around and drove back to Virginia, arriving home at about 3:45 a.m.
‘This was not lucrative. I did it because it was an adventure.’
Rogers, who didn’t even own a cellphone before joining Uber in May, didn’t make much money on the longest ride.
After driving 15½ hours round-trip and spending $32 for gas and tolls (she didn’t spend a dime on food or drinks), the trip earned her about $9 per hour, she calculated.
“This was not lucrative,” she said. “I did it because it was an adventure.”
The trip was “a little bit scary for me,” she said. “I had never been anywhere downtown in New York. I’ve driven through New York to visit my sister in Maine. But never downtown.”
Rogers said she first realized she may have made Uber history when one of her riders Googled “longest Uber ride” and up popped a story on Joe Strandell, who drove a woman 320 miles from Santa Barbara to Palo Alto in California in 2014. Strandell shared his story with Harry Campbell, an Uber driver who blogs about the ride-sharing industry.
Campbell told The Post that Rogers is the new record-holder. Uber itself did not return messages seeking comment.
Rogers likens Uber driving to fishing.
“It’s like I throw my line in the water when I turn my app on — and I wait for the hit. And when I tap my screen, it’s like setting the hook. And then … and when I pick them up, it’s like reeling them in.”
And sometimes she catches a big Brooklyn fish.Casey Anthony, Disney condos, CSI: Miami, and now this. The state of Florida is apparently under threat from a small army of adaptive, herpes-infected monkeys that wildlife officials are now classifying as a "public health hazard."
More than 1,000 Rhesus monkeys currently herp around the Silver River in Florida where they eat dirt and spiders and swap primate venereal diseases with abandon. They're not native to the state; a pair was first introduced in 1930, because some idiot thought they were cute. The monkeys escaped, bred, adapted, learned to swim, and now, 80-some odd years later, here we are. According to the New York Post, 700 of them have been captured in the past decade.
Because Florida is Florida, some residents object to the capturing of the monkeys because they're cute and people like them. Yeah, keep the herpes-infected non-native primates with no natural predators around. Yet another fantastic idea from Florida, the state that brought you the 2000 Presidential election, Stand Your Ground, and Ryan Lochte.
[NYPost]Michigan –-(Ammoland.com)-This past Tuesday, the House Judiciary Committee approved constitutional concealed carry legislation on a party line vote of 6-4. The bills now go to the full House of Representatives for consideration. Timing on a vote is unpredictable.
One important change was made in committee. Both concealed pistol license holders and people carrying without a license would be required to disclose “upon request” of a peace officer. This would eliminate the current requirement for CPL holders to provide immediate disclosure but adds a disclosure requirement for carry without a license. The change was made at the request of the Michigan State Police.
A Democratic amendment to disqualify people from constitutional concealed carry if they would not qualify for a concealed pistol license was defeated due to the burden it would impose on law enforcement. Also defeated was a Democratic amendment to impose a mandatory training requirement for constitutional carry as it would be very difficult to enforce without a license.
CPL holders would continue to enjoy the additional benefits not provided to unlicensed individuals. It is our expectation that most CPL holders would wish to retain and renew their concealed pistol licenses once the legislation becomes law rather than engaging in unlicensed carry. The additional benefits a CPL provides would likely result in an increase in the number of people seeking training and a license in the future as interest in concealed carry increases. This is the result that has been experienced in other states that have adopted constitutional carry. Counterintuitively, not mandating training results in more people pursuing it.
It is time to contact your state representative on these bills. You can find your state representative HERE. Please ask them to support House Bills 4416-4419.The above clip is from Pope Francis’ weekly blessing from the Vatican, footage of which normally goes unnoticed by your Twitter feed and mine. Then again it’s not everyday that the Holy See accidentally drops a curse word while speaking from a window in St. Peter’s Square.
To be fair, this was a verbal stumble we’re talking about, not a hot-mic mishap. Still, as harmless as it was, it was nonetheless plenty entertaining. The pope, who is a native Spanish speaker, meant to say “caso,” which is Italian for “example” or “case.” Instead, he said “cazzo,” which depending on which Italian-to-English dictionary you use translates either to some variation of “prick” or your more classic F-bomb. Or, as my colleague Andrew McCarthy aptly put it in an email, cazzo is more or less the “Swiss army knife of Italian curses.” (On a related note, McCarthy would like his parents to know that his semester abroad back in college wasn’t actually a complete waste.)
Here’s a translation of Francis’ verbal miscue and quick correction: “If each one of us does not amass riches only for oneself, but half for the service of others, in this [insert your expletive of choice here] … in this case the providence of God will become visible through this gesture of solidarity.”
***Follow @JoshVoorhees and the rest of the @slatest team on Twitter.***
This post has been updated.Read here (scroll down to bottom of linked article) and here. The money quote from the IPCC lead author:
“Lacking significant impact from anthropogenic warming so far, the best way to assess the potential influence of climate change on disaster losses may be to analyze future projections rather than historical data.”
In a nutshell, Laurens Bouwer, speaking for the IPCC, concurs that the climate change empirical evidence (ie, severe weather events, species extinction, etc.) of CO2-induced global warming is not convincing, nor material, nor relevant. Since there is no evidence of the IPCC C-AGW hypothesis and predictions being valid, he suggests instead using the failed predictions as basis for future prognostications about climate impact.
Simply amazing idiocy from the IPCC's scientific elite, eh? But wait......
So who is the lead author who dismisses facts and evidence to be replaced by the magical, dysfunctional IPCC prediction machine? Well...er...he's not a credentialed scientist nor a known climate expert. Instead, he appears to be another career apparatchik picked for his adherence to the non-scientific agenda - indeed, another IPCC controlled marionette.
"Laurens Bouwer is employed by VU University Amsterdam. According to that institution’s website, he too remains PhD-free. Yet a bio dated last month tells us he was a lead author for the the 2001 assessment report, as well as a contributor to the IPCC’s “Special Report on Extremes.”...the only way Bouwer could have served as a lead author for the 2001 report is if he had been nominated for that position some time in the late 1990s. But he didn’t even have a Master’s degree then...Let us repeat this: at the time Bouwer joined the ranks of the IPCC’s best and brightest he had yet to complete his Masters."
Examples of failed predictions of IPCC and warming alarmists. List of extreme weather events prior to IPCC's predicted modern era of "climate change" extremes.There is something unflinching about Jatin when he looks into the camera. Reedy with a head full of dark hair casually parted in the middle, he is unsmiling. Even as he is photographed with one of his casual sex partners who, on the other hand, is grinning widely, Jatin wears a sombre expression. Except when he is photographed dancing, pinching his denim with his fingers as if he is ready to twirl. Then, he is grinning. Though identified as a kothi (a term for effeminate men), Jatin has been married to a woman, forcibly by his family, and has three children.
Known only by his first name, Jatin is among the many subjects of Sunil Gupta and Charan Singh’s photo book—Delhi: Communities of Belonging. Published by a New York-based independent publisher called New Press, Gupta and Singh’s book is part of an LGBT-themed photo book series. The books chronicle the lives of queer people across the spectrum living in Russia, Japan, Australia, Mexico, New York City and Delhi.
Jatin has been married to a woman, forcibly by his family, and has three children.
Although these books provide a glimpse into the lives of a cross-section of LGBT youth from varied societies, on a larger level, the attempt is to revisit the notion of a conventional family. “Taking into account the sweeping societal changes of the past sixty years, and arguing for a more diverse and inclusive sense of who we are in the twenty-first century, the books foreground a range of often hidden communities who live with varying degrees of acceptance and have challenged commonly held definitions of family," reads a statement at Diverse Humanity, a website dedicated to this book project.
“The idea is to raise awareness and generate funds to fight legal cases against queer lives in intolerant societies across the globe. In a way, you can say this is long-winded activism," says Sunil Gupta.
Hate crimes and bias against the LGBT community are on the rise around the world. The UK and the US reported 7,194 and 1,219 such cases, respectively, in 2015. There has been a spurt of anti-gay violence in the Netherlands recently, and disturbing reports from Chechnya about horrifying abuse meted out to gay men made headlines. In India, after the Supreme Court decision in 2013 that effectively reinstated Section 377, stifling the voices of an entire community and thrusting many back into the closet, arrests have spiked. A total of 1,491 arrests were made in 2015 under Section 377, according to a National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) report.
The book is seen as an attempt to help overcome the taboo of homosexual life throughout the modern world. In its introduction, historian and gay studies scholar, Saleem Kidwai, writes that “a visible queer community has emerged in Delhi over the past two decades. What was silent and private has emerged into the public sphere. Gupta’s and Singh’s work bears testimony to this."
Under duress, since homosexual acts are still punishable by law, queer people navigate in trickier social landscapes in India, living beneath the shadow of stigma and criminalization. Gupta’s book attempts to chronicle these lives. Ranjan says “even though people are more out today, there is that thing in the back of the mind saying this is still illegal in this country." The subjects, like Ranjan and Jatin, are from all walks of life in Delhi. The unifying factor is that they are from the sexual minorities, identified anywhere within the LGBTQ spectrum.
“I come here to Connaught Place to seek out sexual partners on my way home. I work nearby so it’s easy for me to visit. I don’t want to disclose my identity in my neighbourhood, which is a bit unsafe and rough. So in Connaught Place I can meet people like me and share my feelings, my happiness and sorrows with them. I can find boyfriends here to have sex with, and sometimes they take me to their homes," Jatin says in the book.
Rituparna (centre) and her family.
Indisputably among the best of India’s photographers, Sunil Gupta has, in his works, explored narratives of contemporary gay life in India and other parts of the world, tackling issues of gender and sexuality. From documenting his own experiences of living with HIV to providing groundbreaking portraits of queer people, struggling against homophobic laws and culture, his work has touched upon various important issues. It is also often referred to as subversive, whimsical, personal, political, and Delhi: Communities of Belonging is perhaps his landmark documentation work that provides a peek into the hidden lives of queer people in Delhi.
The decision to peg the book in Delhi was an obvious choice when the project was offered to Gupta and Singh. “Over and above the obvious reasons that we are both from Delhi and speak the language, we believed Delhi is a good microcosm of modern India. It has a wide range of people from all around the country," Gupta says.
They sourced contacts from friends and acquaintances and whittled down the subjects. They varied from HIV activists to queer feminists to professors to even a graphic designer. Since most of the subjects were out already out with their identities, it wasn’t a matter of concern. “But people weren’t sure how public this would become," he Gupta says.
Geeta (yellow jacket) and Kath.
With conservative families, societal pressures and unfavourable laws, being outed or coming out in the public sphere involves numerous complications for queer people in India. Another subject Rituparna says in the book, “It took me one year of activism to talk about my queerness. At the 2008 Pride (March), I was carrying a banner and planning to hide my face, but my parents saw me on TV. Slowly, I began talking to my parents, too. Being seen on TV was a big thing. Some friends left me. My mother called up and said she saw something on TV and ‘the whole colony is talking about it’."
Things have however changed since the 1980s when Gupta started photographing gay men in Delhi. He received a commission from The Photographers’ Gallery (London) for a photography project that “visualized the experience of gay men in Delhi".
The project, titled Exiles, features his subject facing away from the camera, often unrecognizable in their private spaces or in front of Delhi’s various monuments and architectural landscapes. The subjects in Exiles are not identified with their names but only by the locations they are photographed at, creating a deeply moving sense of anonymity.
“Nobody talked about homosexuality or being gay, and it was very invisible," Gupta says.
Pavitr
It wasn’t until 2004 that Exiles was shown at an exhibition in Delhi.
In 2009 when Gupta embarked on another photography project Mr Malhotra’s Party, he found people more willing to face the camera. About the title of the project, Gupta says, “Mr Malhotra is the ubiquitous Punjabi refugee who arrived (in India) post-partition and contributed to the development of the city." By 2009, Internet has reigned in a social change and upwardly mobile queer people had started meeting on the net and private parties, abandoning cruising joints.
“Boundaries have also changed overtime," he says.
Gupta feels strongly about the lack of public queer spaces in India. “Living in London, we have other means to see the gay side of the city—there are galleries, art shows and movie screenings. In India, it’s isolating. With the advent of the car, physical encounters are few and far between," he says.
The advent of Internet has also changed the way queer people interact with each other, according to him. “There are a lot of public spaces for queer people to meet in the west, but India doesn’t have any of them. Globally, gay bars are shutting down. Now in India we are never going to have them. We seemed to have skipped that part of the evolution with Internet," he says.
Zahid and Ranjan.
Gupta believes the younger generation of queer people is losing their sense of physical community without social encounters, and that it is pertinent to create a social atmosphere. With its multitude of gay dating apps, the Internet fosters loneliness and isolation with the sole possibility of sex and not meaningful relationships.
“I see young queer people are deprived of friends. They a have no real connections with the world, the connection one finds on the Internet is unsustainable." His book attempts at emphasizing that queer people need a social network that fosters the sense of friendship and family. Subjects in the book are often photographed with their friends, partners and sometimes even families.
Even though an increasing number of cities are joining in to celebrate the queer pride march each year in India (Lucknow had one last month), acceptance of sexual minorities with the general public is still a far cry. In 2011, one of Gupta’s exhibitions Sun City & Other Stories was shut down by protestors who took offence at its content—an Indian man in a gay bath house in Paris surrounded by naked white men. “It was provocative but no genitals were visible," Gupta says.
The Indian man in the series is pictured looking at the patrons of the bath house. Gupta feels the act of looking was a problem. “It is strange because we are a country of lookers. In places like Delhi, you will constantly be stared down by men."
The cover of ‘Delhi: Communities of Belonging’
When asked if he fears Delhi: Communities of Belonging might also incite similar repercussions when launched in India later this year, Gupta exudes confidence. “The book is by an American publication and it’s globally available already. I doubt censorship would be a problem, because it’s only going to be available online and not on bookstores." The pictures from the book are part of an ongoing exhibition in New York City, after which they will be exhibited at the Nottingham Contemporary, Nottingham UK. “The idea is to have an exhibition in India as well," he hopes.
Despite crushing sodomy laws in 77 countries around the world where homosexuality is illegal, queer lives are shaping up in interesting ways and documenting them is equivalent to providing them with faces and identities. In Jatin’s words, “Bringing back 377 is wrong. If we are over 18 years old and we can make our own decisions, then we should also have the right to choose our own partner."
The prologue of Delhi: Communities of Belonging, then, perhaps best captures this need for identity. “Queer people survive and build communities across all levels of society despite discrimination, and through this book, we would like to share these lives as best as we can."
The photographs carried with this story are part of the photo book Delhi: Communities of Belonging by photographers Sunil Gupta and Charan Singh.WOODBURN -- Cesar Mora's customers disappeared in waves. Every time a rumor spread, his door stopped swinging open.
Mora runs Zapateria El Jalicience, a clothing store in downtown Woodburn. Men used to come in every Saturday to buy leather boots and cowboy hats for weekend parties.
Then President Donald Trump signed an executive order beefing up immigration enforcement.
at a Woodburn gas station, leaving workers afraid to go to their jobs and children terrified to attend school.
Boots made of ostrich, crocodile and eel hadn't been touched in weeks. Mora's business is down 80 percent this year.
"I depend on people, whether they are legal or illegal," Mora said in Spanish.
Across the country, undocumented immigrants say they now live in fear of deportation. But most cities are only marginally changed by the immigration anxieties of a minority group that lives in the shadows.
In Woodburn, Latinos aren't the fringe but the very fabric of the town.
More than a quarter of Woodburn's 25,000 residents are undocumented. Nearly half struggle to speak English. But this was a town that taught people to dream.
In a generation, Woodburn residents transformed the state's worst Latino high school graduation rate into its highest. Mexican parents who fled violence to pick berries for $15,000 a year raised American children destined for college degrees and office jobs.
Latino candidates won a spot in the state Legislature, two on the school board and another on the City Council. They became police officers and school principals. Some obtained a green card or citizenship. Others worked and paid taxes but never obtained legal status.
This winter, as fear threatened to turn Woodburn into a ghost town, the dream immigrants had worked decades to build began to unravel.
Fathers who came three and four decades ago have disappeared on their way to work. Mothers refuse to leave their apartments, afraid the federal agents they call "La Migra" may be lurking at the grocery. Teenagers worry they may soon become the legal guardians for younger siblings.
After the arrests, restaurants' business plunged so sharply that chefs stopped ordering supplies in advance. Catholics say they spend Sunday Mass learning what to do if an agent approaches them. Fliers for community meetings and pro-bono attorneys hang in every restaurant.
"Almost everybody in town is impacted," said Chuck Ransom, the Woodburn school superintendent. "Everybody knows somebody or is related to somebody for whom that situation is real. Nobody can escape."
***
Farmworkers union president Ramon Ramirez (left) talks with the foreman of a labor camp off Leary Road in Woodburn, Oregon. Woodburn lies at the heart of Oregon's richest agricultural region. In Woodburn, Latinos make up 60 percent of the town's population. They aren't the fringe but the very fabric of the town. This winter, deportation fears threatened to turn Woodburn into a ghost town. Casey Parks/The Oregonian
Woodburn lies at the heart of Oregon's richest agricultural region. Today, Latinos make up 60 percent of Woodburn's population. But for much of its existence, it was a predominately white town.
Latinos came as guest |
the stuff they see at Yuck Huts, 38 locations across the country, that’s good for them. I’d rather host the damn show and raise the common denominator before certain acts get to them, because it’s like… You know, John Coltrane doesn’t suck because he can’t follow Metallica.
And I would say that a redeeming feature of all this social media is that everyone can get the most specific type of comedy that they want.
Absolutely, you really can get to your audience a lot more. I’m seeing so many people with whom I interact on social media and they bring in their friends and so on and so forth. Then there are other people I don’t even interact with but they know me from that and so it’s good. I call myself a political satirist for years, not because I want some haughty title, but just because I wanted people to know that I don’t do that other stuff. I don’t do, “Where you from? What do you do? You’re a homosexual! Why do women go to the bathroom in pairs?” I don’t do that shit. I just, I can’t stay in the room with it. That said, there’s a lot of great comics developing and I think it’s going to last one way or another for a long time. I think one thing that might really help is eventually getting integration of all show business. I like working with musicians, and I like working with people who have actual talent. I had a great woman, Megan, who opened for me in Kalamazoo. I asked for a musician, a good local musician. She was tremendous. It makes for a great night. After doing this for forty or so years, I figure I’ve got enough humor for the night and I can bring enough humor, let’s bring something else.
Photo by Gloria Wright.
Phil Stamato lives and writes in New York, where he may also be seen standing up and telling jokes.Ultra-cold strontium atoms in an atomic clock
Perfect timekeeping has taken a step closer to reality after scientists developed a clock that loses just a second every 300 million years.
The researchers claim the new atomic clock is more than twice as accurate as timepieces currently used to regulate international time zones and satellite systems.
Like its predecessors, the strontium atomic clock at the University of Colorado, harnesses the natural – and extremely consistent – vibration of atoms to keep track of time.
But it makes the “pendulum effect” of atoms even more consistent by holding them in a laser beam and freezing them to almost minus 273 degrees – the temperature at which all matter stops resonating.
“An atom consists of a nucleus and some electrons that spin in clearly defined orbits around the nucleus,” said Professor Jan Thomsen, a nuclear physicist at the University of Copenhagen, who has worked with the new experiments together with researchers at the University of Colorado.
“By using the focused laser light one can make the electron swing back and forth in a clearly defined way between these orbits, and it is that which forms the pendulum in the atomic clock”.
Even though the increase in accuracy represents only a small fraction of a second, it has great potential in areas to do with the determination of great distances – for example, measuring the distance to distant galaxies in space.
Now the team want to go a step further.
“We dream of getting an atomic clock with perfect precision,” said Prof Thomsen.
Via Telegraph.co.ukUPDATE: At first I hated this game. You see I am autistic as such many of the games more subtle cues I like totally miss. Unfortunately in FEAR 3 you really have to search the game world for weapons. Also in Fear 3 you can't just shoot everything that attacks you. In FEAR 3 it pays off big to Maylee some of the creatures you encounter. It is especially effective if you just beat the pig like gray to orange glowing creatures to death by stabbing them repeatedly. The ice blue dudes were hard to kill at first but eventually one gets a taste for it even a knack. I am not a man long on patience when it comes to video games. Honestly on Easy Mode I was able to win against the game in campaign mode and if was both difficult and fun for me once, I mastered an understanding of how the game wanted to be played.
FEAR 3 is a lot of fun but only if you adopt the playing style dictated by the game which makes the game less fun and more linear. FEAR 3 does do something I find painfully bad in any video game. I have found that when playing video games there are some weapons I love far more than others. Generally speaking give me a quick loading sniper rifle and no enemy is safe no matter where or how far away he is. When I am armed with a powerful sniper rifle with an equally powerful look down sight any enemy I see is living on barrowed time and I will collect their debt permanently.
With each installment of FEAR 3 the game just takes your favorite gums away and replaces them with the garbage guns the game wants you to have. Un a FPS there is no relationship more scared that that between a player and their favorite gun. What made matters worse is Fear 3 had one of the BEST Sniper Rifles I had ever been honored to use in any game. The FEAR 3 Sniper weapon made enemies just explode and the sensation of killing was a visual visceral state of near carnal rapture that never got old. After learning when to use it the laser gun was also a big favorite. Driving and killing everything that moved using those huge lumbering MECH's was also a much improved totally awesome experience in FEAR 3. The dialogue in FEAR 3 just was not as funny and over the top as it had been in FEAR 2. FEAR 2 set the standard for soldier dialogue, it was vulgar, common and had comedic timing that few video games could match with maybe the exception of Borderlands!
The Fear 3 ending was rather uninspired. Interval 8 the final installment in Fear 3 was not nearly long enough, involving enough or satisfying enough. The disorientation effects were way over the top and were not much more than a bother than adding any excitement. The game itself was rather strong and fun which made the ending appear lame and weak. I enjoyed the story through much of the game play. I enjoyed some of the locales. The game play was too liniar. Since the game allowed you to carry only two weapns types I think it should have let you always keep the weapons you like most. Also ammo is scare in FEAR 3 a fact that makes the game more tedious rather than more fun.
All in all however for the tiny $18.00 investment I made buying this game I could have done worse and often have. For its price $18.00 as of this writing FEAR 3 was one heck of a fun filled ride. To give you a sense of how horrible I am at playing video games most folk breeze through FEAR 3 on easy mode in approximately 6 hours so I hear. It took me three days to get through FEAR 3 on Easy Mode! So no I got few if any time bonus points in FEAR 3. But when all is said and done even with its few flaws FEAR 3 was a hoot and for $18.00 buying it was a no-brainer.
P.S. Do not buy F.E.A.R. 3 from Amazon.com. It is rare that Amazon.com gets beat on price to this horrible degree. In the pricing of FEAR 3 the Amazon.com price got undercut so bad almost makes me want to laugh. The Amazon.com price is more than twice as high as the Amazon.com allied seller stores as of this writing.UPDATE 9/1/2017: The Seattle Police Department has not acquired any new items via the Department of Defense 1033 federal surplus program since this post was originally published in 2014.
Of the original items listed below, the SPD has only retained coveralls, gloves and a utility cabinet. All other items were returned to the 1033 program or discarded. SPD also no longer maintains an account with the 1033 program.
The department remains committed to providing constitutional and effective public safety service without the aid of military equipment.
In light of the ongoing national conversation about the militarization of law enforcement agencies in the United States, the Seattle Police Department has received several requests for information about military equipment purchased through a federal surplus program.
Those items—provided by the Department of Defense between May 2010 and March 2014—are listed below:
Flotation vests
Ballistic plates for officers’ bulletproof vests
Binoculars
Telescopes
Signage
Ventilated tents
A radiation detector
Rifle sights, used by the approximately 130 officers who have passed the department’s rifle-certification program.
Two utility trucks, which the department returned to Joint Base Lewis-McChord after seven months.
Coveralls
Gloves
A metal utility cabinet
And pistol holsters
You can download a spreadsheet detailing these items here.
The prices listed in the spreadsheet show the items’ original value, not the amount paid by SPD. Equipment provided through the DoD’s 1033 surplus program only requires police agencies to cover the cost of shipping.
Images via Creative CommonsMichele Bachmann's 'bombshell' on a 'hidden' $105 billion
By Glenn Kessler
NBC - Meet The Press
"There was a Congressional Research Service report that just was issued in February, and we discovered that secretly, unbeknownst to members of Congress, over $105 billion was hidden in the 'Obamacare' legislation to fund the implementation of 'Obamacare'. This is something that wasn't known. This money was broken up, hidden in various parts of the bill."
--Rep. Michele Bachmann, March 6, 2011
"This is a crime against democracy. No one knew that Harry Reid, [Nancy] Pelosi and Obama put $105 billion in spending in the bill.... This is a bombshell."
--Bachmann, March 8, 2011
You have to give Rep. Michele Bachmann credit. The Minnesota Republican certainly knows how to command attention -- and how to liven up a dreary discussion of the federal budget on the Sunday morning talk shows by holding up a sign that declares: "$105,464,000,000."
Even in Washington, $105 billion is real money.
But her assertion raises questions. Is it possible for a major piece of legislation, carefully analyzed by the Congressional Budget Office before final passage, to "secretly" contain so much spending? Let's find out.
The Facts
Bachmann is correct that there was a Congressional Research Service report issued in February, titled "Appropriations and Fund Transfers in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act." It is actually an update of an earlier report first issued in October.
In January, former Rep. Ernest Istook (R-Okla.) wrote an analysis of the October report for the Heritage Foundation, decrying what he saw as "an attempt to handcuff the current Congress" with directives on spending in future years. "Obamacare was designed to be the governmental equivalent of kudzu -- growing everywhere, propagating by multiple means, and sinking in its roots and becoming impossible to control," Istook wrote.
Here's where it gets complicated. There is a total of $105 billion identified over 10 years in the CRS report, though only three programs, worth a little more than $25 billion, are funded the full 10 years. Most of the other programs listed in the report are funded for just a year or two, or perhaps five years. If Congress wants to alter this spending, it will need to pass a new law.
Istook, in an interview, acknowledged, "Congress has the authority to change this, that's absolutely right," but as a former member of the Appropriations Committee he believed it is inappropriate for a bill authorizing new programs to also fund so many of them.
Administration officials and other analysts, however, note that regularly appropriated money -- also known as mandatory spending -- is common in major pieces of health care legislation involving Medicare, Medicaid and the like. There are many other programs in the bill that are subject to annual appropriations, just not the ones identified in the CRS report.
While Bachmann in her television appearances echoed Istook's argument that Obama "tied the hands of Congress," her main points have been that "this money was broken up, hidden in various parts of the bill" -- something akin to a "slush fund" -- and that it was done "secretly, unbeknownst to members of Congress."
This is bordering on ridiculous. The Congressional Budget Office, the official arbiter of congressional legislation, conducted extensive analyses of the health-care bill. Many of the specific programs identified in the CRS report were listed and examined in the CBO reports that were regularly issued as the legislation made its way through Congress. The CBO reporting also included estimates of the spending for these programs year by year. For complicated reasons, the numbers in the CRS report and the earlier CBO reports are not always exactly the same, but much of it was there in plain sight.
In fact, Bachmann is only talking about half of the ledger. The Obama administration insisted that the health care bill be "paid for" through various revenue raisers and cost cuts in order to not increase the deficit. In the end, CBO declared that the health care bill would reduce the deficit over the next decade.
We have noted there are issues with how that deficit figure was reached, but it is disingenuous of Bachmann to talk only about the costs without noting that, in theory, all of this spending is fully funded.
There is a further problem with Bachman's charge of "hidden" spending. The CRS report refers repeatedly to the many announcements made by the Department of Health and Human Services in recent months that it had spent some of the money authorized by Congress. In other words, the administration has not tried to hide this money at all; instead, it has trumpeted each dollar spent in a press release.
As for the claim that "this money was broken up, hidden in various parts of the bill," we think she means that there were different sections in the legislation, depending on the issue. This is common practice for virtually all major bills, and it is not unusual or nefarious at all.
Bachmann's spokesman did not respond to a request for comment.
The Pinocchio Test
There is no "bombshell" except Bachmann's bombast.
She is correct that Congress already has appropriated some spending in future years, but her claim that this money was "hidden" does not have credibility. The money for these programs was clearly described and analyzed by the Congressional Budget Office before the legislation was voted into law.
She needs to get a new sign.
Four Pinocchios
(About our rating scale).
Follow The Fact Checker on Twitter and friend us on FacebookAside from superpowers (and undeniable box office potential), superheroes’ best asset is their underwear. Although the portrayal of comic book superheroes in films are now “exteriorly deprived” of this so-called asset (the latest Superman movie, for example), it’s really hard not to associate them with such.
Of course, the actors behind these synthetic costumes can’t afford not to wear underwear. Performing acrobatic stunts while fighting crimes explains it all, but maybe another reason is aesthetics. Superheroes must maintain their, ahem, package, in place as they save damsels in distress and kick villains’ asses. Who wants to see an unsexy-looking superhero, anyway?
Like other actors who had played a superhero role, Andrew Garfield had to endure wearing a synthetic costume and make it appear as though everything was fine and comfortable. While shooting the first installment of The Amazing Spider-Man franchise, Garfield admitted that there were scenes wherein he was forced to go commando. Thankfully, he didn’t have to think about this in filming the sequel. The production team came up with a brilliant idea.
During the filming of The Amazing Spider-Man 2, Sony Pictures ordered 75 pairs of Micro Modal Boxer Brief for its lead actor Andrew Garfield. The reason is simple: to let the web-slinging superhero effortlessly swing between and aloft New York’s skyscrapers without losing his poise, worrying about disfigured curves, and thinking about discomfort especially while acting against a green screen.
But choosing specific underwear from a luxury brand is not just for luxury. Naked Brand Group Inc. (OTCQB: NAKD)’s boxer brief is made with MicroModal fabric, which is finer than silk and cotton. The contour pouch, stealth waistband, and shape-giving fabric are in keeping with Spiderman’s tight-fitting costume.
Even the guys from Esquire could attest to the luxury briefs’ unmatched quality, admitting that wearing Naked felt like wearing nothing at all. This lofty commendation suggests that the underwear that suited Peter Parker well is definitely the perfect underwear for all men—be they acrobatic crime fighters or not.
The thing is, Naked’s comfortable and almost-inconspicuous underwear is what makes it the sportsmen’s and actor’s top choice of underwear. Bob Silverman and his sons, for example, said that wearing naked underwear for almost five days gave them no problem when they climb Mt. Kilimajaro in 2014. “[The underwear] really held up great—no smell, breathed well, and worked well with other layers,” said the older Silverman.
Naked will launch its very first women’s collection before the first half of 2015 ends. Perhaps, by this time, even female superheroes like Wonder Woman or Jean Grey are already enjoying their own pairs.
Superheroes and their exterior briefs
There have been many uncanny and unbelievable claims behind American superheroes’ love for intentionally exposed underwear. Some say it is because superheroes never had the chance of being educated on underwear manners as they are either extrovert or orphans. While others say it’s simply a secret code between comic book artists and writers.
But according to former DC Comics editor Julius Schwartz, the ”exterior briefs” were modelled after circus performers and wrestlers popular in the ’60s. He elaborated that these acrobats were not actually wearing underwear, but rather skin-tight underwear-looking shorts over their leggings. And since superheroes had a lot in common with these acrobats—i.e. well-defined physique and love for stunts—it was just practical to clad them in this kind of outfit. Perhaps we can blame it on the limited printing methods at the time why the underwear-like shorts appeared to be worn on the outside in comic books.
—
This article may include forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements generally are identified by the words “believe,” “project,” “estimate,” “become,” “plan,” “will,” and similar expressions. These forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks as well as uncertainties, including those discussed in the following cautionary statements and elsewhere in this article and on this site. Although the Company may believe that its expectations are based on reasonable assumptions, the actual results that the Company may achieve may differ materially from any forward-looking statements, which reflect the opinions of the management of the Company only as of the date hereof. Additionally, please make sure to read these important disclosures.New York, the documentary film by Ric Burns, contains a great segment on the Empire State Building that is available on YouTube in three parts.
The first two parts are particularly interesting, especially the construction stuff that starts around the five minute mark of part one. Oh, and don’t miss the steelworkers throwing red hot rivets around to each other…that starts right near the end of part one and continues into part two. Some other highlights:
- The original Waldorf-Astoria hotel was torn down (with no small amount of glee from the ESB’s developers) to make room for the new skyscraper. The hotel was built by William Waldorf Astor, heir to the forture created by his father and grandfather (John Jacob Astor & John Jacob Astor III), on the site of his father’s mansion. WW Astor’s cousin, John Jacob Astor IV, went down on the Titanic and the Senate hearings into the disaster were held at the hotel.
- The steel beams were custom forged in Pittsburgh and shipped immediately to the building site…some arrived still hot to the touch from the furnaces.
- At the peak of construction, the workers were adding 4-5 stories a week. During one 22-day stretch, 22 new floors were erected. From start to finish, the entire building took an astonishing 13 months to build, about the same amount of time recently taken by the MTA to fix the right side of the stairs of the Christopher St subway station entrance.
- The building didn’t become profitable until 1950.
(thx, lily)It was a thought-provoking and curiosity-stoking piece of news until I checked out the source: So What’s News, a website that promises “News that won’t get you depressed to read the news.”
The site itself billed the item as “satire,” and you have to pay attention when the site managers warn that it may not be true, or at best deeply exaggerated.
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Still, it’s food for thought for women gnashing their teeth at pronouncements by the House leadership that the Reproductive Health bill stands a very slim chance, at best, of being passed before the campaign and elections next year. This means that the proponents of the RH bill will have to start from scratch, assuming they get reelected, and promising more years of tempestuous passage through the rough seas of legislative navigation.
The “news” item is based on reports, quoting House Majority Leader Neptali Gonzales II, that the RH bill will face a tough time getting approved. “The hole which the RH bill has to pass through is getting smaller,” he said, adding that “the time is getting shorter to approve it in the House.” The House leadership apparently plans to shelve any floor debates or a vote on the bill in the next two months since the House will be busy with deliberations on the 2013 budget. Groups reacted to Gonzales’ statement, asking why Gonzales “is conditioning the minds of Congress and the public that the RH bill will not pass.” They point out that legislators have yet to resume their sessions, and “already the leadership is killing the bill.”
Also on the receiving end of the RH bill supporters’ ire are House Speaker Feliciano Belmonte, who allegedly promised to bring the bill to a vote when he was presented with 100,000 signatures in a document calling for the passage of the bill; and President Noynoy, for his “laid-back attitude” toward the bill’s passage and failure to include it among his priority measures.
* * *
Against this background, RH advocates, according to the item on So What’s News, have presented an ultimatum to the largely male legislators, calling on their mates to refrain from engaging (their partners) in sex “until our leaders and lawmakers enact this bill instead of sitting on it.”
Wives of congressmen, a leader assured, have all “promised to abstain from engaging in any sexual intercourse with their husbands until the bill gets passed or voted on.”
“If my husband also believes that the hole in which the RH bill has to pass through is getting smaller, he has to think again, because the hole just closed,” a congressional spouse was “quoted,” adding that “it doesn’t get tougher but it is getting shorter.”
As for P-Noy, the women said, “women across the country also pledged to refrain from entertaining any attempt at courtship or intercourse for that matter by the bachelor leader.” “He won’t be able to reach third base, let alone first base,” said a “very attractive female socialite while clenching her fist.”
* * *
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The “news” item led me to imagine a scenario in which an amorous member of Congress approaches his wife, trying to get her to vote in his favor in his campaign for more, uhm, sexual pork.
But unbeknownst to him, wifey has just joined SWS, or Samahang Walang Sex, an offshoot of the campaign to withdraw sexual favors until the RH bill is passed.
“Honey…” mumbles the hardened politico, “it’s been a long day. How about a little tumble to help us both get some sleep?”
“Is that what sex is to you?” asks the indignant wifey, “a sleeping pill?”
“No naman dear, hindi ka na mabiro! (Can’t you take a joke?),” says the husband. “What I meant was… Let’s, ahh, relax for a while, and bring this day to a fulfilling end!”
“And you’ll only be fulfilled by schtooping me?” says the wife, her voice rising.
“I didn’t say that!” husband says, feeling to his dismay his resolve softening. “What’s your problem? Time was you couldn’t wait for me to get home. Remember the time you texted me to say that you were sliding down the stair rails because you were heating up my homecoming treat?”
Wifey glares at him, and congressman begins to feel his courage shrinking. “If you must know, that hole is closed for now, at least until you work your ass off in the House and convince your colleagues to vote now na on the RH bill.”
* * *
Enlightenment, but also a hint of dismay, dawns on the husband’s face. “Aha! So this is a politically motivated attack! Who talked to you? Did my political opponents offer you a trip to Hong Kong, or free botox treatments in exchange for withholding sex?”
“They did no such thing. This is my own personal decision. I’m sick and tired of men having sex without giving any thought to the consequences! I’ve been on pills for 20 years, for goodness’ sake! Did you bother to wear a condom even once?”
“Is this all you want? Right now, I’ll tell my bodyguard to rush out and buy a condom, no, a box of condoms, if that’ll make you happy!”
“Too late, my love! Nothing but the passage of the RH bill could put me in the mood again!”
Hubby punches his pillow in frustration. “But Gonzales said we should just shelve the bill for now because the bishops are threatening to campaign against administration candidates. Imagine what’ll happen to my chances if the parish priest denounced me from the pulpit week after week…”
“Then you can ask that priest what he plans to do with the three children he has with his majordoma…”
The congressman, ever the pragmatist, realizes the futility of further debate. “Very well, if you’re not in the mood, there’s nothing I can do. But be warned, I’m talking to P-Noy about this underhanded tactic!”
“Good luck! Last I heard, he was having a hard time inviting any of my amigas to dinner at Kowloon House!”
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MOST READVideo: Kellyanne Conway Battles CNN’s Chris Cuomo in Epic 19 Minute Debate on Comey Firing
Senior presidential advisor Kellyanne Conway, the first woman to manage and win a presidential campaign, defended President Trump’s firing of FBI Director James Comey in a contentious 19 minute long interview with CNN’s Chris Cuomo on ‘New Day’ Wednesday morning.
Cuomo was rude, arrogant, condescending, interrupting and even made faces as Conway explained Trump’s decision to fire Comey. Cuomo was comfortably seated in a CNN studio while Conway was standing outside in front of the White House for the nearly twenty-minute long interview.
CNN posted the video of the segment to Cuomo’s Twitter account. Grab a cup of coffee and watch, or bookmark for later.
The case of the White House tested…for you to decide. @KellyannePolls on New Day this morning. https://t.co/3uakLlpbQZ — Christopher C. Cuomo (@ChrisCuomo) May 10, 2017
The segment was later posted to YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gLMqSDsHOkg
Featured image via The Hill/Twitter.
Newsbusters Executive Editor Tim Graham called out Cuomo for his unprofessional interview with Conway, employing one of the liberals’ favorite sexist buzzwords against them.
Liberals who complain about "mansplaining" should really look at Chris Cuomo hectoring Kellyanne Conway. — Tim Graham (@TimJGraham) May 10, 2017
“Liberals who complain about “mansplaining” should really look at Chris Cuomo hectoring Kellyanne Conway.”Bill O'Brien certainly looked the part of a guy who was on the hammer end of one of the biggest scoring explosions in NFL history on Monday night.
The Houston Texans coach couldn't hide his raw emotional state after a 30-23 loss to the Pittsburgh Steelers. The game slipped away late in the second quarter, when a flood of turnovers and blown defensive assignments allowed Pittsburgh to score 24 points in less than three minutes.
O'Brien raised his voice several times in a tense postgame encounter with the media. His eyes told the story of a coach who had run the emotional gauntlet in the four hours before he reached the podium.
"It was 30-23, you know. It wasn't 50-0," he said. "The thing is, you can't do that. You can't turn the ball over. You can't field a kick, bobble the kick. Can't give up shot plays. You can't have 12 men on the field on third down to give them a first down. We just can't do those things, and with all that being said, we're one onside kick away and these questions are like we lost 50-0. We lost by a touchdown. With all of that stuff that we did, we have to improve it. We gotta coach it better and we gotta play better."
"It's very frustrating when you turn the ball over on your own 2-yard line. The whole thing's frustrating. Players are frustrated, coaches are frustrated, but again, it's not like, again, we're an onside kick away, which, we almost recovered. Almost only counts in horseshoes, but we're an onside kick away from having a chance to tie the game with all of that being said that we did wrong. It's a good football team, give Pittsburgh a lot of credit. They played better and they also coached better than us."
It's been a tough stretch for the 3-4 Texans, who have dropped three straight games that could have been won with sharper play in key moments. A first-year coach, O'Brien is on a crash-course of how excruciating life can be in the NFL's big chair.
The latest Around The NFL Podcast recaps every Week 7 game, and breaks down Peyton Manning's record-breaking night. Find more Around The NFL content on NFL NOW.Columnist and political pundit, Andrew Coyne, got hosed down with questions today during Reddit’s popular Ask Me Anything (AMA) feature.
In the AMA, Coyne responded to questions such as The National Post’s paywall, working as a columnist, and not surprisingly his wheelhouse, Canadian politics.
On the question of whether readers should have to pay for content on news sites, Coyne said he’s a big believer in paying for content and also in the instant delivery that digital content distribution provides.
“Key is the tablet, in my view. I’m now a subscriber to the Financial Times, Wall St. Journal, and New York Times on my iPad — never subscribed to them before. It’s not so much the form factor as the instantaneous page loads — changes the whole user experience,” he wrote.
When asked how to become a prominent columnist, Coyne joked: “My advice to you is: try to go to school with the son of the editor of your future employer.”
And as to why he hasn’t entered into electoral politics, despite having more vigour for the topic than just about every other Canadian, Coyne played coy, writing: “I am not cut out for politics. It’s a tough game, for starters, and I’m not particularly tough.”
The conversations with Reddit’s notoriously diverse audience shifted from the wonky speculation about John A. MacDonald stumbling into a time-vortex due to over-consumption of pre-confederation whiskey, to the more serious and sobering question about being a national columnist who is often disagreed with.
“Misunderstanding is something I have some control over, though no matter how clear you think you’ve been some people are going to miss the point (especially humour — oh my God),” he wrote.
But the work of a columnist is to be understood and to convey arguments clearly. Sometimes that’s more challenging than others and Reddit users asked how he deals with people who completely miss his point and fight him on it.
“If I think I’m perfectly reasonable, how did they come to a different conclusion?” He wrote. “Couldn’t possibly be because I’m wrong, so… what are the obstacles to them seeing things my way? Do they have a preconception about me? Is there a buzzword I need to avoid? After disarming those, you hope facts, logic etc will carry the day from there. But you have to want to persuade, first of all: lots of writers just want to either preach to the choir or shock. Neither actually changes any minds.”
Of course, young journalists hoping to break into the field were on hand hoping for some insights into the job market. Coyne was happy to oblige.
“My stock tips for journalists are: 1. Study something other than journalism. Nothing wrong with studying journalism as well, but helps if you can carve out a niche of real or pretended expertise in some subject. 2. Try to work in all different media, if you can: becomes self-reinforcing loop. 3. Take the reader’s time seriously. They don’t owe you a thing, not even the two minutes it takes to read your piece. Make it worthwhile, if you can. Believe me, if you can get a small minority of readers to occasionally read your piece through to the end, you’ve achieved enough.”
And, if you want to know why he warned readers against the robots who kill (seriously, the quote is: “Worry not about the robots, in other words. Except the ones who kill,”) you’ll want to check out the full event here.
If you missed his interaction with Reddit’s audience, fret not. Coyne takes a fastidious and unrelenting approach in addressing his readers daily on Twitter, where people usually ask him just about anything.
The columnist has made a whopping 52,000 tweets, most of which are annoyingly balanced and informative.Ahead of the Pope’s visit to the United States, a trip that will be wrought with sound-bytes, drama, and press releases, I thought it would be fitting to put together a short list of instances where the Holy Father has been completely taken out of context or mis-reported (flat-out lied about) by the national media and press corps. Here, in a somewhat chronological order, are Pope Francis’ “beliefs”:
1. Homosexual acts are not sins. “Who am I to judge?” I start with this first quote due to its quintessential role in the growth of the media love-affair that has since swelled around Jorge Bergoglio, Pope Francis. The quote was widely reported on and swept the United States by storm, who in its cathartic jaundice, were absolutely jubilated that the Catholic faith had finally embraced the lifestyle choices of same-sex individuals. The truth could not be farther. In fact, the media went so far as to hide the entire quotation (try finding it in any news article): “Who am I to judge them if they’re seeking the Lord in good faith?” Shortly before his passing, Cardinal Francis George indicated that the quotation “has been very misused... because he was talking about someone who has already asked for mercy and been given absolution.... That’s entirely different than talking [about] someone who demands acceptance rather than asking for forgiveness.” Want proof? The Holy Father rebuked the French government in April of this year when it attempted to install an openly gay envoy, Laurent Stefanini. Francis allegedly criticized the brute nature of the nomination and the French people’s acceptance of the same-sex marriage law. This got very little press as you might imagine.
2. Trickle-down economics is bad. Some people continue to defend trickle-down theories which assume that economic growth, encouraged by a free market, will inevitably succeed in bringing about greater justice and inclusiveness in the world. The Washington Post reported in bold headlines, “Pope Francis denounces ‘trickle-down’ economic theories…” in his new exhortation, Evangelii Gaudium. This one is entertaining because it gets all the fiscal conservatives screaming. However, it is a fairly easy error to dispute, chiefly because it was a translation problem that everyone overlooked. Here’s the Spanish & English side-by-side. En este contexto, algunos todavía defienden las teorías del derrame, que suponen que todo crecimiento económico, favorecido por la libertad de mercado, logra provocar por sí mismo mayor equidad e inclusión social en el mundo. Some people continue to defend trickle-down theories which assume that economic growth, encouraged by a free market, will inevitably succeed in bringing about greater justice and inclusiveness in the world. There’s two problems: “las teorías del derrame” does not translate into “trickle-down economics.” There’s no similar phrase in Spanish. Derrame means to spill or leak. However, it can still be argued that Francis meant trickle-down. Here is the worse error: “por sí mismo” does not translate into “inevitably” but rather into “by itself.” To the detriment of all those reading the initial translation, it would seem like Francis was attacking a particular set of economic theories. However, he is simply stating that income inequality and poverty cannot be fixed by only pursuing “trickle-down” and nothing else. If you think that we should not care about the poor and that “trickle-down” alone should solve world poverty, you should probably stop reading here.
3. Priests should be able to marry. “The problem is in my agenda.” A few places picked this one up, claiming that Francis had the question of married priests on his agenda and was looking to squash any type of “reform of reform” doctrine inside the Church. It did not take long for the national media to pick it up and run with their “who am I to judge” narrative. Here is a translation from an Italian article that accurately covered the interaction: The celebration was attended by seven priests who celebrated their 50th anniversary of priesthood, but also five priests who had left the ministry because they married. Asked by one of the priests present, Don Giovanni Cereti, on the issue of married priests (in which he recalled the case of the Eastern Churches, where married men can be ordained priests and the thousands of married priests of the Latin rite who can not celebrate), Bergoglio responded in surprise: “the problem is in my agenda.” Francis here is not reflecting on or looking to change the policy of the Catholic Church. Helping these former priests |
ية.. الديمقراطية والمشاركة هي شيء أساسي يجب أن نعبر عنه.. ولكن يجب أن نعلم بأن الديمقراطية لكي تكون بناءة لا بد أن تكون مرتبطة بالانتماء الوطني والقومي ولا يمكن أن يكون أحدهما بمعزل عن الآخر.. لماذا أقول هذا الكلام… لأنه في إطار ردود الأفعال التي تحصل الآن.. هناك من يطرح فكرة العودة للانتماء القطري.. نحن في سورية ننتمي لسورية وانتهى الموضوع.. هذه هي حدودنا السياسية.. حسنا.. ماذا يعني أن أنتمي للقطر… يعني أولا أننا كنا مخطئين ونحن نشتم الاستعمار على مدى مئة عام لأنه قسم المنطقة.. هذا يعني بأن الاستعمار قام بعمل صحيح.. يعني أن انتماءنا النهائي هو هذه الحدود السياسية.. يعني أن نجتمع اليوم في مثل هذا اللقاء.. نحن في سورية وربما في لبنان ودول بلاد الشام ونقدم اعتذارا لسايكس بيكو لأن ما قاموا به صحيح.. هناك منطق غير سليم.. عفوي سطحي.. ارتجالي في طرح هذا الموضوع.. لذلك لا نستطيع أن نفصل الانتماء عن التطور.. عن الديمقراطية.. عن المشاركة.. وهنا نرى كيف أن فكرة القومية هي فكرة رابطة لكل عناصر المجتمع.. وخاصة عندما نريد أن نسير باتجاه المستقبل.. المستقبل يعني الأفضل.. في هذه الحالة فقط الحوار حول الموضوع القطري.. بكلمة مختصرة.. أن نقبل بالأمر الواقع جغرافيا.. أننا قسمنا وقبلنا بأوطاننا بحدودها الحالية لا يعني أن نقبل بتقسيم الهوية.. الجغرافيا تقسم.. الاقتصاد يقسم.. كل شيء يقسم.. أما الهوية فهي دائما ثابتة أو أنها تزول وتنتهي.. ثابتة لا يعني بأنها جامدة.. هي تتطور بتطور المجتمعات.. وكلما انضمت إليها مجموعات وأطياف أخرى ازدادت غِنى.. فإذا هي تتطور دائما وتنمو وتكبر.. وبخلاف ذلك.. فإنها في حال اندثار وضمور وزوال.
وقال الرئيس الأسد: النقطة الأخيرة.. علينا أن ننقل هذا الحوار من إطار حوار النخب والحوار السياسي إلى الحوار مع الشرائح الأوسع وخاصة الشباب.. وبشكل أهم في الجامعات.. علينا أن نحاورهم حول كل المفاهيم.. المفاهيم البالي منها.. القديم الذي لم يعد صالحا لهذا العصر.. والمفاهيم الحديثة ولكن المدسوسة.. نحن اليوم نعيش في عصر الانترنت وكل مواطن تقريبا يخضع للقصف الفكري والثقافي بشكل مستمر وعلى مدار الساعة.. لا توجد ضوابط على هذا النوع من الإعلام.. بالإضافة للفضائيات.. ولا يمكن أن يوجد في المستقبل أي ضابط من الضوابط.. هناك ضابط وحيد هو رجاحة العقل.. ولا يوجد شيء أهم من الحوار من أجل تحصين العقل وتحصين المجتمعات.. فيجب علينا أن نفكر لاحقا بآليات لنقل هذا الحوار.. بعد أن نكون قد وضعنا التصورات.. إلى المنابر الأخرى لنتحدث مع الشرائح الأخرى ولنسمع أفكارا مناقضة لأفكارنا.. وهذا يطورنا وبنفس الوقت يطور الآخرين.
وأضاف الرئيس الأسد: وطبعا نحن في سورية مستعدون للبدء في هذا النشاط.. وقمنا بنشاطات مهمة جدا في هذا الحوار خلال الحرب.. وليس قبلها.. لأن الحرب دفعتنا للقيام بمثل هذه الحوارات.. وقد حققت نتائج كبيرة.. خاصة فيما يتعلق بالعروبة والعلمانية.. الدين والعلمانية.. العروبة والإسلام.. العروبة والدين.. هذه العناوين كانت محور نقاش على مختلف المستويات وكانت لها نتائج مهمة ساعدت في تحصين المجتمع السوري.. لكن الحوار حول المصطلحات موضوع معقد.. وهو بحاجة للقيام بعمل فكري على المستوى القومي لأن اختراق مجتمعاتنا بدأ بمصطلحات.. ونحن مع كل أسف دائما نأخذ المصطلح ونردده بشكل ببغائي دون أن نعرف ما هو مضمونه.. وبعد فترة يتحول إلى جزء من اللاوعي بالنسبة لنا.. ويصبح جزءا من شخصيتنا.. ونصبح منفذين لأجندات خارجية.. ثقافيا وسياسيا دون أن ندري.
وتابع الرئيس الأسد: أعطيكم مثالا بسيطا جدا.. كلمة التعايش.. في سورية كان الكثيرون يتباهون بكلمة “تعايش”.. وكلما أتى وفد أجنبي يمتدحون التعايش الموجود بين مكونات المجتمع السوري.. وربما تكون هذه الكلمة مطروحة في دول عربية أخرى.. أنا كنت أرفض هذه الكلمة والآن نرفضها بشكل رسمي.. لأن التعايش هو علاقة بين مكونات متنافرة.. أي أنني أرفضك ولكن أقبل بالتعامل معك.. ولكن عندما تأتي الظروف لا أريدك أن تكون موجودا.. أنت منفر لي وأنا منفر لك.. هل نستطيع أن نشبه علاقة أعضاء الجسد الواحد بالتعايش… هل نستطيع أن نقول بأن اليد تتعايش مع القدم وأن القلب يتعايش مع الكبد ومع الكليتين… هذا المفهوم خطأ.. عندما يصاب شخص برصاصة أو شظية ولا يستخرجها لأنها غير مؤذية فإن الجسم يغلفها بنسيج ويعزلها.. ولكن يبقى إسمها “جسم غريب”.. هذه هي فكرة التعايش.. وعندما نقبل بهذا المصطلح.. ومع كل أسف لا نحلله.. فنحن نقبل بكوننا مجموعات متناقضة متنافرة ولكننا نعيش مع بعضنا البعض.
وقال الرئيس الأسد: هذا يؤكد أننا لا نستطيع أن نقوم بعمل سياسي إن لم نقم بالتوازي بعمل فكري.. لدينا سياسيون قوميون موجودون معنا في القاعة ولدينا أيضا مفكرون قوميون ولدينا إعلاميون قوميون.. لا بد من أن تكون لدينا أشياء ربما تكون اختصاصية أكثر.. أحيانا السياسي يتحدث بمصطلحات بحكم العادة.. أي انه لا يفهم مضمون هذا المصطلح.. وهنا دور المفكر.. أحيانا المفكر يتحدّث بلغة لا يفهمها سواه.. وكذلك السياسي.. وهنا دور الإعلامي الذي ينقل هذه المصطلحات ونتائج هذا الحوار وهذا التحليل والتركيب.. بعد أن نفكك المصطلحات ونركبها.. ننقلها لعامة الناس بلغة مبسطة ونخلق حوارا شعبيا في هذا الموضوع.. الحوار على مستوى النخب وحده لا يمكن أن يؤدي إلا إلى نتيجة محدودة.. فإذا.. علينا أن نفكر بآليات اللقاءات المقبلة التي من خلالها يمكن أن نكون أكثر تخصصا في مناقشاتنا للأمور.
وأضاف الرئيس الأسد: بالمحصلة.. هذه الملتقيات هي بداية لما سنقوم به وليست النهاية.. لا ينتهي عملنا بالبيان.. بل يبدأ عملنا بعد البيان وأنا أريد أن نكون دائما عمليين في هذه اللقاءات.. لا تهم الرسميات والبروتوكولات ولا قيمة لها.. من يجلس هنا ومن يجلس هناك لا قيمة له ولا قيمة للقطات الإعلامية.. أنا شخصيا لا أهتم بهذه الجوانب ولا قيمة حتى للرعاية سواء رعاها رئيس أو ملك… القيمة الحقيقية هي لما ننتجه من أفكار.. والأهم من ذلك لما نطبقه لاحقا من هذه الأفكار.
وتابع الرئيس الأسد: أريد أن أختم بسؤال أو تساؤل أنتم تسألونه.. هل من المعقول لمسؤول يقبع في قلب الحرب لسبع سنوات ويستقبل أشخاصا قدموا من مختلف الدول ولديهم العشرات وربما المئات من الأسئلة.. أن يتحدث في كل شيء ولا يتحدث عن السياسة وعما يحصل في سورية وعن هذه المؤتمرات.. لا قيمة للحديث عن أعضاء الجسد إذا كان الهيكل العظمي الذي يحملها ويثبتها في مكانها لتعمل بشكل صحيح متداعيا ومتهالكا.. أنا أتحدث في هذا الكلام عن الهيكل العظمي لكل ما يدور في كل هذه المنطقة.. وبعد أن أكون قد تحدثت عنه ننتقل الآن للحوار.. أستطيع أن أتحدث لساعات.. 7 سنوات من الحرب وهناك أشياء كثيرة نتحدث بها.. ولكن بالنسبة لهذا اللقاء هو فرصة للحوار وليس فرصة للخطاب.. وبكل تأكيد الحوار دائما أجدى وأغنى وسأبني كلامي في الجانب السياسي على الأحداث وعلى تساؤلاتكم وأفكاركم ومقترحاتكم.. مرة أخرى أشكركم.. وما تحدثت به هو بالنسبة لي مقدمة لأي شيء سياسي.. الحديث بأمور السياسة دون هذه المقدمة ليس له جوهر ومعنى ولا يمكن أن تصل الرسالة بعمقها إن لم نفهم هذا الجانب.. وخاصة نحن كأبناء تيار واحد.It’s June 21 and the Miami Marlins have played 70 games. While it’s far too early to make any grand statements about the team, they are very much in the thick of the Wild Card race and for the first time in years, the team has several players deserving of an All-Star spot. Here’s a look at the Marlin who has been the best and the Marlin who has been the worst through the first 70 games.
Best Marlin So Far: Marcell Ozuna
Center fielder Marcell Ozuna was the subject of plenty of trade rumors before the season began, with rumors even spreading so far as to say that owner Jeffrey Loria wanted Ozuna gone. While those rumors may have been overblown, it was no secret that the team was shopping Ozuna. Eventually, they kept him, and that’s been the best move the team has made in a while. Through 70 games, “Ozo” is hitting.322/.374/.567 with 15 home runs and 43 RBIs. He’s also playing excellent defense and has worked his way to a 3.1 fWAR, leading the Marlins by a full point over Christian Yelich’s 2.1. Ozuna is likely to represent the Marlins in San Diego for the All-Star Game and has been the best Marlins position player so far, on the way to a career-best season.
Worst Marlin So Far: Cole Gillespie
Cole Gillespie is having a rough year. In only 27 games (41 plate appearances) he has accumulated -0.3 fWAR, the lowest on the Marlins roster for position players. He is slashing just.263/.293/.421 with no home runs and just 5 RBIs. He has struck out in 29.3% of his at-bats and walked in only 4.9% of those. He’s also been a liability on defense, proving the Marlins with no real positives either offensively or defensively. To be fair to Gillespie, he’s basically the 25th man on the roster, with Ichiro serving as the main bat off the bench and Miguel Rojas and Chris Johnson working ahead of Gillespie as well. Still, Gillespie’s numbers have been undeniably rough and he is the official “worst Marlin position player,” at least for now. Among starters, Marlins All-Stars Giancarlo Stanton and Dee Gordon are tied for worst with only 0.2 fWAR.Cashman Center has been officially transferred to the city of Las Vegas from the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority, creating an opportunity for the city to redevelop the 50.25-acre site.
The city recently received an unsolicited proposal from a United Soccer League franchise interested in using the existing stadium at Cashman Center for professional soccer. City officials are currently in negotiations with the United Soccer League on this proposal.
The LVCVA will continue to operate the convention facility through Dec. 3, 2017. The LVCVA has been working to find new locations for the smaller conventions that typically use the space. Any events between June and December 2017 will not be affected by the transfer.
As it relates to the Las Vegas 51s baseball team, the city will assume the current 51s lease and cellular site agreements, and the LVCVA will operate and maintain the stadium and parking areas through the term of the 51s lease, which currently runs through Dec. 21, 2022.Here is an excerpt from Blow’s NY Times op-ed, Trump Raises an Army:
Why does Trump continue to do things that are so divisive and alienating to the majority of Americans? Why does he keep fueling the white-hot fire of his base to the exclusion of the other segments of the country?
I have a theory: Trump and the people who either shield or support him are locked in a relationship of reciprocation, like a ball of snakes. Everyone is using everyone else.
The oligarchs see Trump as a pathway to slashing regulations and cutting taxes for the rich. According to a July analysis by the Tax Policy Center, “Nearly 40 percent of the tax cut would flow to households in the top 1 percent of the income distribution, giving those earners an average annual tax cut of around $270,000.”
Establishment Republicans see him as a path to reversing the New Deal.
Steve Bannon-ists see him as a path to the “deconstruction of the administrative state.” All Republicans, but particularly the religious right, see him as a securer of conservative Supreme Court justices. The blue-collar Trump voters view him as a last chance to breathe life into the dying dream that waning industries and government-supported white cultural assurances can be revived. And the white nationalists, white supremacists, racists and Nazis — to the degree that they can be separated from the others — see him as a tool of vengeance and as an instrument of their defense.When my previous computer died, I lost the International Baseball Competition. I will try again next year. I might still have the original starting files to go on, and if I can find them, I will put them up so that you can do the IBC.
However, from the ashes of the 2015 IBC, there has risen…
BREAKING OOTP!
Yes, Out of the Park Baseball tasks me, so I must have it! I will force it to do things that it was not made to do, things that mankind was not meant to see simulated. Some will answer questions, some will settle scores, and some will push Out Of The Park Baseball to it’s very limits, to see if I can literally cause the game engine to beg for mercy.
(And, yes, this is basically Breaking Madden in OOTP form, you have a problem with that? Oh, and CLICK PICTURES TO MAKE THEM BIGGER.)
TODAY:
PITCHERS
vs.
HITTERS
Yes, for all time, the pitchers have waged war with those at the plate. But now, it is time to finally settle it once and for all, as a team made up entirely of pitchers will play a team made entirely up of hitters. And at the end of the day, ONLY ONE SHALL BE LEFT STANDING…. AFTER THE JUMP:
OUR SET-UP
Team Pitcher will, of course, be the Dodgers. I mean, have you seen Greinke’s ERA lately? Team Hitter will, obviously, be the Blue Jays. The teams of 25 will be made based on the Fangraphs version of WAR- because I said so- and will not be made with any idea of how good a hitter a pitcher is or how good a pitcher a hitter is. However, players whenever possible will be in their “natural” position (i.e. a closer would close, a catcher would catch), unless the computer decides otherwise. For position players, I will have two from each position (including DH) and then the top players not in the top two of their position. For relievers, I will have the top ten starters and the top ten relievers, and the top four who are not already on the team, and Bartolo Colon, because he’s Bartolo Colon. Once the rosters are selected, the line-ups and depth charts WILL be made with a pitchers’ hitting ability or a hitters’ pitching ability in mind.
The game will be held at Dodger Stadium, because I said so.
The starting lineups:
As you can see, this is a strange thing. Buster Posey is a starting pitcher, sure, but the “Dodgers” roster is absolutely bizarre. Madison Bumgarner is catching, leading to a Kershaw-Bumgarner battery. Max Scherzer is leading off. There are left handed players at 2B and 3B. And… hang on… what the hell is Andrew McCutchen doing at Catcher? Oh, it probably got confused at the fact that Posey, a catcher, is starting. Hang on a second…
Okay, that’s better.
So let’s get started.
The Game:
Clearly, the biggest threat for Kershaw may not be any particular batter, so much as how bad the defense behind him might be. He knows this, and so wisely strikes out Kinsler, Donaldson and Trout in order, and MadBum didn’t screw up behind the plate. So, to the bottom of the 1st we go, where…
WHAT THE HECK IS MCCUTCHEN DOING BEHIND THE PLATE!?!?!
Okay, so, here’s the thing: to make sure that the game knows that some of the position players are now pitchers, I changed their official position to pitcher. Among those is the backup catcher, Brian McCann. That meant both catchers were labeled as pitchers, so whenever I left the computer to it’s own devices, it figured that there were no catchers on the roster and so just threw Cutch in there.
So, I took over again and forced McCann in. This means McCutchen won’t be able to play the rest of the game, but if the Hitters are having trouble with an outfield of Cespedes, Trout and Harper, McCutchen isn’t going to be much help anyway.
And so we begin, and Buster Posey promptly walks Max Scherzer. Now, Posey was a pitcher at times in college, but obviously OOTP doesn’t know that, because it’s having him send in Little-League style 66 MPH fastballs. BUT THAT’S ENOUGH FOR THE JOB AT TIMES, right, Andrew Miller?
Note: The “heckuva fastball” was 64 MPH. Feel the burn.
However, Posey then walks Zack Greinke, and then, against Jacob deGrom, throws a pitch that gets past McCann. Men now stand at 2nd and 3rd with one out. deGrom further works the count to 3-2, and then draws a walk. So now, the bases are loaded for Madison Bumgarner. Yes, BUSTER POSEY IS PITCHING AGAINST MADISON BUMGARNER!
Posey’s first pitch is ripped on the ground foul. Bumgarner then fouls back the second pitch. Posey then throws a ball, and then Bumgarner sends a short down to right that goes foul.
And then, Madison Bumgarner finally has had enough and hits a ball up the middle, bringing Scherzer and Greinke home on a 2-RBI single that also puts deGrom at third, with still just one out. Posey mentally notes to himself not to send the Bumgarner family a Christmas card this year.
The horrors continue for Posey, however, as Arrieta hits a double to left that brings home deGrom. Dallas Keuchel then gets a 2-RBI single to make it 5-0 Pitchers/Dodgers. Then Josh Donaldson throws a would-be double-play wide, allowing Dallas Keuchel to get to second and Ken Giles to get to first. Finally, something goes right for Posey when Clayton Kershaw bunts and Posey is able to get the lead runner at third for the second out and then Scherzer- in his second plate appearance of the inning- grounds out to short. 5 runs on three hits and an error in the bottom of the first, as Posey threw 39 pitches, 20 for strikes.
In the top of the second, the hitters appear ready for revenge. Although Goldschmidt flies out, McCann then singles, then Cespedes takes knocks a ball over Ken Giles’ head for a stand-up double that moves McCann to third. Bryce Harper then gets McCann home on a sacrifice fly, and the hitters are on the board. Jung-Ho Kang (who is not injured in this) then is able to hit a ball that falls in between Zack Greinke and Ken Giles, allowing Cespedes to score and make it 5-2.
That, however, would prove to be it in the top of the second, as while Posey walks, Kinsler pops out.
Perhaps reinvigorated by the showing of offense, Posey has a much easier bottom of the second, sending down the pitchers 1-2-3, although Jacob deGrom put a scare by sending a pitch deep that Bryce Harper has to lunge for for the out.
The good vibes continue for the hitters in the top of the third, as Donaldson gets a hit to lead-off and then moves to second on a wild-pitch with one out and Goldschmidt up. Goldschmidt then hits it deep and off the right field wall, allowing Donaldson to score to make it 5-3. A little later, Cespedes hits a two-out double that brings Goldschmidt home, narrowing the lead to one. The game goes to the bottom of the third 5-4 in favor of the pitchers.
Bumgarner leads off the bottom of the inning with a double off of Posey, but that is the only hit of the inning for the pitchers, and the score remains 5-4.
In a somewhat surprising move, the top of the fourth sees a pitching change, as Kershaw is taken out and replaced with David Price, who strikes out Jung-Ho Kang to begin the inning. In another surprising move, Buster Posey is pinch-hit for by Michael Brantley. This, clearly, is a glitch that has come about from the fact that the in-game AI is not looking at Posey’s hitting abilities, but rather is simply seeing he was a pitcher who had been getting beaten up, and so pinch-hit for him.
Or maybe the AI is just psychic, because Michael Brantley hits the ball deep and off the centerfield wall for a stand-up double, then tags up and goes to third on a Ian Kinsler fly-out. Oh, sure, Price then strikes out Donaldson to end the inning and leaves the score at 5-4 again, but, hey, I’m not OOTP’s AI.
Replacing Posey on the mound is Curtis Granderson. Let’s look at Grandy’s pitching scouting report, shall we?
Oof.
Anyway, Granderson gives up a single to Price to start the inning, but at least he’s getting the ball into the 70s, which is nice, and he then goes and gets Max Scherzer to fly out and has Andrew Miller ground into a double play. After 4 innings, it’s still 5-4 pitchers.
Mike Trout leads off the fifth, and this happens:
Oof.
Trout then moves to second on a Goldschmidt fly-out, and later ties it all up when he comes home on another Yoenis Cespedes hit, his third of the day. Clearly, Yo is just as hot in OOTP as he currently is in the real world.
And then… Bryce Harper gives the hitters a lead:
The shot to center chases away David Price, and Wade Davis then comes in and gives up a single to Kang. Davis then strikes out Granderson, though, ending the inning. It’s 7-5 hitters.
With one out in the bottom of the fifth, Granderson gives up a single to deGrom and then walks Bumgarner. Jake Arrieta then gets one past Kang and scores deGrom to make it 7-6. Dallas Keuchel then ties it up by hitting a sacrifice fly that scores Bumgarner from third. 7-7. And that is what the score remains when the fifth innings ends.
In the top of the sixth, with one out, Greinke is again humiliated in the field, this time by Josh Donaldson:
Would Greinke be this bad in real life at shortstop? We may never know, but the numbers and bits that OOTP eats obviously give it a stomach ache whenever Greinke has to make a play up the middle. Although, to be fair, reality did the same thing with Derek Jeter whenever there was a play up the middle, didn’t it?
Mike Trout doubles, although Donaldson is unable to score on the hit. Paul Goldschmidt takes care of that, though, by hitting a ball up the middle (the announcer was kind enough not to burn Greinke this time), scoring Donaldson and Trout and making it 9-7 for the hitters.
And that proves that for Wade Davis, as Dellin Betances comes in in a BOLD double-switch that puts Bartolo Colon at third to replace Keuchel and the pitcher’s spot taking the 7th position in the lineup. This doesn’t help immediately, though, as McCann doubles in Goldschmidt to make it 10-7, Cespedes singles, and then Bryce Harper sacrifice flies. But, wait, Arrieta tries to throw out McCann at the plate! Let’s see how that goes:
Oof.
Betances strikes out Kang to end the inning, but the damage is done. Going into the bottom of the 6th, the hitters lead 11-7.
Nelson Cruz takes the mound for the hitters in the bottom of the 6th, and faces the immortal Bartolo Colon. And then this happens:
Remember folks:
Bartolo is able to tag up when Scherzer flies out, but the great one is unable to be brought home to score and is left stranded on third baseball.
Despite how well (relatively) Nelson Cruz was doing, he is pinch-hit for by the horribly confused OOTP AI by J.D. Martinez. Meanwhile, the Pitchers put in Cody Allen, who walks Martinez to start the top of the 7th. Kinsler bunts over Martinez for some reason, and then Allen strikes out the next two hitters, allowing me to hawk this t-shirt right here.
After “Take Me Out To The Ballgame” finishes, Edwin Encarnacion comes to the mound, because the AI is basically doing a flailing action right now, and then this happens:
With deGrom’s home run, it’s now 11-8 Hitters. Thankfully for Encarnacion and the hitters, nobody else scores in the innings, although Cody Allen gets a single.
You’d think with Cody Allen being allowed to hit, he’d still be in the game in the top of the 8th, right? Well, obviously not, because it appears that the OOTP AI is at least smart enough not to pinch-hit somebody who might be even crappier of a hitter than Allen. So, in this bizarro world, they let the pitcher hit, and THEN replace him the next inning, in this case with David Robertson, who walks Goldschmidt, lets him go to second on a wild pitch, strikes out McCann, and then intentionally walks Cespedes.
Intentionally walks Cespedes… to face Bryce Harper. Okay then. I guess they are setting up the double play. Or maybe the AI is again psychic, because Robertson strikes out Harper and Kang to end the inning.
Taking the mound for the Hitters in the bottom of the 8th is Kris Bryant, because… reasons. And, what’s more, this is a double-switch that takes out Cespedes, AKA arguably the best player of the game so far, and replaces him with Kevin Kiermaier.
Huh.
The first man that Bryant faces is, of course, the immortal Bartolo Colon. Lightning doesn’t strike twice, however, as Colon lazily flies out to Trout in center. Bryant, by the way, is able to hit the high 70s and low 80s in OOTP, and he uses whatever that is worth to strike out Max Scherzer for the second out. It’s the first strikeout thrown by a Hitter since Buster Posey struck out Andrew Miller in the first inning. Speaking of Miller, Bryant walks him on four pitches, but then gets Greinke to pop out to end the inning.
So, after 8, it’s 11-8 Hitters.
The Pitchers have had enough of this madness and put Aroldis Chapman on the mound in the top of the ninth. Kevin Kiermaier is up, and surely he gets blown away, since everybody gets blown away by Aroldis Chapman, right?
RIGHT?
RIGHT!?!?
Nope.
Oh, and then later in the inning Chapman gives up a solo jack to Mike Trout, making it 13-8, and so he’s pulled for Trevor Rosenthal, who finishes the inning. Baseball is weird, huh?
Called in to finish the game for the Hitters is… Jose Abreu. Yes, Jose Abreu. Also, Brandon Crawford is put in as a defensive replacement for Kang, for… reasons.
Abreu walks deGrom to start the inning, then Bumgarner hits into a fielders choice for the first out. Arrieta then flies out. So, with only one out left, up to the plate to face Jose Abreu is… Trevor Rosenthal… who grounds out to end the game.
BOX SCORE:
Yes, the pitchers actually had more people take the mound than the hitters. Go figure, huh?
Just for fun, I also ran a 162-game simulation of the two teams, here’s how it turned out:
..
So, I do believe that we learned a few things this time:
A team made up entirely of hitters would have to be considered the favorite in a game entirely against pitchers. Out Of The Park Baseball‘s AI gets horribly confused when you have a team made up entirely of hitters or entirely of pitchers. Greinke, Kershaw and Bumgarner are good at hitting. Greinke would not make a good shortstop because apparently his range would stink.
I hope you enjoyed this inaugural installment of Breaking OOTP. Come back next time as we answer another burning question and maybe drive the OOTP AI further into madness.
AdvertisementsSource: Slate
In the early days of artificial intelligence research, it was commonplace for the well-educated academics in the field to (mistakenly) think that being “intelligent” meant being good at things that other well-educated academic researchers struggled at, like playing chess. We now know, however, that it’s far harder to get robots to do things that come naturally to us (like identify objects and pick them up) than it is to get them to prove logical theorems or find patterns in huge volumes of data—things we humans struggle at. This and other counter-intuitive trends in AI and research on the nature of human intelligence have discouraged researchers from trying to predict which jobs will be automated, but a provocative new studyby Carl Frey and Michael Osborne at Oxford University tries to do just that, and their findings are alarming.
In “The Future of Employment: How Susceptible Are Jobs to Computerisation?,” Frey and Osborne estimate that 47 percent of U.S. jobs are “at risk” of being automated in the next 20 years. Read the entire article hereVermont Sen. Bernie Sanders claimed Monday that President Trump bears “some responsibility” for the violence in Charlottesville this weekend.
Sanders indicated in an interview with reporters that Trump bears responsibility for the violence because he previously has not condemned white nationalists as strongly as Sanders would have liked. Sanders also posted — and then immediately deleted — a pair of tweets blaming Trump both for Charlottesville and for white supremacy generally. (RELATED: Man Who Opened Fire On GOP Lawmakers Volunteered On Bernie Sanders’ Campaign)
“How much, if any responsibility do you think that the Trump administration has for conjuring that behavior?” a reporter asked Sanders about this weekend’s violence.
“Look, I think it is — when you have a president who doesn’t have the guts to say what the vast majority of the people understand to be true, that white supremacy and neo-Nazism have got to be condemned, he can’t even do that!” Sanders claimed. “The message he is sending out to racists and neo-Nazis all over the country is, ‘It’s OK.’ In fact, you heard some language to that. ‘The president hasn’t condemned us. Why don’t we do more rallies? Why don’t we spread the word of white supremacy and racism and neo-Nazism?'” (RELATED: Portland Killer Is An Anti-Circumcision, Bernie Sanders Supporter)
“So do I think the president bears some responsibility for that?” Sanders asked, returning to the original question. “Absolutely, yes.”
Sanders’ Twitter account first posted video of Sanders’ answer with the caption: “Do I think the president bares [sic] some responsibility for what happened Charlottesville? Absolutely, yes.” That tweet was immediately deleted.
A subsequent Sanders tweet blamed Trump for “conjuring the behavior of white supremacists in this country.” That tweet, too, was immediately deleted.
A third tweet, which has not been deleted and remains on Twitter, is captioned: “The message President Trump sent out to racists and Neo-Nazis all over the country this past weekend is this is okay.”
WATCH:
The message President Trump sent out to racists and Neo-Nazis all over the country this past weekend is this is okay. pic.twitter.com/k7o161yzuU — Bernie Sanders (@SenSanders) August 14, 2017
Trump unequivocally condemned racists and white supremacists in a statement on Monday. “Racism is evil and those who cause violence in its name are criminals and thugs, including the KKK, neo-Nazis, white supremacists and other hate groups that are repugnant to everything we hold dear as Americans,” Trump said.Hate crimes against Muslims in the United States shot up 67 percent in 2015 to their highest levels since the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 attacks, according to new FBI statistics.
Overall, 57 percent of the 5,850 reported incidents were motivated by race or ethnicity, while 20 percent of hate crimes were related to religious bias, the federal law enforcement agency reported on Monday.
There were 257 incidents of anti-Muslim bias in 2015, compared with 154 the previous year. The number is second only to the surge in hate crimes following the 9/11 attacks in 2001, when 481 incidents against Muslims were reported.
While there was a huge increase in crimes against Muslims, Jews remained the most frequent target of religious-based hate crimes in the US, representing 53 percent of all those reported, the FBI said.
READ MORE: Reports of racist attacks rise after Donald Trump's win
The bureau's report also listed 1,053 hate crimes regarding sexual orientation, 19 percent of which were committed against gay males.
The report came at a time of heightened racial and religious tensions in the US following last week's presidential election.
'Just a fraction'
Donald Trump just named a white supremacist as chief strategist. We have no reason to believe things are going to get better for the American Muslim community or other minorities any time soon. Ibrahim Hooper, CAIR
"I think these statistics are just a fraction of what we see on the ground right now," Ibrahim Hooper, from the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), told Al Jazeera.
"We witnessed a spark in the number of hate crimes against Muslims in late 2015, and this number increased further during Donald Trump's election campaign.
"We expect the situation to get worse in the future, based on the fact that Donald Trump had mainstreamed Islamophobia."
President-elect Trump's campaign had heavily focused on minorities, immigrants and Muslims, routinely painting these groups as threats to peace, the economy, and homeland security.
Famously while campaigning, Trump called for a ban on Muslims entering the US. He also promised to build a wall to block Mexicans.
In the first television interview since his election, Trump said he is planning to immediately deport or jail as many as three million undocumented immigrants.
There have been several reports of racist, Islamophobic and anti-semitic incidents since last Tuesday's election that have sparked outrage, including a mosque at New York University’s Brooklyn campus being vandalised, and several Muslim women reporting Trump supporters attempting to rip off their headscarves.
Black students at the University of Pennsylvania (UPenn) said they were afraid to attend classes after they were subjected to racial slurs and threats of lynching following the election.
A videotaped assault in Chicago showed black men beating a white man as onlookers screamed, "You voted Trump!"
Hundreds of Americans also detailed on social media racist attacks that have taken place since the election.
The Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks hate crimes across the United States, has counted more than 200 complaints since election day, according to USA Today.
On Sunday, Trump further ignited civil rights organisations' concerns by naming right-wing Breitbart news executive Stephen Bannon as his chief strategist and senior counsellor.
Under Bannon's tenure, Breitbart pushed a nationalist agenda and |
urged Ottawa’s public school board not to pursue a ban on rugby.
“It would not be something she’d want,” said the father of the 17-year-old John McCrae student who died after suffering concussions playing the sport.
Stringer, along with representatives of Rugby Canada, were responding at Tuesday night’s meeting of the Ottawa Carleton District School Board to a June 4 story in the Citizen that reported some trustees had suggested banning the sport from Ottawa’s high schools.
They asked instead that the board consider the 49 recommendations made by a jury from the inquest into Rowan’s death earlier this month, including a number aimed at making rugby safer in schools. The jury did not recommend that rugby be banned.
“If anyone has reason for removing rugby in high schools it would be me and my family. However, that’s never been part of our narrative,” said Stringer.
“I can speak for Rowan: She would not approve of anything like this.”
Board trustees said there had been no motions to ban rugby, nor are they anticipating any.
A board spokesperson previously told the Citizen that the issue of whether rugby should continue at Ottawa public schools “requires further consideration.” However, the school board has not formally discussed the issue.
Rugby Canada director Tim Powers and former pro rugby player Al Charron supported Stringer, and told the board that the national organization wishes to be allowed to help make the sport safer for young athletes at Ottawa’s high schools.
“Rowan’s legacy should be awareness on this issue,” said Charron, who played for the Canadian national rugby team for 13 years, including captaining the team at the 2003 Rugby World Cup after recovering from a devastating knee injury. He’s now a member of the Ottawa Sports Hall of Fame and works for Rugby Canada.
Charron said rugby is a “tough game without question, but it’s not a dangerous sport.”
Powers said their research suggests that the risk of sustaining a “catastrophic injury” in rugby is lower than or at comparable levels to other contact sports such as hockey or football, something he said board trustees who may still be mulling over a move to ban rugby should consider.
“We think emotion should play no role in determining rugby’s future with your school board,” he said, adding that Rugby Canada would like to work with the school board to make rugby safer for students.
“We want to, as the national governing body for the sport, develop the best possible policy for rugby in your schools.”PARIS — Satellite fleet operator SES said it is likely to trade its midyear launch aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket for a slot later in the year rather than be the first to fly a Falcon 9 with Merlin 1D engines adjusted for improved thrust.
The company’s decision is unrelated to Hawthorne, California-based SpaceX’s ongoing effort to win U.S. Air Force certification to bid against United Launch Alliance of Denver on military launches. But SES’s internal debate – the company said no formal decision had been made – shows the often complicated trade-offs each organization, government or commercial, must make before signing up with a launch service provider.
NASA, which is working through its own Falcon 9 certification, has already delayed a planned Falcon 9 launch this spring until later this year in part to wait for the certification process to complete.
While NASA relies on SpaceX to deliver cargo to the International Space Station, NASA has not certified the Falcon 9 rocket to launch science satellites, which is why the Jason-3 ocean-topography satellite, a U.S.-European mission, will not launch until mid-year despite the fact that its predecessor, Jason-2, is well past its scheduled retirement date.
Luxembourg-based SES in December 2013 flew its SES-8 satellite on the Falcon 9’s first mission to geostationary transfer orbit – an extraordinary step the conservative company took to show how much it believed in the Falcon 9’s importance to the commercial launch sector. SES-8 was successfully placed into orbit.
Second Thoughts about Being First
SpaceX has been working since then to coax more thrust out of the Merlin 1D engine, which the company said before the SES-8 launch was operating at only 85 percent of its potential.
In a briefing with reporters here Jan. 22, SES officials said they retain full confidence in SpaceX and have seen the data showing the Merlin 1D engine’s improved performance on the ground.
But the SES-9 satellite scheduled for launch this year is not SES-8, and the cost-benefit trade-offs on whether to be the first to trust your satellite to an upgraded rocket engine are not the same, either, said Martin Halliwell, SES’s chief technical officer.
“The situation we have now with SpaceX is that we are awaiting manifest updates,” Halliwell said. “You know SpaceX is introducing into their manifest a new engine, or a modification of the current engine, with about a 20 percent increase in thrust. We’re making a decision internally as to whether we want to be the first to fly it.”
SES-9, a Boeing Space and Intelligence Systems 702-HP spacecraft expected to weigh 5,300 kilograms at launch, is near the limit of what the current Falcon 9 v1.1 vehicle can carry and was to be placed into a subsynchronous orbit.SES-9 then would use its on-board propulsion to climb to final geostationary orbit.
SES-9 carries 81 transponder, 53 of which are designed to capture new business in the Indian Ocean region, including maritime customers, from is operating slot at 108.2 degrees east.
SES-8, by comparison, weighed just 3,200 kilograms at launch. It carries a payload of up to 33 transponders, including 21 for new business.
Halliwell said completion of SES-9 is on track for April or May.
One of the trade-offs that SES will look at is whether, having allowed one SpaceX launch slot to pass, it will have another in short order. SpaceX has stopped publishing its launch schedule but at last count it had well over a dozen missions planned this year from both the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida and Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.
“If we decide we are not going to be the first to fly this, then we will be launching later in the manifest, Halliwell said. “It’ll be probably later in the year, in the August-September time frame.”
One of the benefits of the Merlin 1D performance upgrade is that it will permit SpaceX to launch payloads with the same maximum weight as it does currently while at the same time preserving capacity so that the first stage can power itself to an unmanned oceangoing barge to be recovered and reused.
As he has been for several years, Halliwell said he is rooting for SpaceX to succeed with a first-stage recovery as the company advances toward its goal of reusing the stage to cut launch costs.
“We know the rocket has done a lot of testing and has run many, many hours,” Halliwell said. “It looks like a good solution. However, we’ll be making a decision soon. From a power-to-weight point of view this is already a powerful engine and now we’re stretching it another 20 percent. So we’ll have to take a very close look at this.”Yellow caution tape flapped in the wind, crisscrossing the entrance of a mausoleum erected nearly 100 years ago.
It's the latest sign of vandalism at Green Lawn Cemetery, where more than 600 grave sites have been damaged in the past two years at a cost of more than $1 million.
The latest incident occurred on Jan. 9 when a man entered through a broken fence and damaged a mausoleum and eight grave sites before grabbing a fistful of American flags from the graves of veterans and lighting them afire. He tossed the burning flags into a brush pile — an act caught by a security camera — before leaving the cemetery.
"Fences are a lot like locks. They keep honest people out," said Randy Rogers, a trustee on the cemetery's volunteer board.
The cemetery has grave sites of five governors and five Medal of Honor recipients, including Civil War veteran Ovid Smith, whose marker was damaged by vandals on Aug. 14.
The 360-acre Green Lawn Cemetery was founded in 1848 and designed by a landscape architect to be a rural cemetery that would offer peace and tranquility.
Many notable people are buried there, including Samuel Bush, a grandfather of President George H.W. Bush; humorist James Thurber; and Cromwell Dixon, a 19-year-old who was the first person to fly over the Continental Divide.
The damaged mausoleum is where Al G. Field was buried 96 years ago. He was known for minstrel shows that toured for 46 weeks a year throughout the Midwest and East Coast and a lengthy tour throughout the South, according to Dispatch archives.
"The minstrel shows are a mixed part of our history. On one hand, they perpetuated a lot of racist stereotypes," Rogers said. "On the other hand, they also introduced some black culture to white Americans when they had the black minstrel shows."
Field's shows were notable in that he also hosted a separate show with an all-black cast, Rogers said.
Field's grave site was disturbed a few weeks ago when a vandal attempted to smash the glass on the front doors. The doors had been replaced with safety glass after a previous incident. This time, one spot showed cracks surrounding the point of impact.
On the back side of the mausoleum, shards of stained glass in purple and blue hues remain around the frame of a window. It will cost an estimated $3,500 to replace.
Cemetery staff members have not been able to reach any of Field's descendants. It's possible there might not be any. That has been a challenge for many of the damaged historic grave sites, which leaves the cemetery association to find the money to pay for repairs.
"Everyone is saddened and heartbroken by it. Everyone is angry about it," Rogers said.
On Sunday, the Columbus Landmarks Foundation hosted a walking tour of the damage, with all proceeds going to benefit restoration efforts.
Rogers said later that more than 80 people participated and that someone donated $3,500 to repair the stained-glass window.
Columbus State Community College created a course this semester that has students mapping the damaged grave sites to help cemetery employees.
A GoFundMe.com page for cemetery restoration was set up a couple of months ago, and nearly $6,000 has been raised by that effort and Sunday's walk.
Central Ohio Crime Stoppers, which is offering the $1,000 reward, has released photos of the latest vandalism in hopes that someone will come forward with a tip leading to an arrest.
"This isn't the run-of-the-mill vandalism case. This is repeated," said Kristen McKinley, board president of Central Ohio Crime Stoppers.
Anyone with information can call 614-461-TIPS (8477), submit a tip online at stopcrime.org or text a tip to CRIMES, or 274637, and use the keyword CMH.
Dispatch library director Julie Fulton contributed to this story.
bburger@dispatch.com
@abburgerCongrats, you've made it into finance...in the middle office. What is the middle office? Definitions vary, but think risk management, certain accounting roles, corporate treasury--broadly speaking, you interact with the business divisions on externally-related (i.e. client, funding) topics, but don't directly interact with the client. Most importantly, you don't make the firm money.
That's besides the point--better explanations are elsewhere. What does the middle office actually do?
Here's a day in my life (specifically, credit risk management as an analyst/associate).
6:20 am- Rise. My office isn't in NYC, but we work the hours. MO roles can be elsewhere to save the firm $$$ on compensation and rent.
7:05 am- Out the door, and either biking or taking the bus (psh subway, you think this is NYC?)
7:15 am- Arrive at the office. Building looks gorgeous, but the inside is the same as any open-plan office. We even have lockers for our stuff--who knew a BB was so like middle school? Then again, it's middle office. Also keep cereal in the locker (like everyone) since the milk is free. Ever wonder what goes into SG&A expense?
7:15-8:15am- Catch up on the news and the companies I cover. I'm in credit risk, so each day starts with me scanning SNL, WSJ, Bloomberg etc. for news on mergers, bankruptcies, and especially rating agency actions (our contracts with counterparties often have rating-based breaks). If something occurs (Moody's writes an analysis of a sector, Crappy Bank Inc. defaults, Muppets & Co. defrauds clients...) I write a summary post and email the rest of my credit team (i.e. corporates/banks/funds/leveraged fin group) in my office and in NYC. If it's good, it gets posted to the MDs, and if you're really golden, they write back "thx"...or a list of 25 questions...
8:15-9:15am- Generally the first meeting of the day is slotted in here. Planning for our monthly credit review meetings, or for some change in our rating methodology, or a rearrangement of our portfolios.
9:15-9:30am--Starbucks, because our coffee in the office is ________.
9:30-11:30am- Review writing, part 1: We operate on a monthly review cycle--each analyst covers several hundred counterparties (not like equity research!) that are sorted by industry and/or geography. So a corporates group will have an analyst for TMT, for airlines/transport, for resources; financials will have insurance analysts, emerging markets coverage, munis may or may not be thrown in here; some firms may also split off their funds coverage from FIs while others include it.
11:30-12:30- Lunch! Not everything about MO is bad. IBD may get the pay and prestige, but we get hour-long lunches most days (at least if you're productive). Christmas is over though, so no more 2hr sushi lunches with sake...
12:30-4:00pm- Reviews, part 2. There may also be more meetings on side projects--credit risk tends to get pulled into some interesting firmwide projects since the higher-ups like a range of views. So it could be on tax policy, regulatory strategy, the Fed's latest diktats...it's a nice break from the more tedious review writing.
4:00pm- is it a Friday? Go home, since your VPs left at 3:45. Is it not a Friday? Is the MD gone? Leave 5 min after the VPs; yes, facetime matters here too.
5:00pm- Facetime only matters so much. GO HOME. Seriously--the VPs don't care after this point.
Unless your work isn't done, in which case you stay late.
Or you have a call with an Asian office.
6:30pm--if you're finishing up that team call with Tokyo/ HK /SG, send some pings to your team about dinner. Order dinner--make sure to also get lunch for tomorrow. Our dinner $$$ is the same as NYC's, but goes a lot farther. Time it so you're done eating by 8:05. Leave.
8:10pm- No one is here. Literally not even the cleaners; they left at 7:45
10-10:30pm- Bed. This city isn't known for its nightlife. Seriously.
Conclusion: While not for everyone (myself included in the long term), it's a good place to get your foot in the door; it's also rather like a corporate finance job in that you have manageable work hours at the cost of (comparatively) mediocre pay. You also have job security--turnover is high due to meh pay (but morale is pretty good), while those who stay can make VP simply through attrition.THE STORY OF Ireland’s capital city from independence until today is told in historian Tim Carey’s book Dublin Since 1922. Through photos and events, he looks at the key moments in Ireland’s history through the lives of Dublin’s inhabitants. Here, he casts an eye over the late 1970s and early 1980s. Dublin Since 1922 is nominated in the Best Irish Published Book category of the Bord Gáis Energy Irish Book Awards, a category sponsored by TheJournal.ie.
Thursday 23 November, 1978
Most young people with access to BBC television turn it on at 7.20pm to watch this week’s edition of Top of the Pops and the countdown to the number one record.
For the last seven weeks, Olivia Newton John and John Travolta have topped the charts with Summer Nights, a song about innocent teenage love from this year’s hit movie musical Grease. But today they are knocked off the number one spot by quite a different song. It is the first ‘New Wave’ number one and the first ever by an Irish band. It is Rat Trap by Dublin’s Boomtown Rats.
Before they start, members of the Rats turn to the camera, tear up pictures of John Travolta and yawn. Then they break into Rat Trap.
The Boomtown Rats’ first gig was in Bolton Street Institute of Technology in 1976. They were led by Bob Geldof, from Dún Laoghaire. After attending the well-heeled private school Blackrock College, the unconventional Geldof worked for a time in an abattoir that backed onto the Grand Canal. He then went to Canada where he worked for a progressive newspaper before returning to Dublin in early 1975.
After failing to raise money to set up a new publication called Buy and Sell, he sold spyholes for doors to people in the new suburbs in the west of the city. Then he got involved with a new band called Nightlife Thugs. While they were finding their way, bashing out tunes, they were offered the gig at Bolton Street.
At the break in the middle of that first gig, Geldof decided a name change was needed. Nightlife Thugs was rubbed off the board beside the stage and The Boomtown Rats written in its stead – at the time Geldof had been reading Woody Guthrie’s biography Bound for Glory which featured a gang of children called the Boomtown Rats.
Boomtown Rats star Bob Geldof on stage at Wembley during the Live Aid Charity concert Source: PA Archive/PA Images
The Rats quickly became the most popular band in the city.
They are not just known for their lyrics and music but also for laughs – they invite the audience on stage to Do the Rat – enthusiasm, bravado and a lead singer in Geldof with a big mouth and big head – at one gig Geldof is God was emblazoned on his T-shirt. At another he told the audience they were going to make him rich. And he was right.
The Rats moved to England and in February last year signed with the Ensign record label for £700,000. It is the biggest record deal in the history of pop music. After successful singles including Looking After Number One, Like Clockwork and She’s so Modern they released Rat Trap.
It is the most unlikely of hits.
It could hardly be further from Grease’s sweet teenage dreams of 1950s Middle America. Rat Trap tells a tale from the darker side of Dublin nightlife based on Geldof’s experiences at the Grand Canal meat factory. It features Dublin landmarks such as the Five Lamps, at the top of Amiens Street, the gasometer along the Liffey, an Italian café, flats and the meat factory. It is a story of poverty, street fights, urban blight, boredom, fighting parents and Billy and Judy who do not have the sweet teenage dreams of Danny and Sandy from Grease but have been caught in a rat trap from which there is no escape.
Thursday, 1 October 1981
It is a time of great change for Irish women. Equality legislation, increased social freedom, better education and travel opportunities, have all resulted in a wide range of choices being available for women in the 1980s – which job to aim for, where to live, with whom to live, to marry or not, to live with someone or not, to stay in or leave a bad marriage, whether or not to bring up a child alone.
Every year young women from around the country move to Dublin for employment, new experiences and a better social life. According to the latest census, there are 30,000 more women in Dublin than men. To help them survive life in the capital, Lorna Hogg has written A Guide for Single Women in Ireland.
Hogg provides mainly practical advice. Newcomers to Dublin should buy a large map of the city and order a copy of In Dublin and read the Evening Press and Evening Herald to find out what is going on. There are suggestions as to where to eat and what to do. There is advice on building a wardrobe – because, according to Hogg, learning to dress effectively is ‘an absolute priority for the modern woman’ – managing money – because ‘money is power’ – buying a car, buying a house and setting up a business.
While many women successfully navigate single life in Dublin, others are less successful, and for these Hogg outlines the tell-tale symptoms of alcoholism and signs of depression.
She also addresses the issue of relationships. According to Hogg, the biggest difference between the current generation of young women and those of previous generations is that they want a ‘sharing’ relationship, not one in which women are subservient to men or dependent on them.
But Hogg warns about the infidelities of Dublin’s married men. Because not all are what they make themselves out to be. The single woman needs to be on the lookout for men who do not ask to be introduced to their friends and family, who do not ask about their day, who do not take an interest in their lives.
She also advises avoiding what she describes as Dublin’s ‘ineligible men’ which include drunks, the confirmed drug addicts, the violent, the permanent womanisers and the gays and transvestites who marry women or form relationships with girls simply to convince either themselves or society, or both, that they are straight.
March 1984
Source: Leon Farrell/Photocall Ireland
Unemployment, crime, emigration, dereliction. There seems to be no end of reasons to leave Dublin. And that is what is happening. For the first time in decades, more people are emigrating from the capital than are moving into it from other parts of Ireland.
Despite the depressed conditions, In Dublin magazine is far from downbeat about the capital. To celebrate its two-hundredth issue, it publishes a list of 200 reasons that people should stay in Dublin, 200 reasons for Dubliners not to emigrate, 200 reasons not to give up.
From being on a suburban train as it leaves the Dalkey tunnel and the view of Killiney Bay opens out below, to playing rings in Kavanagh’s pub in Glasnevin.
From sipping a glass of whiskey in Kehoe’s pub on South Anne Street, to going to the corporation’s Fruit and Veg Market on Chancery Street.
From the 31 Turner watercolours exhibited in the National Gallery in January’s dim light, to the sound of a saxophone or tin whistle echoing in Merchant’s Arch by the Ha’Penny Bridge.
From the near-forgotten – except for cider parties – War Memorial Gardens in
Islandbridge, to Ricardo’s Pool Hall on Camden Street.
From the ‘Why Go Bald’ sign at the bottom of South Great George’s Street, to the reading room of the National Library.
From the brass bands in the tea tent at the Dublin Horse Show, to the half-wild horses of Ballyfermot and Finglas.
From eating fresh cod and a large single from Burdock’s on Werburgh Street, to watching the sun set on the Sugarloaf from the Baily Lighthouse on Howth Head.
Because even in this, the worst of times, there are many things to still love in the city, still things that make Dublin unique.
The full shortlists for the Irish Book Awards are available on the official site. Members of the public can vote up until 11 November for their favourite books, through the website. The awards will take place on 16 November.A group of drunken anti-Semites terrorized a school bus filled with Jewish students in Australia, shouting Nazi slogans and threatening to murder everyone on board on Wednesday.
Speaking to Australia's Daily Telegraph, mother Jackie Blackburn said her 12, 10 and eight-year-old daughters, who were on their way home from Mount Sinai, Mariah and Emanuel kindergarten in Bondi, were left "traumatized" by the attack.
She said she was alerted to the incident after her daughter called her hysterical with fear.
"She said: ‘Hey Mummy, please help us, there are eight strange men who have been let on to a school bus and they are screaming ‘Heil Hitler! Kill the Jews!’ they want to cut out our throats’."
Chillingly, at that point "the phone cut off and I couldn’t hear anything," she told The Telegraph.
"The next thing her friend Noah Stanton called me and said “Jacqui it’s bad, it’s really bad. Get hold of my mum. Please help us!"
"They were screaming ‘Heil Hitler’, ‘kill the Jews’, ‘Palestine must kill you Jews’, ‘we’re going to cut your throats and slice your throats open’ — just all very bad anti-Semitic stuff," she said.
Blackburn said she could not understand why the bus driver - who was new on the job - "opened the doors for these strange men and allowed them on to torment the kids." But when she confronted him "he denied everything."
"He wouldn’t give me his name or details. He said they weren’t drunk, he was justifying why he let them on, he was denying what the kids had gone through and been traumatized by."
"I’m shaking like a leaf. My kids are on a private school bus it’s only for Jewish schoolchildren."
Two of the offenders were described as "twins" with blonde hair.
Isabelle Stanton, another mother whose daughters were on the bus, said she was shocked that the wave of anti-Semitism which has engulfed Europe recently had found its way to Australia.
"I am shaken up because I never expected something like this to happen in Australia and in Sydney. I expect it in Belgium where I’m from where there’s been anti-Semitic attacks," she said.
“It’s absolutely wrong to import something from the Middle East, I have no words, when children are involved it triggers some terrible emotions.”
Her daughter, 12-year-old Noah, said the men looked "drunk" and couldn't walk straight, and boasted that they had just taken drugs.
"We were panicking and crying. When they got off the bus they said ‘f*** Jews’ and ‘stop taking over Palestine’ and ‘we will kill you and cut your throats’."
While anti-Semitism in Australia is relatively rare, the country has clearly not been immune to the trend of Islamists, along with extremists on the far-left and far-right, using the conflict between Israel and Hamas to stoke anti-Semitism.
On Monday a visiting hassidic rabbi, Rabbi Avraham Shalom Halberstam - also known as the Stropkover rebbe - was attacked along with his assistant in a shopping mall in the city of Perth.
A witness, Danny Mayer, described to JTA how six teenagers surrounded the two men, hurling abuse at them.
"They were surrounding him, so I raced over to get him into the car and they surrounded the car screaming, ‘You are killing babies in Gaza,’" he recounted.
He said the attackers ran away when he began filming them, but added that "the wider community needs to know that Jews around the world are being affected because they are Jews."
And just two weeks ago, vandals daubed the words "Zionist scum" on a Jewish school in Perth.
Vil Alhadeff, CEO of the New South Wales Jewish Board of Deputies which represents local Jews, said he was "deeply disturbed" at the bus attack." condemned the racist ambush.
"We are working with the police and the state government to ensure that proper and adequate security measures are put in place," he said.One feature of our time is the disruption du jour — the whiplash of yet another big surprise that promises to upset everything and everyone for years and perhaps decades to come:
Brexit, the Trump election, and the broader anti-establishment global uprising, springing from lost jobs, income, stature and community, and making many people ambivalent about the post-war system of collective diplomacy and open borders.
springing from lost jobs, income, stature and community, and making many people ambivalent about the post-war system of collective diplomacy and open borders. Robotization — the shift to hyper-automation and the potential that many of our jobs will be swallowed up by machines.
— the shift to hyper-automation and the potential that many of our jobs will be swallowed up by machines. And now the new monopolists, a creeping change in how we view a few tech monoliths that have amassed colossal power — Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google and Microsoft.
Connecting the dots: These three narratives are melding into a gigantic, compound earthquake. When we speak of the race to artificial intelligence and robotization, we mean research dominated by American big tech, along with its Chinese cousins — Alibaba, Baidu and Tencent. When the workplace is filled with intelligent machines some time in the future, their brains are likely to come from one or more of these companies.
In 2001, Goldman Sachs analyst Jim O'Neill published a paper that coined the term "BRIC." Brazil, Russia, India and China would power the next stage of global growth, O'Neill said. The acronym caught fire. The new powers in global growth are the major U.S. and Chinese tech companies, though they fit less comfortably into an acronym.
For that and other reasons, including the decimation of retail by Amazon, they are core to our unease and alienation, as Axios has reported, and they are facing increasing scrutiny.
Going deep: This week, we look at two forthcoming books and a much-discussed legal paper that explain this evolving mind shift, and point the way forward:
The Four, by NYU professor Scott Galloway; World Without Mind, by Atlantic magazine writer Franklin Foer; and Amazon's Antitrust Paradox, by New America fellow Lina Khan.
Frank Foer: A surrender of free will
We are at the mercy of these companies, with billions of people outside China using Google to search the Internet, Facebook to follow their friends, Apple to talk to them, Amazon to buy stuff, and Microsoft for their office needs. Within China, the same can be said for the BAT companies. But that is more dangerous than seems apparent. Foer notes:
Amazon can kill or hobble a book, an author or an entire publisher, and did so to Hachette and Macmillan in 2014, delaying shipments and stripping sales links so books couldn't be bought at all.
Google worked to swing the 2012 U.S. presidential election for Barack Obama, boasting about the power of its analytics tool to help his campaign.
Facebook can also target and favor candidates of its choosing.
All of this troubles Foer, who delivers a passionate argument for the public to wake up and reconsider its tech idolatry. "Our faith in technology is no longer fully consistent with our belief in liberty," he writes. "We're nearing the moment when we will have to damage one of our revolutions to save the other. Privacy can't survive the present trajectory of technology."
His central message: We are at risk of authoritarianism, and a loss of ourselves — "a breaking point, a point at which our nature is no longer really human."
When Foer started this book, "it felt like I was engaging in a quixotic, esoteric venture," he told me. "The tech companies were held in such high esteem that the possibility that there was something fundamentally wrong with them didn't register with people. But the zeitgeist has started to shift, now in a fairly extreme way."
One of Foer's primary targets is Silicon Valley's war on individual genius in favor of the collaborative and populist crowd. This, he says, flies in the face of how big tech views itself, championing "the fearless entrepreneur, the alienated geek working in the garage" — Steve Jobs, Jack Ma, Bill Gates, Larry Page and Jeff Bezos.
"The titans of technology may be capable of breathtaking originality and solitary genius, but the rest of the world is not," he writes.
Another is tax dodgers: Amazon can offer low prices in large part because for years it paid no taxes, while brick-and-mortar stores forked over both that and rent — Walmart paid a 30% tax rate over the last decade and Home Depot 38%. Amazon's effective tax rate is 13%, and Apple and Alphabet's 16%.
Profits left abroad: Far from reaching their station fair and square, big tech squirrels away its profits overseas, and doesn't pay its fair share at home. Amazon dodges taxes by basing much of its operations in Luxembourg. As of 2015, Google had parked $58.3 billion in tax havens abroad including Ireland and Bermuda. In 2012, Facebook earned $1.1 billion in the U.S., on which it paid not a cent of federal or state tax. "The tech companies maintain every shred of data, yet seem to want to purge every bit of taxable earnings," he writes.
What should be done: Foer urges —
The creation of a Data Protection Authority to secure the sanctity of privacy, similar to former government oversight over telephone and TV.
The possible breakup of Facebook, Google and Amazon into smaller companies, or, Lina Khan writes (see below), forcing them to act as common carriers, and not predatory platforms for their singular corporate good.
"The Internet is amazing," Foer writes, "but we shouldn't treat it as if it exists outside history or is exempt from our moral structures, especially when the stakes are nothing less than the fate of individuality and the fitness of democracy."
Lina Khan: The new railroad barons
In January, the Yale Law Journal published a "note" that has since attracted remarkable attention — more than 50,000 hits — and made Amazon lawyers especially nervous.
It all goes back to 1911, and the U.S. Supreme Court decision to break up John D. Rockefeller's Standard Oil. Khan does not name the old oil titan, but she renders Amazon's Jeff Bezos as the Rockefeller of our age. Like him, Bezos subjects lesser competitors to a "good sweating," predatory pressure designed to drive them out and leave the latest market to Amazon.
and the U.S. Supreme Court decision to break up John D. Rockefeller's Standard Oil. Khan does not name the old oil titan, but she renders Amazon's Jeff Bezos as the Rockefeller of our age. Like him, Bezos subjects lesser competitors to a "good sweating," predatory pressure designed to drive them out and leave the latest market to Amazon. Amazon can afford this approach because it seeks no profit, but only to grow; and pays little taxes or rent.
Amazon's reach is breathtaking, Khan notes, comprising "a marketing platform, a delivery and logistics network, a payment service, a credit lender, an auction house, a major book publisher, a producer of television and films, a fashion designer, a hardware manufacturer, and a leading provider of cloud server space and computing power."
They are modern-day railroad barons: Amazon, Khan told me, should be viewed "as an infrastructure company." And as a group, big tech "are utilities on which other companies depend," equating to the 19th century railroads, which their owners exploited to outsized profit advantage because they could.
Khan's intellectual breakthrough: Her big splash is taking explicit and injurious aim at Robert Bork's landmark 1968 book, The Antitrust Paradox, which carved the path to today's casual attitude toward corporate bigness, as Steven Pearlstein writes at the Washington Post.
Rather than judging anti-trust impact by pricing, supply and demand, Khan reasons, it should be examined through the lens of 21st century online business
The lens should be "whether a company's structure creates certain anticompetitive conflicts of interest; whether it can cross-leverage market advantages across distinct lines of business; and whether the structure of the market incentivizes and permits predatory conduct," Khan writes.
Scott Galloway: Power corrupts
Galloway takes the theme of bigness the next step into popular philosophy: Big tech's success, he writes, pivots on the human need for God (Google) love (Facebook), sex (Apple) and consumption (Amazon). Galloway has mixed success with carrying out the theme, but it's a showcase for a toughly argued, hard-edged message: Big tech's big success is "dangerous for society, and it shows no sign of slowing down. It hollows out the middle class, which leads to bankrupt towns, feeds the angry politics of those who feel cheated, and underpins the rise of demagogues."
Big money, small work force: Google employs 72,000 people, Galloway notes, about 40% of the 185,000 who work for Disney, which has a quarter of Google's $650 billion market cap.
As for the whole of big tech, when you include Microsoft, it employs about 660,000 people.
when you include Microsoft, it employs about 660,000 people. By comparison, with 3% of big tech's $3 trillion market cap, the three big American carmakers employ 940,000 workers.
In other words, says Galloway, the spoils of America's old corporate oligarchy was carved out more fairly among many more workers. "Investors and executives got rich, though not billionaires; and workers, many of them unionized, could buy homes and motorboats and send their kids to college," he writes.Description:
i love to go for walks and even runs,play ball and with other dogs i have a very high energy level and there is never enough for me to do i also love love love to play in the water and to swim in the river or a creek whatever is around i like to go camping and riding in the back of apick up with my nose in the wind and for fun i like to chase quail out of the bushs… i am very very strong and love to pull so it is hard for me to be on a leash but i do need some obedience training i know sit and sometimes no but most of the time i have a mind of my own but i know with the proper traing i would be great and i love kids too did mention that.. i would really like someone who might have some work for me to do |
woman was the one who brought up the horrors of a beloved TV star as an aside. Diane is on a book tour for Bojack, but she can't shut Pandora's Box once she's opened it. Mr. Peanutbutter asks her to hold off, and everyone else tells her she's a horrible person for defaming a good man's name. She keeps fighting, until she's confronted by Hank Hippopopalous himself.
And then she gives up.
The season doesn't get cheerier after that. Whether it's the intense discussion on live TV between Mr. Peanutbutter and Bojack about the latter's Diane come-on last season or the thing that happens in the penultimate episode, the back half of Bojack Horseman's second season hits and hits hard. To be sure, the show continues to be very funny. There are more than a few good laughs per episode, but aside from a couple bits here and there, those aren't the things I'll be thinking about in a year from now.
Good TV makes you think, perhaps even obsess. But with Bojack Horseman, it's not some communal obsession with unraveling mysteries. It's an introspective sort of obsession. Do you see yourself in Bojack? What about Todd or Mr. Peanutbutter or Diane or Princess Carolyn? These characters are all fleshed out this season, and you learn fascinating things about all of them. (Princess Carolyn has a particularly interesting arc, and I cannot tell you how glad I was when they ended the Vincent Adultman subplot early on.) But, of course, the focus is on Bojack, on his inability to change course. His drive to push forward towards certain doom.
And that is truly where Bojack and Captain Walker's journeys converge. Both of them set in motions series of events that can only end badly, but the decision to set them in motion was a choice. Maybe at the time it didn't feel like one, but it was. To point to what is perhaps the most obvious example, Bojack did not have to up and leave to see a girl he was sort of in love with decades ago. He didn't have to stay with her family when he found out she had one. He didn't have to... ya know. He could have walked away.
And ultimately, that's what Spec Ops: The Line is about. It's about walking away, or at least the need to walk away (in a meta sense). Walker doesn't do that. He never stops to think about what he's doing or what he's done. Unlike Bojack, he thinks he's helping people (at least at first... by the end? who knows). Of course, the road to hell is paved with good intentions.
Bojack Horseman matters. It's one of the best shows on television right now. Literally. And that's significant not just because it is in and of itself a significant statement. It's significant because it's a show that, on the face of it, is so easy to dismiss. But once you get past all of that, you're pulled along for a fascinating and often poignant journey through something truly great. It's not the thing you expect, but you eventually realize that it's exactly what you wanted.
You are logged out. Login | Sign upMinistry accused of pre-empting parliament's decision on Trident and attempting to force the hand of future governments
The Ministry of Defence is spending £2bn on new nuclear weapons plants before a formal decision has been taken over whether to replace Trident warheads, according to ministers.
The revelation has prompted fierce attacks on the MoD for making "a complete mockery" of the democratic process by pre-empting a decision and so attempting to force the hands of future governments.
The ministry says the investment helps to ensure the safety of the existing Trident warheads, but accepts that the money also maintains the capability to design a new warhead "should that be required".
Details of the MoD's investments have been unveiled for the first time. They include a £734m facility called Mensa for dismantling and assembling of warheads, a risky but essential maintenance process; a £634m highly enriched uranium plant called Pegasus; and a £231m high explosives factory called Circinus.
The plants are being built at the Atomic Weapons Establishment (AWE) sites at Aldermaston and Burghfield in Berkshire. Other facilities with similarly stellar names but smaller bills – Orion, Gemini, and Leo – are also being built as part of the AWE development plan covering 2005 to 2015. The costs of two more – Octans and Orchard – are being kept secret for commercial reasons.
The figures have been released by the defence minister Peter Luff in answer to a parliamentary question by the Green MP Caroline Lucas. Although a few were known from freedom of information requests or other sources, the bulk had previously been kept confidential.
"The fact that the MoD signed off on these costs before a decision has even been made on replacing the Trident warhead makes a complete mockery of the democratic process," said Lucas.
"It's clear that replacing this extravagant and discredited white elephant project would mean locking the UK into the costly technologies of the past, at a time when we should be developing the realistic defence solutions of the future."
She called on the government to end the "culture of secrecy" that allowed crucial military spending decisions to be pushed through without proper parliamentary scrutiny.
Spending so much on nuclear weapons at a time of economic austerity was also "morally indefensible and economically illiterate", she said.
The government decided in October last year to postpone a decision on whether to develop a new nuclear warhead until after the next election in 2015. To save money, and to appease the Liberal Democrats, ministers also deferred the main investment decision on replacing the submarines that will carry the warheads.
According to Peter Burt of the Nuclear Information Service, the new weapons plants would have a life of at least 40 years. "By spending billions of pounds now, the MoD is trying to force the hands of future governments into developing a new nuclear warhead, regardless of whether it will be necessary or affordable," he said.
An MoD spokeswoman pointed out that the government was committed to a "continuous at-sea nuclear deterrent" based on Trident. "This investment maintains the safety of the current Trident warhead stockpile by sustaining essential facilities and skills," she said.
"It also helps maintain the capability to design a replacement warhead should that be required following decisions in the next parliament."Data published in Phytomedicine indicated that garlic supplements could reduce systolic and diastolic blood pressure by an average of 6.71 mmHg and 4.79 mmHg, respectively.
“The present meta-analysis suggests that garlic is an effective and safe approach for the management of hypertension, which may be an alternative therapy in patients with a history of AEs related to antihypertensive drugs,” wrote the authors.
Allicin
Consumer awareness of the health benefits of garlic, mostly in terms of cardiovascular and immune system health, has benefited the supplements industry, particularly since consumers seek the benefits of garlic without the odors that accompany the fresh bulb.
The benefits have been linked to the compound allicin, which is not found in fresh garlic; It is only formed when garlic is crushed, which breaks down a compound called diallyl sulphide.
Study details
Led by scientists from the China Academy of Chinese Medical Sciences, the authors searched PubMed, the Cochrane Library and EMBASE for appropriate articles and found seven randomized, placebo-controlled trials comparing garlic vs. a placebo in hypertensives.
Pooling the data indicated that, compared with placebo, garlic was associated with significant lowering of both systolic and diastolic blood pressure.
In addition, no serious adverse events were reported in any of the studies.
“A recent meta-analysis of 147 randomized trials totaling 958,000 people revealed that a reduction of SBP by 10 mmHg or DBP by 5 mmHg by any of the main classes of antihypertensive drugs reduces CHD events (fatal and non-fatal) by about a quarter and stroke by about a third, regardless of the presence of vascular disease and of BP before treatment and with no increase in non-vascular mortality (Law et al. 2009),” wrote the authors.
“Therefore, great economical and clinical benefit could be achieved with the significant BP-lowering effect of garlic. Importantly, the treatment duration of the included studies ranged from 8 to 12 weeks, and the maximum BP-lowering effects had been exerted at the end of the treatment.”
version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"? Comparison of garlic vs. the placebo for systolic (a) and diastolic (b) blood pressure. Xiong et al. Phytomedicine, 2015. Elsevier
Garlic and heart health
The meta-analysis adds to the large body of science supporting the cardiovascular benefits of garlic. A recent meta-analysis, published in the Journal of the Science of Food and Agriculture (doi: 10.1002/jsfa.5557), concluded that garlic may also reduce cholesterol and triglyceride levels.
Researchers from Shandong University reported that, compared with placebo groups, garlic consumption is associated with a 5.4% reduction in cholesterol levels and a 6.5% reduction in triglyceride levels.
Garlic has been suggested to exhibit several health benefits, including inhibiting enzymes involved in lipid synthesis, decreasing platelet aggregation, preventing lipid peroxidation, and increasing antioxidant status.
Source: Phytomedicine
Volume 22, Issue 3, 15 March 2015, Pages 352–361, doi:10.1016/j.phymed.2014.12.013
“Garlic for hypertension: A systematic review and meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials”
Authors: X.J. Xiong, P.Q. Wang, S.J. Li, X.K. Li, Y.Q. Zhang, J. WangThe Alaska political corruption probe refers to a 2003 to 2010 widespread investigation by the Public Integrity Section of the U.S. Department of Justice, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the Internal Revenue Service into political corruption of nine then-current or former Alaskan state lawmakers, as well as Republican US Representative Don Young and then-US Senator, Republican Ted Stevens. Sometimes referred to as "The Corrupt Bastard's Club" or the "Operation Polar Pen", the investigation focused on the oil industry, fisheries and for-profit prison industries.
By the spring of 2006, the FBI set up in a Baranof hotel suite just three blocks away from the capitol building in Juneau. From their position in the hotel suite, they gathered evidence, such as a videotape of VECO's CEO Bill Allen arranging paper money for legislators, and made other observations By August 2008, the investigation resulted in indictments against six sitting or former Alaska Republican state legislators on corruption charges. In August 2008 US Senator Ted Stevens was indicted and, by October, he was convicted in Washington, D.C. on seven felony counts of failure to disclose gifts. The convictions, eight days before the November 2008 election, resulted in his narrow loss, after 40 years in the U.S. Senate, to Democrat Mark Begich. His convictions were later set aside because of prosecutorial misconduct and the United States Department of Justice ended further prosecution.
In addition to the conviction of US Senator Stevens, two executives of the VECO Corporation, an oilfield services contractor, pleaded guilty to charges of bribery and conspiracy to impede the Internal Revenue Service. Alaska businessmen/lobbyists Bill Weimar (former for-profit halfway house owner) and Bill Bobrick, as well as Jim Clark, the former governor's chief of staff, also were indicted and convicted. Clark's guilty plea and sentence were later vacated before he was ordered to report to custody. That was followed by ex-Alaska State Rep. Bruce Weyhrauch's Supreme Court challenge to the Honest services fraud statute. His case was decided on June 24, 2010, in association with the Skilling v. United States and Conrad Black case decisions. While the Court overturned the Skilling conviction, stating that the Honest services fraud statute was not applicable to private citizens, the Court upheld, but narrowed the application of the Honest services fraud statute by stating that it was applicable to public officials only, and remanding Weyhrauch's conviction to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.
Federal prosecutors later agreed not to retry Weyhrauch on felony charges in exchange for Weyhrauch's agreement to plead guilty to a single misdemeanor in an Alaska State Court. An Alaska State Court Judge then gave Weyhrauch a three-month suspended jail sentence, and a $1,000 fine.
History [ edit ]
The probe began in 2004 or earlier. By 2006 the name "Corrupt Bastards Club" (alternatively "Corrupt Bastards Caucus") began being used to designate Alaska legislators implicated in the federal corruption (a.k.a., "Polar Pen") investigation. The nickname originated in the spring of 2006 as a barroom joke among Alaska legislators after a guest article by Lori Backes, executive director of All Alaska Alliance, that ran in Alaska's three largest newspapers named 11 lawmakers who had received large campaign contributions from executives of the oilfield services company VECO Corporation, which had a long history of making large campaign contributions to Alaska politicians. The article also named Senate President Ben Stevens as having received large consulting fees from VECO.[1][2]
In her article, Backes detailed the amount of political campaign donations contributed between 1998 and 2004 by the top seven VECO executives to Alaska lawmakers who were in office at the time her article was written. The figures were based on reports to the Alaska Public Offices Commission
Additionally, Backes noted the consulting contract Senate President Ben Stevens (R-Anchorage) had with VECO Corporation and financial relationships other lawmakers had with other companies active in the oil and gas industry, including Conoco Phillips and ASCG Incorporated, the latter a subsidiary of Arctic Slope Regional Corporation which is heavily involved in oilfield business in Alaska.[1]
According to Chenault, one of the lawmakers named in the article: "Somebody walked up [in the bar] and said, 'You corrupt bastards,' and that name stuck." Hats with the label "CBC," standing for "Corrupt Bastards Club" or "Corrupt Bastards Caucus," were later printed up, but according to Chenault "that was the extent of the CBC deal."[2]
In the first week of August 2006, an ill Representative Carl Moses returned to Juneau from receiving treatment in Anchorage, to cast a critical vote that insured passage of a bill giving tax breaks to the oil industry. The vote took place, shortly after Moses received campaign contributions from Bill Allen and five other VECO executives, the only Democrat to receive any from that source.[3]
The FBI had set up in a Baranof hotel suite just three blocks away from the capitol building in Juneau. There they videotaped VECO's CEO Bill Allen, peeling off bills for legislators to stuff in their pockets. According to the Juneau Empire, Ray Metcalfe said he had spoken with FBI agents about the case, but didn't know how the feds first got interested in Alaska."I think the jury is still out on what started this," said Metcalfe. Juneau Mayor Bruce Botelho, the longest serving attorney general in the state's history over two administrations, said it looked like those state agencies responsible for ensuring ethical government failed to do their jobs, but it is too soon to tell for sure.[4]
Raids on legislative offices [ edit ]
On August 31 and September 1, 2006 the FBI served some 20 search warrants in Anchorage, Juneau, Wasilla, Eagle River, Girdwood, and Willow, primarily on the offices of several legislators. Republican legislators whose offices were searched included Senator John Cowdery, Senate President (and son of U.S. Senator Ted Stevens) Ben Stevens, Representatives Vic Kohring, Bruce Weyhrauch, Pete Kott and Bev Masek as well as Democratic Senator Donny Olson.[5][6][7] The warrants permitted the search of computer files, personal diaries, Alaska Public Offices Commission reports, and any other items showing evidence of financial ties between legislators and the oilfield services company VECO Corporation,[8] as well as clothing items with the phrase "Corrupt Bastards Club" or its related acronym printed on it.[7] A search warrant for Sen. Olson's Juneau office, made available by his office to the public, specifically authorized the seizure of documents relating to VECO Corporation executives Bill Allen (CEO), Richard Smith (vice president), Pete Leathard (president), and Roger Chan (chief financial officer). The warrant also authorized the seizure of clothing, including hats, bearing the logos or phrases "VECO," "Corrupt Bastards Caucus," "Corrupt Bastards Club," or "CBC" printed on them.[9]
John Cowdery was indicted[10] for bribery and extortion under official right and bribery concerning programs that receive federal funding.
Management of corruption investigation [ edit ]
It later emerged that the investigation of political corruption in Alaska was being managed not by the Alaska U.S. Attorney's office, but rather by the Public Integrity Section of the U.S. Department of Justice in Washington, D.C., with FBI agents working out of the FBI building in downtown Anchorage acting as lead investigators. The FBI raids on legislative offices on August 31 and September 1 involved dozens of extra FBI agents brought up from the Lower 48, but sent home after the initial round of searches and interviews. Other agencies, including the Internal Revenue Service, were also involved.[11]
The Public Integrity Section, created in 1976, is charged with investigation of election fraud, misconduct by federal judges, and corruption of elected officials in all levels of government — federal, state, and local.[11][12] While U.S. Attorney offices also investigate and prosecute public corruption cases, because U.S. Attorneys are political appointees in local jurisdictions, they are sometimes recused from particular cases.[11][13]
Brooke Miles, then-executive director of the Alaska Public Offices Commission, reported that the FBI began to collect public campaign reports and financial disclosure records on selected Alaska legislators perhaps a year prior to the raids, and returned at the start of 2006 to obtain such records for all legislators.[11]
Investigation widens [ edit ]
Fisheries [ edit ]
The FBI conducted a second search on the legislative office of Republican State Senator Ben Stevens on September 18, 2006, seizing among other items documents related to the proposed natural gas pipeline and the oil and gas tax law which had been discussed in the Alaska Legislature during the regular and two special legislative sessions in 2006, as well as items related to his work on the Senate Ethics Committee and documents related to fisheries. Stevens disclosed to the Anchorage Daily News that the FBI seized items during both searches of his office related to the Alaska Fisheries Marketing Board (AFMB), created under legislation by Ben Steven's father, U.S. Senator Ted Stevens, to distribute federal grants to promote Alaska seafood.[14] Ben Stevens had been chair of AFMB until early in 2006.[15] He had received consulting fees from at least three organizations that had benefited from the grants[14] — over $250,000 during the time he served on the board.[15] Other documents related to fisheries were also seized in the September 18 FBI search.[14] One of these was a copy of an affidavit by Victor Smith, a salmon fisherman from Friday Harbor who alleged that Stevens had been paid by a seiners association to lobby his father and that he failed to disclose that income as required by Alaska law.[15]
Private corrections [ edit ]
In October 2006, Rep. Vic Kohring's attorney, Wayne Anthony Ross, provided the Anchorage Daily News with a copy of the search warrant that had been served on Kohring on August 31, as well as a list of items seized. The warrant showed that federal investigators were also interested in information related to developer Marc Marlow and correspondence between Kohring and the Alaska Department of Corrections. Ross told the Anchorage Daily News that his client had been questioned by the FBI about Cornell Companies' (now owned by GEO Group) effort in cooperation with VECO Corporation to build a private prison in Whittier, an effort which failed due to gubernatorial and bipartisan legislative opposition. The Daily News observed, "Those documents, though lacking detail or context, suggest that the probe is wide-ranging and not focused on any one company, issue or individual."[16]
Tom Anderson arrested on federal bribery and extortion charges [ edit ]
The observation by the Anchorage Daily News and other news organizations that the probe had a wider focus than legislators' ties to VECO Corporation was confirmed on December 7, 2006, when Representative Tom Anderson - whose offices had not been targeted by the August and September FBI raids — was arrested on allegations of extortion, bribery, conspiracy, and money laundering involving his support of a private corrections company. Anderson was accused of accepting money from a private corrections company through a shell corporation set up by a lobbyist, identified in Anderson's charging documents as "Lobbyist A" and later identified as prominent Anchorage lobbyist Bill Bobrick, to disguise the source of payments. Unbeknownst to Anderson or Bobrick, their contact with the private corrections company was a confidential source of the FBI working undercover. According to federal prosecutors, the private corrections company — unidentified in the court documents but widely believed to be Cornell Companies — was not implicated in the plot, and had been unaware of the FBI investigation until Anderson's indictment and arrest. The confidential informant in the case was Frank Prewitt, a former commissioner of the Alaska Department of Corrections who later took jobs first with halfway house entrepreneur Bill Weimar, and subsequently with Cornell Companies, which bought out Weimar to establish its Alaska operations.[17] Court documents filed on March 22, 2010 in a criminal appeal indicated that Prewitt had been paid $200,000 for his assistance in investigating and convicting his former associates.[18]
Subpoenas of fisheries businesses [ edit ]
Additional subpoenas were served on fishery executives involved with federal funding and the United Fishermen of Alaska who have had business associations with Ben Stevens.[19]
Figures of note [ edit ]
Indictment, arrest of Kott, Kohring and Weyhrauch [ edit ]
On May 4, 2007, former Representatives Pete Kott (R-Eagle River) and Bruce Weyhrauch (R-Juneau) were arrested and charged with bribery, extortion wire and mail fraud. Then-Representative Vic Kohring (R-Wasilla) later turned himself in and was similarly charged. All three were arraigned in Juneau. Charges against the three involved allegations of soliciting and receiving money and favors from VECO chief executive officer Bill Allen and chief lobbyist and V.P. Richard L. "Rick" Smith in return for their votes on an oil tax law favored by the VECO that was the subject of vigorous debate during the 2006 legislative session and two special sessions in 2006.[27]
Kott and Kohring were both convicted, but their convictions were later vacated due to misconduct by the prosecuting attorneys. In 2011 both agreed to plead guilty. Prosecutors agreed to recommend both men be sentenced to time served and subject to conditions upon release.[28] Kohring lost his latest bid to appeal his conviction, turned down unanimously by an en banc hearing of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.[29]
After federal charges were dropped, Weyhrauch pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor lobbying violation, his sentence was suspended, and he was fined $1,000. It was estimated he had spent $300,000 on his defense.[30][https://www.adn.com/politics/article/former-alaska-rep-weyhrauch-cited-ethics-committee-corruption-charges/2016/02/18/ In 2016, the state senate's Select Committee on Legislative Ethics found that Weyhrauch had committed ethics violations a decade earlier and requested he pay a fine of $18,100 and write and publicize a letter of apology regarding the situation.[31] Two years later, the requests for the apology and payment of the fine were waived.[32]
Of the original seven lawmakers who had their legislative offices searched, only State Senator Don Olson (D-Nome) was not implicated in the scandal.
VECO executives indicted, plead guilty [ edit ]
In the wake of the scandal VECO was broken up and most of its assets, including its former Alaska headquarters in Anchorage, were purchased by CH2M HILL
On May 7, 2007, VECO CEO Bill Allen and Vice President for Community & Government Affairs Rick Smith pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court in Anchorage to charges of extortion, bribery, and conspiracy to impede the Internal Revenue Service.
In addition to the three politicians arraigned on May 4, the new court filings mention illegal payments made to a former state senator, named as "Senator B" in court documents, who received over $240,000 from VECO Corp. over several years, income which Senator B reported as "consulting fees." In the May 7 guilty pleas by Allen and Smith, they admit that the only work done by Senator B in exchange for the funds was advancing VECO's agenda in the state legislature. The only former state senator who matches the information contained in court documents about Senator B is former Senator Ben Stevens (R-Anchorage), son of U.S. Senator Ted Stevens (R-Alaska). Ben Stevens was not indicted.[33] Another state senator discussed in the court documents, identified as "Senator A" in court documents, was identified by sources as John Cowdery.[34]
On May 11, 2007 at a meeting of the VECO Corporation's board of directors and shareholders, Bill Allen resigned as the company's CEO and chairman of its board of directors, citing "the best interest of the corporation, all of our companies, and our many valued employees and customers." Allen's daughter Tammy Kerrigan replaced him as chairman of the board; a new CEO had not yet been chosen. At the same meeting, Rick Smith resigned from his position as vice president of community and government affairs. It was not clear from the VECO statement if Smith's position will be refilled.[35]
Lobbyist Bill Bobrick charged, pleads guilty in Tom Anderson bribery probe [ edit ]
On May 14, 2007, William (Bill) Bobrick, a prominent municipal lobbyist in Anchorage, was charged with one count of conspiracy to commit extortion, bribery, and money laundering in the same scheme for which Rep. Tom Anderson was indicted the previous December. Bobrick was the creator of the shell corporation, Pacific Publishing, through which money was allegedly funneled to Anderson. Bobrick also received money through the scheme.[36] Bobrick appeared in U.S. District Court in Anchorage on May 16, where he entered a guilty plea. Bobrick was sentenced after the trial of Tom Anderson, scheduled to begin June 25, where Bobrick testified for the prosecution. Under sentencing guidelines Bobrick faced a possible 2 to 2½ years imprisonment, but his sentence was reduced to six months in return for his cooperation with prosecutors.[37]
In reaction to Bobrick's part in the corruption scandal, the Anchorage Assembly on May 22, 2007 unanimously approved a measure which prohibits individuals who have been convicted of a felony within the past 10 years of registering as a lobbyist with the Municipality of Anchorage.[38]
US Senator Ted Stevens investigated, charged, convicted and verdict vacated [ edit ]
Ted Stevens was also investigated by both the FBI and IRS. Authorities investigated an extensive remodeling project done at the Stevens "chalet" in the small town of Girdwood, Alaska. Unusual aspects of this remodeling project that were investigated were that the project was supervised by VECO, and invoices for the work on the residence were first sent to VECO before being sent to the senator. Some of the issues investigated were the extent of work done on the home, exactly whom had paid the invoices from the construction contractors and their subcontractors, and the purpose and extent of VECO's involvement.
On the morning of July 30, 2007, agents from the FBI and the IRS raided the residence in Girdwood. Photographs and video of the inside and outside of the residence were taken. Wine bottles in the home were photographed as objects of interest. The raid continued well into the evening. [39]
On July 29, 2008, just a day short of the anniversary of the Girdwood raids, Stevens was charged with seven counts of false statements on financial disclosures involving VECO, the oil services company in Alaska, and the renovations done on his home.
On October 27, 2008, U.S. Senator Ted Stevens was successfully prosecuted in the District of Columbia. He was found guilty by a jury of all seven felonies against him. The case had been prosecuted by Principal Deputy Chief Brenda K. Morris, Trial Attorneys Nicholas A. Marsh and Edward P. Sullivan of the Criminal Division's Public Integrity Section, headed by Chief William M. Welch II, and Assistant U.S. Attorneys Joseph W. Bottini and James A. Goeke from the District of Alaska. Eight days after the verdict, Stevens narrowly lost re-election to Anchorage's Democratic then-Mayor Mark Begich. [3] He had held his seat since December 24, 1968.
On February 13, 2009, U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan cited William M. Welch II, Brenda K. Morris, Patty Merkamp Stemler (Chief of the Justice Department Criminal Appeals Section), and another Justice Department attorney for contempt of court. Judge Sullivan amended the contempt citation on February 14, 2009 to remove the fourth attorney. The contempt citation was for failing to turn over to defense counsel for former Senator Stevens documents relating to a complaint by Chad Joy, a Federal Bureau of Investigation agent, alleging misconduct by prosecutors in the Stevens case. Judge Sullivan had ordered, on February 3, 2009, that the documents in question be given to defense counsel. In the contempt citation, Judge Sullivan described the conduct of the Justice Department's lawyers as "outrageous."[40][41]
On February 16, 2009, the Justice Department stated in a court filing that it had removed six attorneys from "litigation relating to allegations of misconduct in (the case against former Senator Stevens)." The six attorneys were William M. Welch II, Brenda K. Morris, Nicholas A. Marsh, Edward P. Sullivan, Joseph W. Bottini, and James A. Goeke.[42]
On April 1, 2009 Attorney General Eric Holder decided to drop all charges against Stevens after a review of the case turned up alleged evidence of prosecutorial misconduct, including failure to fully disclose potentially exculpatory evidence in response to a Brady motion by Stevens' attorneys. Since Stevens had not yet been sentenced, Holder's action effectively vacated Stevens' conviction. [43]
Prosecutor Marsh, although he had been removed as the team leader of the Alaska probe's prosecution, well prior to the Stevens debacle, had become episodically depressed as a result of the extreme length of the investigation into the conduct of the team involved in the Senator's case. This was exacerbated by his consequent reassignment to less favorable international duties, pending resolution of the inquiry, though he had anticipated complete exoneration. On September 26, 2010, not long after he returned from a trip to Europe, he hung himself in the basement of his home in Takoma Park, Maryland.[44]
Stevens meanwhile, 17 months after leaving office, died in a corporate executive airplane crash on August 9, 2010. He had been en route to a remote hunting lodge in western Alaska.[45]
US drops Jim Clark corruption conviction [ edit ]
In 2008, Clark admitted that he was aware that Veco Corp had paid $10,000 for a political poll to gauge the popularity of then-incumbent Governor Murkowski, and was charged with "honest services fraud". Before he was sentenced, the US Supreme Court ruled that the statute was drafted with unconstitutional vagueness and henceforth will only cover "fraudulent schemes to deprive another of honest services through bribes or kickbacks supplied by a third party who ha[s] not been deceived." Since Clark was guilty of neither bribes nor kickbacks, all charges were voided.
Bill Weimar pleads guilty to making illegal campaign contributions [ edit ]
On August 11, 2008, the Anchorage Daily News reported that Bill Weimar, a former operator of halfway houses for inmates in Alaska was indicted and charged with two felony counts alleging campaign finance violations. Weimar funneled money to an unnamed consultant for an unnamed state legislative candidate in 2004. Weimar agreed to plead guilty to the charges, and in exchange prosecutors will ask for a reduced sentence, a nonbinding agreement that the judge is free to modify. [46] Weimar subsequently pleaded guilty in federal court in Anchorage. His sentencing occurred on November 12, 2008. Weimar was sentenced to 6 months in federal prison and ordered to pay a US $75,000 fine. [47] In 2010, Weimar who was on federal probation after serving six months in prison for illegal campaign contributions, allegedly forced sex on a six-year-old Sarasota girl. After being indicted on January 23, 2011 he fled to Havana, Cuba. From there he flew to Cancun, Mexico where he was arrested on his yacht and extradited back to Florida.[48]
Jerry Ward implicated in probe [ edit ]
On December 15, 2008, the Anchorage Daily News reported that former Alaska state senator Jerry Ward had been implicated in the probe. Ward allegedly convinced a witness in the trial against Senator Ted Stevens to lie about an immunity deal in court to ensure that he was included in it and would therefore not be prosecuted. According to federal prosecutors, Ward had been under investigation for some time over his relationship with Bill Weimar, who was convicted of two felony counts in the matter and sentenced to prison. While he was presumed to be under continued investigation, Ward was not charged.[49]
John Cowdery pleads guilty [ edit ]
On December 18, 2008 KTUU Anchorage Channel 2, an affiliate of NBC, reported that John Cowdery had agreed to change his plea from not guilty to guilty in exchange for some of the charges against him being dropped. As part of his plea agreement, Cowdery did not have to testify against other defendants in the case. No sentencing parameters were agreed upon as a result of this agreement. Cowdery subsequently pleaded guilty in federal court on December 19, 2008. [50] Due in part to his age and alleged infirmity, he was only sentenced to 6 months of house arrest and fined US$25,000. Cowdery died on July 13, 2013.
Beverly Masek pleads guilty [ edit ]
On March 13, 2009, the Anchorage Daily News reported that former Alaska state representative Beverly Masek had pleaded guilty to soliciting and accepting at least $4,000 in bribes from VECO Corp. Masek, who originally rose to fame by competing in the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race while still known by her maiden name of Beverly Jerue, was first elected to the House in 1994. Masek represented a district consisting of the northern and western reaches of the Matanuska-Susitna Borough in the House from 1995 to 2005 before being defeated by Mark Neuman in the 2004 primary election. Masek was sentenced on September 23, 2009.[51]
See also [ edit ]On Comments
If you'd like to submit a comment for possible publication on Centauri Dreams, I will be glad to consider it. The primary criterion is that comments contribute meaningfully to the debate. Among other criteria for selection: Comments must be on topic, directly related to the post in question, must use appropriate language, and must not be abusive to others. Civility counts. In addition, a valid email address is required for a comment to be considered. Centauri Dreams is emphatically not a soapbox for political or religious views submitted by individuals or organizations. A long form of the policy can be viewed on the Administrative page. The short form is this: If your comment is not on topic and respectful to your fellow readers, I'm probably not going to run it.Manchester United winger Adnan Januzaj appears to have been handed the iconic number 11 shirt, previously worn by Ryan Giggs for 24 years, by manager Louis van Gaal.
Ahead of United’s final pre-season friendly against Valencia at Old Trafford - Van Gaal’s first match in charge of the Red Devils at the Theatre of Dreams - an image has been published on Twitter showing Januzaj’s new jersey inside the club’s Megastore.
View Januzaj’s new shirt HERE (Note: Official confirmation has not yet been made)
Related links
- Adnan Januzaj could replace Ryan Giggs as number 11
- Adnan Januzaj scored 16 goals in 22-0 victory
- Adnan Januzaj will benefit if PSG sign Angel di Maria
It’s also rumoured that Luke Shaw will take the number 3 shirt, vacated by Patrice Evra, while Robin van Persie will stick with number 20 rather than switching to numbers 7 or 9.
It’s currently unclear which number United’s £29 million summer signing Ander Herrera will wear. It seems unlikely that he will be handed either seven or nine, although there aren’t too many other obvious squad numbers available to chose from.
Januzaj: From 44 to 11
Van Gaal’s decision to hand Januzaj, who previously wore number 44, the 11 shirt is a significant gesture from the iconic Dutch coach.
There has been speculation that Januzaj could be one of those who suffers from Van Gaal’s 3-5-2 formation, which favours wing-backs instead of traditional wingers, but the fact Januzaj has been handed such an iconic number indicates that the young Belgium international will have a big role to play this season.
Januzaj, of course, is capable of playing in the No. 10 position as well as on either flank - and this versatility, combined with his extraordinary talent, should make him a favourite of Van Gaal.
Watch: Adnan Januzaj in action
Can he cope with the pressure?
That Januzaj was one of Manchester United’s best performers, at the tender age of 18, in a dismal campaign for the Red Devils suggests this is a player with a huge future ahead of him.
Januzaj shot to prominence when he scored two terrific goals on his first Manchester United start, against Sunderland at the Stadium of Light, back in October - and continued going from strength to strength as the season progressed.
|
ixi in northeastern China, turning her back and pointing furtively at a village official who was approaching. She and her husband had been talking to a reporter about long-standing graphite pollution in her neighborhood. While some talked freely, there were people in all of the five areas with graphite plants who, like this couple, were reluctant to speak on the record.
Complaints about the pollution are often met with intimidation. People living near graphite plants frequently appeared fearful of pressing their grievances.
But the pollution continues. Villagers said the cleanup efforts failed — they were short-lived or otherwise inadequate — because local authorities are closely allied with company officials and unwilling to acknowledge the gravity of the environmental trouble.
Some provinces in China sought to crack down on the polluters, and three years ago they issued fines to several graphite companies.
Apple products use batteries made by those companies, too — specifically from Samsung SDI and LG Chem. But Fred Sainz, an Apple spokesman, said that for current products, the company has switched to synthetic graphite, which is not mined. The company declined to say when it made the change to rely exclusively on synthetic graphite.
After leaving these Chinese mines and refiners, much of the graphite is sold to Samsung SDI, LG Chem and Panasonic — the three largest manufacturers of lithium-ion batteries. Those companies supply batteries to major consumer companies such as Samsung, LG, General Motors and Toyota.
At five towns in two provinces of China, Washington Post journalists heard the same story from villagers living near graphite companies: sparkling night air, damaged crops, homes and belongings covered in soot, polluted drinking water — and government officials inclined to look the other way to benefit a major employer.
The world has grown reliant on lithium-ion batteries that power smartphones, laptops and electric cars. But the desperate search for the ingredients carries a steep cost.
The companies making those products promote the bright futuristic possibilities of the “clean” technology. But virtually all such batteries use graphite, and its cheap production in China, often under lax environmental controls, produces old-fashioned industrial pollution.
Smaller and more powerful than their predecessors, lithium batteries power smartphones and laptop computers and appear destined to become even more essential as companies make much larger ones to power electric cars.
A worker at the Jin Yang graphite factory in Mashan, in China’s northeastern Heilongjiang province, in May.
Zhang and Yu live near a factory that produces graphite, a glittery substance that, while best known for filling pencils, has become an indispensable resource in the new millennium. It is an ingredient in lithium-ion batteries.
“This is what we live with,” Zhang said, slowly waving an arm at the stumps.
Beside the family home is a plot that once grew saplings, but the trees died once the factory began operating, said Zhang’s husband, Yu Yuan.
By daylight, the particles are visible as a lustrous gray dust that settles on everything. It stunts the crops it blankets, begrimes laundry hung outside to dry and leaves grit on food. The village’s well water has become undrinkable, too.
“The air sparkles,” said Zhang Tuling, a farmer in a village in far northeastern China. “When any bit of light hits the particles, they shine.”
A t night, the pollution around the village has an otherworldly, almost fairy-tale quality.
Two of the plants, owned by Hensen Graphite and Haida Graphite, are in Shandong province, south of Beijing on the Yellow Sea.
Three of those plants are in Heilongjiang province in far northeastern China — two owned by Aoyu Graphite and one by BTR itself.
Each of the five Chinese graphite factories visited by Post journalists reported having provided graphite to BTR.
“Like everyone else, we sell some to BTR,” said Chen Geng, assistant to the president of Aoyu Graphite Group, which processes graphite at several locations in China. “They’re big.”
From BTR, the graphite is distributed around the world. The company sells graphite directly to the largest manufacturers of lithium-ion batteries, including Samsung SDI, LG Chem and Panasonic, according to Chen Bifeng, the BTR marketing director.
Those companies, in turn, make batteries for Samsung, LG, GM, Toyota and other consumer companies.
The Post sent letters to consumer companies whose battery suppliers have been supplied by BTR. The letters sought information on connections between the consumer companies and the natural graphite produced by Chinese firms blamed for pollution.
GM said a BTR subsidiary had been supplying graphite but declined to give further details. In a statement, the company said it “is committed to transforming the industry by reducing the environmental impact of our vehicles and manufacturing them in the most sustainable manner possible.”
A Toyota spokesman did not answer questions about its graphite sources but noted that the carmaker does not buy graphite directly and that “we make efforts to minimize the impact of our procurement activities on local communities.... We will ask our suppliers to take actions to avoid using certain materials if there is a concern about the source.”
BTR also has supplied graphite to Amperex Technology Ltd. (ATL), according to industry analysts, and ATL has made battery cells for Amazon Kindles, according to analysis by IHS, the global information company. Amazon.com was founded by Post owner Jeffrey P. Bezos. Amazon declined to answer questions regarding graphite sources but said in a statement: “We are committed to ensuring the highest standards in all areas of production and manufacturing. We work closely with our suppliers to ensure they meet our standards, and conduct a number of audits every year to ensure our manufacturing partners are in compliance with our policies.”
Representatives of BTR said that it seeks to ensure the graphite it uses has been mined and processed cleanly, a spokeswoman, Sally Guo, said by email from Shenzhen, and that it was “unfair” to blame the company for pollution.
All BTR subsidiaries are environmentally friendly and “qualified and approved from the government, and the production is strictly operated according to the related law and regulation,” she wrote.
She declined to offer specifics on BTR’s relationships with the plants in its supply chain.
While BTR provides the largest share of natural graphite for batteries, it is just one piece of a massive supply chain.
The graphite companies visited by The Post also supply other intermediate companies — not just BTR — and their graphite products are used in lithium-ion batteries around the globe. The graphite from those factories reaches some large Japanese companies, such as Nippon Carbon, as well as a Chinese company known as Shanshan that makes battery anodes.
The Post was unable to follow the graphite much further beyond those intermediate companies. Mitsubishi Chemical, Hitachi Chemical and Nippon Carbon did not respond to repeated requests for information about their customers. Shanshan officials hung up on a reporter.
Yu Zhen Jun says the yield from his corn crop has decreased as a result of the pollution from a nearby graphite factory owned by Aoyu. A ravaged hillside is all that remains of an abandoned graphite mine outside Mashan in May. Residents gather in the streets of Liumao, near a graphite mine and processing plant owned by BTR. A farmer heads home after working in the rice fields outside Liumao, near the city of Jixi in northeastern China.
‘City of Graphite’
Graphite is found around the world, but Heilongjiang province, a relatively remote locale on the Russian border, is the largest single source. For many there, it means big business.
At the entrance of Mashan, a small, dusty village near Jixi in Heilongjiang, four immense billboards celebrate the graphite industry.
Amid a jumble of storefronts, mopeds and pedestrians, the billboards depict samples of the gray powder against a backdrop of blue skies and daisies.
This, the sign says, is the “City of Graphite.”
China’s dominance in the graphite industry is in part because of price. While the mineral can be found elsewhere, the low cost of Chinese graphite discourages companies elsewhere from opening mines. The price of raw graphite suitable for refinement into anodes is about $550 per ton.
Stephen A. Riddle, president of U.S.-based Asbury Carbons, which began importing graphite from China in the 1970s, said the reason China was able to capture the largest share of the graphite market is mainly a matter of “price, purity and quantity.”
Chinese companies, Riddle said, benefited from a combination of low labor costs and determined ingenuity.
At one mine he visited in the early 1980s, for example, workers used picks and shovels to retrieve the raw material from the dirt — unlike the tractors and other heavy equipment used elsewhere — and then processed the graphite using handmade equipment.
“They were obviously a very low-cost operation,” Riddle said.
In the ’70s, China produced about a tenth of the world’s supply. By 2015, according to the U.S. Geological Survey, it was producing about two-thirds of the world’s supply.
The growth of the industry, particularly around Jixi, has had environmental consequences, especially in recent years.
Up a hill not far from the rice paddy worked by the villagers of Liumao stands a graphite mine and processing plant owned by BTR.
Several residents complained of the pollution, which they blamed for tainted water and dusty air.
“If you leave the window open, the graphite gets everywhere — on the furniture, on the plates,” Li Jie, 51, said as she cleaned some planters for rice seedlings. “It builds up on the windowsills. The dust covers the cherries we grow.”
(TWP)
Zhao Guiyan, 63, also of Liumao, covers her nose when passing by some local waters, because of the chemical smell. “I’m worried what it’s doing to our health — breathing it in and eating it,” she said. Like many in the village, she relies in part on food grown in her yard or her neighbors’.
“I wash the vegetables over and over again,” Zhao said. “But [the graphite] is still there. It tastes and feels like you are chewing sand.”
In Mashan, residents reported similar problems. Mashan boasts several graphite plants, including another owned by BTR and one by Aoyu.
Lyu Shengwen, 55, a laborer, and his son share a two-bedroom home with a bathroom outside. They’ve been living in Mashan about 20 years, and around 2010 they noticed a rise in dust from nearby graphite plants.
“The dust... it’s everywhere,” Lyu said, grimacing.
He marched to a windowsill, swept his hand across it and then turned his blackened fingers toward visitors.
He shrugged and then headed outside toward a clothesline, from which he pulled a drying pair of pants and shook them. A cloud of dust appeared. Then, retrieving a black hose that supplies well water, he invited his guests to examine the water. It was cloudy and, he said, undrinkable — so oily that they now retrieve drinking water from a source more than a mile away.
“They mine anywhere on the mountain that they want to,” Lyu said of the graphite companies. “The plants release their discharge into the water. And it’s impossible to do anything about it.”
With Lyu now shouting, his neighbor Liu Fulan, 62, wandered by, curious. A farmworker, Liu lives with her son and 11-year-old granddaughter. A paper sign, pink and gold, hangs from Lyu’s front doorway. It asks for good fortune.
Liu nodded as Lyu expounded on the nuisance created by the graphite plant.
“You cannot survive without a bath every two days,” Liu said.
She apologized for the state of her home.
“I should clean — I used to clean,” she said sheepishly. “It’s mai tai. But I gave it up. I have too much to do already with the crops.”
Lyu Shengwen, 55, center, at his home in Mashan, says graphite pollution from the local factory is everywhere. “It’s impossible to do anything about it,” he said. Lyu Shengwen, 55, shakes graphite particles off his freshly washed clothes outside his home in Mashan.
In the air, in the water
Despite the name, only a small portion of a lithium-ion battery consists of lithium. Graphite is used to make the negative electrode and represents about 10 to 15 percent of the cost of a typical lithium-ion battery, according to analysts.
The demand for graphite has risen in parallel with the demand for more-powerful laptops, tablets and phones.
Ten years ago, for example, the battery of the best-selling Motorola Razr had a capacity of 680 milliamp-hours. Today, the batteries in the best-selling smartphones have three or four times that.
Video: How lithium-ion batteries work Lithium-ion batteries work much like other batteries — there’s a positive electrode and a negative electrode, and the electrons move from one end to another, creating a charge. The difference is the materials inside, which make them lighter, longer-lasting and rechargeable. Watch the video
Lyu Guoliang, senior engineer at the graphite business association in Jixi, said the demand for graphite rose very rapidly in 2010, driven by the demand for lithium-ion batteries.
Graphite for batteries must be refined to high levels of purity, and the flakes must be reformed into tiny spherical or potato-like particles. This extra refining means that the refined graphite is worth 10 times as much as the raw material, said Lyu, and that made the business particularly attractive.
But without proper controls, mining and refining can cause pollution in two ways — by air and by water.
Graphite powder can quickly become airborne dust, drifting for miles. Without systems of tarps and fans to keep it under control, the resulting fine-particle pollution can cause an array of breathing difficulties, such as aggravating lung disease or reducing lung function, and has been linked to heart attacks in people with heart disease, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
Graphite operations can also lead to pollution because their chemicals leak into local waters. According to industry sources, the purifying process, especially in China, is commonly done with acids, often hydrofluoric acid, a highly toxic substance.
This method is cheaper than the one used in other countries, where the graphite is purified by “baking,” — that is, heating it up. Riddle, of Asbury Carbons, said refining graphite that way is better for the environment but adds about 15 percent to the price. He said that for the past 20 years his company has insisted on purchasing only graphite refined this way.
“We had hoped more companies and users would follow our lead, but this has not been the case,” Riddle said.
Tracing your battery’s graphite The lithium-ion battery industry has a massively complicated supply chain. Each consumer company has dealt with multiple suppliers — and their suppliers have dealt with multiple suppliers. This shows some of the connections within the industry. See companies' responses to Washington Post's investigation. MINING AND PROCESSING Aoyu Graphite Other sources Haida Hensen BTR Other anode makers ANODE MANUFACTURERS BTR BATTERY MANUFACTURERS Samsung SDI ATL LG Chem Panasonic Cathodes come from other manufacturers General Motors LG Toyota Amazon Samsung CONSUMER PRODUCT MAKERS They use the batteries in cellphones, laptops, tablets and electric vehicles. MINING/PROCESSING Haida Hensen Aoyu Graphite Other sources BTR ANODE MFG. Other anode makers BTR BATTERY MFG LG Chem Samsung SDI ATL Panasonic ELECTRONICS MFG General Motors Samsung Amazon Toyota LG BATTERY MANUFACTURERS They build batteries from cathodes, anodes and electrolyte solutions, all sourced from different companies. CONSUMER PRODUCT MAKERS MINING AND PROCESSING They use the batteries in cellphones, laptops, tablets and electric vehicles. Amazon Cathodes come from other manufacturers BTR ATL Samsung ANODE MANUFACTURERS Haida Samsung SDI LG BTR Aoyu Graphite LG Chem General Motors Hensen Other anode makers Panasonic Other sources Toyota Sources: Public documents, interviews with company officials and industry analysts.
‘War against pollution’
The Chinese government has shown increasing concern about the nation’s environmental woes.
After decades of extraordinary economic growth, the country’s air has become an acute health danger. A million or more Chinese die prematurely every year because of outdoor air pollution, according to multiple estimates, including the report known as the Global Burden of Disease, part of a project run out of the University of Washington. One of the critical groups of pollutants in the Chinese air is “particulate matter” — dust, soot, smoke — a category that includes the air pollutants emitted from graphite plants.
Meanwhile, water quality in China has deteriorated, too. In 2015, the portion of the country’s groundwater supplies classified as “bad” or “very bad” stood at over 60 percent, according to China Water Risk, a nonprofit group that tallies figures from China’s Ministry of Environmental Protection. More than a quarter of China’s key rivers were deemed by the government as “unfit for human contact,” according to the group.
According to a report on graphite mining shown on state-run CCTV, the rivers in Jixi show levels of lead and mercury that are many times the national limit. Given the array of industry in the area, however, it is impossible to say how much of the lead and mercury come from the graphite industry.
“We will resolutely declare war against pollution as we declared war against poverty,” Premier Li Keqiang announced in 2014.
About three years ago, the country’s environmental efforts focused on the graphite industry, and records indicate that more than a dozen companies were issued citations by provincial and city officials, mostly in Heilongjiang and Shandong provinces, where most of China’s graphite business is done.
For example, Aoyu, which operates the plants near Lyu Shengwen and Liu Fulan in Mashan, was cited for not controlling the dust and the water pollution. It was fined roughly $7,500 for those infractions and asked to make improvements, according to a database of government records kept by the Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs (IPE), a Beijing-based nonprofit.
Likewise, BTR faced similar enforcement efforts for air and water pollution.
So, too, has Hensen, a graphite producer in Shandong province that sells to BTR, according to its manager, who did not respond to emailed questions regarding the water pollution.
Guo, the BTR spokeswoman, said that the plant in question has been improved and won the approval of the local government. She attributed the complaints to the fact that BTR is an environmental leader within the industry. As a result, she said, “we think it is normal... that someone attacks BTR by improper means.... BTR will talk with local people.... We would like to prove to them that BTR doesn’t make pollution on the water and crops.”
More from this series Cobalt in Congo Workers, including children, labor in harsh and dangerous conditions to meet the world’s soaring demand for cobalt. Graphite in China There’s a trace of graphite in many of today’s consumer devices. In these Chinese villages, it’s in their water, inside their homes and on their food. Lithium in Argentina Indigenous people are left poor as tech world takes lithium from under their feet.
An Aoyu official hung up on a reporter seeking comment about the pollution.
But not all of the graphite factories appear to have been targeted by the crackdown. For two of the five factories visited by Post journalists, no records of any government citations could be found in the IPE database.
And even at those places where polluters were cited by the government, neighbors said that if any improvements were made, they were short-lived or not substantial enough to clean up the problem. Villagers said some factories employ pollution prevention measures — such as tarps to keep graphite from flying away, or actions to prevent toxic sewage from flowing into local waters — only when the environmental officials are present.
“It was worse last year, but it’s still bad,” Li Jie said in Liumao. “Everything is mai tai.”
The trouble, residents and some industry representatives said, is that while the government wants to protect the environment, they also want to protect the jobs at the graphite factories.
Hou Lin, 30, works at the Aoyu plant in Mashan as a safety manager. He walked by as some farmers were complaining to reporters about the pollution.
“The company pollutes a lot,” he agreed. “But people need to have jobs.”
Bags that are used to carry graphite on cargo trucks lie adjacent to a graphite factory in Mashan, China, in May. A worker from a graphite factory, his face covered with the mineral, makes his way home in Mashan, in the far northeastern province of Heilongjiang. A worker at the Jin Yang graphite factory in Mashan. A woman walks down a road in an agricultural section of Mashan. A sign near the entrance of the village touts Mashan as “the City of Graphite.”
Being watched
One of the main obstacles in clearing the pollution, villagers said, is the powerful alliance between local government officials and the owners of the graphite plants. The officials, the villagers said, protect the factories from environmental complaints.
At three of the five villages visited by Post journalists in May and June, a village official either tried to attend interviews or soon after inquired of the interviewees what had transpired in the interviews. Moreover, plant managers and party officials sometimes discouraged journalists from speaking with villagers.
After Post journalists visited the Haida Graphite plant in Pingdu, for example, a plant employee jumped in a car to follow their taxi off the property and through the village streets.
The taxi stopped twice in the village so The Post could interview more people. At each stop, the driver of the Haida car approached to within a few feet and blared the car horn continuously, making talking to villagers impossible. The driver relented only when The Post’s taxi left the area. Asked to comment later about the pollution complaints, a Haida official accused a Post reporter of “espionage” and refused to answer questions.
Similarly, after The Post visited a BTR graphite factory in Jixi, two cars with several men inside began following the reporters’ taxi. Three times, over several miles, the taxi pulled over to let them pass. Each time, the following cars pulled over and stopped behind the Post taxi. Confronted, the men in the cars told reporters that it was just a coincidence that they had stopped at the same time that the taxi did. The men said they were mapping out a bicycle race.
The intimidation has an effect on villagers.
Not far from the Hensen graphite plant in Laixi is a small factory that makes women’s underwear. Han Wenbing, 48, is the owner. A large man, proud of his workshop, he was eager to talk about the graphite pollution.
He readily invited reporters into his home, showing the dust quickly gathering on his kitchen table and showing how his well water, which had been fine for drinking, now is topped with a gray film.
But as he made his case against the graphite plant, his wife grew nervous — and then angry. To speak out would only cause trouble with the plant manager and village officials, she warned her husband.
“Yes, there is absolutely an impact [from the graphite], but we don’t want to be on TV,” she said. “This could offend the boss of the company, which could affect our lives. You [reporters] wash your hands and walk away, but we live here.”
Han nevertheless wanted to make his complaints known. Once his wife acquiesced, he offered to point out a field that showed some of the worst effects of the pollution. The field had been used by small farmers, he said, but industrial runoff had affected the soil so much that “not even the weeds can grow.”
(TWP)
Less than a few minutes into the car trip to the polluted field, though, Han saw the plant manager’s car parked by the side of the road.
“They know it — they know I’m with you,” he said warily.
Moments later, someone representing the village party chief called his cellphone. Village officials had been tipped off that journalists were asking questions. What, the village officials wanted to know, was he doing and who was he with?
The call had an effect. Pointing out the field for reporters would cause too much trouble, Han said. He asked that The Post’s car stop and leave him on the curb to walk home. Even so, he was willing to talk on the record about how the pollution affected his home.
His extended family — parents, siblings and children — all live in the area, he said, and he felt a responsibility to speak out.
“We have lived here for many generations,” Han said. “If no one deals with it, it will keep damaging us.”
Demand ramps up
While U.S. consumers may seem uninvolved in — and untouched by — the Chinese pollution, the truth is more complicated.
The U.S. demand for cheap goods helps keep the Chinese factories going. More than a quarter of the emissions of two key pollutants in China — sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides — arose from the production of goods for export, according to research published in 2014 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The largest share of exports goes to the United States.
Moreover, the same researchers found that some of the pollution in China reaches the United States — the air pollution drifts across the ocean and raises ozone levels in the western part of the country, according to the study.
“Outsourcing production to China does not always relieve consumers in the United States... from the environmental impacts of air pollution,” according to the authors of the study, which was conducted by a consortium of scientists from China and the United States.
Now the rise of the electric-car industry promises a huge surge in the lithium-ion battery business.
Making batteries big enough to power cars will cause a daunting leap in demand. A laptop requires just a handful of the familiar, thin, cylindrical lithium-ion batteries known as “18650s.” A smartphone requires even less. But a typical electric car requires thousands of times the battery power.
Today, the best known “gigafactory” for electric-car batteries is the one being built by Tesla in the Nevada desert — a plant the company says will produce 500,000 electric-car batteries annually. But it’s just one of many. About a dozen other battery gigafactories are being planned around the world.
This is “not just a Tesla story,” said Simon Moores, managing director of Benchmark Mineral Intelligence, a firm that tracks demand and assesses prices for raw materials in the industry. “The demand is rising everywhere, especially in China.”
Children play on a street in the Chinese village of Liumao in May.
Todd C. Frankel and Yanan Wang in Washington and Xu Jing contributed to this report.Now that Samsung’s Galaxy Note 7 is officially banned on airlines in the United States (and some other countries too), traveling across the globe with one of these devices has proven to be a bit of a nightmare.
The good news is that Samsung seems to be hearing your cries of travel woe and is setting up Galaxy Note 7 exchange booths at airports in various countries, in order to ensure no customer stupidly takes a dangerous device on-board an airplane.
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The booths first appeared in Korea, where The Korea Times reports that Samsung is running rental phone booths at major airports in Incheon, Gimpo and Gimhae for users who haven’t yet returned their Note 7 devices.
In Australia, where devices are also banned from all flights, there are “customer service points” at major Australian airports, where customers can switch-out their devices for for a new phone. Samsung will even do data transfer. The airports and terminals where you can do an exchange are available on Samsung Australia’s website.
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In the United States, Samsung has booths setup too. At least at some airports. ABC7News in San Francisco reports that there is an exchange booth at SFO, where customers caught with phones in another country can swap out for a new device (complete with data transfer) before boarding. LAflyr on Twitter also reports that booths are available at TSA checkpoints at LAX.
In a statement, Samsung told Gizmodo:
All Galaxy Note7 owners should visit their local carrier or retail store and participate in the U.S Note7 Refund and Exchange Program immediately and before traveling. We are coordinating with various partners to communicate the U.S. Department of Transportation’s recent order to ban all Galaxy Note7 devices in carry-on and checked baggage on flights across multiple touch-points. We are providing support to Galaxy Note7 owners by exchanging their devices or refunding them in a wide range of places, including at some of the most frequently visited airports around the country. These on-site reps are there to help customers with last minute travel support and can be located by calling the Galaxy Note7 hotline at 1-844-365-6197. But we urge all Galaxy Note7 owners to exchange their device or obtain a refund before they arrive at their airport. We know this is an inconvenience to our customers but safety has to remain our top priority.
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[The Verge via CNET]Nationwide, at least 23,000 schools — about one-third of all public schools — already had armed security on staff as of the most recent data, for the 2009-10 school year, and a number of states and districts that do not use them have begun discussing the idea in recent days.
Even so, the N. R. A’s focus on armed guards as its prime solution to school shootings — and the group’s offer to help develop and carry out such a program nationwide — rankled a number of lawmakers on Capitol Hill.
“Anyone who thought the N.R.A. was going to come out today and make a common-sense statement about meaningful reform and safety was kidding themselves,” said Representative Mike Quigley, an Illinois Democrat, who has called for new restrictions on assault rifles.
Mr. LaPierre struck a defiant tone on Friday, making clear that his group was not eager to reach a conciliation. With the N.R.A. not making any statements after last week’s shootings, both supporters and opponents of greater gun control had been looking to its announcement Friday as a sign of how the nation’s most influential gun lobby group would respond and whether it would pledge to work with President Obama and Congress in developing new gun control measures.
Mr. LaPierre offered no support for any of the proposals made in the last week, like banning assault rifles or limiting high-capacity ammunition, and N.R.A. leaders declined to answer questions. As reporters shouted out to Mr. LaPierre and David Keene, the group’s president, asking whether they planned to work with Mr. Obama, the men walked off stage without answering.
Mr. LaPierre seemed to anticipate the negative reaction in an address that was often angry and combative.
“Now I can imagine the headlines — the shocking headlines you’ll print tomorrow,” he told more than 150 journalists at a downtown hotel several blocks from the White House.
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“More guns, you’ll claim, are the N.R.A.’s answer to everything,” he said. “Your implication will be that guns are evil and have no place in society, much less in our schools. But since when did the gun automatically become a bad word?”
Mr. LaPierre said his organization would finance and develop a program called the National Model School Shield Program, to work with schools to arm and train school guards, including retired police officers and volunteers. The gun rights group named Asa Hutchinson, a former Republican congressman from Arkansas and administrator of the Drug Enforcement Agency, to lead a task force to develop the program.
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Mr. LaPierre also said that before Congress moved to pass any new gun restrictions, it should “act immediately to appropriate whatever is necessary to put armed police officers in every single school in this nation” by the time students return from winter break in January.
The idea of arming school security officers is not altogether new. Districts in cities including Albuquerque, Baltimore, Dallas, Houston, Los Angeles, Miami and St. Louis have armed officers in schools, either through relationships with local police departments or by training and recruiting their own staff members.
A federal program dating back to the Clinton administration also uses armed police officers in school districts to bolster security, and Mr. LaPierre himself talked about beefing up the number of armed officers on campuses after the deadly shootings in 2007 at Virginia Tech.
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But what the N.R.A. proposed would expand the use of armed officers nationwide and make greater use of not just police officers, but armed volunteers — including retired police officers and reservists — to patrol school grounds. The organization offered no estimates of the cost.
Mr. LaPierre said that if armed security officers had been used at the Newtown school, “26 innocent lives might have been spared that day.”
The N.R.A. news conference was an unusual Washington event both in tone and substance, as Mr. LaPierre avoided the hedged, carefully calibrated language that political figures usually prefer, and instead let loose with a torrid attack on the N.R.A.’s accusers.
He blasted what he called “the political class here in Washington” for pursuing new gun control measures while failing, in his view, to adequately prosecute violations of existing gun laws, finance law enforcement programs or develop a national registry of mentally ill people who might prove to be “the next Adam Lanza,” the gunman in Newtown.
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Mr. LaPierre also complained that the news media had unfairly “demonized gun owners.” And he called the makers of violent video games “a callous, corrupt and corrupting shadow industry that sells and sows violence against its own people,” as he showed a video of an online cartoon game called “Kindergarten Killer.”
While some superintendents and parents interviewed after the N.R.A.’s briefing said they might support an increased police presence on school campuses as part of a broader safety strategy, many educators, politicians, and crime experts described it as foolhardy and potentially dangerous. Law enforcement officials said putting armed officers in the nation’s 99,000 schools was unrealistic because of the enormous cost and manpower needed.
At a news conference Friday, Senator Dianne Feinstein, the California Democrat who is leading an effort to reinstitute a ban on assault rifles, read from a police report on the 1999 shootings at Columbine High School in Colorado, which detailed an armed officer’s unsuccessful attempts to disarm one of the gunmen. “There were two armed law enforcement officers at that campus, and you see what happened — 15 dead,” Ms. Feinstein said.
Ernest Logan, president of the Council of School Supervisors and Administrators, called the N.R.A.’s plan “unbelievable and cynical.”
He said placing armed guards within schools would “expose our children to far greater risk from gun violence than the very small risk they now face.”Officials in some districts that use armed security officers stressed that it was only part of a broader strategy aimed at reducing the risk of violence.
But Ben Kiser, superintendent of schools in Gloucester County, Va., where the district already has four police officers assigned to patrol schools, said it was just as important to provide mental health services to help struggling children and families.
“What I’m afraid of,” said Mr. Kiser, who is also president of the Virginia Association of School Superintendents, “is that we’re often quick to find that one perceived panacea and that’s where we spend our focus.”
In Newtown, Conn., the N.R.A.’s call for arming school guards generated considerable debate among parents and residents on Friday — much of it negative. Suzy DeYoung, a parenting coach who has one child in the local school system, said she thought many parents in town and around the country would object to bringing more guns onto school campuses.
“I think people are smarter than that,” she said.A North Carolina mother says her 5-year-old daughter was suspended from school after she was found playing with a stick that resembled a gun.
Brandy Miller said her daughter Caitlin was suspended for one day on Friday after she and her two friends were playing "King and Queen" at her school in Hoke County, North Carolina, ABC affiliate WTVD reported Tuesday.
In the game, Caitlin played a guard, protecting the royals, and picked up the "stick gun" to imitate shooting an intruder into the kingdom.
The Hoke County School system said Caitlin posed a threat to other students when she made a shooting motion -- a violation of school policy, officials said.
"We know why it's bad," Miller told WTVD. "We watch the news, but then I have to tell my kid, 'you're not allowed to play like that in school because people do bad things to kids your age.'"
The Hoke County School school system defended its policy in a statement and said it would "not tolerate assaults, threats or harassment from any student."
"Any student engaging in such behavior will be removed from the classroom or school environment for as long as is necessary to provide a safe and orderly environment for learning," the school system told WTVD in a statement.
Caitlin returned from the one-day suspension on Tuesday, but her mom said was alienated by her friends and teachers over the incident.
She said she would like for the school to apologize to her daughter.PARRIS ISLAND, S.C. -- The first recruit training company on Parris Island to qualify with a Rifle Combat Optic device graduates today with 30 percent more rifle experts than the average company.
Bravo Company recruits were issued the AN/PVQ-31 RCOs for the M16-A4 rifle June 15 as part of a study by the Marine Corps Operational Test and Evaluation Activity.
“They were the first company for the test pilot program aboard the depot,” said Gunnery Sgt. Brian Corns, staff non-commissioned officer in charge at the Marksmanship Training Unit. “It was a very successful first running of the RCOs.”
The initial basic marksmanship qualification rate was 9 percent higher than the 10-year average at Parris Island, Corns said.
“I can tell you Bravo Company had 30 percent more experts than all of the iron sight [shooters] last year,” said Chief Warrant Officer 3 Kenneth Kurre, officer in charge of the MTU.
Corns said Bravo Company also had a 55 percent expert rate, which is unheard of at recruit training.
“It’s been a great success so far and overall. Scores have skyrocketed,” he added.
Although some may think RCOs make shooting easier, using them requires a lot more concentration.
“With the RCOs, recruits have to focus more on the fundamentals of marksmanship than they did with the iron sights,” Kurre said.
Corns said the reason for this is because looking |
and power transmission around the world. He managed to convince J.P. Morgan that he was on the verge of a breakthrough, and the financier gave Tesla more than $150,000 to fund what would become a gigantic, futuristic and startling tower in the middle of Long Island, New York. In 1898, as Tesla’s plans to create a worldwide wireless transmission system became known, Wardenclyffe Tower would be Tesla’s last chance to claim the recognition and wealth that had always escaped him.
Nikola Tesla was born in modern-day Croatia in 1856; his father, Milutin, was a priest of the Serbian Orthodox Church. From an early age, he demonstrated the obsessiveness that would puzzle and amuse those around him. He could memorize entire books and store logarithmic tables in his brain. He picked up languages easily, and he could work through days and nights on only a few hours sleep.
At the age of 19, he was studying electrical engineering at the Polytechnic Institute at Graz in Austria, where he quickly established himself as a star student. He found himself in an ongoing debate with a professor over perceived design flaws in the direct-current (DC) motors that were being demonstrated in class. “In attacking the problem again I almost regretted that the struggle was soon to end,” Tesla later wrote. “I had so much energy to spare. When I undertook the task it was not with a resolve such as men often make. With me it was a sacred vow, a question of life and death. I knew that I would perish if I failed. Now I felt that the battle was won. Back in the deep recesses of the brain was the solution, but I could not yet give it outward expression.”
He would spend the next six years of his life “thinking” about electromagnetic fields and a hypothetical motor powered by alternate-current that would and should work. The thoughts obsessed him, and he was unable to focus on his schoolwork. Professors at the university warned Tesla’s father that the young scholar’s working and sleeping habits were killing him. But rather than finish his studies, Tesla became a gambling addict, lost all his tuition money, dropped out of school and suffered a nervous breakdown. It would not be his last.
In 1881, Tesla moved to Budapest, after recovering from his breakdown, and he was walking through a park with a friend, reciting poetry, when a vision came to him. There in the park, with a stick, Tesla drew a crude diagram in the dirt—a motor using the principle of rotating magnetic fields created by two or more alternating currents. While AC electrification had been employed before, there would never be a practical, working motor run on alternating current until he invented his induction motor several years later.
In June 1884, Tesla sailed for New York City and arrived with four cents in his pocket and a letter of recommendation from Charles Batchelor—a former employer—to Thomas Edison, which was purported to say, “My Dear Edison: I know two great men and you are one of them. The other is this young man!”
A meeting was arranged, and once Tesla described the engineering work he was doing, Edison, though skeptical, hired him. According to Tesla, Edison offered him $50,000 if he could improve upon the DC generation plants Edison favored. Within a few months, Tesla informed the American inventor that he had indeed improved upon Edison’s motors. Edison, Tesla noted, refused to pay up. “When you become a full-fledged American, you will appreciate an American joke,” Edison told him.
Tesla promptly quit and took a job digging ditches. But it wasn’t long before word got out that Tesla’s AC motor was worth investing in, and the Western Union Company put Tesla to work in a lab not far from Edison’s office, where he designed AC power systems that are still used around the world. “The motors I built there,” Tesla said, “were exactly as I imagined them. I made no attempt to improve the design, but merely reproduced the pictures as they appeared to my vision, and the operation was always as I expected.”
Tesla patented his AC motors and power systems, which were said to be the most valuable inventions since the telephone. Soon, George Westinghouse, recognizing that Tesla’s designs might be just what he needed in his efforts to unseat Edison’s DC current, licensed his patents for $60,000 in stocks and cash and royalties based on how much electricity Westinghouse could sell. Ultimately, he won the “War of the Currents,” but at a steep cost in litigation and competition for both Westinghouse and Edison’s General Electric Company.
Fearing ruin, Westinghouse begged Tesla for relief from the royalties Westinghouse agreed to. “Your decision determines the fate of the Westinghouse Company,” he said. Tesla, grateful to the man who had never tried to swindle him, tore up the royalty contract, walking away from millions in royalties that he was already owed and billions that would have accrued in the future. He would have been one of the wealthiest men in the world—a titan of the Gilded Age.
His work with electricity reflected just one facet of his fertile mind. Before the turn of the 20th century, Tesla had invented a powerful coil that was capable of generating high voltages and frequencies, leading to new forms of light, such as neon and fluorescent, as well as X-rays. Tesla also discovered that these coils, soon to be called “Tesla Coils,” made it possible to send and receive radio signals. He quickly filed for American patents in 1897, beating the Italian inventor Guglielmo Marconi to the punch.
Tesla continued to work on his ideas for wireless transmissions when he proposed to J.P. Morgan his idea of a wireless globe. After Morgan put up the $150,000 to build the giant transmission tower, Tesla promptly hired the noted architect Stanford White of McKim, Mead, and White in New York. White, too, was smitten with Tesla’s idea. After all, Tesla was the highly acclaimed man behind Westinghouse’s success with alternating current, and when Tesla talked, he was persuasive.
“As soon as completed, it will be possible for a business man in New York to dictate instructions, and have them instantly appear in type at his office in London or elsewhere,” Tesla said at the time. “He will be able to call up, from his desk, and talk to any telephone subscriber on the globe, without any change whatever in the existing equipment. An inexpensive instrument, not bigger than a watch, will enable its bearer to hear anywhere, on sea or land, music or song, the speech of a political leader, the address of an eminent man of science, or the sermon of an eloquent clergyman, delivered in some other place, however distant. In the same manner any picture, character, drawing or print can be transferred from one to another place. Millions of such instruments can be operated from but one plant of this kind.”
White quickly got to work designing Wardenclyffe Tower in 1901, but soon after construction began it became apparent that Tesla was going to run out of money before it was finished. An appeal to Morgan for more money proved fruitless, and in the meantime investors were rushing to throw their money behind Marconi. In December 1901, Marconi successfully sent a signal from England to Newfoundland. Tesla grumbled that the Italian was using 17 of his patents, but litigation eventually favored Marconi and the commercial damage was done. (The U.S. Supreme Court ultimately upheld Tesla’s claims, clarifying Tesla’s role in the invention of the radio—but not until 1943, after he died.) Thus the Italian inventor was credited as the inventor of radio and became rich. Wardenclyffe Tower became a 186-foot-tall relic (it would be razed in 1917), and the defeat—Tesla’s worst—led to another of his breakdowns. ”It is not a dream,” Tesla said, “it is a simple feat of scientific electrical engineering, only expensive—blind, faint-hearted, doubting world!”
By 1912, Tesla began to withdraw from that doubting world. He was clearly showing signs of obsessive-compulsive disorder, and was potentially a high-functioning autistic. He became obsessed with cleanliness and fixated on the number three; he began shaking hands with people and washing his hands—all done in sets of three. He had to have 18 napkins on his table during meals, and would count his steps whenever he walked anywhere. He claimed to have an abnormal sensitivity to sounds, as well as an acute sense of sight, and he later wrote that he had “a violent aversion against the earrings of women,” and “the sight of a pearl would almost give me a fit.”
Near the end of his life, Tesla became fixated on pigeons, especially a specific white female, which he claimed to love almost as one would love a human being. One night, Tesla claimed the white pigeon visited him through an open window at his hotel, and he believed the bird had come to tell him she was dying. He saw “two powerful beans of light” in the bird’s eyes, he later said. “Yes, it was a real light, a powerful, dazzling, blinding light, a light more intense than I had ever produced by the most powerful lamps in my laboratory.” The pigeon died in his arms, and the inventor claimed that in that moment, he knew that he had finished his life’s work.
Nikola Tesla would go on to make news from time to time while living on the 33rd floor of the New Yorker Hotel. In 1931 he made the cover of Time magazine, which featured his inventions on his 75th birthday. And in 1934, the New York Times reported that Tesla was working on a “Death Beam” capable of knocking 10,000 enemy airplanes out of the sky. He hoped to fund a prototypical defensive weapon in the interest of world peace, but his appeals to J.P. Morgan Jr. and British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain went nowhere. Tesla did, however, receive a $25,000 check from the Soviet Union, but the project languished. He died in 1943, in debt, although Westinghouse had been paying his room and board at the hotel for years.
Sources
Books: Nikola Tesla, My Inventions: The Autobiography of Nikola Tesla, Hart Brothers, Pub., 1982. Margaret Cheney, Tesla: Man Out of Time, Touchstone, 1981.
Articles: “The Problem of Increasing Human Energy With Special References to the Harnessing of the Sun’s Energy,” by Nikola Tesla, Century Magazine, June, 1900. “Reflections on the Mind of Nikola Tesla,” by R. (Chandra) Chandrasekhar, Centre for Intelligent Information Processing Systems, School of Electrical, Electronic and Computer Engineering, Augst 27, 2006, http://www.ee.uwa.edu.au/~chandra/Downloads/Tesla/MindOfTesla.html”Tesla: Live and Legacy, Tower of Dreams,” PBS.org, http://www.pbs.org/tesla/ll/ll_todre.html. ”The Cult of Nikola Tesla,” by Brian Dunning, Skeptoid #345, January 15, 2003. http://skeptoid.com/episodes/4345. “Nikola Tesla, History of Technology, The Famous Inventors Worldwide,” by David S. Zondy, Worldwide Independent Inventors Association, http://www.worldwideinvention.com/articles/details/474/Nikola-Tesla-History-of-Technology-The-famous-Inventors-Worldwide.html. “The Future of Wireless Art by Nikola Tesla,” Wireless Telegraphy & Telephony, by Walter W. Massid & Charles R. Underhill, 1908. http://www.tfcbooks.com/tesla/1908-00-00.htmAfter Dark was my favorite, because it let you add so much stuff to your existing cities, such as new landmarks/attractions and of course the commercial specializations. The day/night cycle was one of the most significant additions since the game released, although it wasn't really part of "After Dark", since it was free for everyone.
Natural Disasters is also good, but the scope is limited to well...natural disasters. When you don't play with the disasters (which is most of the time), the game is basically the same as before. Also it has a few rough edges - Why do fire trucks travel across the city instead of dispatching from the nearest fire station? Why do we need helicopters to put out a tree on fire in the central park or in someone's backyard? Why do fire trucks return home after putting out a building on fire, when 3 buildings next door are also on fire? It has highlighted some issues with the AI that should have been fixed long ago.
Snowfall was a big disappointment I'm afraid. Limiting snow to specific "perma-winter" maps meant it became a separate mini-game rather than an expansion of the base game. The trams were the only useful addition, since you can use them on any map.
Also, don't forget all the free additions like canals, terraforming, day/night cycle, increase of the building and road limits, dynamic weather, theme support etc. The free content that each major patch adds has been at least as exciting as the paid content. I hope this continues with some of the most popular mods being implemented in the base game (Rush Hour, Network Extension, Traffic Manager, above-ground metro etc.).
Click to expand...Former Iowa Democratic congressional candidate Kim Weaver (Facebook.com)
The Democratic candidate running against anti-immigrant Republican Congressman Steve King (IA) announced Saturday that she is dropping out of the race for her own safety.
In a Facebook post published Saturday night, Kim Weaver wrote, “Over the last several weeks, I have been evaluating personal circumstances along with the political climate regarding this campaign. After much deliberation, I have determined that the best decision for me is to withdraw my candidacy for the US House race in Iowa’s 4th Congressional District.”
She explained that beginning during her 2016 campaign, she has been receiving threats of physical violence and murder, and said that “recent events at my home” were forcing her to re-evaluate her decision to run against King.
“While some may say enduring threats are just a part of running for office, my personal safety has increasingly become a concern,” Weaver said.
Furthermore, she explained, she cannot currently risk losing her health coverage, which would disappear if she quit her current job to campaign full time. Added to that, Weaver said her mother is in poor health in Des Moines.
“I feel that it’s necessary to be more available to support her. Considering this, along with the time and energy it takes to succeed as a candidate, I realize that I can’t fully commit to both,” Weaver wrote. “With all this in mind, I have made the difficult decision to end my campaign, and to move out of the district and back to Des Moines where I grew up.”
Weaver thanked her campaign staff, family and friends and urged them to stay active.
“I humbly ask for your support and understanding during this difficult time, as well as your continued support with the effort to unseat Steve King,” she wrote.
King is notoriously anti-immigrant and has made a number of embarrassingly tone-deaf statements about Latino immigrants and people of color during his time in office.
Read Weaver’s full post, embedded below:Both in their books’ sales potential and library access, self-publishing authors will find encouragement next week at BEA’s Author Hub.
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Our Live #EtherIssue Chat is Wednesday
Publishing Perspectives Editor in Chief Edward Nawotka and I will host a live Twitter chat on this week’s Ether topics — a new initiative to get self-published books into libraries and Hugh Howey’s latest AuthorEarnings report — at 11 a.m. ET / 8 a.m. PT—and that’s 4 p.m. BST in London. We’ll use the hashtag #EtherIssue as we do weekly. Join us and watch for @PubPerspectives and @Porter_Anderson on Twitter.
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By Porter Anderson
The first-ever uPublishU Author Hub has its ribbon-cutting at 10 a.m. on Thursday May 29 at BookExpo America (BEA). You’re most welcome to join us if you’re there with a BEA badge.
Author C.J. Lyons, as mistress of the ribbons (I just made that up) will hand off to her fellow “Indie Bestseller,” the author Hugh Howey. And Howey will lead the first programmed session in the Hub, discussing findings and interpretations of his brand-new May 2014 Report from AuthorEarnings.com.
Along with Howey and Lyons’ co-headliners in the Hub — Bella Andre, Barbara Freethy, and H.M. Ward — the entrepreneurial authors who are members of the Author Hub will find a lot to think about, a lot to be encouraged about, in what Howey has to say.
As detailed in my report at Thought Catalog, New Howey Report: Self-Published eBook Authors May Out-Earn The Rest By 27%, Howey’s project to develop quarterly data for authors this time (the follow from February’s debut) shows a healthy stability in the methodology, and a couple of intriguing points about the volatility of new titles vs. backlist long-tail material, for both traditionally and self-published authors.
As Howey writes in the new report, devised with the help of his as-yet unnamed author-associate, “Data Guy”:
As self-published authors build their own backlists, and as more of these authors employ freelance editors and cover artists and pay attention to quality, could there be a future where self-published authors as a cohort are earning a good deal more than traditionally published authors? Our advice to an aspiring author today might be to do one of two things: either build a time machine and travel ten years into the past to query their work — or self-publish today.
The new report may well raise new controversy around the Howeyan attempt to help authors determine a project’s best path to publication. As he and I will be discussing onstage at Writer’s Digest’s Annual Conference in New York and at its Novel Writing Intensive in Los Angeles. I can tell you from my experience of a live conversation with him and Publishing Perspectives Editor-in-Chief Edward Nawotka this month in Berlin at Klopotek’s Publishers’ Forum, Howey will be ready. The guy is always in command of his material and has an abiding passion for this project to support his fellow authors as they struggle, as he has done, to choose how to publish their work.
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But Checking Into a Library?
One thing that has slowed down many who might have liked to consider self-publishing is the quandary of how to get their books into libraries.
There have been some exceptions. One was the Smashwords agreement Mark Coker made with Califa, the California public library consortium, for some 10,000 books made available per Smashwords authors’ opt-in on the program. There’s coverage of that here in a 2012 story in Writing on the Ether at JaneFriedman.com. (Coker will speak in the Author Hub, by the way, at 12:30 p.m. Friday May 30.)
Well, the Library Journal and BiblioBoard believe they have the answer.
It’s called SELF-e, and its new site is just up.
On Thursday May 29 at 1:30 p.m. in New York, Biblioboard’s Mitchell Davis and Library Journal’s Ian Singer will be in the BEA Author Hub to meet with writers and explain the new program.
Quickly, some important points:
SELF-e is a curated program. And immediately on getting that point firmly in mind, you’ve encountered what has been one of the biggest barriers to librarians’ interaction with the self-publishing community: how can librarians possibly face the massive wave of self-published books? — that “tsunami of content,” as Amazon’s Jon Fine likes to call it.
Once chosen for the program, a book becomes part of what the company calls “a unique discovery platform for participating public libraries across the United States.”
The program is platform- and device-agnostic.
A component of the program makes the books of locally based self-publishing authors available to library patrons on a statewide basis.
No multi-user limitations on checkouts of these books.
No cost to participating authors.
When I asked C.J. Lyons why she has officially endorsed the new program, she told me that it brings the library network into the discoverability effort for new books:
With so many books out there, authors and readers, both, rely upon libraries for discoverability. I’m so excited by [this] new partnership that will make it easier for authors and readers to connect–and for libraries to maintain a growing catalog without it becoming overwhelming.
If an author’s book is chosen to be included, then that author provides Library Journal with a non-exclusive license to make the book available to for library subscription programs. There are no restrictions on promoting and selling these ebooks “to any market,” the SELF-e material says, “including the public library market via other vendors).
If not chosen for the SELF-e platform, a writer still can get her or his ebook into “a statewide module with other local authors.” That localized module won’t be curated as the main program will be.
First selections from entries offered by their authors (see the site for instructions) will be chosen later this year after a summer and fall curation period handled by Library Journal.
Another exciting point: the program is developing a “transparent system for all authors to see how many people are reading their ebooks and where those people are.” They expect that part of the program to be ready about a year from now.
In his statement in support of the initiative, Howey writes, “The SELF-e approach to curation combined with simultaneous user-access will encourage books to be discovered and even go viral.”
Librarians will be glad to know that there are no limits to how many submissions they can take from local authors for inclusion in their (non-curated) statewide modules.
Those librarians will also avoid the headaches of patron complaints about restrictions. “there are no wait lists or turnaways,” the material from SELF-e says, “and no time limits on checkouts.”
The homepage at the SELF-e site has an FAQ for both authors and librarians (scroll down to see it). And BiblioBoard already has modules (themed collections of material) in place, including its British Library: Common Core Learning module.
Lyons relates her own excitement about SELF-e to her childhood: “As a child, libraries were my portal to the universe, both real and imagined. How thrilling it is to be able to help readers of today and tomorrow never be without a good book.”
And that’s a good place to start with some questions for our #EtherIssue live conversation Wednesday.
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Wednesday’s #EtherIssue at 11 a.m. ET / 4 p.m. BST
Please give these questions a bit of thought, and join us:
With enough freely checked-out ebook material in libraries through a program like SELF-e, can libraries begin to regain their footing in the wider books community as discovery centers for self-published work?
If you’re an author, how would you feel about providing SELF-e with the non-exclusive license it requires?
Do you agree that library exposure promotes sales? There are those who believe that a library card actually inhibits a user’s buying of books because books are available free of charge at libraries.
Does the curatorial element bother you? Is it a bit of gatekeeping?
Howey, in talking about the SELF-e program, says: “Librarians can be a powerful marketing force for emerging authors.” Do you agree?
And what of Howey’s latest AuthorEarnings report? — how comfortable do you feel with its findings on this second quarterly round? Would you have thought — at least among ebooks on Amazon where the sample is taken — that self-publishing authors might actually be gaining modestly this spring?
We’d love your input on Wednesday at 11 a.m. Eastern, 8 a.m. Pacific, 4 p.m. BST on hashtag #EtherIssue — see you then.
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Last Week’s Topic: When Retailers & Publishers Collide
When we asked our Wednesday #EtherIssue conversation colleagues last week about the Hachette-Amazon standoff over contract negotiations, we got an admirably restrained, sensible discussion. It’s one of the things that tends to hallmark our Publishing Perspectives live chats — mutual respect and level-headed, mature debate, a big credit to our readers.
This is a volatile issue, of course, as is anything to do with Amazon and publishing. And as we go to press on this edition of the Ether, there is word from Frankfurt that three Swedish-owned German publishers may be encountering contractual tensions with the Seattle-based retailer, as well.
Here are a few of the tweets that were exchanged during our discussion. We’ll look forward to seeing everyone online Wednesday.
@Porter_Anderson of course it's the authors. they are losing money, or rather not getting potential sales #etherissue — Melinda Primrose (@MMPrimrose) May 14, 2014
@Porter_Anderson So Amazon need Hachette as well as Hachette needing Amazon #EtherIssue — Caleb Woodbridge (@CalebWoodbridge) May 14, 2014
.@Porter_Anderson Hi Porter – the Seattle Times made sure that readers in Amazon's hometown became very aware of the issue. #EtherIssue — Elizabeth Dimarco (@ESDimarco) May 14, 2014
A friend's book was released by S&S during the B&N standoff. She was very upset. Didn't help that her editors kept quitting. #etherissue — Abby Quillen (@abbyquillen) May 14, 2014
@abbyquillen Yeah another example of authors hurting while the retailer and publisher fight it out. Not a good situation. #EtherIssue — Michael J. Sullivan (@author_sullivan) May 14, 2014
And just a note in closing that our final tweeter there, the author Michael Sullivan, has since written a Digital Book World Expert Publishing Blog post on his experience of this as an Hachette author.
You can read his piece here: An Author’s Perspective on the Hachette-Amazon Battle.
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Porter Anderson is a Fellow with the National Critics Institute, a 33-year journalist with several newspapers and three networks of CNN, as well as a producer posted to the Rome headquarters of the United Nations’ World Food Programme. His Issues on the Ether column appears here at Publishing Perspectives on Tuesdays, followed by an #EtherIssue live discussion on Twitter on Wednesdays. Anderson’s Writing on the Ether articles are read at Thought Catalog and he is a regular contributor to WriterUnboxed.com. He writes the Porter Anderson Meets column weekly for The Bookseller‘s Friday magazine in London with a live #PorterMeets Twitter interview with a newsmaker on Mondays. More about him is at PorterAnderson.com. Find him at Google+
Main image – iStockphoto: mjbs / Boston Public LibraryFreelance journalist and data artist Josh Begley has been methodically recording U.S. military drone activity for years. Every week or so — whenever the strikes occur — Begley will post a news story from the @dronestream Twitter account, identifying when and where drone strikes have occurred before feeding the results into an app called Metadata+.
Sep 1, 2015: Two missiles struck a house, killing 6 people. Four others were wounded (Pakistan) http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/09/01/us-pakistan-drone-idUSKCN0R14RV20150901...
But on Sunday, Dronestream tweeted that Metadata+, which sends out push notifications every time there is a U.S. drone strike, had been removed from the App Store after seven months of being openly available.
Begley will still update followers about the drone strikes via his Twitter account. However, the app's removal is sudden and inexplicable; it was accepted by the App Store after five attempts.
Apple still aspires to be a hub for serious news. It's building tools like Apple News to help journalists and publishers reach new audiences. But Apple's opaque filtering process shows that it may not be ready to decide for the public what kind of content we should or shouldn't be exposed to.
Earlier this month, Apple censored a journalistic app that took you to the scene of the Ferguson, Missouri, shooting of Michael Brown. The tech giant has also taken down educational apps that depicted the Confederate Flag in its historical context. All while allowing for apps that include violence and graphic depictions of war, like Hitman: Sniper and Zynga's Empires and Allies.
Then again, those apps all include in-app purchases from which Apple collects revenue. And none of them is offensive to the United States government.SAN MARCOS, Texas - Authorities believe alcohol may have played a factor in the death of a 20-year-old Texas State University student.
Friends found Matthew McKinley Ellis unresponsive about 11:35 a.m. Monday at the Millennium Apartments, according to the San Marcos Police Department.
Ellis is from Humble.
READ: Definition of hazing in Texas
Authorities said Ellis was a pledge for Phi Kappa Psi fraternity. He was pronounced dead at 12:28 p.m.
An autopsy has been ordered. Investigators believe alcohol may have been a factor in his death, but are awaiting toxicology results from the autopsy, which is expected to take 6-8 weeks.
Ellis was an active student at Texas State University and lived on campus. He was staying at the off-campus apartment complex with four other fraternity members. It is not clear if they are members of the fraternity where Ellis was pledging.
The investigation
University spokesperson Matt Flores said the university is investigating whether the fraternity held any social events preceding Ellis' death.
Flores confirmed that the Phi Kappa Psi fraternity has been under investigation by the university since Oct. 4. The investigation stems from allegations of misbehavior within the fraternity.
The initial complaint was brought to Greek Affairs' attention on Sept. 21 and a formal review was launched Oct. 4. It is an ongoing review.
WATCH: San Marcos Police Department provides updates on student's death
During a press conference Tuesday, authorities said it is too early to tell if Ellis' death is a result of hazing. They also said they have had no previous knowledge of alcohol-related incidents with the fraternity.
Authorities also said they believe the drinking was done at a private fraternity event, not in public.
If it is determined that Ellis' death is hazing-related, charges could range from providing alcohol to a minor to manslaughter.
No arrests have been made at this time.
Greek life suspended
As a result of Ellis' death, Texas State University has suspended activities of all Greek fraternity and sorority chapters at the school.
The chapters are prohibited from "holding new-member events, chapter meetings, social functions, and philanthropic activities until a thorough review of the Greek Affairs system is completed."
This is not the first time this year an incident like this has happened.
February:
Penn State University: Sophomore Tim Piazza died after an alleged hazing ritual while he was pledging Beta Theta Pi.
September:
Louisiana State University: Maxwell Gruver, an 18-year-old Phi Delta Theta pledge, died in what police are investigating as a possible hazing incident.
November:
Florida State University: Andrew Coffey’s death is believed to be alcohol-related. He was pledging Pi Kappa Phi. The death resulted in the suspension of all Greek activities on campus.
Phi Kappa Psi released the following statement on the incident:
"We are heartbroken by the death of Texas State University student and Phi Kappa Psi new member Matthew Ellis," said Phi Kappa Psi Executive Director Mark Guidi. "Our thoughts and prayers are with his family, friends and the entire TSU student body during this difficult time."
"The chapter had been suspended from all operations by Phi Kappa Psi Fraternity, Inc. last week for unrelated matters, and will remain suspended while the investigation continues. Phi Kappa Psi will continue to work closely with the TSU administration and law enforcement during their review of this matter, and have advised all members to cooperate fully."
Texas State University President Denise M. Trauth issued the following statement:
"As president of Texas State University, I am deeply saddened by the tragic death of one of our student who attended an off-campus social event on Sunday evening hosted by members of a university fraternity. Following a call from friends, officers with the San Marcos Police Department found Matthew Ellis, a Phi Kappa Psi pledge, unresponsive on Monday morning at an apartment off campus. He was pronounced dead after EMS personnel were unable to revive him.
"My thoughts are with his family, friends, and the Texas State Community.
"As a result of this tragedy, I have suspended activities of all Greek fraternity and sorority chapters at Texas State. These chapters are prohibited from holding new-member events, chapter meetings, social functions, and philanthropic activities until a thorough review of the Greek Affairs system is completed.
"I have asked Dr. Joanne Smith, Vice President for Student Affairs, who has responsibility for the Greek Affairs system, to immediately initiate this review and propose recommendations for reinstating fraternity and sorority chapters that demonstrate a commitment to the core values of Texas State and the ideals established by their respective national organizations.
"It is imperative that our entire university community develop a culture that places the highest priority on the safety of its students, faculty, and staff."
Copyright 2017 by KPRC Click2Houston - All rights reserved.TAMPA — Jeremy Lenkowski worked on computers for MaintenX International and on a November morning in 2010 he wanted a colleague's advice on what to do about some disturbing videos he had found.
Lenkowski asked Gregory Keeler, the company's controller, to meet him in the parking lot of a McDonald's on N Armenia Avenue. Lenkowski pulled out a laptop, set it on the trunk of his car and inserted a memory stick.
Shocked, Keeler watched as the screen lit up with images of female MaintenX employees, including his own assistant. They "were going to the bathroom and doing other things,'' he later recalled. "I couldn't watch the whole thing and told him to turn it off.''
Keeler was stunned, too, when Lenkowski told him where he had found the videos — in a bag belonging to the company's chief financial officer, James Patrick Stanton Jr.
Four years later — still working for MaintenX — Stanton would be arrested on more than 100 felony counts of video voyeurism based on images that showed unsuspecting women using the toilet, changing clothes and showering naked. At the time of his arrest, a company vice president said that "no one on our executive team had any knowledge of this activity.''
That was not correct.
Within days after Lenkowski found the videos, MaintenX CEO Patrick O'Hara learned of the allegations, he later acknowledged. He was upset enough that he confronted Stanton — who neither admitted nor denied the tapings — and told him to get counseling. He had the bathrooms checked for hidden cameras.
Other than that, little happened. O'Hara didn't call police or request a more thorough investigation. He didn't notify the employees whose privacy had been violated. He didn't even ask whether the images included his own wife and stepdaughter, both of whom worked for MaintenX.
Stanton, a married lawyer, wasn't demoted or disciplined. He continued to work around women he was accused of taping. And because too much time had elapsed between the 2010 tapings and Stanton's 2014 arrest, the charges were dropped and the records were sealed from public view.
The search warrant, the arrest affidavit, the booking information — all have disappeared as if there never had been a case against him.
Stanton, 42, declined to comment for this article, and O'Hara did not return calls. But through depositions and lawsuits, it's possible to piece together the story — one with allegations that a judge called "outrageous'' and "very yucky.''
• • •
Headquartered in a century-old former cigar factory in West Tampa, MaintenX bills itself as "one of the largest national facility maintenance and repair companies in the U.S.'' With its own employees and a huge network of subcontractors, it handles electrical, plumbing and other maintenance work for Fortune 500 companies, including Home Depot, CVS and Best Buy.
Around 2003, a few years out of the University of Florida law school, Stanton joined MaintenX as chief financial officer. Among the employees reporting to him was Lenkowski, who worked in information technology.
In late 2010, Lenkowski was asked to repair Stanton's Dell laptop computer. Needing to transfer a data file, he used a memory stick he found with the laptop. When he opened it to see if there was enough storage to hold the file, images of female employees showering and using the toilet suddenly appeared.
"The videos were taken from different angles, at different times and dates,'' Lenkowski said in a lawsuit he filed against Stanton and MaintenX in 2014. "The restrooms and shower at the MaintenX offices were being monitored and recorded digitally. The videos... had been culled, renamed, sorted and intentionally saved.''
Stunned and not knowing what do, Lenkowski showed the videos to Keeler. After briefly viewing them, Keeler went to work and "sat in disbelief,'' as he later described it. He, too, was unsure how to proceed, so he called his mother, who advised him to let the company owners decide.
Keeler took the matter to O'Hara, MaintenX's CEO and founder, who said he wanted "a week or two to think about it.'' O'Hara then invited Keeler, Lenkowski and the company's vice president, Juan Carlos Gonzalez, to lunch at a Tampa restaurant.
Accounts of that meeting differ.
In his lawsuit, Lenkowski said he was urged not to notify police because "it would hurt the women shown in the video, their families, the company... and the stability of his own employment.''
In a deposition, O'Hara said he told Lenkowski and Keeler that "if they (had) something that's a police matter, they should go to police.''
Regardless of what was said, no one called the police. Instead, O'Hara met with Stanton about the allegations against him.
"And he didn't ever — he didn't deny it, he didn't admit it,'' O'Hara said in a deposition. " I just told him if any of this s--- is going on, that, you know, that's not something that can be tolerated.''
O'Hara also told Stanton that if he "was doing anything like that, he needs to go get some mental help.''
Stanton replied that he had been counseled by his priest.
"And that was good enough for you?'' O'Hara was asked in his deposition.
"Yes,'' he said.
• • •
MaintenX didn't discipline or demote Stanton. In his lawsuit, Lenkowski said the CFO kept working around the women in the videos, "sharing |
shelter from the weirdling sun, and their treasures and lairs.
Stretch goal #9 at $38,000: FUNDED! The boxed set will include a custom-printed Purple Planet judge’s screen. The front will feature Doug’s amazing art. The reverse includes 3 panels of tables, stats, and reference specific to the Purple Planet.
The death orms: massive worms of the arid wastelands, whose death mother hides great secrets at the bottom of a vast pit.
Appendix N Inspirations
Peril on the Purple Planet was born from the same Sword & Planet sources that inspired Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Barsoom series and Robert E. Howard’s Almuric. In these seminal works, an “earthman” awakens on a foreign planet. The mysteries of the new world are slowly revealed as he explores the hostile environs, and the fate of the protagonist hinges on his or her ability to turn these secrets to his advantage.
In Peril on the Purple Planet, ancient technologies lie hidden in ancestor tombs and beneath the shifting sands of the wastes. In the hands of the man-beasts these are religious icons, but wielded by the PCs they become weapons of destruction. The sweltering mushroom jungles hold the secrets to both life and death, and the endless wastes conceal some of the greatest treasures of all.
All of these are left to PCs to discover, as they make their way through the foreign landscape, pitting blade against claw, spell against laser, and cunning against the brutality of the dying planet.
Delivery Details
The adventure module is complete and ready for printing. It will be sent to the printer the moment this Kickstarter funds, and the PDF edition of the adventure module will be available a few weeks after that.
Our goal is to have advance copies of the book available for pickup by backers at Gen Con. Assuming the printer is able to hit that deadline, backers who pick up at Gen Con will not have to pay shipping charges for the adventure module. The boxed set and campaign setting (and stretch goals) will not be ready by Gen Con, so Gen Con backers will still have to pay some level of shipping charges for those materials.
If we have extra copies of the module at Gen Con after fulfilling all backer requests for pickup, we will offer those for sale to the general public.
Backer copies for those not at the con, plus copies of the additional materials for those who picked up the module at Gen Con, are estimated to ship in November when all materials are complete.
Shipping & handling: Shipping and handling charges will be invoiced at the end of the Kickstarter. This allows us to give you the best price for your order. We will invoice the orders via Paypal when items are ready to ship. For USA orders, orders will be shipped via media mail at an expected cost of approximately $8-10, depending on final weight of product. International orders will be invoiced at actual postage cost plus $5 for handling. International postage requires hand-written customs forms, and waiting in line at a post office. International postage also has long transit times, and depending on the destination can be very expensive. If you are unsure how expensive international shipping can be, please ask us for an estimate.
About the Author
At the age of 8, Harley Stroh lost his first PC to pit-rats in the Caves of Chaos. Author of 40-odd adventures, short stories, articles and supplements, he has survived urban camping with Doug Kovacs, studied saber-fencing with a Polish mystic, and ollied through a pane of sugar-glass. Harley spends his free time recovering from skateboarding injuries, playing with his 8-month old daughter, and hiking the Rocking Mountains with Lady and the Hound of Hirot. His next DCC projects are Journey to the Center of Áereth and the long-awaited Punjar city set.OUYA was founded with the idea of creating a new, Android-based platform for building games that could be played on people’s TVs. After a highly successful Kickstarter campaign, the OUYA console began shipping and went on sale in retail locations one year ago.
Since launch, OUYA has continued to grow its user base, thanks to sales and distribution both in-store and online. The startup has expanded the number of locations in which the console is available. At launch, OUYA was sold in the U.S., Canada, and the U.K., while today it’s also now available in Western Europe, the Middle East, and Brazil.
It also continues to grow its developer base and the number of games available on the platform — it now has 36,000 registered developers, and is adding about 1,000 more each month. Those developers have now published more than 840 games for the OUYA console, up from about 170 games available at launch a year ago, and 575 at the beginning of this year.
All this despite the launch of two new next-gen gaming consoles from Microsoft and Sony.
While the launch of the PlayStation 4 and the Xbox One might have stolen some headlines, OUYA CEO Julie Uhrman says it hasn’t slowed down interest in the OUYA platform.
There really hasn’t been any difference in sales since the launch of those new consoles, Uhrman tells me. “They offer something very different from OUYA. We have always strived to carve out our own niche, with a $99 console where majority of games are free to try,” she adds.
That is in contrast to the newer consoles, which cost hundreds of dollars each and have games that are priced at $50 or $60 each. The microconsole’s games are also designed to appeal to a different type of gamer, as opposed to the high-performance, hard-core 3D shooters built for the PS4 or Xbone.
But OUYA’s gamers keep coming back, on average launching more than 13 games a week on the console. According to Uhrman, the average number of games installed per player on OUYA is more than 30.
That’s due in part to the variety of games that are made for the platform, and OUYA is trying to increase the variety and number of games through a number of efforts. That includes its $1 million “Free The Games” fund to match the funding amount received by developers who raise between $50,000 and $250,000 on Kickstarter. That funding comes in exchange for the promise of exclusivity on the OUYA platform for some time.
Pretty soon, developers will be able to program games directly on the OUYA console, Uhrman said. By connecting a keyboard and mouse, they’ll be able to code and immediately test their games.
All of that is meant to attract a new breed of developer. About 50 percent of developers that code for OUYA had never written an Android game before. About 20 percent of developers with a game on the platform have already published a second game.
While OUYA is enjoying steady growth, the company wants to expand things even further over the next year. That starts with the development of its own next-gen console, OUYA 2. While Uhrman said the company is working on the next box, she declined to forecast when it would ship.
It’s also working to extend its footprint onto other platforms, which could include embedding OUYA into smart TVs and other devices. The idea is to take OUYA everywhere so that developers can reach gamers wherever they are. It plans to announce two specific partners for that initiative soon.
That might seem like a lot of ground to cover in a short period of time, but considering how much OUYA has accomplished so far, it seems doable.Google offering $100,000 cash bonuses is so last summer. Now it's apparently offering seven-figure stock payouts to keep engineers from defecting
Last week it was $3.5 million. This week, All Things D reports that one engineer ended a bidding war by taking a $6 million stock grant.
We've seen talent wars like this before. Microsoft was sued back in 1997 for poaching employees from database company Borland. Google returned the favor last decade, causing Steve Ballmer throw a chair across the room. Now, Google is trying its hardest not to end up on the losing end as the cycle repeats itself.
The trouble with paying these kinds of retention bonuses is that once you start, it's very hard to stop. They're basically giving employees an extra incentive to sniff around Facebook or another pre-IPO startup so they can get a job offer to dangle back in front of their managers.
A lot of employees are always going to be motivated by money, and with the stock no longer doubling every year, Google's in a tough spot. But the company may need to take a hard look at other cultural factors as well. We hear more and more tales of new committees, intra-group politicking, and attitude problems toward new employees, particularly those who come in through acquisitions. Facebook is still mostly small enough and agile enough to avoid those problems.Multiple Playable Characters - Each android has a unique weapon set and play style, experiment to find which android suits you best.
Dynamic Levels - From lights out to shifting walls to giant flamethrowers, there are surprises on board the Genki Star that will keep you on your toes.
Overwhelming Odds - Push back against hordes of robots with quick reactions and clever weapon tactics.
Giant Robot Bosses - Challenge the guardian of each deck as they unleash bullet hell and stage covering special attacks.
Co-Op Play - Join in with two, three or four players and experience escalating chaos. Supports Keyboard/Mouse and Gamepad configurations.
Quote I think the best approach is to make your game easily accessible and rely on its quality to drive purchases, so there will definitely be a DRM free version. We're not a steam developer yet so we don't know all the details but if our Greenlight is approved we will be investigating Valves DRM options.
We are evaluating Desura and other indie game distribution platforms, but we are not ready to commit to anything.
Quote Quite smooth actually, Unity's build system is very robust so it's almost identical to Windows and OS X development. The biggest thing so far is that Linux reads control pads differently, which solved a bug we have in the windows version!
Quote Co-Op is local play only, with only 3 people on the development team it would have stretched us too thin to attempt online Co-Op. We'll be looking at this as a potential feature for post release updates.
Quote I'd like to let people know that I used Blender to edit the announcement trailer, it's an amazing piece of software and I think more people should be aware of what it can do.
Well now this game is quite the pleasant surprise, I tend to grow a little tired of games that are "old school" as most of the time to me it means it's going to be a platformer with some attempt at 8bit graphics, not the case with this game! Assault Android Cactus is a twin stick shooter that combines fast paced gameplay with some really great graphics built atop of Unity3D (so we can thank Unity again for another great game). Assault Android Cactus hasn't been released yet but I snagged a preview build to play around with a record some game play. It took me a while to find recording software that works well but I settled with Vokoscreen!What I love about the game is that while the levels themselves are small they generally have a fair bit going on in them, like the first level below you are falling on an elevator which crashes down below, all while you are fighting off hordes of enemies, excellent! It can get pretty intense as well, safe to say I let off a few squeals thinking I wasn't quite going to make it.Not only that but you get to fight huge mechanised bosses as well, who doesn't love a good boss fight?Seems the audio goes out of sync but you get the idea, seems my Video capturing needs work eh!They took the time out of their busy lives developing to answer a few questions of mine too!They are looking to get onto Steam via Greenlight as well so you know the drill, vote if you like it!Finally the developer wanted me to note this to you all:This is the trailer:One to seriously watch folks, I personally love it. It perfectly matches up the "old school" style of gameplay with great graphics to make an exciting game!Nick Wells, CTVNews.ca
A Vancouver Island man went to some unusual lengths to track down a stolen dirt bike.
Ryan Sandnes' bike was stolen last Friday, and despite security camera footage of the thief, RCMP hadn't made much headway in retrieving his stolen property.
That's when he decided to investigate a different way.
"I kind of thought, 'Why don't I send the drone up?'" he told CTV Vancouver Island.
He enlisted the help of a neighbour and together came up with an idea of where the loot could be stashed.
They decided to fly the camera-equipped drone over a nearby field.
"There was a house that'd burned in there about a year ago and I had heard from various people in the area that various items that'd been stolen in the past had been found in the field. So why not give it a shot?" said Murray Thierauf.
The bike was lying at the foot of a tree.
A #Duncan man comes up with an unique way of finding his stolen dirt bike. Story tonight at 5&6 @CTVNewsVI pic.twitter.com/uoyuqnU9hY — Andrew Garland (@CTVNewsAndy) February 11, 2016
"I honestly didn't think it would work that well," he said.
Sandnes turned over the footage to North Cowichan-Duncan RCMP, who say this is the first time they've received video evidence recorded from a drone.
Drone technology has come under fire in the province after a series of incidents. One was spotted flying in restricted airspace near Vancouver's airport in October, drawing condemnation from federal transportation officials.
Two months later and Canada's federal transportation watchdog said it was investigating several videos, possibly taken by a drone flying in the flight paths of aircraft taking off and landing in Vancouver harbour, that were posted online by a local drone operator.
Sandnes hopes that, amid the negative headlines about drones and their capabilities, his experience highlights a positive use.
"Drones are having a bad name right now because of what they could do, what could maybe happen. This is another thing that could happen. You could find your stolen property," he said.
With files from CTV Vancouver IslandWant more hot BPR News stories? Sign up for our morning blast HERE
Sen. Barbara Boxer lost her cool with Bernie Sanders’ supporters at the Nevada Democratic convention Saturday.
Boxer, a Hillary Clinton surrogate, took the Las Vegas stage to raucous boos and, at first, tried to bring a unifying message to stop the onslaught.
“I bring a message from Bernie Sanders and I bring a message from Hillary Clinton,” she told the crowd. “We need civility in the Democratic Party. Civility.
But the supporters of the Vermont socialist were still angered that their charge had lost the Nevada caucus and were having none of it.
She then tried reverse psychology on the angry crowd.
“When you boo me you’re booing Bernie Sanders. Go ahead. Bernie is my friend. You want to boo Bernie, boo me. Go on, you’re booing Bernie. You’re booing Bernie,” she said.
As the boos rained down on Boxer, her tone became more acrimonious as she began to reprimand the malcontents.
“Let’s hear it for Hillary Clinton!” needling those who opposed her. “We have the votes, we have the voice, we have victory!”
“I grew up in Brooklyn. I’m not afraid of bullies,” The California senator continued.
“I’m for Hillary Clinton and she’s for all of us,” she yelled. “Keep on booing and boo yourselves out of this election.”
Way to unify the party.
Sign up for our morning blast HEREKerry set to meet Putin in first visit to Russia since start of Ukraine crisis
US secretary of state John Kerry has landed in Sochi, where he is due to meet Russian president Vladimir Putin later on Tuesday. The trip is Kerry’s first visit to Russia since the start of the Ukraine crisis.
Kerry will also hold talks with Sergei Lavrov, his Russian counterpart. The two laid flowers at a memorial to victims of the second world war in the Black Sea resort before holding talks.
“This trip is part of our ongoing effort to maintain direct lines of communication with senior Russian officials and to ensure US views are clearly conveyed,” state department spokeswoman Marie Harf said in a written statement. Discussion is likely to focus on Ukraine, where sporadic fighting continues despite a ceasefire agreement, as well as on Syria and Iran.
The Russian foreign ministry said: “We continue to underline that we are ready for cooperation with the US on the basis of equality, non-interference in internal affairs, and that Russian interests are taken into account without attempting to exert pressure on us.”
The US has placed several rounds of sanctions on Russia over its actions in Ukraine.
Dmitry Peskov, the Russian president’s spokesman, said a final decision on the meeting with Putin had not been taken yet.
After his stopover in Sochi, Kerry will travel on to Turkey where he is due to attend a meeting of Nato foreign ministers, and will then return to Washington for a summit of Gulf Arab leaders that President Barack Obama is hosting at Camp David.
Kerry has not been to Russia since May 2013, well before the revolution and subsequent Russian intervention in Ukraine began. The conflict has caused the biggest crisis in relations between Russia and the west since the cold war.
Russia believes that the US is meddling in Ukraine, while Washington has pointed to mounting evidence of Russian military involvement in the east of the country.
“Russia has engaged in a rather remarkable period of the most overt and extensive propaganda exercise that I’ve seen since the very height of the cold war,” Kerry said in February. “And they have been persisting in their misrepresentations, lies, whatever you want to call them, about their activities to my face, to the face of others, on many different occasions.”
On Monday the Russian foreign ministry said that US-Russian relations are enduring a difficult period “because of the targeted unfriendly actions of Washington”.
“Unfairly blaming Russia for the crisis in Ukraine, which was actually in the main provoked by the US itself, Obama’s administration in 2014 went down the road of ruining bilateral links, announced a policy of ‘isolating’ our country on the international stage, and demanded support for its confrontational steps from the countries that traditionally follow Washington.”
Putin has accused the US of organising the Maidan protests that toppled former Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych, and has criticised the presence of US military trainers in Ukraine. Although the 300 US trainers are operating in the west of the country, well away from the conflict zone, Russia has questioned their purpose. Interfax quoted an unnamed Russian official as stating that the issue of US military assistance to Ukraine would be raised with Kerry.
During a major military parade on Saturday to mark 70 years since victory in the second world war, Putin criticised “attempts to build a unipolar world” – a clear swipe at the US, though he did not name the country.
“Over the past decade, we are seeing more frequent attempts to ignore the basic principles of international cooperation,” said Putin.
Western leaders mainly boycotted the parade in protest at Russia’s actions in Ukraine.
German chancellor Angela Merkel travelled to Moscow on Sunday to pay her respects at a war memorial, but used a meeting with Putin to criticise Russia’s annexation of Crimea and urged Russia to use its influence over the separatists in Ukraine to encourage them to abide by the ceasefire.
Putin said the Ukrainian government bore most of the responsibility for ensuring peace.
There will be a number of other items on the agenda in Sochi, including Russia’s announcement last month that it would lift a five-year ban on delivery of the S-300 air defence missile system to Iran. Moscow insists the S-300 is a defensive system which will have no negative impact on the security of Israel or other regional players. The White House, however, remains worried about the deal.
After his meeting with Merkel, Putin also criticised what he described as western double standards, comparing the recent events in Yemen with those in Ukraine last year. He said both were coups, but the response from the west was very different.
“If we apply different standards to the same kind of events, we will never be able to agree on anything,” said Putin.Share. Doom, Overwatch, and Uncharted 4 are among the top nominees. Doom, Overwatch, and Uncharted 4 are among the top nominees.
Because of the reaction to No Man's Sky, and the game's presence at previous The Game Awards showcases, host and producer Geoff Keighley says the awards show this year will be putting an emphasis on actual gameplay in its spotlights this year.
Speaking with Polygon, Keighley revealed the show's renewed focus on gameplay over pre-packaged clips.
"I have thought about the story of No Man's Sky a lot," Geoff Keighley said to Polygon, acknowledging the game's presence on both last year's The Game Awards and its original debut during the 2013 VGX Awards (which Keighley also hosted) may have contributed to "a black hole of hype that the developers couldn't pull themselves out of."
Exit Theatre Mode
"There is a good moral of that story and it's part of what I'm trying to address this year; to have developers be more transparent about the state of their game," Keighley explained.
To change things up, Keighley explained that the show will have "deeper looks at [game] premieres," including four to five minute preview segments to "provide a little more context" to what players can expect from these upcoming titles.
The 2016 Game Awards nominees were also revealed today, with Doom, Inside, Overwatch, Titanfall 2, and Uncharted 4: A Thief's End all being nominated for Game of the Year. Uncharted 4 earned the most overall nominations this year.
Exit Theatre Mode
You can watch The Game Awards on IGN this year, and on pretty much every connected device in your home or pocket. Here are some links to the apps (download them today!) and other places where you can watch The Game Awards live stream and IGN's show coverage as well. Watch The Game Awards live stream on...
Check out the full list of nominees below. The Game Awards will air on December 1. Come back to IGN to watch and learn about all of the gameplay reveals showcased during the awards show.
Game of the Year
Doom (id Software/Bethesda)
Inside (Playdead)
Overwatch (Blizzard)
Titanfall 2 (Respawn/Electronic Arts)
Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End (Naughty Dog/Sony Interactive Entertainment)
Best Game Direction
Blizzard (for Overwatch)
DICE (for Battlefield 1)
id Software (for Doom)
Naughty Dog (for Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End)
Respawn (for Titanfall 2)
Best Narrative
Firewatch (Campo Santo)
Inside (Playdead)
Mafia III (Hangar 13/2K)
Oxenfree (Night School Studio)
Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End (Naughty Dog/SIE)
Best Art Direction
Abzu (Giant Squid/505)
Firewatch (Campo Santo)
Inside (Playdead)
Overwatch (Blizzard)
Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End (Naughty Dog/SIE)
Best Music/Sound Design
Battlefield 1 (DICE/EA)
Doom (id/Bethesda)
Inside (Playdead)
Rez Infinite (Enhance Games)
Thumper (Drool)
Best Performance
Alex Hernandez as Lincoln Clay, Mafia III
Cissy Jones as Delilah, Firewatch
Emily Rose as Elena, Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End
Nolan North as Nathan Drake, Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End
Rich Summer as Henry, Firewatch
Troy Baker as Sam Drake, Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End
Games for Impact
1979 Revolution (iNK Stories)
Block’hood (Plethora Project/Devolver Digital)
Orwell (Osmotic Studios/Surprise Attack)
Sea Hero Quest (Glitchers)
That Dragon, Cancer (Numinous Games)
Best Independent Game
Firewatch (Campo Santo)
Hyper Light Drifter (Heart Machine)
Inside (Playdead)
Stardew Valley (ConcernedApe/Chucklefish Games)
The Witness (Thelka, Inc.)
Best Mobile/Handheld
Clash Royale (Supercell)
Fire Emblem Fates (Intelligent Systems/Nintendo)
Monster Hunter Generations (Capcom)
Pokemon Go (Niantic)
Severed (DrinkBox Studios)
Best VR Game
Batman: Arkham VR (Rocksteady Studios/WBIE)
EVE: Valkyrie (CCP Games)
Job Simulator (Owlchemy Labs)
Rez Infinite (Enhance Games)
Thumper (Drool)
Best Action Game
Battlefield 1 (DICE/EA)
DOOM (id Software/Bethesda Softworks)
Gears of War 4 (The Coalition/Microsoft Studios)
Overwatch (Blizzard)
Titanfall 2 (Respawn/EA)
Best Action/Adventure Game
Dishonored 2 (Arkane Studios/Bethesda Softworks)
Hitman (IO Interactive/Square-Enix)
Hyper Light Drifter (Heart Machine)
Ratchet & Clank (Insomniac Games/Sony Interactive Entertainment)
Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End (Naughty Dog/Sony Interactive Entertainment)
Best RPG
Dark Souls 3 (FromSoftware/Bandai Namco Entertainment)
Deus Ex: Mankind Divided (Eidos Montreal/Square-Enix)
The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt -- Blood and Wine (CD Projekt RED)
World of Warcraft: Legion (Blizzard)
Xenoblade Chronicles X (Monolith Soft/Nintendo)
Best Fighting Game
Killer Instinct Season 3 (Iron Galaxy Studios/Microsoft Studios)
King of Fighters XIV (SNK/Atlus USA)
Pokken Tournament (Bandai Namco Studios/The Pokemon Co.)
Street Fighter V (Capcom)
Best Strategy Game
Civilization VI (Firaxis Games/2K)
Fire Emblem Fates (Intelligent Systems/Nintendo)
The Banner Saga 2 (Stoic Studio/Versus Evil)
Total War: Warhammer (Creative Assembly/Sega)
XCOM 2 (Firaxis Games/2K)
Best Family Game
Dragon Quest Builders (Square Enix)
Lego Star Wars: The Force Awakens (TT Fusion/WBIE)
Pokemon Go (Niantic)
Ratchet & Clank (Insomniac Games/Sony Interactive Entertainment)
Skylanders: Imaginators (Toy for Bob/Activision)
Best Sports/Racing
FIFA 17 (EA Canada/EA Sports)
Forza Horizon 3 (Playground Games/Microsoft Studios)
MLB The Show 16 (SCE San Diego Studio/SIE)
NBA 2K17 (Visual Concepts/2K Sports)
Pro Evolution Soccer 2017 (PES Productions/Konami)
Best MultiplayerWelcome to another Xena Thursday! Today, we’re beginning our chronological coverage of every single episode of Xena: Warrior Princess — both the episodes that I have previously highlighted AND the episodes I’ve yet to feature. Complementing my thoughts are the thoughts of those who worked on the series: mostly actors, writers, directors, and producers. I have done months of research for the acquisition of the quotes you’ll see over these next 67 weeks (as there are 134 episodes and I’ll be covering two episodes per week). They come from a variety of sources, including the original special feature-laden DVD releases, The Chakram Official Newsletters, both the Topps and Titans Official Xena Magazines, the fan kits, and other assorted print and video interviews. So in addition to sharing my thoughts, these posts will also contain information and musings from the Xenites that matter most — the ones who brought this exciting series to the small screen.
01. Season 1, Episode 1: “Sins Of The Past” (Aired: 09/04/95 | Filmed: 06/26 – 07/05/95)
Xena journeys homeward determined to make amends for the sins of her past, but her efforts to begin a new life are challenged by the vengeful warlord Draco.
Story by Robert Tapert | Teleplay by R.J. Stewart | Directed by Doug Lefler | Production No. 876901
JACKSON SAYS:
I featured this episode as #23 on my list of the 60 best episodes. Read my thoughts here.
CAST & CREW COMMENTARY:
Lucy Lawless (Actor, Xena): “We didn’t really know what the show was and so we were all thinking on our feet. I had been a little overexcited and not quite centered enough heading into this episode. But the night before the first day of shooting I had terrible diarrhea, and it took everything out of me, which was exactly what was needed for going into the series. So I might have been a lot more hyped, a lot less natural had I not had that inauspicious beginning!” (The Official Guide To The Xenaverse by Robert Weisbrot – 1998)
R.J. Stewart (Writer/Producer): “The great thing about Xena was that dark past. I recognised [sic] right away that there’d never been a hero on television who had such a dark past. Xena was, as portrayed in the Hercules episodes, a war criminal. She was a monster. And now, she’s had this major conversion to good, and I wanted the pilot to be about the ramifications of that. Not about the actual conversion – because that happened on a three-episode arc in Hercules – but about the consequences of that to her life. If you notice, in the first scene [of “Sins Of The Past”], she’s burying her weapons, and the subtext of that to me was that she was giving up. I won’t go so far as to say she was committing suicide, but she was giving this up because she had looked back on what she’d done in the past and realised [sic] it was a horror, what she did, and she was burying her weapons to just walk away from the whole thing. Then the next thing is she hears the cries of people in distress and something clicks right there: ‘Waitaminute [sic]… I know how to make this pain go away inside me, or at least to channel it, and this is doing good, dedicating my life to doing good. So, for Rob [Tapert, Executive Producer] and I, that opening scene was really central to the transition of the bad Xena to the good. Then once we’d got there, we had this great, great backstory for her. Once again, I don’t know of any other hero on television who has such a dark past, and I’ve always said that the biggest monster Xena fights is the one inside of her. The opportunity to revive that – the idea that the dark Xena is still inside her, and could come back – gave a great tension to the series. So the pilot was about setting those things up, and then establishing the relationship between her and Gabrielle. And that, of course, evolved into the heart of the whole series.” (Titan: The Official XENA Magazine, Issue #1 – November 1999)
Renee O’Connor (Actor, Gabrielle): “I remember [the first] scene [with Xena]. I remember being in this room and filming this in front of the crew and being nervous because we were all new and you didn’t know who anyone was yet. It takes time to get in sync with a new production. You eventually lose that fear and it becomes a family environment. But this was one of the first scenes we filmed and Lucy and I were a bit nervous. At least I was… I knew this character was staying a while and I was trying to figure out who she is and establishing the relationship with Xena… I had just come from the Hercules telefeature before I did Xena. The style on Hercules was much more comedic… I came to Xena thinking that show was the same. It’s really interesting to watch how I started off playing Gabrielle and then how Lucy was so complicated and complex as Xena. And dark, really, really, dark. It took me most of the first season, maybe not that long, but it took me a long time to come to Lucy’s level of where she was playing the show in terms of style…. You see how animated I am in the scene trying to talk the villagers out of stoning Xena? I’ve got the hands going. That was who I thought Gabrielle was and I thought the style of the show was animated and comedic. But Lucy was so still, I had to balance that. Make it more realistic. I had to come to play in her field.” (The Chakram Newsletter: #21)
Lucy Lawless (Actor, Xena): “Xena’s only defense is violence, and that’s why we needed Gabrielle to come in and [do the talking – talk her way out of it].” (“Sins Of The Past” Commentary, 10th Anniversary DVD Set)
R.J. Stewart (Writer/Producer): “The great awakening that Xena had in ‘Sins of the Past’ can be stated thus: ‘I’ve lived a life of a death maker. Now, I’ve had an epiphany, a revelation, a vision. I see what I’ve done, the consequences, the suffering I’ve caused. Perhaps, I’ll destroy myself so I can hurt no one else. Wait, people are in trouble. I’ll help them. That’s it! I’ll give my life to protecting innocent people against people like me. And will that redeem me? Maybe, if I do it long enough, but really it’s up to someone else to decide that. I must keep working to help people. I don’t want to be “forgiven” in a ceremonial way so I feel better about myself. Did the people I killed for greed and revenge ever get a chance to feel better about themselves? I must continue to protect the innocent and any time I see a way to make up for the Sins of the Past, I must embrace it. How it all ends, a higher power will decide, but I know my mission and I will give my life to it.’” (Xena Online Community Interview – March 2008)
Jay Laga’aia (Actor, Draco): “I wanted Draco to be as dashing as Errol Flynn. He and Xena had a thing going. I wanted him to be charming and adventurous, but a character who would sacrifice his own mother at the drop of a hat in order to advance himself. He was someone who, if you worked with him, people would say, ‘why are you with this person? He is so evil!’ He was a character who would [show no mercy to] anybody who crossed him. If he had to decide whether to kill a whole town just so that his horses could eat, he would kill the whole town and not think twice about it. For that first episode, I let the director [Doug Lefler] say ‘yes’ or ‘no’, but he basically liked what he saw. I didn’t want Draco to be the stereotypical evil guy all the time. What I wanted was for the audience to see that he was a charming character and that he and Xena not only shared a love of battle, but there was also an intimacy there. So there was an element of affection. But at the same time, as soon as Xena left the room, he would be thinking, ‘Right, how can I use this to my advantage?’ That was the great juxtaposition from my point of view, because I knew characters like that and I pulled them all together. I wanted Draco to have the face of Tom Cruise and the mask of Hannibal Lecter, a combination that made him like honey on steel – it was sweet, but if you licked it you would cut your tongue. So Draco was this barbarian because he would much rather clean his knife in your innards than have to talk and reason with you! He was also very unpredictable in the sense that he was a wolf in sheep’s clothing. He would lure you out with a bouquet of flowers, but as soon as you grabbed them they would turn to poison ivy. I knew I needed this character to have longevity. I also needed him to have more than one dimension, so that I would be able to play him as vulnerable in a comical as well as a dramatic sense…. We did the scene where my army is about to beat up the townsfolk of Amphipolis in a barn and the door opens behind me and Xena is standing there. I grab the leader of the townspeople and I’m about to beat him up, when I suddenly hear, ‘Hello, Draco’ and I turn around to see Xena at the door. Lucy was still trying to get used to her costume, so we did rehearsals wearing robes. So the first take was the first time I’d seen her in the full outfit, and when the door opened I just stood there and went ‘hmmm… I know I have to stand here and say something but how about… WOW!’ The director was laughing in the background and said ‘Cut, we’ll go again..’ But I was totally gobsmacked. Lucy looked absolutely stunning, and it was an image that’s been implanted in my brain ever since.” (Titan: The Official XENA Magazine, Issue #14 – January 2001)
Doug Lefler (Director): “I’m sure one of the reasons I was hired for [“Sins Of The Past”] was the climactic fight on top of the characters’ heads. I’d like to think there were other reasons too, but it was a complex and ambitious episode with a lot of action and forced perspective sequences and a bunch of things of that nature. I believe the first episode was shot in 16mm instead of 35mm and we were given the marching order to work a lot faster than on Hercules and get a lot more set-ups, because they wanted it to be more like a Hong Kong film. We took inspiration from the Jet Li film The Legend Of Fong Sai Yuk for that climactic battle, which was one of my favorite films. So I loved that scene so much that I jumped at the opportunity to do a sequence like it for the Xena pilot.” (Titan: The Official XENA Magazine, Issue #13 – December 2000)
Gary Jones (Second-Unit Director): “Doug Lefler [the main-unit director] had shot the extras only at a distance. He had Draco and Xena on top of platforms from view so it looked like [the fight] was on their heads. But all the close-ups where stunt doubles really were on the extras’ heads was all second-unit… And |
.2% of respondents. It is noteworthy as well that combining the different can formats available, 22.8% choose canned beer as their preferred beer packaging.
Looking at where British Columbian craft beer drinkers most often purchase beer the private liquor store channel comes in top spot with 45% of respondents. Government liquor stores and the brewery itself were in a virtual tie with one another at 25.5% and 25.3%. The.2% difference is well between the margin of error included in the 2016 BC Craft Beer Survey results.
Finally, The craft beer style preferences. What are the preferred styles of BC Craft Beer Drinkers in 2016? This was an open ended question so there are some variances in terminology. The top 10 styles as listed below represent 75% of all responses. The top 10 craft beer styles are listed as submitted by respondants as opposed to by traditional styles.
India Pale Ale Stout Sour Ale Pale Ale Lager Saison Porter Pilsner Belgian Ale Hefeweizen
What do you think about this information? Do you agree? Are you surprised? Tell us what you think in the comment section below.
Next up will be a comparison of data from 2013-2016 responses. Stay tuned to see how the consumer preferences of craft beer drinkers in British Columbia are changing.
*In making calculations where 10+ is a response option, the value of 10 was used in all circumstances.It's difficult when you have an interleague series and the teams involved play just once, but with steady rain all afternoon Saturday forecast to last well into the evening, the Cubs postponed their Saturday night game with the Royals:
#Cubs rained out. Makeup is Monday, Sept. 28 at 7:05 p.m. — Bruce Miles (@BruceMiles2112) May 30, 2015
The Cubs had a big promotional date scheduled with a Chicago Whales Federal League jersey giveaway and the teams were going to wear throwback jerseys. No word yet on when or whether those promotions will be rescheduled. It's too bad that this promotion won't happen -- I always like throwback games -- but clearly, with rain expected to last well into the evening, cold temperatures in the 40s and high winds, the Cubs made the right call.
The teams will wrap up this abbreviated two-game set Sunday afternoon at 1:20, when forecasts call for sunshine, but temperatures only in the 50s.The question remains, though, what does the U.S. crime rate look like across the country on a county-size scale?
Counties across the South, the Pacific Northwest, California, New Mexico and the lower Mississippi River area show the highest rates of crime adjusted for population in 2014.
The overall crime rate includes reported incidents of violent and property crime, specifically murder, rape, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary, larceny, motor vehicle theft and arson.
To show crimes for counties with large and small populations, the rate is displayed as crime incidents per 1,000 people. Although the rate makes the view fairer, it is still subject to distortions, such as a one-time incident in a county with a small population.
Also, big cities have crimes involving people who travel in for work or entertainment, so a rate based on residential population is skewed.In April 2002, a few days after the death of Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother, her crown was taken from behind its ultra-high-security armoured glass in the Tower of London and carried in open view through the streets of London, surmounting her coffin as it processed from St James's Palace to Westminster Hall. It remained there during her Lying-in-State as members of the public filed past to pay their last respects to the Queen Mother, the last Empress of India.
Interestingly enough, she had only ever worn this crown once, 65 years earlier, at the Coronation of herself and her husband, King George VI, in 1937. The largest and most important jewel in this crown is the priceless Koh-i-noor Diamond, which had been presented to Queen Victoria by Lord Dalhousie in June 1850. This followed the British annexation of the Punjab, India, after the British had defeated the Sikhs. From that date the diamond became part of the British Crown Jewels.
The Origins of the Koh-i-noor
Some say that the Koh-i-noor was originally found more than 5,000 years ago, and is mentioned in ancient Sanskrit writings. Devout Hindus claim that it was once worn by the great god Krishna, but was stolen from him as he lay sleeping. By contrast, another source has it that the diamond was discovered in a river bed in 3200 BC. The first reliable evidence of it, however, is in the writings of Babur, the founder of the Mogul Empire, who names this diamond as part of the treasure won by Ala-ud-deen (Aladdin) at the conquest of Malwah in 1304 AD. The Moguls acquired the diamond in 1526.
At that time it was said to weigh 793 carats, but through some incredibly ham-fisted cutting and polishing by a jeweller named Borgio it was reduced to 186 carats. Borgio had been working on it for years, but so enraged was Aurungzebe (the Emperor at the time) at the result that he confiscated all Borgio's worldly goods and contemplated executing him as well.
How the Koh-i-noor Got Its Name
The Koh-i-noor remained with the Mogul emperors until 1739, when Nadir Shah of Persia, the conqueror of India, got hold of it after laying siege to Delhi. According to legend it was a member of the harem of the Mogul Emperor Mohammed Shah who told Nadir Shah that the jewel was kept hidden in the Emperor's turban. So, at a victory celebration, Nadir used a cunning ploy. He suggested that he and the Emperor partake in a well-known Oriental custom whereby the two leaders would exchange turbans. This would symbolise their close ties and eternal friendship. For the Mogul to refuse would have been a great insult to the conqueror. Later that night, when Nadir Shah unfolded his host's turban he duly found the gem, and cried out 'Koh-i-noor', which means'mountain of light'. Nadir Shah then brought the jewel back with him to Persia.
From Persia to Afghanistan to India
After the death of Nadir Shah the Koh-i-noor came through devious means into the possession of Ahmed Shah, the Lord of the Royal Treasury and an Afghan chief. Then Ahmed Shah, after a series of long and fierce battles, established himself in Kabul as King of Afghanistan, and held on to 'the great diamond' as a symbol of his authority. Through various subsequent upheavals and rebellions the diamond came back into the possession of the Indian princes, until the annexation of the Punjab secured it for the British.
The British
The British colonial officials found the Koh-i-noor in 1849, in the treasury of the Punjabi capital, Lahore. They confiscated everything they found in the treasury as compensation for having to fight against the Sikh army, who didn't think much of the British claims to power in India.
Sir John Lawrence, Governor General of India, used to tell the story of how the Sikhs handed the diamond to him in a plain old battered tin box, which he then forgot about. Weeks later London was asking him if he had any idea where the diamond was. He replied in the negative. Then came a second, more urgent letter, in which London expressed a desire to present the jewel to the Queen. Following another negative reply, the Prime Minister himself, Lord Palmerston, sent a plea. Sir John searched high and low but couldn't find it, until one of his servants remembered there was 'a bit of glass in an old tin box'. Luckily the servant was the sort of person who never throws anything away, and eventually discovered it in the tool-shed. There it was, not even wrapped - the most famous gem of India, the fabled Koh-i-noor, the 'Mountain of Light', the jewel to die for (and very many unfortunate people had done just that). And Lawrence didn't have the faintest idea what it was.
The Curse of the Koh-i-noor
The British were rather disappointed at the lack of 'fire' in the diamond, and so they decided it should be re-cut to make it more brilliant. This further reduced it from 186 carats to its present size of just under 109 carats. Over centuries of murder and mayhem, brutality and torture - not to mention deceit and duplicity - the stone had long carried with it a curse that misfortune would always befall its owner, though any woman wearing it would remain unharmed. There was some talk of whether Queen Victoria would return the stone because of the curse. Defiant as always, however, she was adamant it should instead be re-cut and set in a tiara along with over 2,000 other royal diamonds.
In 1911 a new crown was made for the coronation of Queen Mary, with the Koh-i-noor at its centre. Then in 1937 the stone was transferred to another new crown, this time for the coronation of Elizabeth (later to become the Queen Mother) as Queen Consort and Empress of India.
Conflicting Claims
In October 1997, Queen Elizabeth II made a State Visit to India and Pakistan to mark the 50th anniversary of Independence. Many Sikhs in India and Britain used the occasion to demand the return of the Koh-i-noor diamond, which had been won from the Sikhs (whose ruler was Duleep Singh, a young boy at the time) after a fierce battle. But the Sikhs had surrendered, and one of the terms of the surrender was that they hand over the diamond. A simple Punjabi farmer in his 70s, Beant Singh Sandhawalia, has claimed to be the last surviving descendant of Duleep Singh, through adoption. He wrote to Buckingham Palace and to Prime Minister Tony Blair asking for the return of the Koh-i-noor. Sandhawalia says he doesn't want the Koh-i-noor for himself, but will give it to the museum at the Golden Temple of Amritsar, the holiest Sikh shrine.
The Sikhs, however, are not the only people who want the diamond. In November 2000 the Taleban regime demanded the return of the Koh-i-noor diamond to Afghanistan, saying that the British should hand the gem back to them as soon as possible. They have claimed that it is the property of Afghanistan, and that history shows that it went to India from Afghanistan and therefore the Afghans have a stronger claim than the Indians. While an Indian parliamentary committee has insisted that the gem be sent back to New Delhi, the Taleban have claimed that Maharajah Ranjit Singh (the father of Duleep Singh) stole it from Afghanistan while he was ruler of the Punjab.
British officials take the view that the multiplicity of competing claims makes it impossible to establish the gem's former ownership. Thus, for now, at least, it looks likely to remain one of the jewels in the British Crown.Oct 15, 2014; Glendale, AZ, USA; Arizona Coyotes defenseman Oliver Ekman-Larsson (23) shoots the puck as Edmonton Oilers defenseman Nikita Nikitin (86) and center Mark Arcobello (26) defend during the third period at Gila River Arena. (Matt Kartozian-USA TODAY Sports)
NASHVILLE – Coyotes defenseman Oliver Ekman-Larsson holds a cup of coffee in a Gatorade cup outside of the visitor’s locker room at Nashville’s Bridgestone Arena.
Breakfast of champions?
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“Sure,” he gives a wry smile following Arizona’s morning skate
Whatever gets the Swedish minute-crunching blueliner going (he seemingly plays forever, averaging almost half-a-game of ice-time) that night works.
“He plays a lot of minutes in all situations,” Arizona coach Dave Tippett said. “He plays like an elite defenseman in the league. Players who play in that position earn that right and he does that.”
Ekman-Larsson’s skill as a defenseman is quite obvious. He’s got all the necessary tools.
Great stick? Check.
Excellent skater? Check.
Passing? Almost always tape-to-tape.
Shot? Solid.
Positioning? Sound.
Size? He’s listed at 6-foot-2.
But there is somewhat of a cautionary tale down the hall in Nashville’s Shea Weber, another elite toolsy blueliner.
The 29-year-old Weber is a three-time Norris Trophy finalist, turning him into the Susan Lucci, or Buffalo Bills, of the award to a degree. You can make cases for Nicklas Lidstrom beating him in 2011, Erik Karlsson in 2012 and Duncan Keith in 2014. But the fact that Weber has played in small, non-traditional Nashville probably hasn’t helped his Norris push with voters.
Is it possible that the 23-year-old Ekman-Larsson, who plays in Glendale, Ariz., will suffer the same fate? The answer is probably yes to a degree. But without playing in non-major hockey markets, players like Weber and Ekman-Larsson couldn’t develop under-the radar to the same degree, which ultimately has helped them become elite.
Story continues
“That’s one of those things where around the league guys know. Even if he’s not getting the publicity through the media or whatever," Weber said. “We know he has been good for a long time, and he’s very efficient.”
Those around Arizona compare Ekman-Larsson, the sixth overall pick in the 2009 draft, to a young Nicklas Lidstrom – Detroit’s recently retired seven-time Norris winner. While the Swedish comparisons are probably the genesis of this, Ekman-Larsson is more like a bigger version of Ryan Suter, the smooth-skating Minnesota Wild defenseman.
Last season, Ekman-Larsson notched 44 points and 15 goals for Arizona while averaging 25:54 of ice-time per-game. This year he has three points in four games, and is up to 26:14 per-contest
“He is so good offensively and defensively. He’s one of the best sticks I’ve seen defensively in breaking up plays and making that first simple pass,” Arizona defenseman Keith Yandle said. “That’s when he’s at his best. He has one of the better skillsets in the league for a defenseman … the way he can skate and handle the puck, it’s pretty amazing.”
While his skills are obvious, there is somewhat of a PR component to the Norris. The award is voted on by the Professional Hockey Writers’ Association, and a lot don’t often see Ekman Larsson who plays most of the year in more westerly time zones.
Ekman-Larsson probably helped himself this fall somewhat by going to New York for the NHL’s annual interview tour for most of its top players. There, Ekman-Larsson got to hang out with some of the league’s best players, and meet the NHL’s top media personalities.
“It was fun. It was fun to be around such good players, superstars around the league,” Ekman-Larsson said. “It was nice to get away for a couple of days and clear your mind a little bit.”
Though it may be too early this year to start thinking about Norris possibilities, it’s clear that Ekman-Larsson may not be in this spot without playing in Arizona – where he can develop sans intense scrutiny from the media/fan machine like say P.K. Subban in Montreal or Karlsson in Ottawa.
Weber notes this helped his progress a major degree in Nashville where the city’s highest-paid athlete can walk down Broadway across the street from a giant banner donning his image without being noticed (I’ve actually seen this happen).
“It’s a tough position to come in as such a young guy, and all the analysis on it and everyone is going to pick your game apart, whereas with a forward you can get away with a little bit more,” Weber said. “If you’re a defenseman you’re getting beat and exposed. It’s a tough position.”
Weber, Ekman-Larsson and Yandle all say the Norris is an afterthought for them. Whether this is true or not, Ekman-Larsson seems to have a good handle on what can net him the award – namely winning real, actual hockey games during the regular season. The rest then takes care of itself.
“I think everybody who plays in this league, obviously defensemen, care about it,” Ekman-Larsson said. “I would love to win it. But I know if the team does well I’ll have a better chance to win it.”Most experts agree that the storm created by massive returns on crypto investments has just begun.
The evidence is pronounced… when one country of fifty million people can single-handedly form the backbone of volume for Bitcoin, Ethereum, and XRP, it’s a testament that the industry is still at its beginning stages.
Which country am I talking about?
South Korea
The phenomenon known as South Korea has shown its muscle – powering volume behind almost all of the top crypto choices. XRP traders, as well as some Ethereum traders, underestimated the impact that this relatively small country (by population) would have on price levels.1
From an XRP perspective, the addition of several prominent South Korean exchanges was very quick, with each racing each other to add XRP to their listings:
Coinone: May 15, 2017 2
Korbit: May 19, 2017 3
Bithumb: June 2, 2017 4
At the time that each of these exchanges was added, I remember that my personal reaction was muted, because I was instead very focused (and still am) on the massive Japan banking consortium that has implemented Ripple software for both international and domestic payments.
However, I soon learned the business influence that South Korea holds over the crypto markets! The volume on the XRP Ledger is led day-over-day by South Korea; this is an important market, and Ripple quickly identified it as such with a mention in Quarter 2’s XRP Markets Report. Ripple’s Head of XRP Markets, Miguel Vias 5 noted:
“XRP/FIAT volumes in Q2 were 21 times greater than XRP/BTC volumes in Q1. While some of this can be attributed to growth in USD and EUR pairs at Bitstamp and Kraken, the bulk of this transition was due to increased activity on Korean exchanges.”
This acknowledgement was prompt and decisive, with the recognition by Ripple that no matter the cause, South Korea deserved their attention.
The Wider Asian Market
Ripple has not fallen into the trap that some Western companies find themselves in – focusing on a silo of domestic or continent-specific customers. Instead, they’ve purposefully cultivated a very diverse global presence, with offices in six different countries. 6
While I’ve blogged about Ripple’s purposeful focus on Asia previously (Part 1 of Ripple and the Keys to Asian Commerce), it is wise to look at their most recent activity and gauge the progress that they’ve made four months since that original blog entry.
Why Asia?
It’s sheer size and market power makes this part of the world attractive, to be sure, but there is another reason that Ripple’s strategy fits almost perfectly with the countries in the Pacific Rim.
Inefficient Corridors
In a post detailing Ripple’s overall strategy for XRP, Ripple’s Chief Cryptographer David Schwartz (a.k.a. JoelKatz), discussed the general steps involved in market adoption.7 The original post can be viewed here for those interested: XRPChat Link However, I’m going to focus in on two parts of that overall step listing:
“4) We don’t target the biggest corridors like USD->EUR because they’re efficient. We target an inefficient, but fairly high volume, corridor. For example, EUR->INR. Market makers have very small profit margins, so even a small incentive to place good EUR<->XRP and XRP<->INR offers can beat what banks are getting now through the correspondent banking system. 5) Once we get one corridor, we hang other countries off each end of the corridor, expanding the reach of XRP. “
In the West, USD is used as the predominant bridge currency. Likewise in Europe, the Euro serves as a common mechanism for transfer of value across borders. However, in Asia and the countries comprising the entire Pacific rim, this is not the case. While USD is still primarily used, it involves the costly approach of many nostro accounts, and the need for large organizations to source liquidity themselves – essentially putting large amounts of capital on ice.
This is a combustible mix for XRP.
xRapid is Ripple’s approach to make sourcing liquidity easy for banks. Patrick Griffin talked a bit 8 about xRapid’s model in a presentation during SWELL:
“…however, when you go into more exotic currencies where liquidity is constrained for a whole host of reasons, having the ability to move in and out of that market on an on-demand basis and pick up liquidity that is made available through competitive exchanges where market makers, hedge funds, trading firms, retail speculators, are providing spot pricing against a local currency, is a very attractive tool to very quickly move in an out of these markets without having to go through the more traditional rigamarole of pre-funding an account, opening up credit lines, opening up bank accounts; so it’s not a replacement, as I said before. It’s more of a new application – a new tool – that treasurers can use.”
The soft sell from Patrick Griffin is a direct result of Ripple’s understanding of how to interact with banks – some of the most conservative of businesses.
Until now, these banks have opted to play a waiting game when it comes to blockchain technology. Banks do not like taking risks – they wait until technology maturation before consideration of an addition to their technology stack. With xRapid, along with Ripple’s forward thinking when it comes to sourcing liquidity and integration with high-volume exchanges, this concern is looking to play into Ripple’s strengths.
Japan
Japan is a potentially massive & relatively untapped market for crypto-currency. While Japan is one of the most progressive countries when it comes to banking, it is requiring each exchange operator to register officially with the FSA in Japan (Financial Services Agency). Thus far, eleven exchanges have been approved10 by the FSA:
Bitbank
BitFlyer
BitPoint
BitTrade
BTCBox
Fisco Virtual Currency Exchange (part of Fisco)
GMO Coin (part of GMO)
Money Partners
Quoine
SBI Virtual Currencies (part of SBI)
Tech Bureau
This limited selection of exchanges also means that Japanese customers have a limited selection of crypto-currencies to trade directly against JPY as well; eleven coin options, compared to hundreds of choices for those crypto investors in the West. And yes, XRP is one of those eleven options.
Ripple’s Foresight
Ripple clearly understood the potential Japanese market, and one of the first banking partnerships was a consortium based in Japan – yet another example of forward strategic thinking by Ripple.
Ripple’s presence in Japan is entirely centered around the business that both they and SBI formed together: SBI Ripple Asia.9
SBI Ripple Asia
This joint venture was key in forming a banking consortium of more than 70 banks – primarily based in Japan. Each one of these banks is in the process of either deploying or using Ripple software to make cross-border or domestic payments; no other large Fintech has achieved this kind of traction in the banking space thus far.
SBI Ripple Asia Promotes XRP
Instead of resting on the significant accomplishment of including almost every major bank in Japan in a consortium, SBI Ripple Asia is now moving on to the next phase of its business goals, which seem to include strong promotion of XRP in Japan and in Asia in general.
SBI recently announced a partnership with DAYLI Financial Group, which is made up of specialized companies in digital finance and remittance. DAYLI’s clients include Coinone, which was the first Korean exchange to list XRP. The CEO of DAYLI, Kyoung June Eee, was quoted22 as saying:
“Our partnership with SBI Ripple Asia builds on our previous collaborations, including with South Korea’s first blockchain consortium as well as the Ministry of Science and ICT. We are proud to work with SBI Ripple Asia to bring Ripple’s innovative payments solution to the Korean market in order to enable businesses to send and receive payments quickly and efficiently.”
To me, this is an exciting development and shows how seriously Ripple is treating the opportunities in South Korea.
In addition to SBI Ripple Asia reaching across the waters to South Korea, Ripple has sent Miguel Vias to champion XRP with retail and other investors using two publicized meetups – one in Japan and one in South Korea:
Meetups in Japan and South Korea… and more
In his tweet on October 28, Miguel Vias also mentioned21 Singapore and Hong Kong:
SBI’s Promotion of XRP
While SBI’s primary focus is Japan, these latest developments make it clear that SBI’s reach is quickly expanding into other areas of the Asian market as well. The other point worth mentioning for those that don’t know, is that SBI Ripple Asia has been quite vocal about banks and financial institutions moving to use XRP directly to achieve maximum cost savings.
I was pleased to see some of these quotes33 by Yoshitaka Kitao, the executive chairman and CEO of SBI Holdings. Note that this is the high-level CEO of SBI Holdings:
“In my opinion, we are bracing for a social revolution with blockchain that’s even bigger than the Internet. Using blockchain for global payments is central to this revolution, and by dramatically reducing transaction costs, financial institutions and all users of the financial system will benefit greatly. Based on Ripple’s estimate, a bank can reduce the cost of processing remittances by 33% using Ripple’s technology, and by 60% if we couple it with XRP.”
This focus on XRP’s use as a digital asset used for cross-border payment bridging is a positive signal for potential adoption.
China
If you’re wondering how big the Chinese market is compared to other Asian countries, I can assure you with no hesitation – China is the biggest banking market in the world. The largest four banks in the world are all based in China, and control over 12 trillion dollars’ worth of assets. That’s trillion with a “t.”23
In fact, the United States has lost its dominance in world banking somewhere along the way, and currently has 10 banks in the top 100 (by total assets), whereas China has 19 banks in the top 100 (by total assets).
And it’s not just the size of the banks’ assets. China has seen explosive growth in the technology that’s driving payments, and international transfers of value. Because of its status as the foremost worldwide banking powerhouse and industrial giant, technology adoption has been relatively quick among users, and the numbers are impressive.
One article recently claimed that AliPay and WeChat processed over $3 trillion in payments in 2016. With a population of 1.4 billion and counting, capturing any part of the Chinese cross-border value transfer business would be a significant addition to Ripple’s market reach.24 25
It’s been almost three months since Emi Yoshikawa first tweeted26 about Ripple’s Chinese expansion plans and the imminent hiring of team members in China. Here are some interesting developments since then:
August 21, 2017: Coindesk speculates about a possible Alibaba connection to Ripple, despite official Ripple statements 27
August 28, 2017: Ripple hosts China’s central bank representatives at a meeting in San Francisco 28
September 4, 2017: China declares ICOs illegal 29
September 10, 2017: China bans all Renminbi-to-Bitcoin trading 30
October 6, 2017: First report that trading might resume (with KYC procedures) in China 31
While some predicted that Ripple would reveal new details regarding the Chinese expansion during the SWELL conference, Ripple has maintained silence thus far regarding the Chinese market. However, Ripple has a habit of carefully working with regulators and governments to comply with financial regulations and laws while leading clients through tough-to-navigate blockchain technology. I predict we will hear more about Ripple’s progress by year-end.
XRP Volume in China
There are several major exchanges in China that list XRP. The largest one is Bitfinex, but it lists XRP alongside many other options, and doesn’t offer directly Renminbi-to-XRP trading.32 Volume in China is not what it should be, and its clear that the Chinese market could benefit from a deeper promotion campaign by Ripple.
India
You may have heard something about India’s electronic identity program – started in 2009 – and how this country of 1.3 billion people has managed to register almost all of its inhabitants. The program is called “Aadhaar,” and it is a biometric database based on a 12-digit digital identity, authenticated by finger prints and retina scans.12
It was a large-scale effort that resulted in the usage of centralized technology to capture and store information linked to a number for every citizen.
Cashless
Aadhaar was the first step in an effort to demonetize the country. Starting in 2017, India is officially a cashless country, where all commerce happens electronically. Although exceptions still exist, India made the transition through a series of massive steps from November 2016 to the end of last year.13
India had various reasons why it opted to go cashless, but the after-effects were very positive from a financial perspective. The Indian banking sector saw very significant gains, and new businesses have sprung into existence to capitalize on the “India Stack” – the moniker given to all of the integrations and APIs associated with the Aadhaar database.
Identity on a Blockchain
The next step or evolution for identity in India is the storage of personal information on a blockchain. A blockchain run by Indian banks.
The State Bank of India (Not to be confused with the Japanese-based Strategic Business Innovator Group partnered with Ripple) has launched a program to handle Know Your Customer requirements on a blockchain. This blockchain-based solution would be available for any participating bank to utilize to perform KYC for customers. In India, it’s a requirement for banks to perform certain procedures that comply with requirements related to:
Know Your Customer (KYC)
Anti Money Laundering (AML)
Countering the Financing of Terrorism (CFT)
The new effort, dubbed “Clear Chain” would handle these functions. No existing blockchain solution will be utilized by SBI, however; instead, the State Bank of India and its partners are building one from scratch using Hyperledger Sawtooth – a modular platform for developing and deploying blockchains that Intel created as part of the Hyperledger project.11
Ripple Stepping Into India
In early September, Ripple announced the opening of a new office in Mumbai, India.14 Navin Gupta was appointed the Country Manager for Ripple India; his resume includes high-profile positions at HSBC (Largest bank in Hong Kong) and Citibank, handling markets in Hong Kong, Taiwan, Japan, and India.15
Ripple already had traction in the Indian market before this expansion, with two Indian based customers: Axis Bank and YES Bank.16 Expert projections indicate that India’s moves to a cashless system have the potential to supercharge its economy, with some estimates stating that the current digital economy – measured at $270 billion – could quadruple by 2022. A quote from Navin Gupta:
“India is the largest recipient of corporate and retail remittances worldwide, totaling close to $71 billion. The businesses and Indian expatriates sending money into the country want their cross-border payments to be as fast and seamless as payments made within India’s domestic digital payment network. Why should a cross-border transfer take any longer than an electronic transfer within India?”
Indian XRP Volume
The Indian market for XRP has untapped potential. To understand this potential, you must understand the big picture – currently there are very few exchanges that will support Indian Rupee trading with crypto. On Coinmarketcap’s listing of exchanges, for example, only two exchanges support direct INR pairings – one for Ethereum and one for XRP.18
Currently, there is only one exchange that supports trading directly between INR and XRP. To address this, Ripple partnered with BTCXIndia to offer XRP trading. Miguel Vias, Head of XRP Markets for Ripple, had this to say17 about the partnership:
“We are pleased that customers in India now have a way of accessing XRP. With its listing on BTCxchange, the digital asset is now available to this very large and fast-growing market,”
While the volume on BTCXIndia has been very small compared to other exchanges, it is the first step in developing what could eventually be an incredibly large market for XRP.
NPCI
The National Payments Corporation of India is an umbrella organization for all retail payment systems in India. It’s goal is to allow all Indian citizens unrestricted access to e-payment services.19
Starting in April of this year, several sources confirmed that NPCI was working to integrate Ripple technology behind the scenes.20 While Axis Bank and Yes Bank were the initial members of NPCI to utilize Ripple’s solution, it establishes a precedent for other Indian banks to follow when looking for a production-ready blockchain technology solution.
Final Points to Consider
The Pacific Rim is the largest battleground for Ripple. Current XRP volume is only a small sampling of what market adoption by much larger countries could accomplish. At present there is no contest about which country in Asia exerts the most influence on XRP price discovery:
South Korea China Japan India
If there was a way to indicate South Korea’s current influence even more than listing it as bold, green and “number one,” I’d do so; despite XRP investors’ preference for a more diverse set of countries underpinning XRP volume, it’s good to take stock of where the market currently stands. One thing to keep in mind from this currently lop-sided volume distribution?
The probability of imminent price growth in XRP is very high.
Once the other three pieces of the Asian puzzle start to fall into place for XRP, I predict that volume is going to quickly climb far above current levels, and that the volume growth we’ve seen in 2017 will not only be repeated, but might even be doubled or tripled as banks, financial institutions, hedge funds, and crypto investors start to discover the heir to Bitcoin’s throne.
Sources
AdvertisementsOntario’s ambitious goal to put an electric car in every multi-vehicle driveway over the next decade could lead to higher electricity prices, an economist warns.
Premier Kathleen Wynne has pledged that 12 per cent of cars will be electric by 2025.
READ MORE: Ontario boosts incentives to people who buy electric cars
That would see the number of electric vehicles on the road in the province jump from 7,000 to one million.
The province is addressing so-called “range anxiety” by building 500 charging stations by March 31, 2017, promising drivers will be able to travel long distances — from Ottawa to Windsor or Toronto to North Bay — without a drop of gasoline.
“Hydro rates have gone up significantly over the past several years,” says Brady Yauch, executive director and economist at the Consumer Policy Institute. “If this requires more investment from utilities and more generation, prices will go up even more than they already have.”
The projected spike in electric cars would amount to a 2.2 per cent increase in demand overall, according to the province’s Independent Electricity Systems Operator.
WATCH: The high cost of soaring Hydro prices in Ontario
But while the provincial grid has more than enough capacity, local utility companies are bracing for potential system overload in urban areas where demand for electric vehicles is expected to be higher.
READ MORE: Hydro horror stories: tales from rural Ontario
“What we don’t want to have happen — this is the biggest concern — is that the charging energy going into these vehicles superimposes itself on the peak that already exists,” said Dan Guatto, chief operating officer of Burlington Hydro and a board member of Electric Mobility Canada.
Consider the average electric car uses a load equivalent to what an entire home uses each day.
The worst case scenario is pockets of neighbourhoods charging cars, cranking the air conditioning and using appliances all at the same time. This could produce a load that local grids just weren’t designed to handle.
“The cost of managing the load are much lower than increasing the capacity of distribution assets to accommodate yet a higher peak,” Guatto said.
That’s why it’s key that utilities understand where the cars will be on the grid and what time of day they’re plugged in.
READ MORE: 7 ways to lower your hydro bill this summer
“We recommended utilities and electricity providers keep monitoring communities to ensure that as you see a pickup in (electric vehicle) deployment in those areas that the system can respond,” said Steve McCauley of Pollution Probe, an environmental organization that has studied the potential impact of electric vehicles in 10 of Ontario’s major urban centres.
“We found the situation for at least the next 10 years was going to be sufficient,” McCauley said.
Local distribution companies are planning for any unexpected peaks in demand.
WATCH: Ontario Energy Minister Glenn Thibeault doesn’t think the situation in rural Ontario is a crisis
Burlington Hydro is part of a pilot project to design a “smarter” grid that would use the province’s surplus power, which is sold at a loss to other jurisdictions.
“We don’t just shift the charging to off-peak hours. We can also throttle the charging, spread it out over time to take full advantage of when the surpluses are available,” Guatto said. “And when they’re not available, do the opposite.”
READ MORE: Rural Ontarians left in the dark as electricity bills skyrocket
Still, no one can predict for sure what future costs will be. Utility companies factor in all new investment in rate increase applications to the Ontario Energy Board.
“The whole legislation around the Green Energy Act started off as, it’s going to affect (your hydro bill) by one per cent a year. But it’s turned out to be significantly more than that,” Yauch said. “So I think Ontarians want the province to be clear on what the real costs are.”
Ultimately, consumers will get a financial jolt whether they go electric or not. Monthly natural gas bills are going up by five dollars and the price of gasoline will increase by 4.3 cents a litre, as part of the province’s overall climate change strategy.SACRAMENTO (CBS13) — Dead people don’t drive – yet thousands of deceased Californians are receiving handicap parking placards in the mail, courtesy of the Department of Motor Vehicles.
David Kasama of Rocklin received a disabled parking placard in the mail – even though his mother Mary Kasama died nine years ago. David Kasama doesn’t use the placard – but it would be easy to do so – because DMV keeps sending it to him – along |
— Nagoya
— Nagoya ICOCA — Kansai and Chugoku
— Kansai and Chugoku PiTaPa — Kansai
— Kansai SUGOCA — Kyushu
— Kyushu はやかけん ( Hayakaken ) — Fukuoka
( ) — Fukuoka nimoca — Fukuoka
These cards can be purchased from any station ticket counter, including those in airports, and many vending machines for a base deposit of ¥500 plus the amount you wish to load. Cards can be topped up in the same places. The deposit and any remaining value can be refunded when you leave Japan - provided you leave via the same region you arrived and bought the card in. For example, a PASMO card bought on arrival in Tokyo can be used in Kansai, but you will not be able to refund it there before flying out of Osaka airport. You can keep the card for your next visit as they stay valid for 10 years from the last transaction.
By rail
Main article: Rail travel in Japan
N700 shinkansen train Theshinkansen train
Japan offers one of the most efficient rail transportation systems in the world, the crowning jewel of which is the Shinkansen (新幹線), popularly known in English as the bullet train, the world's first ever high-speed rail line. Japan's railways can also be among the most complicated to navigate — Tokyo, for example, has thirteen subway lines, several private railways reaching the suburbs, and a circular route called the Yamanote Line holding everything in place.
A tourist who plans to travel a great deal around the country should consider investing in a Japan Rail Pass, which offers — with a few exceptions — unlimited travel on all Japan Railway (JR) services including bullet trains, limited express and regular commuter trains. Seat reservations can also be made for no charge by visiting a staffed JR ticket counter. Prices start at ¥29,110 for a regular adult pass covering 7 consecutive days of travel, with costs increasing for 14 and 21-day passes as well as for Green Car (first class) passes. By comparison, a round-trip between Tokyo and Osaka costs ¥27,240. Children 6–11 years of age can obtain a pass for half the price. Japan Rail Passes have no blackout dates, and are best purchased before arriving in Japan (you receive a voucher which is exchanged for a rail pass when you arrive). JR has begun experimental sales of these passes inside Japan, but at much higher prices.
There are also regional and local rail passes offered by the various JR companies (such as the JR East Rail Pass), as well as by the subway and private rail companies. Numerous discount tickets are also sold, such as the Seishun 18 Ticket.
For short distances, you can purchase a ticket from a vending machine. Stations will usually have a map above the ticket machines of the other stations along the line or within the vicinity, and the fare to each of those stations. If you are unsure, you can purchase the cheapest ticket at your origin station, and visit a fare adjustment machine at your destination station to pay the difference. In major cities or regions, you can also pay for your journey with a smart card and only have to worry about topping off your balance when you are low on funds.
Part of Japan's efficiency in rail travel lies in its punctuality, and average delays for Japanese trains are typically measured in seconds. All services aim to run promptly on the posted timetable, so arrive early if you know your train's departure time. If you are late by even a single minute, you will miss the train. If you are planning to stay out late, be sure to find out when the last train leaves the station nearest to you. Trains usually do not run during the late night hours, as that is when system maintenance is often carried out. Also be careful as the last train may not run all the way to the end of the line.
Luggage
With the exception of airport lines, Japanese trains typically do not have much space for luggage, meaning it is unlikely that you would be able to find space for anything larger than a small suitcase. Fortunately, Japan has very convenient and inexpensive courier services (see § Courier services) which you can use to send your luggage to the next hotel you will be staying at. The downside is that your luggage will generally take at least a day to arrive at the destination, so you should bring a small day bag to take the clothes you need for at least the first night on the train with you. Your hotel concierge will usually be able to arrange this for you, so enquire with them before you check out.
By plane
Japan's excellent Shinkansen network means that flying is usually more of a luxury than a necessity. That being said, flying remains the most practical mode of reaching Japan's outlying islands, most notably for connections from the mainland to Hokkaido and/or Okinawa. Flying is also useful for getting around sparsely populated Hokkaido, as the Shinkansen network there is limited.
Tokyo's Narita Airport handles a few domestic flights, but most domestic flights leave from Haneda (HND IATA ) to the south of the city. Similarly, while there are some domestic flights from Kansai International Airport, more use Itami (ITM IATA ) to the north of Osaka, and Kobe's airport also fields some flights. Narita–Haneda or Kansai–Itami is quite a trek, so allow at least three and preferably four hours to transfer. Chubu, on the other hand, has many domestic flights and was built from the ground up for easy interchange.
List prices for domestic flights are very expensive, but significant discounts are available if purchased in advance. Both of Japan's largest carriers, Japan Airlines (JAL, 日本航空 Nihon Kōkū) and All Nippon Airways (ANA, 全日空 Zennikkū) offer "Visit Japan" fares where the purchaser of an international return ticket to Japan can fly a number of domestic segments anywhere in the country. These are a particularly good deal for travel to Hokkaido or the remote southern islands of Okinawa. If you hold a return ticket on an airline in the Oneworld alliance or Star Alliance, you can buy a pass for either JAL or ANA flights, respectively, for ¥10,000 each (plus tax). Otherwise, it costs ¥13,000 each (plus tax) with a minimum of two trips required. Some blackout periods or other restrictions during peak travel seasons may apply. If you reserve on the international ANA website, these offers for international travelers may be displayed as the cheapest ones, but if you try on the Japan website (in English and in yens) the regular discounts for a purchase in advance (75/55/45/… days before) may be cheaper.
Low-cost carriers have begun to make an impact in Japan's domestic air market. Among the newer start-ups are Jetstar Japan, Peach Aviation, Vanilla Air (formerly Air Asia Japan) and Fuji Dream Airlines. The veteran low-cost carriers include Skymark Airlines, StarFlyer and Air DO. Some of these airlines offer online bookings in English (Fuji Dream and StarFlyer do not). StarFlyer offers a discounted fare of ¥7,000-9,000 per flight to foreigners on select routes. Be careful, their most basic offers may not include a checked baggage (which is sold as an option), and if you reserve via a third-party web site you may not be able to purchase the option.
ANA, JAL, and their subsidiaries offer a special standby card, the Skymate Card, to young passengers (up to the age of 22). With the card, passengers can fly standby at half of the full published fare, which is usually less than the equivalent express train fare. The card can be obtained from any JAL or ANA ticket counter with a passport-sized photo and a one-time fee of ¥1000.
By boat
Given that Japan is an island nation, boats are a surprisingly uncommon means of transport, as all the major islands are linked together by bridges and tunnels. While there are some long-distance ferries linking Okinawa and Hokkaido to the mainland, the fares are usually higher than discounted airline tickets and pretty much the sole advantage is that you can take your car with you.
For some smaller islands, however, boats may well be the only practical option. Hovercrafts and jet ferries are fast but expensive, with prices varying between ¥2000-5000 for an hour-long trip. Slow cargo boats are more affordable, a rule of thumb being ¥1000 per hour in second class, but departures are infrequent. There are also some inexpensive and convenient short-distance intercity ferries such as the Aomori-Hakodate ferry.
These boats are typically divided into classes, where second class (２等 nitō) is just a giant expanse of tatami mat, first class (１等 ittō) gets you a comfy chair in large shared room and only special class (特等 tokutō) gets you a private cabin. Vending machines and simple restaurant fare are typically available on board, but on longer trips (particularly in second class) the primary means of entertainment is alcoholic — this can be fun if you're invited in, but less so if you're trying to sleep.
By bus
Main article: Bus travel in Japan
Buses are plentiful in Japan, and over the last few decades they have evolved into a major mode of intercity transportation, especially for overnight travel. Fierce competition between buses, trains and airplanes have resulted in affordable prices. While a few buses offer fixed fares between two stops, many have adopted a dynamic pricing model, where fares are based on the time of day, whether it's a daytime or overnight bus, the type of seating on the bus, and how far in advance the ticket is purchased.
A typical JR Intercity Bus on a layover in Shizuoka Prefecture.
Major operators of intercity, or highway buses (高速バス kōsoku basu; ハイウェイバス haiwei basu) include the JR Group and Willer Express. Regional transit operators (Seibu in Tokyo, Hankyu in Kansai, etc) also operate long-distance buses. Tickets for such buses can be purchased at the point of departure, or - with a command of some Japanese - at convenience stores or on the internet. A small but growing number of companies offer online reservations for bus routes in English and several other languages.
Willer Express, which operates around the country in its distinctive pink buses, offers online reservations for its buses in English, Korean and Chinese. In the past few years, they have also begun selling tickets for other bus operators as well. Willer Express' major strong point for foreigners is the Japan Bus Pass, which offers discounted bus travel all across the Willer network. The more the pass is used, the more cost-effective it is; for example, a 3-day weekday bus pass costs ¥10000, and if all of the available trips on that pass are used, each trip costs around ¥1100. A separate national pass is the JBL Pass, which is more expensive but covers a larger network of buses.
Another use of highway buses is for travel to and from airports. In major cities, these buses are known as Limousine Buses (リムジンバス rimujin basu), and travel to major train stations and hotels. Buses also travel frequently to their own terminals in the city which are strategically located to aim for consistent, on-time trips - one such example is the Tokyo City Air Terminal, or T-CAT, in Tokyo's Nihonbashi district.
Local buses (路線バス rosen basu) are the norm in big cities and small towns. Bus fares are either fixed (you pay once, when entering or exiting the bus) or distance-based (you board the rear of the bus, grab a numbered ticket, and match the number with the fare displayed on a board at the front of the bus when it's time to get off). Many buses are starting to accept smartcards, making payment easier. Buses are indispensable in less-populated areas, as well as in cities such as Kyoto where there is not much local rail transit. The electronic board almost always includes a display and recorded voice announcements of the next stop — usually only in Japanese, although some cities (like Kyoto) make a welcome exception. However, if asked most drivers will be glad to tell you when you've reached your destination.
By taxi
You will find taxis everywhere in Japan, not only in the city but also in the country. Taxis are clean and completely safe, though a bit expensive: starting fees are usually in the ¥640-710 range and the meter ticks up frantically after the first 2 km or so. But sometimes, they are the only way to get where you are going. Taxi meters are strictly regulated and clearly visible to the passenger. If you are not sure if you have enough money for the trip, your driver may be able to guess the approximate cost of a trip beforehand. Even if money is not a concern, if you get a cost estimate beforehand, some taxi drivers will stop the meter at the estimated price regardless of how much further the destination may be, which can save you money. Although it is quite nice when it happens, do not expect this treatment from every taxi driver. Taxi fares are also higher at night. Tipping is not customary and would most likely be refused.
In the city, you can hail a taxi just about anywhere, but outside train stations and other transfer points you should board at a taxi stand. (The taxi stand will usually either have a long line of patient passengers, or a long line of idle taxis.) If the destination is a well-known location, such as a hotel, train station, or public facility, the name alone should be enough. Even in the major cities, you are very unlikely to encounter a taxi driver who can speak English, so carrying a pamphlet or card of your hotel or destination with the address on it can be very helpful. Likewise, have staff at your hotel write down the names and addresses of places you want to visit in Japanese to show your taxi driver.
An interesting feature of Japanese taxis is that the driver controls the opening and closing of the rear left passenger door. Try to avoid the habit of closing your door when you board the taxi. Taxi drivers also have a reputation for speeding and aggressive driving, but there are very few accidents involving bad drivers.
All licensed taxis in Japan have green license plates. Unlicensed cabs will have standard white or yellow plates and should be avoided.
By car
Crossroads
Construction
No vehicle crossing
No entry
Stop
Pedestrian crossing
No passing
National Route Sign
Speed limit
Rental cars and driving in Japan are rare in or around the major cities, as public transport is generally excellent and gets you almost everywhere. In addition, the roads of major cities like Tokyo are plagued with massive traffic jams and parking is expensive and difficult to find, so driving there is more of a hindrance than anything else. However, many rural areas can really be explored with only your own transport, so driving should certainly not be dismissed out of hand, especially on the vast, sparsely populated island of Hokkaido. Due to Hokkaido's cooler climate it is a very popular destination in summer, so if you are considering renting a car at this time be sure to do so well in advance of your planned travel date as they are often unavailable at this time. Often the most feasible option is to combine the two: take the train out to the countryside and then pick up a rental car at a station. JR's Ekiren has outlets at most larger train stations and often has discounted train & car packages.
An international driver's license (or Japanese license) will be required if you wish to rent a car or drive in Japan, and must be carried at all times. Rental rates typically start from ¥6000 a day for the smallest car. Purchasing insurance from the rental car company is highly recommended as any rental car insurance from your home country (especially through most credit cards) is unlikely to be valid in Japan, check your policy before heading out.
Driving is on the left as normally found in the United Kingdom, Australia New Zealand, India and Singapore, but opposite to continental Europe, the United States and Canada. There is no "right turn on red" (or left turn, rather) rule in Japan, however in rare cases a sign with a blue arrow on a white background will indicate where turning on red is legal (not to be confused with the white arrow on a blue background, which indicates one-way traffic). Drivers are required to make a complete stop at all at-grade railway crossings. Using a cell phone while driving without a hands-free kit can result in fines of up to ¥50,000. Driving drunk is not tolerated at all. While the minimum for "driving drunk" is a breath (not blood) content of 0.15 mg/L (equivalent to 0.03% BAC), "driving under the influence" has no minimum, meaning police can charge you with even a whiff of alcohol. Penalties include fines up to ¥1 million, up to 5 years in jail, and immediate suspension or revocation of your license. Refusal to take a breathalyzer test also carries fines up to ¥500,000 and up to 3 months jail. Passengers can also be charged (for allowing the drunk person to drive), with similarly severe fines and jail time.
Toll plaza for the Meishin Highway at Kyoto-Higashi Interchange, Kyoto, with the marked ETC lane for automatic toll collection.
Tolls for the expressways (高速道路 kōsoku-dōro) are generally significantly higher than the cost of a train ride, even on the bullet train. So for one or two people it's not cost-effective for direct long distance travel between cities. In major cities such as Tokyo and Osaka, a flat rate toll is paid when entering the expressway system. On inter-city expressways, tolls are based on distance travelled, a ticket is issued when you enter the system and the toll is calculated when you exit. Avoid the purple ETC lanes at toll plazas (unless you have the ETC device fitted) as they are reserved for electronic toll collection, any other lane will accept either yen cash (exact change not required) or major credit cards. Inter-city expressways are well-serviced with clean and convenient parking areas at regular intervals, but be wary of travelling into large cities on Sunday evenings or at the end of a holiday period, as traffic jams at these times can reach up to 50 km long. Using local roads to travel between cities has the advantages of being toll-free and offering more opportunities for sightseeing along the way, but traffic jams and numerous traffic lights slow things down considerably. Covering 40 km in 1 hour is a good rule of thumb to follow when planning an itinerary on local roads, generally more on Hokkaido.
Both rental costs and fuel are more expensive than those in the USA, but fuel is generally cheaper than found in Europe. Most fuel stations are full service, to fill up the tank with regular fuel, say regulaa mantan to the attendant. Rental car companies generally offer smaller cars from ¥5,000 a day, and a full size sedan will cost around ¥10,000 a day. Most rental cars have some kind of satellite navigation ("navi") thus you can ask the rental car company to set your destination before your first trip. Some models (specifically newer Toyotas) have an English language mode, so it doesn't hurt to ask the staff to change it before you head out. However unless you read Japanese you may need to ask for assistance to make full use of the navigation computer. Japanese driving habits are generally as good as anywhere else, and usually better than other Asian countries. Japanese roads are generally of good quality, with smooth bitumen surfaces. Gravel roads are very limited, usually forest roads, and unlikely to be on the itinerary of too many tourists. Roadworks are frequent however, and can cause annoying delays. Certain mountain passes are shut over winter, those that are not usually require either snow chains or a combination of studless winter tires and 4-wheel drive. If you rent a car in mountainous/northern areas they will generally come with this equipment already included.
Navigating within cities can be confusing and parking in them costs ¥300-400/hour. Larger hotels in the cities and regional hotels normally offer car parking, but it would be wise to check car parking however before you book. Validated parking is available at some car parks that are attached to major department stores in large cities, but don't count on getting more than 2–3 hours free. The best car to use in Tokyo is a taxi.
Japan has horizontal traffic lights, with any arrows appearing beneath the main lights. The red (stop) is on the right and the green (go) is on the left. There are usually only one or two traffic lights per intersection pointing the same way, which can make it hard to see when the signals change. However some prefectures, such as Toyama and Niigata, have vertical lights (this is supposedly due to the amount of snow they get).
Japanese signs follow a mixture of European and North American conventions, but most should not pose any difficulty in understanding. "Stop" is indicated by a downward-pointing red triangle, not to be confused with the similar looking Yield sign found in North America. On the highways and around major cities English signage is very good; however in more remote locales it may be spotty. Electronic signs are everywhere on expressways and major arterial roads, and provide helpful real-time information on road conditions, unfortunately they are displayed exclusively in Japanese. The following is a brief list of the most common messages and their translations:
通行止 — Road Closed
渋滞 — Traffic Jam (with length and/or delay indicated)
事故 — Accident
注意 — Caution
チェーン規制 — Chains Required
Warning hazards for repair, breakdown and construction are always well illuminated at night and tend to also appear at least once before the main obstacle on higher speed roads such as expressways. Other road hazards to be aware of are taxis, who feel they have a god-given right to stop wherever and whenever they like, long-distance truckers (especially late at night) who may often be hepped up on pep pills and tend to ride the bumper of any slower car in front, and country farmers in their ubiquitous white mini-trucks, who never seem to go above a crawl and may pop out of rural side roads unexpectedly.
Road speed limits are marked in kilometres per hour. They are 40 km/h in towns (with varying areas: some at 30, roads by schools usually at 20), 50 to 60 in the countryside (if unmarked, the limit is 60), and 100 on the expressways. There is usually a fair bit of leeway in terms of speeding - about 10 km/h on normal roads, for example. If you go with the flow you should not have any problems, as the Japanese often pay speed limits no more attention than they have to.
Japan Expressway Pass
The NEXCO companies in charge of most of Japan's toll highways offer a 7 or 14 day Japan Expressway Pass for ¥20000 and ¥34000 respectively. The pass allows unlimited usage of NEXCO's toll roads, and is obtainable in conjunction with a car rental. A drawback is that the expressway pass cannot be used within Tokyo, Hokkaido or certain areas of Kansai, and cannot be used on the highways that connect Honshu to Shikoku.
By bike
Japan has many great opportunities for bikers. Bike rentals can be found throughout the country, especially near popular routes. Some routes (like the Shimanami Kaido, which takes you from the mainland (Onomichi) to Imabari in Shikoku) have been set up specifically for bikers.
If you will be spending an extended period of time in Japan, you may want to consider purchasing a bike. If you choose to do this, be aware that you need to have it registered. If your bike does not have the proper sticker, your bike can be confiscated. It is important that any bike that is not a rental bike is registered under the rider's name. If you are caught borrowing a bike registered under someone else's name, it is considered stolen in Japan, and you will likely be taken to the police station. The police often check bikes, so avoid problems by obeying the law.
You should learn Japan's somewhat extensive cycling laws, although not all of them are heavily enforced. Cycling drunk is illegal, with no blood alcohol limit, and you face fines of up to ¥1 million or up to 5 years in jail (the same as for driving!). Using your phone or listening to music are both illegal. Cycling on the sidewalk, even in big cities crowded with pedestrians, is normal. Helmets are required for children under 13, but neither children nor adults frequently wear helmets, not even police officers.
By thumb
Japan is an excellent country for hitchhiking, although some Japanese language ability is highly recommended. See Hitchhiking in Japan for a more detail and practical tips for this.
Talk
Tokyo Japanese writing on a temple lantern, Asakusa
See also: Japanese phrasebook
The language of Japan is Japanese. Japanese is a language with several distinct dialects, although standard Japanese (hyōjungo 標準語), which is based on the Tokyo dialect, is taught in schools and known by most people throughout the country. The slang-heavy dialect of the Kansai region is particularly famous in Japanese pop culture. On the southern islands of Okinawa, many dialects of the closely related Ryukyuan languages are spoken, mostly by the elderly, while in northern Hokkaido a rare few still speak Ainu.
Japanese is written using a convoluted mix of three different scripts: kanji (漢字) or Chinese characters, together with "native" hiragana (ひらがな) and katakana (カタカナ) syllabaries. There are thousands of kanji in everyday use and even the Japanese spend years learning them, but the kana have only 46 characters each and can be learned with a reasonable amount of effort. Of the two, katakana are probably more useful for the visitor as they are used to write loanwords from foreign languages other than Chinese, and thus can be used to figure out words like basu (バス, bus), kamera (カメラ, camera) or konpyūtā (コンピューター, computer). However, some words like terebi (テレビ, television), depāto (デパート, department store), wāpuro (ワープロ, word processor) and sūpā (スーパー, supermarket) may be harder to figure out. Knowing Chinese will also be a great head start for tackling kanji, but not all words mean what they seem: 大家 (Mandarin Chinese: dàjiā, Japanese: ōya), "everybody" to the Chinese, means "landlord" in Japan!
Most younger Japanese have studied English for at least 6 years, but the instruction tends to focus on formal grammar and writing rather than actual conversation. Outside of major tourist attractions and large international hotels, it is rare to find people who are conversant in English. Reading and writing tends to come much better though, and many people are able to understand some written English without being able to speak it. If lost, it can be practical to write out a question on paper in simple words and someone will likely be able to point you in the right direction. It can also be helpful to carry a hotel business card or matchbook with you, to show a taxi driver or someone if you lose your way. Take comfort in the fact that many Japanese will go to extraordinary lengths to understand what you want and to help you, therefore it is worth to try to pick up at least basic greetings and thank yous to put people at ease.
Public facilities like trains almost universally include English signage, and the Shinkansen and other commonly-used trains also announce upcoming stops in English. Tourist attractions and large businesses also usually have at least some English signage, but as you get farther off the beaten path, English becomes more spotty (and the translations more questionable). Some of the major tourist attractions and large international hotels in Tokyo have staff who are able to speak Mandarin or Korean, and many major airports and railway stations also have signs in Chinese and Korean as well. In Hokkaido, some people who live near the Russian border may be able to speak Russian.
Japanese Sign Language (JSL, 日本手話 nihon shuwa) is the dominant sign language. Its adoption has been slow, but it has a few strong proponents, including Kiko, Princess Akishino, who is a skilled sign interpreter and participates in many sign language and deaf events. It is mutually intelligible with Korean and Taiwainese Sign Languages, but not with Chinese Sign Language, Auslan, American Sign Language, or others.
See
Castles
When most Westerners think of castles, they naturally think of their own in places like England and France; however, Japan, too, was a nation of castle-builders. In its feudal days, you could find multiple castles in nearly every prefecture.
Original castles
The twelve original castles
Because of bombings in WWII, fires, edicts to tear down castles, etc. only twelve of Japan's castles are considered to be originals, which have donjons (天守閣 tenshukaku) that date back to the days when they were still used. Four of them are located on the island of Shikoku, two just north in the Chugoku region, two in Kansai, three in the Chubu region, and one in the northern Tohoku region. There are no original castles in Kyushu, Kanto, Hokkaido, or Okinawa.
The original castles are:
Reconstructions and ruins
Japan has many reconstructed castles, many of which receive more visitors than the originals. A reconstructed castle means that the donjon was rebuilt in modern times, but many of these still have other original structures within the castle grounds. For example, three of Nagoya Castle's turrets are authentic. The structures of Nijo Castle are also authentic, but they are palace buildings with the donjon having burnt down and not been reconstructed, so it is not listed as an original. Reconstructions still offer a glimpse into the past and many, like Osaka Castle are also museums housing important artifacts. Kumamoto Castle is considered to be among the best reconstructions, because most of the structures have been reconstructed instead of just the donjon. The only reconstructed castle in Hokkaido is Matsumae Castle. The Sougamae of Odawara Castle is a long distance surrounding the entire castle town with about 9 kilometers of empty hill and ground so that it remains in the city. Okinawa's Shuri Castle is unique among Japan's castles, because it is not a "Japanese" castle; it was the royal palace of the Ryukyuan Kingdom and built in a distinctive Ryukyuan architectural style, with a much stronger Chinese influence than Japanese-style castles.
Ruins typically feature only the castle walls or parts of the original layout are visible. Although they lack the structures of reconstructed castles, ruins often feel more authentic without the concrete reconstructions that sometimes feel too commercial and touristy. Many ruins maintain historical significance, such as Tsuyama Castle, which was so large and impressive, it was considered to be the best in the nation. Today, the castle walls are all that remain but the area is filled with thousands of cherry blossoms. This is common among many ruins, as well as reconstructions. Takeda Castle is famed for the gorgeous view of the surrounding area from the ruins giving way to its nickname "Castle in the Sky".
Gardens
Japan is famous for its gardens, known for its unique aesthetics both in landscape gardens and Zen rock/sand gardens. The nation has designated an official "Top Three Gardens", based on their beauty, size, authenticity (gardens that have not been drastically altered), and historical significance. Those gardens are Kairakuen in Mito, Kenrokuen in Kanazawa, and Korakuen in Okayama. The largest garden, and the favorite of many travellers, is actually Ritsurin Park in Takamatsu.
Rock and sand gardens can typically be found in temples, specifically those of Zen Buddhism. The most famous of these is Ryoanji Temple in Kyoto, but such temples can be found throughout Japan. Moss gardens are also popular in Japan and Koke-dera, also in Kyoto, has one of the nation's best. Reservations are required to visit just so that they can ensure the moss is always flourishing and not trampled.
Pure Land gardens dating back to the Heian Period were built to represent the Buddhist Paradise. They all feature a large central pond in front of the Amida Hall. They're simplistic to such an extent that those who are unaware would like not likely even view them as gardens at all. The Byodoin Temple in Uji, Motsuji Temple in Hiraizumi, and Joruriji Temple in Kizugawa are among the most famous of those that remain.
Spiritual sites
Regardless of your travel interests, it's difficult to visit Japan without at least seeing a few shrines and temples. Buddhist and Shinto sites are the most common, although there are some noteworthy spiritual sites of other religions, as well.
Buddhism has had a profound impact on Japan ever since it was introduced in the 6th century. Like shrines, temples can be found in every city, and many different sects exist. Some temples also offer meditation classes in English.
Some of the holiest sites are made up of large complexes on mountaintops and include Mount Koya (Japan's most prestigious place to be buried and head temple of Shingon Buddhism), Mount Hiei (set here when Kyoto became the capital to remove Buddhism from politics, the head of the Tendai sect of Buddhism), and Mount Osore (considered to be the "Gateway to Hell", it features many monuments and graves in a volcanic wasteland).
Many of the nations head temples are located in Kyoto, like the Honganji Temples and Chion-in Temple. Kyoto also has five of the top Zen temples named in the "Five Mountain System" (Tenryuji, Shokokuji, Kenninji, Tofukuji, and Manjuji), along with Nanzenji Temple, which sits above all the temples outside of the mountain system. Although there are "five" temples, Kyoto and Kamakura both have their own five. The Kamakura temple's are Kenchoji, Engakuji, Jufukuji, Jochiji, and Jomyoji Temples. Eiheiji Temple is also a prominent Zen temple, although it was never part of the mountain system.
Nara's Todaiji Temple and Kamakura's Kotokuin Temple are famous for their large Buddhist statues. Todaiji's is the largest in the nation, while the Kamakura Daibutsu is the second largest, meditating outside in the open air.
Horyuji Temple in Horyuji, just south of Nara, is the world's oldest wooden structure. The beautiful Phoenix Hall in Uji is seen by most visitors to Japan on the back of the ¥10 coin, if not in real-life.
Shinto
Shintoism is the "native" religion of Japan, so those looking to experience things that are "wholly Japanese" should particularly enjoy them as they truly embody the Japanese aesthetic. The holiest Shinto Shrine is the Grand Ise Shrine, while the second holiest is Izumo Shrine, where the gods gather annually for a meeting. Other famous holy shrines include Itsukushima Shrine in Miyajima, Toshogu Shrine in Nikko, the Kumano Sanzan, and the Dewa Sanzan, Meiji Shrine in Tokyo, and Shimogamo Shrine, Kamigamo Shrine, and Fushimi Inari Shrine in Kyoto.
Christian
Cenotaph for Christian martyrs in Tsuwano
Japan's introduction to Christianity came in 1549 by way of the Portuguese and Saint Francis Xavier. He established the first Christian church in Yamaguchi at Daidoji Temple, whose ruins are now part of Xavier Memorial Park and the Xavier Memorial Church was built in his honor.
When Toyotomi Hideyoshi came into power, Christianity was banned and Christians were persecuted. Nagasaki is the most famous persecution site where 26 Japanese Christians were crucified. They are saints today and you can visit the memorial for these martyrs in the city. The Shimabara Rebellion is the most famous Christian uprising in Japan, and it was this rebellion that led to the ousting of the Portuguese and Catholic practices from Japan (although Christianity had already been banned by this time), along with approximately 37,000 beheadings of Christians and peasants. In Shimabara, you can visit the ruins of Hara Castle, where the Christians gathered and were attacked, see old Portuguese tombstones, and the samurai houses, some of which were occupied by Christian samurai. Oyano's Amakusa Shiro Memorial Hall contains videos of the Shimabara Rebellion and great displays related to Christian persecution. Less famous sites may be off the beaten path, like the Martyrdom Museum and Memorial Park for martyrs in Ichinoseki. When the nation reopened, some Christians assumed that meant that they were able to practice Christianity freely and openly, so they came out after 200 years of practicing secretly. Unfortunately, it was still not legal and these Christians were brought together in various parts of the country and tortured. You can see one of these sites at Maria Cathedral in Tsuwano, built in the Otome Pass in the area where Christians were put into tiny cages and tortured.
Along with the Martyrdom Site, Nagasaki is also home to Oura Church, the oldest church left in the nation, built in 1864. Because of Nagasaki's status for many years as one of the nation's only ports where outsiders could come, the city is rich in Japanese Christian history, so even the museums here have artifacts and information about the Christian community.
Strangely, you can often find Christian objects in temples and shrines throughout the country. This is because many of these objects were hidden in temples and shrines back when Christianity was forbidden.
Other
Japan has a handful of well-known Confucian Temples. As Japan's gateway to the world for many centuries, Nagasaki's Confucian Temple is the only Confucian temple in the world to be built by Chinese outside of China. Yushima Seido in Tokyo was a Confucian school and one of the nation's first-ever institutes of higher education. The first integrated school in the nation, the Shizutani School in Bizen also taught based on Confucian teachings and principles. The schoolhouse itself was even modeled after Chinese architectural styles. The first public school in Okinawa was a Confucian school given to |
America arise, not from defects in their Constitution or Confederation, not from want of honor or virtue, so much as from the downright ignorance of the nature of coin, credit and circulation."
~~~ John Adams 2 Be Absurd 2) Be Absurd
"If at first, the idea is not absurd, then there is no hope for it”.
"Intellectuals solve problems, geniuses prevent them." Albert Einstein "To be mindful of what is happening within you in this very moment;
to deny nothing; to accept "what is"; to welcome each part of yourself saying "Ahhh, there you are dear one, I see you. I see your light," with breath, tenderness and compassion...
This is the path of a liberated heart." 3 Four Types of People 3) Four Types of People
There are four types of people in the world:
1) Those that make things happen
2) Those that watch things happen
3) Those that talk about things happening
4) Those that wonder "what happened?" The 7 deadly sins per Mahatma Gandhi: Number 1: Wealth without work
Number 2: Pleasure without conscience
Number 3: Knowledge without character
Number 4: Commerce without morality
Number 5: Science without humanity
Number 6: Worship without application
Number 7: Politics without principle Mahatma Gandhi 4 The Game Is Ending 4) The Game Is Ending
You are immortal divine beings playing at being frail and fragile, and you have decided that the time for these kinds of illusory games is coming rapidly to an end. 5 Imagine 5) Imagine
Never mind what-is. Imagine it the way you want it to be so that your vibration is a match to your desire. When your vibration is a match to your desire, all things in your experience will gravitate to meet that match every time.
--- Abraham 6 Divine Providence 6) Divine Providence
Divine providence, I ask not for more riches, but more wisdom with which to make wiser use of the riches you gave me at birth consisting in the power to control and direct my own mind to whatever ends I desire.
--- Napoleon Hill 7 Great Secret of Love 7) Great Secret of Love
LOVE begins at the very point where everything else has its end and this is one of the Great Secrets of Love.
--- AA Michael 8 I AM 8) I AM I AM in command of my life; I AM strong; I AM sure; I AM good; I AM alive; I AM competent, I AM Light; I AM God. 9 My Magic I AM Presence 9) My Magic I AM Presence
My Magic I AM Presence, you direct my activity, world and affairs and take full command of me. Guide, protect, illumine me every step of the way and see that I render the greatest Service possible. See in your wisdom that I make the Ascension at the close of this embodiment. I AM The Ascension, manifesting. I thank you, Beloved I AM."
--- Ashtar 10 Mother God's Affirmations 10) Mother God's Affirmations
MOTHER GOD'S AFFIRMATIONS
I AM the commander of my own life.
I AM the one who directs and manages my own environment.
I AM the representative of God on this Earth Plane.
I AM ready to Serve.
I AM God! 11 Abraham Abraham If your dominant intent is to feel joy while you are doing the work, your triad of intentions—freedom, growth and joy—will come quickly and easily into alignment. See your "career" as one of creating a joyful life experience. You are not a creator of things or a regurgitator of what someone else has created or a gatherer of stuff. You are a creator, and the subject of your creation is your joyful life experience. That is your mission. That is your quest. That is why you are here. ---AbrahamHardy's Reindeer Ranch is a unique and fun tour destination in Central Illinois. The ranch is an unusual and unique attraction that features a herd of authenic Alaskan reindeer ready for you to have an upclose encounter. Hardy's Reindeer Ranch plays host to visitors from all across the nation and many countries. The rebuilt and restored 100 year old barns and 5,000 Christmas trees combine to form a beautiful setting for families, individuals and groups to get away from the ordinary and hurried pace of city life. Hardy's Reindeer Ranch provides a great escape where you can enjoy a very special day in the country. Julie kisses one of our affectionate reindeer Here's our famous Fall Corn Maze for 2018, celebrating Illinois Bicentennial! For added excitement, try the "Moonlight Madness" by navigating the maze at night with only a flashlight and the light of the moon. Please call for hours. Good luck! "Illinois Bicentennial" Daytime $8 'Moonlight'after 5pm $9 Attractions include the amazing Jack Splat Pumpkin Cannon, a challenging Paint Ball Gallery, exciting Pedal Race Rars, Hay Rides, Reindeer Tours, Cook Outs by reservation, weekend concessions and more.Monthly Plan – US$19.99 per month (plus tax where applicable). Requires an EDU email address or School ID. If you have a School ID, please send it to sales@eastwestsounds.com upon purchase for validation. Payment Each month, we'll collect payment of the price stated at the time of purchase until auto renewal is turned off in your account settings. As soon as you've successfully completed this sign-up process, and your validation and payment are confirmed, your membership will begin and you'll have access to your choice of 7 virtual instrument collections. Your 7 product selection Your 7 products selection can only be changed at the end of the first membership year, we suggest you select the regular monthly plan if you want flexibility or to access the entire collection. Cancellation If you need to cancel, go to your account settings and turn auto renewal off, your service will continue until the end of your membership month.
Annual Plan, Paid Monthly – Promotional rate is $9.99/9,99€ per month (plus tax where applicable). Lock in this lower price with ComposerCloud X annual (paid monthly) membership featuring our award-winning virtual instrument collections, plus get an additional mic position (usually the close mic) for those collections that have multiple mic positions to provide better control of the placement of your instruments in your mix. Requires an EDU email address or School ID. If you have a School ID, please send it to sales@eastwestsounds.com upon purchase for validation. Payment Each month, we'll collect the payment selected at the time of purchase. As soon as you've successfully completed the sign-up process and your payment is confirmed, your membership will begin and you'll have instant access to over 40,000 virtual instruments. Renewal We'll renew your monthly plan automatically unless you cancel. Cancellation Under this plan there is no cancellation during the one year term. If you need the flexibility of a monthly plan please select that option instead. If you want to cancel your membership at the end of the one year term, go to your soundsonline.com "My Account" page and turn off Auto-Renew at least one day before your membership is set to renew. There are no refunds for failing to turn off Auto Renew at least 24 hours before your renewal date.
Annual Plan, Paid Yearly – Promotional rate is $119.88/119.88€ (plus tax where applicable). Lock in this lower price with a ComposerCloud X annual membership featuring our award-winning virtual instrument collections, plus get an additional mic position (usually the close mic) for those collections that have multiple mic positions to provide better control of the placement of your instruments in your mix. Requires an EDU email address or School ID. If you have a School ID, please send it to sales@eastwestsounds.com upon purchase for validation. Payment Once a year, we'll collect the payment selected at the time of purchase. As soon as you've successfully completed the sign-up process and your payment is confirmed, your membership will begin and you'll have instant access to over 40,000 virtual instruments. Renewal We'll renew your monthly plan automatically unless you cancel. Cancellation Under this plan there is no cancellation during the one year term. If you need the flexibility of a monthly plan please select that option instead. If you want to cancel your membership at the end of the one year term, go to your soundsonline.com "My Account" page and turn off Auto-Renew at least one day before your membership is set to renew. There are no refunds for failing to turn off Auto Renew at least 24 hours before your renewal date.
Monthly Plan, Paid Monthly – US$19.99 per month (plus tax where applicable). Requires an EDU email address or School ID. If you have a School ID, please send it to sales@eastwestsounds.com upon purchase for validation. Payment Each month, we'll collect the payment selected at the time of purchase. As soon as you've successfully completed the sign-up process and your payment is confirmed, your membership will begin and you'll have instant access to over 40,000 virtual instruments. Renewal We'll renew your monthly plan automatically unless you cancel. Cancellation If you wish to cancel your membership, go to your soundsonline.com “My Account” page and turn off Auto-Renew at least one day before your membership is set to renew. There are no refunds for failing to cancel at least 24 hours before your renewal date.
Monthly Plan, Paid Monthly – US$29.99 per month (plus tax where applicable). Payment Each month, we'll collect the payment selected at the time of purchase. As soon as you've successfully completed the sign-up process and your payment is confirmed, your membership will begin and you'll have instant access to over 40,000 virtual instruments. Renewal We'll renew your monthly plan automatically unless you cancel. Cancellation If you wish to cancel your membership, go to your soundsonline.com “My Account” page and turn off Auto-Renew at least one day before your membership is set to renew. There are no refunds for failing to cancel at least 24 hours before your renewal date.
Promotional rate for the first 30 days is $14.99/14,99€, after which you will be charged $29.99/29,99€ a month unless you cancel before the 30 day promotional period expires (see below for cancellation instructions); or you can upgrade to ComposerCloud X at anytime which is an annual plan, paid monthly or annually, at a discounted price of $19.99/19,99€ (see below for upgrade instructions). Payment Each month, we'll collect the payment selected at the time of purchase. As soon as you've successfully completed the sign-up process and your payment is confirmed, your membership will begin and you'll have instant access to over 40,000 virtual instruments. Renewal We'll renew your monthly plan automatically unless you cancel. Upgrade To upgrade your plan at any time, go to your soundsonline.com "My Account" page and click "Upgrade Plan" next to your subscription. Cancellation If you wish to cancel your membership, go to your soundsonline.com “My Account” page and turn off Auto-Renew at least one day before your membership is set to renew. There are no refunds for failing to cancel at least 24 hours before your renewal date.
Annual Plan, Paid Monthly – Promotional rate is $19.99/19,99€ per month (plus tax where applicable). Lock in this lower monthly price with ComposerCloud X annual (paid monthly) membership featuring our award-winning virtual instrument collections, plus get an additional mic position (usually the close mic) for those collections that have multiple mic positions to provide better control of the placement of your instruments in your mix. Payment Each month, we'll collect the payment selected at the time of purchase. As soon as you've successfully completed the sign-up process and your payment is confirmed, your membership will begin and you'll have instant access to over 40,000 virtual instruments. Renewal We'll renew your monthly plan automatically unless you cancel. Cancellation Under this plan there is no cancellation during the one year term. If you need the flexibility of a monthly plan please select that option instead. If you want to cancel your membership at the end of the one year term, go to your soundsonline.com "My Account" page and turn off Auto-Renew at least one day before your membership is set to renew. There are no refunds for failing to turn off Auto Renew at least 24 hours before your renewal date.
Annual Plan, Paid Yearly – Promotional rate is $239/239€ per year (plus tax where applicable). Lock in this lower price with a ComposerCloud X annual membership featuring our award-winning virtual instrument collections, plus get an additional mic position (usually the close mic) for those collections that have multiple mic positions to provide better control of the placement of your instruments in your mix. Payment Once a year, we'll collect the payment selected at the time of purchase. As soon as you've successfully completed the sign-up process and your payment is confirmed, your membership will begin and you'll have instant access to over 40,000 virtual instruments. Renewal We'll renew your monthly plan automatically unless you cancel. Cancellation Under this plan there is no cancellation during the one year term. If you need the flexibility of a monthly plan please select that option instead. If you want to cancel your membership at the end of the one year term, go to your soundsonline.com "My Account" page and turn off Auto-Renew at least one day before your membership is set to renew. There are no refunds for failing to turn off Auto Renew at least 24 hours before your renewal date.
COMPOSERCLOUD PLUS - Mac HD Annual Plan, Paid Monthly – Promotional rate is $39.99/39,99€ per month (plus tax where applicable). Requires purchase of a CCC PRO Sound Data Hard Drive (US$99) which includes a 3TB USB 3 external hard drive. CCC PRO will be added to your cart if you select this plan (includes a two-year limited warranty from the original manufacturer). The sound data will be replaced free of charge (excluding shipping costs) should the hard drive fail. Shipping costs and any applicable import fees are your responsibility, the hard drive ships from the USA. Payment Once a month, we'll collect the payment selected at the time of purchase. As soon as you've successfully completed this sign-up process and your payment is confirmed, your membership will begin and you'll have instant access to over 42,000+ virtual instruments. Renewal We'll renew your monthly plan automatically unless you cancel. Cancellation Under this plan there is no cancellation during the one year term. If you need the flexibility of a monthly plan please select that option instead. If you want to cancel your membership at the end of the one year term, go to your soundsonline.com "My Account" page and turn off Auto-Renew at least one day before your membership is set to renew. There are no refunds for failing to turn off Auto Renew at least 24 hours before your renewal date.
COMPOSERCLOUD PLUS - Windows HD Annual Plan, Paid Monthly – Promotional rate is $39.99/39,99€ per month (plus tax where applicable). Requires purchase of a CCC PRO Sound Data Hard Drive (US$99) which includes a 3TB USB 3 external hard drive. CCC PRO will be added to your cart if you select this plan (includes a two-year limited warranty from the original manufacturer). The sound data will be replaced free of charge (excluding shipping costs) should the hard drive fail. Shipping costs and any applicable import fees are your responsibility, the hard drive ships from the USA. Payment Once a month, we'll collect the payment selected at the time of purchase. As soon as you've successfully completed this sign-up process and your payment is confirmed, your membership will begin and you'll have instant access to over 42,000+ virtual instruments. Renewal We'll renew your monthly plan automatically unless you cancel. Cancellation Under this plan there is no cancellation during the one year term. If you need the flexibility of a monthly plan please select that option instead. If you want to cancel your membership at the end of the one year term, go to your soundsonline.com "My Account" page and turn off Auto-Renew at least one day before your membership is set to renew. There are no refunds for failing to turn off Auto Renew at least 24 hours before your renewal date.
COMPOSERCLOUD PLUS - Mac HD Annual Plan, Paid Monthly – Promotional rate is $479/479€ per year (plus tax where applicable). Requires purchase of a CCC PRO Sound Data Hard Drive (US$99) which includes a 3TB USB 3 external hard drive. CCC PRO will be added to your cart if you select this plan (includes a two-year limited warranty from the original manufacturer). The sound data will be replaced free of charge (excluding shipping costs) should the hard drive fail. Shipping costs and any applicable import fees are your responsibility, the hard drive ships from the USA. Payment Once a year, we'll collect the payment selected at the time of purchase. As soon as you've successfully completed this sign-up process and your payment is confirmed, your membership will begin and you'll have instant access to over 42,000+ virtual instruments. Renewal We'll renew your yearly plan automatically unless you cancel. Cancellation Under this plan there is no cancellation during the one year term. If you need the flexibility of a monthly plan please select that option instead. If you want to cancel your membership at the end of the one year term, go to your soundsonline.com "My Account" page and turn off Auto-Renew at least one day before your membership is set to renew. There are no refunds for failing to turn off Auto Renew at least 24 hours before your renewal date.
COMPOSERCLOUD PLUS - Windows HD Annual Plan, Paid Monthly – Promotional rate is $479/479€ per year (plus tax where applicable). Requires purchase of a CCC PRO Sound Data Hard Drive (US$99) which includes a 3TB USB 3 external hard drive. CCC PRO will be added to your cart if you select this plan (includes a two-year limited warranty from the original manufacturer). The sound data will be replaced free of charge (excluding shipping costs) should the hard drive fail. Shipping costs and any applicable import fees are your responsibility, the hard drive ships from the USA. Payment Once a year, we'll collect the payment selected at the time of purchase. As soon as you've successfully completed this sign-up process and your payment is confirmed, your membership will begin and you'll have instant access to over 42,000+ virtual instruments. Renewal We'll renew your yearly plan automatically unless you cancel. Cancellation Under this plan there is no cancellation during the one year term. If you need the flexibility of a monthly plan please select that option instead. If you want to cancel your membership at the end of the one year term, go to your soundsonline.com "My Account" page and turn off Auto-Renew at least one day before your membership is set to renew. There are no refunds for failing to turn off Auto Renew at least 24 hours before your renewal date.When Bumble launched in 2014, it hailed itself as a new kind of dating app that gave women control over their romantic destinies.
Now, it's asserting that power and removing users who don't treat women like the queens they are.
Last week, the company said it was blocking a user named Connor after being alerted to his rant against a female user.
"Dear Connor, It has been brought to our attention that you lost your cool on one of our female users named Ashley," reads a blog post on Bumble titled "An Open Letter to Connor."
Related: Dating app founder fights back: We aren't elitist
The interaction between Ashley and Connor started innocently enough: "How's it going," she asked him. He replied: "Great, thanks and yourself?"
But things spiraled quickly when Ashley asked what he did for a living.
Connor -- who claimed to have a $300,000 job and a Notre Dame finance degree -- proceeded to berate Ashley, who he presumed had a $40,000 account manager job. "I don't see anything nice about you prying into my career without even getting to know me as a person first," he wrote in screenshots obtained by Bumble and posted on its blog.
"I've gotten tired of girls like you who shamelessly attempt to pry into my career (and really the kind of money/earning potential I have)," he wrote. "I don't have time for entitled, gold-digging whores."
And surprise! Things got even uglier: "I don't... prescribe to this neo-liberal, Beyonce, feminist cancer which plagues society and says a guy can't as so much as give constructive criticism to and call a girl out on her bullsh*t," he wrote.
Bumble took the opportunity to school Connor on why his reaction was inappropriate and, moreover, why he doesn't belong in its community.
"We can gather that she wasn't hoping to figure out if your wallet was sizable enough for her to move into your house and start cooking dinner for you after vacuuming your living room while you clock in a 9 to 5 work day," Bumble wrote. "It might sound crazy, but people connect over the basic routines of life. You know... the weather, working out, grabbing a drink, and working."
Bumble, launched by Tinder cofounder Whitney Wolfe, follows a similar premise as Tinder. People swipe for matches and photos are prominent.
Unlike Tinder, Bumble requires women to initiate conversations once a match is made.
"We hope that the hate and resentment welling up inside of you will subside and you'll be able to engage in everyday conversations with women without being cowardice to their power... We are going to continue to build a world that makes small-minded, misogynist boys like you feel outdated."
Bumble signed off its blog post with the hashtags #ImWithAshley and #LaterConnor. Support has been pouring in on Twitter.
Crazy concept that a woman might not be "entitled, gold-digging whores" #ImWithAshley #LaterConnor — Eleanor Hambleton (@el_c_hs) June 10, 2016
#imwithashley because asking what somebody does is basic small talk. #LaterConnor for thinking it was a gold digging technique. — Christina Lisk (@ChristinaLisk) June 9, 2016
Bumble did not immediately respond to request for comment.Jefferson County Sheriff found guilty
TWIN FALLS, Idaho - A jury unanimously ruled Jefferson County Sheriff Blair Olsen is guilty of three felony charges of misusing public money Wednesday.
The trial's focus was on the cell phone paid by the county that was in possession of Olsen's wife, Marie. The defense said the phone was kept for backup purposes in case of emergencies, but the prosecution argued it was for Marie Olsen's personal use.
The jury took three hours to make its decision.
After the reading of the verdict, Judge Greg Moeller told the sheriff he is no longer allowed to carry a gun on his person.
Prosecuting attorney Jason Spilman said he was pleased with the outcome.
"It's a case we felt strongly about," he said. "I know the attorney general (Lawrence Wasden) felt strongly about pursuing misuse of public funds, so we're pleased with the result.... I think it was a really hard, at times complex and tedious case. They did a really excellent job of staying on track and paying good attention, and they just did a really nice job."
Olsen and his defense team left the courtroom in a hurry after the verdict was read.
Sentencing is scheduled for June 22 in Jefferson County.
The trial took place in Twin Falls County to ensure fairness.Washington (CNN) The United States is set to deploy troops on the ground in Syria for the first time to advise and assist rebel forces combating ISIS, the White House said Friday.
White House spokesman Josh Earnest said that the U.S. would be deploying "less than 50" Special Operations forces, who will be sent to Kurdish-controlled territory in northern Syria. The American troops will help local Kurdish and Arab forces fighting ISIS with logistics and are planning to bolster their efforts.
The deployment of U.S. Special Operations forces is the most significant escalation of the American military campaign against ISIS to date.
The Special Ops troops will first be deployed to northern Syria to help coordinate local ground forces and U.S.-led coalition efforts to fight ISIS, the senior administration official said. The local forces in that area have been the most effective U.S. partners in confronting ISIS.
White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest rejected early criticism that the small Special Ops force would not be sufficient, noting that they are an "important force multiplier anywhere around the world they are deployed."
"The President does expect that they can have an impact in intensifying our strategy for building the capacity of local forces inside of Syria for taking the fight on the ground to ISIL in their own country," Earnest said, using another acronym for ISIS. "That has been the core element of the military component of our strategy from the beginning: building the capacity of local forces on the ground."
Earnest said that this key element of U.S. strategy in confronting ISIS hasn't changed with Friday's announcement.
He was also careful to insist: "These forces do not have a combat mission."
The first group of Special Operations forces headed into northern Syria will come from the United States and could be on the ground within the month, according to a senior defense official.
Once the troops get there, they will be mainly based at an unofficial headquarters facility where representatives of Syrian Arabs, Kurds and other groups are located. The official would not disclose the location due to security concerns.
The troops will remain there for anywhere from weeks to months at a time, the official said.
The President has approved a current cap of less than 50 troops, with the first contingent expected to be about two dozen. But more could be sent, the official said.
These troops are not expected to go on raids or into combat, according to the current plan. However, they have the right of self-defense and could seek permission if needed to go into the field.
There will be additional Special Operations forces available for raids against targets in both Syria and Iraq when high-value ISIS targets are identified, the official said.
The U.S. support for the anti-ISIS fighters has a crucial goal of making them capable of challenging ISIS control of its unofficial capital, Raqqa. The effort is to make them able to isolate, take control, and "ultimately hold" the key city, the official said. There is no prediction of when that might be possible.
Photos: Syria's civil war, in pictures Photos: Syria's civil war, in pictures Displaced Syrian residents wait to receive food aid distributed by the UN Relief and Works Agency at the besieged al-Yarmouk camp, south of Damascus, Syria, on January 31, 2014. According to the UN Envoy for Syria, an estimated 400,000 Syrians have been killed since an uprising in March 2011 spiraled into civil war. See how the conflict has unfolded. Hide Caption 1 of 52 Photos: Syria's civil war, in pictures Hide Caption 2 of 52 Photos: Syria's civil war, in pictures An injured man lying in the back of a vehicle is rushed to a hospital in Daraa, Syria, on March 23, 2011. Violence flared in Daraa after a group of teens and children were arrested for writing political graffiti. Dozens of people were killed when security forces cracked down on demonstrations. Hide Caption 3 of 52 Photos: Syria's civil war, in pictures Anti-government protesters demonstrate in Daraa on March 23, 2011. In response to continuing protests, the Syrian government announced several plans to appease citizens. Hide Caption 4 of 52 Photos: Syria's civil war, in pictures Syrian children walk over bricks stored for road repairs during a spontaneous protest June 15, 2011, at a refugee camp near the Syrian border in Yayladagi, Turkey. Hide Caption 5 of 52 Photos: Syria's civil war, in pictures Jamal al-Wadi speaks in Istanbul on September 15, 2011, after an alignment of Syrian opposition leaders announced the creation of a Syrian National Council -- their bid to present a united front against Bashar al-Assad's regime and establish a democratic system. Hide Caption 6 of 52 Photos: Syria's civil war, in pictures Delegates from Arab League member states and Turkey discuss a response to the government's crackdown in Syria on November 16, 2011. Hide Caption 7 of 52 Photos: Syria's civil war, in pictures Supporters of al-Assad celebrate during a referendum vote in Damascus on February 26, 2012. Opposition activists reported at least 55 deaths across the country as Syrians headed to the polls. Analysts and protesters widely described the constitutional referendum as a farce. "Essentially, what (al-Assad's) done here is put a piece of paper that he controls to a vote that he controls so that he can try and maintain control," a US State Department spokeswoman said. Hide Caption 8 of 52 Photos: Syria's civil war, in pictures Syrian refugees walk across a field in Syria before crossing into Turkey on March 14, 2012. Hide Caption 9 of 52 Photos: Syria's civil war, in pictures Rebel fighters with the Free Syrian Army capture a police officer in Aleppo, Syria, who they believed to be pro-regime militiaman on July 31, 2012. Dozens of officers were reportedly killed as rebels seized police stations in the city. Hide Caption 10 of 52 Photos: Syria's civil war, in pictures A Free Syrian Army fighter runs for cover as a Syrian Army tank shell hits a building across the street during clashes in the Salaheddine neighborhood of central Aleppo on August 17, 2012. Hide Caption 11 of 52 Photos: Syria's civil war, in pictures Family members mourn the deaths of their relatives in front of a field hospital in Aleppo on August 21, 2012. Hide Caption 12 of 52 Photos: Syria's civil war, in pictures A Syrian man carrying grocery bags dodges sniper fire in Aleppo as he runs through an alley near a checkpoint manned by the Free Syrian Army on September 14, 2012. Hide Caption 13 of 52 Photos: Syria's civil war, in pictures Free Syrian Army fighters are reflected in a mirror they use to see a Syrian Army post only 50 meters away in Aleppo on September 16, 2012. Hide Caption 14 of 52 Photos: Syria's civil war, in pictures Smoke rises over the streets after a mortar bomb from Syria landed in the Turkish border village of Akcakale on October 3, 2012. Five people were killed. In response, Turkey fired on Syrian targets and its parliament authorized a resolution giving the government permission to deploy soldiers to foreign countries. Hide Caption 15 of 52 Photos: Syria's civil war, in pictures A Syrian rebel walks inside a burnt section of the Umayyad Mosque in Aleppo hours before the Syrian army retook control of the complex on October 14, 2012. Hide Caption 16 of 52 Photos: Syria's civil war, in pictures An Israeli tank crew sits on the Golan Heights overlooking the Syrian village of Breqa on November 6, 2012. Israel fired warning shots toward Syria after a mortar shell hit an Israeli military post. It was the first time Israel fired on Syria across the Golan Heights since the 1973 Yom Kippur War. Hide Caption 17 of 52 Photos: Syria's civil war, in pictures Smoke rises in the Hanano and Bustan al-Basha districts in Aleppo as fighting continues through the night on December 1, 2012. Hide Caption 18 of 52 Photos: Syria's civil war, in pictures The bodies of three children are laid out for identification by family members at a makeshift hospital in Aleppo on December 2, 2012. The children were allegedly killed in a mortar shell attack that landed close to a bakery in the city. Hide Caption 19 of 52 Photos: Syria's civil war, in pictures A father reacts after the deaths of two of his children in Aleppo on January 3, 2013. Hide Caption 20 of 52 Photos: Syria's civil war, in pictures Syrians look for survivors amid the rubble of a building targeted by a missile in the al-Mashhad neighborhood of Aleppo on January 7, 2013. Hide Caption 21 of 52 Photos: Syria's civil war, in pictures Rebels launch a missile near the Abu Baker brigade in Al-Bab, Syria, on January 16, 2013. Hide Caption 22 of 52 Photos: Syria's civil war, in pictures An aerial view shows the Zaatari refugee camp near the Jordanian city of Mafraq on July 18, 2013. Hide Caption 23 of 52 Photos: Syria's civil war, in pictures The UN Security Council passes a resolution September 27, 2013, requiring Syria to eliminate its arsenal of chemical weapons. Al-Assad said he would abide by the resolution. Hide Caption 24 of 52 Photos: Syria's civil war, in pictures Residents run from a fire at a gasoline and oil shop in Aleppo's Bustan Al-Qasr neighborhood on October 20, 2013. Witnesses said the fire was caused by a bullet from a pro-government sniper. Hide Caption 25 of 52 Photos: Syria's civil war, in pictures Syrian children wait as doctors perform medical checkups at a refugee center in Sofia, Bulgaria, on October 26, 2013. Hide Caption 26 of 52 Photos: Syria's civil war, in pictures An injured man is helped following an airstrike in Aleppo's Maadi neighborhood on December 17, 2013. Hide Caption 27 of 52 Photos: Syria's civil war, in pictures A man holds a baby who was rescued from rubble after an airstrike in Aleppo on February 14, 2014. Hide Caption 28 of 52 Photos: Syria's civil war, in pictures A US ship staff member wears personal protective equipment at a naval airbase in Rota, Spain, on April 10, 2014. A former container vessel was fitted out with at least $10 million of gear to let it take on about 560 metric tons of Syria's most dangerous chemical agents and sail them out to sea, officials said. Hide Caption 29 of 52 Photos: Syria's civil war, in pictures A Free Syrian Army fighter fires a rocket-propelled grenade during heavy clashes in Aleppo on April 27, 2014. Hide Caption 30 of 52 Photos: Syria's civil war, in pictures A giant poster of al-Assad is seen in Damascus on May 31, 2014, ahead of the country's presidential elections. He received 88.7% of the vote in the country's first election after the civil war broke out. Hide Caption 31 of 52 Photos: Syria's civil war, in pictures Rebel fighters execute two men on July 25, 2014, in Binnish, Syria. The men were reportedly charged by an Islamic religious court with detonating several car bombs. Hide Caption 32 of 52 Photos: Syria's civil war, in pictures Photographs of victims of the Assad regime are displayed as a Syrian army defector known as "Caesar," center, appears in disguise to speak before the House Foreign Affairs Committee in Washington. The July 31, 2014, briefing was called "Assad's Killing Machine Exposed: Implications for U.S. Policy." Caesar, apparently a witness to the regime's brutality, smuggled more than 50,000 photographs depicting the torture and execution of more than 10,000 dissidents. CNN cannot independently confirm the authenticity of the photos, documents and testimony referenced in the report. Hide Caption 33 of 52 Photos: Syria's civil war, in pictures Volunteers remove a dead body from under debris after shelling in Aleppo on August 29, 2014. According to the Syrian Civil Defense, barrel bombs are now the greatest killer of civilians in many parts of Syria. The White Helmets are a humanitarian organization that tries to save lives and offer relief. Hide Caption 34 of 52 Photos: Syria's civil war, in pictures Medics tend to a man's injuries at a field hospital in Douma after airstrikes on September 20, 2014. Hide Caption 35 of 52 Photos: Syria's civil war, in pictures A long-exposure photograph shows a rocket being launched in Aleppo on October 5, 2014. Hide Caption 36 of 52 Photos: Syria's civil war, in pictures Rebel fighters dig caves in the mountains for bomb shelters in the northern countryside of Hama on March 9, 2015. Hide Caption 37 of 52 Photos: Syria's civil war, in pictures Nusra Front fighters inspect a helicopter belonging to pro-government forces after it crashed in the rebel-held Idlib countryside on March 22, 2015. Hide Caption 38 of 52 Photos: Syria's civil war, in pictures A Syrian child fleeing the war gets lifted over fences to enter Turkish territory illegally near a border crossing at Akcakale, Turkey, on June 14, 2015. Hide Caption 39 of 52 Photos: Syria's civil war, in pictures A refugee carries mattresses as he re-enters Syria from Turkey on June 22, 2015, after Kurdish People's Protection Units regained control of the area around Tal Abyad, Syria, from ISIS. Hide Caption 40 of 52 Photos: Syria's civil war, in pictures A sandstorm blows over damaged buildings in the rebel-held area of Douma, east of Damascus, on September 7, 2015. Hide Caption 41 of 52 Photos: Syria's civil war, in pictures Members of a Syrian opposition group attack the headquarters of al-Assad regime forces in the Aleppo villages of Nubul and al-Zahraa on February 12, 2016. Hide Caption 42 of 52 Photos: Syria's civil war, in pictures This still image, taken from a video posted by the Aleppo Media Center, shows a young boy in an ambulance after an airstrike in Aleppo, Syria, on August 17, 2016. It took nearly an hour to dig the boy, identified as Omran Daqneesh, out from the rubble, an activist told CNN. The airstrike destroyed his home, where he lived with his parents and two siblings. Director of the Aleppo Media Center Yousef Saddiq said Omran's 10-year-old brother, Ali, died from his injuries. Hide Caption 43 of 52 Photos: Syria's civil war, in pictures Smoke rises after an airstrike in Aleppo on October 4, 2016. Hide Caption 44 of 52 Photos: Syria's civil war, in pictures Arabic writing that reads " |
by bringing the two together, the BBC Music Awards promises to give viewers and listeners an unforgettable night."
BBC director general Tony Hall and new director of music Bob Shennan unveiled the music initiatives on Monday.
"Today’s the start of something very special for everyone who loves music," Hall said. "BBC Music is a celebration of the brilliant musical talent across our country. We’ll be joining up music on television, radio, [digital player] iPlayer and online like never before. There’ll be new shows, new partnerships and whole new ways to enjoy music on the BBC."
Said Shennan: "From the BBC Proms to Glastonbury, music on the BBC already creates a range of amazing experiences that our audiences love. Under BBC Music and in partnership with the U.K. music industry, we will set a new benchmark for quality and scale, with bigger events and more world-class programming delivered in new ways."
The broadcaster's digital on-demand player BBC iPlayer will bring audiences "the best live and on-demand music programs from across the BBC, with more music from your favorite artists, festivals and shows, curated in new ways." Later in the year, subject to approval from governing body BBC Trust, BBC Radio 1 will launch a branded space within BBC iPlayer offering such things as Live Lounge performances and guest interviews.
And starting later this year, bbc.co.uk/music will bring fans more music coverage and content tailored to their musical tastes.
Among other TV plans, BBC Two is working on a series with the working title The Soundtrack of the Twentieth Century for 2016. It will explore popular music’s rise and transformation across the 20th century. "From Caruso to Taylor Swift via Frank Sinatra, the Beatles, Michael Jackson, Eminem and many more, this is the story of 100 years of music as only the BBC can," the broadcaster said.
It also unveiled plans for a feature-length documentary under the working title Genesis: Together and Apart for BBC Two. The doc will reunite all original members of the band, Tony Banks, Phil Collins, Peter Gabriel, Steve Hackett and Mike Rutherford, for the first time since 1975.
Meanwhile, this fall, BBC Four and Radio 2 will present Country Legends: Nashville and Beyond, a season of programs exploring the history of country music. The coverage will consist of three films looking at Nashville, Kenny Rogers and Bob Harris and a special concert featuring country superstar Brad Paisley and his songwriters.
Coinciding with London Fashion Week this September, BBC Four and BBC Radio 6 Music will collaborate on programming on the relationship between music and fashion. Under the working title Oh You Pretty Things!, a three-part series will look at the relationship between British rock and pop music and fashion, with interviews with the Sex Pistols’ Glen Matlock and others.
Email: Georg.Szalai@THR.com
Twitter: @georgszalaiIn a game that was tightly contested, it was Boswell who would come through with a game-winning 38-yard field goal as time ran off the clock, giving the Steelers a 23-20 win at Paul Brown Stadium.
Boswell hit three field goals in the game, including one at the end of the first half with time expiring as well, giving the Steelers a much-needed boost heading into halftime.
In four career games in Cincinnati, including one playoff game, Boswell has connected on all 17 of his field goal attempts. The key for him is always treating every kick the same, regardless of what is on the line.
“You’ve got to remember the same thing you do every time,” said Boswell. “You can’t put too much pressure on one kick, not enough on another kick. It’s just kick by kick. You just move on with it.”
It’s the third time in four games that Boswell has hit a game-winning walk-off field goal, previously doing so against Green Bay and Indianapolis.
Boswell was previously named AFC Special Teams Player of the Month (December/January) and AFC Special Teams Player of the Week (Week 6) during the 2015 season.Good Technology makes BlackBerry-style infrastructure and client software for big businesses. Good is popular with a fair few corporates, and it released some interesting data last night about the mobile platforms these giants are implementing.
The bottom line: they favour iOS over Android, by a very big margin.
Data for the four month from March to June 2011 inclusive shows iPhone activations - devices linked to the Good network - ran at just under 50 per cent of the total. In March, they exceeded 50 per cent, but bobbed along just under that figure during the following three months.
Android phone activations likewise peaked in March - at 28 per cent - and then dipped to a mean of 24 per cent for the next three months.
What's worse for fans of the Google OS is not that Android activations were lower than iPhone additions to the Good network, but that iPad activation levels were higher too, peaking at 30 per cent in May, up from 20.5 per cent in March. Its Q2 average was 27.2 per cent.
Android tablet activations barely troubled the scorer.
They amounted to 3.1 per cent of tablet activations in Q2. iPads accounted for 95 per cent of tablet activations.
The points to take from this are that corporates - those using Good, at least, most of them US firms - are massively pro iOS, and that the iPad is making big inroads into big business. Neither iPhone nor iPad can be written off as either consumer or media fripperies.
That said, the consumer market is huge, and that's where the real battle between iOS and Android is being fought. Apple is by far the leading hardware vendor, but in operating system terms it's now very definitely second fiddle. ®Apple promised to reinvent the textbook and offer a new experience for students and teachers by way of an update to its iBooks app for the iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch on Thursday.
The app update -- which Apple is calling iBooks 2 and is already released to the iOS App Store -- will allow for textbooks to be sold through the popular app, which in the past sold novels, nonfiction and poetry, but not textbooks.
All textbooks sold through the free app, which is available only to Apple's i-devices, will be priced at $14.99 or less -- a stark contrast to the high-priced paper books that fill college bookstores.
But the main allure might not be the price as much as the interactive features iBooks textbooks can offer.
Apple, which announced the iBooks update at a press event in New York at the Guggenheim Museum, said the iBooks textbook exceeds paper texts in terms of engagement, calling it a durable, quickly searchable book that offers easy highlighting and note-taking as well as interactive photo galleries, videos, and 3-D models and diagrams.
Digital textbooks can also offer immediate feedback with questionnaires at the end of chapters and automatically create flash cards of glossary terms for a student to study.
Apple said the move makes sense given that more that 1.5 million iPads are used in schools. "Now with iBooks 2 for iPad, students have a more dynamic, engaging and truly interactive way to read and learn, using the device they already love," said Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing.
One thing not mentioned by Apple on Thursday was any sort of program that would offer iPads at a discount to students, teachers or schools.
Apple also said there are more than 20,000 education-focused apps available in the iOS App Store.
The tech giant has enlisted the heavyweights of textbook publishing -- Pearson, McGraw Hill and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt -- to sell textbooks through iBooks 2. Combined, the three companies make 90% of textbooks sold in the U.S. Smaller publishers such as DK and the EO Wilson Biodiversity Foundation will be publishing to iBooks 2 as well.
Just as iBooks does with other types of books, textbooks will offer a free preview of a few pages or even a chapter before a purchase is made.
EO Wilson is also publishing a new book through iBooks 2 called Life on Earth, and the first two chapters of the new title will be free with more chapters coming as they are written.
ALSO:
Apple iPad 3: Launching in February, March, or later?
'The Numberlys' app for the iPad: Storytelling of the future
Apple's iBooks 2, iBooks Author: Bids to own publishing's future
-- Nathan Olivarez-Giles
Nathan Olivarez-Giles on Google+
twitter.com/nateog
Image: Textbooks for sale in iBooks 2 on an Apple iPad. Credit: AppleGrand Rapids goalie Petr Mrazek moves to block a puck against Milwaukee at the Van Andel Arena in Grand Rapids Wednesday, November 7, 2012. The Griffins beat the Admirals 4-2. (Cory Morse | MLive.com)
(Cory Morse | MLive.com)
Griffins vs Admirals 11/7/12 15 Gallery: Griffins vs Admirals 11/7/12
GRAND RAPIDS, MI -- Petr Mrazek doesn’t see much difference between playing in the ECHL and the AHL, but the Grand Rapids Griffins sure have noticed. The 20-year-old goalie, playing in his third AHL game, made his home debut Wednesday and saved the Griffins early before the team woke up late in a 4-2 victory against Milwaukee before a matinee crowd of 6,112 at Van Andel Arena. Mrazek endured 12 shots in the first period before the defense settled down, and Joakim Andersson scored on a power play with eight minutes left in the third period for the go ahead goal en route to the Griffins’ third consecutive victory. “He’s playing incredible,” Andersson said of the rookie goaltender. “All three games since he got here … He saved the game for us maybe in the first period when he made some real good saves.“ The win put the Griffins over.500 for the first time this season at 5-4-1-1. Milwaukee falls to 4-6-0-0. Mrazek turned in victories at Texas and Houston over the weekend, allowing single goals in each. Against Milwaukee, he allowed a goal off a slap shot by Jonathon Blue facing a 5-on-3 late in the first that tied the score at 1-1, and was helpless on a redirect by Juuso Pyuustinen midway through the second. Of the four goals he has allowed in three games, two have come with the Griffins having two players in the penalty box. “It was a great feeling because we won and it was my first game here so I’m very happy, Mrazek said. He was called up after turning in a.944 save percentage and a 2.02 goals against average in three games in Toledo. He joined the Griffins the day they left on a three-day, three-game trip to Texas. “I don’t think it’s that difference between the two (AHL and ECHL) in that my job is to stop the puck,” he said. “But it’s AHL, and the game is faster and the players smarter.” Coach Jeff Blashill said Mrazek was part of the turnaround. “We’ve done a good job of limiting our mistakes,” he said, “and Petr Mrazek has made some big saves in net at big times and, in the end, that makes a difference.” Against Milwaukee, the Griffins defense stepped up and limited the Admirals to 14 shots the final two periods after 12 in the first. Andersson’s goal was a breakthrough. The Griffins were 0 of 7 on the power play before Andersson’s tipped in a shot from the right point by Gustav Nyquist. “Recently our power play’s been struggling a little bit,” Blashill said. “We had a hard time getting into the zone, and so we’re going to have to work on that. But I thought it did build as the game went along and, thankfully, we were able to capitalize on the last one.”
Notes
Gustav Nyquist scored on an empty net in the closing seconds for the two-goal difference. The Griffins have already had eight games decided by one goal …… Griffins defenseman Brennan Evans got the best of Anthony Bitetto in a brief fight late in the second period … Mike Knuble, a 14-year NHL veteran who lives in Kentwood, joined Bob Kaser on the radio broadcast … The 11 a.m. start was the earlier start ever for a Griffins home game. The team entered the game 7-3-0-1 in matinee games at Van Andel Arena... The concourse before the game was crowded with educational displays, college information booths and business representatives as part of a job fair … The Griffins host Rockford at 7 p.m. Friday.
and follow him on
for coverage of the Griffins.
Griffins 4, Admirals 2
Milwaukee 1 1 0 - 2 Grand Rapids 1 1 2 - 4
1st Period
-1, Grand Rapids, Sheahan 1 (Ferraro, Billins), 13:54 (SH). 2, Milwaukee, Blum 1 (Beck, Ekholm), 15:56 (PP). Penalties-Bang Mil (high-sticking), 7:34; Andersson Gr (boarding), 11:58; Almquist Gr (hooking), 14:37; Raedeke Gr (cross-checking), 14:55.
2nd Period
-3, Grand Rapids, Pare 4 (Billins, Evans), 6:15. 4, Milwaukee, Puustinen 1 (MacLellan, Watson), 12:38. Penalties-Smith Gr (holding), 3:56; Latta Mil (boarding), 4:06; Bartley Mil (boarding), 7:20; Bitetto Mil (fighting), 13:27; Evans Gr (slashing, fighting), 13:27; Beck Mil (cross-checking), 14:29.
3rd Period
-5, Grand Rapids, Andersson 3 (Billins, Nyquist), 11:28 (PP). 6, Grand Rapids, Nyquist 6 (Andersson, Tatar), 19:30 (EN). Penalties-Beck Mil (tripping), 0:33; Ekholm Mil (slashing), 4:02; Tatar Gr (hooking), 8:12; Valentine Mil (roughing), 11:06; Mueller Mil (goaltender interference), 19:52. Shots on Goal-Milwaukee 12-9-5-26. Grand Rapids 3-11-12-26. Power Play Opportunities-Milwaukee 1 / 6; Grand Rapids 1 / 8. Goalies-Milwaukee, Smith 2-6-0 (25 shots-22 saves). Grand Rapids, Mrazek 3-0-0 (26 shots-24 saves). A-6,112Auto-brewery syndrome Digestive system
Auto-brewery syndrome, also known as gut fermentation syndrome, is a rare medical condition in which intoxicating quantities of ethanol are produced through endogenous fermentation within the digestive system.[1][2] One gastrointestinal organism, Saccharomyces cerevisiae, a type of yeast, has been identified as a pathogen for this condition.
Claims of endogenous fermentation of this type have been used as a defense against drunk driving charges.[3][4][5]
One case went undetected for 20 years.[6]
It has also been investigated, but eliminated, as a possible cause of sudden infant death syndrome.[7]
A variant occurs in persons with liver abnormalities that prevent them from excreting or breaking down alcohol normally. Patients with this condition can develop symptoms of auto-brewery syndrome even when the gut yeast produces a quantity of alcohol that is too small to intoxicate a healthy individual.[8]
Symptoms [ edit ]
This disease can have profound effects on everyday life. As well as the recurring side effects of excessive belching, dizziness, dry mouth, hangovers, disorientation, irritable bowel syndrome, and chronic fatigue syndrome, it can lead to other health problems such as depression, anxiety and poor productivity in employment. The random state of intoxication can lead to personal difficulties, and the relative obscurity of the condition can also make it hard to seek treatment.[9] [10]
Diagnosis [ edit ]
Treatment [ edit ]
The treatment for auto-brewery syndrome is a change in diet requiring low carbohydrates and high protein. Sugar is fermented into alcohol, and a diet that effectively lowers sugars also lowers the alcohol that can be fermented from it. Anything that causes an imbalance between the beneficial and harmful bacteria in the gut can help increase the chance that fermentation in the gut will develop. This can include not only antibiotics, but also overindulgence in sugars and carbohydrates. Watching what you eat could lower the risk of gut fermentation syndrome, and taking probiotics could further protect you by increasing the number of good bacteria in your system.[11][better source needed]House Republicans are proceeding with an overhaul of the law governing higher education, despite calls by some advocates to slow down. (Carolyn Kaster/AP)
House Republicans are pressing ahead with a sweeping overhaul of the federal law that governs almost every aspect of higher education, without hearings and despite mounting pressure to provide more time for analysis and input.
[GOP higher ed plan would end student loan forgiveness in repayment program, overhaul federal financial aid]
On Tuesday, the House Committee on Education and the Workforce considered amendments to the Promoting Real Opportunity, Success and Prosperity through Education Reform Act, introduced by Chairman Virginia Foxx (R-N.C.) and Rep. Brett Guthrie (R-Ky.). The process known as “markup” was expected to take two days as Democrats and Republicans plan to introduce nearly 60 amendments, according to congressional staffers.
The legislation is the first significant step in the reauthorization of the Higher Education Act of 1965, which has remained largely untouched for nearly a decade. As a result, university, student and consumer groups are pleading with the committee to slow down. Barely two weeks have passed since Foxx released the 542-page bill, a tome that would change everything from the way families finance education to the way colleges are held accountable for their performance.
On the eve of the markup, Republicans tucked in more provisions, including giving the education secretary greater flexibility to cut off federal grants to students and barring campuses from regulating fraternities and sororities.
“Despite the fact that reauthorization is already several years behind schedule, this bill is suddenly being rushed through committee,” Ted Mitchell, president of the American Council on Education, wrote to committee leaders Monday in a letter signed by 36 other organizations. “This expedited time-frame limits the ability to analyze the bill and consult with affected parties, leaving the committee in the position of asking its members and the public to support legislation before knowing its full impact.”
Mitchell, who served as undersecretary of education during the Obama administration, said the organizations have significant reservations about the legislation, although there are elements they support — a position echoed throughout the higher education community.
[House Republicans got this right: Colleges should tell students how much bang their buck will buy]
Many have praised the legislation for simplifying the financial aid application, using grants to provide incentives for students to graduate in four years, eliminating student loan origination fees and expanding work-study opportunities for low-income students. But some worry the bill could raise the cost of college for those who can least afford it by ending the Federal Supplemental Educational Opportunity Grant and no longer paying the interest on low-income students’ loans while they are in school. The grant provided $732 million in aid to 1.6 million students in the 2014-2015 academic year, according to the Education Department.
“Eliminating the supplemental grant without channeling the funds directly into another need-based grant program, like the Pell Grant, is simply a cut to students trying to pay for college,” said Michelle Asha Cooper, president of the nonprofit Institute for Higher Education Policy, in a review of the legislation. And ending the interest subsidy, she said, “ultimately means that students will pay more for college.”
A preliminary analysis by the American Council on Education, which represents colleges and universities, supports Cooper’s observation about abolishing the subsidy. The council said an undergraduate who borrows $19,000 over four years and makes all payments on time would see a 44 percent increase in the cost of the loan, if subsidized loans go away. A student who attends for five years and borrows $23,000 would see a 56 percent increase. By most estimates, nearly 6 million students would be affected.
Mary Clare Amselem, an education policy analyst at the conservative Heritage Foundation think tank, argues that taxpayers will benefit if the federal government reduces its role in financing higher education.
“Students and taxpayers win in the scenario where you have private lenders actually competing in the market, and ultimately we would hope that puts more pressure on inflated tuition prices,” Amselem said. “The federal role in education should only be to lend to students that the private markets wouldn’t.”
She applauded provisions to end subsidized loans and Public Service Loan Forgiveness, a program that wipes away federal student debt for people in the public sector after they have made 10 years’ worth of payments. But instead of House Republicans imposing borrowing caps for parents and graduate students, Amselem said she hoped lawmakers would end all government lending to both groups. Banks and other private lenders, she said, are well-equipped to meet their needs. Advocacy groups have argued that private loans lack adequate consumer protections.
Critics of the federal Parent and Graduate Plus loan programs say they are in part responsible for the rising cost of college. They contend colleges and universities have little incentive to keep costs down as long as people can access unlimited amounts of money from both programs, a claim that has been disputed by some education researchers.
The graduate program, in particular, has been blamed for the explosion in student debt, with roughly 40 percent of student loans held by people with advanced degrees. Conservatives have also called for caps on the amount of graduate student debt eligible for loan forgiveness in a federal income-based repayment program that is designed to lower the skyrocketing costs of discharging debt. As it stands, borrowers can restrict their monthly student loan payments to 10 percent of their discretionary earnings, with the remaining balance of the debt forgiven after 20 to 25 years.
Instead of limiting eligibility, House Republicans would limit loan forgiveness, raise monthly payments to 15 percent of income and eliminate the fixed number of years for repayment. But in exchange, the government would discharge any debt remaining after borrowers repay the total principal and interest they would have paid under a standard 10-year plan.
Preston Cooper, an education analyst at the conservative American Enterprise Institute think tank, said he has mixed feelings about the controversial provision.
“Some of the loan forgiveness programs are shaping up to be really expensive and having a cap on interest will give students peace of mind,” Cooper said. “But one of the negatives is getting rid of loan forgiveness, which is a big subsidy. But you’re kind of introducing this new subsidy for people who take a long time to pay off their loans.”
House Republicans would also require people in an income-based plan to pay at least $25 a month, ending a practice that allows struggling borrowers to pay nothing. An analysis released Tuesday by the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank, said restructuring the repayment plan could increase monthly debt bills for borrowers — and the amount they pay overall — without a fixed number of years for repayment.
House Democrats are introducing nearly 40 amendments to combat changes to loan forgiveness, financial aid and accountability measures for colleges. Democrats say they were not consulted on any aspect of the legislation, despite drafting bipartisan bills addressing elements of the Higher Education Act in the last Congress. Members plan to paint the GOP bill as a continued attack on American families, much like the tax overhaul, according to a Democratic committee aide.
[Maryland leads states in suing DeVos over dismantling of rule to regulate career-training programs]
Democrats are especially concerned about the repeal of regulations targeting for-profit colleges. The legislation would end the 90/10 rule, which bars for-profit colleges from getting more than 90 percent of their operating revenue from federal student aid.
It would also get rid of the gainful employment regulation that threatens to withhold student aid from vocational programs that have graduates who consistently end up with more debt than they can repay.
And House Republicans are proposing to limit loan discharges afforded to students defrauded by their colleges, through a statute known as borrower defense to repayment.
“The House GOP proposal guts key safeguards designed to protect students and taxpayers from predatory schools, like the gainful employment rule and the 90/10 provision — and then to make matters worse, it eliminates protections around the borrower defense process, making it far more difficult for students to get relief on their debt when they get scammed by those schools,” said Jen Mishory, a senior fellow at the Century Foundation, a Washington-based nonprofit organization.Do you want to go on a bike ride?
A simple question with what might seem like a simple answer, especially as spring weather begins to waft across the country.
Dig a little deeper, and it gets more complicated. Your decision to ride a bike is likely informed not just by the temperature and your energy level – but also by your gender, and the influence of a burgeoning movement that’s transforming streets across America.
It’s a movement led in large part by an emerging community of female transportation planners – many of whom have marshaled research that illuminates realities like the biking gender gap (there’s one woman for every three men riding a bike in the U.S.) and America’s dangerous roads to make the case for a radical change in how we think about getting from here to there.
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For decades, planners designed streets, and our transportation systems, in ways that inadvertently sacrificed safety to focus on driver freedom. They focused on how to reduce congestion for commuters, often neglecting to think about the population outside of the 9-to-five workforce. The results of this strategy: infrastructure built less for peoples’ holistic needs, and more for vehicles.
“In the past five to ten years, there’s been a big shift in the way we think about designing communities and neighborhoods for bicycling and walking,” said Seleta Reynolds, the general manager of the Los Angeles Department of Transportation at New America’s annual conference. “When you look at the leadership in the traffic safety movement, there are lots of women doing transformative things because they may see transportation from a different angle or lens.”
In many ways, Reynolds said, women are “changing the rulebook for how we design streets, and how we entice more women and families out to use them in a different way.”
Many of these rulebook changes originate with New York City’s Janette Sadik-Khan, the commissioner of the Department of Transportation from 2007-2013. She pioneered a street design plan that focused on the city’s most vulnerable travelers – and is known as a visionary in the transportation planning industry, even if she wasn’t always a popular one.
Around that time, groundbreaking research came out showing that women and casual bicyclists prefer quieter, slower streets and more separated paths. That research combined with the success of Sadik-Khan’s reforms inspired the construction of hundreds of bike lanes across the U.S. “What Janette did was to create kind of environment where women, children and older adults would feel more comfortable getting on a bike and would feel measurably safer walking,” Reynolds explained.
The push to focus on women and vulnerable populations extends beyond the streets to the Department of Transportation’s Job Access Reverse Commute Program (JARC), which is committed to strengthening transit connections in nontraditional commuting routes and times, typically traveled by women and lower-income communities trying to get to jobs or child care centers that are often located outside of conventional routes. The idea is to make sure that people who work a late shift, or do the reverse commute from city to suburbs, have reliable, affordable transit. In theory, a great program. In practice, says – Robin Hutcheson, the director of the Transportation Planning Division of Salt Lake City, JARC funding can be difficult to come by and “doesn’t always help us as a city do what we need to do.”
Both Reynolds and Hutcheson believe there may be a new role for government to play in increasing access for low-income communities as transportation and commuting shifts to a service-based model – in other words, people ditching their cars to rely more on driverless vehicles, Uber, Lyft, Bridge or car share to get around. Bike sharing and car sharing are not used as much in lower-income neighborhoods, she explained, due to both financial and cultural barriers. To Reynolds, the government could help encourage the shift away from individual car ownership towards a more sustainable model by subsidizing these services for lower-income populations.
Philadelphia’s new bike sharing program, which has focused on bringing the service to low-income neighborhoods, is one new example of how to get lower-income Americans on bikes. The program removes financial barriers by allowing patrons to pay with cash in addition to credit cards.
But the push for more bike-friendly communities hasn’t always been a walk – or a ride – in the park. For instance, in order to boost numbers of female bike riders, transportation planners have learned that it’s important to create a more substantial separation between bikers and traffic. “When there is nothing between you and moving traffic except a four-inch white stripe, you’re not going to put your kid on a bike, nor are you going to go out on a bike,” Reynolds said. But if you build a physical curb, or even flip flop parked cars with bike lanes on the road, more women will pedal.
But “to give space to something, you have to take it from something else,” Reynolds said, acknowledging that we’re no longer in the business of widening our roads. Another example of these tradeoffs: Vision Zero – a traffic safety project with the goal of eliminating traffic fatalities and serious injuries. It began in Sweden and has spread globally, with leadership efforts from both men and women. To reduce traffic deaths under Vision Zero, “I have to get everyone to slow down…and people across any discipline don’t do well when it comes to change,” Reynolds said, explaining that speed is a key indicator in how destructive a traffic incident will be. In other words, “saving lives comes at a cost.”
And then there’s the matter of culture change – teaching people to both approach and talk about driving in a different way. One critical pathway to this kind of change, Reynolds noted at the conference, is starting to talk about safety outcomes not as “accidents,” as if they couldn’t have been prevented, but “crashes,” where someone was responsible, and should be accountable for the consequences.
The idea that we all need to slow down is something that parents who witness near-crashes every day near their kids’ schools understand intuitively. But in many cases, that macro-level understanding hasn’t translated into micro-level behavioral change.
Not yet, at least. “When I was growing up, you didn’t wear seatbelts,” she recalled. Today, we may be buckling up more, but in the traffic safety space, there’s still “a real fundamental culture change we have to get to.” Reynolds, however, is optimistic: “I don’t think it’s out of our reach.”
Culture change, however, often requires leadership change. And diversifying the transportation C-Suite may be one of the biggest remaining challenges – as it is for other male-dominated industries.
“It’s one of my biggest frustrations, that I feel like more women are coming into transportation and are succeeding at the low level management and mid-level management, but then the doors still seem closed,” said Swaim-Staley. “We have fewer female DOT secretaries now than we had a few years ago. I see a glass ceiling more than I did when I started out.”
That may be more true in state government than in city government, Hutcheson pointed out. Salt Lake City, she noted, has more than a dozen women in leadership positions. And Hutcheson herself is an example of how even one woman in a leadership role can have a multiplier effect; Janette Sadik-Khan was an inspiration to Hutcheson as she rose into transportation industry leadership.
“Janette showed me – and many of us – what was possible,” Hutcheson said.
Elizabeth Weingarten is the Deputy Director of New America’s Breadwinning & Caregiving Program, and of the Global Gender Parity Initiative. This piece was originally published in New America’s digital magazine, The Weekly Wonk. Sign up to get it delivered to your inbox each Thursday here, and follow @New America on Twitter.
Contact us at editors@time.com.The Manukau Harbour Restoration Society is calling for more transparency on the amount of partially-treated wastewater that is pumped into the harbour.
Photo: Manukau Harbour Restoration Society / mhrs.org.nz
Watercare's Mark Bourne said a $500 million investment made in the plant in the early 2000s significantly improved the health of the Manukau Harbour.
Last year, wastewater that did not have advanced treatment was discharged into the harbour 19 times.
Watercare said even during extreme storm events, which increased water flow through the Māngere Wastewater Plant, all wastewater got at least three stages of treatment.
Environment and Consents Manager Mark Bourne said there were five stages of treatment. By international standards three stages was considered full treatment.
"Around the world, most plants only provide up to three stages of treatment. This includes many of the largest plants in Australia, including the large plants in Sydney.
"Because Māngere Wastewater Treatment Plant offers very advanced treatment, it provides a further two stages of processing during normal dry and wet conditions," Mr Bourne said.
Photo: 123RF
The Manukau Harbour Restoration Society said the semi-treated discharges were not good enough. The Māngere treatment plant was not keeping up with intensification.
Society wastewater biologist Gemma Allen said in one discharge in June 2014, the equivalent of 148 Olympic sized swimming pools of wastewater that did not get the advanced treatment was put into the harbour.
She said Watercare did not own the harbour, but was responsible for contributing to its ailing health.
"During dry conditions the treatment plant works very well, but when there is a storm or heavy rain we are seeing more of these discharges into the harbour.
"Watercare's own estimates are that these discharges are happening between 17 and 20 times a year and they've indicated that's going to increase to 22 events a year," Mrs Allen said.
She said wastewater that had only gone through three stages was pumped into the harbour from four to 32 hours at a time.
"Watercare and the Auckland Council are not prepared to talk in an open matter, they're failing to provide information."
Ms Allen said Watercare did not own Manukau Harbour, but, in a large sense, controlled its health.
"It's summer time and people are going to their local beaches to find health warnings and signs saying they can't swim - something needs to be done."
Watercare's Mark Bourne said: "It's easy for people to say we are responsible for polluting the Manukau Harbour, but that fails to recognise the impact of the thousands of other activities taking place within the catchment."Page 2 Of 2
IGN: We do have that small cliffhanger moment where we hear "help" on the walkie talkie. Is that supposed to be --
Reedus: It's not Glenn! Don't ask me! It's not Glenn! [laughs]
Exit Theatre Mode
IGN: [laughs] OK. Are we going to have to wait another four or five episodes to find out who it is, or is that something that's going to be resolved soon?
Reedus: No, you find out who it is pretty quick.
IGN: OK cool. I was trying to puzzle out whose voice it is, and I figured you could just set the record straight.
Reedus: Yeah, people keep asking me. I'm like, "No!" I mean, I was in the episode when that happened on the dumpster. [pauses] Like, I'm in that episode, and when that episode stops, I turned off the TV and I paced around the room like, "I can't believe that just happened." I mean, I was upset, and we filmed that a long time ago and I was still upset. You see what you see and you make your own decisions. He's such a beloved character that people may hope things, but that's what we're doing. We're making that. It just makes we're doing a good job. Just wait. Everything from here on in is an "I just lost my mind" moment on this show. I mean, we're flying down the road right now. We're doing about 120 [mph].
IGN: And you guys are pretty close to wrapping this season, right?
Reedus: We shot last night until 7 a.m. and I'm driving back to my house and the whole ride here Andy [Lincoln] and I are on the phone, and we're just so thrilled with what we're doing right now on the show. We have a huge crew of people and they've been with the show for six years and it's 7 a.m. and people are still standing around for an hour talking about what we shot today, how good it was and how mind-blowing this was and that was. If we're here doing that and it's 7 a.m. and everyone's beat and they're still waiting around talking for an hour about what was shot today -- that's the level of enthusiasm down here while we're making it. I'm so excited for people to see what we're doing. We just keep jumping from plateau to plateau, and the plateau we're on right now you can see the whole other end of the world. It's crazy.
Exit Theatre Mode
IGN: We know that Jeffrey Dean Morgan is going to be introduced as Negan in the finale. Obviously you don't have to spoil if it's happened on screen, but have you had a chance to interact with him behind-the-scenes? What are your thoughts on his casting for this iconic character?
Reedus: It's a big deal. It's a really big deal. I can say that I've known Jeffrey for 15 years. He has his own style, his own flavor, and he's such a talented actor and has his own personality that whatever he does he brings to and he hits it out of the park. The thing about casting characters for this show is they can't just be a good actor. They need to fit here in this world with us making this show, they have to come to Georgia, they have to fit in this machine. That's on a character level, that's on a personality level, that's on a work ethic level -- they have to fit. |
án. Because of this, the Chamber has been working with the municipal corporation “Mi Arecibo, Inc.” and private investors[3], to fund and develop construction in Arecibo. With an increase in tourism as their ultimate goal and solution to the municipality’s economic problem, the Chamber and the municipality have been working to beautify and sell property to private investors. Guided by what seems like a reprise of trickle-down economics, the municipality is seeking to bring in foreign companies and investors in hopes that small businesses eventually thrive under tourist consumption.
The broad impact and the length of the Puerto Rican crisis hint at the systemic problem within the government and its sluggish bureaucracy, underscoring the island’s status as a colony. Arecibo has been enduring economic stagnation for at least the last quarter of a century, causing the slow but dramatic decay of its community. Across the island, big business contributes to this process by thwarting economic growth at a municipal and individual level, thus removing economic capital from the area. The central government is too weak to protect local businesses from American interests and development. My interview with the Chamber VP proved how disconnected this political mechanism and the municipal administration are from the everyday arecibeño. The municipality, corrupt and bankrupt, is seeking to enrich its constituents through the promotion of an underdeveloped tourism infrastructure and the seemingly empty promise of a long-lasting economic boon. After years of decay and stagnation, the Arecibo community has been almost left without the strength needed to organize themselves in order to meet these challenges. Accordingly, Enma told me “our voices aren’t being heard. We have to comply with whatever they decide”. That is the shared sentiment amongst Puerto Ricans, both in and beyond Arecibo.
Quick facts about Arecibo
Population: 100, 131 in 2000, and an estimate of 91,540 according to the US Census
Land size: 125.9 sq. miles
Per capita income: $8,867
Poverty line: 47.4%
Head of the District of Arecibo
Mayor: Carlos Molina
Municipal debt: $60 million
Notes.
[1] It should be noted that Puerto Rico has more Walgreens stores than anywhere else in the US and more Wal-marts per square mile that anywhere in the Planet. Cintrón Arbasetti, Cintrón. “Puerto Rico First in the World with Walgreens and Walmart per Square Mile.” Centro De Periodismo Investigativo. N.p., 7 May 2014. Web. 02 Aug. 2015. http://periodismoinvestigativo.com/2014/05/puerto-rico-first-in-the-world-with-walgreens-and-walmart-per-square-mile/.
[2] The EPA has investigated and fined the Arecibo municipality and private companies as a consequence of air, water, soil, human contamination and environmental irregularities. The EPA, however, is still deciding whether it will allow the construction of a trash incinerator (WTE) in Arecibo, even though it will certainly compromise air quality.
[3] José Gonzalez Freyre, owner of Pan American Grain is funding the construction of the Columbus Statue in Arecibo and other tourist attractions. CB Staff. “300-foot Columbus Statue Going up on PR Coast after Two-decade Odyssey.” Caribbean Business. N.p., 6 Apr. 2014. Web. 2 Aug. 2015. http://www.caribbeanbusinesspr.com/news/300-foot-columbus-statue-going-up-on-pr-coast-after-two-decade-odyssey-95570.html.This is the third and final installment in our series on the Constitution at the border. Today, we’ll focus on the Fifth Amendment and passwords. Click here for Part 1 on the First Amendment or Part 2 on the Fourth Amendment.
Lately, a big question on everyone's mind has been: Do I have to give my password to customs agents?
As anyone who’s ever watched any cop show knows, the Fifth Amendment gives you the right to remain silent and to refuse to provide evidence against yourself – even at the border. If a CBP agent orders you to unlock your device or provide a password, you have a Fifth Amendment right to refuse to do so. You might simply say "no." In addition, you may tell the agent that you choose to remain silent and want to speak to an attorney, even if you don't have one retained yet. That choice may not stop CBP agents from pressuring you to “voluntarily” talk to them, but they are supposed to stop questioning you once you ask for a lawyer. Also, beware that government agents are permitted to lie to you in order to convince you to waive your right to remain silent, but you can be criminally prosecuted if you lie to them.
CBP agents are unlikely to advise you that you have this choice because the government generally argues that such warnings are only required if you are taken into “custody” and subjected to a criminal prosecution. And at least one federal court of appeals has determined that secondary inspection – the separate interview area you get referred to if the CBP officer can’t readily verify your information at the initial port of entry – doesn’t qualify as “custody.”
But you don’t have to be in custody or subject to a criminal prosecution before you choose to invoke your Fifth Amendment rights to remain silent or to object to being deprived of your property without due process of law. For example, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals has held that a person’s request for an attorney is enough to invoke the privilege against self-incrimination, even at the border.
And that privilege includes refusing to provide the password to your device. For example, in 2015, a Pennsylvania court held that you may properly invoke the Fifth Amendment privilege to avoid giving up your cell phone passcode – even to an employer’s phone – because your passcode is personal in nature and producing it requires you to speak or testify against yourself.
Some courts have been less protective, overriding Fifth Amendment protections where the information sought is a so-called “foregone conclusion.” In 2012, a Colorado court ordered a defendant to provide the password to her laptop, only after the government had obtained a search warrant based on the defendant’s admission that there was specific content on her laptop and that the laptop belonged to her. On appeal, the Eleventh Circuit clarified that the government "must [first] show with some reasonable particularity that it seeks a certain file and is aware, based on other information, that... the file exists in some specified location" and that the individual has access to the desired file or is capable of decrypting it.
So, Fifth Amendment protections do apply at the border, and they protect your right to refuse to reveal your password in most circumstances. That said, individuals passing through the border sometimes choose to surrender their account information and passwords anyway, in order to avoid consequences like missing their flight, being made subject to more constrictive or prolonged detention, or being denied entry to the US.
As we have noted in our Digital Border Search Whitepaper, the consequences for refusing to provide your password(s) are different for different classes of individuals. If you are a U.S. citizen, CBP cannot detain you indefinitely as you have a right to re-enter the country. However, agents may escalate the encounter (for example, by detaining you for more time), or flag you for heightened screening during future border crossings. If you are a lawful permanent resident, agents may also raise complicated questions about your continued status as a resident. If you are a foreign visitor, agents might deny you entry to the country entirely.
But whatever your status, whether you choose to provide your passwords or not, border agents may decide to seize your digital devices. While CBP guidelines set a five-day deadline for agents to return detained devices unless a CBP supervisor approves a lengthier detention, in practice, device detentions commonly last many months.
As always, we want to hear from you if you experience harm or harassment from CBP for choosing to protect your digital data. We’re still collecting stories of border search abuses at: borders@eff.org
We recommend that you review our pocket guides for Knowing Your Rights and Protecting Your Digital Data Privacy at the border for a general overview or take a look at our Border Search Whitepaper for a deeper dive into the potential issues and questions you may face.
And join EFF in calling for stronger Constitutional protection for your digital information by contacting Congress on this issue today.Anthony Rizzo’s charitable contributions and involvement with pediatric cancer patients earned him baseball’s coveted Roberto Clemente Award for 2017.
The award, named after the Pirates’ Hall of Fame outfielder, is presented annually to the Major League Baseball player who best represents the game through “extraordinary character, community involvement, philanthropy and positive contributions” on and off the field.
A survivor of Hodgkin lymphoma early in his professional career, Rizzo, 28, created the Anthony Rizzo Family Foundation to support children battling cancer, soothe their families and fund cancer research. He received the award Friday night at Minute Maid Park before Game 3 of the Dodgers-Astros World Series.
“Obviously with what Roberto did, he kind of set the bar for all athletes, especially baseball players, in all of his charitable work, everything he did giving back,” Rizzo said. “To be a part of this award and (included among) all the past winners, it’s insane to see where our foundation has come from and so humbled to be part of this.”
Rizzo is the third Cubs player to receive the award, following Rick Sutcliffe in 1987 and Sammy Sosa in 1998, and the first from Chicago since White Sox first baseman Paul Konerko was a co-winner in 2014.
Rizzo thanked Cubs Chairman Tom Ricketts for “setting the tone” for players to get involved in charitable endeavors. Rizzo’s foundation committed more than $4 million in 2017 alone to establish the Hope 44 program at Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago, and he has been a fixture there over the last five years visiting children battling the disease.
Rizzo is also involved with cancer centers at the University of Miami Health System and the Joe DiMaggio Children’s Hospital in Hollywood, Fla., as well as with Gilda’s Club Chicago.
At Lurie Children’s, Rizzo frequently visits the children in the infusion center where they receive chemotherapy. Allison Parise, a registered nurse in the oncology unit, said Rizzo’s visits are important for young patients as they go through treatments.
“Truly what Anthony gives to these kids is inspiration,” Parise said. “Inspiration knowing that he was in their shoes, literally, not that many years ago, and how he and his family got through it. He was able to overcome it and survive, and now he’s a professional baseball player thriving in his career and in his life.
“And he’s really a real guy. He comes in here and he gets down with the youngest of kids. He holds the little kids, shakes hands and has heartfelt conversations with the older teenagers. Some of my patients who play baseball, they can relate to him, and some are the same age he was when he went through his treatment.”
Chris Carlson / AP Anthony Rizzo shakes hands with MLB commissioner Rob Manfred after winning the 2017 Roberto Clemente Award on Oct. 27, 2017. Anthony Rizzo shakes hands with MLB commissioner Rob Manfred after winning the 2017 Roberto Clemente Award on Oct. 27, 2017. (Chris Carlson / AP) (Chris Carlson / AP)
Rizzo remembers how he felt in 2008 when he was diagnosed with cancer while playing for low Class A Greenville in the Red Sox system. He knows what it means to stay positive for your family and said going to visit kids battling cancer helps keep him motivated.
“You see the looks on the kids’ faces, and the families, and it’s a couple of seconds away from the reality of what they’re going through when I go in there and just help them out,” he said. “I keep doing it because I just remember when I was sick and seeing my parents suffer way more than I did. I just saw the looks on their faces, and I always wanted to make sure (they knew) I was OK.
“So when I go see these kids, I try to tell them all the time, ‘Be strong with your family,’ and then talk to the parents. A couple of minutes away from reality is just insane.”
Recently a young girl named Mia, whom he had gotten to know at Lurie Children’s, died. Rizzo posted photos of them together on social media, calling her a “warrior.”
“You have lives you’re saving and really helping, and when you lose some, it’s not easy to deal with,” he said of Mia.
Parise said Rizzo’s involvement with Mia and her family was something that wouldn’t be forgotten.
“She was a well-loved little girl from a well-loved family, and he touched their life as I know she touched his life,” Parise said. “What he did to make her laugh, the fun little things he’s done with her family, they now have as a treasured memory.
“When you’re grieving, we all have to hold on to our memories to comfort us, and I think that’s what he’s brought to these families.”
During a trip to Pittsburgh in September, Rizzo went to the Clemente Museum and said he was “blown away” learning about the humanitarian efforts of the Pirates great. Vera Clemente, Roberto’s widow, said Rizzo’s story as a cancer survivor has an impact on children battling the disease, adding Rizzo and Roberto were kindred spirits.
“Roberto loved putting smiles on the faces of every child he met,” she said. “And what Anthony continues to do is very much in the same spirit.”
Photos of Cubs first baseman Anthony Rizzo.
Rizzo doesn’t just walk the walk; he’s fully committed to the fight against cancer. He wants the kids to feel he’s a friend, not just a famous athlete.
“For Anthony to give back, he doesn’t have to do this, but he chooses to do this,” Parise said. “And he’s not just giving his money, he’s giving his time. He comes without (the media attention) and has gotten to know a lot of the kids pretty well.
“He’ll celebrate when good things happen and also grieve when something unfortunate happens, and that’s the reality of cancer.”
During his early days with the Cubs, Rizzo kept an autographed photo of Ernie Banks and him inside his locker. Banks signed the photo with the words “Dream big.”
Now Rizzo’s catchphrase to the children and families he meets is: “Stay strong and dream big.”
Rizzo understands his status as a professional athlete comes with an unwritten responsibility to use that celebrity to help others in need. Baseball is his career, not his life.
Influencing the lives of children is as important to Rizzo as anything else he accomplishes in his career, which already includes a championship ring, a Gold Glove award, a Silver Slugger award and three All-Star Game appearances.
“Baseball is my passion,” he said. “I love playing baseball. I want to be the best I can be. But to be able to reach out and help so many more people on a different level is something I’d never overlook.
“Baseball awards are amazing. I work my tail off to be the best, but to be able to be a part of this type of award is something I can’t even imagine.”
psullivan@chicagotribune.com
Twitter @PWSullivan
Anthony Rizzo replaces missing signed photo for girl hospitalized with cancer »It’s been far too long since my last post. Between designing a total synthesis proposal for one of my classes, preparing a manuscript (and supporting information) for a project we are wrapping up, and (in the past week) doing a number of reactions, I’ve barely had time to read the literature, let alone blog. Moreover, I spent a week house hopping thanks to the surprise winter storm on Halloween that left most of Connecticut (myself including) without power for seven days. However, thanksgiving break has offered me a reprieve and I’ve managed to catch up on a lot that I was behind on. Chemistry continues to go well in the Leadbeater lab. Our collaboration with Dr. Tilley has picked up pace quite a bit with the successful isolation of another key substrate (which I was quite pleased about). We actually have been focusing on pushing out a continuous-flow project first now that it’s finally giving us promising results. I expect that a paper corresponding to that project should go out by next month at the latest. We are currently putting some finishing touches on another paper as well which should also go out by the end of next month (which I can’t wait to tell you all about!). Our paper with Dr. Fenteany’s group did not get into Nature Chemistry but we just submitted to Organic Letters so I’ll be sure to let you know how that process goes. I’ve also developed a new project based off some stuff I encountered while at Columbia that has allowed me to try my hand at a number of named reactions. I’m still just making a test substrate right now, but this one substrate offers a number of avenues to pursue. I’ve also been assisting another one of our lab members (DiAndra) with her project and she has been getting some very interesting (and exciting) results on what shaping up to be a pretty useful reaction. Other than that, Mike and myself have begun preparing lab experiments for the upcoming advance organic laboratory class we will be TAing for next semester. We hope to give the students experience with a broad range of reactions from transition-metal catalyzed couplings to organocatalysis. Our hope is that they will leave the course with the preparation they will need to begin graduate-level or industrial-level research.In other news, I wanted to extend a warm congratulations to my friend Ryan Carris on his most recent publication (in JACS no less)! Ryan is a graduate student in the Johnson Lab at the University of South Carolina whom I met during my REU at Columbia. He’s doing some pretty good work down there, focusing on the manipulation of cyclopropanes for the construction of rather elaborate molecules. In his JACS communication, he details the umpoling of donor-acceptor cyclopropanes (in his case 2-vinylcyclopropane-1,1-dicarboxylate and related species) via a π-allyliridium complex. Carris and his fellow authors then exploit this umpole species to allow for alcohol and carbonyl allylations with a high degree of enantioselectivity (or diastereoselectivity depending on the substrate).They then showed the application of their research by making highly substituted lactones (which could serve as useful materials for a total synthesis) with excellent %ees (>90%). It’s pretty intereting work that’s well written so go check it out!Now it’s time for something I haven’t done in ages, a review! I spent a lot of time catching up on articles in various journals (from Chemical Science to the European Journal of Organic Chemistry) but ultimately the most interesting article I found was in my favorite journal Organic Letters. About half a year ago I posted on some work that the Seidel group over at Rutgers was doing, regarding the exploitation of hydroxyproline decarboxylation for elaborate synthetic transformations. In this most recent article, Seidel and co-workers exploit the decarboxylation of proline itself (which to me is still somewhat of a weird concept) for a Strecker-like reaction.The article begins with a brief overview of the Strecker reaction (which was discovered quite a long time ago in 1850). The article then diverges into specifics about decarboxylative reactions of proline along with some information about the resulting azomethine ylides (specifically their stability and reactivity).Based on their previous experience with azomethine ylides, they rationalized that if they added a cyanide anion source to their reaction mixture, they could affect a Strecker-like transformations. Conceptually, what they wanted was imine formation between an aldehyde and proline, followed by a decarboxylation to give a azomethine ylide. This ylide could is in resonance with an alternative ylide. Protonation of that ylide followed by attack by cyanide at the iminium carbon would affect the first step in a Strecker-like synthesis.To test whether this reaction was feasible, they looked into the reaction of proline with benzaldehyde in the presence of various cyanide sources under thermal conditions. In order to facilitate decarboxylation, high temperatures are required and their group found that microwave irradiation gave them the best results (especially since it allowed them to reach temperatures normally not readily accessible using conventional means). While many cyanide sources were tried, they ultimately found that TMS-CN gave them the best results. In fact, the reaction worked so well that it gave near quantitative yield.
With a relatively short optimization study behind them, they then proceeded to examine the scope of the reaction by first varying the starting aldehyde. A very broad range of aldehydes (from aryl to alkyl) were tolerated with only a few giving a mixture of regioisomers. Ketones proved far less reactive and lower yielding. After varying the carbonyl species, they then started altering the starting amino acid. They initially went with a previously successful unnatural amino acid, pipecolic acid. This amino acid gave solely the expected regioisomer as did tetrahydroisoquinoline-3-carboxylic acid. However when acyclic amino acid derivatives were used (N-benzyl glycine and N-methyl glycine), the unexpected regioisomer was the sole product. The authors attributed this to the substrate-level preferences for azomethine protonation.
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During their study they noticed that if more proline was added, they could shift the preference for the unexpected regioisomer to the correct expected regioisomer. They suggested (in words and figures) the following mechanism to explain this trend:This mechanism was supported some control experiments involving doping of proline or pipecolic acid in the presence of the unexpected regioisomers and conducting a reaction under their optimized conditions. They wrap-up the article with a small application. In a lesser known named reaction, the Bruylants reaction, α-cyano amines react with organometallic reagents (in particular Grignard reagents) in a substitution-like manner. This reaction relies on the concept that α-cyano amines are in at least a small equilibrium with their corresponding ion pair. Addition of the organometallic reagents leads to irreversible C-C bond formation thus driving the equilibrium towards substitution. Seidel and co-workers take the proline-derived α-cyano amine and react it with both an aryl and alkyl Grignard reagent to successfully give the corresponding α-alkyl/aryl amine.Overall, this was an excellent article by Seidel and his students. Hats off for a job well done!! That’s all for now, I should be posting more regularly now, barring no more freak snow storms! Ckellz…Signing off…
November 27, 2011
Categories: Reviews.. Author: ckellz
2 Comments
Comments RSS TrackBack Identifier URII had a date this weekend. During it, he was inspecting my tattoos. He said, “fat’s a big part of your life, isn’t it?”
This probably wouldn’t have struck me so much had he not approached me because of his fat fetish. And I might not have responded had it not been during one of my moments when I’m so desperate to be touched, to lie to myself that I’m desired that I’ll swallow my politics, my self-worth, someone else’s cum with the naïve hope that maybe this one will fix me. They never do.
In another context this probably would have made me happy. In another context this probably would have made me felt validated.
He asked me what my family thinks of my size, as if it’s a communal issue. He told me he wants me fatter, gave me a list of things I should change about myself. He lauded my confidence and told me to never let anyone get me down about myself, and then he told me he wouldn’t know how to explain to his family how he could be attracted to me.
The juxtaposition of his demands that his fetish take over my life while his perplexity that I could have claim pride and agency in this body without the prerequisite of his gaze is striking. And not unusual.
I wonder if fetishizers remember I exist outside of their erections.
I wonder if I do.The Patriots used underinflated footballs on Sunday night.
The next question is how did it happen?
According to a National Football League letter about the investigation into the controversy that was shared with the Globe, the Patriots were informed that the league’s initial findings indicated that the game balls did not meet specifications. The league inspected each of the Patriots’ 12 game balls twice at halftime, using different pressure gauges, and found footballs that were not properly inflated.
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According to ESPN, 11 of the 12 game balls were found to be underinflated by about 2 pounds each. The NFL specifications say they must be inflated to 12½ to 13½ pounds.
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The investigation is still ongoing.
RELATED | Christopher L. Gasper: Thanks to Spygate, Patriots will always be labeled cheaters
A league spokesman declined to comment Tuesday, and earlier in the day, NFL executive vice president Troy Vincent told Pro Football Talk that the investigation would ideally be complete within two or three days.
If the Patriots are found to have deliberately doctored footballs, the organization can be fined a minimum of $25,000, and if the NFL finds the incident egregious, the Patriots could potentially lose a draft pick. In 2007, commissioner Roger Goodell took away a first-round draft pick and fined Patriots coach Bill Belichick after determining the team had spied on an opponent.
The Patriots defeated the Colts, 45-7, on Sunday night to earn their eighth Super Bowl appearance in franchise history. The next day, the NFL confirmed it was investigating whether the team used underinflated footballs.
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The Colts reportedly grew suspicious after linebacker D’Qwell Jackson intercepted Tom Brady late in the second quarter. A softer football is easier to throw and catch, especially in rainy conditions, as was the case Sunday night.
RELATED | On Football: Colts never had a chance against the Patriots
According to Newsday, Jackson gave the ball to a member of the Colts’ equipment staff, who notified coach Chuck Pagano, who then relayed a message to general manager Ryan Grigson in the press box. He contacted Mike Kensil, NFL director of football operations, who then told the on-field officials at halftime.
On the first play from scrimmage after the opening kickoff of the third quarter, the officials held up the game for a minute and ultimately switched out the game ball. Former NFL official Mike Carey, working the broadcast booth for CBS, surmised that “It looks like they still spotted the ball for a kicking ball, waiting for one of the ball guys to come down and give them a regular ball.”
The investigation will attempt to find out if the Patriots tampered with the footballs after the referee inspection. It’s possible that cold temperatures affected the pressure of the footballs, but it was an unusually warm 51 degrees at kickoff.
At least one official touches the football on every play, yet none seemed to notice until halftime. The Patriots led, 17-7, at intermission, and outscored the Colts, 28-0, after the officials seemingly corrected the ball issue.
RELATED: What is Deflate-gate? A breakdown of the controversy
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Per the NFL rulebook, each team provides game officials with 12 footballs before the game, and the balls are required to be inflated between 12½ and 13½ pounds per square inch. The referee inspects the game balls 2 hours and 15 minutes before kickoff, places a special marking on each ball that passes inspection, and hands the approved balls to attendants on each team, who are supposed to maintain custody of the balls on each sideline.
Each team uses its own football on offense — a 2013 New York Times article said that each team even has its own logo on the football when on offense — and teams are allowed to slightly doctor the footballs to their preference. “Rubbing up” the football with dirt to make it less slippery is common, and so is slightly adjusting the inflation levels.
Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers likes to overinflate the football. When the Packers and Patriots played on Nov. 30, CBS broadcaster Phil Simms relayed a conversation he had with Rodgers.
RELATED | Kevin Cullen: Detractors can’t stop trying to take the air out of Patriots
“He said something which was unique. ‘I like to push the limit to how much air we can put in the football, even go over what they allow you to do, and see if the officials take the air out of it,’” Simms said of Rodgers. “Because he thinks it’s easy for him to grip. He likes them tight.”
Rodgers defended the practice Tuesday on his radio show on ESPN Milwaukee.
“It’s not an advantage when you have a football that’s inflated more than average air pressure. We’re not kicking these footballs,” he said.
RELATED: Photos from the Patriots-Colts game
It’s unclear how often the NFL investigates ball issues. In another incident this season, the NFL reminded all 32 teams that they cannot warm the balls with sideline heaters during cold games, after the Panthers and Vikings did it in their Nov. 30 game in Minneapolis, drawing a warning from officials.
“If something is noticed, it’s not unheard of for a ball to be removed from circulation and then tested during the week for whatever issue there was,” head of officiating Dean Blandino said.
Ben Volin can be reached at ben.volin@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @BenVolinIranian protesters burn representations of US and Israeli flags in their annual pro-Palestinian rally marking Al-Quds (Jerusalem) Day in Tehran, Iran, Friday, June 23, 2017. Iran held rallies across the country, with protesters condemning Israel's occupation of Palestinian territories and chanting "Death to Israel." (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)
TEHRAN, Iran (AP) — Iran staged anti-Israel rallies across the country on Friday, with protesters condemning Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territories and chanting “Death to Israel” as the powerful Revolutionary Guard displayed its ballistic missiles, including the type used this week in Syria.
Marchers in Tehran headed from various points of the city toward the Friday prayer ceremony at Tehran University campus grounds. Protesters burned the Israeli and the American flag, as well as effigies of Israeli leaders.
President Hassan Rouhani and other Iranian officials, including Parliament Speaker Ali Larijani, attended the demonstration. State media reported that similar rallies were underway in other cities and towns in Iran.
The anti-Israel rallies are an annual event marking al-Quds Day, a historic Arabic name for Jerusalem. Iran sees it as an occasion to express support for the Palestinians and emphasize the importance of Jerusalem for Muslims.
Iran doesn’t recognize Israel and staunchly backs militant groups that are opposed to it, including the Palestinian Hamas that runs the Gaza Strip and the Lebanese Shiite militant Hezbollah group.
Rouhani told reporters that the rally was Iran’s response to the U.S. violations of the “rights of people” of Iran after the Senate last week approved new sanctions on Tehran over its missile program, something Congress is expected to decide on soon.
Rohani, in remarks carried by the official IRNA news agency, said Israel supports “terrorists in the region.”
Larijani, in a speech to Tehran demonstrators, called Israel the “mother of terrorism” and said that in the “20th century, there was no event more ominous than establishing the Zionist regime.”
The rally also inaugurated a huge digital countdown display at Tehran Palestine Square, showing that Israel will allegedly cease to exist in 8,411 days.
In 2015, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei predicted that after 25 years — by 2040 — there will no longer be a State of Israel.
Iran’s powerful Revolutionary Guard used the demonstration on Friday to showcase three surface-to-surface ballistic missiles, including the Zolfaghar — the type that Iran used this week to target the Islamic State group in Syria. The Guard said it fired six such missiles on Sunday at IS targets in the city of Deir el-Zour, more than 600 kilometers (370 miles) away.
Another missile on display at the Tehran rally was the Ghadr, with a range of 2,000 kilometers (1,250 miles) that can reach both Israel and U.S. bases in the region.
Iran holds al-Quds day rallies held each year on the last Friday of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, which is expected to end this weekend. Iran has marked the day since the start of its 1979 Islamic Revolution, when the country cut relations with Israel.
The Guard said the Iranian airstrike in Syria was in retaliation for an IS attack earlier in June on Iran’s parliament and a shrine in Tehran that killed 18 people and wounded more than 50.Bug Description
Evolution should offer the choice of a signature such as "Sent from Ubuntu.", or similar.
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The mirror is bug #642839, which requests tweaking/removal of the implemented signature, it was fixed on 2010-09-20.
The signature is added to list of "off-the-shelf" signatures,
But the signature is NOT ADDED TO EMAILS unless the user selects it in their account preferences.
For removal instructions on an individual machine, or account that was installed between 2010-08-28 and 2010-09-20, see:
http:// help.ubuntu. com/community/ DisableUbuntuEm ailSignature
*****
This bug report is regarding a default option of having a signature when none is present. Which was fixed and closed.
If you do not like this change, please comment with relevant arguments on bug #642839, which requests the removal/reversion of the default signature.
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NOTE: This change has been reverted by bug 642839.The deal means prime minister Alexis Tsipras gets the cash he needs to avoid Greece defaulting on loans
The cameras lovingly tracking the street riots have long moved on, as largely have the rioters themselves, but the Greek economy remains in the sick bay.
The early hours of the morning saw Greece reach an agreement with creditors over its latest bailout and, crucially, pave the way towards a possible rescheduling of its crippling debts.
The immediate priority was to enable Athens to be able to come up with the €7.5bn that it is due to repay creditors in July.
In time, though, the hope will be that the country can reschedule its €330bn debt mountain. This is equal to some 180% of Greek GDP - getting on for twice the debt-to-GDP ratios in the likes of Britain and France.
The deal, which has been greeted positively by stock and bond market investors, means further cuts in living standards for some Greeks.
It means, for example, that state pensions, which have already been cut by 40% since 2011, will be reduced by a further amount, averaging 9% but by up to 18% in some cases, by 2019.
At the same time, the threshold at which income tax becomes payable will fall from the current €9,000 to €6,000 by 2020, dragging more low-paid Greeks into the tax net.
Other elements of the agreement are aimed at making the Greek economy more competitive and include labour market reforms, making it easier for businesses to fire or lay off employees.
Greece has also agreed to partially privatise coal mines and coal-fired power plants owned by state-run electricity provider Public Power Corp, which is itself contending with a €2.2bn backlog of unpaid bills. This is on top of some €3.6bn worth of spending cuts to which Athens agreed earlier this month.
Needless to say, this has not gone down well with the Greek public, with opposition politicians calling for an early election. Alexis Tsipras, the prime minister, is currently due to go to the polls in 2019.
The latest agreement unlocks payments from the €86bn bailout from the International Monetary Fund, the European Central Bank and the European Commission - the third since 2010 - which is due to expire next year.
The bigger prize for Greece, though, will be reaching a longer term deal to reschedule existing debts. Mr Tsipras hopes, if this can be achieved, it would allow Greek government bonds to be included in future asset purchases by the ECB - potentially cutting Greece's borrowing costs in future.
But it is equally vital because the IMF is reluctant to lend more money to Greece until a rescheduling of existing debt.
It argues that, although Greece's public finances are recovering - the country actually achieved a 4.2% budget surplus last year, beating the target set in its bailout - such an improvement is not sustainable.
Christine Lagarde, the IMF managing director, is pushing for such a deal and the Eurogroup - the grouping of eurozone finance ministers - has also stressed the need to make Greece's debts more sustainable.
Jeroen Dijsselbloem, the Dutch finance minister and chairman of the Eurogroup, said last week that a deal over Greece's long-term debt was desirable in May. This was a big change of tack because, previously, the Eurogroup has said such a deal could only be struck after the current bailout ends.
Yet such a deal will prove difficult because Germany, the biggest European contributor to the three bailouts Greece has received, insists there can be no write-offs of debt resulting in creditors suffering a 'haircut', in the jargon, particularly with Angela Merkel facing a general election this September.
It wants further interest payments to be deferred rather than dropped altogether. An agreement is essential as Berlin also insists that, without the IMF, there can be no future bailouts.
It points to a continuation of the cycle in which Greece and its creditors have operated since the start of the decade.
Tough negotiations, a compromise by the Greek government, followed by more austerity.
However, if a deal can be reached over Greece's long term debt, that cycle might - just - be broken.Do you remember a mere three years ago when the gullible sob-sisters of the western media declared the Arab Spring "the Facebook revolution"?
It wasn't, of course. But what's going on right now in the Iraqi and Syrian territory held by the new Caliphate is the real Facebook revolution, and Twitter revolution, and Tumblr revolution, and YouTube revolution. These guys love social media. |
, as the customer relationship continues to develop and both sales and marketing teams should work to further engage buyers and add value through loyalty programs, upsells and cross-sells.
If you’re just creating your sales pipeline, there are a few basic rules you can follow to build clearly defined sales stages and a smooth process:
Remove ambiguity. Make sure each stage of your sales cycle is self-explanatory and immediately clear. The best way to examine the current status of your sales cycle is to test it on a new hire. If a new sales rep can’t see a difference between Stage1 and Stage2, it means you have a problem. Define stage criteria. One of the factors that will determine whether your sales stages are easy to understand is knowing the ‘trigger’ that moves a lead from one stage to another. To maintain consistency and clarity in your pipeline, ensure that every sales rep knows why and when to change the status of a lead. Take on the buyer perspective. The new school of sales teaches that the sales process should reflect how a customer buys, not how a sales rep sells. This means your sales stages should be part of a buyer’s journey, not the seller’s steps. Map out your buyer journey to identify the key stages and replace seller-centered milestones, such as “Demo Completed” and “Trial” to buyer-driven stages, such as “Evaluating solutions” and “Technical Fit Assessment”. Ditch the linear way of thinking. The order in which milestones are achieved is becoming less and less important, as sales reps start recognizing that different customers make decisions differently. Rather than sticking to a rigid, linear process, allow your buyers to progress through the funnel as they like, even if that means they sign up for a trial before watching a demo. Focus on the list of activities that need to happen to make the sale possible and let the buyer follow their own path. Monitor and iterate. Since every company is unique and follows a different sales process, there is no single optimization strategy that can kick your business into higher gear. However, you should make it a priority to track the time leads spend in each stage of your sales cycle to quickly identify optimization opportunities. If you notice that leads tend to linger at one stage or even drop out altogether, you will be able to put some measures in place and prevent deal loss.
The benefits of a daily routine for your sales team
Poor time management will always result in disappointing sales performance. Sales reps are often masters of multitasking, but even the best can benefit from a daily routine that helps to set the priorities straight and ensure the key tasks are accomplished on time. To help your team drive the sales performance through the roof, introduce some practical habits that will become part of their daily schedules.
Review and plan before you wrap up for the day. Take 10-15 minutes at the end of each day to review your pipeline and prioritize the next day’s to-do list. Check your calendar events, meeting notes and emails to ensure no important information falls through the cracks endangering your ability to close.
Here’s an example of Teamgate’s agenda that comes in handy for busy salespeople. Start your day strong. While you’re sipping on your first cup of coffee, review your to-do list from the day before and scan through the inbox to see if there are any high-priority issues that need to be addressed immediately. The key here is not to get distracted by the gazillion of low-importance emails and requests. Sticking to a plan will help you stay on track no matter how many tasks you have to juggle. Group your tasks. The best way to tackle the most important tasks during your most productive time of day is by organizing your tasks into groups. Instead of handling each task independently, set time aside for a set of tasks that require a similar level of energy and type of approach to reduce the time wasted on readjusting and refocusing your attention. By carving out a certain amount of time for each group of tasks and scheduling them into your calendar, you will be able to better manage your time and keep your mind focused. Automate where possible. With so many useful tools at their fingertips, salespeople are learning to free up time in their schedules and focus on doing what they do best – engaging with customers and closing deals. Leverage technologies available to you to make sure your time is spent on activities that have the best ROI.
Conclusion
The biggest mistake you can make is to treat your sales process as a one-and-done project. Making a habit of tracking your sales performance metrics on a daily basis and reevaluating the sales process every five to six months is a surefire way to ensure your sales process map is regularly updated and remains a work in progress, as it should.
Instead of wasting your time on manual data entry, cold leads and tasks that detract your attention from the most important task at hand – selling, improve and modernize your sales process with the help of a smart CRM that will keep you at your game.ECHO PARK –– Crown Shoes owner Yong Kim has seen many of his customers leave the neighborhood as they have been priced out by rising rents. Now, Kim is joining them. After 35 years in Echo Park, Kim has closed the doors to his Sunset Boulevard shop after a new landlord proposed a substantial rent increase. “Things have changed,” Kim said. “I’m done.”
Kim has been working in the brick storefront crowded with athletic shoes and school uniforms since he was 14 when his parents bought the store. The Belmont High graduate has seen the neighborhood change over the decades. During the 1992 riots, Kim and his brother enlisted Echo Park gang members to help protect the shop in return for free sneakers, according to an account on KCET. Now, there are less gang members around. “This gentrification, these landlords did what LAPD Gang Unit couldn’t do,” he told KCET.
Down the block from Kim, discount store Jumbo Bargain recently closed after it also faced a steep rent hike. Kim said he has heard that other long-time commercial tenants on the block are moving or considering to move as rents rise.
The rent increase was one of several challenges Kim has faced in recent years. Competition from online retailers has increased. The gentrification of the neighborhood has reduced the size of his core Latino customers. The lack of other nearby shoe and clothing stores also made it harder to attract shoppers to the area, said Kim.
“The only thing we are attracting is bar customers,” said Kim of Echo Park’s Sunset Boulevard commercial strip. He said he had grown tired of cleaning up vomit, urine and, in one case, blood from the sidewalk in front of his shop. “How many more bars can they bring in?”
Kim, who closed the shop at the end of May and is now clearing out the remaining inventory, said he will keep selling shoes and other merchandise through online channels and operate his other businesses from offices in Paramount.A common question, rhetorical or otherwise, that skeptics are asked about alternative medicine is, "What's the harm?" It's seemingly an effective ploy for some modalities, so much so that years ago Tim Farley felt obligated to try to answer the question on a website (whatstheharm.net) that catalogues examples of the harm alternative medicine, supernatural and paranormal beliefs, and other pseudoscience do. After all, most homeopathy (at least anything diluted greater than around 12C, at least) is water, without any remaining remedy, effective or otherwise. On the other hand, some homeopathic remedies are adulterated, and some of the "less potent" (i.e., less dilute) remedies might actually have something in them. (homeopathic belladonna for teething babies, anyone?) Moreover, there can be grave harm when the use of ineffective alternative therapies keeps a person from using effective medical therapy. We have seen this over the years, for example, when parents following religions that do not believe in medicine and tell their adherents to rely solely on god for healing, which, sadly, does not work so well for diabetic ketoacidosis, pneumonia, or leukemia. Dead children, however, do not appear to deter belief in such quackery.
File this one as another example of "What's the harm?" Behold the sad, sad case of Ebed and Christine Delozier and their 18-month-old daughter Hope Elizabeth Delozier, who died in February:
According to a criminal affidavit from Magisterial District Judge Fred Wheaton’s Office, the couple was staying at a camper along Hiduk Road in Herrick Township, a property owned by the Hope Baptist Church. Ebed Delozier brought the toddler to the hospital, who was found to be in cardiac arrest. Despite efforts made by the medical staff to save her, the child was pronounced dead a short time later. No immediate cause of death was noted. Criminal investigators were told by a registered nurse on staff that the victim’s mother, Christine Delozier, and aunt, Rebecca Delozier, arrived at the hospital shortly after the victim. The nurse said that the victim’s parents made it clear they were against antibiotics and other chemicals associated with modern medicine. While emergency room staff worked on the toddler, who was not breathing, the nurse said she overheard Christine Delozier making statements such as, “You’re putting holes in her” and, “You’re putting chemicals in her.”
Yes, the doctors at the emergency room were doing exactly that—to try to save the toddler's life! In the case of a cardiac arrest, if there's any hope at all of reversing the situation and saving the victim's life, it involves some rather radical, invasive medicine. So how did Hope reach this state? It started with an ear infection:
The nurse said that while speaking with the family, they related the child had been sick for two weeks and was displaying symptoms consistent with an earache, headache and a fever. She told police the family indicated they had been treating the little girl with a homeopathic approach and were using herbal treatments to care for her.
Although most children recover from otitis media, which is what Hope appears to have had, and mild cases don't even require antibiotics, the key to treating children with mild otitis media is close followup, because antibiotics become necessary if the child doesn't get better quickly and especially if the child's symptoms worsen, as Hope's did. In cases of severe otitis media, antibiotics are still necessary, and sometimes tympanostomy tubes are even required. That's because, if left untreated, severe otitis media can result in a variety of complications, including but not limited to:
Chronic suppurative otitis media
Postauricular abscess
Facial nerve paresis (paralysis of the facial nerve)
Labyrinthitis
Mastoiditis
Temporal abscess
Intracranial abscess
Meningitis
Cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) leak
Unfortunately, of these Hope developed one of the most severe complications:
An autopsy performed on March 26 at Lourdes Hospital in Binghamton, NY, conducted by Dr. James Terzian, indicated that the 18-month-old toddler had died of “streptococcus pneumoniae meningitis”, which caused a cerebral abscess and terminal cerebral edema. The meningitis reportedly originated in a left ear infection, which had been left untreated by conventional antibiotic therapy. Dr. Terzian noted “a simple antibiotic would have saved the victim’s life.” Based upon these findings, Bradford County Coroner Thomas Carman ruled the death as a homicide.
Yes, this child died of something that could almost certainly have been prevented with a bit of that old evil "Western medicine" in the form of amoxicillin. Moreover, the child was sick for approximately three weeks before her death, and, given the severity of her condition, likely suffered horribly, first from pain in the ear and then from the symptoms of advancing meningitis that led to an intracranial abscess and swelling of the brain. Given that the child was being treated with only homeopathic remedies, her illness and death proceeded without treatment even to ease her symptoms. The mother reported that her child had had fevers ranging from 99° to 103° F during that time with occasional vomiting. Five days before her death, the child started draining fluid from her ear, most likely from an ear abscess having ruptured through the tympanic membrane. Finally:
Delozier kept treating the child with natural and herbal treatments to boost her immune system. On the day of the toddler’s death, Delozier laid the little girl down for a nap. Roughly one hour later, she observed her daughter’s breathing to be labored and shallow, taking one breath approximately every 10 seconds. The toddler eventually stopped breathing and went limp. “I watched her die,” Delozier told police. She performed CPR on the victim for approximately 30 minutes, at which time Ebed Delozier arrived home and took the child to the emergency room.
By which time it was far, far too late to save Hope. After 30 minutes of CPR and a trip to the emergency room, she had almost certainly sustained, at minimum, severe neurological damage and was most likely dead by the time she reached the emergency room. Another thought comes to mind: WTF was Delozier thinking as her daughter's breathing slowed to 6 breaths/minute. Didn't she figure out that something was very, very wrong at that point? Her story implies that, at some level, she must have realized that something was very wrong. It's not clear how long she watched her daughter's breathing, but it sounds like the Cushing reflex, which occurs in response to increased intracranial pressure and involves increased blood pressure, lowered pulse, and slower, irregular breathing. Although I don't like citing Wikipedia for medical matters, the Wikipedia entry on the Cushing reflex has about as apt a statement of the significance of this finding as I've ever heard: "Whenever a Cushing reflex occurs, there is a high probability that death will occur in the near future (seconds to minutes). As a result, when a Cushing reflex is detected, immediate care is needed."
Of course, Delozier is not trained in medicine; so it's unreasonable to expect her to recognize the Cushing reflex or realize how serious it is when someone breaths like this, but even lay people know that breathing once every ten seconds is too little, particularly if it keeps slowing down. Certainly Delozier recognized that there was something badly wrong with Hope's breathing. If Hope had been taken to the hospital while still breathing, she might still have had a chance, although probably relatively small. Instead, Delozier did exactly as she stated, and we have no reason to doubt this part of her story. She sat there and watched her daughter die without intervening to try to stop the process.
Not surprisingly, Delozier distrusted "Western medicine," which meant she was also antivaccine:
Interviews conducted with Christine Delozier on March 24 and March 30 found that her child had been born at home without the use of a midwife and from there on, had never seen a medical doctor, nor did she receive any vaccinations. She said her views against modern medicine stem from her childhood as she was raised without taking pills or receiving shots. She told police she has done her own research on vaccinations and found they can be related to death, SIDS, autistic disorders, immune disorders and shaken baby syndrome. While her views are not religiously motivated, she said she does feel God is the ultimate healer.
So once again we see the toxic combination of fundamentalist religion and belief in alternative medicine resulting in the preventable suffering and death of a child who could have been saved with the fairly straightforward use of an antibiotic. True, in this case, religion appears to have played a supporting role rather than the primary role, but it's clear it was important. Be that as it may, unfortunately such is the power of beliefs like this that even now, three and a half months after Hope's death, Christine Delozier has learned nothing and knows nothing new:
Newswatch16 spoke with Christine Delozier at length at her home on Hiduk Road near Wyalusing. She declined to go on camera, but did explain her religious convictions, how she still mourns the loss of her daughter, and about her lack of trust in the American medical community. “If doctors expect people to trust them, they need to become trustworthy,” Delozier said. “People are a lot healthier in countries where doctors aren’t paid by patients.” With tears streaming down her face, she went on to say, “I believe the medical community is at least the third, maybe the first, leading killer in the United States.”
Wait a minute. What does she mean when she says people are a lot healthier in countries where patients aren't paid by patients? Does she mean countries like Canada or the U.K., which have single payer systems in which the government pays its citizens' medical expenses? It's a pretty safe bet that, had Hope been seen by a physician in Canada or England, for example, she would have been prescribed antibiotics and treated pretty much the same way that local pediatricians in Bradford County would have treated her. The treatment of otitis media is fairly standard. As for the trope that medicine is the leading killer in the US, to me it sounds as though Ms. Delozier has been reading too much Mike Adams.
The fact is that the Deloziers' extreme medical neglect killed their daughter. Period. Sadly, cases like this, though thankfully uncommon, aren't nearly as unusual as they should be in the US, where a warped view of religious freedom produces an extreme deference to religious beliefs as a justification for the medical neglect children.
In fact, when I first posted this on various social media, at least a couple of people responded by pointing out to me that cases like this aren't rare but that rather what is rare is that the parents are actually being charged with involuntary manslaughter and endangering the welfare of children. For example, in 2009 Catherine and Herbert Schaible let one of their children die at age 2 months of a treatable pneumonia, which had developed after a cold. Even though the child got sicker and sicker, they refused to take him to a doctor because of their religious beliefs. The courts, bending over backwards not to take the rest of their children away, put the Schaibles on probation and granted them custody if they would promise to take their children to the doctor when they are ill. In 2013, another of the Schaibles' children died in almost exactly the same manner, of pneumonia that developed after a cold. He was 7 months old.
Indeed, one can't help but wonder whether, if the Deloziers had asserted that it was their religious belief not to use doctors or medicine (as the Schaibles, who belonged to a church that explicitly forbade its members from using conventional medicine, did) rather than saying that she just didn't trust doctors and medicine, they would be facing the serious charges they're facing. As it is, I highly doubt the Deloziers will ultimately serve significant jail time even if convicted. Parents who kill their children through medical neglect like this rarely do. Whatever the case, the Deloziers' next court date is today.Focused on his upcoming featherweight title defense against Daniel Straus at Bellator 145, Patricio Freire wants to make a dream come true in 2015.
With former PRIDE head Nobuyuki Sakakibara returning to the MMA world as president of Rizin Fighting Federation in December, "Pitbull" is open to fighting in Japan by the end of the year.
"I’d love to fight in Japan. I always dreamed about this when I was a kid and started watching PRIDE, so I would love to fight there," Freire told MMAFighting.com. "I already asked for an opportunity to fight at Glory, but I’d like to fight at Rizin more. I need to see what plans they have for me, but I’d like to fight in rules I trained for a long time, with soccer kicks and all that."
Rizin FF has two events scheduled in December, on the 29th and 31st, including bouts like Shinya Aoki vs. Kazushi Sakuraba and the return of Fedor Emelianenko. "Pitbull" started his MMA career in 2004, and would love to throw some soccer kicks in a fight and stomp his opponents again.
"I miss it," he said. "I believe I fought five or six times under those rules, with soccer kicks, and my brother (Patricky Freire) also has three knockouts with stomps and soccer kicks. It’s been a while since I last fought, so I want this again."
Rizin FF has a partnership with Bellator MMA, but Freire’s belt wouldn’t be on the line if he fought in Japan. With no need to stick to the 145-pound division, "Pitbull" is willing to compete against lightweights.
"They like to match giants against smaller guys in Japan, so I’d like to fight a heavier opponent," Freire said. "I’d like this type of fight, against a stronger opponent.
"When the fight starts, I unleash the pitbull, and that works in any weight."She Said/He Said – The Nitty Gritty
We decided that we wanted to blog about some the things that we’ve learned over the past 8 months in the lifestyle. From the beginning I felt that swingers keep their dirty trash to themselves and many times we felt like the emotions that we were experiencing were unique to us. People have revealed that they go through a lot of the same discussions that we do and are dealing with a lot of the same issues, but I still don’t know to what degree this happens, if at all in the case of some relationships.
Thankfully, Blink has been determined to talk through every detail of his emotions. Nothing is left uncovered in our relationship. So much so sometimes that it’s hard for me to deal with the emotions that he is feeling. I truly believe that, because I was the one to introduce us to the lifestyle, my mind was more open to the experiences that we would have in the lifestyle. I was already mentally prepared. Blink, on the other hand, has had to play catch up and it has taken him a lot longer to process my desires then I expected. Many times this has caused frustration on my part. I’ve made assumptions that led to actions that were not cool. In one instance I assumed that because he was in a room playing with a couple whom we’ve played with before that he would be okay with me giving someone a blow job. Problem? I didn’t make sure that it was okay with him or the guys wife before taking action. I’ve learned that even though one spouse is willing the other may hold a different opinion. It is my responsibility to make sure that everyone is okay with the action, not just the person that I’m having fun with.
I find that I wanted to move a lot quicker through experiences than he did. I think a large part of that was because I had just left the church that I’d attended for 20 years and felt like doomsday would come before I would get the chance to experience anything. I’ve calmed down since then and am more patient, I think. “Why you so fast?” Blink would say. I was ready for a threesome with a single guy way before he was. He couldn’t fathom why I would want to have a playdate with anyone other than a married couple. I definitely made his head spin and he’ll have something to say about the repercussions my actions had on his psyche.
I wonder how often other couples have these major life-changing discussions? We seem to have them weekly. When there’s a lot going on we have these discussions almost every day, it seems. They are discussions that have brought us to the brink of quitting the lifestyle at least four times in eight months. There have been many, many tears on both our parts. Often times yelling was involved. Every time, however, we’ve come to the conclusion that we are in this for the long haul. We benefit from being in the lifestyle so much – the good outweighs the bad. We are closer then we’ve ever been in the 18 years that we’ve been married. We talk constantly and we are able to participate in an activity together. The people that we’ve met are real and dealing with (or have dealt with) many of the same issues that we have. Honestly, at this point, it’s hard for me to see my life without the lifestyle being a part of it because it is just that – a lifestyle.
~ Mercy
Blink here and Mercy was NOT kidding. She has put me through the ringer! Prior to us entering the lifestyle, I kept my emotions to myself. I rarely reacted though I definitely felt things about Mercy’s behavior. Since we moved into the lifestyle, I have decided not to hold back in discussing my emotions and observations. It turns out that I have a lot of emotions and a lot of observations.
No amount of research could prepare you for what happens in the lifestyle and your reaction to it. No amount. I became enmeshed and immersed in goings on that break taboos, norms, and mores constantly. There is always something new and I can’t catch up. I’ve tried to make sense of it and I have spent a lot of time shaken up. No joke. So, I’ve had to just disconnect the part of me that searches for societal meaning and purpose in this lifestyle. Instead, I’ve taken on a child-like view of a lot this; I look at it with the wonder of a child but the understanding and comprehension of an adult, if that makes sense.
With that said, watching your wife – who was nearly puritanical – have sex with one or more men while you – who was secular – have sex with one or more women, has been an incredible baptism by fire resulting in astronomical personal change. But, it’s not just the act of seeing that. It’s what leads up to that act. The conversations, fears, boldness, resignation and determination and a gamut of other emotions that result in that act.I’m not the same man I was a year ago. I don’t look at men or women the same way. I’ve become more grounded, less judgmental, happier, kinder, more loving, wiser, and the list goes on. I don’t give credit to having sex with others being the reason for the change, rather I give credit to the fact that the lifestyle forces you to change and communicate in order to survive and thrive in it.
The truest words said to me in the last eight months were “the lifestyle is what you make of it.” It really is. No matter how fast or slow you move into it, you really have to shape it for your needs and desires. Otherwise, it will break you.
~ BlinkThe blogosphere is boiling at the cruel beating of a female protester by Egyptian military police, who continued battling protesters in Tahrir Square on Sunday. The clashes, into their fourth day now, have left 10 people dead and hundreds injured.
The video uploaded on YouTube Sunday reveals the extreme cruelty of the country’s law enforcers during the crackdown on Qasr Al-Ainy Street just off Tahrir Square.
The army soldiers in full riot gear have been savagely beating a seemingly unconscious female protester with big sticks, kicking her and stomping on her chest.
Moments earlier she has been struck countless times in the head and body with batons, while being dragged by the soldiers. She tried to cover her head from the blows with her hands.
Some men were apparently carrying her trying to flee from the military police. But the soldiers caught up with them, knocking down one man, whom they also set upon. All of them and some 150 other protesters were detained and charged with “the use of force and violence against army officers, by preventing them from performing their duties, through assaulting them with rocks, Molotov cocktails, and firearms.” All of the accused appeared before the general prosecution on Sunday – including 9 women, 7 of whom had earlier been hospitalized.
Security forces lashed out ruthlessly on armless civilians and burned down tents that had been put up by activists outside the parliament building to camp in protest against the military rule.
Meanwhile Associated Press also reports of military police openly beating women protesters in the street and slapping elderly people on the face.
(AFP Photo / Mohammed Abed) (AFP Photo / Mohammed Abed)
Witnesses said they beat and gave electric shocks to men and women dragged into detention, many of them held in the nearby parliament and cabinet buildings.
Aya Emad, a 24-year-old protester, had a broken nose, her arm in a sling, and her other arm bruised. She told Associated Press that troops dragged her by her headscarf and hair into the cabinet headquarters. She said soldiers kicked her on the ground, an officer shocked her with an electrical prod and another slapped her on the face.
Reports suggest the troops swept into buildings from which television crews were filming from and confiscated their equipment and briefly detained journalists.
An Al-Jazeera TV crew claims the soldiers threw their equipment from a balcony, including cameras, batteries and lighting equipment, to the street, landing on a sweet potato cart whose stove started a fire.
Troops also stormed a field hospital set up by protesters next to a mosque in Tahrir, throwing medicine and equipment into the street, protester Islam Mohammed said.
The internet community therefore questions the methods of the military regime who took over power after the ousting of the ex-President Hosni Mubarak in February.
Egypt however is in the midst of multistage parliamentary elections, with the third and final round of voting set for next month in nine of Egypt's 27 provinces.
The protesters began their sit-in three weeks ago to demand that the nation's ruling military step down and hand over power to a civilian administration. Over the last three days, the protests turned violent, with at least 10 people killed and over 400 detained by police. Eyewitnesses claim most of the victims died of gunshot wounds. Troops have erected barriers to separate themselves from the crowds, but both sides continue hurling rocks at each other.
November already saw clashes between youth and security forces which left more than 40 dead.
Police then responded with a brutal crackdown. They used water cannons, tear gas and, allegedly, shot live ammunition over the heads of, and then directly at the rioters.
Some of the people killed in the clashes have been confirmed by doctors to have died from gunshot wounds.
When protesters tried to stop Kamai Al-Ganzouri, the new prime minister appointed by Egypt’s military regime, from entering a government building, one man was run over and killed by a military vehicle.Why does my Raptor eat or eviscerate the other pets? Because a Raptor is unaccustomed to harmonious environments, all things within your abode—both animate and inanimate—are threatening and appetizing. To successfully train your new pet, always remember: Raptors will be Raptors. This doesn’t mean you should turn away a wincing eye while he sucks out your dog’s guts, but you should understand that reprimands against Fido smoothies are reprimands against his nature. Until you can instill discipline in your Raptor, distract him. Make sure to have a lot of treats on hand. Stray animals are ideal for weaning your Raptor off of your home’s other loved ones.
Why does my Raptor hunt me? A Raptor’s pride is his stealth. If you find him hiding behind the fern, tripping you on the staircase, or working the doorknob while you are in the shower, do not be alarmed. Your Raptor is merely exploring and adapting to his new environs. You and your family are part of his brave new world, and he is uncertain whether you are friends or hors d’oeuvres. It is very important you convince him of the former, and you can do this by making his nature work for you rather than against you. Being hunted is an excellent bonding opportunity. Play along: Let him chase you through the house while you place challenging obstructions in his path. Eventually, his hunting will become more leisurely rather than primal. Just don’t forget to always run. No matter the route, the obstruction, or diversion, your Raptor will catch you.
How can I teach the Raptor to not pounce on me and claw me to death in the middle of the night (or anytime)?
The Raptor knows when its prey is most vulnerable. In your case, it’s while you sleep. In the beginning, as your pet gets to know you, he will probably break skin and break a few of your ribs. Once a Raptor has you in its razor-like claws (see Filing Claws, pg. 103) its only intent is to kill. Therefore it is pertinent that you fight back. Don’t be afraid to stun your pet by throwing him through the window, or stabbing him with the bowie knife kept under your pillow. Violence is the Raptor’s language. Dazed, bleeding, and suffering from a possible concussion, your pet will feel vulnerable and will eventually skulk away.
How can I make my Raptor feel like “one of the pack”? You don’t. The Raptor doesn’t want or need to be part of your family. You need to become one of his pack. In short, you need to bond with and understand your Raptor. An excellent bonding exercise is to stand in front of your pet, mimic his stance by pulling in your elbows and bending your haunches, and let out a shrill followed by clicks. For commands and communicative Raptor vocabulary, see Appendix J. Perform this exercise everyday for several hours. By the end of six weeks, his hunting will become less lethal and more playful. He will start bringing you food. It is essential that you pretend to eat his offering, no matter how putrid and pungent the kitten corpse may be. Refusing his rank alms will destroy the illusion that you are pack-worthy. Having gained and successfully maintained his respect, you can begin dominance training. (See below.)
How can I instill fear in him and establish dominance? Only when you’ve gained your Raptor’s respect can you attempt dominance. A Raptor fears only what can kill him, and so far, with the exception of shotguns and fire, that has been the Tyrannosaurus rex. Of course, engineers have not constructed a pet Rex yet, but you can simulate a lurking Rex by stomping as hard as you can through the house and breaking a few glasses. However, these effects will be minimal and your curious Raptor will eventually sleuth them out. What you will need is a seemingly invisible source of noise and vibration. Nothing can do this more than a 1987 Crown Vic—sans muffler, and with sonic subwoofers—idling in your garage. Whenever your Raptor is acting poorly, or you suspect he is up to something, crank the Crown Vic and blast a Bakker Tech Roaring Rex™ recording (found at your local pet store) or West coast rap music. Even when you are not simulating a Rex, utilizing rap music in your house is a good way to discipline your pet. If your timing is right, he will begin to associate certain areas of your house as Rex territory and will avoid them altogether. Therefore, these spots should be places you don’t want him to go: areas where babies and small children play, the backyard, the kitchen, and your bedroom.
A child has gone missing from the neighborhood. Was it my Raptor? Owners have to be especially conscious of where their Raptors wander. It is inadvisable that they be allowed free reign in public, a backyard is a false security. Raptors can jump any fence, especially when given the further incentive of little meatsticks jumping on the trampoline or barking in the next yard. Remember: Raptors are furtive creatures. Be concerned if your Raptor has gotten out of the house or yard even for 5.7 seconds. If a neighborhood pet or child goes missing, stay quiet and begin checking your Raptor’s feces. (See below.)MARANELLO, Italy — A distemper was in the air last week in this immaculately manicured town of ocher and soft yellow masonry in Italy’s heartland, home to Ferrari since its fabled racing and production cars began rolling out of a rundown workshop here in the late 1940s. The disquiet is keyed to the imminence on Sunday of the Italian Grand Prix at Monza, 125 miles north of here in a wooded parkland that was once a playground for Italian kings.
The race, the defining event of Ferrari’s year, and the one that the company founder Enzo Ferrari coveted more than any other before he died at 90 a quarter of a century ago, arrives at a time when the summer’s heat has yielded to a gloriously temperate fall, with the grape harvest at local Lambrusco vineyards reported to be as good as any in years.
But because of the importance attached to the Monza race by the company’s executives, by the 650 staff members who work for the $250-million-a-year Formula One team, and by the company’s multitude of fans in Italy and around the world, September has often been, as company executives tell it in carefully muted voices, Ferrari’s most difficult month.
Ferrari’s years of competition, with their triumphs and their tragedies, have been accompanied by soaring passions — and bitter disappointments — among the vast numbers in this nation of 70 million who call themselves tifosi, fans who follow with what they and other Italians compare to the craziness once associated with bouts of typhoid fever. To them, the Formula One race at Monza is the apogee of the Ferrari year, and the event that more than any other can secure a winning Ferrari driver’s place in a history that includes 221 Grand Prix victories, 18 Monza wins and 18 world drivers’ championships.National Organizations
Aboriginal Affairs Working Group
The Aboriginal Affairs Working Group celebrates, promotes and shares the accomplishments and proven advancements in Aboriginal economic development.
Aboriginal Financial Officers Association of Canada
Focuses on capacity development and needs of Aboriginal professionals who are working in all areas of finance, administration and management.
Aboriginal Healing Foundation
The Aboriginal Healing Foundation encourages and supports Aboriginal people in building and reinforcing sustainable healing processes that address the legacy of physical abuse and sexual abuse in the Residential School system.
Aboriginal Physical Activity and Cultural Circle
A network for Aboriginal people who are involved in sports, recreation, fitness and Traditional activities. The APACC mission is to create a community of mentors, leaders, participants, and supporters who promote physical activity as a way to health and wellness.
Aboriginal Sport Circle
The Aboriginal Sport Circle is Canada's national voice for Aboriginal sport, which brings together the interests of First Nations, Inuit and Métis peoples.
Arctic Children and Youth Foundation
The aim of the ACYF is to work at all levels to assist Arctic children and youth to attain standards of living, education, opportunities and health and well-being equal to those of other Canadians.
Arctic Co–operatives Limited
The mission of Arctic Co-operatives Limited is to be the vehicle for service to, and co-operation among the multi-purpose co-operative businesses in Canada's north.
Assembly of First Nations
The Assembly of First |
blog, Aug. 22, 2016.
Wardrip, Keith, Kyle Fee, Lisa Nelson, and Stuart Andreason. "Identifying Opportunity Occupations in the Nation's Largest Metropolitan Economies." Federal Reserve Banks of Philadelphia, Cleveland, and Atlanta, September 2015.ANN ARBOR—Binge-watching is a great way for young adults to catch up on multiple episodes of their favorite television series like “The Walking Dead” or “Game of Thrones,” but it comes at a price.
New research by the University of Michigan and the Leuven School for Mass Communication Research in Belgium found that higher binge-viewing frequency leads to poorer sleep quality, more fatigue and increased insomnia, while regular TV viewing does not.
“Our study signals that binge viewing is prevalent in young adults and that is may be harmful to their sleep,” said co-author Jan Van den Bulck, U-M professor of communication studies.
Binge viewing, in which people watch an excessive amount of the same TV program in one sitting, has been on the rise as more American households use streaming services and digital video recorders.
Researchers surveyed 423 adults between the ages of 18 to 25 in February 2016. They were asked about sleep quality, fatigue and insomnia, as well as the frequency of binge watching programs on a TV, laptop or desktop computer for the last month.
Most of the sample (81 percent) reported that they had binge-watched. Of that group, nearly 40 percent did it once during the month preceding the study, while 28 percent said they did it a few times. About 7 percent had binge-viewed almost every day during the preceding month. Men binge-watched less frequently than women, but the viewing session nearly doubled that of women.
Respondents indicated they slept, on average, seven hours and 37 minutes. Those who binge-viewed reported more fatigue and sleep quality compared to those who didn’t binge-watch.
Liese Exelmans, a researcher at the Leuven School for Mass Communication Research and the study’s lead author, said people might sleep an appropriate amount of time (seven to nine hours for adults), but the quality is not always good.
“These students have flexible daytime schedules,” she said. “Chances are they are compensating for lost sleep by sleeping in.”
The study showed that increased cognitive arousal prior to sleep (i.e., being mentally alert) is the mechanism explaining the effects of binge viewing on sleep quality.
“Bingeable TV shows have plots that keep the viewer tied to the screen,” Exelmans said. “We think they become intensely involved with the content, and may keep thinking about it when they want to go to sleep.”
A racing heart, or one that beats irregularly, and being mentally alert can create arousal (or pre-sleep arousal) when a person tries to fall asleep. This can lead to poor sleep quality after binge-viewing.
“This prolongs sleep onset or, in other words, requires a longer period to ‘cool down’ before going to sleep, thus affecting sleep overall,” Exelmans said.
The researchers note that binge-watching frequently happens unintentionally. People get absorbed into their shows, watch “just one more episode” and fail to go to bed in a timely manner.
“They might not intend on watching a lot, but they end up doing so anyway,” Exelmans said.
Sleep insufficiency has been connected to physical and mental health consequences, including reduced memory function and learning ability, obesity, hypertension and cardiovascular disease.
“Basically, sleep is the fuel your body needs to keep functioning properly,” Exelmans said. “Based on that research, it’s very important to document the risk factors for poor sleep. Our research suggests that binge viewing could be one of this risk factors.”
The findings appear in the Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine.
More information:Oh gods. It’s Kull. What, was Arnold Schwarzenegger not available to do a third movie? Ha. Ha. Oh, that is actually the reason for this movie? I’m sorry.
As already discussed with other films, the 90’s hit a fantasy rough patch akin to a dusty stone stretch where the proverbial bike rider keeps skinning his goddamn knees for ten years. Looking back at the cache of films only reveals baleful failures, embarrassments, and good intentions. Kull does not start out with much promise. In fact, the film has a mountain of odds staring down at it. Just reading the premise and looking at the poster, it would be easy to affix to it a low number, kick it in the groin, and leave. However, there may be something more to this.
Kull is an interesting character and he can be thought of as the father of Conan. Well, let’s say the first draft of Conan. Shortly before Conan the Barbarian would enter into cultural consciousness, Kull of Atlantis was created as the dashing, introspective barbarian-pirate-gladiator whose lack of social graces made him seem uncivilized to others. This dynamic between perspective and expectation was flattened in the creation of Conan, who was just a barbarian that hit stuff and wandered. Continuity and character wise, Conan was more transportable from story to story where as Kull was dependent on his surroundings. Looking back at the history one can see why Conan rose to be quarterback while Kull sat on the bench drinking Gatorade.
Kull, the movie, was originally intended to be Conan the Conqueror, the third film following Conan the Destroyer in 1984. The film was supposed to be released in 1987 but Schwarzenegger’s role in Predator, plus a laundry list of other things, caused the project to dissolve. 10 years later, the script was unearthed, rewritten, and attached to Kevin Sorbo. Holy shit, this does not sound good at all. Add to the fact that Kull was released in probably one of the most hostile times for fantasy media. Nothing looks like it is in favor of this film. Why am I enjoying this so much?
Kull starts out pretty pulpy, as our main character is just a roving marauder that just so happens to slay a king. The beginning of the story is taken right from the actual Kull story “The Shadow Kingdom (1929)” before it reverts to the Conan story “The Hour of the Dragon (1935).” Actual formations of plot do not really matter as we are forced to recognize that Kull has no fucking idea how to rule a kingdom. In fact, a potted plant could probably rule better. This fish out of water trope is actually semi-entertaining as Kull’s good-hearted nature in trying to free slaves and institute religious freedom is met with resistance by nearly everyone who conspires against the king. These group of conspirators include the general who sought the crown for himself, the sniveling cousin who was next in line, and a resurrected demon sorceress. Why the hell not?
Akivasha is played by Tia Carrere, who is portraying Xaltotun from the original story. I guess dude wizards can’t seduce Kull like Tia Carrere or marry him for that matter. Remember, this is the 90’s. Things go great until Kull finds himself kidnapped while the entire kingdom believe he is dead and the one woman he truly loves is tried for his death. Oh wait. I forgot about this forced romantic interest. Yeah, so Zareta is a fortune teller who is sister to the guy who played Nightwolf in the Mortal Kombat movie, and she somehow plays a pivotal role in this film. What is it? I do not know. Perhaps it is to carry around cards and look gravely at them. Seriously, how many different cards is she going to pull out of that 7 card pile? Regardless, Kull saves Zareta from being burned and proceeds to hack and slash his way through legions of his own soldiers. Oh Jesus Kull, you can’t just do that. This is not how kings rule.
You see this is the part where things get a little hazy. Even internet plot details sort of glaze over the fact that the middle part of the story has the team of Kull, Zareta, and brother Nightwolf traveling to some foreign land to get the breathe of the god Volka, which will help fight the evil sorceress. These adventures lead them into the likes of wrestlers, actual martial artists, and the distinct voice of Harvey Fierstein playing a double crossing pirate. Oh, did I mention half of this story’s character development takes place before the film so any established connections have already been set up? Yes? No? Just close your eyes take a deep breathe and assume that everything will work out in the end.
I am not going to ruin the story for you but the evil sorceress is eventually defeated by the breathe of Volka that was acquired when Zareta showed her breasts to an ice statue. Listen, it makes sense if you watch it. It also should be mentioned that throughout all of the action sequences a distinct soundtrack of chunky heavy metal can be heard. Add to this the film’s tagline of “Kull Rocks” and one has a movie not aimed at intellectual aficionados of fantasy films but hardcore bodybuilders raging off of testosterone. It would be easy to give this film a 1 and move on. But I can’t. I couldn’t even stop watching.
Kull succeeds because it was destined to fail. The film’s director, John Nicholella, even died one year after Kull’s box office release. The cast is a mishmash of once A list celebrities, obvious favors being called in, and the denizens of TV movies and bit parts. I want to despise this film but I can not. It’s general charm outshines everything and even the comedic parts implanted in the story come with minor chuckles. It is still a dreadfully awful movie but one of the ones that is never boring. Kevin Sorbo is a decent actor with the skills to play a semi reasonable pirate. Sure Kull couldn’t beat Conan in a fight, but he would use his cunning prowess to find a way out of danger. Not only do I enjoy Kull the movie, but I also enjoy the concept behind him because, along with Solomon Kane, it remains one of Robert E. Howard’s lesser known protagonists. No, Kull will never be in the top tier of fantasy films but shit, looking at what we already have, I would say he is doing better than most. Oh, also, enjoy the summary of the entire movie, plot development after plot development, in the trailer below. KULLLLLLLLLLLLL!
Kull the Conqueror
Released: August 29, 1997
Directed By: John Nicolella
Starring: Kevin Sorbo, Tia Carrere
Budget: $30 million
Website: IMDB
Score: 3/9 HammersAs corporate leaders dutifully line up for audiences with President Donald Trump, and try to outdo each other with curry-favoring announcements about the new American jobs they plan to create, it seems a bit curious that one of the more outspoken business executives assailing Trump and his Cabinet picks is a former energy-industry C.E.O. and ex–Wall Streeter. David Crane, who used to run the enormous power company NRG Energy and used to work at Lehman Brothers, recently wrote a blog post titled “Meet the Four Horsemen of the Climate Apocalypse,” in which he fretted about weakened environmental protections under Trump, citing the administration’s picks for secretary of state (former ExxonMobil C.E.O. Rex Tillerson), secretary of energy (Texas ex-governor Rick Perry); head of the Environmental Protection Agency (Scott Pruitt, Oklahoma’s attorney general); and head of the Department of Energy transition team (Thomas Pyle, president of the American Energy Alliance, an industry lobby). “It’s like the fossil-fuel industry’s nirvana,” he told me. Of course, Crane isn’t a typical energy executive. He was, in fact, fired a little over a year ago from NRG Energy, a huge independent power producer, for trying (and failing) to turn one of America’s biggest carbon emitters into a major renewable energy provider that could have made the world a dramatically greener place. NRG generates $15 billion in annual revenue and ranks No. 193 on the Fortune 500 list. Its core business is generating electricity, which it delivers to the grid. Its customers are local utilities (some of which NRG owns), whose customers are consumers and businesses. Companies like NRG have one overriding mission, often described, quaintly, as “keeping the lights on.” The way they do that—by boiling water to generate steam to spin turbines to produce electrical current—hasn’t changed much since Thomas Edison, and it’s a filthy project. Two-thirds of the electricity that Americans consume is made by first burning coal or natural gas. Most of the remainder comes from nuclear power plants, and only some 5 percent from wind and solar. In early 2014, Crane wrote a letter to NRG shareholders that owned up to his company’s role in climate change—think Jerry Maguire’s “mission statement” for the power business. He laid the groundwork for a sweeping transformation of NRG, and ultimately the $6 trillion global energy industry, imploring it to move away from fossil fuels, giant power plants, and far-flung transmission lines, toward what’s called “distributed generation,” built around home solar and battery backup. “The day is coming,” Crane concluded, “when our children sit us down in our dotage, look us straight in the eye, with an acute sense of betrayal and disappointment in theirs, and whisper to us, ‘You knew... and you didn’t do anything about it. Why?’ ” RELATED VIDEO: How Climate Change Could Drown New York City Under President Trump, who has promised to revitalize the coal industry and gut the Environmental Protection Agency, Crane’s pledge to turn a pollution-spewing utility into a renewable-energy company feels all the more quixotic. But its important to note that Crane’s cri de couer was supported by a clear-eyed analysis of the competitive threats to the power industry. Disrupters such as Elon Musk, chairman of SolarCity, had started selling solar panels and other clean-energy services directly to homeowners and businesses. Crane worried that these start-ups could one day make NRG obsolete. He proposed that NRG mirror what phone companies did three decades ago when they invested heavily in cellular networks even as they continued to operate traditional land lines, operations that today make up a much smaller part of the phone companies’ business. NRG would invest in clean-energy technologies such as solar, wind, and nuclear projects (the green business), even as it continued to run—and eventually shrink—its coal-burning plants, which would come to be known internally as the “brown business.” Crane’s manifesto landed like a pebble in a pond, generating ripples, not waves. He got no response at all from his board; he’s still not sure if any of them have actually read it. (NRG declined to comment for this story.) Wall Street initially shrugged, which may have left him with a false sense of security. But the clean-energy crowd took note. Peter Seligmann, the co-founder of Conservation International, deemed it “brilliant,” a call to arms in the “battle for the biggest prize in capitalism—who controls the energy market.” (Disclosure: Crane hired Seligmann’s daughter Leah to head up NRG’s sustainability department, a position she held until April 2016.) British polar explorer Robert Swan, fresh off a bicycle journey across the Indian subcontinent to promote sustainable energy, read it and was inspired. “I thought, At last there’s somebody on the business side in the United States who’s got some guts to tell the truth,” Swan says. Tanuja Dehne, who joined NRG as assistant general counsel in 2004 and later became Crane’s chief of staff, had a more measured response. She views Crane as “an enlightened visionary,” and she was thrilled by the specific vision he laid out in his letter. But she worried about buy-in—from the board; from the company’s more than 10,000 employees; and from Wall Street. Virtually no one invests in NRG to make a bet on the future. More than 90 percent of its shares are owned by mutual funds, pension funds, university endowments, and the like, all of them seeking regular dividends and steady, predictable growth, none of them predisposed to joining Crane on what he was calling his “exciting ride.” “So many potential roadblocks, so many stakeholders,” Dehne says now. “Perhaps we didn’t keep them all in mind.” Indeed, by December of 2015, 20 months after Crane’s letter appeared, he was out of a job.
NRG’s board could not have known what kind of change-maker Crane would become when he took over as C.E.O. in 2003, at age 44. He grew up in Chicago’s North Shore suburbs, graduated from Princeton and Harvard Law, and spent much of his early career overseas wearing blue suits and Ferragamo ties while doing big-project finance for Lehman Brothers, among others. His last gig before NRG was at International Power in London, where he was promoted eventually to C.E.O., and credited with boosting the stock price by 46 percent. NRG desperately needed some of that magic. Like many of its competitors (remember Enron?), NRG had overextended itself and fallen into bankruptcy. Its creditors’ committee sought a fixer, someone to settle debts, tidy up the balance sheet, and get the NRG train back on the rails. Crane, with his Wall Street pedigree, seemed the right fit. He didn’t need to understand how power plants made power, as long as he knew how they made money. Crane, who joined a private-equity firm last year, agreed to speak with me about his conversion from climate-change ignorer to clean-energy evangelist, perhaps with an eye toward his legacy. (He says he did not sign a non-disparagement clause upon departure from NRG.) “The traditional power companies want to protect themselves by regulating in the shadows of public indifference,” Crane says. “I thought that by being very public—the fact that a fossil-fuel guy would say, ‘Look, this is the future’—would make it harder for the bad guys to kill the clean-energy industry in the shadows.” But as Crane’s experiences at NRG show, he may have tried to cross a bridge too far. Crane’s awakening began in the spring of 2005. He recalls attending CERAWeek, an energy conference in Houston, where he was to give a speech. Waiting in the wings, he listened to Jeff Sterba, then C.E.O. of PNM Resources, a New Mexico–based power company, talk for 20 minutes about how carbon abatement was going to be a game-changer for the power industry. Crane recalls, “And I’m thinking, I don’t even know what he’s talking about.” Later he would read an influential report by consulting firm McKinsey & Co. that tallied up the long-term cost of carbon abatement and concluded that government regulations tied to climate change “would mean a shift in the global business environment on the same order of magnitude as the one launched by the oil crisis of the 1970s.” Crane’s wife, Isabella de la Houssaye, says that she could hardly believe her ears when he started talking about emissions and sustainability. When Crane took the job at NRG, de la Houssaye started volunteering at a Trenton, New Jersey, nonprofit called Isles that encourages sustainable practices in struggling communities. “I was bringing it home every night and talking to David, and he was saying, ‘It’s bullshit.’ The next thing I know, it’s almost like my story had become his story.” Crane first raised the possibility of investing in clean energy with his board in the summer of 2006. It was by no means obvious to them why NRG should do that. Coal plants were making so much money that American power companies had sought and received permits to build more than 100 new ones, Crane says. His argument for plotting a different course, as it unfolded, was purely economic. He explained to the board that NRG’s aging fleet of coal-fired plants would need replacing soon. Moreover, he believed political pressure and consumer demand would ultimately force power producers to reduce their carbon emissions by investing in nuclear power (whatever else, it’s carbon-free), so-called “clean coal,” and ultimately wind and solar, plus there would be tax credits and set-asides to collect. “Never once did I go to the board of directors of NRG and say, ‘We have to adopt a strategy that is going to save the planet,’ ” Crane says. “I always talked to them about the business opportunity.” His agenda gained momentum in November when Democrats won control of the House. Suddenly the idea of comprehensive clean-energy legislation didn’t seem so far-fetched. Crane led NRG into the United States Climate Action Partnership (U.S.C.A.P.), a coalition of environmental groups and reform-minded polluters that lobbied hard for cap-and-trade, a market-based approach to providing economic incentives for reducing carbon emissions. Not all of Crane’s fellow U.S.C.A.P. industrialists were climate progressives, but they were all realists. They just wanted Congress to decide on the rules already—a sentiment Crane expressed in a Washington Post op-ed under the headline, “We’re Carboholics. Make Us Stop.” Crane was so sure federal cap-and-trade was coming that he convinced his board to factor a $20-per-ton price on carbon into every investment in new capacity NRG undertook, brown or green. Obama’s election in 2008 was further cause for hope, but the new administration was immediately focused on financial reform and affordable health care. In 2009, the House did pass the American Clean Energy and Security Act, otherwise known as Waxman-Markey. But the bill never even made it to the Senate floor for discussion, much less a vote. And when Republicans regained control of the House in 2010, any chance for comprehensive climate-change legislation at the federal level died. The direct door to a green-energy future slammed shut. NRG stopped figuring carbon exposure into its financial projections.
Starting in October 2008, Crane found himself fending off a hostile takeover bid by Exelon, a big Chicago utility that was hoping to snatch up NRG and its coal plants on the cheap. The battle lasted nine months. In the end, NRG prevailed for one simple reason: Wall Street believed that the new NRG Crane was building would be worth more tomorrow than the premium Exelon offered. Crane interpreted the victory as a mandate from investors to build a new kind of energy company. From that point on, wherever Crane saw a promising alternative to a fossil-fuel generation, he jumped in. Wind, solar, clean coal, or nukes, he was spreading his bets. Among the winners: two big photovoltaic solar-power plants, one in Arizona, another in California’s sun-blasted Carrizo Plain. Both benefited greatly from state mandates to source green power. (“There was no pushback or discussion of morality or anything. It was just a damn good business to be in on straight risk-adjusted returns basis,” Crane says.) But there were losers, too. NRG was the biggest investor (with minority party Google) in Ivanpah, one of the world’s largest solar-thermal plants—an innovative project that’s been hobbled by technical glitches and missed production goals. NRG was also part of the consortium that filed the first application for a permit to build a new nuclear power plant in the United States in nearly 40 years. But huge cost overruns like those that have long plagued the industry drove NRG’s partner to back out, forcing Crane to double down. After the nuclear meltdown at Fukushima, NRG withdrew as well. What those early projects had in common was that none posed an existential threat to NRG’s established way of doing business. Green or brown, the company’s mission still was generating electricity in power plants and selling it wholesale through the grid. By the time Crane sat down to write his shareholder letter in 2014, however, he was convinced that rooftop solar was the future. By Laura Segall/Bloomberg/Getty Images. Soon there were essentially two NRGs, operating side by side. “Green” NRG’s assets included a network of electric-car-charging stations, a company that makes backpacks with onboard solar panels, a fast-growing rooftop-solar-installation division, and a portfolio of wind- and solar-generating stations together responsible for about 10 percent of the company’s 50,000 megawatt capacity, and an equal percentage of its earnings before interest, tax, depreciation, and amortization (E.B.I.T.D.A.), a standard indicator of a company’s operating performance. “Brown” NRG consisted of more than 100 fossil-fuel-generating units still delivering 60 percent of E.B.I.T.D.A. NRG’s retail utility business made up the rest. Crane made a big show of the green side. NRG announced that it was installing solar panels and mini–wind turbines on N.F.L. stadiums, building off-the-grid green-power systems in earthquake-ravaged Haiti, and designing a new $40 million “ultra-green” headquarters building in Princeton. And it was committing itself, loudly, to huge company-wide cuts in CO2 emissions—50 percent by 2030, 90 percent by 2050. But make no mistake: NRG continued to be a big polluter. Crane still had a business to run, and so the company kept buying more coal plants, including 14,000 megawatts of new capacity in a 2012 deal with Houston-based energy wholesaler GenOn. Almost as soon as he sent his letter to shareholders, Crane learned a hard lesson in the politics of transforming a legacy business. Investors will say they want companies to disrupt themselves before they get disrupted, but shareholders, executives, employees, and board members rarely want to volunteer for the short-term sacrifices needed to make change happen. Every time Crane shut down an aging coal plant, it meant wiping out another dying town’s tax base, not to mention jettisoning dozens of longtime employees who had dim prospects of finding another job. “It was always a balance between doing the right thing to advance towards our aspirational goal while being reasonably pragmatic about the pace of getting there,” Crane wrote to me. “If we lunged too quickly, we would be off our feet without gaining our objective. If we went too slow... well, you saw what happened.”
Peter Seligmann of Conservation International attended the Super Bowl in Glendale, Arizona, on February 1, 2015, as one of NRG’s guests. He found himself seated next to Howard Cosgrove, the board chairman, on the shuttle bus. Seligmann congratulated Cosgrove on the green path NRG was taking, but Cosgrove’s response threw him for a loop. “He was noncommittal,” Seligmann recalls, “and not particularly enthusiastic.” Seligmann called Crane as soon as he could. “Cosgrove doesn’t really believe in any of this stuff you’re doing,” he told him. “Do you know that?” Crane was beginning to figure that out. The average age of NRG’s 13-member board in 2015 was past 63. Crane’s efforts to educate the board about new, tech-based insurgents in energy fell flat, sometimes hilariously. Once he invited the creators of the Nest smart thermostat (now part of Alphabet, Google’s parent company) to give a presentation, and they brought free samples. “I don’t want that thing,” one board member said on the way out the door. Crane tried to get them to agree to a mandatory retirement age, or barring that, term limits. He brought names of qualified women and minority candidates who were willing to serve, among them former Michigan governor Jennifer Granholm. In every case he was rebuffed. (In January, activist investor Elliott Management disclosed that it had acquired a significant stake in NRG and was mulling, among other things, the nomination of new board members. Weeks later, Cosgrove and Vice Chairman Edward Muller retired; both were replaced by outside directors.) Crane thought for a while that it might be enough to somehow realign NRG’s shareholder base by attracting a new class of investors who really wanted to invest in green growth, and he retained a West Coast consultancy that specializes in exactly that. But the firm bowed out after less than a month, saying the challenge was too great. Nobody who made a point of investing in green was going to invest in a legacy brown company like NRG, no matter how pure its intentions. “David was adding costs to support new business development via renewables and carbon capture,” says Bob Flexon, who was Crane’s C.F.O. for five years and now runs Dynegy, a competitor, “and the sector was advocating for more conservative management around the balance sheet—more liquidity, less risk. That started creating the tensions.” Things came to a head during NRG’s second-quarter earnings call that August, dominated by growing concerns from analysts about NRG’s sinking share price. Stephen Byrd from Morgan Stanley asked pointedly about the “cash drag” from home solar, and Greg Gordon of Evercore ISI wondered if maybe it wasn’t time to consider separating brown from green. Crane had lost the faith of analysts and shareholders. He was about to learn that he also had lost the faith of his board.Obama's phony war on ISIS
For eight months, from the beginning of World War II to the Nazi invasion of France in April 1940, neither Britain nor France launched any major combat operations against the Third Reich. Both nations essentially waited to be attacked until the Germans were ready. This led to claims that the Allies were involved in a “Phony War” – a war in name only. No one was going to help the conquered Poles any time soon. The bill for this Allied lassitude came soon enough, however, and France completely capitulated after only a month-long German campaign. The U.S.-led coalition’s Operation Inherent Resolve bombing campaign against the Islamic State in Iraq has more than a little bit of the Phony War about it. President Obama, back last summer, promised a bombing campaign of “shock without awe.” But what we’ve been doing is pinpricks.
Ramadi is a huge Iraqi city of inestimable strategic importance to the whole country. Take Ramadi, and you get 70 miles of an open road to Baghdad. This week, ISIS’s murderous hordes have virtually encircled the city, sending perhaps 150,000 terrified refugees fleeing for their lives into the desert. Falih Essawi, the deputy head of the Anbar Provincial Council, personally involved in the city’s fighting like the rest of its population, told CNN this week that security was "collapsing rapidly in the city." He begged the Iraqi government for reinforcements and the U.S.-led coalition against ISIS for “urgent” air support. This urgent support? According to CENTCOM, between Monday and Wednesday of this week, the Coalition bombed only seven ISIS targets in the entire city. In a Pentagon news conference, Defense Secretary Ashton Carter and Joint Chiefs Chairman Martin Dempsey stoutly maintained that no coalition forward air controllers on the ground were spotting the strikes, nor had any ever been. Dempsey was surprisingly equable about the prospect of the modern-day Genghis Khanate taking over a major urban area. "I would much rather that Ramadi not fall, but it won't be the end of the campaign should it fall," he said. To hear the Obama administration pitch it, it is more important for Iraqis to be politically correct than to actually defeat the mortal enemy of all mankind. "I was up front in our meetings about how a lasting victory over ISIL requires inclusive governance in Baghdad and respect for local populations in all areas liberated from ISIL control," Defense Secretary Ashton Carter said at the same time. Still, U.N. Ambassador Samantha Power waxed optimistic: “We’re chipping away.” Just like France and Britain in 1939. Christopher Carson, formerly with the American Enterprise Institute, holds a master’s in National Security Studies from Georgetown University.The Trump administration has said that its goal is to isolate North Korea, in the hope that pressure through sanctions will compel it to renounce its nuclear and ballistic-missile programs and seek dialogue with the United States. But China, North Korea’s largest trading partner and chief political benefactor, dismisses that idea. Beijing believes that for Washington to convince Kim Jong Un to come to the negotiating table, it must assure him that regime change is off the table. On several occasions, U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has said precisely that, but contradictory messaging from the White House has sent conflicting signals to North Korea—and China—about America’s intentions.
In a recent meeting with a group of U.S. reporters in Beijing, Tong Zhao, a fellow at the Carnegie-Tsinghua Center for Global Policy said that, if backed into a corner, the North Korean regime isn’t going to back down. “It is more likely to enhance its military threats because for North Korea this is basically a game of risk-taking between Pyongyang and Washington,” he said.
North Korea has a long history of provocation in the face of what it regards as threats from the United States and South Korea. It has warned of a “merciless strike” in retaliation against their joint military exercises, and said it would accelerate its nuclear-weapons program in response to the deployment in South Korea of the Terminal High Altitude Thermal Defense System, a U.S. anti-missile defense network. It has also warned that it would strike the U.S. territory of Guam after Trump vowed to bring “fire and fury” against North Korea if it threatened America or its allies. But within these threats, Chinese analysts said, lies a fundamental disagreement between the United States and China over the nature of the threat posed by North Korea.
Chinese experts believe North Korea’s leaders pursue nuclear weapons because they feel genuinely threatened by the United States and South Korea. In a Brookings Institution strategy paper published in May 2017, Fu Ying, a retired diplomat who represented China in multilateral talks on North Korea’s nuclear weapons, wrote that in the early 1990s, Pyongyang felt especially vulnerable following the collapse of the Soviet Union, its main diplomatic and financial benefactor during the Cold War. Around the same time, China opened diplomatic relations with South Korea, the North’s nemesis, while the United States and the South continued their military exercises, which the North viewed as a provocation. Feeling isolated, North Korea began its pursuit of nuclear weapons in earnest.
The view from Washington is quite different. Government officials and experts alike believe North Korea’s pursuit of nuclear weapons has aggressive and offensive objectives. Pyongyang, they believe, will use its nuclear weapons to push U.S. forces out of South Korea and then force reunification of the Korean Peninsula on its terms. Trump administration officials said that North Korea must first commit to giving up its existing nuclear weapons (experts estimate the country has enough fissile material to build 20 such weapons). That position is a nonstarter in Pyongyang, and Beijing is sympathetic to its view.0 SHARES Facebook Twitter Google Whatsapp Pinterest Print Mail Flipboard
Today on his radio show Glenn Beck continued to react to the fact that he turned himself into a national laughingstock with his Fox News interview of former Rep. Eric Massa yesterday. Beck tried to place all of the blame on Massa for yesterday’s 60 minutes of train wreck television. The Massa interview could end up being a watershed in Beck’s career, because it was at this point his hubris and arrogance finally derailed his Fox News stardom.
Here is the audio of Beck courtesy of Media Matters:
Beck’s arrogance was on full display today as he blamed Massa, and not himself for booking such an obvious train wreck of a man. Beck said, “I almost threw him out of the studio like three times, but no, no, I wasn’t going to be that hot head kind of guy, and I wasn’t angry for any other reason, other than, what did I say to you coming up on the elevator coming up this morning, Pat? We were arriving and I said what was it before I had an adult who tries to convince America that he is involved in a tickle fest. What did we have on the agenda, because I had the whole week of shows mapped out, and this guy took me off track?”
He continued, “What a waste of time this man was. Now I’m torn on it. I’m torn, because there’d be a lot of conversation about this guy. He was on Larry King. Well it was CNN. It was this it was that, blah, blah, blah. There still is. There’s still conversation. I am seeing it on Twitter and everything else. People, Republicans or conservatives are like you know he was trying to talk code to Glenn and Glenn’s just not smart enough to. Talk Code? Shut up, shut up, I’m really torn because there are so many things we could do, but now that we have spent the hour, we don’t ever have to pay attention this man ever again.”
Glenn Beck has only himself to blame for his woes. Yesterday, Michelle Malkin tried to warn Beck about giving an hour to Massa, but he yelled her down. Beck was attempting to use Massa to advance his Obama conspiracy theories, but instead, this is what he got.
Watch the latest news video at video.foxnews.com
The responsibility for this fiasco rests with Beck himself, but he pushed his senior producer, not only off of his show off of the network. Beck and a small group of likeminded staffers are running his show. There is no one left to point out to Beck that hosting a scandal ridden former liberal congressman in the hope that he backs up your own wild conspiracy theories, might not be such a good idea. The problem for Beck is that his fame survives off of controversy and publicity. He said on his radio show yesterday that people were not paying attention to the same old guests that he has on to support his conspiracy theories. Beck tried to use Massa for his own ends, but instead ended up being made a fool of for an hour.
This looks like the beginning of the end for Beck, because his ego completely blinded his judgment. It seems that Glenn has forgotten that he owes his fame to many of the same conservatives who he told to shut up today. Without the audience Beck will end up going back to being a morning disc jockey. He appears to be setting himself up to learn the hard lesson that the audience giveth and audience taketh away.
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:Justo Gallego Martínez (also known as Don Justo) (born 20 September 1925 in Mejorada del Campo) is a former monk who has been constructing a cathedral-like building on his own in the town of Mejorada del Campo in the Community of Madrid, Spain, since 1961.[2] Don Justo has named the building Nuestra |
Malaysian police have found 139 mass graves and 28 human trafficking camps close to the Thai border.
"We don't know how many bodies are in the graves but exhumation works start today," Malaysia's Inspector-General of Police Khalid Abu Bakar told reporters at a press conference.
"We can't tell yet if they are the Rohingyas or Bangladeshis. We found a highly decomposed body on the ground, believed to have died two weeks ago."
Some of the graves are believed to contain more than one body. The bodies are being identified.
"[In] the operation which we have been conducting from 11 May to 23 May we discovered 139 of what we believe are graves. The first team of our officers has arrived in the area this morning to exhume the bodies," added Khalid.
The latest finding is close to the jungle camps, which were earlier discovered in Thailand containing several mass graves. The discovery of migrant graves has set off a region-wide crackdown and also escalated the Southeast Asia migrant crisis.
Malaysia's Prime Minister Najib Razak has vowed to punish the human traffickers. He said: "We will find those responsible."
Investigators in Kuala Lumpur suspect all the camps were set up by trafficking syndicates.
Home Minister Ahmad Zahid Hamidi said: "Malaysia as a government is not involved - but Malaysians, yes. I recognise that as a fact. But you know, in Mexico and the United States, they have more intelligence and state-of-the-art border security but there is still human trafficking happening there."OpenBionics prosthetic hands: Open source, affordable, lightweight, anthropomorphic
OpenΒionics is an open-source initiative for the development of affordable, light-weight, modular robot hands and prosthetic devices, and can be easily reproduced using off-the-shelf materials.
Most current prosthetic hands cost tens of thousands of US dollars. The OpenBionics initiative presents a new open-source design for highly functional, affordable prosthetic hands. The proposed hands (see Fig. 1) cost less than $200, weigh less than 300g and can be easily fabricated with off-the-shelf materials and rapid prototyping techniques. A novel selectively lockable differential mechanism (based on the whiffletree) allows the user to block the motion of each finger independently, and facilitates the execution of 144 different postures with only one motor. To our knowledge this is the most affordable and light-weight prosthetic hand ever built. The design is based on parametric models of hand anthropometry studies, so it can easily be personalized to specific patients. Anyone interested should fill out the appropriate web-form, providing the desired specifications (hand type: left or right, hand length and breadth) and they will receive the personalized design via email.
Nowadays most amputees express their disappointment for: 1) the large cost of buying and maintaining a prosthesis, 2) the increased weight of the device and 3) the difficulties they face with repairs [1]. Moreover the fear of damaging the prosthesis leads most of the amputees to avoid using them in everyday life tasks and use instead simple hooks or grippers. On the other hand, when the amputees are involved in the selection and preparation of the prosthesis (e.g., replication of an open-source design), the likelihood of prosthesis acceptance is increased 8 times. These findings confirm that what amputees need is a highly functional, personalized, affordable and light-weight prosthesis that can be easily developed and repaired.
The OpenBionics initiative has developed and freely distributed an open-source design for creating anthropomorphic, under-actuated prosthetic hands of low complexity and cost. Our hands use a novel differential mechanism (a variation of the whiffletree or “seesaw mechanism” [2]) that blocks the motion of each finger, allowing the user to select between multiple grasping postures and gestures with only one motor. Human-likeness of both robot structure and motion is achieved by employing an index of anthropomorphism in the design process [3] that uses parametric models derived from hand anthropometry studies [4]. The proposed hands can be easily reproduced with off-the-shelf materials and can be fabricated with rapid prototyping techniques.
Hand Design
Robot Fingers – In our design, anthropomorphism is reflected in two specific design choices: 1) the use of an anthropomorphic kinematic model [3] and 2) the use of a bio-inspired finger actuation and transmission system. The bio-inspired finger design structurally reproduces the flexion movements of the human hand with tendons driven through low-friction tubes and the extension using elastomer materials. The backbone of the finger can be constructed with Plexiglas (acrylic) or ABS, and the flexure joints with silicone or polyurethane sheets.
Thumb Mechanism – For the thumb we use a selectively lockable, toothed mechanism that can implement 9 different opposition configurations. The mechanism substitutes the three Degrees of Freedom (DoF) that implement the human thumb opposition with only one rotational DoF and is completely stiff when it is locked, thus it is not affected by torsional forces inherent in dynamic or unstructured environments. A separate tendon routing system is used for the thumb, and the thumb tendon is terminated to a separate servo pulley.
Selectively Lockable Differential Mechanism – We developed a selectively lockable differential mechanism that can block the motion of each finger independently. Such a mechanism allows the user to intuitively select the desired finger combinations. The top two bars of the whiffletree (see Fig. 2) have appropriately designed holes, and the palm accommodates a series of buttons that are elongated upon pressing. The idea is that, when each button is pressed, the elongated part fills the appropriate finger hole and the motion of this particular finger is constrained. A total of 16 different index, middle, ring and pinky combinations can be implemented using the differential mechanism and a single motor. These can be combined with the 9 discrete positions of the thumb, to produce a total of 144 different grasping postures or gestures with a single motor.
Personalized Designs – Τhe use of parametric models derived from human hand anthropometry studies allows for the development of personalized prostheses (see Fig. 3). The only parameters required to derive the finger phalanges lengths and the personalized finger base frames positions and orientations are the human hand length (HL) and the human hand breadth (HB).
The proposed hands can be fabricated using off-the-shelf, low-cost materials and rapid prototyping techniques (3D printing) or standard machinery tools (CNC, laser cutters etc). All required materials can be easily found in hardware stores around the world.
You can use the following link to order your personalized design (.CAD files): Web Form for Personalized Designs. All cad files (Solidworks.sldasm,.sldprt and.dwg,.dxf,.stl), required for the replication of the proposed design are distributed through our website.
The proposed design is fully described in the following paper:
George P. Kontoudis, Minas V. Liarokapis, Agisilaos G. Zisimatos, Christoforos I. Mavrogiannis and Kostas J. Kyriakopoulos, “Open-Source, Anthropomorphic, Underactuated Robot Hands with a Selectively Lockable Differential Mechanism: Towards Affordable Prostheses”, IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), Hamburg (Germany), 2015 (under review).
The OpenBionics initiative provides also designs for open-source, affordable (<100$), light-weight (<200gr), under-actuated robot hands.
Experiments conducted with the proposed hands can be found at the following videos:
More information can be found in our website, http://www.openbionics.org, Facebook, Twitter:
References:
[1] D. Edeer and C. W. Martin, “Upper limb prostheses – a review of the literature with a focus on myoelectric hands,” 2013. [Online]. Available: www.worksafebc.com/evidence
[2] L. Birglen and C. M. Gosselin, “Force analysis of connected differential mechanisms: application to grasping,” The International Journal of Robotics Research, vol. 25, no. 10, pp. 1033–1046, 2006.
[3] M. V. Liarokapis, P. K. Artemiadis, and K. J. Kyriakopoulos, “Quantifying anthropomorphism of robot hands,” in IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA). IEEE, 2013, pp. 2041–2046.
[4] B. Buchholz, T. J. Armstrong, and S. A. Goldstein, “Anthropometric data for describing the kinematics of the human hand.” Ergonomics, vol. 35, no. 3, pp. 261–73, 1992.
Recent Publications:
Agisilaos G. Zisimatos, Minas V. Liarokapis, Christoforos I. Mavrogiannis and Kostas J. Kyriakopoulos, “Open-Source, Affordable, Modular, Light-Weight, Underactuated Robot Hands”, IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), Chicago (USA), 2014. [BibTeX] [PDF]
Minas V. Liarokapis, Panagiotis K. Artemiadis and Kostas J. Kyriakopoulos, “Quantifying Anthropomorphism of Robot Hands”, IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation
(ICRA), Karlsruhe (Germany), 2013. [BibTeX] [PDF]
Agisilaos G. Zisimatos, Minas V. Liarokapis, Christoforos I. Mavrogiannis, George P. Kontoudis and Kostas J. Kyriakopoulos, “How to Create Affordable, Modular, Light-Weight, Underactuated, Compliant Robot Hands”, Control Systems Lab, School of Mechanical Engineering, National Technical University of Athens, January 2015. [BibTeX] [PDF]
****
Editor’s note:
The OpenBionics initiative is not to be confused with Open Bionics Ltd (ex featured here).
See all the latest robotics news on Robohub, or sign up for our weekly newsletter.MOSCOW, April 12 (Reuters) - Vladimir Putin said on Wednesday trust had eroded between the United States and Russia under President Donald Trump, as Moscow delivered an unusually hostile reception to Secretary of State Rex Tillerson in a face-off over Syria.
Any hope in Russia that the Trump administration would herald less confrontational relations has been dashed in the past week after the new U.S. leader fired missiles at Syria to punish Moscow's ally for its suspected use of poison gas.
Just as Tillerson sat down for talks, a senior Russian official assailed the "primitiveness and loutishness" of U.S. rhetoric, part of a volley of statements that appeared timed to maximize the awkwardness during the first visit by a member of Trump's cabinet.
"One could say that the level of trust on a working level, especially on the military level, has not improved but has rather deteriorated," Putin said in an interview broadcast on Russian television moments after Tillerson sat down with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in an ornate hall.
RELATED: Key players in Trump-Russia connection allegations
27 PHOTOS Key Trump officials, advisers of note in the Russia probe See Gallery Key Trump officials, advisers of note in the Russia probe Tom Barrack The close friend to Donald Trump and CEO of private equity firm Colony Capital recommended that Trump bring in Paul Manafort for his presidential campaign. R. James Woolsey Woolsey, the former director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), has cooperated with Mueller's investigation and worked with Michael Flynn and was present at a meeting where they discussed removing the controversial Turkish Muslim cleric Fetullah Gulen from US soil. (Christopher Goodney/Bloomberg via Getty Images) The former senior Trump campaign official and White House adviser was present and crucial during the firings of Michael Flynn and James Comey. The former head of the Trump transition team following the 2016 election has said previously that he believes he was fired due to his opposing the hiring of Michael Flynn as national security adviser. Jeff Sessions Former U.S. senator Jeff Sessions from Alabama joined Trump's campaign as a foreign policy adviser in February 2016. Sessions was nominated to be U.S. attorney general by President Trump and was then confirmed by the Senate. Reports then emerged that Sessions had spoken twice with Sergey Kislyak while he was senator -- a fact that he left out of his Senate hearing testimony. Instead, he said in writing that he had not communicated with any Russian officials during the campaign season. Sessions defended himself saying he had spoken with Kislyak specifically in a senate capacity. Paul Manafort Paul Manafort signed on as Donald Trump's campaign manager in March 2016. A longtime Republican strategist and beltway operative, Manafort had previously served as an adviser to former Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovich -- a pro-Russia leader who was violently ousted in 2014. Manafort resigned from his campaign position in August 2016 amid questions over his lobbying history in Ukraine for an administration supportive of Russia. The former campaign manager reportedly remained in Trump's circle during the post-election transition period. Michael Flynn Gen. Michael Flynn was named President Trump's national security adviser in November of 2016. Flynn reportedly met and spoke with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak in December, at one point discussing sanctions. Flynn originally told Vice President Pence he did not discuss sanctions -- a point the Department of Justice said made the national security adviser subject to blackmail. Flynn resigned from his position in February. Donald Trump 2016 election winner Donald Trump is at the center of special counsel Robert Mueller's probe into Russia's handlings. Sam Clovis Clovis, a former member of the Trump campaign, arrives on at the U.S. Capitol December 12, 2017 to appear before a closed meeting of the House Intelligence Committee. Clovis worked with George Papadopoulos, a former Donald Trump campaign foreign policy advisor who struck a plea deal on charges of lying to the FBI. (Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images) Roger Stone Stone is a longtime Republican political consultant who served as a campaign adviser to Trump who continued to talk with the then-GOP candidate after stepping away from his adviser role. Stone claimed last year that he had knowledge of the planned WikiLeaks release of emails pertaining to Hillary Clinton and the Democratic National Committee. Stone recently admitted to speaking via direct message with "Guccifer 2.0" -- an online entity U.S. officials believe is tied to Russia. Stone says the correspondence was “completely innocuous.” Carter Page Page worked for Merrill Lynch as an investment banker out of their Moscow office for three years before joining Trump's campaign as a foreign policy adviser. During his time with Merrill Lynch, Page advised transactions for two major Russian entities. Page has called Washington "hypocritical" for focusing on corruption and democratization in addressing U.S. relations with Russia. While Page is someone Trump camp has seemingly tried to distance itself from, Page recently said he has made frequent visits to Trump Tower. J.D. Gordon Before Gordon joined the Trump campaign as a national security adviser in March 2016, he served as a Pentagon spokesman from 2005 through 2009. Like others involved in Trump-Russia allegations, Gordon met with ambassador Kislyak in July at the Republican National Convention, but has since denied any wrongdoing in their conversation. He advocated for and worked to revise the RNC language on and position toward Ukraine relations, so it was more friendly toward Russia's dealings in the country. Former Trump campaign aide Michael Caputo (L) Caputo waves goodbye to reporters after he testified before the House Intelligence Committee during a closed-door session at the U.S. Capitol Visitors Center July 14, 2017 in Washington, DC. Caputo resigned from being a Trump campaign communications advisor after appearing to celebrate the firing of former campaign manager Corey Lewandowski. Denying any contact with Russian officials during the 2016 campaign, Caputo did live in Moscow during the 1990s, served as an adviser to former Russian President Boris Yeltsin and did pro-Putin public relations work for the Russian conglomerate Gazprom Media. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images) Stephen Miller, White House Senior Advisor for Policy Jason Miller Former White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer Eric Trump Donald Trump Jr. Ivanka Trump White House Senior adviser Jared Kushner Executive assistant to Donald Trump Rhona Graff White House Communications Director Hope Hicks Former Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski US Vice President Mike Pence Katrina Pierson K.T. McFarland Former White House Communications Director Anthony Scaramucci Up Next See Gallery Discover More Like This HIDE CAPTION SHOW CAPTION of SEE ALL BACK TO SLIDE
Putin doubled down on Russia's support for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, repeating denials that Assad's government was to blame for the gas attack last week and adding a new theory that the attack may have been faked by Assad's enemies.
Moments earlier, Lavrov greeted Tillerson with unusually icy remarks, denouncing the missile strike on Syria as illegal and accusing Washington of behaving unpredictably.
"I won't hide the fact that we have a lot of questions, taking into account the extremely ambiguous and sometimes contradictory ideas which have been expressed in Washington across the whole spectrum of bilateral and multilateral affairs," Lavrov said.
"And of course, that's not to mention that apart from the statements, we observed very recently the extremely worrying actions, when an illegal attack against Syria was undertaken."
Lavrov also noted that many key State Department posts remain vacant since the new administration took office -- a point of sensitivity in Washington.
One of Lavrov's deputies was even more undiplomatic.
"In general, primitiveness and loutishness are very characteristic of the current rhetoric coming out of Washington. We'll hope that this doesn't become the substance of American policy," Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov told Russia's state-owned RIA news agency.
"As a whole, the administration's stance with regards to Syria remains a mystery. Inconsistency is what comes to mind first of all."
Tillerson kept to more calibrated remarks, saying his aim was "to further clarify areas of sharp difference so that we can better understand why these differences exist and what the prospects for narrowing those differences may be."
SEE ALSO: Putin floats conspiracy theory about 'fake' Syria gas attacks
"I look forward to a very open, candid, frank exchange so that we can better define the U.S.-Russian relationship from this point forward," he told Lavrov.
After journalists were ushered out of the room, Lavrov's spokeswoman, Maria Zakharova, wrote on her Facebook page that U.S. journalists traveling with Tillerson had behaved as if they were in a "bazaar" by shouting questions to Lavrov.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Tillerson might meet Putin later on Wednesday if the two top diplomats decided it would be useful to brief the Russian president on their talks. But Peskov too did not hold back his criticism, saying calls from Western powers for Russia to cut support for Assad amounted to giving terrorists a free hand.
Moscow's hostility to Trump administration figures is a sharp change from last year, when Putin hailed Trump as a strong figure and Russian state television was consistently full of effusive praise for him.
COVER-UP
The White House has accused Moscow of trying to cover up Assad's use of chemical weapons after the attack on a town killed 87 people last week.
Trump responded to the gas attack by firing 59 cruise missiles at a Syrian air base on Friday. Washington warned Moscow, and Russian troops at the base were not hit.
Moscow has stood by Assad, saying the poison gas belonged to rebels, an explanation Washington dismisses as beyond credible. Putin said that either gas belonging to the rebels was released when it was hit by a Syrian strike on a rebel arms dump, or the rebels faked the incident to discredit Assad.
Trump came to the presidency promising to seek closer ties with Russia and greater cooperation fighting against their common enemy in Syria, Islamic State. Tillerson is a former oil executive who was awarded Russia's Order of Friendship by Putin.
Last week's poison gas attack and the U.S. retaliation upended what many in Moscow hoped would be a transformation in relations between the two countries, which reached a post-Cold War low under Trump's predecessor Barack Obama.
The United States and its European allies imposed financial sanctions on Russia in 2014 after Putin seized territory from neighboring Ukraine.
Washington is leading a campaign of air strikes in Syria against Islamic State fighters and has backed rebels fighting against Assad during a six-year civil war, but until last week the United States had avoided directly targeting the Syrian government.
Russia, meanwhile, intervened in the civil war on Assad's side in 2015 and has troops on the ground, which it says are advising government forces. Both Washington and Moscow say their main enemy is Islamic State, although they back opposing sides in the wider civil war which has killed more than 400,000 people and spawned the world's worst refugee crisis.
In an interview with the Fox Business Network, Trump said he was not planning to order U.S. forces into Syria, but that he had to respond to the images of dead children poisoned in the gas attack.
"We're not going into Syria," he said in excerpts of the interview on the station's website. "But when I see people using horrible, horrible chemical weapons... and see these beautiful kids that are dead in their father's arms, or you see kids gasping for life... when you see that, I immediately called (Defense Secretary) General Mattis."
RELATED: Reactions to the Syria gas attack
16 PHOTOS Syria gas attack See Gallery Syria gas attack ATTENTION EDITORS - VISUAL COVERAGE OF SCENES OF INJURY OR DEATH A man carries the body of a dead child, after what rescue workers described as a suspected gas attack in the town of Khan Sheikhoun in rebel-held Idlib, Syria April 4, 2017. REUTERS/Ammar Abdullah ATTENTION EDITORS - VISUAL COVERAGE OF SCENES OF INJURY OR DEATH People stand near a dead body, after what rescue workers described as a suspected gas attack in the town of Khan Sheikhoun in rebel-held Idlib, Syria April 4, 2017. REUTERS/Ammar Abdullah A man breathes through an oxygen mask as another one receives treatments, after what rescue workers described as a suspected gas attack in the town of Khan Sheikhoun in rebel-held Idlib, Syria April 4, 2017. REUTERS/Ammar Abdullah A man breathes through an oxygen mask, after what rescue workers described as a suspected gas attack in the town of Khan Sheikhoun in rebel-held Idlib, Syria April 4, 2017. REUTERS/Ammar Abdullah ATTENTION EDITORS - VISUAL COVERAGE OF SCENES OF INJURY OR DEATH Men stand near dead bodies, after what rescue workers described as a suspected gas attack in the town of Khan Sheikhoun in rebel-held Idlib, Syria April 4, 2017. REUTERS/Ammar Abdullah EDITORS NOTE: Graphic content / A Syrian child receives treatment at a hospital in Khan Sheikhun, a rebel-held town in the northwestern Syrian Idlib province, following an attack on April 4, 2017. A suspected chemical attack killed at least 58 civilians including several children in rebel-held northwestern Syria, a monitor said, with the opposition accusing the government and demanding a UN investigation. / AFP PHOTO / Omar haj kadour (Photo credit should read OMAR HAJ KADOUR/AFP/Getty Images) A man holds an injured baby inside a Turkish ambulance as injured Syrian people enter into Turkey from the Cilvegozu border gate in Hatay province, near the Syrian border on April 4, 2017. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in a phone call with Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin on April 4, 2017 condemned a suspected chemical attack in northwestern Syria as an 'inhuman' strike that could endanger peace talks based in the Kazakh capital. / AFP PHOTO / DOGAN NEWS AGENCY / - / Turkey OUT (Photo credit should read -/AFP/Getty Images) IDLIB, SYRIA - APRIL 4: A wounded kid receives medical treatment at sahra hospital after Assad Regime forces's attack with chlorine gas to Khan Shaykhun town of Idlib, Syria on April 4, 2017. (Photo by Abdulghani Arian/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images) IDLIB, SYRIA - APRIL 4: A woman gets treatment at a hospital after Assad Regime forces attacked with suspected chlorine gas to Khan Shaykhun town of Idlib, Syria on April 4, 2017. (Photo by Bahjat Najar/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images) IDLIB, SYRIA - APRIL 4: A child gets treatment at a hospital after Assad Regime forces attacked with suspected chlorine gas to Khan Shaykhun town of Idlib, Syria on April 4, 2017. (Photo by Bahjat Najar/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images) ATTENTION EDITORS - VISUAL COVERAGE OF SCENES OF INJURY OR DEATH A man carries the body of a dead child, after what rescue workers described as a suspected gas attack in the town of Khan Sheikhoun in rebel-held Idlib, Syria April 4, 2017. REUTERS/Ammar Abdullah TPX IMAGES OF THE DAY A crater is seen at the site of an airstrike, after what rescue workers described as a suspected gas attack in the town of Khan Sheikhoun in rebel-held Idlib, Syria April 4, 2017. REUTERS/Ammar Abdullah TPX IMAGES OF THE DAY Turkish officials with chemical clothes carry a injured man on April 4, 2017 in Hatay province, near the Syrian border. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in a phone call with Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin on April 4, 2017 condemned a suspected chemical attack in northwestern Syria as an 'inhuman' strike that could endanger peace talks based in the Kazakh capital. / AFP PHOTO / DOGAN NEWS AGENCY / - / Turkey OUT (Photo credit should read -/AFP/Getty Images) EDITORS NOTE: Graphic content / Bodies lie in the parking area of a hospital in Khan Sheikhun, a rebel-held town in the northwestern Syrian Idlib province, following a suspected toxic gas attack on April 4, 2017. A suspected chemical attack killed at least 58 civilians including several children in rebel-held northwestern Syria, a monitor said, with the opposition accusing the government and demanding a UN investigation. / AFP PHOTO / Omar haj kadour (Photo credit should read OMAR HAJ KADOUR/AFP/Getty Images) IDLIB, SYRIA - APRIL 4: A child gets treatment at a hospital after Assad Regime forces attacked with suspected chlorine gas to Khan Shaykhun town of Idlib, Syria on April 4, 2017. (Photo by Bahjat Najar/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images) Up Next See Gallery Discover More Like This HIDE CAPTION SHOW CAPTION of SEE ALL BACK TO SLIDE
Tillerson traveled to Moscow with a joint message from Western powers that Russia should withdraw its support for Assad after a meeting of the Group of Seven industrialized economies also attended by Middle East allies.
Some of Washington's allies had been wary of Trump, who spoke during his election campaign of seeking closer ties with Moscow and questioned the value of U.S. support for its traditional friends. Tillerson's mission sees the Trump administration taking on the traditional U.S. role as spokesman for a unified Western position.
Trump's relations with Russia are also a domestic issue, as U.S. intelligence agencies have accused Moscow of using computer hacking to intervene in the election to help Trump win. The FBI is investigating whether any Trump campaign figures colluded with Moscow, which the White House denies.
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Russia: Putin will not meet with Tillerson after Syria missile strikes
Trump says chemical attack in Syria crossed many lines
US launches missiles at Syrian base after chemical weapons attackThis trophy entry will assume that you have done the other Easter Egg for Fireworks. That is because you will need to replay most of this to even get to this Easter Egg. Refer to the aforementioned trophy entry for information on the "easier" Easter Egg. Also, before you attempt the Easter Egg, make sure you and your teammates have knowledge on building all variants of the Tesla Gun (refer to Dark Arts for more information).
All Steps Needed To Complete The Dark Reunion Easter Egg
Here's the harder variation of the two main Easter Eggs in The Final Reich. This will take some time and patience to pull off. One thing to keep note of before taking on the true final boss. There will be a video linked below depicting all steps needed to complete this trophy and Easter Egg altogether. In Step 1 of said video, after activating the "Voice of God",shoot the Orange Orb. If you do shoot it, then you will be taken to the Fireworks Easter Egg; and there's no way of going back, causing you to do everything over again. Below is the aforementioned video depicting every step needed to get to the Final Boss and advice on the Final Boss.Credit to PowerPyx for the video.Liverpool have recently announced that Jordan Henderson will take over as captain from veteran, Steven Gerrard. Henderson is a current England International, the star of a TV advert and also cover star of the soon to be released FIFA 16. For a young man from a suburb of Sunderland to becoming a Liverpool and England star, he isn’t doing too badly.
This is the rise of Jordan Henderson.
Jordan Henderson was born in Sunderland and is a product of the club’s academy. He joined Sunderland as a youngster and signed his first professional contract on July 1st 2008, making his debut as a substitute away at Chelsea. To gain first team experience, Henderson joined Coventry City in January 2009, initially on a one-month loan deal; this deal was extended to the end of the season. Unfortunately for Henderson and his development, he fractured his metatarsal bone and returned to Sunderland after playing just ten games for Coventry, scoring only one goal.
His injury didn’t keep him down for long, though; during the 2009/10 season, Jordan was a regular in the Sunderland team, making 38 appearances in all competitions, and scoring twice. His versatility was key to this. Although primarily a central midfielder, Henderson was equally comfortable playing in right midfield and even at right back, if required. Furthermore, a successful season saw him win the Sunderland Young Player of the Year award.
Henderson started the 2010/11 season the way he left the previous season. His early form began to catch the eye of other clubs and, most notably, the then England senior manager, Fabio Capello. Henderson was due to play for the England U21 team against Germany in a friendly, but he was omitted from the squad and Capello instead named Henderson part of his senior side to face France on November 17th. He made his debut in this game partnering Steven Gerrard in central midfield.
During this season, Sunderland’s manager back then, Steve Bruce, described Henderson as “the best young British footballer there is”. FIFA seemed to agree with Bruce to an extent, naming him as one of thirteen young players to watch in 2011, and described him as “composed, athletic and powerful”. Henderson consequently completed his excellent season by retaining the Sunderland Young Player of the Year award.
During the summer of 2011, speculation began to gather pace surrounding Henderson’s future; Manchester United were allegedly keen to sign him and looked, at one stage, to be favourites, but it was Liverpool who clinched his signature, agreeing a fee worth to be around £20 million. Jordan completed his move to Merseyside on June 9th, signing a long term deal. Niall Quinn, who was Sunderland chairman at the time, had this to say on the transfer “Jordan is a credit to himself, his family and Sunderland’s Academy and everyone here wishes him the very best for the future”.
Henderson’s career at Liverpool did not start the best, and Jordan himself admitted this by saying, “When you come to a club like Liverpool you need to perform straight away and consistently. Looking back, I don’t think I did that”. Henderson was also part of a group of players that were signed for vast amount of money; Andy Carroll at £35million, Stewart Downing £20 million and Charlie Adam £7.5 million. These players were, and still are, seen as a costly mistake by Liverpool and their fans. These signings ultimately cost Liverpool’s Director of Football, Damien Comolli, his job.
Henderson, though, was young and many thought that he could develop into a top player due to his potential and dedication to the sport. However, after his first season at Anfield, it looked likely that his stay on Merseyside would be a short one as he was offered to Fulham as part of a deal to bring Clint Dempsey to Liverpool. Henderson refused to leave, which said a lot about his desire to become a top player at a top club; he didn’t want to take the easy way out, he want to stay and fight for his place -and fight he did.
Henderson worked on his game, worked hard in training, listened to the advice given and, steadily, a maturity flourished in his game, as well as an improvement in overall ability. James Pearce, a football reporter for the Liverpool Echo, said this about Jordan in 2013: “Jordan deserves huge credit for the way he has transformed his Liverpool career. The biggest compliment I can pay him is that he looks like he belongs at Anfield these days”.
Jordan Henderson has since become one of the first names on Brendan Rodgers’ team sheets. He is now also a regular fixture in Roy Hodgson’s England team, and has been present at the last two major tournaments: the 2012 European Championships and the 2014 World Cup.
In September 2014, he was named as Liverpool’s vice-captain. He has since captained the side on fourteen occasions and has yet to be on the losing side. Following Steven Gerrard’s departure, Henderson was announced as Liverpool’s new skipper; this after signing a five-year contract extension worth a reported £100,000 per week. Quite the turnaround for someone who was told he had no future at the club a few short years ago.
The sky is the limit now for Jordan. Liverpool captain, England regular, probable future England captain, television advertisement star and, now, cover star of the new FIFA video game. From a Sunderland point of view, he is a local boy done good and many in the area are proud of him and his achievements. For a Liverpool fan, he’s a signing that surely brings a smile to their face in an era where many failed and, from an England point of view, the better he gets, the better it will be for them as he could well be the next England captain. And few could argue if it happened.
Main PhotoThis channel is the online access to everything Addy. To donate to her and her pups... http://pledgie.com/campaigns/19263 Adeline came to ruffed up rescue on January 11th, 2013. Addy had a rough start to life. She was let loose in a neighborhood and picked up by a stranger they found her rabies tag and tracked the owner who said they didn't want the dog anymore so they just let her loose. She then was taken to another home and chained to a tree on a choke collar. They later discovered that she was pregnant and couldn't afford the pups. Ruffed up rescue got word of her and drove and got her to bring her and her unborn babies into rescue. She is very underweight but soo sweet. We have no info on her outside of the above. Ruffed up named her Adeline, addy for short. She's created quite a following as we all wait for her babies to come. Again to donate thats: http://pledgie.com/campaigns/19263The first ever Blackest of the Black lineup was teased recently with Danzig and Ministry being the first two bands announced for the Southern California festival. Those two are the headliners and now the entire lineup has been revealed. The festival will take place May 26-27 at Oak Canyon Park in Silverado, California
The festival will also include carnival rides, wrestling, vendors and will also offer on-site camping. Full lineup below.
Danzig
Ministry
Suicidal Tendencies
Atreyu
Corrosion Of Conformity
Vamps
Marduk
Suicide Silence
Venom Inc.
Devildriver
Fear Factory
Belphegor
Discharge
Combichrist
Butcher Babies
3teeth
Ghoul
Ritual
More info here: blackestfest.com
–
Will you be attending this festival? Comment below,
Post by Corey Kleinsasser
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AdvertisementsDash, a second generation digital currency, has completed two years of its existence. It was officially launched by web developer Evan Duffield. Initially named as ‘XCoin’, it was later renamed as Dash.
Duffield created a new hashing algorithm – ‘X11’ – that separated Dash from the two biggest algorithms, SHA-256 (Bitcoin) and Scrypt (Litecoin). This new algorithm not only ensured that Dash would remain ASIC-proof for a long time, but also greatly reduced heat and power consumption for miners across the globe.
“It’s been a very exciting two years. So much has happened during the two years, it seems pretty amazing. We managed to develop the masternode concept, along with instant transactions, privacy, funding and governance. I’m pretty happy with the progress that we’ve made”, Duffield told CoinTelegraph in an interview.
The Dash developers have delivered a number of "firsts", such as the first privacy-centric transaction system, the first to enable nearly instant payments, the first to enable user governance, the first to create a sustainable self-funding model, and many others.
In November, the Dash team announced the release of an iPhone wallet for Dash. The team explains that the wallet is ‘deterministic’, meaning that it can be restored just by typing in a passphrase, which keeps a user’s Dash secure without requiring complex and time-intensive backups.
Last month, the Dash team announced the next phase of the project’s development – Dash Evolution (Open Source) – the key component being the creation of the world’s first decentralized application programming interface (API).
According to Duffield, the goal of Evolution is to “make Dash even more secure, allow it to scale to extremely large levels, and make it easier to use than any cryptographic currency that presently exists.”
“Dash Evolution creates a new type of cryptographic currency with various advanced |
since it’s also an online game, you could technically play with anyone around the world.This post was contributed by a community member.
Even though snow has been scarce so far this winter, it's safe to say there will come a time when Teaneck residents will have to pull out their shovels or snow blowers to clear sidewalks and steps.
Someone who's trying to make that chore easier is former Teaneck resident Hillel Glazer, 33, who has created an electrical product that keeps pathways snow-free. The HeatTrak snow-melting mat, which can be left out all winter long, first emerged when Glazer was about 16 years old.
While growing up on Edgemont Place, Glazer and his two brothers would make a few bucks shoveling snow from neighbors' driveways and sidewalks.
The tiring work that yielded about $10 a job got Glazer thinking that there had to be a better and easier way to remove snow from certain areas. While Glazer said it's hard to recall how his snow-melting mat first came about, he said his friends remember him talking about his invention in high school.
"That's how I can peg it down that I came up with this idea when I was 16 years old," Glazer said. "Apparently, I came to school one day after a snowstorm and told everyone how I built this thing from my house."
Glazer took his parent's heating pad and duct taped it to the bottom of a large doormat. He taped it well to keep water out, and he said the mat worked perfectly for two days before shorting out.
"I nearly electrocuted the mailman, Glazer joked.
The invention's progression ended there because Glazer had to focus on school. He eventually graduated from college, got married, and worked in finance, but every time he'd shovel snow he'd think about that snow-melting mat from his teenage years.
"It was around 2003 and at the time I was not happy in my finance job; I was looking for an out to do something else," Glazer said. "I remembered this idea while shoveling snow in front of my apartment."
Glazer said he started looking online to see if someone else had come up with the same invention. Fortunately, no one had, so Glazer got to work on creating a viable product.
"There was nothing like this on the market, so I started making phone calls to companies that I thought would have to supply me with products if I were to make a mat like this," Glazer said. "I researched who was making heating elements, heating pads, and I learned a lot over that week or two. I had some custom mats made for me, and eventually I started having samples sent to my apartment."
Once Glazer got a functioning prototype together, he demonstrated it to inventors and he was able to secure financing to proceed with his product.
"We were selling mats before we even made any," he said. "We put up a website, and we had people ordering mats before we had them made. This was in 2004."
ON TRACK FOR SUCCESS
In 2011, HeatTrak had $4 million in sales. The product can be purchased in home-improvement stores, such as Ace, True Value and Home Depot. Customers also can buy the mats online at the company's website or at online marketers like Amazon.com.
"Our sales are doing fine; $4 million in revenue this year was a substantial increase from last year," Glazer said. "But the truth is our revenue would have been a lot higher if we actually had snow around the country."
The HeatTrak mat has won multiple national awards, including being voted as the Best New Product at the 2010 National Hardware Show.
The company sells residential mats priced at $119.95 that are 20 inches wide and 5 feet long, as well as stair mats that are 30 inches wide and priced at $49.95. Industrial mats can be customizable, but are much bigger in size and meant to handle large amounts of foot traffic. They can cost a few hundred dollars to more than $1,000, depending on the size.
Glazer said all the mats are modular in design, and they all interconnect, kind of like Christmas lights. So while each mat has its own electrical cord, they can be attached to one another in the form of a daisy chain.
"So if you have 10 feet of sidewalk, you put two of our 5-foot mats together and connect them," Glazer said. "It makes it easier for buyers and for us because we don't have to make a variety of sizes."
HeatTrak mats are selling well in Connecticut, Massachusetts, the Midwest and Canada. It's also used heavily at ski resorts in Colorado and Utah.
"We even have some of our mats at the White House," Glazer said. "We found out halfway through the project because there was a lot of customization going on for these industrial mats. At some point our contact in the D.C. area told us the final installation point was at the White House."
The product has been featured on national media outlets on TV and in print. Glazer joked that when he goes to the Midwest or to Canada, people recognize the HeatTrak name. This doesn't happen as much in New Jersey.
"Here in my hometown in Teaneck, most people haven't heard about this product," Glazer said. "But when I go up to Canada or out to the Midwest – they all know about HeatTrak; I'm like a celebrity."
INVENTING NEVER ENDS
Glazer now lives in Atlanta, Ga., but he lived in Teaneck for 27 years. He moved south for a job opportunity for his wife. Glazer flies to New Jersey and stays in Teaneck for three days each week in order to work out of his company's Paterson location, which employs 12 people.
The company will be launching new products in the winter of 2012. While the details of those products are being kept secret for now, Glazer said his goal is to expand the HeatTrak name beyond snow-melting mats and onto products such as a heated dog house or animal mat.
"Our strategy here at HeatTrak is to develop this brand name into multiple, unique heating products that are clever and very useful around the home and businesses," Glazer said. "The snow-mat business is doing well and will grow naturally, and a lot of my attention right now is focused on the new products."
Glazer said growing up Teaneck was "vital" in nurturing his company.
"The original HeatTrak mat, which I still have in my office, was conceived and designed in Teaneck on Edgemont Place," Glazer said. "And a lot of my early investors were contacts from Teaneck – friends and family. So I would say this product really did have its roots in Teaneck."Have you picked up your Baby Box Yet?!
All expectant and new parents, in Alberta, with a child 3 months of age and under are eligible to receive a free Baby Box.
To claim your free Baby Box from The Baby Box Co. you MUST do two things. First, reserve your box here on this page, one box per family please unless you're having (or have had) multiples! There are a limited number of Baby Boxes being distributed so you MUST reserve yours right away to guarantee that you will receive yours! Once you have reserved your Baby Box you will receive an email confirming that we will have a Baby Box waiting for you, you just need to show us that email when you come to pick it up.
Second, and more importantly, you have to visit www.babyboxuniversity.com and register, complete your Alberta Provincial Syllabus and print your completion certificate to bring with you to the event. Please note that you MUST print this certificate to claim your Baby Box. For full details about this incredible safe sleep initiative, please refer to www.babyboxuniversity.com
You are welcome to come and pick up your baby box anytime between 10am and 7pm, we will be located in the lower level Community Room.
Your volunteer team is making this day possible, so we kindly ask that you please make every effort to claim your free Baby Box the day of the event so that we do not have to pack up any Baby Boxes at the end of the day.
We look forward to seeing you there!When “The Path” first premiered on Hulu, its hero was Eddie (Aaron Paul), who had been living his life according to a religious movement called Meyerism — but had started to see the cracks in its foundation and wanted to get out of what he considered could be a cult. But now in the third season, he is the new leader of the movement. Times — and characters — have certainly changed, and with that come new challenges.
“The first couple of seasons he was just struggling with what he was dealing with. In the first season, he just wanted to get out and didn’t believe anything they were selling anymore, but in the second season he was feeling being pulled back in. And now, he has to take control,” Paul told Variety at a Season 3 event held at the Paley Center for Media in Los Angeles, Calif. “He realizes that things do need to change. Some hidden, dark secrets are revealed in this season, and he thinks they need to move past that and do things a new way.”
While Paul feels that Eddie became “all-in” with Meyerism again after his experiences in the second season, he reveals there is an “aha, miracle moment” in the first episode of Season 3 that cements his place as the “guardian of the light.”
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“Does he have this power? Was he just lucky? I don’t know. But does he believe he has the power? Absolutely,” Paul says. “I think his inner circle will start to question the way he runs things, but everybody else in the movement sees him as the leader. They are his sheep, and they follow him. They really, really believe in him.”
Executive producer Jessica Goldberg says this new dynamic comes because there is a “real need for a hope and an authentic leader” among the Meyerists.
“It means having a leader that is maybe really a prophet,” Goldberg says of Eddie’s rise to power. “Eddie spends the season struggling with what that means. He really wants to be legitimized.”
This means that former leader Cal (Hugh Dancy), who already thinks he lost his faith, begins to spiral further. Dancy says Cal is not willing to “play second fiddle” to Eddie, but he believes it isn’t merely out of hubris or a hurt ego.
“He’s built up this incredibly strong support system to avoid having to ever face up to some facts about himself, and being demoted threatens that. He doesn’t know, but that’s what he’s running away from,” Dancy says.
The second season hinted at some of those facts — namely abuse he suffered as a child at the hands of his father — and Dancy says the third season dives much deeper into the exploration of the events and what they stir up for Cal when he is forced to remember and face them now.
“He pretty rapidly goes down a massive rabbit hole of his own past,” Dancy says. “He always had a white knuckle grip on his own life and being in control and he never wanted to let himself not be in control again. If somebody does turn around to realize that kind of thing about themselves, that is a long-term thing, and there’s no easy outcome from that. So Cal responds to these revelations about himself in ways that seem good but then may take a turn.”
Dancy also says that without being the leader of Meyerism, Cal is left to “capitalize on his skill set in a rather tragic fashion.” After all, he has Mary (Emma Greenwell) and the baby to support, and he still wants to be there for Sarah (Michelle Monaghan), who is struggling with blackmailing former Meyerists in the second season.
“Sarah’s guilt is her drive. We started her as the most zealous believer, and realizing her own frailty and her own ugliness starts to chip away at her faith,” Goldberg says.
When the third season starts, Monaghan says Sarah feels like she needs to be punished for the sins of her past, but Eddie’s new way of doing things is “more progressive,” and that means removing some of the harsher rituals. “She finds a cleanse, and what we know about her historically is that she likes these kinds of rituals,” Monaghan says.
Sarah will call on Cal to help, and although Cal is “reluctant” to get involved, Dancy says he ultimately does because he cares for her and because they share so many secrets.
“He’s the only person she can have a fully honest conversation with, and he’s also the only person who could understand that weird need she has and that way she’s torn with getting away and getting back to the core of her faith,” Dancy says.
While the cleanse gives Sarah what she wants in a sense of atonement, it is a moment of regression for Cal, which results in him pulling away.
Monaghan acknowledges there is a role reversal of sorts happening between the former spouses, wiith Sarah feeling like Eddie’s new leadership is a “tough pill to swallow” for the “biggest devout follower of Meyerism,”
“She’s sort of moving away from the movement a little bit — maybe seeing it for what it is or always has been — and she’s seeing her son get deeper and deeper into the movement along with Eddie. That’s a concern for her,” Monaghan says, adding that Sarah goes on a “personal journey” to learn more about Meyerism’s origins and founders. And in doing so, she will unearth some secrets about the religion and its followers that will give her just as much power as Eddie.
“She has all of this information that potentially could take down the movement, but she has to be incredibly careful about how she goes about handling the information because Eddie is now the guardian of the light and there are also very personal secrets and experiences about other people that she deeply cares about, like Cal,” says Monaghan. “All of these things have to be handled delicately.”
“The Path” Season 3 premieres Jan. 17 on Hulu.Thank you for supporting the journalism that our community needs!
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*Introductory pricing schedule for 12 month: $0.99/month plus tax for first 3 months, $5.99/month for months 4 - 6, $10.99/month for months 7 - 9, $13.99/month for months 10 - 12. Standard All Access Digital rate of $16.99/month begins after first year.
*Introductory pricing schedule for 12 month: $0.99/month plus tax for first 3 months, $5.99/month for months 4 - 6, $10.99/month for months 7 - 9, $13.99/month for months 10 - 12. Standard All Access Digital rate of $16.99/month begins after first year.
*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.
Homeowners in Wolseley who wish to remain anonymous arrived home at around 10 p.m. Dec. 31 to find a red gift bag near their front steps, B’nai Brith said in the release. Inside the bag was a large rock, “roughly the size of a loaf of bread,” with a swastika along with an anti-Semitic message painted on it in large upper-case letters:
“We are treating this as a hate crime,” Const. Robert Carver of the Winnipeg Police Service told the Free Press Wednesday evening. “We occasionally get international events that will prompt anti-Semitic reactions, but this one is so much more egregious that we’re spending more time on this.”
Winnipeg’s normally peaceful Wolseley neighbourhood has been rocked by an anti-Semitic incident on New Year’s Eve.
Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 4/1/2017 (783 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.
Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 4/1/2017 (783 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.
Winnipeg’s normally peaceful Wolseley neighbourhood has been rocked by an anti-Semitic incident on New Year’s Eve.
"We are treating this as a hate crime," Const. Robert Carver of the Winnipeg Police Service told the Free Press Wednesday evening. "We occasionally get international events that will prompt anti-Semitic reactions, but this one is so much more egregious that we’re spending more time on this."
Homeowners in Wolseley who wish to remain anonymous arrived home at around 10 p.m. Dec. 31 to find a red gift bag near their front steps, B’nai Brith said in the release. Inside the bag was a large rock, "roughly the size of a loaf of bread," with a swastika along with an anti-Semitic message painted on it in large upper-case letters:
"DIE JEW BITCH. EINSATZGRUPPEN."
The Einsatzgruppen was a Nazi death squad responsible for the mass killings of Jews along with other minority groups during the Holocaust.
The rock came wrapped in a red ribbon, with the words "Jude Bitch get out of our neighberhood (sic)," written on it.
"Anecdotally, I can count on one hand in the 24 years I’ve been in this position the number of incidents that were as egregious and as threatening as this. We are very concerned about this and taking it very seriously," Carver said in an interview.
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After arriving home to find the bag and its contents, the homeowners called the B’nai Brith’s 24-hour anti-hate hotline to report the incident.
"It’s so invasive," one of the homeowners told B’nai Brith, said the news release. "So horrible. It’s difficult to put into words. And it’s frightening, too. We don’t know what would cause someone to do this, but we have had a couple of private issues with people, so who knows?"
Amanda Hohmann, who serves as the national director of the B’nai Brith’s League for Human Rights, said this type of incident is rare in Winnipeg.
"While incidents like this happen with relative frequency in other parts of the country, it’s definitely unusual for Winnipeg," she said. "Overall, numbers of anti-Semitic incidents have dropped dramatically there in recent years, so this has to be quite shocking to the community."
B’nai Brith said it will continue to work with both the family and Winnipeg police to "ensure... that this does not result in a general increase in antiSemitism in Winnipeg."
ben.waldman@freepress.mb.caPresident-elect Donald Trump's plans to goose infrastructure spending will offer strong investment opportunities, said Ding Xuedong, chairman of China's sovereign wealth fund, China Investment Corp. (CIC).
"Trump calls for expansionary fiscal policy and more investments in U.S. infrastructure. The upgrades and the expansion mean massive investment," Ding told CNBC in translated comments. "The U.S. government doesn't have the money, private investors in the U.S. don't have the money and this is where the foreign investors come in."
The Sovereign Wealth Fund Institute has ranked CIC as the world's second largest sovereign wealth fund by assets under management, with around $813.8 billion.
Ding, speaking on the sidelines of the Asian Financial Forum in Hong Kong this week, saw a natural fit between Chinese investors and Trump's infrastructure plans, expressing little concern over the president-elect's "America first" rhetoric.
"Over the past three decades, China's infrastructure has been growing very fast. It's one of the biggest successes China has achieved. We have lots of design, execution and management experiences that we can export," Ding said.
"We hope the U.S. will not have any double standards or bias, but have a level playing field for foreign investors, including China. If so, I see lots of opportunities in the U.S.," he said.
Ding added that he expected CIC could find local partners in the U.S. or the fund could team up with foreign investors.I ’m in the elevator with James Harrison, Joey Porter and Arthur Moats the day after our game against the Cowboys last season. I remember it really well, because we were mad as hell that Ezekiel Elliott had run for 114 yards against us. So James and I are going through our usual routine of breaking down what went right and what went wrong. James is rattling off stuff when all of the sudden he stops talking. Just freezes mid-sentence and stares at the top of my head.
I’m looking at him like, What’s going on?
Then he says, “Bruh …”
You know that feeling when someone is just staring at you all wide-eyed and not saying anything? It’s the worst.
I’m like, “What? Bro, what?”
He says, “Bruh … I think your hair’s growing out.”
That stops me cold. The week before, I looked at myself in the mirror and noticed something weird. My head didn’t look as smooth as usual. I ran my hand over my scalp a few times and could have sworn I felt a few rough spots. But, I mean … That’s impossible. I’ve had alopecia since I was 5 years old. I can’t grow hair, period.
Now here’s James saying he thinks he sees hair. I don’t know if he’s serious or just trying to mess with me.
So I say, “Come on, man, don’t play like that. Are you serious?”
Now Joey and Moats are looking at me, because they overheard what James said.
And then Joey says, “No, man … I think he’s right. I see it.”
I rub my hands over my scalp, and it’s even rougher than last week. I have hair. Not just little bristles. I’m talking hair. For the first time in 19 years.
Since the season was going on, I wanted to keep my routine. I was so used to not having hair that I shaved it smooth again. But once the season ended, I decided to let it grow out. I knew it wouldn’t turn into a full head of hair or anything. It was patchy and thin, but to me, it was still like a miracle.
Unfortunately, it’s 2017. We know the world we live in. So to some people, it was the perfect excuse to hit me with some hate on social media.
I knew it was coming, and I got it all. Search “Shazier hair” on Twitter and you’ll see the kind of ignorance that people with alopecia deal with every day. Some stuff was mean, and some stuff was funny as hell. At least to me.
After I went on NFL Network to do a little spot in their studio, somebody posted a screenshot of my head with the caption, “When you drop your lollipop on the carpet and pick it back up.”
Man, I was crying laughing. That’s just creative. I respect it. But that’s me. I’ve been dealing with those comments for 19 years.
My fiancée, though … That was another story. She would go digging in the comments to see what people were saying, and she took it hard. She just didn’t understand why people would be be so cruel for no reason, and why I wouldn’t want to respond to them.
One day, she read something and broke down in tears.
And that really took me back to my childhood, when I wasn’t such a vet in the troll game.
I tried to make her laugh to calm her down.
I was like, “Baby, you know I used to have a ’fro right?”
I really did. I had a full, thick baby ’fro. But when I was five, my hair started falling out. And not just on my head, either. I was young, so the only thing I can remember is that my pillow would have a bunch of eyelashes on it every morning. My mom would run her hand through my ’fro and come out with a handful of curls.
The first few doctors we saw didn’t know what was going on. I was too young to worry, but obviously my parents were scared to death that it was something serious. It wasn’t until we visited a dermatologist that I was finally diagnosed with alopecia.
The doctor explained to my mom that my immune system was attacking my hair follicles, forcing all the hair on my body to fall out. That’s pretty easy for a doctor to explain to an adult, but it’s not so easy for a five year old to explain to kids at school. Kids would ask me if I was dying, or if I had cancer. No matter how many times I told them I just had a thing that made my hair fall out, they’d still tease me.
That was hard for me, at first. I barely understood what was happening to my body, and kids were treating me like I was carrying some kind of plague. Sometimes I’d get angry and want to say something back. Other times I’d just want to cry.
I’ve met a lot of kids (and grown adults) with alopecia who still struggle with self-esteem issues. And I totally get that. ’Cause let me tell you: kids can be mean.
When I was nine, we moved from Ft. Lauderdale to Waco, Texas, so my father could complete his divinity degree and become a pastor. That meant I was going to be the new kid in school. Easy target.
I heard every insult you can think of …. Cueball. Patches. Chia pet.
The thing that allowed me to get through it was how well my parents handled it. They didn’t call those other kids’ parents to get them to stop, or yell at my teacher for not protecting me enough. That would’ve just made things worse, at least where I lived. They didn’t let me wear a hat or a wig. The alopecia wasn’t going to go away. I couldn’t hide from it, so I had to learn to live with it.
“There’s nothing wrong with you,” my mom would say. “You just don’t have hair. Most kids do. That’s it.”
When we moved back to Ft. Lauderdale three years later, I was once again in that same situation. New school. New bald kid. New insults. Guess what? Florida kids aren’t any different from Texas kids.
Magic 8 ball. Cancer boy. Professor X (that one was kind of dope).
It just went on and on. And you know what I would do every time they fired off a new insult? I’d just laugh.
That’s how you win against a bully. That’s how you really piss them off.
Laugh. Smile. Don’t give a damn what they think.
Still, I was trying different treatments to stop my hair from falling out completely. One of them was a steroid cream I’d rub on my head and eyebrows. Unfortunately, with that stuff my hair only grew back in patches. That looked even worse.
The other thing I tried, when I was in high school, were cortisone shots. The shots were supposed to stimulate hair growth by suppressing the immune system around my head and eyebrows, since that was what was causing the hair loss. And it worked … a little. I’d get a few patches of hair back on my head and eyebrows, but damn if it didn’t hurt like hell.
Every two weeks or so, I’d show up to the doctor’s office, and he would come in with a tray full of needles. And I’m telling you, these weren’t thin needles. The doctor would tilt my head one way, and then jab the needle into my skull 15 times. Then the other side.
Seriously, 15 times. Each side. Every two weeks. For all of high school.
This is the kind of pain that some kids with alopecia go through. Then they get to go to school and deal with another kind of pain.
When I got to Ohio State, my mom asked me if I wanted to continue the shots. By then, I was at peace with it. I was comfortable with who I was. My teammates at Ohio State didn’t care. My coaches didn’t care. So I just embraced the baldness, and all the comments that come along with it. And it’s been that way ever since.
I was bald when I was chasing my dreams, and I was bald when I was living ’em. Who cares?
That’s my message to people I meet with alopecia who really struggle with it, and who won’t go anywhere without a hat. I know how tough it is. But I look at it this way — if your hair magically grows back tomorrow, it’s not going to change who you are as a person, or what you’re capable of, or who loves you.
I was the bald kid in high school.
Then I was the bald kid at Ohio State.
Then I was the bald guy in the NFL.
Don Wright/AP Images
Then I was standing in an elevator with James Harrison last Thanksgiving.
“… Bruh.”
I’ll never forget the look on his face.
I had some hair again. And I have no idea why. Like, this isn’t supposed to happen. I haven’t been doing the shots or the cream or anything for years. My hair just decided to grow back on its own, I guess.
And you know what? It didn’t change anything. I was amazed for like a day, but then I woke up the next morning, and I was still me, and I was like …
That Ezekiel Elliott, man. Damn.An anti-gay religious extremist who supports the deportation of all LGBT people has now abused the memory of Robin Williams by claiming his recent visit to rehab was ineffective and -- for some illogical reason -- therefore "ex-gay" therapy shouldn't be banned.
Leave it to the hate mongers at the certified anti-gay hate group Family Research Council to abuse the memory of Robin Williams and even ignore recent statements by Williams' wife about his sobriety and recent Parkinson's diagnosis.
FRC's Peter Sprigg, who infamously answered "yes" in 2010 when MSNBC's Chris Matthews asked him if "gay behavior should be outlawed," on Monday penned an article somehow conflating Williams' rehab visit to harmful "ex-gay" therapy.
"Apparently, Williams quit alcohol and drugs cold turkey in the early '80's, without any professional therapeutic intervention," Sprigg writes.
He reported that he stayed sober for twenty years, but then began drinking again while working on location in a remote town in Alaska. After three years of drinking, a "family intervention" persuaded Williams to enter "rehab" (residential drug and alcohol rehabilitation) at the Hazelden Addiction Treatment Center near Newberg, Oregon, where he stayed for two months. After that, Williams told The Guardian, he continued to attend meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous every week. Then just last month, news broke that Williams had again returned to rehab, this time at a Hazelden center in Minnesota. A spokesman for Williams said that he had not relapsed into substance abuse, but was "simply taking the opportunity to fine-tune and focus on his continued commitment [to sobriety], of which he remains extremely proud." That was on July 1 — but six weeks later, he was dead.
Of course, it's inconvenient to Sprigg's twisted tale to include the facts that Williams' wife stated he was not abusing drugs or alcohol, and, sadly, he had recently been diagnosed with Parkinson's disease.
"Robin's sobriety was intact and he was brave as he struggled with his own battles of depression, anxiety as well as early stages of Parkinson's disease, which he was not yet ready to share publicly," Williams' wife, Susan Schneider said.
But Sprigg, an ordained Baptist minister and FRC's Senior Fellow for Policy Studies, sees things differently.
Ignoring the readily-available history surrounding Williams' tragic suicide, Sprigg asks, "In light of this history, I have only one question for socially liberal political activists — why aren't you trying to outlaw rehab?"
I ask the question because such activists are trying to ban a form of mental health treatment — not drug and alcohol rehabilitation, but "sexual orientation change efforts" ("SOCE"), also known as "sexual reorientation therapy." Such therapy involves assisting people with unwanted same-sex attractions to overcome them.
Nothing like abusing the memory of an internationally-beloved comic genius who devoted his life to the happiness of others, to try to advance a scientifically harmful and hate-flled agenda.
Sprigg discounts that the American Psychological Association has deemed "ex-gay" or "reparative" therapy harmful and ineffective, claiming they are no less safe or ineffective than "any other form of mental health treatment" -- which is clearly false.
There are good, solid reasons the Southern Poverty Law Center deems the Family Research Council a certified hate group -- primarily its dissemination of falsehoods about LGBT people.
Add Sprigg and his falsehoods to that list.
Image: FRC
See a mistake? Email corrections to: [email protected]Beau knows how to impress at the college level. Beau knows how to adapt and thrive quickly at the AHL level, too.
Does Beau know how to play in the NHL?
He might soon find out.
Beau Bennett, the Penguins’ 2010 first-round draft pick, is one of the few players on the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton roster being invited to the team’s abbreviated training camp. Given how brief camp will be — between five and seven days, likely — the Penguins aren’t interested in monitoring the progress of their top offensive prospect, but rather are curious to see if he can help them immediately.
“I would love to get that chance,” Bennett said following a recent game in Wilkes-Barre. “I’m not really sure what the team has in mind, but playing in the NHL is always the goal.”
Bennett has made a sharp impression on many in the organization, namely the guy who might someday be on his line.
Penguins captain Sidney Crosby and Bennett skated together in Los Angeles this summer. Bennett’s stick handling, passing and overall ability were impressive.
“He’s really good,” Crosby said. “Great hands, and he can really skate. You can see that he’s going to be really good.”
Bennett’s production in Wilkes-Barre has been impressive, especially considering he isn’t working with a terrifically talented unit of forwards. There are few NHL prospects among Wilkes-Barre’s forwards, most of them grinders.
Bennett is no grinder.
“He’s just so incredibly skilled,” said forward Eric Tangradi, who also will take part in Penguins’ training camp. “He’s been great all year. Honestly, he’s just a little different than the other guys here because of his skill level.”
Despite missing six games this season, Bennett leads Wilkes-Barre/Scranton with 23 points in 28 games.
“You can just tell he’s going to be a good NHL player,” said Joe Morrow, a fellow first-round pick and Bennett’s roommate. “He’s been awesome all year. He can do it all.”
The Penguins have worked with Bennett on adapting to their up-tempo system. Bennett has a tendency to slow down the play, taking advantage of his ability to see the ice.
Nothing in coach Dan Bylsma’s system is based on slowing down the play.
“They’ve made it pretty clear to me that Pittsburgh Penguins hockey is all about north and south,” Bennett said. “That’s been a change for me a little bit, but I’m getting used to it, and I have a pretty good idea of what they want out of me.”
Anyone concerned that the Penguins’ desire to alter Bennett’s style will rob him of his natural creativity should not be concerned.
Just ask Crosby.
“No,” Crosby said. “I’m not worried about that. The creativity in his game is something he’ll never lose.”
There are plenty of obstacles on Bennett’s path to the NHL. He has only a few days of training camp to impress his coaches, most of the lineup is already set and he is only 13 months removed from surgery to repair a ruptured tendon in his wrist.
Still, Bennett’s talent entices the Penguins, and Bylsma said he is unsure who will play on the second line with center Evgeni Malkin and right wing James Neal.
“You watch Beau play,” Tangradi said, “and he just impresses you. He can play.”
Josh Yohe is a staff writer for Trib Total Media. Reach him at jyohe@tribweb.com or via Twitter @JoshYohe_Trib.We thought we had successfully disenchanted the world, had exorcised the last sprite and fairy, thrown away our spellbooks and our alchemical paraphernalia, given up on the quest for the true language and the philosopher’s stone, and gotten past our dependence on priests. And barely had theology begun the work of mourning for this lost cosmos than it began to transpire that a strange new magic had crept into the world. Instead of miracles, we have keyhole surgery and 3D printed body parts; instead of witch’s brooms, increasingly mysterious automobiles; instead of covens, we have twitter mobs. Instead of the hocus pocus of hoc est |
. Wherever he ends up over the next few years, you should be able to get a terrific kick out of following his bouts and the chaos amid which he thrives.
Pick up Jack's new kindle book, Finding the Art, or find him at his blog, Fights Gone By..- In a recent interview with Commonweal, Cardinal Walter Kasper discussed his proposal that divorced and remarried persons might receive Communion, suggesting that Christians aren't called to be heroic.
“To live together as brother and sister? Of course I have high respect for those who are doing this,” he told Commonweal's Matthew Boudway and Grant Gallicho, referring to divorced partners who have entered into a new civil marriage.
“But it's a heroic act, and heroism is not for the average Christian.”
A divorced and remarried couple living as brother and sister, he said in the article published May 7, “could also create new tensions … normally it’s also the sexual relations in such a communion, so I can’t say whether it’s ongoing adultery.”
The president emeritus of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity came to the fore after a Feb. 20 address on marriage to a group of cardinals, controversial for its comments on remarriage and the reception of Communion.
According to La Stampa, Cardinal Camillo Ruini has reported that the vast majority of cardinals present at the consistory – about 85 percent – expressed opinions contrary to those laid out by Cardinal Kasper.
Cardinal Kasper's interview with Commonweal began with a discussion of mercy, which he juxtaposed with justice; he suggested that there be should be greater mercy within the Church regarding both the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith’s “criticisms of some theologians” and “the question of Communion for divorced and remarried people.”
With respect to this question, he told Commonweal that a failed marriage is a shortcoming which “has to be confessed.”
“Penance is the most important thing,” he said, highlighting the importance of repentance and “a new orientation,” living the “new quasi-family or the new partnership” in a Christian way.
“My question – not a solution, but a question – is this: Is absolution not possible in this case? And if absolution, then also Holy Communion?
He asserted that “there are many themes, many arguments in our Catholic tradition that could allow this way forward.”
It was at this point that the cardinal stated that the average Christian is not meant for heroism.
Saying that for divorced and remarried persons to live and brother and sister is heroic, he added that “people must do what is possible in their situation.”
He noted the importance of finding a position “between rigorism and laxism,” citing St. Alphonsus Liguori, patron of moral theology, as an example of this. “We aren’t in bad company if we rely on him.”
Cardinal Kasper did not mention that St. Alphonsus Liguori flourished when the rigorist teachings of Jansenism were still en vogue in much of moral theology.
The cardinal responded to his critics – mentioning Cardinal Caffarra by name, though the Archbishop of Bologna has been joined by at least Cardinals Mueller, Brandmueller, Bagnasco, Sarah, Re, Ruini, and De Paolis – by professing that marriage is indissoluble and that when someone is divorced and enters a new union, “the bond of marriage remains.”
Yet he said that if a person repents of the failure of their marriage, “God provides a new chance -- not by cancelling the demands of justice: God does not justify the sin. But he justifies the sinner.”
“Many of my critics do not understand that distinction,” Cardinal Kasper claimed.
“I respect those who have a different position, but on the other hand, they must see what the concrete situation is today. How can we help the people who struggle in these situations?”
He acknowledged that in such situations, the “second marriage” is “not a marriage in our Christian sense,” adding that he would be “against celebrating it in church.”
Cardinal Kasper drew an analogy between such a second marriage, and other Churches and ecclesial communities, which have “elements of the true church” and yet lack its fullness.
“It’s not the best situation. It’s the best possible situation. Realistically, we should respect such situations, as we do with Protestants.”
The cardinal professed: “In no way do I deny the indissolubility of a sacramental marriage.”
“That would be stupid,” he said.
The Church “must enforce” marriage’s indissolubility, he stated, as well as “help people to understand it and to live it out.”
“But,” he added, “we must recognize that Christians can fail, and then we have to help them.”Warner Bros./Time Warner Inc. announced late last night that Clint Eastwood’s The 15:17 to Paris would be debuting worldwide on Feb. 9, 2018. The drama about three young Americans who thwarted a terrorist attack on a train bound for Paris features the three real-life heroes (Anthony Sadler, Alek Skarlatos and Spencer Stone) playing themselves will not be a part of the year-end Oscar race.
That’s surprising considering the pedigree, and considering that Warner Bros. and Clint Eastwood gave the Oscars a last-minute frontrunner back in 2004 with Million Dollar Baby. Of course, in a year when most of the conventional Oscar fare is coming up a little short, Warner Bros. already has the frontrunner in Chris Nolan’s (excellent, acclaimed and highly successful) Dunkirk.
So, as of now, there are just three films that haven’t been seen by the press: Paul Thomas Anderson’s The Phantom Thread, Ridley Scott’s All the Money in the World (which will close out the AFI festival on Nov. 16) and Steven Spielberg’s The Post.
We haven’t had a Best Picture winner that was released in December since 2005, when Million Dollar Baby was the fourth film in a row (after The Return of the King, Chicago and A Beautiful Mind) to win after a late December release. It stands to reason that the would-be winner has already been released or will be released within the next five weeks.
And while there are certainly contenders like The Florida Project, The Shape of Water and Call Me by Your Name that are beloved here and there, we don’t have any conventional one-two punch frontrunners like (for example) Forest Gump and Pulp Fiction, Gravity and 12 Years a Slave, Boyhood and Birdman, or La La Land and Moonlight.
The season is as wide open as I can remember, maybe more so than in 2004 when, before Million Dollar Baby screened in November, it looked like Martin Scorsese’s The Aviator might win by default. Part of this is due to the newer challenges of getting folks to pay money to see would-be Oscar contenders in this Netflix/VOD era. Had Battle of the Sexes been a bigger hit, for example, it might have found itself in the running.
And with Weinstein Company going down in flames for obvious reasons, even the surprisingly popular Wind River (which has earned $32 million domestic since August) is a long shot. So either something like The Shape of Water or The Post pops in the next two months, or we’re going to have an Oscar season filled with relative box office misses and without a consensus pick.
Unless, of course, the Academy notices that there is a relative bounty of worthwhile movies just outside the season. Obviously, if Chris Nolan’s Dunkirk wins the day, that’ll be a case of an offseason champion winning the race, and the extent to which Warner Bros. had tried to keep it in the game (sending out 4K screeners, for example) is encouraging for those of us who wish that the awards season would be a bit more spread out.
If studios can release an acclaimed crowdpleaser in the middle of the summer and keep it in the conversation in the last months of the year, then we might get movies like The Shape of Water or Battle of the Sexes earlier in the year, when they might stand out among the conventional would-be blockbuster fare. And, if I may, an Oscar lineup made up of (among other movies) Universal/Comcast Corp.'s Get Out, Warner Bros.' Dunkirk, WB's Wonder Woman and Lionsgate's The Big Sick would be a lovely end result.
Hell, I will go further and argue that victories for Jordan Peele’s smash horror comedy and Patty Jenkins’ blockbuster superhero movie qualify as “answers” to the current sexual harassment/sexual assault allegations finally enveloping the industry. As I’ve discussed before, part of the narrative of an Oscar-winning movie is that said movie represents a kind of “Look what we can do!” aspirational victory. And the narrative may also represent a theoretical message from Hollywood to itself.
A month ago, I might have argued that DC Film's Wonder Woman and Blumhouse's Get Out (as opposed to standard white-dude movies about important/conflicted white dudes doing cool/tormented white-dude things) qualified as rebuttals to the culture that elected Donald Trump as president of the United States. But now, along with that, victories for Patty Jenkins’ feminist superhero adventure and Jordan Peele’s of-the-moment topical social thriller would count as rebuttals to Hollywood’s own culture as well.
That may sound patronizing, but it’s a potent narrative in a season where narrative may matter more than usual due to a lack of a conventional frontrunner. Both Get Out and Wonder Woman were critically-acclaimed popcorn entertainments that tapped into the cultural zeitgeist and damn well mattered to the general populace (and the media) in a time when television seemed on the verge of overtaking popular cinema as the water-cooler entertainment of choice. They were both hugely profitable hit movies that thrived as a rebuttal to conventional wisdom about what makes a blockbuster and who can helm a hit movie.
Whether or not Wonder Woman or Get Out are the best movies of the year (Get Out is my pick for best of 2017 thus far), and I would argue that A) they are up there for enough moviegoers and possibly voters and B) that barely matters considering how many merely pretty good awards contenders sneak in each year, they are unquestionably aspirational movies, one that offers an idealized version of what is now a definitive Hollywood product (the superhero blockbuster and the horror movie). Critics loved them, and audiences loved them. They both succeeded as genuine triumphs.
There are positive narratives to be found in The Florida Project and (presumably) Call Me by Your Name, The Shape of Water and The Post. But the difference, for what it’s worth, is that Get Out and Wonder Woman were embraced by the populace at large. While box office shouldn’t determine Oscar worth, it should be a factor. We’ll see how this plays out, but a lack of conventional frontrunners in the current season and aspirational narratives, both on-camera and behind-the-scenes, may just put Get Out and Wonder Woman in the Best Picture race.
No, nominating (or awarding) Wonder Woman won't cure Hollywood's sexist culture any more than nominating (or awarding) Get Out will turn Hollywood into a place where the likes of Patty Jenkins and Jordan Peele will have the same opportunity as Guy Ritchie. But it will certainly help send a message about what kind of place Hollywood wants to be, and it will be lovely to see a super-successful and super-acclaimed popcorn movie triumph over (or alongside) conventional Oscar-y movies that so few folks outside the film bubble actually see.
Or maybe Dunkirk will just sweep, and that would be OK, too.PRYPYAT, Ukraine (Reuters) - Any Ukrainian over 35 can tell you where they were when they heard about the accident at the Chernobyl plant.
An interior view of a building in the abandoned city of Prypiat, near the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Ukraine, February 24, 2011. REUTERS/Gleb Garanich
“I remember calling my husband. There had been rumors for days about a nuclear accident. We had even hung blankets on the windows to stop radiation because we didn’t know what to do,” said Natalya, a 46-year-old financial analyst in Kiev, whose husband was a journalist on a daily newspaper.
“He told me there had been a fire at the atomic plant in Chernobyl. That was for me the first confirmation that the reactor had collapsed,” she said this week, seated at her desk in her central Kiev office.
“We had no idea what to expect. It was awful.”
As Japan battles to prevent a meltdown at its earthquake-hit Fukushima Daini nuclear plant, the people of Ukraine are preparing to mark the 25th anniversary of the world’s worst nuclear accident.
The physical and financial legacies of that disaster are obvious: a 30-km uninhabited ring around the Chernobyl plant, billions of dollars spent cleaning the region and a major new effort to drum up 600 million euros ($840 million) in fresh funds that Kiev says is needed to build a more durable casement over the stricken reactor.
Just as powerful are the scars that are less easily seen: fear and an abiding suspicion that despite the reassuring reports by authorities and scientific bodies people may still be dying from radiation after-effects.
While debate about the health impact continues, there is little doubt people in Ukraine and neighboring Belarus carry a psychological burden. Repeated studies have found that “exposed populations had anxiety levels that were twice as high” as people unaffected by the accident, according to a 2006 United Nations report. Those exposed to radiation were also “3-4 times more likely to report multiple unexplained physical symptoms and subjective poor health than were unaffected control groups.”
There are, of course, crucial differences between Chernobyl and the disaster unfolding in Japan.
The Chernobyl accident was the product of human error when a test was poorly executed, while the Japanese failure was triggered by an earthquake and tsunami.
Chernobyl occurred in a secretive Soviet society which reformer Mikhail Gorbachev was only just opening up. The authorities embarked on an attempted cover-up and only partly admitted the truth three days later, denying themselves the chance of rapid international aid.
Despite criticisms that Tokyo could be a lot more transparent, Japan’s disaster has taken place in a relatively open society and international help has been quick to come.
Most importantly, thick containment walls at the Fukushima Daini plant shield the reactor cores so that even if there was a meltdown of the nuclear fuel it’s unlikely to lead to a major escape of dangerous radioactive clouds into the atmosphere.
At Chernobyl, there was no containment structure.
“When it blew, it blew everything straight out into the atmosphere,” said Murray Jennex of San Diego State University.
Despite those differences, though, the Chernobyl experience still contains lessons for Japan and other countries, says Volodymyr Holosha, the top Ukrainian Emergency Ministry official in charge of the area surrounding the Chernobyl plant.
“We were not ready for it — neither technologically nor financially,” Holosha told reporters in Kiev last month. “This is a priceless experience for other countries.”
EXPERIMENT GONE WRONG
In the early hours of April 26, 1986, in the model Soviet town of Prypyat, a satellite of the much bigger Chernobyl, workers at a nuclear power plant demobilized the safety systems on the number four reactor, which had come on line only three years previously.
It was a risky experiment to see whether the cooling system could still function using power generated from the reactor alone in the event of a failure in the auxiliary electricity supply.
It could not. There was a massive power surge that blew off the reactor’s heavy concrete and metal lid and sent smoldering nuclear material into the atmosphere. Dozens of plant staff died on the spot or immediately afterwards in hospital. Hundreds of thousands of rescue workers, including Soviet Army conscripts, were rushed to the site to put out the fires, decontaminate it and seal off the damaged reactor by building a concrete shell around it.
At first, authorities denied there was a problem. When they finally admitted the truth more than a day later, many thousands of inhabitants simply picked up a few of their belongings and headed off — many of them to the capital Kiev 80 km (50 miles) to the south, never to return. Iryna Lobanova, 44, a civil servant, was due to get married in Prypyat on the day of the explosion but assumed all ceremonies would be canceled.
“I thought that war had started,” she told Reuters this week.
“But the local authorities told us go on with all planned ceremonies.” Nobody was allowed to leave the town until the official evacuation was announced on the Sunday” — 36 hours later — “following an order from Moscow,” she said.
Lobanova went ahead with her wedding — and left the next day with her husband by train.
A LEGACY OF BAD HEALTH
The make-shift concrete shelter hastily thrown up in the months after the explosion is often referred to as a “sarcophagus”, a funeral term made even more fitting by the fact that it houses the body of at least one plant worker who rescuers were unable to recover.
The official short-term death toll from the accident was 31 but many more people died of radiation-related sicknesses such as cancer. The total death toll and long-term health effects remain a subject of intense debate even 25 years after the disaster.
“(The disaster) brought suffering on millions of people,” said the Emergency Ministry’s Holosha.
“About 600,000 people were involved in mitigating the consequences of the accident. About 300,000 of them were Ukrainians. Out of those, 100,000 are disabled now.”
A 2008 United Nations study cited a “dramatic increase in thyroid cancer incidence” in the Ukraine and just across the border in Belarus. Children seemed to be especially vulnerable because they drank milk with high levels of radioactive iodine.
“One arrives at between 12,000 and 83,000 children born with congenital deformations in the region of Chernobyl, and around 30,000 to 207,000 genetically damaged children worldwide,” German physicians’ organization IPPNW said in a report in 2006.
Those figures are far lower than health officials had predicted. Indeed, the UN says that overall health effects were less severe than initially expected and that only a few thousand people had died as a result of the accident.
But a 2009 book by a group of Russian and Belarussian scientists published by the New York Academy of Sciences argued that previous studies were misled by rigged Soviet statistics.
“The official position of the Chernobyl Forum (a group of UN agencies) is that about 9,000 related deaths have occurred and some 200,000 people have illnesses caused by the catastrophe,” authors Alexei Yablokov, Vasily Nesterenko and Alexei Nesterenko wrote in “Chernobyl: Consequences of the catastrophe for people and the Environment”.
“A more accurate number estimates nearly 400 million human beings have been exposed to Chernobyl’s radioactive fallout and, for many generations, they and their descendants will suffer the devastating consequences.”
The authors argued that the global death toll by 2004 was closer to 1 million and said health effects included birth defects, pregnancy losses, accelerated aging, brain damage, heart, endocrine, kidney, gastrointestinal and lung diseases.
“It is clear that tens of millions of people, not only in Belarus, Ukraine and Russia, but worldwide, will live under measurable chronic radioactive contamination for many decades,” they wrote.
SEALED-OFF ZONE
The most severe contamination occurred within the so-called Exclusion Zone, a circular area around the power plant with a radius of 30 kilometers (19 miles) that has been deemed unsuitable for living and is closed to unsanctioned visitors.
Several villages and a whole pine forest in the zone were bulldozed and buried shortly after the disaster. Other small settlements are overgrown with trees and bushes that have made the red and white brick houses barely visible.
Prypyat, built to house Chernobyl power plant workers and their families and with a bright future ahead of it as a model Soviet ‘atomgrad’ town, had a pre-disaster population of about 50,000.
Now it is a ghost town that greets its rare visitors with eerie silence.
A shop building in the center is full of rubble and broken furniture — remnants of years of looting which the government could not prevent and which spread hazardous substances across the country.
A portrait of Soviet state founder Vladimir Lenin lies on the floor, covered by a thick layer of dust.
At a children’s amusement park, a Ferris wheel due to be launched less than a week after the disaster is rusting away.
Prypyat’s residents, mostly young families, were evacuated in a six-hour operation which began more than 36 hours after the accident.
In the days that followed, as the fallout was driven by a south-east wind across neighboring Belarus, the Soviet government evacuated thousands of people from other areas under threat.
“We were evacuated on May 4,” said Makar Krasovsky, 73, who lived in the Belarussian village of Pogonnoye 27 km (17 miles) from the plant. “Children had been evacuated earlier, on May 1. Nobody knew anything. Nobody told us anything.”
“We were told to take with us clothes for the next three days but nothing else because everything was contaminated. They promised us the reactor would be shut down and we would return in three days,” he said by telephone from the town of Khoyniki.
Pogonnoye is still sealed off and visits are only allowed once a year — on a day when local Orthodox Christians attend the graves of their ancestors.
FINANCIAL BURDEN
The accident prompted former Socialist bloc nations to shut down reactors of the same design. But the Chernobyl plant itself kept running until 2000 when Ukraine agreed to shut it down after Kiev was promised European aid.
The European Commission and international donors have since committed about 2 billion euros to projects aimed at cleaning up the area and securing the plant. Another 740 million euros remains to be raised: 600 million for the new casement and 140 million waste storage facilities.
Holosha says Ukraine itself has spent much more.
“Since Ukraine gained independence (after the collapse of the Soviet Union), $12 billion has been spent on dealing with the consequences (of the accident),” he said. “Most of the expenditures were linked to maintaining the exclusion zone and providing healthcare and social assistance to those who had lived in the affected area.”
The key new project at the plant is the construction of the so-called New Safe Confinement — a massive convex structure which will be assembled away from the damaged reactor and then slid into place over the existing sarcophagus. The original concrete tomb was built hastily, is supported in part by the damaged walls of the reactor building, and has already had to be reinforced.
The new structure is designed to last 100 years and should allow the reactor to be dismantled without the risk of new contamination.
The project requires 600 million euros ($840 million) in additional financing and is likely to miss the 2012 completion target by a few years due to problems such as radioactive debris encountered during excavation works.
Ukraine hopes to raise most of the funds at an international donors conference set to take place in Kiev next month on the eve of the 25th anniversary of the grim event.
Officials say Ukraine is likely to spend billions of euros on confinement upkeep costs before it finds a way to bury the reactor components, perhaps under layers of underground granite rocks. Even then the area around the plant will remain unsuitable for thousands of years. Asked how long before people can settle down and grow crops at the site, Chernobyl power plant director Ihor Gramotkin said: “At least 20,000 years.”
Yury Andreyev, shift chief at the plant’s number two reactor on the night of the explosions and now head of a non-government body representing the interests of those who fought to control the disaster, sees no danger of the Japan drama taking on the seriousness of Chernobyl.
“The scale of the destruction (in Japan), both nuclear and radiation, is 10,000 times lower that what happened to us in Chernobyl. About 30 tonnes of nuclear fuel were discharged (at Chernobyl). Here (in Japan) there was not the same discharge,” he told journalists on Tuesday.
POLITICAL FALLOUT
Despite the scale of the Chernobyl disaster, both Ukraine and Belarus still rely heavily on nuclear energy, having no developed hydrocarbon resources. In the coming months, both plan to borrow billion of dollars from Russia to finance the construction of new reactors of Russian design.
But that doesn’t mean people have forgotten. Locals in Kiev, 80 km (50 miles) from Chernobyl, will still tell you that they heard no birdsong in the Spring of 1986 and that the leaves of the elegant chestnut trees that line the capital’s boulevards turned yellow a month early.
Slideshow (3 Images)
The disaster and the government’s handling of it highlighted the shortcomings of the Soviet system with its unaccountable bureaucrats and entrenched culture of secrecy. Journalists subsequently uncovered evidence that the children of Communist apparatchiks had been evacuated well before others and some staff died at the plant because they had not been given orders to leave.
Mikhail Gorbachev has since said he considered the disaster one of the main nails in the coffin of the Soviet Union which eventually collapsed in 1991. The nuclear disaster in Japan is unlikely to break the country’s political system. But Tokyo should not underestimate the profound power of a nuclear meltdown — physical and political.
(Olzhas Auyezov reported from Prypyat, Richard Balmforth from Kiev; additional reporting by Andrei Makhovsky in Minsk, Natalya Zinets and Pavel Polityuk in Kiev, and Elaine Lies in Tokyo)The Kentucky Derby is gearing up to run for a 143rd time on Saturday, and the 2017 edition of this Triple Crown race is set to make history. That's because this is the first time in history that the Kentucky Derby is pairing up with a cutting-edge artificial intelligence startup to handicap the race. Organizers from Churchill Downs, the company that owns the namesake track, have tapped Unanimous A.I.—creators of Artificial Swarm Intelligence—and a collection of top handicappers and analysts to make expert picks for the Run For The Roses.
Some may remember Unanimous A.I. from their incredible performance in last year’s Kentucky Derby. The company defied the odds by utilizing Swarm A.I to predict the superfecta outcome—which is the top four horses in exact order—of the race.
For those unfamiliar with horse racing, this is a huge deal. It’s never easy to pick the superfecta in a small race, and it is extremely difficult to accomplish this in the Kentucky Derby—which is the most prestigious event in the sport and boasts a 20-horse field. To make things even more difficult to project, the track at Churchill Downs is extremely long—10 furlongs or 1 and 1/4 of a mile to be exact—and horses must be three-years-old to run. To put it all in perspective, getting the first four horses correct is such a tough task that a $20 superfecta bet on last year’s race would have returned $11,000.
Churchill Downs took note of this outstanding feat and invited Unanimous A.I. to be part of the action in 2017. The track and it’s wagering arm, Twinspires.com, invited some of the top horse racing minds in the industry to make up the “swarm” that will predict the outcome of this year’s race. Last year’s superfecta pick came from an online swarm of self-identified horse-racing enthusiasts, while this year’s crop is a group of proven experts. The collective is getting together on Wednesday to make picks and the results will be publicly released on Thursday, giving potential bettors time to utilize the information to make an informed wager ahead of Saturday’s Run for the Roses.
Swarm A.I. is inspired by the way that birds and other animals flock together in order to amplify their intelligence and decision-making as a group, going far beyond what an individual is capable of. Unanimous A.I., founded by Dr. Louis Rosenberg, came up with algorithms that allow for humans to benefit from a hive mind. The founder had this to say about his company’s technology leading up to this weekend’s race:
While predicting sports always involve a large element of chance, Unanimous A.I. taps the intelligence of groups and evokes the best possible prediction based on the available information. We have seen this work in a wide range of fields, from forecasting movie box-office to predicting the price of bitcoin. We are excited to see how these handicappers do against one of the most unpredictable of events – the race commonly known as the most exciting two minutes in all of sports.
Swarm A.I. has worked well so far and the 2017 Kentucky Derby will be a perfect test for it’s continued use in handicapping. If the swarm can repeat its successes, this time using even better sources in the swarm, it could change horse racing betting forever.
For those who want to get involved, TwinSpires will be running a $10,000 players pool that will make wagers based on the results of the Unanimous A.I. swarm. Members of the public can buy into this—with shares starting as little as $10—and earn a piece of the profit should the swarm once again correctly project the outcome of the Kentucky Derby.OWEN SOUND, ONT.–Just hours before he was savagely attacked by a pack of thugs here, a Toronto man had complained to police he was being harassed and accused of being a rapist. When a 17-year-old girl later confronted him on a downtown street and made similar allegations, the man was attacked by as many as six youths and young men who stabbed him twice in the chest, once in the back, hit him with a piece of lumber and, according to a witness, "beat the crap out of him." The 42-year-old Toronto man is black. His attackers are white. But Deputy Chief Bill Sornberger of Owen Sound police said the Wednesday night attack wasn't racially motivated. "He was absolutely innocent, simply in the wrong place at the wrong time," Sornberger told the Star. "He was a victim of mistaken identity."
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The man, who lives in Etobicoke, has been working with the local hydro authority in recent weeks, staying in Owen Sound Sunday to Thursday, Sornberger said. "He's just a decent guy up here to do a job and make a living," he said. The victim has asked police to withhold his name. Owen Sound Mayor Ruth Lovell was on her way to visit him in hospital last night.
Hints in the local media yesterday that the attack might have been racially motivated spread through this Georgian Bay community like wildfire. "It's embarrassing," said book-shop owner Bea Miller, on the eve of a weekend emancipation festival to mark the end of slavery. "We're the last stop on the Underground Railway. We're just a normal little tourist town, a hockey town. Every town wants a great reputation and we do. We don't want this kind of thing happening. But every town, small or large, has people who will cause problems." Delia Burtwistle, 41, watched the attack about 11:30 p.m. from her apartment overlooking the downtown four corners at 2nd Ave. W. at 10th St. W. "I saw about five guys beating on a black guy with a 2-by-4," she said. "They had him right up against a van, beating the crap right out of him."
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Two of the attackers were also stabbed, one on the hand, another on the leg near his groin. Police arrested four youths, including the 17-year-old girl, who face charges ranging from assault to assault with a weapon. Sornberger said the attack occurred as the man left a coffee shop where he had been accused of being a rapist just hours earlier. "It upset him so much he called us," the deputy said. "He was quite upset and affronted by the whole thing. He asked if a rapist was at large in the community. We sent an officer down there to try and sort it out." But the man was confronted again as he crossed the main intersection. "It wasn't who he was, but he fit a description of a man," Sornberger said. "It wasn't `There's a black guy, let's go get him.' In the middle of the assault, he's on his cellphone trying to call us. He's innocent in all ways." Witnesses told police the man was attacked before he fought back, punching the young woman and stabbing two of his assailants. Sornberger has been deputy police chief in Owen Sound for about a year after 30 years on the Toronto force. He said residents are appalled by what happened. "It's a safe city of really decent, hard-working people who hate this stain on their community," he said. As for a rapist on the loose in Owen Sound, he said there isn't one. "We are not currently looking for a black male for rape or sexual assault," the deputy said. "He doesn't exist."Jeff Scardino figured out how to stand out from the crowd. Jeff Scardino It's difficult to stand out among hundreds of qualified applicants in today's competitive job market.
We know the importance of sending in a memorable résumé and cover letter, but it's easier said than done.
How do you leave a lasting impression on a prospective employer?
Jeff Scardino, senior creative at Ogilvy & Mather and professor at the Miami Ad School in Brooklyn, may have an answer to this classic job seeker's dilemma.
He designed what he calls the relevant résumé— a résumé littered with your failures, bad references, and non-skills.
His personal one highlights several losing pitches during his time in the advertising industry, "missed honors," his inability to remember names, and even romantic failures from his time at Ohio University:
Jeff Scardino
We spoke to him a few months ago when he launched this innovative strategy, and he was confident in its potential, despite its extremities. He believed it would be a creative way to stand out and get your foot in the door.
Since our conversation, he put his theory to test.
Scardino applied for 10 positions, all of which he was qualified for and genuinely interested in. Not all the positions were in the realm of advertising, his expertise. "I kept it within my skill set," he tells us of his application process. "But I did expand outside of advertising by applying for writing roles."
He sent in two separate applications to each company, spacing them out over a week and using a different name and address on each one. He also wrote separate cover letters to pair with the different résumés.
The results were surprisingly lopsided.
The regular résumé received one response and zero meeting requests, while the relevant résumé received eight responses and five meeting requests.
One company replied:
First off, I applaud you. I have never received a résumé like yours. I see hundreds of résumés a year so it was refreshing to see someone take a different approach. I've been passing it around the office, and everyone is dying to meet you.
Another was equally intrigued:
I just received your relevant résumé. Very interesting. Unfortunately, the position has been filled. But I would love to learn more about your project. This is the kind of thinking we love here.
But the two most telling responses were from companies that were initially skeptical, but still replied.
"To me, those two proved my hypothesis more than the people who were really interested by it," Scardino tells us. "Even though they thought it was a joke, they still responded to me, and I was able to open that conversation and explain myself. And they got it."
While Scardino's experiment only extended to 10 companies, with a focus in creatively-minded industries, it seems as if companies are open to — and refreshed by — this new approach. Comfort with being transparent, honest, and vulnerable is an attractive quality, and could score you a follow up phone call, informational meeting, or interview.
Scardino emphasized that this was not a one and done experiment, and plans to continue the push to make the relevant résumé more relevant.
For now, it's a bold technique for getting face time with prospective employers. However, if everyone starts sending out résumés filled with failures, Scardino may have to go back to the drawing boards.
Check out his video summing up the results from his experiment:It’s a bad day to be the producer of game videos on YouTube. Dozens of YouTubers are reporting that they’ve received copyright claims against tens or sometimes hundreds of their videos.
The copyright claims seem to be coming not from game publishers, but as a result of tightening of restrictions to how you’re allowed to monetize videos. In fact, numerous game publishers – including Ubisoft, Blizzard, Deep Silver and Capcom – have reached out to offer help against the claims.
This gets complicated quickly and is the tip of the iceberg as far as the potential problems of distributing game videos on YouTube goes. If you play games, there’s a good chance you spend a portion of your time watching other people play games, as a source of advice, criticism, journalism and entertainment. It’s probably worth being aware of some of the issues surrounding the scene, then.
This story technically started last week, when YouTube announced a change in the way videos belonging to Affiliates[1] of Multi-Channel Networks[2] would be reviewed before monetization. The new system would potentially leave your videos in limbo for days while they were checked. That’s a significant change to the process, especially if making YouTube videos is your business.
There’s a larger problem: videogame channels are almost entirely dependent on third-party materials. If a videogame publisher hasn’t explicitly granted you permission to record their game, there’s no guarantee that you can monetize the content within the video without YouTube putting a mark against your name. Worse, if that game has music, and that music is released on a soundtrack album, then you might find that YouTube’s Content ID process automatically matches that audio against a record company’s catalogue.
This is essentially what has started happening, as reported by CVG. TetraNinja (480,000 subscribers) has had 350+ previously uploaded videos blocked thus far under the tighter restrictions. TheRadBrad (1.9 million subscribers) is experiencing the same. The list of affected YouTubers keeps growing.
For their part, the games industry at large seems to be doing what they can to help. As noted above, Ubisoft, Blizzard and more have all made public statements via Twitter, their own sites or elsewhere, offering to clear the automated copyright claims as fast as they can and offering instructions for how affected producers can get in touch |
licate himself as a member of an extremist organization, or to have had any dealings with extremists beyond performing interviews as a journalist.” Most of the evidence for his supposed terrorist ties was circumstantial and based on testimony from other Guantanamo prisoners or unnamed foreign intelligence sources in the United Arab Emirates and Pakistan.
A second reason was also given:
The al-Jazeera News Network’s training program, telecommunications equipment, and newsgathering operations in Chechnya, Kosovo, and Afghanistan, including the network’s acquisition of a video of UBL [Usama bin Laden] and a subsequent interview with UBL.
The second reason is significant because the anonymous analyst writing the document, signed off on by then-Guantanamo commander Rear Admiral Mark H. Buzby, rated al-Hajj’s “intelligence value” as “high” because “during his employment with UBC and al-Jazeera, he made numerous contacts with high-level extremists to include leaders of al-Qaida and the Taliban” and “He can probably provide information about al-Jazeera Media’s possible support to al-Qaida, the Taliban, and other Islamic militant groups.”
The conclusion was symbolic of the Bush administration’s mistrust and dislike of Al Jazeera.
Al Jazeera, founded in 1996 in Qatar, has had a troubled relationship with the U.S. government since its inception, particularly over its coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict. However, the relationship took a turn for the worse after 9/11, when the U.S. government accused it of airing “terrorist propaganda” and lies, and in actively collaborating with al Qaeda. Their coverage of civilian causalities from U.S. military operations (the Battle of Fallujah was a particularly contentious example) and showing of footage from videos by al Qaeda and other terrorist groups drew sustained criticism from the Bush White House, the State Department and the Pentagon
Relations have improved, with the U.S. eager to demonstrate support for the movements that have toppled the Mubarak and Ben Ali regimes, writes Politico, “the Arab Spring has brought Al-Jazeera in from the cold,” for now, anyway. Relations are still frosty (and stirred up by anti-Muslim sentiment: Al Jazeera’s entry into the U.S. media market has been torturous).
And, perhaps more significantly, Guantanamo Bay, as well as the legal system and logic behind it, are still operating.iSight, cooling patents
Apple has today been granted three patents by the US Patent and Trademark Office, relating to several different technologies. The first of these is entitled "Video Conferencing Apparatus and Method," and covers a particular implementation of webcams. The patent makes specific reference to the defunct external iSight cameras, but also applies to the internal ones incorporated into modern Macs, and could theoretically be used to create an iPhone video camera.
The second patent describes a "noiseless cooling device," meant to strip heat from internal electronics such as hard drives, batteries, CPUs and various other forms of circuitry. The technology relies on a piezoelectric system, which instead of operating a fan, vibrates a special surface to force air to circulate. Apple notes that this concept can apply not just to computers but cellphones, media players, power supplies and monitors.
The remaining patent describes a more CPU/GPU-efficient means of applying Gaussian blur. The technique involves several downsamplings followed by an upsample, and more importantly, using a "truncated" Gaussian filter in the down phase along with linear interpolation in the up phase. This is said to dramatically reduce the burden on processors, especially with a dedicated graphics chip, and more so as the size of a blur grows.Trawlermen who sailed up the Thames in a pro-Brexit demonstration could send an angry armada to the UK Parliament amid fears the fleet has been “betrayed” by the prime minister.
The Fishing for Leave campaign represented skippers and crews across the country during the EU referendum campaign and were joined by Ukip leader Nigel Farage on a 30-vessel flotilla to London.
They even clashed with charity campaigner and former Boomtown Rat Bob Geldof on the Thames.
But now they have warned Theresa May’s flagship speech on Brexit did not offer a strong enough stance to protect the fishing rights of British vessels.
And the group is considering fresh action to ensure their industry is given an exemption to escape a repeat of the controversial Common Fisheries Policy (CFP).
When the UK negotiated its way into the European Common Market in 1973 then-prime minister Ted Heath was accused of “selling out” the fleet.
Since then, the CFP has given EU member states equal access to each other’s waters, allowing foreign vessels to fish around the Scottish coast.
Last night, skipper Alan Hastings, spokesman for Fishing for Leave, said his colleagues were “spooked” by Mrs May making no mention of British fishing in her speech.
He said: “Although a small industry, it is one the government could utilise to show its resolve on taking back control of our borders and ending the authority of EU law.
“Therefore, why not mention what could be a beacon for Brexit?”
The lobbyists are calling for the CFP to be scrapped altogether, rather than being adopted into UK law and then later repealed as has been proposed.
A recent report from the group estimated scrapping the CFP could be worth £6.3billion to the UK economy and sustain tens of thousands of new jobs.
Mr Hastings warned there may be a repeat of the flotilla demonstration or other “publicity stunts” if the government does not protect UK fleets.
The Ayrshire skipper added: “There’s something fishy going on down in London at the moment.”
Liberal Democrat MSP Tavish Scott has also warned the government that Scotland’s fishing communities “know their history”.
The Shetland MSP said: “They have been on the end of politics for decades.
“Edward Heath’s Tory government traded the industry away in the 1970s when Britain joined the common market.
“Is history about to repeat itself? Theresa May’s Brexit speech this week set out her negotiating position as the UK leaves the EU.
“In a little-reported passage, she cited industries who would want a good deal for the UK. German exporters, French farmers and Spanish fishermen.”
Mr Scott said Mrs May’s throwaway concession to Spanish skippers would open the door to fleets from around the continent.
He added: “That does not sound a good deal for the Scottish fishing industry. Are the Tories about to sell us out again?”
However, another prominent pro-Brexit skipper, Peterhead’s Jimmy Buchan, urged caution from his colleagues.
The former Conservative candidate for Westminster, who was part of the flotilla, said: “The detail hasn’t been negotiated yet.
“What she did say is that the European migrant workforce who work in our fish processing will be protected.”
When the Fishing for Leave flotilla sailed to Westminster in June they were broadsided by Bob Geldof who was pictured holding two fingers up towards Mr Farage.
In the wake of the clash Mr Geldof was accused of attempting to “torpedo” the event but a spokesman for the singer said it was important someone made a “counter-argument”.
Last night a UK Government spokeswoman said: “We recognise the importance of our fishing industry and we will be working hard to secure the best possible deal for all our fishermen – both now, and for the future.
“Leaving the EU is a real opportunity to review fisheries management in order to ensure fair access to quota, sustainable stocks and a healthy marine environment.”Image copyright Reuters Image caption There were reports of heavy explosions near the airport in Tripoli
At least seven people have been killed and 30 hurt in clashes between rival militias at Libya's airport near the capital, Tripoli, officials say.
Rebels from the Zintan region who control the international airport have been attacked by a rival group trying to take over the area.
Flights have been suspended amid reports of heavy shelling and gunfire.
Libyan leaders have struggled to bring stability to the country since Muammar Gaddafi was removed from power in 2011.
Analysis: Rana Jawad, BBC News, Tripoli
Image copyright AFP Image caption A multitude of armed groups has emerged in Libya since the end of the civil war in 2011
Although some of the rival militias who attacked airport road are known as Islamists - this is not a clear-cut battle of ideologies. At the heart of this fighting is a turf war between militias that has been brewing in the capital for a long time.
We periodically see clashes like this on a smaller scale - the difference today is some have formed alliances with either side and in the years gone by, they've grown more powerful and hungrier for power.
Tripoli is divided along district lines with local militias controlling their areas and others from outside the capital who at different times were on various government payrolls. But there has long been a belief that those who control key instillations are the ones who yield the most power over the capital.
There was a reported meeting between the rival militias overnight to calm recent tensions. They allegedly agreed that there would not be clashes in Tripoli. This is clearly far from what came next.
Zintan fighters seized control of the airport and surrounding areas, 30km (18 miles) south of Tripoli, shortly after Col Gaddafi's 42-year-rule came to an end.
It is not clear who the attacking rebels are, but Libyan media report they call themselves the Stability and Security Force.
Armed vehicles massed in the area overnight before fighting broke out at dawn, witnesses told CNN.
The violence has prompted airport authorities to suspend flights for three days, starting Sunday.
The BBC's Rana Jawad, in Tripoli, says there have recently been threats from various militias wanting to seize the airport area.
The situation in Libya remains unstable as a complex web of armed groups, which emerged from the aftermath of the civil war, are fighting for power.
Analysts say the rebels are seen by Libyans as both a blessing and a curse. On the one hand, in the absence of an effective army, they provide security across much of the country and protect the borders.
On the other, they have been accused of human rights abuses, unlawful detention and of taking the law into their own hands.London: Do you know why she feels happy when you are in jolly mood? The answer lies in your sweat.
When happy, our bodies produce chemical signals that are detectable by others who smell our sweat and instantly share our happiness, researchers report.
While previous research has shown that negative emotions related to fear and disgust are communicated via chemical composition of sweat, a few studies have examined whether the same communicative function holds for positive emotions.
"The findings show that being exposed to sweat produced under happiness induces a simulacrum of happiness in receivers, and induces a contagion of the emotional state," explained psychological scientist Gun Semin of the Utrecht University in the Netherlands.
It means that somebody who is happy will infuse others in their vicinity with happiness.
"In a way, happiness sweat is somewhat like smiling - it is infectious," he added. The research indicates that we produce chemical compounds, or chemosignals, when we experience happiness that are detectable by others who smell our sweat.
To reach this conclusion, Semin and colleagues examined whether sweat taken from people in a happy state would influence the behaviour, perception and emotional state of people exposed to the sweat.
The researchers recruited 12 males who were prohibited from alcohol use, sexual activity, consumption of smelly food or excessive exercise during the study.
The sweat donors came to the lab, rinsed and dried their armpits, and had absorbent pads attached to each armpit.
They watched a video clip intended to induce a particular emotional state (fear, happiness, neutral). The sweat pads were then removed and stored in vials.
For the second part of the study, the team recruited 36 women as women generally have both a better sense of smell and a greater sensitivity to emotional signals than men do.
The women were exposed to a sweat sample of each type (fear, happiness, neutral), with a five-minute break in between samples.
Initial analyses confirmed that the videos did influence the emotional states of the male participants.
But were these emotions conveyed to the female participants? The results suggest the answer is "yes".
Facial expression data revealed that women who were exposed to "fear sweat" showed greater activity in the medial frontalis muscle, a common feature of fear expressions.
"Women who were exposed to 'happy sweat' showed more facial muscle activity indicative of a Duchenne smile, a common component of happiness expressions.," the authors noted.
"Happiness may be communicated chemically could be of particular interest to the 'odour industry," Semin concluded.
The study was published in the journal Psychological Science.With the final cuts yesterday the opening night roster is set, and Boone Jenner will start his first full professional season on the Jackets' top line.
I remember the 2011 draft well- with the Jackets trading their first round pick to the Flyers for a whiny quitter Jeff Carter, my focus was on what they'd do with their second rounder. NHL Network streamed the second day of the draft, and the cameras were on the Columbus table when they were on the clock to make their first selection, 37th overall. The table was all smiles, with palpable levels of elation as Boone fell into their laps.
Boone has spent the last four seasons with the Oshawa Generals of the Ontario Hockey League, serving as the team's captain since 2011. He's always been a dependable two-way center, but last year saw his offensive numbers take off, with his 82 points leading the Gens. In addition to his success with Oshawa, he was also a member of Team Canada at the past two World Junior Championships.
He's had cups of coffee with the Springfield Falcons at the conclusion of his past two junior seasons, looking especially comfortable last season with the Birds- scoring a combined nine points in thirteen regular season and playoff games.
Though his time in the AHL was very brief, Boone came to camp this year looking for a job with the Jackets, but with so many returning forwards he was in-tough to win a job in the starting twelve. There was talk prior to camp that he had a chance to steal a job, but did any of us think he would start the season in the enviable position of top line left wing, opposite of Marian Gaborik?
Not bloody likely.
But that's where he is, starting the season on the team's undisputed number one scoring line. Along with center Brandon Dubinsky, the trio was assembled midway through the exhibition season, and they've been money since. Boone had a nice line in five preseason games:
Boone Jenner C CLB 5GP 3G 1A 4PTS +4
Starting the year on the top line is as plum a situation for a rookie you'll ever see. He'll have opportunities for proxy offense riding shotgun to the Jackets' top sniper. Boone is already a trustworthy and hard-working player without the puck, and pairing him with offensive players right off the bat will do nothing to hurt the development of the offensive side of his game.
There is a question of how long this will last, however.
Will he be able to endure the opposition's top checking units?
When Nathan Horton returns from injury, will Boone be forced out of the top six?
Will the fact that he's on his entry-level contract, and therefore waiver-exempt, mean that he's on a short leash?
As long as he's contributing with and without the puck, he'll remain on a scoring line. He's a very smart player who doesn't shy away from the rough stuff, so facing tough checking is something he can overcome. Given the fact that he's playing left wing and that he's a natural pivot should mean that when Horton returns his job is safe, again, providing he's still contributing. The fact that he's on his ELC though, could be working against him.
If he struggles, or if the lineup needs a shakeup, the ability to send Boone to Springfield with no risk of losing him to waivers would be the easy move for the front office and coaching staff. It makes a hell of a lot more sense to send him to the AHL if he's not playing legitimate minutes with Columbus. Simply put, if he's contributing with the Jackets, he'll be in a good situation, likely still on the top line. If he hits the rookie wall, don't bury him on the fourth line or in the press box-send him to the Falcons to get big minutes.
He's fast-tracked himself to the show, and we should all enjoy the ride while he's an NHL first-liner. He's already become a fan favorite, with the cries of "Boooooooone" from the fans when he scores a goal, even if its during a scrimmage. I'm not here to say that I think he isn't long for the AHL, rather I want people to know that what we're seeing from Boone is an unexpected bonus, and it would not be a disappointment at all if Boone needs more seasoning in the AHL.
I have a feeling that most of this post may be rendered moot, when Boone cements himself as a front-line player for the Jackets.BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Belgium’s regions agreed to a free trade pact with Canada on Thursday, ending weeks of uncertainty when internal divisions in just one country blocked the European Union of 500 million people sealing the landmark deal.
Prime Minister Charles Michel said the regions and linguistic communities had drafted a four-page addendum to the pact that answered their concerns.
The text addresses fears that a system to protect foreign investors could let multinationals block new rules on the environment, labour rights or public services - specifying that the “investment protection” regime would not come into force during an initial period. It also has a safeguard clause to protect agriculture in the event of a “market imbalance”.
“As a unilateral Belgian declaration, Canada’s approval will not be sought or needed,” a source close to the talks said, indicating the path was now clear to finalise the deal.
European Council President Donald Tusk gave the Belgian agreement to the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) a cautious welcome.
Belgium’s regional governments have until the end of Friday to consult their parliaments if needed, and ambassadors from other EU countries will also review the addendum.
All 28 EU governments back CETA, which supporters say could increase trade by 20 percent, but Belgium’s central government had been prevented from giving its consent because of objections led by the French-speaking Wallonia region.
Wallonia, along with the capital Brussels and Belgium’s groupings of French and German speakers, had opposed the deal for weeks, with fears about a flood of Canadian farm imports one of the main sticking points.
The premier of the Flemish region, Geert Bourgeois, said the original 1,598-page text of the trade deal stood.
“This (the addendum) is a clarification, the actual treaty does not change,” he said.
Canada has already agreed to a binding declaration to answer concerns raised by others, principally setting out the right of governments to regulate.
“POLITICAL HOSTAGE-TAKING”
Belgium will ask the European Court of Justice whether the investment protection system is in line with EU rules, with Wallonia still expressing reservations. Friends of the Earth described these as potential time bombs under the deal.
EU trade commissioner Cecilia Malmstrom said the investment protection system did not yet exist and the EU and Canada had time to set up a panel of independent judges to settle disputes.
“We are quite confident that it is perfectly in line with European law,” she told Reuters.
In Ottawa, Trade Minister Chrystia Freeland played down the suggestion that the Belgian addendum could effectively result in parts of CETA being unwound.
“Every trade agreement... has exit provisions,” she told reporters. “Trade agreements must be structured that way to permit national sovereignty.”
CETA could apply provisionally next year, assuming the European Parliament backs it. Its final implementation could take a few years, after all relevant national or regional parliaments have had their say.
Supporters say the deal will boost the EU economy by 12 billion euros ($13 billion) per year and Canada’s by C$12 billion ($9 billion) at a time of low growth. For Canada, it reduces reliance on the U.S. export market.
German trade groups said the CETA debacle should trigger a revamp of EU procedures.
“This is not a victory for democracy. It is political hostage-taking,” said BDI business association president Ulrich Grillo.
European Council President Donald Tusk addresses the European Parliament during a debate on the last European Summit, in Strasbourg, France, October 26, 2016. REUTERS/Vincent Kessler
Failure to agree CETA with such a like-minded country as Canada would have undermined the EU’s ability to forge other deals and damage credibility already battered by Britain’s vote to leave the bloc and disputes over the migration crisis.
“I’m sorry for all other Europeans and our Canadian partners that they had to wait, but what we managed to get here is important not just for Wallonia but for all of Europe,” said Wallonia premier Paul Magnette.
($1 = 0.9161 euro; $1 = 1.3368 Canadian dollars)Update (April 27, 2016): We received a response from the Department of Justice to our request for a court-enforced pattern and practice investigation. We continue to call for an investigation.
Update (April 11, 2016): We've issued an apology for mischaracterizing the shooting deaths of Alex Nieto and Idriss Stelley in our January letter to the DOJ. Please find more information here.
Today, the ACLU of Northern California and the ACLU Disability Rights Program sent a letter to the US Department of Justice (DOJ) urging a federal pattern and practice investigation into the SFPD for systemic civil rights violations, including the killing of Mario Woods, a young Black disabled man. Mario's death at the hands of police on Dec. 2, 2015 is unfortunately only one instance of the long-standing and deep-rooted failures in the workings of the SFPD, especially as it interacts with communities of color, Black people in particular, and people with disabilities.
Download the letter »
We join our voices to the calls made by San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee; the San Francisco Board of Supervisors; activists; and John Burris, the attorney for Mario Woods’ mother.
The Department of Justice has the unique tools and authority to independently investigate the SFPD. Only the federal government can put in motion the systemic change that the SFPD’s failures require, through enforceable deadlines and independent oversight.
We must address the myriad systemic issues at play to make sure that a horrific police killing like the death of Mario Woods never happens again in this city.
San Francisco is not immune to racism or abuse of people with disabilities. Community pressure and tireless organizing by Black leaders have helped remind the City that we need outside help to truly address the crisis of the SFPD’s failures.
These ingrained problems include:
Excessive use of deadly force against young men of color
Ample evidence of the persistent presence of racial bias
Failure to train and supervise officers to use crisis intervention and de-escalation strategies in dealing with people with disabilities
Fundamental lack of accountability throughout the SFPD and its oversight agencies
As our letter states:
As horrific as the shooting of Mario Woods is in isolation, people and public officials in San Francisco saw it in a context which made it even more alarming. Since 2000, SFPD officers have shot at least 103 people – 37 have died. In each of the 37 deaths, the Department found that the use of force was within policy and merited no discipline.
A 2014 analysis found that more than half of 19 individuals killed by San Francisco police between 2005 and January 2014 – 11 out of 19 – had a mental illness.
In its internal review of the [police shooting of Teresa Sheehan, a woman in psychiatric crisis,] San Francisco found the shooting to be “in policy.” The Department still does not have a policy requiring crisis intervention and de-escalation strategies for persons with psychiatric disabilities subject to involuntary detention.
The cases of Travis Hall, Alex Nieto, and many others also illustrate that racism is built in to the way the SFPD operates. As our letter states:
In 2013, black adults in San Francisco were 6 percent of the population, yet 40 percent of the people arrested, 44 percent of people jailed and 40 percent of people convicted. Black adults are 7 times as likely as whites to be arrested. And this disproportionality has significantly grown in the last twenty years.
However, nothing has been more illuminating than the uncovering in April of 2015 of a series of venomous and hateful text messages exchanged between SFPD officers. These messages only came to light as a result of a federal criminal prosecution. The messages contained a series of racist and homophobic comments, characterizing black people as dangerous in the most insulting terms possible, including a liberal use of the “n” word. In the wake of the text disclosures, the San Francisco District Attorney's Office launched a wide-ranging investigation that has apparently been met with stonewalling from the SFPD, and even failure to meet legal deadlines to provide public information.
These festering problems at the core of the SFPD show why any investigation that the DOJ conducts must address the SFPD’s workings as a whole in order to be effective.
San Francisco’s police need a pattern and practice investigation in order to move forward. San Francisco’s diverse communities need this investigation to do right by them. We all need a thorough investigation of the department’s systemic issues in order to heal.
Alan Schlosser is Senior Counsel with the ACLU of Northern California.Mon Place is a share house in Osaka’s port district. Shared living facilities have been increasing recently in Tokyo. But this is a new take. It’s shared living for single moms.
Traditionally Japanese cities, with the exception of student or company dorms (and so-called “gaijin houses” for foreigners), haven’t offered many options for house shares, in part because apartments tend to be designed as compact boxes for living alone or as larger condos for small families, and also for cultural reasons (the “home” is often said to be more private than in other countries).
This has been changing in recent years as a new generation of urbanites with unstable incomes and lifestyles seek out more flexible abodes where they can escape the often ridiculous upfront fees required when renting a regular apartment.
Mon Place offers a home for young moms who lack the resources to live alone. The renovated condo opened last August. It has six private rooms plus a communal kitchen, living room (with tatami), bathroom and toilet facilities.
Rent is cheap, around 40,000 yen per month, and there is no “key money” (a gift you pay to the landlord) or agency handling fee, nor is a guarantor required. It is one of several shared houses in Osaka and Hyogo prefectures run the same company.
Why is there a need for this? It is not easy for single moms or divorcees to start a new life with their child or children. They often have to show proof of income to a landlord or real estate agent but they won’t have much except for some alimony and a part-time job, plus they would need quite a bit of money upfront for expensive deposits and the first month’s rent. Public housing is available but there is usually a lottery or waiting list, and it can take time to secure a place. If the women are victims of domestic violence, time is not something the women will have.
In 2011 there were over 1.2 million single mother households in Japan, according to the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare. Of these, 81% were divorcees and 8% were widows. Of the divorcees, a mere 8.6% were living in a house rented or owned under the mother’s name. When this is compared to single father households, 37.3% are living in a residence under the father’s name. The discrepancy is evidently due to women being unable to live with their child in their own place due to limited incomes and the intractable real estate system in Japan. They are forced to live with their own parents or rent somewhere under someone else’s name (e.g. their own parents again).
Affordable share houses like Mon Place are practical ways to give single moms independence and a safe place to live with their child, even if just temporarily.Over recent months the Midleton Archaeology & Heritage Project has been engaged in its largest undertaking to date. By systematically assessing United States passport applications from the end of World War One, we have been exploring some of the stories of Irish women who married U.S. servicemen based in Ireland during the conflict. In Part 1 of a series of posts, which will include both analytical discussion and mapping, we present our initial all-island database, which provides biographical details– and photographs– of almost 100 Irish women who were married to American servicemen, the vast bulk of them in Ireland.
2017 will mark the 100th anniversary of the arrival of American troops in Ireland to partake in World War One. The American military presence here is one of the least familiar stories from the period. Of the thousands who arrived, the majority were naval servicemen. The greater number were attached to the U.S. vessels operating out of Cork Harbour, but many were also stationed around the country, such as those at the United States Naval Air Service bases in Cork, Wexford, Dublin and Lough Foyle. The arrival of large numbers of foreign men from across the Atlantic had a major impact on the social environments where they were quartered. Many romances blossomed with local women, a form of interaction that was not always welcomed by the local community, most notably in Cork. For some, either out of love or necessity, marriage followed. Trying to ascertain detail on some of these Irish women’s individual stories is challenging. In an attempt to do so, we have trawled through thousands of passport applications to identify those made by Irish women who had married American servicemen and were seeking to enter the United States.
In order to compile the database below, we carried out a detailed programme of analysis based around the United States passport applications held in the National Archives and Record Administration (NARA) in Washington, D.C. Using the http://www.ancestry.com U.S. passport application database as a starting point, we sought to identify all passports relating to Irish-born women born between 1885 and 1895 who made applications in 1917, 1918 and 1919. These included women recorded in passport sets such as the Passport Applications, January 2, 1906- March 31, 1925; Emergency Passport Applications, Argentina thru Venezuela, 1906-1925; and Applications of Wives of Members of the AEF in Europe. In addition we also searched for Irish women in Applications of Wives of Members of the AEF in Europe for 1920 and 1921. Of the thousands of results, we then examined the original passport scans of each, in order to extract those women with a direct connection to an American serviceman. Where we identified a relevant passport, we transcribed the information into a narrative paragraph, and saved an image of the passport photograph. In order to reveal the maiden names of as many of the Irish women as we could, we cross-referenced the majority with the Irish Marriages database on http://www.findmypast.ie, and also examined a number of World War One related records of U.S. military personnel. The results of this extensive project can be explored in the database of names below.
The women we identified have been separated into three categories, and within each they are divided by county of origin. The first two are those for the wives of U.S. Naval personnel and the wives of U.S. Army personnel, the bulk of which are applications made through consuls in Ireland and Britain by Irish women who had never been outside of Ireland but were seeking to travel to America. A small number also relate to Irish women who were married to an Irish emigrant who had entered United States service. A third category includes those Irish women in America who were seeking to perform service or to reside in France during the conflict (the latter is undoubtedly far from comprehensive). In the majority of instances only those passports where there was a confirmed military connection were included. Though it is likely we have identified many (if not most) of the applications of Irish women who married U.S. servicemen in Ireland or Britain during the conflict, there are undoubtedly more out there.
This post is the first in a series relating to these women, and is intended to present our initial database of individuals and something of their details. We will be seeking to map this information, and follow-on posts will examine what we can learn from them– just as some appear to be heartwarming stories of love, others hint at sadness and separation. We are eager to tell something of their stories, and to imagine what it must have been like for so many of them to leave all they knew behind as they set off for new lives across the Atlantic. Surely though the most compelling aspect of the compilation is the images of the women themselves. In these often haunting pictures we see a range not only of expressions and emotions, but also of hairstyles, fashion-sense and photographic settings. Some of the shots include their children, while one even includes the family dog. We hope you enjoy the information below, and we are eager to hear from readers who may be able add names or detail to this list.
The Wives of United States Navy by County
Co. Cork
Kathleen Yeager, 23, Greenmount, Cork. Husband in United States Navy. Dublin Consulate. Passport issued 7th July 1919.
Kathleen Dorney was born in Greenmount on 5th October 1895 to Thomas Dorney of Crosshaven and Kathleen (Crowley) Dorney of “Kilbuthry” (Kilbarry?), Co. Cork. She had lived in Cork all her life. On 11th February 1919 she had married Jasper Weeks Yeager, a native of Mississippi and a Chief Commissary Steward in the U.S. Navy at the Church of St. Finbar’s West in Cork. He had entered the service in St. Louis, Missouri on 5th April 1913. At the time of her application Jasper was living at 23 Upper Mount Street in Dublin, and was attached the U.S. depot on Sir John Rogerson’s Quay in the city. On emigration Kathleen intended to make her home at No. 1 West 129th Street in New York; she intended to sail on the SS Harrisburg on 10th July 1919.
Margaret Butcher, 22, Queenstown, Co. Cork. Husband in U.S. Navy. Plymouth Consulate. Passport issued 3rd May 1920.
Margaret Reynolds was born in Queenstown on 8th March 1898 to William Reynolds of Kinsale and Minnie (Power) Reynolds of Queenstown. On 12th March 1919 in Plymouth she married Marion Butcher, a native of Boston, Massachusetts, who was a Coxswain in the U.S.N.R.F. Margaret had moved to Plymouth when a baby in 1898, living there ever since. Marion had served in the Navy from 17th July 1917 to 14th July 1919. His discharge was apparently due to his “inability to support wife on naval pay.” At the time of Margaret’s application Marion was living at 151 Commonwealth Avenue in Boston, where she hoped to join him, sailing in May.
Elizabeth Mary Morrison, 22, Cork, Husband in United States Navy. Queenstown Consulate. Passport issued 7th June 1918.
Elizabeth Mary Jones had been born in Cork on 9th October 1895. On 16th February 1918 she had married Stephen C. Morrison in Cork; he was an Electrician First Class in the U.S. Navy. Stephen had been born in Lenoir, Caldwell County, North Carolina. At the time of her application on 6th March 1918 she was “temporarily sojourning” at 3 Victoria Street on Military Road, and her husband had been transferred back to the United States. Elizabeth had never been to America, and her new home was to be in Eufola, North Carolina.
Kathleen Quinn, 19, Cork, Husband in United States Navy. Queenstown Consulate. Passport issued 26th July 1918.
Kathleen Hoskins was born in Cork on 7th March 1899. On 31st December 1917 she had married Chief Boatswain’s Mate James H. Quinn at the Church of S. S. Mary and Anne in Shandon, Cork. He had been born in Philadelphia and was serving in the U.S. Navy. Kathleen had never been to America before. She was going to live at 2905 Ridge Avenue, Philadelphia, and at the time of her application on 24th July 1918 was “temporarily sojourning” at 9 De Vesci Place, Monkstown, Co. Cork.
Margaret Daisy Atkins, 19, Queenstown (Cobh), Husband in United States Navy. Queenstown Consulate. Passport issued 30th April 1919.
Margaret Daisy Brierly was born in Queenstown on 14th August 1899. In the last quarter of 1918 she married Harold Atkins of Binnewater, New York while he was serving with the U.S. Navy; Harold was stationed in the U.S. Training Barracks in Passage. Margaret, who had never been outside of Ireland before, planned to live with her husband at 29 Staple Street in Kingston, New York.
Mary Ellen Balschi, 34, Cork City, Husband in United States Navy. Queenstown Consulate. Passport issued 30th May 1919.
Mary Ellen O’Sullivan was born in Cork City on 13th July 1885. She had lived in Ireland all her life, and never been to the United States. She had married Thomas A. Balschi of Mount Carmel in Pennsylvania in the last quarter of 1917 while he was serving in the U.S. Navy. The couple planned to make their home in Catawissa, Pennsylvania.
Letitia Becker, 22, Youghal, Husband in United States Navy. Queenstown Consulate. Passport issued 4th June 1919.
Letitia Collins was born in Youghal on 21st July 1896, and had lived in Ireland all her life and had never been to the United States. Letitia married Joseph Leonard Becker, a member of the U.S. Navy. The date of their marriage is not given, though Letitia’s application to become an American citizen had been approved on 8th October 1918 and the Civil Registration index suggests they had married in the first three months of 1918. The couple’s son John Arthur was born in Youghal on 14th January 1919. The young family planned to live at 5 Ernst Street in Rochester, New York |
War I, Zhukov was awarded the Cross of St. George twice, and promoted to the rank of non-commissioned officer for his bravery in battle. He joined the Bolshevik Party after the 1917 October Revolution; in Party circles his background of poverty became a significant asset. After recovering from a serious case of typhus he fought in the Russian Civil War over the period 1918 to 1921, serving with the 1st Cavalry Army, among other formations. He received the decoration of the Order of the Red Banner for his part in subduing the Tambov Rebellion in 1921.[3]
Early peacetime service [ edit ]
Georgy Zhukov, commander of the 39th Buzuluk Cavalry Regiment, 7th Cavalry Division Samara (1923)
At the end of May 1923, Zhukov became a commander of the 39th Cavalry Regiment.[4] In 1924, he entered the Higher School of Cavalry,[5] from which he graduated the next year, returning afterward to command the same regiment.[6] In May 1930, Zhukov became commander of the 2nd Cavalry Brigade of the 7th Cavalry Division.[7] In February 1931, he was appointed the Assistant Inspector of Cavalry of the Red Army.[8] In May 1933, Zhukov was appointed a commander in the 4th Cavalry Division.[8] In 1937, he became a commander of the 3rd Cavalry Corps, later of the 6th Cavalry Corps.[8][9] In 1938, he became a deputy commander of the Belorussian Military District for cavalry.[8][10]
Khalkhin Gol to Barbarossa [ edit ]
In 1938, Zhukov was directed to command the First Soviet Mongolian Army Group, and saw action against Japan's Kwantung Army on the border between Mongolia and the Japanese-controlled state of Manchukuo. This campaign was an undeclared war that lasted from 1938 to 1939. What began as a border skirmish rapidly escalated into a full-scale war, with the Japanese pushing forward with an estimated 80,000 troops, 180 tanks and 450 aircraft.
These events led to the strategically decisive Battle of Khalkhin Gol (Nomonhan). Zhukov requested major reinforcements, and on 20 August 1939, his "Soviet Offensive" commenced. After a massive artillery barrage, nearly 500[11] BT-5 and BT-7 tanks advanced, supported by over 500[12] fighters and bombers. This was the Soviet Air Force's first fighter-bomber operation.[13] The offensive first appeared to be a typical conventional frontal attack. However, two tank brigades were initially held back and then ordered to advance around on both flanks, supported by motorized artillery, infantry, and other tanks. This daring and successful manoeuvre encircled the Japanese 6th Army and captured the enemy's vulnerable rear supply areas. By 31 August 1939, the Japanese had been cleared from the disputed border, leaving the Soviets clearly victorious.[13]
This campaign had significance beyond the immediate tactical and local outcome. Zhukov demonstrated and tested the techniques later used against the Germans in the Eastern Front of the Second World War. These innovations included the deployment of underwater bridges[14] and improving the cohesion and battle-effectiveness of inexperienced units by adding a few experienced, battle-hardened troops to bolster morale and overall training.[15] Evaluation of the problems inherent in the performance of the BT tanks led to the replacement of their fire-prone petrol (gasoline) engines with diesel engines, and provided valuable practical knowledge that was essential to the success in development of the T-34 medium tank used in World War II. After this campaign, Nomonhan veterans were transferred to units that had not seen action, to better spread the benefits of their battle experience.[14]
For his victory, Zhukov was declared a Hero of the Soviet Union. However, the campaign – and especially Zhukov's pioneering use of tanks – remained little known outside of the Soviet Union itself. Zhukov considered Nomonhan invaluable preparation for conducting operations during the Second World War.[16]
In 1940 Zhukov became an Army General.
Pre-war military exercises [ edit ]
In autumn 1940, G. K. Zhukov started preparing the plans for the military exercise concerning the defence of the Western border of the Soviet Union, which at this time was pushed further to the west due to the annexation of Eastern Poland.[17]
In his memoirs Zhukov reports that in this exercise he commanded the "Western" or "Blue" forces (the supposed invasion troops) and his opponent was Colonel General D. G. Pavlov, the commander of the "Eastern" or "Red" forces (the supposed Soviet troops). He noted that the "Blue" had 60 divisions, while the "Red" had 50 divisions. Zhukov in his memoirs describes the events of exercise as similar to actual events during the German invasion.[18]
As historian Bobylev reports in his article in "Military History Journal", the actual details of the exercises were reported differently in different memoirs of their participants.[19] He reported that there were two exercises, one on 2–6 January 1941 (for the North-West direction), another on 8–11 January 1941 (for the South-West direction).[19] In the first one "Western" forces attacked "Eastern" forces on 15 July, but "Eastern" forces counterattacked and by 1 August reached the original border.[19]
At that time (start of the exercise), "Eastern" forces had a numerical advantage (for example, 51 infantry division against 41, 8811 tanks against 3512), with the exception of anti-tank guns.[19] Bobylev describes how by the end of the exercise the "Eastern" forces did not manage to surround and destroy the "Western" forces, which, in their turn, threatened to surround the "Eastern" forces themselves.[19] The same historian reported that the second game was won by the "Easterners", meaning that on the whole, both games were won by the side commanded by Zhukov.[19] However, he noted that the games had a serious disadvantage since they did not consider the initial attack by "Western" forces, but only a (later) attack by "Eastern" forces from the initial border.[19]
According to Marshal Aleksandr Vasilevsky, the war-game defeat of Pavlov's Red Troops against Zhukov was not known widely, but the victory of Zhukov's Red Troops against Kulik was widely propagandized, which created a popular illusion of easy success for a preemptive offensive.[20]
On 1 February 1941, Zhukov became chief of the Red Army's General Staff.[21]
Controversy about a plan for war with Germany [ edit ]
From 2 February 1941, as the Chief of the General Staff, and Deputy Minister of Defense of the USSR, Zhukov took part in drawing up the "Strategic plan for deployment of the forces of the Soviet Union in the event of war with Germany and its allies."[22] The plan was completed no later than 15 May 1941.
Some researchers (for example, Victor Suvorov) allege that, on 14 May, Soviet People's Commissar of Defense Semyon Timoshenko and Zhukov suggested to Joseph Stalin a preemptive attack against Germany through Southern Poland. Soviet forces would occupy the Vistula Border and continue to Katowice or even Berlin (should the main German armies retreat), or the Baltic coast (should German forces not retreat and be forced to protect Poland and East Prussia). The attacking Soviets were supposed to reach Siedlce, Deblin, and then capture Warsaw before penetrating toward the southwest and imposing final defeat at Lublin.[23]
Historians do not have the original documents that could verify the existence of such a plan, or whether Stalin accepted it. In a transcript of an interview on 26 May 1965, Zhukov stated that Stalin did not approve the plan. However, Zhukov did not clarify whether execution was attempted. As of 1999, no other approved plan for a Soviet attack had been found.[24]
Eastern front of World War II [ edit ]
General Georgy Zhukov speaking on 1 September 1941.
On 22 June 1941, Germany launched Operation Barbarossa, an invasion of the Soviet Union. On the same day, Zhukov responded by signing the "Directive of Peoples' Commissariat of Defence No. 3", which ordered an all-out counteroffensive by Red Army forces: he commanded the troops "to encircle and destroy [the] enemy grouping near Suwałki and to seize the Suwałki region by the evening of 24 June" and "to encircle and destroy the enemy grouping invading in [the] Vladimir-Volynia and Brody direction" and even "to seize the Lublin region by the evening of 24 June".[25] Despite numerical superiority, this manoeuvre failed and disorganized Red Army units were destroyed by the Wehrmacht. Zhukov subsequently claimed that he was forced to sign the document by Joseph Stalin, despite the reservations that he raised.[26] This document was supposedly written by Aleksandr Vasilevsky.[27]
Life magazine (31 July 1944) Zhukov on the cover ofmagazine (31 July 1944)
On 29 July 1941 Zhukov was removed from his post of Chief of the General Staff. In his memoirs he gives his suggested abandoning of Kiev to avoid an encirclement as a reason for it.[28] On the next day the decision was made official and he was appointed the commander of the Reserve Front.[28] There he oversaw the Yelnya Offensive.
On 10 September 1941 Zhukov was made the commander of the Leningrad Front.[29] There he oversaw the defence of the city.
On 6 October 1941 Zhukov was appointed the representative of Stavka for the Reserve and Western Fronts.[30] On 10 October 1941 those fronts were merged into the Western Front under Zhukov's command.[31] This front then participated in the Battle of Moscow and several Battles of Rzhev.
In late August 1942 Zhukov was made Deputy Commander-in-Chief and sent to the southwestern front to take charge of the defence of Stalingrad.[32] He and Vasilevsky later planned the Stalingrad counteroffensive.[33] In November Zhukov was sent to coordinate the Western Front and the Kalinin Front during Operation Mars.
In January 1943 he (together with Kliment Voroshilov), coordinated the actions of the Leningrad and Volkhov Fronts and the Baltic Fleet in Operation Iskra.[34]
Zhukov was a Stavka coordinator at the Battle of Kursk in July 1943. According to his memoirs, he played a central role in the planning of the battle and the hugely successful offensive that followed. Commander of the Central Front Konstantin Rokossovsky, said, however, that the planning and decisions for the Battle of Kursk were made without Zhukov, that he only arrived just before the battle, made no decisions and left soon afterwards, and that Zhukov exaggerated his role.[35]
From 12 February 1944 Zhukov coordinated the actions of the 1st Ukrainian and 2nd Ukrainian Fronts.[36] On 1 March 1944 Zhukov was appointed the commander of the 1st Ukrainian Front[37] until early May.[38] During the Soviet offensive Operation Bagration, Zhukov coordinated the 1st Belorussian and 2nd Belorussian Fronts, later the 1st Ukrainian Front as well.[39] On 23 August Zhukov was sent to the 3rd Ukrainian Front to prepare for the advance into Bulgaria.[40]
On 16 November he became commander of the 1st Belorussian Front[41] which took part in the Vistula–Oder Offensive and the battle for Berlin. He called on his troops to "remember our brothers and sisters, our mothers and fathers, our wives and children tortured to death by [the] Germans...We shall exact a brutal revenge for everything." More than 20 million Soviet soldiers and civilians died as a result of the war. In a reprise of atrocities committed by German soldiers against Soviet civilians in the eastward advance into Soviet territory during Operation Barbarossa, the westward march by Soviet forces was marked by brutality towards German civilians, which included looting, burning and rapes.[42]
Zhukov was present when German officials signed the Instrument of Surrender in Berlin.[43]
Post-war service under Stalin [ edit ]
After the German capitulation, Zhukov became the first commander of the Soviet Occupation Zone in Germany. On 10 June, Zhukov returned to Moscow to prepare for the Moscow Victory Parade of 1945 in Red Square. On 24 June, Stalin appointed him Commander-in-Chief of the Parade. After the ceremony, on the night of 24 June, Zhukov went to Berlin to resume his command.[44]
During May 1945, Zhukov signed three resolutions regarding the maintenance of an adequate standard of living for the German people living in the Soviet occupation zone:
Resolution 063 (11 May 1945): dealt with the provision of food for the people living in Berlin
Resolution 064 (12 May 1945): allowed for the restoration and maintenance of the normal activities of the public service sector of Berlin
Resolution 080 (31 May 1945): dealt with providing milk supplies for the children living in Berlin.
Zhukov requested the Soviet Government to transport urgently to Berlin 96,000 tons of grain, 60,000 tons of potatoes, 50,000 cattle, and thousands of tons of other foodstuffs, such as sugar and animal fat. He issued strict orders that his subordinates were to "Hate Nazism but respect the German people", and to make all possible efforts to restore and maintain a stable living standard for the German population.[45]
From 16 July to 2 August, Zhukov participated in the Potsdam Conference with the other Allied governments. As one of the four commanders-in-chief of Allied forces in Germany, Zhukov established good relationships with the other commanders-in-chief, US General of the Army Dwight D. Eisenhower, British Field Marshal Bernard Law Montgomery and French Marshal Jean de Lattre de Tassigny. These four generals exchanged views about matters such as judging war criminals, rebuilding Germany, relationships between the Allies and defeating the Japanese Empire. Eisenhower seemed to be especially satisfied with, and respectful of, his relationship with Zhukov. Eisenhower's successor, General Lucius Clay, also praised the Zhukov-Eisenhower friendship, and commented:
The Soviet-America relationship should have developed well if Eisenhower and Zhukov had continued to work together.[46]
Eisenhower, Zhukov and Air Chief Marshal Arthur Tedder, June 1945
Eisenhower, the Supreme Allied commander in the West, was a great admirer of Zhukov,[47][specify] and the two toured the Soviet Union together in the immediate aftermath of the victory over Germany.[48]
Zhukov was not only the supreme Military Commander of the Soviet Occupation Zone in Germany, but became its Military Governor on 10 June 1945. A war hero, hugely popular with the military, Zhukov was viewed by Stalin as a potential threat to his leadership.[citation needed] He replaced Zhukov with Vasily Sokolovsky on 10 April 1946. After an unpleasant session of the Main Military Council—in which Zhukov was bitterly attacked and accused of political unreliability and hostility to the Party Central Committee—he was stripped of his position as Commander-in-Chief of the Soviet Ground Forces.[49] He was assigned command of the Odessa Military District, far from Moscow and lacking in strategic significance and troops. He arrived there on 13 June. Zhukov suffered a heart attack in January 1948, spending a month in hospital. In February 1948, he was given another secondary posting, this time command of the Urals Military District. Tsouras described the move from Odessa to the Urals as a relegation from a'second-rate' to a 'fifth-rate' assignment.[50]
Throughout this time, security chief Lavrentiy Beria was apparently trying to topple Zhukov. Two of Zhukov's subordinates, Marshal of Aviation Alexander Alexandrovich Novikov and Lieutenant-General Konstantin Fyodorovitch Telegin (Member of the Military Council of 1st Belorussian Front) were arrested and tortured in Lefortovo Prison at the end of 1945. In a conference, all generals except Director of the Main Intelligence Directorate Filipp Ivanovich Golikov defended Zhukov against accusation of misspending of war booty and exaggeration of Nazi Germany's strength. During this time, Zhukov was accused of Bonapartism.[51]
In 1946, seven rail carriages with furniture that Zhukov was taking to the Soviet Union from Germany were impounded. In 1948, his apartments and house in Moscow were searched and many valuables looted from Germany were found.[52] In his investigation Beria concluded that Zhukov had in his possessions 17 golden rings, three gemstones, the faces of 15 golden necklaces, more than 4,000 meters of cloth, 323 pieces of fur, 44 carpets taken from German palaces, 55 paintings and 20 guns".[53] Zhukov admitted in a memorandum to Zhdanov:
I felt very guilty. I shouldn't have collected those useless junks and put them into some warehouse, assuming nobody needs them any more. I swear as a Bolshevik that I would avoid such errors and follies thereafter. Surely I still and will wholeheartedly serve the Motherland, the Party, and the Great Comrade Stalin.[54]
These incidents were ironically called the "Trophy Affair" in the Soviet Union.
When learning of Zhukov's "misfortunes"—and despite not understanding all the problems—Eisenhower expressed his sympathy for his "comrade-in-arms".[55]
On February 1953, Stalin ordered Zhukov to leave the post of commander of the Urals Military District, and then recalled him to Moscow. Several opinions suggested Zhukov was needed for Korean War service; but, in fact, during one month at Moscow, Stalin did not give Zhukov any tasks. At 9:50 a.m. on 5 March 1953, Stalin suddenly died. After this event, Zhukov's life entered a new phase.[46]
Reasons for Zhukov's rises and falls under Stalin [ edit ]
During World War II, Zhukov was one of only a few people who understood Stalin's personality. As the Chief of Staff and later Deputy Supreme Commander, Zhukov had hundreds of meetings with Stalin, both private and during Stavka conferences. Consequently, Zhukov understood Stalin's personality and methods well. According to Zhukov, Stalin was a strong and secretive person, but he was also hot-tempered and skeptical. Zhukov was able to gauge Stalin's mood: for example, when Stalin drew deeply on his tobacco pipe, it was a sign of a good mood. Conversely, if Stalin failed to light his pipe once it was out of tobacco, it was a sign of an imminent rage.[56] His outstanding knowledge of Stalin's personality was an asset, and it allowed him to deal with Stalin's rages in a way other Soviet generals could not.[57] Both Zhukov and Stalin were hot-tempered, but both of them made concessions in order to sustain their relationship.
While Zhukov viewed his relationship with Stalin as one of a subordinate–senior, Stalin was in awe and possibly jealous of Zhukov. Both were military commanders, but Stalin's experience was restricted to a previous generation of non-mechanized warfare. By contrast, Zhukov was highly influential in the development of contemporary combined operations of highly mechanized armies. The differences in these outlooks were the cause of many tempestuous disagreements between the two of them at Soviet Stavka meetings. Nonetheless, Zhukov was less competent than Stalin as a politician, an inadequacy which accounted for Zhukov's many failures in Soviet politics. In fact, Stalin's unwillingness to value Zhukov beyond the marshal's military talents was one of the reasons why Stalin recalled Zhukov from Berlin.[2]
Another significant element of their relationship was Zhukov's straightforwardness towards Stalin. Stalin was dismissive of the fawning of many of his entourage and openly criticized it.[58] Many people around Stalin, including Beria, Yezhov, Mekhlis, and others, felt the need to flatter Stalin to remain on his good side.[59] Zhukov, on the other hand, was stubbornly willing to express his views, often going openly against Stalin's opinion even to the point of risking his career and life. His heated argument with Stalin on the subject of abandoning Kiev in June 1941 was a typical example of Zhukov's approach.[60] This independence in Zhukov's thinking gained Stalin's respect. It caused Zhukov considerable difficulties with Stalin on several occasions but was the main reason the decision-making of Stavka became more objective and effective.
Rise and fall after Stalin [ edit ]
After Stalin's death, Zhukov returned to favour, becoming Deputy Defence Minister in 1953. He then had an opportunity to avenge himself on Beria.
Arresting Beria [ edit ]
With Stalin's sudden death, the Soviet Union fell into a leadership crisis. Georgy Maximilianovich Malenkov temporarily became First Secretary. Malenkov and his allies attempted to purge Stalin's influence and personality cult; however, Malenkov himself did not have the courage to do this alone. Moreover, Lavrentiy Beria remained dangerous. The politicians sought reinforcement from the powerful and prestigious military men. In this matter, Nikita Khrushchev chose Zhukov because the two had forged a good relationship, and, in addition, during World War II, Zhukov had twice saved Khrushchev from false accusations.[61][62]
On 26 June 1953, a special meeting of the Soviet Politburo was held by Malenkov. Beria came to the meeting with an uneasy feeling because it was called hastily—indeed, Zhukov had ordered General Kirill Moskalenko to secretly prepare a special force and permitted the force to use two of Zhukov's and Bulganin's special cars (which had black glass) in order to safely infiltrate the Kremlin. Zhukov also ordered him to replace the MVD Guard with the guard of the Moscow Military District. In this meeting, Khrushchev, Malenkov and their allies denounced "the imperialist element Beria" for his "anti-Party", "anti-socialist" activities, "sowing division", and "acting as a spy of England", together with many other crimes. Finally, Khrushchev suggested expelling Beria from the Communist Party and bringing him before a military court. Immediately, the prepared special force rushed in. Zhukov himself went up to Beria and shouted: "Hands up! Follow me!". Beria replied, in a panic, "Oh Comrades, what's the matter? Just sit down." Zhukov shouted again, "Shut up, you are not the commander here! Comrades, arrest this traitor!". Moskalenko's special forces obeyed.[63][64]
Zhukov was a member of the military tribunal during the Beria trial, which was headed by Marshal Ivan Konev.[65] On 18 December 1953, the Military Court sentenced Beria to death. During the burial of Beria, Konev commented: "The day this man was born deserves to be damned!". Then Zhukov said: "I considered it as my duty to contribute my little part in this matter (arresting and executing Beria)."[63][64]
When Nikolai Bulganin became premier in 1955, he appointed Zhukov Defence Minister.[65] Zhukov participated in many political activities. He successfully opposed the re-establishment of the Commissar system, because the Party and political leaders were not professional military, and thus the highest power should fall to the army commanders. Until 1955, Zhukov had both sent and received letters from Eisenhower. Both leaders agreed that the two superpowers should coexist peacefully.[66] In July 1955, Zhukov—together with Khrushchev, Bulganin, V. M. Molotov and A. A. Gromyko—participated in a Summit Conference at Geneva after the USSR signed a peace treaty with Austria and withdrew its army from that country.
Zhukov followed orders from the then Prime Minister Georgy Malenkov and Communist Party leader Khrushchev during the invasion of Hungary following the 1956 Hungarian Revolution.[67] Along with the majority of members of the Presidium, he urged Khrushchev to send troops to support the Hungarian authorities and to secure the Austrian border. Zhukov and most of the Presidium were not, however, eager to see a full-scale intervention in Hungary. Zhukov even recommended the withdrawal of Soviet troops when it seemed that they might have to take extreme measures to suppress the revolution. The mood in the Presidium changed again when Hungary's new Prime Minister, Imre Nagy, began to talk about Hungarian withdrawal from the Warsaw Pact. That led the Soviets to attack the revolutionaries and to replace Nagy with János Kádár. In the same years, when the UK, France, and Israel invaded Egypt during the Suez crisis, Zhukov expressed support for Egypt's right of self-defence. In October 1957, Zhukov visited Yugoslavia and Albania aboard the Chapayev-class cruiser Kuibyshev, attempting to repair the Tito–Stalin split of 1948.[68] During the voyage, Kuibyshev encountered units of the United States Sixth Fleet—"passing honours" were exchanged between the vessels.
Defeating the "Anti-Party Group" and subsequent fall from power [ edit ]
On his 60th birthday (in 1956), Zhukov received his fourth Hero of the Soviet Union title - making him the first person to receive the honor four times. (The only other four time recipient was Leonid Brezhnev). He became the highest-ranking military professional who was also a member of the Presidium of the Central Committee of the Communist Party. He further became a symbol of national strength. Zhukov's prestige was even higher than the police and security agencies of the USSR, and thus rekindled concerns among political leaders. For example, going even further than Khrushchev, Zhukov demanded that the political agencies in the Red Army report to him before the Party. He demanded an official condemnation of Stalin's crimes during the Great Purge.[citation needed] He also supported the political vindication and rehabilitation for M. N. Tukhachevsky, V. K. Blyukher, A. I. Yegorov and many others. In response his opponents accused him of being a Reformist and Bonapartist. Such enviousness and hostility proved to be the key factor that led to his later downfall.[69]
The relationship between Zhukov and Khrushchev reached its peak during the XX Congress of the Communist Party (1956). After becoming the First Secretary of the Party, Khrushchev moved against Stalin's legacy and criticised his "personality cult". To complete such startling acts, Khrushchev needed the approval—or at least the acquiescence—of the military, headed by Minister of Defense Zhukov.
At the plenary session of Central Committee of CPSU held in June 1957 Zhukov supported Khrushchev against the "Anti-Party Group", that had a majority in the Presidium and voted to replace Khrushchev as First Secretary with Bulganin. At that plenum, Zhukov stated:
The Army is against this resolution and not even a tank will leave its position without my order![70]
In the same session the "Anti-Party Group" was condemned and Zhukov was made a member of Presidium. But, in that same year, he was removed from the Presidium of the Party's Central Committee and the Ministry of Defense, entering forced retirement at age 62. These things happened behind his back, when he was on a trip to Albania at the invitation of Gen. Col. Beqir Balluku.[71] The same issue of Krasnaya Zvezda (Red Star) that announced Zhukov's return also reported that he had been relieved of his duties.[72] According to many researchers, Soviet politicians (including Khrushchev himself) had a deep-seated fear of "powerful people."[73][74]
Retirement [ edit ]
One of the last photos of the marshal
After being forced out of the government, Zhukov stayed away from politics. Many people—including former subordinates—frequently paid him visits, joined him on hunting excursions, and waxed nostalgic. In September 1959, while visiting the United States, Khrushchev told US President Eisenhower that the retired Marshal Zhukov "liked fishing" (Zhukov was actually a keen aquarist[75]). Eisenhower, in response, sent Zhukov a set of fishing tackle. Zhukov respected this gift so much that he is said to have exclusively used Eisenhower's fishing tackle for the remainder of his life.[76]
After Khrushchev was deposed in October 1964, Brezhnev restored Zhukov to favour (though not to power) in a move to use Zhukov's popularity to strengthen his political position. Zhukov's name was put in the public eye yet again when Brezhnev lionised Zhukov in a speech commemorating the Great Patriotic War. On 9 May 1965, Zhukov was invited to sit on the tribunal of the Lenin Mausoleum and given the honour of reviewing the parade of military forces in Red Square.[77]
Zhukov had begun writing his memoirs "Reminiscences and Reflections" (Воспоминания и размышления) in 1958. He now worked intensively on them, which together with steadily deteriorating health, served to worsen his heart disease. In December 1967, Zhukov had a serious stroke. He was hospitalised until June 1968, and continued to receive medical and rehabilitative treatment at home under the care of his second wife, Galina Semyonova, a former officer in the Medical Corps. The stroke left him paralysed on his left side and his speech became slurred and he could only walk with assistance. His memoirs were published in 1969 and became a best-seller. Within several months of the date of publication of his memoirs, Zhukov had received more than 10,000 letters from readers that offered comments, expressed gratitude, gave advice, or lavished praise. Supposedly, the Communist Party invited Zhukov to participate in the XXIV Congress in 1971 but the invitation was rescinded.[78]
On 18 June 1974, Zhukov died after another stroke. Contrary to Zhukov's last will for an Orthodox Christian burial, and despite the requests of the family to the country's top leadership,[79] his body was cremated and his ashes were buried at the Kremlin Wall Necropolis alongside fellow generals and marshals of the Soviet Union and later the Russian Federation. In 1995 a large statue of him was erected in front of the State Historical Museum depicting him on a horse[80].
On the 100th anniversary of Zhukov's birth, a panikhida Orthodox memorial service was conducted at his grave, the first such service in the history of the Kremlin Wall Necropolis.[81]
Family [ edit ]
Father : Konstantin Artemyevich Zhukov (1851–1921), a shoemaker. Konstantin was an orphan who was adopted by Ms. Anuska Zhukova at the age of two.
: (1851–1921), a shoemaker. Konstantin was an orphan who was adopted by Ms. Anuska Zhukova at the age of two. Mother : Ustinina Artemievna Zhukova (1866–1944), a farmer descended from a poor family. According to Zhukov his mother was a person with considerable strength who could carry five put (about 80 kilograms) of wheat on her shoulder. Zhukov thought he had inherited his strength from his mother.
: (1866–1944), a farmer descended from a poor family. According to Zhukov his mother was a person with considerable strength who could carry five (about 80 kilograms) of wheat on her shoulder. Zhukov thought he had inherited his strength from his mother. Elder sister : Maria Kostantinovna Zhukova (b. 1894).
: (b. 1894). Younger brother : Alexei Konstantinovich Zhukov (b. 1901), died prematurely.
: (b. 1901), died prematurely. First wife : Alexandra Dievna Zuikova (1900–1967), common-law wife since 1920, married in 1953, divorced in 1965. Died after a stroke.
: (1900–1967), common-law wife since 1920, married in 1953, divorced in 1965. Died after a stroke. Second wife : Galina Alexandrovna Semyonova (1926 –1973 [82] ), Colonel, military officer in the Soviet Medical Corps, worked at Burdenko Hospital, specialized in therapeutics. Married in 1965. Died of breast cancer.
: (1926 –1973 ), Colonel, military officer in the Soviet Medical Corps, worked at Burdenko Hospital, specialized in therapeutics. Married in 1965. Died of breast cancer. First daughter : Era Zhukova (b. 1928), mothered by Alexandra Dievna Zukova.
: (b. 1928), mothered by Alexandra Dievna Zukova. Second daughter Margarita Zhukova (1929–2010), mothered by Maria Nikolaevna Volokhova (1897–1983).
(1929–2010), mothered by Maria Nikolaevna Volokhova (1897–1983). Third daughter : Ella Zhukova (1937–2010), mothered by Alexandra Dievna Zukova.
: (1937–2010), mothered by Alexandra Dievna Zukova. Fourth daughter: Maria Zhukova (b. 1957), mothered by Galina Alexandrovna Semyonova.
Controversy and praise [ edit ]
Appraisals of Zhukov's career vary. For example, historian Konstantin Zaleski claimed that Zhukov exaggerated his own role in World War II.[83] Marshal Konstantin Rokossovsky said that the planning and decisions for the Battle of Kursk were made without Zhukov, that he only arrived just before the battle, made no decisions and left soon after.[35] Andrei Mertsalov stated that Zhukov was rude and wayward. Mertsalov further accused Zhukov of setting unnecessarily and terribly strict rules toward his subordinates.[84]
Others note Zhukov's "dictatorial" approach. For example, Major General P. G. Grigorienko stated that Zhukov demanded unconditional compliance with his orders. Some notable examples for these points include the time, on 28 September 1941, that Zhukov sent ciphered telegram No. 4976 to commanders of the Leningrad Front and the Baltic Navy, announcing that returned prisoners and families of soldiers captured by the Germans would be shot.[85] This order was published for the first time in 1991 in the Russian magazine Начало (Beginning) No. 3. In the same month, Zhukov apparently ordered that any soldiers who left their positions would be shot.[86]
Some historians stated that Zhukov was a typical "squander-soldier general" who was unmoved by his forces' loss of life.[citation needed] Others such as A. V. Isaev reject this idea, and quote some of Zhukov's orders stored by the Russian Ministry of Defense and Government of Moscow to prove that Zhukov did care about the lives of his soldiers:
The commanders of the divisions are personally at fault for the 49th Army's failure to accomplish its objectives and for its heavy casualties. They still grossly violate the instructions of Comrade Stalin and the order of the Front regarding the use of massed artillery to achieve a breakthrough, and about the tactics and techniques of attacking the defenses of populated areas. The units of the 49th Army for many days criminally continue their head-on attacks on Kostino, Ostrozhnoye, Bogdanovo and Potapovo without any success, while suffering heavy losses. Even a person with basic military education can understand that these settlements are very suitable defensive positions. The areas in front of these settlements are ideal for firing upon, but despite this the criminally conducted attacks continue in the same places. As a result of the stupidity and indiscipline of the organizers, people pay with their lives, without bringing any benefit to the Motherland. If you still want to keep your current ranks, I demand: Immediately stop the criminal head-on attacks on the settlements. Stop the head-on attacks on heights with good firing positions. When attacking make full use of ravines, forests and terrain that is not easily fired upon. Immediately breakthrough between the settlements and, without waiting for their complete fall, tomorrow capture Sloboda, Rassvet and advance up to Levshina. Report the execution of the order to me by 24:00 of 27 January. Order of G. K. Zhukov to the commander of the 49th Army on 27 January 1942.[87]
It is in vain that you think that victory can be achieved by using "people's meat." Victory is achieved through the art of combat. War is waged with skill, not with people's lives. Order of G. K. Zhukov to I. G. Zakharkin on 7 March 1942.[88]
In the armies of the Western Front, a |
allied forces off again. This dispirited the Dutch who retired out of range and did not participate in the main attack. Along the French right flank the allies had been routed; but the battle was not yet over. On being congratulated by Monsieur de Bauffremont, Saxe simply replied, "all is not said; let us go to the English, they will be harder to digest", and, at about 10:15, he abandoned his wicker carriage and mounted his famous white palfrey.[76]
Louis, the Duke of Gramont. He was killed during the battle.
As the second Dutch attack on Fontenoy went in, the main allied formation moved towards the French position on the plateau. Cumberland took up his place alongside Ligonier at the head of 20 battalions, 15 British and 5 Hanoverian to their left, led by the British Guards Brigade, each with their two battalion guns,[77] about 13,000 to 15,000 men, drawn up in two disciplined lines,[78] each six ranks deep.[79] However, the narrowness of the defile through which the attack had to pass forced the Hanoverians back to form a third line behind the British. As the British and Hanoverians advanced the French pushed forward the four small three-pounder battalion guns of the Gardes Françaises Brigade and the four of Aubeterre Brigade, the fire from these was added to the bombardment from the Redoubt d'Eu. Cumberland responded by deploying seven of the Guards Brigade's three-pounder battalion guns to push them back. The Duc de Gramont, of Dettingen infamy, was killed by a shot from these. As the column advanced up a slight rise, the British brought up a battery of twelve six-pounder cannons to the front of the column at such close range that the Gardes Françaises left their supported defensive position against orders, as they had at Dettingen,[80] and advanced, unsupported, in an attempt to take the guns.[81] Both sides exchanged fire at close range.[82] From the Redoubt of d'Eu and Fontenoy the French cannon poured tremendous flanking fire. Whole allied ranks were swept away, but still they pressed forward in perfect order as if on parade, the better to foster cohesion and the better to overawe their opponents.[83] Saxe had never believed that the allies would conceive or execute such a manoeuvre, and here was the one weak spot of his defence – a third redoubt between Fontenoy and the Redoubt of Eu would have rendered the allied advance impossible.[66]
On obtaining the summit of the ridge the allied column found itself facing the French infantry line. The French guards rose and advanced towards the crest, whereupon the two forces confronted each other at a distance of 30 paces.[85] The moment was immortalised by Lord Charles Hay of the 1st Regiment of Guards who later wrote that he stepped forward, took out a hip flask and drank with a flourish, shouting out to his opponent, "We are the English Guards, and we hope you will stand till we come up to you, and not swim the Scheldt as you did the Main at Dettingen."[86] He then led his men in three cheers. Voltaire's version of this famous episode has become proverbial. He wrote: "The English officers saluted the French by doffing their hats … the French, returned the greeting. My Lord Charles Hai, captain in the English Guards, cried, 'Gentlemen of the French Guards, fire.' The Comte d'Auteroche, then lieutenant of Grenadiers, shouted, 'Gentlemen, we never fire first; fire yourselves.'"[87] The French were the first to fire, the volley was somewhat ineffective but threw the Third Guards into some confusion and wounded George Churchill, the commander of the guards brigade. Captain Lord Panmure led the unbroken companies of the Third Guards to the flank of the First Guards.[88] Up to this point the British column had not fired a single musket shot, but now the allied infantry poured a devastating discharge into the French. The volley of musketry with the battalion guns delivering numerous rounds of grape-shot,[89] swept away the front rank of the ten battalions of the French first line, killing and wounding between 700–800 men, breaking the Gardes Françaises, while the Gardes Suisses and the four battalions of the Brigade Aubeterre were driven back by the British advance.[90]
Historian David Chandler writes that upon the order "first firing, take care", in the British platoon firing system, the six platoons of the first firing with the whole of the front rank of each British battalion fired together – explaining the efficacy of the British first volley.[91] Additionally, Chandler describes the advance as also a British development of the platoon firing system in which troops mounting an attack continue to advance to give fire by stepping out ahead of the rest of the marching battalion, when they are done and reloading the other platoons advance ahead of them and give fire in turn.[92] This explains the slow advance of the column noted in many first hand accounts.[93]
The French now faced an unexpected crisis. Although the allied attack on Fontenoy had failed, the commander of the second line of the French centre had dispatched much of this line to support the brigade in Fontenoy so there was now no support infantry line behind the part of the line formerly held by the Gardes Françaises and the British Guards advanced deep into this gap.[94]
The Battle of Fontenoy, 11 May 1745 by Louis Nicolas van Blarenberghe. Left: Wood of Barry and Redoubt of Eu, with left of centre the red lines of the Irish Brigade leading the attack on the British right flank. Right: two lines of French cavalry. Centre: British redcoats push onto the plateau. Foreground: Louis XV observing from near the chapel of Notre Dame de Bois. (See map). by Louis Nicolas van Blarenberghe. Left: Wood of Barry and Redoubt of Eu, with left of centre the red lines of the Irish Brigade leading the attack on the British right flank. Right: two lines of French cavalry. Centre: British redcoats push onto the plateau. Foreground: Louis XV observing from near the chapel of Notre Dame de Bois. ().
Saxe was still seriously ill on the day of the battle and had spent the early part of the engagement in his wicker carriage. By the time of the British-Hanoverian advance, however, he had mounted his horse and, despite great pain, directed French actions personally. Saxe now ordered his cavalry to attack the advancing foe, but they too recoiled, broken by shattering fire.[95] From his vantage point near Notre Dame de Bois, Louis XV, attended by the Dauphin, Noailles, the Duke of Richelieu, and Louis XV's minister of war, the Marquis d'Argenson, had witnessed his best infantry fall back in disorder. Convinced it was over, Noailles had implored the King to seek safety; but Saxe reassured him that the battle was not lost. With his defiant oath that "We must all conquer or die together", the French commander rode off to restore order at the front. The King stayed.[96]
By now the allied foot had penetrated the French lines for a distance of 300 yards, and into the French camp.[97] However, the incessant fire from the flanks – from Fontenoy and the Redoubt of Eu – followed by the constant cavalry and infantry attacks, had caused the British and Hanoverian infantry to yield ground, forcing them slowly back towards the crest of the plateau. Endeavouring to restore order, Cumberland personally exhorted and inspired his men, halting their retreat, rallying them with the cry:
"Don't you know me my countrymen? Will you leave me? I don't ask you to do anything without me: all I beg you is to share my danger."[98]
Newly encouraged, the allies once again began to move forward. Gradually, however, the French onslaught had brought about a change in the column's formation.[99] The wings of the line had moved round on either flank in order to face the enemy to their left and right, thus forming a hollow, three sided square, against which Saxe now flung his second line of cavalry. The brigade of the Maison du Roi, the carabiniers, the gendarmerie, the finest cavalry of France, charged and charged again, but each time were driven back by the steady discipline and fire of the British infantry. The regiments of Vaisseaux, Hainault, Normandie, and part of the Irish Brigade, were all beaten back.[100] Ligonier later recorded, "Having had orders to make a second attempt, our troops … a second time made the enemy give way; and they were once more pushed as far as their camp with great loss of men, which we too felt upon our side."[101]
Final French counter-attacks [ edit ]
Portrait of King Louis XV 1710–74 1748 by Maurice Quentin de La Tour by Maurice Quentin de La Tour
After the allied attempts on the left had failed the French had become more and more focussed on the British infantry, and on the retreat of the Dutch all the guns of Fontenoy had been turned to face Cumberland's men. The British and Hanoverians themselves overlooked the opportunity to attack Fontenoy on its unbarricaded side with the French cannon either out of shot or running low on ammunition,[102] a much easier task than that the Dutch had faced.[103] The garrison from Tournai was contained by the French besiegers.
Although the constant charges of the French cavalry had been thrown back, their perseverance at last achieved Saxe's aim: they had made time for his infantry brigades to reform. Long after the battle Saxe justified his tactics writing:
“ "While Fontenoy remained untaken, the enemy's success in the centre was disadvantageous to them, for they had no pivot. The farther they penetrated the more were they exposed to the fire of our troops and batteries in their rear. It was essential to distract their attention by repeated cavalry charges, which were, it is true, unable to produce a decisive effect, but gave us time to organise the general attack on which all depended."[100] ”
The hollow "square" had again progressed several hundred yards beyond the flanking batteries, but Cumberland had become increasingly isolated in the centre with his shrinking mass of British and Hanoverian infantry.[104] The allies grew indecisive. Löwendahl saw the true state of affairs, and galloped off to meet with Saxe. "Well, monsieur le maréchal, here is a great day for his Majesty. These fellows will never get themselves out of a fix like that."[105] After a council with Louis XV it was resolved to unite all available forces, and at around 2:00pm, Saxe made a final concerted effort to repulse the enemy. Four pieces of reserve artillery,[106] loaded with grape-shot, were brought into action, and every available regiment mustered. Saxe rallied six Irish battalions of the "Wild Geese" supported by the remnants of Vaisseaux and Normandie for a final assault and flung themselves into the attack with the wild Gaelic cry of "Cuimhnigidh ar Luimnech agus feall na Sassonach!" – "Remember Limerick and Saxon Perfidy".[107] The Irish Brigade, as a brigade, would suffer the heaviest overall casualties on the French side, losing 656 men including one-quarter of their officers.[108] Sergeant Wheelock of Bulkeley captured a colour[109][110] and the attack of the Irish compelled the British Guards to retire.[111] A simultaneous attack on the allied left was made by all the regiments which had faced the Dutch between Fontenoy and Antoing. Meanwhile, the French Guards, now led by the Comte de Chabannes, eager for revenge, with fixed bayonets charged the front so closely that fire was exchanged muzzle to muzzle.[112] As Saxe and Löwendahl led the infantry, D'Estrées, and Richelieu brought up the whole Household Cavalry.[113] The fighting was extremely close and deadly, some British regiments lost half their strength such as the Royal Welch Fusiliers which lost 322 soldiers, over 200 killed, while the brigade of British Guards suffered over 700 casualties.[114] The French counter-attacks eventually halted and then repelled the British column, taking the field.
Allied retreat [ edit ]
Gardes Françaises.[115] The French and allied armies confronting each other at Fontenoy. The blue-clad French in the foreground are
The initial disorder of the allied column was soon checked as each battalion rallied around its colours; the compact formation was restored, and the British and Hanoverians accomplished their retreat in good order.[116] Attacked from three sides the allies performed a fighting withdrawal – the rearguard of the column facing about at measured intervals to fire at their pursuers. Ligonier made provisions for covering the retreat. Skelton's (32nd) and Cholmondeley's (34th) formed the rearguard, the Buffs were ordered to hold the churchyard, while hedges and ravines were lined with the Black Watch. On either flank the British cavalry closed in to form a screen for the infantry – the Royal Horse Guards to the fore especially distinguished themselves.[117] The army reformed behind Vezon, before retreating on Ath. Upon reaching the safety of Ath, Cumberland burst into tears over his disappointment at the defeat and the huge number of lives the defeat cost.[118]
Saxe was blamed by the "carpet generals"[119] for halting the pursuit 100 yards from the battlefield and not turning the defeat of the allies into a rout. But the enemy were not, even now, lacking in discipline or morale, and the allied cavalry were at last admirably handled. He later explained that while the allied cavalry were still relatively intact, his own had been decimated. Afterwards he gave his reason for not pursuing the allies further – "As we had enough of it, I thought only of restoring order of the troops engaged in the charge.".[120] As Louis XV rode over to congratulate his commander for avenging Poitiers,[121] Saxe's personal guard helped their ailing Marshal onto his horse to meet and embrace his sovereign.[122]
Aftermath [ edit ]
Battle of Fontenoy, 11 May 1745. Oil painting by. Oil painting by Pierre Lenfant. Louis XV pointing at Maurice de Saxe, victor at Fontenoy.
Although the details have not been precisely established, casualty figures were high for both sides: the French amounting to at least 7,000 killed and wounded; the allies are estimated as 10,000[123] to 12,000.[124] This casualty rate was the highest in western Europe since the Battle of Malplaquet in 1709 during the War of the Spanish Succession in the reign of Louis XIV, where, as a 13-year-old boy, Saxe personally witnessed the carnage.[118] After surveying the field, Louis XV told his son the Dauphin, Louis-Ferdinand "See how much blood a triumph costs. The blood of our enemies is still the blood of men. The true glory is to save it."[125] Kneeling before his king after the battle Saxe remarked, "Sire, now you see what war really means."[126] Nevertheless, he was gratified to receive a letter from Louis XV in acknowledgement of his services. "If I owe this triumph to the valour of my troops … you also contributed to it no less by your steadfast daring, by your sage counsel and by your remarkable foresight." Saxe wrote to his brother, King Augustus III, at Dresden, ""The engagement lasted nine hours and although I was half-dying by the end of it, I resisted my fatigue as though I was in perfect health. It is very sweet to win battles … "[126]
Louis XV lavished gifts on Saxe, including the royal Château de Chambord, for Saxe had been present where needed, in spite of his debilitating illness, to deal with every crisis of the battle from rallying troops, to directing and leading reserves, encouraging the King and counseling with his officers. With his victory at Fontenoy, Saxe would become a great hero of Frederick the Great of Prussia, his ally, and would visit Frederick at Sanssouci in 1746.[127]
For the allies there were recriminations with the Dutch getting most of the blame in English accounts with no explanation as to why the Hanoverian advance on Fontenoy failed to occur.[128] However, Cumberland's official report praised his co-commander, Königsegg, who, fighting between the first and second lines of infantry "was present on horseback during the whole action, and gave his orders with great calmness."[129] Cumberland was universally praised for his bravery, but also criticised for his generalship, in particular for neglecting to clear the Woods of Barry at the beginning of the battle or to establish an adequate intelligence system, the failure of which gave Saxe ample time to prepare his position. He failed to make his orders clear and Ingolsby's hesitation on the allied right was in part due to receiving conflicting orders. Ingolsby was court-martialled on the charge 'That he received orders from the Duke to attack a redoubt or battery in the last action near Fontenoy, which orders he did not execute'.[130] The charge of disobedience of orders was found proved. Ingolsby's contention that he had been harassed by inconsistent orders was amply borne out by the evidence, and he was acquitted on the charge of cowardice. The court concluded his failure arose 'from an error of judgement, and not from want of courage.' He was suspended from service and allowed to sell out.[131]
Cumberland failed to make effective use of his cavalry. He was so absorbed in the infantry attack that he left his horse regiments idle in the rear until the time for useful action had passed.[132] In effect, the Duke relied not on manoeuvre but on force; it was a direct approach that fell victim to Saxe's clever exploitation of his defensive position.[133] Additionally, with Cumberland at the head of the allied column he was in no position to capitalize on his own attack through efforts elsewhere: he could not prevent the French from concentrating against his column because he was behaving more like a battalion commander than a captain general.[134] Although British leadership was found lacking, British infantry's superior discipline showed that however much French infantry had improved under Saxe's tutelage, France could not match the best that Britain could put in the field.[135] Fontenoy dispelled the notion of British military superiority held in Europe since Marlborough and demonstrated French battlefield superiority over the British and their allies.[136]
French gains [ edit ]
The victory was followed by a rapid French advance. Without hope of relief, Tournai surrendered to Saxe on 21 May and the citadel of Tournai capitulated on 20 June. After Moltke's repulse at Melle, the capture of Ghent followed in mid-July with an immense amount of supplies and material along with its garrison consisting of 2,200 Dutch troops; and some 700 British troops.[137] The allied field army, now reduced to 35,000 men, was less than half the number of the French and they fell back to Diegem in the vicinity of Brussels. Bruges and Oudenarde soon capitulated, and by the end of July the French stood on the threshold of Zeeland, the south-western corner of the Dutch Republic.[138]
Additionally, the triumph of de Saxe over the British inspired[139] the second Jacobite rising, the Forty-Five, under the Young Pretender, Bonnie Prince Charlie. Charles, with a small contingent of troops, returned to Scotland and invaded England. He had some reason to believe in his ultimate success[140] as all but 8,000 British troops[141] were away on the continent and recently defeated at Fontenoy. Charles' return to Scotland combined with a stunning victory at the Battle of Prestonpans obliged Cumberland to pull his army back to England to deal with the Jacobite invasion.[142] The British government was greatly concerned with developments in Flanders but the military tide had turned in France's favour.[143] Dendermonde and the vital port of Ostend, where a battalion of British Foot Guards and a garrison of 4,000[144] fell to French forces in August, and Nieuport in early September. The only good news for the British came in North America when William Pepperrell captured the key French fortress of Louisbourg at Cape Breton in late June.
In three months Saxe had achieved his grand design: he had established himself on the shores of the English Channel and the River Scheldt. Britain was perilously near to exclusion from the mainland of Europe, and would find it hard to make contact with its continental allies. With the capitulation of Ath in early October France controlled much of the Austrian Netherlands. Saxe, now raised to heroic status in his adopted country, was soon threatening Brussels and Antwerp.[145]
Historian Reed Browning described the effect of the French victory at Fontenoy thus: "The margin of victory had been narrow; the fruits thereof were nevertheless abundant."[146] Napoleon later declared that the victory at Fontenoy prolonged the Ancien Régime monarchy in France by 30 years.[133]
In popular culture [ edit ]
Doctor Livesey, a character in Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island, is mentioned as having been in the Battle of Fontenoy some years before the book's plot takes place, and there are several references to his having been there throughout the book.
Jacques, the title character of Denis Diderot's Jacques the Fatalist, is said to have been severely wounded in the knee while serving in the French army at the Battle of Fontenoy. His recovery from that wound led him to meet the woman he loves, a story he attempts to tell his master throughout the book, only to be constantly interrupted.
The Battle of Fontenoy makes an appearance in the 2009 videogame Empire: Total War as a playable scenario.
The Battle of Fontenoy is central to the plotline of Liam Mac Cóil's prizewinning Irish novel Fontenoy (Leabhar Breac, 2005).
Fontenoy claims an importance place in Irish culture, and gives its name to the Dublin-based Gaelic games club Clanna Gael Fontenoy.
The Battle of Fontenoy is recreated in the war boardgame "The Battle of Fontenoy 11 May 1745" from Clash of Arms games.
See also [ edit ]
Notes [ edit ]After our latest US consumer research in October 2015, we wanted to find out if the trends we were seeing in the survey data held for a larger, more international pool. In December, we surveyed over 1,000 respondents throughout the United Kingdom about their awareness of virtual reality, interest in purchasing headsets and trying applications, and their concerns.
With everyone from Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg to analysts at Goldman Sachs boldly claiming VR as the next computing platform, we believe it is critical strategic decision makers — product managers, marketers, and investors alike — better understand the industry’s potential early adopters and what they really want from our industry.
VR Has an Awareness Problem
Understanding the specifications and various use cases for an emerging technology is important for consumers. Awareness at both the brand and category level is a unique necessity for the virtual reality industry. That is why we asked consumers whether they were aware of recent technological developments in VR. These developments ranged from product releases, rumored features for currently unreleased devices, or even academic advancements. Surprisingly, only 8% of the UK sample claimed enough confidence to say they knew a lot about VR.
Out of the entire sample, 23% had never heard of virtual reality in the UK. In the US, that number was 25% (and only 10% claimed to know a lot about VR). In the US and UK, those who polled higher in awareness for VR included gamers and those looking to purchase a VR device.
These numbers pose a significant hurdle for brands trying to establish presence in this young market. The advancements in both technology and product availability are important for business-to-consumer relations. Awareness in this field could be directly linked to how young the commercial VR industry is or a gap in the marketing of various hardware and software.
Parents Have Concerns About VR’s Safety
Considering the enthusiasm for VR, one might be tempted to ignore many of the concerns. However, in both the US and UK samples, with over 3,400 respondents around the globe, similar concerns and fears keep popping up. Specifically, within the UK, 73% of the parents who specified a concern cited adverse health effects for their children using virtual reality.
These concerns are best illustrated by comments like:
“I would be concerned as to whether it would affect their vision.” “Eye health concerns, headaches. How long is it safe for them to wear them in one gaming experience? How heavy will the headset be (impacting their necks, muscles and bones)?” “I worry about them not getting enough ‘real world’ interaction and confusing their young brains with fantasy vs reality.”
VR’s Greatest Obstacle In 2016 May Not Be High Prices or Lack of Content
Greenlight VR expects headset cost and lack of content to be choke points for the consumer adoption of virtual reality near term, but VR’s greatest obstacle for 2016 may be consumer awareness.
Awareness is most important at the brand level, but with new consumer technologies like virtual reality, it is also an important metric as overall category awareness will impact the success of the individual brands. Therefore, it would be wise for the companies in the industry to increase marketing activities. The future of VR will be dependent on more than just word of mouth by early adopters. It will require new consumers to actually experience for themselves what it’s like to venture into a virtual world.
Image Credit: Mark Grey/FlickrCCA retired four-star general, who at one point was head of Air Mobility Command, is being investigated for the alleged sexual assault of a female colonel who was under his command.
Air Force spokeswoman Ann Stefanek said in a statement to Air Force Times that retired Gen. Arthur Lichte, who headed AMC from 2007 to 2009, is the subject of the investigation. And Lt. Col. Kathryn Barnsley, a spokeswoman for AMC, confirmed that the complainant was a colonel.
Former Air Force officer Tony Carr broke the news about the investigation on his John Q. Public blog, citing an internal memo from AMC.
According to Carr, the memo referred to three alleged incidents of sexual assault occurring between April 2007 and April 2009. The memo said Lichte allegedly "used his position of power to coerce sexual contact," Carr reported.
Barnsley could not confirm those details.
In her statement, Stefanek said the Air Force "will conduct a thorough investigation," but said it would be inappropriate to comment further while it is ongoing.
"The Air Force takes all allegations of sexual assault or harassment very seriously," Stefanek said. "We are committed to upholding the high standards and values of our service and ensuring an environment of dignity and respect, where sexual assault or harassment is not tolerated, and where there is clear accountability placed on all airmen at every level."
A message requesting comment left by Air Force Times at a number listed for Lichte was not immediately returned.
Lichte, from New York City, entered the Air Force in 1971 as a distinguished graduate of Manhattan College's ROTC program, according to his Air Force biography. He held command positions at squadron, group and wing levels. He is a command pilot with more than 5,000 flying hours in various aircraft, including the C-5, C-17, C-20, C-21, C-32, C-37, C-130, EC/RC-121, KC-10, KC-135, UH-1N and VC-137.
In addition to his command experience, he held headquarters-level assignments at Strategic Air Command, Air Mobility Command, the Air Force and U.S. Transportation Command. He also served as assistant vice chief of staff and director, Air Force Staff,
He retired on Jan. 1, 2010.Arab Spring and the New Left
Eighteen months ago, we flooded public squares across the Middle East. We sought to situate ourselves against the old order, en-nizaam – the regime. En-nizaam meant more than just Hosni Mubarak and the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces. It referred to an entire way of doing things, one that mired the region in dysfunction when the old empires finally collapsed.
Our euphoria proved to be short-lived. I was nearly assaulted in Tahrir Square in June, while my Fair Observer colleague, Natasha J. Smith, was raped. This was, as I learned, nothing new. Moufida Tlati’s 1994 film The Silences of the Palace presents a 25-year-old woman in revolutionary Tunisia who is abused by her husband, a former revolutionary leader. She returns to the harem in which she was raised and is confronted with violent memories of past abuse, all of which failed to be confronted in the “New Tunisia.” These reflections discuss the feminist disappointment of the region’s earlier anti-colonial revolts that occurred in the 1950s.
We too must go back. The Silences of the Palace is especially timely post-Arab Spring because its discussion of feminist disappointment in the anti-colonial movement speaks equally to the political failings of the pro-democracy movement. The persistence of such regressive sexual politics is especially disturbing, because of how they undermine the promise of empowerment synonymous with real democratization. Civil rights are not specified by gender. They are universal. I am reminded of the debates that took place following the western revolts of May 1968. Crackdowns on the New Left, for example, were unwittingly aided by its own reactionary tendencies. I drink my mango juice.
“I’m really not convinced that the crackdowns of 1968 combined with COINTELPRO to destroy the New Left,” I say into my mobile phone. “I remember this from when the FBI starting showing up. What, was I going to become cynical and less of an activist just because they started harassing me? At the end of the day, that is what they do. That is how the institutions are. They were built for their own self-interest. The Supreme Council of the Armed Forces is going to assault Tahrir Square with bullets and tear gas because that is how they are. That isn’t enough to destroy the movement. I think that what actually happened is that racial and sexual hatred was so advanced that no one could outmaneuver them. Sexism is already worse than racism because of how often it happens from the people you trust, so why should it be different with a movement you trust?”
“I think you’re completely right about this,” my woman friend responds. “If you read about how certain groups of people were treated in those movements we all cherish now, it is actually disgusting. Yeah! Dr. King cheated on his wife repeatedly! But not only that, one of his right hand men actually molested his daughter. And the Black Power movement? Oh my God, what went on there! And you don’t even have to go back that far. I am almost positive that a girl got raped at Tent State a few years ago. And this whole thing with that senior male leadership always having to have this no-nonsense attitude that is totally stripped of emotion, there has always been something so masculine about it. I’ve always felt like it totally leaves out female voices and those of more sensitive men. It made it so easy to dismiss you from senior male leadership in The Movement. And like, if there’s anything that makes me lose hope, it’s all of that. It’s just, I don’t know.”
1968 was a turbulent year that witnessed the evisceration of various groups comprising the New Left. The United States saw violent crackdowns, the excesses of COINTELPRO, and the assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert Kennedy. The failed strikes of May 1968 in France, in which 22% of the economy was completely halted, led to a strengthened Charles de Gaulle rather than his downfall. Failure after failure led to a victory of the old order, and the relegation of radical politics to boomer nostalgia.
However, crackdowns are only part of the story. The problem appears to be one of historical memory. Images such as of bloody protestors at the Democratic National Convention have dominated our memories of the year. Subtler arguments regarding why the crackdowns succeeded are rarely posited in mainstream discourses about the period.
Let us be clear: by 1968, none of the trends blamed exclusively for the year’s infamy were anything new. The fact that progressive movements were unable to remobilize again is what concerns me. One may argue that cynicism and apathy became impossible to overcome after the year, but the crackdowns could have easily been seen as acts of desperation rather than a victory of en-nizaam. There are two dominant reasons why the New Left collapsed:
1) Excessive drug use symbolized the inability of leftists to fight for real social change. Timothy Leary’s catchphrase of “turn on, tune in, and drop out” meant that many activists thought the world could be transformed by the countercultural lifestyle options of the era as much as through traditional political engagement.
2) Racism and separatist political violence combined with sexism and gendered violence to divide the New Left from within. Activists were primarily responsible for this situation.
The New Left was undone by its own reluctance to live up to its revolutionary aspirations. While its leadership and many of its followers would superficially espouse the doctrines of feminist and minority liberation, they were clearly engaged with sexualized and racist violence. By 1968, the New Left was clearly dominated by males with no real interest in challenging the hateful dynamics they inherited from the societies that raised them.
Although it would be comforting for minority activists to state that this was mainly seen among white progressives, the truth is different. Minority liberation movements were among the worst perpetrators of racism and sexism. The Black Power movement was often violently misogynistic, as activists such as Angela Davis have confirmed. It also conflicted with other ethnic groups within the left’s ranks, because its members believed that racism in the United States only targeted African Americans.
Tahrir Square is no different. Tahrir, which means “liberation,” has quickly come to mean “liberation for us.” That “us” is clearly sexually conservative, and male. I was attacked in downtown Cairo because I was seen as a Pakistani faggot who needed to be shamed for his slim-fitting clothing and uncertain gender identity. When I returned to the United States and read Natasha’s blog post, I was forced to once again confront along with many activists whether “liberation for us” is worth our time. This is exactly the problem.
Leftists always believe they have the solution to social failures. Tahrir, to wit is seen as a revolutionary utopia that can undo the failings of en-nizaam. Experiencing sexual violence especially has the effect of linking revolutionary utopia to the dystopia of en-nizaam. Just as in 1968, it weakens the activist base along lines of material and social violence. When discussed in addition to other divisive trends, such as the splintering of youth groups, the ominous rise of the Muslim Brotherhood in post-revolutionary institutions, and continued strategic failures in Egypt’s left, it is particularly problematic.
If Tahrir is cleared, it will be the same case as in 1968: violence within the movement made it unable to resist violence against it. I drink my mango juice.
Photograph #1 courtesy of Nora Shalaby. Photograph # 2 courtesy of Hossam el-Hamalawy. Published under a Creative Commons license.Today BuzzFeed Reported:
Pesident Obama made a strong case Tuesday for administrative action on LGBT nondiscrimination measures, saying that transgender students can now “assert their rights” following recent Education Department action laying out an expanded view of protections under Title IX.’
Speaking in a White House question-and-answer session with Tumblr CEO David Karp, Obama was asked about the Education Department’s April memorandum detailing a policy that includes anti-transgender discrimination as part of the sex discrimination banned by Title IX, legislation that bars discrimination by schools.
MR. KARP: So one question we heard a lot from our community that I wanted to make sure to mention today: Recently — I think you’ve been following — the Department of Ed’s Office of Civil Rights and DOJ have extended Title IX protections to trans students. What do you see as the next steps to ensure equal treatment of trans people in schools in America?
THE PRESIDENT: Well, Title IX is a powerful tool. It’s interesting — yesterday I had the University of Connecticut men’s and women’s basketball teams here. This is only the second time that the men’s and women’s basketball teams won the national championship in the same year. The previous year was 2004, and it was UConn again.
But what was interesting about it is that the men were kind of a surprise. It was nice. The women were dominant. I mean, the UConn Husky women’s program, they rule. And they are incredible athletes. And talking to these young women, they’re poised and they’re beautiful, and some of them are 6’6” and they’re wearing high heels, and supremely confident and competitive. And that’s a huge shift from even 20 years ago or 30 years ago. The reason for that was Title IX was applied vigorously in schools, and it gave opportunities — it’s not like women suddenly became athletes. They were athletic before. Michelle, when I work out with her, she puts me to shame. (Laughter.) But it had more to do with restrictions and opportunity.
So the point I’m making is, is that Title IX is a very powerful tool. The fact that we are applying it to transgender students means that they are going to be in a position to assert their rights if and when they see that they are being discriminated on their college campuses. And that could manifest itself in a whole variety of ways.Posted April 14, 2014
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into an inspired, hyperactive spaz. My weaknesses are exposed, and I know exactly how to tackle them! Oh, my poor diary on nights like these. Luckily, halfway into the construction of my color-coded pie chart for 2014 success, I remembered something. Every time I have a moment of inspiration like this, I go overboard. With renewed enthusiasm to work hard, I develop a wicked case of amnesia for the hard-fought lessons of injuries past. Not this time.
I realized I don't need a pie chart. I need a list of all the stupid mistakes I've made in the past, and I need to tape it to my forehead. So here it is, which you too can use to get injured—just like a pro! (Or not, if you're really smart.)
1. Stick to The Plan. ALWAYS
The Training Plan I got two months ago may look like a bunch of scribbles on a notepad or cells on a spreadsheet, but really it's an omnipotent being leading me to the promised land and must be treated as such. If 800s are planned for Tuesday and there's a hail storm, don't even think about moving it to Wednesday. Do not adjust the paces. Stick to The Plan. Success isn't about the races, it's about how closely I've followed The Training Plan.
2. Rest days are for babies
I like to run, and I want to get better, so why would I take a day off? The hard-core don't take days off, do they? I bet Shalane worked out twice today. What will I do on my day off, anyway? Think about working out while my mitochondria evaporate? In one day my jeans feel tighter. There is no way this is from being hydrated for the first time in a week. It is fatness as a direct result of laziness. It's only 9:30 p.m.... still time to get in a quick four-miler.
3. Be a hammerhead
Must. Hammer. Every. Single. Day. If it's not hard, it's not doing anything.
4. Mileage is everything
Oh, the magical X-mile week! When I hit that mileage, it will be the true indication that I really want it. Crap...I just totaled my mileage and it looks like I'm only going to hit X minus three miles instead of X! I did a long run this morning, but surely I can just go squeeze out an easy three-miler before bed. Let me just get out of my pajamas and put on my "I'm an idiot" hat.
5. Ignore the physical therapist because you're faster than he is
My PT told me my repeated injuries are the result of bad biomechanics and weakness and gave me a bunch of boring, repetitive chores to fix it. But my faster marathon PR is worth way more knowledge than his eight years of medical education and experience. Plus, I heard from someone somewhere with no credentials whatsoever that your body naturally finds its most efficient form by running more. I just need to keep doing what I'm doing, more.
6. Switch shoe styles midseason
My fitness has come around, I'm on the verge of a big breakthrough, and miraculously I'm injury-free! You know what would be great right now? Some new shoes. I've been wearing this style all season with no problems, and I'm just bored to bits. Suzy's shoes are so cute with their little fluorescent zigzags and minimalist zero-drop design. Let's go spice things up!
7. Starve yourself
According to this article I read, every pound of body fat lost is worth a few seconds per mile. Who cares if losing weight affects my hormone balance and makes it harder to recover from hard training? So what if I'm running really well already and don't have to spend a bunch of energy thinking about food? It simply can't be possible that my body is fastest when it's strong and healthy. Because look at her.
8. Cross-training doesn't count
I get injured every time I try to run more than X miles a week, but my peers run more, therefore I must run more. Adding some cross-training on an ElliptiGo or swimming is proven to "build endurance," but how am I supposed to count the mileage? If it can't be easily logged, it didn't happen.
9. Pop out of the car or plane and do a hard workout as soon as possible
My body has been folded into a paperclip for six hours and my ankles are as thick as Vin Diesel's neck, but there is a hard workout on The Training Plan and I am dedicated.
10. Get stressed out
Being stressed depletes the well of energy before the workout even starts. To avoid injury you have to lower the stress or lower the workout. Both of these things require thoughtful sacrifice. That's hippie talk! Don't give in. Stick to The Plan.
Some of these things you might think are ridiculous, and you'd never do them, but here's the beautiful, complicated truth: The better things are going, the more invincible you feel. Keep getting better and you keep getting crazier. It's like Frank the Tank. The more invincible you feel, the more you scoff at caution, the more reckless you become, the more you think you know everything. Before you know it, you're streaking the quad. And while nothing makes me feel more superhuman than a good string of training and racing, this year I'm putting my foot down. I'm not going to be an idiot.
Lauren Fleshman Lauren Fleshman is a pro runner with Oiselle and cofounder of Picky Bars.Image copyright AFP/Getty Images Image caption Giving clocks is considered taboo in Chinese culture
A UK government minister has apologised for giving a watch to the mayor of Taiwan's capital city, Taipei, without realising such gifts are taboo.
Susan Kramer said she did not know giving clocks suggests time is running out for the person who receives it in Chinese culture, and said sorry.
The recipient, Ko Wen-je, has himself been criticised for saying he did not need it and that he might sell it to a scrap metal dealer.
A spokesman later said he was joking.
"I'm sorry. We learn something new each day," Transport Minister Baroness Kramer said in a statement.
"I had no idea a gift like this could be seen as anything other than positive. In the UK a watch is precious - because nothing is more important than time."
A city spokesman said there was no chance of the watch being resold and it was in storage.
An accomplished surgeon with no prior political experience, Mr Ko ran as an independent last year, defeating the ruling Kuomintang party candidate to become mayor of Taipei.I am beyond thrilled to announce that HeroesHearth is officially spinning off an Esports Organization – HeroesHearth Esports (HHE) – and we have signed Hold It Down (Arthelon, BBJ, IshB00, Khroen, McIntyre).
Brasky (Ryan Lougheed, co-owner of HHE) and I (Ian Anderson) have been dreaming of putting together an Org since the release of Heroes of the Storm and like two doves in a Prince song, we knew things were going to get super real once we found the right team.
We have found the right team:
We personally watched Arthelon play Quick Match for almost an hour and are now convinced that the bad boy of HotS is ready for the big time. Not only was he a former competitive League of Legends player (competed in the challenger scene in seasons three and four), in the HotS scene, he formed Symbiote Gaming, which would later became TempoStorm and competed on the Cloud9 roster.BBJ was the Support for team LFM during last HGC Open alongside ishb00 and is consistently found on the leaderboards as a lonely Support player. Previously, he was a challenger League of Legends player until they nerfed support Veigar. Now, he spends his days waiting for Khroen to host him.Forced into the tank role ever since he found out Justing refused to play Muradin, ishb00 has fully embraced the role of becoming his team's punching bag. He has been playing around the amateur HotS scene for a year and half now, most recently with BBJ on team LFM, and is hoping to finally break top 8 with this new squad. When not playing with the team, you can find him sniping BBJ in HL and spamming OP heroes because why lose when you can win instead.Khroen has played in the competitive Heroes of the Storm scene since September of 2015 with 2ARC Gaming, but rose to the professional level with Gale Force Esports in March of 2016. Khroen has made his mark by placing fifth at IEM Katowice Western Clash (2017), ninth at the DreamHack Summer Global Championships (2016), third at Dream Austin (2016), and winning ESL Burbank (2016 Summer). We also heard that he plays Hearthstone.A veteran of BarrelBoys and Naventic, McIntyre is the reason why Kerrigan was ever relevant on Infernal Shrines. The grumpiest Melee Assassin in the scene won Dreamhack and competed at two World Championships in Korea and Sweden.David 'Dillon' has been a competitive coach for over two years. Since the beginning of time, he has been a Grandmaster player and is subtly in love with spreadsheets. David has a BS in Economics-Finance with a minor in global studie and has worked with a wide variety of teams and individuals.Renal has been involved in the HotS Competitive Scene since 2016. He's managed Miasma Esports and LFM Esports' rosters and is currently working on graduating with a Doctorate of Podiatric Medicine from Scholl College of Podiatric Medicine.
We couldn’t be more excited to support this team. Breakfast Princess (Head of Merchandising and Design of HHE) and I started HeroesHearth a year ago because we wanted to not only contribute to the community that we loved, but also to galvanize the ever-growing ranks of new players looking for educational resources and ways to connect with one another. HeroesHearth Esports will be an amazing new step closer to that on-going quest -- we are excited to be a new voice in the pro Heroes scene, but we are even more proud to directly support a group of individuals who we believe in.
For those of you who are new to HeroesHearth, click here to see what we do and why you should care!Deputy Team Principal of Williams F1 Team is climbing our very own Paddock magazine’s Top 100 ladder every year, being the most influential woman on the list. Claire Williams has been awarded an OBE this year, and recently she gave us some brilliant answers to a few important questions.
In recent years Williams F1 have been doing very well with the budgets you’ve been working with. Is there anything special within the team that has made this possible?
Luckily, we have some very clever people in the financial department who have been able to make our budget work. You only have a finite amount of money, and you have to determine what you’re going to spend that money on. It’s not rocket science, you don’t spend more than you have. That’s always been the philosophy at Williams. We’ve been able to identify areas where if we need to make investment we do and we have to prioritise, that’s how we’ve been able to successfully manage our budget.
It’s an unbelievably hard job to keep a Formula 1 team running at full speed these days. The readers of Paddock are definitely interested in the business side of high-end racing, but would regular fans like to know more about the behind-the-scenes action of looking for partners, sponsors?
I think that world has changed quite a lot actually over the past couple of years, in a number of ways. I think people would be surprised to learn what we actually sell as part of our partnerships these days. It’s no longer about just sticking a logo on a race car, it’s about so much more. Invariably a logo is the last piece of the conversation that we have, it’s the icing on the cake so to speak. Our partnerships are now formed of so many different elements from diversity campaigns and working with Williams Advanced Engineering, to employee engagement and sustainability projects or technical case studies.
Partnerships have become so wide and varied in their scope that what you see on the racetrack, the logos on the cars, is just a small part of it these days. Most partnerships from a timing perspective have changed from when I first started doing the commercial side of my role. If you hadn’t secured your new sponsors by December at the end of the season, that was it, those were your sponsors and therefore the budget you were going to be going racing with.
Brands have changed, they’ve got so many options when it comes to where they put their dollars. They take longer to make their decisions as well, so we see new partners coming into the sport throughout the year now, which is a scenario that never really happened before. The commercial side of Formula 1 is a fascinating world, it’s amazing to try and look at an organisation and see where sponsorship can help, that’s one of the great powers of the sport, it’s so beneficial to a business from a marketing perspective it’s extraordinary.
Brands have changed, they’ve got so many options when it comes to where they put their dollars.
Williams F1 have been involved in some very creative marketing/promotional initiatives in the last years. Is the role of such things as fan events, show runs, social media projects, fun videos changing in the sport?
I think it’s a case of you have to keep up, not just with what other teams are doing, but in other sports the teams and properties are the rights holders. So it’s really important that our marketing group are creative and innovative in what they do. We want to be game-changers in Formula 1 and we also want to embrace the fans that we have and to encourage a new generation of fans to follow the sport, you can only do that by knowing and understanding what they want from you.
So it’s a conversation when you’re talking and thinking about what marketing activation you’re going to be doing, whether that’s what you do in-house, or whether that’s what you do when you’re working with your partners. It’s a wonderful field really because you can be so creative and you can be so innovative. You can really push your people to come up with some jaw-dropping ideas and that’s what we want, we want to create brilliant content and events that engage the public and make them sit up and go “wow, Williams are doing a really great job”. That’s what the marketing group are tasked with doing, bringing in fans to our sport. Formula 1 is often seen as elitist and inaccessible, but we love what we do and we want to share that and one of the ways in which we can do that is through the marketing platforms we deliver.
This episode (6/7) tells you the story from when I got "the phone call" and what happened next. #VB77 #mypathhttps://t.co/IEoPGtzcQh — Valtteri Bottas (@ValtteriBottas) December 21, 2016
What, do you think, is the near future of the sponsorship sector of Formula 1? Do you see any tendencies that might be leading somewhere?
Obviously, Formula 1 is the pinnacle of technology and engineering, so for a number of years now we’ve seen lots of technical businesses come into the sport. That trend hasn’t necessarily changed but it’s probably ramping up. Particularly at Williams, we have a whole piece around IT infrastructure and digital transformation and embracing that. So we’ve seen a lot more IT partners come to us. I don’t necessarily think it’s a case of trends emerging, I think it’s really a case of when there’s so much competition for marketing dollars who you can persuade to bring in is based on the assets that you have that match a business’s marketing criteria.
With Williams in particular, one of the changes we are seeing is that our partnerships are working across the group and aren’t just working within the Formula 1 team. So many of our sponsors now partner with not just the team, but also with Williams Advanced Engineering. Alternatively, more and more are looking at WAE and partnering with them and using Formula 1 as a showcase, it’s a shop window so to speak.HOUSTON/NEW YORK (Reuters) - The U.S. oil and gas renaissance that has bestowed unexpected prosperity on states from North Dakota to Pennsylvania and boosted distillate production to a record high in the Midwest is also causing pockets of fuel scarcity: just ask Arkansas.
Farmers, truckers and politicians there are up in arms over plans by Enterprise Product Partners (EPD.N) to end deliveries on a key pipeline that ships diesel and jet fuel from Texas on July 1. Instead, Enterprise plans to reverse the line to ship ethane, chiefly used as a petrochemical feedstock, from the shale fields in Ohio and Pennsylvania to the Gulf Coast.
The Arkansas attorney general has appealed to federal regulators to intervene, local merchants warn of a “catastrophe,” truckers fear a jump in prices and even a U.S. Air Force base is stocking up on extra fuel.
The controversy is the latest sign of how energy and infrastructure companies are rushing to adapt to the production boom that no one predicted five years ago. And while the eventual result should be a more modern, efficient U.S. fuel network, the changes are forcing some parts of the country to redraw decades-old supply lines.
“When you cut off supply, it’s not as if there’s a lot of extra supply just waiting to be used,” said Ron Leone, executive vice president of the Missouri Petroleum Marketers and Convenience Store Association.
“You’re going to have to scramble to make it up, and in that scramble there will be outages and shortages,” he said.
Enterprise, which announced its plans for the so-called TE Products line in March, says demand for interstate shipments on the 230,000 barrels per day line has fallen sharply in recent years, and that it is not “commercially feasible” to invest an estimated $50 million (32.11 million pounds) to upgrade a parallel line.
Enterprise declined to say how much the pipeline was delivering on a daily basis now.
Local fuel groups argue it is an energy lifeline and that closing it will roil the local market, raising prices as fuel is fetched from further afield and sparking shortages when demand normally met by the pipeline shifts to other sources.
Arkansas, a state of 3 million people north of Louisiana and best known as the home of former President Bill Clinton, is not the first to see a darker side of the shale energy bonanza. Northeast states have also fretted over fuel supplies following the closure of several refineries, partly because they could not compete with inland rivals running cheap shale crude.
The reversal would have a “significant, damaging effect” on business, the Arkansas Attorney General’s office said in an April 25 filing to the U.S. Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), asking for Enterprise’s plan to be rejected or at least suspended for seven months for an investigation to take place.
Enterprise declined comment on the filing.
‘OUTAGES AND SHORTAGES’
The TE Products line runs 806 miles (1,297 km) from Texas via Arkansas to southeast parts of Missouri, Illinois, Indiana and Ohio.
Under the company’s $1.5 billion Appalachia-to-Texas, or ATEX, project, it would reverse the pipeline and build an extension into Ohio and Pennsylvania to pump ethane gas, often produced alongside natural gas from shale reserves from the northern Utica and Marcellus plays, south to petrochemical producers on the Gulf Coast.
The plan emerges at a time when overall fuel supplies in the broader Midwest area are healthier than ever, with refiners running flat-out as a glut of discounted Canada and North Dakota crude pumps up profit margins, while demand is dimmed.
Distillate production in the PADD 2 region from Oklahoma to Michigan is at a record high, up almost 9 percent since 2007, while demand has fallen by 8.6 percent during the same span, according to data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
But regional traders say that broad trend is irrelevant for a narrow corridor including Arkansas, about a third of Missouri, up to a third of Illinois and parts of southern Indiana and Ohio that rely on the TE Products line.
“I think it borders on being catastrophic,” said William Fleischli, executive vice president of the Illinois Petroleum Marketers Association.
Tom Gabe, president and chief executive of Heritage Petroleum, an Indiana-based fuel distributor and shipper on the line, explained how customers on the TE Products line in North City, south Illinois, might now have to go 100 miles south to a different terminal Cape Girardeau, Missouri, to get fuel.
If demand for fuel from that other terminal suddenly doubles to 3,000 truckloads a week, local prices will have to adjust.
“The end user is going to pay more for his fuel,” he said.
Other alternatives include the Explorer Pipeline, from southeast Texas through Oklahoma and central Missouri up to northeast Illinois, or the Explorer line through Illinois, to then be loaded into Buckeye Partners’ (BPL.N) system to move east.
But if the endpoint is Missouri or Arkansas, “you’re driving the barrel,” a Midwest oil products trader said, meaning trucking it from a source other than the TE Products line, adding freight costs.
The Association of Oil Pipelines says trucking products for 300 miles could cost 20 to 30 cents a barrel compared with 4 cents for a barrel shipped on a pipeline.
AIR FORCE ANGST
“Driving the barrel” is what the Little Rock Air Force Base and airlines at the Clinton Airport in Little Rock will have to do because no other major pipelines shipping jet fuel or distillates run through the centre of Arkansas, traders say.
The one petroleum refinery in Arkansas, Delek US Holdings’ (DK.N) 83,000 bpd plant in El Dorado, could make commercial jet fuel, but that would only reduce diesel output - emptying one cup to fill another, said Steve Ferren, executive vice president of the Arkansas Oil Marketers Association.
Delek declined comment on how the closure may affect its production.
The Air Force base in Little Rock will be topping up its fuel tanks to add an inventory buffer while it looks into alternative supply sources, says Mimi Schirmacher, a spokeswoman for Defense Logistics Agency-Energy, which sources energy for U.S. military forces.
SHUTTING DOWN
The 16-inch (40-cm) TE Products distillate pipeline runs alongside a 20-inch line that moves gasoline and natural gas liquids along the same route. The larger line could be reworked to allow it to transport distillate fuel as well, including the installation of more pumps, but the investment is not warranted, Enterprise says.
“Every terminal and destination that is currently served by this pipeline, has and will continue to have other alternatives - including terminals served by other pipelines, terms attached directly to refineries, or terms served by barge,” says Enterprise spokesman Rick Rainey.
Adding to the concerns of traders, Enterprise is considering similar options for the 210,000 bpd Centennial line, which ships gasoline and distillates 795-mile from Texas to Chicago. The Centennial is a 50/50 joint venture with Marathon Petroleum Corp (MPC.N).
The 24- and 26-inch line runs north along the Mississippi River on the eastern border of Arkansas and southeast corner of Missouri, then to Bourbon, Illinois, south of Chicago.
Tom Zulim, Enterprise’s senior vice president of regulated businesses and refined products, said last month the company considered moving different products or reversing the line but “nothing has really come to fruition” yet.Changes to China’s energy mix amid President Xi Jinping’s push for an “energy revolution” have the potential to accelerate the global transition away from fossil fuels to clean energy sources, according to a new report from the International Energy Agency.
The country has sought to move away from coal and other fossil fuels to address a pollution problem that leads to millions of premature deaths and foster economic development outside of heavy industry. China has also sought to position itself as the global leader in the fight against climate change.
To that end, China will install a third of the new solar and wind power in the coming decades while its coal consumption continues to decline, according to the report. It will also generate a quarter of the growth in global natural gas demand, assuming the country continues to implement current polices and follows through on announced measures. And, despite a concerted push for electric vehicles, the country is expected to become the world’s largest oil consumer around 2030.
Energy shifts in China are felt globally and those developments would reverberate quickly, crippling coal producers that rely on exports to China and expanding the market for clean energy technology in China, according to the report. Much of the clean energy investment could remain in China, however, as a result of the government’s current posture investing billions in a wide range of new energy technology.
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The changes in China underscore a broader global transition toward renewable energy sources already underway. The cost of solar and wind power have been reduced by 70% and 25%, respectively, since 2010. Globally, renewables are expected to make up 40% of power generation by 2040.
The United States would benefit from China’s new demand for natural gas as the country expands its exports of the natural resource in the coming years. The U.S. is already a net exporter of natural gas — a trend made possible by fracking and the shale revolution — and is expected to grow its exports. The U.S. is also expected to become a net exporter of oil in the coming decade.
Write to Justin Worland at justin.worland@time.com.CodeSandbox — An online React editor 🏖 Ives van Hoorne Blocked Unblock Follow Following Apr 13, 2017 Already more than a week ago Bas Buursma and I released CodeSandbox: an online code editor with a focus on sharing projects in React. The response was beyond all my expectations: already more than 1500 sandboxes have been created and more than 280 users signed in via Github! The idea of CodeSandbox started when I was on a trip to St. Ives (hah!). I was working at that time on the conversion of Catawiki to React. While I was gone I got a lot of questions from other developers about React, but there was no easy way for me to answer them without having access to an editor where I could access the libraries we have. What is CodeSandbox Simply said: CodeSandbox is an online code editor. It automates things like transpiling, bundling and dependency management for you so you can easily create a new project in a single click. After creating something interesting you can show it to others by just sharing the url. CodeSandbox features a live preview to show the result of the code while you’re typing. The editor works with all javascript projects, but it has some React specific features, like the ability to download the project in a create-react-app template.
The editor itself
Features We’ve been working on CodeSandbox for the past 4 months, so there are a lot of things I built that I’d love to talk about. If you have any suggestions I’d also love to hear them! I will feature (pun intended) the biggest features. NPM Dependencies Support This is really important for us since it should be easy to try out a library in a separate environment without too much hassle. We support NPM dependencies by creating a dependency build on the fly for the specific combination of dependencies. WebpackBin does the same thing and I’m working at this moment with Christian Alfoni to build a service that we both can use. It’s also possible to add external resources, like css and javascript files.
Adding a missing dependency
Downloading If you want to take your project out of CodeSandbox you can easily do that by clicking the ‘Download’ button in the header. You will get a zip file with the create-react-app template to work with. The package.json and index.html are generated for you. Sharing CodeSandbox is built around sharing, that’s why this feature was a priority #1 from the start. It’s possible to share a sandbox in two ways: the fullscreen and the editor mode. You normally work in the editor view when working on a sandbox, but you can share a fullscreen version of it. The fullscreen version is a small version of CodeSandbox with just the editor and preview. You can specify what file and what view to show with the sharing options in the header. It should be possible soon to showcase a sandbox on Medium. EDIT: It’s possible now! Example:
Example embed
The share options Prettier, prettier-eslint, ESLint and Tern support I’ve found these developer tools (especially Prettier) a requirement for me to work fast. You can enable or disable all of these in preferences. Prettify on save is enabled by default (you can still turn it off) because this ensures the same style between sandboxes and makes it easier to read the code of other sandboxes. ESLint follows the rules of the airbnb preset, I want to make this a preference too in the future.The BjjBrick Podcast is in iTunes, Stitcher radio, and RSS link for Andriod
This week we bring you an interview with one of the Dirty Dozen of BJJ Chris Haueter. This a fun interview that covers a large range of topics, but mostly Jiu-Jitsu.
We talk about:
What got him involved in martial arts so early
Early BJJ in the United States
His first thoughts of Jiu-Jitsu
Learning moves on Youtube
MMA fans
Trying to see things from a different perspective
Being a “coach” vs a “master”
Getting a good balance with your training
Kids BJJ and Kids MMA
Violence in MMA
First tournament advice
Training on a tight schedule
His art work
Links: Email chaueter1041@mac.com instagram Chrishaueterart
Quote of the week: My mind’s never gone very far away from what I wanted to accomplish. Dan Gable
Article of the week: The Biggest Delusion in BJJ by John Connors
Catch us next week for another episode of The BjjBrick PodcastTottenham Hotspur bounced back and up, landing at the peak of Group H last night. Coming back from 1-0 down, to 2-1 up, putting Borussia Dortmund out of the Champions League.
Aided by Real Madrid’s 6-0 battering away to Cypriot side Apoel Nicosia, the loss put to rest any hopes of the home side qualifying for the knockout stages of the Champions League, and has them tied on points with Apoel for the Europa League spot.
Mauricio Pochettino fielded his strongest squad despite speculation that with qualification guaranteed, he may rest key players such as Harry Kane and Dele Alli.
Tottenham Top the ‘Group of Death’ as Borussia Dortmund crash out
To the delight of the traveling fans, it was an all-star affair, and as expected both sides came out pressing high from the start, with a couple of early attempts.
As expected, Dortmund’s Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang caused immediate problems for the Spurs defence. Davinson Sanchez unintentionally playing him onside, he found space, to sweeping in a beautiful goal just beyond the reach of a diving Hugo Lloris.
Netting his 16th goal of the season, and ending a five-game drought, he again proves his worth to his club. His recent off the pitch antics had seen him in trouble with his manager. Surely now atoned for opening the Dortmund account.
Spurs, still looking a little bruised from their poor performance against Arsenal, the defence worked hard to keep the deficit to one goal. Dele Alli did little to improve on this lackluster performance on Saturday, and Harry Kane still looked off the pace.
The German side controlled for the most part of the half. The ever solid Davinson Sanchez and Jan Vertonghen prevented further damage. With only the odd run made, Spurs showed no sign real sign of breaking.
Second Half
Whatever was said at the halfway point, however, Pochettinos men came out driving faster and further up the pitch. Young Harry Winks once again showed his astounding composure and movement on the ball, in the absence of Mousa Dembele.
Dele Alli then displayed his creative best. Squeezing between defenders to pass to the reliable foot of Harry Kane. With his classic low finish, the visitors were level.
The traveling fans could now be heard loud and clear, above even the persistent drum of the Dortmund disciples, and their admirably persistent verbal support.
With the home side tiring, and knowing the score in the Apoel game, Spurs quickly took advantage. Dele Alli again showed his undeniable talent as he battled to complete the comeback. Once again he found space passing deftly to set Heung-Min Son up for the deserving winner.
It was an excellent performance all round in a game that Spurs didn’t need to win.
Yet, following the dreaded loss to Arsenal, the North Londoners proved that they can compete with the European big guns. By the same token, Borussia Dortmund showed great stamina and pride to battle so hard knowing there was a slim reward.
Following the emphatic win over Real Madrid, subsequent below-par performances saw the press and critics immediately question Spurs resilience when it matters at the top level. In particular away from home against high calibre competition, which has been an issue for the North Londoners on the home front.
Progressing in Europe
There was little hope given to Tottenham following last season’s disastrous outing in the Champions League. In those first Wembley games, they failed to qualify for the last 16, their first attempt in some years. They have never got past the last 16, their nearest attempt was with Harry Redknap at the helm,
Being listed as the ‘Group of Death’ with occupants such as Borussia Dortmund and Spanish giants Real Madrid, Spurs were given little hope of even qualifying.
With the Pochettino instilled fight the new Tottenham have gained, they not only qualified but have beaten titleholders and the group’s second favorites. Banishing the memories from the weekend, Saturday will see Spurs head into their home Premiership clash with West Bromwich Albion on Saturday in fine fettle.
Main Photo:
Embed from Getty ImagesBy Roland Brown
FIVE years ago motorcycle performance was dramatically stretched in two directions, with the launch of BMW’s S1000RR and Ducati’s very different but equally spectacular Multistrada 1200. Someone must have parked those iron horses together. How else do you explain the birth of the S1000XR, whose mother is undoubtedly BMW but whose beaky, long-legged look and sporty adventure-bike DNA are straight from the Multi?
In reality of course the XR is the result of BMW, who have already successfully extended their S1000 family into the super-naked world with last year’s S1000R, going a step further to compete with Ducati in the adventure-sport market sector that the Italian V-twin basically created. The XR uses the same 999cc, four-cylinder engine as the S1000R, held in a new aluminium-framed chassis whose adjustable screen, upright riding position and luggage-carrying ability are more reminiscent of the R1200GS.
That 16-valve, liquid-cooled power plant, essentially a de-tuned S1000RR unit, is identical to the S1000R engine, though it gets fresh mapping plus a new exhaust system. The output is unchanged, which means there’s a healthy torque spread and a maximum of 160hp at 11,000rpm. Even the gearing stays the same but the XR gets the option of a new quick-shifter which, unlike the S1000R unit, works on both up- and down-changes.
Chassis layout follows the S1000R by combining an aluminium beam frame with telescopic forks and a rear monoshock, but the XR parts are all new. The frame gives more relaxed steering geometry, there’s a generous 150mm of travel up front and 140mm at the rear, and a longer aluminium swing-arm helps stretch the wheelbase by 9mm to 1548mm. The non-adjustable dual-seat is broad, and at 840mm high enough that unless you’re tall you might consider the 20mm lower option. (There’s also a kit that drops it to 790mm, for £175.)
So far, so much like an adventure bike, then. As you reach out to grip the wide, slightly raised one-piece bar, and look out past a fairly slim but quite tall screen, the new four has a GS-like feel that can only be deliberate. But by the time you’ve accelerated away, shifted through the box and sliced this distinctly rapid and improbably quick-steering bike through a set of bends, it’s clear that if this is an adventure sport bike then sport is the dominant part.
It even has Sport in its name, at least for the majority of UK buyers. Alongside the basic model is an S1000XR Sport that adds more refined DTC traction control, extra riding modes, cruise control, heated grips and more; and a top-spec Sport SE that includes Dynamic ESA semi-active suspension plus touring-friendly options including centre-stand, luggage rack and pannier fastenings. All fair enough, though even if they’d called the basic model the Sport I don’t think anyone riding it would feel short-changed.
The engine is a major reason for that. As you’d expect, it’s every bit as good as it is in the S1000R: powerful and revvy enough to give exhilarating, shoulder-wrenching acceleration every time you tweak the throttle. It’s also immaculately fuelled, extremely smooth – with just a slight four-cylinder tingle up near the 11,000rpm red line – and flexible enough to make the XR easy and even relaxing to ride.
Well, maybe not quite relaxing; it’s too temptingly quick for that – happy to howl to an indicated 130mph in seconds, with plenty more to come to a top speed of about 170mph. But there’s fantastic midrange punch from 7,000rpm until the adjustable shift light starts flashing. And while the four doesn’t have quite the low-rev heft of some engines, it pulls very cleanly from well below 4,000rpm in the lower gears, and is equally rider-friendly whether you’re trickling through town or gassing it out of a hairpin in the country.
The XR is particularly addictive if it’s fitted with the Gear Shift Assist Pro, a £385 option that is included with the Sport and SE models. The shifter works flawlessly both up and down the box, allowing rapid changes |
the day before I got on the plane.
Holmes: So, you’re allowed to have your inhaler in the game?
Varner: I am allowed to have that in the game. They’ve cleared that.
Holmes: How do you play that? Day one, you just tell everyone it won’t be an issue?
Varner: I don’t know. This group is looking for every little thing.
Holmes: Any reason to send someone home.
Varner: And so much is going on out there on that porch already.
Holmes: Speaking of…who’s winking at each other?
Varner: It’s almost become who’s not at this point. You can tell who the better players are by the ones who are completely stone-faced. But, there’s a lot going on. My alliance had a conference call before we left in case we got separated. Who are the early targets? Who do we lean toward? And, we’re all here but one, which is good.
Holmes: Mr. Coy. Who are we talking about?
Varner: Terry Dietz and Wiglesworth and Shane. So having him left behind sucks. Seeing his face is burned into my head. But, because we did all the legwork before that, I feel pretty prepared. And Kelly and I seem to be…we’re passing each other at the right times. She’ll say something and it’s exactly what I’m thinking. We were bringing Vytas in at the last minute. So, he’s on board. He knows to come to me and Kelly as soon as we hit the beach. Although we’ve not had a conversation this connects me to Ciera, which connects me to Monica, because of Ciera’s mother.
Holmes: It’s like Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon.
Varner: Oh yeah, I’m sitting here doing all of this in my mind. We have that Cagayan four, they’re the target. It’s Spencer, Kass, Tasha, and Woo. They’re the only show here with four people. That’s a voting block right out of the gate. They find three other people? We’re (expletive deleted). So, it’s about capitalizing on that out of the gate.
Holmes: Bad news for the Cagayaners.
Varner: Kass is trying her damnedest to make us think that Spencer, Tasha, and Woo hate her. But, I’m sitting here watching them all smiling at each other. You don’t do that with someone you hate. And Tasha is hogging everything. She’s a hammock hog. Watch her spread out on the only place we have to lay down. She’s doing it now.
Holmes: There are quite a few San Juan del Surians here as well.
Varner: Well, I’m tight with Kelley Wentworth, which nobody knows.
Holmes: Holy crap.
Varner: Why would anyone suspect that? Why would I know her? She and I have been communicating for months and she’s hooking me up with Jeremy. I feel good with that group. I feel good with the “Blood vs. Water” group. The singles here are assets. Tremendous assets. Stephen, Peih-Gee, Abi-Maria…already. We’ve already connected. I feel like I’m set up really well.
Holmes: Everyone’s probably thinking, “Oh, Jeff and Kimmi!”
Varner: No. I’m playing that up. Kimmi’s one of my best friends out here. We’ve also talked. And my group out here they don’t know that I’m talking to other people. That’s my strategy. I’m not going to be a challenge champion.
Holmes: Especially with your bathtub gymnastics act.
Varner: (Laughs) I’m a (expletive deleted) nightmare. Sandra (Diaz-Twine) won this game without doing anything physical. So, I called her before I left because I knew I’m not in the shape these people are. And she just rattled off things and I wrote page after page. I think I have my hands in enough pies that it doesn’t matter how well I do in challenges.
Holmes: It’s been fifteen some years since you played. What do you think the other players will remember about Jeff Varner’s time in the game?
Varner: I don’t know. People love me and people hate me. I never understood that. I felt I played an honest game. I think I was a little beyond my time, maybe. “Survivor 2” was very survivalist and I was very strategic. People weren’t playing with me the way I needed them to. Starting the fight with Kimmi and Alicia (Calaway) was one of the things that I did. Gagging at Tina (Wesson) to get her to throw up. These ballsy things that nobody else had the guts to do. This group here? Eats, sleeps, and breathes like me. And I like that I’m being called up for pictures last. We’ll be out there and they’ll be like “Vytas over here, Joe lean down, guy in the blue do this…” It’s a sign to me that these people don’t know who I am. I’m sure they do, but fifteen years is a long time.
Holmes: I was pleasantly surprised that the fans voted you in. I was worried that recency bias was going to leave people like you and Fishbach on the sidelines.
Varner: It changes everything. I can’t jump off a pole for peanut butter because I’m not just letting myself down, I’m letting millions of people down. And that’s heavy.
Holmes: So, you feel the weight of the fans expectations?
Varner: Oh yeah.
Holmes: I never thought of it that way. Once the vote ended, I figured it’d be “Survivor” as usual. Almost two halves to the season.
Varner: When we had our first interview with CBS yesterday, they actually tapped into that. I cried. I’m a (expletive deleted). I don’t know where it came from. But there’s something there and it’s deep. And it’s going to get me far.
Holmes: “Survivor” has changed a bit in fifteen years. Are you on top of all the twists and whatnot?
Varner: Yeah, I’m not a Spencer who could probably rattle off the color of everybody’s underwear.
Holmes: Me neither. This is my job and I have to jump onto Wikipedia every couple of minutes to double check things.
Varner: I’m not that dude. I was for a minute. But, life goes on.
Holmes: Any guesses on twists for this season if there are any?
Varner: I think out of the gate whatever Jeff can do to break up pre-game alliances will be done. Kass is whispering around to everyone, “Double elimination off of the bat. Then we’re breaking into three tribes.” I don’t know if it’s the island talking to her or how she knows this. Maybe she overheard something. That’s her collateral. I don’t trust her as far as I can spit. And I’ve been reading a book on body language so I can understand people. Kass, there’s a whole chapter on people who have no body language. They’re liars, perfect liars. They believe their own (expletive deleted). If your feet don’t do anything, if you don’t do anything with your hands? Kass just sits there perfectly. There’s nothing there. Every word out of her (expletive deleted) mouth is a lie.
Holmes: You need to stick around for a long time. Win the whole thing if you can.
Varner: I’ll do my best. Spencer is a textbook everything. When you defy gravity, when your feet come off the ground and your toes point to the sky, you’re extremely confident. That’s all he does. He takes up a lot of territory, which means, “I own this place.” A lot of crotch framing which is, “I’m the boss.” He thinks he’s got this (expletive deleted) down pat.
Holmes: Alright, we’re going to play “Align or Malign.” In my hand I have nineteen cards featuring your competitors. You’ll go through them and tell me who you’ll align with and who you’ll malign. Trick is, you only get eight aligns.
Varner: I only get eight?!
Holmes: That’s the deal.
Varner: Why?
Holmes: Because if you got nineteen aligns you might be tempted to say wonderful things about all of these people.
Varner: Wow…I have more than eight.
Holmes: Too bad. The rules are surprisingly strict.
Varner: Kelly Wiglesworth is an align. She’s a good soul, she’s at peace. She’s from my hometown. We have a lot in common. We go way back in the “Survivor” franchise. I can tell by the look on her face that she thinks this pre-game (expletive deleted) is as much (expletive deleted) as I do. She’s a challenge champion.
Varner: People are going to target Joe which is going to protect her. He’s the shield for her. He’s also a lot like her. He’s very feeling, emotional, sweet. He’s communicating to me here, non-verbally, in a way that makes me very comfortable with him. Align.
Varner: Same with Vytas. I can tell Vytas I have COPD. Align.
Varner: Ciera, the other day I had a panic attack because I couldn’t breathe. She wouldn’t give me the time of day. Wouldn’t make eye contact. The second she sensed something was wrong her hand went on my knee and she started comforting me. I like that. Align.
Varner: Kelley Wentworth…align. We’ll go far in this game together and nobody will see it coming. She’s the coolest chick of the group. Her sense of humor is randy. She’s a nasty little girl and I love it.
Varner: Terry…very loyal. He’s going to stick with me. I know that he and Vytas are together. I know that he and Kelly are together. Align.
Varner: Abi-Maria…align. You need your bitch in the group, she is out of control. She’s flipping around. She’s hysterical here. She’s a shield for me. I can be a little bitchy.
Varner: Shirin…align. She went through a lot in her last season. She overcame a personal obstacle and I feel like that is going to be my experience in this show. So, that’s going to bond us together.
Varner: Kass is a (expletive deleted) liar. She’s a strategist. She thinks she’s got it down. She’s making eye contact with everyone. She’s trying her best. That says desperation. Malign. She’s already shown everyone that she’ll make an alliance out in the woods and then come out and tell everyone.
Varner: Spencer…malign. He’s the winner of this game if you don’t get rid of him quick.
Varner: Woo…malign. I don’t even know why he’s here. My niece looked at him and said, “Why is Michelle Kwan running for ‘Survivor’?” Nice guy. He’s not these people. He’s his own thing. I just don’t think he should be here. I find him boring.
Varner: Andrew I like a lot. But he’s desperate because he doesn’t know anybody here. He’s not in anybody’s group. I’ve heard through the grapevine that he is desperately looking for someone to align with. You’re making me malign him.
Varner: Monica keeps making eye contact with me like her body is something that is going to turn me on. She’s working it. I love how she’s trying to play me. I trust her…I think. You’re making me malign her, too.
Holmes: I’m the worst.
Varner: Kimmi has had a rough life. Her husband screwed her over. She’s had financial trouble. Her kids are sick. I want her to go as far as she can and I want to help her, but I’m not going to jeopardize my game to do it. Malign.
Varner: Jeremy’s body is sick. He’s in great shape. We’re going to get along well. But, malign.
Varner: Keith is an awesome dude. But, the very first night we were chosen, he came up on stage and I said, “Another old man!” He was offended by that, I could tell. Right off the bat I pissed him off. Malign.
Varner: Stephen knows everybody, knows everything. I also think he’s arrogant. He’s named an award after himself and gives it to people, who does that? Malign.
Varner: Peih-Gee…I think we’d work together well, but I think she’s hard to read. And she seems clumsy and oaf-y, sticking her foot in her mouth already. Malign.
Varner: Tasha is the biggest threat in this game. She’s mean. There’s a mean sort of thing coming off of her. Mean like “I’m going to kick your ass,” mean. There’s an energy coming off of her that I don’t want to align with.
Any Questions? Drop me a line on Twitter: @gordonholmes
“Survivor: Second Chance” will kick off with a special 90-minute premiere on Wednesday, September 23rd at 8 p.m. ET.
The opinions expressed are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Comcast.Dear Reader, As you can imagine, more people are reading The Jerusalem Post than ever before. Nevertheless, traditional business models are no longer sustainable and high-quality publications, like ours, are being forced to look for new ways to keep going. Unlike many other news organizations, we have not put up a paywall. We want to keep our journalism open and accessible and be able to keep providing you with news and analysis from the frontlines of Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish World.
The father of the man suspected to have perpetrated the fatal shootings of four Marines in Chattanooga, Tennessee is a native of the Palestinian territories who was once questioned by US authorities over alleged ties to Islamic terrorists, NBC News is reporting on Friday.
US authorities are investigating travel to the Middle East by the suspect, Mohammod Youssuf Abdulazeez, including at least one trip to Jordan and possibly one to Yemen, a source close to the probe said on Friday.
Abdulazeez, 24, who the FBI identified as the shooter, was shot to death in a rampage on Thursday at two military facilities in Chattanooga.The suspect, seen driving an open-top Ford Mustang, sprayed gunfire at a joint military recruiting center in a strip mall, riddling the glass facade with bullet holes, then drove to a Naval Reserve Center about 6 miles (10 km) away, where he killed the four Marines before he died in a firefight with police.The shooting, which comes at a time when US military and law enforcement authorities are increasingly concerned about the threat "lone wolves" pose to domestic targets, also injured three people, including a sailor who was critically wounded.Investigators are trying to determine whether the suspect had any contact with militants or militant groups but have no evidence so far that he did, the US government source told Reuters.US law enforcement officials said they were investigating whether he was inspired by Islamic State or similar extremists.Islamic State had threatened to step up violence in the holy fasting month of Ramadan, which ends on Friday evening.The group, also known as ISIS and ISIL, claimed responsibility after a gunman killed 37 tourists in Tunisia in June, the same day as an attack in France and a suicide bombing in Kuwait.The SITE Intelligence Group, which tracks extremist groups, said Abdulazeez blogged on Monday "life is short and bitter" and that Muslims should not miss an opportunity to "submit to Allah." Reuters could not independently verify the postings.While investigators still have no specific evidence of what might have prompted the suspect to carry out the shooting, they believe family or psychological issues may have contributed, according to the source, who was not authorized to speak on the record.His father, Youssuf Abdulazeez, who attended Texas A&M University, according to his Facebook page, appears to be a high achiever. He works for Chattanooga's Department of Public Works as a soil engineering expert, according to local media reports citing city records.The suspect appears to have followed in his father's footsteps. According to a resume believed to have been posted online by Abdulazeez, he attended high school in a Chattanooga suburb and graduated from the University of Tennessee in 2012 with an engineering degree. His work experience includes an internship with the Tennessee Valley Authority, a regional power utility.Years ago, the father came under investigation by a Joint Terrorism Task Force for possible connections to a militant group, the source said, but he was cleared of any association with terrorism or wrongdoing. It is possible but not certain that the probe resulted in the father's name being placed on a terrorist watch list, according to the source.
Join Jerusalem Post Premium Plus now for just $5 and upgrade your experience with an ads-free website and exclusive content. Click here>>The document, published on Thursday, also suggested that 94-year-old Mr Mandela's relatives had been advised by doctors to switch off his life-support machine.
Medics treating the former South African president, who is entering his fourth week in hospital, said the family should consider letting him go rather than "prolonging his suffering", the document added.
It was leaked as members of Mr Mandela's large family engaged in a war of words over his legacy – and were called on by his former ally, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, not to "besmirch" his name.
"Please, please, please may we think not only of ourselves. It's almost like spitting in Madiba's face," Tutu said in a statement released on Thursday night.
The document, which offered the bleakest picture yet of Mr Mandela's fading health, was submitted to a closed hearing last week by a lawyer acting for Mr Mandela's oldest daughter Makaziwe during a court battle with his oldest grandson Mandela.
Dated June 26, it was leaked to the AFP news agency on Thursday.
"He is in a permanent vegetative state and is assisted in breathing by a life support machine," the document read.
"The Mandela family have been advised by the medical practitioners that his life-support machine should be switched off. Rather than prolonging his suffering, the Mandela family is exploring this option as a very real probability."
On Thursday night, Jacob Zuma, the South African president, issued a "clarification" in which he said that Mr Mandela's doctors denied his situation was a bleak as suggested.
"Former President Mandela has been and remains under the care of a multidisciplinary panel of South African medical experts drawn from the South Africa Military Health Services, the public sector, the universities and the private sector. Under this panel a team of doctors, nurses, paramedics and other health professionals attend to Madiba on a 24 hour basis,"
"We confirm our earlier statement released this afternoon after President Jacob Zuma visited Madiba in hospital that Madiba remains in a critical, but stable condition. "The doctors deny that the former President is in a vegetative state."
Mr Mandela is now entering his fourth week in hospital in Pretoria where he was admitted for a reoccurring lung infection and is now on a ventilator.
Graca Machel, his wife, spoke publicly for the first time about her husband on Thursday, insisting he was "fine" and not in excessive pain.
Referring to Mr Mandela by his clan name, she said: "Although Madiba sometimes may be uncomfortable, very few times he is in pain, but he is fine."
Mac Maharaj, Mr Zuma's spokesman, questioned whether Mr Mandela's condition had been exaggerated by lawyers acting for the family in the court case.
"We have reported even today as a result of President Zuma's visit that Madiba remains in a critical but stable condition and that is based on Mr Zuma going to the hospital and being briefed by the doctors," he said. "Certainly in that statement, there is no suggestion that he is in a vegetative state."
The claims about Mr Mandela's health emerged in a statement entitled "Certificate of Urgency" submitted to a high court close to the former president's childhood home in Qunu, in the Eastern Cape. The court has been hearing arguments in a dispute over where several of Mr Mandela's late children should be buried – the key issue of a bitter family feud – and the certificate was part of an argument for the case to be expedited.
On Wednesday, the court ruled that the remains of three of the former statesman's children should be immediately exhumed and reburied in a hillside plot close to where Mr Mandela is expected to be buried when he dies.
Makaziwe Mandela, backed by Mrs Machel and most of the Mandela family, took Mandla Mandela, to court after he dug up the bodies from Qunu two years ago and moved them to the nearby village of Mvezo, where he is a chief, and has built a visitor centre. On Thursday, having disinterred the remains from Mvezo, Mr Mandela's family are thought to have reburied them in the grounds of his Qunu home.
Mr Tutu appealed to the family to reconcile in his memory. "Your anguish, now, is the nation's anguish – and the world's. We want to embrace you, to support you, to shine our love for Madiba through you," he said. "Please may we not besmirch his name."ANN ARBOR, MI - The owner of Ann Arbor's Sava's Restaurant said Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials took at least three of her employees into custody the morning of Wednesday, May 24. She said they were being released later Wednesday.
ICE agents were in the restaurant, 216 S. State, around 11:30 a.m. and had breakfast before entering the kitchen area, where they took three people into custody, said owner Sava Lelcaj. She was not in the restaurant at the time.
"They came in looking for one person, who was not on duty," said Lelcaj.
Instead, the agents started to question kitchen workers and apprehended three people who were taken to ICE's Detroit office, Lelcaj said. Those people are now being released, she said Wednesday afternoon.
Lelcaj said her company, Savco Hospitality, goes through a vetting process to make sure potential employees have the right documentation to work in the United States.
"We do the best we can to hire, to vet and screen and be compliant," said Lelcaj.
While those taken into custody do have the proper documents to work in the country, they did not have the papers on hand when the agents were at Sava's, she said. Her team is now working to send that documentation to the Detroit ICE office where the individuals were taken.
ICE officials could not be reached immediately for comment.
Update: ICE says three men arrested at Ann Arbor restaurant were in US illegally
Sava's remained open for business, Lelcaj said, and community members gathered at the restaurant as the news of what happened spread.
"It's really sad," Lelcaj said. "It scares the whole community. Today's a great indication even if you have your documentation, and you're at the wrong place at the wrong time, you can still be at risk."
Luis Paez, who assists immigrants in the area, said he heard from a customer who was at Sava's during the ICE visit and made his way to downtown Ann Arbor to help the individuals and their families. He was born in Colombia, and is an American citizen.
"I am appalled at the current situation in the United States," Paez said. "I am trying to get information about what really happened and help as much as we can."
Some of the other kitchen workers left the restaurant after the incident and are now returning to work. When she was made aware of what was happening, Lelcaj prepped her kitchen stuff so she could jump in and help her staff.
"It's a very sad day here at Sava's," Lelcaj said. "These things really shake people up. We have a lot of people who have family roots here."
Ann Arbor Police Chief Jim Baird was made aware by ICE of a targeted enforcement detail at an Ann Arbor restaurant on Wednesday morning, within an hour of the ICE presence there, said Ann Arbor police Detective Lt. Matthew Lige. The department was not asked to participate in the enforcement and did not take part.
Lige said the department was not involved in any prior investigation related to immigration at the restaurant and did not provide any information to ICE prior to the enforcement effort.
Staff writer Darcie Moran contributed to this report.Anyone who has seen an episode of Law and Order, NCIS—or any other police drama—has heard a police officer recite: "You have the right to remain silent. If you give up the right to remain silent, anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to an attorney. If you desire an attorney and cannot afford one, an attorney will be obtained for you before police questioning." These statements, or similar advisories, are generally known as “Miranda Rights.” But what exactly are Miranda Rights and what are they designed to protect?
Who is Ernesto Miranda?
Miranda Rights are named after the landmark US Supreme Court case Miranda v. Arizona. Ernesto Miranda was arrested for stealing $8.00 from an Arizona bank worker. After two hours of questioning, Miranda confessed not only to the robbery but also to kidnapping and rape. When he was brought in for questioning, he was never told that had did not have to speak to police, or that he could consult with a lawyer; he simply confessed to the crimes. He was found guilty.
Miranda's conviction was appealed to the United States Supreme Court. The Justices ruled that the statements Miranda made to the police could not be used as evidence against him because he had not been advised of his Constitutional rights. Since this decision, police are required to recite the Miranda warning to suspects before any questioning is conducted.
The Miranda case did not establish new rights, but rather instituted further protection of Fifth and Sixth Amendment rights.
The following is the standard Miranda warning: "You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to speak to an attorney, and to have an attorney present during any questioning. If you cannot afford a lawyer, one will be provided for you at government expense."
Each state makes its own rules about exactly what must be told to suspects who have been arrested or are being held for interrogation by police, but the Supreme Court ruling requires these four points to be clearly communicated:
1. You have the right to remain silent.
Silence cannot be used against defendants in court. However, there is a term known as “Pre-Miranda” silence, which occurs when a suspect has not be read his or her Miranda Rights and still remains silent. In that case, silence can be seen as unusual and suspect. Suspects who state something like “my attorney has always told me not to give statements without him present,” may avoid the negative consequences of refusing to speak.
2. Anything you say can be used against you in a court of law.
All suspects have the right to remain silent. Those who give up that right face the prospect that their statements will be used against them in court. This can be tricky, as many times the only evidence against a defendant is a confession. Defense lawyers contend that many innocent suspects, intimidated by arrest and interrogation, may speak to police without realizing the danger.
3. You have the right to have an attorney present.
This gives a suspect the right to have legal counsel present at the time of the interrogation. A suspect must be clearly informed that he or she has the right to consult with an attorney and have an attorney present before answering any questions by police. If the police try to question a suspect after an arrest, they must stop the interrogation if the suspect requests an attorney.
4. If you cannot afford an attorney, one will be appointed to you.
In order to make sure a person being interrogated has a clear understanding of his or her rights, the suspect must be told that a lawyer will be appointed without charge if needed. Without this additional advisory, the caution of the right to consult with an attorney could be misunderstood, and rendered meaningless.
Arrest without the Reading of Miranda Rights
The Miranda decision is intended to make suspects aware of their Constitutional rights. Police can ask routine questions—such as name, address, date of birth, and social security number—without reading Miranda Rights,. Again, most states enforce their own rules on when and how police officers can place suspects under arrest, so it is difficult to generalize.
What Happened to Ernesto Miranda?
Ernesto Miranda did, indeed, get a new trial based on the Supreme Court ruling, and his original confession was thrown out. However, based on the evidence, Miranda was again convicted of kidnapping and rape, and served 11 years in prison before being paroled in 1972. In 1976 at the age of 34, Miranda was stabbed to death in a barroom brawl. Police arrested a suspect in the killing who, after choosing to exercise his Miranda Right to remain silent, was released without being charged for the crime.Sen. Ted Cruz sidestepped an indirect critique from fellow Texan and former Gov. Rick Perry Sunday, complimenting Mr. Perry for his tenure as the state’s chief executive.
“Listen, I like Rick Perry. He was a good governor in the state of Texas. He’s a friend of mine. People occasionally throw rocks in politics. That’s his choice. I’m going say I think he did a good and effective job as governor of our state,” Mr. Cruz said on CNN’s “State of the Union.”
Without mentioning Mr. Cruz by name, Mr. Perry downplayed Senate experience in a recent interview with the Texas Tribune and The Washington Post.
“It’s one of the selling points, if you will, to the American people as they decide who’s going to follow Barack Obama,” Mr. Perry said when asked what separates him from Mr. Cruz. “I think they’re going to make a rather radical shift, away from a young, untested United States senator whose policies have really failed.”
Mr. Cruz also said he’s looking “very, very seriously” at running for president.
“I think this next election, 2016, is going to be a fundamental fork in the road,” Mr. Cruz said. “And I believe the American people are looking for a new path. They want to get back to the free market principles and constitutional liberties that were part of the foundation of this country. And so it’s something that I’m looking at very seriously. And I’ll tell you, the support we’re seeing both on the grassroots level and also among the donors has been extraordinary, really has been encouraging.”
Copyright © 2019 The Washington Times, LLC. Click here for reprint permission.Dropping your phone down the toilet may never be a problem again.
Researchers have developed a new way of waterproofing electronic components that means they can be immersed in water for days without being damaged.
The technique coats components with a protective layer just a few atoms thick that is impervious to air or water.
They claim devices treated in this way can be left submerged in salt water for months without being harmed – conditions that would destroy normal electronics.
Professor Samuel Graham at the Georgia Institute of Technology, who has led the research, said the film was stable in warm damp conditions and a number of liquids.
He said: “By creating such barriers films, we are able to extend lifetime and reliability of electronic devices.”
Most electronic devices such as mobile phones have films that are sprayed onto electronic components to protect them from water vapour in the air and make them splash resistant.
However, these can add bulk to components and tiny imperfections in the way these are created can allow water to get through, meaning they are not totally waterproof.
To protect devices such as mobile phones and cameras from water, a separate case needs to be used.
Professor Graham, who is presenting his findings to the American Vacuum Society’s International Symposium and Exhibition, has developed a technique known as atomic layer deposition to create better barriers against water.
By surrounding components with gaseous atoms from a metal like aluminium, they form a layer over the electronics which is then oxidised.
This oxide layer, which is only 10 nanometres thick – around 6,000 times thinner than the width of a human hair – is prevents water from getting to the sensitive electronics underneath.
In one recent study, Professor submerged electronic sensors in water for 10 days after coating them in the atomic film.
The coatings can also be transparent, meaning they can also be used in electronic displays like those found on smart phones.
It could mean that ordinary cameras and mobile phones can be used underwater without coming to any harm.
Professor Graham believes the new coatings could also be used to help protect implantable biomedical devices such as pace makers and underwater sensors.OLYMPICS She's trying to end a destructive cycle
Cycling's Dotsie Bausch goes for Olympic gold in team pursuit, but her lifetime goal is to help others fight eating disorders.
"Without Dotsie's support through this whole thing, I don't know where I would have ended up," says Dawson, who battled anorexia. "I couldn't have done it myself. I realize that now."
Dotsie Bausch will be introduced to the crowd as a world-record holder and medal contender in the woman's team pursuit, but Dawson, a 52-year-old attorney from Paris, Ky., knows that description doesn't begin to tell the story of the Irvine cyclist. Bausch has been a source of hope and help to Dawson and many others who, like her, suffer with debilitating eating disorders.
It seems like the least she can do for the woman who saved her life.
Linda Dawson will be sitting inside a velodrome in London early next month, waving a small American flag and trying to figure out track cycling, a sport she doesn't completely understand.
Last in a series of occasional stories on L.A.-area athletes hoping to make it to the Olympics.
In Toronto, a 25-year-old newlywed named Elyse Wach will be following the race as well. As a high school junior Wach lay in a hospital bed, slowly wasting away from an eating disorder. Her father, desperate for help, contacted Bausch through the internet.
Soon the two women were emailing back and forth, talking on the phone, even meeting in person. Seven years later Wach, once repulsed at the sight of food, is a waitress in an Italian restaurant.
"I would consider myself cured," she says now. "When I was in the hospital I was ready to turn things around. But it was still hard for me. She was there and she was just always very helpful and willing to listen."
And understand — which was easy for Bausch because it wasn't all that long ago that she was in the same place, ravaged by drugs and twin eating disorders that left her life hanging by a thread.
A former New York runway model, she had seen her 5-foot-9 frame shrink from a healthy 139 pounds to an unsightly 90. Her hair fell out in clumps, she slept excessively and as her memory faded, she considered suicide.
Most people associate eating disorders with food, but the conditions are more psychological than physical. Because while bulimia is characterized by binge eating and purging and anorexia is characterized by excessive food restriction, in many cases both conditions are triggered by an irrational fear of gaining weight and a distorted view of one's own body and self-worth.
"You kid yourself through this," says Dawson, who is 5-6 but saw her weight fall to around 95 pounds after she became addicted to exercise, training for marathons and making twice-daily trips to the gym. "That it's not as bad as it is because you can't see what other people see about your body. All you know is that you're consumed by it. You're kind of in a mental fog.
"Everybody thinks it's about the food. But the food is irrelevant."
In Bausch's case the addictive personality traits that almost killed her proved to be her salvation when, as part of her therapy, she climbed onto a bike and found she had both uncommon talent and an insatiable desire to train.
Within two years she had won a state championship. Two years after that she was recruited to the U.S. national team. Her team pursuit squad — which includes Sarah Hammer, Jennie Reed and Lauren Tamayo — is among the favorites in the debut event in London.
But the real prize might be the fact her success has made her an inspiration for others trying to escape the cycle.The Svalbard Global Seed Vault, or the Doomsday Vault as the media have nicknamed it, was officially opened on February 26, 2008, to serve as the ultimate safety net for one of the world’s most important natural resources.
The world’s seed collections are vulnerable to a wide range of threats – civil strife, war, natural catastrophes, and, more routinely but no less damagingly, poor management, lack of adequate funding, and equipment failures. Unique varieties of our most important crops are lost whenever any such disaster strikes: securing duplicates of all collections in a global facility provides an insurance policy for the world’s food supply.
The Vault is dug into a mountainside near the village of Longyearbyen, Svalbard. Svalbard is a group of islands nearly a thousand kilometres north of mainland Norway. Remote by any standards, Svalbard’s airport is in fact the northernmost point in the world to be serviced by scheduled flights – usually one lands a day. For nearly four months a year the islands are enveloped in total darkness. Permafrost and thick rock ensure that, even without electricity, the samples remain frozen.
Below is a video of biodiversity warrior Cary Fowler, and an inside tour of the facilities.
Today the Vault holds over 420,000 samples. Information on the seeds held in the Vault, and how deposits can be made, is available at the vault websitePORTSMOUTH — On the topic of irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), a less than delicate topic for general conversation, knowledge can mean real relief from a chronic, yet manageable condition.
"IBS is an extremely common condition characterized by two main things," said Dr. Aris Damianos, a gastroenterologist at Atlantic Digestive in Portsmouth. "There is chronic abdominal pain or bloating, with the discomfort centered in the abdomen. Then, there are altered bowel changes, diarrhea or constipation or the conditions may flip flop."
Damianos said IBS is diagnosed in people who have these symptoms chronically for more than six months. The symptoms may not be there all the time; they can be recurrent but |
's so perfect. It's so perfect.
[Chuckling]
PAUL: If people want to check out The State, or RISK!, is it RISK-Show.com?
KEVIN: Yeah, it's RISK-Show.com, and the school is TheStoryStudio.org, but RISK! is, you know, it's also on iTunes and--
PAUL: Okay. I'll put all those, when this episode goes up, I'll have you send me links and I'll put all the links up to your Twitter and all that stuff.
Anything else you'd like to share or plug before we wrap up?
KEVIN: Well, The State also has a new book out. It's called The Union of The State. It's an oral history of the group from all 11 of our perspectives.
PAUL: Oh, that's awesome.
KEVIN: Yeah, it's pretty damn interesting, especially to hear people's memories of how certain creative decisions came about with certain sketches, but also, totally, totally divergent ideas of how certain things went. Like, you couldn't believe how much contradiction there is [chuckles]--
PAUL: Wow.
KEVIN: --in that book about what our lives were.
PAUL: Wow. Kevin, thank you so much for coming by and sharing this.
KEVIN: Thank you. This was a pleasure.
PAUL: Many, many thanks to Kevin. And if you haven't checked out his podcast yet, do. I'm pretty sure you guys would really like it, if you like this podcast. If you hate this podcast, then maybe that's not your cup of tea, but if you hate this podcast, why are you still listening to me 102 minutes in? Because you're an asshole, that's why, because you are a masochist.
I don't know why I had to create a hypothetical person and then go after them. But it felt kind of good. It felt kind of good. I think my nipples got a little bit hard.
I want to tell you guys about Madison Reed. They do hair coloring, and they have hair-coloring kits and I gave one to our listener, Kat, and I said, Kat, try it out, give me your honest feedback, don't bullshit me, and she wrote me back and she said, instructions were easy to follow, the second pair of gloves for rinsing is genius, the cap was also appreciated. Since the set time is 45 minutes, so I didn't have to worry about color transfer while doing a few things around the house to pass the time. The color itself was easy to mix and apply. I’m particularly sensitive to strong chemical odors and was surprised by the pleasant fragrance. The color is rich, with good depth and coverage of those stubborn grays. I would suggest ordering two kits if you have longer hair. It made my hair actually feel healthier, thick and smooth. The package included coupons for future purchases and information about their companion products, like the root touch-up powder, which I'm definitely going to try. Many thanks to Paul and Madison Reed. I'm a big fan of both. Cheers, Kat.
So, go to Madison Reed, I'm sorry, Madison-Reed.com and take their quick color quiz by answering a few questions about your hair and they'll find your perfect hair-color match. And they ship it directly to your door, complete with goof-proof step-by-step instructions. Find your perfect shade at Madison-Reed.com and get 10% off plus free shipping on your first color kit using promo code HAPPY. That's Madison-Reed.com, and promo code HAPPY.
I want to also give some love to ZipRecruiter. Are you hiring? Do you know where to post your job to find the best candidates, because posting your job in once place isn't enough to find quality candidates. If you want to find the perfect hire, you've got to post your job on all the top job sites, and now you can. ZipRecruiter already has nine million résumés you can search through in their database. You can add multiple people to your account to make it the most efficient for your team and find the best hire.
ZipRecruiter is a search engine for finding and posting jobs. You can find candidates in any city or industry nationwide. Just post it once and watch your qualified candidates roll in to ZipRecruiter's easy-to-use interface. No juggling e-mails or calls to your office. Quickly screen candidates, rate them, and hire the right person fast. If you have any issues, ZipRecruiter's friendly and human support staff is ready to help. Find out today why ZipRecruiter has been used by over one million businesses.
Right now, listeners can post jobs on ZipRecruiter for free by going to ZipRecruiter.com/first. That's ZipRecruiter.com/first. Third time is a charm, ZipRecruiter.com/first.
And of course, we can always use help for the podcast. If you go to our Web site, mentalpod.com, you can become a one-time PayPal donor, or my favorite, and we need it very, very much, become a recurring monthly donor starting at as little as a dollar a month on Patreon.
I would suggest, if you're going to sign up for monthly donations, on your choices between PayPal and Patreon, I would do it through Patreon because then I can give you guys little rewards and they're kind of tiered on the level that you are a monthly donor at. And it's, the interface is much easier for me, but anything is appreciated.
Spreading the word about the podcast through social media, shopping at Amazon by entering through the link on our Web site, all of those things chip in little bits of money and help keep this going, because this is my full-time job and I, I have many ideas for expanding the podcast and it would be nice to be able to realize some of them.
Okay, enough begging, let's get to the surveys. This is a Struggle in a Sentence survey filled out by Anomie Combatant, and he writes about his depression. It's like the clock hands are spinning faster and faster, and I’m just sitting there. That is so good.
Snapshot from his life. As I’m filling this out, it's a sunny Saturday afternoon. I'm in my apartment with the shades closed. All I've done so far today is move from the bed to the computer. I didn't take a shower yesterday, so it's day three for my underwear. I have unanswered texts on my phone that I don't want to respond to because they could lead to social obligations. I spent 15 minutes trying to think of a clever nickname to use on this survey because, if I can make someone smile or laugh, then maybe I'm okay.
Well, you did make me smile, and laugh, and you are okay even if you didn't. Any comments to make the podcast better? New surveys, please, and maybe more listener interviews.
I did put two new surveys up there. One is for you guys to pick your top 10 episodes of 2016. And the other one is about misophonia, which is a sensitivity to certain sounds, and I’m going to be reading some of those misophonia responses a little later in the show, so hopefully that will shed some light on misophonia. And I have recorded a guest with misophonia and it hasn't, we haven't put it up yet, but be on the lookout for, her first name is Charlynne[sp?], and, yeah, it's a good one. Oh, we're already into the misophonia survey. I hope I didn't catch you off guard.
Just a couple of words before I read the misophonia ones, to just kind of condense it, here are some trends that I have seen in the dozen or so that I've read so far. When asked, is your relationship with the person making the noise that irritates you, is it affected by their noises? People usually say that, yes, because they feel somewhere usually between irritation and rage at that person making the noise.
Most people with misophonia say that they are not comfortable sharing about it. A few say that it feels good to let other people know that they have it, but most feel guilty when they share that they have it, they feel guilty for having it. Some of them, after they share it, they feel judged or misunderstood, or sometimes even made fun of by the person, you know, who then launches into the noise and thinks it's funny because it, it's triggering.
Very few, I've not actually come across a survey yet where the person can trace their misophonia to a loud noise or ear trauma, and most people have not tried or found anything that helps with it.
And now I'm going to read individual, this individual one. This was filled out by a guy who calls himself Low Point, and he's in his 30s. The sounds that trigger him, sounds involving skin, especially scratching, clearing throat and eating sounds. Do you have any other sensory sensitivities? Not really. How long have you had this? As long as I can remember. How many times a day do you get triggered? Four to six.
Have you been diagnosed with a mental or physical health disorder? I've only officially been diagnosed with major depression, but I'm 99% sure I have borderline personality disorder, although I've never talked about it with a health care professional.
Is there a history of trauma in your family? Trauma from childhood, yes. Alcoholic, schizophrenic father who attempted suicide, older sister died from illness when I was seven. Thank you for sharing that. Thank you.
This is an Awfulsome Moment filled out by Keeper of All Boundaries, and he writes, I am gay. My extremely liberal parents gave me a pile of books about coming out, acceptance and gay relationships when I was 11. I know it came from a place of love, but I was way too young to have that stuff forced on me. They frequently nudged me for years to discuss my sexuality with them. It was too late. The 11-year-old boy that felt so invaded and humiliated had built a steel wall that I doubt will ever come down.
Fast forward 25 years, my nephew is now questioning his gender identity and my parents picked up on it. My parents asked me, how do you think we should support him in this journey? Without missing a beat, I whipped around and said, butt out. God, that felt good.
Our family is so liberal, accepting and open-minded that, if he really needed support, I know he will ask for it and receive it in abundance. Until then, I hope that, quote, supportive families like mine can learn to let their flowers grow organically and stop fiddling with the unopened buds demanding to see its colors to strengthen their own politically conscious egos that can also cause severe emotional trauma.
I had never even thought about that, but, you know, I have heard stories of, you know, the well-meaning hippie parents, or maybe not, maybe not well meaning. Maybe they're kidding themselves, who think that nudity around their children is never, ever a bad thing, and don't ever stop to consider, is the child comfortable with it, is this, you know, is the sexuality we're talking about, is this too early to be talking about it with the kid. And I think a lot of times people who are left-leaning can make the mistake of believing, you know, nothing is too taboo or whatever to be talked about, and yeah, I think it's an important topic to talk and think about.
This is a Misophonia Survey. This was filled out by 100% Dorky, who is a trans female, straight, in her 50s, and what noises trigger her, subwoofer, snoring and tuneless whistling. Oh, my God, tuneless whistling. I don't have misophonia, but I want to fucking punch people that whistle.
Any other sensory sensitivities? Very sensitive to smoke and perfume. How long have you had misophonia? For as long as I can remember. How many times a day do you get triggered? Once. Any other issues? Gender dysphoria, but I don't think it's related, and I was, experienced some molestation at eight years old. Thank you for sharing that.
This is an e-mail I got from Kristy, and she writes, I'm 28 years old and I was raised in what I thought was a pretty functional home. It wasn't until about five, six years ago that I realized my mother is bat-shit crazy. She is a hypochondriac. She is a hoarder, and it's gotten progressively worse as she's aged. She never contributed to our family financially, emotionally or in any way, really. I grew up to believe that her behavior was normal and just how women are.
When I became an adult, I started putting it all together that I'm not the crazy one and that her behavior is indicative of mental illness, and the way my home was ran as a child was not functional and was actually incredibly destructive.
I'm almost 30 and pretty much now realizing that I have mommy issues. I can accept that she has these issues, and I can accept that these issues aren't necessarily her fault. I can also accept that the way these issues have affected me were in no way intentional on her part and I do not hate her for it.
But I cannot accept that she only ever contacts me to tell me about her latest ailment and to ask me when she can baby-sit my kids. My reply is always some form of the same words, I'm sorry to hear that, and we are super busy but we're home on Tuesday and Thursday nights if you'd like to come by and visit. I'm not taking my kids to her house because it's filthy and riddled with dog shit, and I'm not going to buy in to her made-up illnesses and justify them for her.
How do I avoid being overcome by anxiety when I get a text or phone call from her without cutting her out of my life completely? Your thoughts are appreciated.
Well, as I like to preface often, I’m not a therapist, but you asked for my opinion, and I think the way you're handling it right now is great, because you are, you're setting boundaries and you're not letting her come over when you don't want her to come over, and you are, I think you said that you try to change the subject? Oh, you say, I'm sorry to hear that.
So, yeah, I think you're handling it pretty well, but, you know, the other thing with having somebody who is kind of emotionally sick or a handful in our life is the emotions that we experience around it. You know, we can even be setting boundaries with someone, taking all the healthy actions, but inside, we're fucking fuming, you know, or may be triggered for days, with having trouble staying present or being depressed or angry or snapping at other people.
And for that, for me, going to therapy and support groups really helped, because it helped process the feelings that were underneath not being able to be at peace with other people being sick around me, you know, especially feeling guilty about setting boundaries with people.
This is another Misophonia Survey, and this was filled out by Chew With Your Mouth Closed Like a Fucking Adult [chuckles]. And he is gay and he's in his 20s, and the noises that trigger him are loud chewing and lip smacking, and those seem to be the two most common ones. Other sensory sensitivities? Even the slightest smell of garbage makes me gag or dry heave. It can be really embarrassing. He's had misophonia since at least high school, possibly earlier.
How many times a day do you get triggered? When I'm with my parents, two to three times a day at least. When I'm not, it barely happens once a week. That's interesting. I wonder if other people making the same noise triggers him as much.
He's bipolar II, or I should say, has bipolar II, and he believes it's connected in some way but he's not sure. History of trauma? My parents were pretty emotionally distant throughout my childhood. I've since moved out of the house but every time I go home we fall into the same dynamic.
And he's the only one of the surveys I've read so far, and I've got a bunch more to read, but he's the only one that says that he found something that helps a little and he started taking lamictal, but not for his misophonia specifically, but once he started taking it, he says he noticed his symptoms becoming much less severe. Thank you for sharing that.
This is a Shame and Secrets Survey, filled out by Mave, and I just want to read a couple of excerpts from it. She's straight, in her 30s. She was raised in a pretty dysfunctional environment. She's never been sexually abused. She's not sure if she's been physically or emotionally abused, and she writes this.
My father was an alcoholic, so he was more verbally abusing whenABSTRACT
New information has been discovered on this ring, will have to post in multiple pieces. Going to take a while, bear with us.
An anon came forward with this statement:
"I experienced ritual abuse, or MKULTRA type abuse. I saw the trafficking of children in cages myself. I saw murder. I was given drugs and I experienced near-drowning. I saw others tortured and die. I saw rape, experienced sexual abuse. I was used in child porn. I saw birth, I saw abortion. I saw people cut open, I saw worse.
I was electroshocked and I was terrified of masks, and people in costumes. I was utterly traumatized to the point that I had hysterical fits that looked like seizures. I was to the point of being in altered states with names. I thought I had a different family. My life has been severely affected by these events. Years of time have been taken away from me by regression and PTSD/DID."
Anon submitted the following drawings made as a child, as well as excerpts from medical records and an EEG reading as a small token of proof:
Your Image
We found new information. TLDR mindmap
New information: David Werner "Werner has worked in more than 50 countries, mostly developing countries.. He has been a consultant for UNICEF, WHO, the Peace Corps, UNDP, and UN-ESCAP and various state and federal governments ranging from Mexico to India and Iran. He has received awards and/or fellowships from the World Health Organization, the American Pediatric Association, the American Medical Writers Association, Guggenheim,[2] and the MacArthur Foundation,[3] among others. Werner is a founding member of the International People's Health Council... also been active in the Planning and Analytic Group for the People's Health Movement..
However,
"Werner resigned from the organization in 1993 after board members voted for his dismissal following allegations that he had sexually abused teenaged Mexican boys in his care." Werner was never charged.
"Board members say that reputation made it painful to oust Werner, and they are careful to say they have no direct knowledge of his sexual involvement with any child. But four board members and two staffers say that over the past year, Werner confirmed to them that he had sex with underage boys from Mexico, telling them he considered the encounters a positive influence on the children.
“I said, ‘These were sexual relationships with minors?’ ” said Dr. Davida Coady, a Berkeley pediatrician who became Hesperian’s president after Werner’s resignation. Coady, a board member at the time, was in Guatemala when Werner resigned.
“David said, ‘Yes.’ He said he never abused anybody, that it was part of mentoring.”"
Drawing by Werner from his website:
My young friend was scared to death.
Skinny Dipping
Hesperian made this statement
After his resignation from Hesperian, Werner founded HealthWrights.
Jason Weston is a co-director of Healthwrights, which formed AFTER Werner was accused of molesting disabled boys in Mexico and resigned from Hesperian.
Jason Weston is the Executive Director of Hai Global.
HAI global operates internationally but is headquartered at Harbin Hot Springs. This is significant because RA anon's testimony connected to Harbin, and anonymous commenters left testimony on social media regarding abuse they had suffered at the early incarnation Harbinger under Don Hammrick.
Weston is also a member of the Faculty at Esalen. This is significant due to Esalen's connection with the rest of the Centers Gathering ring and Tavistock.
Weston's connection to Healthwrights is even more damning not only because of David Werner's known alleged history before the organization was formed, but because the site sponsors politics of health which has published pro pedophilia articles. The site is currently 404'd, but there are numerous snapshotsin the wayback machine which reveal the pro pedophilia viewpoint presented.
Titles included "Sexual Fascism in Progressive America." Also archived here as well as " It's Time To Reform Sex Offender Laws"
The wayback machine archives show that "Politics of Health is an initiative of HealthWrights." This implies that Westen must be aware of the content of Politicsofhealth.org Weston and Werner also published this article together as co authors.
A drawing by Werner, on his Website: "The boy on the rock, who reminded me of Michel Angelo's David, was so beautiful that all the creatures of the forest could not take their eyes off him."
Tina Chase is also listed at HAI Global. She formerly served as an executive at Accenture. She is a software expert and an expert witness. She is alsolisted at VixenStategy LLC.
This is corroborated by the site lilboppers.com, which is registered to VixenStrategy LLC and also mentions Lin Chase by name:
Lin Chase runs other websites through Vixen strategy, which is ALSO listed at the address lilboppers. com is.
Vixen strategy is also registered to "illegal rodeo." Illegal Rodeo's only songs are "don't ease me in" and "hot burrito." I'm getting blank pages when I archive these sites, apologies
When you click "saddle up," it asks you to enter your email saying "Let us know where to find you for the next illegal rodeo!"
Harbin is HAI Global's headquarters. It was previously Harbinger, where numerous people accused Don Hammrick and/or the CIA of abusing them, and it is where RA anon's abuse was linked. Harbin is also the headquarters for Ecstatic Living, which advocates early sex ed.
Weston also owns "Jason Weston Photography" Which includes photographs like this One site lists the photography studio's income as roughly $45,000. However another site listed the income in the multi million dollar range. Here His income is listed as
Weston was trained at the Process Therapy Institute Also Here
THE INVESTIGATION
.................
Pastebins of the RA Anon investigation we previously posted:
Harbin
Ecstatic Living
The Haven
International Holistic Centers Gathering
Findhorn Foundation
GEN/GAIA
Ark
This is only the beginning.
HARBIN HOT SPRINGS
Anon's testimony led us to investigating Harbin Hot Springs - however we wish to make very clear that we are not tying their medical records directly to this establishment, or to any current or former employees.
When we looked into Harbin, we noticed that multiple people seemed to have left comments on social media describing sexual or even MKULTRA style abuse, some of which was strikingly similar to what anon had experienced.
Donald Hamrick owned Harbin for a number of years, running a commune there known as "Harbinger." This commune is a different group than that which owns the property today.
Information Obtained from Wikibin References Harbinger Community, 1967 - 1969
DONALD JAMES HAMRICK - Possible CIA connection
Frontiers of Science Fellowship (F.O.S.F.) was founded by Donald James Hamrick (born December 13, 1935), in 1967. The fellowship was initially located at Redwood Drive, in San Rafael. The Harbinger facility was located on 1,085 acres, in Lake County, California, about 100 miles north of the San Francisco Bay Area.
The extremely rural isolated area would have provided a perfect location for activities like those alleged to have taken place by commenters on Harbin's social media who describe sexual abuse as well as CIA activities involved with mind control.
Don Hamrick, as a pilot, flew a Cessna Twin C1J from one destination to another, 23 - 24 times per month, for a sold year and a half, from 1967 to 1969. He was usually accompanied by Owen Jones, one of the three directors, for Frontiers of Science Fellowship
With his physics background, Hamrick had previously been responsible for the research and development, and the patent filing, of a number of highly sophisticated medical, musical (sound, switching), and machining apparatus and methodologies. They were filed in relation to the Syndyne corporation which Hammrick owned, but later sold.
Steven Gaskin
Steven was a friend and frequent visitor to Harbinger. Steven was the founder of very successful, still existent, "The Farm" commune. I don't think this version of "the farm" has any connection to the current DC ring's references to "The Farm," but I'm not sure.
National Council of Churches reportedly financially supported Hamrick for encouraging youth to use meditation as an alternative to drug use.
Louis R. Mobley (Lou Mobley) was a friend of Hamrick's and an executive with IBM, according to wikibin.
Obtaining and maintaining Harbinger was possible through Hamrick's contribution of funds from the sale of his company, the Syndyne Corporation.Archive
We have seen time and time again that aviation and child trafficking go hand in hand. Allegations of abuse and of Hammrick's involvement with the CIA go along with an association between he and flying and the "small landing strip" Harbin utilized, in an extremely isolated rural area. "Located four miles (6 km) from a major road, situated amongst of forest, meadows and rolling hills." Harbin is still so isolated that visitors to this day are told that they will have no cell service or wifi while visiting. There is also currently a strict security presence guarding the entrance by outsiders. Why is this necessary if it's only a nudist hippy spa?
Questions then arise as to the nature of the Syndyne corporation and their relationship with Hammrick.
Proof Hammrick was involved with Syndyne Corp: His Patent.
Patent
Patent
Syndyne Manual
This appears to be Hammrick's personal website.
According to wikibin, were also monthly financial contributions from the National Council of Churches. With access to an on-site airplane landing strip, Frontiers of Science Fellowship purchased a Cessna Twin 310J airplane, for Hamrick, and another Harbinger director, both pilots, to fly to and from lecture halls, on almost a daily basis.
Wikibin also states that 15 of the full-time participants were children and toddlers, who were cared for by multiple adults. When children were ready, schooling was provided onsite Archive, by accredited teachers.
More information from Wikibin on Harbinger, here
Wikibin on Harbin
Wikibin on the Celestial Synapse
Wikibin on the Harbinger Community
Archive
Supporting further investigation into these questions are testimonies which were left on official Harbin Youtube videos.
The following testimonies are posted in linked pastebins:
In response to an excerpt of praise by Hamrick's wife, Jennifer a user left this pretty rambling comment accusing Hammrick and his cronies of sexually abusing his daughters.
In response to the Califias Blog article on Harbin:
Comment by beersheva on the Harbin blog article, posted November 8, 2015 at 6:33 PM:
In response to Harbin YouTube video, a viewer left this comment in this pastebin
The commenter alleged that the leader of the Finders cult, Marion Petie visited Harbin is significant.
A report on the Finders Cult by the Dept. of the Treasury, provided by Ted Gunderson can be read here. It is extremely similar in content to the testimonies left on Harbin's social media as seen above.
"Heart Consciousness Church was formed in February of 1975, and the ownership of Harbin Hot Springs was transferred to it" (Harbin.7,14). Since being bought by HCC, Harbin Hot Springs has been a not-for-profit entity. Harbin/HCC operates as an intentional community where approximately 150 residents live and operate the Retreat Center for outside visitors.
Harbin/HCC maintains a more specifically religious organization, the New Age Church of Being, incorporated in 1996 (Harbin.1). (We have been unable to find information about the New Age Church of Being outside of Harbin Hot Springs)
Description of the Heart Consciousness Church from Harbin's Website:
New Age Church of Being (NACOB)
".....The New Age Church of Being, or NACOB, oversees those aspects more traditionally thought of as religion: Rituals, ceremonies, and rites of passage including New Moon and Full Moon ceremonies in the Warm Pool, Pagan rituals marking the Seasonal Cycles (especially May Day and Halloween),...
NACOB Ministers are trained through a six-month program open to residents....more informal classes for sharing, hands-on practice, and rituals.... each student is required to teach a class as well as conduct a ritual).
.... They understand symbolism and metaphor and are able to recognize and take responsibility for trance states induced by rituals.The Minister Training Course is not absolutely necessary for ordination as a NACOB Minister and not a guarantee of acceptance. Nor is it necessary to be a NACOB Minister in order to do rituals and ceremonies at Harbin...."
(We have so far been unable to find any reference to the existence of a "New Age Church of Being", as an organization whatsoever much less one which provides certification. There seems to be no online record of NACOB's existence.)
In the summer of 2015, three wildfires destroyed 170,623 acres and 20,78 structures of California - including Harbin Hot Springs. Harbin's "dozens of buildings burned to the ground."
Harbin's site gives links to two organizations: Human Awareness Institute and Ecstatic Living (Harbin.11).
Human Awareness Institute:
Stan Dale created The Human Awareness Institute in 1968. He served in the military, described on HAI's website: "Stan also served with the US Army in Korea. Among his experiences during that time, was residing for a few months in Japan, at an authentic, traditional geisha house..."
After Stan Dale's death, at least the [website ownership passed to Jason Weston of HAI Global.]
(http://archive.is/enf8O) Weston at HAI Global
Weston on HAI's Facebook page, listing his photography site
Corporation Wiki lists him as the Current President of HAI Global Weston at HAI as well as working with SPACE in connection to HAI. However HAI Global lists him as Executive Director, as does Weston's linkedin page.
Weston's petition via HAI after the Valley Fire at Harbin Hot Springs
Weston's gofundme petition asking for HAI donations after Harbin was burned in the valley fire: " HAI was deeply impacted by the 2015 Valley Fire and loss of Harbin Hot Springs, our Northern California home for more than 38 years"
He and HAI Global are also listed by the wiki in connection to Vixen Strategy llc via Lin Chase Lin Chase is listed with both Vixen Strategy and HAI Global, as President (former?) of HAI.
Documentation on Vixen Strategy LLC
"We provide go-to-market strategy consulting to makers of enterprise software
and data center technologies.
We can help you with sales and product strategy, product management and product marketing
for existing or emerging products in both domestic and global markets.
We also work with venture capitalists, private equity firms, and large corporate
customers as due diligence experts for both early stage funding and M&A activities."
Contact Us page
T Lin Chase - a software IT expert More record
She has also served in an executive role with Accenture As discussed in an article with the Pittburgh Post-Gazette in 2007.
Confirming her involvement with HAI - on facebook she is publicly listed as a member of the group "HAI Australia -"
Weston at HAI Global](http://archive.is/PRYmU)
HAI Australia FB page
According to their site, Vixen Companies include:
www. bigtechstrategy.com www. woofactormusic.com [Archive] (http://web.archive.org/web/20170323200637/http://www.woofactormusic.com/) www. woofactorvoices.com [Archive](http://web.archive.org/web/20170323200428/http://www.woofactorvoices.com/tlin-chase) www. lilboppers.com [Archive](http://archive.is/CBI0z) www. fatbitchproductions.com [Archive](http://archive.is/2Y6jy) www. renditionmassage.com (404's, could not find archives) www. thetigerstripes.com [archive](http://web.archive.org/web/20170323195949/http://www.thetigerstripes.com/) www. illegalrodeo.com [Archive](http://web.archive.org/web/20170323200039/http://www.illegalrodeo.com/)
www. tlinchase.com [Archive](http://web.archive.org/web/20170323200247/http://www.tlinchase.com/)
"Production Music" Archive
"Side Woman"
Bands
Voice Artists
"Live Shows"
Live Shows, listing children's parties
www.gridshape.com - doesn't seem to exist
Bit Tech Strategy (I cannot find confirmation of existence)
Accenture Wiki page - This IT consulting firm was once headquatered in Bermuda, but moved to Ireland in 2009.
Second Look
Bio Page
SpeechWorks Why does Lin work at tech/software companies, yet run "kids parties" and teach at a child musical school?
From wikipedia"The company’s main focus was bringing speech recognition solutions to phone systems. Carriers and voice portals were able to use these speech-activated services to direct consumer calls, conduct transactions, and obtain information.[2] SpeechWorks technology was uniquely suited for these applications because it was the first software that offered a human-sounding voice that asked callers questions which they could verbally answer, allowed callers to interrupt the software before it concluded reciting a list of options, and could learn from previous calls in order to add new vocabulary to its database.[3"
lilboppers.com registered to Vixen Strategy LLC.
Lessons - inclusing private sessions available through Lin Chase linked to Blue Bear School, teacher bio page here
"Parties and Classes for kids 4months to 7 years"
LilBoppers Facebook Page
Photos
Only 87 people in total like the lilBoppers facebook page..
Address lists them here
Blue Bear School, like Lilboppers is also listed at the Marina
Blue Bear School Staff and Board
Archive 2
Vixen Strategy LLC is ALSO listed as located at the same marina.
According to its website Blue Bear is NOT accredited.
"Community Outreach"
Kids music classes at Blue Bear School
Weston is also listed as Faculty at Esalen
He ran this couples workshop at Esalen.
He also owns a photography website which according to zoominfo, makes him "$2,400,000" - two and a half million dollars in revenue a year - with 12 employees.
Jason's Photography website
)
Includes Nude on Belly
Weston's bio page
List of Exhibits
Jason Weston's twitter feed
Gallery of images includes the work titled Awakening
Weston is also on the board of Healthwrights which has an "international advisory staff"
in South Africa, India, the Philippines, and Nicaragua. Zoominfo on Healthwrights It appears to have 2 employees, assumedly Werner and Weston.
Healthwrights Index
Projects
Including Community Projects in Mexico and Pdf Projimo Durangito
Projimo Coyotitan
Piaxtla
Child to Child
Gallery
What We Do
Who We Are
"How You Can Help
Related Resources
Archived
Describes "Collaboration and links to other sites"
Collaboration and links to other sites (opens in new window/tab)
Health, Health Care, and Health Communications
Teaching Aids at Low Cost: TALC’s main objective is to promote the health of children and advance medical knowledge and teaching in the UK and throughout the world by providing and developing educational material. TALC is a good source for obtaining David Werner's books in Europe and around the world.
The World Health Organization is the United Nations specialized agency for health. WHO's objective, as set out in its Constitution, is the attainment by all peoples of the highest possible level of health. Health is defined in WHO's Constitution as a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.
UNICEF (United Nations Children's Fund) is mandated by the United Nations General Assembly to advocate for the protection of children's rights, to help meet their basic needs and to expand their opportunities to reach their full potential.
UNDP is the UN’s global development network, an organization advocating for change and connecting countries to knowledge, experience and resources to help people build a better life.
Hesperian Foundation distributes David Werner's first three books as well as other self help books patterned after them. (he resigned from this group after pedophilia accusations emerged)
PoliticsofHealth.org is now 404'd, but archived versions show "The Politics of Health Knowledge Network is an initiative of HealthWrights(www.healthwrights.org)." here
Linked from Healthwrights
Includes a pro pedophilia article titled It's time to reform sex offender laws
More versions
And
Including articles titled: "Globilization is not only inevitable but desirable"
And this novella which describes infants as sexual beings
And "Sexual Facism in America,", a pro pedophilia article originally published in counterpunch
Archived again here
"More Radical Articles," which states a pro pedophilia viewpoint
HealthWrights was cofounded by David Werner
Werner "has been a consultant for UNICEF, WHO, the Peace Corps, UNDP, and UN-ESCAP and various state and federal governments... Werner is a founding member of the International People's Health Council....
Werner's author page on Amazon
Werner listed at Boston University School of Public Health
Werner listed as a McArthur Fellow in 1991
He has also been accused of sexually abusing young boys. "Werner resigned from the organization in 1993 after |
your idea is valid and valuable, this process will help Bitsapphire gain a full understanding of your ambitions. After Week Zero, we proceed with Development.
Usually, we choose between these three alternatives when beginning work on a new project:
Use an open source Blockchains
Use a technology that we’ve already developed
Use something new entirely
We choose option C when there is no existing solution. This way, we can develop a suitable solution for that particular project.
Smart Contracts Development
Besides Blockchain Technology, we also develop Smart Contracts for almost every industry. The industry must have a need for independently verifiable data, and in the case of smart contracts, independently verifiable computation and processes.
After we determine what is needed and develop the architecture with you, we can produce the contract itself and implement it.
The languages and stacks we usually use are:
Golang Solidity
Building a Relationship
Let’s say you contact us through our website. First, we will conduct a free half hour discussion via Skype. During our conversation, we will decide if your project looks promising, what we can do to help, and our next steps moving forward together.
Afterwards, we will begin consulting and schedule our next call. Consulting is normally paid on an hourly basis. During this phase, we will further analyze your goals and provide additional feedback.
Based on these discussions, we will know how to proceed further, and often we follow up the consulting hours with a Week Zero Process.Excerpted from Scarcity: Why Having Too Little Means So Much, by Sendhil Mullainathan and Eldar Shafir. Times Books. Copyright © 2013 Sendhil Mullainathan and Eldar Shafir. All rights reserved.
Some of us hate meetings. Connie Gersick, a leading scholar of organizational behavior, has made a living out of studying them. She has conducted numerous detailed qualitative studies to understand how meetings unfold, and how the pattern of work and conversation changes over the course of a meeting. She has studied many kinds of meetings—meetings between students and meetings between managers, meetings intended to weigh options to produce a decision and meetings intended to brainstorm to produce something more tangible like a sales pitch. These meetings could not be more distinct. But in one way they are all the same. They all begin unfocused, the discussions abstract or tangential, the conversations meandering and often far off topic. Simple points are made in lengthy ways. Disagreements are aired but without resolution. Time is spent on irrelevant details.
But then, halfway through the meeting, things change. There is, as Gersick calls it, a midcourse correction. The group realizes that time is running out and becomes serious. As she puts it, “The midpoint of their task was the start of a ‘major jump in progress’ when the [group] became concerned about the deadline and their progress so far. [At this point] they settled into a... phase of working together [with] a sudden increase of energy to complete their task.” They hammer out their disagreements, concentrate on the essential details, and leave the rest aside. The second half of the meeting nearly always produces more tangible progress.
The midcourse correction illustrates a consequence of scarcity capturing the mind. Once the lack of time becomes apparent, we focus. This happens even when we are working alone. Picture yourself writing a book. Imagine that the chapter you are working on is due in several weeks. You sit down to write. After a few sentences you remember an email that needs attention. When you open your inbox, you see other emails that require a response. Before you know it, half an hour has passed and you’re still on email. Knowing you need to write, you return to your few meager sentences. And then, while “writing,” you catch your mind wandering: How long have you been contemplating whether to have pizza for lunch, when your last cholesterol check was, and whether you updated your life insurance policy to your new address? How long have you been drifting from thought to vaguely related thought? Luckily it is almost time for lunch and you decide to pack up a bit early. As you finish lunch with the friend you haven’t seen in a while, you linger over coffee—after all, you have a couple of weeks for that chapter. And so the day continues: you manage to get in a little bit of writing, but far less than you had hoped.
Now imagine the same situation a month later. The chapter is due in a couple of days, not in several weeks. This time when you sit down to write, you do so with a sense of urgency. When your colleague’s email comes to mind, you press on rather than get distracted. And best of all, you may be so focused that the email may not even register. Your mind does not wander to lunch, cholesterol checks, or life insurance policies. While at lunch with your friend (assuming you didn’t postpone it), you do not linger for coffee—the chapter and the deadline are right there with you at the restaurant. By day’s end this focus pays off: you manage to write a significant chunk of the chapter.
Psychologists have studied the benefits of deadlines in more controlled experiments. In one study, undergraduates were paid to proofread three essays and were given a long deadline: they had three weeks to complete the task. Their pay depended on how many errors they found and on finishing on time; they had to turn in all the essays by the third week. In a nice twist, the researchers created a second group with more scarcity -- tighter deadlines. They had to turn in one proofread essay every week, for the same three weeks. The result? Just as in the thought experiment above, the group with tighter deadlines was more productive. They were late less often (although they had more deadlines to miss), they found more typos, and they earned more money.
Deadlines do not just increase productivity. Second-semester college seniors, for example, also face a deadline. They have limited time to enjoy the remaining days of college life. A study by the psychologist Jamie Kurtz looked at how seniors managed this deadline. She started the study six weeks from graduation. Six weeks is far enough away that the end of college may not yet have fully registered, yet it is short enough that it can be made to feel quite close. For half the students, Kurtz framed the deadline as imminent (only so many hours left) and for the others she framed it as far off (a portion of the year left). The change in perceived scarcity changed how students managed their time. When they felt they had little time left, they tried to get more out of every day. They spent more time engaging in activities, soaking in the last of their college years. They also reported being happier—presumably enjoying more of what the college had to offer.
This impact of time scarcity has been observed in many disparate fields. In large-scale marketing experiments, some customers are mailed a coupon with an expiration date, while others are mailed a similar coupon that does not expire. Despite being valid for a longer period of time, the coupons with no expiration date are less likely to be used. Without the scarcity of time, the coupon does not draw focus and may even be forgotten. In another domain, organizational researchers find that sales people work hardest in the last weeks (or days) of a sales cycle. In one study we ran, we found that data-entry workers worked harder as the payday got closer.
The British journalist Max Hastings, in his book on Churchill’s “Finest Years,” notes, “An Englishman’s mind works best when it is almost too late.” Everyone who has ever worked on a deadline may feel like an Englishman. Deadlines are effective precisely because they create scarcity and focus the mind. Whether it is the few minutes left in a meeting or a few weeks left in college, the deadline looms large. We put more time into the task. Distractions are less tempting. You do not linger at lunch when the chapter is due soon, you do not waste time on tangents when the meeting is about to end, and you focus on getting the most out of college just before graduating. When time is short, you get more out of it, be it work or pleasure. We call this the focus dividend—the positive outcome of scarcity capturing the mind.
We often associate scarcity with its most dire consequences—the poor mired in debt; the busy perpetually behind on their work. The focus dividend shows how scarcity also has its benefits. But the costs are not far behind. Our largest struggles with scarcity, it turns out, share roots with our greatest benefit: they too follow from scarcity capturing the mind.What the developers have to say:
Why Early Access? “Friendship Club was in a fun, playable, competitive shape from very early on and we're excited about being able to share it with people. Importantly we want your feedback and help. Over the past few months we've refactored a lot of the game to allow for fine-tuned control of the rules, meaning you can create your own game modes, which drastically changes the nature of the game. Friendship Club is a game about getting your buddies 'round and having a good time, we feel that inventing house-rules is a fun part of that and we want to see what you come up with! There's lots of elements of the game design that are still on the table and with active engagement from y'all we feel like we've got a better chance of nailing it.” Approximately how long will this game be in Early Access? “The honest answer: we don't know. We have a roadmap and a reasonable idea of the overall features we want to include, but we're aware that things will change as the community starts to grow. We'll need to do additional support, marketing, shows and all of that. Also, if someone comes up with something awesome we'll probably want to add it! We're realistic about how long it takes to make games and are intent on making everything as well as we can. Doing what we do to the best of our ability is our philosophy, we're not about raking in the cash and moving onto the next 'big thing' (if we were about that we'd be doing a very bad job of it)!” How is the full version planned to differ from the Early Access version? “There will be more of just about everything. Game modes, arenas and possibly characters. New arenas will include specific level elements that affect gameplay. Some will encourage more chaos (as if that's necessary) and others will emphasise slower, more strategic play. We're keen to take the core mechanics of Friendship Club as far as possible, whilst lathering it with humour and fun. There will also be a dynamic soundtrack that follows the action. There will be a single player mode, though we are very much focussed on local multiplayer at the moment. One of the major additions will be the ability to save, name and share your own custom game modes made out of the advanced modifier options.” What is the current state of the Early Access version? “It's pretty good, though there is a long way to go. There are four characters, two arenas (each with their own procedural generation algorithms), team matches, and under the hood the advanced modifiers working away. Most importantly the game in its current iteration is FUN, which is why we're happy to get people playing it. We tag things that are still under development with a little WIP icon, so you'll see things as they go through various states on their way to completion.” Will the game be priced differently during and after Early Access? “Yes. We don't believe in selling promises so we're pricing the game based on its current state. So as we add more features the game will get more expensive. However, all future updates of Friendship Club are free once you've bought it. Get on board early, help us with your feedback, see the game grow and put up with the odd bug and you'll be rewarded by getting it at a cheap price. Better than that, you can say you were playing it before it was cool. We don't believe in selling promises.” How are you planning on involving the Community in your development process? “We will be asking for feedback on game elements as they are added to the game. If something doesn't feel right or is less fun than it used to be, we want to know about it. We play the game a LOT, but we also spend an awful lot of time making it so we can get snow-blind sometimes. That said, whilst we'll take every suggestion on board, we do have a reasonably clear vision on what we want the game to achieve in terms of how it plays and where it's headed. An important aspect of user feedback will be the ability for players to create their own game modes, allowing for all sorts of wacky combinations. Some of these may even make it into the game as default game modes in their own right.”A few years ago, I had writer Steven Kotler on the show to talk about his book, The Rise of Superman, which is all about the science of flow — that state of being fully immersed in the energy and enjoyment of an activity. Since then, Steven has worked with high-level athletes, tech CEOs, and even Navy SEALs as part of his Flow Genome Project, an organization dedicated to helping individuals tap into flow states using the latest psychological research and technology.
After rubbing shoulders with various performers, Steven learned that there’s an underground movement of individuals who aren’t just looking to flow to improve performance, but also to a state that Steven calls ecstasis. His latest book shares the research behind this performance-enhancing mental state and the extreme measures some folks are taking to get into it. The book is called Stealing Fire: How Silicon Valley, the Navy SEALs, and Maverick Scientists Are Revolutionizing the Way We Live and Work.
Today on the show, Steven shares what ecstasis is and why it improves performance in sports, business, and even military combat. He then goes on to describe the four accelerating forces in science that allow individuals to hack into ecstasis more easily, including things like mind-altering drugs and zapping your brain with electricity. Pretty crazy stuff. We end the show discussing how average Joes can get into ecstasis as well as the ethical implications of these new technologies. Are we bringing in a brave new world here, literally?
If you want a glimpse of what’s coming into the world of performance enhancement in the next 20 years, you’re not going to want to miss this show.
Show Highlights
How Steven’s new book, Stealing Fire, continues the work of The Rise of Superman
The various altered states that people enter to increase productivity and efficiency
What is “ecstasis,” as well as its traits and characteristics
What the brain is doing in the midst of ecstasis
What is it that keeps humans from reaching top performance without intentionality and help?
Why does “turning off the self” solve some critical challenges in productivity and creativity?
How ecstasis boosts our brain’s information processing capabilities
The ways that ancient peoples used to enter into ecstasis
Modern insights and technologies that allow people today to more easily and reliably tap into ecstasis
The 4 forces of ecstasy
How pharmacology and modern drugs are changing how people get into ecstasis
The research behind micro-dosing psychedelics like LSD and peyote(!)
How other activities can get you into the same states as drugs
Blending — “stacking” — ecstasis techniques to get the most bang for your buck
Electric shock therapy and flow (including my own experience with it!)
Why the military and high-powered tech CEOs are interested in what happens at Burning Man
What is “group flow”?
The risks that surround all this new research
Resources/People/Articles Mentioned in Podcast
Stealing Fire provides some fantastic insights about the future of performance enhancement. While I probably won’t be dropping LSD anytime soon, Steven provides other research-backed options that I’m exploring to work at my highest level. Pick up a copy on Amazon.
Connect With Steven Kotler
Steven’s website
Steven on Twitter
Stealing Fire website
Flow Genome Project
Listen to the Podcast! (And don’t forget to leave us a review!)
Listen to the episode on a separate page.
Download this episode.
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Read the Transcript
Brett McKay: Welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast. A few years ago, I had writer Steven Kotler on the show to talk about his book, “The Rise of Superman” which is all about the science of flow. That’s state of being fully immersed in the energy and enjoyment of an activity. Since then, Steven has worked with high level performance athletes, tech CEOs and even Navy Seals as part of his flow genome project, an organization dedicated to helping individuals tap into flow states using the latest psychological research and technology. After rubbing shoulders with various performers, Steven learned that there’s an underground movement of individuals who aren’t just looking to flow to improve performance but also to seek a state that Steven calls Ecstasis. His latest book shares the research behind this performance enhancing mental state and the extreme measures some folks are going to to get into it. It’s called, “Stealing Fire: How silicon valley, the Navy Seals, and Maverick Scientists Are Revolutionizing the Way We Live and Work.”
Today on the show, Steven shares what Ecstasis is and why it improves performance in sports, business, and even in military combat. He then goes on to describe the four accelerating forces in science that allow individuals to hack into Ecstasis state more easily and these include things like mind-altering drugs and zapping your brain with electricity. Pretty crazy stuff. We end this show discussing how average Joes can get into Ecstasis as well as the ethical implications of this new Ecstasis-inducing technologies. Are we bringing in a brave new world here literally?
If you want a glimpse of what’s coming into the world of performance enhancement in the next 20 years, you’re not going to want to miss this show. After the show is over, make sure to check out the show notes at AoM.is/stealingfire.
Steven Kotler, welcome back to the show.
Steven Kotler: Thanks for having me. Good to be with you.
Brett McKay: We had you on the show a few years ago to talk about your book “Becoming Superman”. It’s all about capturing the flow state, that moment when you’re doing something and things just seem to click, time seems to stand still. You’ve been doing a lot of things that the flow project trying to help people get into that flow state. You’ve got a new book out where you delve deeper. I think it’s related, maybe it’s not. I think it is related. How does this new book, “Stealing Fire”, continue the work you started in “becoming Superman” about getting into this flow state?
Steven Kotler: It’s a great place to start. Let me … quick overview of Stealing Fire just so people can orient for a second. Stealing Fire is a book about a $4 trillion underground revolution in people hacking states of consciousness to massively increased performance. I started down this road as you mentioned in a book called, “The Rise of Superman”, which examined flow states which are one particular altered state that have about 150 track record of massively improving performance and about 150 worth of science to back that up.
I wrote “Rise of Superman” and where “Stealing Fire” really came from and how these things linked up is my co-author in “Stealing Fire” is Jamie Wheal and together, we co-founded and run the flow genome project. We train organizations in the use of flow states for performance. Before “Stealing Fire” came out it was top athletes and the military primarily. People with competitive interest in high performance shall we say. After “Rise of Superman” came out, the work went wild in everywhere. Suddenly we were on Wall Street all the time. We were on Main Street and we were talking to bankers and stock brokers and bio hackers and everybody you could possibly imagine, Fortune 100 companies. Didn’t really matter where we went.
Afterwards, we’d give our talk, we present on flow and afterwards people come up to us and go “Yeah! Flow stuff is really cool, really interesting. I think I’m doing some of it and I want to start doing more of it.” What do you think about blank and we met Wall Street guys were zapping their brains with electrodes to alter their consciousness before they were going to the trading floor because it help them make better decisions, faster decisions. We met Navy Seals who were going on two-week silent meditation retreats. We’ve met Fortune 100 companies in Silicon Valley and we’ve meet whole teams of engineers that were on microdosing on psychedelics or whole teams of engineers that were going skydiving on the weekend, and on and on and on.
Everywhere we went, people are using all these different technologies to change their state for performance improvement which lots of different people lots of things going on and they were harnessing more than flow. It was a larger story than what I was talking about in “Rise of Superman” focused on one particular state of consciousness.
The total link, and then i’ll shut up for a second, the real link was in decoding the science of flow, we ended up with a Rosetta stone for a lot of different altered states of consciousness. We basically reproved something that was proved 100 years ago at the birth of psychology when a guy named William James, a Harvard psychologist, said, “Hey, there’s a whole collection of altered states. The so-called ecstatic states, flow states, psychedelic states, meditative states, contemplative states, the states that yogi seemed to get into, and sexually fueled altered states. They all seem to share very similar properties and they all seem to have the same impact on psychology and the same impact on performance.
A hundred years later, we’ve got enough tools in neurobiology at this point to be able to look in the brain and go, “Oh my god! He is right.” All these things that we’re seeing people hack while they are bigger than flow, they fit into this larger category of ecstatic techniques, things that produce all the experiences that you might find north of happy.
Brett McKay: This is what you call in the book Ecstasis. This is a general term to describe these altered states.
Steven Kotler: Yeah. All the frickin’ terms are loaded with cultural baggage. When we’re working with the Navy Seals, one of the guys in seal team 6 used that term. It caught our attention when you look it up it means literally to stand outside one’s self and to be filled with insight and inspiration. The standing outside one’s self, was accurate because in all the states, one of the things they all have in common doesn’t matter what technique you use. You could be using psychedelics, you could be using meditation, you could be using access to trigger flow, they all make that, as you pointed out, your sense of self disappears. You stand outside yourself, you change the channel on normal waking consciousness and as it turns out, in all these states, all of the brain’s information process and machinery gets fired up. That’s where a lot of the heightened performance comes from, that’s why these are states of insight and information and heightened creative problem solving and so forth.
Brett McKay: Some of the traits of Ecstasis are you mentioned one, the standing outside of yourself. What is about the self, I guess, the ego that prevents us from reaching our top performance?
Steven Kotler: It’s a great question, first of all, and a very tricky one because for certain, we are not advocating, “Hey, get rid of your ego permanently in some yogic Eastern philosophy way.” That doesn’t seem to be useful. If you look at all the progress we’ve made in the past 300 years, it starts with the French Enlightenment. Starts when somebody goes, “Hey, the ego, the conscious mind, that logical, rational version of yourself, that’s the version we should trust.” We end up with the scientific method, the technological revolution and thus, the 21st century.
We need those egos. We just don’t need them running the whole show. It turns out switching the channel of consciousness, dropping out of where we normally live, that ego-driven version of ourselves and turning off the self helps solve certain very critical challenges, most importantly our creativity. If you think about this, this is not hard to imagine. The self part of you being a human self comes with you inner critic, that always on nagging the fetus voice in your head. In all of these states, that inner critic goes silent. What happens when that happens, first of all, risk taking goes up which is really often a good thing. Simultaneously, creativity goes up because you’re no longer second guessing all of our neat ideas. It’s like the floodgates open and the brain clicks into brainstorming mode. Very, very useful for solving certain kinds of problems.
Brett McKay: Besides the stepping out of yourself, other traits of Ecstasis are, I guess the timelessness or time seems to slow down a bit.
Steven Kotler: Yup. It helps to understand what’s going on in the brain to talk about these characteristics. The first thing that’s happening is activity in the prefrontal cortex, the part of your brain that houses most of your higher cognitive functions starts to decrease. It’s an efficiency exchange the brain is trading extra energy that help you focus in the present moment for non-critical functions and start shutting down. The prefrontal cortex comes offline. The self, our sense of self of being an eye is created by structures all over the prefrontal cortex. As those structures wink out, we can no longer create that sense of self.
Same thing happens to our sense of time. Time is a calculation performed by all of these structures in the prefrontal cortex and David Eagleman at Stanford figured out that as they start to go out as this efficiency exchange happens, we lose our ability to process time. We step into a timeless moment what researchers call the deep now. It basically means past, present and future get conflated and you can only think about what’s going on right in front of you at that moment. This is also a big deal for performance.
You think about most anxiety, most fear, is not present moment fear. It’s things that could have happened in the past that you were trying to avoid happening again in the present, things that could happen in the future that we’re scared of. As a result, performance again goes up because anxiety goes down. Simultaneously, the present is the only place in the data stream where you get the most accurate information. Memories are are very very flawed as we learned time and time again and future predictions, nobody saw the the 2007 crash coming. We’re not very good at either. We’re very good at processing data in the present moment. That’s what we evolved to do. You get the simultaneous boost in boost in data processing in the brain and anxiety decreases. Performance goes up and then you get to the next step of the chain which is a sense of effortlessness.
This has a different root. The effortlessness comes that shows up in all these states comes from the fact that you’re flooded with performance enhancing feel good neurochemicals. Stress hormones like cortisol get flushed from our system as we drop into these states, the self turns off, we drop into timelessness and suddenly we get this huge boost in motivation it feels like we’re being propelled by a force that bigger than ourselves. In other words, we’re really passionate about what we’re doing. We’re driven by purpose and meaning and motivation goes through the roof. These states are intrinsically motivating.
Brett McKay: Besides effortlessness, another aspect or another trait of Ecstasis is richness. What is that?
Steven Kotler: Yeah, it’s the last trait that we subscribe to all these kind of north of happy altered states. Richness is short for information richness. I mentioned earlier that in all these states, the information processing in the brain is massively heightened. Again, this has to do with neurochemistry. What we see is in these states, the brain takes in more information per second, goes up so we end up paying more attention to that information. Pattern recognition increases, we find more links between that incoming information and all their ideas and lateral thinking increases. We find more lengths between those older ideas combine with the incoming information and big lateral leaps, aha insights. The richness is essentially surrounds the creative decision making process as well which is one of the reasons you see creativity spikes so much in these states.
Brett McKay: Before we get into how individuals are hacking in to this Ecstasis state, what were people doing before then? In the book, you said that people were able to get into this status on their own, even ancient way. What were they doing a hundred years, thousands of years ago?
Steven Kotler: Merci Elottie, the historian coined a great term which is techniques of ecstasy. Techniques of ecstasy where everything from chanting, singing, prayer, meditation, dancing, endurance activities like vision quest, all the way through psychedelics. The ways of altering our consciousness haven’t all that much changed. There’s a lot of new technology, there’s not a lot of new pharmacology, that’s different. Our brains are the same. They have all the same way so a lot of the traditional techniques still work great and today we can gussy them up with a bunch of other technology to make them work even better.
Brett McKay: Let’s talk about some of the insights we’ve gotten that allow us to tap into that easier. For example, what do we learn from psychology in the past few decades that have made getting into ecstasis easier and more reliable?
Steven Kotler: Great question. What you’re dipping into psychology is the first of what we call, for the heck of a better term, I guess the four forces of ecstasy. These are forces that are accelerating very, very quickly right now. Psychology, neurobiology technology and pharmacology, and really giving us a lot more. The story starts with psychology. What we examined is the change in our version of who we are in the world go back to the 1950s. We were fairly limited. Even those stereotypes they’re not that far off, you have Betty homemaker side, and the strong, silent, masculine type on the other. Those were your acceptable versions of yourself which is fairly restrictive.
Today, with out 78 different pronouns for gender sexualities at this point and things along those lines, we live in a much more expansive world. Our individual versions of who we are, how we can live in this world and what we can experiment with has widened greatly. Simultaneously, psychology has, through the internet, become something of a big data science. When you’re approaching slippery subjects like non-ordinary states of consciousness and their impact on our psychology, you might not be able to get the rigorous data you’d be comfortable with but you can ask 100,000 people the same question so you can get a huge sample size. That allows us to work around some of the squishiness in psychology. It’s really, really, helping us move faster.
Brett McKay: What are some of that squishiness that we’ve been able to cess out thanks to technology?
Steven Kotler: My own work with flow. In the 70s, University of Chicago, Chairman of Psychology Department, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi is often called the Godfather of Flow, discovered flow as measurable. It’s got 10 core characteristics. You can measure it using a psychological scale. The scale has been used with tens of thousands of people, it’s extremely well-validated but it’s still squishy. You’re still essentially stopping somebody mid-task to say, “Okay, answer these questions to figure out if you’re in flow.”
First of all, if you’re in flow ahead of time, you’re not by the time you’ve done answering the questions. We have been hard at work with a whole bunch of other teams around the world to try to create a biophysical base flow detector so we can look at certain data markers, heart rate variability, EEG, things along those lines, and be able to know yes or no, is somebody in flow. Hat’s how things are shifting that way.
Brett McKay: I imagine smartphones are helping with that as well because they have all these nifty things like features where you can measure that stuff easily. They even have things where they can tell about your mood based on how you’re moving and things so you’re able to get a lot more data.
Steven Kotler: Yeah, it’s getting so … we were in a conversation, I don’t even know if I should tell you about this but, we were in a conversation with a team in Russia. There’s a guy named Paul Ekman who discovered that your face, you make microexpressions on your face. You have no control over these, this is like when you smile, the upper corners of your eyes go up. You can’t do it automatically which is why it’s hard to smile on command but it happens naturally. These things are hardwired directly into our emotions. In the TV show, lie to me, which they made about this work, they prophesied an AI capable of reading these things and determining your mood through your facial expressions. We were talking to a guy who has developed this software and they’re thinking deploying it on planes for example.
The story is like, we’ll get a read out of them, yeah. Guy in 2A is not in a good mood. It’s getting really wild out there. What we could do on cellphones, what we could do in the lab is even crazier, but you’re totally right.
Brett McKay: We’ll get into some of the ethics of that technology and being able to hack into ecstasis more easily, talk about that in a bit. An interesting chapter, which I think is very timely because you’re hearing a lot about in the media is, drugs, pharmacology. What are we learning about from pharmacology about getting into ecstasis?
Steven Kotler: Let me walk you through the whole progression because it’s probably useful. The changes in psychology have given us way more permission to explore. Changes in neurobiology have given us the way to map and measure what’s happening in our body and our brain when we’re experiencing the inexplicable. Pharmacology is letting us tune those experiences with increasing precision giving us access to them nearly on demand. Technology is bringing that access to scale. States that used to be experiencable by five or ten people around a campfire perhaps can now be 500,000 people in a stadium. The first thing pharmacology is really doing is it’s giving us a lot more precision with these states.
Brett McKay: Right now, I just heard on NPR, a story about psychedelics, LSD, this thing that was once part of the 60s and we’ve banned it but it’s starting to come, you’re seeing people use psychedelics or LSD to treat things like depression or just to become more creative. We’re talking like microdoses, they’re not like-
Steven Kotler: Yeah, for sure. By the way, cover of last month’s issue of GQ, why your boss wants you to do LSD at work. By the way, the data in psychedelics is pretty clear. Before the microdose in revolution started happening, it shows that roughly one out of ten Americans has an annual psychedelic practice, does psychedelics at least on a yearly basis. There is a huge swatch in the country that have been experimenting with psychedelics. Prior to this, microdosing which are sub-perceptual doses. You don’t trip, have been shown since the 60s in gray experiments to amplify creativity, problem solving, all kinds of stuff.
That’s why when we’re doing the research for “Stealing Fire” for example, what caught our attention was whole teams of engineers at Fortune 100 companies who were secretly microdosing at work on a regular basis. This was not a one-off at one company. This was in a number of different companies that we bumped into this.
Brett McKay: It’s not just LSD. It’s things like ayahuasca is hip in the entrepreneur world. People go on these ayahuasca journeys to South America or peyote is another one.
Steven Kotler: I think the bigger, more important point, and this is my favorite bit of research in the book, I think, bit of data in the book is that today we have options. Here’s what I mean. A lot of these substances we’re now talking about is treatments for anxiety and depression but some of the early work that really led in this direction began about 10 years ago where people are looking at alternative cures for PTSD which is a devastating condition, 25 million Americans at any one time suffer PTSD. It is completely debilitating. The only things on the market were SSRIs which don’t really work for everyone, they don’t really seem to work for women at all. They definitely don’t work in the severe cases and stopped the drugs and you’re back where you started. Not a very effective treatment.
Ten, twelve years ago Michael Mithoefer a psychologist is South Carolina teams up with the multi-disciplinary association for psychedelic research which is run by my friend Rick Doblin. They decided to test MDMA which is technically in a pathedelic, it makes you feel more empathy. It’s known on the street as ecstasy or molly, take your pick as a treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder. They look at victims of child abuse, sexual abuse and war traumas. They test in vets from Iraq and Afghanistan.
What they discovered is one to three sessions of psychedelic therapy that means they administer the drug and they do talk therapy with you for the period, was enough to put symptoms of PTSD into near total remission. People got off their meds. It’s been four, five years since that study has rocked then run and they’ve stayed off their meds, which is why the FDA is now looking at MDMA as a treatment for just normal anxiety and depression.
That’s cool but here’s the neater point. Four years after they ran that study, they re-ran that study. This time, instead of using a psychedelic, they substituted surfing which is packed with flow triggers. Camp Pendleton in California, they put over a thousand soldier through a, surfing is a trigger for flow plus talk therapy protocols. Same basic study as the MDMA study, they just switched the |
enough to enjoy a good schoolyard taunt. “They talk a whole lot,” said Hampton, who must wear noise-reduction headphones in his own locker room. “I want to be part of that,” the new Ravens fullback Vonta Leach said. “I want to talk about being part of the great rivalry.”
The Steelers are 6-2 against the Ravens in the past three seasons, with two playoff victories, including a 31-24 win last season that was decided by a 55-yard Roethlisberger completion on third-and-19 in the fourth quarter. “It seems like they always have us beat and we always end up beating them,” Hampton said. But a great rivalry, like a good marriage, should be full of surprises. Pick: Ravens.
Cowboys at Jets
Sunday, 8:20 p.m.
Line: Jets by 4½
The Ryan brothers can always be counted upon to stir up some familial controversy, and this past week was no different. So we are forced to take the high road. The Cowboys rid themselves of many of their controversial characters in recent years, which is why the defensive coordinator Rob Ryan is now doing most of the talking. A quieter Cowboys team would cause a bluster void in the N.F.L. if not for Rex Ryan’s Jets. Mark Sanchez is on the GQ cover as “the rock-starriest New York quarterback in decades;” Judging by the black tank top and white jeans Sanchez wears in the magazine, rock-starriness for GQ reached its apex with Simon Le Bon in 1986.
These new, under-the-radar Cowboys are ostensibly led by Jason Garrett, though with Jerry Jones squeezing from above and Ryan from below, Garrett must feel like the cheese in the world’s most self-aggrandizing Panini. Garrett’s team is young, unheralded and hoping to play the spoiler. Pick: Jets.
Colts at Texans
Sunday, 1 p.m.
Line: Texans by 9
Peyton Manning will miss a start because of injury for the first time in his career; the recently acquired Kerry Collins replaces him. The Colts organization is putting a brave face on matters, but you can determine the owner Jim Irsay’s true emotional state by the classic rock lyrics he Tweets. Anything by The Hollies or Fairport Convention means Manning will be back soon. Steely Dan could mean anything from measured optimism (“Can’t Buy a Thrill” era) to mild despair (“Katy Lied“). If Manning’s latest neck surgery shelves him for the season, Irsay will clue us in with a selection from Neil Young’s “Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere.”
The Texans have a rebuilt secondary designed to stop the Colts. They also had some Twitter drama of their own when Arian Foster published the M.R.I. images of his ailing knee last week. The Tweets displayed dubious taste and awful judgment, but worst of all did little to end injury speculation: Foster is questionable for Sunday. You would think that 400,000 diagnoses could yield one straight answer. Pick: Texans.
Falcons at Bears
Sunday, 1 p.m.
Line: Falcons by 3
The Falcons abandoned their slow-and-steady philosophy in the off-season, trading five draft picks for the right to select receiver Julio Jones, a deep threat to complement Roddy White and open running room for the plowhorse Michael Turner. The Bears upgraded their pass protection by drafting the enormous Gabe Carimi, but the coordinator Mike Martz then took steps to make his offense more Martz-like, replacing the versatile tight end Greg Olsen with the disappointment-at-large receiver Roy Williams. With Williams dropping passes and the offensive line again in flux, Cutler must brace for another 50-sack season. Martz loves offenses that can throw deep. He will be watching one from the opposite sideline on Sunday. Pick: Falcons.
Vikings at Chargers
Sunday, 4:15 p.m.
Line: Chargers by 8½
Like a superhero movie franchise that fell short of of expectations, Donovan McNabb’s career now needs a reboot every year or so. McNabb 3.0 is now a mentor to the rookie Christian Ponder, a hand-off vendor for Adrian Peterson, and a security blanket for a team with a novice head coach (Leslie Frazier) and a controversial stadium referendum to sell to voters. It sounds like too many story lines: the hallmark of a trilogy that has run out of ideas.
The Chargers have the talent to return to the playoffs, and they also have their own beverage for celebrating victories: Chargers Legacy cabernet sauvignon, produced and bottled by Bell Wine Cellars of Napa Valley. A.J. Smith personally inspected every grape, alienating half of them, and Norv Turner was not involved in the production in any way, ensuring that the wine is safe to drink. Pick: Chargers.
Giants at Redskins
Sunday, 4:15 p.m.
Line: Giants by 3
Rex Grossman will start at quarterback for the Redskins. Mike Shanahan insisted throughout the off-season that John Beck would start, but that was presumably just a motivational ploy for Grossman, because the best employees are the ones who need six months of psychological manipulation to achieve adequacy. The best thing about the start of the season for the Giants is that nothing else can go wrong for them in the preseason Pick: Giants.
Lions at Buccaneers
Sunday, 1 p.m.
Line: Buccaneers by 1½
The Lions are serious wild-card contenders this year, and their first test pits them not just against the up-and-coming Buccaneers, but the steamy Tampa weather. Temperatures are expected to be around 90 degrees at kickoff, but Lions Coach Jim Schwartz was never tempted to crank up the thermostat in his team’s practice facility. “That’s foolishness,” Schwartz told The Detroit Free Press. “We don’t pipe in crowd noise, and we don’t open up the doors and make it cold, and we don’t try to smoke the team out.” The decision not to smoke the team out may haunt Schwartz if the league ever awards an expansion team to Istanbul. Pick: Buccaneers.
Eagles at Rams
Sunday, 1 p.m.
Line: Eagles by 5
With their lineup full of superstars and big-name free agents you are already sick of reading about, the Eagles have nothing to fear this season except the Law of Inverse Ninjutsu. In action movies, the more ninjas (evil robots, Imperial storm troopers) the heroes face, the less dangerous the actual threat: waves of bad guys are usually mowed down easily. By extension, the more free agents an N.F.L. team signs, the less effective each will be, at least in theory. The Rams are not in position to exploit the Law of Inverse Ninjutsu, because they are a little short to be a storm trooper. Pick: Eagles.
Bills at Chiefs
Sunday, 1 p.m.
Line: Chiefs by 6
The Chiefs played to win in the fourth preseason game. Coach Todd Haley gave his starters significant playing time in a game most coaches treat as a Greg McElroy-Ryan Perrilloux film festival. As a result of his innovative thinking, Haley lost tight end Tony Moeaki for the year and jeopardized quarterback Matt Cassel’s availability for the season opener; Cassel has been practicing with a cracked rib he sustained on a second-quarter sack. Also, the Chiefs lost. Just because Eric Mangini and Josh McDaniels are no longer head coaches does not mean Haley has to make all of the “crazy wunderkind” decisions by himself. Pick: Bills.
Titans at Jaguars
Sunday, 1 p.m.
Line: Jaguars by 2
Back in 2007, the Jaguars cut starting quarterback Byron Leftwich eight days before the season opener, promoting David Garrard to the starting job. On Tuesday, they released Garrard, promoting the journeyman backup Luke McCown, who threw only 18 passes in the preseason. The rookie Blaine Gabbert is now McCown’s backup; given the team’s track record, he will earn a starting job when McCown is cut during the coin toss of the 2012 season opener. Rickety Matt Hasselbeck will start at quarterback for the Titans, though with Chris Johnson back from a contentious preseason holdout, Hasselbeck’s main duty will be to hand off without spraining a wrist. Pick: Titans.
Bengals at Browns
Sunday, 1 p.m.
Line: Browns by 6½
Here’s a brief update on the whereabouts of last year’s Bengals. Running back Cedric Benson is back with the team after a five-day August stint in a Texas prison. Benson got time off his 20-day sentence for good behavior, which can only mean that the big inmates-versus-guards football game was coming up and the warden did not want Benson teaming up with Burt Reynolds to cause mischief. Terrell Owens, currently a free agent, was last heard on Philadelphia radio advising Eagles receiver DeSean Jackson not to play until he receives a new contract; Owens’s knee may not be fully healed, but his dissent-sowing skills are as sharp as ever. Not-quite-retired quarterback Carson Palmer now lives in the sewers, occasionally emerging to help Linda Hamilton solve crimes. The remains of the Bengals roster are not quite as good or nearly as interesting. Pick: Browns.
Seahawks at 49ers
Sunday, 4:15 p.m.
Line: 49ers by 5½
The Seahawks have had a strange case of Vikings envy in recent years. The team signed the former Vikings Tarvaris Jackson and Sidney Rice as their starting quarterback and go-to receiver despite Jackson’s track record and Rice’s injury history. Jackson was his usual sack-prone self in the preseason. Rice averaged only 5.5 yards per catch and missed significant time with a shoulder injury, causing an outbreak of Post Nate Burleson Stress Disorder among Seahawks fans. New 49ers Coach Jim Harbaugh has complete confidence in quarterback Alex Smith but is otherwise doing a swell job. Pick: Niners.
Panthers at Cardinals
Sunday, 4:15 p.m.
Line: Cardinals by 7
It’s hard to improve on a great Onion headline, and “Panthers Name Cam Newton Starting QB Because Everyone Seems to Think They Should” sums up the state of football in the Carolinas nicely. The Cardinals signed Kevin Kolb and Larry Fitzgerald for a small fortune, inserted the rookie cornerback Patrick Peterson into the starting lineup, and assembled a roster that appears destined for a 7-9 finish. Or as they are called in the N.F.C. West, a “contender.” Pick: Panthers.
Patriots at Dolphins
Monday, 7 p.m.
Line: Patriots by 7
The Dolphins are arguably the league’s least interesting team, and they definitely have the least inspiring slogans. The first slogan, as reported by Mike Berardino of The Orlando Sun-Sentinel, is “One team. One Mindset. One Goal.” As motivators go, that flunks the William Wallace test. (“They can take our land. They can take our freedom. But they CANNOT take our mindset!”) The other slogan, “Winners don’t even know they are in a race. They just love to run,” is false for any competition except toddler relays. The Dolphins are well aware that they are in a race with the superior Patriots, which by the logic of their slogan may preclude them from winning. Pick: Patriots.
Raiders at Broncos
Monday, 10:15 p.m.
Line: Broncos by 3
The most interesting player on each team is the third-string quarterback, which speaks volumes about how far this rivalry has fallen. The Broncos’ new coach, John Fox, says Tim Tebow will play more often than most third-string quarterbacks, which is like getting used more often than most swimming pool fire extinguishers. Terrelle Pryor is suspended for the first five games of the season, but according to the terms of the disciplinary action, he is allowed to start overshadowing Jason Campbell immediately. Pick: Broncos.In the Truong and Humphrey case, the federal courts stood behind the executive branch. Appeals brought by lawyers for Mr. Truong and Humphrey, claiming the evidence against them was illegally obtained, were denied.
The courts’ stance galvanized civil libertarians in their campaign for changes in the law. Senator Edward M. Kennedy, a prime sponsor of the 1978 intelligence surveillance law, said, “The recent prosecution against Humphrey and Truong points out the need for this legislation.”
“Serious constitutional issues are raised by the case,” he said in a speech on the Senate floor.
The law created the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, a panel of federal judges known as the FISA court. It mandated that one of those judges review any future requests by the executive branch to employ such techniques in cases concerning national security. (After the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, several laws were passed at the behest of the Bush administration to widen the president’s ability to bypass the legal system when conducting wiretaps.)
Mr. Truong and his wife, Carolyn Gates, an American economist, left the United States in the 1980s to live in the Netherlands, where both worked as economic development consultants to the European Commission, the executive branch of the European Union.
Mr. Truong had come to the United States in 1965 as a student, and earned degrees in political science and economics at Stanford University. Discouraged by his family from returning home — he was the son of an opposition leader jailed in Saigon by South Vietnam’s American-backed government — Mr. Truong became an outspoken antiwar activist in the United States.
When he was arrested on Jan. 31, 1978, Mr. Truong was doing postgraduate work at American University, and working as a lobbyist in Washington for several organizations advocating normalization of diplomatic ties between the United States and his country, which had reunified under Communist rule since South Vietnam’s collapse in 1975.
Basing their allegations on wiretaps and the testimony of a double agent employed by both the C.I.A. and the F.B.I., Justice Department prosecutors said Mr. Truong had been passing secret State Department cables about Vietnam-related foreign policy strategies to Vietnamese agents in Paris. Diplomats from the two countries were in negotiations there over an accounting of American prisoners of war and soldiers missing in action as well as other matters left unresolved at the end of the war.The Republic of South Sudan rang in its status as the world's newest country this weekend with a series of spontaneous and orchestrated celebrations of what President Salva Kiir called "a dream come true."
On Saturday, tens of thousands of southerners flocked -- some even ran in their high heels and dress clothes -- to a fitting site for the main independence ceremony: the burial grounds of their fallen hero and former leader, Dr. John Garang.
“We were bombed, maimed, enslaved, treated worse than a refugee in our own country, but we have to forgive, although we will not forget,” Mr. Kiir said in his speech to the masses, a couple hours after he took the oath of office as the first elected president of the South Sudan.
At moments during the day-long ceremony, it was clear that some citizens of the fledgling country could hardly contain their joy.
Cries of "Hallelujah!" and "Freedom!" rang out and rippled through the crowd. Some jumped into the air and roared with delight as the southern flag reached the top of a towering flag pole, symbolic of the accession of the new state to the international community.
World leaders offer praise
The United States and Britain were among the first nations to recognize Africa's 54th country.
"My country, too, was born amid struggle and strife on a July day," US Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice told the teeming and sweaty cround on Saturday. "On this day, the world’s oldest democracy welcomes the world’s newest state."
"Independence was not a gift you were given. Independence is a prize you have won," Ms. Rice said. "Yet even on this day of jubilee we remain mindful of the challenges that await us. No true friend would offer false comfort. The path ahead will be steep... but the Republic of South Sudan is being born amid great hopes."
A host of African heads of state also attended, including South Sudan's historic enemy, Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir.
Mr. Bashir, who is wanted at the International Criminal Court for war crimes, struck an unusually conciliatory tone at the ceremony, urging the two Sudanese states to "overcome the bitterness of the past."
Immediate challenges loom
As South Sudan's capital, Juba, was rocked by celebrations, international and local concerns over the insecurity along the North-South border and all-out hostilities between northern troops and southern-allied forces in the northern state of Southern Kordofan were pushed aside for the day. But UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon stressed in his remarks that the northern and southern governments still had many issues to resolve about the future of their relationship.
The southern president acknowledged the challenges ahead for the new country, telling his citizens to remember that they are "southerners first" as they work together to build a nation from the south's diverse ethnic groups. He asked for the southern militias currently challenging the army in the south's oil-producing region to lay down their arms and "join us in this young nation."
Kiir also pledged that his government would rise to the challenges that come along with statehood.
“Starting from today, we’ll have no excuse or a scapegoat to blame,” Kiir said. “As an independent country, we must focus on the process of service delivery and development."
Optimism, despite the obstacles
"There's still room for optimism for South Sudan," Eddie Thomas of the Rift Valley Institute told the Monitor. "It's more peaceful today than it has been for most of its post-colonial history - and for that matter, most of its colonial history."
On one of the new billboards towering over one of Juba's main streets, the message reflected the solidarity among southerners that has been a theme of the independence celebrations: "We have suffered together, we are now free together."When Apple announced at WWDC that ARKit framework was going to be part of iOS11, there was great excitement in the development community, as most people saw an amazing opportunity to create incredible AR experiences that could be felt by a large audience.
Unity had worked with Apple during the previous months to create the Unity ARKit Plugin, which was released on that first day of WWDC, and allowed any developer to use Unity as a content creation platform for ARKit apps. The demo videos of ARKit apps using that plugin started streaming out over the Internet.
Today, we announce a new feature of our Unity ARKit Plugin: Unity ARKit Remote. This allows developers to prototype their experiences in an agile manner, reducing their production timelines drastically. Previously, when a developer needed to iterate on the scripts and on editing objects, they would have to build out to an iOS device to test their changes. Unity ARKit Remote allows you to run a special app on the iOS device which feeds ARKit data back to the Unity Editor, allowing you to react to that data in realtime in the Editor.
Here’s a video of how it works:
For more details, see this forum post.
Unity ARKit Remote is available as part of Unity ARKit Plugin:11:17pm: The Cardinals, Blue Jays, Red Sox, Rays and Indians are all "seriously in the mix" for Beltran, according to Scott Miller of CBSSports.com. There could be another team involved.
10:40pm: The Indians have jumped into the Carlos Beltran negotiations, according to ESPN.com's Buster Olney (on Twitter). Though GM Chris Antonetti has been on the lookout for offense this offseason, this is the first time the Indians have been publicly linked to Beltran.
Beltran has two and three-year offers and hopes to decide on a new team this week, according to Scott Miller of CBSSports.com (all Twitter links). The Blue Jays and Cardinals are among Beltran’s most aggressive suitors, Miller reports. The switch-hitter appears to be weighing a more substantial contract offer against a city he prefers. He is open to DHing on a part-time basis.
Jon Heyman of CBSSports.com reported tonight that Indians people are considering “everyone but Prince [Fielder]” as they hunt for upgrades at first base and in the outfield. The Indians now have Michael Brantley, Grady Sizemore, Shin-Soo Choo, Ezequiel Carrera, Shelley Duncan and the newly-acquired Aaron Cunningham in the outfield mix. Beltran would be a welcome addition to an offense that ranked 16th in MLB in runs scored in 2011.The independent bookstore is not the last stronghold of literary culture you think it is
Jupiterimages/Thinkstock.
Amazon just did a boneheaded thing, and it deserves all the scorn you want to heap on it. Last week, the company offered people cash in exchange for going into retail stores and scanning items using the company’s Price Check smartphone app. If you scanned a product and then purchased it from Amazon rather than the shop you were standing in, Amazon would give you a 5 percent discount on the sale. (Disclosure: Slate is an Amazon affiliate; when you click on an Amazon link from Slate, the magazine gets a cut of the proceeds from whatever you buy.)
I’m generally a fan of price comparison—like everyone else, I hate spending more than I should—but I can understand physical retailers’ fear of the practice becoming widespread. When you walk into Best Buy and get a salesperson to spend 10 minutes showing you a television, then leave empty-handed so you can buy the TV for less on Amazon, you’ve just turned Best Buy into Jeff Bezos’ chump. The Price Check promotion (which lasted only one day) was, like Amazon’s aggressive efforts to dodge the collection of sales tax, a brazen attempt to crush local retailers, and I (as did many others) found it distasteful. Sure, I’m a fan of Amazon and devote a substantial portion of my income to its coffers—but does it have to be so wantonly callous about destroying its competitors?
All of which is to say that I was primed to nod in vigorous agreement when I saw novelist Richard Russo’s New York Times op-ed taking on Amazon’s thuggish ways. But as I waded into Russo’s piece—which was widely passed around on Tuesday—I realized that he’d made a critical and common mistake in his argument. Rather than focus on the ways that Amazon’s promotion would harm businesses whose demise might actually be a cause for alarm (like a big-box electronics store that hires hundreds of local residents), Russo hangs his tirade on some of the least efficient, least user-friendly, and most mistakenly mythologized local establishments you can find: independent bookstores. Russo and his novelist friends take for granted that sustaining these cultish, moldering institutions is the only way to foster a “real-life literary culture,” as writer Tom Perrotta puts it. Russo claims that Amazon, unlike the bookstore down the street, “doesn’t care about the larger bookselling universe” and has no interest in fostering “literary culture.”
That’s simply bogus. As much as I despise some of its recent tactics, no company in recent years has done more than Amazon to ignite a national passion for buying, reading, and even writing new books. With his creepy laugh and Dr. Evil smile, Bezos is an easy guy to hate, and I’ve previously worried that he’d ruin the book industry. But if you’re a novelist—not to mention a reader, a book publisher, or anyone else who cares about a vibrant book industry—you should thank him for crushing that precious indie on the corner.
Compared with online retailers, bookstores present a frustrating consumer experience. A physical store—whether it’s your favorite indie or the humongous Barnes & Noble at the mall—offers a relatively paltry selection, no customer reviews, no reliable way to find what you’re looking for, and a dubious recommendations engine. Amazon suggests books based on others you’ve read; your local store recommends what the employees like. If you don’t choose your movies based on what the guy at the box office recommends, why would you choose your books that way?
In the past, bookstores did have one clear advantage over online retailers—you could read any book before you purchased it. But in the e-book age that advantage has slipped away. Amazon and Barnes & Noble let you sample the first chapter of every digital title they carry, and you can do so without leaving your couch.
It’s not just that bookstores are difficult to use. They’re economically inefficient, too. Rent, utilities, and a brigade of book-reading workers aren’t cheap, so the only way for bookstores to stay afloat is to sell items at a huge markup. A few times a year, my wife—an unreformed local-bookstore cultist—drags me into one of our supposedly sacrosanct neighborhood booksellers, and I’m always astonished by how much they want me to pay for books. At many local stores, most titles—even new releases—usually go for list price, which means $35 for hardcovers and $9 to $15 for paperbacks. That’s not slightly more than Amazon charges—at Amazon, you can usually save a staggering 30 to 50 percent. In other words, for the price you’d pay for one book at your indie, you could buy two.
I get that some people like bookstores, and they’re willing to pay extra to shop there. They find browsing through physical books to be a meditative experience, and they enjoy some of the ancillary benefits of physicality (authors’ readings, unlimited magazine browsing, in-store coffee shops, the warm couches that you can curl into on a cold day). And that’s fine: In the same way that I sometimes wander into Whole Foods for the luxurious experience of buying fancy food, I don’t begrudge bookstore devotees spending extra to get an experience they fancy.
What rankles me, though, is the hectoring attitude of bookstore cultists like Russo, especially when they argue that readers who spurn indies are abandoning some kind of “local” literary culture. There is little that’s “local” about most local bookstores. Unlike a farmers’ market, which connects you with the people who are seasonally and sustainably tending crops within driving distance of your house, an independent bookstore’s shelves don’t have much to do with your community. Sure, every local bookstore promotes local authors, but its bread and butter is the same stuff that Amazon sells—mass-manufactured goods whose intellectual property was produced by one of the major publishing houses in Manhattan. It doesn’t make a difference whether you buy Walter Isaacson’s Steve Jobs at City Lights, Powell’s, Politics & Prose, or Amazon—it’s the same book everywhere.
Wait, but what about the bookstores’ owners and employees—aren’t they benefitting from your decision to buy local? Sure, but insofar as they’re doing it inefficiently (and their prices suggest they are), you could argue that they’re benefiting at the expense of someone else in the economy. After all, if you’re spending extra on books at your local indie, you’ve got less money to spend on everything else—including on authentically local cultural experiences. With the money you saved by buying books at Amazon, you could have gone to see a few productions at your local theater company, visited your city’s museum, purchased some locally crafted furniture, or spent more money at your farmers’ market. Each of these is a cultural experience that’s created in your community. Buying Steve Jobs at a store down the street isn’t.
But say you don’t care about local cultural experiences. Say you just care about books. Well, then it’s easy: The lower the price, the more books people will buy, and the more books people buy, the more they’ll read. This is the biggest flaw in Russo’s rant. He points to several allegedly important functions that local booksellers play in fostering “literary culture”—they serve as a “gathering place” for the community, they “optimistically set up … folding chairs” at readings, they happily guide people toward books they’ll love. I’m sure all of that is important, but it’s strange that a novelist omits the most critical aspect of a vibrant book-reading culture: getting people to buy a whole heckload of books.
And that’s where Amazon is unbeatable. Again, Bezos will sell you two hardcover books for the price you’d pay for one at your local store. And then there’s the Kindle, which turns the whole world into a bookstore, and which has already been proven to turn ordinary readers in monster book-buyers. Amazon has said that after people buy a Kindle reader, they begin purchasing e-books at twice the rate they’d previously purchased print titles. (And they keep buying print titles.) Amazon has also been instrumental in helping authors create more books. With the Kindle, it launched a self-publishing system that allows anyone to sell a Kindle book. There’s also its Kindle Singles program, which transforms stuff that the book industry wouldn’t otherwise be able to sell—shorter-than-book-length magazine articles, essays, and fiction—into material that can be sold for money.
So, sure, Amazon doesn’t host readings and it doesn’t give you a poofy couch to sit on while you peruse the latest best-sellers. But what it does do—allow people to buy books anytime they want—is hardly killing literary culture. In fact, it’s probably the only thing saving it.A regular refrain within the online security community is that privacy is dead.
David Adler’s talk at RSA Tuesday, titled “Where you are is who you are: Legal trends in geolocation privacy and security,” was about one of the major reasons it is so, so dead.
To paraphrase Adler, founder of the Adler Law Group, it is not so much that in today’s connected world there is a single, malevolent Big Brother watching you. It’s that there are dozens, perhaps hundreds, of “little brothers” eagerly watching you so they can sell you stuff more effectively. Collectively, they add up to an increasingly omniscient big brother.
“Everything is gathering location data – apps, mobile devices and platforms that you use,” he said. “Often it is being done without your knowledge or consent.
[ MORE FROM RSA: See all the news happening at the show ]
“And at same time, privacy advocates have ID’d geolocation as particularly sensitive information.”
That, as numerous experts have been warning for some time now, is because data about where you are at all times of the day can paint an incredibly detailed and invasive picture about who you are – your political, food, religious, sexual and shopping preferences, medical conditions, job, family, friends and other relationships, and, of course, where you live.
And, as is also well known, people make it very easy to collect that data. They essentially give it away. “A lot has to do with the shift to mobile devices,” Adler said. “What people used to do on their desktops, they now do on mobile.”
He cited a Pew Research Center study on how people use their cell phones, which found that 40 percent used it for government services, 43 percent to research job information, 18 percent to submit job applications, 44 percent to look for real estate, 62 percent to research health conditions and 57 percent for online banking.
“In addition to the sensitivity of the subjects, you fold in the location data, and it can become very revealing,” Adler said.
Avoiding this is not as simple as turning off the “location services” feature in a smartphone either, he noted.
“That is only one of several ways location data is gathered,” he said. “I was shocked at technology behind it. It is collected by the cell tower that your device talks to. Wi-Fi hotspots not only share the location, but time stamp it. Your phone logs all of it – your keyboard cache, SIM card serial number, your number, your email address. All of this can be gathered by apps, and they don’t have to ask your permission.”
There is a growing awareness of these risks not just from privacy advocates, but from at least some government agencies as well. Adler quoted the Federal Trade Commission’s Director of the Consumer Protection Division Jessica Rich, who said two years ago that “Geolocation information divulges intimately personal details of an individual.”
He also noted the passage of the Consumer Privacy Bill of Rights Act of 2015, along with other legislation pending.
But it is unlikely that things will change soon in any major way. The Center for Democracy & Technology (CDT) called the consumer privacy bill “an incredibly important first step,” but also said it contains, “too many loopholes, and enforcement is lacking.”
Adler said that is in part because the U.S. still, “has no uniform privacy laws, and enforcement is ad hoc.” He said a number of consumer complaints, “have fizzled in the courts, because they depend on very specific harm to individuals.”
Still, he said a number of FTC cases are setting precedents for protecting consumer privacy.
“Regulators are taking a more in-depth look at this kind of information. It is trending and important,” he said.Update: Thompson issues statement on'scumbag' comment
Perry County residents and officials want Harrisburg Mayor Linda Thompson to apologize for a derogatory comment she made during a news conference Wednesday.
"[She's] calling people scumbags who she knows nothing about," said Ted Houtz of Landisburg. "She’s said a lot of dumb things over the course of her tenure, but this has to be one of the worst things I’ve ever heard her say."
Houtz was referring to a comment Thompson made during a news conference Wednesday about privatizing waste collection in the city.
"We're not opening up our flood gates for some scumbag that comes from Perry County who … comes here and wants to dump for free," Thompson said.
Several attempts to reach Thomson, who is facing a competitive re-election this year, Wednesday night and Thursday morning were unsuccessful.
City officials have said that litter and illegal dumping have become a major problem in the city. Some of the "perpetrators" drive in from out of town, ditch their bulk items and leave – an issue with which Thompson and other officials have repeatedly stated frustration.
By early evening, however, Twitter and other social media networks had erupted with residents reacting to the sound byte.
Perry County Commissioner Stephen Naylor – who said his wife first alerted him to the remarks he described as "crude" and "offensive" – called for an apology.
"We have a lot of people that work down there, they put a lot of money into the area," Naylor said. "They work government jobs, and they pay right-to-work taxes and they pay for parking. … You just don't expect to hear those sorts of things from a city leader."
Naylor said he hadn't spoken directly to his fellow Democrat.
"I think she's gonna feel some heat overnight and [Thursday], and some pressure to take back what she said. But it might be a little late at that point," Houtz said.
PennLive reporter Jeremy Arias contributed to this story.Electricity bills are often ludicrously high thanks to our energy-intensive modern world, but every now and then, thanks to the forces of nature, a metaphorical miracle takes place. As reported by Quartz, Germany just experienced such a phenomenon when a particularly bright and sunny day supercharged their solar and wind power sectors.
Around 1 p.m. on May 8, the nation’s renewable energy generating facilities were supplying around 55 gigawatts of the 63 gigawatts being consumed – about 87 percent of the total electricity consumption. With the addition of the country’s conventional power plants, the output actually exceeded the national demand. This energy surplus meant that, for a brief time, energy prices were actually negative, meaning consumers were effectively being paid to consume electricity.
A similar feat occurred in Denmark last year, when a terrifically windy day boosted their wind power sector so much that these turbines alone generated 140 percent of the nation’s electricity demand, with the excess energy being exported to Germany, Norway, and Sweden.
According to a United Nations report, Germany intends to be one of the frontrunners when it comes to renewable energy; it has pledged to be powered entirely by renewable energy sources by 2050, an ambitious feat to say the least. Days like May 8 serve to give this ambition genuine credibility.
Consumers were being paid to buy energy. Agora Energiewende
A recent study suggested that all the pieces are in place for an energy revolution. Fossil fuels would be rejected, and renewable and nuclear energy would take over. A recent declaration by the International Energy Agency, that over a quarter of the world will be powered by renewable energy by 2020, seems to imply that this may be the case – as does the Paris climate change agreement, which can only be successfully implemented if fossil fuels are ditched in favor of renewables.
Countries all over the world are stepping up to the plate, including Germany. Sweden has initiated legislative and infrastructural changes to put it on track to becoming the world’s first fossil fuel-free nation; Morocco will soon have a 24/7 concentrated solar power plant that will be able to constantly supply the entire region; the U.S., Canada, and China have all agreed to cooperate to end their reliance on fossil fuels.
As always, though, it’s complicated. Many nations increasing their renewable energy generation capabilities are also scaling back on their nuclear power plants, particularly Germany. If they hope to be fossil fuel-free in the near-future, removing their nuclear power plants – which have a near-zero carbon footprint – will greatly hinder them on their quest, along with slowing down their efforts to mitigate man-made climate change.BRIMFIELD, Ohio -- Brimfield Township Police Chief David Oliver announced he is retiring in the wake of reports he would be resigning Friday.
The township's board of trustees scheduled an emergency meeting at 3:30 p.m. Friday to discuss a "personnel issue," township Fiscal Officer John Dalziel said Friday morning.
Oliver responded to accusations against him in a Facebook post announcing his retirement Friday morning.
"What you all are seeing now are some disgruntled people who are taking shots at me and have been since the [Facebook] page got bigger," he wrote. "Two are current employees, some I have fired in the past and some just hate me because of my personality. Whatever the reason, they are out in force, like vultures, enjoying the scene."
The board of trustees suspended Oliver at a meeting Monday night.
Oliver was suspended after it was deemed he violated a township policy about gender-based discrimination. It was not a violation of the township's sexual harassment policy, according to Greg Beck, an attorney representing the township.
He declined to provide specific details about the violation.
Oliver cleaned out his office Thursday and was expected to resign Friday, the Akron-Beacon Journal reported.
Oliver said on Facebook Thursday night that he would |
even have a clue about your e-mail activity.
Bad content added to WP: You cannot control what content is added to your site, and this is in fact one of the major factors that ought to urge you to start cleaning up the mess.
Slow performance or crash: This is another indicator that you are in need of WordPress clean up after a hack. If you are experiencing too slow performance or if you see that your site has crashed, you should look no further.
Traffic drops significantly: You will most likely observe that you get no traffic at all or you have lost most of your visitors from one day to the next. Unless you have dealt with a matter of bad reputation recently, this should alarm you.
Website disappears: This is the most shocking sign that your site has been under attack. In some cases, the hackers remove everything from the site and thus take it down.
As soon as you have noticed some of these signs, it is high time to take matters into your own hands. Though this process is neither easy nor simple to complete, you can in fact repair your WordPress site and make sure that you shield it against any future acts of this sort.
How to Repair Your Hacked WordPress Site
From the very moment when you determine that your WordPress site has been hacked, you need to take some immediate actions and start working toward cleaning everything up and securing your digital premises. Let’s have a look at what it takes for you to accomplish that:
Restore Your Site via Upgrade and Reinstallation: Make use of your backup and restore your site, so that it can keep running. Upon doing so, you need to be thorough while reinstalling all the plugins and additional tools that you have been using so far. It is important to reinstall them and then upgrade them to the latest version.
Scan and Cleanup Your Machine: If you had not installed an anti-virus program, please DO! This is essential, in order to highlight any red flags for you to consider. Scan the machine of yours in detail and fix any problems that emerge.
Change All the Passwords: Do not be sloppy when it comes to cleaning up WordPress. On the contrary, you ought to be really scholastic and change all the passwords that you have been using in e-mail accounts, financial transactions and anywhere else. Of course, it goes without even saying that you need to change the WP administrator password and get a new one (rather than the default that many users don’t mind keeping).
Back up Everything: Besides being able to restore your site in the event of hacking or crashing, you can compare the backups with your current WP site and check for any alterations whatsoever.
Check wp-config.php File: If you come across any modifications when comparing your file with the wp-config-sample.php file, you had better change them.
Engage in Premium Security Solutions: Although it can be tempting to handle your WordPress site and its maintenance on your own or make use of your son’s talent or the wit of your best friend, such options generally come with a greater percentage of risk. Instead, consider premium security solutions that will safeguard your site and deal with the proper WordPress maintenance required.
Any Uploaded File Should Be Copied: This will allow you to keep everything under control. Even in the discomforting event of a crash or any other problem getting in the way, you will know that you have got copies to turn to.
Fresh, New Version of WordPress: Do not settle for older versions of WordPress. Instead, be sure to get updates and have the latest version of WordPress that has fixed security issues and can keep you thoroughly protected.
Go through Every Post: This can take some time, but it is worth the trouble. You should go through every post of yours and identify any problem, in order to deal with it effectively.
How to Protect Your Site from Any Future Attack
As hacking is not a one-time deal, you will have to comply with some security precautions that help you maintain everything perfectly secured on your WordPress site. Below, there are some pieces of advice that you ought to consider for protecting your WordPress website from any malicious intent:
Restrict Administrative Privileges: The fewer the people who access your admin panel, the less likely it will be for breaches to occur.
Scan on a Daily Basis: If you are vigilant and you do not neglect scanning your site daily for bugs and other vulnerabilities, the hack is less likely to succeed.
Use Secured Protocols: Instead of connecting with the use of FTP, you can go for SFTP or SSH for ensuring that it is infinitely more difficult for somebody to track you down.
Use 2-Verification: Make sure that you enhance your site’s security using Make sure that you enhance your site’s security using 2-step verification. This will result in the hacker requiring much bigger effort towards accessing your site.
Disable PHP Execution: You can find detailed instructions on You can find detailed instructions on how you can do that, since it will certainly help you out eliminate threats in the future.
From everything that has been analyzed in this article on cleaning up WordPress, this is a tough job – however, it is not impossible to complete and what you gain is truly remarkable; a fully protected WordPress site that does not compromise anything in terms of security and performance!Firm targets 200,000 sales after Ingram Micro, Tech Data Mobile and Exertis deals
John Lewis is ready for a major assault on the SIM-free handset market.
The retail has teamed up with distributors Ingram Micro Mo- bility, Exertis and Tech Data to supply all “major” smartphone devices through its stores for the first time. The firm, which has also partnered with Vodafone for airtime offerings, says it has targeted a 10 percent share of the SIM-free market, within the next few years.
Sales of SIM-free handsets are expected to surpass two million by the end of the year, up from 1.6 million in 2014, according to CCS Insight.
John Lewis Electrical buying director Jonathan Marsh told Mobile News that the launch marked its “true entry” into mobile and has ambitions to match the success of its existing consumer electronics departments (computing, TV, audio).
SIM-free share
“We have typically between eight and ten per cent of the technology market in the UK and we have doubled that over the past four years. Why can’t John Lewis take a similar share of this market? I know it has been network-led for so long but we are seeing the seeds of change. A long-term ambition is to get to ten per cent of the market.”
The company began selling the ‘top 25’ handsets SIM-free online last month and from its Oxford Street store last week.
Vodafone contract sales will begin in its Manchester Cheadle store next month with Oxford Street to follow in September. Handsets available include the latest devices from Apple, Samsung, HTC and Sony as well as a number of entry-to-mid-range devices.
National rollout
The mobile concession stores will be manned by John Lewis and Vodafone staff and will be rolled out nationally if they prove successful over the Christmas period.
It was launched following 18 months of research after it found that thousands of John Lewis’ 11 million customer base were searching its website for smartphones. It is seeking to differentiate by offering extended two-year warranties on SIM-free handsets and two-years’ accidental damage on Vodafone contract handsets.by
By Etorouji Shiono. Released in Japan in two separate volumes by Square Enix, serialization ongoing in the magazine Young Gangan. Released in North America by Yen Press.
After finishing this first omnibus, you can absolutely see why Übel Blatt was licensed, and why I think it will do very well over here. The plot is straightforward and is the sort of thing that lends itself to a long, drawn-out story. The hero is mostly likeable (more on that later) and you understand his burning need for revenge; the action, though incredibly bloody and violent, is well-drawn and not at all confusing. You find yourself drawn into the story and wanting to find out what happens next. It’s very well-written. It also has a rape so mind-bogglingly appalling in the first few pages that my jaw dropped, as well as two “semi-consensual” sex scenes that also push the limits. So there’s that.
Let’s back up a bit and talk about that plot. It may seem very familiar to fans of The Seven Deadly Sins, and that’s because it’s the exact same plot. Of course, Übel Blatt started in 2004, a good 8 years before Kodansha’s shonen series, so any inspiration most likely runs the other way. In any case, we have a typical manga fantasy world, where everyone is living in castles or huts but we also have flying zeppelins. The young man on the cover is Köinzell, who flashbacks show was once a cute young kid but now appears to be older, far more angry and bitter, and not quite human anymore. He’s on a mission to wipe out the legacy he and his companions left behind, one that has him and three other (seemingly dead) friends branded as traitors. Along the way, he meets a young girl trying to save her brother, an even younger girl just trying to get to the next country, and a seemingly endless number of evil monks.
This is a fun series. Köinzell is mostly serious, even in his lovemaking, but this isn’t really a manga that needs comedy relief. Even the token little girl who gets taken along for the ride doesn’t really get too many wacky antics here. The first half came out as a “Volume 0” in Japan, but unlike most other Volume 0s appears to have actually debuted at the same time as Vol. 1, so I will assume it’s not ‘go back and rewrite the backstory to make it fit what I have now’. There are some men and women in the background I’d like to see more of.
It’s just very hard to recommend a manga where you have to admit that it begins with one of the mook villains explicitly raping a woman, then when he tosses her aside to rant for a bit, his HORSE decides he’s going to get some as well. I understand the need to show that this is a desperate and horrible world which our heroes will need to save, but there are better ways to do it than this. What’s more, Köinzell (who is, to be fair, not the usual sexless hero, something that surprised me) is not much better, recognizing a young woman’s crush on him and having her stripped and his hand down her pants within ten seconds.
Thus my recommendation of this series is tempered by “if you can get past the rape, assault, and non-consensualness with many of the female characters”. I hate saying that. As with Japan, I suspect Übel Blatt’s main audience are young college-aged men who like fantasy series with a lot of sex and violence, and this is probably better than a few others coming along, though I’d try Berserk (which has similar issues all around) first.Ridley Scott’s next Alien, new Blade Runner Ryan Gosling and a return of the Jedi are highlights in a year full of dark visions of the future
Does pop culture science fiction merely reflect humanity’s hopes and fears for the future, or can it act as an early warning signal designed to help us avoid the impending techno-apocalypse? It’s hard to imagine anyone ever handing over the nuclear codes to a super-intelligent machine after watching James Cameron’s Terminator films, while movies such as Ex Machina and Blade Runner – and TV shows such as Humans and Westworld – might just make us think twice about the ethics of developing artificial lifeforms merely to satisfy cruel sexual appetites.
If there is a cultural hive mind in place doing its best to help humanity avoid self-destruction in 2017, it appears to be rapidly shifting towards Defcon 1. For this year’s crop of movies is dominated by darkling, sombre and often downright sinister entries: stories in which humans find themselves threatened by otherworldly forces, whether extraterrestrial monstrosities or techno-doppelgangers who can do everything we can do, only better. There is fear everywhere – a sign of the times, perhaps. Even Pixar’s big movie of 2017 is about dead people.
There are cheerier entries, of course. Marvel looks likely to continue its box office reign with fantastical tales of interstellar talking rodents, Norse gods and a certain gravity-defying teenage crimefighter. Space opera will continue its comeback with a new Star Wars movie proper and Luc Besson’s first foray into the genre since The Fifth Element (1997). But, in general, the outlook for Hollywood in 2017 is distinctly gloomy. Without further ado, here are my top tips – and a few to avoid.
Dark visions of the future
Rupert Sanders’ Ghost in the Shell already feels terribly compromised: a whitewashed cast, a middling director best known for insipid fantasy misfire Snow White and the Huntsman and hints in the trailer that the unsettling visions of humanity’s impending fusion with machines, offered by Mamoru Oshii’s seminal 1995 anime, have been swapped out for a load of tired Hollywood tropes about hidden, forgotten identities. It arrives in March. For a more thoughtful examination of the perils of future technology, James Ponsoldt’s The Circle (based on Dave Eggers’ novel about a company that uses technology to oversee all aspects of human existence) might be worth a look the following month.
Worse than a whitewash: has Ghost in the Shell been Hollywoodised? Read more
Ridley Scott’s Alien: Covenant will hope to rediscover the sense of infernal dread that cut through the original slasher-in-space like a knife, while tying up some of the loose ends that made predecessor Prometheus such an ultimately frustrating affair. What happened to Noomi Rapace’s Elizabeth Shaw? Why is Michael Fassbender’s devious David the android now living alone on his planet-wide bachelor pad of evil, and why do the race of Engineers so hate humanity that they keep cooking up new forms of acid-spewing creatures from the seventh layer of Hades to violate us in increasingly awful fashion? Get ready to scream into the cosmos in May.
Is the Planet of the Apes reboot really into its third movie? War for the Planet of the Apes will see Andy Serkis’s meticulously rendered mo-cap primate Caesar taking on Woody Harrelson’s Colonel for control of the post-apocalyptic Earth, and there’s surely no finer actor than the latter for essaying psychopathic intensity. Matt Reeves’ second stint in the director’s chair debuts in July.
It should come as no surprise that Denis Villeneuve’s Blade Runner 2049 looks set to be an even grimmer tale than Scott’s original 1982 dystopian masterpiece. The debut teaser does at least suggest that Harrison Ford’s Rick Deckard lived rather longer than his replicant brothers and sisters – a development that will need to be explained – but future Los Angeles’ jaded cityscapes remain clouded in an eternal dusk, and even the once glorious Tyrell pyramid appears to have been swallowed by the desert. New blade runner Ryan Gosling begins his mission to save a world that already looks pretty screwed in October.
It’s also worth mentioning a pair of thrillers set in space. God Particle, from newcomer Julius Onah, is the third instalment in the very-loosely-connected-indeed Cloverfield saga, following on from last year’s sinister 10 Cloverfield Lane. This time the aftermath of the monster attack on New York finds us in a space station floating above Earth, as an international crew of astronauts tries to work out why the planet beneath them appears to have suddenly vanished. The film debuts in October.
On a similar tip, Daniel Espinosa’s Life will see International Space Station astronauts Jake Gyllenhaal, Rebecca Ferguson and Ryan Reynolds grapple with the discovery of a mysterious sample taken from the surface of Mars that might hold the key to proving the existence of extraterrestrial life. That one arrives in March.
Galaxy-straddling space opera
The remarkable success of Rogue One: A Star Wars Story suggests audiences continue to be inspired by movies straddling the divide between science fiction and fantasy. Throw in the quick-fire inter-superhero badinage of Marvel’s Avengers films and you have James Gunn’s Guardians of the Galaxy, which is due a second outing in May. The comedy highlight this time around is expected to be Vin Diesel’s Baby Groot, who has regressed to infancy after the events of the first film and now boasts a toddler-esque penchant for mischief.
Who knows if Star Wars’ resurgence inspired Besson to return to the genre that ushered in perhaps his greatest triumph more than two decades after The Fifth Element debuted in cinemas, in the supremely ambitious-looking Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets. What is certain is that the French fantasy maestro is taking a galaxy-sized risk punting €180m (£153m, the biggest ever budget for a French film) on Cara Delevingne delivering a better performance than she did in the execrable Suicide Squad.
Delevingne plays Laureline, partner to Dane DeHaan’s time-and space-travelling super agent: in the long-running graphic novels, she emerges as the series’ real star. Fingers crossed the film succeeds by injecting some Gallic whimsy into the genre and doesn’t go the same way as that other well-intentioned but ultimately failed attempt to expand the template, the Wachowskis’ Jupiter Ascending. Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets debuts in July.
Finally, the big one: Rian Johnson’s still-untitled Star Wars: Episode VIII. Will we finally discover the truth about Rey’s mysterious past? Can Mark Hamill’s Luke Skywalker – this will be our first chance to see the galaxy’s last living Jedi knight in action since 1983 – still cut it with a lightsaber? And how will Disney go about giving Carrie Fisher’s Princess Leia a suitable – preferably non-CGI-assisted – send-off? We’ll find out in mid-December.
Superheroes
Is The Lego Batman Movie the Deadpool your kids are allowed to see? Read more
With comic book movies having shifted into grown-up territory, The Lego Batman Movie is probably the only superhero film suitable for small children out this year. Fortunately, Chris McKay’s film looks set to have the beating of most of its contemporaries, thanks largely to Will Arnett’s wonderfully tongue-in-cheek turn as the tiny, plastic, lobster thermidore-munching caped crusader. It’s a follow-up to 2014 smash hit The Lego Movie, and it’s out next month. What a pity Power Rangers, to be released in March, appears to have eschewed a similar meta-infused approach for a gloomy, furrow-browed adaptation of the brilliantly super-kitsch TV show.
There’s no X-Men movie out this year, but James Mangold’s Logan, featuring Hugh Jackman in his (supposedly) final turn as an older, weakened Wolverine, should fill the gap nicely. Quite how influenced the movie will be by Mark Millar’s classic graphic novel Old Man Logan remains to be seen. There are hints it may be closely influenced by more recent Marvel comics in which a female clone of Wolverine, X-23, takes over the adamantium-clawed mutant’s role. Logan arrives in March.
The new, Warner Bros-funded DC Expanded Universe has two episodes out in 2017. Patty Jenkins’ Wonder Woman arrives first, in March, and will hope to give the film series an Amazonian kick up the backside after the disastrous double whammy of Suicide Squad and Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice. The latter’s director, Zack Snyder, promises he’s learned from his mistakes and will give us a more sympathetic Batfleck in November’s Justice League. If neither film achieves critical traction, it’s hard to see how future efforts such as The Flash and Aquaman can be expected to drive all before them.
Why so serious? Power Rangers' first trailer ditches the kitsch Read more
Rival studio Marvel is also doubling up this year. Spider-Man: Homecoming, out in July, will see Tom Holland’s callow wall-crawler earning his superhero stripes as Robert Downey Jr’s Iron Man looks on proudly in between dodgy cracks about the continuing attractiveness of Marisa Tomei’s evergreen Aunt May. Then in November we get the return of Chris Hemsworth’s Norse hunk Thor for a Planet Hulk-inspired road trip through the cosmos in the rumoured company of Mark Ruffalo’s not-so-jolly green giant and Tom Hiddleston’s Loki. There are also reports that Benedict Cumberbatch’s Doctor Strange could be along for the ride.
Best of the rest
Due in June, The Mummy is a strange beast. It looks like a typical Tom Cruise action movie of the past decade, as he is joined once again by an attractive younger female companion (this time Annabelle Wallis) who will no doubt get plenty of screen time and no small portion of the action. But it’s also intended to be the starting point for a Marvel-style “cinematic universe” built around Universal’s monster movies, with Russell Crowe as a Nick Fury-like Dr Henry Jekyll investigating the emergence of various strange creatures in the modern day. Quite whether The Invisible Man and Frankenstein’s Monster can team up without recalling awful memories of Abbott and Costello’s silly 1950s capers in the company of various past-their-best beasties remains to be seen.
All hail Tom Cruise and the era of the equal opportunity action movie Read more
We’ve seen every type of King Arthur tale from whimsical Disney animated musical (The Sword in the Stone) to doom-drenched, mud-caked mediaeval fantasy (Excalibur) on the big screen. Now Guy Ritchie brings us a version in which cheeky cockney tyke Arthur biffs his way through the entire cast of Game of Thrones in a suspiciously mega-populated version of dark ages Britain. King Arthur: Legend of the Sword arrives in May, and looks as if it might be fun.
Those longing to see Idris Elba in a genuinely beefy lead role only need wait until July, when the Hackney-born Englishman stars as gunslinger Roland Deschain in Nikolaj Arcel’s adaptation of/sequel to Stephen King’s venerable series of sprawling fantasy novels, The Dark Tower. This one’s been a long time coming, and a $60m budget suggests an element of compromise. But Arcel has a credible back catalogue (2012’s A Royal Affair won two Silver Bears at Berlin), even if he’s not quite got the industry stature of JJ Abrams or Ron Howard, both of whom had been attached to direct.
Pixar has two movies out in 2017. Cars 3 looks like exactly the kind of insipid sequel the pioneering studio promised it would never make, but studio chief John Lasseter is a renowned petrolhead and these films generate billions in merchandise profits. By contrast, Lee Unkrich’s Coco probably has the bravest, most daring setup for a kids’ movie since Up. It’s all about the Mexican Day of the Dead ceremony, and will see a 12-year-old boy set off on an adventure that culminates in a remarkable family reunion – no doubt involving gazillions of colourful skeletons and a trip to the fiery depths of Hades. I told you 2017 was going to be dark.Anti-government protesters take cover behind shields during clashes with riot police at the Independence Square in Kiev January 18, 2014. REUTERS/David Mdzinarishvili
The anti-government protests in Ukraine are at their most violent point. At least 18 people, including seven policemen, have died so far Tuesday. Hundreds more have been injured.
One of the injured was Oleksandr Turchynov, one of the opposition leaders, who was hit by shrapnel but says "he's okay."
The police tried to storm Independence Square, aka Maidan, where activists have been camping out and protesting en masse since early December. Opposition leader Vitaly Klitschko remained defiant, telling supporters, "we will not leave here. This is an island of freedom. We will defend it," according to Reuters.
The Russian-backed forces loyal to Ukraine President Viktor Yanukovych were met with barrages of Molotov cocktails. Part of the encampment was engulfed in flames.
Previously, police had gathered around the square and clashed with protesters, but this time seemed to be a more assertive effort. Earlier police asked women and children to leave Maidan so they can begin an "anti-terrorist operation."
Basically, things could get ugly tonight.
Here is a frequently updated live blog from The Interpreter.
It's a little after 23:00 in Kiev right now (16:00 EST). Here's the live stream:Micron’s Crucial will launch its M500 solid-state drive this quarter, but TechReport.com already got a close look at the chips.
The M500’s 960GB version will cost less than $600, where as most 1TB SSDs hit the $1,000-and-up price range, making it an attractively priced SSD. The 2.5-inch form factor will also début in 120, 240, and 480GB capacities:
Retail consumers will see the M500 as a Crucial drive, but the same product will be sold to PC makers under Micron’s name. The 2.5″ version is scheduled to hit the market first, followed by the mSATA and M.2 variants. If the per-gigabyte cost ends up being as low as Crucial says, this could be a very appealing SSD for desktops and notebooks alike.
Check out the chart below for performance details:
Get the full report at TechReport.Japanese scientist and researcher Haruko Obokata weeps during a news conference held in Osaka, Japan. (EPA/KIMIMASA MAYAMA)
So this is how it ends for the young and ambitious Japanese stem-cell scientist Haruko Obokata: a renowned national scientific institution laid low, a colleague dead, a major retraction and her once-brilliant career in tatters.
It took less than a year. Less than a year since that day in January when she declared a revolutionary method for creating stem cells. Less than a year since scientists starting asking questions about her methods, unearthing fabrications and acts of plagiarism. Less than year since their research was retracted from the scientific journal Nature. And less than a year since her mentor and research partner wrapped a rope around his neck inside a stairwell and hanged himself.
The final chapter has now arrived for Japan’s most promising stem cell scientist. It was announced Friday morning that Obokata, who was given one last chance to replicate her method called STAP, had failed. The procedure claimed to show that stem cells could be made with a startlingly simple procedure of dripping blood cells into acid, and it was initially hailed as a major breakthrough that could lead to treatments for illnesses such as Parkinson’s disease.
The tests, which were monitored under video surveillance, were called off months shy of the full time allotment she had initially been given. “Dr. Obokata has been unable to reproduce the … phenomenon,” Shinichi Aizawa, a Riken biologist who led the verification efforts, said at a news conference, according to the Wall Street Journal. “While we initially planned to continue efforts until March, we will end the experiments at this point.”
It was, according to prominent stem cell blogger Paul Knoepfler, “a nightmare ending to what was originally a fairy tale scientific story.” Called STAP — “stimulus-triggered acquisition of pluripotency” — Obokata’s discovery originally blew everyone away. And Obokata herself was hailed as an inspiration for young women scientists across the country.
Later, even while Obokata admitted her paper in Nature had been flawed, she claimed STAP worked. She said she had created the cells at least 200 times. “The mistakes do not affect the conclusion of the papers,” she said in April. “The STAP phenomenon has been confirmed on many occasions.”
That was then. Now, Obokata says she can’t figure out what went wrong. “I’ve worked to the limits of my soul in the environment provided to me,” said Obokata, who announced her resignation from Riken. “Now I am just tired and very confused with the results.” Her lawyer added: “She had been conducting verification experiments under a very difficult situation. We hope that for now she can take a break and rest her body and mind.”
The announcements brought to a close a saga that called into question ethical practices at Japan’s renowned Riken, raised concerns about the pressures placed upon young Japanese scientists and sent the international stem-cell community into a bout of soul-searching. Knoepfler just ranked the saga as the stem-cell story of the year. “The STAP mess was a product of many things going wrong,” the blogger wrote. “… Discussion of STAP pointed to more specific, serious problems. Images and data reuse. Plagiarism. Hype. Rush to publish. Unhealthy competition. Gift authorship. And more.”
It also cast doubt on the premise of STAP stem cells themselves, which some authors of the study still contend exist. As of Friday, however, no one at Riken could affirm their existence. “All I can say is that we couldn’t replicate the original results,” Reuters quoted Aizawa saying.
The collateral damage has been immense. In the weeks after the full breadth of the fraudulent work became clear, several prominent Japanese researchers resigned in disgrace. Then Obokata’s mentor, a taciturn but brilliant scientist named Yoshiki Sasai, killed himself, depriving the scientific community of someone doing stunning research in the creation of human eyes with stem cells. The shame of the retraction was apparently been too much. “I am deeply ashamed of the fact that two papers of which I am an author were found to contain multiple errors and, as a result, had to be retracted,” he wrote before he died.
Yoshiki also spoke of his embarrassment at having tutored Obokata. And indeed, others are concerned over the next generation of stem scientists. “What lessons will they and the public take home from all of this?” Knoepfler asked. “… We have to be careful. The risk that STAP-like events pose to our field comes in the form of a possible harmful narrative of the stem cell field fundamentally losing the public trust.”Ashes: Rise of the Phoenixborn, designed by Isaac Vega, and published by Plaid Hat Games, is a deep expandable card game that’s full of strategy and has amazing art.
In Ashes, the Phoenixborn are demi-gods who have a piece of an old god inside of them. They are at war, trying to kill each other, so that they can absorb all the pieces and become the one new god. Gameplay is comparable to other card games like Android Netrunner or Magic the Gathering, though unique enough that it doesn’t feel like a re-hash of what’s come before it.
A lot of game comes inside the box. There are forty custom dice, wound tokens, status tokens, exhaust tokens, and over 240 cards! You can play in head to head matches with pre-built decks, build your own decks, or hold a draft. We’ve had the game almost two weeks and after playing our second match, Lisa requested that I get a second copy because she wants to be able to construct her own decks.
The dice are my favorite thing in the game, because I’m a sucker for custom dice, but its important to note that Ashes really isn’t a dice rolling game. Yes, you roll the dice, but they represent magic/mana/energy and have nothing to do with rolling to see who wins a battle like in HeroScape or Summoner Wars. Plus there are also ways that you can mitigate rolls, so you never feel restricted or stuck with them.
Ashes comes with six Phoenixborn characters and a seventh promo character if you picked it up at GenCon or order it through the Plaid Hat website. Each Phoenixborn has a unique ability that can sometimes be used once a round like hero-powers in Hearthstone while others have a power than can be used a bunch of times. In every round of the game the players have to make meaningful decisions and there is always something that you can do. You never feel stuck or are frustrated cause you don’t have the right kind of mana or enough energy.
If you like CCG’s or expandable card games then Ashes: Rise of the Phoenixborn is worth checking out. If you are still on the fence, scan the additional photos I have below and take note of Fernanda Suarez’s artwork. She did a fantastic job and Plaid Hat made sure that the graphic design was simple so that the art could be the star.
You can order Ashes: Rise of the Phoenixborn from The Plaid Hat Store!
Burning Ashes
In the short time we’ve had Ashes: Rise of the Phoenixborn we’ve become big fans. I’ve enjoyed not only the game, but the lore itself. Between the flavor text and few paragraphs in the rules book, much of the mythos is unknown to the general public, though I know Isaac knows it all.
Wanting more, I ended up writing a short story, called “Burning Ashes.” It’s pure fan fiction, clocking in at just under 6,000 words, and takes place more than 40 years before Ashes: Rise of the Phoenixborn. If you want to read it on your computer you can simply open the.pdf below or use the.epub or.mobi file and copy it to your favorite ebook reading device.
The Phoenixborn and their world is fascinating. Fingers crossed we will get some REAL stories about them. Until then, enjoy what I came up with…
To download the book for Kindle (mobi format) click the link below:
DOWNLOAD LINK
To download the book for Nook, iTunes, Android, or Kobo (epub format) click the link below:
DOWNLOAD LINK
To download the book in PDF format, click the link below:
DOWNLOAD LINK
Instructions
If you’re using an apple device, click the download link above, then select “open in Kindle” or “open in iBooks”.
*** For iPad and iPhone, you might have to tap the download link twice. ***
If you’re using a different device, you may need to use a computer to download the file, then transfer to your reading app.
More instructions on how to do this can be found here:
For Devices using the Kindle app: http://www.amazon.com/gp/sendtokindle
For the Nook app: http://www.barkingrainpress.org/faqs/load-epub-nook/
For Kobo: http://www.ucg.org/help/how-add-ebook-epub-or-pdf-kobo-ereader/
If you are still having trouble getting the files onto your e-readers, eBooksBridge is a great resource that has instructions for specific ereaders.Bitcoin and cryptocurrency exchange LakeBTC.com has announced that they will be adding payment network Ripple’s native asset and cryptocurrency XRP.
Founded in 2013, LakeBTC is currently owned by Lake Investments Limited (BVI), with Shanghai Trading IT, Inc. providing technical and customer support.
The company told CryptoNinjas that XRP will be listed later this year simply to offer LakeBTC users more choices. Lake Investments recently announced an ICO for LankBanker, a spin-off from LakeBTC, which is developing a P2P based crowd banking platform.
As a leading exchange, LakeBTC provides liquidity to individual investors, institutions, merchants, miners, exchangers, market makers, arbitrageurs, funds, and professional trading firms.
Ripple’s XRP has had a jump in price this year hitting a high around 0.38 USD. The company continues to develop its payment network for frictionless global payments with settlement in just seconds. Last week, Ripple opened up an office in Mumbai, India expanding its global reach.
R3 and Ripple Dispute
Ripple is currently fighting back a lawsuit from financial blockchain database consortium R3, which says in its lawsuit that in September 2016, the companies entered into an agreement, part of which gave R3 the option to purchase 5 billion XRP at an exercise price of $0.0085 between then and September 2019.
Ripple tried to cancel the agreement in June in emails from CEO Brad Garlinghouse to Ripple CEO David Rutter, R3, however, rejected the requests. With XRP soaring more than 4000% this year, trading now around $0.20 USD, this makes the options worth roughly $1 billion.
Ripple is asserting that R3 has yet to deliver on its end of the contract in which Ripple would benefit from R3’s banking partnerships, thus exercising the options wouldn’t be authorized.
A Ripple spokesperson wrote, “Our filing is straightforward — R3 misrepresented their ability and intent to deliver on their commitments. Given XRP’s 4000% increase over the course of the year, R3 suddenly wants to tap into the value of XRP, though the facts are clear that they did not earn any option based on our agreement.”Image caption William Shawcross questioned whether high salaries were "fair" to donors and taxpayers
Large salaries paid to charity staff could "bring the charitable world into disrepute", a regulator has warned.
Charity Commission chairman William Shawcross said organisations must ask if pay levels are "really appropriate".
The Daily Telegraph reported 30 staff at 14 leading UK foreign aid charities were paid £100,000 or more last year.
Charity leaders' organisation Acevo said the salaries for these "very demanding jobs" were not excessive compared to other sectors.
Mr Shawcross, who was appointed last year on a £50,000 annual salary to work two days a week, said the commission could not tell charities how much they should pay their executives, but urged them to be cautious.
"In these difficult times, when many charities are experiencing shortfalls, trustees should consider whether very high salaries are really appropriate, and fair to both the donors and the taxpayers who fund charities," he said.
"Disproportionate salaries risk bringing organisations and the wider charitable world into disrepute."
'Very demanding'
British Red Cross chief executive Sir Nick Young was paid £184,000 last year, two Save the Children executives received more than £160,000 each and Christian Aid chief executive Loretta Minghella was paid £126,072.
The number of staff being paid more than £100,000 at the 14 charities it focused on had risen from 19 since 2010, the newspaper said.
We can't - and shouldn't - compete with salaries in the private sector but we need to pay enough to ensure we get the best people to help our work to stop children dying needless deaths Save the Children
The British Red Cross said the pay of its chief executive was far from secret and its annual accounts were available on its website.
"The salary of our chief executive - which is set by the Board of Trustees, and benchmarked against, and competitive with, other non-profit organisations of similar complexity - reflects the enormous responsibility the position carries," a spokeswoman said.
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(Soft On Demand does not give the real name of the actress in the promotional material for the film, titled “Rena Takatsuka: AV Debut,” though one may wish to note the similarity between Takatsuka and Takarazuka.)
In April of 2008, Takatsuka entered the Takarazuka Music School. An article appearing on an Internet site determined that she was the most beautiful pupil in her class, a pronouncement that led to significant bullying within the academy.
Following an accusation by a classmate that she had shoplifted items from a store, the school announced she had dropped out. In November of 2009, she decided to take the school to court since the claim was groundless. She sought 10 million yen in compensation.
During the court session, Takatsuka described continuous intimidation, including having her clothes thrown in the garbage and requests that she “die” and “return to her parent’s home.”
“Nobody in my class would keep company with me,” Takatsuka told the court.
In July of 2010, the school offered that her dismissal be cancelled and she graduate from the Takarazuka Music School in exchange for her not continuing on to the Takarazuka Review, the lavish all-female performing troupe.
Numerous popular stars in the Takarazuka Review, including Hitomi Kuroki, 53, and Yuki Amami, 46, have later moved on to careers in the entertainment industry.
Kyosuke Yamashita is author of “The Trial of Takarazuka Bullying: The Current Young Girl’s Flower Garden,” a synopsis of trial proceedings that resulted from the false accusations made by students — presumably including Takatsuka — at the Takarazuka Music School. In the book, the author says that young performers face tremendous amounts of stress.
After her “graduation,” Takatsuka returned to her home in the Tohoku region. But she was quickly ostracized by the local population.
“When she entered school, a newspaper ran a big story on her,” says one of her friends. “She was a celebrity. But after the court case, people would see her walking in the street and point in a derisive way. The treatment she receive was similar to that of a person touching a tumor.”
Takatsuka then came to Tokyo, where she was scouted by an AV company. She decided to debut thereafter.
“Even after leaving the world of Takarazuka, she wanted to stand in the limelight,” says the aforementioned AV writer.
In life, one might have only one chance, she thought, and the world of AV might be her chance, according to the writer.
“Of course, appearing nude was a consideration,” continues the writer. “But she wanted to chase her dream and decided to make her AV debut.”
In the future, she would like to tailor her career after that of Mitsu Dan, the 33-year-old erotic pin-up model and actress, and Ai Iijima, a former AV star and television commentator who passed away in 2008.
“She wants to appear in roles on television and in film where eroticism is a weapon,” says the writer.
When reached for comment by Josei Seven, Soft On Demand refused to offer confirmation of the real identity of Takatsuka. (K.N.)
Source: “‘AV debyuu’ wo ketsui suru made,” Josei Seven (December 19, pages 158-159)A previously obscure low-level Swedish politician serving as a council member in the town of Kalmar was forced to resign after he published a post to Facebook asking for someone to please “shoot” U.S. President Donald Trump.
“I believed that Donald Trump would calm down after he became the president (of the U.S.),” wrote the now-infamous former politician Roland Peterson, reportedly once a member of Sweden’s Social Democratic Party, according to RT. “But how wrong I was! He exceeded my worst fears! Could anyone shoot him?”
No, they cannot, but they can “shoot” you out of office, Roland, which was pretty much what they did. After Peterson’s post went viral, the backlash erupted with lightning speed, with his peers reportedly slamming him for his “inappropriate” and “idiotic” post, as local party leader Roger Holmberg put it.
Peterson removed the post from his Facebook page an hour later, though by then the damage had already been done.
“It is good that he removed it,” fellow council member Johan Persson reportedly told Swedish news outlet Oestra Smalan, though he added that a “call for violence” should “never” have been issued in the first place.
The backlash eventually spurred the disgraced politician into officially resigning.
“After my blunder on Facebook, there is a risk that I will become a burden for the Social Democrats in Kalmar,” he reportedly wrote in a letter to his peers. “I do not want it, so I chose to leave all my posts.”
Good riddance.
According to the U.K. Independent, what had driven Peterson to make such a foolhardy “blunder” was the U.S. president’s open-minded stance on man-made climate change, the reality of which he has often questioned.
Apparently, questioning an unproven theory’s validity is enough these days to warrant having a leftist politician ask others to shoot you.
“That makes sense,” said no one ever. Like us on Facebook – USA Liberty News Please share this story on Facebook and Twitter and let us know what you think about this disgraced politician and his idiotic Facebook post!
What do you think about his resignation? Scroll down to comment below!
Source: conservativetribune.com
H/T U.K. Daily Mail1990 film directed by Frank Marshall
Arachnophobia is a 1990 American black comedy horror film directed by Frank Marshall and starring Jeff Daniels and John Goodman. It was the first film released by The Walt Disney Studios' Hollywood Pictures label, as well as being the directorial debut of Marshall. The film's story centers on a newly discovered Venezuelan spider being transported to a small American town that produces a new species of deadly spiders, which begin killing the town's residents one by one.
Shooting took place in Venezuela and California and the film was released in the United States on July 18, 1990. It was a modest commercial success, gaining $53.21 million at the box office and received generally positive reviews from critics.
Plot [ edit ]
Entomologist Dr. James Atherton searches the Amazon rainforest with the hope of discovering new species of insects and arachnids. In a Venezuelan tepui, Atherton finds a very aggressive new species of spider. The spider is captured and chloroformed for research, and is later revealed to be lacking sex organs, thus making it a drone, or soldier - atypical in spiders. A nature photographer, Jerry Manley, unknowingly has a fertile (non-drone) male spider of the same species jump into his backpack, later that day sneaking into his sleeping bag and biting him. Manley has a massive seizure from the venom and dies. The remainder of the scientists take his body back to the United States, blaming Manley's death on a fever. The spider crawls into the coffin and is sealed in with the corpse.
Manley's desiccated body arrives at the funeral home in his hometown of Canaima, California. The spider makes it outside, only to be picked by a crow until the spider bites it and it falls to the ground dead, in front of the barn of the Jennings family. Ross Jennings is a family physician, who had moved to the town from San Francisco. He and his son both have arachnophobia.
Ross faces a lack of patients due to elderly rival Sam Metcalf, who was supposed to retire and shift his patients to Ross, but decided to maintain his practice. The Amazonian spider mates with a female domestic house spider and makes a nest in Jennings' barn, producing hundreds of infertile drone offspring, all of which have their father’s lethal bite.
Ross' first patient, kindly widower Margaret Hollins, dies after being bitten by one of the new spiders. Metcalf diagnoses a heart attack, although Ross suspects something else was at work. Metcalf suspects Ross is guilty of malpractice, as Ross had taken Margaret off the medication Metcalf had prescribed for her when she was his patient. A spider also kills a high school football player, Todd Miller, just after Ross had performed a routine check on the team, earning him the town nickname "Dr. Death". The next victim is Sam Metcalf, who is bitten in his own bedroom and dies in front of his wife.
With Metcalf dead, Ross becomes Canaima's town doctor. Knowing Metcalf was bitten by a spider just before his fatal seizure, and that a minute amount of an unknown toxin was detected in his body, Ross suspects deadly arachnids could be infesting the town, and wants to perform autopsies on the recently deceased.
Ross and county coroner Milton Briggs perform an autopsy on the victims and confirm Ross' suspicion that the deaths were caused by spider bites. Ross contacts Dr. Atherton and asks him to aid his investigation, given he is the country's leading expert in spiders. Atherton is sceptical that spiders could be the cause of the deaths, and instead of travelling to Cainama himself, he sends one of his assistants, Chris Collins. Chris is initially sceptical, but is convinced there is a deadly strain of spiders in Cainama after the corpses of Margaret Hollins, Todd Miller, and Sam Metcalf all exhibit spider bites. Ross and Chris manage to catch a live specimen of one of the spiders. When Chris mentions the new species of spider Atherton had discovered in Venezuela, Ross realises that one of the Venezuelan spiders "hitched a ride in Manley's coffin."
After being contacted by Chris, Atherton arrives in Cainama and joins Ross, Chris, Milt Briggs, local Sheriff Lloyd Parsons and exterminator Delbert McClintock in the spider investigation. They discover the killer spiders have a short life expectancy due to being a mixed breed. Atherton tells them the spiders are soldiers, sent out to eliminate potential threats for lead male spider, "the General." He also learns that the General produced a queen, which it likely mated with to produce a second nest someplace, guarded by the queen, which could produce fertile offspring. Atherton elaborates that the transplanted spiders can progressively expand their territory, possibly culminating in their worldwide dispersal. The group sets out to destroy both nests and kill the Queen and the General.
Deducing that one of the nests is in his barn, Ross sends Delbert to destroy it. Delbert finds Atherton dead, having been bitten by the General after disturbing the web. Ross and Chris discover the spiders have killed local mortician Irv Kendall and his wife Blaire (both of whom were killed whilst watching Wheel of Fortune on television). Chris gets the Jennings family out of their infested house, but Ross falls through the floor into his wine cellar, which turns out to be the spiders' second nest, guarded not only by the Queen but also the General.
After electrocuting the queen, Ross battles the General while also attempting to burn the second egg sac. Ross becomes trapped underneath fallen debris, with the General about to deliver the killing strike. Ross finally overcomes his paralytic fear of spiders by summoning up his strength to fling the General into the fire. As the egg sac hatches, the General jumps out of the fire. Ross shoots it with a nail gun and the projectile sends the burning spider into the egg sac, destroying the nest with fire. Delbert retrieves Ross from the burning cellar. With the death of the General and the Queen, the egg sac destroyed, and the drones either killed by Delbert or left to die due to their reduced lifespan, the spider plague is over.
The Jennings family immediately moves back to San Francisco, appreciating city life once more, despite such minor inconveniences as earthquakes (one of which manages to spill Ross' prized bottle of Château Margaux which he had managed to rescue from his burned cellar).
Cast [ edit ]
Production [ edit ]
Filmmaker Steven Spielberg was involved with Arachnophobia, with one of his earlier producers Frank Marshall directing for the first time. Spielberg and Marshall are both the executive producers of the film.[2] Amblin Entertainment also helped produce it.[3]
Marshall meant for the film to be like Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds, and added, "People like to be scared but laughing, like a roller coaster. No one wants to be terrified."[4] The film also has similarities with the 1977 film Kingdom of the Spiders.[5] Producer Igo Kantor hinted in his Fangoria interview that Arachnophobia, which Spielberg produced, bears several similarities to Kingdom of the Spiders. "I thought it was a copy", Kantor stated, "but you don't go and sue Spielberg!"[citation needed]
Jamie Hyneman, of MythBusters fame, stated in Popular Mechanics[6] that Arachnophobia was one of the first movies he worked on and that he often relied on simple magnets for several of the effects.
The film made use of over 300 Avondale spiders, from New Zealand, which were picked for their large size, unusually social lifestyle, and because they are essentially harmless to humans. They were guided around the set by the use of heat and cold, but the large "general" and "queen" were articulated models. The movie was actually filmed in Southern Venezuela for the intro sequence and the jungle scenes, as well as Cambria, California. All the school scenes were filmed at Coast Union High School. Students and staff were used in the football scenes and group events. The locker room and players were the actual students and players from CUHS.[7]
To create the sound effects of spiders being stepped on or squished, Foley artists stepped on mustard packs or squashed potato chips.[8]
Release and reception [ edit ]
Arachnophobia was the first film released by Hollywood Pictures.[3] Advertisers were uncertain as to whether they should market the film as a thriller or a comedy. Therefore, television spots promoting the film billed it as a "thrill-omedy".[9]
Box office [ edit ]
Arachnophobia debuted at #3 behind Ghost and Die Hard 2 with $8 million in its first weekend. The film was a financial success,[10] grossing $53,208,180 domestically[11] and going on to gross an additional $30,000,000 in video rentals. This allowed Spielberg to be the fourth wealthiest entertainer of the year, having previously been the second wealthiest.[10]
Critics [ edit ]
In his book, critic Leonard Maltin calls the film a "slick comic thriller" and approves of the acting, warning, "Not recommended for anyone who's ever covered their eyes during a movie."[2] Newsweek associated the film with B movies "about the small town threatened by alien invaders", and said it was well made but "oddly unresonant."[12] Roger Ebert said the film made audiences "squirm out of enjoyment, not terror", giving it three stars out of four.[13]
On the review website Rotten Tomatoes, 92% of critics gave the film positive reviews, based on 36 reviews, and an average rating of 6.8/10. The website's critical consensus reads, "Arachnophobia may not deliver genuine chills, but it's an affectionate, solidly built tribute to Hollywood's classic creature features."[14]
The film drew protests from some people interested in spiders, as they believed the film tarnished the public image of spiders.[15]
Accolades [ edit ]
Home media [ edit ]
The film was first released on VHS in 1991. It was then released as a bare bones DVD in 1999. The film was released on Blu-ray on September 25, 2012.
VHS and DVD releases by Hollywood/Buena Vista Home Video curiously omit the original poster art's spider from their cover design, however the Blu-ray now reinstates it.
Merchandising [ edit ]
Arachnophobia Film score by Trevor Jones Released July 18, 1990 (original release)
March 19, 1996 (re-release) Studio Evergreen Recording Studios Label Hollywood Records
Unusually, the video game version of Arachnophobia was also released in 1991, for Amiga, Amstrad CPC, Commodore 64 and DOS.[18]
A novelization of Arachnophobia was written by author Nicholas Edwards.[19] Hollywood Comics (an imprint of Disney Comics) released a comic book adaptation of the film, written by William Rotsler with art by Dan Spiegle. Notably, the characters in the comic adaptation bear little resemblance to the actors in the film.
An Arachnophobia soundtrack album was released in 1990. It included Trevor Jones's instrumental music from the film as well as dialogue excerpts and songs such as "Blue Eyes Are Sensitive to the Light" by Sara Hickman, "Caught in Your Web (Swear to Your Heart)" by Russell Hitchcock, and "I Left My Heart in San Francisco" by Tony Bennett.
The European version of the album has the same cover art, but more score tracks, fewer songs and no dialogue. The two versions share 10 of the same tracks, but these are also not without their differences: several tracks are noticeably shorter on the European version like "Canaima Nightmare", which is nearly three minutes shorter; and another track has two different titles ("Cellar Theme" in America and "The Cellar" in Europe).[citation needed]
Possible remake [ edit ]
According to Geek Tyrant, James Wan, one of Hollywood's famed directors, the film is currently in the process of a remake. He is teaming up with Amblin for the works. Wan has directed numerous horror films including Saw, Insidious, and The Conjuring.[20]
See also [ edit ]Lebanon's parliament approaved a new electoral law June 16, and several political activists and “alternative” parties are already preparing themselves for the next elections, expected in May 2018.
Lebanon's civil society has actively called over the last few months for a law based on proportional representation, as well as a series of reforms that are considered to be necessary for the transparency of the electoral process. With the new law in place and with the parliament's term expiring June 20, Lebanese civil society is now preparing itself for the second phase of its battle: participation in the upcoming elections, expected in 11 months, after the current parliament extended its term for the third consecutive time since 2013.
"This is definitely a positive step, yet insufficient," said Zeina el-Helou, the secretary-general of the Lebanese Association for Democratic Elections. "The parties in power have minimized the effect of the proportional representation and sustained confessionalism through the number and division of districts. This is not to mention that several essential reforms, such as the female quota, lowering the voting age from 21 to 18 or the creation of an independent authority, were not included in the law."
She continued: “In addition, the electoral expenditures have been effectively increased; in fact, to the individual $100,000 allowed disbursements — that are yet to be capped now, while there was no explicit ceiling before — another $100,000 was added, that can be disbursed by the electoral list on each candidate. A third reform is the rise of the permitted variable expenditure per voter to 5,000 Lebanese pounds, [compared to] 4,000 Lebanese pounds in 2009.” Concretely, this translated into more than $500,000 of legal expenditures in a district of 100,000 voters.
Despite these failures and the postponement of elections until May 2018, the battle to break through the next parliament is already underway.
Nadine Moussa is an active member of Lebanese civil society who will participate in the elections as an “independent candidate,” she told Al-Monitor. "My decision is in line with my personal struggle for years in favor of a state of law, but it is also motivated by a deep conviction that the Lebanese are more than ever thirsty for a serious and solid alternative to the current feudal, confessional and corrupt system of governance that has been in place for decades," she added. "I also decided to run in the elections in order to contribute to a feminine dynamic against the traditional ‘men’s club.’”
In 2013, Moussa, a lawyer and mother of two children, submitted her candidacy with other members of the Take Back Parliament movement, before the Lebanese Assembly decided not to hold any elections and to extend its term.
Other activists within civil society are also potential candidates. Artist Nada Sehnaoui had already run in the 1998 municipal elections before appearing again in 2016 as a candidate on the Beirut Madinati list, which included 12 women and 12 men from different professional backgrounds. The list was pitted against another that was supported by all the political parties in power.
Against the odds, Beirut Madinati gathered nearly 40% of the votes — a “civil” phenomenon observed for the first time in a country that has always been dominated by traditional confessional parties. Beirut Madinati has quickly become a label of alternative governance and progressivism among the Lebanese. If the coalition officially decides not to participate in the legislative ballot, some of its members will run individually or within a group of Beirut Madinati.
"I have not yet made my final decision, but this is secondary. My candidate is the political program that will be adopted by a united civil society,” Sehnaoui told Al-Monitor.
Since July 2016, an informal team of activists that Nada Sehnaoui joined has been working on this front. "The idea is to create the nucleus of a broad coalition that would include all individuals, movements and parties wishing to run in the elections on the basis of a program that would encompass all the dimensions of public life, including economic, social and environmental policies and reforms," she said.
While some activists are still hesitant, emerging parties, such as Sabaa (Arabic for seven), have already started their battle and are forging their electoral lists in several parts of the country. "Sabaa has now more than 2,000 members, a large network of contacts and key members with substantial experience in policymaking," Ziad Hayek, the director of the party's board, told Al-Monitor.
Hayek has been the secretary-general of the High Council for Privatization since 2006, a highly ranked public position he maintained despite his decision to rally and actively contribute to the Social Movement in 2015, amid an unprecedented waste crisis in the country.
"I don’t intend to run in the elections, but I fully support the current driving energy among some groups. … I have been living an internal dilemma, not to say a revolt, for several years now because no public policy issue has ever been taken seriously since I joined office," he said.
While the proliferation of new movements and parties is, no doubt, the proof of an anti-establishment pulse gaining ground year after year since the waste crisis in the summer of 2015, this buoyant socio-political phenomenon in Lebanon may nevertheless play against civil society during the next elections through the risk of dispersion.
Lebanon's civil society lacked momentum after the garbage crisis, partly because of the absence of a unique structure bringing together all the groups under one banner.
"That’s why a common platform gathering all progressive forces is more than necessary. This is a condition if we really want to break through. We must be united and inclusive but tightly hermetical to opportunists and hidden faces of the establishment [who use the label of] civil society,” said Wadih el-Asmar, one of the founders of the You Stink movement.
"We are actively working to make this platform emerge," he added.
Many activists share Asmar’s point of view. "If the civil society doesn’t unite, we won’t get anywhere. We saw what happened with the Syrian opposition, despite the nobility and the legitimacy of its cause, or with the Palestinians. … The road to reach this objective is definitely not easy, especially since beyond the principle of uniting everyone, the real challenge on the ground will be to create a proper governance structure for this coalition, a common brand, secure financing through one single fund and having electoral delegates,” said Asmar.
But this last battle is worth it, insisted Moussa, especially since "the chances of success are big if we manage to impose ourselves as one united alternative” for voters. She referred to a secret poll conducted by Lebanon Statistics for the National Democratic Institute that was only disclosed to political parties and civil society groups. She said, “47% of the Lebanese say they will not vote for any of the political parties in power” after years of recurrent political vacuums and paralysis, economic recession, increasing corruption and, most importantly, two illegal extensions of parliament’s term.BENNER TOWNHIP - A Pennsylvania corrections officer has been put on desk duty after a drug-detecting dog in his care was left in a hot vehicle after a training exercise and died.
Department of Corrections spokeswoman tells Pennlive.com (http://bit.ly/29VE6Kg) the department's investigative unit is looking into the death of 2-year-old yellow Labrador named Totti.
The officer left Totti in the vehicle for 2 1/2 hours on July 7 at the state prison at Rockview, near Bellefonte.
Other dogs that were under the officer's care have been reassigned to different handlers.
Worden says that the investigative unit has the power to file criminal charges, if necessary.
The handler had stored items in the vehicle at the end of the exercise and didn't realize the dog was locked in the car. Staff tried to cool Totti with water and ice but he died at a veterinary clinic.
Read WJAC's previous story: http://bit.ly/29Ihl9mDavid W. E. Hone, Dylan Wood, and Robert J. Knell
Article number: 19.1.5A
https://doi.org/10.26879/591
Copyright Palaeontological Association, January 2016
Author biographies
Plain-language and multi-lingual abstracts
PDF version
Submission: 7 August 2015. Acceptance: 10 November 2015
ABSTRACT
The allometry in the frill and jugal bosses of the small ornithischian dinosaur Protoceratops andrewsi are assessed. An analysis of 37 specimens, encompassing four distinct size classes of animal, shows that the frill (in both length and width) undergoes positive allometry during ontogeny, while the jugals also show a trend towards an increase in relative size. In conjunction with other data, this provides support that these features were under selection as socio-sexual dominance signals.
David W. E. Hone. School of Biological and Chemical Sciences, Queen Mary University of London, Mile End Road, E1 4NS. This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Dylan Wood. School of Biological and Chemical Sciences, Queen Mary University of London, Mile End Road, E1 4NS. This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Robert J. Knell. School of Biological and Chemical Sciences, Queen Mary University of London, Mile End Road, E1 4NS. This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Keywords: Ceratopsian; sexual selection; behavior; gregariousness
Final citation: Hone, David W. E., Wood, Dylan, and Knell, Robert J. 2016. Positive allometry for exaggerated structures in the ceratopsian dinosaur Protoceratops andrewsi supports socio-sexual signaling. Palaeontologia Electronica 19.1.5A: 1-13. https://doi.org/10.26879/591
palaeo-electronica.org/content/2016/1369-sexual-selection-in-ceratopsia
INTRODUCTION
Sexual selection is a powerful and near-ubiquitous evolutionary pressure (Andersson, 1994) that is responsible for much of the morphological and behavioural diversity of extant animals, and which was presumably also a major evolutionary driver in the past (Knell et al., 2013a). It has been suggested by several authors (e.g., Galton, 1971; Sampson, 2001; Hone et al., 2012; Knell et al., 2013a) that many of the wide variety of ornaments and exaggerated structures on extinct animals were sexually selected, either through acting as signals in mate choice scenarios, as signals or weapons used in intrasexual contests or a combination of these. Some modern signaling traits are also used in social signaling that can be more or less related to reproduction (West-Eberhard, 1983; Kraaijeveld et al., 2004) and for some of the exaggerated traits of extinct organisms it might be better to think of explanations in terms of “socio-sexual signaling” rather than trying to be definitive about exactly how they were used (e.g., see Hone et al., 2012).
These ideas remain controversial, however, with misunderstandings over mutual sexual selection and the evolutionary biology of costly signals leading to recent exchanges in the literature regarding the validity of sexual selection as a hypothesis to explain exaggerated structures present in extinct animals (e.g., Padian and Horner, 2011a, b, 2013, 2014; Knell and Sampson, 2011; Hone et al., 2012; Hone and Naish, 2013; Knell et al., 2013a, b; Borkovic and Russell, 2014). The fundamental problem with trying to understand the biology of extinct organisms is that we cannot observe their behaviour directly and thus it is difficult to assess (Hone and Faulkes, 2014). As a consequence we have to fall back on more indirect assessments of whether a trait evolved through sexual selection, one of which is the rate of change of the traits in question during ontogeny (e.g., Tomkins et al., 2010; Knell et al., 2013a).
It has been acknowledged for some years now that one feature of many sexually selected traits is positive allometry–a slope greater than 1 when the log trait size is regressed against log body size (e.g., Petrie, 1992; Simmons and Tomkins, 1996; Bonduriansky and Day, 2003; Fromhage and Kokko, 2014). This translates to an exponent with a value greater than 1 in the basic allometric equation y = axb where y is the trait size and x is the body size of the organism in question. This positive allometry means that the trait in question increases more than proportionally with body size, so that large animals have proportionally larger traits than smaller ones. Not all traits that are sexually selected are positively allometric (Bonduriansky, 2007), and there are a few examples of positively allometric traits that are not under sexual selection. For example, Simmons and Tomkins (1996) reported that earwig elytra show some degree of positive allometry, and Green (1992) described positive allometry for tail length in smooth newts Triturus vulgaris, but these are rare and probably mostly associated with locomotory traits. Sexually selected display traits and weapons, by contrast, are certainly very commonly positively allometric (Kodric-Brown et al., 2006). Allometric relations can be extracted from the fossil record when sufficient specimens are available, meaning that we can test hypotheses regarding the evolution of putative sexually selected traits by estimating their allometry. If a trait is shown to be positively allometric then, in the absence of a plausible alternative regarding its evolution, we can take this as evidence supporting a hypothesis of evolution via sexual selection or socio-sexual dominance signals (e.g., Knell and Fortey, 2005; Tomkins et al., 2010; Knell et al., 2013a).
The herbivorous ornithischian dinosaurs provide an important case for allometry linked to sexual or socio-sexual selection in the fossil record. Numerous members of this diverse group of extinct archosaurs possess large cranial crests or various other ornaments on their bodies including horns, frills, plates and ‘helmets’. Members of the ceratopsian lineage (the ‘horned dinosaurs’) are excellent candidates for analysis for a number of reasons. There are numerous, well-preserved specimens including both juveniles of various sizes and adults (Figure 1), and all known members show a variety of cranial structures including horns, bosses and in particular a large frill that extends from the back of the head over the neck (Dodson et al., 2004; You and Dodson, 2004) (Figure 1). The small ceratopsian Protoceratops from the Late Cretaceous of China and Asia is especially well suited for study as it is known from a large number of specimens that include young juveniles through to large adults (Brown and Schlaikjer, 1940; Maryańska and Osmólska, 1975; You and Dodson, 2004).
The shapes of ceratopsian skulls do change during ontogeny (Brown and Schlaikjer, 1940; Maryańska and Osmólska, 1975; Chapman, 1990; Sampson et al., 1997) but studies have been limited by the available data. Maryańska and Osmólska (1975), for example, reached five main conclusions about the ontogeny of the cranium of Bagaceratops and suggested that these also likely applied to Protoceratops (a close relative). These changes were “the relative length of the orbit decreases, the length of the snout increases slightly, the length of the frill at first increases, than [sic] appears to stop growing and its length becomes relatively shorter during the successive stages, the width of the frill increases, the width across the quadrates and jugals increases” (Maryańska and Osmólska, 1975). However, although these conclusions echoed some similar patterns observed in Protoceratops by Brown and Schlaikjer (1940), they were limited by a lack of complete specimens that spanned a broad range of ages. Similarly, Dodson (1976) assessed sexual dimorphism in Protoceratops and his analyses included allometric regressions of various measurements, but his study focused on adult or near-adult animals with only a very limited sample or younger specimens.
A large number of hypotheses have been advocated for the functions of the cranial features of ceratopsians including signaling and/or sexual selection (Farlow and Dodson, 1975), though this has in the past often been incorrectly ruled out because of a lack of apparent sexual dimorphism in many taxa (see Hone et al., 2012 for a review). In at least some ceratopsians the horns were used in intraspecific combat (Farke et al., 2009) and may have been involved in interspecific combat (Happ, 2008), though they may have served additional purposes (e.g., as aposematic signals). A particularly wide range of explanations has been proposed for the functions of the ceratopsian frill including: as a temperature regulating device, as an aposematic signal, as a defence against predators and for socio-sexual dominance signals. However, in most taxa many of these can be ruled out (see Hone et al., 2012 for a review), leaving sexual or socio-sexual signaling as the most plausible current explanation for the evolution of these structures.
Here we assess the growth of the frill in Protoceratops based on a larger sample of specimens and across a range of body sizes in excess of an order of magnitude, including animals that can be assigned to four distinct size classes from young juveniles to large adults (Hone et al., 2014a). We show that both the length and width of the frill are positively allometric, suggesting a signaling function.
METHODS
Data on Protoceratops andrewsi skulls were taken from the literature and measured from published photographs of specimens. Data on larger specimens of P. andrewsi were taken from Dodson (1976) that focused on animals of ‘subadult’ and adult sizes. In his analysis of skull dimorphism, Dodson (1976) illustrated a number of major metrics of skull and frill dimensions based around landmarks of the cranium. His measure of basal skull length (variable 1 of Dodson, 1976) was taken as the standard unit of size of the skull (Dodson 1976) measured from the tip of the snout to the base of the articular in line with the ventralmost point of the lower temporal fenestra (also corresponding to the position of the foramen magnum). The length of the frill was taken as Dodson’s (1976) total skull length less the basal skull length, however, where the anterior anchor could not be determined, a minimum was measured to the anterior margin of the frill fenestrae and a maximum to the posterior margin of the orbit. The width of the frill was measured as the maximum width of the frill (variable 9 of Dodson, 1976), and the width across the jugal bosses (variable 8 of Dodson, 1976) was recorded, as were the orbit length and height (variables 13 and 14 of Dodson, 1976).
Additional measurements from younger specimens were taken from (smallest to largest) Fastovsky et al. (2011), Hone et al. (2014a) and Handa et al. (2013) corresponding to young juveniles, juveniles, and subadults (Figure 1). These non-adult specimens at least all correspond to similar localities within the Djadochta Formation and can be considered part of a single population (see Hone et al., 2014a), and the material measured by Dodson, (1976) also herald from the same formation (Brown and Schlaikjer, 1940). Measurements were taken from figures in the papers and unpublished photographs by the authors. The measurements taken from these non-adult animals were made using the program ImageJ (Schneider et al., 2012) and correspond with the variables described above to allow integration of the data. However, the inclusion of very young animals with very different proportions and shapes to the skull (Figure 2) makes it difficult to ensure that some other measurements correspond properly with Dodson’s (1976) landmarks.
Where images of the small specimens presented the skull only in dorsal view (e.g., very young |
the officer had brought Bush to him for a physical.
But again, there was no documentation that any physical exam had actually been performed. And again, not even Bush was claiming that. It turned out that the doctor himself wasn’t even making the claim. It was the doctor’s son who spoke to a reporter for the Montgomery Advertiser — because, he said, at age sixty-four, his father could not handle the volume of inquiries.
Meanwhile, NBC News introduced another witness, of sorts:
CORRESPONDENT DAVID GREGORY: Joe Holcombe, who worked with Mr. Bush on that Alabama Senate campaign, does recall asking why Mr. Bush was absent from a meeting.
JOE HOLCOMBE: I just innocently asked where George was, since he wasn’t there, and then I was told that he was at a National Guard [drill] that weekend.
Holcombe wasn’t claiming that he knew Bush was doing Guard training, or even that Bush had told him so, only that a third party had said that he was. This did not stop the White House from pointing Holcombe out as an “eyewitness” of sorts, and reporters began citing him.
On February 12, 2004, things started to get really knotty for Bush. MSNBC’s Hardball featured Lieutenant Colonel Bill Burkett, the former Texas National Guard consultant who recounted his claim to have personally observed efforts to clean up Bush’s records:
I witnessed the governor’s office call to the adjutant general of the Texas National Guard, [giving him] a directive to gather the files. And then the subscript to that was make sure there was nothing there that would embarrass the governor …
I witnessed that in fact there was some activity under way with some files of — some personal files of “Bush, George W., First Lieutenant,” “1LT” as it was put in handwriting at the top of files within a trash can …
The orders came in a telephone call with Mr. Joe Allbaugh, chief of staff of the governor’s office. Mr. Dan Bartlett [Bush’s communications director] was also on that telephone call.
Bartlett denied the allegations, and Allbaugh called them “hogwash,” but they reinforced the sense of sketchiness about the president’s version. If he had done his duty, why had so few people actually seen him?
The Burkett story soon jumped into the print media, where The New York Times noted that Burkett had first made the allegation way back in 1998 in a letter to a Texas state senator. Then the story made the CBS Evening News.
Bush Gets His Teeth into Alabama
A distraction was urgently needed, and the White House dug deep. Within minutes of the Burkett Hardball appearance, it came up with a new military record, this one purporting to show that Bush had visited a dentist, Dr. John Andrew Harris, at Dannelly Field Air National Guard Base in Montgomery on January 6, 1973 — well after he had finished working on the Alabama campaign and returned to Texas.
The dentist visit became important corroboration — if not that Bush had done his Guard duty in Alabama during the summer and fall of 1972, at least that he had been present on an Alabama base at some point. The following day, building on the dental visit record, Scott McClellan declared that Bush now recalled returning to Alabama for additional Guard service even though he was no longer living there. As reported by The New York Times:
Asked about the 16 members of the 187th who do not remember Mr. Bush serving in Alabama, Mr. McClellan responded that Mr. Bush’s dental examination “demonstrates that he was serving in Alabama.”
A high school reporter might have had some questions. Yet it seemed to satisfy the major media. ABC’s World News Tonight with Peter Jennings took the new White House bait. Terry Moran reported, “That puts Mr. Bush in Alabama, on duty, and seems to disprove the charge by Democratic Party leader Terry McAuliffe and others that the president was AWOL at that time.”
The same night, NBC Nightly News reported: “The White House has released a copy of a dental exam from January 1973 that they say confirms President Bush served at an Alabama air base.”
But there was more to work with in McClellan’s press conference (again, The New York Times):
Mr. McClellan also said that at least two people recalled Mr. Bush serving in Alabama, among them Joe Holcombe, who worked on the Senate campaign with Mr. Bush, and Emily Marks Curtis, who has said she briefly dated Mr. Bush in Alabama.
So now McClellan had folded in Holcombe, despite the gauziness of his claim — and gotten it into The New York Times. And now there was a girlfriend too.
They Said, She Said, He Said
At that press conference, McClellan pointed to an article that had just appeared in the TimesDaily, an Alabama newspaper (and in its sister papers, including The Tuscaloosa News). The article quotes Emily Marks Curtis talking about Bush and his Guard service.
The substance of her brief remarks got a vigorous buffing. First, the Alabama newspaper misrepresented what she said. Then McClellan cited that misrepresentation, and finally it was accepted by The New York Times and other media organizations. Here’s how The Tuscaloosa News opened its story, headlined “Friend: Bush Did Duty in Alabama”:
A friend of President Bush on Wednesday corroborated Bush’s contention that he reported for National Guard training in Alabama in 1972, despite the lack of official supporting records.
In fact, the quote from Emily Marks Curtis did not corroborate Bush in any way. Rather, it suggested the need for further inquiry that might have found that Bush had in fact not done his Alabama Guard service:
“The thing I know about George is that after the election was over in November, George left and he said he came back to Montgomery to do his guard duty,” Curtis said. She said she and Bush, then a first lieutenant in the Texas Air National Guard, dated briefly.
Her statement actually said that Bush left Alabama as soon as the election was over, then returned some time later, at which time he told Emily Marks Curtis that he had come back to do his Guard duty. As the Bush-friendly interpretation gained circulation, Emily Marks Curtis would often be characterized as Bush’s girlfriend. That seemed to give greater credibility to her ability to vouch for Bush, since, presumably, a girlfriend would know whether he had actually been doing military service. Seven months later, with the 2004 general election nearing, she was still being presented that way.
Here’s The New York Times on September 20, 2004:
Ms. Marks, the daughter of an old Montgomery family, was dating George Bush, and she remembers that he was in the Guard but could offer no detailed recollections. “A lot of people were doing Guard duty,” she said in an interview.
Yet Emily Marks Curtis had not been Bush’s girlfriend. The two had not even dated during the six months they both worked on the Blount campaign. Several campaign staffers, including Devere McLennan, who was friendly with Bush, confirmed that to me. In fact, the only time the two went out was during that brief period when Bush came back to Alabama — in early January 1973.
So here’s the full extent of the Emily Marks Curtis–dental connection: When Bush returned briefly to Alabama, he did three things. He called up Emily Marks and asked her out. He told her he was in town for Guard duty. And he went to get a dental checkup.
For the complete story, you’d have to ask Poppy Bush. As noted in chapter 8, the events in this period suggest that it was the father’s idea that his son go to Alabama in the first place, and his idea also that his son go back to Alabama and have the dental checkup at the military base — along with a “date” with a local girl to confirm his presence in the state.
When I talked to people who worked in the dental clinic, they could not remember such a routine exam from decades ago, which was not surprising. However, I did learn that they would have treated anyone who walked in wearing a flight jacket (Bush never relinquished his and liked to wear it publicly for many years thereafter). They would not have required him to present evidence that he was serving in an Alabama Guard unit, or even that he had done so in the past.
So the dental exam proved only that W. had a flight jacket and was wearing it on a particular day in Alabama. Yet the media reported the story as though it corroborated Bush’s account.
Doonesbury Creator Offers Reward
Within a couple of weeks of that media frenzy in February 2004, Doonesbury creator Garry Trudeau upped the ante. In his syndicated newspaper comic strip, he offered a ten-thousand-dollar reward to anyone who claimed he or she had “personally witnessed” Bush reporting for drills at Dannelly Air National Guard base in Alabama between May and November 1972. No one did so.
Seven months later, in September 2004, a group called Texans for Truth went further and offered fifty thousand dollars to anyone who could prove President Bush had fulfilled his service requirements, including mandatory duties and drills, in the Alabama Air National Guard in 1972. No one claimed that either. This reward was offered just as Bush traveled to Las Vegas to address the National Guard Association’s convention.
By March 2004, Texas television reporter James Moore published Bush’s War for Reelection: Iraq, the White House and the People. The new book examined Burkett’s allegations and explored in the most detail ever the specific documentation surrounding Bush’s service record. Moore, too, concluded that Bush had been AWOL beginning in May 1972.
”Witnesses” on Tap
More than anything, Bush needed former members of the Champagne Unit to assert that he had been an exemplary airman until the moment he left for Alabama. This would suggest that there was nothing questionable about his abrupt departure and justify his honorable discharge. For that, he had a core group that he had been cultivating since his early days as governor, through help with legal and personal problems, among other things.
Four men would supply most of the quotes on Bush’s service. A fifth witness was Jim Bath, Bush’s fellow pilot, drinking buddy, and later, business investor, who provided early quotes and then essentially went underground. Unlike the others, Bath was close enough to both George Bushes that he needed no cue cards to know what to say. But Bath had so many liabilities himself that eventually he was removed from the witness list.
Certainly the most interesting of Bush’s witnesses were Major Dean Roome and Colonel Maury H. Udell. Together they did much to keep a lid on the Guard story straight through the 2004 election. Roome, who claimed to have been Bush’s formation flying partner and roommate during full-time fighter pilot training, provided journalists, including myself, with bland accounts of a fellow who never did anything interesting. “He was very friendly, and outgoing, affable, fun to be around, and, uh, just an overall super good guy,” Roome told me.
What actually happened was that an accusation against Bush — probably an accurate one — was used to hang his accusers. It was a brilliant exercise in disinformation; and like so many matters we have encountered, it has “covert operation” written all over it.
Roome’s sidekick, Maury Udell, had been George Bush’s flight instructor at Ellington Field. Bush would devote only a few pages to his Guard service in his autobiography, A Charge to Keep, but Udell was singled out for praise. Bush described him as a tough and exacting instructor, a “270-pound black belt in judo” who required “blindfold” position checks for the plane’s instruments. While Bush’s flattering autobiography was in the works, Udell in turn was ladling out admiring reports on Bush to reporters.
“He had his boots shined, his uniform pressed, his hair cut and he said, ‘Yes, sir’ and ‘No, sir,’ Udell would recall. “I would rank him in the top 5 percent of pilots I knew. And in the thinking department, he was in the top 1 percent. He was very capable and tough as a boot.”
Reporters who quoted Roome, Udell, and Walter “Buck” Staudt, Bush’s top commanding officer, did not know that they were not independent witnesses. Besides being avid Bush boosters, Roome and Udell were hoping that Governor Bush would help them address lingering problems with the Texas National Guard, while Staudt was embroiled in his own little scandal.
The three stayed in regular contact with Bush’s staff, and reported any and all inquiries from the media. Roome in particular became part of an email chain that served as a nerve center and feedback loop. It included Bush campaign (and later White House) staff as well as top Guard officials. The email chain could give Bush’s operatives information on media inquiries and stories in the works, and also receive “talking points” and defensive strategies. The list, with blind copies to recipients, grew to the extent that the talking points were being shared not only with pilots but with many of the country’s top conservative talk show hosts as well.
We need you to close the ranks.
The story that became colloquially known as “Memogate” or “Rathergate” is understood by many people to be about a news organization that used phony documents to tar President Bush’s military service record. It was, in this telling, a prime example of media bias.
What actually happened was that an accusation against Bush — probably an accurate one — was used to hang his accusers. It was a brilliant exercise in disinformation; and like so many matters we have encountered, it has “covert operation” written all over it.
It began in March 2004, when, with John Kerry holding an eight-point lead in the polls, W. flew to Houston to reinvigorate his base. The scene was quintessentially Texan: the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo. “I thought there was a lot of bull in Washington,” W. chortled, donning the obligatory cowboy hat and gazing admiringly at prize heifers. W. also attended a fundraiser at a nearby Hilton Hotel. But two events not on the press itinerary were more significant and telling. In a private Hilton suite away from prying eyes, W. held court with some old buddies he hadn’t seen in a long while: his former fellow pilots from the Texas National Guard.
Bush flattered, seduced, and wheedled. The country needed to stick together at this difficult time, he said. And, heck, if a president couldn’t count on old chums to back him, whom could he trust?
To the dozen or so in attendance, the message was clear: you’ll be hearing from reporters and dirt-diggers, and we need you to close ranks. “We had the president of the United States give us essentially a national security briefing [on Iraq],” recalled Dean Roome. “I was very thrilled that somebody of his stature would take time out of his day.”
The meeting did not come to light until after the election, in an interview between Roome and Corey Pein of the Columbia Journalism Review. Roome told Pein that between briefings on Iraq and Afghanistan, “there was a lot of joking around, slapping on the back. Weird to call him Mr. President but we did.” He added, “It made you feel pretty important, getting briefed by the president on world affairs.” When Pein visited with Roome, a photograph of Roome’s meeting with Bush hung on the wall.
Setting the Fuse
While W. was at the livestock show, so too was his nemesis Bill Burkett. The retired officer and rancher was expecting a package. In early March, according to Burkett, he had received a call from a man who instructed him to call a Houston Holiday Inn that night and speak with a guest named Lucy Ramirez. When he got Ramirez on the line, she told him that she was an intermediary whose responsibility was to deliver to him a packet of documents.
During that phone call Ramirez had asked if Burkett would be in Houston anytime soon. He replied that he would be there in two weeks to attend the Houston livestock show, where he displayed and sold his prize Simmenthal cattle and promoted the bull semen that was a source of income for ranchers.
In Houston, Burkett was approached by a man who could have been Hispanic, who handed him a legal-sized envelope — presumably the man associated with “Lucy Ramirez.” (A woman in the next booth confirmed to two reporters that a man approached Burkett and gave him an envelope.) That package would turn out to be metaphorical dynamite, and in a few months it would blow up in the faces of quite a few people — including Burkett, Mary Mapes, and the TV correspondent and news anchor Dan Rather.
A Swift Boot
The Bush forces began to regain the campaign offensive in May. That month, a day after John Kerry unveiled a twenty-seven-million-dollar advertising campaign highlighting his Vietnam service, a new group calling itself the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth held its first press conference.
One of Karl Rove’s basic tenets is that you attack an opponent at their point of strength. Kerry, oblivious to this, had led with his proverbial chin, and rested his campaign first and foremost upon his status as a decorated veteran of the Vietnam War. That is where the Swift Boat cadre went to work and eventually demolished the most threatening point of comparison between Kerry and Bush.
To be sure, Kerry had invited the venom from some of his fellow Swift Boat officers. He had authorized the historian Douglas Brinkley to write a book about his military service, in which he criticized several fellow officers. One of them was Roy Hoffmann, the former commander who up until then had been friendly to Kerry. It is quite possible that this slight played a role in Kerry’s defeat. It did not matter that even John O’Neill, a lead figure in the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, apparently did not think much of George W. Bush either. “He always referred to him in private as ‘an empty suit,’” recalled Bill White, who was a law client of O’Neill’s.
The anger these men felt toward Kerry was catnip for the Republican attack operation, and before long, hardened pros were helping spread their anti-Kerry message. George W. Bush’s biggest backers footed the lion’s share of the bill — even though the anti-Kerry groups supposedly were independent. There were million-dollar-plus infusions from a cast of characters straight out of Dickens. From builders of houses whose roofs routinely caved in to leading emitters of cancer-causing substances, these moneymen were kept way in the background while public relations experts quietly directed grizzled veterans before the cameras.
The Swift Boat vets themselves had plenty of Bush connections. One legal adviser, Benjamin Ginsberg, had been serving as national counsel for W.’s presidential campaign. The vets’ advertising production team was the same one that had helped mock Michael Dukakis for Poppy in 1988. And the biggest donor to the Swift Boaters was Texas homebuilder Bob Perry, a longtime friend and associate of Karl Rove. Rove and the White House insisted that they had nothing to do with it. No one could prove otherwise.
To its credit, the mainstream media approached the claims with skepticism. (A study by the organization Media Matters found that only one of the fifteen major newspaper editorial boards gave credence to the charges of the Swift Boat Veterans.) However, on cable TV and in the blogosphere, the accusations raged twenty-four hours a day for weeks. This was especially true after the release in August of the book, Unfit for Command: Swift Boat Veterans Speak Out Against John Kerry, published by Regnery, which media critic and former conservative journalist David Brock describes as “a right-wing Washington house that filled the best-seller lists in the 1990s with a slew of largely fictional anti-Clinton tracts packaged as nonfiction.” The various arms of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation — especially Fox News and the New York Post — helped push the book into bestseller territory.
This was a serious problem for Kerry. At the 2004 Democratic Convention, noted Frank Rich, he “placed most, if not all, of his chips on presenting himself as a military hero.” It was not exactly brilliant strategy. In effect he was making himself the issue, rather than the incumbent Bush. Making matters worse, when the Swift Boaters attacked, Kerry did virtually nothing, thus confirming the popular impression that he was actually a wimp who wouldn’t hit back. Instead, he gave news photographers a photo op of himself windsurfing off Nantucket, thus suggesting that he was an elitist wimp to boot. He decided he didn’t want to dignify the smear with a response, thus conceding the spin war to the attackers.
Eventually, other Swift boat veterans surfaced to defend Kerry, but the damage had been done. Kerry’s service had become the issue, rather than W.’s failure to serve. It was a psy-ops coup, and just a warm- up to what was ahead.
The Chase Is On
After the February scrum, the pack of journalists looking at Bush’s service record had quickly diminished. Among the small band who continued was Mary Mapes, the Dallas-based CBS producer who had scored a big success earlier in the year by breaking the story about the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse.
Despite the CBS scoop, investigative reporter Seymour Hersh and The New Yorker now receive, and deserve, the lion’s share of the credit for exposing the scandal, because CBS initially bowed to the Pentagon’s request not to broadcast the prison abuse photos. The network only went ahead when it learned that Hersh’s article was about to run — and only The New Yorker ran the pictures. But now Mapes was back on the Guard story.
As for Bill Burkett, he had hidden away his little care package. But by summer, rumors began circulating about the existence of documents that could explain or corroborate W.’s missing service record. According to Burkett, “Lucy Ramirez” had instructed him to handle the documents in a precise manner, and made him promise that he would do so.
He was to copy the documents, and then burn the originals, along with the envelope they had come in. Ramirez made Burkett promise to keep her identity — and her role in providing the documents — a secret.
Burkett claims to have done exactly as he was told. Though Burkett had personal axes to grind with Bush, given his military history and his own fierce sense of honor, many reporters considered his story credible. Burkett said he believed that Ramirez’s insistence that he burn the materials was for security reasons — to remove any traces of DNA, which might expose whoever originally obtained them.
As the temperature rose around the story, various reporters from The New York Times, Vanity Fair, USA Today, and other news organizations sought a piece of the action. But 60 Minutes II had the inside track. What happened next morphed into an epic scandal that would soon overwhelm questions about Bush, and influence media coverage for the rest of the election.
There would be many casualties: CBS anchorman Rather, producer Mapes, and three other CBS staffers were fired or dismissed. Bill Burkett would become a pariah, and his life would collapse around him. As such, he became yet another in a long line of people who had stood up to the Bushes and suffered the consequences.
A Texas-based freelance researcher, Mike Smith, on retainer for CBS, had been communicating with Burkett, and as the document rumors grew, he began pressing the former Guard official for concrete evidence. In late August, Burkett agreed to meet with Mapes and Smith. Burkett, accompanied by his wife, brought a huge stack of documents, many of them pertaining to his own history with the Guard, to their rendezvous at a pizza parlor in rural West Texas. The CBS team suffered through Burkett’s agonizingly extensive preliminaries and finally pressed him to get to the matter at hand.
Burkett reached into a blue folder and pulled out a sheet of paper, dated August 1, 1972. It appeared to be an order from Bush’s superior, Lieutenant Colonel Jerry Killian, suspending Bush both for “failure to meet annual physical examination as ordered” and for “failure to perform to USAF/Tex ANG standards.” It said that Bush “has made no attempt to meet his training certification or flight physical” and that he “expresses desire to transfer out of state including assignment to non-flying billets.” It also referred to his pilot status as “critical.”
Burkett showed Mapes and Smith a second, related document (and three days later would provide another four). Mapes read the two documents with growing excitement, and then focused on the reportorial issue: how to get copies. Burkett, however, was ambivalent. He told Mapes he was worried about the consequences of getting into a renewed dustup with the president of the United States. His wife, Nicki, was even more reticent. After a show of what Mapes took to be great anguish — perhaps it was — Burkett released the documents.
If there was a single moment at which things went off track for Mary Mapes and CBS, this was it. Mapes was elated at the appearance of manna from heaven, as most reporters would be. The documents comported with what she knew of Bush’s military service based on years of reporting. Now she had what seemed to be concrete evidence. Her main concern at the moment was to get out of the pizza joint before Burkett changed his mind. Every second seemed like an hour. The group drove to a Kinko’s copy center in Abilene, the nearest large town, and her heart beating, Mapes faxed the documents to New York.
Mapes instructed an associate there to begin the crucial process of vetting — to the extent that it is possible to verify such photocopies. The documents were presented to a handful of experts, from a CBS military consultant to independent document examiners around the country. After scrutinizing the materials in New York, and comparing the purported Killian signatures with verified ones found on other official documents, handwriting expert Marcel Matley told Mapes that he felt that, on balance, the memo signatures seemed to be authentic. Colonel David Hackworth, a CBS consultant and the most decorated living soldier in the United States, gave his overview of what the documents suggested to him about Bush: “He was AWOL.”
The sentiment was not universal. It was exceedingly difficult to establish with any degree of certainty whether the documents were real. For one thing, Burkett had presented the reporters with copies, not originals. That eliminated telltale signs of authenticity such as age of paper, an ink signature, and evidence of the model of typewriter used. Furthermore, as a copy is further copied, other clues become degraded. With each generation, details such as spacing and even the appearance of letters begin to change subtly.
What Burkett gave to Mapes was at best a copy of an original, and perhaps a copy of a copy. What CBS New York received by fax from Abilene and sent to several document examiners was a generation worse. Then there were issues surrounding the skills required to judge these copies. One needed some kind of expertise in specialized military procedure and jargon from a particular time frame, as well as a detailed knowledge of the history of typography.
Could such documents have been produced in 1972? One could not prove them real beyond question, but could they be proven fake? In a somewhat parallel case, the distinguished investigative reporter Seymour Hersh had used what he believed to be letters from Marilyn Monroe to sign a $2.5 million contract with ABC for a new Kennedy documentary. Then someone noticed that the letters contained a five-digit zip code, though those had not yet been invented.
Mapes desperately wanted more time. But CBS executives, under competitive pressures, decided that the story had to air within a few days. Other news organizations were pressing Burkett for the documents, and there were scheduling issues as well. The CBS brass didn’t want to be scooped.
The Bloggers Who Ate CBS — Mwuhahahahaha!!!
60 Minutes II had a monumental broadcast planned for September 8, 2004. In the middle of a tight election, the program was prepared to challenge the veracity of a sitting president’s military service. Former Texas lieutenant governor Ben Barnes was ready to tell the story of how he kept W. from getting drafted. And Dan Rather was ready to present the documents that would finally help answer the broadcast’s tantalizing question: “So what happened with Mr. Bush, the draft and the National Guard?”
Within 30 seconds of the documents appearing on television screens, one Internet user was already posting his doubts. An active Air Force officer, Paul Boley — who was serving in Montgomery, Alabama, the same place George W. Bush had been in 1972 — was the first to weigh in. On the right-wing Web site FreeRepublic.com, using the pseudonymous handle TankerKC, Boley wrote:
WE NEED TO SEE THOSE MEMOS AGAIN!
They are not in the style that we used when I came in to the USAF. They looked like the style and format we started using about 12 years ago (1992). Our signature blocks were left justified, now they are rigth [sic] of center … like the ones they just showed.
Can we get a copy of those memos?
Less than four hours after Boley’s post came a more “authoritative” statement of doubt from a fellow FreeRepublic.com poster — a group that self-identify as “FReepers” — calling himself “Buckhead.”
Every single one of these memos to file is in a proportionally spaced font, probably Palatino or Times New Roman. In 1972 people used typewriters for this sort of thing, and typewriters used monospaced fonts.
The use of proportionally spaced fonts did not come into common use for office memos until the introduction of laser printers, word processing software, and personal computers. They were not widespread until the mid to late 90’s. Before then, you needed typesetting equipment, and that wasn’t used for personal memos to file. Even the Wang systems that were dominant in the mid 80’s used monospaced fonts.
I am saying these documents are forgeries, run through a copier for 15 generations to make them look old.
This should be pursued aggressively.
And it was. In the wee hours, the discussion began to spread across the blogosphere. First it was picked up by two conservative blogs, Power Line and Little Green Footballs. It went quickly from blogs to online magazines, starting with Rupert Murdoch’s conservative opinion publication the Weekly Standard, which cited document experts who pronounced the memos probable forgeries. The story didn’t linger in the blogosphere or opinion media, but leaped right to the commercial outlets.
Twenty-four hours after the story aired, Buckhead proclaimed triumph back on the FreeRepublic.com message board:
Victory in this case justly has a thousand fathers. Tanker KC first pegged them as fakes by the overall look, and I later noted the font issue. Many other defects have been noted by others. I haven’t gotten any work done, but it’s been a ton of fun. The most amazing thing is how this thing has exploded across the internet.
Mwuhahahahaha!!!
Another commenter chimed in with:
Isn’t this cool? It’s on the front page of tomorrow’s Washington Post! Great work!
As one “FReeper” posted:
With all due respect, this event showcases a phenomenon of “new media” power that could only have occurred through a vehicle with the community force multiplying tools of FR [Free Republic].
… No single blog can rally a rapid response over a huge number of vital issues like FR can. This forum is, to use a trite old 90s term, synergy at its most powerful.
Places like FR (in other words FR because it is inimitable) and the blogosphere can work in concert. We’re the town square arguing, vetting and digesting, they’re the disseminating REPORTERS of valuable insights, leads and other interesting stuff we shake loose.
Meanwhile, Los Angeles Times reporter Peter Wallsten did some digging, and unearthed Buckhead’s identity. He was Harry MacDougald, an activist Republican lawyer in Atlanta and a member of the Federalist Society, a conservative law group. He played coy with the Times, declining to tell the reporter how he was able to create his critique so quickly, and failing to explain the basis for his expertise in the matter.
Another aspect, this one not reported by the Los Angeles Times, was the manner in which MacDougald’s critique was amplified. Shortly after he posted under a pseudonym, his wife, posting under her own name, Liz MacDougald, and making no mention of their connection, recommended his post to Power Line, which propelled the story further. Actually, there were two people who did so. The other, Tom Mortensen, was also deeply involved with the Swift Boat group.
Whether the response to the memos was coordinated beyond that is difficult to say. Boley (TankerKC) told me in an interview that he had seen the 60 Minutes show by accident, as his wife just happened to turn the set on. He could post his suspicions so quickly, he said, because his computer was on and just steps away. He said that as a career Air Force officer, he noticed instantly that the position of the signature block was based on military protocol that existed only since 1992, and that the memo header deviated from standard.
Regardless of the intentions of the posters and the merits of the arguments about the authenticity of the documents, the story of the backstory took on a life of its own. Soon more people were convinced that Dan Rather and Mary Mapes — instead of Bush — had done something wrong.
Lost in all this was the fact that the documents merely confirmed what reporters had already concluded from their own investigative work. Indeed, The New York Times had asked CBS if it could co-report the memo content and break the story at the same time. And USA Today published the documents the morning after CBS aired its story — though it did not face the firestorm or consequences that CBS did.
USA Today later turned on Burkett and CBS — claiming that, in exchange for providing the documents, Burkett had asked Mapes to put him in touch with the Kerry campaign. Mapes said she merely called the Democrats, with her boss’s permission, to check out a claim Burkett had made about how he had offered them advice on responding to the Swift Boat attacks. It was a tempest in a beer can, but again, it became an Internet sensation.
The “Independent” Panel
Faced with a growing storm, CBS initially stood firm. Two days later, on its website, the company declared:
his report was not based solely on recovered documents, but rather on a preponderance of evidence, including documents that were provided by unimpeachable sources, interviews with former Texas National Guard officials and individuals who worked closely back in the early 1970s with Colonel Jerry Killian and were well acquainted with his procedures, his character and his thinking.
On CBS Evening News with Dan Rather, the old warhorse echoed that, and added, “If any definitive evidence to the contrary is found, we will report it.” But for the time being, he said, “There is none.”
As the criticism mounted, though, CBS News president Andrew Heyward was demanding answers. One of the questions, to Burkett, was about the source of the documents. In the days after Mapes faxed them from Abilene, she had barraged Burkett with demands that he reveal his source. Finally, grudgingly, he had identified George Conn, a friend from the National Guard, who divided his time between Germany and Texas. Mapes had tried repeatedly to reach Conn for confirmation, without success.
But now that the story had exploded, Burkett admitted to Heyward that he had only told Mapes the Conn story to get her off his back, because he had promised not to reveal the involvement of Lucy Ramirez. Now the Ramirez version — supposedly the truthful one — came out.
But was this the real story? As I later learned, there was a Hispanic couple who had worked for the Guard, could have had access to the files of the late Lieutenant Colonel Killian, and were a possible match for the pseudonymous Ramirezes. Their surname was even similar. When I visited their home in Houston, the woman seemed to know exactly why I was there. She cryptically explained that her husband had prohibited her from speaking about the matter. I noticed what seemed to be their recent good fortune: they had apparently just moved into a brand-new house in a brand-new housing development, and had a brand-new car out front. Beyond that, there was little by way of clues, let alone answers.
“Did you use the word ‘horse shit’?
Meanwhile, CBS’s parent company was shifting into damage-control mode. On September 22, two weeks after the program aired, CBS announced plans to convene an “independent review panel” headed by pedigreed outsiders. The two big names on the panel created for this purpose turned out to be former US attorney general Richard Thornburgh and former Associated Press chief Lou Boccardi.
Thornburgh was a particularly odd choice, considering that he had been attorney general during Poppy Bush’s administration. Thornburgh, who had briefly made headlines back then for ordering the statues of scantily clad females on display in the Justice Department modestly draped on official occasions, was back on the morals beat. During the CBS inquiry, he expressed keen interest in Mapes’s use of salty language. “Did you use the word ‘horse shit’? Was that really appropriate in a newsroom?”
After retiring from the AP, Boccardi had been retained by The New York Times to investigate the fabrications of its reporter Jayson Blair. But he remained almost entirely silent during the closed panel hearings. He only asked two questions, including, “When did you realize the documents had been faked?” When Mike Smith replied that it had not been established that the documents were counterfeit, the panel lawyers laughed at him.
Although Smith had been assured that CBS had his best interests at heart, and that the company would look out for him, it soon became apparent that he was raw meat. To Smith, it felt like a McCarthy hearing. The panelists were concerned that Smith had worked for the late columnist Molly Ivins. They even asked if he had ghostwritten columns for Ivins, which was unlikely, since Ivins had one of the nation’s most distinctive — and idiosyncratic — writing styles. There also was a question about a hundred-dollar donation to a fund-raiser for a liver transplant involving a liberal partisan.
Potential bias could have been relevant, but it unquestionably is a secondary consideration behind truth. Nevertheless, the upshot became clear: CBS was going to cover its own behind by portraying its reporters as anti-Bush liberals who didn’t deserve the company’s support. The network did nothing to defend the principles of journalistic inquiry. Still less did CBS get past the procedural |
for Snap’s database, so Snapchat could offer Geofilters pegged to places like parks, farmers’ markets and speakeasies, all based on Foursquare venue shapes and our extensive categorization of places.
In case you’re curious, this is not the first time Snap and Foursquare have worked together. Foursquare was one of the first brands to advertise in the Discover channel with 0:10-second ads for the Foursquare Swarm check-in app. The ‘TFW You Become the Mayor’ ad campaign highlights the incredible rush you feel when you earn a mayorship at a pizza place, dry cleaner, gym and convenience store.
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Passionate about the future of food, travel, mobile or location intelligence? Foursquare is hiring. Join us!Unlike our friends over at the ever-stylish GQ, the Ars Orbital HQ is rarely filled with the kinds of fashion-forward accessories a modern man needs, let alone the entirely frivolous, but ultimately more satisfying ones, it doesn't. You can imagine my surprise when London-based, mid-priced bag and accessory maker Knomo got in touch to pitch a five-day trial of its latest fashionable fusion of leather and canvas in the form of the #LiveFree [sic] backpack.
Clearly, it hasn't seen the sort of functional haversack sported by the typical Ars editor.
Still, when in Rome, right? After all, there's a reason for that spurious youth-targeted hashtag. Pitched as the "Perfect 24/7 Bag," the #LiveFree is ostensibly targeted at the modern tech-laden city-goer—the sort with artisanal coffee in one hand, iPhone in the other, ready to face the daily grind of "Influencer Marketing" and "Organic Content." There's space for up to a 15-inch laptop, a 10-inch iPad, multiple pockets (one of which blocks RFID signals and thus putative contactless card skimmers), built-in cable management, and plenty of pockets for various tech knick-knacks. There's even Bluetooth tracking and wireless charging.
Well, sort of. The #LiveFree might be a looker, but its built-in tech is not so much innovative as it is apathetic. The Bluetooth tracking? A small pocket for one of Chipolo's readily available (and easily hidden) tracking keyrings that's included with the bag. The wireless charging? An odd mash-up of 4500mAh battery pack with Qi wireless charging that sits in one of the zipped-up side pockets. The idea is that you slip one of the supplied charging cases onto an iPhone or Samsung Galaxy S7 and slide the phone in and out of the pocket to charge it.
Except, when I hear "backpack with wireless charging," I think of a bag with a wireless charging pad expertly integrated into the actual fabric, not an entirely separate battery pack you can just as easily buy on Amazon for £20 and stick in any bag you like. The former allows you to easily charge your phone by simply holding your phone to the bag safely laid across your lap in those rare moments where a seat opens up on a bus or a train. The latter means leaving your phone in an easily pickpocketed side-pocket that's not readily accessible.
Not everyone likes to carry around a phone in their pocket. And having a quick and easy way to charge a phone while stashing it away is a potentially useful feature for cyclists disencumbered by skin-tight spandex. Either way, the solution is to buy a battery pack of a suitable size and put it in the pocket of your choice in any bag you like.
Knomo's take on a high-tech backpack feels like the by-product of a meeting where out-of-touch marketing types asked "how do we get in on this Web 2.0 action I've heard so much about?" rather than a creative solution to a tech-hoarder's transportation troubles.
Which is a shame, because otherwise the #LiveFree is an excellent backpack. While I like to think I'm at least a little fashion-aware, looks are ultimately not the most important thing in a bag. Instead, I'd much rather it comfortably held a laptop or two, had enough pockets and compartments to keep the many dongles, cables, and cameras I carry around at trade shows safe and easily accessible, and ideally have enough room to lug around a handful of clothes for a weekend away, or even a full-size games console at a push.
The Astro Scout backpack I use on a daily basis does that and then some, while also being one of the most comfortable and durable bags around. But since it's a bag for "gamers," it's hardly a looker. The #LiveFree not only holds as much as the Scout, it does so while looking a lot more stylish. The waxed, water-repellent black cotton canvas looks great, and is nicely offset by tan leather highlights along the straps and handle. It's not a busy-looking bag either—a particularly impressive feat given how much it holds—making the #LiveFree the sort of thing your mum might call "smart," which I've grown to realise is actually a compliment, not an insult.
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I particularly like the entirely separate zipped-up laptop and tablet compartment at the rear, which makes pulling out a laptop a laughably easy affair compared to having it squeezed in alongside the rest of your belongings—useful when going through airport security, for sure. The multiple pockets on the inside of the bag and in the front pocket make it easier to keep things organised, too, although sadly the #LiveFree can't compete with the sheer number of compartments on the Scout, all of which I've made good use of over the years.
Neither can it compete in terms of comfort. The skinny straps look the part, but for a bag designed to carry around several kilograms of tech, they don't do a great job of spreading the weight around. An extra centimetre or two of width would work wonders.
The #LiveFree I tried is a prototype: it shows the bag's Kickstarter backers (which plonked down a hefty £222, or £251 for an iPhone version) what they will get for their money. The final version won't be significantly different, though; only the colour is set to change, according to the company.
Would I back it? I'm not so sure. The #LiveFree might well be a stylish and surprisingly practical backpack, but I'd never shake the feeling that I'd overpaid (more so when these things hit retail at £369 and up) for a bunch of weak tech integrations that I could otherwise add to any other bag for a few quid. Hell, for that money I could even pick up one of the designer creations so favoured by the folks at GQ.
Then again, what do I know? The #LiveFree just sailed past its £55,000 Kickstarter goal. There are still 26 days left in the campaign.BHOPAL: Over nine lakh aspirants, including those with PhD, post graduate and engineering degrees, have applied for the post of about 14,000 police constables in Madhya Pradesh Of the 9.24 lakh candidates, 1.19 lakh are graduates, 14,562 are post graduates, 9,629 engineers and 12 with Doctorate of Philosophy (PhD), according to the data of Madhya Pradesh Professional Examination Board (MPPEB), which will conduct the examination.The minimum qualification for the post is Higher Secondary."There are candidates with PhD and engineering degrees who have applied for the post," said Bhaskar Lakshakar, Director, MPPEB.He said the examination is scheduled to be held on July 17."Our job is to conduct the examination. The analysis of the profile of applicants is beyond our mandate," Bhaskar said when asked to elaborate on the profile of these degree holders.Over five lakh youth, who have passed Higher Secondary or Class XII, are also among the applicants. There are 3,438 diploma holders too.There are about 2.58 lakh aspirants, belonging to Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes, who have passed classes VIII and above as eligibility criteria for them is low.The post offers a salary in the pay band of Rs 5,200 to Rs 20,200 with an additional grade pay of Rs 1,900 per month.It is not for the first time that people with PhD degrees or engineers are applying for government job. Last year too, out of the over 6.1 lakh candidates who had applied for the post of forest guard ( Vanrakshak ), more than 12,000 were engineers.Over 1.17 lakh graduates, 23,416 post graduates and 34 with PhD degrees had applied for the post of forest guards.There were 3.35 lakh Higher Secondary and 1.17 lakh High School qualified aspirants for the post, as per the MPPEB data.We just got our hands on a crystal clear photo of the BlackBerry Dakota — you know, the device that’s going to sit right at the head of the BlackBerry family dinner table. What about the specifications for the BlackBerry Dakota? What, you thought we’d skimp out on you? How about the famous original Bold styling, HD video recording, NFC, 3G Mobile hotspot, magnetometer and much, much more! Full specs after the break!
Quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE
Tri-band UMTS
5 megapixel camera with HD video recording, flash, and image stabilization
4GB of built in storage, 768MB of RAM
2.8-inch VGA 640 x 480 capacitive screen
WiFi b,g,n on 2.4GHz and 5GHz frequencies
3G mobile hotspot!
MicroUSB port
Bluetooth
NFC
Magnetometer
Accelerometer
Proximity sensor
10.5mm thin
Launches with BlackBerry OS 6.1
Well, what do you guys think? Is this your dream BlackBerry or what?This question has been bugging me for a while now and I was hoping you could shed some light on it for me. Why is cow meat called beef not just just called cow? The same goes for pig--why isn't it "pig chops" rather than pork chops? I mean, we call lamb chops lamb chops. So what's the deal with beef and pork? I have speculated that it's a means for people to distance themselves, mentally, from the meat they eat. But that's just my thought. Do you know the reason?
Colibri replies:
This differentiation goes back to the Norman Conquest of England. The names of the domestic animals are all of Anglo-Saxon origin, while the names of the meats derived from them come from Norman French and ultimately Latin. The common explanation for this is that after the conquest, Anglo-Saxons were often restricted to menial roles such as cowherd, swineherd, etc. Their Norman masters were the ones who actually got to eat the viands (Middle French viande). This is a plausible argument. But proven? No.
Cow: Old English cu; akin to Old High German kuo
Beef: Old French buef, ox, from Latin bouv-, bos, head of cattle
Calf: Old English cealf; akin to Old High German kalb, calf
Veal: from Middle French veel, from Latin vitellus, small calf, diminutive of vitulus, calf
Pig: Middle English pigge
Hog: from Old English hogg
Swine: Old English swIn; akin to Old High German swIn swine
Pork: Old French porc, pig, from Latin porcus
Sheep: from Old English scEap; akin to Old High German scAf,
Mutton: from Old French moton, ram
Some think the servant talk/gentry talk argument is a little too pat. In The Mother Tongue: English & How It Got That Way, Bill Bryson gives the explanation above but in a footnote says:
It should be noted that [Robert] Burchfield, in The English Language, calls this distinction between field names and food names "an enduring myth" on the grounds that the French terms were using for living animals as well (he cites Samuel Johnson referring to a cow as "a beef"), but even so I think the statement above is a reasonable generalization.
For what it’s worth, German makes no field/food distinction: the neuter singular for cattle is Rind, beef is Rindfleisch; pork is Schwein and pork is Schweinefleisch. I’d say the same is true of Spanish but things aren’t quite so clear-cut. Carne means meat generically, but is usually understood to mean beef. If you want to specify beef, you say carne de res, res simply meaning beast or animal. A cow is vaca. Oddly enough, rosbif (roast beef) and bistec (beefsteak) derive from English–although bistec often just refers to the cut, and I have seen restaurants offering bistec de puerco. Puerco can mean either pig or pork, but pigs are often called cerdo and cochino. Cordero means lamb in both senses, and ternera means both calf and veal.
Send questions to Cecil via cecil@straightdope.com.
Related
STAFF REPORTS ARE WRITTEN BY THE STRAIGHT DOPE SCIENCE ADVISORY BOARD, CECIL'S ONLINE AUXILIARY. THOUGH THE SDSAB DOES ITS BEST, THESE COLUMNS ARE EDITED BY ED ZOTTI, NOT CECIL, SO ACCURACYWISE YOU'D BETTER KEEP YOUR FINGERS CROSSED.I have a lot of friends voting for Evan McMullin, the independent presidential candidate.
McMullin is a hero to what’s left of the #NeverTrump movement. He is supposedly a conservative, although many conservatives are skeptical. Maybe he’s a fine person. I don’t even care to contest that. I don’t know him.
But McMullin is not a viable candidate for president. He is a spoiler candidate, and he is fully aware of this! That’s why his campaign strategy, as he revealed in a recent interview, is not to win 270 electoral votes, but instead, to swing the election to Hillary Clinton.
Via RealClearPolitics:
QUESTION: How many states are you going to be on the ballot would you say? EVAN MCMULLIN: Right now we’re either on the ballot or registered as a write-in in 34 states. By the time we get to November 8th it will be 40 to 45. And that’s plenty for our strategy which is not a conventional strategy. We’re not trying to win 270 votes. Of course that would be great but it’s just not going to happen, this is a three-month presidential campaign. So, what we’re trying to do is earn enough electoral votes to block Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump if the race between both of them is so close that we are able to do that by winning 1 or 2 states. So, that’s the idea. But if not that then we will be happy to have prevented someone who I believe is a true authoritarian from taking power in the United States and that’s Donald Trump.
If McMullin’s strategy was actually winning one or two states, denying both Trump and Clinton 270 votes and giving himself an opportunity to win if the election is thrown to the House of Representatives, why would he need ballot access in “40 to 45” states? Because, as he admits at the end of the clip, his true strategy, first and foremost, is to deny Donald Trump the White House. He wants to take as many votes away from him as possible, allowing Hillary Clinton to win critical battleground states. Winning a state outright is, in the end, just a pipe dream:
…So, that’s the idea. But if not that then we will be happy to have prevented someone who I believe is a true authoritarian from taking power in the United States and that’s Donald Trump.
McMullin is ultimately just another tool of an establishment hell-bent on stopping a Donald Trump victory because he threatens their power and their livelihoods. Don’t fall for it.
We have a binary choice on November 8th. It’s Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump. You have a choice between the pro-abortion, anti-religious freedom candidate, Hillary Clinton, or the guy who sometimes says crude things, Donald Trump, who will stand up for life and protect religious freedom from those who seek to destroy the First Amendment and the Constitution itself.
Don’t allow yourself to be manipulated by the media into voting for fake candidates who have no intention of winning. Make your vote count.
UPDATE: I’ve responded to criticism of this article’s headline here.
Jon Schweppe is the Communications Director at American Principles Project.The original Xiaomi Mi Band was one of the most useful and inexpensive fitness wearables, with accurate tracking and fantastic battery life. Reception for the Xiaomi fitness band has been fantastic, and now the sequel looks to add even more to the tried and true formula, with spy photos showing the Mi Band 1S will have a brand new heart rate monitor as well.
At first glance, the Mi Band 1S could easily pass off as the first Mi Band. However, taking a closer look reveals that the pebble shaped body of the Mi Band 1S now has a heart rate monitor on it’s rear, complete with a symbol showing the purpose of the sensor right under it. The sensor will be completely covered by the rubber band of the Mi Band, so chances are you won’t be seeing much of it unless you take the pebble out to charge it.
Unlike the rumors originally suggested, the leaked images of the Mi Band 1S show that the device will retain the design of the original with its alloy front and LED lights, with no display to be seen. One must wonder whether the addition of a heart rate monitor would affect the battery life of the Mi Band 1S, though only time will tell. What do you think of the Mi Band 1S? Sound off in the comments.LOS ANGELES — “Where’s Neil Diamond?”
Ken Shipley has hunted down some of the rarest records in existence as one of the founders of the Numero Group, a Chicago record label that specializes in painstakingly researched reissues of music from the obscure margins of pop. But on Friday evening he was zooming through Amoeba Records, the giant music store in Hollywood, looking for the Neil Diamond section. “I want to see what we’re up against,” he said.
Marc PoKempner for The New York Times
Numero is nominated for two Grammy Awards this year for “Syl Johnson: Complete Mythology,” a monolith of a boxed set tracking the works of one of soul music’s semi-forgotten figures, who is best known for singing on Hi Records, Al Green’s label, in the 1970s, and for his 1967 song “Different Strokes,” which has been sampled by hip-hop acts dozens of times.
Mr. Shipley is nominated in the best album notes category (against Mr. Diamond, for his collection “The Bang Years 1966-1968″), and the label is also nominated in the best historical album category. In a wide-ranging chat in a back room at Amoeba, Mr. Shipley and Rob Sevier, another of the Numero partners, spoke candidly about what the Grammys mean (and don’t mean) for a small label nominated in one of the dozens of non-televised categories, and what’s next for Numero.
Q.
What would a Grammy win mean for you guys?
A.
Rob Sevier: In our niche, we don’t know that there’s an actual measurable sales push that happens with the Grammys, and sales are what is most meaningful to a small label. It’s a new experiment for us.
Ken Shipley: The other side of that is that it does kind of legitimize our last eight or nine years of work in a mainstream sense. It says that if you do good work then it will be recognized by your peers.
Sevier: So, like, our moms?
Shipley: No, I mean in our community. If you were Grammy Award-winning producer Rob Sevier releasing a new LP, it means something more than just, record slob Rob Sevier.
Sevier: Sure. But at the same time I’m sure the transient hotels of the world have a few Grammy winners living in them.
Q.
Your categories are in the pre-televised ceremony, so if you win only a few thousand people at most would see you accept the award. Is there still any sense that winning it can have any big mainstream impact?
A.
Shipley: If you win there are probably 1,000 to 1,500 people sitting there watching you, and all of those people are somebody. This isn’t some Tom, Dick and Sally off the street winning a radio contest to come to the Grammys. These are people that are part of your industry, and you’re getting recognized by these people, who are going to say, “I don’t know who that is, but I’m going to look into it.”
When they say it’s “music’s biggest night,” it’s really the music business’s biggest night.
Sevier: We feel like outsiders here. Not in a bad way. But we live in Chicago, and our lives are pretty different from a lot of the guys we encounter here. I ride my bike eight miles to the office in the Chicago winter. These guys are living pretty good lives in their little corners of the industry. I’m not saying we’re never going to get there…
Shipley: I am.
Q.
So why did you decide to submit the album for the award?
A.
Shipley: Six or seven years ago we submitted two albums, and of course we didn’t get nominated. It’s not like our feelings got hurt, but it felt like a waste.
Sevier: We had to send, like, 15 copies of each album. And we were like, we’re not throwing away 15 copies of anything.
Shipley: It just solidified our outsider status. But then our work got better. We went from being a dinky little label to doing what some people consider important work. An acquaintance of ours, Henry Owings, a Grammy member who had won for the Charley Patton box set, said: “You guys, more than anybody, should submit for the Grammys, because you’re doing something new and interesting. I’m sick of having to vote for all this garbage.” So we submitted “Light: On the South Side.”
[That set was nominated last year for best boxed set, but lost to the White Stripes.]
Then when we did the Syl Johnson box, that to me felt like a superior work. Rob and I had been working on the research for close to four years, by the time it was finished.
Q.
And did you say to yourself, “I want a Grammy for this”?
A.
Shipley: I’d be lying if I didn’t feel that if this is our best work, we deserve it.
Q.
What’s next for Numero?
A.
Shipley: We are trying to take Numero and say, it’s not a record label, it’s a system. Rob has an idea to take music and apply it to the system, whether it’s indigenous people from Malaysia, or funk and soul from Toronto, or yacht rock, or garage from Mexico City. Or our next project, Codeine, a white indie-rock band from New York in the ’90s. It’s how we make records that is going to become more important to us over the next five years.
Syl in a lot of ways is a micro version of us being able to say, here’s one thing that we can do really well.
Sevier: It’s us saying that this is the substance with the best possible style.Titanium dioxide, one of the most-produced nanoparticles worldwide, is being used increasingly in foodstuffs. When intestinal cells absorb titanium dioxide particles, this leads to increased inflammation and damage to the intestinal mucosa in mice with colitis. Researchers at the University of Zurich recommend that patients with colitis should avoid food containing titanium dioxide particles.
The frequency of inflammatory bowel disease like Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis has been on the rise in many Western countries for decades. The illnesses are caused by an excessive autoimmune reaction against the intestinal flora. In addition to genetic factors, environmental factors like the Western lifestyle, especially nutrition, play an essential role in the development of these chronic intestinal diseases.
Use of titanium dioxide nanoparticles in food is increasing
The research of Gerhard Rogler, professor of gastroenterology and hepatology at the University of Zurich, now shows that titanium dioxide nanoparticles can intensify the inflammatory reaction in the bodies of patients with inflammatory intestinal diseases. Titanium dioxide is a white pigment used in medicines, cosmetics and toothpaste and increasingly as food additive E171, for example, in icing, chewing gum or marshmallows. Until now, there have been no restrictions on its use in the food industry.
The scientists led by Gerhard Rogler concentrated their research on a protein complex inside cells: the NLRP3 inflammasome. This protein complex is part of the non-specific immune system, which detects danger signals and then triggers inflammation. If the inflammasome is activated by bacterial components, for example, and the inflammatory reaction plays a vital role in the defense against infective agents. In the same way, NLRP3 can be activated by small inorganic particles -- sometimes with negative consequences: If uric acid crystals form in the cells, for example the inflammation leads to gout.
Titanium dioxide can be absorbed from food in case of intestinal disease
The research team first studied the effect of inorganic titanium dioxide particles in cell cultures. They were able to show that titanium dioxide can penetrate human intestinal epithelial cells and macrophages and accumulate there. The nanoparticles were detected as danger signals by inflammasomes, which triggered the production of inflammatory messengers. In addition, patients with ulcerative colitis, whose intestinal barrier is disrupted, have an increased concentration of titanium dioxide in their blood. "This shows that these particles can be absorbed from food under certain disease conditions," Rogler says.
In a further step, the scientists orally administered titanium dioxide nanoparticles to mice, which serve as a disease model for inflammatory bowel disease. Here, as well, the particles activated the NLRP3 complex, which led to strong intestinal inflammation and greater damage to the intestinal mucosa in the mice. In addition, titanium dioxide crystals accumulated in the animals' spleens.
Researchers recommend abstinence from foods containing E171 in case of colitis
Whether these findings will be confirmed in humans must now be determined in further studies. "Based on our results," Rogler concludes, "patients with an intestinal barrier dysfunction as found in colitis should abstain from foods containing titanium dioxide."ROME/BERLIN (Reuters) - Italian borrowing costs reached breaking point on Wednesday after Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi’s insistence on elections instead of an interim government threatened prolonged instability and kindled fears of a split in the euro zone.
European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso issued a stern warning of the dangers of splitting the zone, rocked by an escalating debt crisis. EU sources told Reuters French and German officials had held discussions on just such a move.
“There cannot be peace and prosperity in the North or in the West of Europe, if there is no peace and prosperity in the South or in the East,” Barroso said.
Italian 10-year bond yields shot above the 7 percent level that is widely deemed unsustainable, reflecting an evaporation of investor confidence and prompting German Chancellor Angela Merkel to issue a call to arms.
Merkel said Europe’s plight was now so “unpleasant” that deep structural reforms were needed quickly, warning the rest of the world would not wait. “That will mean more Europe, not less Europe,” she told a conference in Berlin.
She called for changes in EU treaties after French President Nicolas Sarkozy advocated a two-speed Europe in which euro zone countries accelerate and deepen integration while an expanding group outside the currency bloc stays more loosely connected — a signal that some members may have to quit the euro.
“It is time for a breakthrough to a new Europe,” Merkel said. “A community that says, regardless of what happens in the rest of the world, that it can never again change its ground rules, that community simply can’t survive.”
The European Central Bank, the only effective bulwark against market attacks, intervened to buy Italian bonds in large amounts but remained reluctant to go further.
Italy has replaced Greece at the center of the crisis and is on the cusp of needing a bailout that Europe cannot afford.
“Financial assistance is not in the cards,” one euro zone official said, adding that the bloc was not even considering extending a precautionary credit line to Rome.
Having lost his majority in a parliamentary vote, Berlusconi confirmed he would resign after implementing economic reforms demanded by the European Union, and said Italy must then hold an election in which he would not stand.
He opposed any form of transitional or unity government — which the opposition and many in the markets favor — and said polls were not likely until February, leaving a three-month policy vacuum in which markets could create havoc.
Italian President Giorgio Napolitano said there was no doubt about the resignation of Berlusconi once economic reforms were implemented by parliament within days.
“Therefore, within a short time either a new government will be formed...or parliament will be dissolved to immediately begin an electoral campaign,” Napolitano said.
Even with the exit of a man who came to symbolize scandal and empty promises, it will not be easy for Italy to convince markets it can cut its huge debt, liberalize the labor market, attack tax evasion and boost productivity.
Worries that the debt crisis could be infiltrating the core of the euro zone were reflected in the spread of 10-year French government bonds over their German equivalent blowing out to a euro era high around 140 basis points.
FRUSTRATION
Policymakers outside the euro area kept up pressure for more decisive action to stop the crisis spreading.
Christine Lagarde, head of the International Monetary Fund, told a financial forum in Beijing that Europe’s debt crisis risked plunging the global economy into a Japan-style “lost decade.”
“If we do not act boldly and if we do not act together, the economy around the world runs the risk of downward spiral of uncertainty, financial instability and potential collapse of global demand.”
Berlusconi has reluctantly conceded that the IMF can oversee Italian reform efforts.
Euro zone finance ministers agreed on Monday on a road map for leveraging the 17-nation currency bloc’s 440-billion-euro ($600 billion) rescue fund to shield larger economies like Italy and Spain from a possible Greek default.
A demonstrator waves a flag in front of the Colosseum during a demonstration in Rome, September 6, 2011. REUTERS/Remo Casilli
But there are doubts about the efficacy of those complex plans, and with Italy’s debt totaling around 1.9 trillion euros even a larger bailout fund could struggle to cope.
Lagarde said she was hopeful the technical details on boosting the European Financial Stability Fund (EFSF) to around 1 trillion euros would be ready by December.
Many outside Europe are calling on the ECB to take a more active role as other major central banks do in acting as lender of last resort. German opposition to that remains implacable, seeing it as a threat to the central bank’s independence.
“The ECB will be drawn like everyone else by the weight of gravity (to act),” one euro zone official said.
“CORE” ZONE DISCUSSED
EU sources told Reuters German and French officials had discussed plans for a radical overhaul of the European Union that would involve establishing a more integrated and potentially smaller euro zone.
The discussions among policymakers in Paris, Berlin and Brussels raise the possibility of one or more countries leaving the zone, while the core pushes to deeper economic integration.
In a speech in Berlin, Barroso said Germany’s gross domestic product could contract by 3 percent if the 17-member zone shrank and its economy would shed a million jobs.
“What is more, it would jeopardize the future prosperity of the next generation,” he said.
Barroso said any push toward deeper integration should not come at the price of new divisions among EU member states.
GREEK DRAMA
With the markets’ fire turned firmly on Italy, Greece’s struggle to find a new prime minister became something of a sideshow, but one which demonstrated the difficulty in taking decisive action anywhere within the euro zone.
Slideshow (2 Images)
Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou said he was stepping down without saying who would succeed him as the nation heads toward bankruptcy, but party sources said leaders had agreed it would be the speaker of parliament.
Parties from left and right settled on veteran socialist Filippos Petsalnikos, barring-last minute snags, the sources said, turning to their own political class after ditching a plan to recruit a former top European Central Bank official.
The socialist and conservative parties had wanted former ECB vice-president Lucas Papademos to lead a government of national unity but he appears to have made demands about his level of influence which they could not swallow.HAWTHORN has been handed a massive boost on the eve of the 2015 season, with veteran midfielder Sam Mitchell penning a one-year contract extension.
The deal will take Mitchell, a three-time premiership player with the Hawks, into his 15th season at Glenferrie Oval.
“It’s good to be at one club for such a long time,” he told the club website.
Sam Mitchell will remain a Hawk in 2016 after penning a new one-year contract extension. Source: News Corp Australia
Mitchell, who will turn 33 later this year, captained Hawthorn to the 2008 premiership before relinquishing the role at the end of 2010. He is a four-time winner of the Peter Crimmins Medal.
READ: JOSH GIBSON RE-COMMITS TO THE HAWKS
A 261-game player, Mitchell says back-to-back flag wins in the last two years have prolonged his enjoyment at the club.
“We’ve had success as a team and that always helps you enjoy your footy,” he said.
“When you’re winning and you’re building something, you find ways to enjoy your work and I’ve certainly been able to do that.”
Mitchell was out of contract at the end of this year, however he will now remain at the club until at least the end of the 2016 season.Hawks critical of the Obama administration’s outreach to Iran over the past eight years were in a distinctly upbeat mood as they took over an ornate Senate caucus room Thursday to promote their cause. The incoming Trump administration, many said, understands their case and the threat posed by the regime in Tehran far better than President Obama ever did.
Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John McCain and Democratic Sen. Robert Menendez, a longtime member of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, were among the lawmakers saying Mr. Trump and the team he is assembling will clearly be more skeptical of Iran and ready to call out any violations of the multinational nuclear deal Mr. Obama helped negotiate in 2015.
“There is every reason to believe and be hopeful that the president-elect will take a new set of eyes and a new approach to this theocracy. I’m very hopeful that will happen,” former Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Ridge, the first secretary of homeland security, told the briefing on the policy options on Iran held in the Russell Senate Office Building.
Mr. McCain said he was heartened by Mr. Trump’s choice of James N. Mattis to head the Defense Department, saying the retired Marine general was deeply familiar with the threat posed by Tehran to the U.S. and its regional allies. Gen. Mattis has criticized the Iran nuclear deal as “imperfect” and said in an April speech that “the Iranian regime, in my mind, is the single most enduring threat to stability and peace in the Middle East.”
“I don’t know, frankly, what Donald Trump wants to do [about Iran], but I do know the people he has selected so far for major positions I’ve been very pleased to see,” the Arizona Republican said.
The Capitol Hill event itself, put together by the Organization of Iranian American Communities,* marked another step in the remarkable evolution for one of the major sponsors of the event, the Paris-based National Council of Resistance of Iran and the NCRI’s largest component, the Mujahedeen-e Khalq (People’s Mujahedeen of Iran), or MEK.
A fierce opponent of the Islamic republic regime in Tehran and a source of many of the intelligence scoops detailing Tehran’s clandestine nuclear programs, the secular coalition broke with other elements of the coalition that toppled the Shah of Iran in the 1979 revolution, and has operated in exile ever since.
The MEK was placed on the State Department’s list of terrorist organizations in the mid-1990s but, backed by a growing number of supporters on Capitol Hill, was removed from the list in 2012. MEK officials say they have renounced violence but remain committed to the peaceful overthrow of the theocratic regime in Tehran in favor of a new secular, democratic government.
Camp Liberty resolved
The group was buoyed this year by the end of a long stalemate over Camp Liberty, a onetime U.S. military base in Iraq that became a holding post for over 3,000 MEK members, held there by the Iraqi government and constantly criticized by Iranian authorities. The last of those detained at the camp left Iraq this fall, many having been taken in by the government of Albania.
Former Sen. Joseph Lieberman, the 2000 Democratic candidate for vice president, told Thursday’s gathering that he voted for Hillary Clinton last month but that Mr. Trump’s surprise election, coupled with strong congressional majorities critical of the Iranian regime, could mean a major change in Iranian policy in the months ahead.
“I really think a new day is dawning for the cause of a free, stable, independent and democratic Iran,” said Mr. Lieberman, who noted the resolution of the Camp Liberty standoff means the NCRI “can focus on resistance and changing the regime” in Iran.
“Elections have consequences,” Mr. Lieberman said. “I can tell you, when it comes to Iran, the change from Barack Obama to Donald Trump is a very hopeful one. Now we go to an administration that is not protective or defensive of the Iran agreement, but is ready to challenge it.”
Mr. Trump has been sharply critical of the deal — and the tens of billions of dollars in frozen and sanctioned funds returned to Iran — but has been unclear on whether he would scrap it unilaterally or take a far more aggressive approach to enforcing it and calling out Iranian violations. Many of the other signatories to the deal, including Russia, China, Germany and France, have been actively exploring new commercial opportunities with Iran, in the energy sector and beyond.
For its part, Iran has stepped up its warnings against any move by the Trump administration to torpedo the nuclear deal and the lifting of international sanctions Iran demanded as part of the agreement.
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, considered a relative “moderate” on the Iranian political spectrum |
be one of the most significant and perhaps the most sophisticated fentanyl/carfetanil trafficking and exportation enterprises that has been uncovered in Canada to date,” Sgt,. Alex Lynch of the Kelowna RCMP Street Enforcement Unit said.
RCMP say the bust may have saved lives.
“It’s likely prevented many deaths,” Cpl. O’Donaghey said.Following Apple’s lead, Google and Microsoft will add “kill switches” to their next smartphone operating systems — a measure that has apparently led to a sharp drop in thefts of iPhones.
The announcement was made Thursday by New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman and San Francisco District Attorney George Gascon, who head a Secure Our Smartphones Initiative that has steamrolled initial opposition from the wireless industry with a campaign backed by law enforcement.
“This is very significant and validates everything we have been trying to do legislatively in Sacramento this past year,” said State Sen. Mark Leno, D-San Francisco, who has introduced a bill requiring every smartphone maker to have a kill switch.
A kill switch lets an owner remotely deactivate a stolen smartphone, rendering it useless until it is reactivated by its owner.
The move means that next year, the new versions of operating systems used by 97 percent of smartphones in the U.S. will have the anti-theft technology. About 3.1 million smartphone-related thefts were reported last year in the U.S., double the number in 2012, according to Consumer Reports.
In the first five months of this year, thefts of Apple devices fell by 17 percent in New York City while thefts of Samsung devices — without a switch — increased 51 percent from the same period a year earlier, according to new crime statistics in a report released with the announcement.
In San Francisco, thefts of Apple devices fell 38 percent, the report said.
But the battle is not over. The next step, according to the report, will be to make the anti-theft software part of the default operating system so the user doesn’t have to choose to activate it. Apple’s kill switch requires the user to activate it. A spokesperson for Gascon said the same will be true for Google’s and Microsoft’s.
“Because kill switches are only available on an opt-in basis, not enough consumers are signing up,” according to the report. “This underscores the urgency of (our) call to make kill switches a standard opt-out function on all phones.”
There are sharp divisions over which is best among proponents of some form of kill switch. Some say opt-out is best because most users will go with the default mode; others say users should be free to choose whether they want to use the feature.
Leno’s bill would require opt-out and has met opposition from some industry and advocacy groups. It has passed the Senate and has been working its way through various Assembly committees.
Leno said opt-out is necessary because “the deterrent, to be fully effective, must be ubiquitous. If it’s something you have to do as a consumer, the criminal is going to say my chances are 50-50” of getting a phone without a kill switch, he said.
Adi Kamdar of the Electronic Frontier Foundation disagreed.
“We think opt out isn’t the best way to approach any technological solution,” he said.
Apple’s kill switch, called an Activation Lock, works after the user turns on the operating system’s Find-My-iPhone feature. Mountain View-based Google, whose Android operating system runs on more than half of all smartphones in the U.S., said it would soon release details of its switch.
Microsoft, of Redmond, Wash., said its anti-theft feature will be offered as an update for phones running Windows Phone 8.0 and newer. Nokia phones run on Microsoft’s operating system.
Microsoft vice president for government affairs Fred Humphries said in a blog that Microsoft’s kill switch will include the ability to remotely erase personal data, render the smartphone inoperable by unauthorized users and prevent reactivation or setup without the authorized user’s permission.
Kill switches “make a lot of sense,” said Ken Dulaney, a mobile analyst with Gartner. “We have to stop people stealing phones. But if it’s not done well and causes a lot of support calls to carriers, it’s not going to help. If it’s done properly, it’s a great thing to have.”
The announcement is a big win for the initiative led by Schneiderman and Gascon, which has been racking up successes lately.
In September, three months after the initiative kicked off, Apple introduced its Activation Lock. Earlier this year, federal legislation was introduced requiring carriers and manufacturers to add anti-theft capabilities to smartphones. In April, CTIA, the wireless industry trade group, abandoned its opposition to the proposal.
Contact Pete Carey at 408-920-5419 Follow him on Twitter.com/petecarey.Chevron Corp. (CVX), the second-largest U.S. crude producer after Exxon Mobil Corp. (XOM), may be fined $84 million by Rio de Janeiro state for environmental damage from an offshore oil spill.
The San Ramon, California-based company’s operations in the Campos Basin off Rio’s coast will be monitored for two years through satellites, helicopters and vessels, the state’s environmental agency said in a statement on its website. Chevron will also have to pay for an environmental audit to assesses its ability to respond to accidents, the agency said.
Chevron has come under increased scrutiny in Brazil after 2,400 barrels of oil leaked from its Frade project in deep waters off the coast of Rio last month. Brazil’s federal environmental agency, known as IBAMA, fined Chevron 50 million reais last month. The country’s oil regulator prohibited Chevron from drilling any new wells for at least three months while it probes the spill.
The oil regulator, known as ANP, said last month it may fine Chevron as much as 50 million reais for each violation related to the incident. The company only provided partial video clips of the leak, didn’t report the presence of hydrogen sulfide in a well and didn’t meet requirements in a plan to cement and abandon the well that caused the leak, ANP Director Magda Chambriard said Dec. 1.
Chevron was only able to provide segments of the video at a time due to the size of the data coming from a remote area and is conducting tests to make sure it meets the regulator’s requirements for cementing the well that leaked, spokesman Scott Walker said in an e-mailed response to questions yesterday.
‘Energy Superpower’
The company reacted responsibly and will continue to cooperate with the Brazilian authorities to determine the cause of the incident, it said in an e-mailed statement today.
“We value our relationship with Brazil and look forward to being a partner with the country in developing its potential as an energy superpower,” Chevron said.
The total volume of oil on the surface of the ocean has been reduced to less than one barrel following cleanup efforts, Chevron said.This classic episode of Doctor Who, “The Dalek Invasion of Earth,” featured (as the title indicates) the return of the Daleks. When Ian said he thought they had destroyed the Daleks on Skaro, the Doctor pointed out that that was at a different time, presumably in the future, while the Daleks clearly had spread elsewhere prior to that. This device would allow for enemies to return time and again. Having “defeated” the Daleks or the Cybermen or the Master on one occasion wouldn’t be decisive, not only because they might find a way to reappear, but also because it would as a rule be possible to encounter them at an “earlier” point from those enemies’ perspective.
Because at this stage in the history of the show, one simply saw a name for each part and not of an overarching story, the viewer didn’t know that the Daleks were on Earth until the very end of the first part. The episode did a great job of creating a sense of growing menace: a sign prohibiting the dumping of bodies in the river, a London that was in a state of decay and eerily silent, without even the chimes of Big Ben.
For a show with a limited budget, the episode does quite a good job of giving the impression that most of the action is taking place in a largely deserted London.
The story is quite compelling, and still enjoyable even for viewers today.
The most famous element, and one that it is interesting to reflect on in light of the show’s subsequent development of the time lord mythos, is that in this episode the Doctor says goodbye to his granddaughter Susan, who has fallen in love with a man who was part of the human resistance against the Daleks. This was the first time a major character, one of the Doctor’s regular companions since the first episode, departed from the show.
It is crucial to remember that at this point, we knew nothing of time lords, of different biology such as two hearts, of Gallifrey, or of regeneration. If Susan stayed behind, would she have children that were half time-lord? Would Susan regenerate, and if so, what would the result be for her relationship with David? Would she ever find a way back to Gallifrey, and if so, what would the consequences be? The Doctor says in this episode, echoing the very first episode of the first season, that one day he would return to Susan, just as one day they would return to their home time and civilization.
Although the Doctor would later say that he “borrowed” the TARDIS to go exploring, and to run away, there have been many hints that there is more to it than that. Presumably the fuller story will explain why he was on the run with his granddaughter but not the rest of his family (and some novels and fan fiction has tried to fill in some of this story in the past).
Perhaps the story of Susan will see some further exploration in the 50th anniversary special(s)? It seems only fitting that the Doctor would take River Song to meet Susan. And of course, let’s not forget that Susan makes an appearance in “The Five Doctors.”
If you are a fan of the show, what do you think happened to Susan, and what do you think the show might explore regarding her story in the future?Bitcoin Is ‘Complete Garbage’ Says MarketWatch – We Disagree
Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies fail both as investments and useful money, wrote MarketWatch columnist Brett Arends yesterday. Does he have a point? Well in some ways yes, but many others no.
Also read: OTC Volumes Dip as Chinese Exchanges Start Withdrawals, but Market Is Changing
As Bitcoin and other cryptocurrency proponents, we’re well-used to hearing disparaging talk about the technology we follow. It’s easy and tempting to ignore, whether you’re a long-time holder living off the gains, or a newcomer trying to build the financial infrastructure of the future.
Check out the original article here.
Trolling any technology with a rabid fanbase is also a great way for a writer to get pageviews. Maybe that’s Arends’ motive — or maybe he wrote his piece out of genuine concern. We all know a few naive folk who know little about crypto, and will inevitably make bad decisions if they jump in.
Either way, the article deserves a good Fisking so we’re happy to deliver it. Here goes:
Wild-Eyed Revolutionaries
The column begins with a conversion no-one has ever heard in this industry. It’s with a bitcoin fan who thinks the technology is amazing but can’t think of a single use case:
Fan: Really, the “blockchain” technology is a total masterpiece, way ahead of its time!
You: Yes, yes, I understand that. But what is it actually for?
Fan: You don’t understand! It’s a completely decentralized money system! Totally revolutionary!
You: Honestly, does it have a purpose? Any purpose at all?
Fan: It’s the wave of the future!
And on it will go.
Really, the fan couldn’t even come up with the old trope about banking the unbanked? About how one might not trust our highly-manipulated central bank and stock market economy? About financial privacy? Recall Wences Casares’ tales of his family’s wealth ruined after frequent currency collapses in Argentina?
Those might be cliches by now, but surely a Bitcoin fan could pull one out of his hat. Onward:
Vice and Crime, and Nothing Else
Cryptocurrencies, or cybercurrencies, which have been in a massive financial mania until their sudden selloff this week, have two actual applications: online gambling and money laundering. Neither is the heart of a major business model. But that’s it.
We’ll ignore the word “cybercurrency” that no serious person actually uses. But notice how mainstream journalists love to point to a one-week price window and suggest that’s the final word on Bitcoin? Yes the price crashed. It has crashed before, and recovered, and crashed again. We know the price is volatile and it’s good advice to warn newcomers of that. But even if BTC suddenly dropped by $1,000 today, it’d still be far higher than a year ago. Was it a mistake to buy? Depends when you bought.
Then there’s suggestion that cryptos have only two applications: gambling and money laundering. He didn’t even say drugs or tax evasion, both of which are also great uses. Yes, criminals use cryptocurrencies. To a far greater degree they also use dollars. If something has value, bad people will use it for nefarious purposes. And in a twisted way, it helps to prove the technology actually works.
There are plenty of reasons the average person would value financial privacy. However some can’t see why. In a world where credit card hacks and identity theft are commonplace, where corporations know a frightening amount about our personal lives and use that information irresponsibly, greater privacy is a necessity. I don’t want to supply my name, address, full biography and purchase history every time I buy something — and that’s what you do with all the digital payment options available today.
Inflation, Debasement, Prices, and Money You Can Use
Are they really protections against the ravages of “inflation” and “monetary debasement” imposed by wicked governments? If so, how come people who keep their money in bitcoin and ethereum and the like have experienced Weimar Republic levels of consumer-price inflation just this week?
This argument is a bit nonsensical, since almost nothing is actually priced in bitcoin. Most items have a fiat value and you pay the BTC equivalent. It will remain that way so long as fiat currencies are the dominant payment method and bitcoin is the alternative.
If that ever changes, the price of the dominant payment method (BTC, ETH, diamonds or cans of mackerel) would likely stabilize. And if your local fiat currency does implode — quickly via hyperinflation or slowly via debasement — then yes, you’ll need something else as an alternative.
Bitcoin Is for Speculation, Not Money
Admittedly, before all this, the price of these cybercurrencies had skyrocketed. Those who got in at the start of the year have turned $1 into $30. But this looks more like a speculation than a currency. And what will tomorrow bring? I have a pretty good idea how many potatoes I can buy with my dollars next week. Bitcoins? Good luck with that.
I’ll admit, price volatility makes for a poor currency. And right now, cryptocurrencies are both speculative and experimental. The technology has only existed since 2009 and first gained mainstream attention in 2013. We’d be foolish to assume bitcoin or ethereum are ready to step in and replace the currency of a major country tomorrow. You can make a quick buck this week if you’re lucky with price movements; otherwise cryptos are a long-term bet.
You notice, incidentally, that these bitcoiners continue to measure the market price of their beloved new currencies in terms of, er, old-fashioned U.S. dollars.
Of course we do, because like it or not, local fiat currencies are the current established norm and we all need to use them in daily life. Most businesses don’t accept cryptocurrency — yet — and we’ll always have to pay our taxes in the government-sanctioned unit. We’re betting that this could change at some point in the future.
But don’t worry, our financial system is completely stable and flawless. Nothing could possibly go wrong… right?
There Are Too Many Damn Blockchains
Bitcoin, the grandaddy of them all, might at one point have claimed value as a unique entity. If it held a monopoly among the people who wanted to use a cryptocurrency so they could play online poker or finance international crime, it would have some worth. Yet in the past few years multiple competitors have erupted. There are now 25 with individual market values above $100 million, several above $1 billion. Yet all the bitcoins in the world are still “valued” at around $40 billion. Fast-growing rival ethereum was worth bupkis at the start of the year. Today it’s valued at $31 billion, or almost 10 times as much as the company ESRT, -0.05% that owns the Empire State Building. Preposterous? You make the call.
Indeed that’s a crazy rise. But you’ll even find thousands of bitcoiners who think ETH shouldn’t be worth that much. The “cryptocurrency community” isn’t a homogenous blob of enthusiasm for everything blockchain, by any means. Some are good ideas, some are terrible. Most of us “fans” aren’t advising anyone to pour their life savings into one platform.
For what it’s worth, I visited the Empire State Building in February. It’s beautiful and iconic — but it’s also aging and dusty, with amenities unsuitable for today’s businesses. These days it struggles to attract quality tenants. In 2012, SeekingAlpha noted it has 875,000 square feet of vacant space and advised readers not to buy it.
OK, that’s a very specific example. But the point is, even a shiny symbol of prosperity eventually wears out — and is replaced by something with features more suited to its time. Is it the same with money? The ways we pay today are very different to 100 years ago. Our current system worked for a while, but it’s showing a few cracks. Shouldn’t we at least be trying to create something better?
Do you have any better arguments? Sure you do. Let’s hear them.
Images via Pixabay, Quickmeme,Real life trials of a groundbreaking array designed to clean up the vast plastic island in the Pacific are due to begin next year after successful tests of a prototype in the Netherlands
A crowdfunded 100km-long boom to clean up a vast expanse of plastic rubbish in the Pacific is one step closer to reality after successful tests of a scaled-down prototype in the Netherlands last week.
Further trials off the Dutch and Japanese coasts are now slated to begin in the new year. If they are successful, the world’s largest ever ocean cleanup operation will go live in 2020, using a gigantic V-shaped array, the like of which has never been seen before.
The so-called ‘Great Pacific garbage patch’, made up largely of tiny bits of plastic trapped by ocean currents, is estimated to be bigger than Texas and reaching anything up to 5.8m sq miles. It is growing so fast that, like the Great Wall of China, it is beginning to be seen from outer space, according to Jacqueline McGlade, the chief scientist of the UN environmental programme (Unep).
“We have to admit that there has been a market failure,” she told the Guardian. “Nevertheless, we have to create a market success that brings in new forms of chemistry and technology.”
The Ocean Cleanup project aims to do the technology part with a floating barrier as long as the Karman line that reaches from the sea to outer space.
Sea currents and winds will be used to passively funnel plastic debris into an elbow made of vulcanised rubber where it can be concentrated for periodic collection by vessels.
Sub-sea buoys at depths of up to 30 metres would anchor the contraption in depths of up to 4.5km. Sea currents flowing beneath its booms would allow fish to escape, while hoovering up 42% of the Pacific’s plastic soup. At least, that is the plan.
“Everything is unknown so everything is a potential problem,” said Lourens Boot, the programme’s chief engineer, who has previously worked on offshore oil and gas rigs. “The risk matrix is big, but one by one we are tackling those risks.” One of the biggest has been finance.
Charles Moore, the racing boat captain who discovered the floating vortex in 1997, once said that the cost of a cleaning operation would “bankrupt any country”.
But around half the scheme’s initial €30m (£20m) budget has now been raised through online donations and wealthy sponsors. In the long term, the project plans to finance itself with a major retail line of ocean plastic fashion wear.
“We’ve analysed the quality of the plastic which was surprisingly good,” said Boyan Slat, the 21-year-old founder of the project. “We did some tests and the material is very recyclable. Tens of companies – large corporations – have shown an interest in buying up the plastic and that is our holy grail; funding the clean-up using revenues created by the plastic we extract.”
Facebook Twitter Pinterest The Ocean Cleanup founder and CEO, Boyan Slat. Photograph: The Ocean Cleanup
Boyan wears jeans made from ocean plastic but he is an unlikely green hero. A college drop-out and self-described “super geek,” he won a Guinness Book of World Records entry when he was 13 for simultaneously launching 213 highly-pressurised rockets. Last year he received the UN’s highest environmental award from Ban Ki-moon and was voted one of the most promising entrepreneurs worldwide.
“It is a classic David and Goliath project that couldn’t have happened 20 years ago,” he says. “Without social media it wouldn’t have gone viral. Without crowdfunding, it wouldn’t have had any money and without Skype, hundreds of volunteers spread out across the globe wouldn’t have come together.”
The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa) says it is encouraged by the attention being given to the Pacific’s pollution problem but cautions the technology is at an early stage. “There are a lot of feasibility issues with new technology and with open ocean cleanups,” Asma Mahdi, a Noaa spokeswoman told the Guardian.
Mahdi singled out the distribution of ocean debris way below the visible garbage patch, and the potential for harming sealife caught in the project’s cleanup barrier.
“By skimming floating debris off the surface, we may be doing more harm than good for marine surface-dwellers,” she said. “This includes the microscopic plankton that are the base of the marine food web and responsible for nearly half of the oxygen production that occurs on our planet.”
The project says that by focussing on the ocean’s crest they can remove a layer of trash that would otherwise sink, without disturbing sea life.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest ‘Codends’ filled with plastic particles after trawling the Great Pacific Garbage Patch for one hour. Photograph: The Ocean Cleanup
“The current flows underneath the barriers, taking away everything with neutral buoyancy - like plankton and other fish - while the positively buoyant plastic, up to a certain threshold, remains in front of it,” Slat said.
Its transboundary coalition of online ocean activists has already notched some impressive research achievements.
Early results from a research expedition to the Pacific earlier this year show plastic concentrations in the Pacific at least 10 times greater than expected, according to Slat.
“The previous studies estimated 10 kilos of plastic per square kilometer but we found it was in the hundreds of kilos per square kilometer,” he said.
The full study results will be released next year, but the scale of the threat posed to wildlife – and humans – is already known.
At least 100,000 sea mammals and millions of seabirds and fish and are thought to die each year from entanglement in the plastic muck or ingestion of its microplastics.
One recent study estimated that around 90% of the world’s sea birds had eaten colourful plastic items that they mistook for food.
In this way, decades of discarded plastic bottles, bags and stryrofoam cups are disintegrating at sea under the sun’s UV rays, releasing toxic chemicals such as PCBs and DDT into the food chain.
A Unep report to be published next year estimates plastic debris volumes at around 10-100 items per square km in the English channel, compared to four per square metre in Indonesia and nearly a million per square km in the north Pacific subtropical gyre.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Around 90% of the world’s sea birds have eaten plastic items that they mistook for food, a study estimates. Photograph: Chris Jordan/Midway: Message from the Gyre
“The concentrations are getting a bit scary,” McGlade said. “From the surface to the sea floor there is a hundred-fold increase [in plastics] accumulating and it has a smothering effect. It is hidden and has a tremendous impact on oxygenation and a huge number of marine ecosystems.”
This hidden cache of seafloor trash will not be touched by the ocean clean-up project – and neither will microplastics smaller than 5mm in diameter. McGlade calls it “the biggest issue” with the project.
Slat counters that, by mass, these microplastics represent less than 1% of the Pacific’s plastic pollution. Without rapid action at the sea’s surface, it will grow exponentially.
The floating garbage dump in the north pacific subtropical gyre circulates between eastern Japan and the seas north of Hawaii and west of California. There, debris congregates in the space where warmer waters from the south Pacific meet cooler waters from the Arctic, creating a spinning vortex of plastic.
It is a surreal and lonely place, says Boyan, who travelled there on the research expedition, a world away from the Marin maritime research institute in Wageningen, in the Netherlands, where waves ripple, swirl and crash into one another around a mocked-up boom.
Every time a foghorn sounds, wave formations roll out of a mechanical line under floodlights, in a test designed to mimic natural conditions.
“For sure, the tests have been successful,” Slat said. “The goal was to simulate what would happen if we had a very long barrier and we didn’t see any weird behaviour.”
“The real trick will happen once we go deeper,” Boot added.
According to McGlade: “The problem is that it is still a relatively small-scale test but it did withstand wind and wave conditions such that we would be confident – maybe not out in the widest open ocean – but certainly in conditions around Europe that it would be effective.”
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Crew aboard Mega Expedition volunteer vessel ExtremeH20 check the contents of the ‘codends’ after trawling the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. Photograph: The Ocean Cleanup
Slat argues that wave conditions in the mid-Pacific ocean are actually less challenging than in shallower coastal waters such as the English Channel, where a lower wave steepness may, counter-intuitively, be more likely to spill water over the barrier.
But he also backs proposals to prevent plastic pollution at source. Floating barriers at the mouth of river outlets to the world’s oceans have been mooted, particularly in the developing world where the problem is growing fastest.
Unep wants to see a market mechanism that can set industrial standards for use of biodegradable plastics, because of the way that polyethylene, a thermoplastic polymer found in plastic bags, rapidly disintegrates in sea water.
While the UN group is an enthusiastic supporter of Slat’s Pacific cleanup plans, McGlade stressed that it should be seen as a beginning and not an end for ocean remediation projects.
“This example is one we want to encourage, but I’m hoping that across the world more and more innovative ideas will come about,” she said.
• This article was amended on 26 November 2015. An earlier version referred to polyethylene as a metal-based additive, rather than a thermoplastic polymer.Story highlights Donald Trump slammed Mitt Romney for criticizing him Thursday after asking for his endorsement 4 years ago
The brash billionaire said Romney "would have dropped to his knees" for his support in 2012.
Romney said earlier Thursday that Trump does not have the temperament to be president and that his party is at a crossroads
Washington (CNN) Donald Trump struck back at 2012 GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney Thursday, blasting the former Massachusetts governor for "begging" for his endorsement four years ago only to sharply criticize him now.
"I don't know what happened to him," Trump said during a rally in Portland, Maine. "You can see how loyal he is. He was begging for my endorsement. I could have said, 'Mitt, drop to your knees.' He would have dropped to his knees."
Just hours before Trump, Romney gave a speech blasting the reality TV star as bad on foreign policy and lacking the temperament to be president.
"Think of Donald Trump's personal qualities, the bullying, the greed, the showing off, the misogyny, the absurd third grade theatrics," he said. "We have long referred to him as 'The Donald.' He is the only person in America to whom we have added an article before his name. It wasn't because he had attributes we admired."
But Garrett Jackson, a former personal aide to Romney, later tweeted on Thursday that the former Massachusetts governor never "begged" Trump for his endorsement -- adding that he wished "I would've recorded Trump kissing Mitt's ass."
Read MoreA man who went on national television and told how family members of former Gov. Sarah Palin were involved in a brawl at an Anchorage birthday party says he was fired from a his job at a local paving company after speaking up. Eric Thompson, who appeared on ABC's "Good Morning America" last week, posted a video on YouTube Tuesday seeking work.
He said he hopes his video will "get the word out that the Palins do have a lot of political power and can get you fired for telling the truth."
Thompson said he has no ill will toward the owners of McKenna Bros. Paving, whom he said fired him for giving his account of the brawl.
In the video, Thompson asks for donations to his GoFundMe site and the public's help in finding work. "Within an hour of the airing of my interview on 'Good Morning America,' I was fired from my job for telling the truth about the Palin brawl," Thompson says, addressing the camera.
The video pans to a shot of Thompson holding a cardboard sign reading "Won't Work 4 Palin!" while standing on an Anchorage street.
So far Thompson is the only witness to speak on the record with news media about the house-party brawl on Sept. 6. "I didn't understand what was going to happen, and it just blew up," Thompson said.
In an interview at attorney Kevin Fitzgerald's office on Monday, Thompson gave his account of the evening and what happened once it became a national story. Police said roughly 20 people were involved. Police spokesperson Jennifer Castro confirmed that members of the Palin family were at the party and said alcohol was a factor in the fight. Nobody involved in the fight had wanted to press charges, Castro wrote.
The party was at the home of Korey Klingenmeyer, office manager for McKenna Bros. Paving. About 70 people had gathered to celebrate the birthday of Marc and Matthew McKenna, owners of the company, Thompson said. Todd Palin, a friend of the McKennas and fellow Iron Dog snowmachine racer, was also celebrating his birthday.
The Palins showed up in a stretch limo Hummer around 8:30 or 9 p.m., Thompson said. The family was mingling with other guests, and there didn't appear to be any animosity between partygoers, he said.
Later in the evening, the atmosphere soured, he said. There was a fight, which Thompson said he didn't see, involving the son of a friend and Palin's son Track. Soon after that, Thompson said, he watched as Palin's daughters, Bristol and Willow, marched toward his friend's wife. Klingenmeyer stepped in and asked them to leave, he said. "Hey, this isn't happening. You girls need to go. Get off my property. It's time to go back to Wasilla," Thompson said Klingenmeyer told them. "He's being really, really polite."
At that point, Thompson said, "they take about three steps back and Bristol reaches back and punches him in the face." She hit Klingenmeyer at least six times, he said. "Straight, hard punches to the face."
The homeowner "just kind of pushes her away from himself and she tumbles and falls," he said. Words were exchanged between Todd Palin and Klingenmeyer, he said. A crowd gathered, and the incident quickly deteriorated into a massive "dogpile" fight, Thompson said, although he couldn't see all those involved.
When the crowd split up, the Palin family jumped into the Hummer, Thompson said. Before they left, Track Palin stood outside the Hummer with his shirt off, flipping off the crowd and yelling obscenities, he said. Sarah Palin screamed out of the Hummer, "Don't you know who we are?" he said.
After they left, "the whole party was just like wow, that sucks," Thompson said. A few minutes later, the police arrived.
"Whenever the police show up, the party is over," Thompson said.
Thompson said the incident was "a lot to do with a lot of nothing."
"If anything, I think it just shows you that (the Palins) are normal. Normal people have those issues," he said.
Thompson said 10 people gave witness statements to police.
Thompson recounted the story to several media outlets. He said ABC News had pressured him into talking, saying his name was already in the police report and it was a matter of public record.
"I feel now that I was just exploited and they had their own agenda," Thompson said. "The next thing you know... it's national news."
Thompson's account with "Good Morning America" aired Friday. Thompson got a call from Matt McKenna that same morning, around 8:30 a.m., he said. McKenna had seen the news clip and told Thompson, "My brother and I can't have this, you're done. Turn in your truck," Thompson said.
"I was like 'Jeez, really?' " Thompson said. "I couldn't understand why it would reflect badly on them.
"I wasn't in the front yard, an employee of McKenna Bros. Paving, punching somebody in the face," Thompson said. "That was the Palins. They did this, not me.
"I feel that maybe they got squeezed," Thompson continued. "Maybe Palins do wield a little more, you know, power.... Anybody that's ever come against them, they seem to just, you know, find a way to destroy them," Thompson said.
"I've had many people call me and tell me that man, you screwed up, you should have never said anything about them," Thompson said.
Despite losing his job, Thompson said he doesn't hold anything against the McKennas. "Absolutely not," Thompson said. "They're good people. They really are.
"I feel bad for them, actually, because it's come back on them worse than it did on me," Thompson said.
Thompson doesn't plan to pursue legal action against the company. "I don't want to do anything to hurt them," he said. He has retained an attorney simply to deal with the number of media requests he has received.
McKenna Bros. Paving could not be reached for comment Tuesday.
Now, Thompson is focused on finding another job, he said. But he might take a vacation first.
"I think I need to go put my feet in the water, get a cold beer in my hand," he said. "Get out of the limelight completely."
As of Tuesday evening, his GoFundMe site had raised nearly $5,000.
Thompson said the video was made at the suggestion of his nephew, who thought it might help raise money for the newly unemployed 56-year-old.
The video was met by some criticism, including from Thompson's son, he said.
"I probably have to agree with (critics), it is kind of weird.... But at the same time, on the first of the month, guess what? I've got a house payment to pay," Thompson said.Technology - Paraline Element One of the most difficult aspects in the design of a line array loudspeaker is finding an effective way to control the vertical dispersion characteristics of the high frequency material. In order for a line array cabinet to be effective, the horizontal dispersion must be wide enough to deliver effective room coverage, but the vertical dispersion must be tightly focused and leave the loudspeaker in a narrow, virtually flat front wave that seamlessly couples with waves emanating from the cabinets immediately above and below in the array. If this is done effectively, then program from a line of cabinets leaves the system as a combined, single wave known as an Isowave, in perfect phase with a minimum of cabinet interference, comb filtering or lobing. A conventional high frequency horn design, like that used in typical point source loudspeaker designs, creates a wave with far too much curve as it leaves the cabinet to work in a line array system. To modify a conventional horn to create a wave as focused and as narrow as required for effective coverage in a line array, the horn would have to be far too long to be physically practical to build, to move or to use in any loudspeaker system. The Paraline horn lens, designed and patented by Tom Danley, is capable of producing a wavefront shape of a horn that in conventional terms would be metres long using an element less than one inch deep. It creates desired exit wavefront curvature in a small faction of the normally required path length and effectively takes care of the impractical depth needed to make an array of horns that sum into a non-interfering source. When combined with the Synergy Horn, the Paraline element controls the vertical dispersion and the Synergy Horn controls the focused and controlledDavid Breunig last seen Friday in Orono
A 21-year-old Maine Maritime Academy student was reported missing Saturday, officials with the Hancock County Sheriff's Office said.David Breunig, of Westbrook, a junior at the academy in Castine, was last seen leaving a residence in the Crosby Street neighborhood of Orono on Friday night.He has not been seen or heard from since."We hold hope for David’s safety," academy President Dr. William Brennan said in a statement. "Additional information will be provided as it becomes available."Students are encouraged to contact the school's counseling services if needed.Police said Breunig is 6 feet 4 inches fall with a slim, athletic build. He has blue eyes and brown hair.He was last seen wearing a black shirt, dark jeans and brown boots.Sheriff's deputies said they are working with academy officials and the Orono Police Department on the case.Anyone with information is asked to call 207-667-7575.
A 21-year-old Maine Maritime Academy student was reported missing Saturday, officials with the Hancock County Sheriff's Office said.
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to two (2) times the number of rounds. If there are 5 rounds, you will win 10 points.The runner-up of a 1v1 tournament will receive bonus points equal to one (1) times the number of rounds. If there are 5 rounds, you will win 5 points.
List of All 1v1 HSSTL Tournies
+ Show Spoiler +
Tourny Unranked: Tourny Unranked: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=212100
TEAM - The CORE and FOCUS of the HSSTL
=================
3) GSTL Style Team League
+ Show Spoiler + Team Match every Saturday at 9:00 pm EST
Coordinator must be in chatroom HSSTL by 9:10 pm EST or else your team may receive an auto forfeit and loss.
Group-Stages will be Bo7 regardless of Team Size Updated 4/10
A Win will give your team 1 point.
If you Win with only 1 set loss, you will get 2 points instead.
If you Sweep the series, you will get 3 points. (If your team sweeps the series 4-0).
The teams with the most points from each region will advance to the regionals (East and West for now), where they will be entered into a Round of 8 Single Elimination GSTL-style Tournament.
Note: Until we get enough teams, we may start with a Round of 8 Single Elimination GSTL-style Tournament, with 1 Round each week before starting the ladder-style qualification league. Seeding would be random.
We have 42+ teams atm, so screw that ^_^ The regionals (bracket) will probably be determined by match win not points.
List of All HSSTL Seasons
+ Show Spoiler +
http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=213396 Season 0 (Pre-Season)
The Regions:
Alberta + Washington state
North California
South California and SEA,
British Columbia
New England
East Canada
South US
East Central US
Central US
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MAPS
=================
We will be using the most relevant GSTL Map Pool, which is from GSTL March; the GSTL before the recent GSTL WC.
For each week, a new selection of 7 maps out of the following 9 will be posted. A new selection will be posted for each round of the HSSTL. These selections' maps are to be played in order and cannot be altered. For the Grand Finals and/or Bracket, we may have Bo9s and therefore use all 9 maps, but this is not determined yet.
GSTL GSL Crevassé
GSTL GSL Crossfire SE
MLG Metalopolis
GSTL GSL Tal'Darim Altar
MLG Xel'Naga Caverns
GSTL GSL Terminus SE
GSTL GSL Dual Sight
Blizzard Typhon Peaks
GSTL GSL Xel'Naga Fortress
Map Version/Author Notes:
+ Show Spoiler + MLG is the same version as the GSL versions of the Blizzard maps they use in GSL/GSTL : The bottom of the ramps cannot be walled off with 2 3x3 buildings and you can not spawn close ground positions.
For Typhon Peaks, just use the version uploaded by Blizzard.
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THE RATING SYSTEM
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Ratings will be updated regularly at our website!
INDIVIDIAL
=================
Players will be ranked by their Rating = Points / Matches
Again, each Showmatch or Tournament Round counts as one Match. Each Match gives 2 points for a win or 4 points for a sweep.
TEAM
=================
Teams will be ranked by their total Points = Points
Again, each Team Match gives 1, 2, or 3 points.
=================
LOOKING FOR A TEAM?
=================
TEAM FINDER AND TEAM INFORMATION AND REQUIREMENTS
Old, waiting for new website:
+ Show Spoiler + On the website there will be a list of teams and next to that team it will say one of these: (OPEN)
(CLOSED)
(ACCEPTING: then some sort qualification)
Each team must specify which of these that they are and must alert StAxis, Yoshi, or StKala to make a change, the teams will each have an email address and or a player to contact in game.
Each team can only have up to 4 foreign players! Foreign as in, from a different school!
If you want to leave your team as a foreign player, you MUST be traded with another player or after a season (if/when implemented). Choose your team wisely! You can't just freelance and screw up people's plans, teamwork, and schedules! Pick a team and stay committed as a team member!
You can have more than 1 team from each High School.
Teams have no minimum amount, although it should be obviously beneficial to have at least 5 players so you can play all 5 matches in a Bo7 Team Match. You can sign yourself up as a 1 man team and just play the Individual Events. Teams need to have at least 5 people on them. This will encourage people to look for and recruit other players to get them involved with eSports. There is also no maximum amount.
To qualify as a high schooler, you must be in high school at the beginning of a season.
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HALL OF FAME
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All School Team Match Winners and Individual 1v1 Tournament Winners will be posted in our Hall of Fame.
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SPONSORS & DONATIONS
=================
As of now, we have no sponsors. If anyone is interested in helping out, please PM me.
If you want to donate, all money will be greatly appreciated and go towards the tournament via prize pool (most likely the Team League Finals, since that is the focus of the HSSTL).
=================
CASTING
=================
If you're in a HSL tournament, they have many fine casters!
If you want to help us cast anything, PM us! (please don't post here we may not see it)
This will be a good way for people who want to practice or try to get their name out there
=================
CHEATING
=================
C'mon, really? Don't cheat. It's not cool.
[spoiler]If you're not in high school, we will hunt you down and eat you (alive or dead, up to you, although it may depend if we have a grill with us or not).
If you're smurfing, we will eat you too.
If we suspect you may be smurfing, hacking, cheating, or pretending to be a little kid not in college or older, then you will receive severe severe penalties. Not only for you, but the entire team. AKA, permanent ban forever and ever.
I may not sound serious, but we will take it very seriously.[/spoiler]
Repeat: ANY ILLEGAL PLAYER ON ANY HIGH SCHOOL TEAM WILL LEAD TO A PERMANENT BAN FOR EVERYONE IN THAT TEAM. COORDINATORS ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR KNOWING WHERE THEIR FOREIGN PLAYERS ARE FROM.
=================
CONTACTS
=================
PM me, Yoshi Kirishima or zalien here on TL
or message us in game
Yoshi.855
STAxis.550
about feedback or cheating or problems.
=================
IN CLOSING
=================
For the community, we hope the HSSTL will be a great success. But whether or not it will become one will be decided by you, the community. So please, share feedback, comments, and anything here! Let's all partake in another step in eSports history, and do it in the name of Starcraft!
CROSS-REGION SERVER ISSUE
=================
Obviously, because we can't play cross-region, this will only be for the North American League. If anyone in another server wants to start one up, then feel free to join us and ask for help!
IF YOU'RE NOT IN NORTH AMERICA BUT HAVE A NORTH AMERICA ACCOUNT, FEEL FREE TO JOIN! + Show Spoiler + + Show Spoiler + Update AchievementsUpdate Schedule and InformationThanks to Kaoriyu, we love you! This is his work:Update 4/8/2011 - Kick-Off______________________________Foreign players now have to be within neighboring counties!!!+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++HSSTL is coming...with all its glory...and all its horrorFirst of all, thank you TeamLiquid. I love you all <3.And I love you too Cella!eSports has been growing significantly recently, and I'm sure you've all been getting wiggly and jiggly. I'm sure you've all been getting nerd chills and goosebumps. In the last couple months, we found out about the NASL. Even more recently, we found out about the IGN Pro League. eSports is here and it's here to stay. But some of us just aren't progamers. We don't know how to get there, and can only watch our favorite players, supporting them and cheering them on for them to succeed in what we can't do, to live our dreams.But with my 1337th post, I thought I'd like to do something very special. A dream project that's now been materialized. A helpful stepping stone for those who want to get serious, competitive, or even for those of you who just want to play casually for fun. Some of you may have been notified about this already, so here are the details. And without further ado...I present to you all the! But this is more than just your average tournament. The HSSTL will not only host both team and individual style tournaments, but also provide a ranking of all High School players who participate. This way pro teams can see who the best of the best are and you can get your shot at fame and fortune. The HSSTL will provide a list of people and teams who are welcome to teaching you and giving you a spot on their roster.Website (under heavy construction): https://sites.google.com/site/starcrafthighschoolleague/ REGISTRATION:Each team must needs to post here-High School Name and location (City, State)-Coordinator (and e-mail)-Roster (Character.Code)Template Example:=================THE EVENTS=================At first we were just going to follow a simple CSL-esque weekly format of a random GSTL-style weekly match with another high school every Saturday, but we're going to try something fun and more rewarding, hopefully fostering a more competitive atmosphere that will award the more active teams.There are two kinds of Rankings -- Team and IndividualThere are three kinds of events you as a player or team can participate in.INDIVIDUAL=================1) Individual 1v1 Showmatch Series2) Individual 1v1 TournamentsTEAM - The CORE and FOCUS of the HSSTL=================3) GSTL Style Team League=================MAPS=================We will be using the most relevant GSTL Map Pool, which is from GSTL March; the GSTL before the recent GSTL WC.For each week, a new selection of 7 maps out of the following 9 will be posted. A new selection will be posted for each round of the HSSTL. These selections' maps are to be played in order and cannot be altered. For the Grand Finals and/or Bracket, we may have Bo9s and therefore use all 9 maps, but this is not determined yet.GSTL GSL CrevasséGSTL GSL Crossfire SEMLG MetalopolisGSTL GSL Tal'Darim AltarMLG Xel'Naga CavernsGSTL GSL Terminus SEGSTL GSL Dual SightBlizzard Typhon PeaksGSTL GSL Xel'Naga FortressMap Version/Author Notes:=================THE RATING SYSTEM=================Ratings will be updated regularly at our website! https://sites.google.com/site/starcrafthighschoolleague/ INDIVIDIAL=================Players will be ranked by their Rating = Points / MatchesAgain, each Showmatch or Tournament Round counts as one Match. Each Match gives 2 points for a win or 4 points for a sweep.TEAM=================Teams will be ranked by their total Points = PointsAgain, each Team Match gives 1, 2, or 3 points.=================LOOKING FOR A TEAM?=================TEAM FINDER AND TEAM INFORMATION AND REQUIREMENTSOld, waiting for new website:=================HALL OF FAME=================All School Team Match Winners and Individual 1v1 Tournament Winners will be posted in our Hall of Fame.=================SPONSORS & DONATIONS=================As of now, we have no sponsors. If anyone is interested in helping out, please PM me.If you want to donate, all money will be greatly appreciated and go towards the tournament via prize pool (most likely the Team League Finals, since that is the focus of the HSSTL).=================CASTING=================If you're in a HSL tournament, they have many fine casters!If you want to help us cast anything, PM us! (please don't post here we may not see it)This will be a good way for people who want to practice or try to get their name out there=================CONTACTS=================PM me, Yoshi Kirishima or zalien here on TLor message us in gameYoshi.855STAxis.550about feedback or cheating or problems.=================IN CLOSING=================For the community, we hope the HSSTL will be a great success. But whether or not it will become one will be decided by you, the community. So please, share feedback, comments, and anything here! Let's all partake in another step in eSports history, and do it in the name of Starcraft!CROSS-REGION SERVER ISSUE=================Obviously, because we can't play cross-region, this will only be for the North American League. If anyone in another server wants to start one up, then feel free to join us and ask for help!IF YOU'RE NOT IN NORTH AMERICA BUT HAVE A NORTH AMERICA ACCOUNT, FEEL FREE TO JOIN! =================INDIVIDUAL 1v1 TOURNAMENTS==================================MAPS=================We will be using the most relevant GSTL Map Pool, which is from GSTL March; the GSTL before the recent GSTL WC.For each week, a new selection of 7 maps out of the following 9 will be posted. A new selection will be posted for each round of the HSSTL. These selections' maps are to be played in order and cannot be altered. For the Grand Finals and/or Bracket, we may have Bo9s and therefore use all 9 maps, but this is not determined yet.GSTL GSL CrevasséGSTL GSL Crossfire SEMLG MetalopolisGSTL GSL Tal'Darim AltarMLG Xel'Naga CavernsGSTL GSL Terminus SEGSTL GSL Dual SightBlizzard Typhon PeaksGSTL GSL Xel'Naga FortressMap Version/Author Notes:=================HALL OF FAME=================All School Team Match Winners and Individual 1v1 Tournament Winners will be posted in our Hall of Fame.=================SPONSORS & DONATIONS=================As of now, we have no sponsors. If anyone is interested in helping out, please PM me.If you want to donate, all money will be greatly appreciated and go towards the tournament via prize pool (most likely the Team League Finals, since that is the focus of the HSSTL).=================CASTING=================If you're in a HSL tournament, they have many fine casters!If you want to help us cast anything, PM us! (please don't post here we may not see it)This will be a good way for people who want to practice or try to get their name out there=================CONTACTS=================PM me, Yoshi Kirishima or zalien here on TLor message us in gameYoshi.855STAxis.550about feedback or cheating or problems.=================IN CLOSING=================For the community, we hope the HSSTL will be a great success. But whether or not it will become one will be decided by you, the community. So please, share feedback, comments, and anything here! Let's all partake in another step in eSports history, and do it in the name of Starcraft!CROSS-REGION SERVER ISSUE=================Obviously, because we can't play cross-region, this will only be for the North American League. If anyone in another server wants to start one up, then feel free to join us and ask for help!IF YOU'RE NOT IN NORTH AMERICA BUT HAVE A NORTH AMERICA ACCOUNT, FEEL FREE TO JOIN!Old OP as of July 10, 2010 Mid-master streaming MECH ONLY + commentary www.twitch.tv/yoshikirishima +++ "If all-in fails, all-in again."Alliance for Youth Movements corporate support
Tony Cartalucci, Contributing Writer
Activist Post
Bangkok, Thailand May 20, 2011 – As Adolf Hitler noted, “all propaganda has to be popular and has to accommodate itself to the comprehension of the least intelligent of those whom it seeks to reach.” Certainly the writers handing US President Barack Obama his “Middle East speech” had a particularly ignorant audience in mind. Holding to the narrative that the “Arab Spring” uprising were spontaneous Obama would parrot, “It is not America that put people into the streets of Tunis and Cairo — it was the people themselves who launched these movements, and must determine their outcome.”
However, the “Arab Spring” was entirely engineered, prepared for, activists trained, funded, and equipped by the United States, years in advance, based on successes and experience garnered from decades of extraterritorial meddling. In particular, a coalition between the US State Department, NGOs, corporations, and organizations entirely contrived for the sole purpose of fomenting unrest in foreign nations, began as early as 2008 preparing for what is now unfolding in the Middle East and North Africa.
Beyond a mere conspiracy theory, the New York Times itself conceded in an article titled, “U.S. Groups Helped Nurture Arab Uprisings,” that “a number of the groups and individuals directly involved in the revolts and reforms sweeping the region, including the April 6 Youth Movement in Egypt, the Bahrain Center for Human Rights and grass-roots activists like Entsar Qadhi, a youth leader in Yemen, received training and financing from groups like the International Republican Institute, the National Democratic Institute and Freedom House, a nonprofit human rights organization based in Washington…” Also implicated in the New York Times report was the National Endowment for Democracy, which provided these organizations the bulk of their funding.
Egypt & Tunisia
The Egyptian April 6 Movement was in New York City as early as 2008 receiving training and an opportunity to “network” at the US State Department sponsored Alliance for Youth Movements (AYM) summit. In 2009, the April 6 Movement then attended training at the US-created CANVAS organization in Serbia before returning to Egypt to partake in the year-long run up to the revolution led by International Crisis Group trustee Mohamed ElBaradei and his “National Front for Change.” In fact, April 6 Movement members attempted to welcome ElBaradei when he first returned to Egypt back in February, 2010, almost a full year before the “Arab Spring” would begin.
Thus President Obama is an absolute, degenerate liar, intentionally misleading the American people and the world abroad about what is unfolding throughout the Arab world. The level of duplicity is unprecedented as is the scale of the ambition of the corporate-financier interests driving this plot throughout the Middle East, North Africa, and outward toward Beijing and Moscow. Not only was Egypt’s unrest meticulously engineered and executed by the US, but so was the unrest in Tunisia, Syria, Yemen, Bahrain, and Libya.
In an April 2011 AFP report, Michael Posner, the assistant US Secretary of State for Human Rights and Labor, stated that the “US government has budgeted $50 million in the last two years to develop new technologies to help activists protect themselves from arrest and prosecution by authoritarian governments.” The report went on to explain that the US “organized training sessions for 5,000 activists in different parts of the world. A session held in the Middle East about six weeks ago gathered activists from Tunisia, Egypt, Syria and Lebanon who returned to their countries with the aim of training their colleagues there.” Posner would add, “They went back and there’s a ripple effect.” The ripple effect Posner is talking about is of course the unrest Obama claims was launched by “the people themselves.”
Libya
Perhaps the most absurd proposition of all is the attempt to portray the events in Libya as a spontaneous people’s revolution. In fact, for 30 years the US, UK, and the US-created Al-Qaeda, supported armed militants in Libya’s east in their bid to overthrow Qaddafi. Hopefully the following time-line will lay to rest the official narrative as the profane lie that it is.
1980s: US-CIA backed National Front for the Salvation of Libya (NFSL) made multiple attempts to assassinate Qaddafi and initiate armed rebellion throughout Libya.
1990s: Noman Benotman and the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) wage a campaign of terror against Qaddafi with Osama Bin Laden’s assistance.
1994: LIFG kills 2 German anti-terrorism agents. Qaddafi seeks arrest warrant for Osama Bin Laden in connection to the attack but is blocked by MI6 who was concurrently aiding the LIFG.
2003: Upon Qaddafi’s abandonment of WMD programs, Libya’s collaboration with MI6 & the CIA to identify and expose the LIFG networks begins, giving Western intelligence a windfall of information regarding the group. Ironically this information would give Western nations an entire army to rebuild and turn against Qaddafi in 2011.
2005: NFSL’s Ibrahim Sahad founds the National Conference of Libyan Opposition (NCLO) in London England.
2011: Early February, the London based NCLO calls for a Libyan “Day of Rage,” beginning the “February 17th revolution.”
2011: Late February, NFSL/NCLO’s Ibrahim Sahad is leading opposition rhetoric, literally in front of the White House in Washington D.C. Calls for no-fly zone in reaction to unsubstantiated accusations Qaddafi is strafing “unarmed protesters” with warplanes.
2011: Late February, Senators Lieberman and McCain and UK PM David Cameron call for providing air cover for Libyan rebels as well as providing them additional arms.
2011: Early March; it is revealed UK SAS special forces are already operating inside Libya
2011: Mid-March; UN adopts no-fly zone over Libya, including air strikes. Immediately, the mission is changed from “protecting civilians” to “ousting Qaddafi.” Egypt violates the arms embargo of UN r.1973 with Washington’s full knowledge by supplying Libyan rebels with weapons, while Al Qaeda’s ties to the rebels are admitted by everyone including the rebels themselves.
2011: Late April; Documented evidence is revealed that Libya’s rebels are conducting a barbaric campaign, employing extrajudicial killings, indiscriminate military force, child-soldiers, landmines, and torture. New York Times blames a lack of support.
2011: Late April, early May; Followed by calls to assassinate Qaddafi, ordnance crash into his son’s home killing him and 3 of Qaddafi’s grandchildren. NATO concurrently seeks a new UN resolution authorizing ground troops while aggressor states seek to release seized Libyan assets to the rebels.
With the US-educated Mahmoud Gibril Elwarfally, interim prime minister of the contrived rebel “Libyan Transitional National Council,” standing before the Brookings Institution for a May 12, 2011 talk saying “what’s taking place is a natural product of the globalizational process that started in the mid-80s,” any lingering doubts as to who these rebels are fighting for and what their final goal is, is laid to rest.
Mahmoud Elwarfally, the rebel “prime minister” speaks before the Brookings Institution declaring the Libyan rebellion was a natural product of “the globalizational process.”
….
Elwarfally would go on to talk about a “new global cultural paradigm,” and “new global values,” common values, shared by many “young people.” These young people, he says, are calling for human dignity, democracy, and inclusion at all levels of national government, repeating verbatim statements coming from geopolitical meddler Zbigniew Brzezinski and the myriad of US-funded NGOs that promote these “new global values.” Elwarfally would go on to reveal that Libya’s future is to serve as a “a lake” to develop the skills of Africans to serve the needs of the European Union.
Again we see a globalist trained stooge, not “the people” determining the fate of a nation mired in carefully crafted chaos. Whatever the people on the ground think they are truly fighting for, it most likely diverges entirely from what Elwarfally articulated before his corporate-financier admirers amongst the Brookings Institution.
Syria
Syria has been slated for regime change since at least 1991. In 2002, under the Bush administration, Syria would be added to the growing “Axis of Evil.” It would be later revealed that this escalation was accompanied by covert funding for opposition groups inside of Syria.
In an April 2011 CNN article, State Department spokesman Mark Toner was quoted as saying, “We’re not working to undermine that [Syrian] government. What we are trying to do in Syria, through our civil society support, is to build the kind of democratic institutions, frankly, that we’re trying to do in countries around the globe. What’s different, I think, in this situation is that the Syrian government perceives this kind of assistance as a threat to its control over the Syrian people.”
Toner’s remarks came after the Washington Post released cables indicating the US has been funding Syrian opposition groups since at least 2005 under the Bush administration and was continued under Obama. Coupled with Posner’s remarks regarding the training of Syrian activists who were sent back to their homeland to confront their government, it is clear that it was not “the people themselves who launched these movements.” We will also see that it is most certainly not be “the people” who determine their outcome either.
Order Out of Chaos
Mark Toner’s comments regarding US support for “civil society” that is attempting to build “democratic institutions” around the globe is in fact quite telling when one understands that “civil society” and “democratic institutions” are euphemisms for imperial networks. Such euphemisms are similar to the guise of spreading “civilization” the Romans and the British used as they conquered and subjugated populations globally.John Thys, AFP | British Prime Minister Theresa May (L) and European Commission chief Jean-Claude Juncker pose prior to a Brexit negotiation meeting on December 4, 2017, at the European Commission in Brussels.
Britain and the EU failed to strike a Brexit divorce deal during talks in Brussels on Monday but said they were "confident" of reaching an accord later this week.
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British Prime Minister Theresa May and European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker fell short of a breakthrough, despite encouraging progress on the thorny issue of the Irish border.
The EU says Britain must make sufficient progress on key divorce issues -- Ireland, Britain's financial bill for leaving the bloc, and the rights of EU nationals in Britain -- to allow the opening of trade and transition talks at a summit on December 15.
"The DUP put the brakes on the deal" - FRANCE 24's Bénédicte Paviot on Brexit talk breakdown
"Despite our best efforts and the significant progress we and our teams have made in the past days on the remaining withdrawal issues, it was not possible to reach a complete agreement today," Juncker said at a joint news conference with May.
"This is not a failure... I am very confident that we will reach an agreement in the course of this week."
Juncker, a former Luxembourg prime minister, said May was a "tough negotiator and not an easy one."
May said differences remained on a "couple of issues".
"But we will reconvene before the end of the week, and I am also confident we will conclude this positively," May said.
‘Getting closer'
The failure of the talks came despite EU president Donald Tusk saying just hours earlier that negotiators were "getting closer to sufficient progress" at the December summit, and that he was "encouraged" by a phone call with Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar.
Tusk -- who was to see May later in Brussels, and who cancelled a Middle East trip because of the "crucial" talks -- said recently that Monday was the "absolute deadline" for an improved offer from London.
Irish broadcaster RTE said Britain was ready to keep the EU customs and single market rules for Northern Ireland in order to meet Dublin's insistence that Brexit should not bring back a "hard border" and threaten a peace process that ended decades of sectarian tensions.
Irish Taoiseach speaks after Brexit talks breakdown
Dublin's demands on the status of the border with British-ruled Northern Ireland have been the key stumbling block recently, with fears that the talks could even collapse amid tensions between the two neighbours.
But an angry reaction from the Northern Irish unionists who prop up May's minority Conservative government meant there was still no deal three hours later, and the meeting was put on hold while May made calls to try to win them over.
"We will not accept any form of regulatory divergence which separates Northern Ireland economically or politically from the rest of the United Kingdom," Democratic Unionist Party leader Arlene Foster said in a statement.
In a sign of the tensions within the United Kingdom caused by Brexit, the leaders of Scotland and Wales together with the mayor of London all called for similar deals to the one being considered for Northern Ireland.
May, Brexit minister David Davis and the prime minister's Brexit adviser Olly Robbins attended the "working lunch" with Juncker, the EU Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier and Juncker's chief of staff Martin Selmayr.
Exit bill, citizens rights
The EU has demanded "sufficient progress" from Britain on the exit bill, citizens rights and Ireland in order to move on to talks on a post-Brexit transition period of up to two years, and on a future relationship including a trade deal.
Failure to do so this month could make the EU "rethink" whether an overall Brexit withdrawal deal is possible at all, Tusk has warned, raising the prospect of a chaotic exit with far-reaching economic effects.
After months of stalemate, London and Brussels have effectively reached a deal on the divorce settlement, reported to be 45 billion to 55 billion euros ($51 to $63 billion), and previously the most contentious issue.
Despite anger from Brexit supporters, they appear to have reached a compromise, with London increasing its offer but Brussels offering enough wiggle room for the British government to be able to present its own, lower figures to the public.
A deal is also close on the rights of more than three million Europeans living in Britain, though there is still disagreement over whether they would be protected by the European Court of Justice -- a red line for Brexit supporters in Britain.
(AFP)The Philadelphia Fraternal Order of Police (FOP) condemned Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton for deliberately ignoring the widows and families of police officers murdered in the line of duty — heavily implying that those executed were victims of domestic terrorist group, Black Lives Matter.
The mothers of Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, Eric Garner, and others are scheduled to speak at the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia.
“President John McNesby and the membership of Philadelphia Lodge 5 FOP are shocked and saddened by the planned choice of speakers at the upcoming DNC in Philadelphia,” the letter reads:
The Fraternal Order of Police is insulted and will not soon forget that the Democratic Party and Hillary Clinton are excluding the widows, and other family members of Police Officers killed in the line of duty who were victims of explicit, and not implied racism, and “being on duty in blue.” It is sad that to win an election Mrs. Clinton must pander to the interests of people who do not know all the facts, while the men and women they seek to destroy are outside protecting the political institutions of this country. Mrs. Clinton, you should be ashamed of yourself if that is possible.
Black Lives Matter has repeatedly, publicly agitated for police murders and its supporters light up Twitter with gleeful hate directed at dead cops after every massacre. The Philadelphia Fraternal Order of Police’s stinging rebuke comes in response to Clinton’s unite-the-fringes strategy that aims to channel the anti-racism, anti-cop frenzy into votes for Democrats.
Clinton is hoping historic black turnout can send her to the White House. The specter of racism, combined with the mainstream media’s wall-to-wall coverage of police shootings and Obama’s “stigmatize-and-federalize” campaign against local law enforcement, may override black voters’ economic concerns in an era of suppressed wages. Longtime Clinton ally Virginia Terry McAuliffe has also worked to boost black turnout by restoring all Virginia felons’ voting rights in one sweeping executive order — as many as one in five felons in Virginia are black.
The anti-cop campaign carried out by the media and Democrats has bloody consequences: Black militants murdered five police officers in Dallas and three in Baton Rogue in July, wounding twelve more — not counting the multiple cop executions carried out since the Ferguson riots in 2014. Murder rates have spiked in major U.S. cities as police leave the force and withdraw from troubled neighborhoods in order to avoid a media firestorm.
Yet Clinton has largely ignored devastated law enforcement families while lecturing Americans that their alleged racism is responsible for police shootings.When Big Pharma develops a new prescription medication, the regulatory authorities, such as the US FDA, set regulatory guidelines for not only the claims made by the company but also for the manufacturing standards. Every ingredient used to manufacture a pill or injectable must be listed in the package insert and must be tested during the three or phases of clinical trials.
In general, if a pharmaceutical company makes any changes to the ingredients, even something as simple as a binder in the pill, it must re-file with the regulatory authorities for clearance to do so. Even if a manufacturer changes equipment or a process, without changing the the ingredients, it is required to file those changes with the FDA, and they may not proceed with the change.
The same is not true of so called “natural health products.” In fact, according to a study published in BMC Medicine, the majority of herbal products on the market contain ingredients that are not listed on the product’s label. Furthermore, these companies (let’s call them Big Herbal) often substitute some of the ingredients with cheaper, untested alternatives and fillers.
The researchers used a technique called DNA barcoding technology, which is a taxonomic method that uses a short genetic marker in an organism’s DNA to identify it, even if it is mixed in with DNA from other organisms, to examine the ingredients in 44 herbal products from 12 companies in Canada.
Results:
Only two of the companies provided authentic products without substitutions, contaminants or fillers.
Overall, nearly 60% of the herbal products contained plant species not listed on the label.
Only 50% actually contained the plant claimed on the label.
About 32% substituted another plant.
About 20% contained contaminants of a variety of non-plant sources.
About 20% contained fillers.
Yes, you read that right. Of the 44 herbal products studied, only about half actually contained the plant product that was claimed on the label. Moreover, the 20% that used fillers used rice, soybeans and wheat (probably GMO, ironically).
Lead author Steven Newmaster, an integrative biology professor and botanical director of the Guelph-based Biodiversity Institute of Ontario (BIO), home of the Canadian Centre for DNA Barcoding stated that, “contamination and substitution in herbal products present considerable health risks for consumers. We found contamination in several products with plants that have known toxicity, side effects and/or negatively interact with other herbs, supplements and medications.”
For example, one product that was labelled as St. John’s wort, a plant with claimed anti-depression activity (unless the research is done in Germany, the evidence is very weak), actually contained another plant, Senna alexandrina, which has strong laxative properties, and with chronic use, can cause diarrhea and liver damage, along with negatively interacting with immune system in the colon. So, you could take this medication in the hope (as farfetched as that is) of treating your depression, but end up going to the hospital because it harms several organs.
Or the other example of a Ginkgo biloba, which is claimed (and solidly refuted by science) to treat certain neurological deficits such as Alzheimer’s disease, was contaminated with black walnut, a serious danger to people with nut allergies. So, another product with absolutely no benefit to humans, but may actually be danger.
And let’s not forget the fillers like rice, soybeans or wheat, which may be a worry for individuals who may be allergic to these ingredients, or, in the case of wheat, may be sensitive to gluten (which is incredibly rare).
With all of this data, the authors concluded:
Most of the herbal products tested were of poor quality, including considerable product substitution, contamination and use of fillers. These activities dilute the effectiveness of otherwise useful remedies, lowering the perceived value of all related products because of a lack of consumer confidence in them. We suggest that the herbal industry should embrace DNA barcoding for authenticating herbal products through testing of raw materials used in manufacturing products. The use of an SRM DNA herbal barcode library for testing bulk materials could provide a method for ‘best practices? in the manufacturing of herbal products. This would provide consumers with safe, high quality herbal products.
There is so little evidence that any of these supplements do anything for you. There is little evidence that Big Herbal, a US$142 billion worldwide market (and highly profitable because they’re not regulated and don’t have to do any clinical research to support their nonsensical claims), actually is concerned about your health, only about making profits. But there is growing evidence that some of these products do more harm than even the claimed benefit.
And more evidence that Big Herbal has ethical issues that if they ever showed up in Big Pharma, there would be worldwide clamoring for criminal prosecution. Time for the same outrage against Big Herbal.
Key citations:
Linde K, Berner MM, Kriston L. St John’s wort for major depression. Cochrane Database Syst Rev. 2008 Oct 8;(4):CD000448. doi: 10.1002/14651858.CD000448.pub3. Review. PubMed PMID: 18843608. Impact factor=5.72.
Newmaster SG, Grguric M, Shanmughanandhan D, Ramalingam S, Ragupathy S. DNA barcoding detects contamination and substitution in North American herbal products. BMC Medicine 2013 Oct;11 |
they're also hella cool looking. And they represent the cyborg aesthetic, complete with cool body mods, taken to its furthest extent. Artists have been inspired by the Borg to create everything from Steampunk eyepieces to Venetian masks to My Pretty Ponies.
Thanks to Lauren Davis for life-saving research help.A new movement is forming with a simple message: ‘Stay in Europe to change Europe.’
On 23rd June, Britain will vote on whether or not to leave the EU. It’s going to be close, and radical and progressive voices may well decide the outcome. We need to act – not just to win the refrendum, but to fight for the Europe we need.
Join Yanis Varoufakis, Caroline Lucas, Muzna Al-Naib, Katia Widlak, Amelia Womack, Asad Rehman, Anthony Barnett, John McDonnell, Owen Jones, Michael Mansfield and a host of other campaigners to discuss and debate the ideas we need to win.
With workshops, skills training, and participatory breakouts.
Sessions include:
Reigning in corporate power: tax and financial reform
Defending free movement, ending fortress Europe
Organising across borders for workers’ rights
Resisting power: Europe and human rights
Preserving the future: environmental sustainability
International partner
Democracy in Europe 2025
Diem25.org
info@diem25.org
Organised by
Another Europe Is Possible
anothereurope.org
info@anothereurope.org
Media partner
Open Democracy
Opendemocracy.net
info@opendemocracy.netSweden’s secret intelligence service has revealed it is actively hunting “several” Islamic State terrorists who have reached the country with the intention of launching a mass attack, and the United States Embassy has upgraded its advice to citizens in response to the threat.
Despite the information about a threat to the country, the Swedish security service (SAPO) has chosen not to upgrade the national threat rating. This decision has elicited some comment in the country, especially considering the coming celebrations for the Swedish King’s 70th birthday on Saturday, and Eurovision song contest ina fortnight.
Both high profile events and potential targets, thousands are expected to attend Eurovision, and most of Europe’s royals are invited to attend the King’s birthday on Saturday. Sweden’s Aftonbladet reports SAPO is now being “cautious” after an embarrassing “incident”, where a significant man-hunt was launched to catch an individual who turned out to be an “ordinary refugee”.
Regardless seven or eight Islamist militants are understood to have arrived in the country and are thought to be preparing to launch an operation against the country immediately.
Responding to the threat, the American embassy in Stockholm issued an update to travel guidance to citizens yesterday, stating: “terrorist groups continue to plan near-term attacks throughout Europe, targeting sporting events, tourist sites, restaurants, and transportation… be aware of immediate surroundings and avoid crowded places”.
The statement follows an earlier blanket warning for the whole of Europe issued in March in the wake of the Brussels bombings.
Although the American government has taken the threats seriously, the revelation of the presence of active Islamists terrorists in Sweden has brought into sharp focus the lack of preparedness the authorities have for a mass attack of the kind seen in other European nations in the past decade.
Nor the Stockholm metro and public transit authority, Sweden’s airports, or the emergency services have made any contingency plans, or initiated extra security measures, reports Expressen. A spokesman for the group which owns Sweden’s ten largest airports told journalists because the government hadn’t raised the threat level, they had not acted. Indeed, in the past when the level had temporarily increased they still had not adjusted their practices.
Listen to the discussion of this article on Breitbart News Daily on SiriusXM:StripTease is a growing collection of EKG rhythm strips for rapid interpretation- a critical skill in intensive care medicine- plus a venue for detailed discussion.
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24,442 total views, 12 views todayLAST JUNE, JUST 16 DAYS SHY OF her 80th birthday, Thelma Howard died in a Santa Monica nursing home. When her will was read, there were two stunning surprises. The first was that Howard—who had worked as Walt Disney’s housekeeper for more than three decades—had amassed a $9.5 million fortune, mostly in Disney stocks. The second was that she had bequeathed half her estate to disadvantaged children, to be overseen by the newly formed Thelma Pearl Howard Foundation. “There had been so much pain and tragedy in my aunt’s life, I think she felt she missed being young,” says Howard’s niece Cheryl Wallace, of Lewiston, Idaho. “She wanted to give something back to children.”
The second of five children born into a poor Idaho farming family, Howard was 6 when her mother died during childbirth, and by the time she left Idaho at 18, she’d lost two of her siblings as well. She tried business college in Spokane, Wash., but dropped out for lack of money. By 1931 she had moved to L.A., where she worked at a soda fountain, did office work and cleaned houses. She took a live-in job at Disney’s Holmby Hills estate in 1951 and quickly became a favorite of Disney’s two children, Diane and Sharon. “The housekeeper before Thelma banished my sister and me from the kitchen,” says Diane Disney Miller, now 61. “But when Thelma came, we spent all our time there. She could put on a full dinner with a roast and fresh pie and have kids drawing pictures at the kitchen table.
She made the place warm, and she made it work.” She made it work for Disney, too, by keeping the fridge stocked with hot dogs, a favorite snack he wolfed down cold when he came home. Every Christmas he rewarded Howard with shares of his ever-expanding empire. She never sold any, bought more herself, and numerous stock splits over the years helped her amass nearly 193,000 shares by the time of her death.
That fortune will now be split between Michael—her 55-year-old son from an early marriage, who is in a home for the developmentally disabled—and the foundation, which will distribute funds to children’s charities in Southern California. “My dad used to say she was the real Mary Poppins,” says Miller with a smile. “He was right.”The Seventh Sally or How Trurl's Own Perfection Led to No Good
Stanislaw Lem
The Universe is infinite but bounded, and therefore a beam of light, in whatever direction it may travel, will after billions of centuries return— if powerful enough—to the point of its departure; and it is no different with rumor, that flies about from star to star and makes the rounds of every planet. One day Trurl heard distant reports of two mighty constructor-benefactors, so wise and so accomplished that they had no equal; with this news he ran to Klapaucius, who explained to him that these were not mysterious rivals, but only themselves, for their fame had circumnavigated space. Fame, however, has this fault, that it says nothing of one's failures, even when those very failures are the product of a great perfection. And he who would doubt this, let him recall the last of the seven sallies of Trurl, which was undertaken without Klapaucius, whom certain urgent duties kept at home at the time.
In those days Trurl was exceedingly vain, receiving all marks of veneration and honor paid to him as his due and a perfectly normal thing. He was heading north in his ship, as he was the least familiar with that region, and had flown through the void for quite some time, passing spheres full of the clamor of war as well as spheres that had finally obtained the perfect peace of desolation, when suddenly a little planet came into view, really more of a stray fragment of matter than a planet.
On the surface of this chunk of rock someone was running back and forth, jumping and waving his arms in the strangest way. Astonished by a scene of such total loneliness and concerned by those wild gestures of despair, and perhaps of anger as well, Trurl quickly landed.
He was approached by a personage of tremendous hauteur, iridium and vanadium all over and with a great deal of clanging and clanking, who introduced himself as Excelsius the Tartarian, ruler of Pancreon and Cyspenderora; the inhabitants of both these kingdoms had, in a fit of regicidal madness, driven His Highness from the throne and exiled him to this barren asteroid, eternally adrift among the dark swells and currents of gravitation.
Learning in turn the identity of his visitor, the deposed monarch began to insist that Trurl—who after all was something of a professional when it came to good deeds—immediately restore him to his former position. The thought of such a turn of events brought the flame of vengeance to the monarch's eyes, and his iron fingers clutched the air, as if already closing around the throats of his beloved subjects.
Now Trurl had no intention of complying with this request of Excelsius, as doing so would bring about untold evil and suffering, yet at the same time he wished somehow to comfort and console the humiliated king. Thinking a moment or two, he came to the conclusion that, even in this case, not all was lost, for it would be possible to satisfy the king completely—without putting his former subjects in jeopardy. And so, rolling up his sleeves and summoning up all his mastery, Trurl built the king an entirely new kingdom. There were plenty of towns, rivers, mountains, forests, and brooks, a sky with clouds, armies full of derring-do, citadels, castles, and ladies' chambers; and there were marketplaces, gaudy and gleaming in the sun, days of back-breaking labor, nights full of dancing and song until dawn, and the gay clatter of swordplay. Trurl also carefully set into this kingdom a fabulous capital, all in marble and alabaster, and assembled a council of hoary sages, and winter palaces and summer villas, plots, conspirators, false witnesses, nurses, informers, teams of magnificent steeds, and plumes waving crimson in the wind; and then he crisscrossed that atmosphere with silver fanfares and twenty-one gun salutes, also threw in the necessary handful of traitors, another of heroes, added a pinch of prophets and seers, and one messiah and one great poet each, after which he bent over and set the works in motion, deftly making last-minute adjustments with his microscopic tools as it ran, and he gave the women of that kingdom beauty, the men—sullen silence and surliness when drunk, the officials—arrogance and servility, the astronomers—an enthusiasm for stars, and the children—a great capacity for noise. And all of this, connected, mounted and ground to precision, fit into a box, and not a very large box, but just the size that could be carried about with ease. This Trurl presented to Excelsius, to rule and have dominion over forever; but first he showed him where the input and output of his brand-new kingdom were, and how to program wars, quell rebellions, exact tribute, collect taxes, and also instructed him in the critical points and transition states of that microminiaturized society—in other words the maxima and minima of palace coups and revolutions— and explained everything so well that the king, an old hand in the running of tyrannies, instantly grasped the directions and, without hesitation, while the constructor watched, issued a few trial proclamations, correctly manipulating the control knobs, which were carved with imperial eagles and regal lions. These proclamations declared a state of emergency, martial law, a curfew, and a special levy. After a year had passed in the kingdom, which amounted to hardly a minute for Trurl and the king, by an act of the greatest magnanimity—that is, by a flick of the finger at the controls—the king abolished one death penalty, lightened the levy, and deigned to annul the state of emergency, whereupon a tumultuous cry of gratitude, like the squeaking of tiny mice lifted by their tails, rose up from the box, and through its curved glass cover one could see, on the dusty highways and along the banks of lazy rivers that reflected the fluffy clouds, the people rejoicing and praising the great and unsurpassed benevolence of their sovereign lord.
And so, though at first he had felt insulted by Trurl's gift, in that the kingdom was too small and very like a child's toy, the monarch saw that the thick glass lid made everything inside seem large; perhaps too he dully understood that size was not what mattered here, for government is not measured in meters and kilograms, and emotions are somehow the same, whether experienced by giants or dwarfs—and so he thanked the constructor, if somewhat stiffly. Who knows, he might even have liked to order him thrown in chains and tortured to death, just to be safe—that would have been a sure way of nipping in the bud any gossip about how some common vagabond tinkerer presented a mighty monarch with a kingdom. Excelsius was sensible enough, however, to see that this was out of the question, owing to a very fundamental disproportion, for fleas could sooner take their host into captivity than the king's army seize Trurl. So with another cold nod, he stuck his orb and scepter under his arm, lifted the box kingdom with a grunt, and took it to his humble hut of exile. And as blazing day alternated with murky night outside, according to the rhythm of the asteroid's rotation, the king, who was acknowledged by his subjects as the greatest in the world, diligently reigned, bidding this, forbidding that, beheading, rewarding—in all these ways incessantly spurring his little ones on to perfect fealty and worship of the throne.
As for Trurl, he returned home and related to his friend Klapaucius, not without pride, how he had employed his constructor's genius to indulge the autocratic aspirations of Excelsius and, at the same time, safeguard the democratic aspirations of his former subjects. But Klapaucius, surprisingly enough, had no words of praise for Trurl; in fact, there seemed to be rebuke in his expression.
"Have I understood you correctly?" he said at last. "You gave that brutal despot, that born slave master, that slavering sadist of a pain- monger, you gave him a whole civilization to rule and have dominion over forever? And you tell me, moreover, of the cries of joy brought on by the repeal of a fraction of his cruel decrees! Trurl, how could you have done such a thing?"
"You must be joking!" Trurl exclaimed. "Really, the whole kingdom fits into a box three feet by two by two and a half... it's only a model...."
"A model of what?"
"What do you mean, of what? Of a civilization, obviously, except that it's a hundred million times smaller.”
"And how do you know there aren't civilizations a hundred million times larger than our own? And if there were, would ours then be a model? And what importance do dimensions have anyway? In that box kingdom, doesn't a journey from the capital to one of the corners take months—for those inhabitants? And don't they suffer, don't they know the burden of labor, don't they die?"
"Now just a minute, you know yourself that all these processes take place only because I programmed them, and so they aren't genuine...."
"Aren't genuine? You mean to say the box is empty, and the parades, tortures, and beheadings are merely an illusion?"
"Not an illusion, no, since they have reality, though purely as certain microscopic phenomena, which I produced by manipulating atoms," said Trurl. "The point is, these births, loves, acts of heroism, and denunciations are nothing but the minuscule capering of electrons in space, precisely arranged by the skill of my nonlinear craft, which—"
"Enough of your boasting, not another word!" Klapaucius snapped. "Are these processes self-organizing or not?"
"Of course they are!"
"And they occur among infinitesimal clouds of electrical charge?"
"You know they do.""And the phenomenological events of dawns, sunsets, and bloody battles are generated by the concatenation of real variables?"
"Certainly."
"And are not we as well, if you examine us physically, mechanistically, statistically, and meticulously, nothing but the miniscule capering of electron clouds? Positive and negative charges arranged in space? And is our existence not the result of subatomic collisions and the interplay of particles, though we ourselves perceive those molecular cartwheels as fear, longing, or meditation? And when you daydream, what transpires within your brain but the binary algebra of connecting and disconnecting circuits, the continual meandering of electrons?"
"What, Klapaucius, would you equate our existence with that of an imitation kingdom locked up in some glass box?!" cried Trurl. "No, really, that's going too far! My purpose was simply to fashion a simulator of statehood, a model cybernetically perfect, nothing more!"
"Trurl! Our perfection is our curse, for it draws down upon our every endeavor no end of unforeseeable consequences!" Klapaucius said in a stentorian voice. "If an imperfect imitator, wishing to inflict pain, were to build himself a crude idol of wood or wax, and further give it some makeshift semblance of a sentient being, his torture of the thing would be a paltry mockery indeed! But consider a succession of improvements on this practice! Consider the next sculptor, who builds a doll with a recording in its belly, that it may groan beneath his blows; consider a doll which, when beaten, begs for mercy, no longer a crude idol, but a homeostat; consider a doll that sheds tears, a doll that bleeds, a doll that fears death, though it also longs for the peace that only death can bring! Don't you see, when the imitator is perfect, so must be the imitation, and the semblance becomes the truth, the pretense a reality! Trurl, you took an untold number of creatures capable of suffering and abandoned them forever to the rule of a wicked tyrant.... Trurl, you have committed a terrible crime!"
"Sheer sophistry!" shouted Trurl, all the louder because he felt the force of his friend's argument. "Electrons meander not only in our brains, but in phonograph records as well, which proves nothing, and certainly gives no grounds for such hypostatical analogies! The subjects of that monster Excelsius do in fact die when decapitated, sob, fight, and fall in love, since that is how I set up the parameters, but it's impossible to say, Klapaucius, that they feel anything in the process—the electrons jumping around in their heads will tell you nothing of that!"
"And if I were to look inside your head, I would also see nothing but electrons," replied Klapaucius. "Come now, don't pretend not to understand what I'm saying, I know you're not that stupid! A phonograph record won't run errands for you, won't beg for mercy or fall on its knees! You say there's no way of knowing whether Excelsius's subjects groan, when beaten, purely because of the electrons hopping about inside—like wheels grinding out the mimicry of a voice—or whether they really groan, that is, because they honestly experience the pain? A pretty distinction, this! No, Trurl, a sufferer is not one who hands you his suffering, that you may touch it, weigh it, bite it like a coin; a sufferer is one who behaves like a sufferer! Prove to me here and now, once and for all, that they do not feel, that they do not think, that they do not in any way exist as being conscious of their enclosure between the two abysses of oblivion—the abyss before birth and the abyss that follows death—prove this to me, Trurl, and I'll leave you be! Prove that you only imitated suffering, and did not create it!
"You know perfectly well that's impossible," answered Trurl quietly. "Even before I took my instruments in hand, when the box was still empty, I had to anticipate the possibility of precisely such a proof—in order to rule it out. For otherwise the monarch of that kingdom sooner or later would have gotten the impression that his subjects were not real subjects at all, but puppets, marionettes. Try to understand, there was no other way to do it! Anything that would have destroyed in the littlest way the illusion of complete reality would have also destroyed the importance, the dignity of governing, and turned it into nothing but a mechanical game...."
"I understand, I understand all too well!" cried Klapaucius. "Your intentions were the noblest—you only sought to construct a kingdom as lifelike as possible, so similar to a real kingdom, that no one, absolutely no one, could ever tell the difference, and in this, I am afraid, you were successful! Only hours have passed since your return, but for them, the ones imprisoned in that box, whole centuries have gone by—how many beings, how many lives wasted, and all to gratify and feed the vanity of King Excelsius!"
Without another word Trurl rushed back to his ship, but saw that his friend was coming with him. When he had blasted off into space, pointed the bow between two great clusters of eternal flame and opened the throttle all the way, Klapaucius said:
"Trurl, you're hopeless. You always act first, think later. And now what do you intend to do when we get there?"
"I'll take the kingdom away from him!"
"And what will you do with it?"
"Destroy it!" Trurl was about to shout, but choked on the first syllable when he realized what he was saying. Finally he mumbled:
"I'll hold an election. Let them choose just rulers from among themselves."
"You programmed them all to be feudal lords or shiftless vassals. What good would an election do? First you'd have to undo the entire structure of the kingdom, then assemble from scratch...""And where," exclaimed Trurl, "does the changing of structures end and the tampering with minds begin?!" Klapaucius had no answer for this, and they flew on in gloomy silence, till the planet of Excelsius came into view. As they circled it, preparing to land, they beheld a most amazing sight.
The entire planet was covered with countless signs of intelligent life. Microscopic bridges, like tiny lines, spanned every rill and rivulet, while the puddles, reflecting the stars, were full of microscopic boats like floating chips.... The night side of the sphere was dotted with glimmering cities, and on the day side one could make out flourishing metropolises, though the inhabitants themselves were much too little to observe, even through the strongest lens. Of the king there was not a trace, as if the earth had swallowed him up.
"He isn't here," said Trurl in an awed whisper. "What have they done with him? Somehow they managed to break through the walls of their box and occupy the asteroid...."
"Look!" said Klapaucius, pointing to a little cloud no larger than a thimble and shaped like a mushroom; it slowly rose into the atmosphere. "They've discovered atomic energy.... And over there—you see that bit of glass? It's the remains of the box, they've made it into some sort of temple...."
"I don't understand. It was only a model, after all. A process with a large number of parameters, a simulation, a mock-up for a monarch to practice on, with the necessary feedback, variables, multistats..." muttered Trurl, dumbfounded.
"Yes. But you made the unforgivable mistake of overperfecting your replica. Not wanting to build a mere clocklike mechanism, you inad vertently—in your punctilious way—created that which was possible, logical, and inevitable, that which became the very antithesis of a mechanism...."
"Please, no more!" cried Trurl. And they looked out upon the asteroid in silence, when suddenly something bumped their ship, or rather grazed it slightly. They saw this object, for it was illuminated by the thin ribbon of flame that issued from its tail. A ship, probably, or perhaps an artificial satellite, though remarkably similar to one of those steel boots the tyrant Excelsius used to wear. And when the constructors raised their eyes, they beheld a heavenly body shining high above the tiny planet— it hadn't been there previously—and they recognized, in that cold, pale orb, the stern features of Excelsius himself, who had in this way become the Moon of the Microminians.SEOUL, Jul. 24 (Korea Bizwire) — The Seoul Metropolitan Government announced plans on Sunday to launch a campaign to tackle harmful drinking culture, a prevailing problem among South Korean businesses.
As part of its efforts to combat excessive drinking during business socializing sessions known as ‘hoesik’, the Seoul government is distributing simple guidelines outlining seven useful rules for workers to follow.
The seven rules recommended by Seoul government officials include drinking within your means, not forcing your colleagues to consume alcohol, drinking before 9 p.m., drinking slowly, not sharing a glass, opting for low-alcohol drinks, and lastly, avoiding ‘poktanju’, which is a shot consisting of soju and beer.
“Too many office workers are exposed to the excessive drinking culture such as poktanju or drinking the entire shot at one go, as it is widely considered an additional responsibility,” the Seoul government said.
“It is important that all company members help establish a healthy drinking culture.”
The excessive drinking culture in the South Korean business sector has been one of the biggest social issues facing the country, becoming a major factor behind a rising incidence of colorectal and liver cancer as well as driving under the influence.
According to findings from a survey on traffic safety conducted by the Seoul Municipal Government that was released earlier this month, nearly one in ten men has driven a vehicle at least once while drunk during the last year.
M.H.Lee (mhlee@koreabizwire.com)After years of fighting, activists who have been seeking to prevent the informally proposed Pebble Mine in Alaska's Bristol Bay region -- home of the world's two most prolific salmon runs -- may finally have something to cheer about. One of the two foreign companies in the joint venture formed to explore the Pebble deposit, Anglo American, announced today that it will be withdrawing from the partnership at an expected cost of $300 million dollars.
Anglo American CEO Mark Cutifani stated,"despite our belief that Pebble is a deposit of rare magnitude and quality, we have taken the decision to withdraw following a thorough assessment of Anglo American’s extensive pipeline of long-dated project options. Our focus has been to prioritize capital to projects with the highest value and lowest risks within our portfolio, and reduce the capital required to sustain such projects during the pre-approval phases of development as part of a more effective, value-driven capital allocation model. We wish the project well through its forthcoming permitting process and express our thanks to all those who have supported Pebble and who recognize the opportunities and benefits that such an investment may bring to Alaska.”
After Anglo American's exit from the partnership is complete, the Pebble Limited Partnership (PLP) will be wholly owned by the remaining partner, Canada's Northern Dynasty Minerals. Northern Dynasty has indicated it has no plans to alter its efforts to develop the Pebble deposit into a large-scale open pit mine.
Northern Dynasty CEO Ron Thiessen commented "Northern Dynasty will again own 100% of one of the world's most important copper & gold resources and will have the benefit of $541 million worth of expenditures, which opens the door to a number of exciting possibilities for Northern Dynasty and its shareholders and the Pebble Project and its stakeholders. Northern Dynasty and the Pebble Partnership have both the expertise and resources necessary to advance the Pebble Project."
The informally proposed Pebble Mine debate has labored on for years as opponents and proponents argue over the environmental impacts and economic benefits that a mine such as Pebble would bring to the Bristol Bay region. Public pressure may have reached a pinnacle in recent months, however, as scientific evidence mounts that mining in the Bristol Bay region would pose a grave threat to the world's greatest runs of wild salmon. After the closing of the EPA public comment period regarding its draft risk assessment of large scale mining in the Bristol Bay region, it was reported that 77% of respondents were against a mine such as Pebble being constructed in the region.U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel met with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi in New Delhi on Friday as part of a push to boost weapons sales to a new government eager to modernize its military, and to explore plans for the two nations to jointly develop a next-generation anti-tank missile.
Hagel’s visit to India – the world's biggest arms importer – comes ahead of Modi's first official visit to Washington next month.
Indian officials said they were close to finalizing a $1.4 billion deal to buy at least 22 U.S. Apache and 15 Chinook helicopters. India has also offered a follow-on order of 39 Apache helicopters in addition to the 22 now being negotiated, a defense ministry official said.
The initial batch of helicopters is meant to replace the Indian Air Force's aging fleet of Soviet-era aircraft, and will be armed with Hellfire and Stinger missiles.
The Indian army has separately requested a fleet of at least 39 of these attack aircraft, some of which will be deployed as part of a new mountain division it is raising along the disputed border with China, an army official said.
The United States is keen on securing greater military cooperation with India as Washington seeks to counter growing Chinese firepower in Asia. India, for its part, seems more interested in co-development opportunities than in simply buying American-made weapons. Part of that could include plans for the co-developing a Javelin missile that is cheaper, lighter and more capable.
Speaking to reporters traveling with him Thursday en route to New Delhi, Hagel said he recognizes India's intent to maintain its independence and develop its own industrial base.
"No country wants to be seen as a second cousin" to the U.S., Hagel said, adding that Washington must find ways to "adjust to what India's political requirements are, how they want to handle the relationship."
U.S. defense sales to India have grown from the low hundreds of millions of dollars in the decade to 2008 to more than $9 billion since that year. According IHS Jane's, a defense research firm, India was the top foreign buyer of U.S. arms last year.
U.S. officials say there is the potential for billions of dollars of new sales in the next few years, and are hoping the Modi administration, which came to power in May, can overcome bureaucratic obstacles that have held up some deals.
During the meeting Modi and Hagel also discussed the situation in Afghanistan, as U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry visited Kabul to try to resolve disputed elections that have raised fears of civil war.
India has voiced concern about instability in Afghanistan as the U.S. prepares to withdraw its troops. Modi told Hagel that a smooth transition of power in Afghanistan was essential for sustaining progress toward peace and stability, according to the Press Trust of India news agency.
The war in Afghanistan has also frayed relations with India as the U.S. pursued an often uneasy alliance with India’s arch-rival Pakistan, pressing Islamabad to go after Taliban insurgents launching attacks against coalition forces across the Afghan border. Pakistan and India – both nuclear-armed – have battled in three major wars since their partition in 1947. But more recently, they have taken some steps to improve relations.
Wire servicesIn the course of reporting his profile of Laura Poitras, Peter Maass conducted an encrypted question-and-answer session, for which Poitras served as intermediary, with Edward J. Snowden. Below is a full transcript of that conversation.
Peter Maass: Why did you seek out Laura and Glenn, rather than journalists from major American news outlets (N.Y.T., W.P., W.S.J. etc.)? In particular, why Laura, a documentary filmmaker?
Edward Snowden: After 9/11, many of the most important news outlets in America abdicated their role as a check to power — the journalistic responsibility to challenge the excesses of government — for fear of being seen as unpatriotic and punished in the market during a period of heightened nationalism. From a business perspective, this was the obvious strategy, but what benefited the institutions ended up costing the public dearly. The major outlets are still only beginning to recover from this cold period.
Laura and Glenn are among the few who reported fearlessly on controversial topics throughout this period, even in the face of withering personal criticism, and resulted in Laura specifically becoming targeted by the very programs involved in the recent disclosures. She had demonstrated the courage, personal experience and skill needed to handle what is probably the most dangerous assignment any journalist can be given — reporting on the secret misdeeds of the most powerful government in the world — making her an obvious choice.
P.M.: Was there a moment during your contact with Laura when you realized you could trust her? What was that moment, what caused it?
E.S.: We came to a point in the verification and vetting process where I discovered Laura was more suspicious of me than I was of her, and I’m famously paranoid. The combination of her experience and her exacting focus on detail and process gave her a natural talent for security, and that’s a refreshing trait to discover in someone who is likely to come under intense scrutiny in the future, as normally one would have to work very hard to get them to take the risks seriously.
With that putting me at ease, it became easier to open up without fearing the invested trust would be mishandled, and I think it’s the only way she ever managed to get me on camera. I personally hate cameras and being recorded, but at some point in the working process, I realized I was unconsciously trusting her not to hang me even with my naturally unconsidered remarks. She’s good.
P.M.: Were you surprised that Glenn did not respond to your requests and instructions for encrypted communication?
E.S.: Yes and no. I know journalists are busy and had assumed being taken seriously would be a challenge, especially given the paucity of detail I could initially offer. At the same time, this is 2013, and a journalist who regularly reported on the concentration and excess of state power. I was surprised to realize that there were people in news organizations who didn’t recognize any unencrypted message sent over the Internet is being delivered to every intelligence service in the world. In the wake of this year’s disclosures, it should be clear that unencrypted journalist-source communication is unforgivably reckless.
P.M.: When you first met Laura and Glenn in Hong Kong, what was your initial reaction? Were you surprised by anything in the way they worked and interacted with you?
E.S.: I think they were annoyed that I was younger than they expected, and I was annoyed they had arrived too early, which complicated the initial verification. As soon as we were behind close doors, however, I think everyone was reassured by the obsessive attention to precaution and bona fides. I was particularly impressed by Glenn’s ability to operate without sleep for days at a time.
P.M.: Laura started filming you from nearly the start. Were you surprised by that? Why or why not?
E.S.: Definitely surprised. As one might imagine, normally spies allergically avoid contact with reporters or media, so I was a virgin source — everything was a surprise. Had I intended to skulk away anonymously, I think it would have been far harder to work with Laura, but we all knew what was at stake. The weight of the situation actually made it easier to focus on what was in the public interest rather than our own. I think we all knew there was no going back once she turned that camera on, and the ultimate outcome would be decided by the world.SEATTLE -- Washington state is asking a federal judge to determine if his earlier injunction against President Donald Trump's initial travel ban also applies to the President's revised executive order.
Washington was the first state to sue over the original travel ban, which resulted in a federal judge in Seattle halting its implementation around the country. Attorney General Bob Ferguson on Thursday said the state would ask Judge James Robart to extend his temporary restraining order against the first ban to Trump's revised order.
"In our view, this new executive order contains many of the same legal weaknesses as the first and reinstates some of the identical policies as the original. Consequently, it is equally subject to the injunction we received February 3," argued Ferguson.
Related: Notice of filing of executive order
Related: Response to Defendants notice of filing executive order
Trump's revised ban bars new visas for people from six predominantly Muslim countries: Somalia, Iran, Syria, Sudan, Libya and Yemen for 90 days. Iraq, previously targeted in the initial order, was removed from the list in the revised order.
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would not be great. Danny Murphy I wanted to keep, so ask him. There were no issues at all. With Bobby it started after a couple of weeks. Everybody knew and now he has moved on. We moved on."[ENG SUB] Hyeri Reveals The Type of Fans Each Member Has & Girls Days Surprising New Fanbase
1 vs 100 Game Show 141021
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Every member of Girls Day has a certain type of fan that likes them. Uncle fans like Sojin. Yuras fans are…. I won't spoil it for you. Girls Days new fanbase is mostly likely solely due to Hyeris aegyo. Her nagging whine melts the hearts of even the toughest harabojis and harmonis. If you don't like Hyeris aegyo, you probably can't feel feelings.
Hyeri breezes through the questions on 1 vs 100, only getting stumped on a few, but always pulling through at the end. I would not want to go against her on Jeopardy. Can they add a k-pop section to Jeopardy? I know I could get at least 60% of the questions right. Try to guess what Hyeris fanbase is before you watch the video (You won't be able to).
Earlier in the episode, Hyeri gets taught by a Gag Concert member how to make an aegyo face. If you want to watch it, comment below. Sorry Hyeri, but your analysis is wrong. Your fanbase is actually everyone who's seen your viral Real Man video.
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Thursday's solar flare could potentially cause a colorful aurora in the northern part of the United States, but researchers won't know until it gets here. While you could spend all night and looking to the heavens, the Space Weather Prediction Center has put together a map and chart to help you know whether you'll be able to see it or not—here's how to use them.
Scientists use a measure of "Kp," or geomagnetic activity, to determine how far south people will be able to see the aurora, known in some places as the "Northern Lights." According to Phil Chamberlin of NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory, the Kp of Thursday's solar flare is expected to be between six and eight (out of 9)—if the Kp remains weak, only people in the northernmost states and Canada will be able to see the aurora, but if it's closer to 8, people as far south as Washington, D.C. will be able to see the aurora.
Follow the Space Weather Prediction Center's Kp chart, which is updated every five minutes with the last three hours' data, and compare it to the map to determine whether you'll be able to see the lights. Kp is expected to spike sometime in the next 24 hours as the charged particles reach Earth. In the United States, aurora are relatively rare occurrences, but in the aftermath of the "Halloween Storms" of October, 2003, people as far south as Florida reported seeing auroras.
"I've never seen one with my eyes, it's definitely on my bucket list," Chamberlin says. "I don't know if I'll stay up all night for this, but I'm going to keep checking this index."
Jason Koebler is a science and technology reporter for U.S. News & World Report. You can follow him on Twitter or reach him at jkoebler@usnews.com“Virtually no one, it seems, is happy with the state of maleness,” observes Mark Regnerus in the opening pages of his new book, Cheap Sex. It’s not the central point of the book, but this comment serves as a poignant starting point for reflection, especially since a similar claim could be made of “femaleness,” and of relations between the sexes just in general. Is anyone pleased with the state of modern romance? Complaints come in a thousand flavors, but the discontent seems widespread.
Cheap Sex is an important book. As a sociologist, Regnerus has spent years studying American sexual habits, through extensive surveys and batteries of interviews. It’s rare to find such a nuanced discussion of this subject, offered from the perspective of a researcher who is willing to engage progressive assumptions critically. Regnerus does a remarkable job of combining big-picture analysis with copious detail on every modern sexual practice from dating apps to pornography to the rise in female masturbation. It’s hard to imagine any reader getting to the back cover without wanting to quibble. (This reviewer certainly didn’t.) In truth, this is a strength of the book. To the extent that you agree with Regnerus, Cheap Sex offers a treasure trove of supportive data. Insofar as you disagree, it’s an excellent foil.
What do we see when we look at the sexual landscape of contemporary America? In a way, the title says it all. We live in a world where sex is cheap. The choice of an economic term is very deliberate here, because the whole book represents an effort to analyze American sexual practices through the quasi-economic lens of “sexual exchange.” When he claims that sex is cheap, Regnerus isn’t pricing prostitutes. He’s assessing what a person (specifically, a man) must do to secure access to sex. Nowadays the answer is: not much. It has not always been so.
If it seems odd to analyze sex in market terms, consider that people always have reasons for seeking romance. We all hope to gain something in entering into a sexual relationship, whether a marriage, a one-night stand, or anything in between. Men and women tend to want different things, though. Men have a higher sex drive, and are slower to invest emotionally in their relationships. Women enjoy sex too, but intimacy and moral support tend to be higher relationship priorities for them. (Even sex is more pleasurable for women in the context of committed relationships.) The “terms” of our sexual exchanges are continually being shaped by our appraisal of our real options. What are we obliged to give to our partners, and what can we realistically expect in return? Thinking about sex in quasi-economic terms can help us to understand this ongoing process.
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How did sex become so cheap? Regnerus puts considerable weight on contraceptives and female careerism, both of which facilitated female promiscuity. When men can access sex without proving themselves as husbands and breadwinners, many will decide not to shoulder these onerous burdens. Pornography is another factor, which does seem to reduce men’s interest in romancing (or marrying) flesh-and-blood women. In a more traditional world, everyone had strong inducements to get and remain married. Today, outside pockets of religious conservatism, marriage is no longer seen as the high road to sexual access. It is a pinnacle of relationship fulfillment and a seal of social respectability; unless and until people see those goods in the cards, they will shy away from marriage and linger in the netherworld of cheap sex.
For women, cheap sex means significant pressure to accommodate the expectations of men. In this book, we meet men who expect (usually with justification) that women will be willing to have sex with them after a single shared meal or a few drinks. We meet women who acknowledge that they would like to develop their relationships for a bit more time before getting to sex. It’s difficult, though, to swim against the tide of male expectation. Many women spend years hopping from one disappointing relationship to the next, while marriage lingers on the ever-receding horizon.
Men have an easier time achieving their relationship goals. Whether he is looking for marriage, medium-term companionship, or just a lot of low-commitment sex, a resourceful man can likely find what he seeks. A cheap-sex market is a man’s market, in the sense that men’s expressed preferences are more often fulfilled than women’s. We shouldn’t make the mistake of thinking, though, that cheap sex promotes real thriving in men. Although women are more likely to want expensive sex, many men sorely need it to push them towards healthy and productive life habits. Marriage is also riskier for men nowadays, especially since modern women tend to have (sometimes unreasonably) high expectations for the quality of their marital relationships. Years of youthful promiscuity are poor preparation for that kind of test, and divorce tends to have a significantly negative impact on men’s health and happiness.
Is there an exit from this grim world of loveless copulation? Diagnosis is not really the focus of Cheap Sex, but it’s clear enough that Regnerus sees a more traditional breadwinner-and-homemaker marital model as the obvious alternative to our male-centric dating market. When both sexes have something valuable to contribute to the sexual exchange, long-term commitment will be a good deal for all concerned. But that’s not likely to happen unless women pull back somewhat from the labor force, restrict men’s sexual access, and force would-be lovers to woo them with promises of fidelity and material support. Regnerus doesn’t see this happening anytime soon, so his last chapter is devoted to gloomy predictions of more of the same for the foreseeable future.
Might not this be pushing the “exchange” analysis beyond its reasonable limits? When we get to the grim predictions, I start worrying that Regnerus may be reducing culture to less than it really is. That’s interesting, because I suspect that he and I would mostly want the same things when it comes to sociological trend lines. We might disagree about the extent to which sociology walks hand in hand with solid moral analysis concerning relations between the sexes.
As a Catholic and a marriage traditionalist, I love expensive sex. Sex should be expensive, because it’s very significant, socially, psychologically and morally. When we treat sex as a triviality, people get hurt. Having said that, I doubt whether “market-based” sociological analysis can really lay the groundwork for a more equitable sexual and social world.
The problem can be explained rather nicely using the exchange model itself. Insofar as we’re viewing sex as a mutually-beneficial exchange between self-interested agents, who’s to say that both parties come to the table with an equally strong hand? Isn’t it possible that nature herself has put self-seeking men in a better position to advance their personal interests?
There are plenty of reasons to believe that this might be the case. Let’s grant that men have a higher sex drive, while women have unique physical and psychological vulnerabilities reflecting their orientation towards childbearing. The result is that each sex has something to offer in a sexual exchange. Men, though, are physically stronger, while women shoulder a far more onerous reproductive burden. In a market driven by self-interest, man can surely turn these imbalances to his advantage in myriad ways, demanding compensation for his social contributions while taking the woman’s largely for granted. Woman’s unique contribution to civilization has in a sense been “assigned” by nature herself, so her negotiating position is weaker. She can try to bolster it by restricting sexual access, but is that tool really potent enough to compensate for men’s other advantages? A man may buy a cow for the milk, but cattle are not respected citizens.
In the financial world, parties with unequal holdings quite regularly enter into mutually-beneficial exchanges. However, the inequities of the original position tend to be reflected in the outcome, and the same may be true here. It seems entirely possible to build a stable society in which men extend certain essential protections to women, while allotting themselves a notably disproportionate share of available goods (which might include material pleasures, personal liberties, fulfilling opportunities, and social respect). That arrangement might be genuinely beneficial for women in comparison to (say) a Hobbsean state of nature, while still seriously failing to respect their true worth as rational beings, created in God’s image.
We shouldn’t fault Regnerus for failing to address moral questions that go well beyond the methodological constraints of his discipline. At the same time, we should be wary of amoral theories that try to explain a little too much. If we agree that modern men and women aren’t what they should be, the obvious next step is to determine what men and women should be. We won’t achieve that just by collating everyone’s expressed preferences. People often want things that aren’t good for them, especially when it comes to sexual appetite.
Despite the sad state of modern romance, men and women still want to be together, just as they always have. It may be naïve, though, to expect that healthy relations can be established without the application of any moral principles. The gulf between Mars and Venus can ultimately be bridged only when each is willing to sacrifice, for the other and for the children who are the natural fruit of sexual union. Romantic love will only flourish when we accept the fundamental truth that sex is never really cheap.
Rachel Lu is a Senior Contributor at The Federalist and a Robert Novak Fellow.DOJ Settled Massive Russian Fraud Case Involving Lawyer Who Met With Trump Jr.
Democratic congressmen on the House Judiciary Committee want to know why Attorney General Jeff Sessions abruptly settled a money laundering case in May involving the same Russian attorney who met with Donald Trump Jr. during the presidential election to offer “dirt” on Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton.
The civil forfeiture case was filed in 2013 by Preet Bharara, the former U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York — who was fired by Trump in March. The case alleged that 11 companies were involved in a tax fraud in Russia and then laundered a portion of the $230 million they got into Manhattan real estate.
The forfeiture case was heralded at the time as “a significant step towards uncovering and unwinding a complex money laundering scheme arising from a notorious foreign fraud,” Bharara said. “As alleged, a Russian criminal enterprise sought to launder some of its billions in ill-gotten rubles through the purchase of pricey Manhattan real estate.”
But Instead of proceeding with the trial as scheduled, the Trump Justice Department settled the case two days before it was due to begin. By then, Bharara had already been axed by the president. Bharara’s assistant did not immediately respond to request for comment.
“We write with some concern that two events may be connected—and that the Department may have settled the case at a loss for the United States in order to obscure the underlying facts,” wrote 17 Democratic Congressmen on the House judiciary panel in a letter to Sessions on Wednesday.
The Russian attorney who uncovered the tax fraud scheme, Sergei Magnitsky, mysteriously died in prison. As a result, U.S. lawmakers passed the Magnitsky Act, which levied sanctions on Russian officials—sanctions that Natalia Veselnitskaya, a Russian attorney, worked to reverse.
Also the attorney representing the Russian companies in the DOJ case, Veselnitskaya, is the same one who organized a meeting with Donald Trump, Jr. and top Trump campaign officials in June 2016 to offer material that could “incriminate” Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. “Love it,” responded Trump, Jr. to an intermediary.
Though been painted as a “Kremlin attorney”, Veselnitskaya does not necessarily work directly for the Russian government. She claims she has some high-level government clients.
According to emails published by Donald Trump Jr., Veselnitskaya had evidence of Clinton wrongdoing that she was offering on behalf of the Kremlin as “part of Russia and its government support for Mr. Trump.” The emails exchanged by Trump’s son and an intermediary also noted that Veselnitskaya was “in court” at the time and needed to push back the meeting. She was working on the civil forfeiture case that Sessions would eventually shutter.
In May, the Justice Department settled the case for $6 million instead of $230 million and did not demand any admission of wrongdoing. According to the lawmakers’ letter to Sessions, Veslnitskaya was surprised by how generous the settlement was, telling one Russian news outlet the penalty appeared like “an apology from the government.”
While the Congressmen didn’t cite any evidence that the two events are definitely related, they sent Sessions a laundry list of questions. They want to know if there was any contact between members of the Trump administration or campaign and the Department of Justice or the Russian attorney about the case.
Photo Credit: WIN MCNAMEE/Getty ImagesIt just seems like WWE had this great idea several months ago to bring in veteran talent but once they showed up, WWE didn’t have anything for them to do. It’s only until recently WWE is making something out of Jinder Mahal. But that’s arguably just so WWE can have a bigger piece of the lucrative Indian market.
It seems one superstar who recently returned with some fanfare has already decided to leave WWE and go back to his former home. “The Japanese Buzzsaw” Tajiri announced late last night he was through with WWE.
Tajiri explained his recently recovered knee had nothing to do with the decision, his doctors say it’s okay. Of course, he’s been wrestling for a long time now so pretty much every part of his body probably hurts, at least a little bit.
It makes sense he would want to leave regardless though. He hasn’t been featured at all recently, especially for a veteran like himself. In Twitter posts translated from Japanese Tajiri had the following to say about his decision to leave WWE.
“Dare so like a few days ago but withheld it from yourself. In January, suffered knee injuries, while is fine no problem at all in fact, WWE doctor out OK “risky,” and. The bodyparts of the wrestlers came professional wrestling for many years is of course that anyone is there.”
“The company considered the age of the I’m a 46-year-old, ‘another match in the WWE and not’ and. After a while OK I get? And while coach of the NXT they waited, but still really good, with. So anyways, back to Japan.”
“Again I have no regret even though just four months back WWE footsteps. Just from a year ago now finally last phoned me once again want to do a challenge and achieved the American youth is now over. Thanks for HHH to return who have worked with Regal mentor. Goodbye, and thank you. WWE’s America.”
It’s a shame Tajiri is leaving. We barely got a taste of his famous Green Mist on 205 Live and he’s already bidding farewell to WWE. We wish him the best of luck. He was always one of our favorites.MI5 has been secretly collecting vast quantities of data about UK phone calls for the last 10 years. According to a report on BBC News, the newly-revealed programme was "so secret that few even in MI5 knew about it, let alone the public." Meanwhile, as part of GCHQ's continuing charm offensive to bolster the case for wider surveillance powers, a senior officer named "Peter" has taken the unusual step of writing an article in The Guardian. In it, he claims "GCHQ cannot and would not hoover up every piece of information," despite evidence to the contrary.
GCHQ vs. MI5 vs. MI6 GCHQ, MI5, and MI6 are all similar but distinct intelligence agencies of the UK government. GCHQ, MI5, and MI6 are all similar but distinct intelligence agencies of the UK government. GCHQ deals mostly with communications intelligence (signal interception and the like). MI5 deals more with domestic human intelligence, while MI6 is more concerned with human intelligence abroad. They all work quite closely with each other: MI5 might use signal intelligence from GCHQ, for example.
For example, drawing on Snowden's leaks, The Guardian wrote in June 2013: "The sheer scale of [GCHQ]'s ambition is reflected in the titles of its two principal components: Mastering the Internet and Global Telecoms Exploitation, aimed at scooping up as much online and telephone traffic as possible." The article went on to give some numbers for GCHQ's spying operations carried out on fibre optic cables linked to the UK: "tapped cables had the capacity, in theory, to deliver more than 21 petabytes a day—equivalent to sending all the information in all the books in the British Library 192 times every 24 hours."
More recently, we have learned about Karma Police, which GCHQ itself billed as the "world's biggest" Internet data-mining operation, intended to track "every visible user on the Internet."
Although the GCHQ officer denies that his organisation engages in mass surveillance, he does admit it has "bulk data powers," which he tries to minimise by claiming: "while the volume we scan may seem large, it is a minute slice of the whole." But as Ars Technica pointed out in 2013, that's a misleading argument: "if properly tuned, the packet analyzer gear at the front-end of [the NSA's] XKeyscore (and other deep packet inspection systems) can pick out a very small fraction of the actual packets sent over the wire while still extracting a great deal of information (or metadata) about who is sending what to whom." The same applies to GCHQ, which can take a "minute slice of the whole," but still get practically everything that really matters.
Finally, Peter tries another, rather imaginative justification for GCHQ's use of these bulk data powers—now dubbed simply "analysing data at scale"—that somehow aren't mass surveillance: "Dealing with encryption and analysing data at scale were crucial for GCHQ’s predecessors at Bletchley Park to succeed in their mission." In other words, if Alan Turing did it, it must be OK. At least he didn't try to claim that James Bond had a licence to scale, as well as to kill.Every element of this story challenged our sanity.
Administrative and criminal charges have been filed against Police Officer 1 (PO1) Ronel Pantig for firing his gun indiscriminately and damaging his neighbor’s house in Tondo, Manila last Dec 19.
“Pantig claimed that he only did it because he had an altercation with one of his brothers as they were having a drink,” reports Jodee A. Agoncillo in Philippine Daily Inquirer.
Speaking in Filipino, Pantig told reporters, “I’m really sorry for what I did. I was drunk and bitter over a family matter. I haven’t bothered checking social media ever since because it will only hurt me even more.”
The report noted: “Pantig was on a motorcycle with a female companion when he fired seven shots unprovoked around 1:35am at the corner of A. Rivera and La Torre Streets, Barangay 245, Zone 22, where he also resides. At least one shot hit the door and wall of his neighbor, Anthony Tan. The incident was captured on a closed-circuit television camera in the area.”When will she run through London with a sausage up her bum (Picture: Rex/Metro)
Three days ago, before the London Mayoral elections, Katie Hopkins threatened to ‘run naked down Regent Street with a sausage up my bum’ if Sadiq Khan won the elections.
Well, Sadiq won with over 57 per cent of the vote, and Katie, the good sport she is, has since tweeted that she is off ‘to buy sausage’.
But now the British public want to know exactly when Katie will follow through with her claims.
Because people need to know when to be in the capital, Kate:
Anyone know when the Katie Hopkins pork sausage run is taking – want to make sure I'm in the capital for that. pic.twitter.com/JNQgaqMpse — Ron Cook (@Ron_Cook_) May 7, 2016
A promise is indeed a promise:
Not that we're desperate to see a naked Katie Hopkins, but a promise is a promise! Wheres the sausage? London awaits! #LondonMayor — Skint London (@SkintLondon) May 7, 2016
People were really polite about it:
@KTHopkins please kindly let us know when you doing your run, i don't want to miss it — usha (@usha314) May 7, 2016
But soon patience was in short supply:
So where's Katie Hopkins with the sausage up her bum? — Jason Cooper (@C88Jason) May 7, 2016
People were rushing home to find out if there had been any updates:
Any update on the @KTHopkins sausage situation while I've been out? #LondonMayor2016 — Felicity BAUMFLOUGH (@Baumflough) May 7, 2016
And there were puns a plenty:
@KTHopkins @piersmorgan Go on do it... what's the wurst that can happen? —
Earl Abuse (@EarlAbuse) May 07, 2016
The public realised what a time it was to be alive:
Gary Lineker in his pants, Katie Hopkins with a sausage up her backside – what a time to be alive. — Jamie East (@mrjamieeast) May 6, 2016
Even Piers got in on the tweet action:
And Katie was quick to ‘thank’ Piers, before revealing that ‘timings to be announced shortly’.
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MORE: Katie Hopkins has been slaying everyone with her Celebrity Big Brother tweets
MORE: Did Katie Hopkins seriously just come out as bisexual?
MORE: Katie Hopkins looks totally different now – after cutting off all her hair following brain surgeryEfforts to breathe new life into an aging Manhattan office building that is the flagship property of the family of President Donald Trump’s son-in-law has gained a green light after a partial owner of the building indicated a willingness to sell.
Steven Roth, chairman and chief executive of Vornado Realty Trust, said in a letter to its shareholders that there had been “much press” recently about 666 Fifth Avenue, a 60-year-old building that Vornado owns with the Kushner family.
“This is an ongoing, complex, dynamic, and unpredictable situation,” Roth said in the letter dated April 4.
Vornado has a joint venture in the building with Kushner Cos., a real estate company whose chief executive until recently was Jared Kushner, an adviser to Trump who is married to Trump’s daughter Ivanka. Jared sold his interests to a family trust in January.
Vornado declined to elaborate on Roth’s letter, first reported by the New York Post late on Friday.Lots of iPhone application developers are frustrated with the process to get new apps into your hands. It takes about three weeks lately for an app to get approved and into the iTunes store.
Lately I’ve noticed that some developers are avoiding building apps and, instead, are building custom web pages that are designed specifically for the iPhone. I’m not the only one, Marshall Kirkpatrick, over at ReadWriteWeb is seeing the same trend and yesterday featured several services that are building iPhone web experiences but not apps.
Examples you might be already using are Twitter’s mobile site, or Techmeme’s mobile site.
But yesterday another one came along from Nextstop, which is a cool new app for sharing cool things to do near you (great for travelers to check out) and they, too, decided on HTML5 instead of doing an iPhone app. So, I visited them in their San Francisco offices and learned why they made the choices they did, got a demo of the new mobile site they built using HTML5, and also talked about what their view of what’s happening in the larger mobile industry is.
Some reasons Nextstop likes HTML5:
1. Rapid iteration. If they code a new feature tonight, you get it tonight. No waiting three weeks for you to get their latest.
2. It prepares their systems for building a native app. Why? Because apps can include a Safari browser instance inside, so all of this work is reusable, even if they do a native app.
3. It’s easier to build and debug because you don’t need to do a lot of specialized coding to make the native app work properly.
4. It fits into the greater web easier for users. In an iPhone app it can be jarring to take users out to a web browser, but if they already are in the browser they are used to going to other pages and back again using Safari’s navigation.
Anyway, if you want to learn more about the latest thinking of iPhone app developers, this is a good video to watch.
AdvertisementsThe following distributions are used by version 4.1 of Mario Kart 8 to determine the probability of obtaining a certain item when an Item Box is opened.[1] The tables have the same structure seen in Mario Kart 7, with the column number of each item being the same for the items featured in both games and the probability coded as a percentage multiplied by two.
Title screen (ST)
These item probability distributions are used in the demonstrations of the gameplay that are shown in the title screen. Although 20 sets are defined for them, only the second, third and fourth actually contain at least a probability value different from zero.
Item probability distributions (Title screen, second set) Distribution 1 100 60 10 30 2 40 50 70 20 10 10 3 30 50 50 20 20 10 20 4 30 50 30 40 10 20 20 5 30 40 10 60 30 20 10 6 30 40 70 40 10 10 7 30 40 70 50 10 8 30 30 80 60 9 30 30 80 60 10 30 20 80 70 11 30 20 70 80 12 30 20 60 90
Item probability distributions (Title screen, third and fourth set) Distribution 1 200 2 200 3 200 4 200 5 200 6 200 7 200 8 200 9 200 10 200 11 200 12 200
Races (S2)
During races, each probability distribution is chosen depending on the distance from the frontrunner in the moment the Item Box was opened. The distance reported is the one at which the switch to the next distribution happens.
Versus races feature five additional distributions sets whose distributions are all made to obtain a specific item and whose purpose is unclear. Most of them are reported without the distance as it is not determined whether they are used by drivers controlled by players or by the software.
Grand Prix races
Item probability distributions (Grand Prix races, drivers controlled by players) Distance
(units) 400 65 50 5 5 5 70 1000 20 25 50 20 10 10 10 5 5 15 15 10 5 2000 10 20 30 25 15 15 10 15 5 10 5 10 10 15 5 3300 15 20 50 5 5 60 5 5 10 10 10 5 5500 10 30 5 5 85 25 10 25 5 8000 10 5 65 40 30 5 40 5 13000 5 35 35 60 10 55 26000 10 30 85 15 60 999998 30 40 70 60 999999 30 40 70 60
Item probability distributions (Grand Prix races, drivers controlled by software) Distance
(units) 300 50 40 15 10 5 70 10 700 25 30 60 15 5 5 10 5 5 20 10 10 1300 30 35 30 25 10 10 10 5 10 15 10 10 2600 30 35 15 45 10 5 25 5 5 5 5 15 4500 30 35 5 50 5 3 47 10 10 5 7000 15 20 50 4 58 20 10 3 20 13000 10 10 30 57 30 30 3 30 26000 10 10 10 42 30 55 3 40 999998 30 60 30 50 30 999999 30 60 30 50 30
Versus Races
All Items
Item probability distributions (Versus Races, All items, drivers controlled by players) Distance
(units) 400 60 50 5 5 80 1000 15 25 45 20 10 5 10 10 10 5 20 10 10 5 2000 5 15 35 30 10 25 10 15 5 10 5 10 10 10 5 3300 15 18 50 5 2 65 10 5 5 10 10 5 5500 25 10 5 85 33 10 2 25 5 8000 10 5 65 40 30 5 40 5 13000 2 40 30 65 8 55 26000 20 25 90 10 55 999998 40 30 70 60 999999 40 30 70 60
Item probability distributions (Versus Races, All items, drivers controlled by software) Distance
(units) 300 60 45 15 5 75 700 30 35 55 10 5 5 10 10 5 20 10 5 1300 30 35 30 20 15 10 10 5 5 10 10 10 10 2600 30 40 15 40 10 10 20 5 5 5 5 15 4500 30 40 50 10 5 40 10 10 5 7000 15 30 55 5 40 20 10 5 20 13000 10 10 40 45 30 30 5 30 26000 10 10 20 30 30 55 5 40 999998 30 60 30 50 30 999999 30 60 30 50 30
Mushrooms Only
Item probability distributions (Versus Races, Mushrooms Only, drivers controlled by players) Distance
(units) 400 100 100 1000 100 50 50 2000 100 85 15 3300 70 130 5500 30 130 40 8000 120 80 13000 80 120 26000 40 160 999998 100 100 999999 100 100
Item probability distributions (Versus Races, Mushrooms Only, drivers controlled by software) Distance
(units) 300 120 80 700 120 40 40 1300 110 80 10 2600 110 90 4500 90 80 30 7000 70 70 60 13000 50 60 90 26000 50 60 90 999998 50 110 40 999999 50 110 40
Shells Only
Item probability distributions (Versus Races, Shells Only, drivers controlled by players) Distance
(units) 400 100 100 1000 90 30 40 30 10 2000 60 60 10 40 30 3300 40 65 5 50 40 5500 20 70 10 50 50 8000 60 10 50 80 13000 50 10 50 90 26000 50 10 50 90 999998 200 999999 200
Item probability distributions (Versus Races, Shells Only, drivers controlled by software) Distance
(units) 300 120 80 700 90 50 40 20 1300 80 70 10 40 2600 70 65 5 60 4500 60 55 5 80 7000 45 50 5 100 13000 35 40 5 120 26000 25 30 5 140 999998 200 999999 200
Bananas Only
Item probability distributions (Versus Races, Bananas Only, drivers controlled by players) Distance
(units) 400 100 100 1000 115 50 35 2000 120 15 65 3300 110 90 5500 80 120 8000 50 150 13000 20 180 26000 20 180 999998 200 999999 200
Item probability distributions (Versus Races, Bananas Only, drivers controlled by software) Distance
(units) 300 120 80 700 130 40 30 1300 140 10 50 2600 130 70 4500 110 90 7000 90 110 13000 70 130 26000 70 130 999998 200 999999 200
Bob-ombs Only
Item probability distributions (Versus Races, Bob-ombs Only, drivers controlled by players) Distance
(units) 400 100 100 1000 130 70 2000 160 40 3300 180 20 5500 190 10 8000 200 13000 200 26000 200 999998 200 999999 200
Item probability distributions (Versus Races, Bob-ombs Only, drivers controlled by software) Distance
(units) 300 120 80 700 150 50 1300 170 30 2600 190 10 4500 190 10 7000 200 13000 200 26000 200 999998 200 999999 200
Additional sets
Item probability distributions (Versus Races, additional Mushrooms Only distributions, drivers controlled by players) Distance
(units) 400 200 1000 200 2000 200 3300 200 5500 200 8000 200 13000 200 26000 200 999998 200 999999 200
Item probability distributions (Versus Races, additional Mushrooms Only distributions, drivers controlled by software) Distance
(units) 300 200 700 200 1300 200 2600 200 4500 200 7000 200 13000 200 26000 200 999998 200 999999 |
in the gallery below.Without more details about Kahn's version of the story, it's hard to work out where or when in the story this might be taking place, but the lady up front with the wicked optics is almost certainly Molly. Fraga mentions in his blog post that one of the biggest challenges of the project was figuring out a fresh visual take on a property that has influenced and been outright ripped off for decades since. At the very least, these storyboards give us a little insight into what the world of Kahn'smight have looked like. Not to mention, it looks like that would have been a pretty badass action sequence.Based on Gibson's Hugo Award-winning 1984 novel,tells the story of Case, a drug-addicted, down-and-out computer hacker who is hired by a mysterious client to undertake a seemingly impossible hack. He's accompanied by Molly Millions, an badass augmented merc who provides the muscle Case is usually incapable or too strung out to provide. It introduced many of the concepts movies such ashave expanded upon, so fingers crossed, maybe we'll eventually get to see it done justice on the silver screen. Blended From Around The Web Facebook
Back to topYesterday, Mike Huckabee claimed that France is a “very politically correct country.” He might want to walk that statement back.
One of our Parisian readers forwarded along a satirical Facebook event making the rounds in France that roughly translates to “Orgy at Republic Plaza” — a response to the Paris attacks that took place last week.
As the event description reads: “For the national unity: we must communicate or f*ck!” It continues (again, a loose translation):
A lot of people are taking this event seriously. This page is here only to make an appeal to love and not war with a dose of derision and humor so that the whole world can start the week with a smile in spite of the recent drama and fear. There’s no other political message intended, and this was not created to shock or provoke. Everyone’s invited to bring their own sense of humor in a spirit respecting everyone and everyone’s beliefs. Regardless of whether you’re a heterosexual, homosexual or burqa fetishist.
peace and love
Comments on the event include a number of images that are, well, let’s just say they draw their inspiration from the spirit of Charlie Hebdo. In one cartoon, two Muslim men are shown having sex in public with the caption, “se fait sauter au milieu de la foule,” which is a double-entendre that could either mean “to get f*cked in a crowd” or “to get blown up in a crowd.” In another, a woman is shown wearing a pink burka designed to resemble a condom, with the caption “burqapote.” “Capote” is French slang for condom.
To be clear, a number of French citizens have gone to the event to say that this is all a bit much. Humor is all well and good, but it has its limits. As one commenter asks, “how is anyone going to take France seriously” if this is the national response? Another commenter charged that the event’s organizer — who went under the pseudonym “Mehdi Mitchell” in reference to the avant-garde and sexually explicit comedy, Shortbus (written and directed by John Cameron Mitchell) — has “no heart, just like the terrorists.”
However, as our reader pointed out, this kind of humor is much more standard in French culture than it is in the United States. In making their point, they forwarded a passage from the late French comedian Pierre Desproges, which reads, in part:
…oui, on peut rire de tout, on doit rire de tout. De la guerre, de la misère et de la mort. Au reste, est-ce qu’elle se gêne, elle, la mort, pour se rire de nous? Est-ce qu’elle ne pratique pas.
Which translates (again, loosely) to, “…you can laugh at anything. One must laugh at everything. At war, misery and death. Besides, does it bother her, death, to laugh at us? Does she not practice black humor, death?”
In other words, you have to laugh at death, and since nothing is worse, if you can laugh at death you can laugh at everything. That logic may not fly for everyone, especially in the United States, but at least it’s internally consistent.
In France, everything is fair game for humor — especially the sacred. While Charlie Hebdo may have gone the extra mile in satirizing Islam, they also went out of their way to poke fun at the Catholic Church, along with other groups and organizations that would file defamation lawsuits — to say the least — were they the target of that kind of humor in the United States. And that isn’t particularly out of the ordinary in France, as evidenced by the fact that there’s a market for it.
In this context, the jokes aren’t punching down at marginalized people; they’re aiming at society’s highest institutions and concepts — religion, race, culture — for the very purpose of bringing them back down to earth with the rest of us. At least, that’s the intent.
In any case, it appears as though humor that would be far too politically incorrect for Mike “Beyoncé’s a great singer, but kind of a slut” Huckabee is an essential part of how some French people are coping with the recent attacks. So let’s at least not pretend they’re somehow afraid of insulting and ridiculing the Islamic State just because they’re a bunch of European socialists, shall we?
UPDATE: Charlie Hebdo’s latest cover is a variation on the same theme.This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN:
As the New York State Assembly takes on one of the harshest drug laws in the nation, a new study underscores the severity of racial bias in drug-related law enforcement. According to Human Rights Watch, African Americans were arrested as much as five-and-a-half times as whites on drug charges every year for the past three decades. The trend dates back to the ’80s, the earliest date with complete data.
About one in three people arrested on drug charges are African American. The report says, “Jim Crow may be dead, but the drug war has never been color-blind. Although whites and blacks use and sell drugs, the heavy hand of the law is more likely to fall on black shoulders.”
The Human Rights Watch report is called “Decades of Disparity: Drug Arrests and Race in the United States.” I’m joined now by its author, Jamie Fellner, senior counsel in the US program at Human Rights Watch. I’m also joined by Deborah Small, a leading activist around the issue, executive director of Break the Chains, a group that works to reduce racial disparities in drug law enforcement.
In a moment, Deborah, I want to talk to you about international implications of the drug laws here and how they deal with this around the world. But Jamie Fellner, let’s go to you. You’ve just released “Decades of Disparity.” Talk about the situation today.
JAMIE FELLNER:
The situation today is a war on drugs that is skewed by race, and it always has been skewed by race. In fact, the history of drug laws in this country show that it’s very difficult to separate concerns about drugs from concerns about minorities. And certainly in the ’80s, the white politicians played the race card, calling it a crime card, to woo the anxious white electorate.
And yet, twenty-five years later, we still see that arrests are predominant — or disproportionately of black people, including blacks and Hispanics. But the data only breaks it down by race, white and black. And I think the reason is because race has always been used to define what do we think the drug problem is and what is the response to it. We could have used and should be using, I believe, a non-law enforcement approach to people with substance abuse problems. Instead, we’ve used a criminal law enforcement approach.
The other thing that the report shows is that most of the arrests — and this is historical, again, not just currently, but certainly currently, too — most of the arrests are for possession. I think the American public think the police are out there looking for major traffickers and dealers. And, in fact, they’re arresting people because they have some weed in their pocket or maybe a rock of crack. Eighty percent — for the last nine years, every year, 80 percent of arrests are for simply for possession. And in fact, four in ten arrests are for marijuana possession. And even though it’s a war now against marijuana, it’s still disproportionately blacks who are being arrested. So you have to ask yourself, what is going on?
AMY GOODMAN:
And in terms of who are the drug users and sellers, what is the proportion?
JAMIE FELLNER:
Blacks and whites engage in drug offenses at about the same rate. They use drugs and they sell drugs at about the same rate. Since there are six-and-a-half times as many whites in this country, you would think there would be then proportionally six-and-a-half times as many whites being arrested on drug charges.
But that’s not the case, because the police aren’t going into white homes, white bars, white neighborhoods, white offices to make drug arrests. They’re going into black neighborhoods. And if you go into black neighborhoods, that’s where you’ll be arresting black people. And I don’t think that’s — I mean, I hate to say it, but it’s not coincidental.
AMY GOODMAN:
What do you mean?
JAMIE FELLNER:
I think that there is a deliberate use of drug laws to — I think that there’s something in this country which can be called structural racism, which doesn’t require any individual policeperson or prosecutor or judge or anyone else to have malign intent. Nevertheless, there is what’s called a conspiracy of forces, of assumptions, of attitudes, of behaviors, which end up with the result that blacks get the short end of the stick.
AMY GOODMAN:
Deborah Small, let’s talk about this nationally, and then we’ll come back to this report — internationally. How do our drug laws compare to others?
DEBORAH SMALL:
Well, America, the United States, has among the harshest drug sentencing laws in the world. I just recently returned from a major drug law conference in New Zealand, which has a very high incarceration rate — it’s about the fifth highest in the world — and yet, they consider seven years to be a really stiff sentence, a harsh sentence, for any violation, a violent crime, including a drug crime. And when I told them that drug offenders routinely get sentences of ten, fifteen, twenty years or more, they were astounded, because most people around the world would never hand out the kind of sentences that we routinely give for drug-related offenses.
AMY GOODMAN:
A global conference is coming up?
DEBORAH SMALL:
Yes, the UN is about to engage — or has been engaged in a ten-year review of international drug control strategy. Ten years ago, they declared that by this point in time they wanted to achieve the goal of a drug-free world or significantly reduce the demand and supply of drugs. It’s very clear in 2008 and 2009 that we’ve come nowhere near that goal.
It’s interesting, though, because in the intervening ten-year period, many of the countries, particularly in western Europe and Latin America, have adopted harm reduction as one of the main components of their approach to addressing the problems of drugs, along with law enforcement, drug treatment and prevention. And harm reduction basically is a set of strategies that’s designed to help reduce the harms associated with drug use to both individuals and communities. So, needle exchange and overdose preventions are examples of harm reduction programs. The US has been willing to support those kinds of programs locally but is fiercely fighting the efforts of the Europeans and others to include harm reduction language in the document to be presented to the UN, on the basis that to do so would be endorsing drug legalization.
AMY GOODMAN:
We are seeing now an escalation of attention on the border right now, Jamie Fellner, with Mexico, and they’re talking about this as a terrorism threat, which has to do with what they’re calling the drug wars in Mexico and places like Ciudad Juarez. How does that affect dealing with legislation today in the United States and people incarcerated?
JAMIE FELLNER:
Well, I also wanted to note that three former presidents of Latin American countries have issued a statement based on a study, basically saying that the drug war has been a disaster for their countries. And in fact, I started working on US drug issues coming out of work on Colombia, where the coca is grown that ends up coming, much of it, here.
And I think it is important, as Deborah is doing, to look at the sort of whole international picture. As long as the United States is going to be consuming, there is going to be violence in Mexico, there is going to be violence in other countries that are producers. That’s one of the — you could almost take a harm reduction approach to this. The huge profits that come from drugs come from their being illegal. So these countries are the victims of all this violence, because the US consumer is paying such a premium based on the drugs being illegal. And it’s a Catch-22. It’s a vicious circle.
AMY GOODMAN:
What about the power of the prison lobby in the United States? I mean, correction officers, for example, in California, I think it’s something like the prison guard lobby is the second most powerful.
JAMIE FELLNER: Yeah.
AMY GOODMAN: We just had a discussion about the New York Rockefeller drug laws and about the fact that prisoners who come from New York City, sent Upstate, a tremendous industry to keep up the economy Upstate, largely white areas —-
JAMIE FELLNER: Mm-hmm.
AMY GOODMAN: —- are then counted in the Census as residents of those Upstate areas —-
JAMIE FELLNER: Right.
AMY GOODMAN: —- which then get representation in Congress. Of course, they don’t; they can’t even vote.
JAMIE FELLNER:
They can’t vote, of course, right. That’s not just true in New York. States — just about every state has used prisons as a rural economic engine, and many cities don’t want the prisons located there, so you see in state after state essentially minorities being taken from urban areas and sent to be residents, non-voting residents, in predominately white rural areas, in the prisons there.
It’s not just the prison guards. Here in New York, for example, and many places, prosecutors are fierce opponents of any reform to drug laws, not just because they truly believe that they’re the best interest of the community, because they know how futile it is, they see the same people coming through all the time, but because the laws since the mid-’80s have given them such huge power through the mandatory minimum. So what they charge, in essence, sets the terms of the debate, and judges are just bystanders in this process. And most people don’t want to give up power, and prosecutors are no different there. They do not want to give up the huge power that they have accrued over this time.
AMY GOODMAN:
What are you recommending with your report, the conclusions of “Decades of Disparity”?
JAMIE FELLNER:
Well, “Decades of Disparity” follows a number of reports we did just last year. We’ve released one on prison admissions, showing that blacks —-
AMY GOODMAN: We have thirty seconds.
JAMIE FELLNER: —- blacks go to prison at ten times the rate of whites on drug charges. We think you need a paradigm shift. It’s not about arresting more whites. It’s about looking at how — what we’re trying to do in the war on drugs. If we want to reduce drug use, let’s focus on substance abuse prevention and treatment rather than sending people to prison.
AMY GOODMAN:
We’re going to leave it there. I want to thank you both for being with us, Jamie Fellner, senior counsel at US program at Human Rights Watch, Deborah Small, executive director of Break the Chains, which works to replace current drug policies.(The phone in the following pictures is not included)
There might be some deviation due to manual measurement.
Notice:
The phone in the picture is not included.
This RC model is not a toy and is not suitable for children under 14 years old.
Carefully read the instruction before any use, if you are a beginner, it's advisable to be assisted by an experienced adult.
This RC drone is equipped with coreless DC motors, continuous using with different batteries is not suggested.
Caution for the battery:
Don't over-charge, or over-discharge batteries.
Don't put it beside the high temperature condition.
Don't throw it into fire.
Don't throw it into water.
MJX X916H quadcopter is a fantastic quadcopter which you will love it at first sight. It's headless mode, one-key return function, 3D-flip and altitude hold make your flight easy and fun. Besides that, the 0.3 MP camera with real-time transmission can capture photos and record videos as you wish. It's also got an exquisite appearance and palm-size, you will love this amazing mini drone just as I do. (The "MJX H" app is supported on IOS and Android)LED light enables you to fly in the dark at night.Smart phone app control, easy to use.High/low speed switch, 3D-flip function and headless mode make your flight more remarkable.Wifi real-time transmission FPV system which can capture photos and record videos for your great memory.With one-key return function, the drone can find its way back home easily.Flight plan function, draw a flight course on the screen and the drone will fly along.Newest 6-Axis Gyro control system ensures stable flight and easy operation.Built-in barometer with altitude hold function provides stable flight.Brand name: MJXItem name: X916HColor: BlackController: Mobile wifi controlChannels: 4 ChannelsCamera: 0.3MPGyroscope: 6-AxisFunction: Forward/backward, up/down, left/right, sideward flight, hovering, 3D-flip, headless mode, high/low speed, one-key return, FPV image transmission, photo taking and video recording, altitude holdRemote distance: About 30mBattery for quadcopter: 3.7V 380mAh li-po batteryBattery dimension: 40 * 20 * 8mmBattery weight: 10.4gCharging time: About 70 minutesWorking time: About 5 minutesItem dimension: 110 * 110 * 35mm / 4.3 * 4.3 * 1.4inItem weight: 38.4gPackage size: 13.7 * 11.6 * 7.3cm / 5.4 * 4.6 * 2.9inPackage weight: 225g / 8ozGift box package1 * MJX X916H Quadcopter (built-in camera)1 * 3.7V 380mAh Li-Po Battery1 * USB Charging Cable4 * Spare Propeller1 * Wrench4 * Propeller protector1 * English ManualResidents were urged to remain calm and take care of the safety of children and the elderly. Picture: Valery Samsonov
A state of emergency was declared in the mountainous Republic of Altai after four days of extreme rainfall in southern Siberia. In all, 20 road and pedestrian bridges were damaged, leaving villages cut off.
Almost 4,000 houses were flooded in the deluge with more than 9,000 people hit including 2,000-plus children.
The destruction of a bridge in Chemalsky district caused an accident with the overturning of a GAZ-66 killing two people.
Reports said another four had died in the flooding which has also hit Khakassia and Tuva, with fears for Altai region, as well as Krasnoyarsk, Irkutsk and Transbaikal. The Russian Emergencies Ministry (EMERCOM) and local authorities were working to assist people in the latest flooding to hit Siberia, an increasing phenomenon blamed by some experts on global warming.
Two Ilyushin Il-76 planes were sent to Siberia carrying rescue equipment, KAMAZ trucks and boats.
More than 2,000 people and 630 appliances were involved in the rescue efforts, along with dozens of boats.
Russia's Hydrometeorological Centre warned of the risk of more heavy rain, with lower temperatures and more showers and thunderstorms, resulting in further flooding. Pictures: Valery Samsonov
Emergencies Minister Vladimir Puchkov said: 'We are enlarging our rescue group in Siberia.
'We are tasked with protecting all the townships and potentially hazardous areas. Meanwhile, a special space system monitors the situation and the met office and all the federal structures are engaged.'
Residents were urged to remain calm, take care of the safety of children and the elderly, and refrain from travelling to worst-hit areas.
Puchkov dispatched the Tsentrospas national rescue team and the Leader Centre team for high-risk rescue operations to the flood-hit regions.
He promised victims would receive from 10,000 roubles to 100,000 roubles ($287 to $2,878) in compensation. Russia's Hydrometeorological Centre warned of the risk of more heavy rain, with lower temperatures and more showers and thunderstorms, resulting in further flooding.Minister for Health James Reilly has outlined the merits of competition-based universal health insurance (UHI) to achieve universal health entitlements for Irish citizens ( Irish Times, February 18th, 2014).
However, a national debate has yet to take place on the differing ways of achieving a sustainable universal service.
UHI systems are premised on a belief that competition between insurers and providers will promote efficiency and equity. The German system, termed the Bismarck model, has developed over 130 years and is characterised by a predominance of mandatory social health insurance (SHI) with multiple competing sickness funds and a public/ private mix of providers. The Dutch and German models undoubtedly have benefits, especially in terms of equity. But UHI is not without problems and in the case of Holland it has proved complex to comprehend and implement.
Such systems are normally more expensive than other universal arrangements. The percentage of GDP spent on healthcare is typically above 11 per cent across all UHI systems – the cost of healthcare has risen in Holland and is now more than 12 per cent.
Excessive testing
This cost contrasts
with tax-funded systems such as that of the UK, that typically spend under 10 per cent of GDP on healthcare. When demand increases in a healthcare market, supply can also rise. A supplier-induced demand can be created that can increase healthcare utilisation and cost.
Therefore a valid concern with a competition-based model of the universal system is not just the expense, but the potential for overdiagnosis. This can occur in all healthcare systems, with patients being harmed through excessive diagnostic testing and procedures of dubious benefit. But a competition-based model of UHI, despite regulation, could incentivise the phenomenon more than a tax-based system would.
If the competition-based version of UHI was the only mechanism to achieve equity in healthcare there would be no debate, but there are alternative avenues to deliver universality. First, universal entitlement to GP care can be provided without UHI. The Adelaide Hospital Society, in its 2008 document Social Health Insurance: Further Options for Ireland, reported that the funding gap to provide medical cards to the entire population would be €217 million. The transfer of chronic disease management to the community would require more resources and negotiation with representative organisations, yet it is clear that progressive taxation measures alone could allow this to happen.
The second great inequity in the current Irish system is the access barrier to secondary care. The Government’s solution of a payer-provider split is effectively a privatisation (for profit) of the entire Irish hospital system. While this could prove progressive and equitable, there may well be better options.
Many universal systems adopt single-payer models that do not involve a competitive insurance market which then purchases public or private services. One successful example is Canada. The 2010 report from the Adelaide society argued that “extreme caution is required when considering introducing competition between social health insurance funds in a SHI system”. It proposed a single health insurance fund, separate from the exchequer, regulated by a social health insurance authority. Such a system operates successfully in Taiwan – and it may well represent the best option here.
But do we need to look that far? The founding principles of the British NHS are solidarity and fairness. This contrasts with Ireland, where almost 50 per cent of the population buys private insurance to access a duplicate system, enabling them to jump queues. The private system cherrypicks lucrative, less risky elective care, reflected in its low contribution to overall health expenditure. We cannot square the circle of inequity within the status quo. This problem was caused by successive governmental support of the private insurance market. Currently 70 per cent of the Irish health services are funded through taxation and 15 per cent through private insurance. Paying for hospital services almost exclusively through taxation and minimising our current private system is not an unrealistic proposal. It could be achieved through accepting higher progressive taxation and reducing incentives to private healthcare to incentivise the uptake of private services into the under-resourced public system.
I admire Dr Reilly’s desire to achieve universality, but there are several ways of getting there. A national debate is needed on how we achieve this shared aim.
Mark Murphy is a general practitioner in Co Dublin. He is a SPHeRE PhD Scholar based in the HRB Primary Care Centre, Royal College of Surgeons in IrelandShow full PR text
Nexus One now compatible with the AT&T 3G network and shipping to Canada
In early January, we announced the Nexus One, the first device sold through Google's web store. The Nexus One is unlocked, which means you can use it with a SIM card from most GSM operators worldwide. Currently the device is compatible with most 3G networks, including T-Mobile in the US. However, there are some carriers that have different 3G frequencies, such as AT&T in the US and Rogers Wireless in Canada, so users with these SIM cards can only access 2G or EDGE networks on their Nexus One.
Starting today, an additional version of the Nexus One is available from the Google web store that is compatible with AT&T's 3G network. This new model can be purchased as an unlocked device without a service plan. In addition to AT&T's 3G network, this device will also run on Rogers Wireless in Canada. And like the first version of the Nexus One, it can be used with most GSM operators globally.
Additionally, Nexus One devices can now be shipped to Canada from Google's web store, and will work with a SIM from Rogers Wireless. To find out which version you should purchase, based on your mobile service provider, please visit our Help Center.Chapter 3: Did We Fail?
Dawn Bella-Long
Wind, if going fast enough, feels like shattering through a billion sheets of break away glass, every inch another sheet smashing and spreading around the body. Dawn found it exhilarating. The initiation day event was probably her favorite little ritual of Beacon's. Solid mix of grimm killing, screaming, treasure hunting, and gambling. Plus, Dawn had the dealer's advantage.
The catapult platforms sent everyone flying, the relics now so old the spring had enough time to wear and precision was lost. Maybe on purpose, but the students were fleshy variants of poorly folded paper airplanes. Everyone dropped somewhere different. Azura passed her by a mile midair, right into the thicker woods, a good place for the monkey. She lost view of Summer, bad, but got to see the bull faunus land in the deepest segment of the valley. Good. It was Dawn's turn to hit the floor.
Having stretched her legs out, the wind dragged. Too fast. "Steady." Dawn crossed her arms, grip firm for support. The back jets of her gauntlets might have been meant to give her punches a bit of a boost, but right then they made perfect retrograde rockets. Aura licked into the dust stores and boom, a momentary jet of flame. Each ignition slowed her down, little pops of fire fighting gravity.
The uniform emerald leaves below gave way to browns of branches and greens of grass. A little bit of black and white for the beasties, too. Dawn made a drop zone of one broken oak branch, her boots peeling the bark off the limb as she slowed. Below, content to lick at tree sap, a pair of ursa minors turned their heads toward their new guest. "You first, papa bear?" Dawn stopped dragging her feet, snapping the already cracked branch, and jumped. Ursa were dumb, the biggest looked straight up into the dawn light, cooking its eyes with solar rays and blinding itself to its fiery kick.
Dawn stomped with her entire mass, an igniting of aura to add some fireworks to this show. The grimm skull plate cracked, and Dawn propelled from it like a diving board. Another trip back into the sky. Dawn pulled a short belt of ammo from her robe, feeding it into the right gauntlet, Gawain, each dust laden heavy round the size of a large man's thumb. Left hand bracing the right, elbow locked, Dawn twirled around, falling right back towards the bigger ursa minor, face cracked, blackened blood pooling around the red of his eyes. Papa bear was mad. Dawn unloaded. The automatic rounds shredded the ursa into strips of dark, boiling flesh. The kick actually gave her some extra air time.
"Now for mama bear." Dawn didn't get a good look before she landed, instinct and careful ears prompted her to roll through the forest dirt. She did feel the rumble as the second ursa minor slammed its full body into the ground she had just escaped.
Gawain spit out the back of her spent belt and Dawn kicked herself onto her feet. The beast growled, and the thudding of its charge knocked leaves from the trees. Closer, Dawn raised her fist, let it come, white blade-like claws jutting for her throat. Close enough. She dropped herself down onto one side, and, staying on her right hand and leg, kicked with fire spilling from her boots into the bear's soft throat.
Crack. Something gave, either its jaw or Dawn's ankles. She didn't care to discover. The ursa stepped back, possibly choking if they really needed to breath, but its belly left open, presented. The ursa minors lacked any of their older cousin's armor. The left gauntlet, Agravain, came into play. Aura popped the fire dust and rocketed the punch forward with a touch of extra to add some flame to her fist. Soon as she made contact with the ursa's chest it was bye bye, mama bear. The flesh collapsed and plenty of that oil-like black spilled onto her hand.
Smokey blood on her gauntlets, dirt on her robes, and leaves in her coal and gold hair, the grace of Dawn's landing was robbed from her. The roar of something else dragged a groan out of her. "Oh, what now?!" Little bear. An actual little black bear was growling at her. Least it wasn't a manifested collection of evil. "Hey little one, you're not on my list." Dawn stomped the grass with a popping flame, enough to send the furry thing bounding the other way. Alright, back to that list. Back to finding Summer Schnee.
Eyes on the sky. Odyssia might be clever enough to try and trick the system, but faunus ears, small as Dawn's might be, they hear involving flares. Thing was, if Dawn was smart enough to listen from a distance, others might, others of ill-repute could as well. Do or die.
Dawn bounced up two neighbor trees for a better vantage, furred ears tilted toward every distant sound. Off in the depth were reverberations of rifles and elemental weapons, all shots coming from below, but her senses focused high. The blue midday sky was free of clouds, besides a handful of distorted shapes in white. Dawn didn't catch the flare till the big burst, a single blast of fire dust, until her faunus hearing picked up the rippled air. The time release shell blended into orange shrapnel and signaled for Odyssia.
And Dawn.
And everyone else. Go time.
Dawn sped up to a race, the branches her track. She kept high, sliding around trunks and jumping between trees. It wasn't exactly quiet, but keeping a small rapid creek splashing against rocks to her right and the human propensity to look straight, not up, kept her safe. If anyone saw her, the plan was fucked. Below, Dawn caught a few scattered future students, ignoring them outright. The one person who seemed to notice the faunus was called out by someone else, letting her slip by unclaimed.
Eventually the creek flowed down a different path, tree limbs ended, and Dawn was forced to slide down the bark and continue on foot, no pause in her pace. The forest grimm were all in a panic. Had to be a bad day to have over thirty would-be hunters dropped right on your homes. Dawn managed to avoid them, besides a pair of creeps she had to kick into Remnant's upper atmosphere. With the forest thinning, the flare's remains had of course dipped down into a clearing.
Dawn kept low, trying her best not to be noticed, though the golden highlights were likely to really screw her right about now. Who's here? Dawn's eyes caught two figures, then a third. Rouge. Easy to spot, built like a brick shit house and probably looking for Odyssia. He found Azura instead, obviously looking for the other cousin. He was an old friend, and with the muscle to back up a master of glyphs. Good combo, and most importantly not the foreign faunus.
The third figure was irrelevant. Hera Adel, the child of Vale's famed admiral and nationalist Coco Adel. Her noticeable rabbit ears were a danger to Dawn's incognito objective, split by a small green garrison cap with red trims. She stood alert, back straight, shoulders tight in her matching jacket and asymmetrical skirt. The black leggings were a nice touch, cute, but Dawn had other business to attend to. Two more students approached the clearing, a handsome girl and an equally heightened friend with peculiar white and red hair, but both simply walked on after a few words and neither were the target. Neither Summer Schnee, nor Odyssia Nikos were here, just everyone looking for the—
That clever bitch!
"Dawn! Over here!" Shit. Dawn was cursing herself to oblivion as soon as she cracked a twig on the way out. Azura had good hearing apparently, that little adorable twerp. Curiosity was going to kill that little blue headed—Dawn, breath. You planned for this.
Dawn clicked her tongue to admit, not defeat, but an alternative. "Well, hello there kiddo!" She spun herself right around on her heel, kicking up a bit of foliage with her. The three figures were all staring at her, further complicating the who-saw-who first. Dawn was going to relieve them of the complication.
"Hey, you must be Dawn," Hera started her introduction, confidently stepping up with her arm out and a box strapped around her waist. Their parents were political adversaries, Dawn knew damn well where she had heard about her. Interesting choice, why approach her natural rival? "I heard about your skill while at Signal—" Not interesting enough. Dawn stepped right past her.
"I call my cousin," Dawn announced
"Excuse me?" Hera complained, voice turned from sweet summer to angry growl quick.
"Actually, Dawn, I'm Rouge by the way, it's been a really long while," Jaune's boy liked to talk as much as his dad it seemed, "Anyways, Azura's not great with people, so we figure, why don't I be on the kid's team and help 'em out." Dawn thought him sincere, if skirting an awkward line between trying to impress her with his good guy charms and actually helping out the Rose hunter.
"She saw me first," Dawn bullshitted, snagging the blue hood of her cousin and dragging them along the grass.
"I've been chosen!" Azura seemed thrilled at the prospect, arms and rifle up for a new adventure. Such a goof. Four years of this. This, this was going to be a very strange affair.
"So what? It's just me and, um?"
"Hey man, you can do worse than Hera," Dawn tossed him a line. He could use the help. "We on the other hand are going to comb this forest and find your sisters." The Emerald Forest demarked miles of ruins, foliage, creeks, grimm, a lot of bullshit, and a girl with a target on her back. Finding a needle in a haystack sucked, racing against a family enemy, well that at least made it exciting. "You ready for adventure, Azura?"
Odyssia better not screw this up.
Odyssia Nikos
"Bang." Odyssia pulled back Penelope's trigger, the compact form's barrel lit up with the spread of heated dust and fragments. They carved a path out of the left side of the beowolf, a dissipating figure of ash that she could run through.
The pack kept up with Odyssia, unable to lose them in the forest interior, and with the flare, options were limited. The ruins offered some pathways to escape, a carcass of white moonstone dirtied by moss and centuries of battle. How any of the structures stood on this initiation culling ground astounded her. Didn't save them from being the site of her hunt. Legs kicked her faster through the stone grounds. Almost got away from the looks of it, but she knew better, heard the sound of claws pounding the cracked marble. As Odyssia cut between the crumbling cutaway alley, unsurprisingly one of the pack clung to the overhead arch.
Odyssia went for the gap, running for the amphitheater's courtyard corpse. The beowolf descended, swinging its right claw for the young human's head. In return she dropped, skidding on her bronze boots and under its reach. The shoes could take it, but with a swing over her shoulder, the beast could not stand a scattershot to the back of that white and black skull.
The grimm died, Odyssia lived. She was given a moment of peace at the center of the ancient theater. The flooring had long since been rended apart by starving plantlife. Long tendrils of grass rose between the cracks shifting as wind swirled, still |
a comfortable home to stay peacefully close to nature,” he says.
The reason more people don’t adopt such a simple way of living, says Mohan, is because they fear that such lives are impractical. One of the goals of their village, he says, is to show that a group people can put such ideologies into practice
When activist Daya Bai viisted their village
Parallel education
Mohan and Rukmini’s daughters, Sreya and Surya, have dropped out of regular schools as their parents don’t see much point in present systems of public education.
“Surya was class topper, but she quit studies while she was in Class 8. Kids should have humanity, love and compassion towards nature. The formal education system doesn’t provide any of this. Now she is learning whatever she likes and is comfortable with it. Formal education is, in a way, a stress and strain on the kids,” Mohan says.
“My real education began when I left school. I learn practically now. This learning is amazing. I learn to think by knowing things through touch and sight,” Surya says.
Surya and Sreya learning Chenda (drum)
Sreya, who is dyslexic, was very stressed in school, as her teachers were unable to understand and work with her abilities. When her parents took her out of the classroom, a world of opportunities opened up to her.
She says she has learned a lot more now than what her school could teach her. “Now I know how to grow paddy and vegetables, rear cows, to stitch and many more traditional jobs too. In school, I was not able to learn all these,” says Sreya who excels at stitching and sewing.
Sreya and Surya also travel across Kerala to learn more about the different kinds of lives and cultures lived in the state.
“For us, a high position means living amidst nature and understanding the environment. Other white-collar jobs are not high profile according to us,” says Surya.
Learning under Mohan’s guidance, Surya and Sreya have also become practiced at sculpture and other art forms. Sreya points to a peacock sculpture on the mud wall of their house, and says, “ We all did this together. Doesn’t it look good?”
Many more sculptures dot the walls and pillars of their tiny mud house, which resembles a fairy tale home.
The community, as a whole, is also planning weekly art meets in the village, so that their kids can experience an aesthetic way of life.
“Every weekend classes in some art form will be conducted here, so that the kids here can learn many more arts,” Mohan says.
Mohan adds that all the education in the village is being planned such that it teaches the children to live together, rather than to compete with each other.
Edited by Rakesh MeharImage caption Jean-Marie Le Pen supports his daughter's bid to take over the Front National
For 40 years Jean-Marie Le Pen has ruled one of the most successful and feared ultra-nationalist movements in Europe.
In 2002 he shocked France by winning through to the second round of the presidential election.
But now at 82 years of age, the father of the Front National is ready to step aside and he is backing his daughter Marine to succeed him.
"I didn't take to politics readily," Marine told me. "But then as the daughter of Le Pen, it is probably unavoidable that I entered the fray. Politics swallowed me up."
"Now it is my desire to carry on my father's fight," she says. "I want to strive for what he believed in, what the French people really want. And if I don't do it, I don't think anyone else is capable."
Softer image
Marine is not lacking in self-confidence. But she is hardly Joan of Arc, the symbol of French sanctity that is the adopted emblem of the FN party.
Invariably she wears jeans and high-heeled shoes. She is a twice-divorced mother of three. She is pro-abortion. She is certainly not the choice of the hard-line Catholics within her party.
But those who meet her agree she is personable and difficult to dislike. Which makes her a formidable politician.
She is still perceived by the majority of French voters as the re-incarnation of the extreme right Nonna Mayer, Sciences Po University
"She is of her generation," said Nonna Mayer, an expert on far-right politics at the Sciences Po University. "She has no nostalgia for World War II. That is the past. She is looking ahead."
"She has the same ideas about immigration as her father," said Ms Mayer. "She thinks there are two kinds of French people: the'real French' and the others. But she packages this message in a different, softer way. She is very popular and very good with the media."
The vote for the party leader will be taken among 75,000 party members. The result is to be announced at a conference in Tours on 16 January.
The old guard
But there is someone who stands in Marine's way: Bruno Gollnisch.
For years he has been the right-hand man of Jean-Marie Le Pen and was briefly the leader of a far-right group within the European Parliament. He is seen as the old guard, though on the key policy of immigration, he and Marine are pretty much the same.
"Our policy is to stop and if possible reverse, firmly but peacefully, the trend of massive immigration in our country. We are also in favour of national preference. We think it is quite normal that French people be preferred to 'aliens' in terms of employment, education and so on."
The feminists and some traditionalists within the party prefer Mr Gollnisch. Marine could split the party. But her father thinks she is best placed to achieve the unthinkable.
"The National Front is not an association of bowls players, it isn't a basketball club, it's a political organisation with heavy responsibilities," said Mr Le Pen.
He joked and laughed with his daughter throughout our interview. They are clearly very close.
Image caption Bruno Gollnisch has been Mr Le Pen's right-hand man for years
"I've made it clear who I support," he says. "If you will allow me a comparison. Bruno Gollnisch is an Olympic swimming champion but what we need is a Formula One driver; that is not to take his qualities away, Bruno Gollnisch is good at swimming but he is not so good at driving."
Ambitious goals
The nightmare scenario for opponents of the FN within France, and Europe at large, is that one of these two candidates will see off a deeply unpopular President Sarkozy and progress to round two of the Presidential elections in 2012.
When Mr Le Pen forced his way through to the second round in 2002, centre-left voters held their noses and voted for the incumbent Jacques Chirac of the centre-right.
But, faced with a similar scenario, would the centre-right voters opt for a socialist candidate? Marine Le Pen does not think they would.
For years, there were many within the Front National who were quite content to belong to a fringe party. Marine has bigger goals in mind.
And she firmly believes the political tide in Europe is moving her way.
"I am in it to win, to win the presidential elections." said Marine. "That's the goal of any political party, to come to power to implement its ideas. So we will fight. And I think we stand a good chance of reaching the second round. It is why the French political class is so fidgety."
"We might well face a socialist candidate," she says. "I hope so. The voting reactions between the right and the left are not the same. Moreover, the image of the Front National has changed in the minds of the French people in the past ten years. The numbers prove it."
Image caption Marine Le Pen believes she could win the presidential election
Dangerous opponent
But has the image of Marine Le Pen changed in the minds of the French people?
Last month the mask slipped. During a campaign speech in Lyon, she compared Muslims who pray in the street to the Nazi occupiers of France during the Second World War.
"In the second round, I am sure there would be a sacred union against Marine Le Pen," said Nonna Mayer. "She is still perceived by the majority of French voters as the re-incarnation of the extreme right. And still the FN is seen by over half of the French voters as a danger to democracy."
And yet a recent poll suggested Marine could come third in the 2012 Presidential elections, with 13% of the vote.
It might not seem a very large proportion of the vote but that is five points better than her father was polling a year from the election in 2002.
With President Sarkozy floundering and the French centre-left still muddled, Marine Le Pen could be a very dangerous opponent.Image copyright JUSTIN TALLIS/AFP/Getty Images Image caption Lutfur Rahman was found guilty of corrupt and illegal practices by an Election Court in April 2015
Police made "major failings" while investigating electoral fraud in Tower Hamlets, a London Assembly committee chairman has said.
Steve O'Connell said there was concern the Met Police had not charged former Tower Hamlets mayor Lutfur Rahman.
Mr Rahman was forced to step down after an Election Court found him guilty of corrupt and illegal practices.
Police had investigated claims of electoral fraud and malpractice during the local elections of 2014.
Mr Rahman, who became Tower Hamlets' first directly elected mayor in 2010 and was re-elected four years later, has faced no criminal prosecution.
The Met has been contacted for a comment.
'Not what we expect '
Mr O'Connell, chairman of the Assembly's Police and Crime Committee, said: "During our investigation, we, as a committee, have been shocked to uncover major failings by the Metropolitan Police in its ability to investigate allegations of electoral fraud and malpractice."
He said failings included missed files of evidence, missed opportunities to gather witness statements and witnesses who were prepared to give evidence in the election court but were unwilling to do so in criminal proceedings.
He also said a bundle of 27 files sent to the Director of Public Prosecution was not reviewed by the force.
"This is not what we expect from a supposedly world-leading police force," he said.
Mr O'Connell has written to Sophie Linden, deputy mayor for policing and crime, urging her to use her powers to call on Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary (HMIC) to look into the activities of officers investigating the election.
He said it was time for "a fresh pair of eyes" to review the activities of the Met.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
LIVERPOOL FC have given up on trying to sign Theo Walcott in January – but will attempt to lure the Arsenal attacker to Anfield when he's a free agent next summer.
The Reds were prepared to table a bid of £8million for the 23-year-old England international, who has snubbed the Gunners’ offer of a new five-year contract.
Chelsea, Manchester United and Manchester City have also shown interest in securing Walcott's services.
However, Liverpool now believe that Walcott will stay put in January and see out the remaining months of his deal at the Emirates.
Arsene Wenger has made it clear that Arsenal won't look to cash in on the player next month and that suits Walcott, who will be able to weigh up a number of lucrative options after his contract has expired in June.
Competition for his signature will be tough with Juventus among a number of top European clubs who have been monitoring his situation.
The Reds' hopes of convincing him to move to Anfield as a free agent are buoyed by the fact that Walcott was a boyhood Liverpool fan. He also has the same agent as boss Brendan Rodgers.
However, Liverpool know that being able to offer Champions League football will also be an important factor in Walcott's decision.
The Reds currently stand seven points adrift of the top four but Rodgers is hoping that a double swoop for Tom Ince and Daniel Sturridge in January will provide the extra firepower needed to close that gap in the second half of the season.
As revealed in Tuesday's ECHO, the Ince deal is close to completion and Liverpool will pay Blackpool around £4million for the winger.
Sturridge is increasingly likely to join him at Anfield. The Reds are happy to meet Chelsea's £12million asking price but they have yet to agree terms with the striker.
Both transfers can't be completed until the transfer window reopens on January 1.The Best Undiscovered Sega Dreamcast Games
Usually, when you get a new-to-you console, you can usually find or remember the major games to check out. But what happens when you need something different to play? This is where the “Hidden Gems” come in.
Read More About My Criteria For Hidden Gems
See All The Hidden Gems Articles
This will be a bit of a work-in-progress. I may add to these as I go along and find new games.
If you have some recommendations to add, please do so in the comments section below.
Platformers
Obvious Choices:
Sonic Adventure, Sonic Adventure 2, Rayman 2, Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver
Featured Game: Napple Tale: Arsia in Daydream
“Napple Tale’s fourteen stages of play are primarily of the 2.5D variety, which means 3D graphics adding spice to single direction scrolling… The developers explore the gamut of gameplay concepts that we’ve seen before, from moving platforms, to well-timed jumps over moving objects and wide chasms…It may sound like standard stuff, and much of it is. However, the levels are arranged to perfection and feel like the result of much planning. They also feature a few non 2.5D sections. Boss encounters take place in large free-roaming arenas, and are as imaginatively constructed as the NiGHTS bosses. You’ll also find a few mini games here and there, and some fun diversions, like mine cart rides and an awesome multi-path roller coaster sequence. Also worth mentioning is the progression of level complexity. Although the game never becomes overly difficult, the levels grow more complex and lengthy as you progress – by the end, even experienced gamers may find themselves slowing down so as to not die…
The amazing world, oddball creatures and numerous moments of humor and surprise seem to take root in Alice in Wonderland. The 2.5D platforming levels are designed with just as much attention to detail – their elegant design is the equivalent of the elegant storytelling which can be found in the Lewis Carrol classic. Seeing as how Alice’s adventures in wonderland have been translated throughout the world and read by children everywhere, shouldn’t the same be said of Alisia’s?
IGN’s Review of Napple Tale
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More Great Games:
MDK 2
Super Magnetic Neo
Action
Obvious Choices:
Jet Grind Radio, Ecco The Dolphin: Defender of the Future
Featured Game: Alien Front Online
“Alien Front Online is one of the more impressive games on the Dreamcast, not necessarily in the visuals or the depth of gameplay; in the latter sense, it’s a pretty simple game, a Quake with tanks, so to speak. What Alien Front Online brings is a pretty sweet online package added to a single player mode with lots of missions.
Based off the original SEGA arcade game, Alien Front Online puts you in the role as the invading alien army, with their strange vehicles and weaponry, against the US Army, with their big tanks, bigger guns, and diehard attitude.”
IGN’s Review of Alien Front Online
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More Great Games:
Toy Commander
Bomber Hehhe!
Sword of the Berserk: Guts’ Rage
Gundam Side Story: 0079
Iron Aces
Incoming
Frame Gride
Pen Pen TriIcelon
Deep Fighter
Vigilante 8: Second Offense
Wild Metal
Adventure
Obvious Choice:
Shenmue
Featured Game: Stupid Invaders
“Right away you will notice the gorgeous graphics in Stupid Invaders. Sported within are great colorful backgrounds and that wonderful “cartoony” look that we all enjoy (Well most of us, anyway). The characters and environments are rendered very nicely. To give you an idea of the look of the game, just imagine the color scheme and wacky rendering techniques found in the classic PC game Day of the Tentacle. The animation looks great, except for some missing frames in some of the CG sequences. Used to tell most of the story, the CG sequences do a great job of progressing the story and play a huge roll in the game. And besides, watching the CG sequences is a lot of fun. They are very high quality, and are so well done, that Ubi Soft could have taken this game and made an entire cartoon out of it. Some may argue that Ubi Soft should have just done that instead, but keep reading for more on that issue.
Having a great storyline in an adventure is a must, whether it is in film, a television show, or a videogame. Without an interesting storyline, all the technical bells and whistles will eventually lose their grip on the player and the game itself will have failed. But Ubi Soft has a nice simple storyline for Stupid Invaders, with some great suggestive humor that will have you falling out of your chair throughout the course of the game. Even though its a “cartoon-styled” game, Stupid Invaders isn’t for the kiddies, as it has some mild language and “suggestive themes.” Rather than give any hints though, I let you check it out for yourself.”
Planet Dreamcast’s Review of Stupid Invaders
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More Great Games
Rent a Hero No. 1
Floigan Brothers
Maken X
Survival Horror Adventure
Obvious Choices:
Resident Evil 2, Resident Evil 3, Resident Evil Code: Veronica
Featured Game: Blue Stinger
“The combat in the game is very much similar to that of the Resident Evil series which, sports nifty weapons, such as napalm guns, bazookas, plasma rifles, machine guns, rail guns, and my personal favorite the Star Wars light saber rip-off, the Raysword… The combat isn’t as sparse as in the Resident Evil games makes things fun but doesn’t give that level of suspense that Resident Evil had…
The plot has many twists and turns along the way like any good adventure game should. You’ll meet up with other controllable characters such as Dogs, the foul-mouthed ship captain. Every time an important event occurs you are treated to some beautifully rendered CG graphics that rival Final Fantasy VIII. The plot unfolds in a linear fashion, with the main objective being the ever famous “save the world from destruction” theme we’ve been seeing since the days of Space Invaders. You will see the story unfold as you slowly figure out why the asteroid is falling towards Earth and discover who is behind the whole shebang. Overall, the plot is what kept me in front of the TV for as long as it did”
PlanetDreamcast’s Review of Blue Stinger
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More Great Games
Alone in the Dark: The New Nightmare
Shadow Man
Carrier
Illbleed
3D Shooters (First or Third Person)
Obvious Choices:
Unreal Tournement, Quake 3 Arena, Rez, Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six
Featured Game: Fur Fighters
“I really enjoyed Fur Fighters. It’s all too rare nowadays to get a 3-D action game which has (gasp!) action. Far too many 3D games are either dumbed down to compensate for being 3D (Sonic Adventure) or remove most enemies altogether, creating vast, almost-empty wastelands of exploration (Mario 64, Rayman 2). Although I’m not much of a first (or third) person shooter fan, I’m pleasantly surprised by the difference the inclusion of FPS elements has made to this sagging genre. You’ll often be attacked by three or more enemies at once, and will quickly find yourself strafing, jumping, and running madly to even the odds in your favor. Enemies attack with the same weapons available to your character: the shotgun is the typical short range weapon, the machine gun is the basic mid-range weapon, and others such as the rocket launcher can be used from longer distances. Switching weapons is also done ala MDK2, using the D-pad to cycle through the available choices. Eight weapons are available, and each is distinguishable enough from the others to give them individual advantages. As in all FPS games, you’ll always have a basic melee attack for those times when you’re out of ammo, or in an area in which it would be wiser not to fire.”
PlanetDreamcast’s Review of Fur Fighters
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More Great Games:
Outtrigger
Propeller Arena
Red Dog: Superior Firepower
Starlancer
Headhunter
Rainbow Cotton
Charge N Blast
Heavy Metal: Geomatrix
2D Shmups
Obvious Choices:
Ikaruga, Bangai-O, Mars Matrix, Gunbird 2, GigaWing, GigaWing 2
Featured Game: Cannon Spike
“The interesting thing about the game is its setup. It can be easily described as a shoot em up mixed with Contra for good measure. It’s over head, one screen look gives it a Powerstone feel to it. While not creative by any means, it gets the job done by being a fast paced shooter. And it’s rather hard too. Not so much because of the enemies AI (which at times you wonder if it even exist) but for the sheer amount of fire power that they have and a total lack of reaction to your attacks….
The game is set up much like Alien Solider, in where that the game is pretty much one boss battle after another. At the start of each stage you have to battle waves of terrorist which usually consist of either humans with weapons, robots, or robots with weapons. All enemies are typically the same, with being able to usually just shoot out tiny bullets or land a punch if they’re close enough. Once you have defeated every enemy, a midboss accompanied by with more enemies comes along to wreak more havoc. The midbosses tend to be much more massive although sometimes not so much and they range from a helicopter to a zombie gorilla. Once you defeat this wave, the actually boss of the level will attack you with the possibility of having minions with him/her. These bosses are the games challenge as they tend to shoot many bullets for you to avoid much like a shmups. There are a few instances where they will shoot at you that is reminiscent of a bullet hell feeling, as with many Psikyo games, with all the projectiles coming in at you. ”
Hardcore Gaming 101’s Review of Cannon Spike
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More Great Games:
Triggerheart Exelica
Under Defeat
Karous
Zero Gunner 2
Radirgy
Border Down
Castle of Shikigami 2
Psyvariar II
Trizeal
Chaos Field
2D Fighting
Obvious Choices:
Marvel vs Capcom, Capcom vs SNK, Street Fighter Alpha 3, Street Fighter III: Third Strike, Guilty Gear X, King of Fighters
Featured Game: Fatal Fury: Mark of the Wolves
“MOTW is one of the best fighters you can get for the DC. It’s also one of the best 2D fighters ever made. There’s really no reason for you to not go out and pick it up. If you like fighting games, even if you don’t, chances are you’ll like this.
It’s got everything you could want: nice graphics, spot on control, solid play mechanics, and it’s loads of fun to play. It’s nice to have a fighting game that requires some real strategy. It’s a welcome change from the current trend of button masher fighting games that Capcom’s “Vs”� series has spawned. If you’re looking for a fun new game to play on your Dreamcast, you need not look further than Fatal Fury: Mark of the Wolves.”
PlanetDreamcast’s Review of Fatal Fury: Mark of the Wolves
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More Great Games:
The Last Blade 2
Vampire Chronicles
JoJos Bizzarre Adventure
3D Fighting
Obvious Choices:
Soul Calibur, Virtua Fighter 3tb, Dead or Alive 2, Power Stone, Virtual On: Oratorio Tangram
Featured Game: Project Justice
“The fighting system in Project Justice is classic Capcom, which most people would agree is a good thing. Anyone acclimated to the basic movements Capcom has used since the early days of Street Fighter will have no trouble picking up Project Justice and pulling off moves and combos… Although some players may be caught off-guard that they can’t use all their characters in a single round, this is actually one of the most interesting elements of strategy when playing the game. Often times, it is beneficial for the player to choose a character he has no intention of playing, simply to gain the advantages that character has as a support character. The nature of the fighting system allows for those sorts of strategic decisions.
The fighting system is very much like that of Marvel vs. Capcom 2 in the way the use of partners adds to the strategy and depth of the fighting engine. In fact, the game really plays like a 3D MvC2, just without the ability to call in your partners. You can cancel opponents attacks by striking them at the right time as well as launch all kinds of crazy air comboes in the air. There are more or less millions of comboes and strategies in Project Justice, making it an actual worthwhile fighting game even though the theme and setting doesn’t exactly take itself seriously. Although a handful of characters almost border on “cheap” with seemingly infinite juggle ability, any player can avoid such traps with just a bit of practice and skill.”
PlanetDreamcast’s Review of Project Justice
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More Great Games:
Tech Romancer
Plasma Sword
Fighting Vipers 2
Psychic Force 2012
Wrestling
Obvious Choices:
Ultimate Fighting Championship
Featured Game: Fire Pro Wrestling D
“Regular consumers of Wrestlemania, No Mercy or similar US franchises (or those that have ignored Wrestling games totally) – consider yourselves warned – you might be in for something of a shock. Fire Pro is to those US based games what Street Fighter is to Tekken: less glitz and glam and far more substance. Fire Pro Wrestling is as old as old school can be (originating from way back in 1989) yet fresh enough to compete with the slickly produced new breed of 3D wrestlers. From the start there is a realisation that this game is different; perfect timing and a sense of the game play structure are absolutely necessary for survival let alone success; button mashing results in becoming intimately acquainted with the canvas.”
NTSC-uk’s Review of Fire Pro Wrestling D
More Great Games:
Giant Gram 2000: All Japan Pro Wrestling 3
Giant Gram: All Japan ProWrestling 2
Racing
Obvious Choices:
Sega GT, Daytona USA 2001, Sega Rally Championship 2, Metropolis Street Racer
Featured Game: F355 Challenge Passione Rossa
“The most defining characteristic of F355 is definitely its control. If there is one word in the English language that sums it up perfectly, it would have to be connected! You see those hands on the wheel? Those are your hands, driving your F355! I can honestly tell you that I’ve never played a game of any type that possesses more feel. You can feel when you’re traveling too fast to navigate that corner up ahead. You can feel when you’ve applied too much throttle and started to break the rear end lose. You can feel when your tires have started to regain traction, telling you it’s time to get back on the throttle. You can feel… well, I could go on and on with examples here, but I think you’re starting to catch my (4 wheel anyone?) drift.
Needless to say, after spending countless hours with those other “sim” racers and their typically floaty control, upon my first lap around Suzuka Short, I was simply amazed at how tight everything felt. And it’s important to note that this perfect control is equally attainable with either the standard Dreamcast pad, or a (preferred) high quality racing wheel… According to Sega, a professional F355 driver has claimed that “training” with F355 Challenge in the off season has actually improved his real life lap times at Long Beach! Now that’s saying quite a bit about what Yu Suzuki and his AM2 team have accomplished here!”
PlanetDreamcast’s Review of F355 Challenge Passione Rossa
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More Great Games:
Revolt
Hydro Thunder
Test Drive LeMans
San Francisco Rush 2049
Looney Tunes: Space Race
4 Wheel Thunder
4×4 Evolution
18 Wheeler American Pro Trucker
Star Wars: Episode I Racer
Tokyo Xtreme Racer: 2
V-Rally 2
Vanishing Point
Wacky Races
Puzzle/Maze
Obvious Choices:
Bust-A-Move 4, Super Puzzle Fighter 2 X, Chu Chu Rocket, Bomberman Online, Puyo Puyo Fever
Featured Game: Wetrix
“Wetrix is another hiqh quality puzzle game that can proudly stand next to its N64 competition, Tetrisphere and Bust-A-Move. The camera and control problems and the slightly flawed multiplayer mode knock it down in our final rating, but if you’re looking for another game that you can just pop in and play anytime, this is it. Wetrix is an addictive waste of time for one player and shows that there is still room for innovation and originality in the puzzle genre. Couple that with its low sales price and you’ve got another Infogrames/Ocean classic and a splashing debut for British developer Zed Two. Buy it, but don’t expect to immediately like it. It takes time.”
IGN’s Review of Wetrix
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More Great Games:
Ms Pacman Maze Madness
Sega Swirl
Mr Driller
Sakura Taisen: Hanagumi Taisen Columns 2
The Lost Golem (Golem No Maigo)
RPG/Strategy
Obvious Choices:
Skies of Arcadia, Grandia 2, Phantasy Star Online
Elemental Gimmick Gear
“Most of the game is a 2D overhead view. All the backgrounds and sprites are a 320×240 resolution, but all the backgrounds are 100% original hand-drawn goodness. There’s nothing constructed from tile sets here. Every inch of every map is unique. Very colorful stuff. Very alive. Sprite animation shows nothing to complain about. Very pleasing to the eye… All the boss battles, of which there are maybe 10, are in full 3D. They play exactly like the 2D portions of the game. Same buttons for the same moves. It offers a good bit of variety and makes the bosses seem a bit more dramatic….
If you’ve ever played Alundra 1, Beyond Oasis, Legend of Oasis, Brave Fencer Musashi, or Zelda LttP, you will know what to expect [in terms of gameplay]. The game consists of running around on fields and dungeons, talking to townsfolk, collecting money and other items, acquiring character upgrades and weapons, and performing some side quests. There’s a few mini-games thrown in there, but some are extremely frustrating.”
Mozgus’s Review of Elemental Gimmick Gear
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More Great Games:
SegaGaGa
Record of the Lodoss War
Armada
Evolution: The World of Sacred Device
Evolution 2: Far Off Promise
Sports
Obvious Choices:
NFL 2K2, NBA 2K2, NHL 2K2, World Series Baseball 2K2, Virtua Tennis, Tony Hawk, Ready 2 Rumble Boxing
Featured Game: NBA Showtime NBA on NBC
“The gameplay is almost exactly like NBA Jam’s, which means all the big insane dunks and unrealistic physics are here. But unlike Blitz, there are actually a couple of rules. Goaltending is in effect and the occasional bone-rattling charge may result in a free throw. Hit three shots in a row and you’ll catch fire, making you a force to be reckoned with until the other team puts out the flames. While on fire, you have a better chance of making any shot, but your fire can be chanced once the opposing team makes a basket or after you make five consecutive scores. Some fans may miss the inclusion of powerups, but their absence makes the game a bit more balanced. The AI hasn’t changed much since Jam, it still cheats, but that makes it challenging. And just like the arcade game, there are lots of codes to use and secret characters to unlock.”
PlanetDreamcast’s Review of NBA Showtime
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More Great Games:
Dave Mirra Freestyle BMX
NFL Blitz 2001
Tee Off Golf
Sega Bass Fishing 2
Sega Marine Fishing
Other
Obvious Choices:
Space Channel 5, Samba De Amigo, Crazy Taxi, House of the Dead 2
Featured Game: Cosmic Smash
“Cosmic Smash is a heavily stylized sports game with the emphasis placed strongly on arcade gameplay, which received only a small budget release in Japan. A big departure for respected Sega Rally developers Sega Rosso, realism is dropped in favour of immediate gameplay, funky music and pre-eminent cool. Ushering us in to this gaming metaverse, an announcer simply declares ‘Welcome to Cosmic Smash’, in a manner so laid back you imagine it took quite some effort…
Visually, Cosmic Smash is a virtuoso performance in minimalist retro-future chic, instilling pure joy in anyone old enough to remember the beautiful artificial vistas of Tron. Playing arenas are either clean white with grey line details and strong, disembodied light sources, or pitch black with green neon strips of colour defining the room. The player model and ball both emit light that gives enjoyable, subtle lighting effects in white areas, and a warm glow in black ones. Blocks are shiny and transparent, casting reflections on arena walls.”
NTSC-uk’s Review of Cosmic Smash
Find Cosmic Smash on eBay
More Great Games:
Seaman
Typing of The Dead
OoogaBooga
Yu Suzuki Gameworks
Pro Pinball Trilogy
Cool Cool Toon
Twinkle Star Sprites
Confidential Mission
Worms World Party
Jet Coaster Dream
Jet Coaster Dream 2
Tokyo Bus Guide
Lack of LoveSPIEGEL ONLINE: In your new book "Der Totenleser" ("The Interpreter of the Dead"), a vengeful husband cuts out his unfaithful wife's eyes and a father murders his son in order to hurt the boy's mother. Aren't stories like this just gratuitous, a sort of pornography of violence?
Michael Tsokos: I know that there is a fine line. My mother is also a doctor and one of my most critical readers. She said of the first version: "Michael, this book will be banned!" However I do not believe I have crossed the line into gratuitous violence. I could have depicted the incidents in much more detail but I deliberately chose not to.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: So the actual reality is far worse than what is in your book?
Tsokos: Yes. And it has become clear to me that no publisher would want a book that told the whole truth, the way forensic pathologists experience it daily -- and no reader could be expected to read it.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: Who are your readers then? Are they the kind of people who enjoy "torture porn" movies like "Saw"?
Tsokos: The target group is interested laymen, who are interested in a genuine look behind the scenes and who don't just want the glossy version of reality that television offers. If you take a look in the papers, you will read about cases like this almost every day. But in the newspapers, the stories are only a few lines long. I have also written about the fates of those involved.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: The subtitle of your book is "Unbelievable New Cases From Forensic Pathology." How often do these sorts of spectacular cases actually arise?
Tsokos: What is amazing is that we see these bizarre cases regularly, I could fill a book with them every year -- and I'm not talking about a knife fight with two dead. There's a lot of incidents that I didn't even bother to include. Take, for example, the hooligan on the Berlin subway who pulled himself up on the overhead handrail and then swung forward to kick out the carriage's windows. One time he swung too hard, his feet hit the train going in the other direction and he was hurled out of the carriage. He was left lying half-conscious on the tracks and the next train ran him over. These are the kinds of things that just make you shake your head.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: In your book, you reveal a lot of details about the day-to-day work of a forensic pathologist. But there are some areas where you leave things deliberately vague, for example the question of how the scene of a crime can be manipulated. Why?
Tsokos: Obviously I cannot give people a how-to guide for manipulating a crime scene.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: But you know how to commit the perfect murder?
Tsokos: Yes. In 16 years on the job, I have discovered plenty of possibilities for committing a murder without anybody even suspecting that it was murder. But we forensic pathologists cannot open this Pandora's box.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: Does the realism of TV shows like "CSI" suffer because they can't give the true picture, because doing so would give potential criminals ideas?
Tsokos: No. In my opinion, they suffer because they depict methods that do not even exist. One gets the impression they are not being advised by experts.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: Do you actually watch TV crime shows?
Tsokos: Yes, sometimes. But, for example, I don't like these stories about serial killers who are always very cunning and who supposedly have the sort of background knowledge that one could only have if one had been working in my profession for years.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: If we are to believe what we see on TV, then forensic pathologists solve at least as many cases as the police.
Tsokos: The impression is often created that it is the forensic pathologists who solve the cases. On television, the boundaries between forensic medicine and police work are often blurred. The Americans do actually have crime scene technicians working with police units, who take |
song attached to it.
Honourable Mentions
1987's The Living Daylights was John Barry's final James Bond score and followed the successful Duran Duran title track of A View To A Kill with another similarly energetic pop song, this time The Living Daylights by a-ha. Word has it that John Barry and the members of that band didn't get on, and that's probably why the song had only a minimal impact on the score. Unusually for a Bond film, a total of three original songs were written.
Barry had a much better working relationship with the members of The Pretenders, and the love ballad, If There Was A Man and the rock song Where Has Everybody Gone feature the music of Barry mixed with the lyrics and vocal performance of Chrisie Hynde. The latter features in source form within the movie, blaring out of a Walkman, the former plays over the end titles, and both crop up, instrumentally, in some of the romantic and action cues in the film score. We didn't put these into the main list as they were never intended to be title tunes.
Apparently, the Pet Shop Boys song This Must Be The Place I've Waited Years To Leave was originally conceived to be a James Bond title track, but the finished song was then heavily reworked and doesn't sound particularly Bondian. The Beach Boys instrumental Pet Sounds from the 1966 album of the same name was originally intended to be a Bond theme, and it was at one time called Run James Run, but the idea was abandoned. It's an usual sounding track, but it does have some twangy guitar.
Getting back to insiders' world of Bond, there is another abandoned Bond track called Only Myself To Blame that had been written as a potential end title track for The World Is Not Enough. It's yet another collaboration between David Arnold with Don Black, but this jazzy ballad, that reflects on the relationship between Bond and Elektra, was deemed too downbeat by the director of the film Michael Apted.
There you have it – that is everything we know about the forgotten, misplaced and rejected James Bond title song. Of course, if you have MI6 clearance and know about other significant contenders for the top spot in a Bond movie, let us know below in the comments.
Follow our Twitter feed for faster news and bad jokes right here. And be our Facebook chum here.Kontron announced a Linux- and Android-ready Pico-ITX single board computer with extended temperature support, built around a Texas Instruments Sitara AM3874 system-on-chip. The KTAM3874/pITX provides up to 2GB RAM and 16GB flash, supports HDMI/LVDS dual displays, runs on less than 5 Watts, and offers I/O including Ethernet, USB 2.0, serial, CAN, and SATA, plus mini-PCIe and microSD expansion.
The KTAM3874/pITX is the first Kontron Pico-ITX SBC designed to operate from -40 to 85°C, says the company. Available with a minimum of seven years long-term availability, the 100 x 72mm board supports a wide range of applications ranging from industrial use to digital signage. Targeted applications are said to include autonomous battery- or solar-powered outdoor systems, or mobile or stationary dual-display computers including Box PCs, HMIs, and thin clients.
Kontron KTAM3874/pITX SBC, with/without heat spreader
(click images to enlarge)
The board’s Texas Instruments Sitara AM3874 SoC is equipped with a single ARM Cortex-A8 core clocked at up to 800MHz. It’s the only 3D-accelerated model of the three Sitara AM387x SoCs TI introduced in 2011. Video acceleration is available, but it lacks the TI C64x+ DSP supplied by the pin-compatible, HD-video ready DM8148/8168 SOCs.
KTAM3874/pITX connectors, top and bottom
(click images to enlarge)
In April, Kontron announced a SMARC form-factor computer-on-module called the SMARC-sA3874i, which is based on the same AM3874 SoC and provides a similar feature set to the KTAM3874/pITX.
KTAM3874/pITX block diagram
(click image to enlarge)
The KTAM3874/pITX is equipped with 1GB of DDR3, with an option for 2GB, and it ships with 4GB of eMMC NAND flash, with an option for 16GB. A microSD slot is available, along with a SATA interface. There’s also an mSATA interface on a mini-PCI-Express connector, and a separate Mini-PCIe-based SIM card slot.
The board supports up to two independent displays via 24-bit dual channel LVDS and HDMI 1.3a interfaces, with the latter capable of supporting 1080p HD video, says Kontron. Analog audio I/O is available, along with a separate, 1W loudspeaker port “for making acoustic acknowledgement or for speech output,” says the company.
Dual 10/100 Ethernet ports are supported with an optional switch. Along with the HDMI port and two of the five available USB 2.0 ports, these are the only real-world coastline ports on the board. Of the three other USB ports, one is a client port, and another is available on a mini-PCIe connector. Other I/O includes dual CAN bus interfaces, dual RS232, and a single RS435, as well as 26x GPIOs, I2C, UART, and SP outputs.
The KTAM3874/pITX ships with a Linux BSP, but is also said to support Android and Windows WEC7. Kontron’s in-house services include individual driver implementations and configuration-specific images.
Specifications listed for the KTAM3874/pITX include:
Processor — Sitara AM3874 (1x Cortex-A8 core @ up to 800MHz) plus 3D acceleration
RAM — 1GB DDR3 (800MHz) via 2x 32-bit slots, with option for 2GB
Flash — 4GB eMMC NAND flash with option for 16GB; microSD slot
Display: HDMI 1.3 (external) with support for 1080p LVDS (dual-channel 24-bit) Dual display support
Networking — 2x 10/100 Ethernet ports (external) with optional switch
Other I/O: 4x USB 2.0 host ports (2x external, 1x via mini-PCIe) USB 2.0 client 2x RS232 RS232/485 2x CAN bus SATA 2.0 mSATA (via mini-PCIe slot) 26x GPIOs, I2C UART SPI (shared with GPIOs) Audio line-in, line-out, mic-in 1W speaker interface
Expansion — 1x Mini-PCIe slot with mSATA and SIM card support
Power — 5V DC; sub-5W consumption
Operating temperature — -40 to 85°C
Dimensions — 100 x 72mm (Pico-ITX)
Operating system — Linux BSP with U-Boot; also supports Android and Windows WEC7
The Kontron KTAM3874/pITX is available now at an unstated price. More information may be found at Kontron’s KTAM3874/pITX product page.1.1k SHARES Share Tweet Pin Text
Here are the three basic methods on how to start a fire with sticks.
Hand Drill Bow Drill Fire Plow
Each method has its pros and cons.
But to be successful, you must diligently follow instructions.
It’s hard enough to be successful (more on this later), but without employing proper techniques, it’s nearly impossible.
In this guide, we will describe each of these three methods in detail (provide simple-to-follow videos).
These will show you exactly how to start a fire with sticks.
But first, we should talk about WHY this survival skill should be learned.
As A Way To Introduce You To Skilled Survival, We're Giving Away Our Ultimate Survival Gear Checklist. Click Here To Get Your FREE Copy Of It.
Why You Should Learn How To Start A Fire With Sticks
What’s the first survival skill you think of when you hear the phrase “Wilderness Survival”?
I hope critical survival skills such as water procurement and debris shelter building come to mind. And I bet you also thought about fire starting as well.
Why? Because fire is so freaking useful in wilderness emergencies. Warmth, signaling, cooking, protection from animals…and also hope.
Fire and survival go together like bullets and guns. There’s just a special place in the human heart for fire and survival.
For instance, when all hope seems lost in the wild, a fire will spark some much-needed inspiration to keep you going.
It just feels like, “if you can make a fire…you can make it”.
Or as said by the blind priest in the classic movie Frankenstein,
“Fire Is Good. Fire Is Our Friend”.
Sure, fire is good; fire is our friend; but a fire is easy, right? Just whip out your $1.50 gas station Bic, hold the flame to wood and presto you got yourself a blazing, warm campfire.
But let me ask you this; “Do you always have a lighter with you? Have you ever forgotten to pack one? Did it get confiscated by TSA airport security?”
The truth is, matches get wet, lighters run out of fluid, and both are notorious for going missing when you most need them.
But sticks; yes sticks can be found nearly anywhere.
Learning how to start a fire with sticks is not a survival skill you want to be forced to use. But it’s a skill that every prepared survivalist should master.
Being able to start a fire, build a shelter, and craft survival weapons from natural raw materials is powerful.
The ability to survive with only the resources you can scavenge from the wilderness is called Bushcraft.
And Bushcraft skills are what wilderness survival is all about.
These skills are not just useful for survivalists; even if you’re a camper, hiker, backpacker, hunter or angler starting a fire with sticks is an essential survival skill you should practice.
It’s one of the few basic self-reliance skills that might someday save your life.
So it’s time to learn this skill; Just In Case.
As A Way To Introduce You To Skilled Survival, We're Giving Away Our Ultimate Survival Gear Checklist. Click Here To Get Your FREE Copy Of It.
How To Start A Fire With Sticks: Friction
Starting a fire with sticks, in its simplest form, boils down to harnessing the physics of friction.
Each of the three methods shares this friction concept.
So let’s go through the general idea of how friction creates fire and then we’ll dive into the details of the specific methods.
Preparation Is Crucial
If you get the preparation right, you’ll drastically increase your odds of success. Preparation includes:
1 – Procure the proper materials.
Sourcing a dry straight stick
Finding dry flat wood to make a fire board (or fire hearth)
Creating a dry and very fine tinder bundle
Creating a bunch of kindling
Having a bunch of dry sticks
The main thing in common in this list is that you must use dry wood. If you select wood with moisture, you are putting yourself at a significant disadvantage.
Don’t underestimate how important this step is.
You get this wrong; you’re destined to fail.
So the key to getting this right is to select sturdy wood with very low moisture content.
Why? Because moisture is fire starting’s kryptonite.
The more moisture in the wood, the more friction will be necessary to build an ember, and the less chance of success you’ll have.
Seasoned woods are ideal, but any thoroughly dried-out wood will do.
2 – Stage the materials.
You need to have your tinder bundle and kindling staged in such a way that the materials are nearby and ready to be employed.
Much of this is fire starting 101.
The process of going from ember to fire is called “working a fire up the ladder.” This is how it works:
You begin with a heat source or flame. For this ember or flame to grow you need very dry and very fine tinder. Then this tinder bundle provides enough fire and energy to catch larger more robust materials such as kindling. Then finally, the fire is strong enough to catch small dry sticks and logs.
This is how you go from a small ignition source to a roaring fire.
If you skip these preparation steps you’ll find it much more difficult to get a fire going (unless you have a fire accelerant – such as gasoline).
So before you begin, collect some dry kindling: old plants, bits of cured wood, dandelion fluff, old stalks, dead grass.
This will act as your tinder bundle.
In general, the finer the tinder, the more flammable.
Don’t underestimate this step. If your tinder bundle is not dry and fine enough, you’ll struggle to transfer fire from your hot ember to the tinder bundle.
Also, gather larger twigs and sticks to feed the kindling.
Kindling is wood (sticks) slightly larger and most substantial than tinder.
Flammable materials such as dry cedar bark, pine shavings, and needles, are all great kindling options. All those resinous dried softwoods that burn fast.
You’ll add these slower burning hardwoods to your fire after you’ve got it going using your tinder bundle.
That’s it. Here’s a quick recap:
You find all the proper materials (dry stick, dry board, dry/fine tinder material, dry/fine kindling materials, and small/dry sticks) Prepare materials for ideal setup (fire drill set up and fire starting materials setup) Create massive amounts of friction using one of the three techniques discussed below The friction buildup will turn the friction point from wood into hot ember Quickly transfer the hot ember into your tinder bundle and blow (this ignites your tinder bundle) Grab the kindling and use the burning tinder bundle to ignite it Keep adding larger, dry sticks to create a long-lasting fire
As A Way To Introduce You To Skilled Survival, We're Giving Away Our Ultimate Survival Gear Checklist. Click Here To Get Your FREE Copy Of It.
Making Fire with Sticks: Hand Drill
The simplest way to create enough incendiary friction is with a setup called a fire drill.
A fire drill looks exactly like it sounds.
It’s a drill made of sticks and wood.
The overall setup mirrors the design of a drill press you would see in a metal fabrication shop.
It’s a combination of a long, straight, dry, sturdy stick with one end sharpened to a point and a flat piece of wood.
The stick’s sharp tip is set down at a perpendicular angle onto a flat piece of wood called a fireboard.
But before drilling, being successful with this method begins with the proper material selection: fireboard and sticks.
As we touched on early in this article, the wood materials must be dry.
The drier, the better.
Once a fireboard and stick have been procured, it’s time to focus on creating an enormous amount of friction.
Now with this fire drill setup, you place your open hands on either side of the stick.
Palms flat, stick between palms and you rub your hands together making the stick twirl.
The twirling action of the stick then transfers rotational energy via friction at the point of contact between stick and fireboard.
Pro Tip: Placing your foot on the fire board will hold it steady while you are twirling.
With a hand drill method, the friction is created by twirling the pointed stick with your hands while at the same time adding downward pressure through stick into the fireboard.
The combination of spinning and pressure, over a period of time, creates the friction buildup needed to create a hot ember.
Pro Tip: Make sure you make a small notch in the fireboard for the tip of your fire drill stick to rest in. That shallow notch is where you’ll focus the friction to create a hot ember.
The notch also helps to ensure your drill stick doesn’t wobble all over the fireboard.
You’ll also need to add a side notch on the board.
The reason for the side notch is that when you are creating the friction the hot wood fibers need some oxygen and also need a place to build up.
Without a notch, the hot wood fibers have nowhere to build up, and it will take much longer to create a hot ember.
Once set up, the process is simple (but not suggesting it’s easy).
Just give this setup enough friction (energy) to turn the contact point of the stick and board into a hot coal or ember.
And a hot ember is the Holy Grail of creating a fire with sticks.
This sounds simple, right?
Well, it is, in theory, but here’s the catch.
While rubbing your hands together to twirl the stick, you also have to push down to create pressure.
Because without downward pressure, you won’t be able to create enough friction to turn the point of contact into a small hot ember.
Significant amounts of friction are created only by the combination of 1) fast rotation and 2) downward pressure.
And significant amounts of friction are necessary.
It takes a tremendous quantity of twirling and pressure over time to create an ember hot enough to light tinder.
So you’ll need to twirl a lot.
And then twirl, twirl, twirl and twirl some more until the end of the fire drill rubbing against the fire board produces a whisper of smoke.
When you see that whisper of smoke, you’re not done but you’re making progress. You’ll need to dig deep and twirl with even more vigor.
If you pause to rest, even for a second or two, the friction you’ve worked so hard to build up will be lost.
So no breaks. If you want to succeed, you must keep twirling…
The goal is to twirl until the tip of the fire drill becomes hot enough to grow into a small, very hot ember.
Once you have an ember, you can stop twirling and transfer the coal from fire board to tinder.
You don’t need to rush here, a good ember will be useful for a couple of minutes, but also don’t waste time.
Place the ember into the tinder bundle and blow on the ember to give it some oxygen.
Oxygen will stoke the ember and help it to transfer the ember’s energy into the tinder material.
If successful, the tinder bundle will begin smoking and will eventually burst aflame.
Then just work your way up the fire ladder from ember to fire.
Congratulations! You have now successfully started a fire with sticks using the hand drilling methodology.
Now if a picture is worth a thousand words, then a good video is worth at least 100 times that.
So here is an excellent video that goes into the details on how to start a fire using the hand drill method.
As simple as this method seems on paper, it’s not nearly as easy as it sounds.
To be honest, this is one of the most challenging ways to start a fire with sticks and requires a ton of determination.
Why? Because not only will the contact point become affected by the forces of friction, so will your hands.
Your hands will quickly become hot and sore. If your hands are not used to this sort of abuse, they will soon become blistered and bloody as well.
And that’s the rub.
Often the pain in your hands becomes too great to continue before you can establish a glowing ember.
It may become so painful that you will swear, curse, and give up in a heap of sweaty, frustrated agony.
So can a fire be started with a fire drill setup using only your hands?
Yes, it is possible, but unless your calloused hands are accustomed to this sort of abuse, it’s not probable.
However, all is not lost.
The way I see it, you have two options to help improve your odds of success.
If you have another person with you, you can trade off twirling. For this to work, you have to transfer twirling duties quickly. Because every time you stop (even for a second or two) you lose hard earned friction buildup. However, if you can transfer quickly, you will allow your hands and muscles a break. Which over time may allow for a faster, more successful friction buildup.
Make a simple tool and setup modification to take your soft, weak, fleshy hands out of the equation altogether.
As A Way To Introduce You To Skilled Survival, We're Giving Away Our Ultimate Survival Gear Checklist. Click Here To Get Your FREE Copy Of It.
Making Fire with Sticks: Fire Bow
Another way on how to start a fire with sticks is with the use of a fire bow. You may recognize these from movies of a certain time period where the heroes fashion a bow designed device from a branch and some twine.
They give the fire bow a few smooth pulls, and moments later fire jumps to life.
Again, it’s not as easy as it looks.
The directors of those sorts of movies edit out the hours of toil and sweat and instead hop right to the best part – when the fire starts.
A fire bow is composed of a sturdy branch but, in this case, you want it to have some moisture. This helps prevent it from snapping while you are drilling for friction.
The sort of branch you are looking for has a slight C shape to it, like a bow.
Yes, you can buy a fire bow and practice with it at home, but we are talking about ruggedly living off the land for a time.
Blue light specials won’t save you.
Try making a fire bow at home from natural material so you know what to do in the event of wilderness survival.
So once you have your bow-shaped stick there are a few more steps to create a fire bow.
Next, you need some string or paracord.
Most string materials can work, twine, shoestring, etc.
However, I keep a paracord bracelet on me at all times because it’s the perfect material for this task.
Worst case, if you don’t have shoe strings or paracord, you can tear a long strip of sturdy material from your clothing.
Not ideal but you can make it work.
Another wilderness option is to find some tough, flexible vines, like grape vines.
The length of cordage you need is roughly one and half times the length of your fire bow.
Now fasten the cordage to each end of the fire bow, at the tip ends.
Pro Tip: A fire bow fire drill works better if you select a stick that is larger in circumference than the one you’d twirl in your hands.
This helps give the bow cordage more area to grab which helps smooth the twirling process.
Now since you’re not twirling with both hands and are instead using only one hand on the fire drill, you can use the other hand to apply a stabilizing bearing block.
This is a piece of wood (or shell) held comfortably in your hand and placed on top of the fire drill to keep it steady as you twirl.
If using wood as the stabilizing bearing block you’ll want to add a natural lubricant to it.
A lubricant helps to prevent the bearing block from building friction and working against your twirling efforts.
Some fresh leaves work for this or a crushed worm or slug can work as well.
As before, make sure you have a tinder nest with easily ignitable materials on hand, ready to catch the coal you create.
Now you’re ready to drill for fire.
The fire drill cordage is looped once around the stick so you can twirl it by moving the bow in a back and forth motion like you are sawing.
The fire bow string twirls the fire drill, so its point rubs against the fireboard, creating the fire-producing friction.
You hold the fire drill steady in place with your free hand placed on top of the hand-hold, keeping the fire drill from dancing all over the fireboard.
The fire bow has the following benefits of hand twirling alone:
It’s way easier on your hands.
You can create more downward pressure and maintain a similar twirling rate. This is due to the freehand pushing down on the stick through the stabilizing block.
When one hand gets sore, you can switch hands, which should help maintain a fast twirling rate and pressure without tiring as quickly.
Everything else remains the same.
Friction–>hot ember–>tinder bundle–>kindling–>small sticks–>logs–>FIRE.
Now do yourself a favor and pick up a bow drill kit that’s expertly designed and ready to go.
A bow drill kit makes learning how to start a fire with sticks much much easier and fun.
Here’s a video that shows this method in a way that is easy to follow:
Making Fire With Sticks: Fire Plow
The third way on how to start a fire with sticks is by employing a fire plow setup.
A fire plow uses the same physics of friction but in a slightly different way.
With a plow, the necessary friction develops from sliding back-and-forth, instead of rotational.
So to accommodate sliding, you create a trough in your fireboard.
This trough is where you place the tip of your stick.
Then you push and pull the tip of the stick down into the fire board at a 45-degree angle. So the pressure slides the stick along the trough.
Doing this quickly, repeatedly, and forcefully, creates the friction build up necessary to create a hot ember.
Everything else from preparation to “working up the fire ladder” is essentially the same.
Here’s a video on using Yucca to build a fire plow.
Conclusion
Now is the time to take the knowledge of how to start a fire with sticks and put it to some use.
The best way to learn is to practice.
I just supplied the first half of the equation, now its time for you to supply the second half.
Get a good bow drill kit if you want to learn the techniques first and have some initial success.
Then practice how to make your own bow drill from natural resources.
And once you’re successful, I’d love to hear about it in the comments below.
Happy Drilling & Plowing.
Remember: Prepare, Adapt and Overcome.
“Just In Case” Jack
P.s. Do you know where the closest nuclear bunker is from your home?
There are a lot of natural nuclear shelters in the US that are absolutely free. And one of them is near your home.
Click here to see the Closest Natural Nuclear Bunker to Your Home?
How To Start A Fire With Sticks The Complete Guide 4.5 (89.41%) 34 votes (89.41%)votesNot the worst gig a goat can get.
Three goats at Pony Pasture are taking a break in the shade Saturday while they wait for their first course of winter creeper to settle.
Eating such invasive plants helps demonstrate their prowess at getting rid of pesky growth. At the river park, they chomp away at the aggressive ivy that has crept up the trees and would suffocate everything in sight if given the chance.
“I think of the goats as a SEAL team,” says Kristi Orcutt, owner of RVA Goats. “I send them in to get the poison ivy, the briars -- they’re not fazed by it.”
Human volunteers can sweep in afterward to get the rest, Orcutt says.
The goats are three of 27 available to rent from Orcutt to tackle invasive species or to help with old-fashioned mowing.
“Just the sheer effort to remove all of these invasive plants is almost overwhelming,” says Kitty Hardt, a master naturalist and Richmond tree steward. Her group has been working for several months now and cleared only two areas.
Hardt hopes the goats will help ease the burden and bring attention to the struggles between native plants and invasive ones.
“This area here is like an ivy desert,” she says. “Over time it kills everything. Even the smaller trees won’t survive, and it doesn’t allow any new trees to grow.”
Hardt surmises someone planted winter creeper in a yard up the hill. It climbed a tree and grew berries, which birds ate and spread downhill. Ivy also hastens the death of host trees, she says.
“Do not plant ivy,” she warns. “If you do plant ivy, never let it grow up a tree.”
Not that the goats mind the winter creeper buffet.
Orcutt says this is the goats’ first time eating this particular ivy. “I took it home to get their palates used to it a few days in advance.”
After that, goat peer pressure takes over and it’s a race to eat all the ivy they can, Orcutt says. Digestion breaks excluded.At the end of February we first highlighted something extremely troubling for the global "recovery" narrative: according to UBS the global credit impulse - the second derivative of credit growth and arguably the biggest driver behind economic growth and world GDP - had abruptly stalled, as a result of a sudden and unexpected collapse in said impulse.
As UBS' analyst Arend Kapteyn wrote then, the "global credit impulse (covering 77% of global GDP) has suddenly collapsed" and added that "as the chart below shows the 'global' credit impulse over the last 18 months is essentially mainly China (the green shaded bit), which even now is still creating new credit at an annualized rate of around 30pp of (Chinese) GDP. But the credit impulse is the 'change in the change' in credit and even the Chinese banks could not sustain the recent extraordinary pace of credit acceleration. As a result: whereas back in Jan '16 the global credit impulse was positive to the tune of 3.8% of global GDP (of which China comprised 3.5% of global GDP) it has now fallen back to -0.1% of global GDP (China's contribution is -0.3% of global GDP)."
As we concluded then, "absent a new, and even more gargantuan credit expansion by Beijing - which is not likely to happen at a time when every single day China warns about cutting back on shadow banking and loan growth - the so-called recovery is now assured of fading. It is just a matter of time."
Four months later, the so-called "global coordinated recovery" is on its last, shaky legs, because not only has soft data in the form of PMIs, ISMs and various other sentiment surveys peaked and is now declining, as has consumer confidence, but those all important CPI readings from around the world have posted several consecutive months of disappointing prints, and according to some are jeopardizing the Fed's rate hike intentions (especially if Wednesday's inflation print is a big dud). US GDP is likewise in "stall" territory.
In short, February's collapse in the credit impulse, duly noted here, top-ticked the recent peak of the world economy.
So, fast forwarding just over three months later, where are we now? To answer that question, overnight UBS released its much anticipated update on the current state of the global credit impulse, and it's nothing short of a disaster.
As Kapteyn writes in what may have been the most eagerly awaited report in recent UBS history, "we have been inundated with questions about the chart below, first published in March. Yes, the global credit impulse is still falling. And yes, it matters because the correlation of this global credit impulse with global domestic demand is 0.61."
But it's what follows next that should send shivers down the spine of anyone still clutching to the failed "recovery" narrative:
From peak to trough the deceleration in global credit growth is now approaching that during the global financial crisis (-6% of global GDP), even if the dispersion of the decline is much narrower. Currently 55% of the countries in our sample have experienced a -0.3 standard deviation deterioration in their credit impulse (median over 12 months) compared to 77% of countries in Dec '09 when the median decline was -1.4 stdev."
Here is what the stunning collapse in the credit impulse looks like as of today:
While we urge all readers to get in touch with their friendly UBS sales coverage for the full report, here is a quick primer from UBS on what the current data is telling us, not so much about China where the credit impulse slowdown was discussed previously, but about the world's biggest economy. From UBS:
The credit impulse in the US has also turned down, seemingly on the back of a sharp drop in demand for C&I loans. The slowdown is more visible in the bank loan data than the Flow of Funds data we are using to calculate the credit impulse (the FoF is 3x as broad and includes non-bank credit as well). But the slowdown is nonetheless at odds with confidence being expressed about investment and future borrowing plans. The US credit impulse was running at 0.7% GDP back in September 2016 and by March had fallen to -0.53% GDP (recovering somewhat in April based on bank loan data).
Why does this matter? Because as UBS shows in the chart below, in the US the correlation between activity and the impulse is very strong, and the lack of credit growth could constrain an acceleration in GDP from weak Q1 levels (the credit impulse suggests domestic demand growth should be close to 1% rather than the 2+% which consensus is currently tracking).
UBS' parting words - despite the spun attempt to deliver the gloomy news as painlessly as possible - are very concerning:
Over the last 6 months, the culprits are the US and China (given large GDP weights) but the size of the declines in, Germany, Italy, and Mexico are notable. And the message from the impulse response functions is basically that global IP and import volume growth have peaked.
That is polite way of saying the credit dynamo behind global growth has not only stopped, but is now fully in reverse mode. And, as a reminder, as UBS admitted earlier, "from peak to trough the deceleration in global credit growth is now approaching that during the global financial crisis." Only this time there is no global financial crisis.
More importantly, back in 2009, not only China, but the Fed and other central banks unleashed the biggest injection of credit, i.e. liquidity, the world has ever seen resulting in the biggest asset bubble the world has ever seen. And, this time around, the Fed is set to hike for the third time in the past year, even as the ECB and BOJ are forced to soon taper as they run out of eligible bonds to monetize. All this comes at a time when US loan growth is weeks away from turning negative.
As such, what "kickstarts" the next spike in the credit impulse is unclear. What is clear is that if the traditional 3-6 month lag between credit inflection points, i.e. impulse, and economic growth is maintained, the global economy is set for a dramatic collapse some time in the second half.Mae Anderson and Michelle Chapman, The Associated Press
NEW YORK -- EBay is splitting off its fastest growing segment, the PayPal payment service, the e-commerce company said Tuesday.
Investors applauded the news, sending eBay's shares up nearly seven per cent in morning trading.
The move comes after months of pressure from activist investor and billionaire Carl Icahn, who has a 2.5 per cent stake in eBay, according to FactSet.
eBay CEO John Donahoe had been adamant that splitting off PayPal was the wrong move for the company. But Tuesday, the company said that making PayPal a separate publicly traded company next year "maximizes strategic focus and flexibility for eBay."
PayPal provides online shoppers with an alternative to credit cards. It's also moving into mobile payments from Internet-enabled devices such as smartphones and tablets, which are expected to become a major area of growth.
Citi Investment Research analyst Mark May said in a note last month that the sum total of mobile payments could grow from $1 billion in 2013 to $58.4 billion by 2017. Apple threw down a gauntlet in September with its own digital wallet Apple Pay, seen as a major competitor to PayPal.
"The payments landscape is hyper-competitive, the pace of change is accelerating and everyone is gunning for PayPal," said Forrester analyst Denee Carrington. "The split will give PayPal greater agility to help it achieve its full potential."
Donahoe also said he will step down as CEO of eBay after overseeing the separation of the two companies and will not have a management role in either of the two afterward. He may have a seat on the board at one or both, along with eBay Chief Financial Officer Bob Swan.
Dan Schulman, an executive at American Express, will be the new president at PayPal, effective immediately. The 56-year-old will become PayPal's CEO once the separation takes place.
Devin Wenig, currently president of eBay Marketplaces, will become CEO of the new EBay Inc. He will lead the eBay Marketplaces and eBay Enterprise businesses.
Cowen and Co. analyst John Blackledge said the spinoff "makes a great deal of sense," because there is "manageable overlap" between the two businesses and the new structure makes PayPal "more nimble" to respond to challenges like Apple Pay.
EBay, based in San Jose, California, said that the separation was the best path for growth and shareholder value creation for each business.
EBay is an e-commerce site that connects sellers to buyers. PayPal, acquired by eBay in 2002 for $1.3 billion, has been its fastest-growing segment.
In the most recent quarter, PayPal gained 4 million new, active registered accounts, up 15 per cent, to 152 million. Payments revenue rose 20 per cent to $1.95 billion, about 45 per cent of eBay's total revenue.
PayPal users can send and receive payments online, with all transactions backed by prepaid user accounts, bank accounts or credit cards. The service is available in 203 markets worldwide and is on track to process 1 billion mobile payments in 2014.
There is a push away from traditional credit cards, particularly after a string of high-profile data breaches that have ensnared major retailers like Target and Home Depot.
Alibaba, the Chinese e-commerce powerhouse in China, split off its PayPal-like mobile payment arm, Alipay, in 2011.
"A thorough strategic review with our board shows that keeping eBay and PayPal together beyond 2015 clearly becomes less advantageous to each business strategically and competitively," Donahoe said.
PayPal has been expanding beyond mobile payments and offering other financial services. It began lending money to small business customers late last year. And eBay bought Braintree, a payment processor used by startups such as vacation rentals site Airbnb and cab-hailing app Uber, a year ago for about $800 million and will be part of the PayPal.
Shares of eBay jumped nearly 7 per cent to $56.16 in morning trading.
AP Business Writer Joseph Pisani contributed to this report.Police officers working in downtown Edmonton will have a new addition to their uniforms that act as an extra set of eyes and ears.
As part of a new year-long pilot project beginning Wednesday, 20 small Body Worn Video (BWV) recording systems will |
in that direction. So he had this big gathering of Hashemite leaders, and said, “You are my friends; I married into a Hashemite family; I have no problem with you. Your problem is with the other guy, with Mohsen.” He stopped the war. Mohsen then found a way to restart it. I think that’s when Saleh decided, let this war in Sadah be the way to get rid of Mohsen. So the war continued from 2004 to early 2010. The reason was because Saleh was sending arms to the Houthis to degrade the forces of his army commander, Ali Mohsen.
Didn’t the Americans say, “Our enemy here is Al Qaeda, and our enemy is coming out of places like Dammaj.”?
Well, we were saying that, but the problem was Saleh was intimately involved in promoting and manipulating Al Qaeda to extort money, both military assistance and actual hard cash, from Saudi Arabia and from the Americans. I usually say that Al Qaeda was in three factions. The biggest faction was working for Saleh and for government institutions, homeland security, political security, military intelligence. The second faction was working for Ali Mohsen and Islah and Al Zindani. And the third faction, a tiny small faction, was actually working for Osama Bin Ladin and Zawahiri. It’s still the case until today.
You mentioned the relationship between the Houthis and Iran. What exactly has been the relationship?
There is credible evidence that [the Houthis] have received certain high tech communication equipment, targeting equipment and stuff like that. But the weapons they use are actually from the Yemeni army. We know how it got there. We know when Saleh sent them the antitank missiles. Most of the support from Iran is actually in training and political support. There are five thousand Houthi students studying in Iran today. That is in addition to a large number of military trainees in southern Lebanon and in Iran. This is documented; it’s very credible. The Iranians tried their best in 2008 to convince the Yemeni government that they are not involved to the extent that the foreign minister of Iran offered to come to Sanaa to discuss the claims of the Yemeni government that they were supporting Houthis and answer any questions that may have arisen inadvertently by Iranian behavior. The Yemenis refused to receive him. This tells you that they didn’t really have any evidence that they could present to him.
However, the continuous claims by the Yemeni government and the Saudi government that the Iranians were substantially involved in the conflict in Sadah became a self-fulfilling prophecy.
In the negotiations just before the Houthis took Sana’a last year it became clear that they were in close coordination with the Iranians. Here is an example of that: One night, the negotiating team of the Houthis and the negotiating team of President Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi drafted an agreement to be discussed by both sides and to be agreed and signed the following morning. In the morning, before the Houthis came back to the negotiating table, the Omanis sent a copy of the agreement from Muscat to President Hadi, telling him the Iranians had agreed to support this agreement. Now, the government side did not send the agreement to Iran. So the Houthis sent the agreement to the Iranians for their approval. The Iranians shared that with the Omanis, not intending to have that come back to the Yemeni government. A few days before that the guy with the title of head of the Yemeni operating theater of the revolutionary guards in Iran sent a letter to President Hadi promising him that the Houthis will not take over Sana’a. Then he went into a lot of operational details. “We will accept this, and we will not accept that” and so on. It was as if he was actually running the campaign. It was officially delivered by the Iranian embassy to the president.
So by the time Sana’a was taken over, the Iranian involvement was clear. However, I still argue that it is not a patron-client relationship. The Houthis have their own domestic agenda, they rely very much on Iranian support, but they are not doing Iranian bidding. The Houthis are not as connected to Iran as Hezbollah in Lebanon because they are not the same sect; they are a different sect, close but not the same sect. Zaidis do not consider Ayatollah Khamanei [the Iranian supreme leader] to be their religious leader. There is no Iranian authority over the Zaidis of Yemen.
What was the role of the Saudis in the 2004–2010 wars against the Houthis?
At that time Saudi Arabia had a weak leadership. King Abdullah was not only weak but also in conflict with his powerful brothers of the Sudairi faction, leading to paralysis of the state on various issues of national security. So Saudi policy toward Yemen up to 2009 was really rudderless and reactive. Then, in 2009 they were sucked into the war by Saleh. You know how Saleh is manipulative, a great tactician really. He managed to suck them in so that he could extort money, and he managed to extort several billion dollars in the name of fighting the “Iranian threat” in Sadah. Within the Saudi regime there are two key factions, and maybe more beyond that, but two main factions, and at some point in the 2009 Saudi involvement in the war in Yemen, one faction was trying to use that war in competition with the other faction.
Up until 2009, the Yemeni file had been held by Prince Sultan, minister of defense. When he got sick and went off to die, the file had been transferred to Interior Minister Prince Nayef on the grounds that Yemen was becoming an internal security threat, so the Ministry of Interior, which controls the counterterrorism forces, were granted authority to deal with Yemen. But Khalid Bin Sultan, son of Prince Sultan and deputy defense minister, wanted to restore his faction’s authority over the Yemen file, so he was anxious to get into a war, rather than just counterterrorist activity, the proper domain of the Ministry of Interior.
Did he get his chance?
In 2009 three hundred Houthis, at most, crossed into Saudi territory. Saleh drew them into it. By this time the lineup had changed. Ali Mohsen, the army commander, was supporting the Houthis, covertly, while Saleh was attacking them. His plan of using the Houthis to degrade Mohsen’s forces had worked; they were really worn down. Now he decided that it would be politically useful to put down the Houthis. So he attacked the Houthis with the Republican Guard forces that he controlled directly. Mohsen meanwhile, to get at Saleh, effectively handed over a lot of bases, full of weapons, to the Houthis to use against Saleh. Meanwhile Saleh obtained the permission of King Abdullah to allow the Yemeni army to cross into Saudi Arabia and attack the Houthis from the rear. The Houthis responded by invading Saudi Arabia.
Khalid Bin Sultan immediately declared the whole region of southern Saudi Arabia to be a “killing zone’”—his words. He declared a general mobilization of the armed forces of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia to confront those three hundred infiltrators. There was fighting for several months. The Saudis carpet-bombed the entire border zone. When Khalid Bin Sultan declared southern Saudi Arabia to be a war zone he effectively banned the Ministry of Interior from the region. And so the counterterrorist forces who were properly trained to deal with this kind of security threat were not allowed to come in, and as a result the army couldn’t really sweep the infiltrators out of the border zone, and the Houthis came out victorious.
Because of 2009, the Saudis invested a couple of hundred billion dollars to strengthen and improve their armed forces. All the major investment in Saudi military preparedness was triggered by the 2009 war against the Houthis. That’s when they bought all those weapons from the Americans and the French and everyone.
What’s the lineup of forces now in Yemen?
Unfortunately it’s very skewed in favor of the coalition of Saleh, who controls a large part of the Yemeni army, and the Houthis. Together they control most of Yemeni government forces and institutions. They are in effective control of the state in Sana’a and most governorates [provinces]. Mukalla, an important port on the southern coast, is controlled by AQAP [Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula].
And the Saudis are not bombing Mukalla, and they’re allowing food in. Have they traditionally been on good terms with AQAP?
Of course. Until maybe a few years after 9/11 they were still coordinating the bulk of financing of Abdul Majid Al Zindani [Osama Bin Laden’s spiritual mentor, on the U.S. terrorist list] and Iman University. But eventually they parted ways; the Saudis conducted a major campaign against AQAP in their territory. The strategy was to push the AQAP members out of Saudi Arabia and into Yemen. So they established a dragnet clearly open in one end, and they just pushed them into Yemen. It was very convenient for them. As part of the campaign they also severed direct relations with AQAP.
But if you look at individual people who moved out into the AQAP camps, first stop was Al Iman, second was Dammaj, and off to terrorist training camps. So these places that had been Saudi funded, that was the terrorist railroad.
True, Iman University did not lose their support until the Arab Spring, when Al Zindani came out openly against Saudi Arabia, on the side of Qatar and against Saudi Arabia. Because that was how the Arab Spring mobilization took place, Qatar on one side and Saudi Arabia on the other. I did ask the chairman of the university. He said the university was continuing to get [Saudi] support until 2011. And then after that, they had to downscale the accommodation and food and stipends and everything for the students. Dammaj I think continued to receive assistance. So maybe the educational institutions were kept on the Saudi payroll, but the jihadis and people who are directly involved in terrorist activity were no longer connected directly to the Saudis. They might have been connected indirectly through intermediaries. Al Zindani definitely continued to have good relations with the Saudis until the Arab Spring.
Saleh was so close to the Americans, so close to the Saudis, CIA director Brennan would call him up late at night; they had a relationship. Now he’s in an alliance with the Houthis, and the Americans are working with the Saudis to target him. What happened there?
I think the guy overplayed his hand. The negotiations are imbalanced between Saleh and the Americans, Saleh and the Saudis, because Saleh has his entire thinking focused on how to extort as much as possible from these two countries, while they were actually thinking about a whole range of things, fighting terrorism, development and their other concerns, so he managed to use AQAP, and he actually harbored them and provided them protection and safe houses in Sanaa.
He provided them with safe houses in Sanaa?!
Yeah, at the same time as he is declaring that he is going to go to all-out war against AQAP. I heard this from people who are intimately close to the process, including some people who are directly involved. So he kept extorting money and aid from these two countries. Eventually I think he was exposed. Now he tried to make a deal with the Saudis, and the Saudis said there will be no deals. He sent his son to meet with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Nayef a few weeks ago, and basically Mohammed Bin Nayef listened to him while he said, “We will sever our relations from the Houthis, and we will eliminate them; we have 50,000 fighters. And in return sanctions against my father will be lifted, his money will be released, and I become president.” And Mohammed Bin Nayef said to him, “The meeting is over.” They are done trying to make a deal with [Saleh], because he has broken every deal he had with them.
I always heard that he kept a lot of his money in cash, in shrink-wrapped hundred dollar bills in his basement. What has happened to that?
When one of his houses was bombed three weeks ago, there was talk about hundreds of millions being looted by his guards, neighbors, Houthis, etc. There’s no way of knowing. But I know people who he’s taken down to the basement to show them the money to keep them loyal to him.
Has the Saudi bombing campaign had much effect on the Houthis?
It’s really hard to quantify this. But the fact that the resistance to Houthi domination is now holding territory is definitely because of the Saudi bombing campaign. If there was no Saudi involvement the Houthis-Saleh coalition would have controlled the whole country two months ago. They would have been able to take over Aden. There was no resistance in Taiz. So the Saudis did have an impact in reducing the military capabilities of this coalition, and I think eventually they will force it to abandon its campaign to dominate. They have already agreed to go back to the negotiating table to reach an agreement on power sharing. However, I have serious worries that the Saudis are not going to stop there. Some of the narrative coming out of Saudi Arabia is that they will exterminate the Houthis. It’s very dangerous, because right now the reason we are having this conflict, the reason the peaceful transition (when Saleh was overthrown in 2011) was derailed in Yemen, was because of an imbalance of power between the Houthi-Saleh coalition and the rest of the factions. To restore the peaceful transition we have to restore the balance. If the Saudis go for the destruction of the Houthis as a military force, then they will create the same imbalance vis-à-vis the other side, which is the Islah tribal Sunni coalition. Which means we will continue to have a military conflict.
It’s not civil war yet, in the sense that people are not killing each other because of their identity. They’re still fighting over nominally political issues, although the underlying polarization is around identity lines. So I’m worried that what the Houthis did to push Yemen into a civil conflict in September 2014, the Saudis may end up doing again when they end their campaign by eliminating the Houthis. The Houthis must remain as a counterbalance to the others. That’s the ideal situation that we can come out with.
With no water, no food, will there be a Yemen left to have a political settlement?
This goes beyond my worst fears in the past two years. But I think that Yemen is quite resilient; we can’t destroy Yemen. If we stop the fighting before we get past a certain threshold point where the conflict becomes outright sectarian conflict, that’s when I will lose hope completely.
Is the khat still getting through?
Allahu akbar, thank god our khat supply was never interrupted in the worst of fighting. Moderate prices, no problem. The new de facto president is a khat dealer, the chief negotiator of the Houthis is a khat dealer. Some of the top commanders are khat dealers. Clearly there’s one thing they can do well, supplying khat to the entire nation.By Pallab Ghosh
Science correspondent, BBC News
A network of radio telescopes had been threatened by the cuts Leading scientists have said that physics research in the UK is suffering greatly because of a shortfall in funding. They made their comments to BBC News at a meeting to respond to a government review published last month which concluded that physics was strong and had an excellent reputation. At the meeting, the scientists said that a 25% cut in research grants was damaging the long-term future of research. They are concerned that university departments are having to cut back - with some having to halve in size. And there are also worries that many young researchers are turning away from physics as a result of cutbacks. Late last year, it emerged that there was an estimated £80m shortfall in funding for physics research following the merger of two funding bodies to create the Science and Technologies Facilities Council. Professor Brian Foster is a particle physicist at Oxford University. He says his own department had to find savings of £1.5m to cover grants that would no longer materialise. "What we're suffering from is down-sizing - essentially getting rid of people that are funded by STFC. In my own department, we are having to halve in size," he said. Systems change Professor Foster is also European director of the International Linear Collider, a giant machine that would follow on from the recently opened Large Hadron Collider at Cern. The STFC withdrew from the ILC project earlier this year. Please turn on JavaScript. Media requires JavaScript to play. "The decision is a very retrograde one," Professor Foster said. "We cannot afford not to be involved in the future of particle physics. Not to be involved in the future is clearly a death sentence in the not too distant future." Professor Foster rejects claims that he is guilty of special pleading for his particular interests, a view supported by the president of the Institute of Physics, Professor Jocelyn Bell Burnell. "Of course you can't fund everything, but as president of the Institute of Physics I'm taking an overview," she told BBC News. Please turn on JavaScript. Media requires JavaScript to play. Her concern is that spending allocations were made secretively, without proper consultation. That resulted in a Comprehensive Spending Review in government that was not favourable to certain parts of science. The institute is keen that in future the process is more transparent and that there is much better consultation with scientists working in the field. "We see some changes in those directions but I've yet to be convinced that it's going to work well enough," said Professor Bell Burnell. Please turn on JavaScript. Media requires JavaScript to play. Professor Andy Fabian, president of the Royal Astronomical Society, said that grant cuts had led to young researchers leaving academia. "We're all still reeling; it had its biggest impact on the young post-doctoral workers who've decided, many of them, to do something else and that kind of drop is going to take many years to recover from." Future 'challenges' In October, Professor Bill Wakeham, of Southampton University, carried out a review of the status, funding, university provision, school education, careers and skill-supply of physics in Britain. Overall, his review findings were positive, but his report concluded that some "important challenges" had to be addressed. The review recognised the considerable increase in science funding over recent years - rising from £1.776bn in 2001/02 to £3.235bn in 2006/07. But it said that physics' share of this extra money was not as great as some areas because the government had made a strategic choice to push research funds towards health, the environment and energy. A spokesman for the Department of Innovation, Universities and Skills said: "Public funding for science is now at its highest level ever and will increase from £3.4bn per year this year to almost £4bn by 2011. "While detailed funding decisions are rightly a matter for individual research councils, over the past five years public funding for physics has increased from £460m to £616m."
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StumbleUpon What are these? E-mail this to a friend Printable versionThe Three Biggest Problems in the World
And How to Solve Them
umair haque Blocked Unblock Follow Following Sep 21, 2016
The biggest material problem in the world today is economic stagnation. The global economy is flat. But that’s just the beginning. Median incomes across the advanced world haven’t grown for decades. Translation: the world’s richest middle classes are imploding.
Nor are they being “replaced” by rising middle classes in the east. While incomes are rising in the east, they aren’t rising fast or high enough to make up for the losses in the west. Hence, a flat global economy. Further, gains in the east come at the expense of liberal democracy, basic rights, and human capital investment.
Translation: the global economy is broken.
As a consequence of a broken global economy, extremism is spreading. That’s the second big problem in the world today. It’s extremism of a certain kind: authoritarian, nationalist, often tinged with religious overtones. Hardly confined to the poor world, extremism is ascendant on the US, UK, France, Russia, to name just a few. ISIS and the national socialist movements of the rich world have more in common than they’d care to admit: both are products of societies in which order, opportunity, and stability is disappearing. Extremism doesn’t arise in a vacuum. It is the consequence of the political void left in a failing system where the middle is collapsing.
The middle is collapsing because at precisely the moment the world needs leaders worthy of the word, they seem to have disappeared. As a simple example, Hillary and Trump are the two most intensely disliked politicians in modern American history. Then there’s David Cameron, whose legacy is Brexit. Wherever you look in the world today, you will see the defining feature of an era: an era of low calibre leadership, in which the best we have simply aren’t very good – let alone good enough.
The forging of leader is a subtle alchemy. Part education, part culture, part training, part osmosis. What low calibre leadership tells us with great clarity is that this alchemy has gone badly wrong. Instead of turning lead to gold, it is turning lead to tin. Like tin cans, today’s leaders are easily crumpled, dull, and can’t hold much up – let alone the future of a suffering world.
So how do we solve the world’s three big problems? Shall we shrug our shoulders and declare defeat? Not a chance.
To really solve them, we’re going to have to begin at the beginning, not the end. That is, not with economics, but with leadership.
Not by waiting for better leaders. But simply by playing the role of those better leaders, in our own lives, whatever tiny way we can. Whether it’s by challenging our organisations, starting businesses, or just being defiantly decent humans.
If enough of us do that, then things – incentives, norms, institutions – begin to change. And if we don’t? They don’t.
Maybe you think that’s optimistic. Good. It is. This is a dark age. It is up to each and every one of us to create a little light wherever and however we can.
Dark ages aren’t dispelled by the sunrise. The midnight of the human soul is forever. But by the stars.
UmairMANILA, Philippines – A graduate of University of the Philippines (UP) Diliman topped the November 2012 Librarian Licensure Examination.
UP’s Brian Dayrit got the highest rating with 87.55%
RANK NAME SCHOOL % 1 BRIAN LLOYD BAELLO DAYRIT UNIVERSITY OF THE PHILIPPINES-DILIMAN 87.55 2 MARK ANTHONY ANDRESIO SANTOS UNIVERSITY OF THE EAST-MANILA 87.45 3 FRANCES ELAINE LIRIO LOWE UNIVERSITY OF THE PHILIPPINES-DILIMAN 86.90 4 JOHN LOUIE TOBIO ZABALA UNIVERSITY OF SAN JOSE-RECOLETOS 86.30 5 GENEVIEVE LOSEGRO VIVERO HOLY CROSS OF DAVAO COLLEGE 86.15 6 LOUISE KAYE GUDMALIN MENDOZA UNIVERSITY OF THE PHILIPPINES-DILIMAN 85.95 7 AARON PAUL LAURENTE MADRIÑAN UNIVERSITY OF THE PHILIPPINES-DILIMAN 85.75 8 JERIK-JAMES ESQUIVIAS DIONELA UNIVERSITY OF THE PHILIPPINES-DILIMAN 85.70 9 KARIS DAWN MANALO SALINAS UNIVERSITY OF THE PHILIPPINES-DILIMAN 85.50 10 NOEL SALVADOR BERNARDO CASIMIRO UNIVERSITY OF THE PHILIPPINES-DILIMAN 85.45 MA VICTORIA MONILLA LAGO UNIVERSITY OF THE EAST-MANILA 85.45
All 27 examinees from UP passed the exams given by the Board for Librarians in Manila, Baguio, Cebu, Davao and Legazpi.
The Professional Regulation Commission (PRC) said 379 out of 812 examinees overall passed the exams.The army is set to launch a fresh hunt for assault rifles, light machine guns (LMGs) and carbines after a string of failed attempts to equip its soldiers with these basic weapons during the past decade, a senior officer said on Sunday.
The officer said the force’s road map for infantry modernisation was taking shape with the government preparing to release a tender for 7.7 lakh assault rifles and redoubling its efforts to buy more than 54,000 LMGs and 44,618 carbines – weapons that are expected to cost upwards of Rs 45,000 crore.
“Indian soldiers are the best in the world but the worst equipped,” said Lieutenant General Rajender Singh (retd), who was director general of infantry in 2007-08. It was during his tenure that the army moved files to buy these weapons.
“The delay is absolutely shocking. Our casualties in counter-terror operations can be reduced by half if soldiers are provided better assault rifles,” General Singh told Hindustan Times. He said the assault rifles should have come by 2010-11.
The army’s fruitless hunt for new assault rifles to replace the flaw-ridden 5.56mm INSAS (Indian Small Arms System) rifle returned to the drawing board last year. It has once again revised and finalised the qualitative requirements for the new assault rifles and will shortly seek the defence acquisition council’s (DAC) “acceptance of necessity” for the weapon.
Headed by defence minister Nirmala Sitharaman, the DAC’s “acceptance of necessity” for weapons and systems is the first step towards making proposed procurements. She has identified equipping the soldiers with state-of-the-art weapons as one of her top priorities.
“We will move a case for getting the acceptance of necessity after which a tender will be issued. It’s an extremely critical requirement and we are running years behind schedule,” said another officer.
Simultaneously, the army hopes to firm up the qualitative requirements for the carbines and put out a request for information for the LMGs to take the infantry modernisation programme forward.
Two tenders for carbines and LMGs have been withdrawn during the past one year as, in both cases, only a lone vendor met the army’s requirements, delaying the projects by at least six years. A single-vendor situation is a strict no-no under India’s arms purchase policy.
“We have drafted simpler qualitative requirements so that a single-vendor situation does not crop up and basic weapons can be bought swiftly,” the officer said.
Defence secretary Sanjay Mitra will meet the army brass early this week to discuss the LMG programme. Army sources said the Defence Research and Development Organisation had claimed that it had a weapon to replace the LMG but hadn’t offered it for trials yet despite reminders. The force plans to buy 9,000 LMGs in the first phase. The new weapons could be inducted in six to seven years.
“These purchases will have a direct bearing on our operations in Jammu and Kashmir,” said former northern army commander Lieutenant General BS Jaswal (retd). “Our deliverance of casualties on the enemy is not fructifying due to fault lines in the entire range of small arms except the AK-47,” said General Jaswal, who headed the army’s infantry directorate before General Singh.
It was no secret that soldiers preferred AK-47s to INSAS rifles while carrying out counter-terrorism operations, said General Singh.
First Published: Oct 29, 2017 13:41 IST“THE region is getting covered," says the founder of the Teesside Cannabis Club (TCC).
"It’s just a matter of time, from the Angel of the North to Middlesbrough police station.
“We’re not going to back down and we’re not just one voice, we’re hundreds, thousands of voices from all different walks of life – there is no stereotype.
“We want to take cannabis from the top and the bottom, from the dealers who make our streets a nightmare to the pharmaceutical companies working with the government to hold sick people to ransom.”
The campaigner is speaking exclusively to The Northern Echo in a bid to highlight an illegal plot to establish wild cannabis grows at public sites around the North-East.
The Teesside father-of-three founded the organisation following the death of his father from cancer.
His father’s painful struggle and his own battle to control a crippling stomach condition inspired his work to promote the benefits of medicinal cannabis and he is now committed to campaigning for the legalisation and regulation of the class B drug.
His own GP recommended he turn to cannabis after a serious stomach complaint left him taking seven types of prescription drugs a day.
A mild strain of the cannabis taken once a day – enough to ease symptoms but not enough to provide a “head high” – has now replaced a once spiralling reliance on the cocktail of prescription drugs.
He believes it would have also helped his father deal with the pain of terminal lung cancer.
“When you’re caring for a relative with cancer you see what drugs and chemo are doing to them.
“I researched everything I could to try and help him with the pain but after he died I had nothing left to put my knowledge into.
“My way of helping others in my dad’s memory is to make as many people as possible aware of the health benefits of cannabis.”
Together with a disabled man in his 40s and a professional woman of 50, he set up the Teesside Cannabis Club (TCC) which works in conjunction with the lobbying organisation UKCSC (UK Cannabis Social Clubs) to promote the benefits of the plant.
And he is encouraging hundreds of members to support the Feed the Birds movement by setting up wild cannabis grows.
“We don’t condone dealing or selling drugs," he says. "We want people to be able to grow their own without being criminalised and we want it regulated.
“I’ve got 36 convictions for possession of cannabis, I’ve had to deal with drug dealers and I shouldn’t have had to go down this route at all.
“We’re speaking out to say we’re here in the North-East and we’re not going away until the law changes – this is not London, it’s not Manchester but it’s a big place and we can make a difference from here.”Thieves who targeted Microsoft’s Silicon Valley campus over the holiday break walked away with five iPads but apparently didn’t consider any Microsoft products worth stealing.
Ouch! That’s the report from the Palo Alto Daily Post, or at least from a scan of an apparent article from the paper making the rounds online. (The paper doesn’t offer a full online version.)
There’s some speculation that it’s a spoof, but the details including the name of the officer, the reporter and the address of the Microsoft campus in Mountain View all appear legitimate, and we also found an online reference to the police report.
The story reads, “Microsoft’s campus in Mountain View is presumably loaded with Microsoft’s latest and greatet products, but a thief decided to steal five Apple iPads from the company’s offices instead.” They were reported to be two iPad 2s, two iPad 3s, and one iPad 4.
The paper notes erroneously that the iPad 4 hasn’t yet been released. That’s the common (though not official) name for the current, fourth-generation iPad.
The story concludes, “No Microsoft products were reported stolen.”
Yes, it reads like it could come from the Onion, but it appears real. We’ve left messages with the Daily Post reporter and the Mountain View PD to confirm the story and the details.
Update, Monday morning: In case anyone was wondering, Daily Post reporter Angela Ruggiero confirmed via email that the story is real.The week in football – Cellino; the Scientology clause; pot-belly of the week; plus why the gates to love are locked
Match of the week: one to watch
Football's fit and proper test, enhanced in 2010, versus Massimo Cellino – 12 months after his last arrest warrant alleged he "shows a total lack of a sense of legality or respect for institutions". Cellino denies wrongdoing.
• Explaining the Leeds deal: GFH head Hisham Alrayes on what drew the Bahraini bank to Cellino's £25m bid for 75%: "It has taken us some time to get the right deal in place with people who truly shared our commitment to, and faith in, the future of Leeds United."
Breakthrough of the week
Coming out unequivocally on discrimination after years of mixed messages: Sepp Blatter, 77: "Imposing an age limit [on sport executives] is an act of discrimination. It is not normal to impose age limits."
Also last week from Zurich
• Fifa marking the conclusion of their sustainability training programme to "improve awareness of sustainable management" among Brazil's stadium operators - two months after their £5.2m 90-minute World Cup draw in a £1.7m temporary tent.
• Plus a setback: Fifa executives told to end their bonus culture by its audit and compliance head, after £20.4m was paid to undisclosed "key management personnel" in 2012 – up 81% since 2008. (Sepp's view on executive pay, expressed in 2011: "I'm not ashamed … We're school kids as far as salaries are concerned.")
Figure of the week
$205bn: The amount Qatar will have spent by 2018 on major pre-World Cup infrastructure projects, being built by migrants on $300 a month.
Lazy journalism news
Swansea chairman Huw Jenkins, 3 Feb, unhappy with reports over Michael Laudrup's future: "When you end up losing matches you get rumours and you get stories. We have had them for many weeks... There isn't anything to discuss."
Also moving on
• Holland, 20 Jan: Ado Den Haag CEO Piet Jansen, staying resolute on coach Maurice Steijn. "You don't need to keep asking me about him every other day: I'm totally consistent." 5 Feb: Sacks him.
• South Africa, 6 Jan: Chippa United chairman Siviwe Mpengesi says he's ready to settle down after getting through seven coaches in 17 months. "We have the best manager, and we support him." 27 Jan: Makes it 8 in 18 months.
• Plus: Massimo Cellino, sacking and unsacking Brian McDermott inside 24 hours – his fastest switch since telling Cagliari fans to lay off Massimo Ficcadenti. 2 Nov 2011: "There are those who dare pass insults, but for every so-called fan who whistles, 100 show support. We're building with patience and trust. I have those qualities. I'm not even thinking about sacking. He's a good coach, a good man. It's time to be serious, earnest and, above all, level-headed." 9 Nov: Sacks him.
PR News: mixed week for…
Newcastle: facing more credibility-sapping headlines over Joe Kinnear and Willie Donachie, but gaining Papa John's as Official Pizza Partner in "really exciting" news for fans.
Quote of the week
Birmingham International Holdings Ltd, revealing chairman Carson Yeung had resigned "to devote more time to his other personal commitments" - and thanking him for "his foresight, aspiration and clairvoyance".
Clause of the week
Germany: Der Spiegel publishing a leaked Adidas player endorsement contract revealing the forfeit clauses which would cost the unnamed Bayern Munich player his €400,000 deal: being caught taking drugs, or "belonging to any organisation or association which represents the principles of L. Ron Hubbard." Adidas: "Scientology and other such organisations are incompatible."
Respect campaign
Ghana: Premier League referee Otis Oppong passing a fitness test to "silence critics" of his pot-belly: "I hope this puts to bed the numerous calls suggesting I am unfit to be the referee. My belly has never been a problem for me."
Club name of the week
Nepal: Friends Club fined after three of its officials manhandled a referee, leading to bans of up to 12 months. The club says it will take legal action to secure compensation and overturn the bans. "We've suffered a lot."
Most contrite
El Salvador: Atlético Marte coach Romeo Blanco, facing charges after calling a referee "a frustrated homosexual criminal" marked by "boundless arrogance". "I take full responsibility for what I say and do. I said what I said, and I'd say it again." Disciplinary head Luis Iraheta: "We're really tired of this."
Cleanest break
Peru: Model Tilsa Lozano says she's moving on from the public furore that followed her alleged affair with Fiorentina's Juan Manuel "El Loco" Vargas, which he denies, by releasing the video for her new track "I'm single and I do what I want." Lozano: "The gates to my love are padlocked."
Plus: most giving
Former Brazil star Gérson, 73, on why he marked Botafogo's third goal by stripping off in the Maracana's Rádio Transamérica studio and leading fan celebrations. "With that goal, I became crazed – I felt inflamed, so took off my top. These fans deserved it."Senator Bernie Sanders
November 4, 2013
Williston, Vt.
I am excited to be here today with all of you to officially launch the Vermont Regional Test Center. Many people and organizations worked hard to make this happen. I want to thank Secretary of Energy Ernest Moniz and the Department of Energy, Sandia National Laboratories, IBM, and Governor Shumlin and the State of Vermont. Others that deserve recognition include: Mary Powell, Josh Castongay, and the rest of the Green Mountain Power crew; and Dr. John Evans, Dr. Melody Burkins, and their colleagues at the University of Vermont. Thanks to all of these folks and the many other supporters working behind the scenes for their hard work.
In 2008, I visited Sandia’s lab in New Mexico, and it became clear that there was huge potential for a Vermont-Sandia partnership. That visit was the beginning of a friendship and a partnership committed to creating a national lab presence in Vermont. Today we are celebrating a significant milestone in that relationship: the launching of the Vermont Regional Test Center – one of five such centers in the country.
The Regional Test Center is a $3 million project funded by the U.S. Department of Energy’s SunShot Initiative, which aims for a 75 percent reduction in the cost of solar energy by 2020 and to make solar power account for at |
suggestion email entertainment.news@bbc.co.uk.Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau says all candidates running for nomination to represent the Liberal Party in 2015 will have to support the party's pro-choice position, but that the same rule does not apply to sitting MPs.
"I have made it clear that future candidates need to be completely understanding that they will be expected to vote pro-choice on any bills," Trudeau said Wednesday following his party's weekly caucus meeting in Ottawa.
Trudeau said that rule, however, does not apply to current members of Parliament because they were vetted under a different nomination process.
"The existing MPs... will be respected to a certain extent in their choices, but our position as a party is we do not reopen that debate," Trudeau told reporters.
The Liberal leader said it is part of the screening process to ask candidates where they stand on a number of issues, ranging from same-sex marriage to abortion.
"We make sure that the people who are stepping forward are consistent with the Liberal Party as it is now, as it stands under my leadership and under the feedback we're getting from Canadians across the country."
Trudeau insisted his party is committed to open nominations, but that does not prevent him from screening candidates.
'2-tier system'
NDP Leader Tom Mulcair criticized Trudeau's position saying the Liberal leader was compromising his principles by creating a double-standard within his own party.
"I have difficulty seeing how you can have a two-tier system in your caucus," Mulcair told reporters after question period on Wednesday.
"When you make an offer to the public in an election, it's based on principle. It's an ethical question."
Mulcair said that no current or future NDP MP "will ever vote against a woman's right to choose."
I would prefer to have a situation where the party was of a more pluralistic view, but the party's made that choice and the leader reflects that choice. - John McKay, Liberal MP
Liberal MP John McKay, a long-time opponent of abortion, told reporters on Wednesday that it's normal for MPs to have some differences with their parties but conceded that "it creates awkward moments."
"I would prefer to have a situation where the party was of a more pluralistic view, but the party's made that choice and the leader reflects that choice," McKay said.
"Whether it is right or whether it is wrong, whether it's good politics or bad politics, that's the decision."
Whipped votes
Trudeau appeared stumped for an answer when he was asked whether he would whip any future votes on abortion.
"It is a tough one," Trudeau said.
"We are steadfast in our belief... it is not for any government to legislate what a woman chooses to do with her body. And that is the bottom line."
Trudeau, however, went on to note that during his Liberal leadership campaign he said he would whip the vote on issues included in the party's platform, on budget votes and votes of confidence, as well as votes on basic charter rights.
The Liberal leader acknowledged his party does not yet have an official platform.
Kate Purchase, a spokeswoman for the Liberal Party, told CBC News in an email that "people deserve the assurance that if they vote Liberal, they will get an MP that supports a woman's right to choose."
"Current MPs who were elected before Mr. Trudeau became Leader were elected under a different process and we will respect that process," Purchase said.
McKay refused to speculate what he would do if a vote on abortion came up in the future.
"I don't know. I don't know what the circumstances of the vote would be," McKay said.
In an interview with CBC News Network's Power & Politics on Wednesday, McKay told host Evan Solomon he was "surprised" by Trudeau's comments today.
Trudeau's comments came after members of the Campaign Life Coalition held a news conference ahead of the annual March for Life anti-abortion protest which will take place on Parliament Hill on Thursday.
The group said it is hoping to draw out anti-abortion candidates from all parties, including the federal New Democrats and Liberals.
It had been expected that Trudeau would discuss his party's motion proposing five changes to fix the Temporary Foreign Worker Program, but he did not.
That motion was defeated 146–129 in the House of Commons late Wednesday.Staughton Lynd could have built an enviable career as an academic but for his conscience. His conscience led him as a young undergraduate disgusted by the elitism around him to drop out of Harvard, and tortured him when he returned to finish his degree. It plagued him after he received his doctorate from Columbia and saw him head to the segregated South to join his friend Howard Zinn in teaching history at the historically black Spelman College. It propelled him to become the director of Freedom Schools in the Mississippi Summer Project of 1964. It prodded him a year later to chair the first march against the Vietnam War in Washington, D.C., and join Tom Hayden and Herbert Aptheker on a trip to Hanoi.
The administration at Yale University, where Staughton taught after leaving Spelman because of conflicts with the college president over his and Zinn’s activism, was not amused. Yale dismissed him as a professor. Five other universities, which had offered Staughton teaching positions, abruptly rescinded their offers. He had become a pariah. No university would hire him, although his book “Intellectual Origins of American Radicalism” had become a minor classic. Staughton, like all incorrigible rebels, found a new route to defy authority. He put himself, with his wife’s help, through law school, graduated in 1976 and moved to Youngstown, Ohio, to fight the departing steel companies and defend workers tossed out of jobs.
Staughton faults the labor movement and 1960s civil rights organizers, including Saul Alinsky, for whom he worked in Chicago, for failing to see that moving temporarily into a community, organizing and then departing left the organized vulnerable to reprisal. It eroded the credibility and moral authority of radical activists. The Lynds embrace the idea of “accompaniment,” proposed by the assassinated Salvadoran Archbishop Oscar Romero. Accompaniment calls on professionally trained people, whether lawyers, doctors or teachers, to move into poor areas and remain there. This led the Lynds to move, once Staughton got his law degree, to Youngstown, where they have remained for 34 years.
Power, for the Lynds, must be fought in all its forms. While working for a law firm that represented unions, Staughton was asked to prepare a Supreme Court brief for a union that had failed to file a meritorious grievance for a member.
“I’d drop dead first,” Staughton snapped at the head of the firm.
He then published a book called “Labor Law for the Rank and Filer,” and the firm’s patience with their new hire ended. He was fired. It was another lesson, for all who seek the moral life, that the world does not reward virtue. Failure, at least as it is defined by the powerful, is the price to pay for moral autonomy and courage. Staughton had become a lawyer to help workers. If union bosses would not further workers’ rights, he would fight the unions too.
“The paradigmatic experience of my father, who as a student at Union Theological Seminary had taken a summer preaching assignment, which apparently was the practice between the first and second years, saw him end up at a Rockefeller oil camp in Elk Basin, Wyo.,” Staughton said. “When my father arrived in Elk Basin in the early 1920s by stagecoach, he became aware on the very first evening at the table that the men who were working six days a week for Mr. Rockefeller were not thrilled to have this handsome young man from the East spending the week talking to their wives. So he got a job as a pick-and-shovel laborer, and preached in the schoolhouse Sunday evenings. It is the single thing about him of which I am most proud. I have made a way of life out of what my father experienced for a summer, to find a way to have a continuing relationship with the poor and the oppressed, with a working-class community quite different from the academic livelihood that both my parents ended up in.
“Throughout my life with one or two exceptions, my closest friends have been persons who, like Howard Zinn, could be described as working-class intellectuals,” he said. “What it means for Marxist analysis and how we change the world, I guess I am still trying to figure out. Nowadays, Youngstown having closed all its steel mills and become a prison town, Alice and I have some of our closest relationships with people behind bars.”
I met Staughton and Alice, also a lawyer, a few days ago in Youngstown. The Lynds, now in their 80s, have soldiered on as the walls have collapsed around them. They practice what they call “prophetic litigation,” meaning that they often know they are likely to lose but believe that constantly battling issues of injustice and abuse, and keeping these issues before the public, is worth the likelihood of defeat.
Youngstown, like many postindustrial pockets in America, is a deserted wreck plagued by crime and the attendant psychological and criminal problems that come when communities physically break down. The city’s great steel mills have been leveled and replaced by America’s new growth industry — prisons, including a so-called supermax facility. The Lynds worked for many years for Legal Services in Youngstown, specializing in employment law. Staughton, when the steel mills were shut down in the late 1970s, served as lead counsel to the Ecumenical Coalition of the Mahoning Valley, which sought to reopen the mills under worker-community ownership. The legal impediments, however, conspired to make the worker-community ownership impossible, a stark reminder that law in this country is usually designed to protect privilege.
“The hollowing out of the American economy, the absence of manufacturing jobs, is critical,” he said. “It means that this is not an ordinary recession. We are not going to bounce back the way we did in past recessions. Alice and I have had some contact with a school in inner-city Youngstown where they send kids who are thrown out of public school to give them one last chance before they put them behind bars. We have a pretty intense feeling for what it is like to grow up as an African-American in a place like Youngstown. Even if you make it through high school, where do you find a job? I don’t mean to say the problem is wholly economic. There is often a lack of love in the home that these kids experience. But if there were decent jobs which a hard-working young person could go on to, we would have a different world. Instead, some of these kids volunteer for the military and take their hatred and trauma overseas.”
As the collapse has taken its toll on the residents in and around Youngstown, the Lynds have focused on the plight of inmates, especially those who were involved in a prison uprising in Lucasville, Ohio, in April 1993. Five of the leaders of the uprising were sentenced to death for their part. They remain on death row.
Three of the five are black and two are white. The two whites were members of the Aryan Brotherhood. The blacks are Muslims. The men have refused to testify against each other. The Lynds, when they read the testimony of Ohio Highway Patrol Sgt. Howard Hudson in the trial of one of the white inmates, George Skatzes, were inspired by the inmates’ ability to overcome racial and religious divisions.
Once the prisoners surrendered and the Highway Patrol entered L block, which the prisoners had occupied, the officers found graffiti covering the walls. In the trial, Hudson, the state’s principal investigator, identified a photograph taken in the L block corridor.
Question: On the wall on the right there appears to be something written? Answer: Says “Black and White Together.” Q: Did you find that or similar slogans in many places in L block? A: Yes, we did, throughout the corridor, in the L block.
The transcript goes on.
Q: [What is the photograph] 260? A: 260, the words, “Convict Unity,” written on the walls of L corridor. Q: Did you find the message of unity throughout L block? A: Yes. … Q: Next photo? A: 261 is another photograph in L corridor that depicts the words, “Convict race.”
“ ‘Convict race,’ is my favorite,” Staughton said. “Evidently the cultural creation of racial identity can work in more than one way. Among the Lucasville rebels, the process didn’t separate the races, but overcame racism. Not since the early 1960s in the South have I experienced as much interracial solidarity as I have among convicted prisoners which the state of Ohio considers ‘the worst of the worst.’
“The same solidarity took place among soldiers in Vietnam who protested the war,” he said. “This is instructive. People draw on their cultural resources, on their music, traditions and symbols in radical or revolutionary conflicts. It is natural that blacks and whites would initially organize separately. But in Vietnam, or a supermax prison, troops and inmates face a common danger and a common enemy. It is easier to overcome cultural barriers. The danger in the wider society is less defined. It is more diffuse. This is the reason it is harder to bring groups together. But this is what must happen. Too many movements are directed from the top down. They are not rooted in local communities. It is we who should be building local movements to tell those in power what to do, not the other way around.
“My favorite book is Ignazio Silone’s novel ‘Bread and Wine,’ particularly the first edition before he started rewriting all his books.” he said. “The religious element in my childhood was very recessive, more in the background than upfront. We never went to church, although it has always been there for me. My parents sent me to schools run by the Ethical Cultural Society. It is a kind of reform, Reformed Judaism institution. What Pietro Spina, the protagonist of ‘Bread and Wine,’ struggles with is how to bring together the Christianity of his childhood and adolescence with his later Marxism. That has been my effort as well.”
The Lynds have requested that their ashes be buried along with those of indigent death row inmates at a cemetery run by the Jubilee Partners community in Georgia.
“We knew at once that this is where we belonged,” Staughton said.Image caption Click right to see the nEUROn without its domed cover previous slide next slide
Under a huge semi-opaque dome and with heavy security in attendance, visitors to the Paris Air Show peer at a strange looking shape.
Drones Aircraft without pilots are known as Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), or drones
In military situations, drones are used for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance
They are piloted by crew at base
Typical uses include checking for roadside bombs and attacking suspected insurgents
They are also used by companies and individuals
They are used in the oil industry, for example, to inspect drilling platforms and refineries Drones: What are they and how do they work? Could we all soon own a drone? Viewpoint: Drones, modern war, and the US
The matte black, almost featureless triangular aircraft is making its first public appearance, and the makers don't want people seeing too much of its advanced features.
But this object - the rather awkwardly-named nEUROn - could be the future of combat aircraft.
When a jet like the Rafale or the Sukhoi SU-35 shrieks overhead at the show, the watching crowds are left in awe at the skill and daring of the pilot.
Ever since the World War I, when aces like the Red Baron Manfred von Richthofen patrolled the skies, the fighter pilot has held a special place in the imagination.
But that status could now be under threat, because the next generation of combat aircraft may dispense with the pilot altogether.
Unmanned Aerial Vehicles, or drones, are nothing new, as their controversial use in Afghanistan and Pakistan has shown.
Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption The drones - large and small - on display at the Paris Air Show
But drones have limitations, and are vulnerable to being shot down within seconds of going anywhere near properly defended airspace.
Enter the combat drone
In some regions you have very dangerous missions, and the use of unmanned vehicles could be very useful Eric Trappier, Chief executive, Dassault Aviation
One solution is to develop much larger machines, full-scale fighter aircraft capable of flying long distances at high speed.
They would be capable of bombing missions or tactical strikes, and able to defend themselves. And all without the need for a pilot.
A number of experimental "superdrones" have already been built. Among them are Northrop Grumman's X-47 and the BAE Systems' Taranis.
And then there's the spooky-looking nEUROn, being developed by a European consortium.
France's Dassault is the lead contractor in the six-nation consortium, with the other participants being defence companies from Greece, Italy, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland.
The nEUROn, which made its first flight at the tail end of last year, is an ugly beast, low slung and black.
Its rather bat-like appearance clearly owes a great deal to the Lockheed Martin F117 Nighthawk, better known as the original Stealth Fighter, and indeed it has been built using stealth technologies.
"It's a big one!" says Eric Trappier, chief executive of French firm Dassault Aviation. "It's the size of a fighter, with a bomb bay."
The aircraft has already done radar tests to assess its stealth capabilities, but a fully operational aircraft is unlikely to be ready until the end of the decade.
Image caption The use of unmanned aircraft in military situations has been controversial
Mr Trappier believes there is a clear role for unmanned aircraft to play in future conflicts, with fleets of pilotless planes being directed to targets by controllers on the ground, or from manned aircraft flying behind them.
"In some regions you have very dangerous missions, and the use of unmanned vehicles could be very useful. For example, the destruction of enemy countermeasures or missiles or whatever.
"It's mainly for the first day of war, where you don't really know what's going on in front of you, the UCAV (unmanned combat aerial vehicle) could be a good answer."
So could unmanned planes one day do the job better than a fighter piloted by an individual rather than a computer?
"Yes, in some types of mission it could be better. In some others, where you really need to have the pilot in the loop, well I think the manned vehicle will remain. So it's a kind of compromise between the unmanned vehicles and the manned fighters."
Serious mistakes
But manufacturers wont be able to develop them without opposition.
The use of existing drones has faced widespread criticism, largely because of the way in which they have been employed by the CIA in particular, outside the boundaries of conventional conflict.
But there have also been concerns that the operators of drones are too far removed from the battlefield to comprehend the seriousness of what they do and that mistakes can be made.
But according to Mr Trappier, the issue is not whether or not drones should be used, but how they should be operated.
"It's a matter of who is in charge, who is in command. You need to know what you are doing on the mission. Whether a human is in the aircraft or not, he has to be in the loop."
He says much of the criticism in the US is not about the use of drones, but about who is in charge: the CIA, the Pentagon, or the armed forces.
"You need to continue to operate UAVs as though you were operating a manned vehicle," he says.
That's fine in theory, but would it be the case in practice?
Given the amount of development money being poured into this industry, one suspects that in a few years time we will eventually find out.Germany (1942-45)
Standard AT gun – Approx. 20,000 built
Backbone of the German Anti-Tank Corps
The Wehrmacht was always trying to stay ahead of the arms race that had developed in the 1930s. Whilst the 3.7cm Pak 36 anti-tank gun had acquitted itself very well during the Spanish Civil War, it was thought that an upgraded version was needed in order to stay ahead of the gun-armor spiral. Rheinmetall-Borsig AG was asked to improve upon their original design. What they came up with was the 5cm Pak 38 with a L/60 barrel (a barrel 60 calibers in length), which met approval for production in 1939. However, soon after the factories geared up for production, the German military became aware of newer tank designs by the Soviets (thanks in part to the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact) and therefore ordered an upgunning of the Pak 38.
The Design
Originally, Rheinmetall wanted to just change the barrel of the previous Pak 38 but, because the Luftwaffe was given priority for lightweight alloys, the design also needed to be changed. As a result, a new carriage was developed using all steel construction.The gun’s traditional split trail was supported by torsion springs and, like the Pak 38, a third wheel could be attached to the trail spades for easier manhandling. For ease of production and economic use of resources, the curved gun shield of the Pak 38 was dropped and replaced with a more angular twin plate shield.
The gun was equipped with a L/46 barrel with a larger double-baffled muzzle brake. The gun mechanism was of the ‘horizontal sliding breech block semi-automatic variety’” which allowed for a more rapid rate of fire, as the previous shell was expanded and the breach was left open for the next shot. Because of the weight and size, the gun was seen as a motorized piece and was equipped with solid rubber tires which allowed it to take the harsh punishment of the frontlines. If the need arose, it could be used in an indirect fire role.
Photos: Wikimedia Commons
The above pictures are of a horizontal sliding semi-automatic breech block. The operating handle is pulled to the opening position, this pushed the block to the side (to the right in the case of the PaK 40) and then a shell is pushed into the breach. The operating handle is then pushed to close the breach and make the gun ready to fire. The layer of the gun would then press the trigger on his elevating handwheel triggering the gun. The recoil would then reopen and eject the spent shell casing and recock the mechanism. This then allows for a new shell to be pushed into the breach, which would then close automatically without the need to touch the operating handle.
The sights were the standard ZF 3 x 8 (3 x magnification, 8-degree field of view) that equipped Anti-Tank (AT) guns of the German military, but it was an improvement over the earlier ZF 3 x 8’s (as used on Pak 38’s) in that it had an upgraded reticule which allowed for better leading of targets, and better degrees of accuracy.
Overall, the cost was 12,000 Reichmarks (RM) per unit (approximately $48,940 in 2017), which was a significant leap over the 8,000 RM (approximately $32,625 in 2017) of the Pak 38. It also required 2200 man hours and 6 months production time per unit.
On the Frontlines
Originally, the Pak 36 and 38 were performing adequately enough that the Pak 40 project was not seen as a necessity. However, once Operation Barbarossa (the invasion of the Soviet Union) began and the German military encountered the heavily armored KV-1 and steeply angular T-34, the Pak 38 struggled to penetrate except at point blank ranges. The Pak 40 was speedily pushed into high gear and the first pre-production models were ready in November 1941. These initial models proved their worth on the Eastern Front and approval was given for production. By the end of 1942, over 1,300 Pak 40s were on the frontlines. It was decided in 1943 to make it the standard AT gun in German service. It was so successful that by the end of the war about 23,000 had been produced and supplied to over 9 countries.
PaK 40 and crew in action in France, 1943. Photo: Bundesarchiv
The vast majority of PaK 40’s (about 20,000) served within the German military. It saw action first on the Eastern Front, where its high-velocity armor-piercing shells easily penetrated most Soviet armor encountered. By the beginning of 1943, the PaK 40 had become the core of the Wehrmacht anti-tank arm. It saw service on all fronts that Germany was fighting, from North Africa and Italy, from France to the Eastern Front.
Finland received 210 PaK 40’s in 1943-1944. They were used to replace the existing obsolete AT guns in their inventory (like the 37mm Bofors) and were assigned at a divisional level. It was put to effective use on the Karelian Isthmus during the Soviet Summer Offensive of 1944, where it could be dug in and ranged to previously designated killing zones. The Finnish military kept the gun in service until 1986.
Finnish PaK 40 on the Summa front, 1944. Photo: SA Kuva
Other German allies such as Albania, Bulgaria, Romania, and Hungary also received small numbers of the Pak 40 guns but these were of limited use as the tides of war had turned against them and they soon found themselves surrendering before they could press any numbers of the gun into service.
The Soviet Red Army was also impressed by the performance of the PaK 40 and would often put captured versions directly into service.
In 1955 the USSR sent a small number of captured PaK 40s to North Vietnam. The North Vietnamese Army used them in a coastal defense role at the Red River Corridor until they were retired in 1972.
Specifications:
– Caliber: 75 mm
– Barrel length: L/46 or 3.45 m
– Rifling: 32 grooves, right-hand increasing twist, 1/24 to 1/18.
– Weight in firing position: 1,425 kilograms (the US M5 was 2,210kg, the British 17 pounder was 3,034kg and the Soviet ZiS-3 was 1,116kg)
– Height: 1.25 metres (the US M5 was 1.62m, the British 17 pounder was 1.6m and the Soviet ZiS-3 was 1.37m)
– Length with the carriage: 6.2 metres
– Length: 3.70 metres
– Width: 2.0 metres
– Traverse: 65°
– Elevation: -5° to + 22°
– Max, ROF: 14 r.p.m.
– Effective firing range: 1.8 km
– Maximum indirect firing range: 7.678 km (HE shell)
Penetration Figures
Heereswaffenamt documents give the following statistics for the penetration values of the PaK 40 (all against 60-degree angle):-
Pzgr. 39
– 100 metres = 99mm
– 500 metres = 91mm
– 1000 metres = 81mm
Pzgr. 40
– 100 metres = 126mm
– 500 metres = 108mm
– 1000 metres = 87mmIn this week’s politics chat, we talk about why the presidential race has tightened. The transcript below has been lightly edited.
micah (Micah Cohen, politics editor): Welcome, everyone, to our first post-Labor Day politics chat. Things are afoot! And we’re here to talk about them. Our question for today: Why is Donald Trump gaining on Hillary Clinton in the polls?
To set us up, Harry, briefly describe how the race has shifted since the conventions.
clare.malone (Clare Malone, senior political writer): I hope no one is wearing linen and/or white to this chat.
harry (Harry Enten, senior political writer): Clinton got a large convention bounce. In our polls-only model, for example, Clinton got as high as an 89 percent chance of winning and was projected to win the national vote by 8.6 percentage points. But since mid-August, her chances have fallen steadily. Right now, she’s at a 69 percent chance of winning and only is projected to win the national vote by 3.9 percentage points.
micah: So, let’s talk causes, then we can talk about where Trump’s gains have come from. Can we point to any one or two things to explain the race tightening?
clare.malone: I think it’s not so much what Trump has been doing, so much as Clinton has been the top story in most news cycles these last couple of weeks, and she’s not being portrayed in a flattering light, generally speaking.
Trump had a rough go after the conventions, and Clinton just sorta laid back and let him run his mouth for a while. But now, the Clinton Foundation stuff is raising itself as a specter in her campaign — whodathunk a charitable foundation would prove to have such nefarious connotations! But things like the AP story that went viral about her supposed “pay to play” with people at the State Department didn’t play well.
natesilver (Nate Silver, editor in chief): I don’t think there’s any one cause — and if you look at the data, it suggests both some gains for Trump and some decline for Clinton.
harry: To Clare’s point, I think it’s what we’ve spoken about before: Both of these candidates are flawed. The American public isn’t in love with either one. When they are reminded of a candidate’s flaws, they seem to oscillate back to undecided or towards the other candidate. In this case, we’re back to where we were pre-conventions. But I haven’t seen Trump breakthrough yet in ways he hasn’t before.
clare.malone: Is the number of undecideds right now on-track historically? Or is it out of the norm?
natesilver: No, it’s way higher, at least compared to recent elections. You have 18-20 percent of the electorate that’s either undecided or voting for one of the (largely anonymous) third-party candidates. That figure was like 5-10 percent at a comparable point four years ago. People largely ignore that, because they get focused on the margin between Clinton and Trump, when it’s maybe like the most important thing right now.
micah: So, this seems like a good point to bring up the Gary Johnson gaffe…
clare.malone: Mitt Romney tweeted this yesterday:
I hope voters get to see former GOP Governors Gary Johnson and Bill Weld on the debate stages this fall. — Mitt Romney (@MittRomney) September 7, 2016
And then….
Gary Johnson asked “What is Aleppo?” in an interview … and not in response to a “Jeopardy!” question. I also think we should be fair to him, though — he released this statement earlier this morning where he basically said his brain had been in a space where he thought “Aleppo” was an acronym. That kind of brain fart seems pretty plausible to me, especially since he’s not engaging in a full-court press campaign, where he’s constantly guarded — it’s a much more laid-back operation.
harry: According to Huffington Post/Pollster.com, 53 percent of Americans are undecided when asked whether they have a favorable or unfavorable view of Johnson. The Aleppo “gaffe” probably doesn’t help. But the third-party stuff at this point seems as much about the major party candidates than anything Johnson or Jill Stein has done themselves.
natesilver: Trump’s whole strategy in the primaries was basically to make gaffes like that and then get more media coverage as a result. So maybe it will help Johnson? I’m being flip, but he and Stein are basically getting votes as no-name alternatives right now, and not because people like their policies per se.
micah: So, let’s put a bow on the Johnson thing: Any predictions on whether it will affect the horse race? Or if so, how?
natesilver: It’s plausible that some Johnson/Stein voters could begin to drift back into the Clinton camp if the race looks like it’s tightened up and she might need their votes. I’m not sure it will have that much to do with Aleppo-gate, though.
harry: I tend to think it won’t impact the race.
clare.malone: I will third that. I think people don’t know that much about Johnson yet, and they won’t really unless he gets on the debate stage.
micah: OK, so back to Trump-Clinton: As Harry said, Clinton’s margin is essentially back to where it was before the conventions — do you think this is where the natural equilibrium of the race is? (Clinton up 3-4 points.)
natesilver: I don’t make a lot of presumptions about where the equilibrium is, although it’s worth noting that over the very long term, Clinton’s lead is a bit larger than it is now — it has been about 5 points, on average, throughout the campaign.
clare.malone: I think she’s at a low ebb right now… I kinda feel like the debates could be good for her. In the same way that the convention was good for her. She’s the kind of person who preps like crazy for those sorts of things and I think she, unlike Matt Lauer, will certainly be calling BS on a lot of Trump statements.
micah: The Lauer stuff was ridic.
I’ll be the presumptuous one though: The fundamentals of this race, as Harry wrote yesterday, suggest a Clinton edge of about 1 point. Then I think you add 3-4 points because Trump is a historically awful candidate. So, all else being equal, I think the race oscillates around a +4-5 Clinton edge.
natesilver: Well, maybe. I think you start at Clinton +1, add 10 points for Trump being a really awful candidate, then subtract 7 for Clinton being a bad candidate too.
But there’s a margin of uncertainty around all those things, which is why anything from a narrow Trump win to a 10-point Clinton win wouldn’t be that surprising.
micah: Clinton has had some bad news cycles, as Clare said, so she’s a bit below the default now.
clare.malone: This sounds like that “math exercise” about how old or young you’re allowed to date.
micah: What’s that math, Clare?
harry: (28/2) +7 = 21.
clare.malone: That thing.
natesilver: I do think there’s something to the notion that — at least in terms of the media coverage — it’s maybe not the worst thing for the media to have “gotten this out of their system” on Clinton, so they might be ready for a Clinton comeback story by the time of the debate.
clare.malone: Hm. Well, I think that David Axelrod made a legit point on Twitter earlier — he said this Lauer screw up might put the fear of God in the other debate moderators:
The idea that they need to come prepared to fact-check like crazy.
natesilver: Here’s the thing: Historically, the challenging-party candidate (Trump in this case) has gained ground after the first debate. But the first debate is usually held about a month after the incumbent party’s convention. There’s a much bigger gap this year. So maybe the challenging party’s debate bounce is actually the incumbent party’s convention bounce wearing off? And this year, without a debate, the convention bounce wore off gradually instead?
micah: Nate, does that apply when there’s no incumbent running too?
clare.malone: I just don’t see any way how the debate is good for Trump. Does anyone have a theory?
natesilver: THE EXPECTATIONS GAME. Journalists will use phrases like “the expectations game” to basically justify a biased interpretation of the debate.
micah: That, and: The first debate typically hurts the incumbent president because it puts the challenger on the same level as the president — something like that could apply to Trump too, right?
clare.malone: But… the expectations game is usually about the finer points of debating. (Which I know you know about, Nate!) Trump literally lacks a handle on basic facts.
He’s good on his feet, but he’s got cotton-candy talking points, not steak-and-potato ones.
harry: Things happen. In this case, Trump says nothing racist, pronounces the name of a foreign country correctly and boom!
natesilver: I’m just saying, the media could “call” the first debate for Trump even if that’s false.
clare.malone: Doesn’t that become apparent during a two-hour television event?
micah: I’m not sure the debates are that effective at sussing out substance.
clare.malone: But I think general election debates are very different from primary season ones, especially this primary season’s. Ted Cruz was drafting off Trump for most of the primary and not calling him out.
micah: Sarah Palin and Joe Biden tied in their debate in 2008, according to the media.
natesilver: Actually, I think the media was ready to declare Palin the winner of that debate, until polls started saying otherwise.
micah: We have to save this debate talk though.
clare.malone: lol, like it’s cake and ice cream for a very special occasion.
micah: Back to the tightening polls! Nate, you said earlier that Clinton’s support has dipped a little and Trump’s support has risen a little. Can we say anything about which types of voters they’re losing and gaining, respectively?
natesilver: Perhaps not a lot. There’s some evidence that Trump is regaining ground with Republicans more than with other groups.
harry: Trump’s doing a little better with Republicans, while Clinton is doing a little worse among Democrats if you look at the Pollster.com aggregates.
clare.malone: Is this the whole people tuning in after the summer thing? I feel like I’ve heard countless people say, “We just have to wait until voters get their kids back to school and then they’ll pay attention to the election.” Once they see what they’ve been missing, it might turn into “tune in, drop out, man.”
natesilver: I can tell you from looking at FiveThirtyEight’s traffic over the years that interest usually takes a big step up as of the conventions, and then steadily increases from there. But again, maybe the timing has been a bit thrown off by the early conventions.
clare.malone: And the Olympics.
harry: Freaking Olympics.
clare.malone: And Taylor Swift breaking up AGAIN.
natesilver |
Robertson’s suggestion that pot be regulated like alcohol and tobacco, Califano rejects it out of hand:
Contrary to Robertson’s belief that legalizing marijuana will reduce our nation’s incarceration rates, the fact is that only 2 percent of all inmates are incarcerated for marijuana possession as their controlling or only offense. Indeed, legalizing marijuana will likely increase criminal activity. Some two-thirds of incarcerated felons (1.5 million) meet the medical criteria for addiction and marijuana is commonly one of the first steps on the road to other drug addiction. Most violent felonies, such as murder, rape and aggravated assault, occur when the perpetrator is high or drunk, and the lion’s share of property crime involves people seeking money to buy drugs. And the legal drug alcohol that Robertson wants marijuana to be treated like is implicated in more violent crime than any other substance. The notion that taxing sales of marijuana will provide a windfall for our public coffers is another (bong) pipe dream. For every $1 of taxes on tobacco and alcohol, our nation incurs $9 in state and federal health-care, criminal justice and social-service costs. These costs will skyrocket if legalization becomes the norm, increasing the drain on our public coffers.
Perhaps Califano hasn't read up on Portugal, which decriminalized drugs across the board and saw its addiction rates plummet; the occurrence of new HIV cases plummet; drug-related crimes plummet; and drug-related law enforcement spending plummet.
As for the one-dollar-in-nine-dollars-out claim: The Office of National Drug Control Policy will have a budget of around $25.6 billion next year, and local and state governments will spend billions more of their own tax revenue investigating, arresting, trying, and locking up users and dealers; treating uninsured meth makers for third degree burns (incurred via the shake-and-bake method, itself a product of anti-meth policies); giving public assistance to drug-war widows and orphans; and drug-testing unemployed people applying for both jobs and unemployment benefits. Forget one dollar in, nine dollars out: This year, just like last year and every year before it, the U.S. will takes zero dollars in—because you can't tax something that's illegal—and fork out billions.Jayalalithaa
A speech she had made at a function organised by Deepa's supporters had gone viral on social media.
Chennai police arrested a nutritionist from the city on Saturday for claiming that former Chief Minister Jayalalithaa had no pulse when she was admitted to Apollo Hospital on September 22.
Rama Seetha was arrested weeks after Apollo Hospital lodged a complaint against her for a speech she had given at a function organised by Jayalalithaa’s niece Deepa Jayakumar’s supporters, reported Times of India.
In her speech, Rama Seetha claimed that Jayalalithaa was shifted to the ICU despite being brought to the hospital with no pulse. She also alleged that arrangements had been made for her burial at MGR memorial 20 days after her hospitalisation.
The video of the speech was first published by a Tamil newspaper and was then republished by other news organisations, making it go viral. The timing of the video also surfaced around the same time as the February 6 press conference facilated by the Tamil Nadu government, which aimed to put an end to the rumours surrounding Jayalalithaa's hospitalisation and death. However, the "doctor's" speech only further intensified rumours that Jayalalithaa had been brought dead to the hospital.
A case has been registered under IPC Sections 419 (cheating by impersonation), 153 (deliberately giving provocative statement with intent to cause riot) and 505 (statement conducive to public mischief).
While police say that the nutritionist never worked with Apollo Hospital, Rama Seetha reported said that she had made the speech with the intention of grabbing Deepa’s attention, reports TOI.
Jayalalithaa was admitted to Apollo Hospital on September 22 with fever and dehydration. A team of doctors from Apollo Hospital together with British intensivist Dr Richard Beale were treating the then CM until her death. Jayalalithaa suffered a cardiac arrest and was pronounced dead on December 5.Buy Photo Ronnie Price (left) jams with the Blue Cat Blues band in The Juke at Blue Earl Brewing Company in Smyrna. (Photo: DOUG CURRAN/SPECIAL TO THE NEWS JOURNAL)Buy Photo
Yes, it’s the state’s biggest city. And yes, if you’d like to see established acts like Graham Nash or Ryan Adams, you’d likely be sitting at The Grand on Market Street.
We also know about places like 1984, Oddity Bar and Bar XIII, which have put a priority on live, original music for the 21-and-older crowd. And the ever-growing Ladybug Music Festival, held each year on Market Street, will expand to two days this year (July 20 and 21), two months after David Bromberg re-starts his Big Noise festival May 20 at Tubman-Garrett Riverfront Park (May 20).
But with this week’s announcement of World Café Live at the Queen’s transition – World Café Live is pulling out, an as-yet-unnamed new manager is coming in – the city’s status as an entertainment hub was thrown into flux.
Here are 4 venues, events and developments shaking Wilmington’s status as the nexus of entertainment in Delaware.
NEWARK
Newark is on an entertainment upswing.
After Mojo Main folded in 2014, there was some fear that entertainment, specifically live, original music, on Newark’s Main Street would die.
Not so.
With Grain Craft Bar + Kitchen now residing in the spot of the former Mojo Main, the music is still going. The bar and restaurant has also added events like foodie and beer festivals, tap takeovers and game nights.
A few steps away, a new five-screen movie theater – Main Street Movies 5 – will open next month in the spot vacated by Cinema Center 3.
But the biggest change, though, could be coming to the biggest stage in the city.
STORY: UD relaxes alcohol sales at the Bob, Delaware Stadium
Some older Blue Hens will remember when legends like Johnny Cash played the Bob Carpenter Center. But even the young tykes will recognize names like Walk the Moon, Kanye West and Drake, who have also all played the venue in more recent years.
Many of the big names – like Chance the Rapper, who played the arena in October – were brought in by SCPAB, the Student Centers Programming Advisory Board.
While SCPAB books shows for students, the school is aiming to serve the entire community by bringing in major-name shows to the 4,500-seat venue by teaming with national promoters.
The school teamed with AEG Live to bring country artist Chris Young to the stage in November and promise that more are on the way.
The country star with hits like “I’m Comin’ Over” and the duet “Think of You” with fellow young country star Cassadee Pope, is no stranger to Delaware. He was one of the stars who took the stage in Dover for 2015’s Big Barrel Country Music Festival.
The school would like to bring in acts that people will be talking about in years to come.
"I've heard stories from alumni about shows back in the day like when Billy Joel came," Chrissi Rawak, UD's athletic director, recently told The News Journal. "It's great for the community and I feel like there's a responsibility that we have to provide those experiences for others. Part of what we are trying to do out here is create great memories and fun for people who visit our side of the world."
No other shows have been announced yet, but stay tuned.
CRAFT DRINKMAKERS
If you haven’t figured out yet that the state’s drink makers are into more than booze, you haven’t been paying attention.
And while Wilmington has one of the grandaddies of the state’s craft brew movement – Iron Hill – the bulk of the state’s craft drink makers reside elsewhere.
Delaware’s slew of breweries, wineries and distilleries -- from Crooked Hammock Brewing way down at the southern end in Lewes all the way up to the Liquid Alchemy meadery in Elsmere -- have added food, often in the form of food trucks, and entertainment to their offerings as a way to keep people for more than a tour of the facility and growler to go.
STORY: First responders find support from breweries
The good times often include music. At Argilla Brewing Company at Pietro’s Pizza near Newark, the Sin City Band takes the stage every Monday, just like they used to at the old Mojo Main and East End Café for years. In Smyrna, Blue Earl Brewing is so into music that it has a dedicated stage, blues-themed décor and beer names. And Dogfish Head Brewings & Eats in Rehoboth Beach has been bringing in national acts for free concerts for years.
But the fun extends past just music.
This Friday night you could spend time at a pajama party and chili cook-off at 3rd Wave Brewing Company in Delmar.
And on Saturday you could learn to pair wine, cider and cocktails with Super Bowl snacks at Harvest Ridge Winery in Marydel.
Add to all that recent festivals, like the blowout Harry Potter-themed party at Mispillion River Brewing in Milford, and it’s clear the state’s drinkmakers are offering some unique opportunities.
FIREFLY
Wilmington has some longstanding music festivals, including the Riverfront Blues & BBQ Festival and Peoples Festival, while start-ups have tried to establish large-scale draws for younger crowds. Remember Foxtail Fest?
But nothing has rivaled Firefly Music Festival in the wide-open Woodlands in Dover.
Firefly fans have been atwitter about today’s line-up announcement since, well, the end of last year’s festival.
The anticipation reached frantic levels earlier this month as lineups dropped for major festivals, clueing fans into shows like U2 at Tennessee’s Bonnaroo Music + Arts Festival. Tool and Childish Gambino – a.k.a. Donald Glover, on a recent high with his TV show “Atlanta” – will be at Governors Ball NYC Music Festival. And Radiohead, Beyonce and Kendrick Lamar are set to headline Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival, the two-weekend, celeb-packed party in California.
STORY: Countdown: Firefly lineup announced Friday
ans can relax, knowing that come 10 a.m. today they’ll have this year’s Firefly lineup in their mitts.
The festival has topped out at 90,000 people in recent years, bringing a younger demographic and unprecedented level of entertainment to an area previously best known as a NASCAR hot spot. Who would have thought a Beatle would play near Dover International Speedway 20 years ago? Or even in 2012, after Firefly’s first stint in The Woodlands with 30,000 of its new friends?
As far as entertainment is concerned, we know: It’s only one weekend per year. But it’s one hell of a weekend.
RISE OF SUSSEX COUNTY
When “SNL’s” Sasheer Zamata took the mic for a standup show last year, it wasn’t at The Playhouse on Rodney Square in Wilmington. It was in Milton.
The re-emergence of the Milton Theatre has brought an edgier vibe to the town’s entertainment scene.
Shows like the one-off gig by Guided By Voices sponsored by Dogfish Head aren’t the norm, but cult movie screenings via the monthly Revival House events and pop-up art shows are. So are drag shows and comedy open mic nights.
It’s just one example of how some of Sussex’s sleepier spots are coming up with interesting alternatives to Netflix and chill.
The Freeman Stage at Bayside in Selbyville figured it out nearly a decade ago. The outdoor stage hosts performers from the community and children's programming, but it’s also seen sell-out crowds of about 2,400, usually for national acts, according to Alyson Cunningham, communication and public relations manager for the Joshua M. Freeman Foundation.
While fans will have to wait for this year’s lineup (it’s tentatively due in March), past performers like Heart, Huey Lewis & The News, Lyle Lovett, Grace Potter & The Nocturnals, The Band Perry and Melissa Etheridge should give you an inkling of what types of headliners the stage has featured over the past few years.
STORY: Major concerts coming to new Sussex County stage
Come summer, there will be another outdoor concert venue in Sussex. Hudson Fields, near Milton, will play host to a run of national acts. The concert venue is the baby of the Highway One Group, which owns the Bottle & Cork and The Rusty Rudder.
Tickets went on sale last Friday for the first act announced for the series – country act Old Dominion. The concert is June 1.
Also coming to Sussex this summer is the Big Chill Beach Club, a new Big Chill Surf Cantina spin-off restaurant slated to offer a 360-degree view of the Atlantic Ocean,
Indian River Bay and Indian River Inlet. It’s not far from Hammerhead’s Dockside, which first opened in 2013, a spin-off of the popular Dewey Beach hangout.
And don’t forget Lefty’s Alley & Eats, the bowling/laser tag/bar hybrid, which opened just last month.
Read or Share this story: http://delonline.us/2jBpgLKSwampscott, Mass.
THE American clergy is suffering from burnout, several new studies show. And part of the problem, as researchers have observed, is that pastors work too much. Many of them need vacations, it’s true. But there’s a more fundamental problem that no amount of rest and relaxation can help solve: congregational pressure to forsake one’s highest calling.
The pastoral vocation is to help people grow spiritually, resist their lowest impulses and adopt higher, more compassionate ways. But churchgoers increasingly want pastors to soothe and entertain them. It’s apparent in the theater-style seating and giant projection screens in churches and in mission trips that involve more sightseeing than listening to the local people.
As a result, pastors are constantly forced to choose, as they work through congregants’ daily wish lists in their e-mail and voice mail, between paths of personal integrity and those that portend greater job security. As religion becomes a consumer experience, the clergy become more unhappy and unhealthy.
The trend toward consumer-driven religion has been gaining momentum for half a century. Consider that in 1955 only 15 percent of Americans said they no longer adhered to the faith of their childhood, according to a Gallup poll. By 2008, 44 percent had switched their religious affiliation at least once, or dropped it altogether, the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life found. Americans now sample, dabble and move on when a religious leader fails to satisfy for any reason.
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In this transformation, clergy have seen their job descriptions rewritten. They’re no longer expected to offer moral counsel in pastoral care sessions or to deliver sermons that make the comfortable uneasy. Church leaders who continue such ministerial traditions pay dearly. A few years ago, thousands of parishioners quit Woodland Hills Church in St. Paul, Minn., and Community Church of Joy in Glendale, Ariz., when their respective preachers refused to bless the congregations’ preferred political agendas and consumerist lifestyles.Google is consistently rated the best place to work. So you need a degree from Harvard to get in the door, right?
Not really, according to Laszlo Bock, Google's Head of People Operations.
When the company was small, Google cared a lot about getting kids from Harvard, Stanford, and MIT. But Bock said it was the "wrong" hiring strategy. Experience has taught him there are exceptional kids at many other places, from state schools in California to New York.
"What we find is the best people from places like that are just as good if not better as anybody you can get from any Ivy League school," said Bock, who just authored a book titled "Work Rules!" and stopped by CNNMoney to share his smarts.
Every year, 2 million people apply to get a job at Google (GOOG). Bock himself has seen some 25,000 résumés.
So what else does Google not care about:
Grades: Google's data shows that grades predict performance for the first two years of a career, but do not matter after that.
Brainteasers: Gone are interview questions such as: Why are manhole covers round? or How many golf balls can fit in a school bus? "Our research tells us those questions are a waste of time," Bock said. "They're a really coachable skill. The more you practice, you get better at it."
A shoe: "Somebody sent me a shoe once with a résumé tucked inside because they wanted to get their foot in the door." That one didn't work.
Or a robot: Especially when it arrived broken, with exposed wires and a "press here" button. Call in the bomb squad.
Here's what Google does care about:
Problem solvers: Your cognitive ability, or how well you solve problems.
Leaders: The idea is not whether you were president of the student body or vice president of the bank, rather: "When you see a problem do you step in, help solve it," and then critically, "Are you willing to step out and let somebody else take over, and make room for somebody else? Are you willing to give up power?"
Googleyness: That's what Google calls its cultural fit. It's not "Are you like us?" Bock said. "We actually look for people who are different, because diversity gives us great ideas."
What's most important is that people are intellectually humble, willing to admit when they're wrong, and care about the environment around them..."because we want people who think like owners not employees," Bock said.
The least important thing? Knowing how to do the job.
"We figure if you get the first three right you'll figure it out most of the time."Positioning
Toxin nest Placement
Positioning
Toxin nest Placement
Positioning
Toxin nest Placement
Positioning
Toxin nest Placement
Map-specific strategy for Abathur revolves heavily on positioning to place effectives and spawn efficientPrime position for Abathur is usually near the middle forward fort so his toxin nest range engulfs most of the three lanes and all avenues into them.Best forward position for Abathur will be at top fort near the south wall. Even though it is risky, there is no better option in order to influence both lanes. Be extra cautious if they have stealthies by being extra vigilant/constantly re-positioning/or hugging the fort.Realistically speaking, early ganks on you will be difficult to survive and may lead to enemy team losing on overall experience because they are not in lane.Since you will not be takingand never going into the mines, toxin nest no icons can only be placed on the surface. Haunting Mines play currently revolves around doing a couple camps as a group or team, followed by a push or skull hunting. This translate to easily predicting enemy movement and thus, great toxin nest placement.Example 1: Enemy team just finished their bottom giants, no skull phase is currently going on, and their top giants are still live. Because enemy heroes will probably be mobilizing for their top giant camp, place mines around their top giants for vision and dismounting.Example 2: Enemy team just finished knights and no skull phase is currently going on. Because enemy team will probably push alongside their knights, start placing toxin nest no icon along the paths that lead to the soon-to-be-sieged lane. Once your team is defending against the siege, start placing mines behind the enemy team to dismount and deal finishing blows.Example 3: Your team just finished up mines and the enemy team will have to 5-man defend your Golem. Because the whole enemy team is showing on the map, use toxin nest to push the other lane and pressure a second front. Since your team has full effective vision without your toxin nest placement due to current circumstances, use toxin nest for its secondary role: DPS.Early forward positioning on Blackheart's Bay is not as black and white as the rest of the maps. You have two major options off the bat, midlane forward fort to support team with toxin nest for the Xel'naga Watchtower engagement or botlane fort near its north tower to provide experience from bottom lane plus toxin nest ready for one of the two chests.Positioning inside the vent near your giants is a risky position that will provide both experience at botlane and toxin nest noicion support at Xel'naga Watchtower.Early positioning will be quite dynamic because of the early objectives at play that span from mid to botlane. This means Abathur will have to go top to soak up experience at times, but provide limiting toxin nest support during early portions of the game.Without a doubt, most of your toxin nests should be placed around Blackheart. All three functions of a toxin nest (vision, damage, dismount) will be of great help for objective control.Because the most common avenue of travel will be the path that leads from midfort to Blackheart, try to always keep toxin nest charges there. Other areas of high traffic include the bridge that leads from midlane to Blackheart and the two vents next to Blackheart.Lane control on Dragon Shrine is extremely important; each lane has an objective that needs to be minding. Because of this fact, teammates doing camps are either soloing or have little time to clear since objectives are demanding attention. This is where Abathur shines, by providing toxin nest anddamage unto camp minions.Since most enemies will show because they are constantly near the lane objectives, enemy movement is easy to predict. This will cause Abathur to provide more effective Toxin nest placement andBest forward position is definitely at midlane fort, between fort and gate. Your effective range will cover everything relevant.Basic Abathur positioning and movement will stay true on this map because all objectives and camps are evenly scattered across the map. Keep in mind Abathur can cap a shrine. This may lead to the use of the infamousbaits (bait by showing a vulnerable Abathur, just to become invulnerable by cloning right before you get ganked).Getting the Dragon Knight is not recommended since getting out of the carcass alive is highly unlikely. Best to do the usual split pushing,support, and/orswing along side a teammate pushing with the Dragon Knight.Toxin Nest placement on shrines is an alright tactic, but your brute support still revolves around. Always chose tosupport over toxin nest placement especially when battling over a shrine.Toxin Nest placement should mainly be divided between placement on avenues leading to midlane and placement to damage camp minions.Best forward position is definitely at midlane fort, between fort and gate. Your effective range will cover everything relevant except some of the bushes at top and bottom lane.When it comes to engagements over curse tributes, experience soaking trumps staying in close to the tribute to provide toxin nest support because you will being someone and won't be able to place toxin nests.Note the size and many hiding spots on this map. This is perfect for split pushing once you gain. Be more cautious if the enemy team includes high mobility heroes likeand. Be less cautious and downright obnoxious if the enemy team includes low mobility heroes likeToxin nest should be placed mainly to dismount and provide vision. Keeping eyes on the enemy team and slowing them down is a huge advantage on this huge map with time-sensitive objectives. Placement should revolve around the middle of the map and any live camps that may be the enemy team's target.A nice trick is to use toxin nests to interrupt single individuals from capturing a tribute. If only one enemy is attempting to capture a tribute, place a toxin nest under them so it can interrupt them once it settles. Since the time for a toxin nest to settle is less than that of capturing a tribute, this annoyance can interrupt a capture until you run out of toxin nests or another enemy member starts destroy the nests as they are settling. Place one toxin nest at a time so the annoyance is lengthy.Abathur himself can also interrupt by autoattacking or summoning a. It is extremely risky, but it may be necessary in some situations. You can combo this trick withinvulnerability.For quite some time now we’ve had fun watching Asia’s Photoshop-skilled netizens have fun at the expense of others. Whether it’s putting boobs on a guy, or taking them of a woman, we’re always in for a chuckle. Still, it also makes you wonder what lies in the hearts of those anonymous artists. Do they have some sort of grudge against humanity as a whole to make us look as if we can fly by the power of our own farts with the mere click of a mouse?
Photoshop trolls’ souls were put to the test recently when a resident of Taiwan uploaded an old family photo along with his dying grandmother’s request: “Could anyone colourize this photo? Please grant this dying wish of my grandmother. All she wants is to be able to clearly see how her family once looked, one last time.”
■ The upload
At 3:58pm on 20 January, a post was made on a Taiwanese website called Mobile01. It contained the photo above and a humble request explaining how family meant everything to his grandmother and she would spend all of her time thinking of them. She could barely stand up by herself at this point. Both her mind and body were failing but she would cling to life, telling tales and reliving the times she enjoyed with those she loved.
“She said ‘Don’t worry, it’s only a little longer now.’ I knew exactly what she meant. My grandmother’s heart could barely pump blood through her body any more. I imagined how painful that must feel and began to cry when I heard her say that.”
Then, she took out an old black-and-white photograph taken about 70 years ago and made a wish.
“I wish I could see my family clearly again like we were at that time.”
With no image processing skill, the grandchild took to the internet to ask for help. In an often untamed wilderness of smug attitudes and foolishness, there didn’t seem much chance of someone not putting a raptor in the background instead. Still it was worth a shot to bring some happiness to a dying woman. The post was made and there was nothing left to do but wait.
■ The reply
At 6:45pm on the same day another post was made on the thread. The poster was anonymous so we will refer to them as Fotosho Shokunin, a Japanese term for those skilled at Photoshop also used for Photoshop trolls.
The post had the following message and image:
“I had to make my best guess at what all the colours actually were. Eh, it was pretty difficult… *sweating* If you could confirm the colour arrangements, I can make the necessary alterations.”
■ The reaction
In less than three hours of the original request, Fotosho Shokunin had completely colourized the photo with meticulous detail. There was another Photoshop-proficient netizen also trying to help, but once they saw this Fotosho Shokunin’s worked they stepped down.
The fast restoration soon went viral in Japan and drew comments such as “I got goosebumps from that;” “That’s almost professional looking;” and, “I don’t know which is more amazing, the technology that went into making that photo, or the spirit of its maker.”
The story grew big enough to catch the attention of Taiwanese media outlets. According to SET News who interviewed Photoshop professionals, the amount of work that went into this colourization would have taken a pro an entire day to complete. The work was so amazing it led to rumors that it was actually a creator of the software who had come to the grandchild’s aid.
■ The grandmother
The grandchild immediately printed out a copy of the modified photograph and took it to his grandmother. She was thrilled and began to reminisce about her days as a student, when she visited Japan with her grandfather, and her family business. A lifetime had be given to her thank to a few selfless hours of someone’s time.
The grandmother expressed her sincere thanks and appreciation to all of the netizens who came out to help, and the grandchild passed on her gratitude online along with some pictures.
In a touching gesture of goodwill we can clearly see that while some with talent in Photoshop enrich our lives by making a guy look like he’s touching his buddy’s groin, others such as this Fotosho Shokunin are finding different ways to brighten people’s days.
Source: YouTube, Mobile01
Original Article by Megu Sawai
[ Read in Japanese ]Last April, when plans to ship coal through the old Oakland Army Base became public, Phil Tagami, the master developer of the base, came under fire from local officials and community groups. Tagami, however, downplayed the news, claiming that coal is only one of many goods that might be shipped through a new maritime bulk terminal that he's building on the base. He also said in statements to the press that a $53 million investment that four Utah counties hope to make in the marine terminal would allow these counties to ship potash, hay, salt, and other Utah goods, perhaps including coal, through the facility.
But emails, contracts, and reports reviewed by the Express show that the proposed investment in the bulk marine terminal by the Utah counties is, in fact, driven by a secretive Kentucky-based coal company, Bowie Resource Partners, that wants to massively expand its coal mining operations in Utah. And if accepted, the Utah counties' investment in Oakland's Army Base redevelopment project would make the proposed bulk terminal a major export hub for millions of tons of new coal from Bowie's mines in Utah. Records also show that a Utah public official who is leading the deal stands to profit personally.
Commissioners from four Utah counties — Sevier, Carbon, Emery, and Sanpete — are marshalling millions in public subsidies to build the infrastructure that will carry the coal from Bowie's mines to Oakland, where it will be loaded onto ships bound for Asia.
Jeffrey Holt, who has been the chairman of Utah's Transportation Commission since 2009 and is an investment banker with the Bank of Montreal, is advising the four counties on their Oakland port investment. In March, Holt led a field trip from Utah to Oakland to scope out the terminal site. In April, Holt helped the counties obtain the $53 million public loan from a Utah state agency to help build the coal export terminal at the Oakland Army Base.
Holt is also helping to assemble financing for another group of Utah counties that is building a railroad that will haul coal from a Bowie Resources mine in Utah — known as the Sufco mine — and would establish a rail link to the Union Pacific Railroad, thereby allowing for the shipment of coal to Oakland's waterfront.
Holt and the Bank of Montreal stand to earn millions if the railroad and coal terminal in Oakland are built. Bowie Resources would earn millions more shipping Utah coal through Oakland. The details of these plans to expand coal mining in Utah and to establish Oakland as a massive coal export hub have — until now — been kept under wraps by the parties involved, including the Oakland team building the export terminal led by Tagami.
But Bowie's coal export scheme, heavily dependent on public subsidies, is by no means assured. The Utah railroad and Oakland terminal investments, masterminded by Holt, are incredibly risky. Expanded coal mining in Utah faces opposition from environmentalists. And many in Utah question the use of public funds to subsidize coal companies. Finally, coal exports from Oakland face growing opposition, with the Oakland City Council scheduled to consider the matter on September 21. Three councilmembers — Dan Kalb, Lynette Gibson McElhaney, and Rebecca Kaplan — have already spoken out against the idea of coal moving through the Army Base terminal.
Bowie's plan to secure Oakland as its coal export hub emerged in February 2014 when the Port of Oakland, citing environmental concerns, rejected a bid by the company to build a coal export facility at the Howard Terminal. Stymied at the port, Bowie looked to the small slice of city-owned waterfront where Tagami's company CCIG is planning to build a bulk commodity terminal as part of the massive Army Base redevelopment it has been contracted to complete by the city. In April, the Utah Permanent Community Impact Fund Board (CIB), a special state agency that makes grants to rural Utah counties for sewers, fire stations, and other municipal improvements, quietly approved an unusual $53 million low-interest loan to Sevier, Carbon, Emery, and Sanpete counties. In a presentation to the CIB, Holt and several commissioners representing the four counties said the funds would contribute to a $200 million maritime terminal in Oakland that would export many different commodities. Appearing with Holt and the county officials was Mark McClure, vice president of CCIG.
When the CIB loan was first reported by a small Utah newspaper as securing access specifically for Bowie Resources' expanded coal exports through Oakland, Holt and others worried the revelation could kill the project. On April 8, the day after the Richfield Reaper newspaper reported the loan, Holt emailed commissioners of the four Utah counties. "We've had an unfortunate article appear on the terminal project," wrote Holt. "If anything needs to be said, the script was to downplay coal, and discuss bulk products and a bulk terminal."
Holt also wrote that Tagami was disappointed that the plan to export coal had been made public. "Phil Tagami had been pleased at the low profile that was bumping along to date on the terminal and it looked for a few days like it would just roll into production with no serious discussion," wrote Holt.
"Less press is best," Holt added. "Controlled message is critical."
Tagami did not respond to emails and phone calls seeking comment for this report.
Records also show that Bowie Resources' plan to mine coal from Sufco appears to depend on the Oakland deal going through and that the company might not otherwise find a market for the fossil fuel. As such, shipping coal through Oakland likely will lead to a massive expansion of coal mining in Utah that might not otherwise occur.Services Overview
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Current pop culture is even more extreme: It doesn't just celebrate the lonely man; it also despises men in groups. And this isolation isn't just a historical anomaly; it also runs counter to male biology. Men, every bit as much as women, are social creatures who live in a permanent state of interdependence and who require connection for basic happiness. "Men come into the world with this empathic, relational need, and they get treated as if they don't have it," Way says. Disconnection has costs. In periods of vulnerability, the male suicide rate spikes. During the recession, the suicide rate for men grew at four times the rate for women. Divorced men kill themselves nearly 2.5 times as often as married men. (There's no difference in the rates between divorced and married women.) Men over eighty-five kill themselves thirteen times as often as women.
The contempt for male friendship is a cultural failure on an epic scale. Without friendship, life simply isn't worth much. Friendship is essential not just for a personal sense of well-being but also for society in general. In Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle prized it more than justice: "When men are friends, they have no need of justice, while when they are just they need friendship as well, and the truest form of justice is thought to be a friendly quality."
The sophistication of adult-male friendship is essential to being a fully formed person. You need your friendships the way you need vitamin C in your blood and your bones. The current contempt cannot last, because the lesson for men is obvious: Keep your bros. Just don't call them that.
A LITTLE ETYMOLOGY
No less an authority than the publishers of the Oxford English Dictionary traced the history of the word. Although it originated in the 1970s as a word that signified an African-American, it since has become a term almost exclusively applicable to white men. The lexicographers identify one of its stranger properties: "a certain element of metonymy: By being the sort of person who says 'bro,' a person becomes a bro." Ultimately,the word is fluid and much like the word hipster:It has become embroiled in its own opposition, at least among people who care about what bro might or might not mean. The lexicographers kind of gave up. The word has "a level of nuance that a conventional dictionary entry is ill-suited to describe: The semantic boundaries are subjective and in constant flux."Michael K. was three days away from surgery to remove part of his intestine (the last-resort treatment for his ulcerative colitis) when he heard about a treatment his doctor had never recommended: fecal transplants. He canceled the surgery, sought help from a mentor, and chose a friend who he thought would be a good source of healthy donor material. What happened next sounds a bit like an oddball marriage proposal: he took the friend on a hike, made a few poop jokes, and then popped the question.
The friend said yes, as he writes in his success story on The Power of Poo, a website created to help patients find help with fecal transplants (DIY or otherwise.) The two moved in together for more convenient poop swapping, since he wanted to do the transplants frequently, and they need to be fresh.
If you want something done, you’ve got to do it yourself?
Is the age of the do-it-yourself fecal transplant upon us? That was several experts’ concern after the FDA’s recent decision to regulate fecal transplants as an investigational new drug. (Judy Stone‘s is one take worth reading) As a result, the treatment, which was on a trajectory toward mainstream acceptance, will once again–temporarily–be rare and hard to get in the US.
Fecal matter occupied a gray area, neither drug nor device nor tissue, when Maryn McKenna reported two years ago that “fecal transplants work, but the regulations don’t.” At the time, several researchers were applying to begin clinical trials. That would be the road toward getting the transplants, known as FMT (for “fecal microbiota therapy”, although there are a lot of other names: stool transplant, fecal bacteriotherapy, human probiotic infusion…) approved and widely available. Now, FMTs are considered to be in Phase 1 of a three-phase process.
In the meantime, doctors operated within the gray area and tried it out. It worked, they shared results, and soon FMT got its own billing code (44705) and a set of guidelines that include a battery of tests for donors: blood tests for diseases like HIV, and stool screening for parasites and the like. The price of donor testing is estimated at anywhere from $500 to $1500+, depending on who’s doing the estimating and what tests they include. Good luck getting insurance to cover it.
If you have the cash, though, FMT is worth it. The studies that have been done so far are astounding: in one trial of patients suffering from C. difficile infection (a diarrheal disease that can be life-threatening and antibiotic-resistant), an infusion of feces cured 94% of the patients. The usual treatment, an antibiotic called vancomycin, only cured 27%. The trial was stopped early because the difference was so drastic; it was unethical to keep half the patients on antibiotics alone when a better treatment was available. Gastroenterologists agree: FMT is not just effective for C. diff, it’s extremely safe. The American College of Gastroenterology writes in their C. difficile treatment guidelines that “no adverse effects or complications directly attributable to the procedure have yet been described in the literature.”
Dr. Michael Edmond, who used to offer the procedure, blogged recently about canceling patients’ appointments and applying for the Investigational New Drug permit that is now required. (The FDA will approve or deny the application within 30 days, but won’t tell him the criteria they use to decide.) He told The Verge: “by trying to make fecal transplants safer, the FDA is actually pushing them underground.”
The underground
They have been underground for a while, of course. Only a few clinics offer the treatment, and some (like the Centre for Digestive Diseases in Australia) give patients instructions on doing the procedure at home. Meanwhile, sufferers of inflammatory bowel disorders are already sharing tips and support online, so DIY instructions fit right in. If you are desperate and willing to try anything, Dr. Google and Dr. Facebook are there for you.
The gross-out factor probably contributes to the scarcity of medical professionals offering the treatment. Tracy Mac, who runs the Power of Poo website, describes her gastroenterologist’s reaction when she suggested a fecal transplant: “He screwed up his nose like a seven-year old and observed ‘but it’s putting someone else’s poooo inside of you’. An interesting comment coming from someone who makes a living sticking cameras up bums!”
The thing is, if you have Crohn’s, C. diff, or ulcerative colitis, fecal transplants mean dealing with less poop, less often. “[I] realize that doing the fecal enemas is not that bad,” Michael writes. “Afterall the illness caused me to poop my pants with bloody diarrhea at times.”
Also spurring the do-it-yourself phenomenon: those amazing results I mentioned earlier are from C. diff infections, but many patients seeking the treatment have ulcerative colitis, Crohn’s, or sometimes other disorders. The evidence is less definitive on those, although still promising. It may be the nature of the disease: If you have C. diff, your problem can be traced back to a single misbehaving species of bacteria.
For inflammatory bowel disorders, the disease and its causes may be more complex. Tracy Mac attributes mental health problems to an unhappy gut, which is not as far-fetched as it may sound: a recent study found that gut microbes can influence brain function in humans. Scientists in the Netherlands are testing fecal transplants for weight loss and insulin resistance. The gut microbiome seems to be a key player in health and disease, so FMTs have a lot of potential. Potentially.
How it’s done
While C. diff treatment often uses one transplant or a short series, sufferers of inflammatory bowel diseases like ulcerative colitis and Crohn’s often prefer a long term strategy. Kathy explains why she has been doing FMTs for her daughter for the better part of a year: she was in a trial testing fecal transplants for ulcerative colitis, and did so well that they decided to continue at home. “We have kept up the FMT because we believe the intestines take a long time to heal, and because we don’t think it can hurt,” she writes. “While we have faith in the treatment, we don’t want to stop it yet, either.”
Kathy has a fascinating, simple, instructive video on youtube. Neatly dressed–and still spotless at the end–she prepares a sample in her bathroom, as she does several times a week. She has a dedicated blender, cup, strainer, and spoon, and she wears gloves. Ten minutes for prep, she says, five minutes for cleanup, and about thirty seconds to administer. Afterward, she used to ask her daughter to lie down and watch a movie; after nine months of treatment, she’s as likely to do a handstand for a few minutes and then go about her day.
In a hospital setting, the transplant is often performed with colonoscopy equipment, to infuse the sample as far back in the colon as possible. It’s also possible to run a tube from the patient’s nose down past their stomach. For the do-it-yourselfers, the more accessible option is to simply use an enema bottle. (The smaller size, I keep hearing: a little goes a long way.) In fact, there is research suggesting that enemas may be the most effective delivery method, but there’s just not enough data yet to say for sure.
What now?
There are lots and lots of questions about fecal transplants. We’re just coming to grips with the gut microbiome’s impact on health and disease, and we know so little about what is actually in that magical brown pellet (which is about 55% bacteria, in case you were wondering.) Does a donor have to be matched to the patient, or is any healthy stool good enough? Do some patients respond to the treatment and others don’t – maybe in a predictable way? Does the sample need to be fresh, and if not, what is the best way to store it? Can poop be replaced entirely by a synthetic, probiotic concoction? Are there legions of failed FMT patients who are too disappointed, or embarrassed, to publish negative results?
I’m looking forward to hearing the answers to those questions, and I hope the FDA’s rules don’t keep life-saving treatment from those who need it (They have promised emergency approvals in dire situations). In the meantime, if you want to hear about the current state of the science from those on the front lines, the transcripts from the recent FDA workshop will make excellent reading on the beach this summer. All summer. We’re talking 600+ pages. Enjoy?
(Update: I’ve corrected this piece to refer to inflammatory bowel diseases, or IBD, an umbrella term for diseases including Crohn’s and ulcerative colitis. That’s distinct from irritable bowel syndrome, which is what I originally wrote. Not the same thing! Thanks to Tracy for setting me straight.)This protoplasmic vat of fluorescent goo might look like a witch’s cauldron. But Solaris, a project by Russian artist Julia Borovaya, isn’t horror: it’s pure sci-fi. Named after the famous 1961 novel by Stanislaw Lem, Solaris reads the thoughts of whoever is staring into it, then transforms them into Rorschach-style currents swirling through ferromagnetic film.
Designed last year at the Moscow Art & Science Lab, Solaris bears more than a cursory resemblance to its namesake. In Lem’s classic novel, later adapted into a famous 1972 film by Russian auteur Andrei Tarkovsky, Earthen scientists discover a sentient gas giant called Solaris, the waves of which are capable of externalizing a person’s thoughts as simulcra of people or places they have known.
Similarly, Borovaya’s Solaris is capable of reading brainwaves. When it’s not being used, the waves of Solaris are still; when observers strap on an Emotiv EEG headset, the surface comes to life, swirling with dark eddies and currents of passions. It works by translating the brainwaves being read by the headset into the motion of an invisible motor, which in turn controls submerged magnets to manipulate the surface film of ferromagnetic fluid glistening on top.
Created with help from chemist/roboticist Edward Rakhmanov, Borovaya says that the name was pointedly chosen, since Solaris helped inspire the project. They set out to create a device which could externalize the thoughts of observers, just like Lem’s sentient planet. “The object only comes to life with human mental contact,” Borovaya tells me. “The movement of the black liquid in the green liquid is unique to each person... over time, the object helps to discipline a chaotic flow of thoughts, and becomes a part of the person viewing it.”
It seems that some observers have really taken that to heart. In an accompanying video about the project, several people who tried it for themselves disquietingly argue that Solaris–like the novel’s planet–is alive. That’s demonstrably untrue, but something tells me that Lem himself would have approved. It’s exactly the sort of question about what being alive really means that he was trying to address in his book.Lest anyone mistakenly believe that I am a lone voice questioning why the ruling/governing class in America seem to have already forgotten what led to the financial and housing crisis that sparked this nation’s longest recession, Stephen Moore, the Distinguished Visiting Fellow, Project for Economic Growth at the Heritage Foundation, and former writer for the Wall Street Journal, penned a recent article for FoxNews.com, titled, “Why is Washington re-inflating the financial bubble.”
And I quote, “Bubble, bubble, toil and trouble. That might well be the new theme for the U.S. economy. Washington – the White House, Congress, housing agencies, and the Fed – have learned nothing from the housing bubble of 2007-08.”
Moore adroitly explains (as I have many times on HousingWire), that although there is blame enough to spread across Wall Street, and to many involved in the mortgage and real estate industries, as well as to consumers themselves, the true enabler was our government.
Through easy money, housing policies that pushed people into low down payment loans that many could not or would not ever repay, and a tsunami of debt, the stage was set.
Evidence abounds that the bubble is now being re-inflated by these very same culprits:
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are once again offering 3% down payment loans, albeit with purported underwriting “safeguards.”
Janet Yellen has yet to pull the plug on zero-interest rate loans that have only benefitted Wall Street and their congressional “partners,” which means that interest rates will no doubt begin to rise in 2016.
Government debt has climbed from just under $10 trillion in 2008 to more than $18 trillion.
Federal Housing Administration loans have become the “new sub-prime” loans according to many high-profile members of our industry.
There remains significant concern that the recasting HELOC loans will drive delinquencies upward.
If those aren’t troubling signs enough, other reports, including one from RealtyTrac, recently indicated that bank repossessions have spiked 66% year-over-year in Q3 of this year.
This is the greatest annual rise ever recorded by RealtyTrac. The foreclosure sales and real estate analytics company stated that more than 123,000 single-family homes went back to the lenders in just three months.
While it is true that in states such as Florida, Massachusetts, New York and New Jersey, a virtual flood of deferred foreclosures from the previous housing crisis are finally cascading over legal and legislative dams in these judicial foreclosure states, other states, such as Nevada, are seeing dramatic increases in mortgage delinquencies.
And, a dramatic rise in foreclosure activity will impact values in certain markets. A very large percentage of the homes being foreclosed upon have deferred maintenance, which means they will be sold at discounted prices. The added inventory of homes will in itself drive down or slow rising home prices, but the discounted sales will have an even greater negative impact.
Additionally, in an article in HousingWire authored by Brena Swanson on Oct. 19, “MBA predicts mortgage lending will shrink next year,” there is both negative and positive news for those involved in real estate.
According to Swanson, the Mortgage Bankers Association said at a press conference at its annual meeting being held in San Diego that it expects a decrease in refinance mortgage originations. But, it is also predicting an increase in purchase mortgage originations.
Swanson reported that Michael Fratantoni, chief economist and senior vice president of research and industry technology with the MBA, attributed the predicted increase in purchase mortgage originations to a mixture of factors, including growing demand in households for owning a home rather than renting, and mortgage finance options.
To put an exclamation point on Moore’s observations, consider that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are much more bullish on loan originations for 2016. Why wouldn’t they be, since they are promoting 3% down payment loans? This will no doubt increase loan originations, but just as surely, it will increase delinquency risks.
As a result of all this, there is a looming downward spiral predicted here. That said, savvy real estate professionals, investors and potential home buyers recognize potential opportunity when they see it.BEING OFFERED A complimentary bottle of beer or a glass of wine while you get your haircut has become a common occurrence in Ireland.
Certain barbershops will give their customers a beer (or even a whiskey), while higher-end salons have been known to offer a free glass of prosecco or a cocktail with a beauty treatment.
However, the Irish Independent reports this morning that this practice could soon be banned under new laws.
The incoming Public Health (Alcohol) Bill will allow for regulations to be brought in to stop establishments supplying free alcohol.
Alcohol awareness groups have called for an end to this practice as it further contributes to the “normalisation” of alcohol use in Ireland.
But for many people, a beer or glass of wine could be just what they want as they get their hair cut or styled.
But what do you think?
Today we’re asking, Should hairdressers and barbers be banned from giving out free alcoholic drinks?Here's your warning: this appears to be a case that will have people again howling for legal reform. According to USA Today, on July 26, 2009 Diane Schuler drove her minivan the wrong way on the Taconic State Parkway in New York, eventually colliding head-on with an SUV. Schuler was killed, along with her daughter and three nieces. The three men in the SUV were also killed. Let's pause a moment right here and quote one of the parties in the subsequent events, who admitted that things "pale in comparison to the real tragedy of the day." Among those events, though, is a feeding frenzy of lawsuits.Toxicology reports determined that Schuler was both drunk and high at the time of the collision, findings her husband, Daniel, has consistently said cannot be true. Official accounts of Schuler's behavior on the day, however, would suggest she was certainly under the influence of something.In fact, Daniel Schuler doesn't believe his wife is at all at fault in the crash. He has filed suit against the state of New York alleging that the state's "negligence, carelessness and recklessness" concerning highway upkeep and signage are the only reasons his daughter suffered fatal injuries. Specifically, he insists that highway conditions were unsafe, lanes weren't properly marked and there weren't barriers and cones to provide adequate warning.Schuler has also filed suit against his late wife's brother, Warren Hance, who was the father of three of the girls in the car who died. Schuler contends that since Hance owned the minivan that Diane was driving, Hance is also at fault. On top of all of that, a relative of one of the victims in the SUV is suing the sister of the SUV's driver, alleging that the late driver's estate bears some responsibility for him being hit head-on by Diane Schuler. If you were looking for a new definition of the word "mess," this is probably it...General Manager Basil McRae announced today that the London Knights 4th round (64th overall) pick in the 2013 OHL Priority Selection, Matthew Tkachuk, has committed to and entered into an Ontario Hockey League Standard Player’s Agreement with the London Knights.
Tkachuk, a forward from the US National Development Program, was a member of Team USA’s U17 Gold Medal Team last season and Team USA’s U18 Gold Medal Team this spring. While competing in the U18 tournament in April, the 6’1” 187lbs winger not only helped Team USA capture gold but was also named a Top 3 Player on his team and was awarded the tournament’s Most Assists (10) in just 7 games played.
Tkachuk had an outstanding year with the US National U18 Team and the USNTDP Juniors. In a total of 89 games played, the St. Louis, Missouri native scored 51 goals and 78 assists for a total of 129 points and 194 PIMs.
Tkachuk will join the London Knights in late August for training camp and will wear #7 for the team next season. He’s eligible for the 2016 NHL Entry Draft and is the oldest son of former NHLer Keith Tkachuk.
Click here to watch video highlights from the press conference announcing Tkachuk’s commitment to the Knights.The TCG Meta Snapshot is a project by some of the writers at YGOPRODeck that aims to encapsulate the state of the meta for a given 1-2 week period. The TCG Meta Snapshot also aims to rank decks in a somewhat looser tier system than the one used on Pojo. The tiers that we will use are as follows:
Tier 1: Highly Competitive Meta Decks. 10% or more of tops, as ranked by Pojo. This will roughly correspond to Pojo’s Tier 1, with some overlap into Pojo’s Tier 2.
Tier 2: Semi-Competitive Meta Decks. Less than 10% of tops, as ranked by Pojo. Corresponds to the rest of Pojo’s Tier 2, Pojo’s Tier 3, and Rogue.
Tier 3: Semi-Competitive non-Meta/Rogue decks. 1-2 tops. Specifically includes decks that top small events or get lower rankings at medium events. Can also include decks that can potentially top but have not yet in a given format.
Tier 4: Casually Competitive non-Meta decks. Decks that can compete at the locals level, but cannot top an event.
Archetype Explanation
True Draco are a Stun/Control oriented deck that focuses on using a variety of different Continuous Spell and Trap cards to generate advantage and summon out powerful Tribute monsters. Their main win condition is Master Peace, the True Dracoslaying King. This monster is very difficult for many decks to get past and can use its effect to disrupt an opponent’s plays.
Tier Ranking
True Draco are currently in Tier 1 along with Pendulum Magicians, although this is likely to change with the release of SPYRAL Double Helix in Circuit Break on October 20th. Although True Draco can still put up a fight against SPYRAL going first, the deck will have a very difficult time going second due to the targeting immunity of the deck nullifying most of the destruction effects that the archetype uses. This will likely result in True Draco being pushed into Tier 2.
Decklists
We will be looking at three major decklists for True Draco. The first two of these will be Demise True Draco builds and the third will be an Invoked True Draco build. This spread is to reflect the general distribution of the builds in the meta, with the Demise variant of True Draco showing itself time and again as the most successful variant of True Draco.
The first list we’re going to look at is Carlo Carillo’s Top 8 list from YCS Guadalajara. Carillo’s decklist is relatively unique compared to many of the Demise True Draco lists that we’ve seen in this format, largely due to its omission of the Spellbook engine. While undoubtedly a powerful draw engine, Carillo seems to have omitted in favor of main decking Cosmic Cyclone and using Waterfall of Dragon Souls. While Waterfall of Dragon Souls has seen scattered use in the Demise builds of True Draco since Zoodiac format, it has been decidedly less common in the September 2017 Forbidden List format. The engine does have the advantage of making use of excess Master Peace or Majesty Maiden that can easily become dead otherwise in the current iteration of the deck now that there are far less Tribute Monsters in the Main Deck.
Another very relevant meta call that Carillo used was main decking three Anti-Spell Fragrance. This is clearly a counter to Pendulum Magicians, the top deck in the meta going into YCS Guadalajara. While this definitely served Carillo well at the event, the tech will likely fall to the wayside as we transition away from Pendulum Magicians and towards SPYRAL who are much less affected by Anti-Spell Fragrance.
The last notable feature of Carillo’s decklist is his inclusion of Breakthrough Skill in the side deck. Due to the prevalence of Normal Summonable search monsters in the format such as Performapal Skullcrobat Joker and Spellbook Magician of Prophecy, Breakthrough Skill can be very useful when going first. Furthermore, it can effectively counter an opponent’s ability to search with Ignis Heat or Majesty Maiden on your turn in the mirror match.
This next list is Matt Manno’s Top 16 list from ARG Atlantic City. Manno chose to run the Spellbook engine, bringing his deck much closer in line with the general trend for True Draco decks in the current format. However, Manno did choose some interesting ratios on his draw cards. Most notably, he only chose to run a single Spellbook of Knowledge and a single Pot of Desires. The single Spellbook of Knowledge is meant to reduce the chance of the Spellbook Engine becoming dead in the deck when the single Spellbook of Magician of Prophecy is used up as the deck runs no other Spellcasters.
The single Pot of Desires has a similar advantage of preventing the situation of drawing Pot of Desires with Pot of Desires. This guarantees that, when resolved, Pot of Desires will generate an overall +1 in card advantage. While many decks need Pot of Desires to generate draw power and card advantage, the large number of other draw cards makes True Draco far less reliant on Pot of Desires.
The other major tech choice in Manno’s main deck is the inclusion of The Monarchs Stormforth. This card offers powerful non-targeting removal that can even be used on the opponent’s turn with the effect of the True Draco Trap Cards to Tribute Summon on the opponent’s turn. It can also help to mitigate the deck’s problem generating monster tribute fodder with the reduced monster pool the deck has in the current format. The Monarchs Stormforth also has good potential going forward against SPYRAL as non-targeting/non-destruction will become much more valuable.
The last main deck tech choice Manno ran was two copies of Chaos Trap Hole. In the pre-Circuit Break meta, this was a very good call as all of the current most popular decks except Paleozoic focus on using LIGHT or DARK monsters.
This last list we’re looking at is Steven Gregory’s Top 4 Invoked True Draco list from the Garden City Michigan Regional. This list contains a lot of interesting choices that are not normally seen in Invoked variants of True Draco. The most glaring of these is the inclusion of Card of Demise. Often, Invoked True Draco decks will not include Card of Demise so as not to conflict with the ability to Fusion Summon. However, Gregory’s list chooses to include the card anyways, likely due to the need for the deck to generate as much card advantage as possible for it to be able to compete with Pendulum Magicians.
The next interesting inclusion is that of Mariamne the True Dracophoenix. While Mariamne has seen some use in True Draco decks since the September Forbidden List, its inclusion in an Invoked variant of the deck is especially interesting. This is mainly due to the need for more WIND targets to use as a material for the summoning of Invoked Raidjin while not clogging with too many copies of Majesty Maiden.
The deck’s final interesting tech card is a single copy of Set Rotation. This functions as a good consistency boost that plays off of the deck’s use of multiple different field spells.
Tech Section
Due to half of the deck’s monster lineup from the previous format being eliminated by the Forbidden List, True Draco decks see a variety of different tech choices run in almost every successful build. The most common of these in the current format are ones we’ve already discussed when going over the decklists, namely The Monarchs Stormforth, Mariamne the True Dracophoenix, and Anti-Spell Fragrance in the main deck. Out of these, The Monarchs Stormforth has the highest potential going forward against SPYRAL.
Another trend that might start to rise in prevalence as SPYRAL enters the meta is the forgoing of Card of Demise in the main deck in favor of hand traps. While SPYRAL can often generate enough advantage tofight through a hand trap, True Draco will struggle heavily against SPYRAL going second if they are able to create a board uninterrupted. Hand Traps that True Draco are likely to gravitate towards will be Maxx “C”, Ash Blossom & Joyous Spring, and Droll & Lock Bird. Ghost Reaper & Winter Cherries will also likely see some use due to True Draco’s large amount of free Extra Deck space.
Matchups
Magicians
Magicians are one of the more difficult matchups for True Draco in the current meta. This is largely due to the floating effects of the various Magician monsters somewhat nullifying the power of the deck’s removal options. Time Pendulumgraph can also prove to be very powerful against True Draco, especially with the lowered number of True Draco Trap cards making it more difficult to summon a Trap immune Master Peace.
The main counters to the deck are Anti-Spell Fragrance, Imperial Order, and Cosmic Cyclone. At larger events this format, many True Draco players have opted to main deck as many of these cards as possible. Zaphion the Timelord can also work to counter Pendulum Magicians by being able to safely neutralize the opponent’s scales and their Time Pendulumgraph while also serving as tribute fodder for True Draco monsters in Main Phase 2. Even going into the new format many of these cards will likely remain viable side deck options.
True Draco
The mirror match is relatively similar to how it has been since the deck’s release. The focus should be on outpacing the opponent in the resource game and establishing pressure with Master Peace that is preferably immune to Monsters and Traps. To counter the opponent’s Master Peace, the best options are usually Spells such as The Monarchs Stormforth, Dark Hole, and Raigeki as the opponent will likely tend towards a Monster/Trap immune Master Peace. Cosmic Cyclone and Zaphion the Timelord also can work very well in this matchup to remove the opponent’s Continuous Spells and Traps.
Paleozoic
Paleozoic is a relatively easy matchup for True Draco due to the nature of Majesty Maiden and Ignis Heat. Because their effects can chain to an opponent’s card activation, you can very effectively block the opponent from flooding the board with Paleozoic monsters. Paleozoics will also generate advantage much slower than True Draco does.
Overall, the Paleozoic matchup does not usually merit specific side deck cards and can be handled with Cosmic Cyclone and other Spell/Trap removal already found in the Side Deck.
ABC
ABC can prove to be a relatively difficult matchup for True Draco, but only if they are able to get off the ground. ABC Dragon Buster can very effectively shut out True Draco’s ability to create a board as its banish effect avoids the floating of the True Draco Spells and Traps. ABC also has enough ATK to beat Master Peace in battle if there is no Dragonic Diagram on the field. Because of the danger that ABC poses, it is usually worthwhile to run specific cards in the side deck to counter ABC such as System Down. Ghost Reaper and Winter Cherries can also be very potent against ABC and will be a much more popular side deck choice going into the SPYRAL format.
Trickstar
Trickstar is a very dicey matchup for True Draco. Going first, Trickstar shouldn’t be too difficult of a matchup. Especially with the Demise variant of the deck, the low hand size you will likely be maintaining will neutralize the effectiveness of Trickstar Reincarnation. Going second can be difficult, however, as Trickstar Reincarnation can potentially banish important 1-of cards such as Ignis Heat or True King’s Return which will heavily damage True Draco’s ability to play in the long term.
Side Deck options that are recommended to counter Trickstar are mostly hand traps such as Ash Blossom and Maxx “C” when going second. Cards such as Skill Drain can be very effective when going first due to its ability to neutralize the burn damage coming from the opponent’s monsters.Masonic Symbols and the LDS Temple
By Sandra Tanner
In the Spring of 2002 the LDS Church completed its reconstruction of the Nauvoo Temple in Illinois. It was originally built in the 1840's but was destroyed after the Mormons abandoned the town. Due to the publicity and photos regarding this new temple many people have asked about the symbols on the building.
(click to enlarge)
To understand the symbols one must first know something of Joseph Smith's involvement with Freemasonry. Joseph's brother, Hyrum, had been a Mason since the 1820's. Many other members of the LDS church, like Brigham Young, were Masons before they joined Mormonism. LDS historian Reed Durham observed:
"By 1840, John Cook Bennett, a former active leader in Masonry had arrived in Commerce [Nauvoo] and rapidly exerted his persuasive leadership in all facets of the Church, including Mormon Masonry.... Joseph and Sidney [Rigdon] were inducted into formal Masonry...on the same day..." ("Is There No Help for the Widow's Son?" by Dr. Reed C. Durham, Jr., as printed in Joseph Smith and Masonry: No Help for the Widow's Son, Martin Pub. Co., Nauvoo, Ill., 1980, p. 17.)
Reed Durham further commented:
"I have attempted thus far to demonstrate that Masonic influences upon Joseph in the early Church history, preceding his formal membership in Masonry, were significant....In fact, I believe that there are few significant developments in the Church, that occurred after March 15, 1842, which did not have some Masonic interdependence." (Joseph Smith and Masonry: No Help for the Widow's Son, p.17)
The History of the Church records Smith's entrance into the Masonic lodge in 1842:
"Tuesday, 15.—I officiated as grand chaplain at the installation of the Nauvoo Lodge of Free Masons, at the Grove near the Temple. Grand Master Jonas, of Columbus, being present, a large number of people assembled on the occasion. The day was exceedingly fine; all things were done in order, and universal satisfaction was manifested. In the evening I received the first degree in Free Masonry in the Nauvoo Lodge, assembled in my general business office." (History of the Church, by Joseph Smith, Deseret Book, 1978, Vol.4, Ch.32, p.550-1)
The next day Smith recorded:
"Wednesday, March 16.—I was with the Masonic Lodge and rose to the sublime degree." (History of the Church, Vol.4, Ch.32, p.552)
The Mormon involvement in Freemasonry reached its heights during the early 1840's in Nauvoo. In the Encyclopedia of Mormonism we read:
"The introduction of Freemasonry in NAUVOO had both political and religious implications....Eventually nearly 1,500 LDS men became associated with Illinois Freemasonry, including many members of the Church's governing priesthood bodies—this at a time when the total number of non-LDS Masons in Illinois lodges barely reached 150." (Encyclopedia of Mormonism, vol.2, p.527)
The Salt Lake Tribune (May 4, 2002, p.C3) printed a picture of the original Nauvoo temple weather vane, which shows the Masonic symbol of the compass and square above the angel. Reporter Peggy Stack wrote:
"Every detail of the historic Nauvoo Temple was reconstructed [in the new Nauvoo temple] meticulously with one exception: the flying angel weather vane that graced the top of the 19th century Mormon edifice.
"In its place is the gold-leafed Angel Moroni, first used on the Salt Lake Temple,...
"Some speculate that the horizontal angel, with its compass and square, may be too closely associated with Masonic rituals for modern Mormons." (Salt Lake Tribune, May 4, 2002, p.C3)
(click to enlarge)
[Original architect's drawing of the Nauvoo Temple weather vane.
Notice the compass and square above the angel.]
Reed Durham observed:
"There is absolutely no question in my mind that the Mormon ceremony which came to be known as the Endowment, introduced by Joseph Smith to Mormon Masons initially, just a little over one month after he became a Mason, had an immediate inspiration from Masonry....
(click to enlarge)
[Architect's drawing of the stars for the Nauvoo Temple.]
"It is also obvious that the Nauvoo Temple architecture was in part, at least Masonically influenced. Indeed, it appears that there was an intentional attempt to utilize Masonic symbols and motifs. The sun stones, and the moon and star stones, were examples. An additional example was the angel used on the weather vane on the top of the Temple. [Above the angel] is a beautiful compass and square, in the typical Masonic fashion." (Joseph Smith and Masonry: No Help for the Widow's Son, p.18)
(click to enlarge)
[The compass and square as used in Masonry.]
Additional details of the Nauvoo temple symbols and pictures of the building are in the Deseret News 2001-2002 Church Almanac (see |
time he had spent with him in the car.
Marvin is certain he knows what happened to his old boss and where his body was hidden.
After Marvin left him, Hoffa's life continued on a trajectory of confrontation. He became the general president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters in 1958. In 1964, he was convicted of jury tampering, attempted bribery and fraud, and sentenced to 13 years in prison, eventually stepping down as president. In 1975, Hoffa was fighting to regain control of the union. The executive tried to dissuade him by offering him a lifetime pension, but, as Marvin says, Hoffa craved power and influence more than money.
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On July 30, 1975, Hoffa left for a meeting with Anthony Giacalone, a Mafia boss from Detroit known as "Tony Jack," one of the union's main contacts with the Mafia, and Anthony Provenzano, known as "Tony Pro," the Mafia captain and Teamsters leader who had made Marvin Hoffa's driver two decades before. Hoffa has not been seen since. He was declared legally dead but his body was never found.
"It was his own people who did it. Mr. Hoffa gave them no choice. He was very close with Tony Jack and everybody knows that he provided the trigger man. Tony Jack told me. He didn't say ‘Marvin, I provided the trigger man.' But he told me in another way," Marvin says.
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Ten years after Hoffa disappeared, Marvin was at a four-day Teamsters conference at the newly opened Omni International Hotel in Detroit. He was there as an errand boy and security man. Tony Jack was among the delegates.
"Let's take a break, let's get out of here," Tony Jack said during the meeting. An entourage of intimates got up with him. The hotel was across the road from the Renaissance Center, but the two were connected by a long glassed-in walkway that stretched across the 10 lanes and wide centre median of East Jefferson Avenue. Marvin walked beside Tony Jack because he was carrying his orange juice and standing ready to light his cigar.
When Tony Jack passed the middle point of the bridge, facing the Renaissance Center, he nodded toward the huge tower's foundation.
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"Say good morning to Jimmy Hoffa, boys," he said.
"Say good morning to Jimmy Hoffa, boys..."
Marvin is sure Hoffa's body rests in the concrete footing of the Renaissance Center, which was under construction at the time of his disappearance. The story Marvin heard from Detroit mobsters is that after Hoffa was snatched and killed, practically every union carpenter in and around the city was called in to rush the construction of wooden forms needed for pouring concrete at the Renaissance project. As soon as the forms were in place, the concrete flowed, tons of it; ahead of schedule. Never before or since has he heard of his union brothers working so diligently to get a project done.
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"There was a mad rush to get the concrete poured," Marvin says. At some point, he says, someone slipped Hoffa's body into the wet cement, where it was encased beneath what is now Detroit's most visible landmark.
Reprinted by permission of the publisher, John Wiley & Sons Canada, Ltd., from The Weasel: A Double Life in the Mob, by Adrian Humphreys Copyright © 2011 by Adrian HumphreysCLOSE Author Lee Strobel's best-selling exploration of faith heads to theaters April 7 and shows its first trailer.
Mike Vogel is Lee Strobel in 'The Case for Christ.' (Photo11: Pure Flix Entertainment LLC)
Atheist-turned-Christian Lee Strobel's 1998 best-selling book The Case for Christ heads to the screen April 7, with its first trailer revealed on usatoday.com.
Mike Vogel plays Strobel as a Chicago Tribune investigative reporter in 1980, when Strobel begins to investigate Christianity, compelled by his wife Leslie's (Erika Christensen) newfound faith. The search leads to life-altering results.
Case for Christ features Faye Dunaway as skeptic Dr. Roberta Walters and Robert Forster as Strobel's father Walter.
"It's been an incredible journey, not only to go from atheism to faith, but to see the raw reality of our lives played out on film," Strobel says. "In the end, it's our hope that everyone who sees it will take their own faith journey."
Mike Vogel and Erika Christensen star in 'The Case for Christ.' (Photo11: Pure Flix Entertainment LLC)
Read or Share this story: http://usat.ly/2kSRLs1flickr/jmsmith000 Shortening the work week doesn't just make for happier employees— it could end up saving lives.
A radical experiment has been underway in the Swedish city of Gothenburg for the past several months. Rather than ask employees to work a normal 40-hour week, a nursing home, a hospital, a factory, and a tech start-up have all implemented six-hour workdays.
The Svartedalens nursing home shortened its shifts in the fall of 2015, and has already reported higher standards of care and received effusive praise from its 80-person staff.
"I used to be exhausted all the time," Lise-Lotte Pettersson, an assistant nurse at Svartedalens, told the Guardian last September. "I am much more alert. I have much more energy for my work, and also for family life."
The orthopedics unit at nearby Sahlgrenska University Hospital also switched 89 nurses and doctors to a six-hour schedule in 2015, the New York Times reports. The hospital hired 15 new staff members to make up for the lost hours (which officials admit was expensive), but since then, fewer employees have called in sick, more surgeries have been performed, and patients have experienced shorter wait times.
Working less, in other words, likely resulted in extra lives saved.
"For years, we've been told that an eight-hour workday is optimal," Anders Hyltander, the hospital's executive director, told the Times. "But I think we should let ourselves challenge that view and say, 'Yes that's the way it is now, but if you want to increase productivity, be open to new ideas.'"
Gothenburg's Toyota plant first implemented a similar policy 13 years ago, and the local internet start-up Brath also switched to 30-hour weeks in 2013. Productivity and profits have reportedly risen in both places.
The success of these initiatives supports a growing body of evidence in favor of working less.
Several experiments conducted by K. Anders Ericsson, one of the top experts on the psychology of work, have shown that people can only remain productive for four or five hours of concentrated work. After they pass that peak performance level, their output tends to flatline or even suffer.
"If you're pushing people well beyond that time they can really concentrate maximally, you're very likely to get them to acquire some bad habits," Ericsson tells Tech Insider. Those bad habits, which could include daydreaming or getting distracted by social media, hurt productivity.
Not all experiments with shorter work weeks have withstood the test of time, though. The northern mining town of Kiruna, Sweden launched a similar program in 1989 but ended it in 2005 due to political changes in the local government.
However, as more organizations find that shorter workdays lead to increased productivity, those extra 10 hours per week start to seem like a waste of time.This article is about the sign of death. For other uses, see Rigor mortis (disambiguation)
Rigor mortis (Latin: rigor "stiffness", mortis "of death") or postmortem rigidity, the third stage of death, is one of the recognizable signs of death, caused by chemical changes in the muscles post mortem, which cause the limbs of the corpse to stiffen.[1] In humans, rigor mortis can occur as soon as 4 hours post mortem.
Physiology [ edit ]
After death, respiration in an organism ceases, depleting the source of oxygen used in the making of adenosine triphosphate (ATP). ATP is required to cause separation of the actin-myosin cross-bridges during relaxation of muscle.[2] When oxygen is no longer present, the body may continue to produce ATP via anaerobic glycolysis. When the body's glycogen is depleted, the ATP concentration diminishes, and the body enters rigor mortis because it is unable to break those bridges.[3]
Additionally, calcium enters the cytosol after death. Calcium is released into the cytosol due to the deterioration of the sarcoplasmic reticulum. Also, the breakdown of the sarcolemma causes additional calcium to enter the cytosol. The calcium activates the formation of actin-myosin cross-bridging. Once calcium is introduced into the cytosol, it binds to the troponin of thin filaments, which causes the troponin-tropomyosin complex to change shape and allow the myosin heads to bind to the active sites of actin proteins.[1] In rigor mortis myosin heads continue binding with the active sites of actin proteins via adenosine diphosphate (ADP), and the muscle is unable to relax until further enzyme activity degrades the complex.[2]
Normal relaxation would occur by replacing ADP with ATP, which would destabilize the myosin-actin bond and break the cross-bridge.[1] However, as ATP is absent, there must be a breakdown of muscle tissue by enzymes (endogenous or bacterial) during decomposition. As part of the process of decomposition, the myosin heads are degraded by the enzymes, allowing the muscle contraction to release and the body to relax.[4][5] Decomposition of the myofilaments occurs 48 to 60 hours after the peak of rigor mortis, which occurs approximately 13 hours after death.[1]
Physical changes [ edit ]
At the time of death, a condition called "primary flaccidity" occurs. Following this, the muscles stiffen in rigor mortis. All muscles in the body are affected. Starting between two and six hours following death, rigor mortis begins with the eyelids, neck, and jaw. The sequence may be due to different lactic acid levels among different muscles, which is directly related to the difference in glycogen levels and different types of muscle fibers.
Rigor mortis then spreads to the other muscles, including the internal organs, within the next four to six hours. The onset of rigor mortis is affected by the individual's age, sex, physical condition, and muscular build. Rigor mortis may not be perceivable in many infant and child corpses due to their smaller muscle mass.[6]
Applications in meat industry [ edit ]
Rigor mortis is very important in meat technology. The onset of rigor mortis and its resolution partially determine the tenderness of meat. If the post-slaughter meat is immediately chilled to 15 °C (59 °F), a phenomenon known as cold shortening occurs, whereby the muscle sarcomeres shrink to a third of their original length.
Cold shortening is caused by the release of stored calcium ions from the sarcoplasmic reticulum of muscle fibers, in response to the cold stimulus. The calcium ions trigger powerful muscle contraction aided by ATP molecules. To prevent cold shortening, a process known as electrical stimulation is carried out, especially in beef carcasses, immediately after slaughter and skinning. In this process, the carcass is stimulated with alternating current, causing it to contract and relax, which depletes the ATP reserve from the carcass and prevents cold shortening.[7]
Application in forensic pathology [ edit ]
The degree of rigor mortis may be used in forensic pathology, to determine the approximate time of death. A dead body holds its position as rigor mortis sets in. If the body is moved after death, but before rigor mortis begins, forensic techniques such as livor mortis can be applied. If the position in which a body is found does not match the location where it is found (for example, if it is flat on its back with one arm sticking straight up), that could mean someone moved it.
Several factors also affect the progression of rigor mortis, and investigators take these into account when estimating the time of death. One such factor is the ambient temperature. In warm environments, the onset and pace of rigor mortis are sped up by providing a conducive environment for the metabolic processes that cause decay. Low temperatures, however, slow them down. Therefore, for a person who dies outside in frozen conditions rigor mortis may last several days more than normal, so investigators may have to abandon it as a tool for determining time of death.[8][9]
See also [ edit ]
References [ edit ]
Bibliography [ edit ]America’s Liberty PAC is run by Jesse Benton, a longtime aide of Paul and his father, Ron Paul. 2016 Rand Paul super PACs raise $5 million
Two super PACs supporting Rand Paul’s presidential candidacy together raised about $5 million in the first half of the year.
One of the PACs, America’s Liberty, raised $3.13 million, according to FEC filings. The second PAC, Concerned American Voters, told POLITICO it had raised $1.88 million.
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That’s far short of the amount raised by the super PAC backing former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, which reported raising more than $100 million in the first half of the year, and short of those backing other top-tier Republican presidential contenders, such as Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker.
The two biggest donors to America’s Liberty were Nevada data mogul George Macricostas, who gave $1.1 million, and Philadelphia options trader Jeff Yass who gave $1 million.
America’s Liberty PAC is run by Jesse Benton, a longtime aide of Paul and his father, former Rep. Ron Paul, and John Tate, the president of the libertarian millennial group Campaign for Liberty.
Matt Kibbe, formerly of FreedomWorks, is a senior adviser for Concerned American Voters; Jeff Frazee is the super PAC’s president.
Each of the two super PACs has a different focus: America’s Liberty PAC will likely concentrate on paid media, while Concerned American Voters emphasizes grass-roots organizing.
“I am very pleased with these results so far,” Tate said in a statement. “This sum shows that Sen. Paul has real support in this race for president and we are working tirelessly to assist him by airing TV ads, managing and collecting data and running a top-notch digital campaign.
“We are just getting started and this financial support will allow us to continue to give Sen. Paul the help he needs in this race,” Tate said. “Instead of spending millions on slick TV ads, we have invested and are building a tech-savvy, highly targeted data-driven effort that can be used to effectively manage the tremendous grassroots support that Sen. Paul has built over the years.”
Two weeks earlier, Paul’s official campaign reported that it had raised $7 million in the most recent fundraising quarter.
Ken Vogel and Alex Isenstadt contributed to this report.
CORRECTION: The original version of this article said Tate helped run Concerned American Voters. He helps run America’s Liberty.
CORRECTION: Corrected by: Jennifer Shutt @ 07/24/2015 05:10 PM CORRECTION: The original version of this article said Tate helped run Concerned American Voters. He helps run America’s Liberty.SEOUL (Reuters) - South Korea’s highest court on Thursday struck down as unconstitutional a decades-old law banning adultery, triggering a surge in shares of condom makers and morning-after pills.
The 1953 law aimed to protect women in a male-dominated society where divorce was rare, by making marital infidelity punishable with jail.
“The law is unconstitutional as it infringes people’s right to make their own decisions on sex and secrecy and freedom of their private life, violating the principle banning excessive enforcement,” said Seo Ki-seok, a Constitutional Court judge, reading an opinion on behalf of five judges.
Seven members of the nine-judge panel deemed the law to be unconstitutional.
After the ruling, shares in Unidus Corp, which makes latex products, including condoms, soared to the 15 percent daily limit gain.
Hyundai Pharmaceutical Co Ltd, a maker of morning-after birth control pills and pregnancy tests, ended up 9.7 percent after the court decision, recovering earlier losses.
Critics have said the law against adultery is outdated in a society where rapid modernization has often clashed with traditional values.
In 2008, the court had upheld the law, citing South Korean society’s legal perception that adultery damages social order.
Several thousand spouses file criminal adultery complaints each year in South Korea, although jailings are rare. Prosecutors say no one was put behind bars last year, despite 892 indictments on adultery charges.ADVERTISEMENT
For a certain group of influential left-of-center analysts and pundits, it's become increasingly self-evident that Donald Trump's victory in the 2016 presidential contest was a function of one factor above all others: racism.
These liberal analysts acknowledge other factors too, of course. Yes, Vladimir Putin meddled and the Trump team probably at least tried (ineptly, it seems) to collude. Yes, James Comey made unprofessional blunders. Yes, the media had it in for Hillary Clinton. And yes, her campaign was guilty of hubris and unforced errors. But the real culprit, they claim, was the ideology of "white supremacy" that dominates American history, persists among many or even most white voters, and reached a fever pitch in reaction to eight years of a black president.
Those convinced that racism is to blame for the rise of Trump now have a formidable new weapon in their arsenal: a new essay in The Atlantic by Ta-Nehisi Coates with the stop-you-in-your-tracks title of "The First White President."
Coates is a stunningly powerful writer, penning essays that are deeply informed historically, animated by a fiery passion for racial justice, and shot through with unshakable sadness at how unlikely it is that such justice will ever be done. He writes like a prophet, rendering judgment from on high but with his heart kept low to the ground, in communion with his fellow African Americans and their unending struggles in a land that perennially fails to treat them as equals, and just as perennially fails to acknowledge the extent and persistence of that failure. Every American should read and learn from him.
But that doesn't mean he's infallible — and his new essay on Trump, like the claims of those left-of-center analysts and pundits that it will fortify, is seriously misguided.
No serious-minded person denies that race was an important factor in the 2016 election. Trump launched his political career by accusing a black president of being illegitimate and un-American. He announced his presidential campaign by demagogically describing Mexican immigrants as rapists and drug dealers. He spoke on the stump of imposing a "Muslim ban."
What Coates wants to establish isn't that these racially charged statements and actions (and many other recounted in the essay) happened, since we're all well aware of them. What he wants to establish is that Trump won the 2016 election above all because of these statements and actions. Trump's base is white America, and white America thrilled to his message of racial repudiation — a repudiation of dark-skinned immigrants; of evidence of police brutality directed against people of color; of the members of a religion from another part of the world; and most of all, of "the fact of a black president." That absolute negation of color in the name of whiteness is something new in the history of the United States, and it's what makes Trump "America's first white president," Coates contends.
But is that really true? Is Trump's electoral triumph really first and foremost an expression of the ideology of white supremacy? Coates devotes long stretches of his essay to arguing against various alternative explanations of Trump's victory, especially those that highlight the economic struggles and status anxieties of the white working class. As far as Coates is concerned, this is just the latest example of "the myth" of virtuous working-class whites that has so often been used to conceal the "sins of whiteness itself."
Yet Coates is too intellectually honest to pretend that any monocausal explanation of something as multifaceted as a narrowly won presidential election in which nearly 129 million votes were cast would be adequate. Though he doesn't seem especially happy about it.
Responding to The New Yorker's George Packer, who wrote that white working-class support for Trump and the GOP in recent election cycles can't "be attributed just to the politics of race," Coates becomes irritable:
This is likely true — the politics of race are, themselves, never attributable 'just to the politics of race.' The history of slavery is also about the growth of international capitalism; the history of lynching must be seen in light of anxiety over the growing independence of women; the civil rights movement can't be disentangled from the Cold War. Thus to say that the rise of Donald Trump is about more than race is to make an empty statement. [The Atlantic]
No, it's to make a true statement — and one that long passages of Coates' own essay seems to deny.
Why would Coates deny it when he knows better? I suspect it's because he's wedded to a view of American history that so emphasizes the centrality of racial injustice that he ends up constantly tempted to reify racial categories and even endorse notions of collective guilt and victimhood. This may be what leads him to write in sweeping terms about "sins of whiteness" and to claim that no explanation of the 2016 presidential race has the power to "cleanse the conscience of white people for having elected Donald Trump."
But "white people" didn't elect Donald Trump. A coalition of 62 percent of white men, 52 percent of white women, 13 percent of black men, 4 percent of black women, 32 percent of Latino men, 25 percent of Latino women, and 27 percent of Asians elected Donald Trump. "White supremacy" surely played an important role for some of those white voters. But it should be obvious that it can't be a sufficient explanation of the outcome overall — unless we begin to talk in terms of racial false consciousness.
Unfortunately, Coates occasionally does exactly that. In what is easily the most disturbing passage of Coates' justly lauded memoir Between the World and Me, he recounts the story of the death of a black friend at the hands of a police officer we eventually learn was also black. Instead of leading to a complex moral judgment of the tragic event, Coates treats it as a straightforward example of the evils of structural racism in which the black officer passively participated. Coates' new essay similarly accuses Bill Clinton, Bernie Sanders, and even Barack Obama of complicity in the thoroughly racial system that ultimately produced President Trump.
There are signs, once again, that Coates knows better. "Certainly not every Trump voter is a white supremacist," he writes at one point, "just as not every white person in the Jim Crow South was a white supremacist." Yet he also understands that if this is true, then Donald Trump might not deserve the title of America's First White President. Which may be why Coates adds a crucial addendum to this concession: Every Trump voter may not have been a white supremacist, "but every Trump voter felt it acceptable to hand the fate of the country over to one."
And there's the rub: Coates' entire analysis stands or falls on the reader's willingness to elide the moral distinction between voting for Trump because he's a white supremacist and voting for Trump despite the fact that he's a white supremacist.
In this respect, Coates' argument resembles the highly tendentious one found in Daniel Jonah Goldhagen's book Hitler's Willing Executioners, which sought to assign collective guilt for the Holocaust to all Germans, whom Goldhagen held responsible for developing, affirming, and enacting the murderous ideology of "eliminationist anti-Semitism" that defined the Nazi regime. One became complicit just by being there.
The passage of the essay about George Packer, in which Coates dismisses efforts at identifying extra-racial causes for Trump's rise as "empty statements," does not end there. It goes on to say that pointing to those other causes "is small comfort to the people — black, Muslim, immigrant — who live under racism's boot."
That may well be the case. But shouldn't writing and thinking, the effort of analyzing and understanding, aim for something more than "comfort"? Shouldn't it aim, instead, at the truth, however exigent? However painful? However unsettling?
Here are some unsettling truths: Trump won. Some voted for him because they're white supremacists, but others did for a range of other reasons (party loyalty, negative partisanship, anger about economic stagnation, resentment in response to cultural despair and decline, Clinton hatred fueled by a mix of right-wing media and foreign meddling, and on and on). Trump voters of all kinds aren't going anywhere. They are our fellow citizens and have the right to vote. Many of them probably aren't persuadable by left-of-center candidates, but some of them probably are. Moving beyond Trump and reversing the agenda of his presidency will require appealing to some of these voters.
And denouncing them all as racists is as unhelpful as it is inaccurate.NEW DELHI (Reuters) - Sayeed Zabiuddin Ansari, the alleged key plotter in the 2008 Mumbai attacks now in Indian police custody, had been living in Saudi Arabia for two years and was “talent-spotting” for another “massive attack”, an Indian police official said on Tuesday.
The Taj Mahal hotel is seen lit-up following the Mumbai attacks December 21, 2008. REUTERS/Punit Paranjpe/Files
Ansari, also known as Abu Hamza and Abu Jindal, was arrested at Delhi airport on June 21 on his arrival from Saudi Arabia. Police revealed his arrest only on Monday, after interrogating him for five days about the three-day rampage in Mumbai that killed 166 people.
Police said Ansari helped coordinate the attack by 10 members of Pakistan’s Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) militant group from a “control room” in the Pakistani city of Karachi and also helped to train the gunmen.
Until his arrest, Ansari had been living in Saudi Arabia on a Pakistani passport, an official at New Delhi’s anti-terrorist police unit told Reuters on condition of anonymity.
During his stay in the desert kingdom, Ansari sought to recruit volunteers for another Mumbai-style attack, the official said. He would not say where the planned attack was to have taken place or even whether India was the target.
Asked how India had learned of Ansari’s whereabouts, the official said: “We had inputs and we acted on them.” He would not elaborate, but some Indian media, quoting sources, said the United States, which has sought to deepen its counter-terorrism relationship with India, had provided the information.
The Hindu newspaper, quoting government sources, said the arrest came after months of painstaking diplomatic talks between Riyadh, Washington and New Delhi. Indian officials had travelled to Saudi Arabia to lobby for him to be handed over, it said.
It was not clear whether Ansari was in Saudi custody before his deportation from the kingdom or even how he had travelled to Delhi. One newspaper said the Saudis had asked India to send a plane to take him home.
The Saudi embassy in Delhi could not be reached for comment.
Indian media, quoting intelligence and police sources, said Ansari had admitted during interrogation to training the attackers, teaching them Hindi and speaking to them by telephone during the attack. He said Hafiz Saeed, the suspected mastermind of the attack and founder of the LeT, was present in the Karachi “control room”, media quoted the sources as saying.
Washington has offered a $10 million reward for information leading to Saeed’s arrest.
HANDOVER OF ANSARI SURPRISES
Ansari’s arrest casts a fresh spotlight on Pakistan’s history of backing militant groups as a tool of foreign policy. Pakistan’s ISI military intelligence agency nurtured the emergence of the LeT in the early 1990s to serve as a proxy to fight Indian forces in Kashmir.
Pakistan denies backing militant groups, but experts believe the security establishment maintains a relationship with LeT. Pakistan’s government has not commented on Ansari’s arrest.
A Gulf-based source familiar with the Ansari case said Pakistan had exerted pressure on Saudi Arabia not to release him into Indian custody. “The ISI wanted Abu Hamza to be handed over to Pakistan rather than anywhere else,” he said.
An Arab diplomat in Islamabad expressed surprise that Saudi Arabia had handed over Ansari to India.
“This makes no sense that the Saudis would help India and anger the Pakistanis. The Saudis see Pakistan as their nuclear guarantee against Iran and they would never go against the ISI,” he said.
India’s Foreign Ministry and analysts played down any suggestions that Ansari’s arrest could damage diplomatic talks with arch-rival Pakistan on a host of disputed issues.
“This arrest is unlikely to have a negative impact on talks between India and Pakistan unless further investigations reveal that the arrested person was used by Pakistan to plot another terror attack on India,” said B. Raman, a former top Indian intelligence official and now security analyst.
The Mumbai attacks heightened tensions between nuclear-armed India and Pakistan, which have fought three wars since 1947, and have continued to cast a pall over fragile relations ever since.
Ten militants arrived on the Mumbai shoreline in a dinghy on November 26, 2008, before splitting into four groups and embarking on a killing spree. They held off elite commandos for up to 60 hours in two luxury hotels and a Jewish centre in the city. The only attacker to survive was sentenced to death in 2010.
A voice believed to belong to Ansari was recorded talking to the gunmen attacking the Jewish centre. He is reported to have told the attackers to convey to the media that the “attack was a trailer and the entire movie was yet to come”.SuperMicro C7Z390-PGW
Last month I told you about an upcoming B360 motherboard from SuperMicro. It was spotted in Sisoft database. SuperMicro hardware is always showing up early there (the same thing happened with Z370). Today we have a Z390 motherboard, the first one to make an appearance.
Not much is known about the new chipset itself, in fact, even the processor is not detected by Sisoft software, which means, it may also be a new SKU.
Six weeks ago, a roadmap was leaked showing new 8th Gen Coffe Lake-S processors to be launched early next year. The roadmap lists 6, 4 and 2-core CPUs with TDP at 65W and 35W. The CPU spotted at Sisoft with Z390 motherboard is detected as a 92W part.
According to another leaked roadmap, Intel Z390 motherboards are to be expected in second half of 2018. Since we are seeing this Z390 leak already in November (~220+ days before 2H 2018), one could say that the timeline could have changed, so in other words, the Z390 may launch sooner.
It’s also worth adding that Eurocom representative claimed that Z390 motherboards will support 8-core mainstream CPUs. So far there is no trace of such SKU, even the CPU in this leak is a 6-core processor, but at least now we know Z390 supports more than just 8-core CPUs.
Intel Z390 and new Coffelake-S CPUs will compete directly with Ryzen 2000 (Zen+). Both are expected in the first half of 2018.
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Please enable JavaScript to view the comments powered by Disqus.As the Senate prepares to vote on their version of the tax bill as early as this week, all eyes are on six senators.
Three senators — Jeff Flake (R-AZ), Bob Corker (R-TN), and John McCain (R-AZ) — are virtually immune from outside pressure as they are unlikely to face voters again. Flake and Corker are retiring and McCain is 80, just won reelection, and is battling a serious illness. All three have expressed serious concerns about how much the tax proposal will increase the federal deficit.
Meanwhile, Sens. Susan Collins (R-ME), Steve Daines (R-MT), and Ron Johnson (R-WI) have all outwardly expressed hesitancy over voting for the Senate tax bill, citing other policy concerns. Daines and Johnson don’t think the legislation does enough for “pass-through business,” small businesses that also include larger corporations like hedge funds and law firms. Collins, who was a key vote in stopping multiple GOP attempts at repealing the Affordable Care Act, has stated the Senate’s decision to include a repeal of the individual mandate to help pay for a massive corporate tax cut is the reason why she is hesitant to vote for the bill as written.
The Senate Finance Committee is considering some last minute alterations to the legislation in an effort to get some support, this includes an expansion of the pass-through deduction to win over Johnson and Daines and a change allowing taxpayers to deduct $10,000 in local property taxes from their taxable income, a provision included in the House bill but not yet in the Senate, to get Collins’ vote.
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These minor alterations, however, won’t lower the deficit, and that will be a tougher nut to crack. Corker and Flake have cited a the deficit, which is expected to increase by $1.5 trillion if the proposal were to become law, as a major concern. This may understate the true deficit impact. The individual tax cuts will expire in 2025 while the corporate tax cut is permanent. Temporary individual tax cuts would help pay for the long-term costs of the bill, and Republicans argue there is no way a future Congress would allow the tax cuts to completely expire. If that’s true, the real impact on the deficit would be substantially higher.
Then there are the claims that the tax proposal would raise wages across-the-board and boost the economy. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimated Monday that the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act would hurt more low-income Americans than previously reported, while the conservative-leaning Tax Foundation’s dynamic scoring found the legislation wouldn’t yield sustainable 3 percent economic growth like the White House previously promised.
The bill’s inability to deliver results on economic growth could cause Republicans to lose another vote in the Senate.
Sen. James Lankford says he's concerned the tax cuts won't yield the promised growth and wants a "backstop" built in if revenues plunge. — Sahil Kapur (@sahilkapur) November 27, 2017
Republicans can only afford to lose two votes in the Senate or the tax proposal will go down. Right now there are at least seven Republican senators with serious concerns about the bill.
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New polling has found the bill is incredibly unpopular in Corker’s home state of Tennessee (30 percent approve), McCain’s home state of Arizona (26 percent approve) and Collins’ home state of Maine (22 percent approve).
This puts Senate passage of the bill later this week in jeopardy.A pair of middleweights looking to reverse their most-recent fortunes will meet in the Octagon in January when the UFC returns to the state of Georgia.
UFC President Dana White announced at the post-fight press conference at UFC 167 on Saturday night that Strikeforce veteran Luke Rockhold and Costa Philippou would face one another at UFC Fight Night 35 on January 15, 2014. That bout is set to headline the event, which is set to take place at The Arena at Gwinnett Center in Duluth, Ga. That event's main card is expected to air on Fox Sports 1.
Rockhold, 29, is the last Strikeforce middleweight champion and most recently competed at UFC on FX 8 in May. The bout was his UFC debut and he was stopped with strikes by Vitor Belfort in the first round. He holds a record of 10-2 in professional MMA.
Philippou, 33, last fought at UFC 165 in September where he dropped a unanimous decision victory to Francis Carmont. He holds a professional record of 12-3 with 1 no-contest.Hollis Daniels, a Texas Tech freshman, stunned friends and family when he was arrested last night for shooting a cop to death.
Friends of the student who admitted murdering Officer Floyd East Jr have spoken to The Tab to describe their shock upon hearing that he took a firearm and shot into the head of a police officer, killing him.
It is still unclear whether he used his own weapon or was able to take an officer's pistol and use it before fleeing out of the station and into the night.
A detective said Officer East was processing Daniels after he was found with "drugs and drug paraphernalia" in his dorm. He was not handcuffed. Detective Thomas Bonds said an officer left the room and then heard a loud bang. When the officer came back, he found East mortally wounded and Daniels gone, having taken East's body camera with him.
An affidavit says Daniels told officers he had done "something illogical" and that "he was the the one that shot their friend." The report adds he said: "I fucked up."
While information about the student, whose full name is James Alvin Hollis Daniels, is still emerging, interviews with his high school and college friends only further darken the picture of this alleged killer.
Everyone who we spoke to told us how Daniels, who has been charged with murder, was a regular kid with a positive outlook. One of his best friends, Gerardo Escalante from his hometown of Seguin, Texas, said he had "no clue" why this happened.
"I was shocked when I found out this happened. That wasn’t James. I had known him for a good while, we were close friends. I have no clue, I wish I knew what exactly happened for him to do that. But I know him enough to know that he wouldn’t go and do stuff like that."
Gerardo, who skated with Daniels frequently back in Seguin, added he liked him because he would "always embrace the conversation." On seeing his Daniels mugshot after his arrest, he said he couldn't believe he was looking at his friend.
A student at Texas Tech who claimed to be Daniels' lab partner in Astronomy class said he seemed "absolutely normal."
"We talked about what any teenage boys would talk about," said Zachary Dishman. "What we did for fun, girls, what we thought of the lab and class we were taking. He never struck me as anything other than a completely normal person. It seemed like he had his head screwed on correctly."
Alycia Harkey, who was friends with him at Seguin High School, told us: "We were friends through theatre class, we were backstage. He was cool, |
.[17] He later earned an MBA degree from the George Washington University in 1971,[15] after his second tour in Vietnam.
Despite his parents' pronunciation of his name as, Powell has pronounced his name since childhood, after the World War II flyer Colin P. Kelly Jr.[18] Public officials and radio and television reporters have used Powell's preferred pronunciation.
Military career
Powell was a professional soldier for 35 years, holding a variety of command and staff positions and rising to the rank of General.[19]
Training
Powell described joining the Reserve Officers' Training Corps (ROTC) during college as one of the happiest experiences of his life; discovering something he loved and could do well, he felt he had "found himself." According to Powell:
It was only once I was in college, about six months into college when I found something that I liked, and that was ROTC, Reserve Officer Training Corps in the military. And I not only liked it, but I was pretty good at it. That's what you really have to look for in life, something that you like, and something that you think you're pretty good at. And if you can put those two things together, then you're on the right track, and just drive on.[20]
Cadet Powell joined the Pershing Rifles, the ROTC fraternal organization and drill team begun by General John Pershing. Even after he had become a general, Powell kept on his desk a pen set he had won for a drill team competition.
Upon graduation, he received a commission as an Army second lieutenant.[21] After attending basic training at Fort Benning, Powell was assigned to the 48th Infantry, in West Germany, as a platoon leader.[22]
Vietnam War
In his autobiography, Powell said he is haunted by the nightmare of the Vietnam War and felt that the leadership was very ineffective.
Captain Powell served a tour in Vietnam as a South Vietnamese Army (ARVN) advisor from 1962 to 1963. While on patrol in a Viet Cong-held area, he was wounded by stepping on a punji stake.[23] The large infection made it difficult for him to walk, and caused his foot to swell for a short time, shortening his first tour.
Powell returned to Vietnam as a major in 1968, serving as assistant chief of staff of operations for the in the 23rd (Americal) Infantry Division. During the second tour in Vietnam he was decorated with the Soldier's Medal for bravery after he survived a helicopter crash and single-handedly rescued three others, including division commander Major General Charles M. Gettys, from the burning wreckage.[22][24]
Powell was charged with investigating a detailed letter by 11th Light Infantry Brigade soldier Tom Glen, which backed up rumored allegations of the My Lai Massacre. He wrote: "In direct refutation of this portrayal is the fact that relations between American soldiers and the Vietnamese people are excellent." Later, Powell's assessment would be described as whitewashing the news of the massacre, and questions would continue to remain undisclosed to the public. In May 2004 Powell said to television and radio host Larry King, "I was in a unit that was responsible for My Lai. I got there after My Lai happened. So, in war, these sorts of horrible things happen every now and again, but they are still to be deplored."[25]
After the Vietnam War
Powell served a White House Fellowship under President Richard Nixon from 1972 to 1973. During 1975–1976 he attended the National War College, Washington, D.C.[26]
In his autobiography, My American Journey, Powell named several officers he served under who inspired and mentored him. As a lieutenant colonel serving in South Korea, Powell was very close to General Henry "Gunfighter" Emerson. Powell said he regarded Emerson as one of the most caring officers he ever met. Emerson insisted his troops train at night to fight a possible North Korean attack, and made them repeatedly watch the television film Brian's Song to promote racial harmony. Powell always professed that what set Emerson apart was his great love of his soldiers and concern for their welfare. After a race riot occurred, in which African American soldiers almost killed a White officer, Powell was charged by Emerson to crack down on black militants; Powell's efforts led to the discharge of one soldier, and other efforts to reduce racial tensions.[22] During 1976–1977 he commanded the 2nd Brigade of the 101st Airborne Division.[12]
A "political general"
In the early 1980s, Powell served at Fort Carson, Colorado. After he left Fort Carson, Powell became senior military assistant to Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger, whom he assisted during the 1983 invasion of Grenada and the 1986 airstrike on Libya.
President Ronald Reagan and National Security Advisor Powell in 1988
In 1986, Powell took over the command of V Corps in Frankfurt, Germany, from Robert Lewis "Sam" Wetzel.
Following the Iran–Contra scandal, Powell became, at the age of 49, Ronald Reagan's National Security Advisor, serving from 1987 to 1989 while retaining his Army commission as a lieutenant general.
In April 1989, after his tenure with the National Security Council, Powell was promoted to four-star general under President George H. W. Bush and briefly served as the Commander in Chief, Forces Command (FORSCOM), headquartered at Fort McPherson, Georgia, overseeing all Army, Army Reserve, and National Guard units in the Continental U.S., Alaska, Hawaii, and Puerto Rico. He became the third general since World War II to reach four-star rank without ever serving as a division commander, joining Dwight D. Eisenhower and Alexander Haig.
Later that year, President George H. W. Bush selected him as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.[27]
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Powell in November 1989, on his official Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff portrait.
Powell's last military assignment, from October 1, 1989, to September 30, 1993, was as the 12th Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the highest military position in the Department of Defense. At age 52, he became the youngest officer, and first Afro-Caribbean American, to serve in this position. Powell was also the first JCS Chair who received his commission through ROTC.[28]
During this time, he oversaw 28 crises, including the invasion of Panama in 1989 to remove General Manuel Noriega from power and Operation Desert Storm in the 1991 Persian Gulf War. During these events, Powell earned his nickname, "the reluctant warrior." He rarely advocated military intervention as the first solution to an international crisis, and instead usually prescribed diplomacy and containment.
General Colin Powell, Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff, waves from his motorcade during the Persian Gulf War Welcome Home Parade in New York City.
As a military strategist, Powell advocated an approach to military conflicts that maximizes the potential for success and minimizes casualties. A component of this approach is the use of overwhelming force, which he applied to Operation Desert Storm in 1991. His approach has been dubbed the "Powell Doctrine". Powell continued as chairman of the JCS into the Clinton presidency but as a dedicated "realist" he considered himself a bad fit for an administration largely made up of liberal internationalists.[29] He clashed with then-U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Madeleine Albright over the Bosnian crisis, as he opposed any military interventions that didn't involve US interests.[30]
During his chairmanship of the JCS, there was discussion of awarding Powell a fifth star, granting him the rank of General of the Army. But even in the wake of public and Congressional pressure[31][32] to do so, Clinton-Gore presidential transition team staffers decided against it.[33][34][35]
Awards and decorations
Badges
Medals and ribbons
Foreign decorations
13 Rules of Leadership
First printed in the August 13, 1989 issue of Parade magazine,[40] these are Colin Powell's 13 Rules of Leadership.[41][42]
It ain't as bad as you think. Get mad, then get over it. Avoid having your ego so close to your position that when your position falls, your ego goes with it. It can be done. Be careful what you choose. You may get it. Don't let adverse facts stand in the way of a good decision. You can't make someone else's choices. Check small things. Share credit. Remain calm. Be kind. Have a vision. Don't take counsel of your fears or naysayers. Perpetual optimism is a force multiplier.
Powell's experience in military matters made him a very popular figure with both American political parties. Many Democrats admired his moderate stance on military matters, while many Republicans saw him as a great asset associated with the successes of past Republican administrations. Put forth as a potential Democratic Vice Presidential nominee in the 1992 U.S. presidential election[43] or even potentially replacing Vice President Dan Quayle as the Republican Vice Presidential nominee,[44] Powell eventually declared himself a Republican and began to campaign for Republican candidates in 1995.[45][46] He was touted as a possible opponent of Bill Clinton in the 1996 U.S. presidential election, possibly capitalizing on a split conservative vote in Iowa[47] and even leading New Hampshire polls for the GOP nomination,[48] but Powell declined, citing a lack of passion for politics.[49] Powell defeated Clinton 50–38 in a hypothetical match-up proposed to voters in the exit polls conducted on Election Day.[50] Despite not standing in the race, Powell won the Republican New Hampshire Vice-Presidential primary on write-in votes.[51]
In 1997 Powell founded America's Promise with the objective of helping children from all socioeconomic sectors. That same year saw the establishment of The Colin L. Powell Center for Leadership and Service. The mission of the Center is to "prepare new generations of publicly engaged leaders from populations previously underrepresented in public service and policy circles, to build a strong culture of civic engagement at City College, and to mobilize campus resources to meet pressing community needs and serve the public good." [52]
Powell was mentioned as a potential candidate in the 2000 U.S. presidential election, but decided against running.[53] Once Texas Governor George W. Bush secured the Republican nomination, Powell endorsed him for president and spoke at the 2000 Republican National Convention. Bush eventually won, and Powell was appointed Secretary of State.
In the electoral college vote count of 2016, Powell received three votes from faithless electors from Washington.
Secretary of State (2001–2005)
As Secretary of State in the Bush administration, Powell was perceived as moderate. Powell was unanimously confirmed by the United States Senate. Over the course of his tenure he traveled less than any other U.S. Secretary of State in 30 years. [54]
On September 11, 2001, Powell was in Lima, Peru, meeting with President Alejandro Toledo and US Ambassador John Hamilton, and attending the special session of the OAS General Assembly that subsequently adopted the Inter-American Democratic Charter. After the September 11 attacks, Powell's job became of critical importance in managing America's relationships with foreign countries in order to secure a stable coalition in the War on Terrorism.
Powell came under fire for his role in building the case for the 2003 Invasion of Iraq. In a press statement on February 24, 2001, he had said that sanctions against Iraq had prevented the development of any weapons of mass destruction by Saddam Hussein. As was the case in the days leading up to the Persian Gulf War, Powell was initially opposed to a forcible overthrow of Saddam, preferring to continue a policy of containment. However, Powell eventually agreed to go along with the Bush administration's determination to remove Saddam. He had often clashed with others in the administration, who were reportedly planning an Iraq invasion even before the September 11 attacks, an insight supported by testimony by former terrorism czar Richard Clarke in front of the 9/11 Commission. The main concession Powell wanted before he would offer his full support for the Iraq War was the involvement of the international community in the invasion, as opposed to a unilateral approach. He was also successful in persuading Bush to take the case of Iraq to the United Nations, and in moderating other initiatives. Powell was placed at the forefront of this diplomatic campaign.
Powell's chief role was to garner international support for a multi-national coalition to mount the invasion. To this end, Powell addressed a plenary session of the United Nations Security Council on February 5, 2003, to argue in favor of military action. Citing numerous anonymous Iraqi defectors, Powell asserted that "there can be no doubt that Saddam Hussein has biological weapons and the capability to rapidly produce more, many more." Powell also stated that there was "no doubt in my mind" that Saddam was working to obtain key components to produce nuclear weapons.[56]
Most observers praised Powell's oratorical skills. However, Britain's Channel 4 News reported soon afterwards that a UK intelligence dossier that Powell had referred to as a "fine paper" during his presentation had been based on old material and plagiarized an essay by American graduate student Ibrahim al-Marashi.[57][58] A 2004 report by the Iraq Survey Group concluded that the evidence that Powell offered to support the allegation that the Iraqi government possessed weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) was inaccurate.
In an interview with Charlie Rose, Powell contended that prior to his UN presentation, he had merely four days to review the data concerning WMD in Iraq.[59]
A Senate report on intelligence failures would later detail the intense debate that went on behind the scenes on what to include in Powell's speech. State Department analysts had found dozens of factual problems in drafts of the speech. Some of the claims were taken out, but others were left in, such as claims based on the yellowcake forgery.[60] The administration came under fire for having acted on faulty intelligence, particularly what was single-sourced to the informant known as Curveball. Powell later recounted how Vice President Dick Cheney had joked with him before he gave the speech, telling him, "You've got high poll ratings; you can afford to lose a few points." Powell's longtime aide-de-camp and Chief of Staff from 1989–2003, Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, later characterized Cheney's view of Powell's mission as to "go up there and sell it, and we'll have moved forward a peg or two. Fall on your damn sword and kill yourself, and I'll be happy, too."[61]
In September 2005, Powell was asked about the speech during an interview with Barbara Walters and responded that it was a "blot" on his record. He went on to say, "It will always be a part of my record. It was painful. It's painful now."[62]
Wilkerson said that he inadvertently participated in a hoax on the American people in preparing Powell's erroneous testimony before the United Nations Security Council.[63]
Because Powell was seen as more moderate than most figures in the administration, he was spared many of the attacks that have been leveled at more controversial advocates of the invasion, such as Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz. At times, infighting among the Powell-led State Department, the Rumsfeld-led Defense Department, and Cheney's office had the effect of polarizing the administration on crucial issues, such as what actions to take regarding Iran and North Korea.
After Saddam Hussein had been deposed, Powell's new role was to once again establish a working international coalition, this time to assist in the rebuilding of post-war Iraq. On September 13, 2004, Powell testified before the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee,[64] acknowledging that the sources who provided much of the information in his February 2003 UN presentation were "wrong" and that it was "unlikely" that any stockpiles of WMDs would be found. Claiming that he was unaware that some intelligence officials questioned the information prior to his presentation, Powell pushed for reform in the intelligence community, including the creation of a national intelligence director who would assure that "what one person knew, everyone else knew."
Additionally, Powell has been critical of other instances of U.S. foreign policy in the past, such as its support for the 1973 Chilean coup d'état. From two separate interviews in 2003, Powell stated in one about the 1973 event "I can't justify or explain the actions and decisions that were made at that time. It was a different time. There was a great deal of concern about communism in this part of the world. Communism was a threat to the democracies in this part of the world. It was a threat to the United States."[65] In another interview, however, he also simply stated "With respect to your earlier comment about Chile in the 1970s and what happened with Mr. Allende, it is not a part of American history that we're proud of."[66]
Powell announced his resignation as Secretary of State on November 15, 2004. According to The Washington Post, he had been asked to resign by the president's chief of staff, Andrew Card.[61] Powell announced that he would stay on until the end of Bush's first term or until his replacement's confirmation by Congress. The following day, Bush nominated National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice as Powell's successor. News of Powell's leaving the Administration spurred mixed reactions from politicians around the world — some upset at the loss of a statesman seen as a moderating factor within the Bush administration, but others hoping for Powell's successor to wield more influence within the cabinet.
In mid-November, Powell stated that he had seen new evidence suggesting that Iran was adapting missiles for a nuclear delivery system.[67] The accusation came at the same time as the settlement of an agreement between Iran, the IAEA, and the European Union.
On December 31, 2004, Powell rang in the New Year by pressing a button in Times Square with New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg to initiate the ball drop and 60 second countdown, ushering in the year 2005. He appeared on the networks that were broadcasting New Year's Eve specials and talked about this honor, as well as being a native of New York City.[68]
Life after diplomatic service
After retiring from the role of Secretary of State, Powell returned to private life. In April 2005, he was privately telephoned by Republican senators Lincoln Chafee and Chuck Hagel,[69] at which time Powell expressed reservations and mixed reviews about the nomination of John R. Bolton as ambassador to the United Nations, but refrained from advising the senators to oppose Bolton (Powell had clashed with Bolton during Bush's first term).[70] The decision was viewed as potentially dealing significant damage to Bolton's chances of confirmation. Bolton was put into the position via a recess appointment because of the strong opposition in the Senate.
On April 28, 2005, an opinion piece in The Guardian by Sidney Blumenthal (a former top aide to President Bill Clinton) claimed that Powell was in fact "conducting a campaign" against Bolton because of the acrimonious battles they had had while working together, which among other things had resulted in Powell cutting Bolton out of talks with Iran and Libya after complaints about Bolton's involvement from the British. Blumenthal added that "The foreign relations committee has discovered that Bolton made a highly unusual request and gained access to 10 intercepts by the National Security Agency. Staff members on the committee believe that Bolton was probably spying on Powell, his senior advisors and other officials reporting to him on diplomatic initiatives that Bolton opposed."[71]
In July 2005, Powell joined Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield & Byers, a well-known Silicon Valley venture capital firm, with the title of "strategic limited partner."
In September 2005, Powell criticized the response to Hurricane Katrina.[72] Powell said that thousands of people were not properly protected, but because they were poor rather than because they were black.
On January 5, 2006, he participated in a meeting at the White House of former Secretaries of Defense and State to discuss United States foreign policy with Bush administration officials. In September 2006, Powell sided with more moderate Senate Republicans in supporting more rights for detainees and opposing President Bush's terrorism bill. He backed Senators John Warner, John McCain and Lindsey Graham in their statement that U.S. military and intelligence personnel in future wars will suffer for abuses committed in 2006 by the U.S. in the name of fighting terrorism. Powell stated that "The world is beginning to doubt the moral basis of [America's] fight against terrorism."[73]
Also in 2006, Powell began appearing as a speaker at a series of motivational events called Get Motivated, along with former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani. In his speeches for the tour, he openly criticized the Bush Administration on a number of issues. Powell has been the recipient of mild criticism for his role with Get Motivated which has been called a "get-rich-quick-without-much-effort, feel-good schemology."[74]
In 2007 he joined the board of directors of Steve Case's new company Revolution Health. Powell also serves on the Council on Foreign Relations Board of directors.[75]
Powell, in honor of Martin Luther King Day, dropped the ceremonial first puck at a New York Islanders ice hockey game at Nassau Coliseum on January 21, 2008. On November 11, 2008, Powell again dropped the puck in recognition of Military Appreciation Day and Veterans Day.[76][77]
Recently, Powell has encouraged young people to continue to use new technologies to their advantage in the future. In a speech at the Center for Strategic and International Studies to a room of young professionals, he said, "That's your generation...a generation that is hard-wired digital, a generation that understands the power of the information revolution and how it is transforming the world. A generation that you represent, and you're coming together to share; to debate; to decide; to connect with each other."[78] At this event, he encouraged the next generation to involve themselves politically on the upcoming Next America Project, which uses online debate to provide policy recommendations for the upcoming administration.
In 2008, Powell served as a spokesperson for National Mentoring Month, a campaign held each January to recruit volunteer mentors for at-risk youth.[79]
Soon after Barack Obama's 2008 election, Powell began being mentioned as a possible cabinet member.[80] He was not nominated.
In September 2009, Powell advised President Obama against surging US forces in Afghanistan.[81] The president announced the surge the following December.
On March 14, 2014, Salesforce.com announced that Powell had joined its board of directors.[82]
Political views
A liberal Republican, Powell is well known for his willingness to support liberal or centrist causes.[83] He is pro-choice regarding abortion, and in favor of "reasonable" gun control.[83][clarification needed] He stated in his autobiography that he supports affirmative action that levels the playing field, without giving a leg up to undeserving persons because of racial issues. Powell was also instrumental in the 1993 implementation of the military's don't ask, don't tell policy,[83] though he later supported its repeal as proposed by Robert Gates and Admiral Mike Mullen in January 2010, saying "circumstances had changed".[84]
The Vietnam War had a profound effect on Powell's views of the proper use of military force. These views are described in detail in the autobiography My American Journey. The Powell Doctrine, as the views became known, was a central component of U.S. policy in the Persian Gulf War (the first U.S. war in Iraq) and U.S. invasion of Afghanistan (the overthrow of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan following the September 11 attacks). The hallmark of both operations was strong international cooperation, and the use of overwhelming military force.
Powell was the subject of controversy in 2004 when, in a conversation with British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, he reportedly referred to neoconservatives within the Bush administration as "fucking crazies."[85] In addition to being reported in the press (although the expletive was generally censored in the U.S. press), the quotation was used by James Naughtie in his book, The Accidental American: Tony Blair and the Presidency, and by Chris Patten in his book, Cousins and Strangers: America, Britain, and Europe in a New Century.
In a September 2006 letter to Sen. John McCain, General Powell expressed opposition to President Bush's push for military tribunals of those formerly and currently classified as enemy combatants. Specifically, he objected to the effort in Congress to "redefine Common Article 3 of the Geneva Convention." He also asserted: "The world is beginning to doubt the moral basis of our fight against terrorism."[86]
Powell endorsed President Obama in 2008 and again in 2012. When asked why he is still a Republican on Meet the Press he said, "I’m still a Republican. And I think the Republican Party needs me more than the Democratic Party needs me. And you can be a Republican and still feel strongly about issues such as immigration, and improving our education system, and doing something about some of the social problems that exist in our society and our country. I don’t think there's anything inconsistent with this." [87]
Views on the Iraq War
While Powell was wary of a military solution, he supported the decision to invade Iraq after the Bush administration concluded that diplomatic efforts had failed. After his departure from the State Department, Powell repeatedly emphasized his continued support for American involvement in the Iraq War.
At the 2007 Aspen Ideas Festival in Colorado,[88] Powell revealed that he had spent two and a half hours explaining to President Bush "the consequences of going into an Arab country and becoming the occupiers." During this discussion, he insisted that the U.S. appeal to the United Nations first, but if diplomacy failed, he would support the invasion: "I also had to say to him that you are the President, you will have to make the ultimate judgment, and if the judgment is this isn't working and we don't think it is going to solve the problem, then if military action is undertaken I'm with you, I support you."[89]
In a 2008 interview on CNN, Powell reiterated his support for the 2003 decision to invade Iraq in the context of his endorsement of Barack Obama, stating: "My role has been very, very straightforward. I wanted to avoid a war. The president [Bush] agreed with me. We tried to do that. We couldn't get it through the U.N. and when the president made the decision, I supported that decision. And I've never blinked from that. I've never said I didn't support a decision to go to war."[90]
Powell's position on the Iraq War troop surge of 2007 has been less consistent. In December 2006, he expressed skepticism that the strategy would work and whether the U.S. military had enough troops to carry it out successfully. He stated: "I am not persuaded that another surge of troops into Baghdad for the purposes of suppressing this communitarian violence, this civil war, will work."[91] Following his endorsement of Barack Obama in October 2008, however, Powell praised General David Petraeus and U.S. troops, as well as the Iraqi government, concluding that "it's starting to turn around."[90] By mid-2009, he had concluded a surge of U.S. forces in Iraq should have come sooner, perhaps in late 2003.[92] Throughout this period, Powell consistently argued that Iraqi political progress was essential, not just military force.
Role in presidential election of 2008
Powell donated the maximum allowable amount to John McCain's campaign in the summer of 2007[93] and in early 2008, his name was listed as a possible running mate for Republican nominee McCain's bid during the 2008 U.S. presidential election.[94] However, on October 19, 2008, Powell announced his endorsement of Barack Obama during a Meet the Press interview, citing "his ability to inspire, because of the inclusive nature of his campaign, because he is reaching out all across America, because of who he is and his rhetorical abilities", in addition to his "style and substance." He additionally referred to Obama as a "transformational figure".[95][96] Powell further questioned McCain's judgment in appointing Sarah Palin as the vice presidential candidate, stating that despite the fact that she is admired, "now that we have had a chance to watch her for some seven weeks, I don't believe she's ready to be president of the United States, which is the job of the vice president." He said that Obama's choice for vice-president, Joe Biden, was ready to be president. He also added that he was "troubled" by the "false intimations that Obama was Muslim." Powell stated that "[Obama] is a Christian—he's always been a Christian... But the really right answer is, what if he is? Is there something wrong with being a Muslim in this country? The answer's no, that's not America." Powell then mentioned Kareem Rashad Sultan Khan, a Muslim American soldier in the U.S. Army who served and died in the Iraq War. He later stated, "Over the last seven weeks, the approach of the Republican Party has become narrower and narrower [...] I look at these kind of approaches to the campaign, and they trouble me."[95][96] Powell concluded his Sunday morning talk show comments, "It isn't easy for me to disappoint Sen. McCain in the way that I have this morning, and I regret that [...] I think we need a transformational figure. I think we need a president who is a generational change and that's why I'm supporting Barack Obama, not out of any lack of respect or admiration for Sen. John McCain."[97] Later in a December 12, 2008, CNN interview with Fareed Zakaria, Powell reiterated his belief that during the last few months of the campaign, Palin pushed the Republican party further to the right and had a polarizing impact on it.[98]
Views on the Obama administration
In a July 2009 CNN interview with John King, Powell expressed concern over President Obama growing the size of the federal government and the size of the federal budget deficit.[99] In September 2010, he criticized the Obama administration for not focusing "like a razor blade" on the economy and job creation. Powell reiterated that Obama was a "transformational figure."[100] In a video that aired on CNN.com in November 2011, Colin Powell said in reference to Barack Obama, "many of his decisions have been quite sound. The financial system was put back on a stable basis."[101]
On October 25, 2012, 12 days before the presidential election, he gave his endorsement to President Obama for re-election during a broadcast of CBS This Morning. He cited success and forward progress in foreign and domestic policy arenas under the Obama Administration, and made the following statement: "I voted for him in 2008 and I plan to stick with him in 2012 and I'll be voting for he [sic] and for Vice President Joe Biden next month."
As additional reason for his endorsement, Powell cited the changing positions and perceived lack of thoughtfulness of Mitt Romney on foreign affairs, and a concern for the validity of Romney's economic plans.[102]
In an interview with ABC's Diane Sawyer and George Stephanopoulos during ABC's coverage of President Obama's second inauguration, Powell criticized members of the Republican Party who "demonize[d] the president". He called on GOP leaders to publicly denounce such talk.[103]
2016 presidential election
Powell has been very vocal on the state of the Republican party. Speaking at a Washington Ideas forum in early October 2015, he warned the audience that the Republican party had begun a move to the fringe right, lessening the chances of a Republican White House in the future. He also remarked on Republican presidential contender Donald Trump's statements regarding immigrants, noting that there were many immigrants working in Trump hotels.[104]
In March 2016, Powell denounced the "nastiness" of the 2016 Republican primaries during an interview on CBS This Morning. He compared the race to reality television, and stated that the campaign had gone "into the mud".[105]
In August 2016, Powell accused the Clinton campaign of trying to pin Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton's email controversy on him. Speaking to People magazine, Powell said, "The truth is, she was using [the private email server] for a year before I sent her a memo telling her what I did."[106]
On September 13, 2016, emails were obtained that revealed Powell's private communications regarding both Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. Powell privately reiterated his comments regarding Clinton's email scandal, writing, "I have told Hillary's minions repeatedly that they are making a mistake trying to drag me in, yet they still try," and complaining that "Hillary’s mafia keeps trying to suck me into it" in another email.[107] In another email discussing Clinton's controversy, Powell noted that she should have told everyone what she did "two years ago", and said that she has not "been covering herself with glory." Writing on the 2012 Benghazi attack controversy surrounding Clinton, Powell said to then U.S. Ambassador Susan Rice, "Benghazi is a stupid witch hunt." Commenting on Clinton in a general sense, Powell mused that "Everything [Clinton] touches she kind of screws up with hubris", and in another email stated "I would rather not have to vote for her, although she is a friend I respect."[108]
Powell referred to Donald Trump as a "national disgrace", with "no sense of shame". He wrote of Trump's role in the birther movement, which he referred to as "racist". Powell suggested that the media ignore Trump, saying, "To go on and call him an idiot just emboldens him." The emails were obtained by the media as the result of a hack.[109]
Powell endorsed Clinton on October 25, 2016, stating it was "because I think she's qualified, and the other gentleman is not qualified."[110]
Despite not running in the election, Powell received three electoral votes for president from faithless electors in Washington who had pledged to vote for Clinton, coming in third overall.[111] After Barack Obama, Powell was only the second Black person to receive electoral votes in a presidential election. He was also the first Republican since 1984 to receive electoral votes from Washington in a presidential election, as well as the first Republican Black person to do so.
Personal life
Powell married Alma Johnson on August 25, 1962. Their son, Michael Powell, was the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) from 2001 to 2005. His daughters are Linda Powell, an actress, and Annemarie Powell. As a hobby, Powell restores old Volvo and Saab cars.[112][113] In 2013, he faced questions about a relationship with a Romanian diplomat, after a hacked AOL email account had been made public. He acknowledged a "very personal" email relationship but denied further involvement.[114]
Civilian awards and honors
Powell's civilian awards include two Presidential Medals of Freedom (the second with distinction), the President's Citizens Medal, the Congressional Gold Medal, the Secretary of State Distinguished Service Medal, the Secretary of Energy Distinguished Service Medal, and the Ronald Reagan Freedom Award. Several schools and other institutions have been named in his honor and he holds honorary degrees from universities and colleges across the country.
Coat of arms
The Coat of Arms of Colin Powell was granted by the Lord Lyon in Edinburgh on February 4, 2004. Technically the grant was to Powell's father (a British subject) to be passed on by descent. Scotland's King of Arms is traditionally responsible for granting arms to Commonwealth citizens of Scottish descent. Blazoned as
Azure, two swords in saltire points downwards between four mullets Argent, on a chief of the Second a lion passant Gules. On a wreath of the Liveries is set for Crest the head of an American bald-headed eagle erased Proper. And in an escrol over the same this motto, "DEVOTED TO PUBLIC SERVICE."
The swords and stars refer to the former general's career, as does the crest, which is the badge of the 101st Airborne (which he served as a brigade commander in the mid-1970s). The lion may be an allusion to Scotland. The shield can be shown surrounded by the insignia of an honorary Knight Commander of the Most Honorable Order of the Bath (KCB), an award the General received after the first Gulf War.
See also
ReferencesTHE WIDER VIEW: Towering skyscrapers in the 'Manhattan of the desert'
Rising from the valley floor like a mirage, the 450-year-old mud brick towers of Shibam in Yemen are the world’s first skyscrapers – dubbed the Manhattan of the Desert.
The 500 tower houses, made from mud mixed with chaff and hay, have withstood 113F (45C) heat, floods and, last Sunday, an explosion caused by suspected Islamic militants that killed four South Korean tourists and their local guide.
Inside the walled fortress, a Unesco World Heritage Site, the streets are eerily quiet in spite of the 7,000 residents.
The 450-year-old mud-built skyscrapers of the desert city of Shibam in Yemen
Families pass silently from building to building high up along connecting corridors – built to protect early inhabitants from attacks by Bedouin nomads.
To the right of the picture, a gateway is one of only two entrances cut through the city’s protective outer wall.
The mud walls of the tower houses – five to eight storeys and up to 130ft high – are thickest at the bottom for stability.
By law, any rebuilding must follow the shape of the original structure.
The arched window frames are made from the leafless nabaq tree and some towers are whitewashed with lime to slow down erosion by heat and rain – the crumbled house to the left shows why this is needed.
The city’s design serves as a giant air-conditioning unit, creating maximum shade.
Each building is usually used by one family. Food and cattle are kept on the ground and first floors.
The second storey upwards is a living area, with kitchens and entrances to the corridors on the fourth floor.
Mike Nelson took this picture at sunset from a vantage point 1,500ft above the city.Because we’re big dual-sport fans, it didn’t go unnoticed for even a second that the “new” Husqvarna’s 2014 model lineup lacked a street-legal dual-purpose machine along the lines of sibling company KTM’s 350/500EXCs. So we were stoked to see two such models announced for 2015, the FE 501 S and FE 350 S. Critics may cite the fact that these two machines are very similar in design to the existing KTMs—even sharing identical engines—but there are enough differences to keep |
came out of just about nowhere last year to usurp the starting NT job away from Kenrick Ellis. He rewarded the Jets’ faith with 66 total tackles and 7 run stuffs in his rookie season and this time comes into the season fully entrenched as the man in the middle for New York. With Richardson and Muhammad Wilkerson flanking him and taking away some of the attention, expect more solid contributions from Harrison in year two.
21) Brandon Mebane (SEA) – Finally, the Super Bowl champs have a representative on the list. Mebane won’t be near the top of the Seahawks most important defenders, but quietly he’s been a disruptive force on the inside, recording 7.5 run stuffs and 7 hurries in 2013. And I seriously doubt Mebane goes another full season without chalking up at least a sack or two.
22) Pat Sims (OAK) – Sims had a career rebirth in his first season in Oakland, notching a career high 54 total tackles and 6 run stuffs. Whether this was a flash in the pan or the birth of a new Pat Sims remains to be seen, but this is a contract year for Sims so he’ll be inclined to show the league that 2013 was no fluke.
23) Jared Odrick (MIA) – Although teaming with Starks to make quite the impressive tandem, Odrick saw his sack total decrease for a second consecutive season, down to 4.5 in 2014. Still, the younger member of the duo also is the bigger risk/reward play here. Personally, I’ll take Starks and his higher floor, but I wouldn’t be surprised if this was the year Odrick elevated his game to the next level.
24) Justin Smith (SF) – Even at 34 years old, the veteran Smith is still getting it done. He registered 6.5 sacks last season and has had at least 5.0 sacks in 11 of his 13 NFL seasons. Smith is still recovering from shoulder surgery after playing through it last season, but he’ll be ready to go when the season rolls around. I wouldn’t be surprised to see another 5.0 sacks on his ledger after this year, but the upside is limited.
25) Terrance Knighton (DEN) – The numbers might not reflect it, but Knighton has quietly become one of the league’s best defensive tackles in Denver. With Von Miller seemingly back for a full season (should his ACL recovery continue on course), along with the other additions John Elway made on defense, “Pot Roast” should have plenty of opportunities to make another big impact. I would bet on that including an increase to last years 3.0 sacks and at least 5 run stuffs.
26) Darnell Dockett (ATL) – Another veteran who’s still making an impact, Dockett turned in another good fantasy year in 2013. He had 7.5 run stuffs to go along with 4.5 sacks, although 3.0 of those sacks did come in a game against New Orleans in September. The 33-year old former ‘Nole will continue to be the veteran leader on what should again be a very good Arizona defense.
27) Timmy Jernigan (BAL) – From all accounts, Jernigan has acquitted himself nicely in Baltimore, so much so that talk is he’s in line to start alongside Haloti Ngata and Chris Canty. This is a risk/reward pick here, but I love Jernigan’s athleticism and strength and he has the ability to get 5.0+ sacks in his rookie year with the right opportunity.
28) Jonathan Babineaux (ATL) – Babineaux and the Falcons had a tough go of it in 2013. In attempting to fix their issues, Atlanta showed renewed faith in Babineaux by signing him to a three-year extension during the offseason. He’ll reward them with more big plays in the backfield (sacks, pass breakups, run stuffs) at the expense of his tackle numbers (second most of his career in 2013).
29) Cullen Jenkins (NYG) – The 11-year vet Jenkins had another solid campaign in his first with the Giants last year, recording 5.0 sacks and 31 total tackles. The question surrounding Jenkins will be his durability as he enters his age-33 season. Jenkins has played all 16 games the last three seasons, so if he can again hold up the course of the season, he’ll give you some respectable numbers in return.
30) Kawann Short (CAR) – We’re getting into sleeper range here for sure, but much like Mebane and Knighton, Short will never get the headlines with all the other stars on the Panthers defense. The numbers from his rookie year are pedestrian (30 total tackles, 1.5 sacks, 3.5 run stuffs), but they don’t tell the whole story. Panthers’ brass are incredibly high on Short due to his impressive stature and believe he could be in line for a breakout season in 2014.Shaw Communications Inc. is finally poised to enter the wireless business, with a $1.6-billion deal to buy Toronto startup carrier Wind Mobile Corp.
Calgary-based cable operator Shaw announced the transaction on Wednesday evening, noting that while the deal still requires approval from the federal government and the Competition Bureau, it expects it to close during the third quarter of fiscal 2016 (the first half of the calendar year).
Wind, which operates in urban areas in Ontario, British Columbia and Alberta, has 940,000 subscribers, and Shaw said the small carrier is expected to generate $485-million in revenue and $65-million in earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA) in 2015.
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"Wireless was a missing piece," Shaw CEO Brad Shaw said in an interview, adding that now the company will be able to match its main rival, Telus Corp., which already has one of the largest cellular businesses in Canada and competes with Shaw for television and Internet customers.
"Now we're on the same page, we're at the same level... and we've improved our competitive position in Western Canada just by doing this deal, let alone the opportunity in the East."
Mr. Shaw clearly relishes the opportunity to compete with Telus on the wireless front, stating, "We're no longer the incumbent that's going to sit here and try to protect his margin and his revenue and free cash flow. We're going to be the small guy, come in, guerrilla, tactical, and just do it a little differently.
"I kind of look at it as similar to what Telus did to us," he added, referencing Telus's entry into the television market in Alberta and B.C. through its IPTV (Internet protocol television) offering.
Wind has provided a lower-priced alternative to Canada's Big Three carriers – Telus, BCE Inc. and Rogers Communications Inc. – and consumers will be wondering whether that will evaporate with this sale.
Mr. Shaw said as the wireless company improves its coverage and upgrades to LTE (fourth-generation), "I see pricing somewhat discounted, but probably closer to the incumbents as we go forward, which allows us to increase ARPU [average revenue per user]. But listen, growth is very important to us and that's going to be a key driver, as well as making sure consumers feel there's value."
The company has not made any decisions on whether to use its own brand for the wireless business, but initially it would maintain the Wind brand, he said.
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After buying licences for wireless airwaves in a 2008 public auction, Shaw conducted a strategic review and abandoned plans to enter the wireless business in 2011. Since that time, it has instead been building out a WiFi network in public places in a bid to increase its value proposition to home Internet customers and now has 75,000 hotspots across Western Canada.
Shaw struck a deal to sell its spectrum licences to Rogers in 2013, but that sale was only completed this past summer as part of a broader transaction that included Rogers' purchase of struggling new wireless entrant Mobilicity and divesting of a large swath of spectrum to Wind.
Wind's chief executive officer, Alek Krstajic – who previously launched the third new entrant, Public Mobile, and sold it to Telus – will continue to run the wireless business, which Mr. Shaw said will remain based in Toronto. Last week, Wind announced it had secured up to $425-million in new financing from three major Canadian banks, allowing it to refinance high-yield debt at a lower rate, as well as fund improvements and expansion of its cellular network.
The company's former owner, Amsterdam-based VimpelCom Ltd., sold Wind to a consortium of financial investors in September, 2014, for $135-million, as well as the assumption of debt obligations. Sources said the total value of the deal was closer to $300-million.
Wind's shareholders after that deal included Toronto's West Face Capital Inc. and California-based hedge fund Tennenbaum Capital Partners, as well as Globalive Capital, the investment fund of Wind's founder, Anthony Lacavera.
Lawrence Guffey, who is an adviser to Blackstone Group and a director on the T-Mobile US, Inc. board, was also part of that deal, as were Canadian investors Serruya Private Equity and Novus Wireless Communications.
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Wind's shareholders have approved the sale and said in a separate release Wednesday that they are pleased with the transaction.
Mr. Shaw said several factors since Wind's 2014 sale justified the significantly higher valuation.
"First, I think the competitive landscape has evolved significantly. Wind is the sole remaining wireless new entrant in Ontario, Alberta and B.C., which I think has resulted in significant rationalized competitive behaviour," he said.
"The Wind business right now is materially stronger than it was a year ago," he added, noting it has significantly more spectrum holdings after acquiring airwaves from the Rogers/Mobilicity transaction, as well as at a discounted rate during a public auction earlier this year.
Buying Wind also gives Shaw a ready-made wireless business, Mr. Shaw said. "We're immediately in the space, we're immediately able to deliver new things to our customers."
The Shaw transaction will see the Calgary company acquire 100 per cent of the shares of Wind's parent company, Mid-Bowline Group Corp. (an anagram of the letters in Wind Mobile) under a plan of arrangement, which will require court approval.
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The enterprise value of the deal is about $1.6-billion, based on quarterly financial statements as of Sept. 30, Shaw said.
Shaw said it will finance the deal with a view to maintaining its "investment-grade status" using a flexible approach that could include "potential debt issuance, asset sales, the issuance of preferred or common equity or any combination thereof."Malaria culture is the method to grow malaria parasites outside the body i.e. in an ex vivo environment. Although attempts for propagation of the parasites outside of humans or animal models reach as far back as 1912,[2] the success of the initial attempts was limited to one or just a few cycles. The first successful continuous culture was established in 1976.[3] Initial hopes that the ex vivo culture would lead quickly to the discovery of a vaccine were premature. However, the development of new drugs was greatly facilitated.[4]
Method [ edit ]
Candlejar
Infected human red blood cells are incubated in a culture dish or flask at 37 °C together with a nutrient medium and plasma, serum or serum substitutes.[5] A special feature of the incubation is the special gas mixture of mostly nitrogen (93% nitrogen, 4% carbon dioxide, 3% oxygen) allowing the parasites to grow at 37 °C in a cell incubator.[6] An alternative to gasing the cultures with the exact gas mixture, is the use of a candlejar. The candlejar is an airtight container in which the cultures and a lit candle are placed. The burning candle consumes some of the oxygen and produces carbon dioxide (CO 2 ), which acts as a fire extinguisher. Carbon dioxide content in fresh air varies between 0.036% and 0.039%, at an app. 5% CO 2 concentration the candle stops burning. The number of parasites increased by a factor 5 approximately every 48 hours (= one cycle). The parasitemia can be determined via blood film, to keep it within the wanted limits, the culture can be thinned out with healthy red blood cells.[7]
P. falciparum-infected erythrocytes by discontinuous density gradient centrifugation in Percoll.[8] Concentration of-infected erythrocytes by discontinuous density gradient centrifugation in Percoll.
The original method for the successful ex vivo propagation of P. falciparum described culture of the parasite under static conditions (Trager-Jensen method).[3] James B. Jensen joined Trager’s laboratory as a post-doctoral fellow in 1976. He decided to employ a candlejar instead of the CO 2 incubator. In the summer of 1976 Milton Friedman, a graduate student in the Trager lab who was working in the MRC laboratories in The Gambia, arranged for a sample of human blood infected with P. falciparum to be sent to New York City. This was diluted with RPMI 1640 (which turned out to be the best of the commercial media) in Petri dishes, placed in a candlejar and incubated. The line grew very well and became FCR-3/Gambia, one of the most widely used strains. Later, other lines would be established using similar methods and the impact of continuous cultivation of P. falciparum was phenomenal especially for the testing of putative antimalarials and for deciphering its genes. A number of subsequent reports (from as far back as the early 1980s), showed that cell suspension (using a shaking-incubator) significantly increased culture growth. Continuous agitation has also been shown to improve other parameters of culture growth relevant to researchers, such as the prolongation of culture synchrony after synchronization procedures, and a reduction of the rate of multiple infections.[9] Despite this, the practice of culturing the parasite under static conditions remains widespread. The greatest value of the candlejar method is that it can be used in laboratories almost anywhere in the world where there is an incubator, a candle and a desiccator.[10] Around 60% parasitized cells can be obtained using optimized culturing conditions.[1] Recent studies of P. falciparum isolated directly from infected patients indicate that alternative parasite biological states occur in the natural host that are not observed with ex vivo cultivated parasites.[11]
Concentration of infected cells [ edit ]
P.falciparum infected blood[12][13] Magnetic collection ofinfected blood
To achieve synchronization and/or concentration of the parasites in culture several methods have been developed. A discontinuous Percoll gradient procedure can be used to isolate infected red blood cells because red cells containing plasmodia are less dense than normal ones. Young trophozoites coincided with erythrocytes in a broad band corresponding to densities from 1.075 to 1.100 g/ml, whereas schizonts were concentrated at a density approximating 1.062 g/ml.[14] There are studies, however, that suggest that some strains of P.falciparum are affected in their capacity of invasion after being exposed to this chemical. The difference between diamagnetic low-spin oxyhemoglobin in uninfected red blood cells and paramagnetic hemozoin in infected red blood cells can also be used for isolation. Magnetic columns have shown to be less harmful for the parasite and are simple and adjustable to the needs of the researcher.[15][16] The column is mounted in a potent magnet holder and the culture flowed through it. The column traps the erythrocytes infected with the latest stages of the parasites, which can then be eluted when the column is removed from the magnet. It is a simple method that does not need expensive equipment and it does not seem to affect the parasites as to their invasion capabilities afterwards.[12]
References [ edit ]
Further reading [ edit ]
• Doolan, D. L. (Editor) (2002) Malaria Methods and Protocols (Methods in Molecular Medicine), Totowa, NJ: Humana Press, ISBN 0-89603-823-8 / ISBN 978-0-89603-823-3DETROIT -- A NASA astronaut captured a nighttime photo of Detroit, Ann Arbor, Toledo and Cleveland from space over the weekend.
Commander Shane Kimbrough, who is part of NASA's Expedition 50 on the International Space Station, posted a photo showing the lights of all four cities and part of Lake Erie on Sunday, Jan. 15.
Flint, Saginaw, Lansing and Jackson are visible in the photo.
He's been posting shots of major cities in the U.S. and across the world since he arrived at the station in October.
Kimbraugh will return to Earth in late February.
The Expedition 50 crew members are contributing to more than 250 experiments in fields including biology, Earth science, human research, physical sciences and technology development, according to NASA.
In 2015, astronaut Scott Kelly tweeted a daytime photo of Detroit during his year in space.Cosmos’ Fall Season Finale will kick off at 7:00 pm
NEW YORK (October 9, 2017) – The New York Cosmos announced today that the club will host one additional home match at MCU Park against Puerto Rico FC on Saturday, October 28 at 7:00 pm.
The match, originally scheduled to be played at Juan Ramón Loubriel Stadium in Bayamón, has been switched to MCU Park as Puerto Rico continues its recovery efforts in the wake of Hurricane Maria.
Resulting in this schedule change, Cosmos fans have an additional opportunity to catch Captain – Carlos Mendes – in action for one, final, regular season home game before he begins his retirement. In honor the man who have been with the club since the reboot in 2013, the first 2,500 fans in attendance will receive a commemorative Captain’s Armband upon entry.
Tickets for the match are now available here.
The New York Cosmos will be donating 50% of all ticket sales to the Carmelo Anthony Puerto Rico Relief Fund for the remainder of the 2017 NASL Season. For more information, click here.Photo taken during an escorted visit and reviewed by the US military shows an Army soldier walking in 'Camp 6' detention facility at the US Naval Station in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, April 8, 2014 [AFP]
The U.S. military on Monday canceled a pretrial hearing for the accused mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, an al Qaeda figure prominently mentioned in last week’s Senate report on the CIA’s harsh Bush-era interrogation program for terrorism suspects.
The military commission at the U.S. detention facility in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, was supposed to discuss allegations the FBI tried to infiltrate legal defense teams, according to the court’s docket.
No reason was given for canceling the hearing for Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who according to the Senate Intelligence Committee’s report was subjected repeatedly by his U.S. interrogators to the simulated drowning technique known as waterboarding.
But attorneys representing Guantanamo prisoners say evidence of torture mentioned in the Senate report means prosecuting suspected terrorists has suddenly become more difficult.
“The most significant revelation from the Senate report is the conclusion based on entries into the CIA record that many of the statements the CIA made are simply lies,” said Jim Cohen, an attorney representing two Guantanamo detainees.
“That is going to be hard to resist by fact-finders in connection with the Guantanamo prosecutions,” Cohen said.
CIA evidence that is potentially important to the prosecution could be thrown out, he added.
Defense lawyers raised issues of mistreatment of prisoners in previous Guantanamo hearings but the judges presiding over the hearings largely ignored them, saying they were irrelevant to the guilt or innocence of the defendants.
“If the prosecution tries to use evidence of statements that were gained through torture, then torture is relevant,” said Martha Rayner, a law professor and attorney for Guantanamo detainee Sanad Al-Kazimi.
Lawyers for Mohammed and four other suspects had wanted this week’s hearing to go forward so that Judge James Pohl, an Army colonel, could determine the extent of FBI contact with defense team members.
Pohl had ruled in July that no conflict of interest arose for defense attorneys from the FBI approaching a security officer for a defense team.
(Reporting by Tom Ramstack; Additional reporting by Ian Simpson; Editing by Scott Malone, Bill Trott and Tom Brown)Iowa is very proud of its status as the first state to weigh in on presidential races every four years with its caucuses -- perhaps equally as proud as New Hampshire is to be the "first in the nation" presidential primary. But New Hampshire should be more proud. That's because primaries do a much better job of picking the eventual winner than do caucuses.
A post at the Smart Politics blog detailing the success of the various states in picking the eventual nominee got us thinking. It included the map below, which shows how many times since 1976 each state has picked a candidate in the Republican nomination process that went on to lose.
Iowa sticks out like a sore thumb. Which made us curious about how each system did overall. We used data on the type of election from Frontloading HQ and results from Wikipedia to calculate picks in races in which there was no incumbent. Of the 650 total contests since 1976, more than 440 were primaries. The results of the primaries matched the eventual winner 77.9 percent of the time. The results of the caucuses: only 64.5 percent.
Of course, Iowa, given its petulant insistence on going first, usually has a wider field of candidates from which to choose. But it's not like Mike Huckabee in 2008 or Rick Santorum in 2012 used that momentum to dash along to the presidency. (Yes, yes, we are aware of a certain Mr. Obama.) New Hampshire has had its misses, too, but notably fewer.
No state always picked the eventual winner. Several came close, usually getting tripped up in tightly contested nomination battles -- for example, New Jersey and Texas picking Clinton in 2008, or Wisconsin and Oregon picking Gary Hart in 1984. Virginia was the only state that with frequent caucuses which picked 12 of 13 winners. (Smart Politics has its one miss in the 1976 race, when it backed Ronald Reagan over non-elected incumbent Gerald Ford; we don't include that race because of the incumbent. Our numbers reflect Virginia's one miss as Jesse Jackson in 1984.)
There wasn't a strong correlation between how often a state held primaries and how often it picked the winner, but there was a trend. The graph below shows the frequency of primaries (versus conventions and caucuses) against how many successful picks the state made.
Notice that even primary states can do badly. Massachusetts insists on picking candidates who won't go on to win, for some reason.
So. We've argued before that Iowa shouldn't be the first state to vote. We amend that statement to say, "unless it actually holds a real primary." We can be patient, though, anticipating the change that will emerge once people realize that caucuses are not the best way to predict a president.Pegasus was a video game system sold in Poland, Serbia, and Bosnia. It was a hardware clone of the Nintendo Famicom aka Nintendo Entertainment System (NES), also called a Famiclone.
Contents show]
Hardware Edit
Processor 8-bit MOS 6502 1,79 MHz Video Clock 5,37 MHz Resolution 256 x 240 Color Palette 25 on screen
(out of 64 possible) Standard NTSC ("forced" to PAL standard, 50 Hz refresh rate) Sound 5-channel mono 1 channel noise
1 PCM
3 channels for sounds Media ROM cartridge
(Nintendo 60-pin equivalent)
Background Edit
This particular Nintendo-clone was hugely popular in Poland, Serbia and Bosnia, where it has gained cult status, and is still widely available on auction websites and flea markets.
The system was manufactured in Taiwan by BobMark International, and was built to resemble Nintendo Famicom console. Pegasus, like most known Famicom clones, was compatible with 60-pin Famicom cartridges, and partially compatible with some NES games, which could be played using a special converter. Original Nintendo games weren't popular however, due to raging piracy and lack of officially licensed products on the market. Majority of the games sold with and for the system were cheap pirated copies, manufactured mostly in Russia and China. Games for Pegasus are widely available in Poland to this day, mostly on street markets and in small toy stores.
The typical retail set included the system, two detachable controllers (both with "turbo" buttons, which meant 4 buttons in total; 6-button controllers also existed), a light gun (very similar in design to NES Zapper), power supply and RF cable. Console had a built-in RF modulator, as well as audio-video RCA connectors. The system itself didn't include any built-in games, but was bundled with a pirated multicart labelled "Contra 168 in 1", which contained a few of the best-known NES titles, like Contra, Super Mario Bros. and Tetris, listed multiple times with slight variations. Most of the games had a "trainer" feature, which allowed the player to adjust the number of lives, and even the starting level of the game.
The 8-bit Pegasus was originally released in two versions:
MT777DX
IQ-502 (much rounder casing with controller ports on the sides of the system and an eject button instead of a lever, manufactured by Micro Genius)
There was also a 16-bit version of the Pegasus system, known as "Power Pegasus 16-bit", which was a clone of Sega Mega Drive.
Popularity Edit
In the early 1990s, the Pegasus system gained massive popularity in Poland, probably due to the fact that until late 1990s there was no official distributor of Nintendo products in Poland. The Pegasus consoles were mass-marketed by most of the major and smaller electronic stores, where buyers even received warranty cards for the product. Numerous VHS rentals offered an option to rent or exchange Pegasus cartridges, as well as entire systems. Pegasus and its revisions received a wide coverage in Polish video game press. This, along with the system's surprisingly high reliability led to a false claim that Pegasus was an "official" video game system manufactured by a "major" company, and as such was considered by many to be an official Nintendo product. To meet its growing popularity, a number of obviously pirated NES games were reviewed on regular basis by Top Secret, a major Polish video games magazine. Pegasus was even officially advertised in press and on TV. See a few of their ads here [1]. Nintendo took legal actions against the system's importer and distributor, right after officially establishing sales of licensed Nintendo products on Polish market in 1996.SAINT MALO, France, Oct. 4, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Capricor Therapeutics, Inc. (NASDAQ: CAPR), in its presentation today at the 22nd Annual International Congress of the World Muscle Society, reported that teens and young men in the advanced stages of Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD) experienced meaningful improvements in cardiac and upper limb function after a single dose of Capricor's lead investigational product, CAP-1002. DMD is a rare, life-threatening genetic disorder for which treatment options are limited.
The late breaking abstract and results presented at the late breaking poster session describe the first six months of follow-up data from the randomized 12-month Phase I/II HOPE clinical trial of CAP-1002. CAP-1002 is a cell-based therapeutic candidate and consists of allogeneic cardiosphere-derived cells, whose mechanism of action is immunomodulatory and anti-fibrotic, and which have been shown to generate new muscle cells in preclinical models.
"These findings are especially significant because the patients in the HOPE trial were preteens or young men who were in advanced stages of Duchenne muscle disease," said Ron Victor, M.D., professor of medicine and Burns and Allen Chair in Cardiology Research at Cedars-Sinai Heart Institute and a principal investigator for the HOPE Trial. "Most other studies in DMD have focused on pediatric patients in earlier stages of the disease. To see such positive results in a clinical trial with just one dose of CAP-1002 sets the stage for the next step of evaluating multiple doses of this innovative cellular therapy in a larger trial."
The HOPE Trial was a randomized, open label trial of 25 males with DMD, of ages 12 to 25 years (mean 17.8). For 17 of them, the disease had progressed to the point of wheelchair dependence for mobility. Cardiomyopathy, or heart disease, secondary to DMD was an eligibility criterion and was evidenced by scar in four or more left ventricular segments. All participants had been receiving chronic corticosteroid therapy at entry. Thirteen received a single dose of CAP-1002, while the others received the standard of care, and all participants were to be followed for 12 months. CAP-1002 was administered by infusion into each of the three main coronary arteries for a total dose of 75 million cells.
In the trial, cardiac muscle was assessed by magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) studies performed at baseline, six months, and 12 months. All MRI interpretations were conducted in a manner blinded to treatment assignment and clinical outcomes.
Regional left ventricular (LV) function significantly differed between treatment groups following a single dose of CAP-1002, as determined by assessments of systolic thickening of LV wall segments. At six months, a statistically-significant increase in mean (standard deviation, or SD) change from baseline in inferior wall segments was observed with CAP-1002 (+31.2% (46.9)) compared to the usual care group (-8.8% (27.7)) (p=0.02). Six-month mean changes in anterior (+16.3 (46.5)) and lateral (+24.5 (51.2)) wall segments numerically favored CAP-1002 as compared to usual care ((-14.1 (24.9)) (p=0.11) and (-4.5 (35.0)) (p=0.24), respectively).
Differences observed in the change from baseline in cardiac scar size are consistent with a treatment effect on the heart. At six months, the mean (SD) percent change from baseline in observed scar size was -5.1 (8.5) in the CAP-1002 group (p=0.04) and -0.2 (11.5) in the usual care group (p=0.71) (p=0.09 for treatment group difference).
Skeletal muscle was assessed by the Performance of the Upper Limb test (PUL), a validated instrument for the assessment of upper limb motor function in individuals with DMD and consists of manual tasks that relate to activities of daily living. Scoring on the PUL was evaluated at baseline and at six weeks, and then at three, six, and 12 months.
Following a single dose of CAP-1002, the mean (SD) percent changes from baseline to six weeks and three months, respectively, in combined middle-plus-distal PUL dimension were +8.8 (15.0) and +8.9 (15.4) in the CAP-1002 group and -1.7 (3.7) and +0.8 (3.7) in the usual care group. By a post hoc responder analysis, mid-distal PUL score increased at six weeks by? 10% (or maximum possible) in 42% of CAP-1002 participants compared to none of the usual-care participants (p=0.045). At three months, the group difference in response was 33% CAP-1002 vs. 10% usual care (p=0.32). Given the ages of the trial participants, shoulder function (upper PUL scoring) had been essentially lost prior to entry.
Treatment with CAP-1002 was generally safe and well-tolerated over the initial six-month follow-up period of the HOPE Trial. There was no significant difference in the incidence of treatment-emergent adverse events of either group.
"These exciting findings propel us into our next phase of development of CAP-1002 for the treatment of DMD," said Linda Marbán, Ph.D., Capricor's president and chief executive officer. "Subject to regulatory approvals, we expect to initiate the randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled HOPE-2 clinical trial of intravenous (IV), repeat-dose CAP-1002 in the first quarter of 2018. The primary efficacy endpoint will be based on the PUL, and the HOPE-2 Trial may potentially serve as a registration study. We also look forward to presenting 12-month follow-up results from the HOPE Trial at a major medical conference later this quarter."
The poster is available at the Events & Presentations section of Capricor's website.
DMD is a devastating genetic disorder that causes muscle degeneration and leads to death generally before the age of 30, most commonly from heart failure. DMD occurs in one in every 3,600 live male births across all races, cultures and countries. DMD afflicts approximately 15,000 to 20,000 boys and young men in the U.S. Treatment options are limited and there is no cure.
The HOPE trial was funded in part by the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine.
About CAP-1002
CAP-1002 consists of allogeneic cardiosphere-derived cells, or CDCs, a unique population of cells that contains cardiac progenitor cells. CAP-1002 has been shown to exert potent immunomodulatory activity and alters the immune system's activity to encourage cellular regeneration. CDCs have been the subject of over 100 peer-reviewed scientific publications and have been administered to approximately 140 human subjects across several clinical trials.
About Capricor Therapeutics
Capricor Therapeutics, Inc. (NASDAQ: CAPR) is a clinical-stage biotechnology company developing biological therapies for Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD) and other rare diseases. Capricor's lead candidate, CAP-1002, is a cell-based candidate currently in clinical development for the treatment of DMD. Capricor is also exploring the potential of CAP-2003, a cell-free, extracellular vesicle-based candidate, to treat a variety of disorders. For more information, visit www.capricor.com.
Cautionary Note Regarding Forward-Looking Statements
Statements in this press release regarding the efficacy, safety and intended utilization of Capricor's product candidates; the initiation, conduct, size, timing and results of discovery efforts and clinical trials; the pace of enrollment of clinical trials; plans regarding regulatory filings, future research and clinical trials; regulatory developments involving products, including the ability to obtain regulatory approvals or otherwise bring products to market; the timing of regulatory approvals; plans regarding current and future collaborative activities and the ownership of commercial rights; scope, duration, validity and enforceability of intellectual property rights; future royalty streams, expectations with respect to the expected use of proceeds from the recently completed offerings and the anticipated effects of the offerings, and any other statements about Capricor's management team's future expectations, beliefs, goals, plans or prospects constitute forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Any statements that are not statements of historical fact (including statements containing the words "believes," "plans," "could," "anticipates," "expects," "estimates," "should," "target," "will," "would" and similar expressions) should also be considered to be forward-looking statements. There are a number of important factors that could cause actual results or events to differ materially from those indicated by such forward-looking statements. More information about these and other risks that may impact Capricor's business is set forth in Capricor's Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2016, as filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission on March 16, 2017, in its Registration Statement on Form S-3, as filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission on September 28, 2015, together with prospectus supplements thereto, and in its Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q for the quarter ended June 30, 2017, as filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission on August 14, 2017. All forward-looking statements in this press release are based on information available to Capricor as of the date hereof, and Capricor assumes no obligation to update these forward-looking statements.
CAP-1002 is an Investigational New Drug and is not approved for any indications. Capricor's exosomes technology, including CAP-2003, has not yet been approved for clinical investigation.
For more information, please contact:
AJ Bergmann, Vice President of Finance
+1-310-358-3200
abergmann@capricor.com
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SOURCE Capricor Therapeutics, Inc.Image copyright Getty Images Image caption Marriott had said it had banned mobile hotspots on cybersecurity grounds
Hotel group Marriott International has announced it will stop blocking guests from using personal wi-fi kits.
The firm was fined $600,000 (£395,000) last year by a US watchdog after a complaint that it had jammed mobile hotspots at a hotel in Nashville.
Marriott responded at the time saying it wanted to block such devices only in its conference and meeting spaces and believed it had the right to do so.
But it has changed tack after facing a backlash from customers and the press.
"Marriott International listens to its customers, and we will not block guests from using their personal wi-fi devices at any of our managed hotels," the company, which is based in Bethesda, Maryland, said in a statement.
'Unacceptable' behaviour
The US Federal Communications Commission launched an investigation into the hotel's practices in March 2013 after being contacted by a hotel guest who said they had been unable to connect to the net via a mi-fi device at Marriott's Gaylord Opryland Resort & Convention Center.
Image caption Mi-fi devices can offer a cheaper way of getting a high-speed data link than paying a hotel
An investigation by the regulator subsequently confirmed that the hotel was using a wi-fi monitoring system that de-authenticated guest-created hotspots.
This meant that if a guest connected their laptop, smartphone or tablet to either a mi-fi add-on or |
15th-round pick into the OHL who initially couldn't crack the roster. He played on the Junior B team in Owen Sound simply to be around.
Every year, however, he improved, winning over more fans and friends and everyone in the front office. He became one of the most popular kids at the local high school simply because – unlike many junior hockey players – he would talk to everyone. He became ingrained in the community, too.
"Everybody loved him," remembered former Owen Sound teammate Chris Minard, whose family billeted Ward when they played for the Platers.
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Ward was invited to the Detroit Red Wings camp after his last junior season but didn't make their AHL affiliate. He went to UPEI to get his sociology degree because he promised his mother he would and dominated the university league. He had pro offers after his second and third seasons but wouldn't leave until he finished school.
Ward then spent three full years in the AHL before Nashville spotted him and signed him to a two-way deal that paid close to the league minimum. A few months shy of his 28th birthday, Ward was finally in the NHL full time, one of a few number of Canadian university players to make it.
Eight seasons later, he has played almost 600 games and become known for coming up with key goals in the playoffs. He has six already this year for the Sharks, continuing a terrific first season in San Jose after signing a three-year, $9.8-million (U.S) deal there last summer.
Typically a third-liner, Ward, a right winger, was bumped to the second unit – and was screening the goalie for San Jose's lone goal – when the Sharks needed a spark late in another one-goal loss in Game 2.
"It's my favourite story," said Ray McKelvie, the former Owen Sound GM who begged his scouts to take a chance on Ward deep in that 1997 OHL draft. "I'm just so happy for him. He never gave up. He just keeps working and working. You could write a book about [his career] and they wouldn't believe you."
"It's great to see he's done so well," added Minard, who admitted he is now cheering for the Sharks, despite the fact he played for the Penguins. "It's crazy."
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Whether Ward's tale comes with a happy ending, with the odds now stacked against the Sharks, remains to be seen. But he has already ensured that much for someone else. Johnson will attend Nashville State Community College next fall to become an occupational therapist, with the goal of one day joining a pro hockey team to help players recover from injuries.
Whether Ward wins the Cup or not, Johnson knows what he wants to be.
"I want to be like him," Johnson said. "I never told him that, but I want to be just like him. Not a hockey player, but to have his mindset, his mentality of working hard. That's the kind of mindset I want to have in life."Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Shadow immigration minister Chris Bryant: "There are unscrupulous employers"
Labour's immigration spokesman has modified his planned criticisms of two of the UK's biggest retailers over claims they favoured Eastern European workers over Britons.
In a speech, Chris Bryant said Tesco had to provide "reassurance", while Next was cited for using a recruitment site "entirely in Polish".
But he removed other critical excerpts referring to both firms, which had been reported in the press over the weekend.
Tesco and Next had raised concerns.
In extracts published in the Sunday Telegraph, Mr Bryant claimed Tesco had moved a distribution centre to Kent where "a large percentage" of staff were "from Eastern bloc" countries.
Staff at an original site, "most of them British, were told that they could only move to the new centre if they took a cut in pay", he was reportedly due to say.
'Sensitive'
After complaints from the company, these passages were removed.
In the speech itself, Tesco was described as a "good employer and an important source of jobs in Britain".
Analysis The government is on the defensive over immigration. A controversial ad van campaign is dismissed as offensive and racist. Labour spots an opportunity to capitalise on the usually quiet summer recess. It decides to tackle "unscrupulous" behaviour by some firms who seem to target foreign workers to undercut UK workers. It even unveils a policy proposal too, albeit small scale, on sham marriages. But what should've been a logical continuation of Ed Miliband's "predators v producers" theme from 2011 turned into a lesson in how not to get your message out there. It was sloppy and appeared to be misinformed. Chris Bryant even veered towards the language of resignation statements when he said he took "full responsibility" for the way extracts of the speech were released in advance to a newspaper. All a distraction from ideas that many people would like to hear more about, especially in areas where a concentration of foreign workers has caused tension in communities and strained public services.
However, Mr Bryant added: "Yet when a distribution centre was moved to a new location, existing staff said they would have lost out by transferring and the result was a higher proportion of staff from A8 countries [those with lower per capita incomes within the EU] taking up the jobs.
"Tesco are clear they have tried to recruit locally. And I hope they can provide more reassurance for their existing staff. But the fact that staff are raising concern shows how sensitive the issue has become."
Before he delivered the speech, Mr Bryant had also been expected to say that Next had "brought 500 Polish workers to work in their South Elmsall [West Yorkshire] warehouse for their summer sale and another 300 this summer".
He had been due to say the workers had been "recruited in Poland and charged £50 to find them accommodation".
But when he gave the speech, Mr Bryant did not mention numbers of employees taken on at South Elmsall by Next or any charge for accommodation.
However, he said the company had used the flamejobs.pl recruitment agency, whose website was written "entirely in Polish".
Wrongly drafted
He added: "Now of course short-term contracts and work are sometimes necessary in order to satisfy seasonal spikes in demand.
"But when agencies bring such a large number of workers of a specific nationality at a time when there are one million young unemployed in Britain, it is right to ask why that is happening."
Before the speech, Tesco denied some of Mr Bryant's claims, saying he had been "wrong" to say it had a new distribution centre in Kent.
It had in fact set one up in Dagenham, east London. Mr Bryant acknowledged that the initial location had been wrongly drafted.
A Tesco spokesman said: "We're pleased that Mr Bryant has recognised that Tesco is a good employer and an important source of jobs in Britain.
"We worked incredibly hard to recruit people from the local area in Dagenham, and as a result of that work the vast majority are British and live locally.
"We have one of the best pay and benefits packages in the industry, and we pay the same rate whether our colleagues are British or from the EU."
Before the speech, a Next spokesman said: "We are deeply disappointed Mr Bryant did not bother to check his facts with the company before releasing his speech.
Image caption The Home Office "go home" campaign is being investigated by the Advertising Standards Authority
"In fact, agency workers from Poland cost us exactly the same as local agency workers and our existing employees.
"The only reason we seek the help of people from Poland is that we simply can't recruit enough local people to satisfy these spikes in demand for temporary work."
However, the Conservative MP for Harlow, Robert Halfon, offered Mr Bryant some support.
He said many of his constituents employed at the Tesco distribution site had been forced to take redundancy when operations shifted to Dagenham rather than a pay cut of up to £10,000.
He accused Tesco of being "a ruthless company" and said the Tories should be "the party of small business and fair business".
Mr Rose, executive director of the Recruitment Society, an industry body, told BBC Radio 5 live that Labour had got it wrong.
"They don't have their facts correct and it's part of a current jingoism that's going around about British jobs for British workers," he said.
Sham marriages
Peter Mooney, head of consultancy at Employment Law Advisory Services, also told 5 live the national minimum wage and agency worker regulations applied to all EU citizens employed in the UK.
"They are entitled to recruit to fulfil a seasonal need. Where they get their workers from, as long as it's within the law, is absolutely fine."
On Friday the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) announced that it was investigating, after 60 complaints, a scheme in which vans drove through London calling on illegal immigrants to "go home or face arrest".
A Home Office spokesman said it was in contact with the ASA and would "respond in due course".
In his speech, Mr Bryant said that such "cheap and nasty gimmicks" by the government left "a nasty taste in the mouth".
He also proposed new powers to tackle an "epidemic" of sham marriages, and called for the Home Office to be given more information and powers to investigate suspicious marriages.
A Downing Street source said net immigration had fallen by a quarter since the general election and that Labour should apologise for having let immigration get out of control when in power.Facebook recently added a “Donate Now” call-to-action button for non-profit pages. Hooray! Break out the bubbly. It’s an all-night non-profit party and we’re not stopping ’til the sun comes up!
Hold on just a minute there, Speedy McSpeederston. Before we knock down the Statue of Liberty and replace it with a bust of Mark Zuckerberg, let’s analyze this new fangled “Donate Now” button a little closer. Does this announcement truly add up to a win for charities everywhere? Or is the social media giant the one with the most to gain?
What I like about the Donate Now button
There is zero downside to simply setting it and forgetting it. Facebook doesn’t charge you for having the button and it doesn’t charge you if anyone organically clicks it to get to your website. So why not add it and have one more access point from your Facebook page to your donation page?
It’s super easy to set up. You can have the button installed in three quick steps. You start by hitting the “Create Call To Action” button on the top of your page:
You follow that up by selecting the “Donate Now” button from the drop-down menu:
And you finish up by directing the button to your website and bashing create (which presumably ALWAYS explodes in a fury of neon unicorns and furry newts):
Now don’t fret if you didn’t see a single unicorn or newt. I may have passed out with excitement and imagined those things.
The one thing I didn’t imagine was my “Donate Now” button being ready to go. As you can see, set up was crazy-easy. It takes 30 seconds. And if you stop right there, with the new access point set up, you’re a winner for sure. However, Facebook doesn’t want you to stop there… And this is where my problem with the button comes to the fore.
What I don’t like about the Donate Now button.
It’s the catch. Everybody’s got one. And they’re not all as pretty as Willie’s. And what is the catch on the Donate Now button? Well, if you want any traffic to see it, you either need to have a very large community of donors on the page already… Or you need to pay-to-play.
Yes, folks. It’s the dreaded Promote feature:
If you don’t promote the button, you’re not likely to raise much money. So this raises the ante a bit, particularly if you’re a small non-profit with a limited budget. You’re now going to need to spend extra time and cash, and not just on paying Facebook to boost the ad. You need to take your time in designing the ad, researching the proper audiences to target the ad, and then commit time every day to monitor your campaigns. And you don’t really get many clicks for your money, so you better hope your website’s conversion funnel is in tip-top shape. If it’s not, you could lose your shirt.
As you can see in this image, Facebook estimates that 20 dollars will get you between 29 – 53 clicks a day, a range of 69 to 37 cents per click:
Bank on your true number being closer to 29 clicks than the high range of 53. In order to maximize your clicks and get that high number, you’ll need to create a highly engaging ad, as you’ll be rewarded with more organic impressions when the audience reacts positively to your post. This will take some fine tuning, so you shouldn’t expect instant success. You can get some tips for promoting your cause on facebook here.
My takeaway on Donate Now
While a skilled social media team can likely maximize the value of a promoted “donate now” button, most small non-profits don’t have a dedicated social media team. It becomes very easy to predict a sea of small-budget, losing promotions. Facebook does make it very easy to test the feature at low budgets (you can bid as low as 1 dollar a day), so this feature won’t cripple anyone. But on a macro level, Facebook will likely pocket millions of dollars on these small failures.
With all of that said… Definitely set up the button. That much is free, after all. But if you’re going to drop ad dollars into it, make sure you begin a promotion with open eyes and the proper preparation. Have an engaging ad targeted to the right people. And make sure the page you’re linking to is ready to convert those visitors at a high percentage.Culture ministry says it will press charges against activists for damage to world heritage site as UN climate talks began in Lima
Greenpeace has apologised to the people of Peru after the government accused the environmentalists of damaging ancient earth markings in the country’s coastal desert by leaving footprints in the ground during a publicity stunt meant to send a message to the UN climate talks delegates in Lima.
A spokesman for Greenpeace said: “Without reservation Greenpeace apologises to the people of Peru for the offence caused by our recent activity laying a message of hope at the site of the historic Nazca lines. We are deeply sorry for this.
“Rather than relay an urgent message of hope and possibility to the leaders gathering at the Lima UN climate talks, we came across as careless and crass.”
Earlier Peru’s vice-minister for culture Luis Jaime Castillo had accused Greenpeace of “extreme environmentalism” and ignoring what the Peruvian people “consider to be sacred” after the protest at the world renowned Nazca lines, a Unesco world heritage site.
He said the government was seeking to prevent those responsible from leaving the country while it asked prosecutors to file charges of attacking archaeological monuments, a crime punishable by up to six years in prison.
The activists had entered a strictly prohibited area beside the figure of a hummingbird among the lines, the culture ministry said, and they had laid down big yellow cloth letters reading “Time for Change! The Future is Renewable” as the UN climate talks began in Peru’s capital.
“This has been done without any respect for our laws. It was done in the middle of the night. They went ahead and stepped on our hummingbird, and looking at the pictures we can see there’s very severe damage,” Castillo said. “Nobody can go on these lines without permission – not even the president of Peru!”
Peruvian authorities are also seeking the identity of the archaeologist who led the activists to the site and the plane from which the photos of the stunt were taken, he said. “It was thoughtless, insensitive, illegal, irresponsible and absolutely pre-meditated. Greenpeace has said it was planning this action for months.”
Tina Loeffelbein, a Greenpeace spokeswoman at the summit, said she was not aware of any legal proceedings being brought against the group. She said Greenpeace was cooperating with the Peruvian authorities and seeking to clarify what took place.
In a statement Greenpeace said it was concerned that it could have caused “moral offence to the Peruvian people”.
The statement read: “Our history of more than 40 years of peaceful activism clearly shows that we have always been most respectful with people around the world and their diverse cultural legacies.”
Castillo responded: “Disrespecting humanity’s cultural heritage – I don’t think that’s the message this summit or Greenpeace is trying to spread to the world! Most of us in the cultural sector agree with the message. But the means don’t justify the ends.”
“We took every care we could to try and avoid any damage. We have 40 years of experience of doing peaceful protests,” Kyle Ash, Greenpeace spokesman, told the Guardian. “The surprise to us was that this resulted in some kind of moral offense. We definitely regret that and we want to figure out a way to resolve it. We are very remorseful for any offense that we’ve caused and we’re very remorseful for that.”
He said Greenpeace met on Wednesday with Peru’s minister of culture, Diana Alvarez. He said the organization hoped to maintain a dialogue with the Peruvian government. He added Greenpeace would take “total responsibility” if any permanent damage had been caused to the archaeological site.
“It’s not a matter of money. The destruction is irreparable,” Ana Maria Cogorno, President of the Maria Reiche Association named after the German archaeologist whose groundbreaking research on the Nazca Lines from 1940 onwards saw them gain recognition and protection, told the Guardian.
The hummingbird etching on which the Greenpeace stunt was laid was the “only one of the lines which was completely untouched and perfectly conserved”, she said. “It’s one of the symbols of Peru,” she added.
Last week Greenpeace projected a message promoting solar energy on to Huayna Picchu, the mountain that overlooks the Inca citadel of Machu Picchu, another protected archaeological site in Peru.Kristina Barker/Reuters For some of us who ride, we wish there were CliffsNotes on riding a motorcycle. Everyone always says experience and skill comes with time (absolutely true), but there are certain things I really wish I had known as soon as I started learning to ride.
It would have made me a better, safer rider a whole lot sooner. Although most of them are "duh" type of things, they completely changed my riding.
I know Bill Kresnak didn't release "Motorcycling for Dummies" just for me, so listen up and relate if you can.
Many of us had a so-called "mentor" who taught us to ride. Although it was my brother who initially taught me to ride on dirt when I was 15, it was an ex-boyfriend who took me under his wing when I got my first street bike. I still remember some of the horribly inaccurate advice he gave me:
The scariest part is, I believed him! He rode a bike and was willing to offer his advice, which was enough credibility for me to listen to him.
The truth is, there are very few people who are qualified enough to teach new riders how to ride. The easiest and safest way to make sure you get proper riding instruction is to hire an objective professional. New rider schools typically offer novice through advanced classes that are very beneficial to any rider. But if you insist on having your buddy teach you, really make sure he or she know what they are doing. Don't assume they are experts.
2. Don't have a staring contest with a tree because you will lose
When I started riding dirt, I would spend more time on the ground than on the bike. When trying to avoid an obstacle, no matter how hard I tried, I always hit the very object I was trying so hard to avoid. It was extremely frustrating, especially because I couldn't understand what I was doing wrong.
It wasn't until I nervously went on my first canyon ride that someone said to me "You'll be OK, just look through the turn. Don't fixate on what you're trying to avoid." After that ride, I finally figured out what I was doing wrong on dirt all those years — target fixation! While trying to avoid that tree or that drop-off, I would stare directly at it, and since you go where you look, I'd ride right into it. I had to learn to trust my peripheral vision, and ever since then not only have I been able to avoid any target fixation related incidents on my street bike, I've also dramatically improved as a dirt rider.
3. Moving your bike while sitting on it is a bit like walking with your pants down
Although this is more relevant to riders who are height challenged like me, it really is safer for anyone to move their bike while off the bike. I'm only 5'4" and have very poor ground clearance on most motorcycles. I used to mimic my friends who'd back out of a parking space while sitting on a bike, and having tipped my bike over on several occasions, I set out to find a better way to move my motorcycle. Turns out, it's much easier to move it while standing beside it.
First of all, having both feet firmly on the ground makes it a whole lot easier to move the bike because you have a good foundation. Second of all, with one hand on the handlebar and the other holding on to the bike's tail, that bike is not falling anywhere. The trick is to find the balance point, which then relies on control over muscle. Whether it accidentally tips slightly toward you or away from you, you have the strength of your whole body to hold it up. I haven't dropped my bike since, nor will you ever see me asking strangers for a push to get my bike out of a parking space.
4. Your hand is on the holster in a duel because every millisecond matters
I recently retook the new rider course and one of the "mistakes" I kept making (according to the instructors) was covering the front brake. Although I understand why instructors are worried about students grabbing a handful of front brake during the class, it's not a skill that should go beyond your new rider course.
I'm used to commuting in California traffic, and having two fingers on the front brakes has saved me on numerous occasions. In fact, I was recently on a group ride that encountered a multi-bike pileup right in front of me that required some serious emergency braking. Upon reviewing video footage from a rider behind me, I noticed that even though I was a few bikes behind the wreck, I was one of the first people to get on my brakes. Getting on the brakes sooner has less to do with my catlike reflexes, and more to having my trigger fingers ready on the front brake.
5. The rear brake is your best friend
Too many people downplay the effect of your rear brake. It's true that it has much less stopping power than the front brake, but it has more purpose than just stopping. It's about control.
When I discovered how much stability you gain by dragging the rear brake, it was game on. Narrow paths between cars, tight U-turns, sharp parking lot entries — bring it all on. With the use of my rear brake, I never have to duck walk my bike again. Learning this skill was a huge game changer for me and I've actually had my riding buddies comment on how much more stable I look splitting lanes.
Another good use for the rear brake is smooth stopping. Although I use both of my brakes to come to a complete stop, I primarily use the rear brake when rolling to a stop. It makes the stop feel much smoother because the front forks aren't compressing. I challenge you to try it and tell me I'm wrong!
6. Whether you're Valentino Rossi or Joe Schmo, go to the track
Most people associate going to the track with racing, but it's far from it. In fact, all track day organizations make it clear that you're not there to race. There is no better place to improve your skills as a rider than the track. Where else can you test your personal limits and the limits of your motorcycle in a controlled environment?
I would attest a single track day to equal about four to six months of riding experience. Yes, you might be the slowest rider there at first, but so what? Nobody cares, everyone is too concerned about themselves to notice or care about how you're doing.
Also, as long as your bike is in good working condition, it doesn't matter what you ride. I've been to the track with guys on everything from Scramblers to big dual-sport BMW's. As impressive as it is to see people killing it at the track on a sport bike, there's something slightly more impressive about a rider on a non-conventional "track bike" tearing up the asphalt.
7. Always put the right foot down
Not right as in left and right, but right as in correct. I got into the habit of always putting down my left foot when I stopped. Then one day I was parking my bike on a sideways slope, went to plant my left foot, and realized as I was leaning my bike further and further to the left that I couldn't feel ground. At a certain angle there's a point of no return, and unless you're Hercules there's no saving it and the bike is going down.
Not only did I embarrassingly drop my bike in front of a bunch of other riders, I almost started the dreaded domino effect with the line of bikes I parked next to. It was literally a matter of inches and I'll be eternally grateful that didn't happen because the patched leather vest Harley guys whose bikes I almost took out did not seem particularly understanding. So pay attention to the road where you're stopping and adjust which foot you put down first based on the road conditions.
8. You're not as durable as you think
This one is an oldie but a goodie — please gear the f up. The broader my motorcycle network becomes, the more horror stories I hear about accidents. Remember how painful it was to scrape up your knee when you went down on a bicycle as a kid? That throbbing pain that made your leg twitch? Take that and multiply it by about 100. That's what motorcycle road rash is like.
We all know motorcycling is dangerous, but why not attempt to minimize the risk? No one is going to argue that a person who goes down wearing gear is going to have fewer injuries than someone "bare backing" it on a bike. So why would you choose to not wear gear? There really is no sensible answer. I didn't always wear gear, but I eventually learned from the pain of others to not make their mistakes. Spend your money on gear rather than medical bills, and free your family from the burden of taking care of your mangled body. Did I mention the napalm-like road rash?
9. Always ride your own ride
I always notice that I make the most mistakes when I'm trying to keep up with someone. Never ride outside of your comfort zone as it will only deplete your confidence, or even worse, cause you to crash.
When riding with people way above my level as a new rider, I always found myself disappointed after the ride because they are so much better than me. In retrospect, riding with other beginner riders gave me a huge confidence boost because you frequently think you're a worse rider than you really are. Everyone progresses at their own pace, so it's not about how long you've been riding or how fast you can get through the corners. Although I do want to get faster, that's never been my primary goal. My goal is to be safe and if it takes me twice as long to progress, so be it. Don't give into the peer pressure.
Kate first learned to ride when she was about 15, but her love for motorcycles began long before that. She was absolutely fascinated with motorcycles as a kid and followed her older brother Dennis around as he ventured into everything from road racing, to Supermoto, to dirt biking, to adventure riding. When she finally got her first bike, there was no going back and now she lives and breath motorcycles.
She and Dennis run Beach Moto, a unique motorcycle gear boutique in West Los Angeles. For them, it's not just a business, it's a passion. They feel incredibly lucky to have the opportunity to meet so many interesting riders and see so many unique bikes through our work in this industry. Their way of giving back to the motorcycle community is by limiting what they carry in the store to only the highest quality items they would use themselves. Knowing their customers are properly protected and fully satisfied with every purchase is an indescribably rewarding feeling.Contents show]
History
The villainess known as the Asbestos Lady hated the original Human Torch. With every intention of doing battle with the Torch, she designed for herself a costume made from asbestos, which essentially made her immune to fire while wearing it.
Eventually, the Asbestos Lady heard about several advancements in "asbestos science" developed by Fred Raymond, and wished to have them for herself. To this end, she tried to force Fred into joining her growing gang, but the Human Torch had been watching Raymond's home in case such an attack took place.
After she was repelled by the Torch, the Asbestos Lady decided to bump off the Raymond family as revenge. She arranged a train wreck that resulted in the death of all on board except for youngest Raymond, Thomas, who was apparently immune to the ensuing fire.
Intrigued, the Asbestos Lady kept an eye on the youth after he joined a circus act (taking advantage of his immunity to fire), but she was again waylaid by the Human Torch who defeated her by melting her boots to the asphalt road[1].
Some time later in 1947, the Asbestos Lady's twin brother Killer Murdock was brought to justice by the Human Torch and Toro, now a crime-fighting duo; Murdock was executed for his crimes. Asbestos Lady became determined to wipe the two heroes out. In her first attempt, she gathered her brother's old gang to try and eliminate the heroes but the plan failed, although Asbestos Lady managed to escape[2]. She later lured the vacationing heroes into a trap where she tried to drown them in a river with an asbestos-lined net. Thinking her foes dead, Asbestos Lady and her gang started a crime spree until she was finally apprehended by the Torch and Toro for attempting to rob the gold stored at Fort Wright. Asbestos Lady was apprehended and locked away in prison, vowing to get revenge against the Torch and Toro[3]. She later escaped from jail and was used as a pawn of the Organizers, an agency that funded super-villains in order to keep them distracted from their activities[4]
Victoria Murdock died of idiopathic mesothelioma at 45 (presumably from asbestos exposure)[5]. Her disease was a type of cancer.
Powers and Abilities
Abilities
Murdock was a gifted scientist.
Paraphernalia
Equipment
Fire-Proof Costume: The Asbestos Lady wears a fire-proof costume constructed of asbestos.
Weapons
Handguns: The Asbestos Lady carries a pair of handguns loaded with asbestos bullets, which are capable of penetrating the defensive flame sheaths used by the Human Torch and Toro.
The Asbestos Lady carries a pair of handguns loaded with asbestos bullets, which are capable of penetrating the defensive flame sheaths used by the Human Torch and Toro. Flamethrower: The Asbestos Lady wielded a flame-thrower.
Marvel Comics Asbestos Lady
Notes
Asbestos Lady has a peculiar continuity. Her first appearance was in Human Torch Comics #27, however her original origin story was depicted in Captain America Comics #63 published a month later, which explained her motivations for going up against the Human Torch and Toro. The character only had a few minor appearances before appearing again in Invaders #22 where it was ret-conned that she was active as Asbestos Lady as far back as the early 1940s prior to the Human Torch and Toro becoming partners.
#27, however her original origin story was depicted in #63 published a month later, which explained her motivations for going up against the Human Torch and Toro. The character only had a few minor appearances before appearing again in #22 where it was ret-conned that she was active as Asbestos Lady as far back as the early 1940s prior to the Human Torch and Toro becoming partners. It is suggested in Marvel Knights: Spider-Man #9 that the Asbestos Lady was created and funded by the American government.
Discover and Discuss
Search this site for:WingnutSC Profile Joined March 2012 United States 52 Posts #1 Gamers for Giving 2016 Starcraft 2 Tournament
General Information & Tournament Registration
Full rules/info doc may be found
To register go
Seating extremely limited and filling up fast, register ASAP if you plan to attend to secure your seat.
The Gamers for Giving 2016 StarCraft 2 tournament will be
a 1 vs 1 tournament for the latest installment of the franchise, Legacy of the Void. The tournament will be open to all PC gamers of the BYOC LAN party at Gamers for Giving.
Tournament Staff:
HOSTS/PRODUCERS/COMMENTATORS
Ehren "WingnutSC" Benson
Nick "Gallagation" Gallagher
WingnutSC and Gallagation have been a fixture in Midwest eSports for years, casting, commentating and producing StarCraft 2 streams at most regional events including Youmacon 2013, 2014, 2015 and other large LAN events. They were the primary casting duo of the
TOURNAMENT ADMINS
Tim "Bubbarowley" Rowley
Jeff "FuzzyWaffles" Ballard
Tim and Jeff have loved the SCII scene since the early Wings of Liberty beta. Their love for Starcraft has grown more and more since his discovery of eSports and like to be a part of the community for the greatest game on the planet. They have years of experience running and attending Michigan LAN parties and their passion makes them a good fit for running a smooth and exciting tournament.
General:
The tournament will begin on Saturday, March 12th at approximately 1:30 PM Eastern Time.
Attendees will be able to gain access to the venue beginning on Saturday, March 12th at 10:00 AM. After checking into the event and obtaining credentials, attendees will be able to find their respective seat in the LAN and begin setting up their equipment.
Once inside the venue, individuals who wish to participate in the StarCraft tournament will need to register themselves by visiting the “PC Tournament Desk,” located at the NOC in the center of the arena floor. Players will be able to sign up between 10:00 AM – 1:00 PM. StarCraft admins will construct and publish the tournament bracket once the registration period has closed.
Tournament Prizing:
The tournament will have a guaranteed $800 prize pool. The tournament’s prize pool may increase in the event of excess or specialized sponsorship, but will otherwise remain constant regardless of the number of tournament participants. In the event of an increase, an announcement will be made on the GamersforGiving.org website.
The distribution of the prize pool will be as follows:
• 1st Place: $400
• 2nd Place: $200
• 3rd: Place $100
• 4th Place: $50
• 5th and 6th Place: $25.00
Tournament Format:
The tournament will take place over the course of both Saturday, March 12th AND Sunday, March 13th. Players should anticipate playing on both days, however, in the event the tournament can be played in its entirety on Saturday, tournament admins reserve the option to complete the competition.
All players will be seeded in the tournament bracket based on their most recent StarCraft 2 ladder ranking, or closest comparable rank.
Players will engage in a best of three, double elimination tournament until the bracket’s semifinals. The semifinals and finals will follow a best of five win/loss format.
Players must lose two matches to be eliminated from the tournament.
Map Pool:
This section will be updated after 1/31/2016. The map pool will consist of the most recent Blizzard Ladder Pool.
Map picks will be veto based. Two players will flip a coin, and the winner gets to veto first. Players will veto maps until one map is left, after which loser will pick the next map.
Equipment & Miscellaneous:
The Starcraft 2 tournament is a BYOC event. Players will need to bring their own computers / laptops, as well as necessary peripherals to compete in the Starcraft 2 tournament. Gamers Outreach will provide tables, chairs, 2 electrical outlets, networking equipment and internet access to facilitate the tournament.
Please reference the LAN Party event information page for a handy check list of things you’ll need to bring to the LAN (http://gamersforgiving.org/lan-party/).
Players will connect to Battle.net and compete with designated opponents. In the event that internet access becomes unavailable, Battle.net is down, or anything happens at the venue that causes the tournament to become inoperable, the tournament will take place online after Gamers for Giving on a newly designated date.
Every player must set their online status to “Busy” when playing a tournament game. Additionally, all players must turn off toast notifications.
Additional Rules:
Please see the full ruleset Full rules/info doc may be found HERE To register go HERE Seating extremely limited and filling up fast, register ASAP if you plan to attend to secure your seat.The Gamers for Giving 2016 StarCraft 2 tournament will bea 1 vs 1 tournament for the latest installment of the franchise, Legacy of the Void. The tournament will be open to all PC gamers of the BYOC LAN party at Gamers for Giving.WingnutSC and Gallagation have been a fixture in Midwest eSports for years, casting, commentating and producing StarCraft 2 streams at most regional events including Youmacon 2013, 2014, 2015 and other large LAN events. They were the primary casting duo of the Starcraft 2 Community Team League for two seasons consisting of some of the best professional and amateur teams in the EU and NA regions. For a full sampling of WingnutSC and Gallagations work check out the youtube archive! Tim "Bubbarowley" RowleyJeff "FuzzyWaffles" BallardTim and Jeff have loved the SCII scene since the early Wings of Liberty beta. Their love for Starcraft has grown more and more since his discovery of eSports and like to be a part of the community for the greatest game on the planet. They have years of experience running and attending Michigan LAN parties and their passion makes them a good fit for running a smooth and exciting tournament.The tournament will begin on Saturday, March 12th at approximately 1:30 PM Eastern Time.Attendees will be able to gain access to the venue beginning on Saturday, March 12th at 10:00 AM. After checking into the event and obtaining credentials, attendees will be able to find their respective seat in the LAN and begin setting up their equipment.Once inside the venue, individuals who wish to participate in |
Baxter-Simons
Co-founders, Prelude Ventures
United States
Masayoshi Son
Founder, Chairman and CEO, SoftBank Group Corp.
Japan
George Soros
Chairman, Soros Fund Management LLC
United States
Tom Steyer
Businessman, Philanthropist, and President, NextGen Climate
United States
Ratan Tata
Chairman Emeritus, Tata Sons
India
Meg Whitman
CEO, Hewlett Packard Enterprise
United States
Ms. Zhang Xin and Mr. Pan Shiyi
Co-founder and CEO, SOHO China
Chairman, SOHO China
China
Mark Zuckerberg and Dr. Priscilla Chan
Founder, Chairman and CEO, Facebook
Pediatrician and CEO, The Primary School
United States
University of California
Office of the Chief Investment Officer
United StatesThe Girl
She has dirty blond hair, a seductive smile, and the most engaging set of hazel green eyes I’ve ever seen. It’s the kind of engaging I can’t ignore… the kind that makes me want to engage too. Because she’s mysterious. And I’m curious. And I need to know more.
Yet, I do my best to avoid making eye contact. So I stare down at the pool table and pretend to study my opponent’s next move. But only long enough for her to look the other way, so I can once again catch a glimpse of magnificence.
I do this, not because she intimidates me, but because I think she may be the girl Chad met last night. A wild night that, he said, “involved two bottles of port wine, chocolate cake, and sweaty bed sheets.”
Then, just as her eyes unexpectedly meet mine, my opponent groans, “It’s been your turn for like five minutes. Ya planning on going sometime today?” And she walks gracefully away.
So I continue to wonder… “Is she the port wine and chocolate cake girl? Gosh, she doesn’t look like that kind of girl.” But I don’t wonder too long because Chad enters the room and says, “Marc, there’s someone I want you to meet.” So I follow him into the kitchen and we bump right into her. “Oh, Angel,” Chad says. “This is my buddy, Marc.”
And I smile ear to ear and chuckle…
Because she’s not the port wine and chocolate cake girl. But also because I spent the last twenty minutes thinking about the port wine, and the chocolate cake, and the sweaty bed sheets.
The Dance
Hours later, the party begins winding down. But the band is still playing, the two painters who have been painting a wall mural all evening are still painting, and Angel and I are still dancing.
“Are you tired?” I ask.
“No,” Angel says. “Dancing is my outlet. When I dance, I transcend myself and the doubts that sometimes prevent me from being me. This evening has been enchanting, just dancing with you and being me.”
So I twirl her around. And the drummer keeps drumming. The guitarist keeps strumming. The singer keeps singing. The painters keep painting. And now we’re the only ones dancing.
As we continue to dance, she says, “I feel as if we’re naked. And not just you and me, but the drummer, the guitarist, the singer, and the painters too. Everyone left in this room is naked… naked and free.”
I smile and tell her that I agree. “We are naked. We are free.”
As I know we don’t have to take our clothes off to be naked. Because moments of passion flow into each other like port wine flows into chocolate cake. And if we let them, these moments can expose us completely, and continuously. And create climaxes that don’t even require sex.
Because a true climax has little to do with orgasm, and everything to do with passion, love, and devotion. In the same way, nakedness has little to do with how much clothing one wears, and everything to do with one’s awareness in a given moment of time… An unfettered awareness that frees their mind and allows them to truly live the moment for all it’s worth.
The Climax
After a few more songs, Angel asks if I’d like to join her out on the front porch where it’s quieter. “Just so we can talk about life,” she says.
I give her a little wink. “I love life in this crazy world! It is crazy, isn’t it?”
She smiles. “Yeah, a world in which we can be naked with our clothes on and experience continuous climax without intercourse.”
“Because instead we can achieve both with music, or paint, or dance, or any form of avid self-expression,” I add.
“You got it. Even the sincerity in this conversation is beginning to work for me,” she says as we step out the front door and into the moonlight.Senator James Inhofe.
Republicans have insisted that any American program to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions is pointless, since China and other countries will never, ever agree to curtail their own emissions. As Chinese coal has reduced its energy intensity and announced a cap and trade system, and countries having accounted for more than 90 percent of global emissions having submitted emissions targets, this prediction is looking bad. But they are not content to sit back helplessly and watch their prediction fail. Leading Republicans have been doing everything they can to persuade other countries to burn every molecule of carbon they can find. Some of them may even crash the Paris talks in an attempt to blow up the negotiations. Now the Hill reports that Oklahoma senator James Inhofe, the Environment and Public Works Committee chairperson, and Kentucky representative Ed Whitfield, the House Energy and Commerce Committee energy and power subpanel chairperson, are considering a trip to Paris. “I don’t know if I’ll repeat what I’ve done several times before, which is to go over and be the bad guy, the one-man truth squad, and tell the truth, that they’re going to be lied to by the Obama administration,” Inhofe explains.
Inhofe’s version of the truth, as he has explained in his book, The Greatest Hoax: How the Global Warming Conspiracy Threatens Your Future, and numerous public speeches, one of which posited that the existence of snow falsifies climate science, does not comport with the conclusions of leading experts in the field. Normally, when you are conducting international diplomacy, you want to have the face-to-face work handled by figures who are impressive, or at least cogent. But the Republicans’ peculiar form of anti-diplomacy calls for unusual tactics and unusual characters.
The Republican goal in Paris is not to persuade other countries that they’re right, or even that their ideas have any contact with reality at all. It is merely to persuade those countries that the Republican Party mortally opposes any limits on greenhouse-gas emissions, regardless of scientific or diplomatic developments, and that it will carry out this agenda if it takes power. Foreign diplomats are accustomed to political systems in which even the conservative parties accept the conclusions of climate science, and may suspect the Republican threats to destroy an international climate agreement amount to crazy bluster they wouldn’t actually carry out. Inhofe and Whitfield’s role is to persuade them that, yes, the Republicans really are this crazy.Tom Mulcair says he'll focus on the Trans-Pacific Partnership deal, an inquiry into missing and murdered indigenous women and electoral reform over the next four years as he leads the federal NDP.
Mulcair laid out priorities for his deflated New Democratic Party during the counterpart B.C. provincial party's convention in Vancouver today.The federal party went from 103 seats in 2011 to just 44 in last month's election.
He said the election results were not what the party had hoped for, but he was happy for being able to grow the B.C. caucus to 14 members of Parliament.
"All we have to do is to make sure that in 2019, everybody understands that the orange wave starts in the Pacific and works its way east," he said.
Mulcair also stressed that the election resulted in the second-largest number of NDP MPs in history, putting a positive spin on the party's current state.
He took the opportunity to criticize the TPP, saying the massive trade deal would put Canadian jobs at risk, increase the cost of medicine and threaten the country's farming industry.
"This was a trade deal negotiated in secret behind closed doors. Canadians did not see the full text of the agreement before the election, and there's no reason for the new government not to release the full text, including side agreements, right now."
Electoral reform
One of the biggest priorities Mulcair highlighted is to fight for proportional representation in Parliament, calling the current first-past-the-post system of electing MPs "out of date."
"Every vote should count, and in the last election again, more than 30 per cent of Canadians stayed home," he said. "The entire House of Commons should truly resemble the diversity of our country because, as we have heard before, it is 2015," he said, referring to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's now-famous comment from last week.
He also outlined the need for an inquiry into missing and murdered aboriginal women, and to usher in a "new era of nation-to-nation relations with First Nations, Inuit and Métis peoples in Canada."
He said an inquiry into missing and murdered indigenous women would begin with consulting the women's families.
Mulcair also spoke to members of the Canadian Union of Public Employees at their national convention on Friday.
The NDP chief said the party will continue to uphold the values of past leaders such as Jack Layton and former Saskatchewan premier Tommy Douglas, including free universal health care and environmental protection.
Mulcairaddressed his caucus and the media last Wednesday for the first time since the election.Three freshmen are over the final hurdle in the sprint toward the Calder Trophy.
Florida Panthers defenseman Aaron Ekblad and forwards Johnny Gaudreau and Mark Stone of the Calgary Flames and Ottawa Senators, respectively, have been tabbed as the three finalists for the award handed out to the NHL's top rookie.
Ekblad, 19, played 81 games and looked well beyond his years. The reigning first-overall selection finished with 12 goals, 39 points and led all rookie defenseman with a 184 SAT.
Gaudreau tallied 24 goals and finished in a tie for rookie scoring with Stone, netting 64 points. He led rookie forwards in average ice time, skating 17:43 per night, and was the first Flames rookie since Jarome Iginla to reach 50 points.
Stone finished a goal off the freshman lead, his 26 just shy of teammate Mike Hoffman. He also led rookies with a plus-21 rating and willed Ottawa into the playoffs with a nine-game point streak to close out the season.
Left off the ballot was Filip Forsberg, who finished one point shy of the goals and points lead, playing in all 82 games for the Nashville Predators. He led all freshman with a 308 SAT, and was one of the most efficient players in the game for the first half of the season.Image copyright AP Image caption Coulibaly demanded the Kouachi brothers who had just attacked the Charlie Hebdo offices be freed in exchange for the hostages he was holding at the kosher supermarket
French police have made 10 arrests in connection to the attacks on the Charlie Hebdo offices and a kosher supermarket in Paris in January 2015.
Those held are suspected of supplying arms to Amedy Coulibaly, said French broadcaster BFMTV.
He killed four people he took hostage inside the supermarket and separately a policewoman.
Police have linked Coulibaly, who died in a shootout with police, with the attacks on the Charlie Hebdo offices in the days prior.
He is said to have demanded the release of the Kouachi brothers who carried out the attack on the satirical magazine's offices.
The arrests were carried out in France and Belgium from Monday to Wednesday, sources in the police investigation said.
One of those under suspicion is Claude Hermant, an arms dealer with links to a far-right paramilitary group.
According to BFMTV, Hermant and his wife are accused of buying four Tokarev pistols and two Kalashnikov rifles which were later found in Coulibaly's possession.
Hermant is currently serving a prison term for a separate arms trafficking offence.
In total 17 people were killed in the successive attacks from 7-9 January 2015.
The attacks prompted thousands to attend vigils and gatherings in France and around the world, spawning the #JeSuisCharlie hashtag - perhaps the fastest spreading solidarity hashtag in history.By Rick Reeno
Freddie Roach, who trains former eight division world champion Manny Pacquiao (57-6-2, 38 KOs), would demand a rehydration clause for a potential fight with WBC middleweight champion Saul 'Canelo' Alvarez (46-1-1, 32KOs).
Pacquiao is back in action on Saturday night, when he faces Tim Bradley (33-1-1, 13 KOs) in a trilogy bout from the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, Nevada.
According to Pacquiao, the upcoming contest will be the final fight of his professional career.
But, Roach is not convinced that his fighter will walk away for good. He anticipates an inevitable return to the ring, potentially in the fall.
Pacquiao's promoter, Bob Arum of Top Rank, is interested in matching the Filipino star against Canelo - if Pacquiao decides to continue his career.
Roach is also interested in the fight and believes Pacquiao can win, but there are obvious conditions that he would require.
"We would have to cap him. We would have to cap how much weight he can gain the next day [after the weigh-in]," Roach said.
Roach is also the trainer for Miguel Cotto, who lost a twelve round decision to Canelo last November. The fight took place at 155-pounds. Roach complains that Canelo was a 'light heavyweight' when he entered the ring.
Canelo will defend his title against Amir Khan on May 7th. As previously reported, Roach wants to evaluate how well Khan performs against Canelo - and use that performance to solidify his position regarding the idea of Pacquiao fighting Canelo at a catch-weight of 155.
"Canelo, we will talk about it. I know he is big - Manny has always done good with big guys. I think Manny can outbox Canelo. It is a difficult fight I know. I think we get a look at Amir Khan and see how that goes a little bit and we will have maybe a better idea because Amir is like Manny - he is a good athlete. He is very athletic and very fast. I don't know if those pictures were Photoshopped or what but it looks like put on a lot of muscle. People tell me those aren't real pictures though," Roach told BoxingScene.com.Swiss watchmaker Swatch is diversifying its brand with a huge step forward in advanced battery technology, eventually destined for electric vehicles.
The Swiss watchmaker owns a 51 per cent stake in Belenos Clean Power, a company formed in 2008 that is dedicated to technologies used within the clean energy chain, with a division focussing specifically on new battery technology. The company is even backed by actor George Clooney, who owns a share in the operation.
According to a report by TwentyTwoTen, Belenos Clean Power's battery advantage comes from a patented compound used to develop its battery cells. The patented compound uses vanadium rather than rare raw materials, which makes the batteries cheaper to mass produce.
But, the biggest advantages are weight saving and reduced charging time. In comparison to the Panasonic supplied battery packs fitted to Tesla vehicles, the vanadium powered battery pack weighs a third less than the Panasonic equivalent and also charges twice as fast.
Swatch Group AG chief executive officer Nick Hayek told the media that it was the Volkswagen dieselgate scandal that triggered the company's interest.AMSTERDAM — Cal Odyssey striker Villyan Bijev has signed a five-year contract with English Premier League giants Liverpool and has been immediately loaned to Belgian champs Racing Genk, MLSsoccer.com has learned.
The 18-year-old Fresno, Calif.-raised forward holds a Bulgarian passport, but that country has yet to fully complete its European Union induction, having only joined in 2007. Bijev will be able to obtain a UK work permit with his passport next July, but for the meantime must start his pro days in the Jupiler League.
While wowing the Reds on a blind-given trial suggested by his rep, Bijev may have convinced them to offer a deal with a 45-minute friendly showing with the Under-18s against Stevenage Borough. The American bagged a hat trick, won the penalty kick for another goal and set up yet another to spark an 8-0 romp.
Bijev will join the Genk first team for training, but will likely work his way into the selection with some reserve action.
"Everybody cuts their teeth in the second team," Bijev's agent, Steve Kelly, told MLSsoccer.com on Friday. "[Liverpool] would be very surprised if he wasn't in the first team by the end of the season."
Bijev, a member of the US U-18 player pool, could hope to make his Genk debut when the U-21 side opens their season with an August 19 trip to Anderlecht.Buy Photo Chuck Simpson, an operator engineer, fills in dirt and flattens it where two homes that were eyesores once stood in the 1500 block of Alter in Detroit Wed., Oct. 7, 2015. A total of ten homes are being taken down that have plagued the neighborhood for years. (Photo: Regina H. Boone, Detroit Free Press)Buy Photo
Cleaning up blight in Detroit seems to be paying off even faster than hoped for.
A new report commissioned by the Skillman Foundation and Rock Ventures, the company founded by businessman Dan Gilbert that helped pay for Detroit's Blight Removal Task Force Report last year, came up with some surprisingly upbeat results this week.
A study titled "Estimating Home Equity Impact from Rapid, Targeted Residential Demolition in Detroit" reported that each individual demolition in the so-called Hardest-Hit zones in Detroit increased the value of occupied single-family homes within 500 feet by 4.3%
And the study suggested that Detroit's current mix of demolitions, vacant-lot clean-ups, sales of side lots to neighbors, auctions of homes by the Detroit Land Bank Authority, and other tactics are boosting overall property values in these Hardest-Hit zones by up to 13.8%.
The Hardest Hit zones are defined by a federal program meant to alleviate the scourge of mortgage foreclosure in the nation's hardest-hit cities. The City of Detroit received some $100 million under the program and has devoted that money to blight-removal efforts.
Overall, the study showed an estimated increase in total home equity of more than $209 million following the blight demolitions.
Dynamo Metrics, a small firm based in Detroit and Lansing that does data analysis, performed the study in partnership with the City of Detroit. The report details can be found at DemolitionImpact.org.
This new report is just the latest entry in a growing body of national research that supports the idea that blight removal pays off almost immediately in improved property values and even in crime reduction.
Buy Photo Jason Danneels, an operator engineer, helps pull down houses in the 1500 block of Alter in Detroit Wed., Oct. 7, 2015. A total of ten homes are being taken down erasing eyesores that have plagued the neighborhood for years. (Photo: Regina H. Boone, Detroit Free Press)
Susan Wachter, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania who has studied blight remediation carried out by the nonprofit Philadelphia Green organization in that city, found that vacant-land improvements boosted surrounding home values by as much as 30%, which she called an "astonishingly large impact."
And a 10-year study conducted by the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia found that greening vacant lots reduced gun assaults and other types of crime in those neighborhoods. Residents living near greened lots reported less stress and they exercised more, improving health outcomes.
In one perhaps odd result, the Philadelphia research found that complaints about disorderly conduct rose once trash-strewn lots were cleaned up. But that may mean that neighbors, enjoying the benefits of blight removal, grow less tolerant of rowdy behavior and are more willing to call it in to police.
Similar upbeat findings have been reported in Cleveland when blight removal programs have been studied.
Brian Farkas, head of special projects for the Detroit Building Authority where he oversees the city's demolition efforts, said leaders are thrilled with the results of the survey showing real gains in property values from the city's blight campaign.
"I'd say we're off to a great start," Farkas said last week. "We're clearly not done yet. But we're seeing the needle move in the right areas."
In the past 18 months, the city has demolished about 7,000 blighted structures, concentrating efforts in given areas. Last week, for example, contractors hired by the city demolished 10 eyesore houses near Alter Road and Kercheval on the city's far eastern border with Grosse Pointe Park. Stacy Franklin, 44, a resident who has lived more than 30 years on Alter and saw the neighborhood decline over the years, said she was happy with the clean-up effort.
"I feel wonderful about it. Take away the eyesores," she said.
Demolition is just part of the city's war on blight. Since early 2014, the Detroit Land Bank Authority has closed on 370 properties auctioned to new owners, sold some 2,200 side lots to neighbors, and filed nearly 4,000 nuisance abatement suits against property owners, all according to the new report on property values.
It's a good record, and certainly well ahead of what Detroit was accomplishing in earlier years, but multiple challenges remain. Even at the brisk pace set by the Land Bank and Building Authority, Detroit's blight removal efforts have barely dented the problem. The more than 12,000 properties addressed so far through the various tactics represent no more than perhaps 15% of the total blighted buildings and vacant lots in the city, which total well more than 100,000 eyesore lots and structures.
So much more needs to be done, and money to do it long-term has yet to be identified. The federal Hardest Hit funds are tapped out. Mayor Mike Duggan has been lobbying Washington, D.C., to find a new source of funds.
Buy Photo Stacey Franklin, 44, of Detroit lives along Alter across from a few of the run down homes that have stood in front of her home for years. She is elated that the homes are coming down, but she never let the eyesores bother her. She plants flowers and takes pride in her home that she has lived in since she was nine. Photographed Wed., Oct. 7, 2015. (Photo: Regina H. Boone, Detroit Free Press)
And as the report notes, "Blight is not a static challenge. The cancer continues to grow and spread in areas where it is not being addressed."
But if nothing else, the report on Detroit's efforts supports those who believe spending some of our tax dollars on blight removal pays off not just in the long term but in the immediate here-and-now, too.
"The important thing about this study is that it got away from just thoughts and emotions to actual data driving that this is a good investment," Deb Dansby, vice president of Rock Ventures, said. "Even though it’s early on, it’s really what the city needed to be able to make the case to get the rest of it funded."
Or, to put it another way,rising property values, reduced crime, and more attractive neighborhoods are benefits that everyone can understand.
Contact John Gallagher: 313-222-5173 or gallagher@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @jgallagherfreep.
Read or Share this story: http://on.freep.com/1LmUyQtYou've bought a historic house, but it needs a little (or a lot) of work to turn it into a home. With thoughtful planning and research at the outset, you can ensure that the fix-it stage goes as smoothly as possible. This week’s round-up of toolkits brings you five things to consider as you look to restore or rehabilitate your new old house.
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[10 on Tuesday] 10 Tips for Finding Clues to Your Home’s History from PreservationNation
Before you begin to fix up your historic home, you’ll need to do a little research. Put on your detective cap and look closely at the house inside and out. Make note of changing styles, from floor plans to architecture to paint color. Get 10 ideas of what to look for.
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[10 on Tuesday] Restore vs. Rehabilitate: Which is Right for Your Historic House? from PreservationNation
Restoring a house means returning it to its original form using materials as similar as possible to the original ones. Rehabilitating means repairing the house and making it usable while preserving the historically and culturally significant portions. Find out which approach is right for you.
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[10 on Tuesday] Should You DIY or Hire a Professional? from PreservationNation
For DIYers, there are often many projects to keep you busy when you buy a historic house. For those who may not have the time, many professionals are available to help. No matter which camp you fall in, this toolkit offers a list of various people you can call.
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[10 on Tuesday] How to Plan Your Restoration or Rehabilitation Project from PreservationNation
Regardless of who’s doing the work, there are several important steps to consider when planning the restoration or rehabilitation of your historic home, from analyzing existing conditions to planning what parts of construction happen when. See all 10 steps.
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[10 on Tuesday] How to Keep a Renovation/Rehabilitation Project from Breaking the Bank from PreservationNation
Last but certainly not least, you’ll want to make sure you can afford all the projects you’re planning that will turn your historic house into a home. Before you begin sawing wood or hiring contractors, browse this list of 10 ways to make your dollars go farther.Researchers Say Bath Salts Effect on Brain Similar to Cocaine
Photo: U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA)
Many people are already aware of the danger of ingesting bath salts due to recent reports of people acting like crazed zombies. Several deaths have also been blamed on the bath salt mephedrone (4-methylmethcathinone or "meow-meow"). In the latest incident, a man high on bath salts stripped to his underwear and threatened to eat golfers at an Atlanta golf course. The man reportedly told the golfers, "I'll eat you. I don't want to eat you but I will."The use of the synthetic stimulants collectively known as "bath salts" have gained popularity among recreational drug users over the last five years. Until recently, the stimulants had been readily available and unrestricted via the Internet and at convenience stores. They were also virtually unregulated until recently. In October 2011, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration placed mephedrone on Schedule 1 of the Controlled Substances Act for one year, pending further study. President Obama signed into law legislation passed by Congress to permanently ban the sale of bath salts in the U.S. on July 9th.New research shows that the drug is not only dangerous, but addictive as well. C.J. Malanga, MD, PhD, associate professor of neurology, pediatrics and psychology at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine, has conducted a new study that offers compelling evidence for the first time that mephedrone, like cocaine, does have potential for abuse and addiction.Malanga says, "The effects of mephedrone on the brain's reward circuits are comparable to similar doses of cocaine. As expected our research shows that mephedrone likely has significant abuse liability."A report of the study was published here in the journal. The report's first author and MD/PhD student at UNC J. Elliott Robinson points out that mephedrone and other potentially addictive stimulants "inappropriately activate brain reward circuits that are involved in positive reinforcement. These play a role in the drug 'high' and compulsive drug taking."The bath salts study, conducted on laboratory mice, used intracranial self-stimulation (ICSS), a technique developed in the 1950s that can measure a drug's ability to activate reward circuits. In ICSS studies, animals are trained to perform a behavioral task, such as spinning a wheel, to receive a reward: direct stimulation of the brain pathways involved in reward perception. During the study, adult animals were implanted with brain stimulating electrodes. Measures of their wheel spinning effort were made before, during and after they received various doses of either mephedrone or cocaine. As was expected, cocaine increased the ability of mice to be rewarded by self-stimulation. The researchers found that mephedrone also increased the ability of mice to be rewarded by self-stimulation.Malanga says, "One of the unique features of ICSS is that all drugs of abuse, regardless of how they work pharmacologically, do very similar things to ICSS: they make ICSS more rewarding. Animals work harder to get less of it [ICSS] when we give them these drugs. And what we found, which is new, is that mephedrone does the same thing. It increases the rewarding potency of ICSS just like cocaine does."But in 2015, the women’s team won the World Cup and then embarked on a scheduled 10-city victory tour that yielded an eight-figure bump to U.S. Soccer’s bottom line.
As a result, the women brought in more than $23 million in game revenue, about $16 million more than the federation had projected. An anomaly? Yes. And a welcome one if you are U.S. Soccer.
After expenses, the women turned a profit of $6.6 million last year. The men? Their profit was just under $2 million. Looking ahead, U.S. Soccer’s 2017 budget predicts that trend will be repeated: Expecting another Olympic gold medal, and another victory tour, the federation has forecast a profit of more than $5 million for the women’s team in the next fiscal year (on $17.5 million in revenue).
The men? U.S. Soccer figures they will lose about $1 million this year (on only $9 million in revenue).
The Women Make a Quarter as Much? Really?
Yes and no. According to figures provided by U.S. Soccer, since 2008 it has paid 12 players at least $1 million. Six of those players were men, and six were women. And the women hold their own near the top of the pay scale; the best-paid woman made about $1.2 million from 2008 to 2015, while the top man made $1.4 million in the same period. Some women in the top 10 even made more than their male counterparts over those years. But the numbers diverge down the list. At No. 25, the female player made just under $341,000, and the corresponding male player supplemented his salary by about $580,000. At No. 50, the male player made 10 times as much as his female counterpart.– U.S. Rep. Erik Paulsen said he plans to be on the field for the congressional baseball match on Thursday even as his teammate and roommate, Rep. Steve Scalise, recovers from being shot at a practice for the game.
“It’s more important than ever, I think, that that event take place,” Paulsen told the Star Tribune on Wednesday, a few hours after Scalise and several others were injured by shots from a gunman at baseball field in Alexandria, Va.
Paulsen, a Republican from Minnesota’s Third Congressional District, rooms with Scalise and two other Republican congressmen in Washington, and all play on the Republican baseball team. Paulsen skipped practice Wednesday morning; a few hours later, he visited Scalise at the hospital, after he underwent two surgical procedures. A third surgery was possible, Paulsen said.
The injuries “were more extensive than they thought,” Paulsen said.
Paulsen said he’s played many times at the site where the shooting occurred.
“Having been to that field and seen the layout, you can certainly understand how that situation could have been truly terrible,” said Paulsen. “It could have been a lot worse.”
The room in the shared house with Scalise and two other House Republicans came with one condition, as Paulsen told the Roll Call newspaper back in 2011: He’d have to sign up for the Republican congressional baseball team.
“I had no choice,” Paulsen told the paper. “When I learned my three housemates are very engaged and very competitive and very good as a part of the team, I had to play.”
Minnesota U.S. Rep. Tim Walz, a DFLer, was also scheduled to be on a separate practice field nearby to warm up with the Democrats ahead of Thursday’s big game — Republicans vs. Democrats — but was not there when violence struck. Photos on Twitter showed the Democratic team huddled together in prayer as they received word.
“My prayers go out to the victims of the congressional baseball practice shooting. Thank you to Capitol Police for your heroism and service,” Walz tweeted.
Paulsen said he’d be wearing his Minnesota Twins jersey with a #3 on Thursday; he said his housemates have been known to tease him when he walked in with hockey gear: Why don’t you play an American sport, they’d joke.
The annual game is a fundraiser for the Boys & Girls Clubs.
This isn’t the first time that Paulsen has seen a friend in Congress shot. He was close with U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, D-Ariz., who was shot in the head in 2011 in an attack that killed six people and wounded 15. Giffords resigned from the House the following year. Paulsen met Giffords and her future husband, Mark Kelly, in 2005 during a fellowship program on relations between the U.S. and China, before they served in Washington.
Staff writer Maya Rao contributed to this report.Tree Measuring Guidelines
of the
Eastern Native Tree Society Prepared by Will Blozan, ENTS President, October 2004
Introduction
The Eastern Native Tree Society is a diverse, non-profit group of ecologists, educators, naturalists, and world-renowned canopy researchers dedicated to a better understanding our Eastern forests. Accuracy is the premise of our mission, and ENTS has developed research techniques unmatched by any other institution. Champion trees are a spin-off of our research, and this handout describes our measuring guidelines.
The Eastern Native Tree Society (ENTS) has developed and tested standardized techniques for tree measurements. The ENTS techniques generally follow champion tree guidelines and the results of ENTS measured trees can be submitted to most champion tree lists with no conversions. The most significant difference between ENTS measured trees and those measured via conventional forestry methods is a much higher standard of accuracy. In fact, the “ENTS method” of laser-based tree height measurements is so accurate that it is being employed in height growth monitoring projects by several universities and premier forest ecologists. Perhaps the most important value of the ENTS method is that it is repeatable, a basic premise of any scientific project. Users of the method, with a few minutes of training, can produce measured results within 1% or less of a seasoned ENTS researcher. Seasoned ENTS researchers can measure a tree from the ground to within inches of a direct tape drop. This process takes but a few minutes for most trees. See Figure 4 on page 11 for a discussion of this method.
This handout will discuss the basic premises and assumptions of how to measure a tree and discusses in detail several ways to do it. I will start with the easiest dimensions to obtain- girth and crown spread.
NOTE: This is a draft document and is the sole property of Will Blozan and the Eastern Native Tree Society. Unauthorized copies and distributions are forbidden. For permission to use this document please contact me at:
Will Blozan, President
Eastern Native Tree Society
Girth
Girth is a dimension taken at a point 4.5 feet (BH) above average soil level (A). This measurement is called circumference at breast height (CBH). If a burl or other atypical growth formation is encountered at this point the least distorted girth below this point is used (B); otherwise above BH. When a tree is growing on a slope the girth is taken at a point that is the average of the highest point and the lowest point the tree trunk appears to contact the soil (Mid-slope-C). This mid-slope rule is used to follow the American Forests guidelines for measuring champion trees. In all cases the girth is taken perpendicular to the axis of the trunk at BH, not parallel to the soil. Measured girth is the best approximation of size, since it is a real number, not a calculation based on fictional premises. Even girth has its limitations, as a sinewy or contorted trunk will have lots of hollows and ridges that are not accounted for in the measurement. Diameters calculated from such trees will be overstated (diameter= CBH/ 3.142). For volume measurements, “footprint” maps must be obtained to calculate the “functional” diameter and girth. The functional diameter is always smaller than the calculated diameter.
Figure 1. Girth measurement locations
When most people ask how big a tree is they want to know the diameter, not the girth. Diameter is useful to calculate since it is an attribute readily understood by most people. It also seems to be one of the most overstated dimensions other than height, with many “5-6 foot diameter” trees being closer to 3-4 feet in actual diameter. Lack of an accurate reference is often to blame, as is in the case of overstated heights.
Average crown spread
Average crown spread is obtained by measuring the longest and shortest extent of the crown and averaging the figures. Crown spread is taken independent of trunk position. I measure to the tips of the limbs, not to “notches” in the crown shape. Try for a ninety-degree difference in measuring location.
Figure 2. Measuring crown spread
Average crown spread= (longest + shortest)/2
When measuring crown spread on steep slopes (>15 degrees), it is important to correct the slope distance to horizontal distance to avoid exaggeration. This can easily be accomplished by taking the COSINE function of the angle of the slope in degrees and multiplying it by the slope distance.
Another method is the “Spoke Method”. Ten or more measurements are taken from the midpoint of the trunk to the outer extremities of the crown. These are averaged and the result is the average crown spread. This is the preferred method of |
, Exxon and Boeing are among 144 US firms at the event, the best attendance in years after Washington previously warned business leaders against attending due to political tensions.
While Russia is talking up its recovery, the situation remains precarious and attention will also focus on talk of much-needed reforms to modernise its creaking economy.
But analysts warned that with Putin likely to bid for another term as president in elections next year there are unlikely to be any radical changes.
"Structural changes are necessary but to put them into action is not easy," Russian Finance Minister Anton Siluanov saidThis buff was implemented in all regions on 5/21. For more info, click here.
The double Rift Keystone Fragment buff will end at 5:00 a.m. PT on 5/22. We may bring this fun, but temporary buff back again at some point in the future!
The increased Legendary drop rate does not affect Act-specific Legendary items from Horadric Caches.
Hello folks,I come bearing exciting news. Due to the overwhelming popularity of our Anniversary buff we have decided to keep the increased Legendary drop rate once the two-year anniversary celebration ends. Once the buff is disabled tomorrow morning, you will find that the new base line drop rates for Legendary items will be the same as those you have all enjoyed for the last week.Happy hunting and link the loot!------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Additional details:The Taliban paraded a large convoy of fighters into the district center of Sangin in Helmand province just one month after Resolute Support denied Afghan forces were defeated there. The Taliban force operated openly in the daylight without fear of being targeted by US or Afghan airstrikes.
The Taliban video, simply entitled “Sangin,” was released on Voice of Jihad on May 6. An English-speaking Taliban member narrated the video. When shown, his face is blotted out. According to the Taliban, the video “contains information about the strategic district of Sangin, its conquest by the Mujahideen of Islamic Emirate, barbarity by the foreign forces and the hirelings [Afghan security forces] and the reopening of the bazaar on the first day of the new blessed campaign ‘Operation Mansouri.’ ”
The video showed scores of vehicles, including several US-made Humvees, laden with Taliban fighters entering Sangin’s district center. The Taliban fighters were greeted by hundreds if not thousands of Afghans, while Taliban flags waved throughout the town. A large banner announcing Operation Mansouri, the group’s newly announced spring offensive, is hanging at the entrance to the town.
According to the Taliban, key buildings in the town, including a hospital, were destroyed during US airstrikes on March 22. The Taliban claimed it rebuilt and reopened the bazaar for the commencement of Operation Mansouri, which was announced on April 28.
The Taliban seized Sangin’s district center on March 22 after surrounding it for several months, and hailed its capture as an important victory. US and Afghan warplanes bombed Sangin’s district center after airlifting the remaining forces during the dead of night.
Resolute Support, NATO’s mission in Afghanistan, denied that the Taliban overran Sangin, and instead claimed it relocated the district center several kilometers from the original site. In a statement that clumsily attempted to salvage the loss of Sangin’s district center, Resolute Support said that “the only thing they left to the Taliban is rubble and dirt.”
The Taliban video told a different story. While some buildings appeared heavily damaged, and the Taliban attempted to use this damage as propaganda to portray the “barbarity” of US and Afghan forces, much of Sangin remained intact.
Additionally, the Taliban video showed that more than a month after Afghan forces lost Sangin, and despite the relocation of the “new” district center just kilometers away, the Taliban can still flaunt a large force with little fear of reprisal.
For more information the Taliban takeover of Sangin, see the following reports from FDD’s Long War Journal: Taliban takes key district in Helmand province, Resolute Support spins loss of Sangin district center as a victory, and Capturing Sangin an ‘important victory,’ Taliban says
Images from the Taliban video “Sangin”
Bill Roggio is a Senior Fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and the Editor of FDD's Long War Journal.
Are you a dedicated reader of FDD's Long War Journal? Has our research benefitted you or your team over the years? Support our independent reporting and analysis today by considering a one-time or monthly donation. Thanks for reading! You can make a tax-deductible donation here.SEOUL, South Korea -- South Korea said Wednesday that it would suspend operations at a joint industrial park with North Korea in response to the North's recent rocket launch, the first time in the park's decade of operation that Seoul has halted work there.
Kim Jong Un orders rocket launch
The move comes after North Korea on Sunday launched a long-range rocket considered by other countries to be a banned missile technology test.
South Korean Unification Minister Hong Yong-pyo said at a news conference that the suspension of operations at the industrial complex in the North Korean border city of Kaesong would stop the North from using hard currency earned there to develop nuclear and missile technology.
The park, which started operations in 2005, has provided 616 billion won ($560 million) of cash to North Korea, Hong said.
South Korea's government will provide financial compensation to companies that operate at Kaesong, Hong said. It will begin pulling South Koreans from the park on Thursday.
There was no immediate reaction to the move from North Korea.
The park is the last major cooperation project between the rival countries. Combining South Korean initiative, capital and technology with the North's cheap labor, it has been seen as a test case for reunification. Last year, 124 South Korean companies hired 54,000 North Korean workers to produce socks, wristwatches and other goods.
South Korea's government and companies invested more than 1 trillion won ($852 million) to pave roads and erect buildings in the zone, which lies in a guarded, gated complex on the outskirts of Kaesong, North Korea's third-largest city.
South Korean companies in Kaesong survived during past periods of tensions that led to the suspension of other inter-Korean projects. A major interruption to the park's operation happened in 2013, when North Korea pulled out its workers in protest of South Korea's joint military drills with the United States.
Japan, meanwhile, announced Wednesday that it would impose new sanctions on North Korea to protest the rocket launch. Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga said the sanctions would be approved by the Cabinet later, and would also require legislative changes in parliament.
Suga did not elaborate on the specific sanctions Japan was looking to impose, or what sector of North Korea's economy they would target.
The U.S. government is still deliberating it's response to North Korea's recent actions, but is pushing allies in the region hard to send a strong, unified message with harsh sanctions imposed by the United Nations Security Council.
Any U.N. sanctions would on top of the unilateral measures taken by individual nations.
For their part, U.S. senators are expected to vote on Wednesday on a sanctions package that targets North Korea's ability to access the money it needs for developing miniaturized nuclear warheads and the long-range missiles to deliver them, according to the legislation's backers.
The House overwhelmingly approved a similar measure last month and there is strong bipartisan support in the Senate for the North Korea Sanctions and Policy Enhancement Act.
"The kind of belligerence we've seen from Pyongyang must not be ignored," Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Kentucky Republican, said Tuesday.For Immediate Release
Attorney General nominee hostile to Second Amendment rights
WASHINGTON, D.C. — America’s third-largest political party urged the Senate Wednesday to reject the nomination of Eric Holder to be Attorney General, citing his record of hostility to Second Amendment rights.
‘The Attorney General is expected to defend our Constitutional rights, not infringe them,’ said Libertarian Party spokesman Donny Ferguson, ‘Americans value the precious rights protected by the Second Amendment, and they demand the Senate reject this nomination.’
Nominated by President Barack Obama to lead the Justice Department, Holder earned the ire of gun rights groups while Deputy Attorney General under then-President Bill Clinton, from 1997 to 2000.
Holder supported mandatory licensing and registration of gun owners, banning certain types of legal ammunition, waiting periods for handgun purchases, restricting law-abiding gun owners to purchase only one gun a month and regulations intended to drive gun shows out of existence.
Holder was also a key figure in a 2000 attempt by the Clinton administration to sue several firearms manufacturers who did not agree to restrict certain lawful sales, despite the fact Congress earlier rejected such proposed rules.
The companies were told the government lawsuits would be dropped if they agreed to restrict certain sales to lawful purchasers and stop manufacturing certain types of legal firearms. Only one, Smith & Wesson, agreed.
Holder also sided against gun rights in the Supreme Court’s 2008 District of Columbia v. Heller case seeking to overturn Washington, D.C.’s gun control laws. In a brief, Holder argued the Second Amendment confers collective rights on the government and does not protect individual rights of Americans. The Court ruled otherwise, declaring gun ownership to be an individual right.
For more information on this issue, or to arrange an interview with the Libertarian Party, please call Director of Communications Donny Ferguson at (202) 333-0008, x. 225 or e-mail Donny.Ferguson@lp.org.
The Libertarian Party is America’s third-largest political party, founded in 1971 as an alternative to the two main political parties. You can find more information on the Libertarian Party by visiting www.LP.org. The Libertarian Party proudly stands for smaller government, lower taxes and more freedom.Guitarist says he's available for new projects
Blur guitarist Graham Coxon has spoken about the recently-reunited band’s near future, stating that they have no current plans.
The Britpop band reconvened in 2015 for their first album release in 12 years. Their comeback album ‘The Magic Whip’ was the first Blur album to feature Coxon since 1999.
With their ‘Magic Whip’ tour commitments concluding, Coxon told NME at the NME Awards 2016 with Austin, Texas that the band have “no plans” and that he is “available” for new projects.
“I think the four individual members are kind of just free form at the moment,” Coxon said.
“I’m woodshedding. Damon’s busy, he’s doing a load of things, Alex and David are doing stuff… but collectively, there’s no plans”.
Coxon then joked: “I’m just waiting for phone calls from anyone, you know… I’m just sitting in my woodshed practising acoustic guitar. But I’m available”.
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Blur won Best Music Film at the NME Awards 2016 with Austin, Texas for their band documentary ‘New World Towers’.
The film fought off tough competition from Amy, Montage Of Heck and Straight Outta Compton.Google has won a significant legal challenge against efforts by the French government to recover €1.1bn (£970m) in back taxes.
At issue was the tech firm's use of its Irish subsidiary to book revenues it gained in France between 2005 and 2010.
It was accused by the authorities of using an illegal loophole to escape higher corporate taxes but the French court ruled Google Ireland Limited was not taxable in the country.
It represents a blow to the French authorities who had vowed to secure a big sum from Google by applying the law after the UK negotiated a deal.
It was announced in January last year that the company would pay £130m in back-taxes to HM Revenue & Customs at an effective tax rate of 3%.
That deal - heavily criticised by Labour and other political opponents as too low - was hailed a "major success" by-then Chancellor George Osborne, who argued the multi-national firm was among many paying nothing when he took office.
Italy got more - £272m - when it held similar negotiations with Google this year.
The Paris court ruling was seen as damaging the ambition of new French President Emmanuel Macron to hold major international firms to account for any cheating.
It was also potentially damaging to a separate tax fraud investigation in France against Google, which - like rivals - has faced regulatory scrutiny over activities in the wider EU.
Just last month, the European Commission ordered it to pay a record fine of £2.1bn for abusing its dominance as a search engine to boost its shopping comparison service.
Google responded by saying it "respectfully disagreed" with the ruling and would consider an appeal.
Last year, European competition chief Margrethe Vestager ordered Apple to repay £11bn in back taxes in Ireland - a verdict that prompted both the company and country to appeal.Yayzors, horsies.
I know that when you first start reading, it’s hard to hold a narrative thread through a longer post, but give this one a try – 6 short paragraphs, all of them very straightforward. This one has mostly very beginner language, with a couple of intermediate or upper-intermediate words. The grammar, rather than the vocab, is probably the hard part of this post, which is an great survey of every basic Chinese sentence structure. If you can read this, your foundation in Chinese grammar is very solid.
A few notable points:
他过的很快乐，时光飞快地过去了。
I figure that might be confusing for new readers, since there are two different uses of the word 过 guò here. I tend to find that the easiest way to remember what 过 means in every context is that it almost always means either “past” or “pass”, or one of many variations thereon. Let’s look a few usages of 过.
1) In the most common usage, the one we see earliest in our learning, 过, when used after an action, means that the action has “been done before”, or “has been done in the past”, as in “Have you ever been to Shanghai (in the past)?” （你去过上海吗?), or “Have you ever eaten this type of fish (in the past)?” (你吃过这种鱼吗?).
2) Usage two, 过去, means “to pass by”, as in “The days passed one by one” (一关一天就过去了).
3) Usage three, also 过去, means “The Past”, a noun, as in the opposite of the future. “To forget the past is a betrayal.” (忘记过去，就意味着背叛)
4) The fourth usage is “to pass (time)”, or “to pass one’s days” (过日子), or to “How were you [how did you pass] the last few days?” (这些天过得怎么样？).
5) Another 过去 – to “pass across”, “to cross” (as in a river or street).
6) 过去 “to pass by” (someone or something).
And on and on. In our sentence here, we’re using #4 first, and then #2.
他过的很快乐，时光飞快地过去了。
“He passed [his days] very happily, time flew past.”
Make sense? Hope so, because several different usages of 过去 come up in this post, so keep an eye out.
One more thing:
咱们 zán men. This means “us” or “we”. I know, I know, you learned that 我们 means “us” and “we”, and it does. 咱们 only refers to “us” and “we” when the speaker is including the person they’re talking to. So 咱们 means really “You and I”, not “we”. Confusing, right? Here are some examples：
我们： “Sorry, you can’t come with us, we’re going to see a movie alone.” (The person being spoken to is not included in the “we”.)
咱们： “Why don’t we see a movie this afternoon?” （The speaker is including the person spoken to in the “we”.)
我们： “I’ll call you as soon as we get back.” (The person being spoken to is not included in the “we”.)
咱们： “What should we do when we get back?” （The speaker is including the person spoken to in the “we”.)
我们： “We’re not home right now, leave a message!” (The person being spoken to is not included in the “we”.)
咱们： “We could go home right now and check the messages.” （The speaker is including the person spoken to in the “we”.)young Thoreau
cabin at Walden
Thoreau, age 43
Sculpture by Daniel Altshuler
(baptized) was born on July 12, 1817 in Concord, Massachusetts, to John Thoreau and Cynthia Dunbar. He was the third of four children. He was named after a recently deceased paternal uncle, David Thoreau, but since everyone always called him Henry, he eventually changed his name to Henry David, although he never petitioned to make a legal name change. Henry's father was a businessman and active in the Concord Fire Society. His mother spent her time raising Henry and his three siblings, Helen, John and Sophia.When Thoreau was sixteen, he entered Harvard College, where he was known as a serious though unconventional scholar. Henry's older siblings, Helen and John, Jr., were both schoolteachers. When it was decided that their brother should go to Harvard, as had his grandfather before him, they contributed from their teaching salaries to help pay his expenses. While at college, Thoreau studied Latin and Greek grammar and composition, and took classes in a wide variety of subjects, including mathematics, English, history, philosophy, and four different modern languages. During his Harvard years he was exposed to the writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson, who later became his chief mentor and friend.After graduating in 1837 and into the early 1840s Thoreau was occupied as a schoolteacher and tutor. A canoe trip in 1839 convinced him that he should not persue a schoolteacher's career but should instead aim to become established as a poet of nature. In 1841 he was invited to live in the Emerson household, where he remained intermittently until 1843. He served as handyman and assistant to Emerson, helping to edit and contributing poetry and prose to the transcendentalist magazine,Thoreau came to consider that he needed time and space to apply himself as a writer and on July 4, 1845, he moved into a small self-built house in a second-growth forest around the shores of Walden Pond. He stayed there for two years, two months and two days, sometimes traveling into Concord for supplies and eating with his family about once a week. Friends and family also visited him at his cabin, where he spent nearly every night. While at Walden, Thoreau did an incredible amount of reading and writing, and also spent much time sauntering in nature.In July 1846, when Thoreau went into town to have a pair of shoes repaired, he was arrested for refusing to pay a poll tax meant to support America's war in Mexico. He spent a night in jail. His most famous essay,(published 1849), which in its call for passive resistance to unjust laws was to inspire Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr., was a result of this experience. The journal he kept at Walden became the source of his most famous book,(1854), in which he set forth his ideas on how an individual should best live to be attuned to his own nature as well as to nature itself.Thoreau left Walden Pond on September 6, 1847. After that, he resided again in Emerson's house (1847–49) and then for the rest of his life in his family home. He occasionally worked at the pencil factory and did some surveying work. He also traveled to Canada, Cape Cod, and Maine - landscapes that inspired his "excursion" books -, and. By the 1850s he had become greatly concerned over slavery, and, having met John Brown in 1857, wrote passionately in his defence.Aware that he was dying of tuberculosis, Thoreau cut short his travels and returned to Concord, where he prepared some of his journals for publication. Although he never earned a substantial living by his writings, his works fill 20 volumes.Thoreau died of tuberculosis on May 6, 1862, at the age of 44. He is buried on Authors' Ridge in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery in Concord, Massachusetts.When I was applying to graduate school for clinical psychology, of course I went looking for websites with tips on how to apply. I found plenty of sites on how to apply to graduate school, and how to apply to psychology programs, but clinical psychology is unique – it’s highly competitive compared to other fields of psychology, and the application process and graduate study in the field are different in many ways.
After giving out lots of advice on how to apply, I wanted to inform more people about my personal experiences, tips, resources, and discoveries I made along the way (along with some input from my friends!). I decided to try my hand at a website.
Feel free to contact me at any time with questions or comments.Become a certified badass. Abducted by a race of hostile aliens, Lt. Kai Tana must use her quick reflexes and the teleporting power of the Quarp Jet to free her fellow prisoners and find a way home. Swapping back and forth between top-down vertical shoot ‘em up and side-scrolling action platformer, Velocity 2X blends two unique styles of fast-paced, frenetic gameplay into one incredible experience. - High-energy Adventure: Players must pilot the Quarp Jet through dangerous territory, using a variety of weapons and teleporting technology. Then dock your ship and advance through side-scrolling missions to defeat the evil alien race from within! - Speed Runner’s Dream: Use Speed Boost pads, on-foot teledash and cybernetic sprints to make it through the game faster! - Over 50 Dynamic Levels: Using the Quarp technology, navigate Lt. Tana through hours of gameplay that increases in speed and difficulty as you advance. - High Re-playability: Compete against your friends to see who can have the top score! Ranked leaderboards let speed runners compete for fastest time, highest completion percentage and highest overall score! - Neon Future: Take players to the stars with colorfully bold visual effects and a pulsing electronic soundtrack co-created by award-winning game composer Joris de Man. - NEW FEATURE Daily Challenge: Come back daily for exclusive new maps, complete with their own leaderboards! - Dual Core & Critical Urgency DLC Packs Included: 16 additional mind-melting levels to master advanced techniques!
Show MoreThe Treasury Department paid $220,000 to settle a lawsuit brought by a former congressional staffer alleging sexual harassment by Rep. Alcee Hastings, D-Fla., it was reported Friday.
According to Roll Call, which cited documents related to the case, Winsome Packer alleged that Hastings touched her inappropriately and made unwanted sexual advances. On one occasion, Packer said Hastings asked her what kind of underwear she was wearing.
The former Republican Hill staffer alleged that the harassment occurred while she worked for the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE), also known as the Helsinki Commission. The commission, which helps shape U.S. policy in Europe, includes nine members of the House and nine members of the Senate. Hastings, 81, is one of the commission's ranking members.
HASTINGS HAS PAID CONVICTED MONEY-LAUNDERER $75,000 FOR 'PART-TIME' WORK IN DISTRICT OFFICE
In a statement, Hastings said had not seen the settlement agreement between Packer and the CSCE until the Roll Call report came out.
"At no time was I consulted, nor did I know until after the fact that such a settlement was made," Hastings said. "I am outraged that any taxpayer dollars were needlessly paid to Ms. Packer."
Roll Call reported that Packer sued Hastings and the CSCE in 2011 under a federal statute that allows individuals to seek damages from federal officials for civil rights violations. Hastings' name was dropped from the lawsuit the following year after he argued that the statute did not apply to members of Congress.
The House Ethics Committee conducted a separate investigation into Hastings, which it closed in December 2014. The committee concluded that Hastings "did admit to certain conduct that was less than professional," but the most serious charges against him "were not supported by evidence."
The claim against Hastings came to light on the same day that Rep. Trent Franks, Ariz., announced he would resign from Congress with immediate effect. Franks' resignation followed a claim by a former aide that the congressman repeatedly asked her to carry his child, at one point offering her $5 million to do so.
Click for more from Roll Call.
Fox News' Chad Pergram contributed to this report.QUITO, Ecuador (AFP) - A court in Ecuador sentenced the crew of a Chinese ship caught fishing endangered sharks in the Galapagos marine reserve to prison terms on Sunday (Aug 27).
The Chinese-flagged Fu Yuan Yu Leng 999 was caught within the protected zone on Aug 13 with 300 tonnes of fish - including some 6,000 sharks, mostly protected species such as the hammerhead and the bigeye thresher.
The court announced on the third day of the trial against the crew that it was sentencing the ship captain to four years' prison for committing an environmental crime with aggravating circumstances.
The ship's three top officers got three years' prison, while the 16 other crew members were jailed for one year.
The court also ordered the crew to pay US$5.9 million (S$8 million) to the Galapagos National Park.
It's unclear if the Chinese crew will appeal the sentence.
"After the enormous indignation we felt, this will definitely compensate for the damage caused because a historic precedent has been set," park director Walter Bustos said upon hearing the sentence.
The 138,000 square kilometre reserve, a sanctuary for sharks, has been designated by Unesco as a World Heritage site.
Some 27,000 people live on the 19 Galapagos islands, located in the Pacific some 1,000 kilometres off Ecuador's coastline.
The Galapagos is famous for its unique flora and fauna studied by Charles Darwin as he developed his theory of evolution.
"Zero tolerance for environmental crimes!" tweeted Ecuador's Environment Minister Tarcisio Granizo.
The Chinese ship has been confiscated and will be held in service to the Galapagos park, Mr Granizo said.
Galapagos residents have been protesting what they say is a fleet of 300 Chinese fishing vessels located in international waters just outside the marine reserve.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
WHILE Pepe Reina fluttered his eyelashes at Barcelona last week, team-mate Luis Suarez went one step further and pretty much raised his skirt to Real Madrid, pleading ‘take me, take me!’
His brazen behaviour elicited an understandably outraged reaction amongst the Reds fan base, with the majority asking for Suarez to simply be open and honest about his future ambitions.
Except honesty isn’t always the best policy.
Thirty-six years ago a truly magnificent Liverpool number seven was commendably candid about wanting to leave Liverpool, offered 12 months notice of his intention to quit – and even signed off with a European Cup winning performance.
But it wasn’t an amicable parting.
Ivan Ponting’s wonderful Player by Player volume recalled: “Sadly, but perhaps inevitably, there was bitterness on Merseyside when Kevin announced his decision to take his talents to Europe.
“Having been honest enough to give a full season’s notice of his intention, he endured, with commendable dignity, the cooling of the Kop’s ardour and perfidious jibes about his so-called greed.
“How short were the memories of such mealy mouthed critics, and how blindly they lashed out at a man who had given no more than half a dozen below-par performances in as many years at Anfield.”
Kevin Keegan had been adored by the Kop – but the greater the love, the greater the sense of betrayal.
The banner which greeted Luis Figo when he returned to the Nou Camp in Real Madrid white on November 24, 2002 said it all: “We hate you so much, because we loved you so much.”
Luis Suarez has been loved so much by the Reds.
And there will be no easy exit for him whenever he chooses to end his Anfield reign.
Seventh heaven to seven deadly sins
FROM seventh heaven, to seven deadly sins.
Liverpool’s revered number seven shirt has suffered a dramatic slide over the past 20 years.
Heaven? The vibrant explosiveness of Keegan, the mercurial majesty of Dalglish, the occasionally unappreciated genius of Beardsley.
Hell? How about Speedie, Saunders, Clough, Smicer, Kewell and Keane, the men who followed.
So in which category does the current incumbent reside?
In terms of talent, Luis Suarez is right up there with the very greatest number sevens in the club’s history. In terms of legacy... he’s currently heading for Fernando Torres territory.A Bayside sweet spot has closed up shop for good.
Ralph’s Famous Italian Ices of Bayside, located at 214-15 41st Ave., off Bell Boulevard, has shuttered its doors. In a statement posted on the business Facebook page on March 24, the owners broke the news to the community.
“It is sad to say but we are closing the Bayside Ralph’s,” reads the post, signed by Nina and Joe. “We want to thank you for your loyal patronage. And while we might not know your names we certainly knew many of you and we will miss catching up with you. And did we not have the best crew in the world? Good bye [sic], Bayside.”
The spot operated seasonally, opening in March and closing sometime in the autumn months. Residents quickly chimed in on the Facebook thread to express their disappointment.
“Ralph’s will be so missed!!” wrote Jeanne Tassaro. “And yes, you had the best crew ever. Best of luck to you all.”
“Where am I gonna get my crazy coconut now???” wrote Andrew Kum, who added a photo of the sweet treat to his comment.
The business was also reported as closed on Yelp.
The spot, a franchise location of Ralph’s Italian Ices, was known for its water and creme ices, fruit smoothies, signature sundaes and iceberg — a smoothie with soft-serve ice cream on top.
Bayside residents willing to travel a bit further to satisfy their sweet tooth can find the nearest Ralph’s Ices spot using their store locator.Journeying across the North American landscape, The Culture High is the riveting story that tears into the very fiber of modern day marijuana prohibition to reveal the truth behind the arguments and motives governing both those who support and oppose the existing pot laws. With budgets to fight the war reaching billions and arrests for simple possession sky rocking to nearly a million annually, the debate over marijuana’s legality has reached epic proportions. Utilizing the quirky yet profound nature of its predecessor, The Union: The Business Behind Getting High, The Culture High raises the stakes with some of todays biggest names, unprecedented access to footage previously unobtainable, and incredibly moving testimonials from both sides of the spectrum. Top celebrities, former undercover agents, university professors and a slew of unforgettable characters from all points of view come together for an amusing yet insightful portrait of cannabis prohibition and the grasp it has on society as a whole. The Culture High will strip search the oddity of human nature and dare to ask the question: What exactly is going on here?
Available Oct 17, 2014Hot on the heels of the iPad mini being jailbroken, well-known developer and iOS hacker Chpwn has announced that he has hacked his iPad 4. Both tablets officially went on sale last Friday.
As Chpwn points out, Cydia doesn’t look any different on the fourth generation iPad than it did on its predecessor. But the fact that it’s been jailbroken is actually pretty significant…
The new iPad features a handful of improvements over the previous model, including an upgraded FaceTime camera, the new Lightning port, and of course, Apple’s new A6X processor.
Though Chpwn’s jailbreak will remain a failbreak — meaning it won’t be released publicly in an effort to find more exploits — it’s a really good sign that it works on the iPad 4’s new chipset.
If you’re keeping score, the iPhone 5 and both of the new iPads have now been jailbroken, giving the Dev Team and others good starting points for developing public jailbreaks for the devices.
If you want to know more about the current state of the jailbreak, we have a full rundown of the situation here. And as always, we’ll let you know as soon as we find out more information.The 1988 B-sci-fi/horror Killer Klowns from Outer Space is one of my favorite 80’s horror flicks. It’s pure fun and embraces its wonderful cheesiness in every way possible. Plus, it has some of the creepiest yet most badass looking killer clowns ever to be seen on celluloid.
Talks of a sequel have been happening for a while with no real new information coming forward. However, that’s changing today as Stephen Chiodo, the director and one of the original film’s writers, has spoken on the Movie Crypt Podcast and explained that the title could be given new life in the form of a TV series!
Right now, we are currently pursuing a long arch series for cable. We wondered, should we do a sequel to the first one or do we do a remake? We came up with a ‘requel’ – it’s a sequel and a remake. We’ve been developing this for a while. It’s a trilogy in four parts, and it really follows the continuing adventures of new people who are experiencing this phenomenon of a Klown invasion, and once in a while you see some of the old guys pop up and hear their stories – find out what happened over the last 25 years. It’s fucking great.
To say that I’m somewhat puzzled by the conflicting statements here is an understatement. A four-part trilogy? The math doesn’t add up there. A sequel/remake? It’s kinda been done but it just seems to confuse people. A long-running series on cable? Let’s hope the audiences turn up to get renewals locked down!
As much as I question Chiodo’s explanation, my excitement for the return of the Killer Klowns completely outweighs all of that! Bring me some human-infused cotton candy, some monstrous popcorn, and an acidic pie because I’m ready to face the carnival!
[H/T iHorror]What’s in a brand positioning statement?
In clear terms, it defines your company’s direction… and actually acts as a compass through growth opportunities and changing market conditions. It is the critical platform for all communications. Without direction or focus, the brand goes…. absolutely everywhere… and not in a good way!
It seems very easy to create… A few words that speak volumes. How difficult can it be? More to the matter, how significant is a positioning statement? Positioning Statements, or in the case of Consumer Packaged Brands, slogans, have been at the heart of advertising sell copy since the inception of mass selling.
It is an important component of your marketing initiative… if not the most important. Positioning is not just a fluffy marketing word… it defines and identifies your Brand/Business. A brand positioning statement eloquently states your brand’s “stake in the sand”. Moreover, it expresses “This is who I am, this is what I do, this is what and how I deliver”. In basic marketing practice, the easiest way to describe a positioning statement is that it announces to the world what makes your brand stand out above the rest and how you do that in a very succinct message.
Keep your brand/business on track with a powerful positioning statement. So how do you go about developing one?
A good marketing exercise to do prior to attempting to create your own positioning statement is to look at the brands that have successful taglines and try to identify the key messages that the tagline promotes. Ask yourself if the statement is relevant to what the brand promises, or the product delivers….or if it speaks to the service the business provides. View the positioning statement in rewind. You’ll find that the good positioning statements easily reflect the market, the target and the benefit of each brand or business. Here are some to get you started: McCain “It’s all good TM”campaign, “i’m lovin’ it”, an international branding campaign by McDonald’s Corporation (they incorporated it with their logo), and Scotiabank “You’re richer than you think”.
In this new world of do-it-yourself marketing and branding, many start-up companies go at developing a brand positioning statement on their own. Often those positioning statements end up being descriptors of the brand. Like the warning copy on an Evil Knievel daredevil act, I urge you not try this at home… and alone!
Here are the must haves of a positioning statement, in no particular order:
1) The Promise: Must state what we offer.
2) The Benefit: Must clearly identify what’s in it for them.
3) Personality: Must reflect the culture and brand voice.
4) Originality/Uniqueness: Must be a thing of beauty and joy.
5) Simplicity: Must be so succinct as to inspire a “wow”.
6) Longevity…. it must be there for the long haul.
What better way to demonstrate the importance of clearly stating the benefit simply within a positioning statement than with the Muppets! Watch this video clip from the Muppets Take Manhattan movie, for Ocean Breeze Soap. The message is bang on!
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Does your positioning statement have what it takes to direct your brand’s destiny?In the months following Gov. Rick Perry’s failed run for president, his campaign committee spent nearly $1.3 million of left over cash on expenses ranging from travel and parking to financial and political consulting, according to a report from Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.
Perry, who dropped out of the race last January, continued to use $1,291,755 from his committee Rick |
’s got a few new aches, but nothing pressing. He considers them, looking up into the sky as he works. Their bench sits at the edge of an open athletic field, with summer-lush woods behind, but there are no birds. A football lies abandoned, one end crumpled inward, a few yards away. “How long will we be waiting?”
“As long as we need to.” She finishes reassembling her gun and hefts it briefly. There is something brittle and flinty in her movements. “I don’t really know.”
Another pause. Jim stills his hands, resting them on his knees. The park’s stillness is a lead weight against his temples. “And we’re the last ones?”
“Maybe. As far as we know.” Madeline won’t meet his eyes.
“Then this could be futile. 055 could already have won.”
Madeline whips around to glare at him, her whole posture suddenly lit with desperate ferocity. “Don’t!” she snaps. “Don’t talk like that! We can’t think like that! We don’t know anything else we can be doing — for Christ’s sake, Jim, we can’t remember ten minutes ago. We could be the last thing keeping the world alive, for all you know!”
“Okay!” He pulls his head back as if struck, raising his hands. “Okay. We’ll stay. As long as we need to.”
“As long as we need to.” She gives a firm, sharp nod, a peck from a raptor beak. Jim doesn’t dare contradict her.
Then she nods again, softer, and suddenly uncertain. Again, barely moving her head, staring around herself in sudden confusion. “Jim? What the — What are we doing here?”
Jim’s throat clenches tight, stopping his voice and breath. She’s forgotten again. Just as he will, in another few minutes.
“055, Madeline. Remember agreeing that something wasn’t round?”“If you always vote for the lesser of two evils, you will always have evil, and you will always have less.” — Ralph Nader
In his time as a consumer advocate, Ralph Nader probably saved more American lives than any soldier or doctor in history. He is the reason why our highways have guardrails, our cars have shatterproof windshields, our meat is regulated heavily against contamination, our government enforces its own transparency, our air is safe to breathe and our workplaces are sanitary. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration he helped create has reduced the rate of deaths per mile driven by 80 percent, saving more than 3.5 million lives over the past 50 years. Nader was and is a true American hero. In 2000, Nader ran for president. As a candidate, he offered a platform similar to that of U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, D-VT, today, arguing that there was “too much power and wealth in too few hands.”
But Nader’s campaign differed significantly from Sanders’: Nader ran as a Green party candidate. Nader did not have the support of the political machine. Throughout the election, Nader was marginalized by critics who argued that a vote for Nader was a vote wasted. When election day came, Nader received just 3 percent of the popular vote.
But when he lost the election, he also lost the support of liberal America. Nader was vilified and ridiculed, accused of “spoiling the vote” by siphoning crucial votes away from Al Gore and ushering George W. Bush into office (something which has since been proven untrue). The Great Joe Biden said “Nader cost us the election.” A New York Times piece shortly after the election reported “Other Democrats argued that if Mr. Bush won the election, Mr. Nader should be held responsible for jeopardizing the wellbeing of gays and lesbians, minorities and the poor, women and organized labor.” Because of his party affiliation, Nader became a pariah, a scapegoat for the incompetence of Gore — a man who couldn’t even win his own state — on the campaign trail.
The true progressive, Nader understood, had no place in a Democratic Party that gave the appearance of “change” as it simultaneously rigged its own elections with superdelegates and subsisted on corporate financing. The true progressive, Nader understood, needed a third party outside of an establishment that proved itself immune to reform and unable to stymie its insatiable love affair with the war industry, big oil, Wall Street and free trade agreements. No, Nader would never consider becoming a cog in the machine.
Sanders’ appeal is that he isn’t an establishment Democrat, that he is outside of the bought-out corporate party. But Sanders, despite being elected to Congress as an Independent, sold his soul to the Democratic Party long ago. Despite the Eugene Debs poster in his office, he has strayed from socialism on many occasions. He backed economic sanctions that killed more than a million Iraqi civilians; voted for the racist 1994 Federal Crime Bill (which he ironically denounces today) and supported Bill Clinton’s presidential run in 1992 and then again in 1996 after he eviscerated welfare, deregulated Wall Street, passed NAFTA and doubled the number of federal prisoners. In 2005, Sanders was endorsed by U.S. Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-NY, chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, meaning that no Democrat running against Sanders would receive financial help from the Democratic National Committee.
Sanders talks a big talk, a looming rhetoric of “political revolution,” but when asked why he would not run as an Independent, he responded “I don’t want to end up like Ralph Nader.”
Sanders wants revolution but only the type that keeps his job security safe and his legacy intact. Sanders is not Nader; he is ignorant to the fact that revolution can only come when corporate politics are disemboweled, when Democratic and Republican parties are left to rot. Revolution does not simply mean vapid rhetoric about the indictment of a few Wall Street executives; it must mean the destruction of a political system funded by the fossil fuel industry and an end to the Espionage Act; it must mean severe cuts to the military and its surveillance apparatus and punishment for war criminals like Dick Cheney.
At the end of the day, Sanders is a pawn of the Democratic party. He will not win. When he loses to Hillary Clinton in the primary, he will endorse her, and he will have done his role: legitimizing the Democratic party as progressive, uncorrupted and unbeholden to corporate interests.
The two main parties are two sides of the same coin, institutions overseen carefully by elites fraudulently promising fictions of democracy and peddling neoliberalism, imperialism and ecocidal unfettered growth as the answer to our woes. The difference between voting for a Democrat and a Republican is the difference between driving off of a cliff at 45 miles per hour and driving off of a cliff at 75 miles per hour. We need a third party (and probably a fourth one, too). I understand that the Green party is not an appealing option. It has been debilitated by first-past-the post, its inability to enter into political debates and the fact that it is kept off of the ballot in many states.
When the general election comes, Sanders will be gone, and again we will be forced to choose between two evils. We will have to cast ballots not for the candidate who represents our values, but for the candidate who demonstrates the most sanity. For this reason that I urge you to vote for Jill Stein, the Green party candidate, in the general election. Her campaign platform calls for many of the same things that Sanders calls for in his own campaign. In fact, the Green party has called for these things for years but has not received mainstream media attention because money and the establishment control politics. Stein presents an alternative from the D’s and the R’s, Charybdis and Scylla.
Stein differs from Sanders mainly in that she is not working to win the presidency necessarily but to meaningfully check the power of the two existing parties. She is working toward revolution and a system that values viewpoints and ideas over party affiliations and corporate donors. Stein sees a political system that “is extremely corrupt. It serves the interests of oligarchy. It subjugates (people, planet and peace) to profit.”
I know many of you are still unconvinced; many of you might argue that voting for Stein will spoil the election and give it to Trump or U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-TX. But for most of you, your vote probably doesn’t count anyways if you vote for an establishment candidate. If you live in a state that is strongly Democrat or strongly Republican, your vote is wasted because the electoral college system is winner-take-all. Clinton (or Sanders, I guess) will win Rhode Island even if 75,000 Democrats vote Green in the general election. If you see the need for a third party or your views are more in line with Stein than Clinton in an uncontested state, there is no need to vote for Clinton to keep the Republican out. You ought to vote for Stein! The cliff is imminent, especially considering that Trump might take the wheel.
Glenn Yu ’19 can be reached at glenn_yu@brown.edu. Please send responses to this opinion to letters@browndailyherald.com and other op-eds to opinions@browndailyherald.com.Wisdom's Children The Unity of Beowulf: Tolkien and the Critics by Bill Ramey As Lewis E. Nicholson notes, J. R. R. Tolkien's article "Beowulf: The Monsters and The Critics" is "widely recognized as a turning point in Beowulfian criticism" (x). Of course, this turning point does not mean that later critics agree with Tolkien's complete assessment of Beowulf, but it does mean that they accept a key point made by Tolkien: Beowulf is a fine poem and a unified one at that. The mark of Tolkien's impact is that critics before him regard Beowulf as a less than unified work, more important for its historical and philological content than its literary merit, and critics after him regard Beowulf as a unified work of art. For example, of the critics who discuss the poem as a whole in An Anthology of Beowulf Criticism, most agree pace Tolkien that Beowulf is a unified poem, even if they argue so on different grounds. Burton Raffel's introduction to his own translation offers a particularly exuberant example of post-Tolkien Beowulf criticism: [W]e are remarkably lucky to have [Beowulf]: not only is it unique, the sole survivor of what might have been a thriving epic tradition, but it is great poetry. Approached as an archaeological relic, it is fascinating. Taken as a linguistic document, it is a marvel... But Beowulf's position as a great poem must remain primary; the other purposes it serves are important but peripheral to this central fact of sheer literary merit. (x) This view of Beowulf has become so common that its unity is taken by many critics as a self-evident fact. As one might expect, however, the certainty of this view is not apodictic. The issue of unity is one naturally raised by the critics, because Beowulf presents certain difficulties for critical analysis. The manuscript support for the poem is limited to one damaged copy written in two hands and provides little help in determining its origin and authorship. The poem itself has two parts that differ in content. The first part contains many allusions to the Old Testament, implying the presence of a Christian author. The monsters of part one are evil, being linked by ancestry with Cain. Part two, however, makes no clear reference to the Old Testament, and its single monster is not so much evil as it is amoral. Moreover, digressions interrupt the main narrative throughout the poem without necessarily helping the narrative along. It is primarily for these reasons that critics prior to Tolkien argue against the unity of Beowulf. Though this paper agrees more with Tolkien and Raffel, it does not assume the self-evident unity of Beowulf; rather it will briefly review and assess the main issues relevant to the question of the poem's unity, of which there are three: (1) Beowulf's structure, (2) the significance of its subject matter, and (3) its thematic unity. One possible caveat here is that modern ideas about artistic unity do not apply to Beowulf. H. L. Rogers makes this claim, for example. However, Aristotle presented sophisticated ideas about poetic unity long before Beowulf, and hence there is no reason to believe that Old English authors had "primitive" notions of artistic unity. Moreover, those who argue against the single authorship of Beowulf already apply "modern" standards of unity to support their case, as Rogers indeed does. Thus there should be no great objection to applying these standards in support of the opposing view. The prima facie evidence for the structural unity of the poem is strong. The narrative centers around three fight scenes that parallel one another and link together part one and part two. In each part, a monster plagues a helpless people, and Beowulf comes to the rescue. Throughout this basic narrative, there are themes of kingly wisdom and tribal loyalty, descriptions of aristocratic wealth, and comments about moral virtue. No critic questions this rudimentary unity of Beowulf's structure. Indeed, those who attack the unity of Beowulf focus less on the structure of the poem and more on its subject matter and theme, issues to be discussed shortly. The key argument against Beowulf's structural unity maintains that its two parts present too many dissimilarities to be unified; critics on the extreme end of this argument even hold to the theory of multiple authorship. For example, it is said that Grendel and his mother do not compare equally with the dragon; the Christian allusions of part one do not mesh with the paganism of part two; and Beowulf himself is not the same character from beginning to end--the optimism of the young Beowulf gives way to the gloomy sadness of the old one--and so on. Certainly the differences between the parts are real, but there are two things to consider before drawing the conclusion that Beowulf is not unified or has multiple authors. First, despite the differences, are there any marks of similarity, indicating a unified design--not general similarities such as the use of monsters, but specific ones? One interesting critical answer to this question comes from R. M. Lumiansky, who argues that the Beowulf poet creates suspense through the device of dramatic audience, that is, the fictional audience within the poem. Though the external audience of Beowulf knows the outcome of key events through foreshadowing, the dramatic audience does not. Hence the poet creates suspense for the external audience vicariously. To support his argument, Lumiansky focuses on the three fight sequences, each of which uses the device of dramatic audience. In the fight with Grendel, the poet briefly shifts the point of view to the Danes. In lines 725-52, we see the fight through their eyes. At first they are afraid; then they marvel that Heorot Hall is still standing; and finally Grendel's cry terrifies them. Lumiansky's contention is that the "poet has skilfully arranged these three reactions climactically," in order to create suspense. In the fight with Grendel's mother, even though we know that Beowulf is victorious, the poet shows us the reactions of those who wait on the shore. The Danes assume that Beowulf has been killed when they see the blood in the water, and they accordingly leave. The Geats remain, saddened at the loss of their leader--who, of course, as we know, turns upon the scene; but the external audience still has the satisfaction of suspense, experienced through the dramatic audience. Finally, there is yet a third use of dramatic audience in the final fight with the dragon. The poet clearly foreshadows Beowulf's demise, but again there is a shift in perspective, this time to that of the companions. By shifting the focus of the external audience to the desertion scene and the heroism of Wiglaf, the poet builds suspense and introduces an unknown into the narrative of Beowulf's death, despite the inevitability of that death. The significance of Lumiansky's position is that it provides a specific example of a literary technique found in all three of the fight scenes and in both parts of Beowulf. If the poet used this technique, then there is evidence of his hand throughout the poem; it is unlikely that a redactor or second author would use this device as effectively as the primary author, especially if the dissimilarities between part one and part two are as great as critics of Beowulf's unity believe--working in such a device as dramatic audience would be very difficult. The second thing to consider is the function of the differences. Mere repetition--and the elimination of dissimilarities--does not make a work of literature unified, anymore than the repetition of notes makes a symphony. Variation is as aesthetically important as repetition. It follows that if the differences between the halves of Beowulf function as variations on a theme, this is evidence of its unity and careful authorship. For example, it clear that the Beowulf of part one is not the Beowulf of part two--he is old, moody, and near death in the latter part. Critics such as Rogers might argue that this is an indication that the poet could not sustain his Christian vision to the very end (a view to be addressed later), but they should first ask if there is any reason for presenting Beowulf in such different ways. Margaret Goldsmith suggests the following: The second part of the poem is the realization of what Hrothgar's warning has foreshadowed, the old Beowulf's mortal struggle with the dragon... Thus, the poet uses the heroic combats of story to typify man's unending struggle with the powers of darkness... (378-79) The idea that part two complements or fulfills part one is stated more strongly by Tolkien: [Beowulf] is essentially a balance, an opposition of ends and beginnings. In its simplest terms it is a contrasted description between two moments in a great life, rising and setting; an elaboration of the ancient and intensely moving contrast between youth and age, first achievement and final death. (81) The textual support for this view is strong. The poem begins with the funeral of Scyld; it ends with the funeral of Beowulf. After Beowulf defeats Grendel, the scop chants the lay of Sigemund, in which Beowulf's future is foreshadowed, specifically, his fight with the dragon and his downfall. Sigemund is like the young Beowulf: "Great glory Sigemund gained that lingered long after death" (l. 829). But Heremod is like the old Beowulf; recounting the downfall of Heremod, the scop says that "the stain of sin sunk deep into Heremod's heart" (l. 849), foreshadowing the plight of the later Beowulf: The heart of the hero was heavy with anguish,
The greatest of sorrows; in his wisdom he weened
He had grievously angered the Lord Everlasting,
Blamefully broken the ancient law. (ll. 2195-98)
Likewise, as Goldsmith points out, Hrothgar foreshadows the fall of Beowulf in his advice about kings: Since God has granted him glory and wealth
He forgets the future, unmindful of Fate.
But it comes to pass in the day appointed
His feeble body withers and fails... (ll. 1639-42)
Thus part two fulfills the predictions of part one, and the difference between the two Beowulfs serves a purpose: to illustrate the biblical maxim "pride goeth before a fall." The poet has placed too many clues about Beowulf's future for part two to be substantially disparate. Despite these indications of unified design, there is another argument against Beowulf's structural unity, one that also questions the significance of Beowulf's subject matter. According to this argument, the digressions in Beowulf detract from its unity and put the important episodes where they do not belong--on the outside of the poem. W. P. Ker expresses this view bluntly: The fault of Beowulf is that there is nothing much in the story....In construction it is curiously weak, in a sense preposterous; for while the main story is simplicity itself, the merest commonplace of heroic legend, all about it, in the historical allusions, there are revelations of a whole world of tragedy... Yet with this radical defect, a disproportion that puts the irrelevancies in the centre and the serious things on the outer edges, the poem of Beowulf is unmistakably heroic and weighty. (252-53) Ker is the prime example of a pre-Tolkien critic, one who values Beowulf for its philological content and does not quite know how to evaluate its literary merits. That a poem can be considered weighty when "there is nothing much in the story" and heroic when the main story is the "merest commonplace of heroic legend" indicates that something is not quite right with this evaluation of the poem. The first problem has to with the digressions. As with the variations between Beowulf's two parts, one should ask if the digressions serve an artistic purpose, a question that Ker et. al. simply do not raise. Fortunately, post-Tolkien critics have raised it and their findings add more support for the unity of Beowulf. Kemp Malone, for instance, argues that the poet understood the importance of the digressions but had other things in mind with his poem, namely, presenting a Christian moral: Most of the episodic matter of the poem... is concerned, not with the hero himself but with his setting. The author... was not only a Christian moralist. He was also an Englishman; that is, a man of Germanic stock and traditions. (146-47) Thus at the very least, the digressions serve to create the setting of the poem and the hero's life. Adrian Bonjour corroborates this view in his monograph on the subject of Beowulf's digressions: "the very number and variety of the episodes renders the background of the poem extraordinarily alive" (71). As seen with the lay of Sigemund, the digressions can serve an even more specific literary purpose, for instance, foreshadowing. Even the lay of Finnsburg, reckoned as the most difficult digression, has a purpose. It recalls the beginning of the poem--the death of Scyld--and hints at the ending--the death of Beowulf: "Then a funeral pyre was prepared, and gold was drawn from the hoard / The best of the Scylding leaders was lain on the bier" (ll. 1014-15). It also echoes the victory of Beowulf over Grendel and his return home: "The Scylding warriors bore to their ships all treasure and wealth" (l. 1047). In general, the lay of Finnsburg is a celebration of the aristocratic warrior values upheld by the Danes and the Geats, an extension of their joy over Beowulf's victory: "So the song was sung, the lay recited / The sound of revelry rose in the hall" (l. 1052). Another problem with Ker's position has to with his contention that "there is nothing much" in Beowulf, that the digressions contain the important parts. However, if the digressions serve the larger poem--if the parts serve the whole--then there is no reason to suggest that the poem itself lacks significance in contrast to its digressions. There are whole worlds of tragedy in the digressions, but there is also a world of tragedy in the main poem, complemented by the digressions. As for the more general significance of the poem, that would require longer treatment. It suffices to say that many critics do not take Ker's view on this matter. R. E. Kaske sees the major theme of Beowulf as sapientia et fortitudo, the high virtues of kingly wisdom and courage. Malone sees Christian moralizing and English patriotism in Beowulf. But the suggestion that Beowulf has a Christian moral put there by a Christian poet brings up the third issue regarding the unity of Beowulf, namely, its thematic unity. Rogers, for example, believes that the poet had progressive difficulty fitting his material to a Christian message, and that is why part one has specific references to the Old Testament and part two does not. According to Rogers, the fight scenes became less and less amenable to the poet's Christian sensibilities: The poet does in fact express his moral idea fully only in the earlier part of the poem; particularly, in the account of the Grendel fight. In that of the second fight, his idea and the subject matter are on somewhat strained terms; in that of the third fight, they are fundamentally at variance. (237) Thus Rogers states: "I do not believe that Beowulf can be regarded as an artistic unity in the modern sense, or that the poem has a higher theme than the life and death of its hero" (236). It is certainly true that the poet alludes directly to the Old Testament early in the poem, but the lack of explicit Christian allusion in the later poem does not make it thoroughly pagan, as Rogers suggests. One might point to the obviously pagan burial of Beowulf, but one can find a pagan burial at the beginning of the poem as well. Rogers argues that the poet would not want to "repaganize" the latter part of the poem, but then why would he "paganize" the earlier part at all? Even before the poet's era, the precedent for mixing Christian and pagan themes had been set, for instance, by Boethius' The Consolation of Philosophy. In fact, there are no explicit Christian references at all in the Consolation, but most scholars today believe that Boethius was an orthodox Christian. Even more to the point, though there are no explicit Christian allusions in part two, there is an Old Testament motif--the chosen king with a tragic flaw. As cited earlier, Beowulf "grievously angered" God, leading to his downfall. Though he defeats the dragon and wins the treasure, he dies. The similarity to Moses, Saul, and David would not be lost on a Christian audience. Moses gets to see the promised land, but cannot enter it; Saul begins his reign by divine appointment, but disobeys God and falls out of favor; likewise David, who commits adultery. When a scop early in the poem recounts the first chapter of Genesis, it is no accident that the themes of kinghood and tribal politics follow it; the same themes are in the Old Testament. In conclusion, then, the unity of Beowulf, though not self-evident, is readily demonstrable. Structurally, it is composed of two complementary, coherent parts, and the themes of one are fulfilled in the other. The digressions do not detract from the unity, but comment upon the main narrative and foreshadow the end of the poem. Moreover, the Christian moralizing, though it changes shape, does not end in the first part, nor is it replaced by a thorough-going paganism. There is evidence of a single design throughout Beowulf--evidence, as Tolkien notes, of "a balance, an opposition of ends and beginnings." Works Cited Beowulf. Trans. Charles W. Kennedy. The Oxford Anthology of English Literature: Medieval English Literature. Ed. J. B. Trapp. New York: Oxford University Press, 1973. 29-98. Goldsmith, Margaret E. "The Christian Perspective in Beowulf." Nicholson: 373-86. Kaske, R. E. "Sapientia et Fortitudo as the Controlling Theme of Beowulf." Nicholson: 269-310. Ker, W. P. The Dark Ages. New York: Thomas Nelson, 1955. Lumiansky, R. M. "The Dramatic Audience in Beowulf." The Beowulf Poet. Ed. Donald Frye. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1968. 76-82. Malone, Kemp. "Beowulf." Nicholson: 137-54. Nicholson, Lewis E., ed. Preface. An Anthology of Beowulf Criticism. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1963. Raffel, Burton, trans. Introduction. Beowulf. New York: New American Library, 1963. Rogers, H. L. "Beowulf's Three Great Fights." Nicholson: 233-56. Tolkien, J. R. R. "Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics." Nicholson: 51-103. (Page last updated on 3-30-98)Bob Comis was a very happy pig farmer, for about eight years. At his peak, he raised 700 pigs in a year -- sending each and every one of them off to slaughter.
"I loved the work. I loved being around pigs, who are absolutely incredible beings, and I loved the positive effect that the physical labor and steady routine had on my mental well-being," Comis says.
Comis also loved that he was able to give his pigs a good life, during the time they were alive. Unlike the pigs raised at factory farms, his pigs got to spend time outside; they had complex social arrangements.
He saw himself as part of a movement to bring humanity, and concern for animal welfare, to the food system.
Then nearly two years ago, Comis found a moment of communion with the pigs that changed everything.
The Last Pig
One cold morning in January 2014, Comis was making his rounds on the farm in upstate New York.
"Everything seemed pretty normal, until I approached one group of pigs," says Comis.
For no reason that he can precisely pin down, Comis just suddenly was overcome with the feeling that "things had suddenly become very different."
"As I looked at the pigs, they seemed different to me somehow," he says.
In that moment Comis resolved to change his ways and decided to become a vegan.
But first, he sent those final pigs to slaughter.
The Last Pig
Comis is now the subject of an upcoming documentary called "The Last Pig," directed by Emmy-winner Allison Argo. The film follows Comis through his last year of farming pigs and his transition into a new business and a new life.
Argo tells HuffPost that she'd been interested in making a film about the ethics of eating animals for a while, but hadn't yet come upon the right subject. Then she discovered Comis, who'd started writing about his reckonings on places like The Huffington Post and Salon, even before the experience that made him quit pig farming for good.
"I knew this was the story I’d been looking for," Argo says.
The two are about a year and a half into making the independent documentary, which they expect to release before next summer. You can see the trailer, up at the top of this page (watch out; you might cry as you realize that the friendly pigs you're seeing Comis with aren't, well, pets).
There's an Indiegogo campaign going now, to raise the money to finish the film.
Argo's goal, when the film is released, is for viewers to have their own rethinking about who and what pigs really are -- and how we as humans relate to all animals.
"I hope that 'The Last Pig' will open eyes and hearts," she says. "Not just to the wonderfulness of pigs, but to the wonder of all life. My greatest hope is that 'The Last Pig' will bring us closer to a compassionate society, where every individual has the right to live, whether two legged, four legged, finned or winged."
As for Comis, he's still vegan; his transformation stuck.
"I farm vegetables now instead of pigs," he says.
The Last Pig
The Last Pig's Indiegogo campaign, which is nearly fully funded, runs until Nov. 10. You can follow the film on Facebook.
Get in touch at arin.greenwood@huffingtonpost.com if you have an animal story to share!
PHOTO GALLERY Celebrity Vegetarians— A delicate balance must be struck when it comes to the intake of folate and B12 by pregnant women, according to new research from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
Doctors tell women who plan on becoming pregnant that they need enough of folate to ensure proper fetal neurodevelopment, but having too much could carry serious risks, as well, a new study shows.
For the study, researchers analyzed data from 1,391 pairs of mothers and children in the Boston Birth Cohort. The mothers were recruited at the time of their child’s birth — between 1998 and 2013 — and followed for several years, with the mother’s blood folate levels checked once within the first one to three days of delivery.
Researchers found that if a new mother has a very high level of folate right after giving birth – more than four times what is considered adequate – the risk that her child will develop an autism spectrum disorder doubles.
Folate is found naturally in fruits and vegetables and the synthetic version, folic acid, is in vitamin supplements and used to fortify cereals and breads in the U.S.
Very high vitamin B12 levels in new moms are also potentially harmful, tripling the risk that her baby will develop an autism spectrum disorder.
If both B12 and folate levels are extremely high, the risk that a child develops the disorder increases 17.6 times.
The researchers found that one in 10 of the women had what is considered an excess amount of folate and six percent had an excess amount of vitamin B12.
A large majority of the mothers in the study reported having taken multivitamins – which would include both nutrients – throughout pregnancy.
But the researchers say they don’t know exactly why some of the women retained such high levels in their blood.
It could be that they consumed too many folic acid-fortified foods, took too many supplements, or that some women are genetically predisposed to absorbing greater quantities of folate or metabolizing it slower. It could also be a combination of the factors.
With many types of vitamin supplements, conventional wisdom has been that the body will flush out the excess. That may not be the case with these nutrients.
More research is needed, the scientists say, in order to determine just how much folic acid and B12 a woman should consume during pregnancy to have the best chance of ensuring her baby’s health.
“We have long known that a folate deficiency in pregnant mothers is detrimental to her child’s development,” says one of the study’s senior authors M. Daniele Fallin, PhD, director of the Bloomberg School’s Wendy Klag Center for Autism and Developmental Disabilities.
“But what this tells us is that excessive amounts may also cause harm. We must aim for optimal levels of this important nutrient.”
The findings will be presented May 13 at the 2016 International Meeting for Autism Research in Baltimore.
Follow @CBSBaltimore on Twitter and like WJZ-TV | CBS Baltimore on FacebookThe largest banks in Mexico (Group of 7 or G7) have been able to withstand the past and recent economic crises, according to a new Fitch Ratings dashboard report. The G7 have proven resilient due to their strong franchises, consistent profitability, controlled asset quality, solid liquidity, and sound capital ratios.
The G7 is composed by Banamex, BBVA Bancomer, Banco Santander Mexico, Banorte, HSBC Mexico, Scotiabank Inverlat and Banco Inbursa. Fitch's new report also discusses key factors affecting the credit profiles of these banks.
Despite the currently less dynamic economy in Mexico, G7's performance remains stable. G7 banks continue with consistent profits even in a low interest environment and have quickly adapted their underwriting standards to the operating environment in order to preserve comfortable asset quality.
G7 banks are well capitalized and supported by solid internal capital generation and to a lesser extent to capital infusion from its parent companies. The banks' capital bases are mostly composed of core equity. In turn, these banks have a wide low-cost domestic and broadly diversified retail deposit base and ample access to capital markets and interbank funding that supports its sound liquidity and strong net interest margins. As expected, the G7 did not face pressures in the new liquidity legal requirements required by the Liquidity Cover Ratio under Basel III.New nature reserves to protect Canberra's endangered species
Posted
Nature reserves will be established in Canberra's north and south to protect endangered species and offset the creation of new suburbs.
The ACT Government has allocated more than $5 million in its 2016-17 budget for the sites in Gungahlin and the Jerrabomberra Valley.
A total of 120 hectares will be set aside near the soon-to-be constructed suburb of Taylor to provide for the golden sun moth and box gum woodland community.
Planning and Land Management Minister Mick Gentleman said land would also be allocated near Hume to provide a habitat for the striped legless lizard and natural temperate grassland.
"Eastern Broadacre, an employment and industrial corridor which will be established in selected areas between the Majura Valley and Hume, will initially have 162 hectares of land dedicated to environmental offset," he said.
"The ACT Government has also committed to protect other species not impacted by these developments, but that are found within the offset sites, such as the critically endangered grassland earless dragon and button wrinklewort."
Range of conservation activities to be undertaken
Mr Gentleman said conservation activities including weed, pest animal and erosion control programs would be carried out at both sites.
"Conserving the cultural heritage of Symonston Aboriginal Quarry site, part of the Eastern Broadacre area, will also be a focus," he said.
"This includes delivering a community interpretation program in partnership with the Traditional Custodians to raise awareness of the indigenous cultural heritage within the local area.
"The funding will provide for the first stage of a project to plant native wetland appropriate species traditionally used by the Ngunnawal people along Jerrabomberra Creek as well as the control of local weeds."
The Government said it would monitor the offset sites and the outcome of the programs.
Topics: environment, animals-and-nature, conservation, canberra-2600, act, jerrabomberra-2619, gungahlin-2912Maldini gives Inter-Milan verdict
By Football Italia staff
Paolo Maldini gives his verdict on the Milan Derby and hopes Napoli win the Scudetto this season. “Inter have results, but not good football.”
This is a massive weekend in Serie A, as |
results of this study are encouraging—they support the idea that diet, and specifically a diet rich in cocoa flavanols, can play an important role in maintaining cognitive health as we age.”
This study was the second installment in a two-part investigation by this team into the effects cocoa flavanols have on the brain. The first study, published in the journal Hypertension in 2012, found cognitive and cardiometabolic benefits of habitual cocoa flavanol consumption in older adults who had been diagnosed with mild cognitive impairment (MCI). Despite these findings, the question of the benefits of cocoa flavanols on cognitive function among individuals without MCI remained uncertain.
This second study just published in the AJCN looked to address this question. Enrolling men and women aged 61-85 years with no evidence of cognitive dysfunction, the participants in this controlled, randomized, double-blind study were assigned to one of three flavanol groups, consuming a drink containing either high (993 mg), intermediate (520 mg) or low (48 mg) amounts of cocoa flavanols every day for eight weeks. The nutritionally matched drinks were specially prepared. The high- and intermediate-flavanol cocoa drinks were produced using Mars’ patented Cocoapro® process, while the low-flavanol drink was made with a highly processed, alkalized cocoa powder. Other than the inclusion of the test drink, normal diets and regular lifestyle were maintained throughout the study.
The patented process needed to create the drinks in the study ensures that the high concentrations of flavanols found in fresh cocoa beans are not destroyed during processing. Credit: Mars, Incorporated. The patented process needed to create the drinks in the study ensures that the high concentrations of flavanols found in fresh cocoa beans are not destroyed during processing. Credit: Mars, Incorporated.
At the start of the study and again after eight weeks, cognitive function was assessed using a battery of tests that examined memory, retention, recall, as well as executive function. Among those individuals who regularly consumed either the high- or intermediate-flavanol drinks, there were significant improvements in overall cognitive function after only eight weeks. As cognitive function was normal for this aged population, this study shows that even cognitively healthy individuals can quickly benefit from the regular inclusion of cocoa flavanols in their diets.
In addition to evaluating cognitive function, the researchers also monitored insulin resistance, blood pressure and other metabolic markers. Excitingly, there was also evidence of improvements in these cardiometabolic outcomes. In the high- and intermediate-flavanol groups, both systolic and diastolic blood pressures were reduced and insulin resistance was significantly improved. In contrast, only a modest improvement in diastolic blood pressure was observed in the low-flavanol group, with no significant improvements in either systolic blood pressure or insulin resistance among the consumers of the low-flavanol drink.
It is not yet fully understood how cocoa flavanols bring about improvements in cognitive function, but the study’s authors suggest that the improvements in insulin resistance and blood pressure could be revealing. “Earlier studies suggest a central role for insulin resistance in brain aging,” said Desideri. “These results could therefore provide some insight into a possible mechanism of action for the cognitive improvements we have observed.”
Over the past decade, there has been significant evidence indicating that consuming cocoa flavanols improves vascular function. Dr. Catherine Kwik-Uribe, human health and nutrition director at Mars, Incorporated, and co-author on this latest study, said, “Since the brain is a heavily vascularized tissue, we might also be looking at vascular improvements as underlying the observed improvements in cognitive function.”
Dr. Kwik-Uribe went on to speak about Mars’ flavanol research program that has spanned over two decades: “The amount of research showing the beneficial effects of cocoa flavanol consumption is growing and Mars is proud to be a partner in important research like this that highlights the positive role cocoa flavanols may play in supporting healthy aging.”
Dr. Desideri and his team are already thinking about the next steps: “It is clear from our latest research and other recent studies that cocoa flavanols have profound effects on the body, and specifically the brain,” said Desideri. “Now we’d like to know how they work and how long the effects last. If these further studies confirm the findings that brain health can be improved by consuming dietary flavanols, it may have the potential to affect the daily lives of millions of people world-wide.”
Note to Editors: This research trial was carried out with a special cocoa flavanol test product, designed to deliver a standardized amount of flavanols within a nutritionally suitable drink. This test product is currently not commercially available. Flavanol content of commercially available chocolate is variable and, given its macronutrient profile, it is not recommended as a health food.
About Cocoa Flavanols
Flavanols are a distinct group of naturally occurring compounds that can be found in a variety of foods such as tea and red wine. Cocoa flavanols refers to the group of bioactives found naturally in fresh cocoa beans. Cocoa is an especially rich source of flavanols and the type and mixture of flavanols and procyanidins found in cocoa is unique. Mars studies show cocoa flavanols have a range of proven health benefits, including improved circulation and cardiovascular health. For more information, please visit Mars Center for Cocoa Health Science at www.marscocoascience.com.
Reference:
Daniela Mastroiacovo, Catherine Kwik-Uribe, Davide Grassi, Stefano Necozione, Angelo Raffaele, Luana Pistacchio, Roberta Righetti, Raffaella Bocale, Maria Carmela Lechiara, Carmine Marini, Claudio Ferri, and Giovambattista Desideri. Cocoa flavanol consumption improves cognitive function, blood pressure control, and metabolic profile in elderly subjects: the Cocoa, Cognition, and Aging (CoCoA) Study—a randomized controlled trial, American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, First published ahead of print December 17, 2014 as doi: 10.3945/ajcn.114.092189.For other uses of the word, see Equate (disambiguation)
Equate is a board game made by Conceptual Math Media where players score points by forming equations on a 19x19 game board. Equations appear across and down in a crossword fashion and must be mathematically correct. It is similar to Scrabble except players use digits and mathematical operators instead of letters.
About [ edit ]
Equate can be beneficially used in both a classroom and as a board game for the family. To earn higher scores, a player must use division or fraction or land premium board positions. For 2 to 4 players or teams. It is recommended to be played by ages 8 and up.[1]
Benefits [ edit ]
The use of fractions stimulates the players interest towards fractions and motives them to want to learn more about fractions. In order to get higher scores, players are constantly taking advantage of premium board positions. Equate uses large numbers. Single digits placed adjacent to one another creates even larger numbers. Equate is also strategically challenging for advanced players who are already good at math. The game adapts to many different levels of play.[1]
Advanced Tile Sets [ edit ]
Advanced Tile Sets take the game of Equate to a higher mathematical level. This particular sets includes 197 tiles with positive and negative integers imprinted on them, integer exponents, fractions, the four basic operations, and equal symbols. The additional tiles are sold separately, not with the board.[1]
See also [ edit ]
References [ edit ]As a second-year faculty member in the School of Journalism at the University of Missouri, I have not only experienced an oppressive climate on campus, but also have witnessed the various experiences students and black alumni have recently described.
This past summer, I experienced an incident that I believe is reflective of this environment. I attended a writing retreat hosted by academic leaders and staff on campus. During a writing break, which included a historical lecture about a particular painting, a coordinator of this retreat expressed her belief that some slaves did not want to leave the South and “had good homes.” If I had not been present, I do not believe this expression would have been challenged, as many others in the room remained silent. And this incident is just one of many.
So let me be clear about what an expression like this actually does to our society and what it represents. Such statements are reflective of institutional racism at this university, which you can see in the lack of diverse faculty and staff, the university’s curricula, lack of resources and inaction. The fact that there are educators who believe in upholding the myths of slavery on campus helps to maintain discriminatory practices by administrators, faculty and white students.
I know faculty of color who have been called “n-words” and have been disrespected, simply because they look different. I know faculty of color, including myself, who have been confronted and challenged by white students. In courses that require students to learn by being uncomfortable, where issues of systemic oppression are discussed and examined, some white students have attempted to challenge our knowledge and expertise. While maybe not all faculty have the same experiences, feelings of isolation and alienation have found many of us. Intersected forms of oppression, including racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, Islamophobia, ableism and classism impact everyone on campus — even those who look the other way.
In some instances, some of us feel pressured into creating “safe spaces” for our white students. Yet, questions about ensuring the safety of students of color in class are not prioritized. Even though my status on tenure-track places makes me vulnerable, it is important to note that these experiences are heightened for students of color. Students of color have even less support, fewer resources on campus and continue to live in unsafe environments where some white students have threatened their ability to simply breathe, thrive and succeed in higher education.
The events of this fall semester extend from this university’s history. Particularly since the shooting and killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri — just 120 miles down the road — student activists have taken up the cause to fight the university’s institutionalized forms of oppression. It was students who demonstrated in support of Michael Brown, his family and the non-indictment of Darren Wilson. This dialogue brought the issue of police brutality to the university and it opened a space for more conversations about students’ experiences with racism on campus. The simple necessity of security for students on campus directly relates to the vulnerability of black people in this country.
I can only speak for myself when I say that the resignation of President Tim Wolfe is one step in the long fight toward progress. The demands that #ConcernedStudent1950 have announced should be taken seriously by this community, including the Board of Curators, the various administrators, faculty, staff and students. What comes next should be a united effort to diversify the various bodies and voices in our community.
Recruitment and retention of students and faculty of color is essential. Students of color should be able to see professors who look like themselves. Leadership should be diverse. The voices who will lead us should create an inclusive space where marginalized voices matter. We should be able to just be. We should be focusing on how to move the university, a space that should focus on the production of knowledge, into a space where students can thrive and succeed. We should be preparing them to go into the real world. There is no doubt that the students who led the movement are ready to enter the post-university world. As a faculty member at the University of Missouri, I am proud to support this historical movement.
But we still have a long way to go, and we will not be deterred. Dismantling the system we have now is extremely important. Implementing more diverse curricula and bringing in diverse voices is another step to making this community more inclusive. We also need to connect what we see here in Columbia to larger national conversations about disenfranchisement, mass incarceration, legal lynching by police officers and white men alike, homophobia and ongoing violence against women. These forms of discrimination are all connected.
I hope we can move forward to create a model for higher education. The students have brought us here. With recent incidents on campuses throughout the country, it is important that we continue to raise awareness about the struggles marginalized voices continue to face. I hope we can move forward as a collective body of concerned community members.
Cristina Mislán is an assistant professor of journalism studies in the Missouri School of Journalism, where she teaches courses in qualitative research methods and cross-cultural journalism.Remember when President Obama’s Department of Education reported that its income-driven repayment program (IDR) to help federal student loan borrowers avoid default would cost $25 billion?
That estimate has more than doubled, with a new estimate of $53 billion, according to a new report from the Government Accountability Office.
When it was introduced in 2009, the IDR was designed to permit borrowers to pay back their loans only when they could afford it, with fewer years to complete repayment. But estimates of how much it would cost did not take into account the fact that once the idea was introduced, news would spread like wildfire, the fact that borrowers would choose to use the program depending on whether they were flush with cash or not, and income inflation, as The Weekly Standard pointed out.
As the GAO wrote:
As of June 2016, 24 percent of Direct Loan borrowers repaying their loans (or 5.3 million borrowers) were doing so in IDR plans, compared to 10 percent in June 2013. Education expects these plans to have costs to the government. GAO was asked to review Education’s IDR plan budget estimates and estimation methodology … For the fiscal year 2017 budget, the U.S. Department of Education (Education) estimates that all federally issued Direct Loans in Income-Driven Repayment (IDR) plans will have government costs of $74 billion, higher than previous budget estimates … While actual costs cannot be known until borrowers repay their loans, GAO found that current IDR plan budget estimates are more than double what was originally expected for loans made in fiscal years 2009 through 2016 (the only years for which original estimates are available). This growth is largely due to the rising volume of loans in IDR plans.
The GAO figures that $137 billion of the $355 billion borrowers currently owe will not be repaid; 108 billion will be forgiven, according to GAO's estimate.
Wyoming senator Mike Enzi, who commissioned the report, slammed the DOE, snapping, "At a time when our nation is facing a mammoth national debt, the Department of Education has expanded a student loan program that will cost twice as much as originally estimated. This Administration has been manipulating the terms of the student loan program without the consent of Congress, while shirking its statutory duty to carefully assess the cost impact of those changes."If the Blue Jays wind up winning the AL East in September, mark down June 20 as a game to remember. Starter Liam Hendriks and reliever Todd Redmond combined forces to allow eight runs in the second inning to the Reds, bookended by two-run home runs to Devin Mesoraco and Jay Bruce.
The Jays answered immediately, as Edwin Encarnacion blasted his 22nd home run in the top of the third, a three-run blast to make it 8-3. In the seventh, following a solo home run by Brett Lawrie and a two-run homer by Juan Francisco, the Jays were within one run at 9-8. Dioner Navarro doubled in the tying run in the eighth inning, but the Jays weren’t even close to done.
In the top of the ninth, facing Aroldis Chapman, the Jays strung together two walks and two hits to go up 11-9. With Encarnacion batting, Sam LeCure relieved Chapman, but he couldn’t get the job done, either. Encarnacion blasted another three-run home run — his second of the game and 23rd of the season — to make it 14-9.
To put in perspective how improbable the comeback was, FanGraphs gave the Jays a 1.6 percent chance to win after the bottom of the second. It fell to a game-low 1.1 percent after Jose Reyes grounded out in the top of the third inning for the second out. Following Encarnacion’s home run in the ninth, they were 99.5 percent to win. The graph at FanGraphs is nuts.
Follow @CrashburnAlleyCNET's Cheapskate scours the web for great deals on PCs, phones, gadgets and much more. Questions about the Cheapskate blog? Find the answers on our FAQ page. And find more great buys on the CNET Deals page.
Republic Wireless
You remember Republic Wireless, right? It's that Sprint-based MVNO that relies on Wi-Fi calling to give you a lower monthly bill -- but only if you buy one of a couple compatible phones.
Nah, nah, nah. That was the old Republic Wireless. The company now lets you bring your own phone, supports about 18 different models and has a GSM partner. (I'm not allowed to say what it is, or that it rhymes with Whee-Skoble.)
OK, but, yeah, that whole Wi-Fi calling thing -- big hassle, yeah? Not anymore. In fact, Republic is now so damn sure you'll like Republic, you can sign up for a new line of bring-your-own-phone (BYOP) service and get six months free.
Buy one, get six
It works like this: You'll need an unlocked, Republic-compatible GSM phone (see the list on the BYOP page). Then, between now and May 22, order a SIM card for $5. (That cost drops to zero when you check out, but shipping will run you $4.) When it arrives, pop it into your phone and activate it prior to June 6.
Bam! You just qualified for six months of Republic's middle-tier plan, which includes unlimited calls, text messages and Wi-Fi data, plus 2GB of 4G LTE cellular data. Regular price: $30 a month. There's no contract, and when it's over you're free to do whatever.
But! There's one small catch here, and I think it's totally fair: You do need to pay for the first month (again, $30). So technically it's months two to seven you're getting for free. Also, you're on the hook for any applicable taxes and fees (usually $2-$4) for all seven months.
What happens if you go over 2GB? Republic doesn't do the whole throttling thing, so you can purchase additional gigabytes for $10 each, or temporarily upgrade to a higher-tier plan and pay the prorated difference. The $40 plan, for example, comes with 4GB of data; you'd get billed for $10. (Basically, Republic is covering the first $30 of whatever plan you choose.)
What's the deal with Wi-Fi calling?
Republic's claim to fame has always been Wi-Fi: Whenever possible, it leverages Wi-Fi networks for calls. If there's no hotspot available, it hits up cell towers, same as any other carrier.
This can be a huge benefit if you typically get poor cell coverage in your home or office, as Wi-Fi is better able to reach inside buildings, basements and so on. On the other hand, Wi-Fi call quality doesn't always compare favorably to that of cellular.
That's the beauty of this offer: For the price of one month, you get seven months to see if Republic is a better option for you.
The last time I tested the carrier was probably two or three years ago, when it worked only with Sprint and a select few phones. Honestly, the experience wasn't great. But Republic has made major advancements, not the least of which is a "call bonding" technology designed for super seamless handoffs if you move between Wi-Fi and cellular networks while on a call.
Another consideration: Not all stock messaging apps work with Republic. On a Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge, for example, I had no choice but to install Google's own Android Messages app and set it as the default. (Of course, you can definitely use third-party messaging tools such as WhatsApp.)
I was able to do a couple quick phone tests on the aforementioned S7, and calls all sounded great. Your mileage may vary, of course, but right away I noticed a huge improvement over the last phone I tested on Republic's network.
So there you go! If you've wondered about this carrier and whether it might be a good fit, this is a great opportunity to give it a try. Of course, if you're already a customer, hit the comments and share your experiences.
Enlarge Image Koogeek
Bonus deal: In the past I've shared deals on smart electrical outlets; now how about one that's appliance-specific?
For a limited time, and while supplies last, Beeebo-us (via Amazon) has the Koogeek smart light-bulb adapter for $29.99 when you apply promo code Z3QMW5UE at checkout. Regular price: $39.99.
In case it's not abundantly clear, this screws into a light-bulb socket, then pairs with your phone for smarty-lamp goodness.
You can set timers, remotely turn the light on or off, and so on. I got to fiddle with one briefly; it works as advertised, so it's a good way to bring a lamp into your smart-home mix. Any better than a smart outlet, which is more versatile? That's debatable.Hello and welcome to the latest edition of the Feedbag! Last time, we covered the subject of review drafts. This month, our question is about how to help enable feedback when you’re in a leadership role:
I’m team leading at an upcoming event, and I’d like to encourage my team to review each other. Do you recommend any strategies or approaches that have worked well in facilitating review exchanges and/or making sure that the reviews are actually written after the event?
This question is actually particularly relevant to me. As I write, I’m just a few days away from head judging a multi-judge event where many of the staff have expressed a goal of working on their L2 pre-test requirements. As those familiar with this process will know, a big part of the L2 advancement process is the review and feedback requirement.
It’s easy to get judges to agree that reviewing each other is a good thing. It’s considerably harder to make reviews happen. Sometimes when we finish an event, we just want to be done with it. As a result, taking the time to follow up with feedback just doesn’t stay a high priority.
If you’d like to actually get your team members to produce some reviews, try focusing your efforts on these three pieces of advice:
1. Any exercise or discussion should be relevant to the event.
It’s common for team leads to come up with some kind of group exercise or discussion to get team members interacting with one another. If you’re planning something like this, it should be appropriate to the experience level of your team as well as the format of the event. A well-selected scenario can be a really good springboard for discussion that can expose strengths or weaknesses in a judge’s understanding of policy.
Conversely, a corner-case topic might be fun to discuss, but it doesn’t really hold much value, especially when generating material for review. I like to come up with questions about recent policy updates. Every judge should be keeping up with updates, so this kind of question has the practical benefit of ensuring that judges understand policy relevant to the event while also giving me insight into each judge’s reasoning process.
2. Provide concrete, reasonable goals.
“I want you all to review each other” is a nice goal, but it lacks direction. Furthermore, it can be intimidating to someone who is just testing the waters when it comes to providing feedback. Vague goals are more likely to scare someone off than actually produce written reviews.
Instead, focus on providing your team members with specific direction about who they should review and then help them identify talking points. For my own upcoming event, I’ve asked each of my staff to choose a judge they’ll be working with and plan to identify one thing that judge does well and one area for improvement. This puts them into the mindset of looking for ways to provide feedback from the start of the day, while also keeping things manageable: I just want people to start feedbacking. Writing a review the length of War and Peace is optional.
3. Follow up and facilitate.
Even with specific, useful instructions, you should still plan on being a resource to your team members. Check up on your team throughout the day to make sure they’re observing a judge with the goal of providing feedback. Feedback can be a pretty private thing, but in your role as both leader and mentor, it can be good to ask what points your team members have identified for each other. “What did Judge A do well? What can they improve on for next time?” is a good way of forcing people to turn their observations from the day into deliverable feedback.
This can be an iterative process. First talk with one judge; identify what feedback they have for their subject; and then put the two judges together to ensure that the feedback is delivered. Finally, follow up with your staff after the event to make sure those reviews actually get into Judge Center. The most important part about feedback is that it’s delivered, but there are many benefits to having written records of it, not the least of which is level advancement requirements.
Ultimately, you can’t force people into anything. But your goal as a lead should be to help your team members find a path to providing feedback that is achievable for them. Keep your instructions specific, manageable, and relevant to make participating in your nefarious schemes viable for judges who, let’s not forget, still have a tournament to run. Follow up during and after the event to help make sure people are delivering their feedback.
Thanks for another great question this month! It’s definitely helped me plan how I want to interact with my staff for my own upcoming events, and I hope it’s useful for all the team leads and head judges out there!
If you’d like to submit a question, comment, or smart remark to the Feedbag, please contact me via JudgeApps.We recently posted an innocent looking piece of fan art on Facebook that was created by one of our community members. The image playfully mashed up the themes of Mass Effect and My Little Pony, depicting the Pinkie Pie character in N7 armor. We thought it was hilarious and wanted to let the rest of our community in on the fun. Those of you that had front row seats during the aftermath know that’s not exactly what happened.
Even though the image was posted in jest, it raised the ire of a portion of our Facebook community. Some fans felt compelled to “unlike” our page, while others even went as far as to post their intention to “sell all their Mass Effect games.”
It got me thinking: What exactly is a social media community, and what is its true purpose?
It is my belief that the purpose of a social media community is to create a place where people from all over the world can gather, linked by their shared affection of a particular passion. It sounds almost Utopian, doesn’t it? A little corner of the internet reserved just for us where we can go and interact with like-minded fans.
At BioWare, we think of our fans as our extended family, and as within any family, there are bound to be times when we won’t always see eye-to-eye. Sometimes Uncle Jay is going to root against your favorite sports team. Sometimes cousin Sue is going to wear socks with sandals. And sometimes, just sometimes, we’re going to post pictures of little pink ponies sworn to protect the galaxy from Reapers.
We support our community’s desire to be creative and share with us. Our talented fans send us all types of content, from painstakingly detailed fan art and cosplay photos to music and poetry inspired by our games. We try to showcase as many of them as we can, and hope that the community will find it all as fascinating as we do.
We strive to provide a community that offers a little something for everyone, and as such, new content is always being gathered for future posts. We take the work that we do very seriously, but we also believe that a good sense of humor is healthy. Doesn’t everyone enjoy a good laugh?
If you don’t enjoy a particular post, that’s okay. You can’t please everyone, as they say. However, rather than become hostile and turn against the community, we have an alternate suggestion: Create something better. Instead of raving about what you don’t like, show us an example of something that appeals to you.
Remember, it’s your feedback that helps to shape the community, but you’re always going to catch more flies with honey than vinegar. Be good to one another.
~ David Hulegaard, Social Media CoordinatorEye of Science/SPL
Explorations of how the microscopic communities that inhabit the human body might contribute to health or disease have moved from obscure to ubiquitous. Over the past five years, studies have linked our microbial settlers to conditions as diverse as autism, cancer and diabetes.
This excitement has infected the public imagination. 'We Are Our Bacteria', proclaimed one headline in The New York Times. Some scientists have asserted that antibiotics are causing a great 'extinction' of the microbiome, with dire consequences for human health1. Companies offer personalized analysis of the microbial content of faecal samples, promising consumers enlightening information. Separate analyses from the same person can, however, vary considerably, even from the same stool sample. Faecal transplants have been proposed — some more sensible than others — for conditions ranging from diabetes to Alzheimer's disease. With how-to instructions proliferating online, desperate patients must be warned not to attempt these risky procedures on themselves.
Microbiomics risks being drowned in a tsunami of its own hype. Jonathan Eisen, a microbiologist and blogger at the University of California, Davis, bestows awards for “overselling the microbiome”; he finds no shortage of worthy candidates.
Previous 'omics' fields have faltered after murky work slowed progress2. Technological advances that allowed researchers to catalogue proteins, metabolites, genetic variants and gene activity led to a spate of associations between molecular states and health conditions. But painstaking further work dampened early excitement. Most initial connections were found to be spurious or, at best, more complicated than originally believed.
The history of science is replete with examples of exciting new fields that promised a gold rush of medicines and health insights but required scepticism and years of slogging to deliver even partially. As such, the criteria for robust microbiome science are instructive for all researchers. As excitement over the microbiome has filtered beyond academic circles, the potential mischief wrought by misunderstanding encompasses journalists, funding bodies and the public.
Crucial questions
Here are five questions that anyone conducting or evaluating this research should ask to keep from getting carried away by hype.
Can experiments detect differences that matter? Profiling a microbiome could produce a catalogue at the level of phyla, species or genes. Much work relies on analysis of 16S rRNA, an ancient gene that tolerates little variation and so is reliably found across the bacterial kingdom. But this allows only a coarse sorting. For example, microbiomes associated with obesity have been distinguished by different ratios of bacterial phyla, which encompass a staggering range of diversity. If this criterion were used to characterize animal communities, an aviary of 100 birds and 25 snails would be considered identical to an aquarium with 8 fish and 2 squid, because each has four times as many vertebrates as molluscs. Even within a single species, strains often differ greatly in the genes they contain.
“Press officers must stop exaggerating results, and journalists must stop swallowing them whole.”
Modern technology now allows for finer distinctions: we can study more genes in a sample, an ability that may enable us to decipher'metabolic networks' revealing the biochemical reactions that a microbiome can perform. This kind of analysis could identify gene combinations, potentially from multiple species across a microbial community, that affect health for good or ill. However, pinning an outcome to any particular entity is likely to be hard unless the networks are already well characterized.
To take a simple example from a single bacterial species, we could show that vaccination eliminated 30% of known pneumococcal strains in a human population — but only because we knew in advance to focus on the genes targeted by the vaccine3. Our ability to identify functional differences in closely related genes is rarely sophisticated enough to pull out important genes or networks if we do not know what to look for in the first place. Moreover, genomes are littered with clues both true and false, such as 'hypothetical proteins' and genes that are understood poorly or not at all, but could make for important differences in what metabolic networks do.
We need to be able to identify functional differences in closely related genes from sequence alone. Until then, we must remember that apparent similarities might cloak important differences.
Does the study show causation or just correlation? A separate question is raised when distinct microbiomes can be identified and associated with diseases or other conditions. Then we are left with the chestnut of causes and correlates. Sometimes, a particular microbiome found in association with disease will be merely a bystander4.
A 2012 article comparing the gut microbiomes of old people living in care homes with those of old people living in the community found distinct microbiomes that correlated with multiple scores of frailty5. After accounting for some potentially confounding factors, the authors proposed a causal relationship: diet altered the microbiome, which in turn altered health. This explanation fits the data, but the reverse causality — the potential for poor health to alter the gut microbiome — was not explored. Frailer people probably have less active immune systems and differences in digestion (such as the time required for food to pass through the stomach and intestines) — factors that could change the microbiome. This work is not the only example of this sort of confusion.
What is the mechanism? All scientists are taught the catechism that correlation is not causation, but correlation almost always implies some sort of causal relationship. We just don't know what it is. We must determine it with careful experiments.
In the past three or four years, studies have advanced from characterizing a broad community of mainly unculturable microbes to identifying functional elements, individual taxa or particular properties. We can now design experiments to precisely define actions of components of the microbiome6, for example by reconstituting communities but leaving out specific taxa, or by precisely measuring the biochemical activity of an experimental microbiome in an 'organ on a chip'7. A return to a reductionist approach is essential if we are to pinpoint both whether the microbiome affects human health, and exactly how it does so.
How much do experiments reflect reality? Even if the microbiome can have an experimental effect, it may not be an important cause of the symptoms seen in ill people.
Much work has addressed the role that gut flora have in obesity, and several studies have found associations between the gut microbiome and weight gain8. To assess whether this association was cause or consequence, researchers collected gut-microbiome samples from human twins (one obese, one not) and introduced the microbiota to mice. Mice previously colonized with an 'obese' microbiome lost weight when supplied with a 'lean microbiome', but only if also fed a normal or low-fat diet. Diet alone had little effect9. Although this elegantly controlled experiment suggests great potential for the microbiome and related therapies to affect health, it also shows the microbiome's limits: the effect was dependent on other factors, in this case diet.
Microbiome studies often rely on germ-free mice. These animals allow researchers to readily introduce an experimental microbiota. But they do not represent the animals' natural state and are typically unhealthy owing to the lack of a microbiome. So results may not predict responses in animals with flourishing microbiomes. Mice and their microbiomes are also adapted to a rather different niche from humans, so results may not be generalizable.
Could anything else explain the results? There are good reasons to think that bacteria influence us in a host of ways. But there are many other — possibly more important — influences, such as diet in the earlier example. Whenever a study links a microbiome to a disease, wise critics should ask whether other contributors to disease are considered, compared and reported.
The hype surrounding microbiome research is dangerous, for individuals who might make ill-informed decisions, and for the scientific enterprise, which needs to develop better experimental methods to generate hypotheses and evaluate conclusions. Funding agencies must not let their priorities be distorted by the buzz around the field, but look dispassionately at the data. Press officers must stop exaggerating results, and journalists must stop swallowing them whole. In pre-scientific times when something happened that people did not understand, they blamed it on spirits. We must resist the urge to transform our microbial passengers into modern-day phantoms.Electric Forest is still unfortunately six months away. Luckily that means there is an insane amount of time to talk about hot rumors surrounding the 2017 edition of the festival. The intial line ups of both weekends 1 and 2 have some secret slots. Well looking at tour schedules and then also having little clues like this popping up –
We are pretty sure we can assume Zeds Dead will be making an appearance at, at least one weekend. Sources point to Flume being another one of the blocked off names as well.
Related: Electric Forest 2017 Lineup
We cannot stress enough that this is all conjecture at this point, but still things are falling into place. Stay tuned to EDM Sauce for more details as they become available. We cannot wait until Electric Forest 2017!I'm not sure we could devise the right tests. Can you test whether someone is sincerely interested in finding a balanced and sustainable solution for all the constituents? Can we ask them to act honourably even though the system has convinced voters to vote against their own interest, where meeting the needs of the wealthy is the key to re-election, where it is contrary to one's own interest to act in the people's interest?
The problem isn't the lack of intelligence. The problem isn't even really the character of the individuals as individuals. The problem is that the systems (both economic and political) corrupt people, cause them to lose their human decency and compassion. If we did develop tests we'd have to administer them regularly, like drug tests, to make sure our representatives weren't slipping, which they naturally would under pressure from the systems.
If we had systems in place that try to regulate who can serve they would eventually (quickly) be used to the advantage of those with the greatest power in the economic and political spheres. Wealth is power, and power attracts power, manipulating any rules we put in their way to their advantage and to the disadvantage of honest, sincere people. I'm reminded of the early anti-trust laws that were used not to limit the abuses of the wealthy elite and large corporations as intended but instead to prevent labour from working together to insist on safe working conditions and a living wage. They were used not to curb the entitlements of the wealthy (to special access to power, influence, and sources of non-work-derived sources of revenue) but |
specific case of accessor functions (like std::get ).
But even without a user-friendly definition, where does this bring us? Well basically, I can ask for the functions I use to extract elements of a tuple to be move-independent. In other words, for any two distinct indices i and j, I need f<i> and f<j> to be move-independent, where f is the function I wish to call on my tuple. This way, I can go back to my generic library and continue writing stuff such as
template < typename Tuple, std :: size_t... i > void foo ( Tuple && tuple, std :: index_sequence < i... > ) { use ( f < i > ( std :: forward < Tuple > ( tuple ))...); // ^ for some function f, for example std::get }
without worrying that I might be moving from an object twice. The most common case, by far, is where f == std::get or some equivalent of it. However, it’s easy to come up with a use case where the functions would be something else, such as slicing a tuple at two disjoint ranges of indices. For example, using the Boost.Hana library,
auto tuple = hana :: make_tuple ( "abc" s, "def" s, "ghi" s, "jkl" s ); auto abc_def = hana :: slice_c < 0, 2 > ( std :: move ( tuple )); auto ghi_jkl = hana :: slice_c < 2, 4 > ( std :: move ( tuple ));
This will create two tuples containing the first two and the last two elements of the original tuple, moving them instead of doing a copy. This is safe to perform, since we’re slicing the tuple at two non-overlapping ranges. Plus, it wouldn’t be equivalent to write std::move(hana::slice_c<0, 2>(tuple)), for the copy would have already been made inside of hana::slice_c, the library being unable to rely on the fact that tuple can be moved from.
Conclusion
While it is most of the time a bad idea to call std::move on an object multiple times, this article presents a use case in which it makes a lot of sense to do so, i.e. decomposing a tuple into its subobjects. In addition, this article attempts to define a notion of move-independence that makes it easier for generic library writers to express the constraint that a set of functions must not pull the rug from under each other’s feet when called on a common xvalue.***
Electricity network in ‘uncharted territory’ as blackouts loom
The Telegraph
Andrew Critchlow
5 September 2015
As Britain loses one more power station, experts argue the grid has been left too exposed.
Picture a cold and dark wintery evening in November and millions of householders across the country are switching on their kettles at the same time after a long day at work but suddenly there is a big problem.
Another creaking coal-fired power station has been shut down and with barely a breeze blowing to fire up the thousands of wind turbines that Britain has increasingly relied upon to keep the lights turned on, the entire electricity network has become overloaded.
Suddenly, the doomsday scenario of a nationwide energy blackout and power curfews on a scale not seen since the bleak winter of enforced economic hardship of 1979 becomes reality.
This is the fear of experts like Anthony Price, director of Electricity Storage Network, who argues that policymakers have allowed the system to become too vulnerable to outages, which could cost the economy billions of pounds in lost output and productivity.
“As a society we run the risk of paying the price eventually for running everything with the very minimum of spare capacity available,” said Mr Price. “If something does go wrong with the existing generating system we really have no where to run to meet demand.”
His concerns were brought into sharper focus last week with the announcement that the Eggborough power station in Yorkshire would close in March 2016. The plant generates around 4pc of the UK’s electricity and its shutdown at the end of the winter will place a further squeeze on the safety cushion for avoiding a blackout across large areas of the country.
Conventional fossil-fuel burning power stations like Eggborough and the Longannet coal-fired plant in Fife that is also due to close in March are still the most reliable means to produce electricity for the grid, despite the dramatic shift over the last decade towards renewables such as wind or solar.
However, there are growing concerns that such a change to generating more of the country’s 85 gigawatts of power from renewables has left the grid dangerously exposed.
According to analysts at the investment bank Jefferies, the closure of Eggborough will mean that over 16 gigawatts of coal-fired capacity – which is enough to provide electricity for a dozen large cities – will have been shut down over the last four years. At the same time, Britain has installed only 6,000 megawatts of new easily “dispatchable” generation capacity to meet any potential shortfalls that may arise.
Although renewables accounted for a record 22.3pc of the UK’s total electricity generation in the first quarter of this year, conventional coal, gas-fired and nuclear plants remain the backbone of the country’s energy supply infrastructure. Coal burning plants still provide around 40pc of the UK’s electricity. Unlike wind turbines, fossil-fuel burning plants like Eggborough, which the government appears so keen to see phased out, can be turned on or off with the flick of a switch.
“Things are moving into uncharted territory in terms of security of supply,” said Peter Atherton, utilities equity analyst at Jefferies. “We have never had such a low ratio of conventional power plant capacity compared with renewables and the problem is going to get worse.”
The announcement in May by SSE that it would be closing the giant Ferrybridge power station in Yorkshire by March 2016 has also raised the stakes for regulators who are duty bound to ensure Britain has enough power. Based on the recent closures, power supply levels published by Ofgem show that Britain will be perilously close to blackouts by the winter of 2016 if wind levels prove to be too low to generate adequate electricity for the grid.
According to Mr Atherton the problem started with the Labour government under the former Prime Minister Tony Blair which committed Britain to unachievable targets for building renewable energy capacity.
The suspicion is that Mr Blair went into European climate talks in 2007 not even knowing the difference between energy – which covered everything from transportation to home insulation – and electricity. Almost a decade later, this possible schoolboy error by Mr Blair and his negotiating team could lead to blackouts for the “first time in living memory”, Mr Atherton believes.
“Germany and Spain for example don’t have the same security of supply problem as we do. We are unique in that we have a problem with supply and affordability of power,” he said.
The Coalition and the new Conservative Government have essentially continued along with the same unrealistic policy which has committed Britain to generating around 80pc of its power from renewables and nuclear by 2030. Another problem according to Mr Atherton is the need to build more latency into the renewable network.
He estimates that to replace 1 gigawatt of conventional coal or gas generated power capacity it requires the equivalent of around 3.5 gigawatts of renewables.
“The problem is that the closure programme for conventional plants like Eggborough is running to time but the new build programme is now about four years behind schedule. There is a big mismatch between what is getting shut down and what is getting built to replace it,” said Mr Atherton.
With conventional fossil-fuel burning plants expected to simply serve as back up for renewables and nuclear from 2030 onwards, the cost of construction is also an issue, according to John Feddersen, chief executive officer of Aurora Energy Research based in Oxford. He estimates that the cost of constructing a new combined-cycle gas turbine electricity plant capable of producing around 1,000 megawatts of power is around £700m in the UK, which is expensive given that these plants will increasingly be used as standby facilities.
“There has been less construction than expected because of this,” he said. Mr Feddersen questions whether it is economically feasible to maintain a 5pc capacity buffer to ensure the security of supply given the cost of construction and maintenance.
Further uncertainty is being caused by the potential delay of the landmark £24.5bn Hinkley Point nuclear plant. Originally earmarked to start producing electricity by 2023 its developer EDF has recently rowed back on the date for when the plant will actually open. Construction work on the nuclear facility is being held up by delays to taking a final investment decision on the project, which is vital to meeting the UK’s power needs beyond 2020.
***
***
EDF and its Chinese investment partners have so far failed to secure additional funding for the project from investors. The scheme is also being bogged down by negotiations with the Government over potential subsidies and a protracted EU enquiry into state aid.
Ultimately, National Grid is responsible for ensuring that the country has enough power to meet demand in any eventuality. It has been mandated to buy what it describes as “balancing services” from suppliers. As of July the grid had procured at a cost of £36m an additional 2.56 gigawatts of power, which means it will have a margin of 5.1pc spare capacity with which to balance the network.
Although this should be enough of a buffer to avoid a shortfall, or the imposition of emergency measures such as requiring some industrial users to shutdown during peak load periods, the system remains vulnerable to unforeseen plant shutdowns and adverse winter weather conditions. Nuclear plant operator EDF was forced at the end of last year to take its reactors at Haysham and Hartlepool down for safety reasons.
The grid is currently in the final stages of conducting a public consultation before it published its closely-watched winter outlook report, which will provide the latest figures on the state of supply and demand. Although few experts expect a shortfall this winter there is growing concern that blackouts could be unavoidable by the end of 2016. “There is never a 100pc guarantee of keeping the lights on but the margins are manageable this winter,” said a spokesperson for National Grid.
Of course any blackouts can be avoided by the National Grid and the Government by paying suppliers to keep plants open that were scheduled to be shutdown. Eggborough’s owners have already said that the plant will need £200m in fresh funding to remain open for another few years but that is unlikely to be forthcoming.
Mr Atherton said: “The National Grid has a legal duty to make sure the lights stay on in the winter.”
A DECC spokesman said: “Our number one priority is to ensure that hardworking families and businesses have access to secure, affordable energy supplies they can rely on. In the short term, we have ensured that National Grid have everything they need to manage the system and meet sudden increases in demand.
“In the longer term, we are investing in infrastructure and sensible policies to improve energy security. The UK Government and EDF are continuing to work together to finalise Hinkley Point C project. The deal must represent value for money and is subject to approval by Ministers.”
The TelegraphIn the mess of the primary season, it’s easy to lose perspective of what an impressive personal and political career Hillary Clinton has had. So let’s take a look at some of her accomplishments and examples of her working hard for the American people.
Much of this list comes from a post by /u/carefreecartographer on Reddit, reproduced here with permission, and sourced by me.
Foreign Policy:
Health:
Education:
9/11:
Children/Women:
This is considered by many to be one of the turning points of international women’s rights
In 1995, during an unprecedented address in Beijing to the United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women, Hillary recounted worldwide abuses and declared “It is time for us to say here in Beijing, and for the world to hear, that it is no longer acceptable to discuss women’s rights as separate from human rights.”
First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton’s Remarks to the Fourth Women’s Conference in Beijing, China
Career:
Political Career:
Voting Rights
More legislation (that became law)
Legislation VetoedA lot of Linux enthusiasts would like to get into VFIO passthrough gaming, but the proposition can get daunting quickly — Getting the wrong hardware or trying to work with a generalized build you already have can throw up roadblocks, and in a lot of cases, those complications drive newcomers to the practice away.
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Misunderstandings in the early stages of setup lead a lot of would-be VFIO gamers to believe that you need server or enterprise hardware to make VFIO work properly, or that the performance problems are so severe that it isn’t worth doing anyway.
While this isn’t the case, ill-defined compatibility guidelines and poor documentation do a lot to help propagate the myth that VFIO for gaming is ‘too hard’ or ‘vaporware.’
VFIO Gaming Can Be Easy
The goal of this build guide is to help people thinking about building a VFIO gaming rig, or people that have a machine they want to make more VFIO compatible, make the right part choices, even on a budget. Convenience and VFIO compatibility are prioritized over pure price to performance, and we realize that with some tweaking and workarounds, you can get other hardware working pretty well, too.
That’s outside of our scope here, though. This build is about making VFIO gaming as hassle free as possible from the ground up, for under $1,000. (All prices listed at the time of writing, and are subject to change.)
So, without further ado, let’s get into our parts, and the rationale for each of them:
One of the most important parts of building a VFIO machine is proper IOMMU groups — without them, you’re left shuffling around expansion boards, patching kernels, and attempting all manner of jury-rigging to get your setup working.
The Gaming K6 is on the expensive side of the Coffee lake spectrum, but it has all the features you’re likely to need, and it comes with a full compliment of PCIe Isolation, which is critical for a VFIO Gaming rig. Less expensive options may be available, but this is the only board we were able to verify.
Editor’s Note: This motherboard is only appropriate for single dGPU VFIO setups. The z370 chipset has poor cpu lane isolation regardless or motherboard. If a second, host dGPU is desired, the X370 or x299 chipsets may be more appropriate, or the ACS patch will need to be used.
Enough cores for a respectable passthrough VM, and no need to patch the guest or host system to get it running well. There isn’t much else to say about this chip.
Yes, a B350 + Ryzen 5 combo may be more attractive for the price, but after you add up the cost of a host gpu, the time spent getting the host to boot properly with the display card in the wrong slot, patching the kernel (yes, a few distros use the kernel with the merged NPT fix, but not a majority of them) and possibly an RMA because of the Segfault issue, the value proposition becomes a bit of a wash.
We’re focused on convenience and compatibility after all, so the coffee lake hexacore was looking good from the get-go.
No, this isn’t the most powerful or glamorous card on the market. Yes, it is bug free and well balanced with the amount of cores you can pass through on the i5. Regardless of what brand you may prefer, or what power you want to extract from your VM, higher end consumer cards need workarounds in the guest and/or host to work properly.
Polaris cards might not be the fastest thing out there, but they make passthrough VM setup easier. If the extra 5-10 FPS or so is that important to you, I’m sure the workarounds are worth it, but for newcomers, it’s best to stick to what isn’t broken out of the box.
If we’re being honest, RAM prices are a bit outrageous at the moment. This particular component doesn’t really have much bearing on VFIO gaming compatibility, and Intel platforms aren’t as picky about their DIMMs as Ryzen systems tend to be, so this one’s pretty much up to you.
As long as you have enough to comfortably pass 8-12 GB to the guest while gaming, and it’s compatible with your motherboard, go with whatever costs the least at the time. There’s not a whole lot to gain from high frequency ram on a ‘budget’ system like this.
Another function over style choice here. Seasonic is the quiet mastermind behind many beloved PSU rebadges, and they’re well known for their reliability (among ODMs like FSP and Super Flower) in the enterprise sector. Realistically, you could run this build on about 430W, but this gives you some overhead if you want to pop in a better GPU or an i7 down the line.
In the Quarterly reviews of hard drive failure rates done by Backblaze, Toshiba and Hitachi produced drives consistently survive longer than WD or Seagate, and right now Toshiba and Hitachi Drives are cheaper per gigabyte in most cases. Despite the mind-share of the ‘top’ brands, we think the value proposition of going with Toshiba or Hitachi is good enough to take the road less traveled.
As for the SSD, it’s just cheap, commodity flash with no history of catastrophic failures. It’ll make a perfectly adequate boot drive for the host, but it’s pretty much interchangeable with most drives in the price range. Consider getting a higher capacity SSD if you want to put your VM’s boot image on faster media. The motherboard has plenty of SATA connectivity, so grabbing another SSD or HDD to dedicate to your VMs later on is no big deal.
Cases are really a matter of taste, but the Corsair 200R is one of my favorites in the lower end price range, you get thumbscrews and solid tool-less assembly, a no-nonsense design language, plenty of room and cable management options, and solid, well finished construction for less than $50. While this part is interchangeable for whatever matches your aesthetic, I’d strongly recommend the 200R if you don’t know what to get or you’re a first time builder on a budget.
Build Summary
Part Price i5 8400 $199 Asrock Fatal1ty Gaming K6 $179 Asus Strix RX 570 $229 16GB RipJaws V $169 Seasonic 620W $45 HDD $69 SSD $39 Corsair 200R $43 Total $971
With all our components selected, we should be about 30 dollars under budget. You could take the remaining dollars in your budget and put it towards a tower cooler, if noise is a big issue for you, or buy a few quality of life improving accessories, like a USB KVM switch or a USB HBA, for config-free input switching in your gaming VMs, or a USB audio interface for low latency VM audio. Either way, you’ve got a hassle free VFIO gaming rig, all said and done.
Discuss the merits and drawbacks of this build’s approach to convenience on our discord!
Photo courtesy Kyle BrennanIt was huge celebrations for one man in Mexico – and time for another to finally accept championship defeat. But who else experienced highs and lows in Sunday’s eventful race around the Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez? The Winners Ninth enough for four-tastic Hamilton Despite the clash with Sebastian Vettel on the opening lap, which condemned both drivers to playing catch-up roles against the odds, Lewis Hamilton’s chances always looked better than the German’s. Vettel needed to win or, if Hamilton failed to score, at least to garner 16 points. But Hamilton is a fighter and he’d wanted to win, and just because he was down in last place didn’t mean he would give up. His was a champion’s drive, in extremely difficult circumstances, and his fight with Fernando Alonso for his eventual ninth place was a highlight of the race’s closing stages. He thus cannot be beaten to his fourth world title, and vows to go wheel-to-wheel with Vettel and Verstappen in the remaining two races. As double champion Emerson Fittipaldi said of him, “He is a super champion, a great for sure. England should be very proud of him.”
Victorious Verstappen (and Renault) From the moment he got alongside Sebastian Vettel going out of Turn 1 and towards Turn 2 at the start, the flying Dutchman had this race won. As the two title rivals had their moment behind him, he simply hauled away unto the distance, toying with Valtteri Bottas’s valiant attempt to keep him under pressure, and won in tremendous style. Afterwards, it transpired that he had barely broken a sweat. But for all that, it was a little bit tense after he had seen the retired machines of team mate Daniel Ricciardo and then Brendon Hartley, both of which suffered dramas with their new engines. But even though Red Bull and Renault turned the engine down and asked him to ease off to conserve his machinery, he had more than enough speed to cope with anyone else on the track. "I could see a lot of cars blowing up and retiring so I was definitely a bit worried," he said as he took the third win of his short career. “We looked after our engine and everything seemed to work pretty well. I saw on the TV screen that Daniel had retired, and I saw a Toro Rosso on fire. "I thought, 'Oh God, don't make this happen to me,' and we turned the engine down. I had a new engine so maybe that helped, but Daniel had a new one too. “I had my bad luck at the beginning of the year so I am very happy that this time nothing happened to me. I knew the car was good but I didn't know it was going to be this good. After last week I was fired up and motivated to do well, and after yesterday I was giving it everything.” And just because he is Max Verstappen, he banged in the race’s fastest lap on the 65th tour. Because he could. And it mattered not that Vettel subsequently went a little faster, three laps later. Verstappen was proving a point which will not have gone unnoticed by rival camps. With two wins in the last four races, the Dutchman is very much a man in form.
Mighty Magnussen Considering how ill he’d felt with a stomach upset on Friday it was a miracle that Kevin Magnussen was fit enough to helm his Haas to an eighth-place finish. Especially as he had to fend off serious attacks from Fernando Alonso and then Lewis Hamilton on his way to the chequered flag. His was also a particularly fine drive because he was in arguably the slowest car on the grid, at least based on qualifying times. The Dane made his luck on the opening laps as he jumped up from 14th to 10th, had a brief spell in sixth during the pit stops, then rode it for all it was worth to the flag, which he reached just 0.6s ahead of the newly-crowned quadruple champion. And the four points he earned brought Haas to within one of Renault in the fight for seventh place overall. “That was like a victory,” he suggested. “It was incredible, and a great way to reward everyone for their hard work. It was a perfect race. It couldn’t have gone better. We could easily have given up and just thrown the towel into the ring yesterday – it was a very tough day for us all. Nobody gave up, and everyone knows we’re not the worst team, or meant to be on the last row. We’re meant to be in the points, fighting in the midfield and getting into the top 10. We pushed on and I’m very proud of the team for that. We’re going to continue to fight. It’s not going to be easy, we can see that, but we’ll continue to push in the constructors’ championship and have fun all the way to the end.”
Marvellous Mexico Once again, the Mexicans put on a fabulous show that drew a mammoth crowd – 337,043 was the official figure. This weekend’s Dia de los Muertos (Day of the Dead) parade was a key part of the pre-race build up, and brought great culture to the grid. It is a celebration of the belief that deceased loved ones return from the dead to see life on earth again, to taste their favourite foods, and to rest before returning to the afterlife. The enthusiasm of the Mexican crowd brought much to the proceedings, not least on the 19th lap when so many of them stood with clenched fists in support of those affected by the recent earthquakes on September 7th and 19th.
The Losers Valiant Vettel gracious in defeat Once again Sebastian Vettel was the architect of his own downfall. He really needed to win this one and he took pole with a brilliant lap. But when the chips were down and he headed into Turn 1 after the start, he left a sliver of a gap for Max Verstappen, and as he struggled to keep his car under control as the Dutchman went by, he hit the right-rear tyre of Lewis Hamilton, whose pass for second place was opportunistic but totally righteous. Thereafter, he was doomed to play catch-up, knowing that he had almost zero chance of the second place he needed to keep his title hopes alive (assuming Hamilton didn’t rise higher than ninth). "I'm down, obviously,” he admitted afterwards. “It's tough to cross the line and realise that you're not in the fight anymore. That sums it up. The rest isn't that important, whatever happened today, the most important thing is it's Lewis's day - he was crowned world champion and he deserves that. "I would have loved to go up on him, but it's his day, it's his year. "For us, obviously we're left with whatever is left. Right now, it's disappointing. Next year will be a different story, as we all start again, but right now, in these moments, you need to give credit to the best man and that is him this year. "Overall, he was the better man and did the better job, simple as that."
Renault on the ropes It was a bad day for most of the Renault runners; Carlos Sainz had a high-speed spin early on and a pit stop to change flat-spotted tyres, and never really featured again as he ran just ahead of Hamilton for a long time and later retired with the handling awry due to a mechanical steering problem. And one of the toughest breaks befell his team mate Nico Hulkenberg. He was fourth on the opening lap but later lost seventh due to electrical problems. He was urgently told to stop the car and that it was not safe due to an electrical issue, and instructed to get out of it by walking down the nose and jumping off. “It was a very frustrating race today, I’m disappointed,” the Hulk said. “We were doing well and a very good result slipped through our fingers. We have some work to do on reliability because we lost some potential points today. It’s a shame but this is racing.” Also, Brendon Hartley lost a decent 11th place in his second race for Toro Rosso when his new Renault engine broke dramatically on the 31st lap. And with the new power unit on Daniel Ricciardo’s Red Bull eating a turbo after only five laps, it was a bittersweet race for the French engine supplier, though Verstappen’s great victory was, of course, a massive consolation.In the weeks before and after the Copenhagen climate change conference last December, the science of climate change came under harsh attack by critics who contend that climate scientists have deliberately suppressed evidence — and that the science itself is severely flawed. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the global group of experts charged with assessing the state of climate science, has been accused of bias.
The global public is disconcerted by these attacks. If experts cannot agree that there is a climate crisis, why should governments spend billions of dollars to address it?
The fact is that the critics — who are few in number but aggressive in their attacks — are deploying tactics that they have honed for more than 25 years. During their long campaign, they have greatly exaggerated scientific disagreements in order to stop action on climate change, with special interests like Exxon Mobil footing the bill.
Many books have recently documented the games played by the climate-change deniers. Merchants of Doubt, a new book by Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway set for release in mid-2010, will be an authoritative account of their misbehaviour. The authors show that the same group of mischief-makers, given a platform by the free-market ideologues of The Wall Street Journal's editorial page, has consistently tried to confuse the public and discredit the scientists whose insights are helping to save the world from unintended environmental harm.
Today's campaigners against action on climate change are in many cases backed by the same lobbies, individuals, and organisations that sided with the tobacco industry to discredit the science linking smoking and lung cancer. Later, they fought the scientific evidence that sulphur oxides from coal-fired power plants were causing "acid rain." Then, when it was discovered that certain chemicals called chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) were causing the depletion of ozone in the atmosphere, the same groups launched a nasty campaign to discredit that science, too.
Later still, the group defended the tobacco giants against charges that second-hand smoke causes cancer and other diseases. And then, starting mainly in the 1980s, this same group took on the battle against climate change.
What is amazing is that, although these attacks on science have been wrong for 30 years, they still sow doubts about established facts. The truth is that there is big money backing the climate-change deniers, whether it is companies that don't want to pay the extra costs of regulation, or free-market ideologues opposed to any government controls.
The latest round of attacks involves two episodes. The first was the hacking of a climate-change research centre in England. The emails that were stolen suggested a lack of forthrightness in the presentation of some climate data. Whatever the details of this specific case, the studies in question represent a tiny fraction of the overwhelming scientific evidence that points to the reality and urgency of man-made climate change.
The second issue was a blatant error concerning glaciers that appeared in a major IPCC report. Here it should be understood that the IPCC issues thousands of pages of text. There are, no doubt, errors in those pages. But errors in the midst of a vast and complex report by the IPCC point to the inevitability of human shortcomings, not to any fundamental flaws in climate science.
When the emails and the IPCC error were brought to light, editorial writers at The Wall Street Journal launched a vicious campaign describing climate science as a hoax and a conspiracy. They claimed that scientists were fabricating evidence in order to obtain government research grants — a ludicrous accusation, I thought at the time, given that the scientists under attack have devoted their lives to finding the truth, and have certainly not become rich relative to their peers in finance and business.
But then I recalled that this line of attack — charging a scientific conspiracy to drum up "business" for science — was almost identical to that used by The Wall Street Journal and others in the past, when they fought controls on tobacco, acid rain, ozone depletion, second-hand smoke, and other dangerous pollutants. In other words, their arguments were systematic and contrived, not at all original to the circumstances.
We are witnessing a predictable process by ideologues and right-wing think tanks and publications to discredit the scientific process. Their arguments have been repeatedly disproved for 30 years — time after time — but their aggressive methods of public propaganda succeed in causing delay and confusion.
Climate change science is a wondrous intellectual activity. Great scientific minds have learned over the course of many decades to "read" the Earth's history, in order to understand how the climate system works. They have deployed brilliant physics, biology, and instrumentation (such as satellites reading detailed features of the Earth's systems) in order to advance our understanding.
And the message is clear: large-scale use of oil, coal, and gas is threatening the biology and chemistry of the planet. We are fuelling dangerous changes in Earth's climate and ocean chemistry, giving rise to extreme storms, droughts, and other hazards that will damage the food supply and the quality of life of the planet.
The IPCC and the climate scientists are telling us a crucial message. We need urgently to transform our energy, transport, food, industrial, and construction systems to reduce the dangerous human impact on the climate. It is our responsibility to listen, to understand the message, and then to act.
Copyright: Project Syndicate, 2010China has put the final piece of what is set to be the world's largest radio telescope in place, state media have reported.
The "Five-hundred-metre Aperture Spherical Telescope", or FAST, is the size of 30 football fields and has been hewn out of a mountain in the southwestern province of Guizhou.
"The project has the potential to search for more strange objects to better understand the origin of the universe and boost the global hunt for extraterrestrial life," Zheng Xiaonian, deputy head of the National Astronomical Observation under the Chinese Academy of Sciences, which built the telescope, said on Sunday.
The $180m radio telescope would be a global leader for the next one to two decades, Xiaonian was quoted as saying by the official Xinhua news agency.
READ MORE: China to relocate 10,000 to make way for huge telescope
A number of trials will follow the hoisting of the final piece on Sunday.
The telescope, which took about five years to build, is expected to begin operations in September.
China's space programme has been a priority, with President Xi Jinping calling for the country to establish itself as a space power.
Beijing's ambitions include putting a man on the Moon by 2036 and building a space station - work on which has already begun.
China insists its programme is for peaceful purposes, but the US defense department has highlighted Beijing's increasing space capabilities, saying it is pursuing activities aimed to prevent adversaries from using space-based assets in a crisis.Entertainment industry groups often equate illegal downloading to theft, an act that many people would feel guilty about carrying out. However, millions of downloaders simply do not feel any guilt when they transfer infringing content to their machines, so why is that? Scientists in Australia think they've found the answer.
Every month millions of people download and share movies, TV shows, music, software and ebooks without obtaining permission from copyright holders.
In most countries that activity is illegal, meaning that huge numbers of Internet users are breaking the law on a daily basis.
While there are plenty of criminals around, most illegal downloaders don’t equate their hobby to being tantamount to theft, despite huge efforts by copyright holders to paint it so. To most it just doesn’t ‘feel’ the same and now scientists in Australia think they may have discovered why.
A three-stage study published by Robert Eres, a PhD student within the Social Neuroscience lab led by Dr Pascal Molenberghs at the Monash Institute of Cognitive and Clinical Neurosciences, investigated why normally law-abiding people don’t have a problem with breaking laws which cover intangible items.
To that end the researchers investigated what happens inside the brains of people when they pirate intangible digital content versus stealing a physical item such as a handbag.
To begin, the researchers issued a questionnaire to discover whether people are more likely to “steal” non-tangible items (such as movie or music files) than their physical counterparts (DVDs and CDs). They found that their test subjects were indeed more likely to “steal” items that have no physical embodiment, no matter what their cost or associated risk of getting caught.
Next up the researchers carried out two sets of brain scans to try and understand why people are more happy to “steal” items that have no physical presence.
“The first brain imaging experiment revealed that people’s brains were much more active when trying to imagine intangible compared to tangible objects, which suggests people have more difficulty with representing intangible items,” the researchers write.
During the second set of scans, test subjects were asked to imagine themselves illegally or legally obtaining physical and digital versions of items such as movies, music, TV shows and software.
What the researchers found was that when imagining stealing an item, participants showed much more activation in the lateral orbital frontal cortex of their brains. Among other things, this part of the brain is associated with feelings of moral sensitivity and it was much more active when test subjects were thinking about stealing physical items than it was for intangible items such as digital files.
“The findings from the two brain imaging experiments suggest that people are processing the intangible and tangible objects very differently within their brains,” Mr Eres says.
Social Neuroscience lab head Dr Pascal Molenberghs says that this suggests that people have less problem breaking laws covering intangible items since they experience more difficulties imagining them so their brains feel less guilty when they “steal” them.
“Evolutionarily, we have interacted more with physical goods – particularly in respect to ownership so that is why we are hardwired to respect these more compared to intangible items such as ideas or software,” Dr Molenberghs says.
Finally, the researchers believe that the results of study have wider implications to other areas of online life, beyond Internet piracy.
“Overall, the data presented here suggests that the differences we see in moral behaviors (particularly concerning contexts of non-physical interactions; piracy, online surveillance and espionage) may be due to the differences in their neural representation and the discerning level of guilt felt for tangible items compared with intangible,” they conclude.Williams III led the Tigers in scoring and rebounding as a sophomore. Bo Ryan is not going to be pleased.
Multiple sources have told Spartan Tailgate that former Missouri forward Johnathan Williams III is eyeing Michigan State as his next destination. Missouri announced last night that Williams III, a sophomore, will transfer.
Sources claim when Williams III submitted his transfer application, Michigan State was the school he requested to have contact with. Missouri did not stand in the way on that front. It was reported Williams cannot move on to an SEC or Big 12 school, Illinois or Arizona as conditions of the transfer. Now it is a matter of the NCAA deciding if Williams III will be immediately eligible where he lands. NCAA rules state a player that transfers must sit out one season but that can be waived. If it is not, Williams must sit out 2015-16 but would have two years of eligibility remaining.
The Spartans heavily recruited Williams III out of Memphis (Tenn.) Southwind in the 2013 draft cycle. Williams III, ranked then as the nation’s No. 9 power forward in the 247Sports Composite, ultimately chose Missouri over Michigan State and Georgetown, among others. The coach Williams III committed to, Frank Haith, left Missouri for Tulsa last April in a move that stunned the college basketball community.
This past season, the 6-foot-9, 225-pound Williams III led the Missouri in points ( |
tha Franklin and Barry White. He just doesn’t adjust his voice at all. And you can hear him on my podcast, called Hey We’re Back!
11. Do you have anybody’s autograph?
JK: I had Jackie Robinson’s autograph. He came to our home for dinner one night, and he signed a baseball for me. But I went out and played baseball with it the next day and I lost it. I also lost my shoes. I came home with no shoes and no baseball from Central Park.
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AVC: How did Jackie Robinson wind up at your house for dinner?
JK: Because my father was part of an interdenominational, interfaith group. After he gave up being a communist and a labor leader, he went into the Jewish business, and he was a synagogue administrator, and it was in that role that he invited Jackie Robinson to attend an event, and he came over for dinner.
AVC: What was Jackie Robinson like as a dinner guest?
JK: A total slob. I would ask him to pass the coleslaw, and he would say, “Blow me.”
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AVC: That is… unexpected. You never get a sense of that from documentaries.
JK: He was such a great athlete, I just don’t understand his anger at the dinner table. I just don’t get it.
12. Bonus question from Scott Aukerman: I’m having trouble turning my pilot light of my water heater back on. I’ve looked it up online. Supposedly, you’re supposed to push a button while putting a flame in there, but there’s no actual button. It looks to be an electronic switch, and it says in the instructions to turn and depress the “on/off” button. There’s no “on/off” button. There’s just an “up” and a “down” button. I’m just clueless. I don’t know if I should call the gas company and pay $100. I’d rather save the $100 by not calling the gas company and just handling it myself, but I’m clueless, so would they mind coming by to show me how to turn the pilot light of my water heater back on?
JK: No.
AVC: No, you wouldn’t mind, or no, he shouldn’t call the gas company?
JK: No, I wouldn’t mind.
AVC: So you’ll be by shortly to help Scott Aukerman with his water heater.
JK: Yeah, I’m happy to do it. He lives in Natick, Massachusetts, I’m hoping.
AVC: Maybe he could just bring his water heater there.
JK: It’s such a dangerous situation. Just the term “pilot light” has become kind of obsolete in the world of microwaves and convection ovens. Or maybe I’m just confusing my kitchen with the world.
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AVC: Both are big and frightening.
JK: Yeah.
AVC: And what question do you have for the next person?
JK: Have you ever had sex with an animal? I posed that question to Tom Leopold as Dr. Katz, and he said, “Yes, but that’s not why I’m here.”
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AVC: Is that really a question you want an answer to? You want the answer to be “no,” right?
JK: It depends on who I’m asking. I think more people have than would be willing to admit. And that doesn’t mean that it’s always consensual. But there’s a law on the books in Vermont—I think it was introduced around 1920, and it’s still on the law books—that men in Vermont are not allowed to wear boots that go above the knees. Because doctors believed that syphilis was introduced to this country by men having sex with sheep. Which we now know is not the case.
AVC: Do we know that?
JK: Well, I think the jury’s still out. But the law is still on the books in Vermont. I’m not making that up. That’s one of the problems with comedians is that they confuse truth with funny.
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AVC: Just to clarify, you never had sex with those hamsters, right?
JK: No. But they were cute. Just not for me.On Thursday, July 14, the day before Pitchfork Music Festival kicks off in Chicago, there will be pre-fest events with Broken Social Scene and Mick Jenkins. Jenkins is the next musician to be featured in In Sight Out, Pitchfork's collaborative talk series with the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago. The talk takes place Thursday, July 14 at 6 p.m. at the MCA and is moderated by Pitchfork contributor David Drake. Find more information here.
Additionally, Pitchfork is delighted to have Broken Social Scene playing a special pre-festival performance at the Metro on July 14. This intimate show is only open to festival pass holders 21 and over, and will be available to anyone who purchased a day or three-day pass. Those who already have a festival pass will be receiving a special promo code to purchase tickets while supplies last. *
*WASHINGTON (WJLA) – For five months, a thriving D.C. business has been the target of self-described ISIS militants.
Wednesday, one day after ABC7 reported on the threats and harassment, the FBI has stepped in to investigate.
For the past five months a barrage of phone calls and internet postings have threatened employees. The callers vow to carry out mass murder.
ABC7 News is not identifying the business nor any individuals because of the sensitive nature of these threats.
The business is Jewish owned and some of the threats are anti-Semitic while others are racial or homophobic.
The recent terrorist attacks in Paris have employees worried.
The owner says D.C. police investigated but handed the case over to Homeland Security, which deemed the threats not credible.
Verizon says the calls are traceable but it needs police to ask it to take action.
The business owner says the detectives tell him they must hear from Verizon first.
The business owner and employees say they know of no one who has an axe to grind against them and they are baffled as to why the callers are targeting them.I wanted to try and create my own game mats for use in the X-Wing miniatures game. I am providing the pdf files at full resolution so you can print them out yourself on PVC banner. I used 900g PVC banner material and the pdfs are provided in 150 dpi & CMYK format.
Creating these mats took time to create. If you like them and want to use them that’s great! But if you feel like buying me a beer or another ship for my X-Wing collection then click the donate button below. Or buy a copy of End Space instead :)
Cheers,
Justin Wasilenko
Donate with Paypal:
Death Star Game Mat
For more images used in the creation of this image check out the ArtStation page.
Jakku Game Mat
This mat is based on the excellent diorama created by Stefan Hacker.
3′ x 3′ Jakku Graveyard
Disclaimer: They are provided as is with no support or guarantee.
Terms of Use: Private use only. Not allowed to be used in commercial printing or usage.The opinions expressed by columnists are their own and do not represent the views of Townhall.com.
There was an old "Saturday Night Live" fake movie trailer narrated by horror movie veteran Christopher Lee. John Belushi played a houseguest who couldn't take a hint from a couple that just wanted to go to bed. The husband tells Belushi, "Look, I don't want to be rude, but my wife is VERY tired!" Belushi responds by picking up the TV Guide and saying dismissively, "Yeah.... Hey, there's a good movie on tonight! I think I'll call up some friends and watch it over here!"
Then came Lee's creepy voiceover: "It came without warning! They were just being POLITE! They didn't realize that they'd be stuck with... "The Thing That Wouldn't Leave"!
John Kasich is this election season's The Thing That Wouldn't Leave.
After investing everything in New Hampshire, Kasich came in second, doing worse than Jon Huntsman had in his race-ending performance in 2012. Kasich's response? He didn't just declare victory, he proclaimed, "Tonight, the light overcame the darkness."
Since then, Kasich has lost some 30 contests and won one -- in his home state of Ohio. But still, he just won't go.
It's not just that Kasich can't take a hint, it's that he appears to be living in a kind of fantasy world, largely defined by three myths or delusions.
The first is the most endearing. Kasich has the best resume of the remaining candidates. Heck, he arguably had the best resume of the entire 2016 field, if by "best" you mean the longest and deepest government experience. He's not delusional about that.
What he is confused about is the idea that a lot of people care that he was, say, the chairman of the House Budget Committee two decades ago. According to legend, a supporter once shouted at Adlai Stevenson, "Governor Stevenson, all thinking people are for you!" Stevenson shot back, "That's not enough. I need a majority!" Even if Kasich is right that his resume makes him the best qualified to be president -- a debatable proposition -- the simple fact is that after nearly three dozen contests, relatively few voters agree with him.
Ah, but what about the delegates? If it's a contested convention and neither Donald Trump nor Ted Cruz has enough delegates to lock up the nomination, won't they turn to Kasich?
Not necessarily. But don't tell that to the Ohio governor, who goes from interview to interview insisting that he'd be the natural choice for the convention. Why would he be? Well, that answer varies.
Kasich's most frequently stated reason is that delegates will choose him because he beats Hillary Clinton in the polls. And it's true that Kasich does marginally better than Cruz in hypothetical matchups against Clinton -- and a lot better than Trump.
Left unanswered is why the delegates -- many of them loyal to Trump and Cruz -- would gamely back The Thing That Wouldn't Leave. After the second or third round of voting, delegates are free to cast their ballots for whomever they want. There's little evidence that they'd want Kasich, and they'd be under no obligation to vote for him over, say, Paul Ryan or Marco Rubio -- or, for that matter, Rush Limbaugh or Shaquille O'Neal. Indeed, for many delegates it would seem either unfair or downright crazy to skip over bigger vote-getters and back Kasich just because he won his home state of Ohio.
Of course, what that leaves out is the fact that Kasich is running as a hopeful, positive, uplifting champion of light over darkness. That brings us to yet another Kasich delusion, and this one is shared by many of his backers as well. Call it the myth of Kasich the hugger.
In South Carolina, a college student asked the Ohio governor for one of his supposedly famous hugs. It wasn't until later that we learned the huggee worked for the hugger's super PAC. More to the point, Kasich is simply not the touchy-feely guy he's pretending to be or perhaps thinks he is.
The man is famously irascible, pugnacious and sanctimonious. He's prone to defending his policies, such as his expansion of Medicaid under Obamacare in Ohio, by insinuating that he cares more about his eternal soul than his critics. A lot of people talk about how unlikeable Cruz is. Well, I've met both men, and I'd much rather have a beer with Cruz.
Maybe Kasich's denial stems from the fact that he's never lost a race and can't contemplate failing this time. I really have no idea. All I know is that it's time for him to go.Kept forgetting to do this, but here we go finally.
Once again I have got a great Secret Santa. She shopped around and found me some awesome gifts.
I got a Stargate SG-1 shoulder patch.
I also got a copy of Batman: the Movie (1966) on Bluray. I highly recommend this version to anyone who likes the movie
Then finally, I got a set of Stargate SG-1 Earth Point of Origin vinyl decal stickers. I'm seriously thinking about putting one of them on my car's back window.
The cool thing is now two years in a row I have got Stargate stuff from Secret Santa. As a big Stargate fan, I'm not complaining a bit.
But anyways, Thank you Santa for this gifts. I hope you have a great New Year!A day after Rush Limbaugh stirred up a roiling pot of controversy by saying on his show that he's "ashamed" of America, the conservative radio talk show host clarified his statements on Friday by asserting that he had only been referring to his disappointment with the liberal direction that the country is taking.
“I realize that many of you tuned in today wanting to hear more of this," Limbaugh said. "You wanted to hear what this is all about. You wanted to hear more about it, and I haven't really discussed it yet and you're probably angry, and I want to tell you why."
On Thursday, Limbaugh had drawn criticism from conservatives and liberals alike when he said that he was "ashamed of [his] country" for the "first time" in his life.
“To be watching all of this, to be treated like this, to have our common sense and intelligence insulted the way it's being insulted? It just makes me ashamed," he said at the time.
People on both sides of the aisle demanded that Limbaugh clarify his comments and on Friday, the radio host complied -- explaining that his frustration had been directed at the country's liberal leanings.
"[T]he left has beaten us," Limbaugh said during his Friday show. "They have created far more low-information, unaware, uneducated people than we’ve been able to keep up with."
He added that liberals now have control of "pop culture, movies, TVs, books [and] music."Five thousand faculty strike at Pennsylvania state campuses
By Samuel Davidson and Douglas Lyons
20 October 2016
About 5,000 college educators went out on strike Wednesday at 14 Pennsylvania state university campuses after contract negotiations between the faculty union, the Association of Pennsylvania State College and University Faculties (APSCUF), and the Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education (PSSHE) broke down Tuesday night. The strike affects 105,000 students.
Faculty picketing at Shippensburg University
Professors set up pickets early in the morning at state system campuses in Bloomsburg, California, Cheyney, Clarion, East Stroudsburg, Edinboro, Indiana, Kutztown, Lock Haven, Mansfield, Millersville, Shippensburg, Slippery Rock and West Chester.
The strike is an expression of growing social opposition and anger among different sections of workers throughout the country in the run-up to the US election. In every case, the unions involved are seeking to isolate workers and prevent a political struggle against both the Democratic and Republican parties.
One of the main issues in the strike is the expanded use of temporary adjunct professors. The administration is seeking to increase the number of classes that can be taught by adjunct professors from 25 to 30 percent, and force adjuncts to teach a fifth course without any additional pay. Universities throughout the country are turning to the use of adjunct professors to cut costs.
The state system administration wants the power to hire graduate students who have not yet earned their degree, and to expand the use of online courses at the expense of classroom learning. All these measures are aimed at cutting costs and creating the conditions for laying off professors.
The PSSHE is also demanding $22 million in concessions from employee health care plans. Even before the strike, the union proclaimed its willingness to accept increased health care premiums, deductibles and medication co-pays. Making clear their determination to break the strike, the PSSHE has already cut health benefits for the striking employees.
The WSWS spokes with faculty and students on the picket lines at Shippensburg University, in south central Pennsylvania.
Steve, a professor in the Department of History and Philosophy, said, “It has been over a year without a contract and now the deal was especially unfair to part-time adjuncts.”
Steve of the History and Philosophy department, Bob and Blake of Management and Marketing department.
Blake, a professor in the Marketing and Management Department, said, “We are out here protecting higher education by having faculty stand together to defend it. I didn’t get a PhD to go on strike. The very best thing to have is high academic standards and protect the integrity of the schools. I haven’t heard one faculty say we should strike for money. We didn’t enter the profession for money. It is a quality issue.”
Blake added, “We are fighting for an opportunity for working-class and middle-class kids to have access” to higher education. Education in the country is “going in the wrong direction.”
“The state system has terminated our health insurance,” Blake added. One of the professors “has kids, and he has to pay like $2,000 a month for health insurance.”
Joshua
Joshua, a senior at Shippensburg, expressed his support for the faculty. “I’m on the side of the faculty and their goals for students. The state system is not in it for education but in the money business. … I would say the majority of teachers are underfunded, salaries are low, and they can’t even provide resources for students.”
APSCUF insists that the state negotiating team compelled it to strike. The union has made clear that it is prepared to capitulate, so long as a face-saving offer is made. Union president Kenneth M. Mash said that in last-minute negotiations—conducted in secret not only from the media but from professors—the union offered millions of dollars in additional salary and health care concessions.
“We are headed to the picket lines, but even on the picket lines, our phones will be on, should the State System decide it doesn’t want to abandon its students,” Mash said in a statement.
The union coupled declarations of its readiness to agree to major concessions with appeals to the state’s Democratic governor, Tom Wolf. The union endorsed and financially supported Wolf during his election bid in 2014, claiming that he would support public education.
Wolf defeated the Republican incumbent, Tom Corbett, based largely on promises to restore funding to the state’s beleaguered public schools and university systems. Wolf has boasted of increasing allocations to the cash-starved system by 7.5 percent over two years, but state funding remains today at the level it was in 1999, and $60 million less than it was in 2007-2008, the year before the onset of the Great Recession.
In his statement, Mash spoke of Wolf as though he were an ally of the striking professors. “Through all of this, the governor has been a strong advocate for the students,” the union president said.
The attempt to portray Wolf as a friend is a fraud. He sits on the PSSHE’s Board of Governors and, as governor of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, is both the titular head of the state system and the individual who wields the most authority over state funding. There is every reason to believe that Wolf has collaborated closely with the PSSHE to help formulate its negotiating position.
Wolf has repaid the union bureaucracy’s subservience by condemning professors in equal measure with the PSSHE, saying that he was “extremely disappointed,” blaming the strike on the “shortsightedness on both sides.” Wolf is insisting, in other words, that professors have no right to strike even though they face massive concession demands and have been working without a contract since the summer of 2015.
Professors are facing not just state administrators, but a political system that subordinates the needs of teachers and students to the austerity dictates of the state’s wealthy elite, who dominate both political parties.
The state is propagating the lie that defending the rights of professors means increasing tuition for students. “These are difficult times for our universities,” state spokesman Kenn Marshall said. “If APSCUF won’t agree to share more of the costs for their own health care—like everyone else has—it will threaten our ability to keep tuition affordable for students.”
In fact, there are more than sufficient resources to ensure decent pay and benefits for professors and free higher education for students. However, these resources are controlled by the financial aristocracy and used for financing a military engaged in endless war abroad. The entire PSSHE budget of $444.2 million is less than the cost of three Air Force F-22 Raptors, and a small fraction of the combined wealth of the state’s ten billionaires.
Administrators at other colleges and universities, as well as both government and private employers, will be watching the strike closely. If the Pennsylvania state system professors can be forced to pay a substantially higher share for their health care, and if more work can be pushed on to low-pay faculty, similar demands will be made across the US.
Please enable JavaScript to view the comments powered by Disqus.The possible closure of the Central European University in Budapest has unleashed waves of denunciations directed at the Hungarian prime minister, Viktor Orbán, in western media. Orbán has been accused of leading an “assault on freedom” in the New York Times, while one Guardian writer has summoned up the spectre of Munich 1938.
We know the price of appeasement. That’s why we must stand up to Viktor Orbán | Timothy Garton Ash Read more
Let’s go over a few facts many west of Vienna seem unable to understand. Hungary is a democracy. It has a wide range of political parties (a lot more than, say, the US, which is only one party away from being a one-party state). It has free and fair elections. It has a parliament that passes legislation. The quality of legislation can vary greatly, as in any democracy, but like most legal matters that is a matter of keen debate. If citizens are unhappy about the legislation, they hold demonstrations, as they have been doing.
Orbán has aroused a lot of ire with his talk of “illiberal democracy”. I would like to underline the word democracy in that formula, which tends to get overlooked in the frothing of his critics. It should also be noted that in current Hungarian political usage “liberal” doesn’t have the connotations of “civilised”, “enlightened” or “generous”, it’s a portmanteau for leftwing conventions. I accept that an anti-left stance isn’t going to win Orbán fans among the Guardian’s readers, but I trust they might be willing to accept that someone who has a different opinion isn’t automatically wearing jackboots.
I find the criticism that Hungary no longer has a pluralistic media especially puzzling. That’s a harsh judgment on a country: the sort of judgment that requires evidence. I always find it interesting how people who don’t speak Hungarian feel entitled to accuse Orbán of “muzzling the press”.
For the benefit of those who have no Hungarian, I can give you a long list of television, radio, print and internet outlets that are not only prepared to be critical of Orbán, but devote themselves exclusively to trashing him. Indeed some of the criticism and satire is of a savagery rarely seen in Britain – it has to be conceded there’s very little adult debate when it comes to politics in Hungary.
If I want to know what’s going on in Hungary I check www.index.hu, which is fairly balanced, but enjoys needling the government. If I want some tabloid fun, I go to www.444.hu, which is unrepentantly anti-Orbán. Anyone with a phone can have access to “clean” news or denunciations of the prime minister if they want.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest A man holds up a sign that reads ‘Don’t close CEU, Orbán to the jail’ in a protest against a law that could close the Central European University, in Budapest. Photograph: Attila Kisbenedek/AFP/Getty Images
Orbán has also been condemned for his treatment of migrants. Some see his detention of the people flooding in over the border as unreasonable. It might not be the ideal solution, but unlike the EU – which is sitting on its arse in bewilderment – Orbán is actually doing something. I am the son of refugees and I can assure you that if my parents had been detained when they arrived in Britain in 1956, in safety and with regular meals, while matters were sorted out, they wouldn’t have complained: they would have said “thank you”.
The most disgusting accusation made against Orbán is that of antisemitism – as George Soros, the billionaire behind the Central European University, is Jewish. Orbán is the man who introduced Holocaust education into schools, passed a Holocaust denial law and whose government financed Son of Saul, a film about Auschwitz that won an Oscar.
The amendment to the law on higher education that has caused the recent furore affects 28 foreign institutions in Hungary, 27 of which were found to be operating with “irregularities” (largely sloppy paperwork, something that will come as no surprise to anyone familiar with university admin). None has been fined or shut down.
Many, probably most, academics at Hungarian universities disapprove of the amendment, which they feel is bad for research, but the Central European University is not being singled out for punishment: it’s asking to be given privileged treatment.
This is not simply about freedom of speech or independence of scholarship. The CEU is legally a Hungarian university. Under the amendment the same buildings, the same canteen, the same umbrella stands, the same courses, the same bitching about Orbán and his wickedness can continue, and students can get a qualification recognised in Europe. The government can’t touch them.
What can’t continue, without a new deal, is the practice whereby the CEU can also issue a diploma accredited in the US – it is registered in New York – without actually operating a campus. Until now, CEU students have been getting double bubble.
Obviously that was an attractive deal for students so, should the CEU lose that option, it will make the university less marketable. However, if it is so much the centre of excellence that its supporters claim it is, it should still be able to attract students. The issue is bums on seats and dollars as much as anything else.
I have followed the progress of this institution since its creation in 1991, and I know many of the staff. One of the salient themes it has been banging on about for nearly 30 years is the rule of law. Perhaps the CEU should adhere to its own principles and comply with the law. Then everyone can vote against Orbán next year.Saracens are the reigning back-to-back European champions
Saracens director of rugby Mark McCall has called on Premiership Rugby to amend their salary cap to help English clubs retain their home-grown players.
McCall says Sarries will find it "very difficult" to hand their England players competitive new contracts with the current cap of £7m per year.
And he wants a section of the wages to remain exempt for academy graduates who stay loyal to their clubs.
"For now the cap is staying level which makes things difficult," said McCall.
"I think there should be an incentive for clubs to grow their own and to bring English players through for English clubs and for England."
Saracens, who are reigning back-to-back European champions, saw five of their English players tour New Zealand with the British and Irish Lions this summer - and all were academy graduates.
Mako Vunipola, Jamie George, George Kruis, Maro Itoje and Owen Farrell all featured prominently as the Lions drew the Test series.
"It would be an unbelievable shame if we had to lose players we have grown ourselves, who have come through our system since they were 14 or 15," added McCall.
"If you bring a player through your academy system and he becomes like some of our players, then there should be a limit on what he costs you in the salary cap."
The Premiership Rugby salary cap rose to maximum of £7m for the 2017-18 season, a figure that includes a maximum of £600,000 which clubs will receive if the teams hit the Premiership's existing home-grown player quota.
The bulk of Saracens' England and Lions contingent are contracted until 2019, and are on course to ask for sizeable wage increases when they negotiate their next contracts.
"To be penalised for having all these academy players who are only asking for their market value, and not to be able to afford them and to have to let them go, doesn't seem right," added McCall.Campaigners against voting reform were last night accused of exploiting an election loophole to peddle "lies" about their opponents.
The acrimony surrounding the 5 May referendum on ditching the first-past-the-post system intensified as a publicity drive by the "No2AV" campaign was referred to the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA).
The controversy centres on adverts claiming that introducing the alternative vote for Westminster elections would cost the country £250m. The message is reinforced with images of a baby in intensive care – saying the cash should be spent on a cardiac facility – and of a soldier – saying the £250m would be better spent on bulletproof vests. Polls conducted since the campaign was launched suggest that support for moving to the alternative vote has fallen.
We’ll tell you what’s true. You can form your own view. From 15p €0.18 $0.18 $0.27 a day, more exclusives, analysis and extras.
A spokesman for the Yes campaign said: "These shameful adverts are based on a lie. The No campaign can't defend the current voting system, so instead is peddling messages it knows not to be true."
Despite the referral to the ASA – by the left-wing blogger Sunny Hundal – it appeared last night that there was no sanction over the content of material put out during the referendum campaign.
A spokesman for the ASA told The Independent it had no remit over political advertising, which it said was regulated by the Electoral Commission.
But the Electoral Commission said it only regulated political funding and at first referred concerns over referendum publicity material to the ASA. It later said only adverts that were defamatory or stirred racial hatred could face action.
Mr Hundal said: "I made the complaint because it is obvious to everyone, including many who oppose the AV, that the £250m figure is deeply dishonest. But additionally, it highlights the fact that there seems to be no way to ensure such third-party political ads stick to the facts.
"A group that isn't revealing its funders is investing thousands of pounds in ads that have little basis in reality. Others could follow their lead in the future to smear political opponents too. Who would regulate that?"
The No campaign said it had no regrets over its advertisements, which it said struck a chord with voters witnessing heavy spending cuts in their communities. It explained that the £250m figure was calculated from the £150m price of electronic machines to count votes cast under the AV system, the £82m cost of holding the referendum and a further £20m-plus expense of publicity campaigns to explain AV if the voting system is changed.
A spokesman said it would, if required, be able to provide clear and detailed explanations of how the figures were calculated.
We’ll tell you what’s true. You can form your own view.
At The Independent, no one tells us what to write. That’s why, in an era of political lies and Brexit bias, more readers are turning to an independent source. Subscribe from just 15p a day for extra exclusives, events and ebooks – all with no ads.
Subscribe now.The most successful team in the IMSA Continental Tire SportsCar Challenge history has suspended its program, with Rum Bum Racing announcing Monday that it will not continue its GS class campaign this year.
The Luis Bacardi-owned team, which debuted in 2010, has been one of the front-runners in the class with a total of 21 overall victories out of 66 starts, including back-to-back championships in 2012-2013 with Matt Plumb and Nick Longhi.
Most recently, Matt Plumb and brother Hugh have struggled with its aging Porsche 997, in a class that has seen an influx of new GT4-based and series-specific machinery.
The brothers’ Porsche suffered a mechanical failure in the season-opener at Daytona, although finished third last month at Sebring.
The team has not disclosed the reason for its withdrawal, although in a statement it said: it will “continue to evaluate competition possibilities in the future.”
Rum Bum’s withdrawal leaves only seven GS class entries, but 34 cars in total, for this weekend’s Continental Monterey Grand Prix at Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca.Hillary Clinton speaks during a fundraiser at the Capitol Hill. She’s 68, and younger than Donald Trump. (Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images)
A woman her age is supposed to be invisible. But Hillary Clinton, who is 68, refuses to disappear — and there is no shortage of people who despise her for it.
One voter at a Donald Trump rally described her to The Washington Post’s Jenna Johnson last week as “an angry, crotchety old hag.” Trump, who isn’t exactly a spring chicken at age 70, claims Clinton lacks “stamina” and a “presidential look” and mocked her by acting out her stumble when she had pneumonia last month.
There’s misogyny, and then there’s the ageist misogyny that older women face. That undercurrent runs very deep in our culture, and it’s one of the reasons the haters hate Hillary Clinton so deeply.
No one has talked about this much, but it’s a very real phenomenon in this election.
The presidential nominee is confounding America because she represents a demographic that our culture secretly dislikes: older women.
At a rally in Manheim, Pa., Oct. 1, Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump mocked Democratic rival Hillary Clinton stumbling during a 9/11 ceremony after she had been diagnosed with pneumonia. "She's supposed to fight all these different things, and she can't make it 15 feet to her car," Trump said. (The Washington Post)
Everyone is guilty — even women themselves. Earlier polls showed that women Clinton’s age supported her, but younger women overwhelmingly supported Sen. Bernie Sanders.
Maybe a wise grandpa made sense to them. But grandma? In the Oval Office? Shaking their heads. Does. Not. Compute.
America worships youthful femininity, and our pop culture, if not our policies, idolizes mom. But what do we do with women once they’re not in either of those roles?
[She ditched her $400,000-a-year legal job after her ‘woman’s card only held her back]
We minimize and ignore them.
The older, wise woman has rarely had a starring role in the American story, beyond grandma and her cookies.
Plenty has been said about the way American women feel invisible once they reach 60, or 50, or — gack — even 40 today. We live in a culture where gorgeous Maggie Gyllenhaal is being told she’s invisible before she’s out of her 30s.
1 of 57 Full Screen Autoplay Close Skip Ad × Hillary Clinton on the campaign trail View Photos The Democratic presidential nominee on the road as Election Day nears. Caption Hillary Clinton loses to Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential election. Nov. 9, 2016 Hillary Clinton speaks in New York while her husband, former president Bill Clinton, applauds. Melina Mara/The Washington Post Buy Photo Wait 1 second to continue.
“I’m 37, and I was told recently I was too old to play the lover of a man who was 55,” Gyllenhaal told the Wrap last year. “It was astonishing to me. It made me feel bad, and then it made me feel angry, and then it made me laugh.”
Most women in this age bracket remember the day they realized they had become invisible — that moment when the salesman pushing a big-ticket product looked right past them (even though they were the only person in his periphery who could actually afford the thing), when the clerk who was so chatty with the guy in front of them ignores them, when the intern treats them like a nonentity rather than an experienced superior.
This isn’t only about the silencing of catcalls and other changes that come with age. Most women welcome the end of that attention. No, there’s something deeper and more inhumane about the dismissal.
There are plenty of countries for old men in Hollywood, though, according to a study on diversity in the entertainment industry released earlier this year by the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism.
The study looked at 414 scripted movies, TV shows and digital series from major media companies that aired for 12 months between 2014 and 2015. Of the characters older than 40? Men got 80 percent of the roles.
Hello, Hollywood. There are older women besides Helen Mirren, Judi Dench and Meryl Streep.
The situation is not too different for women at less glamorous workplaces.
Another study — this one done last year by economists at the University of California at Irvine and Tulane University — looked at what happened when 40,000 fake résumés carefully created to reflect a breadth of age-appropriate experience were sent out for all kinds of jobs in cities across the country.
And, yup, you guessed it. The number of callbacks for older women was way lower than for younger women. In some cases — administrative jobs — 47 percent lower. But when it came to men, young and old got equal shots at jobs, wrinkles and ear hair be darned.
Corporate America is the axis of evil when it comes to the sexism/ageism intersection.
The tiny minority of respected, older women — just 4 percent of American Fortune 500 companies have female CEOs — have persisted and struggled and fought to earn positions of power that are usually an inevitable evolution for men of their skill and experience. They get talked over in meetings, interrupted and passed over for promotions, while usually being criticized for their ambition. Indra K. Nooyi, the 60-year-old chief executive of PepsiCo, said she had to work twice as hard as the men around her.
Powerful older women? We apparently still can’t get our heads around this concept.
Some of this is because women simply didn’t have the opportunity to get into the white- collar workforce in a meaningful way until the 1970s. Congress is still only 19 percent female. Heck, we’re not even 100 years into women being able to vote.
[Born before women could vote, these 100-year-olds want Hillary to make history]
So it’s taking a while to accept that women can be maidens, mothers and, yes, leaders, too.
What about all that wisdom, experience, the things they’ve seen, the things they know?
Discarding older women means discarding years of knowledge and know-how.
The “grandmother hypothesis” even suggests that older women — and |
report in the May 6 Annals of Internal Medicine.
The law, enacted when Mitt Romney was governor, is widely seen as a model for the national Affordable Care Act, sometimes called Obamacare. The Massachusetts law mandated coverage and offered subsidized private insurance and expanded Medicaid coverage.
To gauge the law’s effect, researchers compared mortality rates among people ages 20 to 64 from 2007 to 2010 with the years preceding the law’s enactment, 2001 to 2005. The 2.9 percent decline was the average, with the greatest effect seen in previously uninsured people. The researchers calculated that Romneycare yielded one fewer death for every additional 830 adults covered. Greater coverage led to more clinic visits resulting in better overall health, the authors suggest.City and Municipality in Puerto Rico, United States
Añasco ( Spanish pronunciation: [aˈɲasko]), named after one of its settlers, Don Luis de Añasco, is a municipality of Puerto Rico (U.S.) located on the west coast of the island bordering the Mona Passage to the west, north of Mayagüez, and Las Marias; south of Rincón, Aguada, and Moca and west of San Sebastián and Las Marias. It is part of the Aguadilla-Isabela-San Sebastián Metropolitan Statistical Area.
History [ edit ]
The town was founded on October 18, 1733 and named after Don Luis de Añasco, a colonist from the Extremadura region of Spain who came to Puerto Rico with Juan Ponce de León. Añasco was founded by the initiative of rich landowner Don José de Santiago, who wanted to establish the "villa" in properties owned by Don Luis de Añasco. The property was located on the margins of the río "Guaorabo", as the Taínos called it.[1]
Añasco town was preceded by the first settlement of San German. In November 1511, Juan Ponce de León handed over governorship to Juan Cerón, a lieutenant of the viceroy Diego Colon (son of Cristobal Colon or Cristopher Columbus). Cerón ordered Miguel de Toro, a lieutenant of Juan Ponce de León, to create a "Christian Village" in western Borinquen, calling it San German. This was the second attempt of foundation given in 1511 at the mouth of the Guaorabo River (present day Rio Añasco), near the area known today as Añasco, Puerto Rico. This first settlement was attacked in 1528, 1538, and again in 1554. A fort to protect this town began in 1540, but its construction was suspended in 1546 when the people decided to move inland being tired of attacks. Attacks by Carib Indians forced the population to move south inland to the present site of the present town of San German[citation needed].
In the 18th century, Añasco was the fourth most populous municipality in Puerto Rico, after San Germán, San Juan, and others. The Añasco River is also claimed to be the site of the popular legend of the drowning of the Spaniard Diego Salcedo in 1511 at the hands of the Taínos, proving the Spanish soldiers were not gods and igniting a revolt. It is believed that the revolt was led by the cacique Chayoán and suppressed by Spanish soldiers.
Many of the first settlers to the area came from the Canary Islands and the south of Spain. The 1918 San Fermín earthquake destroyed Añasco's parish church, the town hall and other structures, almost eliminating most of the historic downtown structures.
Geography [ edit ]
Añasco is located in the Coastal Plains of the west, bordered by the Río Grande de Añasco. It is bordered in the north by Rincón, Aguada, and Moca; Mayagüez to the south; and San Sebastián and Las Marías to the east. The Mona Passage lies to the west of the town.[2]
The Añasco terrain is mostly plain, but features a series of hills and mountains like Canta Gallo (1,194 feet, or 364 meters), Gordo and Pichón (both at 1,115 feet, or 340 meters).[3] It is also crossed by several rivers like Icaco River, Caguabo River, La Balsa, and others.[2][4]
Barrios [ edit ]
Like all municipalities of Puerto Rico, Añasco is subdivided into barrios.[5][6][7][8]
Tourism [ edit ]
Landmarks and places of interest [ edit ]
Añasco Beach
Autodrome
El Salto de la Encantada
Hacienda La Eugenia
Río Grande de Añasco
San Antonio Abad Parish
Villa Pesquera
Culture [ edit ]
Festivals and events [ edit ]
Añasco has several celebrations and festivals every year. The most notable are:[10][11]
Patron Festivities - January
Mayuco Festival - January
Festival de Bellas Artes - January
Theater Festival - May
Festival de Merengue - June
Santa Rosa de Lima Festival - August
Chipe Festival - September
Cooperativa Marathon - October
Sports [ edit ]
Añasco has a AA baseball team called the Fundadores de Añasco.[12] It is also known for being the hometown of some amateur boxing prospects like Samuel D. Figueroa and Jonathan Badillo. Samuel D. Figueroa is now an undefeated professional boxer and holds a record of 2-0, 1 KO.
Notable People [ edit ]
Mariana Bracetti - (1825–1903) was a patriot and leader of the Puerto Rico independence movement in the 1860s. She is attributed with having knitted the flag that was intended to be used as the national emblem of Puerto Rico in its attempt to overthrow the Spanish government on the island, and to establish the island as a sovereign republic.
Ivy Queen - Singer
Aristides Gonzalez - boxer, Olympic bronze medalist in 1984
Economy [ edit ]
Agriculture [ edit ]
Sugar cane had been cultivated in Añasco as early as the 16th century. The earliest known sugar mill ("ingenios") operator around the Añasco area was Tomás de Castellón in 1523. Añasco has also been a place for fruits and coffee cultivation.[2]
Demographics [ edit ]
Like most of the people of Puerto Rico, the Añasco population originated with the Taino Indians and then by immigrants from Spain that settled the central highland, most prominently the Andalusian and Canarian Spanish migration who formed the bulk of the Jibaro or white peasant stock of the island.[13] The Andalusian and Canarian Spaniards also influenced much of the Puerto Rican culture which explains the Southern Spanish dialect, and the Spanish colonial architecture. This area of the Island has an array of cultures that include the Basque, French, Corsican and Italian is highly predominant due to the introduction of coffee in this region of the Island.
Government [ edit ]
All municipalities in Puerto Rico are administered by a mayor, elected every four years. The current mayor of Añasco is Jorge Estévez Martínez, of the Popular Democratic Party (PPD). He was elected at the 2008 general elections and is currently serving his third term.
The city belongs to the Puerto Rico Senatorial district IV, which is represented by two Senators. In 2016, Luis Daniel Muñiz Cortés and Evelyn Vázquez were elected as District Senators.[14]
Transportation [ edit ]
There are 22 bridges in Anasco.[15]
Education [ edit ]
The Puerto Rico Department of Education operates several public schools in the municipality, including two bilingual schools, Antonio Gonzalez Suarez Regional Bilingual Elementary School and Sergio Ramirez de Arellano-Hostos Regional Bilingual Secondary School, the first public bilingual schools on the island. There's also private bilingual schools in the municipality, such as Colegio de la Salle and MAS Integrated School.
Symbols [ edit ]
Flag [ edit ]
The flag colors, design and symbolism is taken from the municipal Coat of Arms, with the only exception being that silver is painted white on the flag.[1]
Coat of Arms [ edit ]
The green field of the shield contains a saber cross massed in black, outlined in silver, and has a gold scallop shell in each quadrant formed by the cross. A gold mural crown of three towers crests the shield.[1]
See also [ edit ]October 10, 2012
Alan Maass reports on the surge of struggles around the U.S. against Wal-Mart, including the outcome of a strike at the company's giant distribution center in Illinois.
IN WAREHOUSES and stores around the country, Wal-Mart workers are putting a new spin on the company's famous slogan "Save money, live better." Best of all, they're beginning to see some concrete victories.
In a high-profile battle in Elwood, Ill., southwest of Chicago, workers at the largest warehouse in the Wal-Mart distribution chain returned to their jobs victorious after a three-week strike. The 38 workers won promises that their demands about harassment and management retaliation will be addressed--and they will get full wages for the time they were on strike.
But the walkout in Elwood is only part of a small strike wave. Warehouse workers also walked off the job in Southern California. In early October, "associates" at Wal-Mart stores in Florida and Southern California struck in separate one-day actions.
The walkouts continued on October 9 and 10, with employees going on strike on Tuesday at stores in Florida, Maryland, Texas, Washington and California. According to Salon.com, workers at stores in other cities and states will join the action, which is being spearheaded by OUR Wal-Mart, a group of employees supported by the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) union. The walkouts coincide with the company's annual investor meeting in Bentonville, Ark., where OUR Wal-Mart is planning a demonstration.
Striking Wal-Mart workers picket outside a store in Pico Rivera, Calif. (Aurelio Jose Barrera | OUR Walmart)
That these actions have taken place at all is an inspiring sign of hope for a labor movement that has made little headway against Wal-Mart--the largest private employer in the world, whose guarantee of "low prices" for customers is based on paying low wages and no benefits to overworked employees.
But the fact that workers like those in Elwood are winning concessions from the notoriously anti-union company is even more important. As one of the Elwood strikers, Daniel Meadows, told Labor Notes, Wal-Mart wants "to send a message to you: that you're totally expendable. We want to show that you can stand up to management and keep your job."
THE ELWOOD strike took place at the company's largest distribution center, a giant 2.2 million-square-foot warehouse.
As at the facility in Southern California, conditions in Elwood are grueling and dangerous. Workers say they lift hundreds of boxes, weighing up to 250 pounds, with no support, in the course of a workday that sometimes expands to 10, 12 or more hours. During the summer, temperatures in the warehouse regularly rise above 100 degrees--during the winter, the facility is freezing.
Injuries, including life-threatening electrical shocks, are commonplace, and workers say they inhale dust and chemical residue. But management responds to health complaints with suspicion. One speaker at a rally for strikers in Elwood told the story of how a worker who suffered a severe injury was required to submit to a company drug test before being allowed to go to the hospital for treatment.
As striker Mike Compton said at the rally: "We are only referred to as 'bodies.' They have no regard for our well-being. We are constantly told to push harder. We are never done."
According to Warehouse Workers for Justice (WWJ), around three-quarters of the workers in Elwood are "perma-temps" who are paid "at, near or sometimes below" the minimum wage and can be fired at the bosses' whim. WWJ, which is backed by the United Electrical Workers (UE), helped the Elwood workers organize to protest conditions and the company's failure to pay overtime and full wages.
Wal-Mart owns the Elwood warehouse, but it has a contract with Schneider Logistics to operate the facility. Schneider, in turn, uses several subcontractors to hire labor--"making it difficult for workers to sort out just who is responsible for violating their rights at any given moment," as Workday Minnesota reported.
In September, several dozen workers signed a petition protesting the terrible conditions inside the warehouse, and several, with the aid of WWJ, filed a lawsuit charging management with wage theft. After the workers who filed the lawsuit were told they were fired--then that they were suspended without pay--a group of petitioners tried to confront managers at the warehouse on September 15.
As one worker, Ted Ledwa, told David Moberg of In These Times:
We had to walk around the entire warehouse to collect everyone, and all the time, management was saying we were trespassing and had to leave. All we wanted to do was present the petition to management. As we came around the corner, managers with these riding forklifts cut our group in half, but we continued to walk. They told us we were going to be escorted out of the building by the police. They refused to take the petition. My manager said that we don't want to mess with him. We said we didn't want to mess with anybody. We just wanted someone to take the petition and hear our grievances. Their answer is the police are on their way. You're going to be arrested.
Management's abuse led 30 workers to go on strike--they were later joined by eight more employees.
The Elwood strikers won enthusiastic support from Chicago unions and activists--including the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU), then in the midst of its nine-day strike. On October 1, CTU members were among hundreds of people who attended a solidarity demonstration and march to the Wal-Mart warehouse--which was closed for the day in anticipation of the protest.
As SocialistWorker.org reported, when a group of clergy and community supporters blocked the street in front of the facility, "[o]fficers decked out in riot gear arrived on the scene, accompanied by a black Hummer with a Long Range Acoustic Device...[a sound cannon] used to disperse crowds by with painful and sometimes damaging blasts of noise."
In typical fashion, Wal-Mart tried to deflect attention by attacking WWJ as a "union-funded, union-backed" organization to bring in dues money.
But the pressure of the strike and the solidarity it inspired forced management to give in. According to a WWJ statement, workers returned to their jobs this week having "won their principal demand for an end to illegal retaliation against workers protesting poor conditions." Management also agreed to pay full wages for the three weeks the workers were on strike.
Now the fight to win safe working conditions and dignity on the job will continue on the inside. "With this victory, we forced the company to respect our rights," Ted Ledwa said in the WWJ statement. "We showed that when workers are united, we can stand up to the biggest corporations in the world and win."
THE ELWOOD strike is an important achievement in its own right, but it comes amid a wave of walkouts and protests against Wal-Mart.
Several days before the Elwood walkout, a group of workers at a Wal-Mart warehouse in Mira Loma, Calif., east of Los Angeles, near Riverside, also went on strike. Around 50 of the strikers participated in a six-day march to downtown LA to deliver letters of protest demanding payment of back wages and improved working conditions.
The strikers returned to work at the end of September. Though they only won a vague promise from Wal-Mart officials to review their contractors, the atmosphere at the warehouse is different now, according to their supporters. For example, when workers found continuing unsafe conditions, they told managers--who shut down the unsafe parts of the facility that day. Meanwhile, a California state agency launched an investigation into complaints that temperatures inside the warehouse reach as high as 120 degrees.
Now, the strikes seem to have spread to Wal-Mart stores.
On October 4, workers at nine Wal-Marts in the Los Angeles area walked off the job in an action coordinated by OUR Wal-Mart. The retailer is notorious for paying low wages to its associates and unilaterally cutting hours--in particular, so they can prevent employees from establishing themselves as full-timers, when they can access meager benefits.
But another main issue is the frequent retaliation by supervisors against any employee who speaks up about working conditions. Victoria Martinez, who works in the photo department of one of the stores, told Salon.com: "Every time I go into work, I get panic attacks...I'm always wondering what are they going to try to do to me when I come in."
At a rally of some 250 workers and their supporters outside a Wal-Mart in Pio Rivera, Evelin Cruz told Salon that she was "scared" about the strike. "But," she said, "I think the time has come, so they take notice that these associates are tired of all the issues in the stores, all the management retaliating against you."
As this article was being written, walkouts organized by OUR Wal-Mart were taking place at stores in more than half a dozen metropolitan areas, including Dallas, Seattle, Miami, Washington, D.C., Sacramento, and San Francisco.
In some cases, only a small number of Wal-Mart workers appear to have joined the action, but the campaign is casting a spotlight on conditions for store workers in the same way that the warehouse walkouts have. As Margaret Van Ness, who works as an overnight stocker at an LA-area Wal-Mart, told the New York Times: "The managers at our store and others are running over their associates as if they didn't exist. They treat them like cattle...We need to bring back respect."
Though it has the backing of the UFCW, OUR Wal-Mart says it will press for better pay, benefits and working conditions without launching a drive for union recognition--at least for now. Some of the workers participating in this week's strikes plan to travel to Arkansas to demonstrate outside the company's investor meeting.
In all these actions, workers who participate are putting their livelihoods at risk. Non-union workers do have the right under labor law to go on strike without being punished. But management also has the right to permanently replace them and stop them from returning to work--unless they are judged to be protesting illegal labor practices. Wal-Mart claims it will follow the law--but the organizers of OUR Wal-Mart say they put little stock in legal protections where the giant retailer is concerned.
For decades, Wal-Mart has been a symbol of greed and union-busting in an era when Corporate America has been running a "race to the bottom" to make workers work longer and harder for less and less. The "beast of Bentonville" has fought tooth and nail against every attempt by employees to organize a union--and won each battle so far.
But the strikes at Wal-Mart warehouses and stores could be a sign that the tide has finally turned. The courage and determination of Wal-Mart workers should inspire labor and social justice activists to take the next steps forward in the struggle against corporate greed and power.President Donald Trump has signed an executive order claiming that in the future the total number of federal regulations will shrink, via the elimination of two regulations for every new one. He has nominated an FCC chief and a department of education chief who advocate choice-enhancing changes in the way their agencies run. He says he's a hardcore Second Amendment supporter (although he also supports taking away the right to bear arms based on mere suspicion). He's offered up a Supreme Court justice willing to seriously question government regulatory and police powers. He at least claims he wants to see spending cuts and tax cuts.
Should libertarians—who are supposed to advocate those goals as part of a larger vision of reducing government power over our property and choices—admire and support Trump? Even a little?
Libertarianism is more than just advocating a random checklist of disconnected actions that in some respect limit government's reach or expense. (See Steven Horwitz, an economist in the Hayekian tradition, for valuable thoughts on why judging Trump via a checklist of discrete changes in specific government behavior doesn't work in libertarian terms.)
Libertarianism is a unified skein of beliefs about how the human social order should be shaped. What binds the philosophy is the understanding (or belief, for the skeptical) that using violent force against the peaceful both makes us, overall, poorer and is, at any rate, almost always or always wrong.
For most libertarians, the practical and moral arguments against aggressive force on the innocent support each other; the sense of what's morally right for most libertarians is rooted in a generally rule-based sense of what furthers human flourishing overall. To most libertarians, that is, freedom is both a valuable part of human flourishing, and a necessary part of most other aspects of it.
That we should be free to do what we want with ourselves, and with our justly owned property, is the core of libertarianism. (A swirling, complicated debate surrounds questions about what behavior is truly about ourselves alone, and how, why, and under what circumstances property is justly owned and what that implies about how we can use it. Such questions can't be resolved in a blog post.)
Given the nature of human beings' productive powers, the best way to ensure the collective "we" gets richer faster is to ensure the individual freedom to exchange with others as we choose, and by doing so build long and complex chains of production and exchange that benefit us all (or even just some/many of us), irrespective of accidents like national boundaries.
Free trade and free migration are, then, the core of the true classical liberal (libertarian) vision as it developed in America in the 20th century: if you don't understand and embrace them, you don't understand liberty, and you are not trying to further it.
The Trump administration may not in every specific policy area do the wrong thing in libertarian terms. But whatever it gets right is more an epiphenomenon of certain alliances within the Republican Party power structure or the business interests he's surrounding himself with. Trump and his administration can't be trusted to have any principled and reliable approach to shrinking government or widening liberty, since Trumpism at its core is an enemy of libertarianism.
What appears to be the core of Trumpism, based on his earliest priorities and his closest advisers? The blatant, energetic, eager violation of the right to freely choose what to do with one's justly owned property and energy, and fierce denial of the principle that through such freedom we create immense and unprecedented wealth for the human race. (Again, most libertarians don't just clutch "freedom" as a value disconnected from all other values, although they privilege it in most cases. They also believe freedom is conducive to the greatest human wealth and happiness, overall. It's a philosophy of social betterment as well as a philosophy of individual rights.)
Not yet a month into his administration, Trumpism is most surely centered on a poorly considered nationalism. His administration, with each swift and relentless bit of dumb bullying over our businesses' right to choose what to do with capital, our right to buy from abroad unmolested, other humans' ability to move peacefully into our country, acts on the principle that it's best if we don't trade with people outside our borders, that the Leader gets to decide what private businesses do with their capital and resources, and that we should beggar ourselves for the sour joys of keeping fewer people not born here from coming here (in a time when that alleged "problem" barely exists).
Trump is openly a type of illibertarian leader we haven't seen in a while. The "open" part is important. Those wanting to downplay the threat of Trump can, justly, point to all sorts of crummy and illiberal policies that past administrations and imagined alternate administrations did or might also pursue. In the context of the current political debate, that scarcely matters. Trump is the president we have, and his policies are what we have to face, and fight. It may fit any given person's amour propre to not ever risk seeming to overstate or overguess exactly how bad Trump is or might be, but it doesn't necessarily help the cause of promoting liberty.
It does matter whether a president encases even protectionist or trade-managing or restrictionist policies with a stated appreciation for lower tariffs and more open migration, which at least on the margins likely keeps bad things from happening. By paying that tribute of statist vice to libertarian virtue, at least doesn't deliberately imbue Americans with the belief that the country will be stronger by making goods and labor more expensive.
A president who openly and firmly rejects the principle of, and fails to grasp the benefits of, economic liberty is indeed worse than one who merely casually violates those principles. (And economic liberty is the core of human liberty, in a world where we must produce and trade to live).
Trump and his administration don't merely violate the core principles of individual liberty carelessly or as a byproduct of other goals; he is against economic liberty, deeply and sincerely. More than anything else, Trump is a loud and proud enemy of libertarianism.
The continued presence and dominance of Steve Bannon in his inner circle indicates that Trumpian nationalism, though the administration doesn't spell this out explicitly, yearns toward ethno-nationalism. Bannon believes American "civic society" necessarily excludes too many immigrants from Asia (even though people of that descent make up over 5 percent of America.)
While he's been careful since taking his powerful position in the White House not to say much of what he thinks about anything, Bannon's stated belief that the news organization he ran, Breitbart, was "a platform for the alt-right" and his own site's definition of that often deliberately ill-defined term, it's hard to avoid the conclusion that his nationalism has an ethnic component.
The administration's choice, apparently at the driving of Bannon and his ally Steven Miller, to launch their administration with an expensive and absurd "border wall" and for a spate of pointless (except in their disruptive cruelty) blows at movement of people from a small set of mostly-Muslim countries (that are not the Muslim countries from which any serious terror threat to the U.S. has ever actually arisen) show that the "public safety" rationale doesn't hold up. They are either idiots, or the restriction has another purpose.
What the limited travel restrictions so vital to the Trump administration have demonstrated is that they are eager to build from the most speculative and phantom of fears an expensive and disruptive apparatus of control, one that Miller considers a test run to prove the president's unrestricted power over certain matters, even in the face of the courts. And the fears they decide to focus on are fears of the foreign "other," even if that foreign other is a legal resident of the United States or wants nothing more than to work for or with existing Americans.
If you are judging how to view Trump's administration, and make reasonable guesses about its future actions based on demonstrated core commitments, those demonstrated preferences, goals, and methods are seriously bad, and more serious than (so far) semantic stunts about cutting regulation or taxes.
Trump v. Mises
Free trade and migration is not just one of a random pile of "freedom-increasing policies" that one can grab from and hope the whole number ends up large enough. It's the heart. Trump's disdain for them shows he can't be trusted to stand for our core freedoms, for any reason other than pure political contingency, or perhaps as part of his unlovely desire to humiliate the enemies and opponents his administration is obsessed with. (Yes, someone out to stick it to the modern liberals may occasionally posit a freedom-enhancing policy. This doesn't make "sticking it to the liberals" itself inherently a libertarian attitude.)
Is it just a sign of pants-wetting Trump Derangement Syndrome to call Trump the quintessential anti-libertarian? The modern American libertarian tradition is not unitary or invented by one person—I wrote an over-700-page book about it, called Radicals for Capitalism.
That said, given his influence on nearly every thinker or institution that comprised modern American libertarianism from World War II to the dawn of the 21st century, Ludwig Von Mises, the Austrian emigre economist and social philosopher, can be relied on to reveal what is core about modern American libertarianism.
Mises, driven from his beloved Austria by the Nazis and firsthand witness to the death of liberal principles via strongman ethno-national fascism, thought and wrote diligently and brilliantly about every aspect of social philosophy. From the start of his career to the end he identified free trade and free migration in a regime of legal respect for individual private property as the core of a free society. Those, again, are the principles Trump has nothing but contempt for.
Mises' personal and intellectual experience taught him vividly why the nationalism at the heart of Trumpism is the worst enemy of classical liberalism, the humane and liberating and wealth-generating tradition Mises sustained and furthered.
Mises' liberalism, and thus modern libertarianism, was built not solely in reaction to Marxist communism but equally against the wealth- and life-destroying evils of autocratic ethno-nationalist autarkic statism.
As Mises wrote in his first magisterial work of social and political philosophy, Socialism (1922), almost as if he foresaw a Trump who would try to bamboozle a nation into thinking it could enrich "the people" as opposed to special interests via protectionism and exclusionary immigration policies, and wanted to warn the liberty-minded that would be not just one concession on a liberty checklist but the end of the benefits and glories of free markets (as well as a clear violation of any pretense that one is working for "the people" vs some privileged elite):
It becomes a cardinal point of the particularist policy...to keep newcomers out. It has been the task of Liberalism to show who bear the costs of such a policy.... A system that protects the immediate interests of particular groups limits productivity in general and, in the end, injures everybody—even those whom it began by favouring. How protection finally affects the individual, whether he gains or loses, compared with what he would have got under complete freedom of trade, depends on the degrees of protection to him and to others.... As soon as it is possible to forward private interests in this way and to obtain special privileges, a struggle for pre-eminence breaks out among those interested. Each tries to get the better of the other. Each tries to get more privileges so as to reap the greater private gain. The idea of perfectly equal protection for all is the fantasy of an ill-thought out theory. For, if all particular interests were equally protected, nobody would reap any advantage: the only result would be that all would feel the disadvantage of the curtailment of productivity equally. Only the hope of obtaining for himself a degree of protection, which will benefit him as compared with the less protected, makes protection attractive to the individual. It is always demanded by those who have the power to acquire and preserve especial privileges for themselves. In exposing the effects of protection, Liberalism broke the aggressive power of particular interests. It now became obvious that, at best, only a few could gain absolutely by protection and privileges and that the great majority must inevitably lose.... In order to rehabilitate protection, it was necessary to destroy Liberalism....Once Liberalism has been completely vanquished, however, and no longer menaces the protective system, there remains nothing to oppose the extension of particular privilege.
When it came to free immigration, Mises was so intellectually and emotionally attached to it that this generally quite pacific man thought that immigration barriers nearly rose to a legitimate excuse for the excluded to wage war.
His writing after seeing the horrors that ethno-national autarky brought to Europe in his 1944 book Omnipotent Government bookend his explanation of the vital, core importance of free trade and migration:
....imagine a world order in which liberalism is supreme....In this liberal world, or liberal part of the world, there is private property in the means of production. The working of the market is not hampered by government interference. There are no trade barriers; men can live and work where they want. Frontiers are drawn on the maps but they do not hinder the migrations of men and shipping of commodities. Natives do not enjoy rights that are denied to aliens. Governments and their servants restrict their activities to the protection of life, health, and property against fraudulent or violent aggression. They do not discriminate against foreigners. The courts are independent and effectively protect everybody against the encroachments of officialdom. Everyone is permitted to say, to write, and to print what he likes. Education is not subject to government interference. Governments are like night-watchmen whom the citizens have entrusted with the task of handling the police power. The men in office are regarded as mortal men, not as superhuman beings or as paternal authorities who have the right and duty to hold the people in tutelage. Governments do not have the power to dictate to the citizens what language they must use in their daily speech or in what language they must bring up and educate their children........In such a world the state is not a metaphysical entity but simply the producer of security and peace. It is the night-watchman....But it fulfills this task in a satisfactory way. The citizen's sleep is not disturbed, bombs do not destroy his home, and if somebody knocks at his door late at night it is certainly neither the Gestapo nor the O.G.P.U. The reality in which we have to live differs very much from this perfect world of ideal liberalism. But this is due only to the fact that men have rejected liberalism for etatism.
It's not merely that of a grabbag list of "libertarian positions" Trump is picking a few and neglecting the others and thus libertarians have reason to be hopeful; it's not merely that, oh, free trade and immigration were among Mises' many positions, and his reasons for positing them as core to liberalism were whimsical.
They were, as he explained and knew in his bones from the horrible history of Austria and Germany he lived through, the core of liberalism (libertarianism). If one doesn't understand that, as Trump and his people do not, then their instincts and intelligence can't be trusted for anything when it comes to liberty.
Why Some Libertarians Might Not Seem Particularly Alarmed by Trump
Conflicting concerns and perspective have dictated many libertarians' reactions to Trump. (In the social networking age, it is much easier, for better or worse, to understand a very wide range of perspectives not mediated through existing approved brands.) Libertarians tend to already see so much of what the American state has done, under control of both parties and a variety of politicians, as hideous evils that our sense of loud public outrage at what the government is up to generally has had to be kept in some form of polite abeyance, lest we become the sort of constant wild ranters that tend to be filtered out of any public discussion.
This sociological reality, perhaps, makes libertarians less likely to be the loudest and most panicked about Trump. Trump is, as we've heard from many in the past few weeks, inheriting powers and a system that have long existed and long been abused, from travel restrictions to deportations. I have seen an understandable wave from those of libertarian bent of "wait, you are telling me the government is scary now?" reaction to the more, let's say, acutely panicked complaints about Trump.
This is a time of high rhetorical tension in American political discourse. One with a contrarian streak (and libertarians of necessity have contrarian streaks) might be inclined to discount the apocalyptic sense that Trump represents a unique and freshly unacceptable blow to American liberty. Predicting an unusually dire event occurring has social and intellectual costs; even someone highly alarmed by Trump might be reluctant to predict severe and unprecedented domestic repression.
But Trump's very rise to power was unprecedented in many respects, and his core and proud illiberalism is fresh in modern America. (Again, governmental vice paying some tribute to the virtues of liberty is important.) The presence and growing power of Steve Bannon, a man near as we can tell genuinely and enthusiastically dedicated to ethno-nationalism, is what makes it hard to believe that Trump doesn't want to take his economic autarky and restrictionism as far as he can get away with.
And from the perspective of the first few weeks of Trump, any remnants of dedication to free markets and freedom in these realms has seemingly already been flushed out of the body of the GOP in order to make room for an injection of pure malignant Trumpism, so we can't count on his Party or its old rhetorical commitments to hold him back.
Trumpian nationalism and restrictionism is a philosophy that has already caused and will continue to cause misery, both direct and obvious in the lives of people whose movement is restricted and indirect and harder to see in the choking of the wealth-generating properties of international trade.
The president has chosen to make his leading adviser, one who seems to have outsized influence on the administration, a man whose sole political concern is both dumb and evil, and whose approach to that goal is, according to something historian Ronald Radosh reports Bannon said to him (though Bannon later said he did not recall saying this to Radosh, or meeting him at all), "Leninist," that is, dedicated to the revolutionary scorched-earth destruction of all existing institutions.
I know many libertarians who smile at that. Why, even early libertarian movement linchpin Murray Rothbard at times thought in Leninist strategic terms! Don't libertarians hate the system and want to see it fall?
I, and most libertarians, hate lots about the "system" and would like to see lots about it fall. But Bannon's hatred for modern institutions has almost no overlap with libertarians'. He doesn't want more freedom. He wants ruthless state power supporting his particular vision of a favored class.
He doesn't hate modern institutions for being tyrannical, for illegitimately bossing around or destroying people's lives. Bannon sees libertarians as his enemies, and he's right to do so. He hates the current establishment because he feels it insufficiently promotes war to the death against radical Islam. He hates it for insufficiently pushing an autarkistic ethno-nationalism that will make poorer and more miserable not only Americans but the world.
Trump's Temperament (And Why it Matters)
There is another reason to find Trump especially alarming as president. It touches on what's always undergirded why I was attracted to libertarianism on a sub-intellectual level when I was young, an inclination that made the explicit philosophy ring true. It is another reason I find it wrongheaded from a libertarian perspective to be a bloodless Vulcan tallyer of pluses and minuses for specific policies Trump has spouted or appointments he's made.
Many libertarians don't dislike the state out of some disconnected dislike for "government" qua government, but because they dislike cruelty and the needless causing of pain and misery to other human beings, |
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Reader: Reader is a Web-based news aggregator that reads Atom and RSS feeds to allows users to easily subscribe, organize and share news items. It even has a mobile version allowing you to get your news on the go. iGoogle: Create a custom designed home page with iGoogle. Users can choose to have their Gmail accounts, calendars, weather, news and more all integrated on one main page they can see when they open their browser. The site also offers a wide number of themes for further customization. Picasa: This Google program makes it easy to manage your photos online and off. Users can download a photo editing and management program to their desktops which makes it easy to mail, upload or post photos to a blog or they can use the online albums provided by the program. Docs: You no longer need desktop publishing applications installed on your computer to type out documents or create spreadsheets, you can do it entirely online with Google. The services allow users to create, publish, share and collaborate on their documents and presentations, and best of all, they're available on any computer with an Internet connection. Notebook: Research can be easier with this Web clipping application from Google. It makes it simple to clip text, images, and links from pages while researching and then save, retrieve or share the clips later. Desktop: Make it easy to find everything on your desktop with this application from Google. It allows users to search through their email, computer files, music, photos, chats, and web history to find what they need and also allows them to install useful gadgets to their desktops.
Transit: Those taking public transportation will appreciate this mapping tool which helps users to plan a trip via the local public transportation options by using Google Maps. Mars: Doing a little space exploration through these maps of Mars, created through a composite of images and data from two NASA missions to the planet. Users can see the elevation, infrared data and photos of Mars through the site. Sky: Those hampered by bright city lights or clouds can still enjoy looking at the night sky with this program from Google. It provides easy access to images from the Hubble telescope through the Space Telescope Science Institute, allowing users to look through planets, stars, galaxies, satellites and more. Earth: Travel around the world without leaving your desk with Google Earth. The program uses satellite imagery and mapping technology to allow you to find and see any location in the world through an attractive and easy to use interface. Some people have claimed the satellite pics comprimise personal security, but either way, it's a useful tool.
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Orkut: This social networking service used to be invitation only, but since 2006 has been open for anyone to join. It allows users to create an account, list information and interests and talk with and add friends to a profile. While less popular in the United States, the site is one of the biggest in both India and Brazil and can be a great way to meet people from around the world. Android: Android is an open source mobile phone platform that is based in the Linux OS and is in the later stages of development by Google and the Open Handset Alliance. When it is released in late 2008, it will allow users to have more control over their mobile devices and, Google hopes, encourage them to use Google products from just about everywhere. Send to Phone: Send yourself a message from the Web with this tool. It allows users to send text messages to their mobile phones about anything they want to remember or share from a simple Google website or through a Firefox extension. Shared Stuff: Google offers this free Web page sharing system that allows users to save and share pages they find interesting on the Web with others. The program can also be integrated into Facebook or del.icio.us. Talk: You may have heard of Google Talk but did you know that it's not only a chat tool but can be used for VoIP conversations as well? Users can make the most of the service, and enjoy its integration into their Gmail accounts. Dodgeball: This social networking site was created for use on mobile phones and allows users to text in their current location and get information about friends and interesting events that are nearby, as well as the ability to invite friends to come to their current location. It's currently available in 22 cities in the US. GrandCentral: GrandCentral is a VoIP service that allows customers to link several phone numbers. Users can set up the service to ring certain numbers at certain times of the day or to go through a series of numbers in order to contact them. As an added bonus, it also features a unified voice mail service. The service is currently in the beta stages and users will have to request an invite to get a number. Sites: Create and collaborate on shared websites with this tool from Google. Users can create a simple webpage, collect relevant information and choose who can edit and work on the project with them.
Scholar: Google Scholar provides a great way to through the full text of scholarly literature from all fields and formats. The index of materials gives easy search capabilities to nearly all peer-reviewed journals that appear online and has a "cited by" feature that can make is easier to find related materials and gather sources. Patent Search: This specialized search tool from Google allows users to search through millions of patents from 1979 to the present to see if a particular design or idea has already been claimed. Each patent results page will come complete with citations, drawings and claims from the United States Patent and Trademark Office. Search by Number: Did you know you can enter an area code, parcel tracking number or flight information into Google and get the information you need quickly and easily? Simply type in what you're searching for and Google will do the rest. Accessible Search: This search engine is designed especially to aid those who are visually impaired or blind by giving priority to sites that have been designed for usability by everyone. Trends: Get easy to read graphs of Web trends over time with this tool. It allows users to track searches over city, region or country to see when certain topics were of more interest to browsers. Users can also take a look at Hot Trends which displays the most popular searches over the past hour. Book Search: Formerly known as Google Print, this tool allows users to search through the full text of books that are scanned and stored in the Google database. Results range from entire books to short excerpts depending on arrangements with publishers and copyright issues with the materials. News Archive Search: Browse articles that go back over 200 years with this integrated feature of Google News. Users can find articles from sources like the New York Times, Forbes, the Wall Street Journal and more. Special Searches: Google offers a wide variety of special search tools that can help narrow down what you're looking for. Choose from searches that specialize in universities, the government, public service, Linux, Microsoft, Apple and more.
Gadgets: These mini-applications can by placed on a webpage or on your iGoogle site or if you have Google Desktop to your desktop as well. They make it easy to keep track of events, to-do lists, check the weather, or even just play games. Pinyin IME: With an increasingly global economy, it can be useful to have tools that make it easy to communicate with those speaking other languages. This tool from Google China allows users to convert Pinyin characters that can be entered on a western style keyboard to Chinese characters. Image Labeler: Users can help label images for better search results with this tool that uses a game-like interface. Users compete against another player to label images, creating an enjoyable time for them and helping Google create a more accurate search database. Code Search: Programmers looking for help with code or open source code to use will get directed results with this specialized search tool. Alerts: This email notification service sends out alerts based on categories like news, web and groups. Users are alerted when new articles make in into the top ten news articles or top twenty search results for that item. Apps: Businesses can use Google products within their own domain names with this tool. The standard edition is free, and users can upgrade if they need more storage to use Gmail, Talk, Docs and more. Gears: Gears is an open source project that gives Web applications more versatility and power by adding new features to your web browser that can include storing data locally, interacting with desktop products and running JavaScript in the background.
Simply Google: This site provides access to all of Google's specialized searches in one easy-to-use place. Goofresh: Want to know what's fresh to the Internet? This site allows you to use Google to search for sites that have been added today, yesterday or within the last week or month. Cooking With Google: Have some random ingredients in the fridge but aren't sure what to make with them? Maybe this Google-based tool can help. Enter in a few ingredients and it will give you recipes in several different categories. Babelplex: Want to search through Google in multiple languages? This tool can help you do that, acting as a cross between a search engine and a translation tool for 29 language combinations.
Make getting from place to place a snap or explore the surface of another planet with these tools.Web developers, businesses and even students can benefit from these great Google tools that make using and creating websites easier.Keep in touch with classmates, friends, family and coworkers by using these programs offered by Google.Narrow down your search with these effective online tools.These various Google tools can keep you busy for hours or make doing a wide variety of things even easier.These applications are based on Google's search technology, but allow you to do a wide variety of things more easily than with current Google-created programs.Sharon Hodgson, shadow public health minister, says use of mesh implants is a ‘public health scandal’ as they have left some women in permanent pain
Labour has called for an immediate halt to the use of vaginal mesh implants and urged the government to launch an independent inquiry into the “ongoing public health scandal” surrounding the treatment of women for urinary incontinence and pelvic prolapse.
Vaginal mesh implants: 'If I lift my leg my whole body shakes' Read more
Sharon Hodgson, the shadow public health minister, said the government must stop allowing the use of mesh implants before a debate in parliament about their safety, after reports that some women have suffered debilitating complications including perforated organs and chronic pain.
The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (Nice) is due to publish updated guidance for the use of mesh implants in January, after NHS England said in a report in July that the treatment for urinary incontinence and prolapse “is a safe option for women”.
Q&A What is a vaginal mesh implant? Show Hide The implants have been widely used as a simple, less invasive alternative to traditional surgical approaches for treating urinary incontinence and prolapse, conditions that can commonly occur after childbirth. For the majority of women the operation is successful.
However, concerns are mounting over the severe complications suffered by large numbers of patients, including chronic pain, mesh cutting through tissue into the vagina and being left unable to walk or have sex. Johnson & Johnson, whose subsidiary Ethicon produces one of the most widely used mesh products, is fighting a major class action in Australia. The Guardian revealed in August that thousands of women have undergone surgery to have vaginal mesh implants removed during the past decade, suggesting that about one in 15 women fitted with the most common type of mesh support later require surgery to have it extracted due to complications.
However, since then further evidence has emerged about apparently high rates of complications, and the issue is gaining political momentum. The Guardian revealed in August that thousands of women have undergone surgery to have vaginal mesh implants removed during the past decade, suggesting that about one in 15 women fitted with the most common type of mesh support later require surgery to have it extracted due to complications.
Hodgson said the issue had become a “public health scandal” as mesh implants have left some women in permanent pain, unable to walk and unable to work.
“This is an ongoing public health scandal and the government need to do much more to support those affected,” she said. “Mesh implants should be taken off the market now until we know more about the threat they pose to women’s safety.
“The government have failed to answer big questions about the extent of this public health scandal, including how many women have been affected and why a product with such terrible risks was allowed into the market in the first place.
“Labour is calling for a full inquiry to uncover the extent of the harm done by mesh implants so we can be sure that this never happens again.”
However, some leading gynaecologists have warned that a ban would risk depriving women of the option of a treatment that, for incontinence at least, has been shown to be effective.
The debate in Westminster Hall has been called by the Labour MP Emma Hardy and the issue has also been repeatedly raised by Owen Smith, a shadow cabinet minister, who chairs the all-party parliamentary group on surgical mesh implants.
Hardy said her email inbox has been filling up with people telling her their horrific stories after having mesh implanted.
“I was first alerted to the issue of mesh complications after a constituent contacted me who had been suffering in silence for years. I hope that the government will take action and heed Labour’s call for a public inquiry into the use of mesh,” she said.
Smith also said mesh injury was “one of the worst medical issues” he had come across as an MP.
“Since working with Sling the Mesh campaign, I have been contacted by
countless women from right across the UK who have shared their heartbreaking
stories of their suffering following mesh surgery. The government must immediately review all mesh surgery and suspend the use of mesh until more is known about its risks,” he said.
Kath Sansom, a campaigner at Sling The Mesh, said: “People are waking up to the global scandal that is surgical mesh implants and at last it is on the political agenda at Westminster.”
Last week, the health minister Jackie Doyle-Price told MPs she was aware women had suffered complications, but added that it was “equally the case that many women also experience considerable relief from symptoms”. Doyle-Price said: “I think it’s very important that the work that Nice are doing should be allowed to be undertaken so that we can actually make a very clear view of this.”
Sohier Elneil, a consultant urogynaecological surgeon at University College Hospital, London, is calling for the use of mesh procedures for incontinence and prolapse to be stopped for two years. “The time has come for us to truly revisit everything we know about both these clinical states,” she said. “Clearly, the knowledge we have had to date has been limited both in scope and relevance. A change needs to happen now.”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
Police have issued an appeal to try and find a 25-year-old man from Bridgend who was last seen on Saturday.
Joshua James Owen, from Bryncethin, Bridgend, has been missing since 11am on Saturday.
South Wales Police has issued an appeal for information to try and find him.
He is described as white, 6ft 1in tall, of a slim build with a partial beard. Police say he left with a backpack.
A police spokeswoman said: “He has links to London so it is possible that he may have travelled there.”
Anyone who sees Joshua or has any information about his whereabouts is asked to contact police on 101 quoting reference number 1700195935.The alcohol-laced energy drink Four Loko has been stirring up a lot of controversy in the last month, and now there’s another concoction on the market that is raising some eyebrows.
This time it’s alcoholic whipped cream. The products are sold under a few different names including Cream and Whipped Lightning, the Boston Herald reported.
According to the report, canisters of Cream are 30-proof and come in a slew of different flavors including chocolate, raspberry and cherry.
“They [drinkers] can get a significant amount of alcohol in one shot," Dr. Anita Barry, a director at the Boston Public Health Department, told the newspaper.
The makers of Cream, Kingfish Spirits of Cleveland, told the Herald the company has “complied with all laws and is determined to make sure it is distributed and marketed responsibly.”
And when you try to log on to their website, you are required to enter a valid birth date to verify you are of legal drinking age.
On its website, ‘Whipped Lightning’ touts its “adult” product as the “world’s first alcohol-infused whipped cream” and a “tasty topping that can dress up any drink.”
The product is currently available in more than 10 states.
“What we need is a good surveillance system to be able to monitor these things,’’ Dr. Michael Siegel, a professor at Boston University’s School of Public Health, said in the report.
Canisters of the alcohol-laced whipped cream sell for about $12.
Click here to read more from the Boston Herald.Central Intelligence Agency (AFP)
The CIA has mushroomed into the largest US spy agency with a nearly $15 billion budget as it expands intelligence, cyber sabotage and overseas covert operations, secret leaked documents showed Thursday.
Former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden leaked the government’s “black budget” for fiscal year 2013 to The Washington Post, which published portions of the top-secret document online in the latest in a series of revelations that have put the US intelligence community under a spotlight.
The $52.6 billion budget request for the nation’s 16 spy agencies is not a startling revelation in itself — the White House has published overall intelligence spending since 2007.
But it shows a dramatic resurgence of the Central Intelligence Agency, once thought to be on the decline after it acknowledged intelligence failures prior to the attacks of September 11, 2001 and the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003.
It now is the dominant colossus within the national intelligence community, expanding its workforce by more than 25 percent from a decade ago, to 21,575 this year.
CIA has increased its budget request to $14.7 billion, nearly 50 percent more than the NSA this year, according to the Post’s review of the documents, even as government austerity has forced agencies to contend with shrinking budgets.
By comparison, in 1994 the CIA accounted for $4.8 billion of the total $43.4 billion intel budget in 2012 dollars, according to the Post.
In the budget’s introduction, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper warned that the intelligence community faced “hard choices” as government is forced to rein in costs.
Spending is projected to remain level through 2017, but Clapper stressed that “never before has the IC (intelligence community) been called upon to master such complexity and so many issues in such a resource-constrained environment.”
Snowden’s earlier disclosures to Britain’s The Guardian newspaper and the Post uncovered details of the NSA’s vast surveillance programs that scooped up data on nearly every American.
The NSA has long been considered the behemoth of the intelligence community, but according to the black budget, CIA’s resources are nearly 50 percent larger.
The funding pays for an array of spy satellites, high-tech equipment and employees including analysts, linguistic experts, cryptologists and an increasing number of cyber specialists.
But CIA resources have also been funding secret prisons, an enlarged counterterrorism center, a series of paramilitary operations, and some $2.3 billion in human intelligence operations, the Post said.
It is also spending $2.6 billion on “covert action programs,” which include deployment of lethal drones, payments to militias in places like Afghanistan, and efforts to sabotage Iran’s nuclear program.Hard on the heels of the FBI’s revelation that Hillary Clinton withheld at least 30 emails potentially related to the Benghazi attack from the State Department, comes the potentially even more devastating discovery that she was still sending classified material through her secret, unsecured private email server after she left the State Department.
The New York Post reports:
On May 28, 2013, months after stepping down as secretary of state, Clinton sent an email to a group of diplomats and top aides about the “123 Deal” with the United Arab Emirates. But the email, which was obtained by the Republican National Committee through a Freedom of Information Act request, was heavily redacted upon its release by the State Department because it contains classified information. The markings on the email state it will be declassified on May 28, 2033, and that information in the note is being redacted because it contains “information regarding foreign governors” and because it contains “Foreign relations or foreign activities of the United States, including confidential sources.” The email from Clinton was sent from the email account — hrod17@clintonemail.com — associated with her private email server. The email’s recipients were Deputy Secretary of State William Burns, diplomat Jeffrey Feltman, policy aide Jake Sullivan, diplomat Kurt Campbell, State Department chief of staff Cheryl Mills, and Clinton aide Huma Abedin.
“Hillary Clinton’s mishandling of classified information was so pervasive, it continued after she left government. She clearly can’t be trusted with our nation’s security,” said Republican National Committee research director Raj Shah.
“Hillary Clinton’s secret server jeopardized our national security and sensitive diplomatic efforts on more than 2,000 occasions, and shockingly, it now appears her reckless conduct continued even after leaving the State Department. Hillary Clinton’s terrible judgment shows she cannot be trusted with our national security,” said Jason Miller, senior communications adviser for Donald Trump’s presidential campaign.
The FBI is expected to release its full Clinton investigation report to the public soon, along with its notes on Clinton’s voluntary interview with FBI agents.
It will be interesting to see how the Bureau looked at Clinton’s failure to submit official correspondence, as required by law, in defiance of documents she signed under penalty of perjury… and her willful destruction of such documents with advanced data-erasing software, whose manufacturer is currently bragging that it helped Hillary Clinton thwart the FBI… followed by her exposure of classified material as a private citizen… and yet somehow concluded she should not be referred to the Justice Department for indictment.If you’ve had your Slow Cooker packed away in the back of your cupboard all summer, it’s time to get it out! With school right around the corner, it’s great to have some recipe ideas ready for breakfast, lunch, dinner or snacks that can be put together in the morning that free up a little bit of time during the day. Applesauce is one of my favorite things to make in the slow cooker and the flavor is so much better than what you would get out of a jar from the store. Since I had plenty of peaches in my kitchen, I thought I would blend those sweet, ripe peaches into my applesauce. The result is a fresh tasting applesauce that your family will love. When you make this yourself, you are able to control the sugar too. My family loves dipping grilled cheese sandwiches into fresh applesauce. Sounds a little strange, huh? My grandfather always ate his grilled cheese sandwiches this way and it’s the only way I eat it! I actually have never served grilled cheese sandwiches without applesauce. If you haven’t tried this, you don’t know what you’re missing:) Apples and cheese are an amazing combination! Of course, this applesauce is also just as wonderful on it’s own. How does your family like to eat their applesauce? This recipe is very simple and will make enough applesauce to fill a few mason jars that can be stored in the refrigerator for a great after school snack. If you have little ones at home, this is the perfect recipe they can help you with!
Print Slow Cooker Peach Applesauce Ingredients 4 lbs. Golden Delicious or McIntosh apples, peeled, cored and cut into chunks
8 regular sized fresh peaches (about 4 cups), skin removed, and chopped
1/3 cup water
1/4 cup brown sugar
1/2 tsp. cinnamon Instructions Place apples and fresh peaches in your slow cooker. Sprinkle with sugar and cinnamon. Pour in the water. Stir so everything is well combined. Cook for 4 hours on high or 8 hours on low. Uncover, and with a potato masher, mash the applesauce until you get the consistency you want. If you like your applesauce smoother and less chunky, you can use an immersion blender. You can adjust the sugar to your own taste too! Let the applesauce cool for 30 minutes and then chill in the refrigerator until you are ready to serve. This recipe makes about 8 cups or so of applesauce. Store leftover applesauce in a large mason jar in the refrigerator for up to 1 week. 3.1 https://www.cozycountryliving.com/slow-cooker-peach-applesauce/ Copyright ©2017 Cozy Country Living ®All Rights Reserved
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According to police, Umar Hayat of chak-41 North, some 200 kilometres from Lahore, suspected that his sisters Razia and Noreen, who were in their 20s, had relations with the men of the locality. "Yesterday Hayat had a quarrel with her sisters before he shot them dead at their house," Shafique Ahmed, a police official said.
He said the neighbours told police that the accused often had quarrels over the issue and also used to beat them. A murder case has been registered against Hayat who managed to flee the scene after the crime.
Some 870 women were killed in the name of honour in Pakistan last year, according to figures provided by rights groups.The Pakistani passport (Urdu: پاکستانی پاسپورٹ) is issued to citizens of Pakistan for the purpose of international travel. The Directorate General of Immigration & Passports of the Ministry of Interior[1] is responsible for issuing passports. Pakistan's machine-readable and biometric passports are currently being issued from regional passport offices and Pakistani embassies. Pakistani passport holders are eligible to visit 33 countries without a visa, or with visa on arrival.
In 2004, Pakistan became one of the first countries in the world to issue the biometric passports, which are, according to the publisher, compliant with ICAO standards and dubbed Multi-biometric e-Passports.[2] They do not carry the "chip inside" symbol ( ), which is mandatory for ICAO-standard electronic passports.,[3] however Ministry of Interior is planning to start issuing E-Passport in coming years to Pakistani citizens. As of 2012, Pakistan has adopted the Multi-biometric e-Passport that is now compliant with ICAO standards.[4] According to the Interior Minister, the biometric passports will be introduced in 2017.[5] The passports are printed in a centralized passport personalization facility established within the premises of Directorate General of Immigration and Passports Headquarters in the Federal capital of Islamabad.[6] Since January 2014, passports are being issued with 5 and 10 years validity.[7]
The British Indian passport was issued to the British subjects of British Indian Empire, British subjects from other parts of the British Empire, and the subjects of the British protected states in India (i. e. the British Protected Persons of the 'princely states').[8] The use of passports was introduced to British India after the First World War.[9] The Indian Passport Act of 1920 required the use of passports, established controls on the foreign travel of Indians, foreigners travelling to and within India.[10] The passport was based on the format agreed upon by 1920 League of Nations International Conference on Passports.[11] However, the British Indian passport had very limited usage, being valid for travel only within the British Empire, Italy, Switzerland, Austria, Czechoslovakia, Germany, France, Spain, Norway, Sweden and Holland.[12]
The use of the passport was discontinued after the independence of India and Pakistan in 1947, and its bearers were entitled to opt for Indian, Pakistani or British nationality.Passport regime only started between the two countries from 1952. Citizens of both India and Pakistan did not need a visa or were issued one on arrival till the Second Kashmir War. Before the war, citizens of both countries could freely travel to each other's countries, despite the fact that both had gone to war in 1947 over the princely state of Kashmir.[13]
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1940s [ edit ]
The cover of the First Pakistani passport in 1947
Issued in late 1947, the cover of Pakistan’s first passport was largely beige in colour and only partially green. It had 'Pakistan Passport' written in three languages: English, Bengali, and Urdu. It had two Pakistan flags, one symbolising West Pakistan and the other East Pakistan. Inside, there was the holder's name, address, profession, photo, and marital status. Pakistanis did not require pre-arrival visas and could get visas-on-arrival in any country they wished to travel, including India.[14]
1950s [ edit ]
The West Pakistani passport in 1954
By 1954, the colour green had ousted the beige. The two flags were still there, but the holder's name now appeared on the cover. Due to tensions between the state and the Bengali majority of East Pakistan, the government had introduced the One Unit scheme, which treated the ethnically diverse West Pakistan as a single province and the Bengali-dominated East Pakistan as the other province. Consequently, West Pakistani passports (like the one in the picture) had 'Pakistan Passport' written only in English and Urdu, whereas East Pakistani passports had the same written in English and Bengali. This was soon changed, but the rest of the contents remained the same: holder's name, photo, address, profession, and marital status. Pakistanis could still get on-arrival-visas in most countries, except Israel, the Soviet Union and Afghanistan – countries that Pakistan had developed strained relations with. However, India and Pakistan were still issuing on-arrival-visas to one another despite the fact that both had gone to war in 1948.[14]
The dark green passport lasted till 1960. In 1956, when the Constituent Assembly authored and passed the country's first constitution, it declared Pakistan an Islamic republic. It was also decided that the term 'Islamic Republic of Pakistan' was to appear on Pakistani passports by 1958. However, this never happened because in 1958, the country's powerful president, Iskander Mirza, and its army chief, Ayub Khan, imposed martial law for the first time in Pakistani history. Mirza suspended the constitution, terming it “the peddling of Islam for political gains.” Within the first 20 days of the coup, Ayub ousted Mirza as well and became president in 1959. He changed the name of the country to the Republic of Pakistan.[14]
1960s [ edit ]
Pakistani passport during Ayub's era
The first passport issued by the Ayub regime was in 1960. It was light green in colour, symbolising the regime's modernist and moderate view of Islam. It just had 'Pakistan Passport' written on it in English and Urdu. The flags were removed and so was the Bengali translation (which had reappeared in the late 1950s). The contents inside remained the same. Pakistanis could receive on-arrival-visas in all countries, except the Soviet Union, communist countries in eastern Europe, and Israel. Afghanistan had begun to give on-arrival visas. The only communist country that gave on-arrival visas to Pakistanis was China. India and Pakistan still had on-arrival-visa policies between them.[14]
In 1967, the colour of the passport was changed back to dark green. The Ayub regime had begun to face harsh criticism from opponents, especially after the 1965 Indo-Pakistani war had ended in stalemate and the once-booming economy had begun to retract. Trouble began to brew on the country's streets and campuses, and Bengali nationalists in East Pakistan became more hostile. The passport turned dark green again and, once more, the words 'Pakistan Passport' began appearing in Bengali. The inside contents remained the same. Pakistanis still enjoyed on-arrival-visa facilities in all the countries, except in communist countries, barring China. However, from 1965 onward, India and Pakistan abolished their long-standing on-arrival-visa policies.[14]
1970s [ edit ]
In 1974, the passport became bluish green in colour and the Bengali text disappeared after Pakistan recognised Bangladesh. This was due to the fact that in December 1971, East Pakistan had seceded to become Bangladesh. When Zulfikar Ali Bhutto's left-leaning and populist Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) came to power in 1973, it authored and passed the country's third constitution. Even though the new constitution changed the country's name back to Islamic Republic of Pakistan, the new name did not appear on the passport. The contents inside changed a bit though. Apart from having the holder's name, address, profession, and marital status, a section was added to note the colour of the holder's eyes. From 1970 onward, the U.S. ended its policy of giving on-arrival-visas to Pakistanis, but the Soviet Union and communist countries began to relax their visa policies towards Pakistan somewhat. Nevertheless, Pakistanis were still able to enjoy on-arrival-visas in most countries.[14]
In 1974, the passport also came with the disclaimer that Pakistanis could not use the passport to travel to Israel and South Africa, which was under the apartheid regime at the time. In 1979, the passport was more or less the same, but the Urdu words 'Pakistan passport' were shifted on top and the English ones pushed down. In July 1977, a reactionary military coup pulled off by General Zia-ul-Haq had toppled the Bhutto regime, but the name Islamic Republic of Pakistan had yet to appear on the passports. The contents inside remained the same as they were in 1974. However, the revived on-arrival-visa policies between Pakistan and Afghanistan were abolished again, mainly due to the communist revolution in Afghanistan in 1978 and the Soviet invasion of that country in 1979. Barring the communist countries (except for China) and the U.S., Pakistanis could still get on-arrival-visas in most countries.[14]
1980s [ edit ]
In 1984, major changes were made to the Pakistani passport. Zia was still at the helm and had accelerated his Islamization. The country's official name, though changed to Islamic Republic of Pakistan in 1973, only appeared on the passports for the first time in 1984. The word 'Passport', in addition to English and Urdu, also appeared in Arabic. There were two reasons for this. Firstly, more and more Pakistanis were going to oil-rich Gulf countries for work. Secondly, Arab cultural and theological influence had been allowed by the regime to seep inside the country’s institutions. The contents of the new passport inside now had an additional section in which the holder had to declare their faith. Also, they had to sign a declaration that they were not members of the Ahmadiyya community in order to receive the passport. Though the community had been ousted from the fold of Islam by a National Assembly Bill in 1974, a new ordinance in 1984 introduced further restrictions on the community. In 1983, UK and other major European countries stopped providing on-arrival-visas to Pakistanis. Pakistanis could also not get Afghan visas ( |
Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9, which has been pounding Jupiter all week--could be named Dudu (Asteroid 564). Or it could even be named after a peace-loving Beatle (Asteroids 4147 to 4150 are named for John, Paul, George and Ringo).
With more than 300 asteroids named every year, scientists are running out of names, and turning to those of political dissidents, musicians and even mistresses. That has irritated some members of the international astronomy group that registers such names, setting off a debate in the letters columns of astronomy journals.
"We knew that there would probably be some flak for it, but we didn't expect it to go this far," said Gibson, 66, who chose the name in 1985 with the help of his wife. He could have done far worse, he argued. "I let the whole universe of tasteless names go unaddressed."
A cat. A Vulcan. And an asteroid. Mix them together and you have a controversy of cosmic proportions brewing around James Gibson, a planetary scientist from Tujunga who has become the target of scientific ire for naming an asteroid after his late cat, Mr. Spock.
But Gibson's naming of Asteroid 2309 after his marble gray tabby, who kept him company at an isolated mountaintop observatory in Argentina, was apparently the last straw. In 1985, a review panel at the International Astronomical Union passed a resolution discouraging such pet names.
And, following the written debates in the journals, some scientists expect the issue may come hurtling back into view at the IAU meeting next month in Holland.
The rules that now regulate such names are "not entirely satisfactory," concedes Brian Marsden, who serves on the IAU's Minor Planet Names Committee. "It can get silly. But you have to have a sense of humor in this business." Marsden, putting that philosophy into practice, supported the application to name 2309 for Spock the cat.
Tom Gehrels, a planetary scientist at the University of Arizona who coordinates the Spacewatch search for asteroids that may collide with the earth, is anti-Spock, saying the choice "has hurt (astronomy) enough that the committee will not allow it to happen again."
Scientists believe most asteroids are rocky space chunks ranging from the size of a house to the city of San Fernando--cosmic debris left over from the solar system's formation 4.5 billion years ago.
Asteroids are first given numbers upon their discovery. After their orbits have been confirmed in subsequent sightings by other astronomers, the discoverer has 10 years to assign a name, Marsden said.
As of today, 6,057 asteroids have been discovered hurtling through the solar system and about 4,600 of them have been named, said Marsden, who also serves as director of the Minor Planet Center in Cambridge, Mass. The names are registered by being published in the Minor Planets Circulars edited at the center.
Marsden said obvious names like Copernicus, Galileo and other famous astronomers have already been taken. "It does make things rather difficult when it comes to naming things," Marsden said.
Gibson, however, is happy with the debate.
Gibson--an astronomer for 36 years who previously named asteroids after his wife, Ursula, and his hometown of Ellensburg, Wash.--submitted the name in part to reaffirm that asteroids should be named after those who have made helpful, significant or unusual contributions to astronomy. His late cat qualifies, he said, but some other personal choices do not.
"I don't have a problem with people who name objects after the seven astronauts who went down in Challenger," Gibson said. "But to name an asteroid for a granddaughter who isn't out of the crib yet, that's a little extreme."Heterosexual men eye up other men's physical qualities from their dance moves - just as women do - researchers in Newcastle have found.
The Northumbria University study used 3D technology to capture the moves of 30 men aged between 19 and 37 who danced to a simple drum beat.
The results showed that women were drawn to strong arm and torso moves.
But they showed men were also conscious of strong upper body movements - making it easier to detect "love rivals".
The study, published in the American Journal of Human Biology, involved dancers being converted into virtual characters - avatars - and rated by women and men on perceived dance and physical qualities.
'Strength and virility'
Lead researcher Dr Nick Neave said: "Although it is traditionally thought that signals given off by men when they dance have been designed - like animal mating displays - to be interpreted as clues of their physical attributes to the opposite sex, it seems that heterosexual men are also making use of these signals, presumably to detect a potential love rival.
"This increased sensitivity to male qualities by other heterosexual men may be due to them sizing up the strength and virility of their competition.
"Dance quality was positively associated with actual grip strength and these clues of upper-body strength were most accurately picked up by male observers.
"Upper body strength is highly related to fighting ability as it reflects the ability to do damage. The ability to gauge strength before potential conflicts is sensible, especially to other males."
The next stage of the ongoing research project will involve a study of 80 women who have been similarly mapped while dancing.
Dr Neave said the study hoped to give clues as to how the fertility of women was perceived.Television news shows scrambled to get White House staffers and GOP legislators to talk about reports that Trump revealed confidential information to Russian diplomats and asked the FBI director to end the investigation into former national security adviser Michael Flynn.
The response: Mostly crickets.
Although an unceasing parade of Democrats have been on air Wednesday morning, no one speaking for Trump or the White House appeared.
On CBS, Gayle King said she hasn’t been able to book any Republicans on Wednesday morning: “It was like crickets over there in Washington.”
Wow: @CBSThisMorning says it asked 20 GOP lawmakers to be a guest this AM to talk about Trump. And asked the WH for someone. ALL declined. — Ed O'Keefe (@edatpost) May 17, 2017
That’s a notable difference from last week, after Comey was fired, when Trump surrogates and Republican lawmakers went on show after show.
Some notable exceptions Wednesday: Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.) was on CNN and called for a special prosecutor or independent commission to investigate the Russia claims.
And Marco Rubio, a Florida Republican who was one of Trump’s opponents in the presidential primary, said “we need to know what the facts are.”
Sen. @marcorubio: Before we form opinions and advocate for action, we need to know what the facts are pic.twitter.com/OkNOdNQNvs — FOX & friends (@foxandfriends) May 17, 2017
The White House did release a statement Tuesday night, saying “the president has never asked Mr. Comey or anyone else to end an investigation, including any investigation involving General Flynn … This is not a truthful or accurate portrayal of the conversation between the president and Mr. Comey.’’This bus stop at 6716 E. Marginal Way S. is in the final four to be the nation's sorriest bus stop. (Photo: KOMO News)
SEATTLE -- Seattle has made the Final Four.
But not in a good way.
Streetsblog USA is running a contest for people to name the nation's sorriest bus stop.
A homely little number on East Marginal Way keeps winning and winning.
First, it took care of the Californians, taking out unsightly stops in Fremont, then San Diego.
Now, in the final four, it's up against a stop in Chapel Hill, N.C. Students and staff at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill have cross a divided highway to get there.
The Seattle stop is at 6716 E. Marginal Way S. It is across the street from South Seattle Community College's Duwamish Apprenticeship & Education Center.
Alexander Lew nominated and described it as follows:
Here’s one in Seattle, WA (yes, in a city that funded $54 billion in transit improvements!). The bus lets you off onto the freight railroad tracks. When it’s rainy (which is like most of the year), the trackbed gets pretty muddy.
Streetsblog adds:
Imagine standing at that stop with a train roaring behind you, and high-speed traffic in front of you.The U.S. Military has purchased software designed to create and control false online personas in an attempt to use social media and other websites to counter anti-U.S. messaging.
According to the contract between US Central Command (Centcom) and California company Ntrepid, the software would let each user control 10 personas, each "replete with background, history, supporting details, and cyber presences that are technically, culturally and geographically consistent." The software would also be able to let personas "appear to originate in nearly any part of the world" and interact through "conventional online services and social media platforms," while using a static IP address for each persona to maintain a consistent online identity.
These false online personas, also known as "sock puppets," would be equipped to seem like real people while entering online discussion through blogs, message boards, chats, and more. With a false persona, a user could discredit opponents, or create the semblance of consensus.
Centcom spokesman Commander Bill Speaks told The Guardian that the software "supports classified blogging activities on foreign-language websites to enable Centcom to counter violent extremist and enemy propaganda outside the US."
The technology would not be used in America, or by American owned companies--which include major social media sites like Facebook and Twitter. "We do not target U.S. audiences, and we do not conduct these activities on sites owned by U.S. companies," Speaks told the Washington Times.
At a senate hearing March 1, Centcom commander James N. Mattis said, "Our enemies operate within cyberspace (and its associated relevant physical infrastructure) to plan, coordinate, recruit, train, equip, execute and garner support for operations against the U.S., its allies and interests. Clearly, in the information age, our military must adapt to this new domain of warfare."
The online persona project is thought to fall under the domain of Operation Earnest Voice, which oversees Centcom's Information Operations, and in the words of Mattis, "seeks to disrupt recruitment and training of suicide bombers; deny safe havens for our adversaries; and counter extremist ideology and propaganda."
The users controlling the personas would be hidden in a variety of ways, including randomizing the IP addresses they accessed the software with, and "traffic mixing," or blending web traffic with that outside of Centcom to provide "excellent cover and powerful deniability."
The strategy may sound familiar. Last month, hacker group Anonymous unloaded a batch of 50,000 emails from security firm HBGary, where documents indicated that the firm was in the process of developing their own persona management software. The document outlined some of the proposed strategies for creating verisimilitude:Bill Pugliano/Getty Images General Motors CEO Mary Barra is the top-ranking woman on the Fortune 500 list released Wednesday.
A record number of women are now running Fortune 500 companies.
Thirty-two female CEOs head the 500 biggest companies in the United States, according to numbers released by Fortune magazine Wednesday morning.
It’s the highest number of female CEOs in the Fortune 500’s 63-year history and a big jump from last year when there were only 21 women CEOs.
The newbies include Hershey chief executive Michele Buck, who had been at the company for 11 years before being named to the position, and Mattel CEO Margo Georgiadis, formerly Google’s Americas president. General Motors chief Mary Barra is the top-ranking woman on the list, followed closely by IBM’s Ginni Rometty.
To be sure, there’s a long, steep hill left to climb. Women still constitute only 6 percent of the CEOs on the list and there were no black female CEOs. The glass ceiling is feeling the pressure, but it’s still fairly well intact.Hide Transcript Show Transcript
WEBVTT APPLAUDED AND CHEERED WHENTODAY'S ARREST WAS ANNOUNCED.THE WORCESTER COUNTY DISTRICTATTORNEY BROUGHT RELIEF TO THESMALL TOWN OF PRINCETON THAT HASBEEN LIVING WITH AN UNSOLVEDMURDER FOR MORE THAN EIGHTMONTHS.>> EARLY THIS MORNING, STATEPOLICE ARRESTED 31-YEAR-OLDANGELO COLON-ORTIZ IN CONNECTIONWITH THE MURDER OF VANESSAMARCOTTE.DAVID: MARCOTTE'S PARTIALLYBURNED BODY WAS FOUND LASTAUGUST AFTER SHE'D GONE FOR AJOG NEAR HER PARENTS' HOME.INVESTIGATORS FOUND HER KILLER'SDNA ON MARCOTTE'S HANDS.WITH THAT AND WITNESSSTATEMENTS, THEY DEVELOPED APROFILE OF A HISPANIC MAN, ABOUT30 YEARS OLD WITH AN ATHLETICBUILD AND SHORT HAIR, DRIVING ADARK SUV.>> AN ALERT STATE TROOPER SAW ADARK SUV IN WORCESTER NOT TOOLONG AGO.HE LOOKED AT THE DRIVER OF THEVEHICLE AND IT MATCHED OURSUSPECT.DAVID: THE TROOPER USED THEVEHICLE LICENSE PLATE TO TRACKDOWN THE SUSPECT'S ADDRESS INWORCESTER, WHERE THE D.A. SAYSCOLON-ORITZ VOLUNTARILYSUBMITTED TO A MOUTH SWAB AND ONFRIDAY, HE SAYS INVESTIGATORSMADE A MATCH.>> SEASONS CHANGED, HOLIDAYSCAME AND PAST AND MS. MARCOTTE'SFAMILY WAITED AND WAITED ANDHOPED.DAVID: AS NEWS OF THE ARRESTSSPREAD, DOZENS OF COMMUNITY CAMETO HEAR THE OFFICIALANNOUNCEMENT.SOME DOUBTED THIS CASE MIGHTEVER BE SOLVED.>> BECAUSE IF YOU JUST LOOK ATTHIS TOWN, IF TWO PEOPLE DROVEBY THAT SPOT THAT AFTERNOON,THAT WOULD HAVE BEEN A LOT.>> I HAD FAITH IN THE SYSTEM.AND ONCE WE WERE AWARE THAT DNAEVIDENCE HAD BEEN FOUND, I FELTPRETTY CONFIDENT THAT THEY WOULDFIND THE PERSON WHO WASRESPONSIBLE.DAVID: TONIGHT, HE FACES CHARGESOF ASSAULT AND BATTERY, PLUSASSAULT WITH AN ATTEMPT TO
Advertisement 5 Investigates: Arrest made in connection with death of Princeton jogger Vanessa Marcotte DNA matched suspect, authorities say Share Shares Copy Link Copy
An arrest has been made in connection with the death of Vanessa Marcotte, authorities confirmed. The suspect, identified as Angelo Colon-Ortiz, 31, was taken into custody early Saturday in Worcester. "We got him," Worcester District Attorney Joseph Early Jr. said during a press conference Saturday afternoon. Marcotte's family released a statement Saturday evening thanking the Worcester County District Attorney's Office, the Massachusetts State Police, the Princeton Police Department and the entire community.Authorities said they were able to take Colon-Ortiz into custody with the help of an alert state trooper, who spotted a dark-colored SUV in Worcester being driven by a man matching the description of Marcotte's alleged killer. The trooper wrote down the license plate of the vehicle and followed up by obtaining DNA from Colon-Ortiz the next day. Early said the DNA match was confirmed Friday. Authorities said Colon-Ortiz is being held by state police in Millbury pending his arraignment in Leominster Tuesday. He is facing multiple aggravated assault charges. He is not yet charged with murder, but Early said more charges are expected. Marcotte, 27, was found not far from her family home off Brooks Station Road on the evening of Aug. 7, 2016. Her hands, feet and part of her head were burned, sources said.Marcotte was an account manager for Google in New York City. She grew up in Leominster and graduated from Boston University.The Marcotte family's statement continued, "After eight long months, we're able to take the first step toward justice for Vanessa. She was a beautiful, intelligent, and generous young woman whose passion for giving back to the community will always be remembered. As we move forward, her spirit will live on through The Vanessa T. Marcotte Foundation that strives to empower women to live boldly and fearlessly.""It was through (Marcotte's) determined fight and efforts that we obtained the DNA of her killer," Early said.In February, Early said DNA evidence had led them to develop the profile of a person of interest in the case.Officials said they were searching for a Hispanic man with an athletic build and average height. He had a shaved head or short hair on the day of the murder and is about 30 years old. A dark-colored SUV was seen in the area around the time Marcotte was killed, Early said. Authorities received thousands of tips related to the case.Thank you, Matt Ryan.
As a member of the media for almost 10 full years now, there are very few things that give me more pleasure than narrative-busting performances that force a lot of narrow-minded group-thinkers to come up with some other default tagline every time a certain player, coach or team's name is mentioned.
"Matt Ryan stinks in the playoffs."
It's not just that Ryan destroyed this narrative, as he and his team dominated the Green Bay Packers in the NFC Championship game on Sunday. It's that it was never true in the first place.
In 2008, Ryan was able to lead an undermanned Falcons team that was terrible the year before into the playoffs, before they lost to an Arizona Cardinals team that Kurt Warner took to the Super Bowl that year.
The Falcons were the No. 1 seed in 2010, but they ran into buzz saw known as Aaron Rodgers, as the Packers sliced and diced every team in their way en route to bringing another Lombardi Trophy back to Lambeau.
In 2011, the Falcons lost to a Giants squad that beat the Patriots to win a Super Bowl of their own.
Matt Ryan got his first playoff win in the 2012-13 season against the Russell Wilson-led Seattle Seahawks, before coming up a few yards short in the NFC Championship Game that year against the 49ers.
That's why his record was 1-4 prior to this year in the playoffs. A sterling postseason record? Far from it. "Matt Ryan stinks in the playoffs" was not a fair characterization either, however. And fortunately, that narrative has disappeared. Hopefully forever.
Instead -- unless he can knock off Tom Brady, Bill Belichick and the omnipresent Patriots -- a new albatross will hang around his neck, like every other stellar passer that has failed to win the game's ultimate prize.
"Can't win the big one."
Fair or not, that may end up being the conversation this offseason, but for now there are a lot of folks that need to offer a mea culpa based on how Ryan and this team have played this year. By any statistical measure, we are talking about one of the top five offenses in the history of the NFL.
Ryan has been particularly sharp, as evidenced by his yards per attempt this year, which is the best in NFL history for players with at least 400 pass attempts. No big deal.
Fortunately for him -- and unfortunately for a lot of folks that prefer to lean on their default verbal crutches -- that performance has continued in the postseason.
The combination of a fast and young defense that was hand-picked by Falcons GM Thomas Dimitroff and personnel man Scott Pioli over the past two years, and an electric offense under the direction of offensive coordinator Kyle Shanahan, has led the Falcons to humble both the Seahawks and Packers the past two weeks. They are relentless on both sides of the ball and opponents have wilted under that pressure.
The key, though, has been the guy known as Matty Ice. As if his off-the-charts regular season wasn't enough, his performance in the playoffs has cemented the fact that he should clearly be the MVP of the NFL this season.
Whether he wins that award remains to be seen. What isn't up in the air any longer is what folks can say about his postseason success, or lack thereof, moving forward.
Nobody can say "Matt Ryan stinks in the playoffs" anymore.
Instead, they may have to say "Matt Ryan, Super Bowl Champion".The CSS Working Group, the W3C, the browser vendors and the Open Web need you, and I really mean you ALL. The following article is written by Daniel Glazman, co-chairman of the CSS Working Group; the part until "This must not happen" represents an official discussion of the CSS Working Group. Members of the Group behind that discussion include Adobe, Apple, Disruptive Innovations, Google, HP, Microsoft, Mozilla, Opera and the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). The second part of the article is strictly mine.
Not so long ago, IE6 was the over-dominant browser on the Web. Technically, the Web was full of works-only-in-IE6 web sites and the other browsers, the users were crying. IE6 is dead, this time is gone, and all browsers vendors including Microsoft itself rejoice. Gone? Not entirely... IE6 is gone, the problem is back.
WebKit, the rendering engine at the heart of Safari and Chrome, living in iPhones, iPads and Android devices, is now the over-dominant browser on the mobile Web and technically, the mobile Web is full of works-only-in-WebKit web sites while other browsers and their users are crying. Many sites are sniffing the browser's User-Agent string and filtering out non-WebKit browsers. As in the past with IE6, it's not a question of innovation but a question of hardware market dominance and software bundled with hardware. But there is an aspect of the problem we did not have during the IE6 era: these web sites are also WebKit-specific because they use only "experimental" CSS properties prefixed with -webkit-* and not their Mozilla, Microsoft or Opera counterparts. So even if the browser sniffing goes away, web sites will remain broken for non-WebKit browsers...
In many if not most cases, the -webkit-* properties WebKit-specific web sites are using do have -moz-*, -ms-*, -o-* equivalents. Gradients, Transforms, Transitions, Animations, border-radius, all interoperable enough to be browser-agnostic. Their web authors need only a few minutes to make the site compatible with Mozilla, Microsoft or Opera. But they never did it.
Without your help, without a strong reaction, this can lead to one thing only and we're dangerously not far from there: other browsers will start supporting/implementing themselves the -webkit-* prefix, turning one single implementation into a new world-wide standard. It will turn a market share into a de facto standard, a single implementation into a world-wide monopoly. Again. It will kill our standardization process. That's not a question of if, that's a question of when.
Let me be very clear: this is NOT hypothetical and I'm not discussing here something that could happen. All browser vendors let us officially know it WILL happen, and rather sooner than later because they have, I quote, "no other option". Let me also state very clearly that is NOT a lack of innovation on these browser vendors' side, in particular when they DO support a feature but with their own prefix, following here the Working Group's rules.
THIS MUST NOT HAPPEN.
This situation happened in the past with IE6, when browsers were desktop-only, and it took ten long years to recover. With billions of mobile browsers today, the Web may not recover at all.
Vendor prefixes have not failed. They are a bit suboptimal but they also very clearly preserved Web Authors from chaos. We can certainly make vendor prefixes work better but we can only do that if vendor prefixes remain VENDOR prefixes.
I am asking all the Web Authors community to stop designing web sites for WebKit only, in particular when adding support for other browsers is only a matter of adding a few extra prefixed CSS properties.
I am asking all the Web Authors community to remove immediately and stop implementing WebKit-based browser sniffing in web sites. You own such a web site? Show your support for the Open Web and remove that browser sniffing immediately after you finish reading this call for action.
I am asking the Web Design and Web Users community to stop recommending web sites that require one single browser while they could be open to multiple ones. Don't link them, mention them only to let the community know they fail serving the Open Web. Don't feed the trolls; blacklist them, whatever is the coolness of the service they provide.
I am asking the Web Authors community to update their online services to support the other browsers if these other browsers offer a level of CSS support they did not offer in the past. Do that NOW! Very little effort, big effect.
I am asking the whole Web community, all Users, to ping Web Authors and complain if their web sites work only for one rendering engine while it could work for many. Help us evangelize these Web sites to make sure the Architecture of the Web remains safe for all, remains based on consensual and open Web Standards, because browser vendors implementing the prefix(es) of other browser vendor(s) can only lead to a chaos of the IE6 magnitude. We did it in the past for works-only-in-IE6 web sites and we did it well, now is the time to do it again for works-only-in-WebKit web sites.
I am also asking the browser vendors behind WebKit, namely Apple and Google, to submit as soon as possible to the CSS Working Group complete technical proposals for the proprietary CSS-like properties they have let the whole world use in iOS and Android devices, harming the Open Web. An example of such a property is -webkit-text-size-adjust. Please note the Apple representative to the CSS WG said he'll look at the possibility to have proposals submitted for a list of such properties. If these properties are so well implemented and so useful to the mobile Web, they became de facto standards ; let's turn them as soon as possible into de jure standards through W3C standardization. I am also calling Apple and Google to remove support for the "experimental" versions of a property when the final one is implemented and shipped. We, and that we represents the whole Web Industry, cannot let the architecture of the Web become unsafe and unreliable keeping forever vendor prefixes that should be gone. That is harmful and this is your responsibility, because you could provide mandatory software updates to your users. The Open Web does not have to suffer of such a decision.
So please all express your opinion, help the Open Web and tweet or blog that you don't want to see this happen. Some of you already started, after reading the minutes of the CSS Working Group face-to-face meeting in Paris. Let Microsoft, Mozilla and Opera know this is the wrong way to go even if we understand perfectly both the diagnosis and their proposed solution. If browser vendors standardize the Web, it's really owned by Users and Authors and now is the time to let browser vendors remember it better. YOUR VOICE DOES MATTER.
I am finally asking you to relay that call for help. For that reason, comments are closed on this article. Use your blog, your twitter account, Facebook, Google+, whatever. But do it.
Jeffrey, Eric, Molly, Lea and all our friends of the Web Designers' community and/or Web Standards' community: please help us. Now.
If you're a journalist, I'm immediately open to interviews on this topic (please note I'm based in Europe).
Thank you.
Updates:History Edit
Geography Edit
Transportation Edit
Carmel-By-The-Sea is a quiet town and does not have any big roads. The biggest by a wide margin is Cabrillo Highway ( SR 1), generally called "Highway 1", which at the northern border of town becomes a limited-access freeway where it enters Monterey and exit 399. The freeway goes north for San Francisco, connecting to Highway 101. South of Carpenter Street in the northeast corner of Carmel, Highway 1 changes from a freeway to a two-lane surface road with many at-grade intersections, some signalized, as it remains through town and for a long distance south of Carmel. Some have proposed turning the intersection with Carpenter Street into an interchange as an exit 398, but no official proposals have been made. South of Carmel, the highway follows the scenic Big Sur coast before eventually reaching bigger cities such as Santa Barbara and Los Angeles far south of Carmel. However, avoiding the Big Sur Coast and taking the 101 Freeway to these cities is much faster, and Highway 1 frequently closes along the Big Sur Coast during rainy season due to mudslides, occasionally for months at a time due to the damage. These landslides usually do not happen near Carmel, however. Carmel's other major street is Ocean Avenue, which serves as the town’s main business district and goes straight from Highway 1 to the beach. 17 Mile Drive, a scenic road along the Monterey Bay coast, also passes through downtown Carmel.
Demographics Edit
Economy Edit
Major employers in Carmel-by-the-Sea include the La Playa Carmel hotel, Carmel Realty, and the restaurants Forge in the Forest, Il Fornaio, Portabella, and Casanova.[30]
Arts and culture Edit
Government Edit
Education Edit
Media Edit
Carmel Pine Cone Edit See also: Media in Monterey County, California The Carmel Pine Cone is the town's weekly newspaper and has been published since 1915,[60] covering local news, politics, arts, entertainment, opinions and real estate. The newspaper also has a section called The Police Log that contains almost every report of a crime in the Carmel area, often read with a quaint twist of humor by readers since the contents of the log are fairly innocuous. Veteran CBS and NBC network news producer Paul Miller became publisher in 1997. In 2005, after failing to convince city officials to rezone a potential site for the Pine Cone's operation, he moved the paper's production offices to Pacific Grove, while maintaining a reduced news staff in downtown Carmel. The last Carmel office was closed in 2009 so the paper is no longer made in Carmel. In 2007, the paper began offering an Adobe Acrobat (*.PDF) version of its complete newspaper on the Internet, which has attracted more than 9,000 subscribers, in addition to the newspaper's weekly print circulation of approximately 19,000. The town was used as the prime location for the film The Forger in 2012.
Notable people Edit
See also Edit
References Edit
Further reading EditAir Lituanica is now accepting bitcoin for flight tickets as part of its ongoing bid to embrace new and innovative methods of serving customers.
With the news, the two-plane, Lithuania-based airline becomes the second airline, and second in eastern Europe, to add bitcoin payments following airBaltic’s July announcement.
In a blog post, Air Lituanica director of commerce Simonas Bartku illustrated the benefits bitcoin can bring to travel businesses, writing:
“Bitcoin payments are highly beneficial for the aviation market – this currency helps to attract more buyers from abroad as bitcoins can be used anywhere in the world.”
Air Lituanica’s statements provide the latest evidence that bitcoin is gaining traction beyond the airline industry in the wider global travel industry, and that a growing number of consumers and businesses in this sector are looking to tap digital currency as a solution.
Long term, digital currency proponents believe the technology can provide real convenience to travelers due to the hassles and high fees associated with currency conversion as well as the high risk of fraud international travelers face. Further, it seems a growing number of businesses are looking to help the community test its prediction.
With this in mind, CoinDesk takes a look at recent news that showcases how bitcoin is building traction in the travel industry.
Bitcoin for destination travel
In addition to appealing to existing travel companies like Air Lituanica, bitcoin is also helping savvy entrepreneurs gain a foothold in the space.
For example, just last week, Bali-based travel booking agency BitcoinTour launched with the goal of making it easier for travelers to use bitcoin to visit the popular island. Notably, Bali is part of the BitIslands initiative, a project that aims to turn the Indonesian tourist destination into a top destination for bitcoin enthusiasts.
BitcoinTour now allows bitcoin users to book flights via major airlines serving the island, including Air Asia, Citilink and Lion Air, as well as a number of area hotels.
Expedia opens doors to hotels
Another segment of the travel industry that is increasingly interested in bitcoin is the hotel sector. In recent months, the Sandman Hotel Group in Canada and at least one member of the popular Dutch easyHotel franchise have begun to accept bitcoin as payment from customers.
However, bitcoin travel has recently become significantly easier with the addition of Expedia and CheapAir to the ecosystem, the former of which nets more than $1bn in annual revenue, while the latter serves more than 200,000 hotels worldwide.
Land travel lags behind
While international travel options have proved to be more accommodating of bitcoin services, land travel alternatives have been less quick to embrace bitcoin.
Still, there have been companies exploring this as-yet untapped part of bitcoin’s travel sector. For example, CheapAir announced in May that it would accept bitcoin for its Amtrak railway bookings.
Further, PassportParking, a parking solutions provider that serves lots in 35 US states revealed it would seek to implement a bitcoin payments trial in 2014.
Combined, the news events show that bitcoin is gaining ground in the travel industry, but that the idea of an easy, bitcoin-only vacation may be years away.
Image via Tallinn-airport.eeUpdate: Olbermann gives Stewart B- for smackdown
The Daily Show’s Jon Stewart took on MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann Thursday night for what he dubbed as a devolution into petty name-calling — and offered his viewers a special comment of his own — replete with a dozen or so comical spectacles.
“For years, sir, your outrage was warranted, based in fact, saturated in reason, marinated in malice but tenderized with the cleaver of careful consideration once wielded so masterfully by the demigods of discourse those whose very chair you sit in,” Stewart quipped. “You fought your fight. And you fought it furiously and forthrightly but isn’t a fight, if ill-foughten, folly?
“Fer-haps,” he added. “How far, sir? How far will you fall? Once, you toiled in the fields of the factual — equal parts punditry and profundity with prodigious prose as powerful as it was purple but now this, now this, sir — this, sir.
Stewart changes his glasses several times.
“This, sir — this, sir and no, sir. This teleprompter is not stuck. I am doing something called repetition for dramatic emphasis, you, sir, invented. I like it. “
“But now you’re just kind of calling people names. To wit, you said this of Joseph Isidore lieberman, Democrat [sic], Connecticut, “a senatorial prostitute of Roger Ailes’ fat ass.” Chris Wallace, “a monkey posing as a newscaster,” Rush Limbaugh, a “big bag of mashed up jackass.” All right, all right, I’ll give you that one. That was a good one.”
“And of Michelle Malkin, you said a ‘mindlessly morally bankrupt knee-jerk, fascistic mashed up bag of meat with lipstick on it” end quote. That sounds a lot more like violence against women than anything Scott Brown ever said… You ceded the high ground and now you wallow in the fetid swamp of baseless name calling. And as we both know, sir, that’s my thing. It is beneath you — it is next to me. A man of your intellect need not be me — petty, pompous, pusillanimous or poopyhead.”
On Friday, Olbermann responded to Stewarts evisceration.
TV Newser’s Chris Ariens writes, “It was a little bit of a ripoff of the Affleck thing, but overall, I’d give it a B-.”
Olbermann was referring to a 2008 impression Oscar winner Ben Affleck performed on MSNBC’s sister network’s Saturday Night Live. (Video of Affleck’s impression can be seen below)
This video is from Comedy Central’s The Daily Show, broadcast Jan. 21, 2010. Affleck’s Olbermann impression from NBC’s Saturday Night Live, which originally aired in November of 2008 follows:Between now and national signing day on Feb. 5, The Oregonian is profiling high school football players who are expected to sign with the Ducks.
Name: Jalen Jelks
Hometown: Phoenix, Ariz.
Position: Defensive end
Twitter: N/A
Height: 6-foot-7
Weight: 256 pounds
High school: Desert Vista
2013 statistics: 72 tackles, 10 sacks, three forced fumbles, one blocked field goal
Why Duck fans should be excited:
The possibilities for the next four years are tantalizing considering how far Jalen Jelks came in the previous four.
Amid preparation for the final football game of his prep career, Jelks laughs over the phone at just the thought of his high-school transformation.
“As soon as spring ball came around I noticed a big difference in my game,” he said.
How exactly, again, did he go from a 170-pound freshman wrestler grappling over his head in the 185-pound division into a 6-foot-7, 250-pound defensive lineman manhandling smaller opponents? His coach simply explains it as Jelks’ “natural progression.”
“Every year he gets a little bigger and stronger and a little quicker, but it wasn't really this wake-up, overnight and there-he-was thing,” Desert Vista High coach Dan Hinds said. “It was just a natural thing.”
After the change from his unassuming start – he wasn’t a consistent varsity contributor until his junior season – to an eye-popping prep finish complete with offers from Washington, Tennessee, Wisconsin, Oregon and more, it’s also natural to wonder about the possibilities of Jelks’ career in Eugene as a Duck defensive lineman. Despite being a year young for his class, Jelks will graduate at 17 with the physical gifts of a much older player.
On Feb. 5, Jelks will make his July verbal commitment to Oregon official by signing his National Letter of Intent in Dallas, where he will play in the U.S. vs. Canada "International Bowl" two days later.
“It’s all tied together to getting stronger and faster,” said Jelks, who plans on reaching at least 265 pounds by |
of the three potential nominees for the Senate seat, only Meek remains untainted by this scandal.Konami will be using the Fox Engine for PES 2014 and also other unannounced next-gen PS4 games and this new photo comparison shows the engine in action. To the right is a photo and left is a screenshot from Fox Engine.
You can still see some apparent distinguishing features that gives the illusion away:
• The polygon edges on the ear are prevalent and you can also see them on the lower parts of the nostrils.
• Hair is always a hard feature to pull off and here you can see the lack of hair strains and their delicate fidelity are not the same. While the eye brow is almost identical you can see the unnatural evenness of the eyelashes compared to the more random real-life appearance.
• The strong light (simulates a flash) gives off an unnatural and monotone color flesh tone compared to the photo. As you can see in the reflection of the eyeball two light sources has been set up for this render.
• Random blemishes, birth marks, freckles and other imperfections of the skin are usually details that makes a person look realistic, they are largely missing here.
• The shadow between the lips and inside the ear is too strong which suggest that the flesh itself doesn’t have enough translucency (transparency) as real skin.
Fox Engine vs. Photo
Credit: Konami Digital Entertainment and Sony Computer EntertainmentThe vultures of Britain’s International Centre for Birds of Prey don’t know it, but they’re dupes. Every day, the giant birds carefully tend to their eggs, rotating them periodically so they incubate *just *right. But...take a closer look at that nest. Not every egg in there is made of calcium carbonate, and they don't always contain baby birds.
No, at this conservation center, some of those eggs are actually 3-D printed. And they're packed with a bounty that may be more precious to the vultures than an actual embryo: sensors.
Really, it’s for their own good. Many vulture species are in serious trouble, and captive breeding programs like the one at ICBP may be the bird's only hope of beating extinction. But fostering those baby vultures in captivity is *hard. *Incubation may seem simple, but it's a careful balance of temperature, humidity, and movement that conservationists are just beginning to understand. So to help get a better picture of the process, ICBP developed its 3-D printed vulture egg, filled with sensor guts from tech partner Microduino.
Add a name like EggDuino (yes, yes) and it begins to sound a bit, well, daft. But in fact it’s emblematic of a massive shift in the way conservationists are going about their work. More and more, sensors in vulture nests or camera traps in rainforests (alternatively: cameras strapped to tree kangaroos to see the canopy as they see it) or drones in the sky are doing the data-gathering scientists have always had to do by hand. And all that's great—as long as the lights and clicks and whirs don't spook those data points away.
Microduino
Saving the Nest Eggs
Vultures face peril like no other group of birds, particularly in Africa. There, farmers are poisoning dead cattle to take out scavengers like lions—taking out other, harmless scavengers like vultures in the process. To protect vultures on the brink, conservationists are turning to captive breeding programs.
The problem is, egg incubation is a complex mixture of environmental and behavioral factors. “We don't know exactly what those temperatures are, the amount of turning that goes on, the humidity, everything else that goes on underneath the parent,” says Adam Bloch, a conservationist developing the electronic egg at the ICBP.
Microduino
But you can’t simply drop a sensor in the nest and expect a vulture to not boot it right out. These 3-D printed eggs are shaped just right and have the same weight distribution as a normal egg, so the parent doesn’t grow suspicious as it rolls it around. As a serendipitous bonus, the texture of the 3-D printed nylon egg mimics that of the real thing.
Bloch's data could be a boon to conserving the vultures on his reserve. But it may be worthless for species in other parts of the world, which likely keep their eggs at different temperatures and humidities. (If it gets hot enough, vultures will actually rise up to shade their eggs.) So he wants to get this technology in the hands of conservation groups in Africa as well as India, a country with its own declining vulture populations. If you’ve got a 3-D printer, you’ve got eggs. Microduino will sell you the sensors for $200.
And for this electronic egg, vultures may just be the beginning. “It could also be used for eagles, it could be used for kites, it could be used for anything that has an egg,” Bloch says.
Eyes in the Sky
Let’s pull back a bit—say, 1,500 feet above a California wetland in 2014. Scientists with the Nature Conservancy are taking an evening drone flight, training the craft’s infrared camera on a flock of sandhill cranes.
In a state that’s lost damn near 100 percent of its wetlands to development, the birds that fly north and south along the so-called Pacific Flyway face unprecedented risk. To track the creatures, the researchers have traditionally counted them the old-fashioned way: with a pair of trusty binoculars. But with an overhead shot, the scientists get a wider field of view of the nesting cranes, which appear as black blobs against a white background.
But like an errant, poky sensor in their comfy nests, birds may not like having a drone watching their every move. Matt Merrifield, the Conservancy’s chief technology officer, knows for sure that hawks don’t appreciate them. “We had one situation actually where we had a red-tailed hawk come and punch one of these things out of the sky,” he says.
So scientists are working to feel out exactly how wildlife reacts to quadcopters—and tweak their methods to match. How close can you get to a sandhill crane, for instance, without spooking it? After all, it’s evolutionarily programmed to distrust things hovering above it, what with all the birds of prey about. The same cautions apply to studying mammalian subjects with quadcopters. One study found that black bears’ heart rates spiked as drones approached them.
Rodd Kelsey/The Nature Conservancy
With every new technology, researchers have to be careful not to disrupt the ecosystems they're trying to observe. Camera traps, for instance, are great at capturing wild critters, but a flash will of course alter the behavior of the subjects. The only new method unlikely to cause problems? Satellite imagery, used to track populations of blue whales and elephants and emperor penguins.
Despite the challenges, though, these new observational techniques are actually a step up from the ecological work of yore. “Fifty years ago it was all about being in the field and seeing the animal, maybe capturing it, maybe photographing it,” says conservation biologist Nathalie Pettorelli, who edits the journal Remote Sensing in Ecology and Conservation. “But we've gone from a relatively invasive way of looking at nature to a much less invasive way.”
Even the most mysterious ecosystem of all, the ocean, is slowly giving up its secrets. Researchers have unleashed autonomous robots that roam the Pacific Ocean collecting data like temperature and salinity—and collecting actual animals: plankton.
So from electronic eggs to drones to submersible bots, science is building a micro-to-macro monitoring network of the natural world. And done right, the network can suck in data without disturbing the wildlife it’s intended to protect.Indian women are being sold “like products” for just £4000 in Saudia Arabia and £2000 in Bahrain, according to India’s welfare minister.
Palle Raghunatha Reddy claimed that women from the southern Andhra Pradesh region of India are being held in horrific conditions in Gulf state jails after fleeing their husbands and employers.
In a letter to India’s foreign minister, Reddy appealed to the national government to protect women from overseas recruitment agents who sell them on as if they came from a “retail shop” after luring them from their homeland on the promise of triple pay.
We’ll tell you what’s true. You can form your own view. From 15p €0.18 $0.18 $0.27 a day, more exclusives, analysis and extras.
Female migrants in Saudi are tricked into overstaying their visas and jailed on petty offences while their cases are heard before being sold to the highest bidder, the minister alleged.
Experts estimate that over twenty thousand Indian women have been detained in poor conditions having travelled from Andhra and neighbouring state Telangana.
There have been complaints of physical abuse, mistreatment, non-payment of salary and denial of fundamental human rights.
Reddy confirmed that more than 25 women currently in Gulf jails have sought help from the Andhra Pradesh state government in the past few months.
He added: “Necessary steps should be initiated to bring them to their native areas safely by providing free travel and necessary visa documents at the earliest possible opportunity.
Shape Created with Sketch. 10 examples of Saudi Arabia's human rights abuses Show all 10 left Created with Sketch. right Created with Sketch. Shape Created with Sketch. 10 examples of Saudi Arabia's human rights abuses 1/10 In October 2014, three lawyers, Dr Abdulrahman al-Subaihi, Bander al-Nogaithan and Abdulrahman al-Rumaih, were sentenced to up to eight years in prison for using Twitter to criticize the Ministry of Justice. AFP/Getty Images 2/10 In March 2015, Yemen’s Sunni President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi was forced into exile after a Shia-led insurgency. A Saudi Arabia-led coalition has responded with air strikes in order to reinstate Mr Hadi. It has since been accused of committing war crimes in the country. Getty Images 3/10 Women who supported the Women2Drive campaign, launched in 2011 to challenge the ban on women driving vehicles, faced harassment and intimidation by the authorities. The government warned that women drivers would face arrest. Getty Images 4/10 Members of the Kingdom’s Shia minority, most of whom live in the oil-rich Eastern Province, continue to face discrimination that limits their access to government services and employment. Activists have received death sentences or long prison terms for their alleged participation in protests in 2011 and 2012. Getty Images 5/10 All public gatherings are prohibited under an order issued by the Interior Ministry in 2011. Those defy the ban face arrest, prosecution and imprisonment on charges such as “inciting people against the authorities”. Getty Images 6/10 In March 2014, the Interior Ministry stated that authorities had deported over 370,000 foreign migrants and that 18,000 others were in detention. Thousands of workers were returned to Somalia and other states where they were at risk of human rights abuses, with large numbers also returned to Yemen, in order to open more jobs to Saudi Arabians. Many migrants reported that prior to their deportation they had been packed into overcrowded makeshift detention facilities where they received little food and water and were abused by guards. Getty Images 7/10 The Saudi Arabian authorities continue to deny access to independent human rights organisations like Amnesty International, and they have been known to take punitive action, including through the courts, against activists and family members of victims who contact Amnesty. Getty Images 8/10 Raif Badawi was sentenced to 1000 lashes and 10 years in prison for using his liberal blog to criticise Saudi Arabia’s clerics. He has already received 50 lashes, which have reportedly left him in poor health. Carsten Koall/Getty Images 9/10 Dawood al-Marhoon was arrested aged 17 for participating in an anti-government protest. After refusing to spy on his fellow protestors, he was tortured and forced to sign a blank document that would later contain his ‘confession’. At Dawood’s trial, the prosecution requested death by crucifixion while refusing him a lawyer. Getty Images 10/10 Ali Mohammed al-Nimr was arrested in 2012 aged either 16 or 17 for participating in protests during the Arab spring. His sentence includes beheading and crucifixion. The international community has spoken out against the punishment and has called on Saudi Arabia to stop. He is the nephew of a prominent government dissident. Getty 1/10 In October 2014, three lawyers, Dr Abdulrahman al-Subaihi, Bander al-Nogaithan and Abdulrahman al-Rumaih, were sentenced to up to eight years in prison for using Twitter to criticize the Ministry of Justice. AFP/Getty Images 2/10 In March 2015, Yemen’s Sunni President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi was forced into exile after a Shia-led insurgency. A Saudi Arabia-led coalition has responded with air strikes in order to reinstate Mr Hadi. It has since been accused of committing war crimes in the country. Getty Images 3/10 Women who supported the Women2Drive campaign, launched in 2011 to challenge the ban on women driving vehicles, faced harassment and intimidation by the authorities. The government warned that women drivers would face arrest. Getty Images 4/10 Members of the Kingdom’s Shia minority, most of whom live in the oil-rich Eastern Province, continue to face discrimination that limits their access to government services and employment. Activists have received death sentences or long prison terms for their alleged participation in protests in 2011 and 2012. Getty Images 5/10 All public gatherings are prohibited under an order issued by the Interior Ministry in 2011. Those defy the ban face arrest, prosecution and imprisonment on charges such as “inciting people against the authorities”. Getty Images 6/10 In March 2014, the Interior Ministry stated that authorities had deported over 370,000 foreign migrants and that 18,000 others were in detention. Thousands of workers were returned to Somalia and other states where they were at risk of human rights abuses, with large numbers also returned to Yemen, in order to open more jobs to Saudi Arabians. Many migrants reported that prior to their deportation they had been packed into overcrowded makeshift detention facilities where they received little food and water and were abused by guards. Getty Images 7/10 The Saudi Arabian authorities continue to deny access to independent human rights organisations like Amnesty International, and they have been known to take punitive action, including through the courts, against activists and family members of victims who contact Amnesty. Getty Images 8/10 Raif Badawi was sentenced to 1000 lashes and 10 years in prison for using his liberal blog to criticise Saudi Arabia’s clerics. He has already received 50 lashes, which have reportedly left him in poor health. Carsten Koall/Getty Images 9/10 Dawood al-Marhoon was arrested aged 17 for participating in an anti-government protest. After refusing to spy on his fellow protestors, he was tortured and forced to sign a blank document that would later contain his ‘confession’. At Dawood’s trial, the prosecution requested death by crucifixion while refusing him a lawyer. Getty Images 10/10 Ali Mohammed al-Nimr was arrested in 2012 aged either 16 or 17 for participating in protests during the Arab spring. His sentence includes beheading and crucifixion. The international community has spoken out against the punishment and has called on Saudi Arabia to stop. He is the nephew of a prominent government dissident. Getty
"Instructions should be issued to Indian embassy officials in Gulf countries to interfere in the matter and provide necessary help in terms of food, clothing and shelter."
In response the Indian government confirmed it would send ministers to Saudi Arabia and Bahrain. next month to investigate the conditions migrants are being held in.
An official from Andhra Pradesh meanwhile said the state authority is in the process of appointing lawyers to provide legal aid to Indian prisoners in the Gulf region.
The Independent has contacted Amnesty International for comment.
We’ll tell you what’s true. You can form your own view.
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Subscribe nowHate crime targeting Jews in the UK has escalated for the third year running, reaching the worst level on record according to a new report. The shock result has prompted a warning from Jewish people that they are enduring “intolerable” levels of hate crime.
At the same time the number of charges for those perpetrating hate crimes against Jews fell “drastically”, with alleged perpetrators charged in fewer than a tenth of cases, campaigners say. They also claim a “paltry” 15 cases were prosecuted last year.
The new figures were obtained from all UK police forces by the Campaign Against Antisemitism for its National Antisemitic Crime Audit. In summary it highlights:
Antisemitic hate crime has surged 44 per cent since 2014, making 2016 the worst year on record
1 in 10 antisemitic crimes were violent but only one violent antisemitic crime was prosecuted in 2016
Almost half of police forces did not charge a single one of the antisemitic crimes reported to them
Only 1.4 per cent of antisemitic crime was prosecuted — just 15 cases last year
The Home Secretary has issued a statement promising to “consider the report’s recommendations carefully”
In 2016, anti-Semitic crime rose by 14.9 per cent against 2015, or 44.5 per cent against 2014. There were 1,078 anti-Semitic crimes in 2016 and a consistently elevated level of anti-Semitic crime has become the new normality for British Jews.
Gideon Falter, chairman of the Campaign Against Antisemitism, which compiled the analysis, said:
“The failure of police forces and the Crown Prosecution Service to protect British Jews is a betrayal. The solutions are simple, but whilst the right promises are being made, little has been implemented. The result is that British Jews continue to endure intolerable levels of hate crime.”
The campaign’s report warned that a consistently elevated level of anti-Semitic crime has become the “new normality” for British Jews since the middle of 2014.
Forces recorded 105 violent offences against Jews in 2016 – which was down by 44 per cent on the previous year, the assessment found.
In a statement, the Rt Hon. Amber Rudd MP, Home Secretary, responded to the new report, saying hate crime of any type is not acceptable. She continued:
“Everyone in this country has the right to be safe from violence and persecution. We are working together to tackle antisemitic hate crime in all its forms and using the full force of the law to protect every person in the UK. Our Hate Crime Action Plan has encouraged further action against hate crime across the police and criminal justice system.
“This includes encouraging more victims to report incidents to the police. We will consider the report’s recommendations carefully as we develop new ways to rid the country of this sickening crime.”
This is not the first time a study has revealed the level of anti-Semitic hate crime in the UK. As Breitbart Jerusalem reported, in February a different study revealed anti-Semitic hate incidents are surging to record highs in Britain.
The Community Security Trust charity said there were on average more than three anti-Semitic incidents per day in 2016.
It said there were 1,309 incidents last year, a 36 percent increase over the year before. It is the highest total since the group started keeping records in 1984.
Most of the incidents involved verbal abuse, hate mail and graffiti. There were also 81 cases of vandalism and damage to Jewish property.As you'll well know if you barbecue very often, fat is extremely flammable. Normally, the human body doesn't carry enough of the stuff for it to be a problem during cremation—but recently, an obese woman from Austria carried so much weight that her fat burnt strongly enough to set a crematorium ablaze.
The fat caused the fire inside the crematorium to reach 300C, resulting in clouds of smoke billowing out of the building when the filter mechanisms failed to stand up to the job. Firemen had to rush to the scence in Graz, Austria, where they were confronted by thick black smoke smoke which, in the words of the Daily Mail, left them "covered with a layer of sooty grease". Delightful. They eventually extinguished the fire by aiming water through the vents which are used to clear the filters of the cremation oven.
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The woman in question weighed 440 pounds, and experts have claimed that it is definitely her size which caused the oven in which she was being cremated to overheat, as opposed to there being a fault. Most countries don't currently have an upper limit on weight or body size which is allowed to be cremated—but this incident could well change that. In fact, since the fire Austria and Switzerland are considering a ban on larger bodies being cremated.
The alternative, of course, is just to increase the size of our crematoriums with the size of our waistlines—but given how fast the national average BMI is increasing, we better build 'em big. [Daily Mail]
Image by Aivolie/ShutterstockThe Houston Astros came out of nowhere. Just two seasons after occupying the basement of the American League West, the Astros have returned to take the top spot. Their turnaround is so sizable and so swift that it’s historic.
In 2014, the Astros finished fourth in the division, with a correspondingly putrid winning percentage of.432. This year, the Astros are projected to end with a.530 winning percentage, sixth-best in the majors. Turnarounds like that don’t happen often, but they do happen: Since 1950, only 114 teams (7.2 percent of the total number) have managed to increase their winning percentage by.100 or more over the course of a single season. The 2013 World Series-winning Boston Red Sox managed it, as did the 2014 Los Angeles Angels. We’d expect to see a couple of teams every year bump their winning percentage by a similar margin.
The Astros’ turnaround becomes historic, however, when you look at how bad they were two years ago. In 2013, the Astros finished 51-111, good for a.315 winning percentage and the bottom of the division. The team was not felled by injuries or misfortune — it was genuinely terrible in every phase of the game. The Astros’ hitters racked up 1.4 wins above replacement (WAR) — 29th in the league — and their pitchers totaled 1.2 — 30th in the league. That’s what happens when your team is essentially replacement level. A team full of anonymous, AAA types who couldn’t make it in the major leagues would have been projected to finish at a winning percentage of.294, barely worse than the Astros’ actual performance.
If the projection for this season holds, the Astros will have increased their winning percentage by.200 over two years. Since 1950, that kind of reversal has happened a grand total of seven times — and when it has, it’s usually because a decent team has gotten radically better. The 2001 Seattle Mariners assembled a historic juggernaut of a team that won 71.6 percent of its games after winning 48.8 percent two years earlier. The team before the Mariners to accomplish this feat, the 1995 Cleveland Indians, became a 100-win team from a borderline contender. Only one team — the 1963 Philadelphia Phillies — had a starting winning percentage as poor as the Astros did at the end of their 2013 season.
It’s still early in the season, and the Astros likely won’t finish as well as they have started. That doesn’t mean, though, that the Astros’ current winning percentage (.625) is founded purely on luck. They have one of the best run differentials in the league, scoring 28 more runs than they’ve allowed. The Astros aren’t getting terribly lucky in terms of their batting average on balls in play (BABIP), either offensively (.278, good for 24th in the league) or defensively (.283, also 24th). They have been a little bit lucky in terms of clustering their hits, but even if we remove that, they’d have earned a.576 winning percentage so far, good for fourth in the league.
Most teams that accomplished turnarounds like the Astros’ did so on the basis of vastly improved play — both on offense and defense. On average, teams that saw their winning percentage improve by.100 year to year were helped by their offenses putting up.46 more runs per game and their defense allowing.54 fewer runs per game. The Astros are doing just as well. Their runs per game have improved by.55 relative to last year, and their runs allowed per game have declined by.61. In other words, this kind of improvement is no fluke.
The Astros have built their team on a combination of savvy trades (outfielder Jake Marisnick), high draft picks (right fielder George Springer) and an eye for talent disregarded by other teams (second baseman Jose Altuve and starting pitcher Collin McHugh). Guys like McHugh offer an insight into the front office’s analytics-heavy approach. McHugh was acquired not because of his results but because the spin on his curveball suggested that he could become a success.
As with any turnaround, however, luck does play a role. Indeed, projection systems are relatively unchanged in their opinion of the Astros despite their success. FanGraphs’ Steamer projection pegs them as a roughly.500 team going forward, and Baseball Prospectus’s PECOTA is even less optimistic.
But all those wins in the bank mean that even if they regress, the Astros stand a good chance at making the playoffs for the first time since 2005. Both projections tab them as better-than-even to get into the postseason, and their unexpectedly exceptional play may convince the front office to make further improvements to the roster.
One of the most optimistic parallels for the Astros’ recent success comes from the last team to increase its winning percentage by.200 in two years: the 2008 Tampa Bay Rays. Like the Astros, those Rays were coming from the basement, riding a wave of young talent gathered by a recently installed, sabermetrically advanced front office. For the Rays, 2008’s turnaround was the beginning of an impressive run that saw them make the playoffs in four of six years (getting all the way to the World Series in 2008).
If those Rays are any guide, we may be witnessing the rise of a new contender — one that will be competitive in the AL West for several years. This may be the last year the Astros sneak up on people.Image caption Children issued with shotgun certificates can not own a gun, and must be supervised by an adult
Thirteen children under the age of 10 have been issued with shotgun certificates in the UK over the past three years.
The youngest child to be granted a licence was seven years old, figures obtained by BBC News show.
Last year, the Association of Chief Police Officers suggested under-10s should be banned from using shotguns.
The British Association for Shooting and Conservation says children use shotguns for sports and on farms.
The statistics were released by 51 police forces under the Freedom of Information Act. Dorset was the only constabulary not to provide information.
Between 2008 and 2010, there were 7,071 licences issued to under-18s.
Devon and Cornwall police granted the most certificates, 418, followed by West Mercia (346) and Norfolk (324).
No minimum age
Ten shotgun certificates were issued to nine-year-olds. Two forces - West Mercia and Cumbria - each approved a licence application for an eight-year-old.
In 2008, Gloucestershire police granted a licence to a seven-year-old child.
In a statement, the force said applications were carefully considered on a case-by-case basis.
Age is irrelevant. It's the mental aptitude, and the stability of the family... that decides it, the age doesn't decide it at all Steve Bloomfield, British Assoc for Shooting and Conservation
"The application for a licence was submitted and supported by the boy's father, who is himself a firearm and shotgun certificate holder", it said. "The young person - now aged 10 - remains under direct supervision."
A West Mercia force spokesman said thorough checks were made before any licence was granted.
"Most of the under-18s who have firearms licences do so for sports purposes," he said. "For example, the eight-year-old boy has a licence for clay pigeon shooting under the supervision of his father at organised clay pigeon events only."
Under current laws, there is no minimum age for applying for a shotgun certificate in the UK. The decision to grant a licence rests with a senior police officer.
The British Association for Shooting and Conservation says the law still prohibits people under-18 from owning or buying a shotgun, or using one without supervision.
Spokesman Steve Bloomfield said age was "irrelevant" as the decision on granting a licence was made by a very experienced police officer who would visit the family involved.
He added that the certificate simply allowed a child to be trained and educated by an adult.
"It's far better to take a young person with their parents, or to a club, and allow them to use that shotgun and be trained from whatever age," he said.
"And the age is irrelevant. It's the mental aptitude, and the stability of the family, and the stature of that young person that decides it - the age doesn't decide it at all."
'No cause for concern'
West Mercia police said all under-18s must have an adult over 21 who is a firearms licence holder themselves to vouch for them.
Assistant Chief Constable Adrian Whiting, lead spokesman on firearms legislation for the Association of Chief Police Officers (Acpo), says the evidence on young people obtaining shotgun certificates "does not currently give cause for concern".
Case study Susan Clark, 42, West Berkshire: "I don't see the problem. My nephew has been shooting and hunting since he was 9 years old, and he is more responsible with his firearms then many supposed adults are with far more dangerous things like cars. We live in the countryside; there are several organised shoots in the area. My husband does clay pigeon shooting. The problem is not with those who are responsible enough to get certificates and go on organised shoots. The problem is with illegal guns in back alleys. There is a negative culture around guns. I was raised around them so have no problem with them. How many children have used shotguns to harm people in the last 20 years? How many'responsible' adults have killed people by dangerous driving?"
But he said there should be a minimum age for shooting with firearms and shotguns.
He said: "If we are to continue to allow children to shoot, then introducing a minimum age across firearms and shotguns without exemptions would apply more controls than currently exist."
Last October, he told the Commons Home Affairs Committee there should be an "absolute minimum age" of 10.
Ten is the age of criminal responsibility in England, Wales and Northern Ireland.
The Home Affairs Committee reported that a "large number" of young people enjoyed shooting in a safe and responsible manner.
But it concluded that the laws should be "simplified and clarified" and that there was "no good reason" to maintain the current differences in age restrictions between shotguns and firearms - where people have to be 14 before being granted a licence.
The Home Office is currently reviewing firearms laws and is expected to publish its response to the committee's report by early summer.
A spokesman said: "Public protection is the first duty of any government and our firearms laws are among the toughest in the world.
"It is right that we keep them under review and we are prepared to tighten them further if necessary. Those controls must also be proportionate and fair and all options are on the table.
"We are carefully considering the recommendations made by the Home Affairs Select Committee, the Association of Chief Police Officers and any issues raised in the parliamentary debate, before deciding what further action might be necessary."According to a new study by an international team of researchers, your thoughts about marriage equality and racial justice could be linked to your affinity for steaks and sausages. In other words, if the idea of killing another living being for dinner doesn’t leave a bad taste in your mouth, then you’re probably not too bothered by other social injustices, either.
The study, “Rationalizing Meat Consumption. The 4 Ns,” published in the journal Appetite, found that people who justify eating animals by claiming that it is “natural,” “normal,” “necessary” or “nice”—even though it is none of these things—are more tolerant of social inequality in general.
Historically, these same “Ns” have been trotted out to justify everything from slavery to homophobia. For instance, as the study notes, “In defense of male-only voting practices in the U.S. opponents of women’s suffrage often appealed to the necessity of denying women the vote … to the natural superiority of male intelligence, and to the historical normalness of male-only voting as ‘designed by our forefathers.’ … Today, most people find such arguments in support of male-only voting ludicrous at best.”
This confirms what PETA has long maintained: The mindset that condones the oppression of other humans—whether Jews, women, gays or people of color—is the same mindset that permits the exploitation of animals. Prejudices of any stripe arise when we start to believe that “I” am important and “you” are not, that my interests somehow trump those of other living beings.
It’s not surprising that meat-eaters find it necessary to defend their behavior, which is increasingly coming under public scrutiny. In this day and age, anyone who’s been paying attention knows that raising and killing animals for food is destroying the planet, jeopardizing our health and causing tremendous suffering to billions of sentient beings. In today’s meat and dairy industries, animals know little else but pain, fear, injury and disease. Piglets have their tails and testicles cut off without being given painkillers, chickens and turkeys have their throats cut while they’re still conscious and calves are taken away from their mothers within hours of birth.
And the United Nations reports that a global shift toward a vegan diet is necessary if we want to combat the worst effects of climate change.
It’s simpler to make excuses—”I grew up eating meat; it’s normal,” or “A plate of spare ribs is so nice after a hard day”—than it is to change behavior. It’s easy to shake our heads in disbelief at what others before us have done but not so easy to examine honestly the biases and prejudices that we hold today.
But there’s hope. As more consumers begin to question the status quo and reject the inherent violence of eating animals, the world will become a kinder place for all of us.
A previous study found that vegans and vegetarians have more empathy than meat-eaters do—for both animals and their fellow humans. Researchers in Europe placed volunteers in an MRI machine and showed them a series of random pictures during scanning. The scans revealed that when observing animal or human suffering, the “empathy-related” areas of the brain are more active among vegetarians and vegans. The researchers also found that there are certain brain areas that only vegans and vegetarians seem to activate when witnessing suffering.
Compassion begets compassion. Change can happen when we begin to recognize that all oppression, prejudice and cruelty are wrong—and that all are connected. We can start with dinner.
Paula Moore is a senior writer for the PETA Foundation, 501 Front St., Norfolk, VA 23510; www.PETA.org.
This post originally appeared in the Sun Sentinel.Exclusive: An apparent casualty of the New Cold War was a U.S.-Russian agreement for eliminating weapons-grade plutonium but the deal’s death is not being mourned by either side, as Jonathan Marshall explains.
By Jonathan Marshall
Despite America’s constant demonization of Russian President Vladimir Putin, few world leaders have collaborated as effectively with Washington on matters of critical national security, including overflight rights to Afghanistan, disposal of Syria’s chemical weapons stocks, and the agreement to prevent Iran from undertaking a nuclear weapons program.
Now he’s done it again. In the guise of punishing the United States by suspending a nuclear disarmament agreement, Putin has generously relieved the Obama administration of a budgetary headache of Excedrin proportions.
On Monday, Putin issued a decree suspending a bilateral agreement for the disposal of each side’s weapons-grade plutonium, complaining that Washington’s economic sanctions and military buildup in Eastern Europe have “ radically changed ” relations between the world’s two major nuclear powers.
“The Obama administration has done everything in its power to destroy the atmosphere of trust which could have encouraged cooperation,” the Russian foreign ministry explained. “We want Washington to understand that you cannot, with one hand, introduce sanctions against us... and with the other hand continue selective cooperation in areas where it suits them.”
An instant analysis by Stratfor, a private risk consulting firm, warned that “other nuclear disarmament cooperation deals between the United States and Russia are at risk of being undermined. The decision is likely an attempt to convey to Washington the price of cutting off dialogue on Syria and other issues.”
There’s some truth to that gloomy forecast. But Putin was well aware of Washington’s own eagerness to find a way out of the agreement due to the spiraling cost of compliance. He thus succeeded in sending a message without risking serious additional damage to the already frayed U.S.-Russia relationship.
The Plutonium Management and Disposition Agreement, signed in 2000, commits the United States and Russia to dispose of a total of 68 tons of weapons-grade plutonium, enough for 17,000 nuclear weapons, rendered surplus by the easing of Cold War tensions.
Besides signaling other countries that the United States and Russia were serious about slashing their nuclear arsenals, the agreement aimed to get rid of the plutonium in a way that minimizes the risk of nuclear theft or diversion.
The two parties agreed to dispose of most of the plutonium by mixing it with uranium to create “mixed-oxide” (MOX) fuel for “burning” in commercial nuclear reactors. But that step required construction of special facilities to create the fuel.
In the United States, planning began for the Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility in South Carolina. After years of research, development, and initial construction under the Bush and Obama administrations, however, the Department of Energy announced in 2013 that “This current plutonium disposition approach may be unaffordable, though, due to cost growth and fiscal pressure.”
Indeed, the total cost of the MOX program, including the plant and its operation, had soared from an estimated $3.1 billion in 2002 to $18 billion. This year, |
new city, but not enough to start a prosperous life. Plus, Anna was going to the Southern Isles, where the currency would be worthless.
Aleams: It means I'm writing well!
Coincidenceless: Elsa doesn't have a concrete plan at the moment. She's trying to regain control but making zero progress. It might not even be possible
Guest 3: Agreed!
Guest 4: Thank you so much!
Guest 5: Glad to hear it!
DVINM: Don't give up hope just yet.
Moosdrool: You and me both.The EU leaders see the UK's vote to leave the bloc as "politically binding," Oettinger told German newspaper "Bild" in an interview published on Tuesday.
Still, "it could be that public opinion shifts if the economic situation worsens because of the Brexit vote," he added.
"In any case, I wouldn't bet big money on Brexit," Oettinger said.
The German conservative has served as the Commissioner for Digital Economy and Society in the European bloc since 2014. He was previously the bloc's Energy Commissioner.
London in the doorway
The UK voted against the EU in the June 23 referendum. However, London has still to trigger the formal procedure on cutting ties with the bloc. Most analysts expect the move to extend a period of economic uncertainty.
On Tuesday, German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said that Brexit would have long-term consequences that were still difficult to estimate. Both London and Brussels needed "new, fair and binding" rules for their future relations, he added.
British Prime Minister Theresa May is expected to discuss the exit talks with her cabinet on Wednesday.
Turkey to join EU 'after Erdogan'
In the Bild interview, Oettinger also said that London's hesitation in starting the talks would increase economical and political uncertainty.
Commenting on the future of the bloc, Oettinger also remarked on Turkey's bid to join the EU. This goal was was "not realistic until well into next decade" he told the mass circulation newspaper. "It is likely a topic for the time after Erdogan," he added.
Even so, it was important to maintain good relations with Ankara due to Turkey's geopolitical and economic status, according to the European politician. Turkey plays a major role in the transit of refugees heading to Europe.
No 'leeway' on anti-terror law
Under the conditions of the refugee deal Turkey was promised visa-free travel. Ankara claims it has done enough to win this EU concession by October.
Turkish politicians have openly threatened to abandon the refugee accord if the EU decides to keep its visa requirement for Turkish residents.
Oettinger believes that there is still work to be done before waiving the visas, especially with Turkey's approach towards fighting terrorism. The country's anti-terror law has been used to target academics and journalists.
"Most importantly, we cannot give any leeway when it comes to anti-terror laws in Turkey," Oettinger said. "If Turkey needs more time to change the law, so be it."
dj/jm (AP, Reuters, dpa)Copyright by KXAN - All rights reserved Nicholas Marriott, left, and Kobie Howard (APD Photo)
Copyright by KXAN - All rights reserved Nicholas Marriott, left, and Kobie Howard (APD Photo)
AUSTIN (KXAN) -- Two people were arrested following the discovery of 22 pounds of marijuana in luggage at Austin-Bergstrom International Airport on Monday. It's part of their continuous presence for interdiction operations.
At around 3:30 p.m. on Sept. 12, an Austin police officer and his narcotic detection K9 named Emma were conducting a routine inspection when the police dog signaled an alert.
"It varies [when we're at the airport], we try to spread it around," Sgt. Greg White from Austin Police Department's Criminal Interdiction Unit says. "We try to maintain a presence out there."
During their search, they found a suitcase piled on a luggage cart from an inbound flight from Sacramento and identified it as the property of Nicholas Marriott, 24.
The officer said in a police affidavit he could also smell marijuana emanating from the bag. Officers then let the bag continue on the conveyor belt to baggage claim and wait for the owner to get the marijuana-filled luggage.
They watched as a man, later identified as Marriott, took the bag and began walking towards the exit with another man, 38-year-old Kobie Howard.
Copyright by KXAN - All rights reserved 22 pounds of marijuana found in suitcase at Austin airport on Sept. 12, 2016 (APD Photo)
Copyright by KXAN - All rights reserved 22 pounds of marijuana found in suitcase at Austin airport on Sept. 12, 2016 (APD Photo)
When confronted, Marriott claimed he was coming from Dallas, despite his luggage tag saying Sacramento. When asked if there was any reason the K9 would signal a positive narcotics alert for his bag, he answered, "No." Marriott declined to give officers consent to search his bag.
After a search warrant was obtained, the 22 pounds of marijuana were found in the bag.
"For marijuana, because it's not profitable unless it's in bulk, we usually don't see like any type of concealment methods other than just packaging as much as they can in one bag," Sgt. White said.
Police believe Marriott and Howard assisted each other in transporting the bag and knew of its contents. They were both charged with the third degree felony of possession of marijuana.
Officers believe this was the last stop for the large amount of drugs.
"We have a large college crowd here that the marijuana typically sees for the younger crowd," Sgt. White said. "Mostly what we've seen here, this is usually the final stop, it's bought in bulk here and then packages in smaller amounts and sold at street level."
Bail has been set at $25,000 for Marriott and $50,000 for Howard.
In February, 35 pounds of marijuana was found in checked luggage at ABIA.
We wanted to know why TSA agents would not have found the drugs on the earlier legs of the flight. Officers say it's typically local police departments or DEA agents that deal with narcotics.
"TSA is more concerned with the safety of the passenger with weapons and bombs and stuff like that, their X-ray machines aren't really looking for the narcotics," Sgt. White said.
Police estimate this year alone they have seized around 400 pounds of marijuana from ABIA.Reminder: In chapter 20, Anna told Rapunzel that Vanessa used to be her best friend and that she knew how it feels to be betrayed.
'Stay with me, my sweet
I know I'm being selfish
But, stay by my side...'
Elsa didn't know what possessed her to cook Chinese food and to find out that it was Anna's favorite was a blessing. From the time she was cooking until when the redhead took her first bite, she had been nervous that she couldn't eat herself. The moment that face brightened up similarly to a child given a candy, her worries were thrown to the back corner of her brain as easily as a forgettable dream.
Anna ate way more than she had seen her do before, and that was the best compliment she ever received that morning.
But since they were done eating, nothing was between them anymore; no food and table to serve as a barricade. Elsa was embarrassed for cooking a feast with Anna in mind and knowing that Rapunzel might've said something offhandedly before breakfast didn't help.
"I'll wash these," Charlotte offered. "You've already done your part."
"You're going to be busy, right?"
"Mama's already here and itching to help out," Senya assured. "I'll gather the ingredients for the cookies and cakes. You girls just put these in the kitchen and tidy up."
"We're going to finish putting up the decorations," Olaf announced. "There're still a few left, but since Alice wanted to help," As if on cue, Alice began squealing excitedly as she left the dining room, "we might not be able to finish until lunch time."
"I'm offended," Kristoff grumbled.
Charlotte pinched the bridge of her nose and groaned. "Olaf, put your brother in place if he's getting out of hand, please."
"With pleasure," Olaf chuckled darkly and cracked his knuckles.
"You're aware you don't look like a villain, right?" Marshall sneered.
"Looks can be deceiving." The photographer wagged a finger. "Dad was the one who taught me that."
"And I've taught you well," Kai praised. Frederic laughed at the interaction and happily offered a helping hand with decorating.
Everyone dispersed, Kristoff grumbling to himself about how there wasn't anything wrong with being a good father, and left the four high school girls to themselves. Silence surrounded them with unspoken questions hanging in the air. There were many things Elsa wanted to point out, to ask about to each of them, and she didn't know how best to approach it.
"I'll take these to the kitchen." Anna gestured to the plates placed on top of each other. "Do you want me to get towels?"
"No need to. We have a spray over there." Elsa gestured to the left side of the room where said spray was on top of a cupboard. "Alice's place is the only messy one."
The redhead nodded and carried the plates to the kitchen. Elsa watched her disappear around the corner, bit her lower lip, and turned to glare at the brunette who squeaked at the sudden attention.
"W-What?"
"You introduced Anna to your parents as my girlfriend?" Elsa whisper-shouted, not wanting anyone from the other rooms to hear.
"It was meant as a joke!"
Ariel's brows furrowed. "That might not have been a good idea. Anna likes Elsa for real and being called her girlfriend when they're not can't be good for her right now."
"I know," Elsa agreed without delay. Then, Ariel's words caught up with her and a massive blush appeared on her face. "Uhm... what?"
Shaking her head and showing no signs of elaborating, the conservative redhead regarded the now-squirming brunette. "I'm sorry, Rapz. If it's a joke, maybe you can try and assure her that there's nothing behind it?"
"I honestly didn't think Alice was there, and Mama and Papa didn't believe me anyway. They talked to her after that. I know she told them it wasn't true," Rapunzel replied, though the way her voice shook at the end showed that she was taking Ariel's words to heart. "She didn't react badly."
"That's not the point," Elsa said. "I don't want to take advantage of her."
The brunette nibbled on her lower lip and ran a hand through her short hair. After three more strokes, she raised her hands in defeat. "Ugh! Now, I'm starting to worry! Okay, okay. I'll talk to her. Just... I promise I didn't mean any harm."
Elsa and Ariel smiled. "We know."
Maybe it was the ache of her belly from overeating, or the obvious way Mr. and Mrs. Dalton looked at her, or the awkward glances from Elsa, or maybe... maybe she just needed some time to think. Alone.
Whatever the reason was, nobody stopped Anna from stepping out of the dining room when she excused herself to the front porch after finishing the task of bringing the dirty utensils to the kitchen. She was, however, accompanied by Rapunzel.
Something she didn't appreciate.
Ultimately, it was the brunette's fault why everyone thought there was something going on between her and Elsa. Even if Ariel and Marshall willingly put themselves on the spot so that she and Elsa wouldn't be, the damage had been done.
"I'm sorry about earlier."
Anna tensed and glanced at her company from the corner of her eyes. "About?"
"Calling you Elsa's girlfriend. I was only teasing, but I think I went overboard."
There was a crestfallen look on Rapunzel's face. It was surprising because she had always been blunt and direct. Anna had become accustomed to her constant teasing and, at times, brutally honest personality. To hear her apologize for her behavior was kind of unusual.
"Why did you say it?"
"I don't know," Rapunzel answered with little confidence. "Maybe I wanted to see your reaction? About Elsa being your girlfriend."
"And? How was it?"
"I'm really sorry, Anna. I only wanted to know if you've thought of that. You do like her, right?"
Anna adjusted herself and was pleased to feel the knot in her stomach beginning to relax. "I think it's more than like now," she whispered. "I don't want her to be my girlfriend, Rapz. Not yet. Not when... when there're so many things going on."
"Do you think she's not ready? Is it because of what she's going through?"
Thoughts began to swirl in Anna's head and she wrung her hands together. She wanted to keep her mouth shut because nobody needed to know how she truly felt about this, but as she kept learning more and more about Elsa and the people around her, she had to admit that it was getting more difficult to keep these thoughts at bay. Having Rapunzel think that she thought Elsa was weak was something she couldn't live with either.
"It's because of what I'm going through."
Only silence was what met her resigned response. For a second, Anna thought that Rapunzel left after her long pause, but the body sitting beside her and patiently waiting for an explanation said otherwise.
"I... can't commit to a relationship. It's not because I think Elsa's not ready. It's because I'm not. I don't want to be with someone because I can never be sure if their feelings for me are real. They can act sweet, say romantic things, and state dreamy promises of forever, but those are things people can do even without meaning them." She lowered her head and whispered, "I don't even know if Elsa feels the same way."
It wasn't a lie. Maybe she had heard Elsa's awkward confession to Gerda, but it was questionable at best. Did Elsa think more about it? Did she find the answer? Her feelings, were they real? Anna didn't want to hope and tried her best to think of the other painful outcome. Even if it wasn't ideal, it would save her the disappointment when Elsa realized that what she felt for her wasn't real.
"If she does?" Rapunzel's eyes softened when Anna failed to hold back a whimper. "Do you want to talk about it? If... If you don't want to, it's fine. But if you want to talk, I can always listen."
"Why? You're not obligated to."
"I already think of you as my friend, Anna, even if we started out wrong. It's not easy sharing, I know. But it's easier than keeping everything inside. You'd be surprised how much talking can lift a weight off your shoulders." The brunette laughed, a faint smile adorning her lips. "It's better than letting it consume you."
Rapunzel was the closest person Anna would readily consider as a friend aside from Elsa, and even then, she had reservations regarding sharing secrets and learning hers. Anna could feel that there was something about the brunette's words that meant more than what was let up, but truthfully speaking, she was far too worried about her own misgivings that she honestly didn't have time to think about someone else's.
Elsa was an exemption.
It was terrible to think that way right after Rapunzel called her a friend, but really, when was the last time Anna ever had one?
"Thanks, Rapz."
Acceptance showed on Rapunzel's face and she patted Anna's shoulder before standing up and removing any visible dirt from her butt. "I'll be inside if you need me."
"Sure."
As soon as she was left alone, Anna wrapped her arms around herself and held her breath for a few seconds before releasing it slowly. She was glad that Rapunzel didn't pry, but she hated how vulnerable she felt after talking about a portion of her own problems.
Rapunzel was the first person outside her family that Anna had ever shared the issue related to Vanessa with even if it was lacking in great detail. Knowing that someone out there knew that she and Vanessa used to be very close? It made her feel exposed, weak, and terrified.
Elsa was wiping along the table and trying to be subtle with her glances towards Ariel. It was only the two of them in the dining room, later to be accompanied by Senya and Charlotte once they'd gathered enough ingredients for the desserts. Despite her worry about what was going on with Rapunzel and Anna at the time, Elsa had to make the most of this solo opportunity with Ariel.
"What is it?"
Elsa squeaked and flushed at the sound that left her. Ariel giggled behind a dainty hand.
When did she gain that confidence?
Clearing her throat, Elsa asked, "W-Were you serious?" Ariel stopped laughing and tilted her head. "About you and Marshall."
"Oh." Ariel rested her palms on the table, her own blush dusting her cheeks. "Yes."
"Wow." Elsa breathed. "Wow, uhm. W-When did that happen?"
"A week before vacation. We've been... dating for a long time."
"How long are we talking about?"
"More than a year."
"What?!" Elsa blurted, taking a deep breath when Ariel winced. "Wasn't he hurting you back then? He was with those people and- I'm sorry, I'm confused."
There was a moment's hesitation before Ariel explained everything that went on during the school years prior to Elsa's arrival. Elsa learned that Ariel knew Marshall's reason for being friends with Vanessa and that he was reluctant to do it, knowing that it was Ariel they were tormenting. As she listened, the guilt during the time she realized why her brother was doing it weighed on her again, but along with it was a clearer understanding of him.
"I'm... I'm sorry."
"What?"
"If it wasn't for me, he wouldn't have done those things."
"I'm not blaming you, Elsa. If anything, I want to thank you." Ariel placed a hand on top of hers. "If you didn't stand up against him, I was afraid he'd stay longer with them. I know he and I talk and go on dates, but sometimes, being with people who act hostile every day could transform anyone into one."
Sometimes, Elsa wondered how someone could be this kind or forgiving. Ariel had the right to get angry at her for being the reason why Marshall acted the way he did, but instead, she chose to say thank you for standing up against him. Like this, she reminded Elsa a little bit of Cindy—always looking at the bright side of things.
"Elsa...?"
Feeling a slight dampness on her cheeks, Elsa blinked and quickly retrieved her hand back to hastily wipe her eyes. Worry was etched on the redhead's aquatic eyes, but she was glad there weren't any follow up questions and comforting pats or hugs. It would only make things worse.
Mentally counting to five, Elsa calmed enough to give a watery smile. "He's lucky to have you."
Ariel laughed with reddened cheeks, the tensing of her shoulders leaving. "I think he's luckier to have you. I let him do those things because I thought it was better if I'm the one getting hurt instead of other people. But you? You did everything you could to stop him."
"He doesn't listen to me," she grumbled. "He always finds a reason to prove that he's right."
"Because it's never easy to admit when one is wrong," Ariel explained. "He does listen to you, even if it's not obvious. I know he can be reckless, unreasonable, and extreme, but he has your best interest at heart. That's one of the things I love about him."
Elsa didn't know what to say and chose to say nothing. She knew Marshall worried about her immensely. She also knew he could get extreme. A good example was him telling Anna about her and Cindy. Through it all, she knew that it was only him being a brother. A brother who was trying to catch up to the times they had already lost.
"What are you doing?"
The question startled Elsa, causing her to look at Ariel who was staring at the archway. Elsa followed her gaze and saw Rapunzel standing right there with her head and full attention down the hall. It was a full minute before the brunette looked at them.
"Nothing," the brunette promised as she slowly stepped in. "Sen and Charlotte aren't here yet?"
"Mhm," Ariel answered.
"That must be a lot of ingredients." Rapunzel's grin faltered when her eyes landed on Elsa's piercing gaze. "What?"
"Are you okay? You look... Is something wrong?"
"Nope." Elsa was not convinced and Rapunzel sighed. "I just saw your mom, okay? Passed by her along the hallway. Nothing happened!" She waved her hands when blue eyes widened. "I didn't do anything, a-and..."
"And...?" Ariel pried.
Rapunzel shook her head and smiled. "It's nothing."
"Rapz," Elsa warned.
"It's nothing, I swear! I think..."
"What is i—"
"It's time!" piped in a new voice. The three girls instinctively ran to Senya and Charlotte who stumbled to the dining room with the ingredients on hand to help. "Let's try to finish one before the other and we can start putting them in the oven."
Senya placed little boxes on the table with a huff. "I'm telling you, even if you're a pastry chef, I don't think this will work without a proper tier cake stand," she said, picking up from where they'd left off of their conversation before coming in.
"We won't know until we try," the chef retorted. "And it's always a beauty to experiment."
The musician rolled her eyes and spread out the ingredients, oblivious to the spot she saved her little sister from. Elsa and Ariel glanced at the younger brunette who was happily helping out with measuring cups. Whatever it was that bothered Rapunzel, Elsa only hoped it wasn't something she needed to worry about.
A door swinging pushed Anna to lift her head from her knees, fumbling for a bit and half-wondering what Rapunzel might've forgotten, only to see that it was Mrs. Dalton. They locked eyes for a lengthy period, Anna feeling like a deer caught in the headlights with the way the lady simply looked on with a neutral face.
She suddenly regretted isolating herself from the others.
"Hi," Anna tried through the huge lump in her throat.
A subtle jolt was the initial reaction and the air grew thick.
Mrs. Dalton was cautious as she sat on the chair closest to the door, three spaces away from Anna. "You're dating Elsa?" she asked tentatively. "Alice said you're her girlfriend."
"R-Rapunzel was only teasing. I'm not- Elsa's not my- We're..."
Mrs. Dalton furrowed her brows. "Why would she tease about that?" Anna flinched and was unable to say anything, but that alone was already an answer. "Oh."
A deep blush colored her cheeks. It was one thing to discuss this with Elsa's best friend and brother. But to her mother? It was getting serious fast and Anna didn't know if she was in the correct mindset to keep up with what life carelessly tossed at her.
"Is she- Is she happy?" The face of Elsa's mother was pale and her eyes were red-rimmed. It wouldn't take a genius to see that she lacked sleep and proper rest. Anna wanted to believe she knew why that was. Maybe Mrs. Dalton finally realized her mistakes and was regretting everything? It would've been perfect.
But Anna was a skeptic.
"If you mean about me liking her, she's fine with it," she answered with an air of confidence she completely based on the way Elsa's eyes had shone when she gave her that scarf. "If you mean completely happy, no. She still longs for... for you."
Mrs. Dalton involuntary whimpered, her eyes watering. Anna felt a stab in her insides and had to physically restrain herself from looking away. This woman- no. Elsa looked like this woman when she was crying, and it was painful to watch.
"We messed up, didn't we?" Mrs. Dalton's voice broke.
"You did. I can understand why taking care of Cindy was important, but I can't understand why you had to ignore Elsa along the way. Even when Cindy died, it was still about her." Anna bit her lip, contemplating for a second before surrendering to her curiosity. "How can you do that?"
Tiny sniffles were heard from the lady as she tried her best not to cry. Maybe it was her pride. Maybe it was her status as a parent, as someone older and more powerful. Maybe she hadn't cried in front of someone who was years younger than her before, someone who was even younger than her youngest child.
That air of authority, seeing the refusal to give in and admit that this 'child' had a point... It should've annoyed Anna, but it didn't.
"I know I don't know everything that happened because I wasn't there," Anna acknowledged, "but from what I saw back in Arendelle and the things I heard from everyone, I can't help but think it's so unfair. You had a twin. One of them died, but the other one still lives. What are you doing?"
"You do know you're talking to your crush's mother, right?"
"I'm telling you because you are her mother."
Mrs. Dalton's laugh came out wet and strangled, and as simple as that, her mask was ripped off and left her a sobbing mess. "You're something else, Anna. I don't know if you'll believe me, but those are the same questions I asked myself when Elsa was hospitalized. What have I done?"
Anna wanted to believe her. Badly. Because Elsa deserved this freedom. After the years of turmoil, Elsa deserved a break. She had been holding back on being happy and that kind of practice had to stop.
"What kind of mother am I to only see these things when her life was in danger?" Mrs. Dalton's way of speech teetered between Arendellian and Coronian. "Why didn't I see how much we've been hurting her? To think that I... I even left her here alone in the place where Cindy died! I'm a monster!"
Mrs. Dalton was futilely holding back on the sobbing. Her tears seemed to have lives of their own as they simply spilled out.
It left Anna torn.
This woman was Elsa's mother and she was talking to her as if she knew what it must've felt to lose a daughter. Like she had been there to witness everything happen. Maybe she had to stop. Regardless of everything, this woman was an adult that she had to respect and the mother of the girl she... loved. There were limitations.
"You know, it was hard... to make her believe in me. She was afraid to trust me because she thought I only felt this way towards the girl she was trying to live as." Despite the continuous sobs and sniffles of her only company, Anna didn't stop. It was terrible to make Elsa's mother cry. The thought scared her if she was being honest. But there she was, doing exactly that. "And when she did, she started doubting herself. She didn't know how to deal with her own feelings. She said that... that she was being selfish."
"W-What?"
Fingers absently curled on the edge of the bench she was sitting on. She remembered that time in Gerda's music room where Elsa told her about her last performance and what happened after that. She remembered the previous day, right outside the restaurant where she gave Elsa her gift. Elsa had uttered a simple question that she hurriedly brushed off, but one that gave Anna an idea of what she truly felt.
[Do I even deserve it?]
"She thought it was selfish of her to be happy when Cindy couldn't be." A pang of pain tugged in Anna's chest at her own admittance. "She felt guilty for being alive."
It was the tipping point.
Mrs. Dalton broke down completely and choked out in the most pained voice Anna had ever heard from her, "Oh, Elsa."
Anna pressed her lips tight and painfully watched the woman cry her heart out. They weren't close enough to permit her reaching out and touching Mrs. Dalton to offer comfort. She wasn't good at comforting people her age, let alone someone significantly older.
Minutes passed and after a self-debate, Anna decided to let loose once in a while and placed a hand on the shoulder of this broken figure. The moment their eyes met, her chest tightened at the exhausted and swollen, tear-stained eyes.
Was she a terrible person? Was this alright? Maybe, maybe not. Anna would probably regret this someday. But there was no turning back.
"Queenie," Anna paused, wavering upon calling Elsa's mother by her name. "I don't want Elsa to get hurt. If I could only feel her pain and alleviate it somehow, I would. But to be honest? That's not my job." A defeated smile pulled at her lips. "There's no way I can replace a parent's love."
Review/Fav/FollowDucks on a frozen Cherry Creek. Jeffrey Beall, via Flickr
Denver has long banned certain uses and activities in its parks, including feeding wildlife, rock-climbing, and illegal drug use.
But starting this week, a city directive will also ban certain people from its parks. If the Denver police determine that a person has committed an illegal drug offense in a park, that person will be banned from all city parks for 90 days.
The new rule, which will be in effect for six months, is in response to the emergence of what Denver Parks and Recreation calls a “hub for drug sales and use” along the Cherry Creek Greenway, which runs through an otherwise well-off area southeast of downtown. The city says it has collected more than 2,400 needles from parks since April.
Naturally, the American Civil Liberties Union of Colorado says the ordinance is illegal. “The parks director has the authority to ban activities and has the authority to ban uses in the park,” Mark Silverstein, the legal director of the ACLU of Colorado, told the Denver Post. “The executive director does not have the authority to ban people.”
The directive makes no presumption of innocence and gives full power of suspension to the police. “The person subject to the Suspension Notice need not be charged, tried or convicted of any crime, infraction, or administrative citation in order for the Suspension Notice to be issued or effective,” it reads.
Denver’s order is actually a relatively modest version of more expansive “parks exclusion” laws that exist in Seattle; Portland, Oregon; and other cities. These laws allow police to ban residents from all city parks for a number of minor infractions, like having a dog off a leash. If they return to the park in violation of the ban, they can be arrested.
“Prior to the adoption of those laws, individuals could be removed from public parks only if there was probable cause that they had committed a criminal offense. More minor rule violations, such as being in the park after closing time, resulted only in a citation,” write Katherine Beckett and Steve Herbert in Banished. “Parks exclusion laws authorize police and parks officials to ban persons for committing minor infractions.”
Essentially, it’s a clever way cities can circumvent the unconstitutionality of vagrancy laws. Shortly after Seattle’s law was enacted, the ACLU reported that almost half of those banned from parks were “obviously” homeless. The majority of offenses were open container violations. I’d wager that very few residents have been banned from Seattle parks for not having a tow rope in proper condition stored on their boat.
In Denver, like in other cities, banned parkgoers can appeal. In practice, only a fraction of people do: The time frame to appeal is often limited to 10 days, and the banned don’t have a right to counsel.Productivity Sauce
Dmitri Popov
The Android Market features a few tethering applications, so it should be easy to use your Android phone as a wireless modem. Well, that's how the theory goes, anyway. In practice, however, these applications require root access to your phone's system, so you have to "root" your phone before you can tether it. Rooting an Android phone is not for the faint of heart, though, and there is the ever-present risk of bricking your device. Meet Proxoid, a proxy server application that lets you use your phone as a modem without hacking its system. Making Proxoid work does require a few steps, but the entire process is simple enough even for uninitiated users. Here is how to make Proxoid work with an Ubuntu-based system.
Start with installing the Proxoid application on your Android phone from the Android Market. On your phone, navigate to Settings - > Application -> Development and enable the USB debugging feature. On your Ubuntu machine, create the 90-android.rules file:
gksudo gedit /etc/udev/rules.d/90-android.rules
Add the following line to it:
SUBSYSTEM=="usb", ATTRS{idVendor}=="0bb4", MODE="0666"
Save the file and quit the text editor. Download and unpack the latest release of Android SDK. Connect the phone to the Ubuntu machine via USB and start the Proxoid application. Open the Terminal, navigate to the tools directory in the Android SDK folder and run the following command:
./adb forward tcp:8080 tcp:8080
The proxy server should now be running, but to be able to use it with Firefox, you have to modify the browser's proxy settings. In Firefox, choose Edit -> Preferences and switch to the Advanced -> Network section. Press the Settings button in the Configure how Firefox connects to the Internet group. Select the Manual proxy configuration option, then enter localhost in the HTTP Proxy field and 8080 in the Port field. Press OK to save the settings and close the window. Now you can browse the Web using the created connection.
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DisqusToronto police are investigating an incident where two men who hand out information about Islam and copies of the Qur’an at St. Lawrence Market say they and their books were sprayed with urine. On Feb. 25, between 10:30 and 11:30 a.m, Quazi Islam and his friend Gerges Hamad were in their usual spot, by the LCBO, talking to people.
Police are investigating an incident where two men say they and copies of the Qur'an they were handing out were sprayed with urine at St. Lawrence Market. ( Photo Courtesy: Quazi Islam )
Islam said he was about two feet away from the table, and when he came back he saw something like water on it. “I asked my friend Hamad if it rained,” Islam said. The pair looked around and saw that the tablecloth, the copies of the Qur’an and the chair were wet.
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“And it smelled... bad,” he said. Islam and Hamad have been giving out information on the religion for about two years. While there are the “occasional bad apples” Islam said most people are “very nice.” The men reported the incident to police, who confirmed they are investigating the potential mischief charges, but have not ruled out the possibility of a hate crime. Islam said most of the abuse is verbal, though he added that he’s also had people spit on him. He said the most hate and abuse he receives is when there is a big terror incident, such as the Paris shootings.
“They say Prophet Mohammed is a pedophile... Some people say we oppress women,” Islam said. “Why I am distributing this dirty idea of Islam in this country?” People usually have misconceptions about the religion because they confuse the culture of a country with that of Islam, he said, but added that there are more people who stand up for them than abuse them.
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“Most people... 99.9999 per cent of people are supportive,” he said. “If someone uses abusive language, people stop and fight (on) our behalf.” With files from Vjosa IsaiMangaluru: There was allegedly an attempt to attack rationalist and activist Narendra Nayak near his house on Wednesday morning. The police have beefed up security cover for Nayak following the incident.
Nayak, a leading rationalist, was active in showing people how to debunk Godmen and fraudsters. He was also leading the fight to provide justice in the murder of RTI activist, Vinayak Baliga.Nayak is currently the president of Federation of Indian Rationalist Association.
In his complaint Nayak stated that around 6.30 am on Wednesday he drove his car towards MG Road, when two people in a motorcycle came near his car and indicated that a tyre was deflated.
Nayak, however, continued to drive his car. Later he stopped near a petrol bunk and found that no tyre was deflated. He alleged that had he stopped and got down from the car, there would be attempt to hit him.
“On Wednesday morning I was on my way to swimming pool. At the road leading to MG road near my house, I slowed down my car to enter the main road. Just then two people came in a bike in the main road told me that my car’s rear tyre was deflated. I had a doubt and did not get down. I continued to drive my vehicle and went near the nearby petrol bunk and saw that the tyre were intact. Later I felt that it was a standard tactic by Shiva gang. I doubt they wanted to attack me if I got down to see the tyres. As I was alert, their tactic did not work,” he told Deccan Chronicle.
Nayak also alleged that RTI activist Baliga too was murdered similarly when assailants stopped him under the pretext of enquiring about an address and killed him.
“Most probably this effort to attack was because of my role in the fight for justice in Baliga murder case. It could be a combined effort by those who are angry with me,” he added. “I remember both the people who came in the bike. This was clearly an act to attack me,” he added.
Though Nayak has police cover, the incident took place early in the morning before the police personnel arrived. Following the incident police cover for Nayak has been increased. Police Commissioner Chandra Sekhar said that an additional Personal Security Officer has been provided to Nayak following the incident. “The complaint has been registered at Urwa Police station. The CCB police are investigating it,” he addedImage copyright AFP Image caption Kurds made up between 7% and 10% of Syria's pre-war population
K |
its original sacred significance; 9 as a complete, perfect number that unites all opposites, and through which all that is wrong is returned back into the divine order. The masters go ( number 22 as a master number) after they have completed their work on this level and their pathways (number 22 as the number of the pathways and as the number of divine diversity, as well as the number of the infinite manifestations of creation). End of interpretation.Thelma and the Sleaze 03/02/19 With:
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With:Elizabeth and the CatapultIs S.F.'s too-cool attitude a turnoff?
The 49ers' new stadium in Santa Clara is shown on June 17, 2014. The 49ers' new stadium in Santa Clara is shown on June 17, 2014. Photo: Peter Hartlaub, The Chronicle Photo: Peter Hartlaub, The Chronicle Image 1 of / 13 Caption Close Is S.F.'s too-cool attitude a turnoff? 1 / 13 Back to Gallery
It's been a rough couple of weeks for San Francisco.
Earlier this month, organizers of the America's Cup sailing races announced they wouldn't be dropping anchor again in San Francisco and were looking to San Diego, Chicago or Bermuda instead. Last week, movie mogul George Lucas announced he will take his art collection and hundreds of million of dollars to Chicago to build his new museum.
And photos are splashed all over the media of the San Francisco 49ers new stadium in Santa Clara which is almost ready for its first big game. (A succulent garden on the roof of the luxury boxes? That is so San Francisco. Except it's 45 miles from here.)
San Francisco is like the most beautiful girl in high school who finds herself without a date for the prom, spurned by the big men on campus who favor nice girls with great personalities. (At least the tech geeks still love us, so there's that.)
When it comes to wooing big projects and events, is San Francisco's too-cool-for-school attitude a turnoff? And can the city project a friendlier attitude the next time around - such as if it vies against Boston, Los Angeles and Washington, D.C., for a potential 2024 Olympic bid?
"We can't be arrogant as a city and assume that we're better than everywhere else and that we will never have to be proactive to attract cultural institutions or businesses," said San Francisco political consultant Mark Mosher. "But by the same token, it can be a race to the bottom to try to depend on tax breaks and subsidies to do that."
It's a balancing act, sure, especially in a city where so many residents object so vociferously to anything new - and where legitimate worries about the increasingly obscene cost of living here make catering to billionaires not high on the agenda.
But when City Hall sets its mind to it, it can be a regular Don Juan. Witness the tax break to lure Twitter and other tech companies to the beleaguered Mid-Market stretch. That's helped bolster the city's tech industry, which in turn has helped lower the city's unemployment rate to a tiny 4.4 percent.
But like the guy who texts to see if you're free for a beer in an hour, some other efforts on behalf of City Hall to attract potential suitors have been less than impressive.
The 49ers will play their first Santa Clara game later this summer after former Mayor Gavin Newsom famously fumbled the ball when it came to maintaining any sort of relationship with the team's owners, the York family. City Hall officials assumed the Yorks would agree to play at a new Hunters Point stadium instead of moving down south. Wrong.
The America's Cup certainly wasn't as beloved as the 49ers, but it did make for an exciting event last summer. Russell Coutts, CEO of the defending champion Oracle Team USA, told The Chronicle he wanted to ink a deal quickly with San Francisco to host the 2017 races. Mayor Ed Lee said he definitely wanted to host the event again, but refused to spend city general fund money on it. Lee then learned through a media report San Francisco was the fourth choice and had dropped from contention.
But perhaps the most confounding loss of all is Lucas' museum of Americana art and Hollywood memorabilia. Most cities would jump if a famous movie maker asked to build a museum there and dangled a $700 million check to get it done. Not San Francisco.
The Presidio Trust took four years to tell Lucas he couldn't build at his preferred site near Crissy Field and seemed to assume he would accept a last-minute offer of another site in the Presidio in February. He didn't.
Lee then waited until May, when it was clear Chicago was a very determined front-runner, to come up with any sort of backup plan. When the Golden State Warriors' plan for a basketball arena at Piers 30-32 fell through in favor of a Mission Bay site, Lee offered Lucas the piers or a parking lot across the street.
In the dating world, that's called sloppy seconds, but with the piers' history, it's more like sloppy seventeenths. Lee's proposal required Lucas to buy or lease the bayfront site at market value, whereas Chicago offered its much larger lakefront site for $1 a year.
But apparently in Lee's world, that's ardent love.
"The mayor pulled out all the stops," said his spokeswoman, Christine Falvey. "Nothing's taken for granted.... There are always cities waiting in the wings to swoop in if we hesitate."
Nathan Ballard, a Democratic strategist, said it's hard to imagine another city failing to take advantage of Lucas' offer.
"I'm sure (Chicago) Mayor Rahm Emanuel was giggling when he learned we rejected the museum the first time around," Ballard said. "Most big cities are not going to look a gift horse in the mouth like San Francisco."
"There's a powerful undercurrent of Nimby-ism in San Francisco," he continued. "There's a resistance to change that's almost pathological."
And even when we profess to want something - like the Lucas museum - we take our sweet time.
"Sometimes in San Francisco we engage in rigorous analysis that leads to paralysis," said political consultant Alex Tourk.
To be fair, San Francisco is hosting the 2016 Super Bowl. Well, Santa Clara is hosting the football game and San Francisco is hosting a bunch of parties.
Ballard, who is working on the Super Bowl, said he thinks if the region pulls that off, it can make a great case for hosting the Olympics.
"The Olympics have much broader appeal than either the Lucas museum or the America's Cup," he said.
And, as Falvey pointed out, there are always big conventions in town, and Fleet Week and the Blue Angels are returning this fall after being canceled last year because of federal budget cuts.
But meanwhile, Piers 30-32 sit empty - still. Candlestick Park is slated for demolition. And we had to scramble just to get Paul McCartney to play one last concert there instead of at the 49ers new stadium down south. Damn you, Santa Clara!
Quote of the week
"I thought to myself, 'Why not?' I'm already here, might as well buy one."
Eurico Chin, whose lottery ticket purchased at a Safeway in the Sunset was worth $70 millionJames Murdoch's repeated assertion that he was never shown evidence that phone hacking at his company went beyond a "rogue reporter" was dramatically undermined last night. An internal email that he was sent, suggesting hacking was "rife" at the News Of The World and talking of a "nightmare scenario" of multiple victims, was released by a Commons committee.
Click to view email exchanges between Murdoch and Myler, Crone and Myler, and Pike and Crone
The presumed heir to the Murdoch empire has insisted during two bruising appearances before MPs that he was not told of crucial information in 2008 that proved hacking was widespread at the Sunday tabloid. He accused the paper's former editor, Colin Myler, and its chief lawyer, Tom Crone, of being "misleading" when they said he was made privy to those details.
We’ll tell you what’s true. You can form your own view. From 15p €0.18 $0.18 $0.27 a day, more exclusives, analysis and extras.
But a News International email released yesterday challenges those claims. It shows that Mr Murdoch, who was in charge of the media group at the time, was provided with a chain of messages from Mr Myler and Mr Crone accepting that the NOTW had made use of intercepted voicemails left for Gordon Taylor, the chief executive of Professional Footballers' Association, and was facing a disastrous prospect of a public claim that it had covered up the true extent of hacking.
In a sign of the seriousness with which Mr Myler was taking the situation, he offered Mr Murdoch an "update" and warned: "Unfortunately it is as bad as we feared." The line suggests that, contrary to Mr Murdoch's repeated recollection, both men had already discussed the case in some depth.
Mr Murdoch claimed last night that he had not read the full email because he received it on his BlackBerry on a Saturday afternoon and did not scroll through the exchange of four messages. He said the fact the email chain showed that he replied to its sender, Mr Myler, within "just over two minutes" supported his claim, and his key position that he was "not aware of evidence that... pointed to widespread wrongdoing" at the NOTW remained unchanged.
The email chain, disclosed by News International (NI) lawyers to the Commons Media Select Committee yesterday, was sent to Mr Murdoch just after 2.30pm on 7 June 2008. At the time, NI faced a serious threat to its attempt to keep a lid on the phone-hacking scandal by insisting the practice was restricted to its former royal editor, Clive Goodman, who was in jail for eavesdropping on royal aides' voicemails.
That threat came in the form of a damages claim from Mr Taylor, whose lawyers obtained a separate email containing the texts of messages left by and for him – which were transcribed by a junior NOTW reporter, Ross Hindley. The email became known as the "for Neville" email, because it was allegedly intended for the paper's chief reporter, Neville Thurlbeck.
When it was shown to NOTW executives, including Mr Crone, they decided to offer a £725,000 settlement to Mr Taylor and approached Mr Murdoch, then executive chairman of NI, to authorise the payment. Mr Murdoch has insisted that the only substantive discussion he had with his executives about Mr Taylor's payout took place on 10 June, when he met Mr Myler and Mr Crone for 15 minutes in his office. In testimony to MPs last month, Mr Murdoch said his former executives' evidence – that they had told him about the full significance of the "for Neville" email – was "misleading".
The new email shows he was sent information three days earlier that went to the heart of the problems the NOTW faced in dealing with Mr Taylor's claim. Mr Myler, who asks Mr Murdoch if he and Mr Crone could have "five minutes with you on Tuesday", refers in the third line of what Mr Murdoch would have read, to an "extremely telling" note from Julian Pike, of law firm Farrer's, about the PFA boss's claim against the NOTW and its parent, News Group Newspapers.
In the text of that note sent on 6 June, copied at the bottom of the email, Mr Pike summarises Mr Taylor's demand that he be "vindicated or made rich" because of the hacking against him. Mr Pike said: "[Taylor] wants to demonstrate that what happened to him is/was rife throughout the organisation. He wants to correct the paper telling parliamentary enquiries that this was not happening when it was (NGN's line having been there was a rogue trader in [Clive Goodman])." In a letter to the committee, Mr Murdoch said: "Given the timing of my response, just over two minutes after Mr Myler had sent this email to me, and the fact that I typically received emails on my BlackBerry on weekends, I am confident I did not review the full email chain at the time or afterwards, nor do I recall a conversation with Mr Myler over that weekend."
He added that he stood by his earlier testimony to the committee.
The Labour MP Tom Watson, a leading member of the Media Select Committee, said: "This shows that Colin Myler raised his serious concerns about the Taylor case with James Murdoch. It shows the external lawyer to the company believed that Gordon Taylor sought to prove Parliament was misled. How can the company have just found this important email trail?"
Another Labour MP, Chris Bryant, who is claiming damages from NI, said: "These revelations show James Murdoch is slipshod as a manager and NI have been slippery with their evidence to Parliament. They knew, at the highest level, why they had to pay Gordon Taylor such a substantial sum because otherwise their whole cover-up would have been blown apart. The rogue reporter line was a lie and NI knew it."
Questions over Sienna Miller claim
News International held a discussion about a phone-hacking claim from Sienna Miller when the actress had yet to disclose her private plans to take legal action, the Leveson Inquiry heard yesterday.
Counsel for the victims whose phones were illegally accessed by the News of the World, David Sherborne, questioned NI's former independent legal adviser, Julian Pike, about a record of attendance document from a meeting which took place in May 2010.
Mr Sherborne asked Mr Pike how Ms Miller's name came up, when the Metropolitan Police had yet to be notified and a formal notification of complaint had not been lodged. Mr Pike could offer no explanation.
James Cusick
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Subscribe nowANALYSIS: Weapon donations have become the latest issue to draw out the chaos within anti-Gadafy forces
SPLITS have opened in the Libyan opposition administration over claims that Italy is about to break the UN arms embargo and provide weapons to the rebel army.
With the ruling National Transitional Council deadlocked in its attempts to agree an executive committee, two of its most high-profile members have clashed over the most sensitive issue between the rebels and the West – weapons imports.
Last week, vice-president Hafeez Ghoga told The Irish Times that Italy would be sending weapons “within days” to rebel troops in apparent violation of the UN arms embargo, a claim flatly denied hours later by council president Mustafa Abdul Jalil.
But the following day, Ghoga convened a press conference to insist Rome had agreed to send arms and claiming rebel officials were finalising the details.
Italy itself has said it has provided aid such as flak jackets but has declined to comment on plans. But in Benghazi, this public spat has come at a sensitive time as rebels try to turn a hastily formed revolutionary command structure into a government.
For more than a week, the council has set deadlines for a 15-strong executive committee to be agreed, only for the deadline to pass with no announcement.
On Saturday, eight names of the committee were agreed, with Jalil’s ally, Mahmoud Jabril, confirmed as foreign minister. But other key posts, including defence chief, are left unfilled.
The lack of a government is worrying western aid donors, who are nervous about forwarding development cash until there is an executive to account for it.
And then there is the split in the military. For now, the rebels have two generals, each insisting that they are the commander.
The council has backed Adbul Fattah Younes, Gadafy’s former interior minister, who switched sides to the revolution after being sent to Benghazi by the dictator to quell it. Opposing him, so far only in the smoke-filled rooms of the council committees, is Khalifa Heftar, an army general who defected to the US in the 1980s. For now, Gen Younes wears the trousers: he brought an interior ministry brigade over to the side of the rebels in the early days of the rebellion.
But Gen Heftar also has his supporters, not least because his defection came 20 years ago, and that the army was never seen as the weapon of oppression as was the interior ministry. This split is the last thing the underequipped rebel army needs as it tries to organise itself.
Gone are the wild days of March, when young men with guns would speed down the highways towards Tripoli, only to speed back the other way at the first sign of fighting. A visit to the front line east of the town of Adjabija showed rebel volunteers now assembled into organised units. Soldiers still wear sandals and jeans, but are equipped with machine guns, anti-aircraft guns and recoilless rifles.
However, the situation in the south is more fluid, with Gadafy’s patrols able to cut the main road to the oil fields. Without tanks and heavy guns, the prospect of the rebels pushing west appears non-existent. For most who gather at the nightly rallies in support of the revolution outside the Benghazi courthouse, the rebel headquarters, Jalil remains the figurehead of their revolution.
Soft-spoken, even bland, Jalil made his bones with millions of Libyans when he publicly resigned as Gadafy’s justice minister last year, saying promised reforms were never implemented.
Ghoga, former head of the bar association, came to prominence when he joined protests held by lawyers at the start of the revolution. Initially, he set up a rival national council, but quickly abandoned it when it became clear public support was with the National Transitional Council, and was offered the vice-presidential post, apparently as compensation.
Council supporters insist there is no rift between the two men. The council is made more unwieldy by the insistence that some of its 31 members are nominated from areas still under Gadafy’s control, amid concerns it be seen by the outside world as the government of only rebel-held areas. Diplomats from the US, Britain, France and Italy are in Benghazi, trying to prod the ruling council in the right direction. They say teething troubles are to be expected of a ruling council whose members have little political experience.
Libya is not Egypt or Tunisia, where popular revolutions earlier this year were able to build on existing parties and a freeish press to build consensus. In Libya, there are almost no organisations. The reason Benghazi’s 3,500-strong Boy Scouts have taken over rubbish collection is that there is no other organisation that flourished under Gadafy’s autocratic rule.
For now, Jalil seems to call the shots. His ally, Jabril, also doubles as the foreign affairs chief, and has been instrumental in garnering western support at conferences in Doha and Rome.
Kingmaker in this set-up may prove to be the oil and finance minister, Dr Ali Tarhouni: he was a former student activist who fled Libya in 1973, becoming a professor in the US and returning home to be given perhaps the most powerful cabinet post.
Tarhouni has already begun talks with Qatar to whom the rebels want to sell their oil, but his control over both oil and finance have raised eyebrows among foreign donors about whether too much power is concentrated in a single pair of hands.
Western diplomats insist the rivalries can be overcome. “I think it’s good-natured chaos,” said one western official. “There is unity – they all want to get rid of Gadafy.”
A few hours amid the euphoria of the nightly street protests-cum-rock concerts in downtown Benghazi is testimony to that. But what supporters, both in the West and the Arab world, want to know is whether the council can agree on how to accomplish the task – and who gets control of the donor cash.
Chris Stephen is a freelance journalist and war crimes expertA headline-generating study, published in the journal Pediatrics this week, suggests that approximately one in three Americans is arrested before age 23. That's up from about one in five in 1965, the last time a similar study was conducted. The study used data from surveys given to the 7,335 people who enrolled in the federal government's National Longitudinal Survey of Youth in 1996.
This study, a recent joint initiative between the Departments of Justice and Education and a spate of anecdotal stories in the news all suggest a surge in the arrests of minors, and particularly in arrests that originate in schools. But the federal government is both fighting the "school-to-prison" pipeline while continuing to fund the same programs that critics say are causing it. Moreover, because the government hasn't been collecting data on school-based arrests, and the little available data shows overall arrests of juveniles are down, it's difficult to determine if a problem exists, much less whether federal initiatives are solving it -- or contributing to it.
The Pediatrics study seems consistent with a rough survey of the criminal justice system over the same period. The U.S. certainly has more laws now than it did a generation ago. The U.S. incarceration rate has soared since the early 1980s (though last year it declined for the first time in two decades). State and federal governments have been prosecuting consensual crimes more aggressively, particularly drug crimes. And since the late 1990s, again with federal prodding, most public schools have embraced a "zero tolerance" policy for many offenses (drugs and weapons in particular), treating every infraction as if it were a criminal offense. The policy bars school officials from considering context or using nuance when dealing with an accused offender.
There are also more police in America's schools. A survey by the Justice Police Institute released last month found a 37 percent increase in the number of law enforcement personnel (called school resource officers, or SROs) employed by public schools between 1997 and 2007, including more than 5,000 such officers in New York City schools alone. The increase in SROs, also driven by federal funding, was in part influenced by media-driven hysteria over a few highly publicized school shootings in the 1990s.
There have also been a number of stories in the news of late about pre-adolescent children arrested for absurdly minor offenses, including a 6-year-old Wisconsin boy arrested for "playing doctor" with a 5-year-old girl, a 12-year-old arrested in Memphis for not wearing his helmet at a skateboard park, a 13-year-old boy arrested in New Mexico for burping in gym class (his parents' lawsuit also revealed the arrest of a 7-year-old girl who refused "to sit next to the stinky boy" in class), a 10-year-old Connecticut boy arrested for giving a classmate a "wedgie," and a 5-year-old who was bound at the wrists and ankles, arrested and charged with assault after kicking a police officer in the leg.
Taken together, these studies and anecdotes suggest a troubling trend of putting kids in handcuffs for doing the sorts of things kids have always done. This has spurred concern over a burgeoning "school-to-prison pipeline" problem in which children -- particularly poor, minority and at-risk children --are funneled from public schools into the criminal justice system. In response, the Justice Department and the Department of Education launched a joint initiative last July that aims to combat this trend.
So how can arrests of minors appear to be dropping and increasing at the same time? Robert Brame, a professor of criminal justice and criminology at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte and the lead author of the Pediatrics study, tells HuffPost via email that the overlapping time periods explain some of the discrepancy. "I don't think there is an inconsistency between the two sets of results," Brame writes. "What my study does is measure the cumulative arrest experience of a group of people who were in their teenage years in the late 1990s... The number we come up with is in the 25 to 41 percent range by age 23. That number seems high to many people (not so much to criminologists) and it does appear to be somewhat higher than it was in the 1960s but not dramatically so. If we looked at a group of people who were adolescents today and followed them for the next 10 years, the cumulative arrest rate might turn out to be lower."
So while it's true that the U.S. experienced a surge in both crime and arrests in the 1970s and 1980s, the drop in total juvenile arrests since the early 1990s is part of a broad and dramatic nationwide drop in crime that began at about the same time.
It is still possible that policies like the funding of SROs and zero tolerance have spurred a surge in school-based arrests, but that the surge was drowned out by a broader drop in crime and arrests overall. Because so little actual crime occurs in schools, school arrests make up only a small percentage of total arrests. The problem is that national data on school-based arrests simply doesn't exist.
Department of Education press spokesman David Thomas told HuffPost that the agency hasn't been tracking those figures. (Officials at the Justice Department did not return a request for comment.) This means that in the 1990s, when the federal government passed policies to incorporate federal crime policy into the public schools, they provided no real way to assess whether or not the policies work, much less to assess possible collateral, unintended consequences. Thomas says the agency's Office of Civil Rights did recently survey 7,000 school districts on student disciplinary actions and law enforcement referrals for 2009-2010. Those results are expected to be released next month. Those figures will at least offer a snapshot of how often minors are arrested on school campuses, but they still won't reveal whether or not school arrests and referrals to law enforcement are rising or falling.
Still, critics say that what data is out there suggests a problem. "It's true that national statistics just aren't available," says Amanda Petteruti, a policy analyst with the Justice Policy Institute. "But we do know that surveys of specific cities and school districts have shown a significant increase in school referrals [to law enforcement]." A 2005 study by the advocacy group the Advancement Project, for example, found "the number of arrests in Philadelphia County schools has increased from 1,632 during the 1999-2000 school year to 2,194 in 2002-2003." Arrests at Houston schools jumped fourfold from 2001 to 2002. In Denver, law enforcement referrals at city schools jumped from 818 in 2000-2001 to 1,401 in 2003-2004. Arrests in Chicago schools increased from 7,861 in 2001 to 8,539 in 2003. The study found that in most cases, more than half the arrests were for broadly classified, unspecified offenses like "detrimental behavior," "other" or "miscellaneous."
A recent report by the New York Civil Liberties Union found that the New York Police Department's School Safety Division arrested more than one student per day and issued summonses to three per day between July and October of this year. Of the 63 arrests, 15 were for serious crimes (felonies). Most of the summonses were for nondescript crimes like disorderly conduct or minor offenses like riding a bike on the sidewalk. But that survey, too -- the first since NYPD was required to release the information -- still doesn't reveal the existence of any underlying trend.
Of course, even if juvenile arrests have fallen since the 1990s -- and even if they've fallen in schools specifically -- it doesn't mean the figure still isn't too high, or that schools shouldn't be looking for less harmful ways to discipline students. Nor does it answer whether zero tolerance or police in school hallways are sound policies.
The history of these policies suggests they are not. Both policies came about in the 1990s, in response to dire warnings from politicians and right-of-center anti-crime activists about the rise of "super predators," a supposed new class of ruthless, brutal, amoral juvenile criminal who was going to wreak havoc on American cities and suburbs.
The wave of super predators never happened. In fact, violent crime had already begun its historic drop when those warnings were issued in the early to mid-1990s, and has continued to drop since. The media also obsessed over a series of anomalous school shootings in the 1990s, which led to new legislation from panicked politicians. But the rise in school shootings was also a myth. A 2000 annual report on school safety issued by the Departments of Education and Justice found that "for students aged 12 to 18, overall school crime... decreased by nearly a third." A 1996 CDC report arrived at similar results: Children were 40 times more likely to be killed outside the school building than inside of it. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, incidence of violent crime in schools, already low, was halved between 1993 and 2008.
The result is a pretty muddled picture of juvenile arrests, and uncertainty as to whether the school-to-prison pipeline is a real concern. With little hard data, the federal government has launched a new program to address an alleged problem that, if it exists, other federal programs may have helped to create. And those programs -- which are still operating -- were passed in response to a problem that may not have existed. In the meantime, the government hasn't bothered to collect the data necessary to assess the efficacy or impact of any these programs.× Expand Chef Alan Bergo of Lucia's Photo by Eliesa Johnson Chef Alan Bergo
What is wrong with us? We used to be one of this great nation's restaurant star-cities, and then in the last two years we lost so much of what made us special: La Belle Vie, Heartland, Birdie, Saffron, The Strip Club, Victory 44, Upton 43, Haute Dish, The Oak Grill at Dayton's (don't even tell me it was Macy's), Brewer's Table at Surly, Brasserie Zentral, Toast Wine Bar, and Piccolo. Of course, we lost loads more restaurants too, but some merely felt like the natural work of time—Ristorante Luci turning in to Bar Brigade, for instance. But those ones I listed, this is not normal, this is not natural, these are the best restaurants we have ever had. That Lucia's is closing is the last dagger I can stand.
Lucia's! Our very own Lucia's, which defined Northern cooking, single handedly revived butter makers and artisanal hog farmers, and knocked our socks off for 30 years. If you've never read my Lucia Watson profile, please go, and bring a box of tissues because this is a part of our hearts that we can not bear to lose but that we are losing nonetheless. I talked to the final chef, Alan Bergo, and he told me the last night is Saturday, October 14. "I'm so tired, I'm so spent," Bergo told me. "I’m emotionally drained, I've been trying to do everything I could night and day, working doubles every single day to thin down labor [costs], and what's so sad is the restaurant has been busy." Well, I don't know. Like, busy busy? I went a couple months ago to the wine bar and the place was deserted—though the food was seriously fantastic. Truly fantastic food in a truly empty restaurant, we were the lone and only table in the wine bar. I remember when you couldn't even find a slice of wall to lean on in Lucia's Wine Bar, it was that busy. Why didn't I mark that as notable when it happened? I just thought: Eh, it's an off night. I now wish I had raised the alarm. I didn't, and that's on me. In pale compensation, I am now raising a general alarm.
Tell me, Minneapolis, what is it you are doing with your evenings? Are you binge-watching through our golden age of television while chopping up your Blue Apron boxes? Are you fasting? If you fancy yourself as someone who lives in a good restaurant town and appreciates local chefs, stop whatever it is you have been doing and get out there and support our restaurants. Do you have a favorite restaurant you haven't visited in a while? Consider this your engraved invitation to prevent another funeral. I don't want to hear about the road construction. I don't want to hear you might have to walk to parking. I don't want to hear any excuses! It is not possible that two years ago we could support national-caliber greatness and today we've decided to live in a cemetery. It is not possible. Our restaurants need us, right now! Think of it this way. I know a lot of you support our local terrific museums, and even when we get busy we still send our membership check, because we know that they use our membership numbers to get foundation support, and we want them to be here when we're not busy. Our terrific restaurants don't have that model! This is an appeal to you, responsible patrons of the arts: Are you being a responsible patron of our food arts? If that's not enough of a nudge, here's some inside-dirt: I promise you that you have additional restaurant neighbors on life support and you don't even know it because you haven't gone to check on them.
Obviously, mistakes were made. All of us in Minneapolis are now responsible for some form of negligent homicide of our favorite restaurants that we totally loved and never wanted to lose. Let's forgive ourselves but let's not forget, and let's make the one change that can save us: get out there! Eat. It's the best cure to this pernicious disease.Don't believe the hype about autonomous vehicles. They won't be a substitute for a balanced system that includes rail transit and passenger rail.
Almost every day I encounter a breathless story about the revolution to come from self-driving cars. Far fewer deaths from automobile collisions! No traffic jams! No distracted driving! In other words, here is The Answer to myriad problems created by an auto-centric culture.
Beneath it is a veiled excuse to continue sprawl and car-dependency, as well as ammunition for critics of transit investments, especially rail transit and intercity passenger trains. Suburban building moguls, gobsmacked by the back-to-the-city movement, love this argument. So do anti-transit ideologues. After decades of highly subsidized sprawl, we can have more — thanks to self-driving cars.
Here’s why I’m skeptical:
• As long as cars of any type are based on an internal-combustion engine, they will be prime culprits in the greenhouse gas emissions driving climate change. More aggressive sprawl, destroying precious farmland and wilderness, would further degrade the environment and hurt food security. Electric cars for most are a pipe dream and would still have to be charged from some source — in most places those charging stations would depend on power from generating stations run by fossil fuels.
• Also, how long would it take for the majority of modestly paid Americans to afford a self-driving car, along with all the necessary maintenance to keep it safe? Decades at best. Never, more likely. The self-driving panacea doesn’t deliver if it represents merely a majority of well-off early adopters in the massive traffic jams that are our reality. Meanwhile, abandoning investments in transit risks widening inequality, as happened in many U.S. cities in the 1960s and 1970s.
• A new study by Michael Sivak and Brandon Schoettle at the University of Michigan casts doubt on whether self-driving vehicles would increase productivity of occupants. Most respondents to a survey said they would either prefer to be in control of the vehicle or would watch the road. Motion sickness and protection of occupants are other problems.
• Then there’s the powerful magnet of custom. Sure, the country is changing (for example, more people are choosing to live in transit-rich cities without the burden of car ownership). But most red-blooded Americans love to drive. This is something that makes the automobile synonymous with independence and freedom. This substantial number of drivers doesn’t have any interest in being stuck powerless inside a pod-on-wheels directed by algorithms. Plus, as the Los Angeles Times pointed out, even less privacy.
Self-driving cars aren’t The Answer. But they may be one answer. With the U.S. population at almost 325 million — double where it stood in the mid-1950s, and increasingly concentrated in large metropolitan areas — we’re going to need all sorts of intelligent responses. An overarching one, both for mobility and to head off the worst of climate change, is to recover a balanced transportation system.
Before freeways and interstates gutted so many American cities, the country had such a system: private automobiles, buses, rail transit, airlines and intercity passenger rail. Enormous subsidies and avoidance of costing externalities favored cars (and planes) until we almost lost rail. Now Los Angeles, for example, is essentially rebuilding the fabled Pacific Electric train system it ripped out in the 1940s and 1950s. Seattle is behind, especially because of its foolish rejection of a subway (mostly paid for by the feds) in 1970, but is beginning to make some progress with long-overdue light-rail.
In so many cases, we can’t widen our way out of traffic jams — much less make a dent in global warming. We need to regain |
Beck said Turks in Germany freely demonstrated in the streets of Berlin, Hamburg and other German cities for or against the German and Turkish governments.
“It is a fair and democratic right in Turkey as well as Germany and I cannot understand that such threatening of an MP can happen in front of the police,” he said.
The Istanbul governor’s office last week said the march had been banned out of concern for public order. Security in the city is already tight after a series of bombings in recent months blamed on Islamic State and Kurdish militants.
But an ultra-nationalist youth group had also threatened violence if the march went ahead, calling it immoral.
While homosexuality is not a crime in Turkey unlike many other Muslim countries, homophobia remains widespread. Critics say President Tayyip Erdogan and the Islamist-rooted AK Party he founded have shown little interest in expanding rights for minorities, gays and women, and are intolerant of dissent.
Historically the gay pride parade in Istanbul - a city seen as a relative safe haven by members of the gay community from elsewhere in the Middle East, including refugees from Syria and Iraq - has been a peaceful event.
But last year police used tear gas and water cannon to disperse participants, after organizers said they had been refused permission because it coincided with the holy month of Ramadan, as it does again this year.
Slideshow (10 Images)
Some foreign diplomats who had attended the previous years’ events have sent solidarity messages for the Gay Pride week via social media. The Swedish Consulate held a reception while the Norway delegation co-organized a boat trip.
John Bass, U.S. ambassador to Turkey, posted a picture on his Instagram account showing a rainbow flag flying in the garden of the U.S. embassy in Ankara marking the Gay Pride week.
“It reminds all of us that human rights are universal rights and belong to everyone, no matter who they love,” he wrote.AUGUSTA, Maine (Reuters) - Maine will allow gun owners to carry concealed weapons without a permit, a practice called “constitutional carry” by Second Amendment advocates, under a bill signed into law on Wednesday by Republican Governor Paul LePage.
The measure will make Maine the fifth state to pass a law legalizing the carrying of a handgun, either openly or concealed, without the requirement of a government permit.
Maine joins Alaska, Arizona, Wyoming and Kansas in voting to allow the practice, according to National Rifle Association spokesman Lars Dalseide. Vermont has never required a permit. Arkansas and Montana also allow more limited forms of constitutional carry.
More than a dozen other states have considered similar legislation.
The Maine law will take effect 90 days after the state’s legislature adjourns, which is expected in mid-July.
The Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which protects the right of individuals to own and bear firearms, has limited efforts to pass gun control legislation around the country and has served as the basis for expanding gun rights in many states.
Maine law currently allows gun owners to openly carry a handgun without a permit, but concealed carry requires a background check, a licensing fee, a judgment of “good moral character” and evidence the applicant can handle a gun safely.
Sportsmen’s groups and gun advocates argued the process was too onerous, deterring law-abiding citizens from applying.
Opponents, including Maine Chiefs of Police Association, said rigorous background checks kept weapons out of the hands of felons.
The new law, which passed with broad bipartisan support, would eliminate the permit requirement for any resident over 21 years old who is not already prohibited from owning a firearm.
Active members of the military, and veterans over 18 years of age, would be granted the same privilege.
Maine ranked 21st in firearm deaths per 100,000 population in 2013, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Hawaii had the fewest and Alaska the most, the data shows.If you, being a monstrous bigot, didn’t take your small child to drag queen story hour at your public library or bookstore, don’t despair. In some places, publicly funded schools are stepping in to compensate for your neglect on exposing your kids to gender diversity. For example:
Angry parents stampeded a California charter school board meeting Monday after a teacher read her kindergarten class picture books about transgenderism to affirm a gender dysphoric classmate. During the class, parents say, the gender dysphoric boy also switched clothes to look more like a girl in a “gender reveal.” Parents were not notified beforehand of the discussion or the classmate’s psychological condition, and learned about it when their confused kindergarteners arrived home from school that day. “The kindergartners came home very confused, about whether or not you can pick your gender, whether or not they really were a boy or a girl,” Karen England of the Capitol Resource Institute told CBS News. “My daughter came home crying and shaking so afraid she could turn into a boy,” a parent said at the public meeting.
This is not a one-off situation. As Joy Pullman explains, it’s part of a strategy by transgender advocates. She discusses how the litigious parents of a trans tot sued a public charter school into compliance with their desires. More:
Nova is a test case for what trans activists want to perpetuate nationwide — and not just in public schools, but also in private and home schools. An 8-year-old drag queen groomed by his parents says “If you want to be a drag queen and your parents don’t let you, you need new parents,” the underlying, totalitarian belief of the movement he represents. The easiest initial access point is private school choice programs, but activists are also targeting all private schools through accreditation bodies. The accreditation attack is currently most visible in higher education, but it’s spreading to K-12.
Yesterday I heard from a Washington, DC, reader whose children attended a public charter school, until he and his wife found out what the school was doing behind their backs. He sent me the e-mail chain between him and the school’s principal. I reproduce it here with his permission, and with the names of the people involved and the school redacted:
Dear [Principal], Raising little ones is hard these days, particularly because — even by ages five and six — kids on the playground are educating them about topics I didn’t even know much about until I was a preteen. Consequently, my wife and I began talking to the girls about sexuality in age-appropriate ways last year. It’s a sensitive area, but we wanted to go ahead and introduce our values to them early on, before a kid at school did and potentially caused confusion. In that spirit, last weekend I decided to talk to the girls about the topic of people who identify as transgendered. Shortly after starting the conversation, however, I learned that [their teacher] had already talked to [our daughter] and her classmates about it. This involved her reading a book called “I Am Jazz” and conducting a classroom discussion on the topic. First of all, let me say this: [my wife] and I think a lot of [the teacher]. She has been an excellent teacher and [our daughter] has seen great progress in her class. Furthermore, she has made a point to encourage us and compliment [our daughter’s] progress anytime she sees us. She’s a good and professional teacher, and I suppose that’s part of the reason we were so disappointed. We wouldn’t have expected it from her. And even though I’m sure she meant well, those good intentions don’t make [our daughter’s] experience any more appropriate, especially because I had already let the school know my wishes about any such discussion with the students. Before enrolling the girls, I explicitly told you that if there was any reason the school felt the need to discuss topics including sexuality, marriage norms, or gender identity, I wanted to be notified so that my children could be excused, giving me the opportunity to decide when they were ready for that discussion. You assured me that the school would never even broach these subjects with the kids. Just to be on the safe side, however, at our home visits, I also explicitly told the teachers the same. The classroom was not the place to conduct a discussion like this with first graders — the home is. [Our daughter] was confused by the discussion and book, and it required me to spend 20 minutes just to undo the odd and incorrect conclusions she drew about transgendered individuals from [the teacher’s] lesson and even the storyline of the book. That confusion could’ve been avoided by giving parents notification beforehand or not even discussing it at all with first graders. The sad thing is that I would’ve never even known it happened if I hadn’t decided to have this conversation that, quite frankly, I thought might be a little too mature for their ages. But we can’t unspill the milk, so I am asking you to do the following to make things right: (1) notify all parents about what happened so they can have a chance to discuss this with their own children; (2) apologize to all of us for exploring this topic with our kids without seeking our permission; (3) inform all parents of any other instances in which such a discussion happened or any comments were made regarding gender identity, marriage norms, and sexuality; and (4) let us know what remedial measures the school will take to ensure this will not happen again. Despite the excellent job you all are otherwise doing, this was a violation of every parents’ trust and rooted in the assumption that we are all in agreement with the ideology of the staff members. But more importantly and fundamentally, even if parents are in agreement with the ideology of staff members, this decision assumed that the school, rather than parents, is in the best position to decide when to approach hard topics like this with our children. It is not my intent to discourage [the teacher] at all — again, we have otherwise been so pleased with her work with [our daughter] this year; but I just can’t overlook this breach of trust and I think other parents also have a right to know it happened so they can address it at home as necessary. Thank you for your attention to this matter.
Having not heard from the principal, the father wrote:
[Principal], [my wife] and I were hoping to hear back from you about our email to you. Maybe it would be better if we met in person. When are you available in the next two weeks?
The principal responded:
We are the height of planning for school opening. My apologies I did not respond sooner. As a mother and school leader, I can empathize with the challenge of keeping up with what our children are exposed to and wanting to be their first teacher on so many issues. I also think well of [the teacher]. She has shown herself to be a proficient teacher and student advocate. I do not recall a conversation about how we would handle conversations about transgender issues, but I cannot imagine agreeing either to censure such material or inform you in advance. I am sorry if [the teacher] or I led you to believe such a request would be honored. The book used is one that is a respected text in honoring the diversity of our children. It is a text that explains a real situation that many children face in self-acceptance, acceptance by others and being true to themselves. We feel the classroom is the appropriate place to share such messages. We would not request that these themes require permission, or clearance with families. (Different than courses on sexual education, for which we do require permission.) Quite the contrary, families have asked that we enhance our curriculum to be more inclusive of all the different groups our children and families represent, and we feel that this book achieves this purpose. I stand by [the teacher’s] use of the book in class, her decision to share the text, and the importance of these texts in the elementary classroom. I am happy to meet with you to listen or answer any other questions you might have. My time is limited in this month, but I will do my best.
The father replied:
Thanks for getting back in touch with me, [principal]. I realize that you are busy, but do you mind meeting with [my wife] and me briefly before the week is over? We would like to tie up the discussion, but we think it might contribute to mutual understanding if we do it in person.
The principal replied:
I am not available until the school year begins as we are feverishly working to train teachers, prepare the building and open school. I am copying [my assistant] who can help us set up something for the first week of school.
To which the father wrote:
We still want to get together with you, but if we aren’t able to talk before the school year begins, we would at least like to make sure we understood your email correctly. [My wife] and I would like our children to be exempt from any classroom discussions or instruction relating to the topics of gender identity, marital norms, or sexuality. We would also like to be informed before any such discussions take place in the classroom. I would like to know if the school will honor that request. Thanks in advance for letting us know. We know that these are sensitive topics that require great care, which is why we want to be the first ones to talk to our children about it.
The principal did not respond. Six days later, the father wrote:
[Principal], I appreciate how busy you are right now, but if you could please answer the question I emailed last week, I would appreciate it. Good luck with school prep!
The principal responded:
Thank you for understanding that this is an extremely busy time. I will not exempt any child from classroom discussions or instruction relating to the topics of gender identity, and ‘marital norms’. As it relates to formal instruction regarding sexuality, and sexual reproduction I will ask for your permission before these concepts are introduced in 4th grade. When they are introduced, I can say they are conducted with cultural humility and inclusivity– thoughtful of all our children and all their families.
The parents removed their two children from this public charter school last week in light of the principal’s refusal to respect their wishes or even to tell them when gender identity is going to be discussed in their elementary school classes.
I asked the father if he wanted to go public with this, naming the school — in which case I would need to use their names, and call the principal and the teacher for comment. He said no, that they don’t want a public fight over this issue:
We just want to raise awareness and encourage parents to ask their children direct questions about this kind of stuff. If I hadn’t brought up this topic with my daughter, I would’ve never known what she was exposed to, nor would I have known that the school was systematically indoctrinating kids and doing so behind the backs of parents who had asked them to do otherwise.
Let this be a lesson to you, reader. Do you know what your child’s school’s policy is? Do you know what your child’s teacher thinks about introducing gender ideology to little children? You had better.
Note too, per Joy Pullman, that the campaign to institute gender ideology in elementary schools is not stopping at public schools or at public charter schools. Via the accreditation process, they’re going after private schools. Pullman writes:
The leftists harping on this topic are essentially demanding a religious litmus test — the adoption of the moral belief that every sexual practice must be affirmed — as a precondition for educating children. It is starting with public and private schools, but will eventually encompass “outliers” such as homeschoolers. None of us are safe unless we band together and stop this crazy train in its tracks. A key problem is that Republican-led statehouses are the ones guarding school choice programs, and these same statehouses can barely muster the votes to protect children in public schools from being forced into unisex shower and sleeping quarters.
I have been told by people involved in this fight that Republican state legislators are getting hammered hard by the big business lobby, which wants to see liberalization of the schools on the SOGI (sexual orientation and gender identity) front. If these legislators do not hear from their constituents, they will rightly assume that the people they represent don’t care about the issue — and they’ll cave. If this matters to you as a parent, educate yourself — and call your state legislator. If you homeschool or have your kids in a private religious school, do not think that you are safe. (If you don’t belong to the Homeschool Legal Defense Association, join it now.)
The other side is not playing around — and it has deep pockets (e.g., The Gates Foundation). In The Benedict Option, I call on Christians to prepare themselves, their communities, and their children to hold on to the truth a world in which this moral insanity is the norm. There is no way to avoid it. I also urge them to use whatever political power we have left to fight for religious liberty, which includes the right to have control over what their children are taught in the classroom on matters as fundamental as what it means to be male and female.
Social and religious conservatives have lost many battles on this front, but they have not yet lost this one. But you had better be clear that the battle is here — and, as these parents above have learned, in some places it has been joined without parents even knowing what was happening. You cannot afford to be ignorant, nor can you afford to be indifferent. Never, ever forget that the Law Of Merited Impossibility is an infallible guide to progressivist culture war tactics: “It will never happen, and when it does, you bigots will deserve it.”
If your child’s teacher has read I Am Jazz to her, and she wants to know whatever happened to Jazz Jennings, you may want to know that Jennings spoke about this in the media earlier this summer, and has been on the I Am Jazz reality show discussing vaginas at the dinner table. This is the culture we live in now:
UPDATE: Reader Brendan:
I understand the call to arms on this, I really do, but I think that the battle on this has already been quite well and truly lost. The cultural Zeitgeist on this issue has a very “year before Obergefell” feeling to it — in other words, the battle was already over in everything but a formal and official way, and most everyone knew it. It’s the same for this issue — for all practical purposes this is over. Are there more people squeamish about MTF transwomen in the ladies room today than there were about gay marriage in, say, 2013? Probably. But that sentiment is being very exceptionally and forcefully forced into silence, just as the sentiments about SSM were. The reason is more or less the same as it was for SSM: corporate America wants it, for several reasons ranging from not wanting to alienate customers who are millenials (who are extremely pro-trans) to not wanting to seem like bigots to their socio-economic peers at the cocktail party. LGBT is a main corporate, capitalist priority currently, and it’s getting pretty much the full support of almost all big enterprises. This makes the issue politically impossible, because the Democrats of course are in bed with LGBT, while the Republicans will generally do what big business wants, which in this case (as in the case of SSM) is pro-LGBT. In that context, there really isn’t any way a fight can really be won here on this issue at this point. At the end of the day, what parents think on this issue doesn’t matter. What matters is what big business thinks, what the mainstream media thinks, what the Academy thinks and so on. Parents don’t rate, and they will be made to comply with their betters. Just watch.Donald Trump would not pass his own ideological "test" aimed at protecting the United States from radical Islam, the Council on American-Islamic Relations said in response to the GOP nominee's speech Monday.
The Muslim group, a constant critic of Trump's "bigotry" against American Muslims, such as his ban on all Muslims entering the U.S. and his ongoing feud with a Muslim Gold Star family, said in a statement that "American values include the right to hold unpopular or non-majority opinions."
"Trump himself would likely not gain entry into the United States if tested for basic American values of tolerance and pluralism, given that his proposed ban on Muslims entering the United States and his views on Latinos are in complete contradiction to America's traditions of ethnic diversity and religious freedom," said CAIR Government Affairs Director Robert McCaw.
At a campaign event Monday in Youngstown, Ohio, Trump announced a series of counter-terrorism strategies to combat radical Islam, including an "ideological screening test" to evaluate immigrants' attitudes toward American values.
"In the Cold War, we had an ideological screening test," Trump said. "The time is overdue to develop a new screening test for the threats we face today — I call it 'extreme vetting.' I call it extreme, extreme vetting."
He also called for the creation of a commission to educate the public on how to better be on guard against radical Islam.
McCaw said such a commission "crosses the line into government interference in religious beliefs," and warned that the panel would be filled by "anti-Muslim bigots."
"This government promotion of a state version of a particular religion would violate the First Amendment and put America on a path to a society in which those in power get to choose which beliefs are 'correct' and which are 'incorrect,'" said McCaw. "Donald Trump obviously views millions of ordinary American Muslims not as fellow citizens who contribute to this great nation, but as foreign intruders who must be treated with suspicion and whose constitutional rights may be curtailed."The relentless onslaught of bad health news about meats like bacon and well-marbled steak certainly had its effect, but then so did our continuing tendency to worship small farmers at the shrines of Local, Seasonal, and Sustainable. Let’s face it — those terms mainly apply to fruits, vegetables, and grains, no matter how much we tenderly coddle our cows and chickens. Somehow, over the last few years, the consumption of vegetable matter became elevated in our minds to a positive virtue of the highest order, both morally and nutritionally, as the masses quaffed Jamba Juice and office workers slipped out for "just a salad" at lunch.
This adulation of vegetarianism was reflected in a broad range of restaurants, too. While the small-dish movement began by reproducing traditional Spanish tapas, many of the small dishes gradually became small vegetarian dishes. At full-menu establishments, the proportion of meatless apps and entrees zoomed. And a new crop of low-meat and meat-free restaurants at the bistro level has appeared over the past year or two in certain neighborhoods — mainly the East Village, Lower East Side, and Williamsburg.
But the reasons for this sea change were not all ethical and nutritional. As meat prices soared, restaurateurs found they could charge the same amount for a plate of artfully arranged veggies as for a plate of meat, salvaging profits in the process. And a key result of this vegetable-centricity has been a gaggle of new restaurants serving strictly vegetarian and even vegan meals. The new spots flaunted all the bells and whistles one expects from upscale dining, including name chefs, prix fixe options, and sophisticated wine lists. Flesh be damned.
But wait a minute, aren’t vegetarian restaurants traditionally awful? A decade ago a large proportion of them were, focusing on bland food low in fat and salt, emphasizing healthfulness over flavor. Many of their recipes were descended from the hippie vegetarian cuisine of the 60s, in which pedestrian vegetables would be stir-fried with a touch of tamari, then dumped over brown rice. Other recipes derived from English vegetarianism of the 19th century, often involving cooked-to-death casseroles with plenty of cheese. A third strain of vegetarianism promoted rubbery and chemical-laden meat substitutes made from TVP.
All that began to change a few years ago, in what might be termed a vegetable liberation movement. Sourcing their raw materials ostentatiously from farmers’ markets, the new vegetarian restaurants paid much more attention to making the food exciting. What’s more, rather than eschewing fat and salt, they reintegrated those wonderful ingredients, realizing that they were the essence of a meaty meal’s appeal. Almost overnight, many committed carnivores began feeling as much enthusiasm for vegetarian fare as they once reserved for meat.
The revolution began in the East Village. Dirt Candy appeared in 2008 near Tompkins Square in a tiny storefront, making vegetables gorgeous in sculpted compositions that emphasized color and shape. During the same era, old-timer Angelica Kitchen hired a second chef to pursue more ambitious vegetarian cuisine, while still slinging the traditional hippie stuff. In summer of 2014, Dimes appeared on Canal Street,emphasizing egg breakfasts, grain bowls with goji berries, and salads heavy with avocados, seeds, and nuts. The menu also deployed bacon and chicken in relatively small quantities, as if aimed at patrons who wanted to become vegetarians, but still had a step or two to go.
Later that year, Semilla materialized in Williamsburg, where José Ramírez-Ruiz and Pam Yung offered multi-course meals that, in the winter when it first opened, emphasized roots and grains, treating the former almost like meats in massive roasts delectably sauced. I watched in awe one icy evening as Ramirez-Ruiz pulled a daikon the size of a small dog from a braising pan, and began cutting it in thick, greasy slices.
Barely into the new year Wassail debuted, a festive Lower East Side spot under chef Joseph Buenconsejo that took a science chef approach to vegetarian cooking. He made gorgeous little sculptures of hakurei turnips and maitake mushrooms, cut into precise shapes and flooded with foam. He surprised us with unusual ingredients such as borage oil and cocoa nibs in savory uses. Wassail’s beverage program was unusual, too, consisting of ciders from around the world. Today’s modern vegetarian restaurant relishes being quirky as hell.
Next came El Rey, a tiny storefront on the Lower East Side that started out as a coffee shop, but then began serving wildly creative vegetarian snacks such as kale salad (a vegetarian concoction that has become ubiquitous on area menus), flatbread with avocado mash (making gluten popular once again), and chia seed pudding (proving that the tiny seeds can be more than a tonsure for your chia pet). Later, the menu was expanded to include more-ambitious dinners.
No one was too surprised when Brooks Headley, longtime head pastry chef at Del Posto, hung up his toque and abandoned the world of meat. He took over the old Dirt Candy space to found micro-fast-food establishment Superiority Burger. The lines soon ran out the door with patrons who marveled that a vegan hamburger could taste every bit as good as a beef-bearing one, and the place soon garnered two stars from the Times’ Pete Wells. Next came Avant Garden, also near Tompkins Square, where the dining room was more like an amphitheater, allowing patrons to watch a trio of cooks assembling flesh-free tartines on artisanal, gluten-bearing bread, and fancifully composed vegan dishes, both cold and hot.
Even restaurants that didn’t go all the way with the new vegetarianism still climbed in bed with some of its dietetic practices. A case in point is Bruno Pizza, a new café that Ryan Sutton famously adored and Pete Wells detested. Scan its menu and find that nearly half its menu is vegetarian, with the veggie-centric dishes featuring the kind of salty and exotic combinations featured at places like Dirt Candy and Dimes. What’s more, the new vegetarianism is spawning a whole generation of vegetarian carnivores, eating meat occasionally with relish, but also seeking out vegetarian restaurants, not because they want to eat healthy, but because they simply enjoy the food. Thus are the city’s dining preferences changing, one delicious bite at a time.Ronda Rousey has been nothing but respectful to Cat Zingano in interviews. "Rowdy" can be known for trash talk, especially directed at rivals Miesha Tate and Cris Cyborg. But she's been uncommonly complimentary of Zingano.
However, Rousey always finishes that praise by saying "when" she beats Zingano. Not if. When.
Zingano is cool with Rousey's confidence. Because she shares it. There isn't a doubt in Zingano's mind that she'll become the UFC women's bantamweight champion by beating Rousey in the main event of UFC 184 on Feb. 28 in Los Angeles.
"That's the level we're at," Zingano told MMAFighting.com in a recent interview at the LA FitExpo, where she was promoting her sponsor MusclePharm. "She's there, because I'm not yet. Her time came first. All these opportunities came first. All we can do is wait and see."
Many before have said they would vanquish Rousey. No one has even come close. The champ is a perfect 10-0 with every single victory coming by finish. All but Tate in their second meeting has been done within the very first round. Rousey knocked out Alexis Davis in just 16 seconds at UFC 175 last July.
Zingano (9-0), too, is undefeated. And she doesn't think she compares to any of those other women.
"I'm unorthodox," Zingano said. "There's just nothing like me. There's not. They haven't seen anyone like me. She's the closest that there gets, but it's still different. I'm just more well-rounded, I have more heart, I have a lot of things going for me that people just haven't had a chance to see yet."
The 32-year-old Broomfield, Colo., native might indeed be the most versatile fighter Rousey has had to contend with. Zingano was a four-time national champion in college, has won world titles in jiu-jitsu and yet she's still known mostly for her striking. Zingano's lethal Muay Thai has allowed her to knock out five of her nine opponents.
Zingano is also indisputably tough-minded. In 2013, she tore her ACL and then re-injured it later that year. Then in January 2014, her husband and coach Mauricio committed suicide. Eight months later, Zingano returned to the Octagon to beat Amanda Nunes by third-round TKO at UFC 178 on Sept. 27.
Currently, Zingano juggles training at Team Elevation in Denver with raising her 7-year-old son Brayden. She is a private person and the new spotlight of being in the UFC 184 main event has brought more media. Chris Weidman's injury forced the cancellation of his middleweight title defense against Vitor Belfort. Zingano is trying to embrace the added attention.
"There's been a lot more camera crews around and a lot more interviews, but for the most part it's all still really new to me," Zingano said. "I gotta have that healthy balance to make sure that I'm maintaining focus on the fight and getting my rest in, getting my food in. All those things come first. My needs, my kid's needs. As long as I have all that done, nothing really bothers me. It's all part of the job."
Rousey has been so dominant that the talk surrounding her always involves potential challengers, especially Cris "Cyborg" Justino, who will be competing for Invicta FC just one day before the Rousey-Zingano fight in the same city. "Cyborg" is reportedly currently in negotiations with the UFC. A potential showdown with Rousey is surely part of the talks.
Zingano doesn't mind being overlooked. She just wants to remind people that she's next up, before Rousey can think about "Cyborg" or her next movie role.
"It doesn't really matter to me, because I've had to prove myself the whole way along," Zingano said. "So it's just another step, another way that I gotta get through and shut people up. I can care about it and have it bother me or I can laugh about it and keep enjoying the surprises."
And that's what Zingano is planning for Feb. 28. A surprise -- for Rousey and everyone watching.
"She's never seen or had to deal with anyone like me before," Zingano said. "So it's gonna be interesting."The big interview: Bernie optimistic about resistance
• Bernie Sanders has warned that Donald Trump is aiming to move the US “towards authoritarianism”, in an interview with the Guardian.
Sanders said Trump’s mistruths and attacks on the media are not accidental: “He lies in order to undermine the foundations of American democracy.”
But Sanders expressed optimism over the resistance, and issued a rallying cry to those who might feel scared by Trump’s rule. “These are very difficult and frightening times,” Sanders said. “But also understand that in moments of crisis what has happened, time and time again, is that people have stood up and fought back. So despair is absolutely not an option.”
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Despair: not an option. Photograph: Michael Reynolds/EPA
This week in the resistance
• People around the world took part in a mass international women’s strike – dubbed “A Day Without a Woman” – on Wednesday. But how much impact did the protest have? The feminist writer Maureen Shaw pointed out that most women are unable to take impromptu days off, and said future action should be designed to have a more tangible impact.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Protestors send love from Los Angeles on Wednesday. Photograph: Lucy Nicholson/Reuters
Up next...
• The American Civil Liberties Union has told the Guardian about its plans to thwart Trump by creating “freedom cities” across the US.
Faiz Shakir, national political director at the ACLU, said cities could use their local authority to resist implementing legislation signed by the Trump administration. The ACLU is encouraging people to meet with local sheriffs or police commissioners to pressure them to act.
The ACLU will officially launch the scheme in a live-streamed broadcast on Saturday. More than 2,300 watch parties have been set up around the country – find local ones here.
What we’re reading
• Republicans’ biggest white lie is that they represent the working class, writes Lucia Graves. In Jason Chaffetz’s much criticized comments suggesting that Americans should choose between healthcare and an iPhone, the Utah congressman was “playing into an old Republican trope that poverty is a choice and that poor people deserve their fate because poverty can be attributed to personal, not systemic, failure”.
• Democrats in Georgia are facing an early test of their ability to translate anti-Trump energy into votes, according to the New York Times. Jon Ossoff, a 30-year-old film-maker, is running for the congressional seat vacated by Tom Price, Trump’s new secretary of health and human services. Part of Ossoff’s pitch? “Make Trump Furious.”
• All the more reason to worry about the “Ryancare” repeal of the Affordable Care Act: the Washingon Post points out that healthcare in the US already lags way behind systems in other “first-world” countries – despite America spending more.
Environmentalists are talking about...
Last year, Scott Pruitt wrote that “scientists continue to disagree” about the extent of climate change, so perhaps we shouldn’t have expected too much from Trump’s new administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Scott Pruitt illustrates the impact of carbon dioxide on climate change. Photograph: Susan Walsh/AP
But still, Pruitt’s denial that carbon dioxide emissions are a primary cause of global warming – contrary to all available evidence – was quite striking.
As our environment correspondent Oliver Milman notes, this stance actually puts Pruitt at odds with his own agency.
(As an aside, the Guardian asked Trump at a press conference in November 2015 why he himself did not believe in climate change. He wouldn’t answer the question; specifically, his response was: “OK, what else?”)
Photo of the week
The Statue of Liberty went dark on the eve of the Day Without a Woman. Was it coincidence? The NYC parks department said it was. Others thought differently.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest It’s always darkest before the dawn. Photograph: AP
Meme of the week
If you thought – like us – there was nothing new to say about Donald Trump’s hair, you thought wrong. This video of his mane flapping around like the end of a toilet roll took even the most ardent Trump-hair-watchers by surprise.
Gideon Resnick (@GideonResnick) My life will be defined as before and after i saw this pic.twitter.com/mMMRBtsR6i
People soon noted that Trump’s weave natural head of hair bore similarity to Dobby from Harry Potter, Salacious B Crumb of Star Wars fame, and this image – from the popular sitcom Friends – of Monica with a turkey on her head.
Key dates to watch
• The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office will deliver its verdict on the Republicans’ healthcare bill on Monday. The CBO is assessing the impact and cost of the legislation – something proponents and opponents are sure to seize on.
• Trump’s revised immigration executive order is due to take effect at 12.01am on Thursday 16 March. But a hearing in response to the state of Hawaii’s lawsuit is set for Wednesday, 15 March. A judge could decide to place a nationwide halt on the order.
• The Pennsylvania governor, Tom Wolf, is attending an Indivisible activist event in Philadelphia on Sunday. Indivisible was formed by a group of former Democratic congressional staffers in December, and aims to be a Tea Party of the left.
• Trump is holding a rally in Nashville, T ennessee, on 15 March, perhaps as part of his “full-court press” on healthcare. (The exact details are yet to be confirmed.) Protests are planned.
Sign up for our weekly newsletter about the ResistanceIRELAND’S JOE WARD has been beaten by Carlos Andres Mina of Ecuador in the men’s light heavy 81 kg at the Rio Olympics tonight.
The Irish boxer lost via split decision, 27-28, 28-27, 28-27, as another big boxing medal hope saw his dreams of glory die prematurely.
Despite some controversy over the outcome, Ward looked sluggish and well below his best throughout the bout, as the Westmeath native was left to rue two costly point deductions.
It comes after a bad week for Irish boxing in which both Paddy Barnes and David Oliver Joyce suffered defeats, while Michael O’Reilly was sent home after failing a drugs test.
Speaking on RTÉ after the fight, former Irish boxing star Bernard Dunne lamented Ward’s loss and acknowledged: “There’s no doubt our team hasn’t performed so far.”
However, fellow panellists Michael Carruth and Kellie Harrington played down suggestions that Irish boxing was suffering owing to the departure of high-performance coach Billy Walsh prior to the Olympics.
The42 is on Snapchat! Tap the button below on your phone to add!
Source: The42: Rio 2016 Olympics/SoundCloudAnd there are those who cannot be taught, because they refuse to learn.
Carico was one of the worst and most obnoxious trolls I ever met, and her ways could have made a saint angry.
I found my post from |
--there are a lot of issues with primaries as well that you'd have to address. But, but the bottom line is, you got to play by the rules. We all agreed to the rules earlier in this campaign, Tim, and one campaign now has broken those rules, has decided not to abide by them; and our campaign has chosen to do that, to, to abide by the rules and to, and to work something out. We recognize that those are two very important states. We want to see this resolved. We want the parties to work with the states to come up with a resolution. We'll be competitive, whatever it is. Whatever fair approach that we can employ, we'll forward, we'll take it, we'll do it. But it has to be fair, and it has to be worked out in concert with the parties and, and abide as much as possible with the rules that everybody agreed to six months ago.
MR. RUSSERT: So you would be open to primaries in Michigan and Florida?
FMR. SEN. DASCHLE: Oh, of course. Absolutely. We would be.
MR. RUSSERT: Paid for by private donors.
FMR. SEN. DASCHLE: Absolutely.
MR. RUSSERT: Scheduled in June?
GOV. RENDELL: Tim, can I say one thing?
FMR. SEN. DASCHLE: Well...
MR. RUSSERT: Just one second, Governor.
GOV. RENDELL: The Clinton campaign, Clinton campaign did not break the rules. And superdelegates were in the rules, and they knew the rules going in, that superdelegates could vote for anybody they wanted.
FMR. SEN. DASCHLE: Well, we're claiming victories now that the rules clearly implied were not going to be part of this process. You know, we both said we weren't going to compete, and now the Clinton campaign is saying, "Well, we won." Well, how can you win if you weren't competitive? You didn't--you said you weren't going to participate, and now we've changed the rules to say that...
GOV. RENDELL: We can resolve this, Tom.
FMR. SEN. DASCHLE:...that we're participating, that we're going to--but anyway, it, it's squabbling that is, is harmful, I think, to both sides.
GOV. RENDELL: Let them vote. Let Florida and Michigan vote.
FMR. SEN. DASCHLE: Absolutely. We don't have any problem with that.
MR. RUSSERT: And, and, Governor, at the end of all those votes, if Barack Obama still had more elected delegates, would you then agree that he deserves the nomination?
GOV. RENDELL: Not if Hillary Clinton wins Texas, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Florida back to back to back to back to back.
MR. RUSSERT: What happens, then--what do you, as governor of Philadelphia, governor of Pennsylvania...
GOV. RENDELL: You're getting me in big trouble, Tim.
MR. RUSSERT: Sorry, governor of Pennsylvania, say to African-Americans in your state, in Philadelphia, in Pittsburgh, throughout the state and throughout the country, and to young people and to others saying, "You won most delegates, you won most contests, but the superdelegates have decided that we're going to go in a different direction." How do you make that case?
GOV. RENDELL: Well, number one, as Tom said, the, the Obama campaign wants to play by the rules. Those were the rules going in. That's number one. If we want to change them perspectively, change them. But those were the rules. Number two, superdelegates have always had the responsibility for fielding the strongest candidate, and I think everyone--African-Americans, young people, old people--everyone knows that we need a change in Washington, D.C. And I don't care if it's Senator Obama or Senator Clinton, we need a change. And we've got to get the strongest candidate. And if she wins Ohio, Texas, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Florida on top of all the other big states she won, if she wins the key states that are going to decide the election, let's go with our strongest hand because the issues are too important to risk losing.
MR. RUSSERT: Senator Daschle, that's a strong argument.
FMR. SEN. DASCHLE: It, it's, it's an argument. I wouldn't concede it's very strong, Tim. First of all, to say to the rest of the country they don't matter is not a strong argument. To say to the rest of the country that we're going to have an election, but if we differ with the ultimate result, we're going to--that that doesn't matter, you know, I don't see how anybody could make that case in a compelling way. You know, Barack Obama has shown he can win in every part of the country. We're turning out vote unlike anything we've ever seen before. We're winning big states, small states; we're winning across ethnic boundaries and lines. We have shown in a very compelling way--there's a recent poll that I said just came out that showed that Barack is winning far more states than Hillary Clinton is, so there's no question in my mind that the strongest candidate is the candidate who wins the most elections. Barack Obama has won 29 contests. Hillary Clinton has won 13 contests. That's the bottom line. There is no, no if, ands or buts about it. So you can say, "Well, you can win Texas and Ohio"--and, by the way, there's a very narrow margin, we may actually win more delegates in Texas than Hillary did at the end of the day. The, the bottom line, she's a good candidate; Barack's a good candidate. Barack's a candidate who can draw independents, Republicans and Democrats, and he will do it all over the country.
MR. RUSSERT: Governor Rendell, I want to talk to you about some comments made by Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton about the vice presidency. Yesterday in Mississippi, Bill Clinton said that if Hillary Clinton was the nominee, she would certainly consider Barack Obama. In fact, they would be "almost unstoppable" together. Hillary Clinton herself on Friday was talking about this also in Mississippi. Let's listen.
(Videotape)
SEN. HILLARY CLINTON (D-NY): I've had people say, "I wish I could vote for both of you." Well, that might be possible some day.
(End videotape)
MR. RUSSERT: Would--do you think that Barack Obama would be acceptable as vice president?
GOV. RENDELL: Acceptable? I think it would be a dream to Democrats all over this country. Personally, for me, it would be a great ticket. I mean, I'm going to fight hard for Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama, whoever the candidate is. But put them together and I think it would give America a rare opportunity to experience something just incredibly wonderful.
MR. RUSSERT: So, if you believe he's acceptable as vice president, one heartbeat away from the presidency, you believe that Barack Obama is qualified to be commander in chief.
GOV. RENDELL: I think he's qualified. I don't think he's as good a potential commander in chief right now as Hillary Clinton is. But I certainly think he's qualified. And I will work my heart out for him if he's our nominee, just as I know Tom will work his heart out for Senator Clinton if she's our nominee.
MR. RUSSERT: It--that seems to be in conflict with some things that you have said and what Hillary Clinton has said. On Wednesday you sent out a statement from the Clinton campaign that says, "We want a president who's ready, not one we hope will one day be ready," suggesting Barack Obama is not ready. Hillary Clinton said this on Monday. Let's listen.
(Videotape)
SEN. CLINTON: I think that I have a lifetime of experience that I will bring to the White House. I know Senator McCain has a lifetime of experience that he will bring to the White House. And Senator Obama has a speech he gave in 2002.
(End videotape)
MR. RUSSERT: And she went on to offer these observations about a threshold for commander in chief. Let's listen.
(Videotape, Thursday)
SEN. CLINTON: I think it's imperative that each of us be able to demonstrate we can cross the commander in chief threshold, and I believe that I've done that. Certainly Senator McCain has done that. And, and you'll have to ask Senator Obama with respect to his candidacy.
(End videotape)
MR. RUSSERT: So, Governor Rendell, if Barack Obama's qualified to be vice president, he has crossed the commander in chief threshold. Correct?
GOV. RENDELL: Well, I, I think he's ready. He's not nearly as ready as Hillary Clinton is, there's no question about that. But, look, make no mistake about it, he's a talented, dynamic politician and, and a, and a good senator, and I think he would make a fine president. Again, is he as experienced and as ready as Hillary Clinton? Nobody is. Tim, I've been talking to Democratic candidates since 1980, and Hillary Clinton is the best-prepared candidate I've ever talked to. Far better prepared than Bill Clinton was in 1992.
MR. RUSSERT: But if, in fact, there's a possibility Obama may be the Democratic nominee, would it be better, in the interest of the Democratic Party, that the Clintons not suggest that he hasn't passed the threshold to be commander in chief?
GOV. RENDELL: Well, sure. Look, there, there's rhetoric in a campaign on all, on all sides, and I, I think the, the issue should be framed as ready compared to Hillary Clinton. And, and that's the way I would frame the issue going forward. To me, there's no contest. I don't think--it's not Barack Obama's fault. I think almost any of the other candidates would have fallen into the same category, ready but not as ready as Hillary Clinton.
MR. RUSSERT: Senator Daschle, would Senator Obama be willing to be vice president?
FMR. SEN. DASCHLE: Well, Tim, it's really a rare occurrence, maybe the first time in history, that the person who's running number two would offer the person who's running number one the number two position. What Barack has said is that's way premature. He doesn't have any interest in being vice president. He's going to be our presidential nominee.
Look, Hillary Clinton was a great first lady. I worked with her. I know what a good first lady she was. But it would be hard for me to draw some degree of, of, of connection between being a first lady and having experience to be the commander in chief. She's served in the Senate, she's been on the Armed Services Committee, and I give her credit for that. But in terms of numbers of years of elected office, the number of years served, Barack Obama has more years served than Hillary Clinton. So it's a, it's a specious argument. The fact is, both of them are qualified. They're good candidates. They both would make great leaders. I do believe that Barack offers a lot more in the capacity of leadership. But I don't think anyone can look at her experience as first lady and say for some reason that qualifies her to run for president of the United States.
MR. RUSSERT: Do you believe discussions that Obama has not crossed the threshold to be commander in chief by the Clintons is potentially hurtful to Obama in a general election?
FMR. SEN. DASCHLE: I do. I think it's very, very troubling that, that they would, would make assertions that, in my view, are, are going to come back in, in some way. And I think when you look at what Barack has been able to show with regard to his judgment, with regard to his, his, his extraordinary ability to, to, to bring more people into, into government and to, and to, and to talk with the kind of compelling message that he has, that, to me, is, is, is what's going to make him the kind of candidate that he'll be in November. I think...
MR. RUSSERT: Would, would Barack Obama consider Hillary Clinton for vice president?
FMR. SEN. DASCHLE: I'm sure she would. I--he's said on more than one occasion that, that Barack Obama has, has a lot of ideas about who ought to be vice president, and she's--she'd certainly fit as well.
MR. RUSSERT: But if he said it's time to turn the page and not send the same people back to Washington, how could he possibly do that?
FMR. SEN. DASCHLE: Well, I think that there are a lot of ways to turn the page, and certainly his candidacy is going to turn the page in many respects. There's no question about that. The bottom line is, he wants the strongest person, the person who can serve in the capacity of president should he not be around. She's certainly in that category, but probably a lot of others as well.
MR. RUSSERT: You have a new book out critical of what we can do about the health care crisis and, reading it, there on page 166 you say there should be mandates for health care, that people should be forced to buy health care insurance. That's Hillary Clinton's position, not Barack Obama's.
FMR. SEN. DASCHLE: Well, Tim, there are a lot of ways to get to coverage for all. Obviously you can use mandates, you can use incentives. You've got to--I think both Barack and Hillary are right. You've got to make sure that we have adequate support for those who can't afford the health insurance that they're going to need, but you also have to find ways to insure that those who can afford it take the responsibility themselves to buy it.
MR. RUSSERT: We will have a candidate by when, the convention?
FMR. SEN. DASCHLE: We'll have a candidate by the convention. Hopefully it's going to be a lot sooner than that. I believe that Barack's going to be our candidate, and I wouldn't be surprised if it happens maybe even by Memorial Day.
MR. RUSSERT: But it may go to the convention.
FMR. SEN. DASCHLE: It could go to the convention.
MR. RUSSERT: Governor Rendell, could this go to an actual convention?
GOV. RENDELL: Yeah, I think so, Tim. I don't think either Senator Obama or Senator Clinton can win enough pledge delegates to get over the necessary threshold.
MR. RUSSERT: We will see you both in Denver in August.
GOV. RENDELL: Thank you.
MR. RUSSERT: What a race. Tom Daschle, Ed Rendell, thanks very much.
Coming next, it looks like Clinton vs. Obama could go on and on and on. What happens to those disputed delegates from Michigan and Florida? Will there be new primaries? And some of the controversial statements made in the campaign. Dan Balz, Ron Brownstein, John Harwood, Gwen Ifill--our political roundtable puts it all into perspective coming up only on MEET THE PRESS.
MR. RUSSERT: Inside the race for the White House with our political roundtable after this station break.
(Announcements)
MR. RUSSERT: And we're back.
Welcome. What a race. Here's the latest poll. These are Newsweek numbers out now. Amongst Democrats, Obama, 45; Clinton, 44. How do they fare against McCain? Pretty similar. Obama, 46; McCain, 45. Clinton, 48; McCain, 46. All within the margin of error.
Dan Balz, looking at those numbers, listening to Governor Rendell, Senator Daschle, first, will we have new primaries in Michigan and Florida?
MR. DAN BALZ: I think that's almost inevitable at this point, Tim. I think both sides have resigned themselves to the fact this is going to happen. Certainly Senator Clinton wants it to happen, and I think the Obama campaign has realized that there's no other way to do it. I think party leaders believe that's the best way to do it. Obviously, there are a lot of questions about the mechanics. How do you do it? When do you do it? Who pays for it? But I think people have come to the conclusion that these states have got to be heard from.
MR. RUSSERT: And it sounds like, from Governor, Governor Rendell, rich donors will be funding these primaries.
MR. BALZ: Well, it's interesting. Senator Nelson from Florida called Howard Dean, the chairman of the Democratic Party last week, to talk about what to do, and Governor Dean reminded him that the state parties are still able to raise soft money, these big unregulated contributions, which means wealthy people can give enormous amounts of money to try to fund these. Obviously the campaigns have a tremendous amount of money. They could put something up on their Internet sites and probably within a couple days raise a sufficient amount of money. So I'm not sure that the money's going to be a big obstacle.
MR. JOHN HARWOOD: And I think, Tim, the leverage that the Obama campaign may be overprocessed. You know, the Obama campaign much prefers caucuses to primaries. They dominate that forum. They're not the ones who need this. Hillary Clinton is the one who needs this. Barack Obama would love to run out the clock with his lead in pledged delegates, which so far Clinton hasn't been able to dent, and they may be able to hang tough for a more favorable, procedural venue.
MR. RUSSERT: Corporate sponsors?
MR. RON BROWNSTEIN: Yeah. Right.
MR. RUSSERT: Disneyland presents the Florida primary.
MR. BROWNSTEIN: Well, look, I think in the, in the--publicly, neither one wants to stand in the way. I think privately, the Obama campaign is much less enthusiastic, for obvious reasons, about the idea of revoting. And I, I think kind of a nightmare scenario here for Democrats is, you can imagine this going on for another three months and the fundamental situation not being very different at the end of that than it is today, which is that, when you look at all the polling, when you look at the results, we pretty much have a tie here. I mean, we have as close to a tie as you can get. And it's not only in the sense of the absolute total numbers, but in the reality that they have divided the party almost exactly in half with durable and distinct constituencies that recreate themselves from state to state. I said the other day, these last 11 states, you could almost run a computer simulation based on their underlying demographics and you'd probably have a pretty good idea who's going to win unless something breaks. Now, maybe something will break in May. But if it doesn't, Democrats could spend, I don't know, $100 million, $120 million, candidates beat each other up for three more months, and you end up in the same position you are today, with them having to make a very difficult choice between two candidates who've split the party almost exactly in half.
MR. RUSSERT: When...
MR. HARWOOD: With a computer simulation, you could do Michigan and Florida for free.
MR. BROWNSTEIN: You could do a computer simulation, wouldn't cost you anything.
MR. RUSSERT: In fact, the Obama campaign has suggested, "Let's just split the delegates 50/50 and call it a day and save the money." But the Clinton people, they don't think...
MS. GWEN IFILL: Oh, no. I don't think so.
MR. RUSSERT: Not going to be.
Gwen Ifill, this--the whole discussion of, if in fact Ron's right, and when you look at these races, Pennsylvania favors Clinton, but then a few weeks later you have, the same day, North Carolina, Indiana, which together have more delegates than Pennsylvania.
MS. IFILL: Yeah.
MR. RUSSERT: They opt for Obama. And you go back and forth. Obama finishes with more elected delegates, having won more contests and, say for argument's sake, more popular votes cumulative. Governor Rendell said you could still deny him the nomination by saying Hillary Clinton is a stronger general election candidate.
MS. IFILL: We got an e-mail from a viewer at "Washington Week," and all it said was, the subject line was Hillary vs. Obama, and the, and the body of it was: rock, paper, scissors. That's, that's all he said. I mean, what we, what we have here, when you have these deadlock races, it's something that's being run on, on the margins. So the margins are important. It seems sometimes like they get a little caught up in this back and forth that we all have to pay such close attention to during the week. But if you assume, as Ron says, that people are going to vote the way they're going to vote and that neither can poach on each other's territory very much--they, they know it, they ought to, and there ought to be a way to do it, but they can't do it. That means you have to fight around defining each other. So, for the Clinton people, it's defining him as someone you can't trust. He's not who he says he is. He is not who he says he is in Iraq. He's not who he says he is on NAFTA, which worked. He is not who he says he is on any of these things. And for the Obama people to say she is not who she says she is and to try to somehow broaden his base among lower-income voters, which she has not done so far, by emphasizing his roots as a Chicago organizer, that sort of thing. The problem with that, is, you know, you own--you, you, you know, you win, what? Eight, seven delegates in Wyoming. That's not bad. It raises the delegates she won last week, but it's not enough. You've got to keep fighting for all of those and, as quietly as it's kept, he needs the superdelegates as badly as she does.
MR. BROWNSTEIN: And, you know, what makes this even more complicated, if, if you assume the superdelegates, in the end, are going to make a kind of self-interested decision about who would be the best candidate in the fall for the party and for themselves, that is really not clear either. I mean, when you look at the polling of Clinton vs. McCain and Obama vs. McCain, Obama generally runs a little bit better right now, but that's static. We don't know how it'll hold up in a general election. And what makes it even more complicated is they have very different coalitions. I mean, there's evidence in the early polling that their strengths and weaknesses in the primaries project forward. So Obama gets more defection from Republicans, he does better among independents than Clinton, but he also in the early polling suffers more defection of himself--of his own to McCain among down-scale Democrats. And so you can't...
MS. IFILL: But he also...
MR. BROWNSTEIN: You're casting a forward bet on...
MS. IFILL: But he also does better among white voters than she does among black voters. So, turn that on himself.
MR. BROWNSTEIN: Right. So--right. It's all, it's all--you're making a bet of which candidate can better cure the problems they face in the spring by the time they get to the fall.
MR. HARWOOD: But here's the other thing we can't forget. If you look at House and Senate races, battleground House and Senate races, by and large, the people involved in those races think Obama at this point would be stronger at the top of the ticket because Hillary Clinton would--hostility to Hillary Clinton would mobilize Republicans. So that counts. I also think on Gwen's point about the margins, the size of the margins matters. And a Clinton campaign advisor told me it's important for us to get the pledge delegate lead by Obama down below 100. That's--they, they think that's a psychological shift that would be important.
MR. RUSSERT: It is interesting in the open seat, Dennis Hastert's Congressional seat in Illinois yesterday, the Democrat won, it's a seat 2-to-1 Republican. The Obama people are saying Obama spent a lot of time campaigning for this, a new congressman, that they used a television ad. And yet, when I said, "Did you really win the seat?" The Obama campaign said, "We just won another superdelegate." So it's all local, Dan.
MR. BALZ: All politics is local.
MR. RUSSERT: Dan Balz, this conversation I had with Governor Rendell into Gwen's point, if the Clinton campaign is trying to put a question mark over Barack Obama's head--"Is he ready?"--and yet still promote him as vice president, how do you do that?
MR. BALZ: Well, it's a very tricky thing, as, as Governor Rendell showed when you asked him those questions. It's a little difficult to make the argument that he's not ready and then say he ought to be vice president if she's the nominee. But, look, it's, it's clear that in Texas and Ohio, those arguments work. That red phone ad, that 3 a.m. phone ad, certainly had an impact in Texas. It raised questions about Senator Obama. It does go to a basic question that people have had about him from the beginning of the race, "How ready is he to step in as president?" He has shown himself in this campaign to be a very good candidate, and that is one measure that people take in terms of deciding is somebody tough enough, strong enough, resilient enough, smart enough to be able to handle the pressures of the presidency? But it's certainly an argument that she will make. What--as Gwen said, what the Obama campaign is going to try to do is raise doubts about just how qualified is she. What is her foreign policy experience? This is a line that's coming out of the Obama campaign very consistently in the last few days. Look...
MS. IFILL: And how transparent is she really?
MR. BALZ: That's right.
MR. RUSSERT: And to that, here's the centerpiece of the discussion the last couple of days. First was this headline in The Scotsman newspaper, "Hillary's a Monster." And here was the quote, "She's a monster, too--that's off the record--she is stooping to anything. The amount of deceit she has put forward is really unattractive." That was Samantha Power, chief foreign policy adviser to Barack Obama. She resigned.
Then we had the exchange over Hillary Clinton's tax returns. This was Senator Obama on his campaign airplane. Let's watch.
(Videotape, February 7, 2008)
SEN. OBAMA: I'll just say that I will--I've released my tax returns. That's been a policy I've maintained consistently. I think the American people deserve to know, you know, where you get your income from.
(End videotape)
MR. RUSSERT: To that request from that Obama campaign was this response from the Clinton campaign.
(Audiotape, March 6, 2008)
MR. HOWARD WOLFSON: I, for one, do not believe that imitating Ken Starr is the way to win a Democratic primary election for president.
(End audiotape)
MR. RUSSERT: John.
MR. HARWOOD: Well, look. On Samantha Power, that reflects the genuine feelings of a lot of the Obama team. They think that Hillary Clinton has played below the belt. They were on the verge of winning; it was taken away from them. They're very frustrated by that.
With regard to Howard, you know, that strong language is part of their attempt to put pressure on Obama, to try to draw the contrast as sharply as they can and, and say that these ethics offensives from the Barack Obama team are illegitimate. Strong words in a campaign. Unfortunate for Samantha Power that she's forced out of the campaign for something that is--was hyperbolic and...
MR. RUSSERT: But to raise Ken Starr, probably helpful in a Democratic primary because he was not particularly popular.
MR. HARWOOD: Sure.
MR. RUSSERT: But in a general election...
MS. IFILL: Except, except for, except for a small problem that a lot of these new voters don't really have the scars over--the healed-over scabs over Ken Starr that maybe some people who lived through a lot of this did.
MR. BROWNSTEIN: And they're not voting for Clinton, anyway.
MS. IFILL: And they're not--that's...
MR. BROWNSTEIN: They--I mean...
MS. IFILL: Well, no, that's not true, actually. A lot of new voters are voting...
MR. BROWNSTEIN: Well, but there, there are. But the, the...
MS. IFILL: But, but, but--let me just finish the thought. I, I think that one of the things that's interesting that's happening with this is that--the, the Samantha Power thing, the monster thing was a, a one-day dustup. She, she did lose the gig. But the truth is, what they were--what the Clinton people really seized on was this--something else she said to the BBC, which is the idea that maybe he wouldn't withdraw troops as he has promised. And they were able to leap on that and say that's part of a theme, he isn't what you think he is.
MR. RUSSERT: Let, let's, let's go to that graphic, we have it. Samantha Power, her comments on Iraq. Then I want to show you something else, someone else who briefed Senator Clinton said. But first, here's Samantha Power on Iraq: "You can't make a commitment in March of 2008 about what circumstances are going to be like in January 2009. [Obama] will of course not rely upon some plan that he's crafted as a presidential candidate or as a U.S. senator. He'll rely upon a plan--an operational plan--that he pulls together, in consultation with people who are on the ground, to whom he doesn't have daily access now."
And the Obama people responded by talking about this article in The New York Sun about Jack Keane, who was advising Hillary--not--excuse me, not advising, briefing Hillary Clinton. "A retired four-star general, Jack Keane, said when he briefed Mrs. Clinton in late 2006 and January 2007 on the counteroffensive strategy known as the surge, she `generally supported the surge strategy in the sense she wanted it to succeed but she was skeptical about its chances. I have no doubts whatsoever that if she were president in January '09 she would not act irresponsibly and issue orders to conduct an immediate withdrawal from Iraq, regardless of the consequences, and squander the gains that have been made.'"
So both campaigns are pointing to the other, saying, "They're not really serious about an immediate withdrawal."
MS. IFILL: It, it's true. And, and, and the Obama campaign, they admit that they have to stop making so many unforced errors, which is also true. But, but I--what they--I find it interesting when both candidates turn this debate back to Iraq, as--are they paying attention to the economy and the fact that 63,000 jobs were lost on Friday? And the polls would show that is number one and two, health care and the economy. It's understandable why the Obama people think there is some gain in reminding people that she voted for the war, but I'm beginning to wonder that, absent any new bad news out of Iraq, that is something that is useful.
MR. BALZ: Yeah. But I think that--I mean, I think certainly the Clinton campaign is very, very focused on the economy. It, it's interesting that the, the 3 a.m. telephone ad ran only in Texas.
MS. IFILL: Yeah.
MR. BALZ: They decided that the economy was such a dominant issue in, in Ohio...
MR. HARWOOD: Yes.
MR. BALZ:...they did not want to bring that issue directly in, they didn't want to spend money in, in Ohio.
MR. BROWNSTEIN: And even the Iraq dustup with, with Obama, they tried to tie it to the NAFTA question from last week about whether he was sending a different signal to Canada privately than he--what he was saying publicly, and all sort of adding up to, you know, do you really know who he is? Can you really--can you really trust him to keep his commitments? Samantha Power, brilliant journalist, fell victim to Michael Kinsley's law of gaffes. You know, in Washington a gaffe is saying what you really believe. And, and, and this is, as, as, you know, as I was saying before, I mean, this is kind of a nightmare scenario for Democrats, which is that it kind of goes in this direction for three months. I tend to think it'll calm down. The history of this campaign is it ratchets up and then they back off.
MS. IFILL: Mm-hmm.
MR. BROWNSTEIN: Last week you were in a position where Hillary Clinton literally had her back against the wall. I mean, I was down in San Antonio at the Alamo, you know. I mean, it was--that's the way it felt. And Obama, of course, had the chance to end the campaign. Now that opportunity isn't there for a while, and you would think the party leaders would be sending the message informally, "Tone this down. You're going--this is going to go on for a while."
MR. RUSSERT: I think...
MR. HARWOOD: Well, they are sending that message. Nancy Pelosi met with representatives of the Clinton campaign, chided them this week for that 3 a.m. ad. She didn't like that at all. And the Clinton people said, "We don't think he's been vetted. We're going to keep doing it."
But I think one reason it may tamp down somewhat is that in the Iraq dustup that we just talked about and NAFTA, they're both cases of fights that look big over something where they essentially have the same position.
MR. RUSSERT: The issue of transparency, Senator Clinton had first said that she would not release her tax returns until she became the nominee. Now she has pledged to release them on April 15th, one week before the Pennsylvania primary.
MR. BROWNSTEIN: Yes.
MR. RUSSERT: Yesterday Bill Bradley, former presidential candidate, supporter of Barack Obama, went on PBS and made some very strong charges about Bill Clinton and his finances. Let's listen.
(Videotape)
FMR. SEN. BILL BRADLEY: I think Barack Obama has a much stronger chance of beating John McCain in the general election. I think Hillary is flawed in many ways, and particularly if you look at her husband's unwillingness to release the names of the people who contributed to his presidential library. And the reason that's important, are there favors attached to $500,000 or a million dollar contributions. And what do I mean by favors? I mean pardons that are granted, investigations that are squelched, contracts that are awarded, regulations that are delayed. These are important questions, and the people deserve to know, and we deserve, as Democrats, to know before a nominee is selected because we don't want things to explode in a general election against John McCain.
(End videotape)
MR. RUSSERT: That was on Wednesday. On Friday, this article in USA Today: "Archivists block release of Clinton papers. Federal archivists at the Clinton Presidential Library are blocking the release of hundreds of pages of White House papers on pardons that the former president approved, including clemency for fugitive commodities trader Marc Rich.
"The archivists' decision, based on guidance provided by Bill Clinton that restricts the disclosure of advice he received from aides, prevents public scrutiny of documents that would shed light on how he decided which pardons to approve from hundreds of requests."
Dan Balz, you have the tax returns, you have the money given to the Clinton foundation, and you have the presidential papers. Are those three together going to be an issue the Obama campaign is going to use against Hillary Clinton effectively?
MR. BALZ: They will certainly use it. We'll see how effective they're able to, to make it. They--people have been going after her on that, and we remember from the Philadelphia debate that there were--debate about that night, should she release them, why isn't she releasing them. They're certainly going to go after all of those. I don't know in terms of voting issues how much these are important to people. You know, as Gwen said, you know, when you lose 63,000 jobs in a month, people have other concerns than about the release of papers.
MS. IFILL: Mm-hmm.
MR. BALZ: But nonetheless, it is a way for Obama to remind people of the bad aspects of the Clinton administrations, that he can make the argument, "I will change this country. I will turn the page." It is, it is core to part of his argument.
MR. BROWNSTEIN: Well...
MR. HARWOOD: And they're also trying to use it to rebut the idea that she's been vetted and he hasn't. Their point is that, yes, she may have been--there may have been news coverage of some of these things in the past, but not the way we're going to see it when Republicans put the pressure on in the fall.
MR. BROWNSTEIN: Is John McCain having a good morning here or what?
MR. HARWOOD: Yeah.
MR. BROWNSTEIN: I mean, somewhere sitting back--I mean, look, I mean, I, I agree with Dan. I mean, you know, if you look especially at who Hillary Clinton |
whom people say, with straight faces, “Kid’s a horse”).
Seguin and Hall will be two of the top young players to watch out for this season. Seguin’s play in Switzerland earned him the truly badass honor of wearing a helmet and jersey adorned by flames, which designates the team’s leading scorer. (We really need to bring this NBA Jam–inspired couture to the NHL, although I guess it might be a wee bit of a target for hard-of-sight enforcers.) He’s almost literally coming in hot. Hall, meanwhile, has suffered a few injuries since last year, including shoulder surgery this offseason, but has bounced back nicely: In his first game back playing for the AHL’s Oklahoma City Barons, he scored 38 seconds into his first shift; by the end of his 26 games with the team, he had racked up 34 points.
While these days the Boston Bruins can always be expected to be legitimate contenders out of the East, the Oilers are more of a question mark — but, like, the tantalizing kind, in a “What’s behind door no. 3?” way. Their blue line could use a clear leader, sure, and it’s hard to know whether you can rely on their goaltending, but the team will surely not be lacking for scoring — not with young guns like Hall, Ryan Nugent-Hopkins, and Jordan Eberle on their team (to say nothing of Nail Yakupov, the charming rookie who will probably remain with the team). And in the wide-open Northwest Division, anything’s possible. It won’t happen this year, but maybe somewhere down the road we’ll get a head-to-head look at the pride of the 2010 draft class in a seven-game series. Until then, we’ll just have to enjoy both players on their own.
There will be some fun competition for the Calder Trophy
One of the benefits of this shortened season is that we may not have to hear the words “rookie wall.” (I realize that writing that is like mentioning a shutout mid-game.) And while it’s not clear which teams will opt to burn a year of their relatively inexpensive entry-level contracts with rookie players for a 48-game season, there will be plenty of new faces who will get a shot. Most young prospects have been invited to camp while in the swing of their seasons, whether they’ve been playing in the CHL, AHL, or overseas.
It’s widely expected that Jonathan Huberdeau of the Florida Panthers will make the club’s roster; in one of those “re-evaluate how old you are” pieces of news, he’s been skating on a practice line with the elderly Alexei Kovalev! (Obligatory AK27 troll doll video here!) Tyler Seguin had good advice for defensive prospect Dougie Hamilton: “I’d tell him to delete his Twitter for 1st little bit and not even look at it.” The St. Louis Blues have been looking forward to Russian Vladimir Tarasenko joining them since they drafted him in 2010. Minnesota Wild supporters have been salivating about young Finn Mikael Granlund, though to him even the most rabid of NHL fans ain’t no thang — he’s used to being treated “a little bit like Lennon and McCartney walking in the streets” when he’s in his native country, his agent Todd Diamond said in May.
The Edmonton Oilers’ Justin Schultz, who failed to sign an entry-level deal with the Anaheim Ducks and was courted by numerous teams this summer, has been impressive in AHL play with 48 points in 34 games. The Buffalo Sabres are currently weighing whether to play Mikhail Grigorenko (after seeing him at the World Junior Championships, I think they should — he played like a man among boys, the silly but won’t-go-away rumor being that maybe he is one.) The anticipation in Calgary for a kid named Sven Baertschi prompted one Calgary Herald writer to describe the local sentiment as such:
Some folks hereabouts fervently believe if you gave Sven Baertschi a turnip, a loaf of day-old bread and a head of lettuce he could whip up a repaste fit for a visiting foreign dignitary. Or hand him an easel, a palette and, voila!, a canvas worthy of a prominent nail in the Musee d’Orsay.
Not all of the new guys were born in the (deep breath) ’90s. One older player — he’s 26 — who’s been garnering attention is the Detroit Red Wings’ Damien Brunner, who made a name for himself by leading the Swiss league with 25 goals and 57 points in just 33 games this season. Even more enticing: He was playing alongside Henrik Zetterberg, the newly named Red Wings captain. Head coach Mike Babcock is considering pairing the two with Pavel Datsyuk. Not a bad welcome to the league.
The Eastern Conference: engagements, beach yoga, brothers reunited, and more!
Could this season mark the return of the Alexander Ovechkin we all once knew and loved? (Well, those of us who weren’t Penguins fans in the mid-aughts, that is.) These days Ovi is a newly announced Olympic torchbearer as well as a happily engaged man, having recently proposed to his tennis-star girlfriend, Maria Kirilenko. What’s more, he may be more simpatico with new head coach Adam Oates than he was with Bruce Boudreau at the end of his tenure or with Dale Hunter after that. “I think Adam will find the key to Alex Ovechkin’s soul,” Oates’s former college coach told the Washington Times. Ovechkin added: “I talk only one time to Dale all year. Right now I talk to Oatesy almost every day.” All together now: awwwww.
Fun bulletin board material from zany Ottawa Senators self-described “owner-fan” Eugene Melnyk: “We saw who won the Stanley Cup last year, and many of [our] players thought we were a much better team.” Oh, it’s so on.
While their defensive corps remains questionable, the Carolina Hurricanes certainly added a lot of potential offensive firepower this offseason with their draft-day trade for Jordan Staal (who learned the news during his own wedding and now joins his brother Eric on the team) and their one-year signing of Alexander Semin (a move I quite liked). Combined with the reliable play of goaltender Cam Ward and a cache of young talent that includes 2011 Calder winner Jeff Skinner and 20-year-old American defenseman Justin Faulk (who recorded 24 points in 31 games with the Charlotte Checkers of the AHL), the Hurricanes should battle for the Southeast Division.
Playing (and training) in a “non-traditional market”? Turns out it’s not bad. Not bad at all. That second link is like Tampa Bay hockey Stonehenge.
It’s expected that the Montreal Canadiens will find a way to come to a contractual agreement with brash and lovable defenseman P.K. Subban, but for how much? While Subban’s agent feels his comparables include guys like Jordan Eberle, Taylor Hall, Jeff Skinner, and Tyler Seguin — all of whom make somewhere in the neighborhood of $6 million over six or seven years — the Canadiens are offering somewhere more in the $4 million range. With the season just days away, we’ll see who cracks first.
The Western Conference: egregious predictions, contract disputes, and more!
I mentioned my (probably foolish) Blue Jackets bet above, and here’s why I’m bullish: There was no team that had worse luck over the last season than Columbus; everything that could have gone wrong most certainly did. From the eight-game suspension of James Wisniewski that opened last season to Jeff Carter’s early injury (and late sulking); from the loss of the no. 1 overall pick when the Edmonton Oilers won the lottery to the subsequent injury to Ryan Murray, whom they picked second overall; from the Rick Nash sweepstakes drama to the cancellation of the planned All-Star Game in Columbus, it’s been one damn thing after another. This can’t possibly keep happening, can it?! (This is my own personal version of karma sabermetrics.) And the Blue Jackets have more than a few things going for them: a lunchpail group fronted by a hungry Brandon Dubinsky, who, after a mediocre year in New York, will undoubtedly have something to prove; the addition of John Davidson, who helped turn around the St. Louis Blues as the president of hockey operations; a serviceable new goalie in Sergei Bobrovsky; Ewing Theory potential; and the comfort of low expectations. Think of it this way: If you’re the St. Louis Blues and you play Detroit, Chicago, and then Columbus in the span of four nights, which game might you be overlooking? That might be the bleakest reason for optimism, but with this team we’ll take whatever we can scrounge up.The final Halo 3 Easter Egg has been found seven years after the game's original release, according to TeamBeyond.net.
Bungie first hinted at the existence of the Easter Egg in 2012 when the company's Jon Cable confirmed he found it in the game's code, noting it only rears its head on a specific day.
Programmer Adrian Perez later revealed the Easter Egg was a loading screen dedicated to his wife as a birthday gift.
Now the process for accessing the Easter Egg has finally been worked out, according to users at TeamBeyond. According to the website, if you press down on both thumbsticks during the loading screen on Dec. 25, you will be shown a wider view of the Halo ring. Written on the ring's surface is "Happy Birthday Lauren!"
You can check it out in the video below.Don't miss this underrated '90s gem getting a second life from the folks at Scream Factory.
The loss of most video rental stores has robbed filmgoers of the joy of discovery.
Sure, we can still scroll through titles on streaming devices and choose options that look “watchable.” What we can’t replace is that tangible, concentrated search at a brick and mortar shop. We’d crane our neck and search the shelves for titles, eye-catching cover art and random sleepers we’ve never heard of for as long as the store would stay open.
I used to get a crick in my neck and an ache in my thighs for the long durations (sometimes hours) I’d spend in a video store. I’d scan through titles as though searching for the Lost Ark itself.
Video stores are where I discovered my love for Jean-Luc Godard (it began with his “Contempt”), and experienced cult classics I was too young to see the first time (like “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” and “Eraserhead”).
I found countless works, ranging from sublime to just silly, that I’d never heard of before.
Dan O’Bannon’s “The Resurrected [Blu-ray] ” is one of those movies I recall looking back at me from its shelf at the long-gone Videoland & TV where I used to work. Until a week ago, I never saw it and can’t recall a former customer who had. It’s one of those unassuming horror movie sleepers that deserves better than remaining an obscure curiosity item.
John March, a low rent private eye (played by prolific character actor John Terry) is hired by Claire, a femme fatale (Jane Sibbett of “Friends” and “Herman’s Head” fame), to investigate her husband. Unlike most neo noir thrillers, Claire’s scientist husband (Chris Sarandon) isn’t committing infidelity but claims to be working on a life-altering project. He vanishes for long hours into the night and is obsessed with his latest project.
Before long, corpses and slimy monsters start to pile up.
“The Resurrected” is based on H.P. Lovecraft’s “The Case of Charles Dexter Ward” and directed by Dan O’Bannon, solid genre pedigree that the film certainly lives up to.
RELATED: Why ‘Eyes Wide Shut’ Caused a College Commotion
The introductory scenes and first two acts are dialog-driven and straightforward. Anyone who saw this and expected cheap thrills would be surprised by how much exposition, mood-building and conversation there is. While never boring, O’Bannon trusts that horror fans will be patient, absorb Lovecraft’s intricately written tale and be ready when it finally goes all-out bananas … which it finally does.
Following his cult favorite, “The Return of the Living Dead,” O’Bannon directs this with relative restraint. He carefully paces the narrative building of the first two acts before going full-tilt crazy in the grand finale. While not as unhinged as his prior film, this has an odd but charming blend of a classy, wink-free serving of the outrageous that mirrors the tonally similar (if far more elaborate) “Lifeforce,” which O’Bannon wrote.
For all the impressively grotesque monsters and flashes of gore, Sarandon is the film's best special effect. Click To Tweet
It can be argued that a definitive adaptation of Lovecraft has yet to appear, as his enormously influential “At The Mountains of Madness” and “The Call of Cthulu” have never been made into films.
Stuart Gordon’s “Re-Animator” and “From Beyond” are perhaps the most famous and certainly the most outrageous Lovecraft films, though John Carpenter’s quasi-Lovecraft homage, “In The Mouth of Madness,” also bears mentioning.
Other Lovecraft stories-turned-films have been middling, with either budgetary restrictions or unfaithful screenplays doing a disservice to the scope of the author’s vision. O’Bannon’s film is a low budget B-movie, but it’s done with finesse and maximizes every opportunity it has to entertain and jolt its audience.
Terry and Sibbett are pretty good in the leads and Ray Romanus (of “Fast Times At Ridgemont High” fame) provides goofy comic relief as March’s right hand man. However, the film belongs to Sarandon, who plays the mysterious doctor with visible relish. Following his iconic turns in “Fright Night” and “The Princess Bride,” Sarandon gives real theatrical panache to his character. For all the impressively grotesque monsters and flashes of gore, Sarandon is the film’s best special effect.
“The Resurrected [Blu-ray] ” by Scream Factory is a true gift for the film’s fanbase, as well as first-timers who will be curious as to the film’s production history after an initial view. Once again Scream Factory delivers a wealth of extras for a title few will remember. The company affectionately elevates the status of a forgotten B-movie by telling its extensive production history for the first time.
In addition to a nice 2K clean-up of the original print, there are great new interview with Sarandon, Sibbett, screenwriter Brent Friedman, composer Richard Band, FX artist Todd Masters and production designer Brent Thomas. They praise the late O’Bannon (who I’ve never seen filmed or photographed without wearing a bow tie) and recall the film’s troubled production.
The best of the interviews actually comes from S.T. Joshi, author of “I Am Providence: The Life and Time of H.P Lovecraft.” With an assist from old photos, Joshi basically sits and tells us Lovecraft’s story and its surprisingly engaging and thorough just to hear him give it to us straight.
There’s also the U.S. and Japanese trailer, a photo gallery and deleted/extended scenes that offer more explicit gore. We also have footage of none other than Bruce Campbell introducing Quentin Tarantino at the Fangoria Chainsaw Awards to give O’Bannon a statue for making this film!
FAST FACT: Stephen King once called H.P. Lovecraft “the twentieth century’s greatest practitioner of the classic horror tale.”
Finally, the feature-length commentary (by Romanus, Friedman, Masters and the producers) is pretty good and offers some fun anecdotes. Overall, this is a top-shelf presentation of an undeservedly forgotten horror sleeper.
With its effective blend of detective thriller, fantasy and brutal horror, O’Bannon’s film is easy to recommend to horror fans. It may be an odd thing to declare but it’s true: “The Resurrected” cares about its audience.Someone is Testing Methods for Taking Down the Entire Internet
Imagine one fine sunny day you wake up, have your coffee and try to log into Facebook or Gmail and find that you can’t reach it. You immediately try to tweet about it but find Twitter is also not available! You then call up your friends/colleagues and find out that they are also facing a similar situation. You call a friend based in Australia, all the way from the United States, and find out that he/she is also not able to access any website! Is this doomsday possible!
Yes according to security researcher, Bruce Schneier. In fact, Schneier says that some unknown entity is already working on bringing down the whole Internet. Schneier in an essay last month revealed that companies responsible for the basic infrastructure of the Internet are experiencing an escalating series of coordinated attacks that appear designed to test the defenses of its most critical elements.
Based on his studies, he says that these escalated attacks are just a primer to the full-fledged attack to take down the entire Internet backbone and hurl the cyber world into chaos. Though Schneier has identified a pattern in the ongoing attacks, he has not been able to identify the unknown entity which is behind such attacks. He says that, based on the scale of the attacks, the most likely culprit is a single large state cyber warfare unit, with China at the top of the list of suspects.
Schneier says that the ultimate goal of such an entity is to enforce a “global blackout of all websites and e-mail addresses in the most common top-level domains.”
We can’t take Schneier words lightly as he knows what he is speaking about. Schneier is the CTO of IBM’s Resilient and a fellow at Harvard’s Berkman Center so his research comes from vast bit of experience.
Schneier says that he notice a pattern in the recent attacks which were standard sized, though huge, DDoS attacks —blasts of data designed to overwhelm servers could be in the offing. What distinguished them was their methodically escalating nature. The attacks, described by sources speaking to Schneier anonymously, are coming in slowly mounting waves, forcing companies to “demonstrate their defense capabilities for the attacker.”
His inside findings align with a public report from domain registrar Verisign, which says that DDoS attacks have “continued to become more frequent, persistent, and complex.” Schneier says that the unknown entity is also testing out non-DDoS attacks, including attempts to tamper with Internet addresses and routing.
Schneier writes that this “doesn’t seem like something an activist, criminal, or researcher would do,” and that the scale of the probes suggests the involvement of a state. Though he doesn’t go into much detail, he says the “data I see suggests China, an assessment shared by the people I spoke with.”
Graham Templeton from ExtremeTech analysed Schneier’s research and pointed out that the entity who is trying out such attacks has to have a backup plan ready so that its own Internet network doesn’t collapse during such a mass attack. What makes China a probable candidate for such a weapon of cyber mass destruction is that that it along with Russia has made significant strides in building systems that would resist any such mass takedown. Templeton argues that these tests were “meant to be seen,” for much the same reason that nations in the past have made their nuclear weapons and missile tests highly visible—as a means of flexing global power by demonstrating the ability to blow it all up.
In case you wake up one day to find out that the Internet in the entire world has collapsed like Schneier says, you know whom to blame.Doctor Who comes back for a run of six episodes starting this weekend, and our hopes are high. If nothing else, we know there will be witty dialogue, insanely cute actors, and mind-bending plots. But we're hoping for more than that.
Because these six episodes aren't just the conclusion of Who season six — they're the culmination of two years of open-ended storytelling. And we're hoping it all pays off. Here's our wishlist for season 6.5. With spoilers for everything that's already aired...
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Doctor Who's never seen anything like Steven Moffat's tenure as showrunner. Not just because of the long-running storylines that go back to the Tennant era, with questions piled on questions. Not just because of the complex plotting that requires you to keep track of multiple timelines. Not just because of the profusion of weirdly metaphysical monsters. But also because it's the most relationship-oriented the show's ever been.
This is really the story of two couples, Amy and Rory, and River and the Doctor, and everything else is absolutely subordinate to that. Think about it: There were really only four characters in "The Big Bang," the fifth-season finale, and any guest stars were kept very much to the sidelines. The only monster/enemy in that episode was a half-petrified Dalek that showed up for a few minutes. For all Russell T. Davies' much-vaunted emphasis on relationships, he never would have dared give us a season finale in which there are no other major characters besides the regulars.
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So yeah, Moffat is trying something fiendishly ambitious here. And he's the best there is at what he does. Partly because of those things, we're going to ask a lot of him.
Here's what we'd like to see in the next six episodes:
1) Some answers.
This one is sort of a gimme. The list of mysteries in Moffat's huge sweeping storyline is almost as long as Romana's full name. There's the DIY TARDIS in the attic of James Corden's house, which turned up again in the tunnels under Florida. There's the fact that the Silence (apparently) made the TARDIS blow up and cracked the universe. There's the death of the Future Doctor. Plus, why the eyepatch lady is at war with him, and how she's connected to the Silence. And that's just the tip of the iceberg. We've been promised loads of answers, and let's hope it all forms a reasonably coherent picture at the end of the day. Or at the very least, a newer, better puzzle.
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2) River Song mentioning an adventure she had on her own.
The Doctor has adventures without River Song all the time, why shouldn't she have some without him? Just an off-hand reference, that's all I want. Like, "There was the planet of the giant hummingbirds. Oh wait, you weren't there for that one." I think that's all I'm waiting for, to seal the deal on River Song being one of my favorite Who characters ever. She's already close to being the female counterpart to Captain Jack. She's brilliant, stylish, funny, flirty and a little bit tragic — now all she has to be is independent, and she's my hero forever.
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3) The return of Awesome Amy
Amy Pond was a really fun character when she started — she was cute and demented and kept challenging the Doctor all the time. You can especially see it in "Flesh and Stone," which was the first episode that Karen Gillan actually filmed. Amy is being hyper and getting in the Doctor's face over and over, like a crazed weasel. Lately, she's receded into the shadows as Rory has gotten more awesome — and in fact, her most recent stint was as a damsel in distress. How about seeing more of Amy's take-charge side again? And more of her arc would be nice, too — she had the beginnings of a nice arc in season five, with her trust issues and her realizing that she can't stand to lose Rory. But I feel like that's gotten lost lately, and we're just getting one note from her: that she really does love Rory and not the Doctor. Message received!
4) Some more naked emotion from Matt Smith
And by "naked," I don't mean that we need to have another Matt Smith shower scene — although that would be welcome too. But it's more that we need to feel more from Matt Smith's Doctor. He's already one of my two or three favorite Doctors, for his humor and cleverness, and the way he can make Moffat's off-beat dialogue sparkle. But when I think of my favorite Eleventh Doctor moments, they're the ones where he lets some passion shine through. Like his brief moment of rage in "The Beast Below." His warmth and sadness in his one Sarah Jane Adventures appearance, written by Russell T. Davies. His compassion in "Vincent and the Doctor." And his anger, followed by helplessness, in "The Doctor's Wife." I know that Matt Smith can deliver a strong emotional performance, because I've seen it. But I haven't felt it in a lot of Moffat's recent scripts, where any brief moments of emotion are glossed over, or rushed through, or just distilled into a brief shot of the Doctor looking sadly into the distance before snapping out of it. Given that Moffat's whole story arc is about relationships and feelings (see above), we need to feel this.
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5) Dare to go from A to B occasionally.
It's gotten clearer that Moffat often jumps from A to Q and then back to C, in his plotting, because it's fun and clever, and we enjoy it. But sometimes, when you have a tough moment — OMG, Amy has just shot a little child! — you need to show us what happens next, instead of flashing a cue card that says "six months later." Moffat is the master of sleight of hand, moving items around so fast that we can't follow the speedy motion, and he loves to introduce new random elements just as we're reeling from the last big reveal. But sometimes this backfires: the lesbian Victorian cannibal Silurian and the Sontaran nurse were my favorite things in "A Good Man Goes to War," but they were also a huge distraction from dealing with the fact that Amy had been a prisoner for months and she'd been forced to give birth in a sterile white room. Presumably after the Doctor melted Rory's wife into a pile of snot, the two of them had a difficult conversation — which we never got to see. I'm not saying we need all mopeyness all the time, like RTD gave us, but sometimes when you go from A to Q to C, you miss B. And B might help to set up what happens later.
Moffat is the master of writing great character moments, but as Kay Reindl points out, oftentimes those moments don't feel like they add up to an arc — just a collection of nice moments. Sometimes it would be nice to see more of a progression, which requires seeing the consequences, and each moment after the last.
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6) A moral to the fairy-tale
Season five was very much fairy-tale-themed, something which seems to be less in evidence so far in season six. And there were a lot of interesting fairy-tale elements thrown into the mix: the girl who waits all night for a wizard to come back, only to have him reappear years later. A crack in the bedroom wall which grows to swallow up everyone the girl cares about. A boy who waits 2,000 years for the girl to come back to him, and thus earns the right to marry her. A little girl who believes in stars when nobody else does, and thus is able to help bring herself back to life. A hero who gives himself up to oblivion, only to be saved by the girl's belief in him after everyone else has forgotten him. And so on. Rewatching these episodes, those elements come out more strongly, and a running theme seems to be the power of faith, and memory. The Crack makes you forget, but you can overcome it by having faith.
But although "The Big Bang" contains some of Moffat's cleverest writing and some of Matt Smith's most brilliant moments, I feel like it stops short of making a real statement — maybe because in the end, Amy bringing the Doctor back is too quick and painless. Or maybe just because there's so much going on in it, and there's no villain in the episode. In any case, I feel like now that Moffat has layered all of season six's complicated family melodrama on top of season five's fairy-tale intricacy, we sort of need to get a Statement. A moral to the fairy tale.
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7) Pick a villain.
I think that's the other thing Moffat's needed all along — a strong villain, to anchor all of this. If you're going to have one single ongoing storyline, lasting more than two years, then you need a single villain to go with it. A Voldemort. A Darth Vader. I was really excited when the Silence turned up at the start of season six, because they seemed to be the over-arching nemesis the Crack storyline had needed to reveal. And then they were vanquished relatively easily, and suddenly there was Madame Kovarian with her eyepatch and her one leering eye. (We glimpsed her in the opening few episodes, but only briefly.) Part of what makes a satisfying conclusion is watching a supreme villain that you've grown to loathe over the course of a year or two finally get what's coming to them. Like watching Buffy finally beat the crap out of Glory at the end of Buffy season five. I'm really hoping that the Silence, or Madame Kovarian, or someone really, gets promoted to main villain status, so there's a baddie for all this to revolve around.
Moffat is one of the most talented, funniest, creepiest writers ever to script Doctor Who. Here's hoping the conclusion of season six pays off all of our colossal anticipation, and gives us what we've always wanted from him.INTRODUCTION
Since the euro crisis began, many have seen the German economy as the model for the rest of Europe to emulate. In particular, the reforms of Chancellor Gerhard Schröder are credited with laying the ground work for current German economic success and global competitiveness by tackling an excessive welfare state and sclerotic labour market.
But research in a new ECFR paper by Sebastian Dullien - A German model for Europe? - suggests this argument is wrong. Sebastian says Germany’s current strength comes from wage restraint and pressure on education and research and development – a formula that would harm other European economies if it was applied more widely.
The German approach has involved cuts to research and development, and to education – if this is copied elsewhere it would result in a lower rate of technological progress, harming long-term growth.
Emulating Germany’s deflationary wage policy across Europe would reduce aggregate demand at a time when the EU’s companies are looking for customers.
Widespread wage restraint could also lead to a mutually destructive “beggar thy neighbour” situation in Europe, with each country holding down earnings in an attempt to make their own economies more competitive.
“The German model cannot be a blueprint for Europe. Instead of trying to copy the German approach as a whole, European leaders should carefully examine which of the elements of German reforms could actually increase productivity, output, and employment without detrimental effects on the partners or on long-term growth” - Sebastian DullienNPR Battleground Map: Clinton Tide Rises Again
After the first presidential debate and heading into Round 2 on Sunday, Hillary Clinton has taken what appears to be a firm lead over Donald Trump.
According to the latest NPR Battleground Map, the Democrat once again clears 270 electoral votes, the threshold needed to be president, with just the states leaning in her direction.
She would win the presidency at this point without any of the tossups, states that could go to either Clinton or Trump. That means Clinton could win without Florida, North Carolina, Nevada and Arizona (the tossups).
It also means she would win without places that are now leaning toward Trump and were former tossups — Ohio, Iowa and two electoral votes between Nebraska and Maine which, unlike other states, split their electoral votes partially by congressional district. Those happen to all be places where the demographics favor Trump — older, whiter and with a smaller immigrant population.
Just the polls... Clinton expands to more than 300 electoral votes
Highlighting how much wider Clinton's path to the White House is — and how much the country may be at a demographic inflection point — Clinton could win in an electoral landslide with more than 300 electoral votes even without those states now leaning toward Trump.
Just based on the polls, Clinton's lead has expanded significantly from last month. It went from 287-251 to 322-216 electoral votes.
A big caveat, though: A lot of that is because Florida moved in Clinton's direction. And based on an average of the polls, Clinton is just about a percentage point ahead of Trump there — well within the margin of error. It's equally razor-tight in North Carolina and Nevada, which have also moved slightly in Clinton's favor.
There is an argument that if this is a high-water mark for Clinton after the first debate, a better debate for Trump could move those states back.
Those three add up to 50 electoral votes. But if Trump were to win all of them, he'd still be four electoral votes short of a majority. He'd need one more — New Hampshire? Pennsylvania? Colorado? New Hampshire's demographics might favor Trump, but polling has shown Clinton with — so far — a durable lead there.Vic v Qld v NSW: who’s the winner of the first-term governments?
Three Coalition premiers are running the east coast states. A Crikey analysis of their economies shows Barry O'Farrell is streets ahead, while Victoria marks time and Queensland is in the doldrums.
The Barry O'Farrell government in NSW has significantly lifted the state's economic performance since coming to office, in contrast to its conservative Victorian and Queensland counterparts, a range of economic indicators show. In the death throes of Ted Baillieu's premiership, the Victorian government was forced to reject claims the state was in recession after national accounts figures for the December quarter showed state final demand (which doesn't include production inputs or exports) contracting by 0.7%, on top of a 0.4% fall in the September quarter. However, multiple indicators drawn from ABS economic data show it is the Coalition government in Sydney that has topped the economic honours on the east coast. In the December quarter national accounts, NSW final demand grew at 0.4% and has averaged 0.6% growth per quarter since O'Farrell came to office -- matching the performance of the NSW economy in the last year of the Keneally government. However, Victoria's final demand has averaged just 0.3% per quarter, compared with 1.1% a quarter in the last year of the John Brumby government. In Queensland, where final state demand fell to 0.2% growth in the December quarter, it has averaged 0.5% per quarter in the three quarters after Campbell Newman was elected, compared with 2.3% per quarter in the last year of the Anna Bligh government. It's a very similar story on employment. Under O'Farrell, unemployment in NSW has fallen in trend terms from 5.5% to 5.1%, driven by jobs growth of 60,000 jobs (again, trend numbers) since he was elected, although under the last year of Labor 100,000 jobs were created. However, the participation rate in NSW has held more or less steady since March 2011. In Victoria, the Baillieu government oversaw a rise in unemployment from 5.4% to 5.7%, with only 40,000 jobs created since the end of 2010, compared with 79,000 in the last year of the Brumby government. Worse, Victoria's unemployment rate has only been held down by a significant fall in participation, of 1.1 points. But Newman's performance has been worse still -- just 8000 jobs have been created in Queensland in trend terms since his government was elected, compared with 27,000 in the final year of the Bligh government (though that's a full year compared with just 10 months for Newman's government). Unemployment has risen 0.3 points to 5.8% off a 0.7-point fall in participation. Unemployment in Queensland has been particularly affected by the Newman government's public service cuts -- the number of both public servants and medical professionals has fallen significantly in the past nine months, whereas their numbers have stayed the same or increased slightly in NSW and Victoria. In retail sales, despite the rise (and, now, fall) of the "cautious consumer", retail sales growth has averaged 1.4% per month since the O'Farrell government was elected, compared with 1.3% per month in the final year of the Kristina Keneally government. In Victoria, however, retail sales fell from a healthy 4% per month growth in the last year of Labor to 1.2% under the Baillieu government, including several quarters of negative or flat growth. And in Queensland, retail sales growth has fallen from an average of 3.8% growth per month in the last year of Labor to 3% a month under Newman. In commercial finance, monthly investment has increased by nearly 6% on average under the Baillieu government from the last year of his predecessor, and about 5% under the O'Farrell government. But in Queensland, monthly average commercial finance commitments have actually fallen by 4.5%. As Australia's largest state economy, the performance of NSW is critical to Australia's overall economic performance. O'Farrell has got the state moving again from its dark times under Labor. The performance of the Liberal government in Victoria, however, is decidedly mixed, and Campbell Newman has been taking Queensland backwards.Tune in to this video of the four baby lion cubs for your daily cuteness quotient. They were born Nov. 8 in Seattle's Woodland Park Zoo.
The cubs are the first litter born to South African lion mother, Adia, 3, and father, Hubert, 13. They're also the first litter born at the zoo since 1991.
The now three-week-old cubs are not ready for public viewing yet, as the zoo is trying to allow plenty of family bonding time in a quieter environment.
"We've been monitoring them the last few weeks by video camera," Martin Ramirez, the zoo's mammal curator, told ABCNews.com. "By using the video, we've been able to tell the mother is taking great care of them. There was one cub early on that was making us very nervous, though.
"She's a first-time mom, and a typical litter size for a first-time mom is two. We were all really excited when she had the one, and then she had two, and then three came along, and we were like 'O.K., wow,' and then the fourth one came along |
president Larry Lucchino, who pushed for Valentine’s hiring over the objections of new GM Ben Cherington last offseason, told WEEI yesterday Valentine was safe for the season. But if a roster in hate with its current manager does not get out of its doldrums — fourth place and under.500 — then there would seem more likelihood Kevin Youkilis and Valentine would sing “Kumbaya” while holding hands on the mound at Fenway Park than that Valentine will return next season.
Rumors persist the Red Sox want to make their former pitching coach, John Farrell, manager. The little problem is that Farrell is in his second year as Toronto’s skipper and under contract.
I am not here to fire Valentine, a man I like and think had the thinnest possible chance for success in a soap-opera environment poisoned well before his arrival. But, fair or not, if he truly is one and done, then my managerial suggestion for Boston would be Jason Varitek. He would allow the Red Sox to co-opt the idea of their main rival while honoring what is in vogue in the sport right now.
Like Joe Girardi was for the Yankees, Varitek is a former championship catcher for the Red Sox. So he comes with built-in credibility within this group. Look we can say the Red Sox players need to look in the mirror and not the manager’s office for the problem. But the reality is this core is coming back again next season and, if that is the case, the Red Sox are going to need to find someone who commands instant respect and who can begin to re-establish sanctity and sanity within what has become a Wild West baseball setting. Varitek should have that immediately with this group because it is so familiar with his preparation, professionalism and sturdiness as a teammate.
In the past, you would dismiss someone who was just a year out of the game with no professional managing experience. But the success this year Robin Ventura of the White Sox and the Cardinals’ Mike Matheny — both returning to old haunts as first-time-anywhere managers — is changing the rules. In addition, Don Mattingly is having great success with the Dodgers after never previously managing.
Varitek fits the mold of someone you believe could blend leadership, seriousness of purpose and the ability to communicate with today’s players. He also has institutional memory of when the Red Sox were a model franchise and not a group ready to turn each manager into “Shark Week” chum. The Red Sox are an example of how quickly the model — and reputations — can collapse.
Consider just a year ago today the Red Sox were only a half-game behind the Yankees for both the division lead and the AL’s best record. Theo Epstein was still the GM and viewed as a genius architect, not someone who fled and left a bunch of horror-show contracts in his wake. Francona was still Torre-esque, not someone who lost the clubhouse. Dustin Pedroia was an unquestioned leader, not a centerpiece of a mutiny. Jacoby Ellsbury was an MVP candidate, not a guy who cannot stay consistently healthy.
And Josh Beckett, Jon Lester and John Lackey — all of whom had won decisive games in the World Series — were big-game guys you could trust in huge moments, not beer-drinking, fried-chicken eating insubordinates.
About the only high-profile guy currently in the Red Sox employ who has not had his reputation obliterated is Bobby Valentine, but only because he came in so widely disliked and distrusted. Rightly or wrongly, he has not shaken that in three-quarters of a season. It very well could cost him his last best shot as a major league manager after one season. If that occurs, Boston must think about countering low-morale with high-Tek.
Boras’ threat clearly a factor in babying Strasburg
Scott Boras insisted in a phone call yesterday, “I have never discussed with [Nationals] GM Mike Rizzo what to do with Stephen Strasburg.” But he then painted a picture in which he was, at the very least, a co-conspirator in the controversial decision to shut down the Washington phenom at about 160 innings this year — well short of the playoffs.
From the day Strasburg signed as the first overall pick, Boras, as his representative, said he told Nationals leadership it was important to protect an asset “whose body was not fully matured at 20.” Then after Strasburg’s Tommy John surgery, Boras armed Rizzo with reams of information indicating overburdening pitchers 23 and under greatly increases the risk of injury and strongly stated the organization should follow the conservative protocols of Dr. Lewis Yocum, who not only performed the operation, but has been at the vanguard of studying the impact of pitching on the arm.
If that were not enough, this certainly sounds like an “or else” threat about what would happen if the Nationals disregarded the counsel and Strasburg busted: “There is an ethical and legal consideration here,” Boras said. “Who is not going to follow expert medical advice? What kind of liability do you take on to ignore that?”
Boras has been obsessed with this since the Braves pushed his client, Steve Avery, to throw 828 1/3 innings between the regular and postseasons through his age-23 campaign — the eighth-highest total in that age group during the expansion (post 1969) era. Avery never had a high-caliber season again and was done at 29. Now some of the pitchers high on that list — such as Bert Blyleven, Felix Hernandez and CC Sabathia — have gone on to thrive and have high-level health. But the list is filled with a boatload of cautionary tales such as Dwight Gooden, Bret Saberhagen, Don Gullett, Jeremy Bonderman and Alex Fernandez.
“I just keep going back to Steve Avery,” Boras said. “The data was not there, the research was not there when Steve pitched. We have now done that research. We share it with teams. Is it exact? No. But there is greater success doing it this way [being cautious with young pitchers such as Strasburg].”Tesla cars were lined up near the Nevada Capitol last year during the announcement that the carmaker will build a battery factory near Reno. (Photo: RGJ file)
Tesla Motors launched some fireworks of its own during the Fourth of July Weekend, announcing record sales for the second quarter of 2015.
Tesla's 11,507 sales from April to June represents a 52 percent jump from the same period last year. It is also a 14.7 percent increase over the previous record set during the first quarter. The company sold 10,030 cars from January to March, up 55 percent from the first quarter of 2014.
Total sales for the year place Tesla at less than half of its goal of selling 55,000 vehicles this year. In addition to the company's Model S vehicles, the goal will include sales of the upcoming Model X SUV. The company is eyeing a late third-quarter release for the new vehicle, according to a letter to shareholders sent out in May.
Increasing production also was a big emphasis for the company in its shareholder letter. During an appearance at the Detroit Auto Show earlier this year, Tesla CEO Elon Musk says demand for the company's vehicles still outstrips supply.
"We're demand constrained," Musk said. "I wish we weren't but we are."
One factor in the production equation is battery pack manufacturing, which Tesla aims to address with the Gigafactory 1 plant being built just east of Reno-Sparks. The plant is scheduled to start manufacturing cells and modules in 2016 and is expected to boost battery production while also bringing costs down. In addition to producing battery backs for Tesla' vehicles, the gigafactory will also manufacture batteries for the company's new Tesla Energy line of residential and commercial storage batteries. Tesla currently has a partnership with SolarCity, which counts Musk as its chairman, to install the batteries to supplement the latter's solar panels.
Batteries such as Tesla Energy's products will play a big role in the growth of the distributed storage sector moving forward, SolarCity spokesman Jonathan Bass told the Reno Gazette-Journal earlier this year. The gigafactory is especially crucial due to its ability to bring costs down as Tesla Energy battery production shifts from Tesla's Fremont plant to the Reno area facility.
"In the future, we expect the cost of battery technology to come down and it will become an important part of the grid in the future," Bass said.
Read or Share this story: http://on.rgj.com/1M85T4JChina’s population could have 90 million fewer people than previously believed, and may already have been overtaken by India as the world’s most populous country, independent researchers said Monday.
Yi Fuxian, a researcher at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, suggested that China’s actual population may have been 1.29 billion last year, the Financial Times reports. Official figures from the National Bureau of Statistics put the number at 1.37 billion.
Presenting his research at China’s Peking University, Yi said the statistical overshoot could be down to overblown fertility rate figures. Although 2015 estimates put China’s fertility rate at 1.6 children per woman, Yi thinks it could have been as low as 1.05.
If Yi’s calculations are correct, that would mean that China’s population has already been surpassed by India’s — something that the United Nations had not projected to happen until 2022 at the earliest. Last year, India’s government reported a population of 1.33 billion.
A longtime critic of China’s “one-child policy,” which was loosened last year to allow more couples to give birth to a second child, Yi believes that Beijing’s official population statistics have been overstated for decades — a claim backed by other researchers at the conference.
Due to the sharp drop in births brought about the policy’s introduction in 1979, China now faces a population crisis as the number of working-age adults continues to fall and the proportion of elderly who rely on them grows.
[FT]
Contact us at editors@time.com.Nintendo has confirmed that Fire Emblem If is heading west next year in both North America and Europe.
The new game is the latest in the Fire Emblem series, and it’s quite gorgeous looking. The game lets you customize your own character, which turns out to be the protagonist, instead of a secondary character. Featured above, you can sample a new trailer for the game.
The story is focused on the Hoshido and Nohr kingdoms, who are embroiled in war. The player will decide which kingdom they fight for, which ultimately falls down to loyalty, or your bloodline. There are two sides to every story, and the path you choose will shape your fate. The world and the characters will always be the same, however, the story will change with your decisions.
The Hoshido path is a more traditional one, with a story that is more akin to what fans have seen in previous games. The Nohr story, on the other hand, tasks you with starting a revolution from within an unruly kingdom, with a very diverse and more challenging story.
The game will be released as two individual games in Japan, Fire Emblem If: White Kingdom and Fire Emblem If: Black Kingdom, costing 4,700 yen each. If you purchase one game, the other one can be downloaded for 1,852 yen. An even larger part three of the story is planned for a release some time in the future. Finally, a limited edition is coming with all three story perspectives, for 9,250 yen.
Previously, we had gotten a tease at the game’s western localization thanks to a Nintendo Australia email that listed the game for a TBA date.While some law enforcement agencies use hackers to try and break iPhone encryption, detectives in the U.K. found a simpler solution: mugging suspects before they get the chance to lock their phones.
According to a report from the BBC, the tactic was revealed after a cybercrime unit smashed a fake credit card fraud racket:
“Officers realised crucial evidence in the investigation was concealed on a suspect’s iPhone – but it would be unobtainable if the device was locked. So a covert team seized it in the street while the suspect was on a call — beating the security settings.”
This unorthodox workaround comes as concerns mount over the types of information that might be locked away on smartphones owned by criminals and terrorists. Apple’s strong encryption, and refusal to build a backdoor into iOS, earned praise from privacy and security advocates (and scorn from the Department of Justice).
The battle over whether Apple should help law enforcement hack iPhones was probably the biggest story the company was involved with this year.
The U.K. authorities’ decision to beat iPhone security in this way reportedly came after officers considered forcing a suspect to unlock their phone using Touch ID, only to find out that they didn’t have permission to do so.
In the end, they opted for a legal “street robbery” by waiting for the suspect to use his phone and then swooping in to grab it. As the suspect was restrained by some officers, another was given the job of continually swiping the iPhone’s display to make sure the handset wouldn’t lock before the necessary data could be obtained.
As a result of the seizure, police were able to crack the crime ring. The suspect has been jailed for five-and-a-half years.
Cracking encryption has been a big theme in the U.K. as of late. Recently, the country’s government pushed through its Investigatory Powers Act, aka the “snooper’s charter,” giving it unprecedented abilities to undermine encryption and push for surveillance backdoors.Why Do I Need a Rifle?
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First published on July 8, 2010.
You have done your research and selected a full size open carry pistol and a compact concealed carry pistol. You have received professional instruction in the serious use of these weapons. You are now confident in your ability to defend yourself and your loved ones and that confidence is based upon skill not illusion. Have you achieved preparedness? That depends on what you are preparing to survive. If your goal was to enhance your ability to protect your family from a random criminal attack, you have no doubt met that goal.
In 1965 I was witness to the Watts Riots in Los Angeles. The trigger was a traffic stop and arrest by a Highway Patrolman. The riots lasted 6 days. The official death toll was 34 but Police Officers and National Guard Troops quietly said that the number was much higher. More than 1,000 people were injured. Hundreds of buildings were destroyed most of which were burned to the ground after being looted. I watched Chief William Parker appear on television and state, “looting is a felony and the penal code (in 1965) says we can shoot felons.” He was sending a message to his Officers and the National Guard. Within a few hours a number of looters and arsonists were shot and the riot was over. I cannot imagine a Police Chief having the courage to take such action today.
In 1968 as a result of the murder of Martin Luther King Jr. riots broke out in 60 U.S. cities. These riots lasted 4 days and 5,000 Army Troops from Ft. Bragg were deployed to keep the peace. Already back from Viet Nam, I was stationed at Ft. Ord, assigned to the 41st Experimental Infantry Battalion and was trained in riot control and placed on standby. Los Angeles was one of the cities to experience rioting. Usually referred to by LAPD officers who worked the riot as the 68′ mini riots.
In 1976 I was deployed to the LAPD Harbor Division due to a Ship Explosion in San Pedro Harbor. When the ship blew up many people thought that it was a nuclear attack and they were looting the stores before the glass stopped falling out of the windows.
One night in the 1980’s, the event coordinator at the LA Coliseum failed to request extra police patrol for a Moto Cross. We (Metro) were called to deploy around the Coliseum but it was too late. A few hours with insufficient police patrol had led to “law of the jungle.” Hundreds of cars sat with their windows smashed and the radios ripped out. There were robberies, rapes, kidnappings, and shootings. South West Division Desk took hundreds of crime reports. People were lined up out the door, out to the street and around the corner, waiting to report crimes.
On 4-29-92 I was assigned to SWAT/Metro on long term loan to the Police Academy. Late in the afternoon training was suspended and I was called back to Metro Division. I drove home and picked up additional weapons and ammunition. I drove to Central Facilities and picked up the SWAT truck and drove to the command post. We were assigned to the Rodney King riots for 6 days. We had gun battles with looters and gang members who were just using the riot as cover to shoot at the police. Two officers standing to my right observed a suspect in a crowd of looters pull a gun and they promptly shot him. I waded into the crowd and drug the suspect to the sidewalk and helped handcuff him before he died. Although the violence broke out in the “Black community,” Hispanics quickly took advantage of the chaos. Most of them were illegal aliens and spoke no English. I asked Hispanic arrestees if they knew what started the riot and they said that they did not even know who Rodney King was. They simply saw an opportunity to steal. On the last day I was injured in an altercation with a looter (he lost). I eventually required left shoulder surgery as this was not the first such injury to my left shoulder due to an altercation. The cost of this riot was about 1 billion in damage, 53 people were dead and over 2,000 were injured.
The point we are making here is that civilization is much more fragile than you may imagine. In 1977, New York had a major riot because the power went out. The press called it “the night of the animals.” Detroit had a pretty good riot some years back because the Bulls won the NBA championship. So what does all of this have to do with you? These things always happen somewhere else, right? Try to imagine rioting on a national scale. That could not happen here? What would start such widespread civil unrest?
We have recently seen extensive rioting in France by Muslims. We are currently seeing riots in Greece, with police officers being firebombed by people who are unhappy because their government is bankrupt and wants to cut their pension benefits. The looting and lawlessness that occurred in New Orleans following hurricane Katrina has been well documented. Is it really so hard to imagine that such things could occur here? If you look up the history of riots and civil unrest in the U.S. you will be very surprised by the frequency and the level of the violence.
An Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) attack by North Korea or Iran could plunge our entire nation into the 19th century with little or no law enforcement or military help for months or even years. A world wide crop failure could cause food riots and looting on a scale never seen before. A coordinated terrorist attack involving weapons of mass destruction in multiple cities could start a deadly panic. Political assassination could result in wide spread rioting far beyond what occurred after the murder of MLK Jr. La Raza is calling for a violent revolution encouraging Hispanics to rise up and attack the “Gringos.” Muslim clerics are teaching Jihad in Mosques all over this country. Many economists believe that our government is going bankrupt and the whole financial system is near collapse. How would you and your neighbors react if the federal government declared an emergency and called for all guns to be confiscated and all stored food to be taken to a central location for “Redistribution” by the government. What if you refused to comply? Is it that hard to imagine widespread civil unrest? What is hard to believe, is the fact that it has not yet started.
Now consider hundreds of hungry, angry looters, including gang members and other criminals sweeping through neighborhoods looting, killing and burning what they cannot carry off. Many of these people will be armed. Some will have rifles. Under these worst case scenarios, how effectively will you be able to defend your family armed only with a hand gun. You will need several things in order to mount an effective defense during a large scale wide spread lawless situation. A semi automatic military type rifle, similar weapons for each member of your family who is capable of being trained and coordinated tactical plans with your neighbors who are similarly armed and trained. The only thing that will stop such an attack is over whelming force which will cause the criminals to move on to a less prepared neighborhood.
Do you remember the news footage of the Korean shop owners standing guard on the roof of their stores in LA during the riots. They survived and so did their shops while buildings all around them were looted and then burned to the ground. These citizens used military semi automatic rifles to defend their lives. When nearby Metro Officers were ambushed and came under fire from gang members they used rifles to kill the suspects and win the fight. Generally, rifles have a far greater effective range than handguns. They hold more ammunition than handguns. Their ammunition is more powerful thus capable of disabling or stopping an assailant more quickly than a handgun. Rifles are generally capable of penetrating objects that are often used for cover. You do not want to be fighting people who have rifles when you are armed with only a handgun. Any rifle is better than no rifle but a military semi automatic is the most effective rifle in this role.
In this discussion we must also consider why the founding fathers included the second amendment in the bill of rights. They were very clear in their writings. The primary purpose of the second amendment was to insure that the Army could never be better armed than the citizens so that the government could never control the people by force. Well at least that is one scenario we do not have to worry about, right? We have nothing to fear from our own government? <continues…>
Related
1 2As a programmer I spend a lot of time typing. But not only do I spend a lot of time typing I do it frequently using keys that most users rarely if ever type. All manner of brackets, and slashes, the whole row of characters above the numbers across the top of the keyboard, colons and semi-colons, etc. Basically I’m all over the place on the keyboard. To make matters worse I have really bad form with typing. My style uses my whole left hand and my thumb, pointer finger and occasionally pinky on my right hand. I needed to make a change.
I started out trying to teach myself to touch type properly(I touch type but my hands float over the keyboard instead of staying on the home row). But quickly found that 2 decades of bad habits make change very difficult and though I did start to get the hang of it but the pain in my wrist grew worse. It was time for a bigger change.
I read all I could on keyboards and after a fair few months of looking around settled on an ergodox. This great post is what really sold it for me. There didn’t look to be any new releases on massdrop coming up so I ended out forking out a bunch to buy one off someone on reddit.
Now that I had the keyboard it was time to really get to work. Even now 10 months later as I write this I am still thinking of new tweaks to make to my layouts but this is a basic walk through of the various changes made and why.
Step 1. Ditching Qwerty
Step 2. Making vim work again
Step 3. Changing the rest of L1
Left Hand Right Hand _blank_ F1 F2 { } F5 F11 F12 F6 F7 f8 F9 F10 [power] _blank_ \ / [ ] / _blank_ _blank_ ` = + - _ _blank_ _blank_ & % ( ) $ _blank_ _blank_ h j k l | ~ _blank_! @ < > # _blank_ _blank_ ^ & */td> ( _ _blank_
Step 4: Let there be sound!
Left Hand Right Hand Tab Media Rewind/Back Volume Up Ctrl Space Enter Media Play/Pause Volumn Down Backspace Shift Media Forward/Next Mute
Step 5. It's the small things that count
Step 6. I'm a proud flip flopper
Step 7. And sometimes bigger things
The first change I made is replacing qwerty with colemak using the layout developed by Jason Trill which can be found at the above link. This would be the base where I would grow from so many thanks to Jason for both his article and his layout file! I did this not for efficiency but just because there was no way I was learning proper touch typing on qwerty. Many thanks to http://thetypingcat.com/ for sorting me out on that front.I use vim for most of my work and the switch to colemak screwed up the directional keys on the right hand side. I didn't want to remap HJKL in vim since the colemak plans for that require remapping a bunch of other stuff so instead I changed layer 1 instead to have those four keys(now HNEI) map to HJKL. So now when I want to move around in vim I just have to remember to press my thumb on the L1 key first and muscle memory takes over.As a primarily Ruby developer the layout of L1 never quite felt right so pretty quickly I had almost completely rewritten it to the following layout.The thumb clusters of the keyboard have largely been ignored up to now with me sticking with the original layout of Space/Enter on the left and Delete/Backspace on the right and I just put random keys in the other points since they are not really comfortable to touch regularly. I listen to music when working though and I found myself regularly reaching up to my laptop keyboard to adjust the sound/change songs so that was my next project. The only problem was that the driver I had didn't have support for Apple media keys. Luckily I found the codes in the TMK driver and moved them across. Now my thumb clusters look like this.By now I've largely got a keyboard where my fingers barely move when typing but there is one key I type a LOT being a vim user. That key of course is the colon. So I ended up replacing the bottom left key in the main cluster on the right side with a dedicated colon which sits under my thumb in its resting position.When developing websites I often have a browser window open in one screen and my code in the other. When I want to do something on the browser I click on it, do whatever then click back on my code and get to work. This leaves me reaching for my mouse a lot of pressing CMD+Tab. I do this enough that I decided to save a keystroke. Enter cmdprre &kbfun_command_press_release which triggers cmd + whatever. So I turned it on for that Tab in my left thumb console and now with but a small movement I can swap between my two most recently used applications.My most recent change involves numbers. I had a project that involved typing a lot of numbers. My layout already comes with a numpad layer but I never got use to it(though maybe I should spend some time focusing on it!). Anyhow my last change was changing the forth key on the bottom row of the left hand to switch to a layer which just has the number keys across the home row. This means with a slight move of my thumb all numbers are home row accessible. No more stretching fingers for them!
That’s about it for now. If you want to find my version of the firmware you can find it at https://github.com/shawnonthenet/ergodox-firmware. I’ll try to be more active in posting any future changes there and here too. A year is a long time to wait.CLOSE Speaking in Greenville, Gov. Henry McMaster endorsed legislation that would cut off state funding for sanctuary cities that ignore immigration laws. Wochit
Gov. Henry McMaster, right, speaks Monday in Greenville about his support for legislation sponsored by Rep. Bruce Bannister, left, to prevent sanctuary cities for illegal immigrants from being created in South Carolina. (Photo: Kirk Brown/Independent Mail)
Gov. Henry McMaster said Monday that he wants to make sure that South Carolina has no sanctuary cities for illegal immigrants.
Speaking at the Greenville County Courthouse with several Upstate lawmakers, McMaster endorsed a bill that Rep. Bruce Bannister intends to introduce that would cut off state funding for three years for any town or city that doesn't comply with state immigration laws.
Under these laws, officials must make reasonable effort to determine whether a person in custody charged with a crime is an unlawful alien. They also are required to share the immigration status of these individuals with federal, state and local agencies.
"No mechanism exists today to verify the compliance of the local entities, the government entities, with those immigration laws and reporting requirements," McMaster said. "We here today seek to change that."
There are currently no so-called sanctuary cities in South Carolina. But a number of cities throughout the nation such as Chicago, Detroit, Los Angeles, Miami and San Francisco do not fully cooperate with federal immigration officials.
"You’ve seen other cities around the country have said simply they will not enforce those laws. South Carolina will not abide by that type of lawlessness here," McMaster said. "It is time to do this now before such a thing takes root in our state and I’m proud that these legislators here today have seen fit to step up to introduce this legislation."
Bannister, a Republican from Greenville, said his bill is meant to add an enforcement procedure to a state immigration law that was approved in 2011.
Monday's news conference in Greenville took place as opening arguments were set to begin in a California courtroom in the trial of an undocumented Mexican immigrant accused of fatally shooting a woman in San Francisco in July 2015. President Donald Trump and other Republicans have cited the case in criticizing sanctuary cities and calling for a wall to be built along the border of the U.S. and Mexico.
Will McCorkle, a Clemson University graduate student, said McMaster's comments about keeping sanctuaries cities out of South Carolina are little more than a "political ploy."
Bannister's bill would make immigrants less likely to report crimes or cooperate with law enforcement officials, said McCorkle, who is working on a thesis examining teachers' attitudes and awareness about the rights of immigrant students. He also said the measure could increase the odds of "families being ripped apart" if an illegal immigrant arrested for a minor offense winds up being deported.
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McMaster's visit to Greenville on Monday came one week after Trump attended the Republican governor's fundraiser at the Embassy Suites on Verdae Boulevard. McMaster also spoke Monday morning at the 40th annual joint meeting of the Southeast U.S.-Japan Association and the Japan-U.S. Southeast Association at the Hyatt Regency in downtown Greenville.
McMaster replaced former Gov. Nikki Haley in January after Trump chose her to become the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. McMaster, who is seeking a full four-year term as governor next year, has visited the Upstate at least nine times since late August.
One of his Republican rivals in the governor's race, Lt. Gov. Kevin Bryant of Anderson, was scheduled to speak Monday night at Bob Jones University in Greenville.
Contact Kirk Brown via email at kirk.brown@independentmail.com and follow him on Twitter @KirkBrown_AIM
Read or Share this story: https://www.greenvilleonline.com/story/news/local/2017/10/23/gov-mcmaster-seeks-keep-sanctuary-cities-out-south-carolina/790955001/For many high-end audio enthusiasts, the ultimate goal is to experience music in the way that the artists and the producers intended. With this in mind, it is all the more appealing when a music-industry legend chooses to place his stamp of approval on an audiophile component. The Sir George Martin Signature Series earphones ($3,425) are a limited-edition, bespoke set of in-ear monitors (IEMs) endorsed by George Martin—often called the “fifth Beatle” for his role as the producer of many of the band’s most successful albums. The earphones are the result of a collaboration between Advanced Communication Solutions and Meridian Audio.
Production of the IEMs is limited to 1,000 units and they are custom molded to fit the purchaser’s ears for minimum sound leakage and maximum noise isolation. Sound quality is assured by top-of-the-line cabling and crossovers that lead to three separate miniature speakers—each one devoted to either high-, middle-, or low-range frequencies—in each earphone. The IEMs are packaged with several accessories, including a Meridian Explorer2 portable digital-to-analog converter, artwork signed by Martin, and a presentation case from Asprey that includes a fan system to eliminate moisture that could damage the IEMs. In keeping with Martin’s desire for more research on tinnitus and hearing loss, the IEMs incorporate technologies and volume controls that limit the possibility of hearing damage. Additionally, a generous portion of the purchase price is donated to research on hearing loss and ways to reduce its negative effects. The earphones can be reserved with a partial deposit and are only available for a limited time. (acssignatureseries.com)An Egyptian court sentenced former Islamist President Mohamed Morsi to death on Tuesday in a case related to a 2011 mass jail break.
The court had sought the death penalty for Morsi in May and referred its recommendation to Grand Mufti Shawqi Allam, the country's most senior religious authority, a step required by law for death sentences.
The general guide of the Muslim Brotherhood, Mohamed Badie, was also sentenced to death.
Influential senior Muslim cleric Sheikh Youssef al-Qaradawi was later sentenced death in absentia, also relating to a mass jail break in 2011.
The verdicts can be appealed.
The court last month sought the death penalty for Morsi after he and his fellow defendants, including Brotherhood leader Mohamed Badie, were convicted of killing and kidnapping policemen, attacking police facilities and breaking out of jail during the uprising against then-president Hosni Mubarak.
The court is seeking, in addition to Morsi, the death sentence for 106 others in the same case, which has drawn drawn criticism from the United States, other Western governments and human rights groups.
The Islamist Morsi was Egypt's first democratically elected president and was overthrown by the army in 2013 after mass protests against his rule.
He has said the court is not legitimate, describing legal proceedings against him as part of a coup led by former army chief Abdel Fattah al-Sisi in 2013.
Sisi, now president, says the Brotherhood poses a grave threat to national security. The group maintains it is committed to peaceful activism.
Despite U.S. lawmakers' concerns that Egypt is lagging on democratic reforms, Cairo remains one of Washington's closest security allies in the region.
Relations cooled after Morsi was overthrown but ties with Sisi have steadily improved.
In late March, U.S. President Barack Obama lifted a hold on a supply of arms to Cairo, authorizing deliveries of U.S. weapons valued at over $1.3 billion.Köln -
Jetzt also auch noch Dominic Maroh! Wie befürchtet, fällt nun auch der Slowene vorerst aus. Die Untersuchung in der MediaPark Klinik ergab eine Einblutung in der Oberschenkelmuskulatur – diese wiederum verhindert eine exakte Diagnose der Verletzung.
Doch FC-Coach Peter Stöger rechnet nicht mit einer schnellen Rückkehr Marohs: „Es wird wohl ein bisschen dauern und wohl keine Geschichte von zehn Tagen sein.“
Sörensen-Deal noch nicht fix
Beim eigentlich ersten ernstzunehmenden Test am Samstag bei Drittligist VfL Osnabrück (16 Uhr) muss Stöger somit ohne etatmäßigen Innenverteidiger experimentieren.
Auch Mergim Mavraj (Knieverletzung), Dominique Heintz (noch Urlaub nach U21-EM) und Nachwuchshoffnung Lukas Klünter (aktuell bei der U19-EM in Griechenland) stehen nicht zur Verfügung, Wunsch-Einkauf Frederik Sörensen ist noch nicht verpflichtet.
„Werden offensiv improvisieren“
So will Stöger den Schwerpunkt Samstag an der Bremer Brücke auf die Offensive legen. „Das ist ja ist ja eh das, was die Leute im letzten Jahr bemängelt haben“, scherzt er, „jetzt werden wir mal relativ offensiv improvisieren.“
Für die Plätze in der Innenverteidigung sieht Stöger Matthias Lehmann, der dort schon beim 11:2 gegen die Burgenland-Auswahl spielte, sowie die etatmäßigen Außenverteidiger Jonas Hector und Pawel Olkowski oder auch Sechser Kevin Vogt als mögliche Kandidaten.Jet-setters from around the world meet on a private island for 'orgies' and other sexual acts with young, sometimes underage, women
LITTLE ST. JAMES, U.S. Virgin Islands (INTELLIHUB) — If you can name it — it has likely taken place on the lavish private island East of Puerto Rico which boasts a beautifully landscaped plush luxury estate complete with its own helipad, privy only to certain members of the global elite.
Owned by Jeffery Epstein, a wealthy American financier and convicted sex offender, Little St. James Island appears to be somewhat of a gathering place and is a well desired hangout among key figureheads, actors, and royalty to the likes of former U.S. President Bill Clinton, Kevin Spacey, and even Prince Andrew.
However, the people attending the lavish residence are likely not there to discuss “cutting edge scientific and medical research” as the Epstein VI Foundation would like you to believe, but rather experience full-on sexual encounters with underage girls as young as fourteen.
That’s right, just like a scene out of the Hollywood blockbuster film Eyes Wide Shut, starring Tom Cruise, from wild parties to prostitution, orgies, and even underage sex, Little St. James has it all, seemingly a gathering point frequented by prominent jet-setters, and it’s all being exposed. The cat is out of the bag so to speak.
Back in 2005 police conducted an 11 month-long undercover investigation on Jeffery Epstein and his estate after the mother of a 14-year-old girl went to police after suspecting her daughter was paid $ |
hope is “a way of positively and expansively inhabiting one’s agency”, and our “energy is […] oriented toward the future” (McGeer 2004: 104). In order to capture the motivating power of hope, Pettit distinguishes the “superficial” kind of hope described by the orthodox definition from a more “substantial” hope (Pettit 2004: 154). He construes substantial hope as acting on a belief that the agent does not really hold:
Hope will consist in acting as if a desired prospect is going to obtain or has a good chance of obtaining, just as precaution consists in acting as if this were the case with some feared prospect. (Pettit 2004: 158)
However, this definition seems to render hope an intrinsically irrational attitude because it appears to require the hopeful person to act as if she had a false belief. In typical cases, a hopeful person does not describe herself as acting as if the chances were higher, but as taking the chances as they are as good enough to try (Martin 2013: 23).
Cheshire Calhoun argues that “in hope we live under some kind of as-if idea of the future”. Whereas Pettit suggests that act as if the prospect has a good chance of obtaining and Martin as if the prospect is merely possible, Calhoun argues that hope involves a view of the future in terms of success. The third component of hope besides desire and belief, according to her, is “a phenomenological idea of the determinate future whose content includes success.” This phenomenological idea, she argues, has motivational effect independently of the agent’s desires. This component is not a fully reason-responsive state, as it has non-rational sources like habituation to success or failure.
In a recent proposal, Adrienne Martin aims to remedy the faults of the standard definition in yet a different way and gives an account of hope’s rationality. Similar to Walker (Walker 2006: 48), Martin holds that hope should not be analyzed in terms of necessary and sufficient conditions, but rather as a “syndrome” with paradigmatic marks (Martin 2013: 62). These marks involve two more elements in addition to belief and desire or attraction: First, the agent must see or treat her belief about the possibility of the outcome’s occurring as licensing hopeful activities, i.e., as not advising against some specific activities. Second, the agent must treat her attraction to the outcome as a practical reason to engage in the activities characteristic of hope. Martin calls her account the Incorporation Thesis, which refers to the fact that the hoping person incorporates the desire-element into her rational scheme of ends. On Martin’s account, the rationality of hope is primarily a practical question. Whereas the attraction to the outcome is (on her view) not subject to rational norms at all, the belief in the outcome’s possibility is responsive to theoretical reasons pertaining to the possibility of the outcome. However, whether one sees the belief in the possibility as licensing hopeful activities and, consequently, whether one takes one’s attraction as a practical reason to engage in hopeful activities is governed by norms of rational end promotion (Martin 2013: 51). In this respect, her account is similar to Pettit’s position, which emphasizes the instrumental value hope has for the pursuit of our ends (Pettit 2004: 161).
A further dimension of value is suggested by Luc Bovens’ (1999) theory. He argues that in cases where hoping has no instrumental value (because we cannot contribute to bring about the desired state), hope can still have intrinsic value. In Bovens’ view, this intrinsic value pertains to hope because hoping involves mental imaging. This characteristic of hope is responsible for its intrinsic value in three respects: First, hope has intrinsic value because mental imaging is pleasurable in itself (Bovens 1999: 675f.). Second, hope has epistemic value because it increases one’s self-understanding. Third, hope has intrinsic worth because it is constitutive of love towards others and towards oneself, which are intrinsically valuable activities. It is in virtue of mental imaging that hope is intimately connected to love, because spending mental energy in thinking about the well-being of another person is constitutive of loving her.
Another approach to the value of hope has been developed using the framework of virtue epistemology. Nancy Snow (2013) proposes three respects in which hope can be understood as an intellectual virtue: (1) hope motivates the pursuit of epistemic ends such as knowledge; (2) hope imparts qualities to the epistemic agent, such as resilience, perseverance, flexibility, and openness, that further the successful pursuit of those ends; and (3) hope functions as a kind of method in the pursuit of intellectual projects. (For a critical assessment of Snow’s approach, see Cobb 2015.)
It must also be mentioned that the standard account does not exhaust the meaning of “hope” as it has been treated in the philosophical tradition, in particular as it does not allow for indeterminate hopes. For example, Marcel’s distinction between “hope that” and hope without a determinate object has recently been taken up (with or without explicit reference to Marcel) by otherwise different accounts. Joseph Godfrey calls hope without object “fundamental hope” and bases his account on an analysis of Bloch, Kant and Marcel (Godfrey 1987). Patrick Shade’s pragmatist theory distinguishes particular hopes and hopefulness as “an openness to possibilities that are meaningful and promising for us” (Shade 2001: 139). Jonathan Lear similarly describes “radical hope” as a sense of a future in which “something good will emerge” (Lear 2008: 94), even though all particular hopes were destroyed, and Matthew Ratcliffe takes such radical hope as an example for “pre-intentional hope”, which is
a kind of general orientation or sense of how things are with the world, in the context of which intentional states of the kind “I hope that p” are possible. (Ratcliffe 2013: 602)
4. Analyses of Hope in the Psychological Literature
Psychologists and psychoanalysts have systematically investigated hope since the 1950s (Frank 1968). In many of these first studies, hope was seen as a combination of the perception of an outcome as important for an agent to achieve and as having a certain probability (Stotland 1969). While this understanding of hope deviates from the standard philosophical account (see section 3) by requiring a minimal probability, it continues to play a major role in the current psychological literature.
A very influential psychological approach to hope is Charles Snyder’s hope theory (for an overview, see Rand and Cheavens 2009). Snyder defines hope as follows:
Within a goal-setting framework, we propose that there are two major, interrelated elements of hope. First, we hypothesize that hope is fueled by the perception of successful agency related to goals. The agency component refers to a sense of successful determination in meeting goals in the past, present, and future. Second, we hypothesize that hope is influenced by the perceived availability of successful pathways related to goals. (Snyder et al. 1991: 570)
On this basis, Snyder and others have developed a “hope scale” that measures several components of agency and pathways perception (ibid.).
Several objections have been raised against this analysis of hope. One is that the “perception of agency” relates both to the past and the future and therefore measures a general trait of hopefulness rather than the hope for specific outcomes. As a response, psychologists have developed further “domain-specific” hope scales (Lopez et al. 2000: 61). A second question concerns the issue of whether Snyder’s definition of hope is sufficiently distinct from optimism (see Miceli and Castelfranchi 2010; Aspinwall and Leaf 2002). Snyder wants to distinguish hope from optimism by linking hope to beliefs about self-efficacy (Snyder 2002; Magaletta and Oliver 1999) and reserving the term “optimism” only for generalized expectancies about positive outcomes. However, the ordinary use of the term is better captured by the idea that hope can be upheld even if one does not assign a high probability to the outcome.
5. Hope in Political Philosophy
While the political importance of hope as a psychological state is acknowledged by pre-modern and modern philosophers and while religious hope for a life after death is a major topic in medieval political philosophy, the emergence of a modern worldview that conceives of history as contingent and thus conceives of the future as a space for potential fundamental change, also changes the significance of hope.
While this connection can be most clearly seen in Kant’s analysis of the role of hope in our relation to human history (see section 2.4), Hannah Arendt makes a related point in passing in the Human Condition. According to Arendt, the “natality” of human beings allows them to make new beginnings in their actions and thus subvert the tendency of the public space to disintegrate into routinized behaviour. Therefore, “natality” is a precondition of genuine political action and a necessary condition for the possibility of hope (Arendt 1958: 247). The capacity of hope and the capacity to act politically are thus essentially intertwined.
In modern political philosophy, hope is significant for both the Marxist and the pragmatist-liberal (see section 2.6) tradition of thought. Both traditions have produced thinkers—Ernst Bloch and Richard Rorty, respectively—who accord hope a central place in their political thought. In contemporary political philosophy, hope is not a central topic, but there are interesting attempts to assess its significance for liberal ideal and nonideal theory (see White 1991; Smith 2005b; Moellendorf 2010).
5.1 Ernst Bloch
Bloch‘s The Principle of Hope is certainly not only the most radical attempt to build a critical political philosophy on a highly unorthodox theory of hope, it also constitutes a decisive break with standard analyses of hope found in the philosophical tradition.
Regarding the nature of hope, Bloch argues that it has both an affective component (as the opposite of fear) and a cognitive component (being the opposite of remembrance) through which it anticipates a state of affairs that not only does not yet exist, but that also is not yet cognitively completely available to the subject. On the affective side, Bloch describe affects as a subclass of drives which are the basic material of his (psychoanalytically inspired) psychology. In contrast to basic drives, affects are self-reflexive in two ways: when agents become conscious of their affects this can add to the motivating power of the latter (Fink-Eitel 1988: 323); and through the consciousness of its affects, the subject becomes also capable of reflecting upon itself. Among the affects, we can distinguish between “filled” emotions (which have as their object something which is already completely available in the lifeworld of the agent) and “expectant emotions” (Erwartungsaffekte) that relate to something not yet available, among them hope and fear. In this schema, hope is a positive expectant emotion (Bloch [1954–59] 1986: I:111), and in contrast to the negative affects, to which we are subject involuntarily, it is something in regard to which we have a degree of freedom. Bloch therefore claims that, as a free, future-directed form of anticipation, hope is the most human of all affects (Bloch [1954–59] 1986: I:74).
In regard to the cognitive component, Bloch describes hope as providing new forms of access to reality in a way that defies short summary. In general, however, one can say that hope is always related to the “not-yet-conscious” that in turn reflects “objective possibilities”. The terms “not-yet conscious” and “preconscious” (Bloch [1954–59] 1986: I:115) are part of an oppositional reading of classic psychoanalysis that, according to Bloch, understands the unconscious predominantly as encompassing thoughts which are no longer conscious or repressed (ibid.), but neglects the possibility that some unconscious thoughts are not yet capable of being conscious. This also leads Bloch to introduce a future-directed counterpart to the concept of repression (Bloch [1954–59] 1986: I:128). Whereas repressed memories are repressed by forces within the subject, resistance to not-yet conscious thought is to found in the very material or content of that thought, namely objective, future possibilities—events or outcomes that are, by definition, not yet achieved and habitualized and thus not available in the lifeworld for the subject’s conceptualization. This resistance to conscious reflection is also always partly due to socio-economic causes; not all projects are equally achievable in all historical moments and thus their becoming fully available to consciousness is blocked by their (present) impossibility (Bloch [1954–59] 1986: I:130).
The content or material of the not-yet-conscious is defined by what Bloch calls the “Front”. This concept is related to Bloch’s processual metaphysics according to which objective tendencies and possibilities in reality interact with “closed” matters of fact, such that the moment of potentiality surpassing into actuality always opens up opportunities for the interventions of active decision-making. The right way to relate to these “Front” opportunities is, according to Bloch, “militant optimism”, i.e., not a mere assumption that things will develop in a desirable direction, but an active relation to real tendencies with the goal to realize them (Bloch [1954–59] 1986: I:201).
Arguing from these premises, Bloch develops an integrated theory in which hope is not merely a subjective combination of desires and beliefs about probabilities or facts, but rather a reflection of metaphysical possibilities in the world and part of a range of human capacities that make it possible to relate to that which is not yet, but which is already prefigured in the objective potentials of reality. In the Principle of Hope, Bloch offers a wide-ranging overview of historical and current forms in which hope, optimism and utopia have been and are captured by visions of potential states of affairs—the list of topics discussed ranges from medial representation of desires, social and geographic utopias to literary and artistic ways in which the possible can be captured and philosophical theories of the goods.
The theoretical framework in which these analyses are embedded and in the service of which they are employed, is a revised form of Marxism. Bloch’s Marxism relies on a dialectical materialism which has two aspects that Bloch calls the “cold” and the “warm stream”: the first designates the materialist insight that all historical developments are conditioned and constrained by concrete, existing material conditions, “strict determinations that cannot be skipped over” (Bloch [1954–59] 1986: I:208), whereas the second acknowledges the processual constitution of reality which is adequately captured by hope and expectation. On this version of Marxism, hope becomes a central element of the stance of the social theorist and critic. In particular, Bloch understands Marx’s account of a unity between theory and practice in the Theses on Feuerbach to suggest a social theory that occupies the “horizon of the future” (Bloch [1954–59] 1986: I:285) and a materialism which centrally integrates hope. This materialism, Bloch argues in the final pages of The Principle of Hope, can overcome the division between powerless fantasy and a mechanical determinism which underlies mere predictions of the future and guide political action that is directed towards a real, material, objective possibility—classless society—which is, at the same time, still acknowledged to be dependent on human decision (Bloch [1954–59] 1986: III:1372). Such activity, according to Bloch, must be guided by militant optimism or hope. Political hope is thus not only valuable, it is also necessary to achieve social change for the better.
5.2 Richard Rorty
While Rorty agrees with Bloch that hope, rather than knowledge about historical inevitability or moral truth, is an appropriate basis for progressive political theory, the argument that he develops for this claim could not be more different from the one Bloch advances. Whereas Bloch tries to underpin both his descriptive analysis of hope and the dialectic materialism that is to guide political action with a metaphysical vocabulary that aims to identify the ultimate reality to which hope refers, Rorty arrives at his endorsement of hope as an important element in contemporary liberal politics through a rejection of political models that are based on the idea of (perhaps privileged) knowledge or insight.
In Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, Rorty identifies hope as a central element of a hermeneutic rather than an epistemological approach to philosophy:
Hermeneutics sees the relations between various discourses as those of strands in a possible conversation, a conversation which presupposes no disciplinary matrix which unites the speakers, but where the hope of agreement is never lost so long as the conversation lasts. This hope is not a hope for the discovery of antecedently existing common ground, but simply hope for agreement, or, at least, exciting and fruitful disagreement. (Rorty 1979: 318)
As Rorty also emphasizes in later writings, this hope is not based on any foundations—such as knowledge about probabilities—rather, it is an attitude by which interlocutors express both their commitment to certain forms of future interaction and their belief in its possibility. Although Rorty never provides a formal analysis of hope (the closest he comes to such a definition is his approving reference to Dewey’s analysis of hope as “the ability to believe that the future will be unspecifiably different from, and unspecifiably freer than, the past”, Rorty 1999: 120), his use of the term is consistent with the standard definition. In this sense, “political deliberation presupposes hope” (Rorty 2002: 153). He adds to this definition an important ethical component, however, insofar he focusses on forms of hope that concern intersubjective interactions: to approach others with the hope for agreement is an expression of the liberal virtue of civility (Rorty 1979: 318).
The concept of hope gradually becomes more important throughout Rorty’s work. In Contingency, Irony and Solidarity, Rorty contrasts two forms of liberalism: The “liberal metaphysician” expects social cooperation to be based on scientific or philosophical insight that penetrates individual idiosyncrasy and aims at the adoption of a universal, final vocabulary that then leads to solidarity. By contrast, the “liberal ironist” renounces the idea of a final vocabulary. By acknowledging that only the contingent overlap between “selfish hopes” can be a source of solidarity (Rorty 1989: 93), a liberal ironist also must give up the idea that there is something intrinsically, universally human that will provide a source of solidarity. Instead, we have to engage in an attempt to create solidarity out of shared experiences and interests (Rorty 1999: 87).
Rorty sees the pragmatists, and Dewey in particular (see section 2.6), as the theorists who have best captured these different aspects of hope. On the epistemic dimension, they embrace a form of hope that “doesn’t need reinforcement from ‘the idea of a transcendental or enduring subject’” (Rorty 1982: 206) or “backup from a philosophy of history” (Rorty 1998: 243). On the political dimension, pragmatist experimentalism allows for liberal hope—a hope for a “global, cosmopolitan, democratic, egalitarian, classless, casteless society” (Rorty 1999: xii)—without grounding it in a historical teleology or an abstract utopianism. This liberalism also succeeds in capturing the attractive aspects of both Christianity and Marxism without succumbing to their metaphysical vices.
The most interesting aspect of Rorty’s theory is that the main virtue he ascribes to hope (compared to knowledge) as a basis for politics is that it “does not require foundations” (Rorty et al. 2002b: 58), and certain hopes may even be “unjustifiable” (Rorty 1982: 208). As Nicholas Smith (2005a) notes, Rorty does not intend this to designate an unjustified hope (hope for which there is no adequate justification, although such justification is possible). Rather, he must either mean a form of hope for which the question of justification does not arise or a form of hope that is strictly unjustifiable in the same sense as hope for the impossible. While there are traces of the latter sense to be found in Rorty’s work (Smith 2005a: 94), he consistently seems to use the former meaning in his political writings. But the absence of a need for a metaphysical justification of hope does not imply that we cannot make a distinction between more or less reasonable forms of hoping. As Smith (2005a: 95) further argues, Rorty acknowledges that hopelessness is always based on the absence of a narrative of political progress. For this reason, if such a narrative is available, this seems to provide rational support for political hope.When a luxury Mercedes goes up against an Audi supercar, bet on the autobody repair professionals.
A 48-year-old West Vancouver man is facing charges after he crashed his $160,000 Mercedes S63 into the back of an Audi R8 on the 3100-block of Marine Drive Saturday night.
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Police received multiple 9-1-1 calls just after 8 p.m. when the driver of the Mercedes allegedly lost control and rear-ended the Audi.
Witnesses told police the Mercedes was speeding and passing other vehicles just before the crash, according to Const. Jeff Palmer, West Vancouver police spokesman.
Two boys, aged nine and five, were in the Mercedes' back seat at the time. B.C. Ambulance Service paramedics checked them over and determined the kids
did not need to go to hospital.
"The investigators are looking at whether or not they ought to have been or were properly secured in child restraints," Palmer said. "Based on information and observations, we detained the driver for investigation of impaired driving."
The driver received an immediate 24-hour roadside suspension of his licence, plus another 30-day administrative driving prohibition. Police are recommending criminal charges.
The Audi's passenger, a 37-year-old Richmond woman, was taken to the ER after she complained of neck pain.
Though the accident looked like a fender bender, investigators estimate total repair bill for the damage will cost $200,000.
"It's pretty significant damage. It kind of doesn't look like it but, not surprisingly, they're freakishly expensive to repair," Palmer said.Latest NSA leaks, coming from the same source that revealed tools that NSA used to hack computers around the world earlier this year, confirm that at least four Pakistani ISPs were attacked and hacked by NSA from 2000 to 2004.
It is unclear how deep these hacks had penetrated back then but source confirms that NSA had backdoor access to various computers on these networks.
Hacked ISPs include Multinet, Paknet (which was merged into PTCL in 2007), Micronet (now Nayatel) and PTCL’s gateway exchange in Lahore.
Latest set of leaks indicate various data sets including the configuration setting of the tools that were using to hack servers. Data reveals that majority of hacked servers were running Solaris, an operating system from Sun Microsystems that was widely used back in the days.
IP addresses and other details about the impacted servers is available here and here.
Not to mention, this data is at least 10 years old when NSA wasn’t as aggressive as it is currently. With more people on the internet and NSA getting only stronger with time — since there’s no one to question them — it can be assumed that cent percent Pakistani ISPs are now on their radar and anything you do on internet can be monitored by American agencies.
Even your mobile phones aren’t spared as NSA has confirmed monitoring access to all Pakistani telcos.
Thanks Mohammed Anas Dawoodi for tip.
Via ArstechicaIsrael’s anti-BDS minister Gilad Erdan and UK aid minister Priti Patel meeting at Parliament in September. Violating rules, Patel did not disclose the meeting to civil servants. This photo was published soon after by Conservative Friends of Israel and tweeted by Erdan.
The UK government was in chaos on Wednesday as the prime minister was accused of covering up her knowledge of secret meetings one of her ministers held with Israelis in August.
International development minister Priti Patel was forced to quit on Wednesday evening, saying her actions “fell below the standards of transparency and openness” expected of ministers.
The meetings were arranged by a prominent Israel lobbyist. Patel had already apologized on Monday, admitting she had held 12 such meetings.
She met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other politicians and business people in Israel without informing officials in her own department, the UK Foreign Office or the office of Prime Minister Theresa May.
Patel was forced into the apology after the BBC’s diplomatic editor James Landale broke the story on Friday. It was exposed after Israeli politician Yair Lapid tweeted a photo of the two meeting.
Great to meet with Priti Patel, UK Secretary of State for International Development, today. A true friend of Israel. pic.twitter.com/8q9qSeX7YZ — יאיר לפיד Yair Lapid (@yairlapid) August 24, 2017
Patel then belatedly informed the Foreign Office while her meetings in Israel were already underway, her deputy told parliament on Tuesday.
According to UK government rules, ministerial meetings discussing official business should be attended and recorded by civil servants – whose role is to serve the government in a nonpartisan fashion.
Theresa May accepted Patel’s resignation after coming under pressure to sack her from opposition lawmakers, who said she had violated the ministerial code of conduct.
Patel claimed she had been in Israel “on a family holiday paid for myself,” but admitted the meetings were “arranged by” Israel lobbyist Stuart Polak, a member of Britain’s unelected upper chamber, the House of Lords.
He is a leading member of Conservative Friends of Israel and attended all but one of the Patel meetings.
According to the original BBC report, Polak has access to wealthy Conservative donors, and some ministers and members of Parliament “accused Ms. Patel of trying to win favor with wealthy pro-Israeli Conservative donors who could fund a potential future leadership campaign.”
“This is outrageous. She is a Cabinet minister. She just cannot do this,” a government minister told the BBC. “This is about donors and influence.”
In addition to sitting down with Netanyahu, Patel met with the Israeli leader’s close ally Gilad Erdan – Israel’s “strategic affairs” minister who has been put in charge of combating BDS, the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement for Palestinian rights.
But in her Monday apology, Patel did not disclose two further meetings she had with Israeli ministers without the presence of officials.
Al-Qaida have “not attacked Israel”
Another BBC report on Tuesday stated that after returning from Israel, Patel “suggested some of Britain’s aid budget go to the Israeli army” for “humanitarian operations” in the Golan Heights – part of southern Syria which Israel occupied in 1967 and annexed in 1981 in violation of international law.
During parliamentary questions, Patel’s deputy Alistair Burt confirmed she had suggested that UK aid money intended for relief be sent to Israeli army units in the occupied Syrian territory.
He said that their department had ultimately concluded that this was “not appropriate,” since the UK government does not recognize Israel’s annexation of the Golan Heights.
But Burt defended the mooted proposal as “humanitarian,” saying it was an “entirely reasonable” question for her to ask.
Underreported, but well-documented, the Israeli army occupying the Golan Heights uses its field hospitals to treat anti-government fighters involved in the war in Syria – including members of factions linked to al-Qaida.
Israel’s alliance with such groups is part of its effort to hold back the influence of Hizballah, the powerful Lebanese resistance organization that defeated the Israeli army when it invaded Lebanon in 2006.
Belying “humanitarian” claims, the known al-Qaida-linked extremists are allowed back to fight in Syria after being treated. In an interview with Al Jazeera last year, the former head of Israel’s Mossad spy agency denied that there would be blowback after Israel had gotten “into bed” with Nusra Front – for years al-Qaida’s formal Syrian affiliate.
“The rules of the game in Syria,” said Efraim Halevy, mean that “you can do anything that is not able – is not possible to be done anywhere else.” He defended the group, saying, “Al-Qaida to the best of my recollection, has up till now not attacked Israel.”
Tel Aviv newspaper Haaretz revealed on Wednesday that Patel had “visited an Israeli military field hospital” in the Golan during her “family holiday.”
This visit was not disclosed in the list Patel released alongside her apology on Monday.
Undisclosed meetings
An Israeli military spokesperson told The Guardian that Israel’s foreign ministry had arranged Patel’s visit.
The paper reported that the Israeli army field hospital “assisted both wounded civilians as well as wounded rebel Syrian fighters, some of whom have been accused of being members of jihadi groups fighting the Assad regime.”
The two further September meetings Patel failed to disclose were with Yuval Rotem, director of Israel’s foreign ministry, in New York and another with Erdan in London. Erdan Tweeted the meeting in both English and Hebrew.
Wonderful meeting my friend Sec. of State Priti @Patel4witham, a woman of great courage and leadership. We are taking concrete action 1/2 pic.twitter.com/JCXlRhukqW — גלעד ארדן (@giladerdan1) September 7, 2017
Erdan praised Patel in Hebrew as “a brave and sincere leader who supports Israel with all her heart.”
The BBC reported on Wednesday that Conservative Friends of Israel’s Stuart Polak is thought to have been “present at both meetings.”
According to the Conservative Friends of Israel, on 7 September Erdan held meetings with Patel and with communities minister Sajid Javid.
The lobby group said that the Javid meeting was to discuss “steps to counter anti-Israel delegitimization and BDS” and the Patel meeting aimed at advancing “UK-Israel development cooperation, and counter[ing] attempts to delegitimize Israel in international institutions.”
“Delegitimization” is the Israeli government’s propaganda term used to discredit the Palestine solidarity movement, especially BDS.
Israel’s “black-ops”
The Department for Communities and Local Government did not respond to a request for comment, but according to Sky News political editor Faisal Islam, the Javid meeting was correctly disclosed and attended by civil servants.
As extensively reported by The Electronic Intifada, Erdan’s ministry is leading “black-ops” against the Palestine solidarity movement, reportedly including death threats and harassment of Palestinian lawyers in Europe.
Erdan was also implicated in the Israeli embassy scandal in January, after revelations from Al Jazeera’s undercover film The Lobby led to the forced resignation of “senior political officer” Shai Masot.
Erdan’s strategic affairs ministry is staffed by recent members of Israeli spy agencies, including the Mossad, and has a budget of more than $40 million.
What did Downing Street know?
On Wednesday morning, the crisis threatened to engulf the British prime minister herself.
Despite earlier briefings to the press that she had not been informed about Patel’s meetings, a report in The Jewish Chronicle claimed on Wednesday that May’s office had in fact been told about some of the meetings as early as August.
The report also claimed that May’s office even asked Patel to remove a meeting from the list she published Monday, so as not to “embarrass” the Foreign Office.
But 10 Downing Street quickly denied the story, saying both claims were “categorically untrue.”
An anonymous source in May’s office went further, telling The Guardian that the entire report was “complete bollocks.”
The Guardian noted that the prime minister’s office did not explicitly deny The Jewish Chronicle’s claim that in advance of September’s UN General Assembly, May and Patel had discussed “Patel’s plan for UK aid to be shared with the Israelis.”
Regardless of who knew what and when, it seems the Conservative government has deeper questions to answer about the influence of the Israel lobby.
As Labour lawmaker Naz Shah put it in questions to Patel’s deputy Burt on Tuesday, “it seems that British foreign policy on Israel and Palestine is being run by a Conservative-linked lobby group rather than by an independent civil service and an elected government.”
Shah added that this was “just another example of a government who are in disarray as lobby groups, not Downing Street, run our country.”
With translation by Ali Abunimah.
Updated since initial publication.Getty Images Getty Images
Deer Trail, Colorado residents shot down their infamous drone hunting ordinance on Tuesday, showing that at least 73% of the small town's residents have common sense. The matter fell to the voters after the town's board came to a 3-3 draw on enacting the legislation, which had strong support from the mayor.
Well, ex-mayor. Not too surprisingly, he didn't make it past Tuesday, either.
It had been a good run for the ordinance's author Phil Steele, who had been preemptively selling the licenses since the fall, with up to 900 of the now-decorative paper permits being issued, though, Steele admitted to the LA Times, only three of them went to residents.
The Internet seized upon Steele's courting of the lunatic fringe, focusing endless ridicule upon the 600-person Colorado hamlet. The drone hunting jokes provided an easily mockable portrait of the polarity in a state that has made headlines for contentions over gun laws, the attempted secession of five counties to form a new arch-conservative 51st state, and its legalization of marijuana.
Steele, for his part, has decided to enact "payback" against the town by filing a citizen's initiative to transform Deer Trail into a marijuana distribution center, and vows to bring his drone hunting hubris to another, more "enlightened," community.
No word on whether or not he planned to refund any of the $25 fees he collected for what now amounts to a bizarre piece of scrap paper.
Originally posted at esquire.com.Beijing’s top liaison official Zhang Xiaoming has said Hong Kong’s chief executive has an “overriding power” above all administrative, legislative and judicial organs in the government, and that the separation of the three powers “is not suitable” for Hong Kong.
“The political system in the HKSAR is an administrative-oriented system under the direct jurisdiction of the central government and centred around the chief executive, with checks and balances as well as cooperation between the administration, and an independent legislature,” Zhang told attendees at an event to mark the 25th anniversary of the promulgation of the Basic Law on Saturday.
The CE “has the status of a double chief and is accountable to two sides,” Zhang said. “This gives the CE a special legal position which overrides administrative, legislative and judicial organs.”
Hong Kong’s mini-constitution, the Basic Law, ensures its judicial independence – Zhang added – but the Special Administrative Region’s leader has special legal power above the judiciary as well as the executive and legislative branches of government. As Hong Kong is not a sovereign state, it will not implement the Western system of “separation of three powers,” he said.
“Hong Kong is not using the British or American system… One and a half centuries have passed, if now we copy [the Western system], if we implement separation of three systems and the parliamentary system of the US and UK, and use this to judge whether [society] is democratic, I’m afraid it’s not suitable.”
Speaking in the same event, Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying said that Hong Kong’s high degree of autonomy needs to be kept within the Basic Law framework, and that the principle of “Hong Kong people governing Hong Kong” also needs to be restricted by the Basic Law.
At the end of his speech, Zhang said that he knew his remarks will cause controversy, but felt that he ought declare his stance clearly.
The Liaison Office is China’s de facto representation in the Hong Kong SAR. It is responsible for interactions between the Chinese Foreign Ministry and the People’s Liberation Army, as well as political and propaganda efforts in the city.
Additional reporting: Tom Grundy.In a development that could potentially help millions of people without access to clean water, Dr Cris Birzer from the University of Adelaide says this invention is faster and more productive than other methods of treating water.
“It's effectively a long half cylinder [that] concentrates solar energy to a glass tube and in that glass tube we're just running water,” he says.
“The solar energy, or specifically the UVA radiation in turn kills the pathogens in the water."
Developed for communities in Papua New Guinea, the engineers turned to chip packets as a material that was “easily made and modular."
It's "made from effectively scrap material," Dr Birzer says.
Unclean water claims the lives of 900 children in Papua New Guinea each year. Approximately 780 million people have no access to treated water worldwide.
The inventors have waived their right to a patent, meaning the potentially life-saving design will be freely available to anyone."Assou-Ekotto" redirects here. For his older brother Mathieu, see Mathieu Assou-Ekotto
Benoît Pierre David Assou-Ekotto (born 24 March 1984) is a professional footballer who plays as a left back.
Assou-Ekotto began his career at Lens and in 2006 was signed by Tottenham Hotspur. He became a first-team regular for the Premier League side, totalling 200 appearances across all competitions. He was loaned to Queens Park Rangers in 2013 and released in 2015, after which he joined Saint-Étienne. Despite being born in France, Assou-Ekotto represented Cameroon at international level, participating in two FIFA World Cup tournaments.
Club career [ edit ]
Lens [ edit ]
At the age of ten, Assou-Ekotto followed his brother in signing for Lens, before making his Ligue 1 debut on 28 March 2004 against Paris Saint-Germain, which Lens won the match 1–0. He played in 66 matches in Ligue 1 for Lens. He then played in seven of eight UEFA Cup matches as Lens fell to Udinese in the round of 32. After breaking into the first-team with three appearances in 2003–04, Assou-Ekotto caught the eye with 29 starts in 2004–05. At |
Rebel, they’re often exactly the same,” said Sarah Beetham, an art historian at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts who has studied the mass production of Civil War monuments.
Indeed, the Union and Confederate versions of the soldier statue were probably constructed from the same prefabricated parts.
The meaning of a memorial is never set in stone. The people who commission it might have one message in mind, but those who view the monument in generations that follow may draw entirely different lessons. One generation’s hero becomes another generation’s symbol of inhumanity — one reason Americans eventually turned away from statues of great men on horses, instead choosing stones decorated with lists of those who made the ultimate sacrifice.
In the case of the Confederate statues that have turned into powerful and, to many, disturbing symbols more than 150 years after the war, the Southern women who paid for most of the statues between 1880 and 1920 said they wanted a place to honor their fallen husbands and fathers. But the communities that erected those statues were also looking for a way to assert their doctrine of white supremacy at a time when they were passing Jim Crow laws to codify the separation of the races.
To the Monumental Bronze Co. in Bridgeport, Conn., it was all just business. Union or Confederate, a customer was a customer, another $450 for a zinc statue that could mean whatever you needed it to mean. It was a business model that could appeal to President Trump — a highly profitable product that could dress up a drab little town and make many Americans feel great again.
The ill-fated Confederate soldier statue in the Elberton Granite Museum. (Sarah Beetham )
[Mother of Charlottesville victim says she won’t speak to Trump or forgive his comments]
As Civil War veterans gained political clout near the end of the 1800s, they lobbied for pensions. In the South, their wives, sisters and daughters, organized as the United Daughters of the Confederacy, raised funds and purchased statues, sparking an unprecedented monument boom.
“Because of technological innovations in the granite and bronze industries, the price of these statues came way down,” said Kirk Savage, an art historian at the University of Pittsburgh and author of “Standing Soldiers, Kneeling Slaves: Race, War, and Monument in Nineteenth-Century America.” “Tiny little hamlets in New England and the Southeast could suddenly afford monuments.”
Wealthier cities such as Richmond and Baltimore could afford to hire professional sculptors to create original works in bronze — often drawn from melted-down Civil War cannons — featuring generals such as Robert E. Lee or Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson. But those statues cost thousands.
The marketing mavens at Monumental Bronze served a much larger market with cheap soldier statues made of zinc — a bargain at $450 for a life-size model, $750 for the 8½ -foot jumbo version. Monumental offered something rare for the day: One-stop shopping. Order your soldier and Monumental would ship the prefabricated parts and send someone to your home town to put it all together and get that baby up on a pedestal before the folks in the next town over got theirs.
The monument makers “weren’t interested in ideology or the moral cause,” Savage said. They just saw a market and lunged for it. Some Northern foundries had made armaments during the Civil War and were now searching for a new line. They made cemetery monuments, steady work but not a path to explosive growth. War memorials looked promising.
About 2,500 soldier statues were erected in the North and about 500 in the South, Beetham said. This celebration of ordinary soldiers was a revolutionary break from the classic commemoration of great men on horses.
Monumental sold its statues as “everlasting white bronze,” which they advertised as “a decided improvement” over marble and granite.
“This wasn’t true,” Beetham said. The zinc statues tended to flake apart at the seams, or lean backward in a very unmilitary posture.
Still, those statues forever changed how Americans pictured Civil War combatants.
“Our concept of what a Yankee or a Rebel looked like comes more from these postwar representations in monuments than from what they actually wore,” Beetham said.
When Southerners saw statues that looked too much like those depicting Union boys, they rebelled. In 1900, in Elberton, Ga., an angry crowd gathered in the middle of the night and pulled down a statue of a Confederate soldier because the sculptor — a Southerner, as it turned out — had put a long overcoat (a staple of Union uniforms) on the young man, probably to save the labor of carving out two full legs.
“It was the sculptor’s poor first attempt,” Beetham said. “The soldier looked like he was out of a Keebler elf cookie.”
To the good folks of Elberton, he looked like a Yankee interloper. Down he tumbled.
Townspeople dug a hole in the middle of Elberton’s main square and buried the offending statue facedown. (It was dug up in 1982 and now resides in a local museum.) Elberton then replaced that statue with one from Monumental Bronze’s catalogue.
“They replaced a monument made by a local Southern sculptor with a true Yankee interloper, made in Connecticut,” Beetham said.
Southern communities were generally quiet about the source of their Confederate statues. The United Daughters of the Confederacy had little choice but to buy from the North — or from Europe — because that’s where the foundries were; for decades after the war, the South was still battle-ravaged and almost uniformly agricultural.
The Confederate monument boom was driven almost entirely by women. “It was politically dicey for Confederate veterans to be seen as advocating for their former cause,” Beetham said. “The men want to be able to own property. They want to be able to vote. They can only do that if they’ve clearly laid down their arms and sworn allegiance to the United States. Women don’t have to worry about any of that — they can’t own property, they can’t vote. So they hide behind their femininity and say, ‘We just want a monument to have a place to lay our flowers.’ ”
The monument business fell off after World War I. Although many towns bought doughboy statues, “the great man monument really fades out,” Savage said. Sculpted tributes to common soldiers remained the rule after World War II, as well — the iconic image of Iwo Jima, for example — but in the decades since, the influence of abstract art and rising cynicism about the role of great men in history have altered the nature of monuments. Abstract forms such as Washington’s Vietnam Veterans Memorial wall and the 9/11 memorials in Manhattan and at the Pentagon became more common.
“Starting with World War I, there was a very strong anti-monument movement, in large part in reaction to the Civil War monuments,” which were seen as glorifying war, Savage said. Instead, living memorials became popular — public spaces such as parks, fountains, stadiums and auditoriums named for veterans.
But demand for statues never went away, especially from veterans groups. The motivation remains steady, Savage said: “We want our story, our pain, our sacrifice to be recognized.”by
DONETSK, Peoples Republic of Donetsk
February 11, 2015
Kyiv troops shelled the city of Donetsk yesterday. It was powerful and violent, as if a parting, a farewell for the last time. But I knew it was not for the last time, despite the ceasefire negotiations going on in Minsk.
This morning, their shells landed at a bus depot in the city centre. Several people died. So far, I’ve only seen pictures on the Internet because I can’t bring myself to go there and see with my own eyes the place of the tragedy. Less than two months ago, during my first trip to Donetsk, I departed several times from this bus depot. I purchased items in the now-ruined drugstore at the same location. I drank coffee while waiting for the bus there. If yesterday, somehow, I had appeared in that part of town, I would not be writing this column. I wouldn’t be writing anything at all.
A deputy of the Parliament in Kyiv from the electoral bloc of Petro Poroshenko has submitted a bill that would make it a crime to deny that “Russian aggression” is responsible for the war here in eastern Ukraine. I guess that means I’ll soon be considered a criminal because I deny the military aggression of the Russian Federation. I don’t see any Russian or Chechen soldiers here in Donetsk. I only see local militia, who are standing up to defend their homeland and their way of life. And I see civilians who, despite the fact that the city is being constantly shelled, are going about their business and doing what they think is proper – they work, they help those who are suffering from the war even more than they are suffering, and they hope for a rapid end to the war. I say this is a civil war, brought on by the aggression of Kyiv.
No proposed bill and not even an eventual law will make me afraid to do a “crimethink”. I see parallels between the novel ‘1984’ and the current Ukrainian government. It’s ludicrous, but that’s because the Kyiv government is ludicrous in the way it reproduces the sort of world portrayed by George Orwell in his book, as if it were following the novel as an instruction manual. “We have a war, but it is not a war.” (The government will not formally declare war.)
“We were attacked by Russia, and we have evidence, but we will not produce it.”
“We kill for peace.”
“We destroy the Donbas region, because we love it”,
“We do not buy goods from the aggressor, but we do have businesses on the aggressor’s territory, including producing and selling candies there.” (Poroshenko’s chocolate and candy enterprises are happily doing business in Russia.)
“We pursue in the courts those who are for peace, because they are guilty of war.”
All this and more is the new doublethink which Kyiv authorities impose upon the people of Ukraine.
The repressive bill against critics of conscription would legalize the persecution of those who do not want to die in this war. It allows for the tapping of the phones of relatives of suspected “criminals”. If adopted, the bill will not mark a new stage in the formation of the fascist power in Ukraine, because Ukrainian authorities did not need laws to legitimize their already existing fascism.
From now on, they can send people to prison for refusing to participate in this undeclared and officially non-existent war, while profiting from business relations with those whom they label everywhere an aggressor. The Kyiv government will continue to destroy and cripple thousands of lives in order to stay on top of the power pyramid. It will use all possible means. But it fails to notice that its power pyramid sits atop a shaky base of trash and broken chairs. It is crumbling as I write.
Artillery shells are constantly exploding outside my window, almost non-stop. Obviously, Kyiv military forces have decided to vent their spite until the last possible moment before the truce is supposed to begin on Saturday at midnight.
Yulia Malkina is a writer and editor at the left-wing Ukrainian web journal Liva.com (‘The Left’). Liva publishes a page of selected articles in English, translated from the Ukrainian and Russian-language originals.
Editor’s postscript:
Donetsk resident Dan Levy was an eyewitness to the shelling of a bus depot in Donetsk in the early hours of Feb 11, 2015. He writes the following report on his Facebook page and posted some photos there. Radio Free Europe has a brief video clip of the aftermath of the attack.Child detention: end this shameful bipartisan policy
Posted
This is not about politics; it is about saving vulnerable children from the severe harm done to them in detention, which is proven and undisputable, writes Nick Talley.
The new report by the Australian Human Rights Commission, The Forgotten Children: National Inquiry into Children in Immigration Detention, provides overwhelming evidence once again of the terrible health impacts Australia's detention policies are having on children.
It's a depressing read, replete with stories of children crying themselves to sleep at night, illustrated with children's drawings of bars, tears and upturned faces, and containing testimony from expert paediatricians that the physical, mental and emotional harm being done to children may in many cases be irreversible.
In short, it shows successive governments have clearly failed to uphold their duty of care towards an extremely vulnerable group of people that has no voice to defend itself, and in so doing have breached the United Nation's International Convention for the Rights of the Child.
Almost as sad as the report itself has been the response from the Federal Government, which has had the report since November but only tabled it at the last possible moment, in the closing hours of Parliament on Wednesday, the day of its deadline.
Instead of engaging with the report's horrific content, the Government has attacked the Commission and its president, Professor Gillian Triggs, suggesting that in highlighting the suffering of these children she has engaged in a "blatantly partisan... stitch-up", in the Prime Minister's words.
This response is deeply disappointing. The commission engaged some of Australia's most distinguished paediatricians to examine conditions in detention and the data relating to health impacts. Forty-one witnesses gave evidence, under oath, during five public hearings. Many of these experts are my colleagues, fellows of The Royal Australasian College of Physicians. To suggest their professional medical opinions are part of some political hatchet job is simply shameful.
The Government's response discounts an overwhelming consensus that holding children in detention is unacceptable, outlined in submissions made to the inquiry by over 200 organisations and individuals.
My own organisation provided evidence to the inquiry and I take great offence at any suggestion its evidence was influenced by partisanship. This is not about politics; it is about saving vulnerable children from the severe harm done to them in detention, which is proven and undisputable.
The facts - of children refusing to speak or eat, crying through the night unable to sleep, wetting their beds in fear - are indisputable and beyond politics.
Our opposition to holding children in detention has been sustained during Liberal and Labor Governments, as has this harmful policy, sadly.
Indeed, as Professor Triggs highlighted this week, detaining children is one of the few areas of political bipartisanship in recent years, with both sides complicit in this reprehensible policy.
As a doctor and a medical researcher, I have no doubt that this report is robust. It draws on qualitative and quantitative research methods to reach evidence-based conclusions that highlight the devastating impact the policy of mandatory detention has on children and their families. Scientific rigour is not subject to partisan politics, and it shows ignorance to suggest otherwise.
Instead of attacking the Commission and its president with the tired lines it has been parroting in the months leading up to this report being tabled, the Abbott Government should take this opportunity to fully adopt the report's recommendations.
Once and for all, Australia's leaders must put a stop to the detention of children in immigration facilities.
Professor Nick Talley is president of the Royal Australasian College of Physicians.
Topics: rights, immigration, childrenEditor's note: The day after this story was reported, Jordan Jacobson admitted that it was a hoax, saying he’d posted the photo to Twitter in jest. Jacobson and a friend had confirmed details of the supposed incident in interviews with StarTribune and other news organizations. Please see the follow-up story here.
If Jordan Jacobson ever gets another chance to catch a Home Run Derby ball hit by Giancarlo Stanton, he can have the slugger’s glove with him.
The 19-year-old ball-shagging fan from Lakeville stuck out his right hand Monday night at Target Field in an attempt to nab a blast from the Florida Marlins star during the All-Star competition among major league musclemen. But the ball deflected off Jacobson’s mitt-less flesh and was pounced on by another fan more than 350 feet from where the 6-foot-6, 240-pound Stanton let it rip.
Jacobson could only stare at his swollen and bruised hand that night, an image prominently displayed on the widely viewed Deadspin sports website.
But Jacobson confirmed Wednesday that Stanton is sending the former Lakeville North baseball player a glove and a ball from the Home Run Derby.
“Thank you” was all Jacobson wanted to say, while verifying that Stanton’s Twitter message about the gifts was true.
Jordan Jacobson, left, and Adam Alexander did get some face time on the jumbo screen during Monday’s Home Run Derby.
“Sorry you had to ‘Bear’ this pain @JJacobson13!” Stanton tweeted. “But look on the bright side, now u get my Glove & a Derby ball!”
In an earlier interview with a Florida-based sports and pop culture blog, Jacobson said: “It was extremely painful at first, then went numb after about 15 minutes. It probably would have felt better if I would have gotten the ball.”
When he posted a picture of his hurtin’ hand on Twitter, he wrote: “Note to self … Bring a glove to the homerun derby next year.”
Adam Alexander, who was with Jacobson at the derby, said his buddy reached out on Twitter to Stanton in hopes of some gain from his pain, a move that has paid off.
“Hey @Giancarlo818 thanks, I forgot to bring my mit,” Jacobson wrote, including a photo of the damaged digits.Boulder police on Wednesday afternoon chased down a man driving a riding lawnmower in traffic along south Broadway.
Sgt. Paul Reichenbach said someone called police about 3:15 p.m. after seeing a man ride through the intersection of Baseline Road and Broadway.
The mower continued south along a bike path.
Police caught up with the mower – a black Yard Machines unit with a 21 horsepower engine – at the intersection of Harvard Lane and Auburn Street.
Reichenbach said the driver told officers that he was trying to donate the lawn equipment to Fairview High School and was riding it to the school to drop off.
Reichenbach said riding a lawnmower in traffic or along a bike path are both illegal, but officers chose not to ticket the man because he wasn’t causing a problem.
“He was trying to be a good guy,” Reichenbach said. “We think his heart was certainly in the right place.”
Officers asked the man – whose name was not available because police didn’t arrest or ticket him – to park the mower and have a truck pick it up.
An officer gave the man a ride to the school.
Get more Boulder County news at DailyCamera.com.While the Obama Administration making the claim that it has the power to use drones inside the United States to target and eliminate potential threats, a Fox News poll released on Monday shows that Americans are not at all comfortable with this prospect:
The poll finds that 32 percent of voters think that yes, the president should be able to authorize the use of deadly force domestically against an American terrorist. Still, about twice that many — 63 percent — disagree and want checks on the president. Again, agreement is bipartisan, as most Republicans (70 percent) and independents (70 percent) and a majority of Democrats (54 percent) oppose the president having the sole power under these conditions.
There were actually two different questions in regard to President Obama and drone strikes, one of which was a general question about the policy. The other was a more specific question about giving the power to determine who should be target to the president.
Here are the two questions:
Do you approve or disapprove of the United States using unmanned aircraft called drones to kill a suspected terrorist who is a U.S. citizen on U.S. soil?
Do you think the president of the United States, on his own, should be able to authorize the use of deadly force, such as a drone strike, to kill a suspected terrorist who is a U.S. citizen on U.S. soil?
On the first question, the divide wasn’t that wide. According the poll, 45% — including 44% of Democrats and 47% of Republicans — approve of using drones to kill an American citizen suspected terrorism inside the United States. Only 50% disapprove.
The second question reflected a deeper partisan divide, one that is reflective of today’s politics. While only 32% of respondents the president having the sole discretion to an American citizen suspected of terrorism, 41% of Democrats are perfectly fine with this. Only 26% of Republicans supported the idea.
The poll also found that 74% of Americans approve of drone strikes against suspected terrorists in other countries. Only 22% disapprove of these targeted killings, which often kill innocent civilians.
According to a study by the law schools at Stanford and New York University, as many as 881 innocent Pakistanis — including 176 children — were killed in drone strikes over the course of an eight year period. The study also found that drones have had a profound psychology impact, “giving rise to anxiety and psychological trauma among civilian communities” due to the fact that “[d]rones hover twenty-four hours a day over communities in northwest Pakistan, striking homes, vehicles, and public spaces without warning.”
The numbers on the homefront are good news, but unfortunately, too many Americans don’t see the bad side of drones overseas, which is a failure of the media for not reporting on these incidents when they occur. It’s not a sexy as the latest pop-culture news or the scandal of the day.
H/T: Hot Air"I'm watching the press conference and I am wondering if we should stay in tonight," a Finnish friend texted as Sweden's Security Service Säpo announced on Wednesday that the terror threat level in Sweden had been raised to 'high' amid a hunt for a man suspected of plotting terror crimes here.
"I've never seen such serious warnings from the authorities of any Nordic country," the message continued.
On the streets of Stockholm on Thursday, there were similar jitters.
"I don't like the subway now. It doesn't feel nice," said Helle Aarniporo, 58, who was visiting the capital from Umeå in northern Sweden.
"It's worse to be here than at home. There are many more people. I'm not from Stockholm, so I don't know what [places] to avoid or what to do," she told The Local nervously as she prepared to board the underground at Slussen, a busy station close to the city centre.
Helle Aarniporo is visiting Stockholm from northern Sweden. Photo: The Local
For plenty of Swedish residents the idea of a terror attack on home soil remains unimaginable. The country is frequently ranked among the safest and most peaceful in the world.
There has never before been a nationwide threat level this high, although it was briefly raised in Gothenburg in 2007 amid fears of terrorist activities in the city.
Unlike in Paris, Madrid, London or Copenhagen, there is no history of Swedes being killed at the hands of Islamist extremists in their home country.
Stockholm did experience an attempted suicide attack in 2010, but while the bomber died, only two people were hospitalized with minor injuries.
"It really is a game changer," said terrorism expert Magnus Ranstorp from the Swedish Defence University when contacted by The Local. "Other European countries are raising the threat levels, so this is part of the European reaction. But also we now have this concrete threat," he added. "I think that most people have been pretty ignorant and in a state of denial about the threat of extremism - general Swedes and politicians (...) Now people are waking up to the idea that this is an immediate threat, this is very real."
Sweden's Security Service Säpo's headquarters in Solna, north of Stockholm. Photo: Jan Eriksson/TT Sweden's new high alert status comes amid growing evidence that rising numbers of residents have links to extremist groups. Just a day after the deadly attacks in Paris left 129 people dead, Gothenburg was cited as the largest European recruiting ground for Isis per capita by Swedish integration police chief, Ulf Boström. Sweden' Security Service, Säpo, revealed last month that more than 300 Swedish nationals have left the country to travel to fight with Islamic extremist groups in Syria and Iraq.
Despite the shifting dynamic in the Scandinavian country, authorities have been quick to reassure people that -- so far -- no threats have been made against the general population.
At his press conference on Wednesday night, Interior Minister Ygeman said that only official buildings had been targeted and urged people not to "give in to the fear that the terrorists want us to feel".
Meanwhile Säpo's Director General Anders Thornberg said there was "absolutely no need" for Swedes to be afraid, but explained that they should have a slightly heightened state of vigilance.
Their messages do appear to have got through to some Stockholmers, with many brushing off the fears expressed by other residents when approached by The Local on Thursday.
"I have seen some people writing questions online and stuff and they seem quite scared, but in my circle at least people aren't worried," said Alexander Östman, 25, who lives in the Södermalm neighbourhood, just south of the city centre.
"They [Swedish authorities] were quite honest to say that it was a more general raise across the whole country. If it was just Södermalm for example, I would be perhaps a bit more threatened, but right now I just feel that they explained it pretty good, why they raised the threat level."
Alexander Östman, 25, says he is not worried about terrorism in Sweden. Photo: The Local
Linus Skoglund Orwald, 17, told The Local that while he had been "terrified" to hear about the recent attacks in the French capital, where his cousins live, he was not concerned about anything similar happening in his home city.
"I trust our security and I hope the government can handle this (...) it can't happen over here in Sweden."
But the fact that Säpo has raised the threat level is firm evidence that Nordic authorities believe a terror attack is possible.
The official definition of a 'high' alert is that "the probability that players have the intent and ability to carry out attacks is high".
While Swedes appear to be divided on how to respond to the new warning, what is clear is that discussions about terrorism are no longer focused on what's happening abroad.
In offices, homes and universities around the country, people are asking "what if a terror attack happens in Sweden?".WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A bill was introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives on Thursday that would overturn the Environmental Protection Agency’s decision to prevent California from limiting the amount of greenhouse gas emissions spewed by cars.
The EPA last December turned down California’s request for a waiver from federal law that would have permitted the state to cut vehicle carbon dioxide emissions, which when implemented would have likely have raised the required fuel efficiency of cars and also fought global warming.
A group of 60 House lawmakers introduced legislation that would immediately grant California’s waiver request and also clear the way for 12 other states to set vehicle tailpipe emissions standards.
“The Environmental Protection Agency’s decision defied the science, defied the states, and defied common sense,” said Rep. Peter Welch of Vermont, who co-sponsored the bill.
“With consumers feeling the pinch of record fuel prices and the evidence of global warming overwhelming, the Bush administration must lead, follow, or get out of the way,” he said.
Similar legislation was introduced in the U.S. Senate this year by Barbara Boxer of California.
The 12 states wanting to follow California in regulating tailpipe emissions are Connecticut, Maryland, Maine, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont and Washington.
The governors of Arizona, Colorado, Florida and Utah also have committed to implementing similar vehicle emissions standards.Daphne Sashin is a producer with the CNN social discovery team. Reach her on Twitter @dsashin or weigh in with CNN Parents on Facebook.
(CNN) If they're being honest, most mothers will tell you that no matter how badly you want a child, the transition to parenthood is hard. Really hard.
According to a recent study, the drop in happiness experienced by parents after the birth of first child was larger than the experience of unemployment, divorce or the death of a partner.
The ickiness you feel in pregnancy as your body becomes alien to you. The childbirth, and the healing after. The breastfeeding struggles -- oh, the struggles and the tears. The isolation of being home alone all day with a crying infant while your partner is at work.
At least, that's what it was like for me, when my first child was born in 2011.
A new study suggests when people experience early parenthood -- pregnancy, childbirth and the baby days -- as particularly stressful, they are less likely to want to do it again.
The study by the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research in Rostock, Germany, found "the larger the loss in well-being, the smaller the probability of a second baby." The effect is especially strong for highly-educated parents and those who waited longer to have a second child.
That might sound obvious, but it has policy implications for countries with low birth rates, the authors suggest.
The findings were recently published in the Journal Demography by Mikko Myrskyla, demographer and director at the Planck Institute, and Rachel Margolis from the sociology department at the University of Western Ontario. They looked at well-being data from 2,000 first-time parents starting two years before the birth of their first child until the year after the birth. They found 58% of the participants went on to have a second child over an average of nine years after the first one.
"The investigation deals with a taboo subject. It is rarely discussed that parents often experience a considerable loss of happiness after the birth of a first child," the Institute said in a press release. "The new study shows that for mothers and fathers in Germany, the drop in life satisfaction during the year following the first birth is even larger than that caused by unemployment, divorce or the death of a partner."
That last line is making parents wince. Cheree Pollard Biggs wrote on the CNN Parents Facebook page, "I have suffered through a death of my partner and a divorce and I can tell you that both death and divorce are far more 'unhappy' than the joy I felt after the birth of each child. Yes, I was tired and overwhelmed, but I was happy. Birth is an addition, a renewed sense of hope, a reason to continue. Death and divorce are losses."
But plenty of parents we surveyed agreed that the lows of parenthood can be pretty low -- and it really does take a village to combat them.
Alexa Hart, a mother of a 15-month-old in the Bay Area, told me part of the trauma of new parenthood "rests in our cultural silence" about how challenging it is, financially, emotionally, and on a marriage.
"We accept that divorce and death are traumatic, and condolences are offered when those life events occur. But when you're pregnant/expecting, everyone is'so happy' for you. We expect some challenges, but we don't discuss the deep frustration, total sleep deprivation and heartbreaking questioning of self that comes with new life," she said.
The authors said they were not looking at what makes parents happy or unhappy -- they were specifically looking at why, although most German couples say they would like to have two children, they end up stopping after one.
"On the whole," Myrskyla said, "despite the unhappiness after the first birth of a baby, having up to two children rather increases overall happiness in life."
In my case, it took a good two years before I could even consider going through pregnancy, childbirth and the baby days again. The second time around, I sought out help from lots of different people, and was determined to change the most unpleasant parts of the experience in whatever ways I could.
Robert Hughes Jr., professor of family studies at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, said if countries want more highly educated parents to have a second child, they must "really think about how you support these families." The U.S. has the same pattern of older and well-educated parents not replacing themselves, he said.
"I think people are making really rational choices," he said. "We're going to have to reduce the burden of balancing work and family life, and most of that is probably going to be on the side of altering work schedules and providing new parents in particular with extra supports during that transitional period."On Tuesday, The Arizona Republic ran an 1,100-word obituary of a 38-year-old man named Paul Horner. Horner, who died of a suspected drug overdose, was famous for gaming digital advertising networks with widely shared fake news stories to the tune of tens of thousands of dollars. Some of his false stories were subsequently shared by, among others, Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski and Fox News.
Read through the Republic obit, though, and you’ll meet not just a peddler of fake and destructive stories, but a “pioneer” whose “satire” and “pranks” ranged from “over-the-top jokes to political firebombs.” What a gas! “He had also begun to expand his fake news footprint,” the Republic continued, “paying local writers $50 for stories published on one of his many websites.” A job creator!
The Republic quotes a previous interview with Horner in which he described the “moral purpose” of his work, adding, “anybody can write a story.”
And then the obituary’s kicker (emphasis mine):
“I’ve always done the right thing,” [Horner] told The Republic in the 2016 interview. “I’ve never stolen from anyone. I’ve done a few things in the past that I’m not proud of, but I’ve never been a thief. I’ve never done bad stuff. I’m definitely proud of my life, but more proud of how my writing has become in the last few years.”
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No qualms here with trying to paint a nuanced portrait of a tortured soul who got into some seriously bad shit. Horner did standup as a hobby, per the Republic’s account, was remembered as a good guy by fellow comedians, and even started a charity to deliver socks to the homeless. But we can and should dissociate that from the legitimately toxic acts that Horner found most financially rewarding.
It’s a tightrope, and The Hollywood Reporter similarly fell on the wrong side of it last week in a glamorous profile of the men behind Your News Wire, a site that helped push the Pizzagate conspiracy theory. This, I kid you not, is its opening paragraph:
“Reality is how you perceive it. You can change that perception of reality — dictate it.” Most journalism barons don’t deal in metaphysics. For digital upstart Sean Adl-Tabatabai, 36, who talks of “the holographic nature of the world,” and his husband and business partner, Sinclair Treadway, 24, it could be a credo.
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Just a couple journalism barons spouting off propagandistic one-liners about twisting the idea of objective truth into knots. The undercurrent flowing through such stories—you can also read this between the lines of coverage of Milo, Breitbart, and the like—is that these figures are messengers of the new-media counterculture. Edgy, even.
My counterargument: They are bad people doing bad things, and they represent a cancer within the manic-depressive media environment we all inhabit. If the journalists who write about these people can’t make their own moral judgments about how terrible they are for all the rest of us, we’re in even more trouble than we think.ESWC has announced that it will host a CS:GO tournament during Paris Games Week with 16 teams and $80,000 on offer.
After hosting an event in the Canadian city of Montreal earlier this month, ESWC has revealed the first details about its upcoming international competition, which will take place from October 29 to November 1 as part of the Paris Games Week fair.
A total of ten games will be played at ESWC 2015 PGW, including Counter-Strike, which will have a 16-team tournament with a prize pool of $80,000 (a $5,000 increase from the event in Montreal).
ESWC and Counter-Strike return to Paris Games Week
Both the group stage and the playoffs will feature in a best-of-three format, with one match per day being played on the ESWC main stage, including the grand final.
Teams can apply for a spot at ESWC 2015 PGW by filling out a registration form. The participants will be selected based on motivation and past achievements, even though ESWC says that it will try to "ensure the greatest nationality diversity possible."
It is worth noting that some top teams will not be able to attend the event as it clashes with DreamHack Open Cluj, which will have a $40,000 tournament.Qatar has a "vision and target" of hosting a Summer Olympics and will bid to hold future games, a senior member of the Gulf country's Olympics committee said Monday.
Thani Al-Kuwari added that the country would undoubtedly bid to host an Olympics, maybe as early as the 2028 games.
Kuwari pointed to the fact that Qatar is busy building facilities which could be used at an Olympics, for such events as the World Athletics Championships in 2019, the football World Cup in 2022 and the 2023 FINA world swimming championships.
Qatar, which has come under huge international criticism for alleged corruption and its record on workers rights since being awarded the football World Cup, previously unsuccessfully bid to host the 2020 Summer Olympics, which will be hosted in Japan.
...Do you know the operator precedence rules in the programming languages that you use? Given an expression like this one in Java:
x/6+5&8>>2-4!=8
Can you say how it will be parsed? (Never mind that the semantics may be meaningless; the parser doesn’t care about semantics.) Generally, programming environments give very little help in improving readability of expressions; the expression will be displayed exactly as above. You do get bracket-match highlighting if you have brackets (and some would argue that you should always bracket expressions for extra clarity). But maybe the display of expressions can be further improved in other ways.
Designers tend to use whitespace for grouping items — for example, grouping related columns in tables. And in fact, a lot of programmers do tend to omit the whitespace around high precedence (tightly bound) operators while putting it in around lower precedence operators. You are much more likely to see this:
dist * Math.sqrt(x*x + y*y)
Than this equally spaced version:
dist * Math. sqrt (x * x + y * y)
Or this devilishy spaced version:
dist*Math. sqrt(x * x+y * y)
If the rule that most people follow is simply to have whitespace inversely proportional to the precedence of the operator, surely we could automate this in a programming editor.
Dynamically varying whitespace
Consider this expression, without spaces:
Using the parse tree of this expression, we can assign smaller whitespace to operators nearer |
-3)Newton Campus Soccer Complex, Newton, Mass.555Freshmanscored his team-leading eighth goal of the season in the 71minute to give the Eagles the leadBoston College will travel to face No. 15 South Florida in the second round of the NCAA Tournament on Sunday, Nov. 22. Kickoff and broadcast information will be announced within the next day.After reading Arstechnica’s excellent article on internet infrastructure and what goes on behind the scene to bring the internet to your home, I have a newfound respect for all the ISPs I have used in the past and the ISP business I am running now. Most of the stuff mentioned in the Ars article is not new to me, but it helps to be reminded in a nice 7000-word article with informative pictures what it takes to bring the internet to your home and how little control you have, as a service provider, to maintain a high quality of service.
Ars promised a follow-up article on last mile infrastructure, from NOC to your home, but let me tell you from personal experience; the last mile is the hardest and perhaps the most expensive to maintain. There is an insane amount of planning, and attention to details goes in the background to bring the internet to your home so that you can watch cat gifs.
A little back story.
We started our ISP as sort of a joke, or more like I-have-couple-of-months-to-kill-with-nothing-better-to-do kind of thing. I had zero prior experience in running an ISP. I had some experience in running other businesses, but the experience isn’t easily transferable to running an ISP. My business partner had some experience in working in an ISP industry in very limited capacity and he is not good with money or good with business in general. The perfect couple and the perfect storm, waiting to happen. We applied for a nationwide ISP license, there aren’t a lot of them (I wonder why) and they are not very expensive to apply, so why not? Surprisingly we got our license without much hassle.
It costs a lot of money to start
Let me highlight some of the requirements and cost associated with running a proper ISP, without going into very specific details, like our location and specific network devices we used. Please keep in mind we are only a two-year-old, medium-sized ISP in a developing world, most of what we do will apply to most of the world, but some of it might not.
NOC and POP
Our NOC (Network Operations Center, where all the magic happens) needed to be located in an area which is easily accessible 24/7 without any restrictions. These kind of locations are tricky and expensive to find when your business revolves around serving home users (mostly) in residential areas. We found a nice place in the business district with a 10-year lease with provisions to renegotiate after 5 years.
We had to connect to multiple upstream with two redundant physical connectivity (Primary and Backup) and each of this connectivity has to be from different routes. So, we have four upstream bandwidth providers, for each physical connection, we have to painstakingly plan fiber routes so that they don’t overlap. And if there is any kind of problem with one of the cores connecting us to our upstream, let’s say some absent-minded road construction worker accidently cut our underground fiber cores. We will be pleased to know that it won’t affect any of our other cores. We probably don’t need four upstream, but from our experience we have learned that to absolutely minimize downtime (which are rare) and bandwidth congestion issues, having multiple upstream is the best way to go (with minimal overlapping peering within themselves). We also needed to research and negotiate with our upstream BW providers so that we get access to most of their network peers. It costs us more money, but it gives our users better speed and low latency to things like gaming servers.
Typical DELL R720 10G GGC Nodes, we get four of them.
We also needed to have on premise Google and Akamai CDN. Google has a program where you can apply for their GGC (Google Global Cache) hardware for your premise. They are free to apply and you get 3 nice Dell GGC nodes with a combined throughout of 19gbps to begin with. But there is a minimum requirement before you can apply for them. Your ASN needs to have at least 2gbps worth of bandwidth requests to Google services before you are eligible for their hardware. But when you are starting out you have no option but to buy expensive BW for youtube requirements. Considering that Youtube traffic is about 2/5th of our total traffic and it can take more than 6 months to reach their minimum requirements, plus another 3 months for nodes to be delivered to our premise, configuring them and start benefitting from their GGC nodes can take another month or so. All this time we are burning real money. We have to sell BW to customers by being competitive with the existing market price which includes the benefit of having an on-premise GCC node, which we obviously didn’t. Once we got our GGC nodes running at maximum efficiency, in a matter of weeks we were almost as competitive as our competition. At the moment, we are in talks to apply for Akamai nodes, but Akamai has a higher barrier to entry and though it won’t save us a lot of money, it will give better service for our customer, which is equally important to us. We are also considering applying for Netflix nodes, but since they just started in our country, I don’t know how accommodating they will be.
We lease underground cores from third parties, cores are expensive and we often have to haggle back and forth to try to reduce the cost of the cores that are used as a backup and which we will probably not use more than once a year, for a couple of hours.
We needed multiple levels of redundancy with power too. We have two power company in our region but only one of them is directly connected to our office. The other one has presence 3-4 blocks away from us. Though connecting with second power company had some legal issues, we jumped through some hoops to get connected to them. If you thought last mile OH (Over Head) fiber was expensive to install and maintain, try doing it for power lines. So in an event of a power failure in our zone, we should still have power available from our backup connectivity. To maintain this backup connectivity is expensive even if you use them once a year, as a business you have to pay a minimum amount to keep connected to them, whether you use them or not. We also have multiple online UPS (with 50% overhead capacity), which can provide us about 20 hours worth of power in the event of total power failure from mainlines. We also have two diesel generators, each located on opposite side of the building, with enough diesel in stock for 2 days of uninterrupted power.
The server room is isolated from the rest of the office in our NOC (naturally), the room needs to be carefully climate controlled (multiple 24 hours air-condition units) and access controlled through biometric readers and monitored with HD cameras. I am not going to go into specific name brands or product type we use for our edge routers and distribution switches, but they are the usual culprits that most people use out there. It’s not like you have a lot of high-quality options anyways. Mostly Cisco, Juniper, Mikrotik (home user BW control) and some Linux boxes. These switches and routers are ridiculously expensive and you really need to have a drop-in backup for your edge and distribution routers/switches. Not to mention you need a staging lab before deploying new configurations to live network. Since our network is on 10g, LR (long Range) sfp+ modules that work well with Cisco and Juniper devices can be very very expensive, especially in this part of the world where it’s not readily available so we have to keep a lot of spares available all the time.
Ideally, you should have a drop-in NOC available close by so you should be able to switch to your backup NOC, in the case of a massive disaster to your primary NOC. It’s in the back of our mind constantly. The amount of planning and expenses involved with setting it up is ridiculous. Hopefully, we will do it soon, possibly by the end of this year.
A small network distribution from one of our POP, We have 30 POPs.
We also have 30+ POPs all over the country with cross-connected ring networks to ensure multiple redundancies. Each of these POPs has similar power redundancy with 24/7 support personal. Our support needed to be very solid. Since All ISPs sell the same thing that meets 90% of users needs, our only differential factor is the quality of customer support. So we have a small army of well paid and well-trained support waiting on standby 24/7. It goes without saying all these costs a decent amount of money.
Support
We have three types of support: On the phone, on customer premise (within 12 hours of a call, depending on client’s availability), and last mile Fiber Support. We have 100km+ overhead fiber cables, we also have almost double of that distance of underground fiber we leased from third party provider. This large network of fibers needs constant maintenance almost on a daily basis. Our Fibre support teams are equipped with multiple expensive fiber splicing machines and OTDRs, to help them fix problems as soon as possible. This team is also in charge of last mile connectivity from our POPs to Home users. Since we are a FTTH (Fiber to the Home) service provider, we need to install fairly expensive Media Convertor at each customer premise to provide service.
Typical OTDR
Sales
On the sales and marketing side, our team has to deal with ruthless competition and saturated market. We are fairly new to ISP business (only 2 years old), most of the existing ISPs has been around for decades. Not only do they have a solid network all around the country they have a name brand that most people can relate to. It’s extremely difficult to sway a customer away from their existing internet connection. Sometimes we have to offer at least a month worth of internet free so that customers get time to evaluate and compare the services. When you are starting out, your advertisement cost can be insane. One good thing about being in a developing world is that even though the market is saturated as it stands now, it hasn’t topped out because there is still market to grow. In our case, it’s mostly out of the big cities and into rural areas where big ISPs didn’t put much investment.
What can go wrong?
You can do everything by the book and make sure not to spare any expenses so that you can squeeze out that extra bit of latency issues and things can still go horribly wrong. For instance, as a developing country, our government and their respective bodies are always working on tweaking regulations to best benefit the users. But most of this decisions doesn’t take into account how it affects ISP businesses. Long running businesses can absorb some of the cost of regulation changes but ISPs who are just starting out or hoping to start a business can get easily discouraged. So in the long term, you have less competition on an already difficult sector.
We also have to consider challenges our upstream faces, sometimes their backbones can go down and cause massive network congestions and it can take weeks to fix it, and it’s not even on their hands – as they have to rely on their backbone provider. When a customer calls about having slow internet speed we cannot tell them about upstream backbone issues or estimated time when it will be fixed. Because they don’t care and they want an immediate fix. In this kind of situations, we assure them that the problem will be fixed soon. If we think it will take a long time to get normal service from one of our upstream, we either shift the client to another stable upstream (that’s why we have four of them). Or we take some extra short term BW and move 50% of our clients till things normalize. I know we should be compensated for this loss by our upstream since we have SLA with them, but things are not as simple as they sound. A lot of these SLA can’t be easily enforced with 100% compensation.
As mentioned before, underground cores could go down. Overhead cores could get cut or damaged because of weather. We could get hit by very very large and complex DDOS attack and our existing solution might not be able to handle it. Sometimes our upstream just turns off our interface till they/we figure out how to deal with the DDOS. Hardware for DDOS mitigations is very very expensive.
Don’t start an ISP business
So to conclude, I would highly advise against starting your own ISP. Even if you have a lot of money to throw around. The industry average is 4-5 years before you start to see a return on your investment and start making profits. Surprisingly we are at two years and we are already at a profit, not by much, buts its a start. But rest assured we are an edge case. Perhaps because we are industry outsiders and we did some things that normally most ISPs wouldn’t have done it. But it’s a topic for another day and I hope to write about it soon.
Follow up on profitability.There is a lot of breaking news this weekend as the nation learns that a sitting President (Obama) looks to have used the nation’s national security apparatus – which is empowered to protect this nation from foreign enemies and threats – for crass political gain (read “personal gain”). If this is even partially true, this would be Watergate on steroids and irreparably tarnish the Obama administration for all history.
These high stakes may also explain the irrational fear and hate by the democrat leadership we have seen in their scorched-Earth actions since the election. Events may be unraveling on them big time, events that started last summer in a very different world.
Let’s begin by setting down a hard and fast rule to blunt the coming weasel words from team Obama. The President runs his administration. The President’s cabinet has some individual authority, but they confirm with the Commander-in-Chief anything that could erupt back on them either legally or politically. No cabinet member – especially the Attorney General – would run near or across legal or ethical lines without concurrence (i.e., cover from) the top person.
To say Obama did not “order” the “wire tap” against the Trump campaign is as ridiculous as it sounds. Note: Trump used figurative parentheses when he tweeted “wire tap”, so read that as meaning “surveillance” legally.
It is not like the Captain of a ship actually “weigh’s the anchor” themselves! Captains order it be done. Or more accurately, it is one step of a process that has been established by the command chain so that when the Captain orders the ship to prepare to “get under way” this action is taken. However executed, the Captain is legally responsible for the people under him, and any mistakes they make. This would include any issues or damage done “weighing” the anchors.
So when someone tries to split hairs about who ordered the surveillance on Team Trump, remember this:
First, as Obama officials well know, under the FISA process, it is technically the FISA court that “orders” surveillance. And by statute, it is the Justice Department, not the White House, that represents the government in proceedings before the FISA court.
The fact is no one would be dumb enough to run afoul of the laws protecting the American People from our intelligence apparatus without top cover – because these represent very, very serious crimes. So let’s stop pretending AG Lynch did this on her own. If this happened, it was all coordinated.
We also need to start with specifying which laws were broken, and then get to the all critical timeline – because that is where we will discover how thin the ice is under Team Obama.
The best overview of the laws broken is here, and the following excerpts summarize the issues our nation faces. To understand the issues one must understand the very narrow and special role the FISA Court and our Intelligence Apparatus plays in our nation. Because of its special powers, it is very restricted on what it can do.
Rather shockingly, no law currently forbids misusing the power of the presidency to spy on one’s adversaries. What the law does forbid is lying to any judicial officer to obtain any means of surveillance. What the law does forbid, under criminal penalty, is the misuse of FISA. Both derive from the protections of the Fourth Amendment itself. Under section 1809, FISA makes it a crime for anyone to either “engage in” electronic surveillance under “color of law” under FISA without following the law’s restrictions, or “disclose” or “use” information gathered from it in contravention of the statute’s sharp constrictions.
Emphasis mine. As we deal with this explosive situation, remember the core issue. It is not run-of-the-mill political skulduggery (is there any other kind?). It is the criminal misuse of a critical national defensive capability. Liken it to using a military weapon against your political opponent, because that is the nearest and best analogy. If Obama ordered the military to intervene with Team Trump during the election, that would not be much different from using the intelligence powers to intervene. This is not on the same level as using the IRS to target political opponents – not by a long shot.
Why is this the case? Because the FISA court operates outside the US Constitution, and therefore any misuse is much more serious:
FISA, 50 USC 1801, et seq., is a very limited method of obtaining surveillance authority. The reason for its strict limits is that FISA evades the regular federal court process, by not allowing regularly, Constitutionally appointed federal judges and their magistrates to authorize surveillance the Fourth Amendment would otherwise forbid. Instead, the Chief Justice handpicks the FISA court members, who have shown an exceptional deference to the executive branch. This is because FISA court members trust the government is only bringing them surveillance about pending terror attacks or “grave hostile” war-like attacks, as the FISA statute limits itself to. Thus, a FISA application can only be used in very limited circumstances.
Again, emphasis mine. The capability to use our intelligence resources against any entity is restricted to critical national security. These resources are NOT to be applied for other legal matters, such as questionable business interests, hacking computers, etc. This is important because the evidence seems to show Team Obama tried to abuse these resources – and were rebuffed!
FISA can only be used for “foreign intelligence information.” … The only “foreign intelligence information” allowed as a basis for surveillance is information necessary to protect the United States against actual or potential “grave” “hostile” attack, war-like sabotage or international terror. Second, it can only be used to eavesdrop on conversations where the parties to the conversation are a foreign power or an agent of a foreign power. An agent of a foreign power cannot be a United States person unless they are knowingly involved in criminal espionage. No warrant is allowed on that person unless a FISA court finds probable cause the United States person is knowingly engaged in criminal espionage. Even then, if it involves a United States person, special steps must be taken to “minimize the acquisition and retention, and prohibit the dissemination, of non publicly available information concerning un-consenting United States persons.”
This is the crux of Obama’s legal trouble. In order to legally capture information about members of the Trump Campaign (one of which was a sitting Senator), then retain it and distribute it, the reason would have to border on high crimes and treason – not “discussions” or “hacking” or “business transactions”. Even coordinating national policies and treaties with foreign leaders would not rise to the level of urgency required to invoke these intelligence resources.
To summarize, it is Team Obama’s collection, retention and distribution of information protected by the US Constitution that constitute the high crimes here, specifically when it pertains to members of Trump’s campaign, emphasized here:
This includes procedures that require they never identify the person, or the conversation, being surveilled, to the public where that information is not evidence of a particular crime.
Since the Fake News media has been reporting these very same details to the public, and citing current and former Obama administration sources, it is not debatable on whether laws were broken. They were.
Bottom line: this should never have happened:
At the outset, the NSA should have never been involved in a domestic US election. Investigating the election, or any hacking of the DNC or the phishing of Podesta’s emails, would not be a FISA matter. It does not fit the definition of war sabotage or a “grave” “hostile” war-like attack on the United States, as constrictively covered by FISA. It is your run-of-the-mill hacking case covered by existing United States laws that require use of the regular departments of the FBI, Department of Justice, and Constitutionally Senate-appointed federal district court judges, and their appointed magistrates, not secretive, deferential FISA courts.
So how did this happen? How did our extensive intelligence apparatus come to be misused against members of the Trump campaign?
Well, the simplest answer seems to be Team Obama misled the courts:
This raises the second problem: Obama’s team submission of an affidavit to to the FISA court. An application for a warrant of any kind requires an affidavit, and that affidavit may not omit material factors. A fact is “material” if it could have the possible impact of impacting the judicial officer deciding whether to authorize the warrant. Such affidavits are the most carefully drawn up, reviewed, and approved affidavits of law enforcement in our system precisely because they must be fully-disclosing, forthcoming, and include any information a judge must know to decide whether to allow our government to spy on its own. My assumption would be that intelligence officials were trying to investigate hacking of DNC which is not even a FISA covered crime, so therefore serious questions arise about what Obama administration attorneys said to the FISA court to even consider the application. If the claim was “financial ties” to Russia, then Obama knew he had no basis to use FISA at all. Since Trump was the obvious target, the alleged failure to disclose his name in the second application could be a serious and severe violation of the obligation to disclose all material facts.
President Trump now owns the records of the United States of America. One thing he and his Attorney General (former Senator Sessions) can get their hands on are these affidavits to the FISA Court. If they are as damning as some believe they must be, then Team Obama is going to be in serious trouble.
Remember, back when this all started no one believed Trump would win and be given the keys to all the evidence lockers. Which is why one has to ask why did Team Obama double down in January and push the laws even further?
Team Obama has a responsibility to the FISA Court to not disclose any information on US Citizens accidentally caught up in a surveillance activity, but this is what they began doing in January 2017. This may be the second smoking gun – diligently reported by the Fake News media.
That raises the third problem: it seems the FISA-compelled protocols for precluding the dissemination of the information were violated, and that Obama’s team issued orders to achieve precisely what the law forbids, if published reports are true about the administration sharing the surveilled information far-and-wide to promote unlawful leaks to the press.This, too, would be its own crime, as it brings back the ghost of Hillary’s emails — by definition, FISA information is strictly confidential or it’s information that never should have been gathered. FISA strictly segregates its surveilled information into two categories: highly confidential information of the most serious of crimes involving foreign acts of war; or, if not that, then information that should never have been gathered, should be immediately deleted, and never sourced nor disseminated. It cannot be both. Recognizing this information did not fit FISA meant having to delete it and destroy it. According to published reports, Obama’s team did the opposite: order it preserved, ordered the NSA to search it, keep it, and share it; and then Obama’s Attorney General issued an order to allow broader sharing of information and, according to the New York Times, Obama aides acted to label the Trump information at a lower level of classification for massive-level sharing of the information. The problem for Obama is simple — if it could fit a lower level of classification, then it had to be deleted and destroyed, not disseminated and distributed, under crystal clear FISA law.
There is much more in the article, so please take the time to read the whole thing.
This is about as open-and-shut as you can get in my humble opinion. All this has been faithfully reported (i.e., corroborated) by the Fake News media – citing sources. Along with the internal trail of documents the government is required to keep, it would seem Team Obama has a real problem on their hands.
So let’s visit the timeline of events (best one can be found here), and recall that when all this started Hillary was a shoe-in as the next POTUS. Therefore she would be able to keep a lid on all the critical internal government documents Team Trump now has unfettered access to.
June 2016: FISA request. The Obama administration files a request with the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISA) to monitor communications involving Donald Trump and several advisers. The request, uncharacteristically, is denied.
Note that the article above identifies a prior attempt to gain surveillance through the normal criminal courts process, before this event. This is one month prior to the RNC and DNC conventions. At this time Trump as POTUS seems to be pure fantasy.
This prior attempt is confirmed (supposedly independently) by Andrew McCarthy:
To summarize, reporting indicates that, prior to June 2016, the Obama Justice Department and FBI considered a criminal investigation of Trump associates, and perhaps Trump himself, based on concerns about connections to Russian financial institutions. Preliminary poking around indicated that there was nothing criminal involved. Rather than shut the case down, though, the Obama Justice Department converted it into a national-security investigation under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). …. In June, the Obama Justice Department submitted an application that apparently “named” Trump in addition to some of his associates. … In any event, the FISA court reportedly turned down the Obama Justice Department’s request.
Both the normal courts and the FISA court reject the administrations requests. These requests should be made public ASAP.
Very few people expected Hillary to lose the election at this stage. Bernie was clearly on his way to being vanquished from the Democrat ticket. The effort in June 2016 is clumsy and quickly abandoned. Hillary has her email problems, but she also looks invincible.
I would note one other event on this timeline, when former President Bill Clinton tried to secretly meet with Obama’s AG, Loretta Lynch:
Attorney General Loretta Lynch said she regrets her controversial meeting over the summer with former President Bill Clinton, saying she should have recognized ahead of time how it would be perceived by the public. Mrs. Lynch had met with Mr. Clinton privately after the two wound up on the same airport tarmac in Phoenix on June 27, just days before FBI Director James Comey would announce that he would not press charges against Hillary Clinton over her private email server.
AG Lynch is the only person authorized to make FISA court requests. Coincidence?
Anyway, nothing happens for months, until …
3. October: Podesta emails. In October, Wikileaks releases the emails of Clinton campaign chair John Podesta, rolling out batches every day until the election, creating new mini-scandals. The Clinton campaign blames Trump and the Russians. 4. October: FISA request. The Obama administration submits a new, narrow request to the FISA court, now focused on a computer server in Trump Tower suspected of links to Russian banks. No evidence is found — but the wiretaps continue, ostensibly for national security reasons, Andrew McCarthy at National Review later notes. The Obama administration is now monitoring an opposing presidential campaign using the high-tech surveillance powers of the federal intelligence services.
By October 2016 things are looking really serious for Hillary, but not desperate yet. The Democrats are trying to find a way to neutralize the Podesta emails, which expose serious collusion with the Fake New media. They also remind everyone of Hillary’s own email issues.
But more importantly, the Clinton Foundation was being exposed as a pay-for-power enrichment scheme (rivaling anything thrown at Team Trump in the last few weeks). Did all these events panic the White House and the Democrat power structure? Did they attempt a Hail Mary and try and resurrect their plan to use our nation’s Intelligence Apparatus against Trump?
Not an unreasonable assumption to be honest. And somehow Team Obama actually get the authority for surveillance (maybe by withholding key information about Trump?). Anyway, no one is challenging the fact surveillance began.
But after losing the election to the GOP, team Obama does something stupendously stupid: they issue a memo that attempts to overturn very clear laws about dissemination so they can try and “leak” damning innuendo about Trump through their surrogates in the Fake New media:
6. January: Obama expands NSA sharing. As Michael Walsh later notes, and as the New York Times reports, the outgoing Obama administration “expanded the power of the National Security Agency to share globally intercepted personal communications with the government’s 16 other intelligence agencies before applying privacy protections.” The new powers, and reduced protections, could make it easier for intelligence on private citizens to be circulated improperly or leaked. The new rules, which were issued in an unclassified document, entitled Procedures for the Availability or Dissemination of Raw Signals Intelligence Information by the National Security Agency (NSA), significantly relaxed longstanding limits on what the NSA may do with the information gathered by its most powerful surveillance operations. … Jan 3rd 2017 – Loretta Lynch signs off on rule changes for phone taps.
– Loretta Lynch signs off on rule changes for phone taps. Jan 12th 2017 – WaPo reports On Phone Calls Anonymous Intel Sources
Obama’s administration had become so addicted to circumventing laws by executive orders, procedures, rules, etc they apparently went to that well one time too many.
There is no legal cover behind an illegal rule. This is not going to protect these people from legal jeopardy (may reduce their sentences somewhat). And the more players involved (Lynch, her successor Yates, etc) the more this runs into the RICO statutes.
Team Trump looks to have a great case here. Plus they have access to the government “smoking gun” documents spread throughout. I do not understand why Obama’s administration would dig their legal hole deeper in disseminating the classified information the law required them to delete and not leak. But they did.
So what does that indicate about team Obama? Either colossal stupidity, uncontrolled panic, or a combination of both. Maybe by they time they realized Trump would find the FISA court records their only avenues was to try and turn public opinion using their robots in the Fake News media.
All Trump has to do is let out the smoking gun documents one at a time. Let the left deny and parse words, then drop his counterveiling bombshells.
Rinse and repeat.
If this is as bad as some say, Trump will milk this all the way – as he should.Previous | Next Vegan Housemate Posted at: 2009-12-16 13:51:38 Original ad:
Hey there! My roommate and I are looking for another housemate. We live in a large apartment in Upper Darby. There are two bedrooms and a spacious living area. The rent is $250 a month, which includes cable, internet, electric, and water.
My roommate and I are both vegans and will only live with another vegan. IF YOU AREN'T A VEGAN, YOU NEED NOT APPLY. We are looking for someone who will help with the cooking, in addition to the rent.
If you are a vegan and want to live with two vegans who respect your personal space, please e-mail us. Include some information about yourself, including your source of income.
From Me to ***********@***********.org:
Hey,
I saw your ad, and I can't tell you how happy I was to see that there are fellow vegans looking for a roommate. It is so hard to find someone to live with who respects my way of life. Are you guys still looking for someone to live with?
Mike
From Joanna ******** to Me:
Yes, we still are seeking a third housemate. Can you tell us about yourself?
From Me to Joanna ********:
Well, I am a 24 year old male, and I am currently make a living by being employed. It pays well. Now, as I said earlier, I am a hardcore vegan. I totally respect your lifestyle, but I will occasionally eat a veal burger, maybe two or three times a week. I hope that isn't a big deal. If it is, I can eat it outside, but I will still need to cook it in the kitchen. But besides that, I am easy to get along with. I love watching TV. I hope you guys like CSPAN and late night HBO as much as I do. I also love music, and think I will be a great addition to your apartment.
Mike
From Joanna ******** to Me:
You're not a vegan if you eat veal. Seriously, veal? That is perhaps the single worst thing a vegan can eat. Calves that are raised to become veal are ripped from their mothers at birth so they get anemia. Then they are starved of milk, food, and exercise. They often are put in crates so they cannot move at all; they just stand and suffer until their ultimate death. Veal goes against everything veganism stands for. How you even consider calling yourself a vegan astounds me.
From Me to Joanna ********:
Well thanks for the veal history lesson. My ex used to bitch to me about veal all the time, so I know all about it. Frankly, I think that is why I enjoy veal. Knowing that the calf suffered so much to make himself that much more tender and delicious for me makes it worth every bite. If I didn't eat veal, it would probably expire and be thrown away. Then, the calf would have died in vein. You wouldn't want that, would you. Seriously, veal isn't that bad. They give the calf a nice safe home to live in. Would you rather they just let the calf just be let loose out in the wild? Then, it would probably be killed by a lion or something. By supporting veal, you are supporting the safe life of cows everywhere.
Seeing as how you got all uppity about the veal, I guess I should tell you that I own two shotguns and an assault rifle for hunting and will need to store them in the apartment. I didn't think it would be a big deal, but I may as well tell you everything. Don't worry though, both the shotguns are registered and the assault rifle has the serial numbers filed off of it so it doesn't have to be registered.
From Joanna ******** to Me:
Don't worry, you don't need to tell me anything else because you aren't going to live with us. I highly doubt there is anything about your life that even makes you close to being a vegan. You're argument sounds like something a twelve-year-old would say. You're clearly just claiming to be vegan to live in a cheap apartment. If you really think you are vegan, think again. Vegans don't hunt, idiot.
From Me to Joanna ********:
C'mon, it isn't like I'm eating the animals after I kill them. I just kill them because I hate deer. I can't tell you how many times I've stepped in deer shit - they shit everywhere. They are worse than old people. One time my little brother ate some deer shit because he thought it was beans. We had to take him to the hospital to get him tested for Lyme disease. I'm just killing deer to make Pennsylvania a better, safer place for children. I'm not eating them, so relax. I still don't eat chicken or burgers or any of that shit. You are really picky about the vegans that you want to live with. So when is the lease for your place up? I'm looking for a place to live for about five or six months, and the sooner I can move in, the better.
From Joanna ******** to Me:
YOU'RE NOT A VEGAN!
From Joanna ******** to Me:
Not eating certain kinds of meat doesn't make you a vegan. Veganism is a lifestyle which prohibits using any kind of animal product, be it food, clothes, or anything else. Hunting is absolutely unacceptable and your reasons for hunting are ridiculous. You won't be living at my apartment so give it up.
From Me to Joanna ********:
Wow, I never thought I would find someone as pretentious as Bono, but you take the cake. Next time I bite into a savory beef brisket, I'll think of you.
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Lancet.
''The pooling of published and unpublished studies allowed us to investigate the association between coronary heart disease (CHD) and exposure to job strain - defined by high work demands and low decision control - with greater precision than has been previously possible,'' explains Professor Kivimäki.
''Our findings indicate that job strain is associated with a small, but consistent, increased risk of experiencing a first CHD event such as a heart attack.''
Previous studies examining the impact of job strain on CHD have been inconsistent in their findings, limited in scope, and plagued by methodological shortcomings including publication bias and reverse causation bias.
In this collaborative meta-analysis, Professor Kivimäki and colleagues analysed job strain in employees without CHD who participated in 13 European national cohorts conducted in Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Netherlands, Sweden, and the UK between 1985 and 2006. All participants completed questionnaires at the start of the studies to assess job demands, excessive workload, the level of time-pressure demands, and their freedom to make decisions.In the past few weeks VRFocus has reported on two upcoming video sharing platforms that focus on 360 degree and panoramic content that can be viewed using the Oculus Rift head-mounted display (HMD) among other devices. Both vcemo and vyuu, as they’re called, appeared to be the first of their kind, hoping to become the Youtube of 360 degree content. As it turns out there is another service that’s already in Beta testing and set to launch its first app this week. That service is Littlstar.
Like the aforementioned services, Littlstar is planning to be an open platform for anyone producing immersive 360 degree content, showcasing work from filmmakers around the world as well as user-generated content. Crucially the company plans to provide developer tools and APIs to aid those creating 360 degree videos. The hope is that this service will unite the currently fragmented landscape of content by becoming the defining platform to upload and view this immersive content with.
Littlstar recently confirmed to VRFocus that its mobile app is set to launch later this week on 5th December 2014 and include support for Samsung’s Gear VR smartphone-based HMD, which is due to release in the USA this month. It’s not clear if this means the app itself will be available through the Oculus Home storefront come Gear VR’s full launch or if it will be acquired through the standard Google Play store on the Android operating system (OS). Support for iOS with iPhones is also expected to arrive.
The platform’s API is already available and visiting the official website will present a form in which those interested can enter an email address to join Littlstar’s ongoing beta. A specific date for when the desktop app will arrive is yet to be revealed. VRFocus will continue to follow any and all applications of VR, reporting back with all of the latest updates.The Cyprus rescue and a top European official's comments signal rich eurozone governments are ending their support for troubled banking sectors, which now face greater bank-run risks as additional deposit seizures loom.
The island tax haven averted an immediate meltdown with a last-minute deal to impose steep losses on bondholders and deposits above 100,000 euros at the top two Cypriot banks. That will secure a 10 billion-euro international bailout.
Cyprus was billed as a unique situation, but the head of eurozone finance ministers, Jeroen Dijsselbloem, said responses to future financial crises will resemble Cyprus' rescue with bank shareholders, bondholders and uninsured depositors subject to losses.
U.S. stock indexes reversed earlier gains and closed moderately down. European markets retreated as well, with benchmark Italian and Spanish indexes each off more than 2%.
Dijsselbloem later called Cyprus "a specific case with exceptional challenges" that doesn't represent a template for future action. But his original interview with Reuters and the Financial Times indicated countries like Luxembourg and Malta with outsized financial sectors must learn from Cyprus if their own problems arise.
"It means deal with it before you get in trouble," he said. "Strengthen your banks, fix your balance sheets and realize that if a bank gets in trouble, the response will no longer automatically be that we'll come and take away your problem. We're going to push them back."
He acknowledged eurozone leaders have changed their minds about bank support, moving away from using public rescue funds in the European Stability Mechanism and toward "bail-ins" where creditors see their bank bonds converted to equity stakes.
In fact, policymakers should work toward never using the ESM as a way to directly recapitalize banks, he said. This comes less than a year after eurozone leaders agreed to use the ESM to save Spanish banks.
"Banks should basically be able to save themselves, or at least restructure or recapitalize themselves as far as possible," Dijsselbloem said.
Financial institutions and investors will have to "think about the risks they are taking on because they will now have to realize that it may also hurt them," he added.
Depositors elsewhere may be more nervous, but indebted eurozone members such as Spain and Italy are unlikely to see bank runs unless conditions worsen significantly there, said Bernard Baumohl, chief global economist at the Economic Outlook Group.
While Dijsselbloem tried to walk back his earlier statements, they could still end up doing more harm than good by igniting additional uncertainty, he added.
"You're just pouring more gas on the fire," Baumohl said.
Meanwhile, Cyprus may need another bailout in the future as its economy suffers what's expected to be a severe contraction and undergoes painful reforms.
The island's next crisis may not be on the same scale as this last one, and Baumohl believes the eurozone is still committed to keeping all 17 members in the currency union.
Cyprus' financial sector is too large and has too many foreign deposits to act as a template for Spain and Italy, said Josh Feinman, global chief economist at Deutsche Bank's DB Advisors.
But the eurozone is playing a dangerous game of potentially stirring contagion fears of bank runs, he said. "The policymakers so far in Europe have gotten away with it."
Questions about the latest bailout remain. For example, how much creditors and depositors at the country's two biggest banks will lose is uncertain.
The plan is to shift deposits under 100,000 euros from the Popular Bank of Cyprus to the healthier Bank of Cyprus to form a "good bank," with the remaining entity serving as a "bad bank." Deposits above 100,000 euros in both will be used to pay off the bad bank's debts and recapitalize the Bank of Cyprus.
Deposits below 100,000 euros will be protected. The initial plan sought a levy on small holdings.
New capital controls meant to prevent a total exodus of money out of banks and Cyprus will be a "very temporary measure that will gradually be relaxed," President Nicos Anastasiades said in a TV address.
Cyprus late Monday said banks won't reopen until Thursday, a further delay of two more days.
While Russian firms and investors will suffer some of the worst losses in Cyprus, Moscow said it will negotiate to restructure a 2.5 billion-euro loan it made in 2011.This happened during the stream yesterday I don’t even. staisu got arrested for trying to mail her tarantula to littlerubyrue who is waiting with her hoard of tarantulas in holland. And so Stais got sent to Big baby jail and her cellmate was a rat who ate its baby. And I am the police officer who is her parole officer and makes sure they stay in Big Baby Jail. However since I have no power for what they do behind the bars Stais decided to become a cell stripper for the rat cellmates and Momo got also put in Gay Baby Jail Strip and both proceeded to become strippers. In revenge momo drew me as a police stripper :c At least I get a gun *sob*
Comic
I’ve had a few people ask about this comic right here.
First off, I glad you all liked it. It wasn’t even that amazing or dynamic of a comic and I’ll have to remember ya’ll like it so I can make more some time.
now for the question, I drew it and all my art in Manga Studio 5
It comes preset with the Comic border sqaures and even has affects like sparkles, flower petals and those fuzzy shojo bubbles going on. It also has some 3D models in it as well and it is all fun to play around.
I highly reccomend this program and it’s not that expensive. ususally 35-50 dollars. And it’s pretty easy to transition to if you’re a sai user. As it’s kind of like a love child between Sai and Photoshop.
So there we go a bit of promoting.
and again thank you all for posisitve outlook on the comic and on Rock as well :DA Boss Duel (ボスデュエル Bosu Dyueru) is a special type of Duel performed in Japan during a Yu-Gi-Oh! Day event. During these Duels, a shop staff member uses a Boss Deck and up to 3 players can challenge that Deck at once. Each Boss Deck is designed as a mock-up of a villain from the anime, with each card based on either an extremely powerful anime-only card or the anime counterpart of a physically existing card.
Contents show]
Rules
Each player starts with 8000 Life Points. The boss starts with 8000 Life Points × the number of challengers.
The turn order is Boss → Player A → Player B → Player C → Boss
Challengers
Fields are not shared. Each player can have up to 5 monsters.
Players on the challenging team can talk with each other and show each other their cards.
Face-down cards controlled by a challenger can be used by any player of the team.
If a player on the challenging team achieves an alternate victory condition, then inflict 8000 damage to the boss instead.
If a player on the challenging team loses, that player sends all cards from their field to their Graveyard.
Before starting Player A's turn, the team can choose to activate 1 of the following effects. Each of these effects can only be used once per Duel: During the Battle Phase of this turn, double the ATK of all monsters of that team. Instead of conducting their normal draw during their respective turns, the turn player (except the boss) adds 1 card from their Deck to their hand. Choose 1 player. That player gains 4000 Life Points. (If you choose a player with 0 Life Points, that player returns to the Duel.)
Boss
The boss only has 8 cards in their Boss Deck/Main Deck, and no Extra Deck. Five of these cards are marked "Start" (初) in the place the Attribute circle would normally appear, while one each of the other cards is marked "1", "2", and "3".
The boss's starting hand contains the five cards marked "Start", and the remaining three cards are placed in order (with the card marked "1" at the top of the Deck). The Deck is not shuffled at the start of the Duel.
The boss cannot lose the Duel due to being unable to draw.
During the boss's Draw Phase, after conducting their normal draw, the boss adds all cards from their Graveyard to their hand.
Cards owned by the boss cannot be banished. If a card the boss owns would be banished, it is destroyed instead.
The boss can Normal Summon any number of times.
Cards owned by the boss do not have Levels/Ranks, Types, or Attributes.
Each Boss Deck has 1 card with a hidden effect.
Boss Decks
TriviaClarkson, May and Hammond are back in Amazon's Grand Tour - and the show is a pleasingly familiar affair. They even have a test track. On the show, we got a brief glimpse of the track above - which Clarkson joked is the same shape as the ebola virus.
So where is it? Surely given the enormous budget of the new series the production team have found a suitable glamorous track?
Well, umm, actually, it's in Swindon. Seriously. Here it is:
It's actually the former RAF airfield at Wroughton, which since 1979 has been in the hands of the Science Museum, and is used to store around 26,000 objects from the Museum's collection, which aren't currently on display in its museums.
Here it is on a Google Map:
Incidentally, if you wanted to drive between this new track and the old Top Gear track at Dunsford Aerodrome in Surrey, it would take about one hour and 50 minutes:
And now you know. Ah, the glamour of TV.
More GizUK Grand Tour Coverage:Through the science of forensic entomology, the study of insects associated with a corpse, we learn that cadaverous critters can tell us a great deal about a crime.
As a body decomposes, certain insects and invertebrates colonize it in a sequential and measured rate. Dr. Gail Anderson, a forensic entomologist at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, Canada, suggests that after three days, insect evidence is often the most accurate and sometimes the only method of estimating the elapsed time since death. Entomological evidence may also help determine how a person has died, or if a body has been moved or disturbed postmortem. The following case illustrates how the life cycle of a fly helped police solve a murder.
Case 1: Insect Informants
Through the science of forensic entomology, the study of insects associated with a corpse, we learn that cadaverous critters can tell us a great deal about a crime.
As a body decomposes, certain insects and invertebrates colonize it in a sequential and measured rate. Dr. Gail Anderson, a forensic entomologist at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, Canada, suggests that after three days, insect evidence is often the most accurate and sometimes the only method of estimating the elapsed time since death. Entomological evidence may also help determine how a person has died, or if a body has been moved or disturbed postmortem. The following case illustrates how the life cycle of a fly helped police solve a murder.
The Case:
On a mid-November afternoon, police were called to investigate a foul-smelling odor emanating from a single-family home in the southeastern United States. It did not take long for the investigating officers to discover a shallow grave in the dirt basement of the house, which contained the badly decomposed body of a young female.
It was immediately apparent that the victim had died of a single bullet wound to the head inflicted by a small caliber rifle. A scrupulous examination of the corpse and excavation of the soil in and around the grave site by a forensic entomologist working with police revealed the presence of numerous larvae and pupae of two different fly species.
The specimens were collected from the scene and brought back to the laboratory to be reared. Supplemental information, including weather data and soil temperature, was also analyzed in order to determine the principal climatic conditions at the death site. Based on the developmental biology of both species of flies in that environment, the forensic entomologist estimated that the specimens associated with the body the longest were in their fourth stage of development. It was estimated that the victim had died approximately 28 days prior to the date her body was discovered.
This specific information allowed the authorities to target their investigation in and around the estimated time of death. Within a short time, they identified a female suspect who eventually confessed to having killed the victim precisely 28 days prior to the time the body was found. She further admitted to attempting to bury the victim in a shallow grave in the basement of the house after committing the homicide.
Calculating the developmental rate of the flies provided investigators with the only scientifically reliable method of estimating the time of the victim’s death and subsequently led to the arrest and conviction of the killer.
Case 2: A Grain of Truth
Pollen can certainly be irritating to those who suffer from allergies. But when incorporated into forensics, it not only irritates criminals but also can implicate them. Forensic palynology is the science of analyzing pollen and spores to help solve cases. Microscopic pollen grains from plants of a certain area are assembled in ratios to one another that are unique to that area. When compared with pollen samples from a suspect’s clothing, shoes, or vehicle, these “pollen prints” can point criminal investigators to a specific geographical location, prove or destroy alibis, and link a suspect to the scene of a crime.
Dr. Lynne Milne, a professor at the University of Western Australia in Crawley, is a forensic palynologist who used pollen and spores to help the police catch a killer in Queensland, Australia.
The Case:
In 1996, a young mother of two was discovered brutally murdered in a town called Noosa Heads, on the Queensland coast. Her body was dumped in a park among flowering wattle trees, native to Australia. The victim’s car turned up outside a man’s home in the nearby town of Gympie, inland from Noosa. Flower petals and plant debris littered the car’s interior. When police questioned the owner of the house, he outright denied having recently been in Noosa or driving the victim’s car. He did admit that the previous day he had walked on a path in Gympie where wattle trees were common. Though the police had their suspicions about the man, they had no hard evidence to tie him to the crime.
The police turned to Dr. Milne in the hope that she would shed some light on the case with regard to the plant matter. She observed that the wattle trees in Noosa are of a different species than those in Gympie and generally flower at a different time. She analyzed pollen samples from the two species at each location and identified their “pollen print.” She then examined pollen from the flowers that were found in and on the victim’s car, as well as samples vacuumed up from the car’s upholstery and lifted from the suspect’s clothing.
Dr. Milne’s analysis revealed that all of the flowers were indeed from Noosa, not Gympie, and that most of the pollen in the car and on the suspect’s clothing was also from Noosa — and a perfect match. This evidence was used to link the suspect to the scene of the crime. He was arrested and brought to trial, where he was convicted of the murder and sentenced to life imprisonment.
Case 3: Wooden Witnesses
The structure and physical nuances of wood can be as distinctive as a fingerprint and just as useful in solving a crime. Forensic wood anatomists are able to glean important clues on both macro- and microscopic levels — from matching growth patterns in large pieces of lumber to analyzing the physical characteristics of a splinter-sized fragment.
The first and perhaps most famous case in which wood anatomy was used in the court system to help solve a crime was the Lindbergh baby kidnapping.
The Case:
In the early morning hours of March 2, 1932, Charles Jr., the 20-month-old son of aviator Charles A. Lindbergh and heiress Anne Morrow, was snatched from his crib in his second-floor nursery. A broken handmade ladder was left at the scene. Several weeks after the kidnapping, Arthur Koehler, a wood anatomist at the Forest Products Lab in Madison, Wisconsin, was asked by the FBI to identify some splinters from the ladder. Koehler requested that he be allowed to examine the entire ladder, as it might provide him with key information regarding the crime. His request was granted 10 months later.
Upon closely examining the ladder parts, he noted a set of square holes in one rail that did not correspond to the ladder’s construction. He also discovered nicks left by tools including a hand saw, a chisel, and a hand plane, and the distinctive marks of a machine planer with a flawed blade. Koehler set out to find the mill that had manufactured the boards with the unique machine planer marks. After six months of visiting various mills in the area, he finally found a match — but all his hard work seemed to prove fruitless when he discovered that the mill held no records of past customers.
In September 1934, the police arrested Bruno Hauptmann as a suspect in the case when he tried to spend some of the marked ransom money. A search of his home turned up two hand saws that fit exactly the scratch marks left on the ladder, a hand plane that matched the marks on the ladder rungs, and nails identical to those in the ladder. Perhaps the most incriminating piece of evidence was a missing floorboard in Hauptmann’s house. It became obvious that one of the rails of the ladder was fashioned from it. Not only did the nail holes of the remaining floorboards match the misfit holes of the rail but also, Koehler showed through the comparative anatomy of the wood, the growth rings and grain pattern from the rail perfectly matched the wood from the remaining floorboards.
To the end, Hauptmann insisted he was innocent. He proclaimed proudly that he was a carpenter and if he had made the ladder, it certainly wouldn’t have broken. Nonetheless, he was convicted and sentenced to death.I used to work for Sony Electronics when they still made television sets here in San Diego (as recent as 2002!). When this business moved to China, I was laid off and tried to establish my own specialty retail business. Shorly thereafter I became a business statistic when the business failed. After a 18 month period of unemplyment, I found at a position in our local school district, making about 50% less than when I was at Sony. Within a year I found a better position at Pfizer, but the big-pharma was already foundering, and was laid-off after less than a year. Since then I have not been able to find suitable employment. Had my wife not been a highly skilled Registered Nurse we would have lost our home long ago and suffered additional financial consequences.
I am now planning to attend a paralegal certificate program at a local university in January, and should be on the hunt for employment in May. I have been unemployed 3 weeks to long to qualify for extended unemployment benefits, so I have received almost no help from the state or Uncle Sam. At 54 years of age none of this is coming easy for me. Aside from the financial issues, the emotional stress has been tremendous. Had it not been for friends and playing sax in a local big band, I probably would be dead by know. I've learned that money is not the most important thing in life! I consider myself well educated (BS Virginia Tech, MBA University of Phoenix), and have a lifetime of operational business experience, so why can't I find suitable employment? When somebody with my education and experience is tossed away by society, I wonder how those less fortunate can make it. We are fast becoming a third world country, it's not the place I grew up in. I fear for the next generation. Best regards,
Drew, San Diego, CADeaths from heroin overdoses doubled from 2010 to 2012, U.S. federal health officials reported Thursday.
The new report included data from 28 states that account for 56 percent of the U.S. population.
This big increase in heroin-related deaths is directly tied to the epidemic of narcotic painkiller abuse, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
"There is a growing population of people who are using narcotics, whether the prescription variety or heroin," said study co-author Dr. Len Paulozzi, a medical epidemiologist at CDC's National Center for Injury Prevention and Control.
The overprescribing of narcotic painkillers (such as Oxycontin and Vicodin), which has been going on for 20 years, is responsible for the increase in heroin use and overdoses, he said.
Street gangs are "selling death and misery in the form of heroin"
Although deaths from heroin overdoses have increased dramatically, deaths from narcotic painkillers still far outnumber them. In 2012 alone, more than twice as many people died from prescription narcotic overdoses as died from heroin in these states, the report said.
Most people addicted to prescription painkillers don't move on to heroin, according to Paulozzi. However, about three out of four new heroin users began by using narcotic painkillers, he added.
"A fraction of these people are using heroin in addition to narcotic painkillers, depending on price and availability, or have gone over entirely to heroin," Paulozzi said.
In many parts of the country, heroin is easier to get and cheaper than narcotic painkillers, he noted.
Previous research showed that from 2009 to 2012, there was a 74 percent increase in the number of people aged 12 and older using the drug, according to the report.
Overall, the death rate from heroin overdose in the 28 states that reported complete information to the CDC increased from 1.0 to 2.1 per 100,000 between 2010 and 2012. During that same time period, the death rate from overdoses of narcotic painkillers dropped slightly from 6.0 per 100,000 to 5.6 per 100,000, according to the report.
Heroin-related deaths have risen in every state studied, the CDC reported. However, the Northeast and South saw the greatest increases. Heroin overdoses rose 211 percent in the Northeast and 181 percent in the South from 2010 to 2012, the CDC said. At the same time, overdoses from heroin increased 62 percent in the Midwest and 91 percent in the West, according to the report.
Deaths from heroin overdose also vary by age, Paulozzi said. For example, deaths have climbed 120 percent among those 45 to 54 and about 109 percent among those 25 to 34. At the same time, deaths from narcotic painkiller overdose have declined in these age groups, he said.
Solving the problem of deaths from heroin overdose begins with stopping the addiction to narcotic painkillers, Paulozzi said.
"We still have to focus on reducing the prescribing of narcotic pain relievers, because that's really what got us into this situation in the first place," he said.
To help those already addicted, Paulozzi said, improved access to drug treatment is needed. "That reduces the risk of their winding up in a fatal overdose," he said.
Increased availability of the antidote to narcotic overdose, naloxone (Narcan), might also save lives, he said.
Dr. Andrew Kolodny, president of Physicians for Responsible Opioid Prescribing, said, "There is very little difference between heroin and oxycodone [Oxycontin] or hydrocodone [Vicodin]."
Since the demand for heroin has increased, it has become more available, and competition has driven down the price, said Kolodny, who is also the chief medical officer of the Phoenix House Foundation.
Moreover, heroin has become more available in non-urban and rural areas, Kolodny said. "That's where you will see most of this epidemic," he said.
"The underlying problem we have in the United States is not about prescription drug abuse or heroin abuse, it's the epidemic of people addicted to narcotics," Kolodny said. "Without treatment, overdose deaths are very common among people with this disease."
Kolodny believes in more and better access to treatment for those addicted and in efforts to prevent addiction to painkillers.
"We need to prevent new cases of addiction. To do that, the medical community has to prescribe more cautiously," he said.
The report was published Oct. 3 in the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.GLENDALE, ARIZONA - Arizona Coyotes General Manager John Chayka announced today that the Coyotes have assigned forward Anthony Duclair to the Tucson Roadrunners, the club's American Hockey League affiliate (AHL).
"Anthony is a good young player," said Chayka. "Unfortunately, he has struggled this season. We felt this was a good time to send him to Tucson to work on a few things and hopefully regain his scoring touch. We hope to have him rejoin our team soon."
The 21-year-old Duclair has registered 3-6-9 in 41 games with the Coyotes this season and has tallied 24-36-60 in 140 career games over three seasons with the Coyotes and New York Rangers.
The 5-foot-11, 185-pound native of Pointe-Claire, Quebec was originally drafted by the Rangers in the third round (80th overall) in the 2013 Entry Draft and was acquired by the Coyotes on March 1, 2015 along with John Moore, a second round draft choice in 2015 and a first round draft choice in 2016 from the Rangers in exchange for Keith Yandle, Chris Summers and a fourth round draft choice in 2016.
Duclair will join the Roadrunners on the team’s trip to Charlotte, NC to take on the Checkers Saturday at 4 p.m. MT and Sunday at 11 a.m. MT. He will wear #12 with Tucson. Radio pregame show starts 15 minutes prior to puck drop on flagship station 1450 KTZR.My Land
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My Land is a Sim Farm inspired simulation game from the makers of the award winning god simulation My Planet. You begin the game with a blank plot of land and $5000. From there, it is up to you to make it your own. You can create a farm with crops and animals, or you can create a commerce area with side walks and pizza stands, or you can create a nature park with lakes and trails. The choice is yours!
In My Land, you may take up several avenues of revenue generation. You can do farming, business, or run a nature trail system. The farm is where the easiest money is to be made. There are no real rules to the simulation, so you can basically do anything you want to. Feel free to explore all that the game has to offer!
If you are looking for a nice laid back farm sim game and do not want to be bothered with constant in app purchase requirements and financial nags, then try My Land today!
Remove Advertising My Land is a totally free app, but users may wish to purchase a premium upgrade license which removes all in-app advertising and supports further development. Generally, the premium license can be purchased from each individual app store, but if you buy the license directly from Ape Apps, you will recieve a physical license key file that allows you to unlock the premium ad-free experience on every supported platform. Find out more at the My Land purchase site here: Purchase My Land
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Related AppsDylan Moses is the No. 1 prospect in the 2017 recruiting class, and he’s undecided on where he’d like to attend school.
The outside linebacker is a former LSU commit, but has since opened his recruitment back up and is playing out his high school career at the IMG Academy in Bradenton, Fla.
Moses spoke with ESPN on Monday, and here is some of the information to take away from that conversation.
On decision to decommit from LSU: “During that time period, my family and I sat down and decided that I did commit at a young age, but at the same time I want to give every school a chance to recruit me. Because I’ll never get this chance again.
On which schools he likes best at this point: “Texas, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, UCLA and USC. That’s still the same, but it’s probably going to change when I start taking my visits.
On where he’d like to take visits: “I definitely would like to go to Alabama. I want to look at Miami, Florida, UCLA and USC.”
On what his best fit for a college looks like: “It’s not all about football. I mean, it’s about football, but I want to have a good relationship with my coaches and that family atmosphere. I would like to play on a good defense. Have people surrounding me that I know are going to make plays if I don’t make them and, you know, just to be secure. I want to feel at home.”
Moses said that he would like to have his list trimmed to a final three before the high school football season starts, as he is considering the possibilities of enrolling early.
He said that he’d like to come up to ESPN’s headquarters to make his commitment on television.Ojibwa-Cree elder Ma-Nee Chacaby says coming out nearly 30 years ago was like unzipping her skin so she could reveal her true self.
It was a moment of relief after years of pain.
"I've been happy since that day," she said in an interview from Thunder Bay, Ont. "I admitted to myself who I was and what I was about."
Prior to 1988, Chacaby said she was bullied and injured for identifying as two-spirit — a term she uses to describe carrying both a female and male in her body at the same time.
"It really hurt me to be beaten by my own people because I was First Nations and two-spirit and then it really hurt me to have white people beat me up because I was brown and I was two-spirit," she said.
Discrimination persists today toward indigenous people who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, queer, transgender, queer and two-spirit, said Indigenous Affairs Minister Carolyn Bennett — an issue experts say is connected to the youth suicide crisis.
"There's a big hesitancy just around the indigenous suicides in Canada for the leadership to recognize that some of those suicides are related to oppression around gender identity or sexual orientation," said Albert McLeod, the co-ordinator of Two-Spirited People of Manitoba. "It is a taboo conversation."
In an interview with The Canadian Press, Bennett said she heard concerns raised by young people attending the Feathers of Hope — an event supported by Ontario's child and youth advocate that includes delegates from northern communities.
"When you hear it directly from the young people, I think it really does just break your heart," she said. "It was almost also the same response of kids who were describing suicidal ideation —that they weren't allowed to talk about that out loud because they would go to hell."
Experts say there is a clear link to suicide among indigenous youth.
Sen. Murray Sinclair, who spent six years documenting Canada's church-operated, government-funded residential school system, agrees there is a undoubted connection.
"They are not going to go to hell, but they might be treated like they are in hell," he said in an interview. "That's a real fear."
Evangelical foundations often speak out strongly against traditional values and beliefs, particularly around two-spirited people, Sinclair said.
"That is a direct result of the Christian foundations of the residential schools," he said.
Bennett said the federal government heard stories about the need to flee bullying in communities as part of discussions held ahead of the national public inquiry into murdered and missing indigenous women, adding individuals said they had also been targeted in urban centres.
One of five commissioners for the inquiry — human rights lawyer Brian Eyolfson —identifies as two-spirit.
"I hope that it might make some people feel more comfortable to tell their stories to the inquiry if they know there is a two-spirited commissioner," he said. "I come to this work with that life experience, but I am an impartial and neutral commissioner."
Eyolfson said it is critical to hear about different experiences to shed light on what contributes to violence against indigenous women and girls, including transgender and two-spirit people.
Assembly of First Nations National Chief Perry Bellegarde, who plans to march in Toronto's gay pride parade in June, said respect needs to be restored for two-spirit people, traditionally viewed as sacred by indigenous peoples.
"If there is discrimination, if there is intolerance, if there's racism toward our two-spirited people, that has to end," he said.
There are signs of hope, Bellegarde added, pointing to a two-spirit pride festival held last June by Beardy's and Okemasis First Nation in Saskatchewan.
Kevin Seesequasis, a 34-year-old, openly gay councillor, approached his band colleagues who were enthusiastic about holding the event — an experience that was touching for him personally.
"It was really a fantastic demonstration of support but more than that, it really was understanding... that people in our community do face barriers who identify as LGBTQ or two-spirit," he said.
"If there's any way as leaders we can demonstrate that compassion, love and understanding, it starts with us."
It is critical for leaders to recognize the importance of showing respect to two-spirited children, Sinclair said, noting young people need to be given a sense of validity about who they are. The issue is personal for the former Truth and Reconciliation Commission chairman — he has daughters who identify as two-spirit.
"I... tell them they are special," Sinclair said.
Chacaby also delivers a message of acceptance when she speaks with young people.
"If people could just stop and listen and encourage them and just love them as they are, maybe things would be... better," she said.Today Honda has revealed its new fuel-cell vehicle, the Honda FCV Concept along with a concept model of an external power feeding device that produces an AC power output from the FCV with a maximum rated output of 9kW. This new FCV will be turned into a production model which will go on sale from March 2016 in Japan and then subsequently in the U.S and Europe. In addition to these two fuel-cell application there will be another application, the Smart Hydrogen Station (SHS), which will use Honda’s high-differential-pressure electrolyzer. Honda says that this three applications will provide three concepts for the future CO2-free and hydrogen based society; “generate,” “use” and “get connected”.
Honda says that they view hydrogen as the future environmentally friendly fuel because of three main reasons that it can be produced from various sources, is easily transportable and storable. Due to these reasons Honda is striving to develop the FCV (which uses hydrogen and reacts it with oxygen to make electricity and power the electric motor) as the ultimate environmentally responsible vehicle since the late 1980s.
In 2002 the old FCX got the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the California Air Resources Board (CARB) certifications and became the first car in the world to be certified which allowed Honda to start lease-based sales of the FCX in the U.S and Japan. The struggle for fuel-cell cars by Honda is very long which includes the 2003 Honda FC STACK, the first stack-able fuel-cell to start at below-freeing temperatures and then in 2005 Honda started to lease the FCX to individual-customers in the U.S.
Then in 2008 Honda began to lease the FCX Clarity which was the most |
Hersh, a partner at law firm Cassels Brock & Blackwell LLP who specializes in competition law, said in an interview.
Moose Knuckles identifies itself as a Canadian company with a Canadian product, he said. "To the extent that this case challenges their Canadian-ness, that could potentially have a negative impact on their brand reputation and the willingness of some consumers to pay a premium, based on a Made In Canada claim."
Susan McGibbon, president of consultancy the Retail Lab, said it's risky for a company to try to take advantage of Canada's global reputation for being dependable and trustworthy if the company can't fully back up its claim. "Being uniquely Canadian and Made in Canada mean something on the global stage" with both economic and emotional value tied to it, she said.
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Still, other Canadian companies such as Tim Hortons benefit from focusing on their domestic roots without claiming their products are Made In Canada, said Andrew Resnick of Novo Consulting. Clothier Roots, for example, waves the Canadian flag even though many of its goods are produced overseas, Mr. Resnick said. He noted that while Tim Hortons plays heavily on its Canadian heritage, its controlling shareholder is now a Brazilian private equity firm.
The bureau, in filing an application with the Competition Tribunal, alleged that the Moose Knuckles parkas, which cost from $595 to more than $1,000, are mostly manufactured in Vietnam and elsewhere in Asia. The bureau accused the company of only doing the finishing touches to the jackets, such as adding the trim, zippers and snaps, in Canada.
"Consumers are willing to pay a premium for Made in Canada products and manufacturers know this," said Matthew Boswell, senior deputy commissioner of competition at the bureau. "The bureau has taken action in order to ensure that consumers – and retailers – have the correct information to allow them to make informed purchases."
Moose Knuckles countered that government officials are "using costly litigation against a small and proud Canadian company to test their vague guidelines." It said in a statement that it had on several occasions "pro-actively" contacted the bureau for clarification on its guidelines to ensure compliance. The company said it meets all requirements "to proudly and legally bring its Made in Canada products to the world."
It said it has more than 400 Canadians employed in three domestic garment factories as well as in other production for its core coat collection. "Like virtually every other garment made in Canada, textiles and components from abroad are used in the Canadian manufacture of Moose Knuckles parkas," it said.
In a category dominated by Canada Goose, Moose Knuckles sells jackets with hood trims made from blue and silver fox fur from Finland, gaining a following among well-heeled consumers in North America, Europe and Asia. Its name conjures a Canadian strain of good humour but has a double entendre, with the word also connoting the bifurcation of an area of the male anatomy.
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The Competition Bureau says the "Made In Canada" claim must be accompanied by a qualifying statement when appropriate, such as "made in Canada with imported parts" or "made in Canada with domestic and imported parts." This could include more specific information such as "made in Canada with 60 per cent Canadian content and 40 per cent imported content," the bureau rules says.
As well, the "last substantial transformation of the good" has to occur in Canada, it says.SEATTLE, WASHINGTON
With about two and half minutes to play in Saturdays divisional match up between the New Orleans Saints (12-6) and the Seattle Seahawks (14-3), Seahawks RB Marshawn Lynch found the corner and ran 31 yards for a game sealing touchdown. Lynch would finish with 28 rushes for 140 yards and 2 touchdowns as the Seahawks would clinch a spot in the NFC title game with a 23-15 win. They will face the winner of Sunday’s game between the 49ers and Panthers.
The “Beast Mode” performance by Lynch made up for a bad day for QB Russel Wilson. Wilson only passed for 103 yards and was 50% accurate with his passes. The Seahawks also lost WR Percy Harvin to a concussion after he left the game multiple times for injury.
The Seahawks defense also came up big, holding the Saints to a shut-out on the first half, and holding Saints QB Drew Brees to only 34 first half yards. They also held Saints star TE Jimmy Graham to one catch which end up coming with under 30 seconds to play.
The Saints had an opportunity for a comeback when Brees found Marques Colston in the end zone for a 9 yard touchdown. Colston would then recover the ensuing onside kick to give his team a chance. But Colston would make a mistake on the final play of the game when his attempt for a cross field lateral was ruled a forward pass and would end the game.
AdvertisementsBAGHDAD (Reuters) - An aide to Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi has been killed in an air strike near the city of Falluja, Iraqi state television reported on Monday.
State television identified the man as Abu Huthaifa al-Yamani. It did not say when the strike took place or give further details. It was not immediately possible to confirm the death or whether Yamani was an aide to Baghdadi.
Iraqi security officials have not confirmed the death.
The Pentagon said on Monday it could not corroborate reports that Baghdadi had been either killed or wounded in Iraq, acknowledging conflicting media reports from the region.
"We do not have any information to corroborate reports out of Iraq that Baghdadi has been either killed or wounded," Colonel Steve Warren, a Pentagon spokesman, told reporters.
The contradictory accounts from Iraq followed U.S. air strikes on Friday night.
Islamic State, which swept through northern Iraq in June virtually unopposed by the Iraqi army, has declared a caliphate in the parts of Iraq and Syria it controls.
Falluja is an Islamic State stronghold to the west of Baghdad in the Sunni Muslim heartland Anbar Province.
The United States and its allies launched a barrage of attacks against Islamic State over the weekend, conducting 23 air strikes in Syria and 18 in Iraq against the militant group since Friday, U.S. Central Command said.
In Iraq, seven strikes hit near Baiji and others in or near Falluja, Mosul, al-Qaim, Haditha, Ramadi and Rutba.
(Reporting by Ahmed Rasheed in Baghdad and Susan Heavey in Washington; Writing by Michael Georgy; Editing by Louise Ireland)Two Decades Later, Some Branch Davidians Still Believe
Enlarge this image toggle caption Susan Weems /AP Susan Weems /AP
Twenty years ago, federal agents clashed with David Koresh's Branch Davidian community near Waco, Texas. The standoff ended with a raid and fire that killed some 80 people. It's remembered as one of the darkest chapters in American law enforcement history.
Two decades later, some of the Branch Davidians who survived the raid are still believers, while a new church group has moved onto the land.
The Raid
Most people born in an earlier generation know the outlines of the story. David Koresh was the self-appointed prophet of a small religious community. He was suspected of polygamy, having sex with underage girls and stockpiling illegal weapons.
On Feb. 28, 1993, a strike force from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms raided his compound at Mount Carmel. Four agents and five Davidians died in the gunbattle. In a 911 call, a Davidian and attorney named Wayne Martin said there were women and children inside the compound and told authorities to call off the raid.
The FBI then took charge of the standoff, and for 51 days agents tightened the noose around the Davidians using loud music, bright lights, bulldozers and flash-bang grenades. The standoff culminated with a gas raid.
On April 19, tanks punched holes in the flimsy building and began inserting tear gas. Then, a fire erupted and incinerated the building. A blustery spring wind fanned the flames, and the structure was reduced to charcoal in less than an hour.
Most of the post-incident reports blame the Davidians for starting the fire and for shooting each other in consensual suicides. Some critics maintain to this day that the FBI raid inadvertently caused the fire.
Either way, the agency's actions are indefensible, says Catherine Wessinger, a religious historian at Loyola University in New Orleans, an authority on apocalyptic groups and an expert on the Davidian episode.
"If the FBI believed they were dealing with members of a cult who were not in their right minds, then why would the FBI put so much pressure on them and then ultimately carry out an assault which just confirmed David Koresh's prophecies?" Wessinger says.
The Survivors
Clive Doyle, a 72-year-old Australian-Texan, still lives in Waco and still has Bible study every Saturday with another survivor, Sheila Martin. Doyle has become the Davidians' unofficial historian and spokesman. He says they are still waiting on the resurrection of Koresh.
"We survivors of 1993 are looking for David and all those that died either in the shootout or in the fire," Doyle says. "We believe that God will resurrect this special group."
Today, all nine Davidian survivors who were convicted for various offenses related to the initial ATF raid have been released from federal prison. Paul Fatta, who spent nearly 13 years in prison on weapons charges, was released two years early for good behavior. Now 55 years old, he lives in San Diego where he manages his family's Hawaiian restaurant. Fatta, too, still believes.
Enlarge this image toggle caption John Burnett/NPR John Burnett/NPR
"I would like to see some divine intervention, for God to vindicate his people," he says, "all those that have suffered over the years for truth, who've been misunderstood, have been mocked, ridiculed [and] thrown in prison."
The New Davidians
Out on the grassy rise east of Waco where it all happened, there is a new Branch Davidian community that has risen from the ashes; they call themselves Branch, The Lord Our Righteousness.
Twelve people live in a scattering of mobile homes. There's a new church, a dignified memorial to the dead, and a new leader.
"I came back here after the slaughter and I feel that the Lord has anointed me and appointed me to be the leader," says Charles Pace, a portly herbalist who lost a foot in a tractor accident. "I don't claim to be a prophet. I'm a teacher of righteousness, that's the only thing I claim."
Like their predecessors under Koresh, the new community of Davidians is — according to their leader — waiting for the end times.
"The United States has to fall in order for the One World Order to be set up," he says. "Especially if there's war in the Middle East, that's when they're going to see Branch Davidians start scrambling to find out what the truth is, and where they need to be."
Pace says he teaches the dozens of curious visitors who show up here every month the truth of what happened at Mount Carmel. But as with everything else about the Branch Davidian saga, whose truth is that?NEW GENRES: The Worm in The Apple Tale
Electric Literature Blocked Unblock Follow Following Mar 20, 2015
by Rebecca Scherm
[Editor’s note: New Genres is a recurring feature that aims to complicate and expand our conception of literary genres and their always porous boundaries.]
The plot goes like this: the first time the family meets the worm, they are charmed. “What a charming young man,” one of them might say. But someone else will notice something off about the worm, an awkwardness they can’t pinpoint, but more often than not they will brush off this feeling as their own unfairness or prejudice. After a few more unexpected run-ins (“What are you doing here? How lovely to see you!”) they welcome the worm into their lives fully. In no time at all, they can hardly remember life without the worm.
Of course, the family doesn’t know the worm is a worm yet — except for possibly one doubter, one naysayer, who can’t brush off the feeling that something about the worm is not right. But whenever the doubter expresses concerns, they are dismissed by the others as jealous, petty, or paranoid. By the time the others realize that the doubter was right all along, it is too late. Their whole apple is rotten.
By the time the others realize that the doubter was right all along, it is too late. Their whole apple is rotten.
Gilbert Osmond in Henry James’s Portrait of a Lady is a classic worm, as are Shakespeare’s Iago and smarmy Uncle Claudius, who has wormed his way through the apple before Hamlet even begins. Not every betrayer is a worm. Short-term con artists are not worms. Spies are not worms because they’re working for larger interests than their own. To be a worm, the character has to slowly, steadily munch its way into a relatively healthy apple with little to no initial resistance, becoming harder to exterminate with every single bite.
My earliest encounters with the worm plot must have been fairy tales and Disney movies, where the worm is often a wicked stepmother. I didn’t give it any specific thought until, after writing my own novel, I was often asked about books and movies I found particularly influential and, connecting the dots, saw the worm-in-the-apple picture emerge. Now, it thrills me to recognize a worm plot, to see the soft, browning tunnel left behind as the worm disappears deeper into the apple. The worm-in-the-apple plot feeds our appetites for intrigue and suspicion, but against the backdrop of the most banal events in our lives: hiring a babysitter, meeting the new neighbors. The worm-in-the-apple plot rewards the recreational paranoia of the comfortable. It’s about two common fantasies in conflict: one dream of having it all — a happy, comfortable, fulfilling life — and the nightmare of not being believed, of recognizing a threat and being repeatedly discredited by your loved ones.
Now I’ve become a collector of these worm plots. Here, an introduction to the ways of the worm:
Classically Murderous Worms
“Peyton Flanders” in The Hand That Rocks the Cradle
I saw this movie at thirteen years old and still can’t shake the quietly horrifying image of “Peyton” secretly breastfeeding the heroine’s baby in the middle of the night in an effort to sabotage her. Rebecca de Mornay, with her puffy blond bangs and shirts buttoned up to the neck, is an ideal worm, sunny and icy in equal measure. Cradle (directed by Curtis Hanson) feeds on both the parental fear of someone turning your children against you and the fear of seduction-by-nanny, cloaking them in pulp horror.
Uncle Charlie in Shadow of a Doubt
The Hitchcock classic begins with bored teenager Charlie wishing for something interesting to happen to her family. Soon enough, her beautiful, dapper Uncle Charlie, “merry widow strangler” on the lam, shows up bearing fine jewelry for all. Poor Charlie is the only one who knows his secret, but she’s not quite a naysayer: she’s too worried that this revelation will upset her mother to tell anyone the truth.
Eunice Parchman in A Judgement in Stone by Ruth Rendell
In this perfect, chilly novel, the Coverdale family hires a new housekeeper, Eunice Parchman, who gives everyone the willies, but they are all too embarrassed by their own class snobbery to fire her. Then, seething with hatred for the Coverdales’ bourgeois habits, Eunice murders them all while they watch opera on television. What’s unusual about Eunice as a worm is her lack of charm: no one likes her. Instead, they pity her or are frightened by her in ways they are ashamed to admit.
Harry Belastro in With a Friend Like Harry…
In this French film by Dominik Moll, a bizarre encounter in a gas station bathroom introduces Harry, a wealthy man of leisure and “solutions,” into the lives of Claire and Michel, the harried parents of three young children. Harry just wants to help out wherever he sees a problem: first, a new car when theirs is in the shop; later, murder. Claire and Michel are both uncomfortable with his gifts and attention but simply too exhausted to stop it, and Harry’s “solutions” become bloodier with each passing day.
[Redacted] in The Fever by Megan Abbot
I can’t tell you who the worm is without spoiling it, but how many of us remember the betrayal and distrust we felt as teenagers when our friends made new friends without us?
The Worm’s Side of the Story
Denise Lambert in The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen
Jonathan Franzen loves a worm plot, and for the reader, Denise is an unusually complex worm. For one, she gets to tell her own story. We understand, as she tears Brian and Robin first apart and then to shreds, that she is not a monster out to commit evil. She’s a real and screwed-up person, carrying around a lingering shame and the cramp of only-daughter expectations. She’s not only destructive, but self-destructive. Whether readers sympathize or “forgive” Denise is immaterial: here, comically and painfully told, is the worm’s own tale.
David Axelrod in Endless Love by Scott Spencer
David is a stalker and an arsonist. In obsessive teenage love with Jade Butterfield, he worms his way into her family, and in trying to prove his worth, begins to destroy it. With every desperate, self-serving corrective decision David makes, he hurts himself and the Butterfields more. The first thing people mention when Endless Love comes up is either its seventy page sex scene or the two disastrous movie adaptions of it, but those who love the novel prize its intensity, relentlessness, and its fearlessly naked examination of one tragically well-meaning worm.
Tom Ripley in The Talented Mr. Ripley by Patricia Highsmith
In Patricia Highsmith’s novel, Tom Ripley is a sociopath who charms first Dickie Greenleaf’s parents and later Dickie himself. He worms his way into Dickie’s world with a mixture of compliance and desperation. Highsmith’s novel has not one but two doubters, first Dickie’s girlfriend, Marge, and then his friend Freddie Miles. One doubter is converted to the charmed, the other is killed; such is the way of worms. But Anthony Minghella’s 1999 film adaptation gives us, instead, a deeply yearning and pitiful Tom who unsettles us not just because we fear a someone like him could enter our own lives, but we because we also feel terrifying empathy for him.
Wait, who’s the worm here?
Freedom by Jonathan Franzen
A Friend of the Family by Lauren Grodstein
In Freedom, Franzen looked at the worm story from another angle: Patty Berglund thinks her son Joey’s girlfriend Connie is the worm destroying her family, but it’s easier for her to see Connie as a predator than to sharpen her lens on Joey or herself. Similarly, in Lauren Grodstein’s A Friend of the Family, we feel our sense of blame and danger shift: at first we understand New Jersey doctor Pete’s disturbance when his aimless teenage son, Alec, starts hanging out with Laura, the newly-returned adult daughter of estranged family friends, ten years Alec’s senior and frighteningly beautiful, who has done something so apparently terrible that no one can say what it is. By the time we do know, our natural sympathies with the narrator are more than strained. Who is in danger here, and who is the monster in this family? What if the worm we fear isn’t the worm at all — it’s us?by Jeffrey Green
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The full range of dangers presented by the DNA-damaging endocrine disruptor and neurotoxin Bisphenol-A (BPA) is finally being understood and widely communicated by the scientific community.
It has been linked to obesity, infertility and reproductive disorders in both genders, diabetes, breast cancer, prostate cancer, behavioral problems, liver tumors and more. A Harvard study found a whopping 1200% spike in BPA levels in the urine of people who had recently eaten canned soup, and study after study is showing that harm results at much lower levels than previously thought.
However, even more troubling are the studies revealing that BPA substitutes carry the same level and range of dangers that hoodwink people by labeling “BPA Free” when the presence of bisphenol remains as Bisphenol-S, AP, M, or P.
Following are 3 new studies that highlight the dangers to both humans and nature from the presence of these toxins that are still deemed acceptable by the EPA, which continues to urge that the public does not even have a right to know about where BPA and its substitutes appear.
1. BPA stimulates growth of breast cancer cells, diminishes effect of treatment
Bisphenol A (BPA), a chemical commonly used in plastics, appears to increase the proliferation of breast cancer cells, according to Duke Medicine researchers presenting at an annual meeting of endocrine scientists.
The researchers found that the chemical, at levels typically found in human blood, could also affect growth of an aggressive hormone-independent subtype of breast cancer cells called inflammatory breast cancer and diminish the effectiveness of treatments for the disease.
“We set out to determine whether routine exposures to common chemicals such as those in plastics, pesticides and insecticides could influence the effectiveness of breast cancer treatments,” said corresponding author Gayathri Devi, Ph.D., associate professor of surgery at Duke. “BPA was one of the top chemicals to show growth stimulatory effects in breast cancer cells.”
Devi and colleagues reported their findings in a featured abstract at the annual joint meeting of the International Society of Endocrinology and the Endocrine Society in Chicago, June 23, 2014.
Using new screening strategies, the researchers evaluated a panel of compounds available through a public library of chemicals managed by the Environmental Protection Agency.
The researchers focused on markers in breast cancer cells, specifically those of inflammatory breast cancer, a rare and aggressive form of disease that is difficult to treat.
Screenings identified several agents that appeared to increase the proliferation of inflammatory breast cancer cells. Among the most active was BPA, a chemical known to disrupt hormones. The researchers found that it caused breast cancer cells to grow at a faster rate in both estrogen-receptor positive and estrogen-receptor negative breast cancer cells.
The researchers also found that BPA doses in the range observed in human blood lowered the efficacy of FDA-approved anti-cancer drugs used in breast cancer therapy, notably lapatinib.
“These studies provide the foundation for additional research to develop tools that can be used to identify patients who may be at greater risk of developing treatment resistance,” Devi said. “The findings could also lead to biomarkers that identify patients who have heavy exposure to compounds that could diminish the effectiveness of their cancer therapy.”
(Source)
2. Exposure to BPA substitute causes hyperactivity and brain changes in fish
A chemical found in many “BPA free” consumer products, known as bisphenol S (BPS), is just as potent as bisphenol A (BPA) in altering brain development and causing hyperactive behavior, an animal study finds. The results will be presented Sunday at the joint meeting of the International Society of Endocrinology and the Endocrine Society: ICE/ENDO 2014 in Chicago.
BPA has been linked to a wide range of hormone disorders, such as obesity, reproductive cancers and, recently, hyperactivity in children born to women exposed to high levels of this substance during the second trimester of pregnancy. Now, this research in fish found that exposure to BPS, a bisphenol compound, led to hyperactive offspring, just as BPA did.
“BPS, termed the safe alternative to BPA, may be equally as harmful to developing brains,” said the study’s senior investigator, Deborah Kurrasch, PhD, from Canada’s University of Calgary. “Society must place increased pressure on decision makers to remove all bisphenol compounds from manufacturing processes.”
The study investigated the effects of BPA and BPS on brain development in zebrafish. This fish is developmentally similar to humans, but the embryo grows externally, enabling researchers to see development of the offspring.
A PhD student in Kurrasch’s lab, Cassandra Kinch, exposed zebrafish embryos during the period similar to the second trimester to the exact chemical concentration of BPA found in a local major water source, the Oldman River in Alberta, Canada. This concentration translated to a low dose of BPA for the embryos. By labeling some 5-day-old embryos with molecular markers, she monitored development of the hypothalamus, a powerful region of the brain that controls release of hormones in fish and humans. She counted the number of neurons, or nerve cells, in that brain region and compared it with the number of neurons from fish embryos without BPA exposure.
At the peak time of neuronal birth, the number of neurons in BPA-exposed fish rose 170 percent compared with unexposed fish, Kurrasch stated. In similar experiments using BPS, the number of neurons in exposed fish increased 240 percent. These results, she explained, suggest that BPA and BPS could lead to altered brain connections and might explain the hyperactivity they observed in another experiment. Specifically, the research team used movement tracking software to evaluate behavioral changes in young fish and found that fish exposed during brain development to either BPA or BPS were hyperactive, but unexposed fish were not.
Researchers have thought BPA causes harmful effects by mimicking the female hormone estrogen. However, the Kurrasch lab found another likely cause. They exposed another group of zebrafish to BPA plus various drugs that each block distinct hormone signals. Rather than influencing estrogen signaling pathways, as previously hypothesized, BPA appeared to stimulate neuronal birth by mimicking the male hormone testosterone, which then induced aromatase B, a brain-specific protein recently reported to control the birth of neurons and a key enzyme for estrogen synthesis (production), according to Kurrasch.
“These data provide a new avenue of research to investigate the recent rise in hormone disorders,” she said.
(Source)
3. Common BPA-like chemical, BPS, disrupts heart rhythms in females
Bisphenol S (BPS), a common substitute for bisphenol A (BPA) in consumer products, may have similar toxic effects on the heart as previously reported for BPA, a new study finds. The results were presented Monday at the joint meeting of the International Society of Endocrinology and the Endocrine Society: ICE/ENDO 2014 in Chicago.
In the years since research evidence first showed many potentially damaging health effects of the industrial chemical BPA, some manufacturers have switched to its chemical cousin, BPS, to make hard plastics and other products that they call BPA free, said the study’s lead investigator, Hong-Sheng Wang, PhD, from the University of Cincinnati.
Although some BPA-free products contain no bisphenols, Wang said, “BPS is one of the substitutes used in BPA-free products. There is implied safety in BPA-free products. The thing is, the BPA analogs—and BPS is one of them—have not been tested for safety in humans.”
BPA is an endocrine (hormone) disrupter that can interfere with the actions of native estrogen and other hormones, but it is not clear whether BPS also is disrupts hormones.
In what Wang called “one of the first assessments of BPS’ effect in mammalian primary cells or organs,” he and his co-workers tested an environmentally relevant dose of BPS in the hearts of approximately 50 rats. The 1-nanomolar dose was in the range of BPS found in human urine samples in a study by other authors.
In the current study, the investigators perfused, or flowed, BPS through the arteries of each animal’s pumping heart, after stimulating the heart with the hormone catecholamine to mimic stress. For a control group, 30 rat hearts received only catecholamine and no BPS.
Exposure to BPS rapidly increased the heart rate of female rats and under the stress condition led to arrhythmias—heart rhythm abnormalities—far greater than in the control rats that did not receive BPS, Wang reported. Electocardiograms demonstrated that BPS caused extra heartbeats and a racing heartbeat, also known as ventricular tachycardia. In male rats, BPS reportedly did not have this rapid impact on the heart.
To determine the cause of the cardiac effects in female rats, the researchers studied cardiac muscle cells from some of the rats. Using studies at the cellular and protein levels, they found that BPS caused abnormal calcium handling, or cycling, which is a key cause of arrhythmias, according to Wang. This action is very similar to the underlying mechanism of BPA’s toxic effects on the heart, which Wang and his colleagues showed in a previous study.
The investigators were able to abolish the BPS-induced heart rhythm abnormalities by blocking a type of estrogen receptor (beta) in the female rats. This result shows that “the BPA analog BPS is not necessarily free of endocrine-disrupting activity,” Wang said.
“Our findings call into question the safety of BPA-free products containing BPS,” he said. “BPS and other BPA analogs need to be evaluated before further use by humans.”
(Source)
Given the prevalence of these chemicals and the lack of willingness by regulatory agencies to take sweeping action, it is imperative to eliminate endocrine-disruptors from your system.
Here are 7 Ways To Drain BPA From Your Body.
Recently by Jeffrey Green:?????
Rodney Carmichael??
Atlanta organizer Queen K encourages a fellow protestor while addressing the human barricade on Sprint Street with a megaphone?
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It turned into a game of cat and mouse between protestors and police Wednesday night, as people took to the streets to express their unity and outrage over yet another failure to indict a policeman in the death of an unarmed black man.?
In solidarity with similar protests nationwide over a New York grand jury's findings in the case of Eric Garner, the #ShutItDownATL coalition used social media to quickly organize a rally and march that started at 9 p.m. at the North Ave. MARTA station and climaxed with the formation of a unity circle on Spring Street near the North Ave. intersection that obstructed the entrance ramps to the Downtown Connector.?
While protestors formed a human blockade of interlocked arms — shouting such chants as "Who shuts shit down? We shut shit down!" — organizer Aurielle Lucier announced that eight highway ramps along I-75/85 had been shut down as a result, based on reports she was receiving.??????
Rodney Carmichael??
Atlanta Police restrained themselves while warning protestors who blocked the Spring St. entrance to the Connector for approximately half an hour.?
??It was an emotional demonstration that organizers were intent on keeping peaceful as they displayed their power. Which meant alternating between pushing their agenda of civil disobedience and placating to police demands, lying down in the middle of the street and marching orderly on sidewalks.?
Getting arrested, however, was not the goal. They started the rally by calling arrests casualties to the system. And while they wanted to provide a forum for people to express their "righteous rage," as Lucier dubbed it, they also wanted to keep away the kind of agitators that derailed their mission following last week's non-indictment verdict of former Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson.?
"There were no casualties tonight," an organizer who identified herself only as Queen K told the crowd at the end of the protest back at the North Ave. station, where she'd earlier pointed out two hangers-on she alleged to be trouble starters. After she directed the crowd's attention to the couple in question, the two of them quietly left.?
Still, for a vocal few in attendance, the marching, chanting, crying and staged die-in was not enough to combat the latest perceived miscarriage of justice.?
"We need to bring more aggression," said one petite protestor who bounced among the crowd like a lit fuse. She identified herself only as Tiffany.????
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Rodney Carmichael??
With arms interlocked, a unity circle of protestors took over Spring St., causing the closing of several highway exits on Wednesday night.?
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"Y'all police suck," she said, taunting Atlanta police officers one moment and fellow protestors the next as they corralled on sidewalks in front of Emory Midtown Hospital in another momentary standoff. "Man, what type of protest is this? Y'all scared of the police?!"?
After marching in a loud but orderly fashion down the sidewalk on Peachtree Street, protestors were cornered again by police on Third St. When a policeman driving an SUV demanded them to clear the street over his loudspeaker, the crowd of approximately 300 returned to sidewalks and marched on, leaving only two behind: Tiffany and Lucier.?
In a 10-minute aside, the organizer took time to talk one-on-one with the frustrated first-timer about the difference between strategic protesting and mindless rioting.??????
Rodney Carmichael??
Protestors sit in solidarity with Atlanta police in the foreground?
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"If you're scared," Tiffany responded, "then why the hell are you even doing the protest?"?
Her rage reflected the level of exasperation reached with a judicial system that seems to be operating blindly in all the wrong ways. She didn't realize, however, that she was talking to someone who'd just been arrested four nights earlier during an Atlantic Station die-in.?
"Sis, I ain't scared. That's one thing I'm not," Lucier countered. "I'm telling people to play smart and play for the endgame, because if we all get locked up tonight there's going to be nobody out here tomorrow fighting."??????
Rodney Carmichael??
Organizers directed the protest circle from the inside while local media documented the scene.?
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Led by a coalition of young overwhelmingly female organizers, #ShutItDownATL has quickly morphed from a group of impassioned, enraged protestors to a band of grassroots organizations (#ItsBiggerThanYou, Southerners on New Ground, Gen Y Project, etc.) with tactical goals.?
They started and ended last night's demonstration by emphasizing the same list of demands Lucier presented in front of Attorney General Eric Holder during his visit to Atlanta's Ebenezer Church this week. They also focused on the importance of ending genocide, directing their own narrative outside of media coverage, and continuing to establish a broad-based, diverse coalition across lines of race, sexual orientation and the like.?
Participants joining the core included Georgia Tech students, Occupy sympathizers, even an older man, who appeared to be a vagrant, but made his way to the forefront as the night concluded.?
"We shut down the highway. That's what you did tonight," said Queen K at the rally's conclusion with news cameras watching her. "This is what power in numbers looks like.??????
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EDITOR'S NOTE: To view our complete coverage on local protests and responses to police brutality, visit the #ShutitdownATL page.
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Security experts at Vulnerability Lab have discovered a restriction filter bypass vulnerability affecting the PayPal mobile app.
An unpatched vulnerability affecting PayPal’s mobile applications can be exploited to access restricted accounts and even bypass the two-factor authentication (2FA) mechanism, a researcher claims.
Under specific conditions, PayPal can ask users to confirm their identity to prevent frauds. When users are asked to verify their identity, their account is not accessible and in order to unblock it PayPal request them to make a call or send an email to its service and complete the procedure.
According to Benjamin Kunz Mejri, the founder and CEO of Vulnerability Lab, even if the PayPal account is blocked it can still be accessed via the PayPal mobile apps, and this is possible by using both iOS and Android OSs.
“The Vulnerability Laboratory Core Research Team discovered a restriction filter bypass in the official PayPal Inc Mobile API for Apple iOS.” states the advisory published by the Vulnerability Lab.
Mejri explained that a vulnerability affecting the PayPal mobile app that can be exploited by attackers to access blocked accounts through repeated login attempts that leverage valid session cookies.
“By processing multiple login we saw a bug in the mobile app api next to the identity check. Normally an user account logs in and if the account is restricted by several requests a stable form popup to call paypal or write a ticket mail. By processing to request the form multiple times with an existing account (x01445@gmail.com:chaos666) we was able to bypass the auth verification check to approve the account owner.” is the technical description included in the advisory.
The same trick could be used to bypass two-factor authentication process, once the attacker successfully accesses the account is it able to change its settings, including the password.
“My account is blocked to login to the website or to log in without a valid cookie. When an error in the valid cookie occurs, there is a redirect. This redirect [leads to] a fail in the security approval procedure and results finally in the bypass of the auth and protection mechanism,” explained Mejri.
The worrying aspect of the story is that in April Mejri has ethically reported the flaw in the PayPal mobile app to the company, but it still affects the application. According to Vulnerability Lab, despite PayPal admitted the flaw, it doesn’t consider it critical because the identity approval mechanism can be bypassed at most one time.
Vulnerability Lab also published a video PoC, disagrees with the impact rating, arguing that they have been able to reproduce the exploit each time.
This is not the first time PayPal and Vulnerability Lab have argued over the impact of a mobile API flaw. In October 2014, the German security firm publicly disclosed a similar security bypass issue after PayPal refused to acknowledge its existence for more than a year. Ultimately, the payment processor confirmed the vulnerability, patched it, and promised to reward the researchers.
In that circumstance, PayPal initially refused the flaw and only later admitted its existence.
Bitdefender also reported identifying a PayPal vulnerability last week. The antivirus company discovered a persistent cross-site scripting (XSS) bug that could have been exploited to upload malicious files and launch attacks against Firefox users. PayPal addressed the issue found by Bitdefender.THE Philippines’ most notorious drug and crime lords are pooling their wealth to raise P1 billion (US$21 million) for a bounty on incoming President Rodrigo Duterte and several others.
According to the INQUIRER.net, the crime bosses were mostly drug lords currently inside the New Bilibid Prison (NBP) who are making a bid to have the Davao city mayor, his anointed Philippine National Police (PNP) chief, a senator and another government official killed.
A source told the news site that the high-profile inmates decided to start the ‘Kill Duterte fund’ after no one took up the 50 million peso ( |
killed along with hundreds of thousands of other individuals, mostly Serbs, in a campaign of ethnic cleansing. Authority for the date: http://orthodoxwiki.org/Platon_of_Banja_Luka
1992 William Carson begins tent meetings in Los Angeles that lead to the formation of the Apostolic Faith Home Assembly in August 1923. Authority for the date: Bernie L. Wade. Apostolic Faith and Pentecostal Timetable of Key Events (https://issuu.com/charismata/docExclusive: Rob Zombie will write, direct and produce Broad Street Bullies, a film about the Philadelphia Flyers hockey team that evolved from a cellar dwelling expansion team into a team that racked up victories and penalty minutes in equal measure during the 70s. Zombie, known for his head-banging music before transitioning to genre films like House of 1000 Corpses and Halloween, is making a departure with this film, sort of, because the Flyers brutal style of play is genre-worthy and has the makings for a hockey film on the order of the 1977 sports film classic Slap Shot. The physical play of the Flyers was legendary, to the point that when they played the Soviet Union’s supposedly invincible and tough Red Army team, the Flyers roughed them up so badly that the Russian team left the ice in the first period, and only returned when told they would not get paid if they didn’t.Argentina's footballers unfured a banner claiming sovereignty of the Falkland Islands before defeating Slovenia 2-0, inflaming their country's rivalry with England on the eve of the World Cup.
Goals from Ricardo Alvarez and skipper Lionel Messi ensured a winning send-off for the home side at La Plata, north of Buenos Aires, before they head to Brazil.
But the Argentine squad will have raised eyebrows in Britain showing off their politically-charged banner declaring "Las Malvinas Son Argentinas (The Malvinas are Argentine)" to the 52,000 crowd before kick off.
The banner is regularly put on show before Argentina's games. But the proximity to the World Cup brought new attention.
The South Atlantic islands have been ruled by Britain since 1833 but Argentina claims them and in 1982 attempted to seize control, sparking a brief but intense war.
Tensions have resurfaced in recent years with Argentina infuriated by the Falkland's government's search for oil in surrounding seas.
Diplomatic tensions over the Falklands have added a confrontational edge to a series of titanic battles between England and Argentina at the World Cup.
Four years after the World Cup in 1986, Diego Maradona outraged the English with his punched "Hand of God" goal in the 2-1 quarter-final victory in Mexico.
Maradona later said bitterness over the Falklands conflict had motivated the Argentines against England.
"I know publicly we all used to say football has nothing to do with war, but intimately we knew a lot of our boys had died, shot down like little birds," Maradona said. "And subconsciously, we were aware of that."
In 1998, an epic last-16 match at the World Cup in France ended in a 2-2 draw with Argentina prevailing in a penalty shoot-out.
The match was famous for the red card shown to England's David Beckham for kicking Diego Simeone.
Four years later Beckham avenged the loss at the 2002 finals in Japan, scoring the only goal in a 1-0 victory over Argentina which helped to eliminate the South Americans in the first round.
England and Argentina are not expected to cross paths at the World Cup in Brazil however, unless they both reach the semi-finals.
The team displayed the message apparently in support of the country's claims over the sovereignty of the islands in the South Atlantic, which are a British Overseas Territory.
Argentina accused Britain of provocative behaviour by planning to carry out military exercises in the Falkland Islands.
Despite repeated diplomatic clashes over the territory since President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner took power in Argentina in 2007, islanders voted by 1,513 to three in favour of remaining British in a referendum last year, which Prime Minister David Cameron said "could not have sent a clearer message".
Argentina beat Slovenia 2-0, with goals from Ricardo Alvarez. and Lionel Messi.We are getting closer to the end!
Welcome to the fourth of five mapping challenges as part of The Hammer cup 2016.
Theme Details
TrapVille AKA AdmiralAckbarVille
For this challenge we would like you to create a map that contains at least one trap. It could be one huge or complicated trap or multiple smaller simpler ones.
The player could be the one setting the traps or the one avoiding them. Or the one caught in them.
The winning map will be the one that creates the most interesting situation involving traps, that is fun to play and looks polished.
We are big fans of Rube Goldberg machines, and would love to see clever, overelaborate traps – but we realize the short timeframe, so please don’t get so carried away with the trap design that you don’t have time for testing and polishing the rest of your map.
Here are some ideas to get your creative juices flowing:
“After fairly light resistance, the town square feels a little too empty. This was too easy. Not committing too far forward, you investigate further. It’s clearly a trap. You retrace your steps but quickly find the trap was not the town square after all…”
“The Combine attack is just too strong. Time for a retreat into the mines. You are sure there is a way out and the only way to stop them following you is to blow the entrance. Oh dear, maybe that wasn’t such a good idea – it looks like someone may have been waiting for you down here…”
“Between you and the survivors is the abandoned village, but it’s almost as bad as Ravenholm. There’s talk of the ‘residents’ becoming creative to capture more escapees. Could it be true? Only one way to find out…”
As always, if you have any questions either ask in the comments or if you require a private answer send Phillip an email: planetphillip@gmail.com
Deadline
The deadline for submitting maps is:
Monday 30th May 2016 11pm GMT
That’s 19 days, with 3 full weekends.
General Advice
DO NOT GET TOO AMBITIOUS. If you can’t build it in 2 weekends then think smaller.
Something is bound to delay your progress. Leave time for testing, bug fixing and polishing!
Testing
It seems that the BetaTestersCollective website is currently down.
Feel free to ask RTSL for help.
General Rules
Maximum two maps per entry.
The map must be original and not have been released publicly before.
The map must run in system with only Ep2 installed
By entering the competition you grant PlanetPhillip.Com and RunThinkShootLive.Com the right to release the map as part of the TrapVille mod.
Maps must not appear on ANY other website before the release and for one month after the release of the mod.
No assets from retail games other than HL2, HL2: Ep1 or HL2: Ep2 are allowed.
Other assets are allowed with written permission from their original authors, which MUST be included in the entry.
Phillip’s decision is final and no correspondence will be entered into about it.
The map MUST have a proper name.
The map MUST have a proper filename: MapName_thc16c4.bsp
All entries must be sent to: planetphillip@gmail.com no later than the deadline.
Prizes
Steam or Origin games will be awarded to the Winner, Runner Up and third place.
Points for The Hammer Cup
Points will be awarded for each mapping challenge in The Hammer Cup.
All entries will receive 12 points.
First place receives an additional 36 points, second place receives an additional 24 points and third place receives an additional 12 points.
Bonus points can be awarded to all entries.
Bonus: 0,3,6 or 9 in the following categories:
Design (layout, foreshadowing, secret areas, concept etc)
Visuals (lighting, textures, etc)
Sound (ambient sounds, voice acting, special effects etc)
Gameplay (flow, exploration, 3 dimensions etc)
Misc (g-man sightings, humour, seriousness, scares etc)
Check The Hammer cup 2016 for full details of the event, including the prizes etc.Debbie Skomer runs the San Diego Coalition of Reason and recently attended a church at the urging of a friend — hey, why not?
While at the church, Pastor David Hoffman made a challenge to his congregation: He dared them to find anyone who was a Christian for a significant amount of time and only in their old age decided to lose their faith.
Debbie took him up on it. She felt confident there were many atheists in that position out there. Surely, at least one.
Through email correspondence, Hoffman laid out the specifics of the challenge (edited here for clarity)
Find someone who has lived for Jesus Christ for a significant amount of time (40-50 yrs) and is older (70+).
That person would say that as they look back on their life they regretted their decision to trust Jesus.
That person would tell young people to not trust Jesus because he doesn’t come through.
Hoffman added (and I quote here):
Believe me Debbie this is going to be a challenge because Jesus is faithful to those who put their trust in him.
Is it a fair challenge? Maybe. There are plenty of atheists who were deeply and sincerely Christian for a majority of their life before coming to their senses. Were they 70? None come to mind. But 40s? That’s easy to find. Still, I have no doubt we can meet this challenge.
Someone else who came to mind was— he wasn’t “just” a Christian, he was a preacher for the majority of two decades. I know two decades isn’t the same as forty years and Dan’s not exactly in his 70s, but it’s still a pretty damn long amount of time. And if you’ve ever heard Dan speak about it, you can tell how much he regrets it. Does he not count, Pastor Hoffman?
If you think you or someone you know fits the bill, you can write to the pastor here. Please don’t send him anything nasty. And please let us know (in the comments) what you write!
Let’s overwhelm him with positive responses from atheists who were “real” Christians for a significant amount of time and came to atheism much later in life.
Let’s see how he responds.Kody Schmitt went to Planet Comicon and writes for Bleeding Cool.
A star-studded ensemble of comic creators got together at Planet Comicon for an insightful and entertaining panel titled First Job in Comics: Breaking In. Chris Claremont, Jimmy Palmiotti, Kevin Eastman and more all shared their professional origin stories.
The extraordinary Chris Claremont began by recalling his days at Bard College in 1969. The school required undergraduates to get a job or internship in their field for a credit. At the time, Claremont was studying to become a political theorist. The political calamities of the 1960s were reaching their apex, as Claremont noted that the political environment of the time was not hospitable for someone like himself who wanted to “balance the budgets and end the war.”
He had a strong interest in writing and decided to pursue this avenue instead. His parents knew famed Mad Magazine cartoonist Al Jafee, who had spent time working with Stan Lee for Timely Comics. Using this connection, Claremont was able to score a gig as an intern for Marvel. Stan Lee broke the news to Claremont via phone: “Hey there true believer, this is Stan Lee!” Lee explained they couldn’t afford to pay him, but Claremont was happy with the college credit.
His two months as a Marvel intern were one of the best times in Claremont’s life up to that point. As was customary for Marvel at the time, whenever interns were leaving their position, they were asked to reply to a stack of unanswered fan mail. Among Claremont’s letters was a submission from Tony Isabella.
“I wrote a very polite thanks but no thanks, subtext really not very good. The punchline, of course, is four and a half years later when I worked at Marvel for real you’ll never guess who my boss was. And you’ll never guess who never let me forget who had dumped his first submission to Marvel. That’s the what goes around comes around history of Marvel. That’s how it all began, blame it on Stan.”
Jimmy Palmiotti attended the High School of Art Design in NY with hopes of becoming a comic book artist. During the 10th grade, one of his teachers introduced him to Marvel inker Chick Stone, who needed help meeting his deadlines. Palmiotti met with Stone, who offered him $5 to ink a Frank Robbins breakdown page from Inhumans #41. Palmiotti had never inked before, but he agreed to step up to the plate.
Stone told Palmiotti that the first panel was a train yard (despite looking like a bunch of boxes), and informed him that it was imperative he do a good job on the trains. For the sake of reference, Palmiotti went to a train yard on Coney Island. He climbed the fence to get a good view and inked the page. Palmiotti was very proud of his work. Upon turning in the completed page, Stone flat-out told Palmiotti, “This is terrible.” But he still gave him the $5 and wished him luck for the future.
The next year, Palmiotti’s teachers sent him to a group of artists working on a giant-size newspaper series called Rock ‘N’ Roll Comics. Palmiotti met with the artists, who were living in a tiny New York apartment that Palmiotti describes as being the size of the panel desk. When Palmiotti asked the artists where they slept, they responded, “You see the walls? They’re mattresses standing up. We just drop the mattresses — one, two, three — and that’s where we sleep. Until then, we put them back up.”
Reference material was taped to the bottom of the mattresses, and as they were moved, papers went flying everywhere. Palmiotti thought to himself, “Comic people make no money.” He entered the field of advertising and eventually went on to own one-third of the company he worked for. At the age of 30, he sold his part of the company.
Then, he found out his old high school friend Mark Teixeria needed help completing some artwork he was doing for Marvel. Palmiotti agreed to help, as long as he could do the work in the Marvel bullpen. Palmiotti was able to mingle with other Marvel workers, cementing his own job in the process. Palmiotti was informed that his background inking was really helping save the books. Palmiotti asked for a credit, and received his first-ever background inking credit in Ghost Rider #6.
Kevin Eastman humbly stated that dumb luck was the main thing that led to his career as a professional creator. As a lifelong comic fan, Eastman idolized Jack Kirby. He remembers the day he told his parents that he wanted to be Kirby. “They had this mortified look, like, ‘Oh my god, this guy is never going to move out of the basement.'”
Early on, he sent samples anywhere and everywhere, which resulted in stacks of rejection letters. Just as he was ready to give up, he discovered Heavy Metal Magazine in 1977. He still can’t believe the newsstand sold it to him, because it contained nudity. Heavy Metal made Eastman realize you could do any story of any genre for any age in comic format. This led to his discovery of many international talents and underground publications. He realized he wanted to make comics even if it meant he had to live in his parents’ basement forever.
Eastman was trying to pitch some short stories to a magazine that was changing their focus to advertising. They told him, “You do weird shit like this guy Peter Laird does — you should meet him.” Eastman sent Laird a letter, and the two bonded immediately. They decided to work together to self-fund and publish a book that they would want to read: “Nobody is going to buy this stupid comic anyways, so let’s write something for ourselves.”
Using their tax returns and a loan from Eastman’s uncle, they printed their books and put an ad in the Comic Buyers Guide. They never expected the massive success of TMNT, so they were using copies of the first issue as coffee tables.
“Then it got weird, because you guys started buying this comic book. I think most people when they picked it up thought what the hell is this? Whether they loved it or they hated it they still picked it up.”
Laird called Eastman excitedly proclaiming, “If we make six of these a year, we can make $2,000 each pre-tax, we can eat all the macaroni and cheese we want, pay our rent, and draw comic books for a living.” Eastman said that the longest story they did before the first issue of TMNT was only eight pages.
“I knew nothing. I still don’t know anything…the only reason I’m sitting up here is because so many of you guys out there have been following these turtles for 34 blankity blank years. I have the best job in the world and am eternally grateful. I fell into it and it’s your fault.”
All of the creators were happy to share their humble beginnings to a panel room full of fans hanging on their every word. The main takeaway I gathered from all of these artists is that breaking into comics requires more than just talent and passion. You need to be willing to go through periods of poverty, display grueling levels of perseverance, and hope for moments of lucky happenstance.
About Rich Johnston Chief writer and founder of Bleeding Cool. Father of two. Comic book clairvoyant. Political cartoonist.
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Related Posts"Women get raped at 'unwanted' parties," says Karnataka Congress leader
India
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"Do women get raped when they go to fairs (jatres)? No, they get raped at unwanted parties," these were the words of a Karnataka Congress leader. Bharathi Shankar, the chairperson of Karnataka State Women's Development Corporation did not stop at that and went on to draw parallels between women safety and garbage disposal.
Bharati, a political appointee to the board and prominent Bengaluru Congress women's wing leader had a 'foot-in-the-mouth' moment on Friday. Bharati was invited to be part of a panel discussion on women's safety for 'A Billion Eyes' - a joint initiative of the Bengaluru police and BPAC- a citizens' group that works for better politics.
The Congress leader, when asked about whether she thought of women empowerment as being equal to women safety, said that women were subjected to sexual harassment including rape only in parties. in a bid to push for 'individual responsibility', Bharati gave garbage segregation analogy for women safety. "As a citizen, I should segregate waste first to address garbage issues. If I don't do it and keep blaming the department or corporator, what is the use?" she asked.
OneIndia NewsGame of Thrones actor David Bradley will voice the part of Lord High Admiral Suvarov in Perihelion Interactive's space-based strategy role-playing game The Mandate, the developer announced today.
Bradley is known for his role as Filch the caretaker in Harry Potter, and more recently, Walder Frey in Game of Thrones. Bradley demonstrates his vocal talents in the trailer above, as Lord High Admiral Suvarov muses on his responsibilities as a commander.
"I'm delighted to be working with the team at Perihelion Interactive to breathe life into the character of Suvarov," Bradley said. "The Mandate is my first foray into the world of videogames, and I'm fascinated to see how my vocal performance is realised within the game."
The Mandate is currently raising funds via Kickstarter. At the time of this post, it's raised more than $303,000 of its $500,000 goal. Funding efforts end Dec. 2. The game was Greenlit via Steam and will launch for Linux, Mac and Windows PC.Downton Abbey star Dan Stevens has recorded the first ever audiobook of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, and we have a sneak peak of the recording process to celebrate Hallowe'en.
In the video, Stevens explains that the book paints a far more illuminating portrait of the monster who has been immortalised in film and TV remakes, as well as in Danny Boyle's hugely successful 2011 National Theatre play adaptation starring Benedict Cumberbatch. The NT production incidentally screens at selected cinemas tonight, with Cumberbatch playing Frankenstein, the monster's creator.
Stevens, best known for his portrayal of Matthew Crawley in Downton Abbey, first read Frankenstein as a boy. However, he has found greater meaning in the 19th century novel after reading it for recording: "When I read audiobooks I get inside a novel in an totally different way. Frankenstein was quite an adventure."
Stevens adds, "It's a really profound and beautiful book. The creature is one hundred times more eloquent than you would ever have imagiend if you had only seen Hallowe'en images of this scary guy.
"People might be surprised by how different the book is from their preconceptions and their idea of Frankenstein."California is restricting state government funded travel to four more states after each of them passed laws deemed harmful to the LGBT community.
California Attorney General Xavier Becerra announced the addition of Alabama, Kentucky, South Dakota, and Texas to a travel ban list Thursday at a press conference in San Francisco. The list had already included Mississippi, North Carolina, Kansas, and Tennessee. The travel ban restricts state government funded travel to and the spending of California state tax dollars in states that have laws permitting refusal of service to LGBT individuals.
Becerra cited laws recently passed by the newly added states that he deemed were part of a “scourge of discrimination” against LGBT individuals. Supporters of the laws in question say they were passed in those states to protect religious individuals from government discrimination for operating their businesses according to their religious beliefs.
“We will not spend taxpayer dollars in states that discriminate,” Becerra said.
A Texas law permitting faith based adoption and foster care agencies to refuse potential LGBT parents based on religious criteria was the most recently passed law cited by Becerra.
The California state legislature voted to create the travel ban in 2016. The ban has exemptions for training required for grants, law enforcement officers, and tax officials.
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Content created by The Daily Caller News Foundation is available without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a large audience. For licensing opportunities of our original content, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.The data on Russian stockpiles of weapons can be found in international reporting as they had been open at the times "when the Russian Federation still posed as a civilized state," Tymchuk said.
According to the Ukrainian MP, the Russian defense ministry has scheduled a large-scale write-off of weapons. As reported in the explanatory note to the draft amendments to Russian President’s Decree No. 775, until 2021, they plan to cut for scrap or otherwise dispose of 9,900 armored vehicles, 21,500 missile and artillery pieces, 7 million small arms, and 150 million units of ammunition.
Read alsoUkraine reveals Russian units involved in Donbas hostilities in 2014-2015 (infographics)"There is no doubt that a large part of these weapons and ammunition have already been "disposed of" or scheduled for being "written-off" in the Ukrainian Donbass, " Tymchuk noted.Amazon may be behind a secretive air cargo operation that launched earlier this year, according to a new report from Motherboard. This past September, the aviation holdings company Air Transport Services Group (ATSG) began shipping consumer goods out of a facility in Wilmington, Ohio for an unnamed client. The operation is known as "Aerosmith" and Amazon is likely the mysterious client that runs it.
Wilmington Air Park is a non-passenger airport that has been air-shipping cargo for various clients for decades. DHL ran operations there from 2003 to 2008, but after its departure, the facilities went largely unused. The airport has two large runways and eight industrial facilities for sorting and shipping.
Like Steven Tyler?
As Motherboard notes, Amazon has recently been searching for more effective ways to get its products to consumers, from creating a drone superhighway to opening physical stores. Having its own air cargo operation would allow Amazon to ship without the hassle of a middleman like UPS, which has previously been blamed for Amazon's delivery delays.
Since September, the company behind Aerosmith has contracted four Boeing 767s that together make a total of four flights per day. Motherboard has confirmed the planes fly from Wilmington to four other airports: Allentown, PA (ABE), Ontario, CA (ONT), Tampa, FL (TPA) and Oakland, CA (OAK). Amazon has distribution centers within fewer than 60 miles of each airport.
Amazon could ship without the hassle of a middleman
Motherboard spoke to representatives at the various airports, who described the cargo coming in as "general consumer goods." FedEx, UPS, and DHL all confirmed to Motherboard they were not the companies behind Aerosmith. And a post on a piloting forum this past October claimed to have insider knowledge that Amazon was working on an overnight parcel delivery service, Motherboard reports.
The rumor has not yet been confirmed by Amazon.H. C. Armstrong answers this question beautifully in the wonderful ending sentence of Grey Wolf:
"He is Dictator in order that it may be impossible ever again
that there should be in Turkey a Dictator."
Despite what some uninformed or willingly deceptive Kemalists might say, Ataturk was what political scientists call a benevolent dictator and this can be proven by his own words.
On October 31st 1922 Ataturk gave a speech in the assembly. He urged the separation of the caliphate and sultanate (again this man was a genius – he first separated caliphate and sultanate and then abolished both within two years of each other) and explained why the latter must be abolished. However, there were still some members that opposed this. So Ataturk came forward and gave what I think was an extraordinarily important and admirable speech:
"Sovereignty and kingship are never decided by academic debate. They are seized by force. The Ottoman dynasty appropriated by force the government of the Turks, and reigned over them for six centuries. Now the Turkish nation has effectively gained possession of its sovereignty… This is an accomplished fact… If those assembled here … see the matter in its natural light, we shall all agree. Otherwise, facts will still prevail, but some heads may roll."
Some heads may roll... What he meant was this: "I am going to abolish the monarchy and bring democracy and civilisation. If you stand in my way, I am going to chop off your head! For, no one can put my nation's future in danger!"
A day after this speech, with the majority of votes in the assembly, the sultanate of the Ottoman Empire founded in 1299 had been abolished. 17 days later, frightened for his own safety, the last Ottoman monarch Mehmed VI, had fled the country.
Was Ataturk stubborn? Sometimes.
Was Ataturk ruthless? Probably.
Was Ataturk a dictator? Yes he was.
But most importantly, did Ataturk do the right thing? Of course he did the right thing!
The speech mentioned above is the sole reason why this famous quote from Ataturk, which is also the founding principle of Turkey, is inscribed in the walls of the Turkish Parliament of today:
"Sovereignty Unconditionally Belongs to the Nation."
After the abolition of the sultanate Ataturk was offered the position of the Caliph of Islam. Although he could easily become the Caliph of all Muslims, the legitimate successor to Muhammad and the role to which millions of Muslims would kill to ascend, he remained loyal to his ideals and categorically rejected that. The assembly appointed Abdulmecid II as the Caliph and, several months later, Ataturk founded the Republic of Turkey in 1923. Within a year, when he had the total control of the army and was embraced by the people as the savior of the nation he decided to abolish the caliphate and expel the Caliph. Most of his opponents and even supporters begged him to become Caliph himself; a delegation from India and another from Egypt repeated the request at the same time. Despite the greatness of the position and the international prestige that it would bring, he refused.
He believed the Ottoman Empire was a crazy structure based on broken religious foundations. The new Republic must have good foundations and a well-made, scientific structure. The Caliph and the remains of the house of Osman must go. The antiquated religious courts and codes must be replaced by modern scientific civil codes. The schools of the priests must give way to secular government schools. State and religion must be separated. The Republic must finally become a secular state. The dictator gave the order and the government of Turkey became secular.
By 1924, Ataturk had transformed an Islamic Caliphate into an almost completely secular nation-state (theoretically more secular than the US). He forced Turkey into the Age of Enlightenment. He ended the Islamic monarchy and later gave women suffrage and every other right that men had. (check Atatürk's Reforms for the complete list of his achievements – it's gonna take some time to read through!) Women whom Ottoman mentality had ignored for centuries forcing them to wear veil and whom nobody knew to exist until the Republican Era.
The vast majority of his sharp critics are Islamist fundamentalists. In fact, some of them even loathe Ataturk. Rightly so. Despite what some Kemalists would say, almost all of the reforms of Ataturk conflict directly or non-directly with Islam, Quran and/or traditional Sharia law.
Here's the irony though. The most reliable Quranic commentary (tafsir) that Turkish Muslims use today written by Elmalili Hamdi Yazir was ordered by Ataturk, who also had the book translated into modern Turkish and made it publicly available. His motive was unveiled in a dialogue with one of his generals, Kazim Karabekir, who was not so fond of the idea:
"Yes, Karabekir! In order to teach the rubbish of the son of Arabs to the sons of Turks, I will have the Quran translated into Turkish and make them read it, up to the point they stop getting fooled..."
No other leader of a Muslim nation would have escaped with that bold statement. He, the savior of the nation, was no ordinary leader; no one could oppose him who defeated all the enemies and liberated his people. He did what he promised, and went even further. He forced the priests to pray and to call for prayer in Turkish as opposed to Arabic. He was bold. No other leader in the world has ever done this. He knew what he was doing. He knew that the Arabic words used in praying are perceived by the Turks as magical spells. They do not know what the verses mean, yet they keep murmuring them, hoping that God will help them only if they use these magical words. For hundreds of years priests exploited this and used their knowledge of the Quran as leverage over the people. Ataturk was furious about this. He wanted the Turks to practice their religion knowing the meaning of what they do and what they say and thus not be deceived by the priests.
But he was too progressive. Turks didn't like it; they needed to pray in Arabic to consolidate their spirituality. When the call for prayer was delivered in Turkish it sounded like gibberish; it had no magical effect. 12 years after Ataturk's death they reverted these reforms. Although, thanks to him, they could now understand what the author of the Holy Book meant.
Being a Muslim requires one to support the Quran and Sharia law and reject the idea of secularism. True Muslims who have read and embraced Quran would not object. Even this by itself gives Muslims enough reason to dislike Ataturk whose stance on this issue is unequivocally clear:
"He who needs religion to uphold his government is a weak ruler; it is as if he would catch his people in a trap. My people are going to learn the principles of democracy, the dictates of truth and the teachings of science. Superstition must go. Let them worship as they will; every man can follow his own conscience, provided it does not interfere with sane reason or bid him against the liberty of his fellow-men."
Amazingly, Ataturk, who had made it crystal clear that while individuals could adopt any religion they wished, the Turkish government would not be constructed upon Islamic beliefs, is still respected by many of the Turkish Muslims because of his struggle during the War of Independence, Gallipoli Battle and many others. These people tend to call him "Gazi Mustafa Kemal", the name he used until the Grand National Assembly granted him the surname "Ataturk" meaning "Father Turk". For example, Islamist fundamentalists, such as the current president Erdogan, who work in a government position and are required to put Ataturk's portrait in their offices, prefer to use paintings or portraits such as the one below from pre-Republican times.
The others who are not so fond of him and his reforms are Kurdish nationalists who feel they have been oppressed throughout the Republican Era because they don't feel and have never wanted to be Turkish. Kurdish people are the largest nation without a state. They have their own language and culture so there is no wonder they tend to dislike Ataturk, the father of Turkish nationalism and the eternal supreme commander of the Turkish Army with whom Kurdish nationalists don't get along for decades now.
People in Turkey from various kinds of ethnic and religious backgrounds who identify themselves as Turks and love their country, respect and admire Ataturk. They visit the mausoleum in which he rests, Anitkabir, on national holidays and on November 10th.
Ataturk's definition of nationalism has never been based on a particular race or religion. He wanted the citizens of the Republic of Turkey to identify themselves as Turks just as the citizens of the United States identify themselves as Americans despite their different ethnic/religious backgrounds. The constitution of Turkey has never persecuted against any ethnic/religious minorities but, unfortunately, some Turks have.
What I have noticed is that almost all the scientists from all over the world who know him adore him! How can they not? A man so devoted to science who says:
"I do not leave any moral heritage, any verses, dogmas, nor any moulded standard principles. My moral heritage is science and reason. What I have done and intended to do for the Turkish Nation lies in that. Anyone willing to appropriate my ideas for themselves after me will be my moral inheritors provided they would approve the guidance of science and reason on this axis."
Most of the foreigners do not understand why Turks are so obsessed about Ataturk. It seems that the Turkish nation has every right to boast about its founder, the only undefeated Ottoman commander in WW1, who devastated the Allies in Gallipoli, freed Istanbul from the invading British forces, cleaned Anatolia from the invading Greeks and won the Turkish War of Liberation. He, the first leader to attack and defeat Islamic theocracy, was a dictator, who planted the seeds of democracy, who freed the women, transformed a rotten empire into an independent republic, gave back to his nation its sovereignty, introduced his nation to science and reason and fine arts.
As H. C. Armstrong says in the beautiful ending of Grey Wolf:
"He is Dictator. The future lies in his strong hands. If they
fail, grow flabby, tremble, if though strong to destroy they
cannot build, then Turkey dies.
A lone man without family, without friends, he has made the
people of Turkey the heirs to his private possessions and to his
power.
He is Dictator in order that it may be impossible ever again
that there should be in Turkey a Dictator."All eyes on Quito, American Capital of Culture, 2011 While in Europe the cities of Turku and Tallinn are sharing the honour of being Capital of Culture this year, on the other side of the planet, Quito has taken the title of American Capital of Culture, 2011.
VIEW GALLERY
Thirty-two years ago, the vibrant capital of Ecuador was named a World Heritage Site by UNESCO. This year, as American Capital of Culture, the city – which boasts the largest and best preserved historical colonial centre in South America – has a marvellous opportunity to show the world the great treasures that form part of its ancient cultural heritage and history.
Throughout the year, the Ecuadorian capital has a busy programme of events and activities lined up, including theatre and dance, exhibitions, outdoor activities, concerts of local music and gastronomic fairs. In the first quarter of the year, Quito has been introducing itself to the world as an international, diverse and cosmopolitan metropolis. Next quarter, the focus will be on the city's artistic and religious heritage. From July to September, the city will be showing its green credentials as a place of adventure with strong links with nature, and finally, in the last three months of the year, the focus will shift to the ancestral, festive, cultural and popular heritage of the capital.
The musical programme is to include some outstanding events, with the Festival of Sacred Music from April 11th to 24th, the International Guitar Biennale from May 19th to 21st, the International Festival of Singer-songwriters from June 20th to 26th, and the Choir Festival in December.
Perhaps more than anything, though, 2011 will offer the opportunity to discover the essence of Quito, home to an ancient mix of peoples and cultures that have blended and harmonised to make the city such a unique place.
Founded in 1534 by the Spaniard Sebastian de Benalcazar on the ruins left by the powerful Inca Rumiñahui – who preferred to burn the city rather than let it fall into the hands of the Spanish – the Ecuadorian capital is a rich mix of monuments and buildings of a multitude of styles. The beautifully preserved old centre of the city boasts such gems as the Compania de Jesus church, dating from 1605 and considered the most important religious building left by the Spanish. Alongside this architectural wealth, the city keeps alive many oral and cultural traditions that form part of an intangible heritage.
To all this we can add the fact that Quito is a city of eternal springtime, perched at nearly three thousand metres above sea level in a place of incredible natural beauty on the eastern slopes of the imposing Pichincha volcano. Why not discover it for yourself this year?
Further information:
Quito Tourist BoardNEW ALBUM - RAVE TAPES RELEASED 20th JANUARY
We're pleased to finally be able to share the details of our new studio |
time on the ground. After Hurricane Mitch hit Central America in 1998, 15 pallets of "random medicine" was sent to the region, but "critical time was wasted sorting through the medicine and throwing three-quarters of it away," Schimmelpfennig said.
Baby formula -- another popular donated item -- can be unnecessary if a community only breastfeeds their children. It could also be dangerous if the formula is mixed with contaminated water.
By the same token, medicine can be unnecessary and even harmful.
"In practically every country there will be Ministry of Health protocols, government regulations, about the use of drugs. Those are going to be applied throughout the health system that you're trying to support," Westphal said. "It's much easier based on that knowledge, based on the information you receive about what's really needed, to actually buy the right kind of drugs and medical equipment rather than having it sent out."
All drug donations should be based on an expressed need, according to World Health Organization guidelines. If they don't match the need, the risk is that the donations will have to be thrown away.
"What do you do with hundreds of pounds of unusable drugs?" asks Schimmelpfennig. "Do you throw them out and risk garbage sorters taking them out and selling them on the street to kids? Do you flush them down the sink which risks the drugs getting into the ground water?"
The WHO also recommends that all drugs be labeled in a language easily understood by those in the destination country.
"While well intentioned, these donations could cause more harm than good if the wrong medicine or the wrong dosage is prescribed due to language barriers," Schimmelpfennig says.
Aid groups say they don't want to quash those good intentions, but they want donors to realize why cash is so much better than goods in-kind.
"What you really want to be doing as much as possible is actually address the real needs of people on the ground," Westphal said. "That's got to be the priority, and obviously cash gives you much more flexibility in terms of making sure that relief items you provide really correspond to what people need and what people are used to."
Charities and aid groups often know the situation in the disaster zone and can make the best assessments of what people need, Westphal said.
The U.S.-based Center for International Disaster Information, which promotes education about disaster response, says financial contributions entail no transportation cost and are the most flexible.
"Changes in conditions often cause changes in the victims' urgent needs," the group said. "Relief organizations can't convert a used clothing donation into medicine, for instance."
Save the Children often groups cash donations together, enabling the charity to save money by buying in bulk, Wingate said.
"Often, if not always, gifts are made with the best possible intention, and generosity shouldn't be underestimated at all," he said. "But people after an emergency don't just need anything -- they need specific items. They don't just need any old rubbish. These are people that need to be treated with dignity, and we need to make sure that they're given what they need."2K Shares
Long before the sight of Steve Reeves sporting gladiator garb made girls in poodle skirts swoon at drive-in theaters, there was Adonis. The legendary Greek figure, borne of a myrrh tree, was said to have possessed such unearthly physical beauty that even the goddess of love herself, Aphrodite, couldn’t help but fall head over heels for the delectable deity.
Sadly, Adonis’ overwhelming studliness sparked jealousies that led to the summoning of a boar to do him in; he died for the sin of looking too good. As with any Greek parable, there’s a lesson to be learned. Basically, if you’re a grade-A head-turner, you might do well to keep an eye out for charging wild pigs.
If Reeves hadn’t been apprised of this truism during his competitive heyday, certainly some of his modern-day counterparts have. World-class bodybuilders such as Darrem Charles (especially come Olympia time) and Troy Alves have felt the sharp tusks of a sport that in recent years has placed an ever-greater premium on muscular mass, even when coming at the expense of an Adonisworthy appearance. Like the Greek god himself, these men, and all those who endeavor not to let the prevailing winds shape their own forms, may find their glory years brief (if not quite so sanguine), lest the IFBB gods see fit to make some adjustments on the acropolis high atop “Mount Olympia.”
In honor of Adonis and those who’ve aspired to follow his lead in a quest for perfection, we present you with the 20 most aesthetic physiques, ranked from 20th to the best of all time.
20 Melvin Anthony
Birth Date: November 13, 1972 Height: 5’9″ Weight: 235 pounds
It’s a generally accepted fact that “Marvelous” Melvin Anthony has the smallest waist in bodybuilding today, which is all well and good on its own. But considering that he also has some of the sport’s widest clavicles, we’re talking about a serious V taper. Anthony’s front double-biceps shot, in particular, harkens back to the physiques of a range of athletes, from Sergio Oliva to Arnold Schwarzenegger to Shawn Ray. Anthony’s ab column is especially narrow, relatively high and sits under his rib cage just so. His biceps are long and full, and his lats flare with the best of them. The overall effect is a classic interpretation of this classic pose.
Along with so many others on this list of 20, Anthony is known as one of the best posers of his era.
It’s the savvy bodybuilder who knows his strengths and plays to them.
Anthony’s rousing routines usually begin with dramatic moves capped with subtle flourishes. That minuscule waist, those rounded lats and those steel-cable arms are all displayed to great effect, most successfully at the 2004 IFBB Night Of Champions in New York, the site of his first pro victory.
Anthony certainly has the tools to add to his trophy case and to continue representing the aesthetic brigade with honor.
Melvin Anthony Highlights
19 Sonny Schmidt
Birth Date: September 9, 1953 Died: January 25, 2004 Height: 5’10” Weight: 240 pounds
New Zealand’s greatest bodybuilder, Sonny Schmidt, may have passed on, but he will never be forgotten, especially in the annals of bodybuilding’s most aesthetic athletes. Considering his height and weight, Schmidt is one of the larger guys on this list and he was viewed by some as part of bodybuilding’s mass contingent; often overlooked is the fact that his near-flawless proportions separated him from the rest of the pack.
The 1995 Masters Olympia champion was a perennial top-10 finisher who was rarely seen onstage in anything less than crisp conditioning.
Although Schmidt was supremely proportioned, he had something others of his ilk didn’t always possess freaky bodyparts, which usually make for a bodybuilder who’s somewhat less than balanced.
Fact is, every one of Schmidt’s bodyparts was freaky: his arms were absolutely enormous, as were his calves; his chest was full and ridged; and his back was wide and thick. Add to that combination hanging hamstrings and brick-and-mortar abs, and you have a physique worthy of top-20 status.
Sonny Schmidt Highlights
18 Sergio Olivia
Birth Date: July 4, 1941 Height: 5’10” Weight: 240 pounds
Say “the Myth” in bodybuilding circles and everybody, no matter their age or global residence, will nod their heads in approval. Sergio Oliva was a phenom the likes of which has not been seen before or since. Suffice to say Oliva was the only bodybuilder that invoked fear in the heart of the nearly invincible Arnold Schwarzenegger … now that’s saying something. The Cuban emigre started his iron-pumping career as an Olympic weightlifter for Fidel Castro’s national team.
After coming to America in the early 1960s, he soon discovered with the aid of fellow legend Bob Gajda that he had the God-given structure to be a world-class bodybuilder.
No sooner had he embarked on a bodybuilding career than he began winning titles in the Chicago area.
Then he broadened his scope to the national level where, save for a Mr. America title that should have been his, he dominated. Finally, in 1967, he climbed to the pinnacle the Olympia where he would sit for three years, until the aforementioned Austrian supplanted him. Sure, Oliva was the most massive guy of his day (and many, many days since), but the seamless flow of his muscle groups was truly a thing of beauty. Just a single look at his trademark “victory” pose makes his nickname a no-brainer.
17 Danny Padilla
Birth Date: April 3, 1951 Height: 5’2″ Weight: 175 pounds
Dubbed the Giant Killer, 5’2″ Danny Padilla regularly defeated his towering opposition by way of stellar proportions and flowing lines rather than mere mass not that he wasn’t endowed in the area of striated muscle as well. Looking at photos of Padilla standing solo, it’s difficult, if not impossible, to determine his (lack of) height. Some short men sport proportions typical to their height: long torso matched with stubby limbs. Not so the Rochester, New York, native.
Every bodypart is in near perfect ratio with the others. His muscle bellies are round and emanate from tiny joints.
It has been said that Padilla’s only shortcoming is his shortness.
Yet, no one can explain why a person’s verticality should have any bearing on the judging of his muscularity. Like Robby Robinson (who was a good friend and a frequent onstage rival throughout the late 1970s), Padilla has retained his condition well into middle age, lending credence to the idea that the pursuit of a quality physique above all is a strategy in bodybuilding that could yield benefits for a lifetime.
16 Serge Nubret
Birth Date: October 6, 1938 Height: 6′ Weight: 220 pounds
France’s Serge Nubret could be included on a number of “best of” lists other than this one. “Best abs,” “best chest” and “best impression of a work of art” are just a few. Throughout the 1960s, ’70s and ’80s, Nubret was bodybuilding’s standard-bearer of grace. When he walked to center stage, it appeared as if he was gliding inches above the floor.
His body seemed to slide into poses as if each was created specifically for him. His form was graceful, yet extremely powerful.
At the 1975 Mr. Olympia, Nubret managed, at a bodyweight of only 200 pounds, to best the hulking Lou Ferrigno, who outweighed him by nearly 70 pounds, en route to a second-place finish in the tall class, behind Arnold Schwarzenegger. Despite shedding a reported 20 pounds within just a few weeks of the contest (he had only a short time to prepare, as he was at first erroneously informed that he was ineligible to compete), Nubret still presented enough in the way of shape and lines to give even the Austrian Oak a run for his money.
Nubret’s unique genetic makeup certainly can’t be discounted for the role it played in forging his physique, but his distinctive training system, consisting of very high volume coupled with moderate weights, certainly had a hand in polishing this diamond.
15 Lee Haney
Birth Date: November 11, 1959 Height: 5’11” Weight: 248 pounds
In bodybuilding, there are legends, and then there are Legends, with a capital L. Appropriately enough, L also stands for Lee, as in Lee Haney. To many, Haney’s emergence on the pro bodybuilding scene was a kind of epiphany: a bodybuilder can actually be the biggest guy and the best too. At 5’11” and tipping the scales anywhere between 233 and 248 pounds, Haney was often the largest contestant onstage during his pro career, spanning 1983 to 1991.
Whereas other behemoths often rely solely on mass to see them through, Haney employed a triple-threat approach as he stormed his way through IFBB lineups. In addition to his groundbreaking size, he brought stellar shape and spot-on conditioning to the table, year after year.
Enough times, in fact, to garner a record eight Olympia titles.
Haney’s influence on the sport of bodybuilding has been felt to this day, and not just for the indelible mark he made upon the sport as an individual. The dominating combination of size and shape he displayed caused his competition to rethink their strategies as they attempted to knock him off his throne (they never did). From the time of Haney’s first Olympia win in 1984, everybody endeavoring to make a run at bodybuilding’s top title would have to bring their mass to a whole new level, while keeping the lines that brought them to the dance in the first place. Many have tried and ultimately failed to match what Haney accomplished.
14 Matt Mendenhall
Birth Date: June 26, 1960 Height: 5’11” Weight: 242 pounds
Matt Mendenhall is considered by many of those in the know to be the greatest bodybuilder never to earn pro status. He finished second in the heavyweight class at the NPC Nationals in 1982, 1984 and 1986. Despite winning his class at the 1985 USA Championships, he lost the overall title to light heavyweight Dave Hawk. At the 1985 World Games, he finished second in the heavyweights to Berry DeMey. So close to being a pro, yet so far. (He last competed in 1991, at the NPC Nationals, where he placed fifth among the heavyweights.)
Still, it was never for lack of mass coupled with aesthetics that Mendenhall never won a big title. Conditioning was usually his bugaboo.
Audience members and even competitors at each of the contests he entered often agreed that Mendenhall had the potential to beat everyone in the sport.
He lacked nothing from his wide clavicles to his narrow hips, right down to one of the most impressive pairs of calves in bodybuilding history. Couple this with all-American good looks, and you have a man who not only caught the attention of first Ms. Olympia and all-around bodybuilding babe Rachel McLish, but that of bodybuilding fans who know a stellar physique when they see one. In the pantheon of legendary aesthetes, titles mean nothing. It’s muscular shape, lines and proportion that count and when judging these criteria, Mendenhall is a true champion.
13 Thierry Pastel
Birth Date: June 6, 1959 Height: 5’2″ Weight: 178 pounds
When the name Thierry Pastel comes up in bodybuilding conversations, talk inevitably turns toward his jaw-dropping set of abs and impossibly full arms. Indeed, the French pro’s abs can be ranked up there with the best of all time he sported a crisp eight-pack with ridges so deep you could lose a quarter in them.
He stood only 5’2″, yet his arms were the size of a man’s a half-foot taller and better shaped than many, to boot.
Yet even his outstanding bodyparts couldn’t detract from Pastel’s overall aesthetic excellence.
An exceptional poser, he would rarely hit a shot in the conventional manner, instead opting to add the kind of artistic flourishes to his stance, his hand placement or the angle of his torso that bespeaks an artist more than an athlete. Not surprisingly, Pastel was a protege of fellow Frenchman Serge Nubret, himself a master poser and paragon of aesthetic distinction.
Although the likes of Pastel and Nubret are seldom seen on bodybuilding stages these days, their photos continue to inspire generations of up-and-coming muscle artisans.
12 Chris Cormier
Birth Date: August 19, 1967 Height: 5’10” Weight: 250 pounds
Some would say that in 2006 aesthetics is all but dead and buried, that mass and mass only is where it’s at these days on the pro bodybuilding circuit. To those who truly believe this, we present you with exhibit A: Chris Cormier. From the time he won the NPC USA Championships in 1993, Cormier has been a sight for sore eyes on IFBB stages around the globe. At a competition weight of around 250 pounds, Cormier is among the heavier guys on our list.
It’s the way he carries that weight, rather than the weight itself, that makes him so impressive. Tiny joints coupled with full muscle bellies, all spread out uniformly across a 5’10” frame, make for a physique that has earned 11 pro titles to date in the 70 IFBB contests in which he has competed.
To his credit, in an era when even athletes known for their aesthetics sacrifice their lines at the expense of mass, Cormier has managed to maintain a fine balance between both.
He is one of the few guys in the pro ranks today who can actually vacuum in his abs when hitting a front double-biceps shot.
Certainly, if the traditional vacuum pose were to be incorporated into the mandatory routine, Cormier would be in good standing for top honors at either the Mr. Olympia or the Arnold Schwarzenegger Classic, two shows he would love to win before calling it a career.
Chris Cormier Highlights
11 Shawn Ray
Birth Date: September 9, 1965 Height: 5’7″ Weight: 205 pounds
By the time you read this article, Shawn Ray will be known as many things, including bodybuilding advocate, contest promoter, emcee, charity event organizer and entrepreneur. But the one title that no one should ever overlook in Ray’s long and storied love affair with bodybuilding is Mr. Symmetry.
Ray represents a rare breed in bodybuilding, one that is scarcer now than ever: the bodybuilding prodigy. At the tender age of 22, Ray won the 1987 NPC Nationals, which set him up for a pro career that ranks among the most impressive in bodybuilding’s history.
Although he never got to place a Sandow on his mantle, Ray nevertheless represented the gold standard of excellence through the reigns of three multiple Olympia winners: Lee Haney, Dorian Yates and Ronnie Coleman. Year after year, from 1988 through 2001, Ray posed a serious threat in every contest he entered.
He competed in 12 consecutive Olympia contests during that time (13 overall, sitting out only the 1989 rendition) and, after his first Olympia appearance, never placed out of the top five, taking runner-up honors in 1994 and 1996.
Ray’s muscularity rivaled that of any of his competitors during his career, only he carried it better than most. Fully cognizant of the beauty of his physical form, he became an exemplary poser, choosing to move audiences with an artistic display rather than simply wowing them with pure mass. A rare breed indeed.
Shawn Ray Highlights
10 Mohamed Makkawy
Birth Date: August 29, 1953 Height: 5’3″ Weight: 160 pounds
Egypt’s Mohamed Makkawy stood just an inch taller than Danny Padilla, but he made just as big an impact on pro bodybuilding as did his fellow honoree. Makkawy’s stature within the sport could be more easily measured by the esteem he garnered from fellow competitors than from his height; among his vocal fans was the great Mike Mentzer. In addition, a memorable photograph depicts a grinning Lee Haney, less than a year shy of the first of his eight Olympia wins, hoisting Makkawy into the air on the occasion of just having been defeated by his much smaller rival at the 1983 English Grand Prix.
Despite the groundbreaking size, shape and overall quality of young Haney, Makkawy’s ethereal qualities bordered on human physical perfection.
Makkawy’s six IFBB pro victories came in 1982 and 1983, starting with wins at the 1982 Swedish and Belgian Grand Prix events.
He took the World Pro title in 1983 and was second to another man on this list, Samir Bannout, at that fall’s Mr. Olympia, before earning top honors at three Grand Prix events (including the aforementioned battle in London, England) to round out his very successful year. Unlike many other competitors who are rich in aesthetics, come judging time, he sometimes did get his due.
9 Samir Bannout
Birth Date: November 7, 1955 Height: 5’7″ Weight: 190 pounds
Samir Bannout presented a physique at the 1983 Mr. Olympia contest in Munich, Germany, that came close to matching the ideal embodied by the figure of Adonis. Of course, favorable genetics are at play when we’re talking about the best of the best.
But, good genes or not, Bannout did his gym homework as diligently as any of the other legends on this list.
During his long and outstanding career, Bannout would sometimes find himself plagued with water-retention problems, but he managed to dry himself out when it counted, including at the aforementioned Olympia. Bannout presented an ideal balance of shape and mass; whereas some of his contemporaries who also toed the aesthetic line might be accused of being too light or too stringy, not so Bannout.
At 5’7″, he carried just the right amount of mass to be able to stand with both the elephants and the gazelles, which is appropriate for someone referred to as the Lion of Lebanon.
Samir Bannout Highlights
8 Berry Demey
Birth Date: February 23, 1962 Height: 6’1″ Weight: 225 pounds
Berry “The Flexing Dutchman” DeMey came up through the bodybuilding ranks at about the same time as Bob Paris and was seen by many as a European version of the American champion.
Like Paris and Steve Reeves, DeMey had cover-model looks, which, as might be expected, earned him a number of bodybuilding magazine photo shoots. But DeMey, again like Paris and Reeves, was not simply a pretty boy.
A dedicated trainer, DeMey earned every ounce of his muscles the hard way through day-in, day-out gut-busting workouts and had even reportedly employed the Eastern European method of using single reps to increase his mass.
Still, DeMey was known more for shape than for mass, and what shape he had.
Every bodypart was in such perfect proportion with the rest that he more closely resembled a living sculpture than a bodybuilder when posing. Indeed, more artistic photos may have been taken of DeMey than of any other bodybuilder in recent times.
7 Milos Sarcev
Birth Date: January 17, 1964 Height: 5’11” Weight: 240 pounds
Yugoslavian import Milos Sarcev, like Reeves, Paris and DeMey before him, took full advantage of his GQ looks as he built a large fan base that was composed as much of adoring women as it was men. His image graced multiple magazine covers during his competitive days. Yet Sarcev was and is a bodybuilder at heart, first and foremost.
Sarcev earned the moniker “The Mind” for his intense dedication to finding new and better ways of training and dieting to better serve the needs not just of himself, but of all bodybuilders.
Despite the attention he drew from his looks and brains, it was his body that got him noticed in the first place.
The 1997 Toronto Pro Invitational winner forged a long and fruitful competitive career as he competed in IFBB contests an incredible 72 times. Although his thighs were truly outstanding, Sarcev was not known for any standout bodypart.
He was the guy who simply looked good all the time. In an era when others saw their bodyweights fluctuate drastically between on- and offseason modes, Sarcev was a pillar of consistency, always sporting a trim waistline and pleasing shape.
Milos Sarcev Highlights
6 Charles Clairmonte
Birth Date: October 27, 1962 Height: 6′ Weight: 248 pounds
Had Charles Clairmonte lived in the United States rather than in England, his name would probably be the stuff of legend rather than a relatively little-known bodybuilder on these shores. Born in Barbados, Clairmonte swept through the European NABBA federation like a tornado through a trailer park, winning everything from the European Championships to the Mr. Universe four times to the World Championships. Then, a year after making the switch to the IFBB, he won four Grand Prix contests in 1993.
It’s next to impossible to find a flaw in the Clairmonte physique.
From wide clavicles to a sliced and diced back, a trim waist and flaring thighs, he had it all with definition to spare.
Some will say, however, that no matter how perfectly proportioned a physique is, for a bodybuilder to be considered world-class, he must have at least one truly outstanding bodypart. Fine. Witness Charles Clairmonte’s biceps. They were astounding. In fact, his biceps/triceps must be ranked among the best ever. And yet, they did not look out of place on one of the all-time most proportionate bodies. Go figure.
5 Flex Wheeler
Birth Date: August 23, 1965 Height: 5’9″ Weight: 230 pounds
Kenneth “Flex” Wheeler is considered by more than a few knowledgeable fans to be the best of the best. Not just the most aesthetic, mind you, but the best there ever was. In particular, they point to the 1993 version the IFBB rookie who won the first four shows he entered. He was that good.
There is something intangible to the art of discerning a very good physique from a great one. Being that competitive bodybuilding is a purely subjective sport, this makes sense.
So, when it comes to defining exactly what it is that made Wheeler’s physique so appealing, most are left speechless, which is probably the highest compliment one can pay to such an athlete.
It’s actually easier to pick out his flaws than his strengths: narrow clavicles, not-quite-shredded glutes and high calves. In the bigger picture, focusing on these points is like criticizing the frame around the Mona Lisa. Wheeler’s physique, in particular the 1993 iteration, still is, like Leonardo da Vinci’s masterpiece, a work of art.
Flex Wheeler Highlights
4 Lee Labrada
Birth Date: March 8, 1960 Height: 5’6″ Weight: 185 pounds
“A good big man will always defeat a good little man.” So goes a timeworn bodybuilding proverb. But what if the good “little man” is so good that few men, big or small, can beat him? In other words, what if your name is Lee Labrada?
With the exception of taller-than-average height, Labrada had it all: shape, proportion, rock-hard conditioning and mass to spare.
Standing 5’6″, he could often outmass taller competitors and outfinesse them, as well.
He won his pro card in 1985 and promptly made a statement by winning his first contest, the 1986 Night Of Champions. He would go on to win six more pro contests before hanging up his posing trunks in 1995, but it may be his competitive losses that better define the greatness of the Texan. In 1989 and 1990, Labrada took second at the Olympia to the other legendary Lee of his era, Haney. In both years, it was a case of a good big man versus a good little man. Although the old axiom did hold true in the end, Labrada was actually a few points ahead of Totalee Awesome Haney after a few rounds of prejudging in 1990. A case could be made for Labrada deserving the title of “Uncrowned Mr. Olympia.” Regardless, Labrada’s proportions were unquestionably Olympiaworthy.
Lee Labrada: Perfection
3 Frank Zane
Birth Date: June 28, 1942 Height: 5’9″ Weight: 185 pounds
To be so iconic that one’s name is eventually used as an adjective is an honor few of us will ever experience. So, as “Zanelike” crops up more and more in the bodybuilding scene these days, Frank Zane should feel honored. When Zane defeated an enormous young Austrian bodybuilder named Arnold Schwarzenegger in 1968 at a deficit of some 60 pounds people took notice. His win in that year’s IFBB Universe contest was a watershed event in the sport of bodybuilding.
Stellar lines and attention to detail had won the day over jaw-dropping mass.
The implications in no small way inspired Schwarzenegger to develop the transcendent physique he would display a few short years later and helped shape the entire sport itself.
Zane continued in his pursuit of physical perfection and very nearly reached it.
At 5’9″ and a medicine ball shy of 200 pounds, Zane garnered three straight Olympia titles by outfinessing, not outmassing, bodybuilding’s best in 1977, ’78 and ’79.
Frank Zane Highlights
2 Steve Reeves
Birth Date: January 21, 1926 Died: May 1, 2000 Height: 6’1″ Weight: 216 pounds
To bodybuilding stalwarts, such as Armand Tanny and Zabo Koszewski, the late Steve Reeves is still very much “the Man.” Stop at the front desk of Joe Gold’s World Gym in Marina del Rey almost any morning and you’ll find them ready to testify to the greatness of the Montana-bred movie star.
They’ll go on about not just his coat-hanger-straight shoulders, trim waistline and diamond-shaped calves, but his rugged good looks and his perfectly coifed ‘do.
“He was the most beautiful human to ever walk the sand of Muscle Beach,” recalled fellow beachgoer Harold Zinkin in the book Remembering Muscle Beach.
Indeed, the Mr. America and Mr. Universe winner was so stunningly handsome that Hollywood soon took notice of the young physique star. In fact, it was legendary movie director and producer Cecil B. DeMille who discovered Reeves and set him on the path to stardom; Reeves went on to star in such films as Hercules and Morgan, the Pirate.
To this day, Reeves is held as the archetype for the aesthetic physique.
1 Bob Paris
Birth Date: December 14, 1959 Height: 6′ Weight: 230 pounds
For more than 30 years, the bodybuilding world awaited the second coming of the great Steve Reeves. While a number of classically proportioned athletes had come and gone between 1950 (the year of Reeves’ last competition) and the early ’80s, no one had managed to capture the evanescent combination of magnificence and masculinity that he personified.
Then came Bob Paris.
From his first appearance in a national bodybuilding contest, the 1982 NPC USA, Paris had the sport abuzz with talk that, at last, an heir to the Reeves throne had been found.
The following year, Paris took home top honors at the NPC Nationals, earning his pro card. Surprisingly, he would never place higher than third in a pro career that spanned nine years, but he became the unanimous standard-bearer of the aesthetic ideal. Contrary to the general perception that balanced bodybuilders were relative lightweights in the gym, Paris was a hardcore gym rat who often tackled power exercises in his training routine.
Today, more than a dozen years after his competitive retirement, the bodybuilding world is still looking for someone new to carry the torch lit by Reeves and carried ably for a decade by Paris.
Bob Paris: Flawless Victory
Author: Shawn Perine
References:
http://www.muscleandfitness.com/
http://www.flexonline.com/
COPYRIGHT Weider Publications
COPYRIGHT Gale Groupback to news News Attention! This news was published on the old version of the website. There may be some problems with news display in specific browser versions. Upcoming changes to Simulator battles Pilots and Tankers!
Soon, we plan to make some changes in Simulator Battle mode. After the release of Ground Forces, this mode has become much more popular, the majority of players preferring mixed plane and tank battles while “pure” air battles are less than 10%. Though the number of SB players has significantly increased, waiting time and Battle rating difference in one battle has also increased.
This is why air and tank battles in Simulator mode will be united in one mode soon. This will allow pilots to join the battles faster and will improve the in-game balance.
Those who prefer only air battles will be able to choose “Events” mode, where “Duels” will become available once again - fast 4 vs 4 Simulator Battles without nation limits. Match-making will work in the same way as our usual battles in other modes. There will also be historical events for Simulator mode that will still be regularly available.
Finally, Squadron Battles - In Arcade and Realistic mode there are always dozens of Squadrons fighting each other, but the Simulator level of competition is pretty low - few Squadrons join this mode and play only a few battles daily! This is why we have decided to suspend Squadron Battles in Simulation mode beginning on the 16th of June, on this day we will summarize the results and the winners will get their rewards.. Virtual pilots can still fight each other creating a map with individual settings in Custom Battles.
The War Thunder teamTwitter filed a lawsuit against the U.S. government in a federal court on Tuesday over what the information network says are over-restrictive laws that prevent full disclosure of the scope of government surveillance.
The suit names as defendants Attorney General Eric Holder, the Department of Justice, FBI head James Comey and the FBI, and notes, "The Snowden disclosures have deepened public concern regarding the scope of governmental national security surveillance."
While technologies companies, like Twitter, Google and Facebook, are able to issue transparency reports, those reports can only identify the number of government requests for user data in broad ranges.
"Our ability to speak has been restricted by laws that prohibit and even criminalize a service provider like us from disclosing the exact number of national security letters (“NSLs”) and Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (“FISA”) court orders received—even if that number is zero," Ben Lee, a Twitter vice president, wrote in a blog post.
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And that, Lee stated, violates the company's constitutional rights.
"It’s our belief that we are entitled under the First Amendment to respond to our users’ concerns and to the statements of U.S. government officials by providing information about the scope of U.S. government surveillance—including what types of legal process have not been received. We should be free to do this in a meaningful way, rather than in broad, inexact ranges," Lee wrote.
Jameel Jaffer, American Civil Liberties Union deputy legal director, issued a statement that "Twitter is doing the right thing by challenging this tangled web of secrecy rules and gag orders," and said that he hopes the move will spark similar action by other technology firms.Bangladesh's government is planning to recruit hijras, who have been officially recognized as a separate gender in Bangladesh since 2013, as traffic police in an attempt to rehabilitate and offer them new employment.
Hijra is a feminine gender identity adopted by some people who are born male or intersex, often labeled as transgender by the West. The issue of transgender rights has been big worldwide with the popularity of the Emmy-winning TV series "Transparent" and the decision of Olympian Bruce Jenner to change his name to Caitlyn Jenner and live as a woman. Jenner's new Twitter page got 1 million followers on Monday in just over four hours — faster than anyone, even President Barack Obama.
The Bangadeshi government's initiative to hire the hijras as traffic police has received high praise from Bangladeshis on the web.
Blogger Arif Jebtik saw this step as sign of the country moving in a positive direction:
Twitter user Harun ur Rashid welcomed the government plan:
Hijras face widespread discrimination in Bangladesh and have trouble finding work. Ex-banker Syed Ashraf Ali wrote in an op-ed in the Financial Express:
Rubait Saimum, however, cautioned his neighbors from praising the government's initiative before hearing the practical details:
Dev Saha thought that hijras would do better than the average traffic police. For example, he mentioned how two hijras captured two of the men who had attacked and killed blogger Washikur Rahman in the street in March as they fled.
The department of social services estimates that there are over 10,000 hijras in Bangladesh. Since the 2012, the government has allocated about $1.15 million to the hijra skills development program.
Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh, is one of the most unlivable cities in the world, according to the Economist Intelligence Unit, and its extreme traffic congestion contributes a lot to this fame. The city simply can’t handle the increasing volumes of traffic, and it is a source of stress for many. There's hope that as traffic police, hijras will be able to contribute to reducing the traffic congestion.
This story was cross-posted at Global Voices, a community of 1,200 bloggers and reporters worldwide.Few things are as predictable as death and taxes, but the desperation of a sinking presidential hopeful comes close. Such is the case for retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson, whose campaign is being lugged around like a corpse in a suitcase.
In a Politico podcast, Carson suggested that President Barack Obama was “raised white” and that, unlike his own upbringing in hard-knock Detroit, the nation’s first black commander in chief cannot truly identify “with the experience of black Americans.”
It’s difficult to know to whom the message is targeted. Certainly, it cannot be black Americans—who overwhelmingly support the president, according to polling data. It cannot be conservative Republicans, who have rejected his lackluster candidacy, favoring Donald Trump and Sens. Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio. Carson, who shed nearly half his staff in recent weeks, has yet to concede defeat.
Carson’s “hole card” has always been his blackness. His journey from government dependency as a child living in crushing poverty to a world-renowned neurosurgeon made him a much-ballyhooed attraction on speaking circuits. He has sold millions of books, been the subject of a biopic, and received countless honorary degrees over the course of his career.
“He’s an ‘African’ American. He was, you know, raised white,” Carson said of the |
's representatives, sources said.
Jeanie Buss, Jackson's fiancee, will remain the Lakers' executive vice president of business operations, a source said. Buss is expected to attend the Lakers' next home game, Wednesday against the San Antonio Spurs.
New York (26-40), meanwhile, has won five straight games and is 3½ games behind eighth-place Atlanta for the eighth and final Eastern Conference playoff spot.
But Jackson is taking over a Knicks team that has overall performed well below expectations this season.
Jackson will be faced with several tough decisions in his first offseason as president, one of which is what to do with free agent-to-be Carmelo Anthony.
Anthony, who plans to opt out of the final year of his contract this summer, can sign a deal with the Knicks that is one year longer and worth $33 million more than any pact he can sign with another team.
The star forward has said his first priority is to re-sign with the Knicks. But he'd like to sit down with Jackson and discuss the team's plans for the future before making a decision.
Jackson probably will also have to hire a coach in the offseason. There's widespread speculation that Mike Woodson, the Knicks' current coach, is expected to be let go at the end of the season.
Jackson disciples such as Steve Kerr, Brian Shaw and Kurt Rambis are considered potential candidates.OTTAWA – Conservative party officials are chastising Tory MP Rob Anders for what they say were misleading phone calls placed during a heated nomination battle — a pointed message that they want the race to be fair and open.
Anders’ campaign for the nomination in Calgary-Signal Hill placed calls to party members last week that might have left the impression they were calling from rival Ron Liepert’s campaign.
A script for the calls, which was turned over to the party’s National Candidate Selection Committee (NCSC), features a person saying they are calling from the Conservatives and inquiring whether the party member will be supporting Liepert.
If the target of the call was unsure about who they would support, the caller would proceed to criticize Liepert, said a Conservative source familiar with the script’s contents, speaking on condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to discuss the matter publicly.
Liepert, a former provincial cabinet minister challenging Anders for the Conservative nomination, lodged a complaint with Elections Canada earlier this week.
The Canadian Press obtained a letter sent to Anders by the selection committee, which is the powerful body that has the final say over who gets to run for the party.
“The NCSC has concluded that the script used by your campaign was inappropriate and misleading, and should not have been used,” reads the letter, sent Thursday.
“We require that your campaign comply with its obligations to be accurate when communicating with members of the party, as you have now agreed to do.”
Anders appeared to be doubling down on the issue, putting out a press release Wednesday evening saying he would seek legal counsel to examine whether Liepert had defamed him over the phone call issue.
But the party’s rebuke is a signal that the party is intent on living up to its promise to ensure a level playing field in nomination battles, even when one competitor is an incumbent MP.
It’s the first time since the Conservatives formed government in 2006 that incumbents are not being protected from challengers.
Anders also claimed earlier this week that Prime Minister Stephen Harper had endorsed his campaign. A Conservative party source, also speaking on condition of anonymity, said Harper is not explicitly endorsing incumbents, but merely allowing them to use positive quotes referring to their time in Parliament.Simple preamp for ADSB using BFP420
Note: Resistor is 22K and not 6K8 as shown
20dB
This simple circuit uses a cheap BFP420 which is available at Reichelt Everything including SMA and F connector are also availble there. Total costs less than 4 Euro.Circuit:(Thanks to Renato for pointing out that the BFP420 will suffer with 6K8, 22K gives typ less than 20mA Ic)Cut a piece of PCB to size, remove two stripes of copper with a cutter to make a copper line down the middle. Cut two times a break into the line for transistor and capacitor.Place transistor and input capacitor.Then place coil and decoupling cap above transistor.Finally add SMA connector and base resistor.Power with 5 volts on F connector.Voila, you have very cheap but good and solid17.5dB (with 22K resistor) gain!ATLANTA (AP) — The decision by the owner of a small insurance company to require his employees to carry firearms at the office has sparked a debate: Would having a gun on the job make you safer, or is it inviting violence into the workplace?
Lance Toland said his three offices, based at small airports in Georgia, haven't had problems with crime but "anyone can slip in these days if they want to. I don't have a social agenda here. I have a safety agenda."
When a longtime employee, a National Rifle Association-certified instructor who's been the company's unofficial security officer announced her retirement, Toland wanted to ensure the remaining employees were safe. He now requires each of them to get a concealed-carry permit, footing the $65 bill, and undergo training. He issues a Taurus revolver known as "The Judge" to each of them. The firearm holds five rounds,.410 shells that cast a spray of pellets like a shotgun.
"It is a weapon, and it is a lethal weapon," said Toland, whose company specializes in aviation insurance. "When a perpetrator comes into the home or the office, they have started a fire. And this is a fire extinguisher."
No employee balked at the mandate, he said. "They all embraced it 100 percent, and they said, you know, I'm tired of being afraid," Toland said.
An employer's legal standing to impose such a requirement depends on several factors, foremost whether the business is high risk, a convenience store or taxi company, for example, said Carin Burford, a labor lawyer in Birmingham, Alabama.
More than 400 people on average are killed in the workplace each year, according to the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics. Just last week, a gunman with a criminal record who had just been served with an order to stay away from his former girlfriend began a shooting spree, eventually landing at the lawn mower parts factory where he worked. Authorities say he killed three people and wounded 14 others before a police officer shot and killed him.
About half of U.S. states have laws allowing people to keep firearms in their cars at work. There are companies that allow employees to bring firearms to the office. But it's rare to hear of an employer making it a requirement.
Kevin Michalowski, executive editor of Concealed Carry Magazine, said he hasn't heard of any companies issuing a mandate, but he's increasingly hearing from companies, churches and schools seeking training so they're prepared to deal with a workplace shooting.
He said while workplace shootings don't happen every day, when they do happen, people should have the ability to protect themselves — particularly before police are able to respond.
"The gun-free-zone sign isn't going to stop anyone. In fact, it makes people more vulnerable," said Michalowski, who is a part-time officer in Wisconsin for a county sheriff's department and a rural police department. "The good people who could stop things are disarmed."
One person who isn't convinced is Charles G. Ehrlich, an attorney in California. He was working for the Pettit & Martin law firm in California on July 1, 1993, when Gian Luigi Ferri, a failed entrepreneur and former client of the firm, arrived at the high-rise office building with multiple weapons, killing eight people and injuring six before killing himself.
Ehrlich was lucky. A meeting he was attending went long, and he didn't end up down the hall in a conference room that was Ferri's first target. "I heard the shouting and the noise" but had just moments earlier left the floor.
"It's not like it is on TV or at the movies where the good guy just shoots the bad guy," said Ehrlich, the former president of the Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence. "It's very difficult to shoot a gun accurately, even when you're not under pressure."
Ehrlich also worries about the pressure cooker that exists in many workplaces — and that arming more employees might actually lead to more workplace shootings.
"Conceivably, someone who was well-trained — an ex-Green Beret or something like that — could've run down the hall, pulled out a weapon and fired a shot," he said of the shooting at the firm. "But would he have prevented anyone from being killed? No. Unlike John Wayne who is always faster than the other guy, this guy got off the elevator and just started shooting."
Playing in the back of Toland's mind was something personal: A beloved uncle who had adopted him as a child was killed in 1979 during a nighttime robbery at the convenience store where he worked. Three men robbed him of less than $100. It was the first day he hadn't brought a firearm to the store.
Andrea Van Buren, an agent with Toland's firm for the past two months, was already comfortable with firearms. She carried a Glock nearly every day for the past decade and practices at a range every week.
When she hears about workplace shootings elsewhere, among her first thoughts is: "I'm glad it's not happening here and then the second part is, it could happen here, and then I think, at least I'm prepared," she said. "It's sad. It's heartbreaking."
The revolver Toland is providing his employees isn't exactly ideal for concealment. It weighs two pounds and is more than 9 inches long. By contrast, a Beretta Nano 9mm handgun is more than a third lighter and measures less than 6 inches. Van Buren said she's not bothered by the impracticality. "I liken it to, I have an office computer and I have an office gun."
She understands that not everyone wants to work for a company that requires having a weapon. "Gun ownership isn't for everybody. It's a huge responsibility," she said. "If you're carrying, you've got to be willing to use it."Opening night and there were enough MVP awards inside two arenas that if you laid them end-to-end they might stretch all the way from American Airlines Arena in Miami to Staples Center in Los Angeles, which is where we’ve already got the 2013 NBA Finals scheduled for next June. Don’t we?
There was LeBron James with his three trophies, Steve Nash with his two, then Kobe Bryant and Kevin Garnett with one apiece. Toss in Dirk Nowitzki recovering from knee surgery back in Dallas and there were eight MVP seasons represented in the two marquee games that everybody was watching.
But if the parlor game was to pick out an opening night candidate to be named MVP five years from now, maybe it was little ol’ Kyrie Irving hiding in the shadows of Cleveland.
While Dwyane Wade was often breathtaking and James his usual overpowering self, Irving picked up right were he left off as the 2012 Rookie of the Year and was simply splendid in the Cavs win over the Wizards. There were 29 points, six rebounds and three assists. He slashed, he drove, he pulled up to stick in 3-pointers. But more impressive than numbers or any individual highlight was the way Irving simply had everything under control.
Even when Washington wiped out a 16-point lead to go up by two in the fourth quarter, the point guard turned to coach Byron Scott and said “don’t worry” as he checked back into the game. Then he drove the Cavs’ 20-8 finishing kick. Strong stuff for a 20-year-old.
It was an evening to be dazzled by Anderson Varejao’s board work, rookie Dion Waiters’ flash and Tristan Thompson’s solid play. But on an opening night when there were past winners oozing out of the woodwork in Miami and L.A., the future MVP might well have leaped right out of your HDTV screen.
That is, if you knew to look out of the spotlight to find Kyrie Irving.
Category: 2012, HT News / Tags:, Anderson Varejao, Byron Scott, Cavs, Dion Waiters, Dirk Nowitzki, Dwyane Wade, Fran Blinebury, Kevin Garnentt, Kobe Bryant, Kyrie Irving, LeBron James, Steve Nash, Tristan Thompson, Wizards / 38 Comments on Irving For MVP in 2017? /A look at the controversial Pussy Riot group as seen through the book by Masha Gessen
Published 6:35 PM, August 03, 2014
It’s early in the day of February 21, 2012 and 5 women in neon-bright dresses, stockings, and pastel balaclavas are practicing a protest song in an undisclosed location.
It’s a punk song with loud verses, distorted guitars, and a lilting chorus not unlike a hymn that petitioned: “Virgin Mary, Mother of God, chase Putin out.”
They’ve pre-recorded the riffs and music so the guitars are really just for show. By the end of the day they had crashed the gates of Moscow's Cathedral of Christ the Savior and performed up on the dais, the area nearest the altar and had been stopped by church security as well as some of the church goers.
The same evening, they had turned footage of the performance into a music video titled "Punk Prayer: Mother of God, Chase Putin Away!" and posted it online.
The next morning the video had gone viral and was on almost every news outlet in Russia and Europe. A few days later it had reached America and Asia, and the group Pussy Riot was famous, celebrated – it was also wanted by Russian authorities.
The description in the video stated that the women of Pussy Riot acted the performance in protest against the vulgar show of the Orthodox Church leader's support for Putin during his election campaign.
By the first week of March, three of the five girls on the video had been arrested. A week later the world exploded with support in reaction to their incarceration, including a scrawl on Madonna’s back during a concert in Moscow, and a Peaches song.
Looking back
What do I know of Russia in 2012? That Putin had been handed back the Presidency from his buddy Medvedev; that three women got arrested for performing inside that cathedral; and feminist punk in Russia just gained a quantum leap in fame and perspective.
This is the arc and coverage of Words Will Break Cement by Masha Gessen (also the author of the anti-Putin biography The Man Without a Face), who narrates the story of Pussy Riot from its gestation in the performance art collective Voina, up to the first versions of the band (called Wee Wee Riot), honing shock performance as Pussy Riot, jail time, a show trial, and more jail time.
A few things to remember while reading Gessen’s work or even watching the 2013 documentary by HBO Pussy Riot –A Punk Prayer.
Pussy Riot is not just composed of Nadezhda Tolokonnikova (Nadya), Yekaterina Samutsevich (Kat), and Maria Alyokhina (Masha in the HBO docu), the three girls who were arrested and later gained international media attention. The collective has a variable membership of around 11 women, including some men (like Nadya’s husband Petya, or Peter).
Although they describe themselves as a feminist punk band, Pussy Riot isn’t an actual band, nor are the members (at least none of the three girls were) actual musicians. They just play a fictional band, like the embodiment of an idea, to “perform” political protests through music and metaphor. The women in balaclavas are thus rendered as characters and their motto: Anyone can be Pussy Riot, is emboldened by this symbolism of anonymity.
Gessen’s work delves deeper into the histories of the three girls who were imprisoned, through exclusive letters and interactions she got from Nadya, Kat, and Maria (but mostly Kat and Maria) while in jail, and through interviews with the rest of the Riot members, their families, and their friends.
While the HBO documentary presents a vivid albeit quick portrait of how Pussy Riot came together, Gessen works on her own mural and traces how the quirky art group Voina and its members were eventually left dissatisfied with the shocking, albeit fairly shallow and obscurantist methods of that collective, like kissing cops and holding an orgy at a biology museum.
This of course eventually led to the formation of the punk “band” that made pointed artsy, insta-performances in public places with distorted riffs and anti-administration lyrics for a more immediate, less tangential, and arguably tighter kind of show to get their message across.
Acts of courage
Like I said, they aren’t really musicians in the sense that they would have used any other creative means that would best carry their opinions and beliefs across (hence the visual symbology for anonymity – hence inclusiveness – of the bright neon/pastel balaclavas, stockings, and dresses accompanying the music), but they ARE punks in that their playing expressed two middle fingers, really fast riffs, and often the deficiency of actual musical skill that has come to be associated with the genre.
That a collective of women has embraced the punk aesthetic and used it as both weapon and fuel for protest because there is nothing of creative dissent in contemporary Russian culture just bowls me over. It’s an astounding act of courage. Makes you appreciate a democracy where you can sing and march in protest without getting sent to a gulag the day after.
Gessen’s work is nuanced, layered, and complex, just like the context that birthed Pussy Riot. It’s also rambling and often prone to muse on branching stories that weigh down the action of the narrative. Boy, you can really feel the boredom of the girls in jail and those parts I could have really skipped over.
Here though I must draw a parallel to the Taqwacore movement in North America, where a loose collection of Muslim musicians were inspired by a book to form real punk and bands and eventually culminated in a tour across the USA.
Like the Taqwacores, Pussy Riot concluded that “punk” was a blank canvas – an empty banner with which to rally those who share the same idea – and an umbrella to huddle under as you paint the aegis of refusal to do battle in the realm of ideas.
It may look violent, it may sound harsh, but punk endorses a peaceful revolution of the mind. Three minutes to change the world and your stompbox as spiritual armor, enacted via metaphor, powered with courage, and a one-two-three-fo’!
From a music critique standpoint, Pussy Riot’s repertoire of subjects were pretty limited, with lyrical themes that never strayed out of Russian feminism, LGBT rights, and their fave pet topic: opposition to the policies of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
As a piece of local culture, they were novel but they said nothing new in the greater history of punk rabble rousing that The Clash or Bad Religion haven’t already gone over.
It’s also of interest to note that Gessen is a Russian lesbian who moved to the US with her partner and their children because of the anti-gay laws in Russia.
Where it shines
Pussy Riot has used punk to re-imagine a better Russia, and to endeavor to shape their world without demagogues, cultural rot, and political static. A Russia free from Putin. Of course they got arrested and put through a show trial.
This is where Gessen’s work shines with revelation. Riot had, previously, already performed in a lingerie store, on a roof top, and in the Red Square near the Kremlin.
But it’s the cathedral gig that really got the government’s and the Orthodox churchgoers’ goat.
Their accomplishment can’t be overlooked at all, however. With the cathedral performance, jail time, and the coverage of the trial, Pussy Riot has done more to shine a light on Russian life’s ills and corruption than any news agency has in years.
With the Taqwacore movement in America and Pussy Riot in Russia, punk rock has unexpectedly become the empowering force it’s long hankered for, the dreamer who can almost literally enact change by shouting at the ills and social dystopia surrounding him.
To enact crisis and release static through attention was the impetus, a strategic consistency of shock; with the Pussy Riot performances the three jailed women and their comrades have made punk bigger than the system it’s trying to bring down, like a giant looking over its own shoulder.
Gessen’s work is at its best when she simply recounts action and leaves herself out of the narrative (which happens more often than a reportage/biography book should normally allow).
This happens in the prison scenes, the lull during the trials and at transfers, and in the communiques between Nadya, Maria, Kat and their friends and loved ones. All these in-betweens happen off-camera, without a camfone or journalist to record the event.
Where it stumbles
It is, sadly or likely with forethought, Gessen herself who trips up her own writing when she shows her politics, coloring her reportage and her narrative powers and often surprising the reader with such seething rage. At least it did for me, when I read parts like these: “Medvedev, a tiny man who looked like a cross between a third grader and his favourite stuffed toy, had been anointed Putin’s successor; the day after the action, he was elected to the office of president so he could keep the chair warm for Putin for four years.”
There’s a lot of these scattered throughout and though I applaud going gonzo, getting side tracked like this should go into another piece of work, not when you’ve already got access to your subjects no matter how limited.
All in all the book is at its core an entertaining documentation of Russian judiciary processes in reaction to what five women did at a cathedral, what it meant to Russian liberals, and what it meant to the world, and why it motivated musicians and celebrities to assemble support on social media and other methods.
The book stops while Maria and Nadya are still in prison, but the great epilogue off-book here is that, having served 21 months, Tolokonnikova and Alyokhina were released on December 23, 2013 after the State Duma approved their amnesty.
By early this year though, they were up to their old antics trying to perform a song at the Sochi Winter Olympics site. The Cossacks, atraditional and ultra-conservative militia, were also there to greet these punk women in their own fashion. Welcome back, Pussy Riot. – Rappler.com
Karl R. De Mesa is the author of the book of reportage Radiant Void, now available in major bookstores in Metro ManilaDescription Answer Translation of Lhazareen Lannister ancestral sword Killed Rhaenys Targaryen Flower of Tyrell sigil Number of Sand Snakes Free city home to Areo Hotah Recommended marriage between Robert Baratheon and Cersei Lannister Tends to the Hound's wounds after duel with Beric Dondarrion Last line of Night's Watch oath Pate's secret love Slain by a crossbow bolt to the mouth AL stands for: Brought the Faith of the Seven to the Seven Kingdoms Most powerful house in Dorne after Martell
Description Answer Suggested to be a pedophile Mockery name of Yezzan zo Qaggaz Number of statues depicting gods in House of Black and White Killed Maester Pycelle Name of Victarion Greyjoy's ship Captain of the guard at Riverrun The two colors of Valyrian steel sword, Widow's Wait Killed by Gregor Clegane at the Tourney of the Hand joust. Area origin to Crannogmen Last Hand of the King for Aerys Targaryen II Wife of Azor Ahai Bastard name of the Westerlands Constructed The WallESPN host Jemele Hill didn't mince her words on Monday when she told the truth about Donald Trump. There were no frills, qualifiers, or reductions when she tweeted that he is a white supremacist who rose to power as the clear result of these views.
It came as no surprise to me that on Wednesday, Trump’s press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders utilised the people's podium to call for Hill's firing, deeming her claims "outrageous". Black women's truth-telling has always provoked outrage in those dependant on false narratives to function.
There's a running joke in my family that I became "evil" when I turned five. Five is when I began furrowing my brow, crossing my arms, and "talking back." It's when I developed a sense of justice, when I began challenging those around me to confront their inconsistencies and wrongdoings. It's when I first experienced someone plugging their ears, digging in their heels, and scorning me instead. It's when I got my first lessons in the repercussions of being black and female with an opinion no one wanted to hear.
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I'm unwavering in my dedication to language. Black women committed to truth-telling have to form an intimate relationship with words. We must master, curate, dilute, manipulate, and soften them. We train ourselves to turn harsh truths into something palatable, lest we be punished. Our right to free speech has always been contingent upon our restraint.
This is why the Administration’s comments hit such a raw nerve for those of us who value our supposed right to free speech in America. The United States Government utilising its platform to suggest that a company fire an employee on the basis of criticising the President is an inappropriate – and terrifying – abuse of power. And yet, those staunch protectors of the right to free speech were largely silent this week, despite the noise they make when people perpetrating hate speech or bias are held accountable. They didn't come to her defence despite the vast implications of Sanders' statements. They didn't see themselves in her silencing. They quietly condoned it.
This is not an accident; black women are the difficult daughters of America. Our truths are dismissed as "too much." Our existence holds a mirror to the meaning of society's disdain for us. Our struggles are a call to action. Our realities are too tangled to tackle. Hill's truth doesn't implicate Trump alone, it implicates everyone doing nothing about the glaring hypocrisy in his reign as the head of a country whose brand is freedom and equality.
Because of this, Jemele Hill is not met with the enthusiastic applause that boomed through Boardwalk Hall when Miss Texas lambasted Trump's under reaction to the white supremacist rallies in Charlottesville. Miss Texas is young, white, traditionally beautiful, and a little rebellious. Her calls to justice couldn't be more on-brand.
But Hill is the manifestation of an ideal that America falls short of, so she's met instead with condemnation on the national stage. The press secretary wants her to be punished for speaking the truth so many non-white Americans know to be true. In fact, Hill will keep her job, but ESPN’s public statement that they “accept her apologies” reinforce the idea that black women should not speak out of turn, and certainly not dare criticise the most powerful man in the country.
Shape Created with Sketch. Thousands march against Donald Trump in LGBT rights parade Show all 8 left Created with Sketch. right Created with Sketch. Shape Created with Sketch. Thousands march against Donald Trump in LGBT rights parade 1/8 AP 2/8 AP 3/8 AP 4/8 AP 5/8 AFP/Getty Images 6/8 AP 7/8 AFP/Getty Images 8/8 AP 1/8 AP 2/8 AP 3/8 AP 4/8 AP 5/8 AFP/Getty Images 6/8 AP 7/8 AFP/Getty Images 8/8 AP
I understand why Hill felt the need to apologise for breaking the unspoken rule of restraint. A lot of black women grew up like I did, learning to live inside a sequence of sorries to survive. Those of us who refuse are made to suffer, and Hill is simply sparing herself as much as she can in the aftermath. I support her in that.
But when this all blows over and our outrage moves on to even more destructive remarks – or even worse, actual legislation – coming from the White House, let’s not stop asking who rallies behind America's difficult daughters? In Trump's America and all Americas preceding, the answer is largely no one. And America will never be what it says it is until it does.
We’ll tell you what’s true. You can form your own view.
At The Independent, no one tells us what to write. That’s why, in an era of political lies and Brexit bias, more readers are turning to an independent source. Subscribe from just 15p a day for extra exclusives, events and ebooks – all with no ads.
Subscribe nowDon’t poke at your remote or punch at settings on your touchscreen if you feel a little cross-eyed looking at the Eastern Conference standings. They aren’t what we thought they’d be, to do a 180 on the NFL’s Dennis Green/Bears rant from a few years back.
They aren’t even close, actually, after three full weeks of the 2014-15 regular season.
Most of the respected media outlets didn’t imagine Toronto as the East’s top dog, nor Milwaukee as a playoff team, nor Cleveland as a team that grind along below.500 as Thanksgiving approached.
Few if any expected Orlando to be well in front of New York at this or any other point of the schedule, and Charlotte was a trendy enough pick that some imagined home-court privileges for the Hornets in the first round.
Not many knew what to make of Atlanta, though it generally wasn’t good, but the Hawks weren’t dismissed nearly as readily as Boston was in the “experts’ ” preseason picks. One thing all the geniuses could agree on was Philadelphia’s spot at the shovel end of this circus train, but that had less to do with crystal balls and algorithms than it did with the Sixers’ stated ambition of zero ambitions.
But look where everyone is now.
The East standings are so jumbled, compared to what most expected, that it raises a few questions:
1. Might the door be open for some upstart teams like the Raptors and the Wizards to challenge presumed favorites, the Cavaliers and the Bulls?
2. Will clubs like the Bucks and the Magic have to reassess their goals and factor in playoff possibilities?
3. At what point, if any, do the Knicks borrow from the Sixers and start playing for the bottom in a stink-tank for lottery odds?
4. Who pays all these so-called experts in the first place?
Here’s a look at the predicted order of finish in the East by three heavyweight NBA outlets:
Sports Illustrated: 1) Chicago, 2) Cleveland, 3) Toronto, 4) Washington, 5) Miami, 6) Charlotte, 7) Brooklyn, 8) New York, 9) Indiana, 10) Atlanta, 11) Detroit, 12) Milwaukee, 13) Boston, 14) Orlando and 15) Philadelphia. BleacherReport.com: 1) Chicago, 2), Cleveland, 3) Toronto, 4) Atlanta, 5) Washington, 6) Charlotte, 7) Miami, 8) Brooklyn, 9) New York, 10) Indiana, 11) Detroit, 12) Milwaukee, 13), Orlando, 14) Boston and 15) Philadelphia. ESPN.com: 1) Cleveland, 2) Chicago, 3) Toronto, 4) Washington, 5) Charlotte, 6) Atlanta, 7) Miami, 8) Brooklyn, 9) Detroit, 10) New York, 11) Indiana, 12) Milwaukee, 13) Boston, 14) Orlando and 15) Philadelphia.
The real standings, as of Saturday morning, looked quite different from any of the three lists above. There were myriad reasons, from the small sample size of games played and untimely injuries to the friendliness of some clubs’ schedule in opponents or road demands.
Those sorts of things will equalize to some degree as the season plays out. But other factors specific to each team, good or bad, could linger and become part of who they are and where they finish come April.
Here’s a snapshot three weeks in of a conference that didn’t figure to be deep or great when play started but at least looks (euphemism alert!) more interesting now:
1. Toronto (10-2)
Average predicted finish (in ranking cited above): Third
Biggest factor in rise/fall: Attitude. The Raptors played for development long enough. After four years with coach Dwane Casey and 48 victories in 2013-14, the time was ripe to play for something bigger. The roster is deep, the schedule was kind and the Raptors ranked high at both ends (second in ORtg, seventh in DRtg). But the sense of mission hasn’t been greater in years.
2. Washington (8-3)
Averaged predicted finish: Fourth
Biggest factor in rise/fall: Home court. The Wizards had no homecourt edge last season and it cost them when they dropped four of their five playoff games at Verizon Center. This season, they opened 4-0 at home, then followed up a disappointing loss to Dallas with an in-command triumph over Cleveland.
3. Chicago (8-5)
Average predicted finish: First
Biggest factor in rise/fall: Injuries. Even folks who thought Derrick Rose might have to sit some nights while battling soreness in his second comeback from knee surgery didn’t imagine him racking up two sprained ankles and a strained hamstring so soon in this season. Joakim Noah started slow after offseason knee clean-up, and Pau Gasol, Kirk Hinrich and Taj Gibson all have been hurt recently. “Next man up?” More like the setback are starting to catch up.
4. Atlanta (6-5)
Averaged predicted finish: Seventh.
Biggest factor in rise/fall: Passing. The Hawks have been moving the ball great, and that’s essential when you have a balanced offense that can’t – and doesn’t have to – feed just one particular scoring star. Their 64.4% assist percentage is third highest in the NBA. [Note: SI fell prey to trendier picks, put Atlanta 10th and dragged down its predicted finish.]
5. Milwaukee (7-6)
Average predicted finish: 12th
Biggest factor in rise/fall: Defense. The Bucks ranked last in defensive rating in 2013-14, but Jason Kidd and his staff seem to have lit a fire under their overhauled bunch. The Bucks have pretty good depth for a mediocre or worse team, interchangeable parts that can reward Kidd’s search for a hot hand.
6. Miami (6-6)
Average predicted finish: Sixth.
Biggest factor in rise/fall: Dwyane Wade. The Heat are about where folks expected, but they were 5-3 until Wade started missing games. Without LeBron James, they can’t overcome his absences the way they did in the past.
7. Cleveland (5-6)
Average predicted finish: Second
Biggest factor in rise/fall: Unfamiliarity. It’s harder to put together an insta-contender than we thought, perhaps. When Boston did it in 2007-08 and Miami did it (with a few more growing pains) in 2010-11, they had stars in sync – players who knew themselves and each other well enough to fit securely and quickly. The Cavaliers have James in mid-prime but Kyrie Irving and Kevin Love fresh from lottery-team training wheels. And a rookie NBA head coach. Might take months rather than weeks.
8. Orlando (6-8)
Average predicted finish: 14th
Biggest factor in rise/fall: Youth. In this case, the Magic’s heavy lifters might be so young they don’t yet realize what their limitations are supposed to be. Tobias Harris, Evan Fournier and Victor Oladipo have overachieved, even as Aaron Gordon suffered a broken foot and Elfrid Payton took a step back.
9. Brooklyn (5-7)
Average predicted finish: Eighth
Biggest factor in rise/fall: Schedule. The Nets weren’t happy but they were 4-2, until heading West for an 0-3 slap. They haven’t recovered, dropping home games against beatable Miami and Milwaukee. With as many vets as Brooklyn has, it should travel better.
10. Indiana (5-7)
Average predicted finish: 10th
Biggest factor in rise/fall: Deep reserves. For all the Pacers’ injuries and setbacks – not just Paul George (leg fracture) and Lance Stephenson‘s departure but having David West, George Hill, C.J. Watson, Rodney Stuckey and C.J. Miles sidelined too – some of the bench players (Solomon Hill, Luis Scola) have stepped up. And late addition A.J. Price stepped in nicely. Keeping things afloat might keep Indiana in a playoff hunt.
11. Boston (4-7)
Average predicted finish: 13th
Biggest factor in rise/fall: Potency. Kelly Olynyk, Jared Sullinger and Avery Bradley have contributed offensively without much fanfare and Boston’s offense (third in FG%, second in assists) has swamped several opposing defenses.
12. Charlotte (4-9)
Average predicted finish: Fifth
Biggest factor in rise/fall: Lance. Though we’re loathe to put too much rise or fall on an individual, there’s no denying everyone had higher hopes for Stephenson in the early season, including himself. The defense isn’t up to Steve Clifford standards either (18th, down from sixth last season).
13. New York (3-10)
Average predicted finish: Ninth
Biggest factor in rise/fall: The triangle. ‘Cuz Adam Silver said so. Also disjointed, sometimes at cross-purposes and lots of pedigree that hasn’t proven anything here yet.
14. Detroit (3-10)
Average predicted finish: 11th
Biggest factor in rise/fall: Scattershooting. Offense has been in scarce supply for the Piston, who rank 28th in offensive rating, 29th in effective field-goal percentage, 29th in true shooting percentage and 27th in assist percentage. The disappearance of center Andre Drummond (from a 22.6 PER last season to 11.5) is vexing as well |
es. “Rather, in the name of those who went through it all and saw the inferno’s flames firsthand, we must prepare the ground for a better world.” Burg, along with other Jewish writers, has written about Israel as a nation formed from the collective trauma of the Holocaust, with fear driving it to be like the “battered boy” who becomes an abusive father. Without transcendence, or what Abadian would call “reframing the post-traumatic narrative,” collective trauma in any nation or ethnic group can play itself out on the personal and group level as paranoia or inflicting internalized trauma on others.
For Armand Volkas, a psychotherapist and child of Holocaust survivors, exploring and owning the potential perpetrator in all of us is an important part of the reframing process. Using techniques of drama therapy, ritual, and storytelling, he facilitates workshops between groups with a history of collective trauma between them: Jews and Germans, Israelis and Palestinians, Turks and Armenians, Japanese and Chinese, African Americans and European Americans. “Humanizing the enemy is one of the first steps,” he says. “Just the act of bringing people together.”
In his workshops, individuals can reach personal catharsis and transcendence of national or ethnic conflicts that have played out over generations. In one instance, on the day a restaurant was bombed in Jerusalem, emotions in a workshop were running high as a group of Israelis and Palestinians passed around an invisible flame of hope during a warm-up exercise. When someone dropped the imaginary flame, an Israeli woman burst into tears and a Palestinian woman took her in her arms and held her.
But are compassion and empathy enough? What about justice?
In 2003, Iraqi townspeople, having just lost their hospital in U.S. air strikes, saved the lives of three wounded U.S. peacemakers. Seven years later, the Americans returned—to thank them.
“I know a lot of people say without justice, healing cannot take place. And I completely agree on one level,” says Abadian, who acknowledges the importance of changing institutions and cultures damaged by trauma. “On another level, if we wait around for justice, or think that our feelings or well-being are dependent on others changing their stance, or having our pain recognized by them, or making some sort of reparation, we are not free. … If we were to truly recognize the importance of healing collective trauma, it would reframe and transform our approach to everything, including international economic development, diplomacy, and nation-building.”
An embrace between an Israeli and a Palestinian, remembered by a roomful of people. Health workers re-envisioning a medical model that values our rich and distinct cultural traditions. People speaking out about how we hold collective memory in our bodies, our relationships, and our institutions. These may seem like small gestures when faced with the enormity of collective trauma. But for those who are working toward healing, they are the beginnings of a new social tapestry of respect, understanding, and hope.Yeah, unfortunately you read that right. Former UM linebacker/coordinator/head coach Randy Shannon has filed a law suit against the University of Miami as of April 26th. This story has been broken by a few different sources, and most have included a scan of the paperwork. While I am not well versed in legalese, there are a few things that are relatively clear.
Basically, ths is broken down into two parts, an Employment Agreement and an Guarantee Agreement. Shannon is alleging that, as part of the Employment Agreement he signed prior to his firing, he was to be paid a certain amount if he happened to be terminated without cause prior to the contact ending, and he was also obligated to receive payment based upon the team's appearance in a bowl game. The suit is claiming that Shannon was paid everything he was owed based upon the Employment Agreement, but that the university is saying that due to him being paid that full amount under the Employment Agreement, the amount he is owed under the Guarantee Agreement (a certain sum of money paid quarterly for each year of his employment) must be prorated.
LAYMAN BREAKDOWN: It appears Shannon's dispute is over a prorated amount that the university alleges it does not owe. Shannon was paid for the bowl game, and paid the amount he was owed at the time of his firing. He is saying he did not get paid his quarterly installments that were promised him as per his contract, or at least was not paid the full amount.*
We all have our own opinions of Shannon. On one hand, he is an all-Miami guy with a great success story who was put into a position he probably shouldn't have been. On the other, he is a guy who took a position and continually failed at it, and did nothing to help himself in the eyes of the fans. This lawsuit will certainly notfurther his cause, but the fact remains that if he is owed money based on a contract the school gave him, then that's that. I say just settle this thing, give him whatever he is owed, and get him away from our football program. His time served with us was rewarded when he was given the chance to lead his alma mater, nothing else is owed. There will surely be more to come as this whole mess unfolds, and of course we will have it covered.
*If any of this is misunderstood, let me know in the comments. I don't pretend to know the first thing about legal paperwork and the words/terms therein.East Longmeadow, Massachusetts (CNN) -- The phones are ringing off the hook at the parish of St. Michael's Church, where the Rev. James Scahill called in a sermon last weekend for the pope to resign over the church's sexual abuse scandal.
Pope Benedict XVI has found himself tied to the crisis after news broke last month that 30 years ago, when he was an archbishop, he approved accommodations in his diocese for a priest accused of child sex abuse so the priest could undergo therapy.
The priest, who was not identified, was let go from church service in 2008, according to church officials in Germany.
"If he can't take the consequences of being truthful on this matter, his integrity should lead him, for the good of the church, to step down and to have the conclave of cardinals elect a pope with the understanding that the elected pope would be willing to take on this issue, not just in promise," Scahill said.
His church has received more than 100 emails and dozens of calls, of which only two were negative, Sister Betty Braughan said.
Scahill, a longtime critic of the sexual abuse crisis in the church, said the Vatican is responsible for the controversy and believes that it is wrong to blame the media for perpetuating the scandal.
"I have met with countless victims of abuse. I have lives I can relate this to, and you know anyone with an ounce of intelligence knows the media has not created this scandal," he said. "The institutional church has brought this onto themselves."
The priest complimented the church on its programs for better protection of children over the past eight years but added, "The last temptation, the greatest treason, is to do the right thing for the wrong reason."
The church took action after years of sexual abuse only because it had been exposed through the media, Scahill said.
Although he has received great support from his parishioners, he admits it has been hard to speak out against the church and the pope.
"This has not been a healthy thing for me. It's a lot of stress, but I believe the truth needs to be spoken, and I believe the people want to hear the truth and [that] they are sick of the smoke and mirror approach."
Bishop Timothy McDonnell, whose diocese includes Scahill's parish, said it was a sad irony that Scahill gave his sermon on Divine Mercy Sunday, "a day on which the church throughout the world re-affirms Christ's forgiveness, reconciliation and mercy towards all his followers."By using a virtual private network (VPN) hosted in the United States, Facebook users from around the world are accessing Facebook Places. The VPN allows foreign users to download the US version of the Facebook for iPhone app or access the US version of touch.facebook.com, both of which include Places.
Reports from Twitter show some people from Germany, Australia, Scotland and Belgium using Places as early as August 24th, and the Places interfaces for iPhone and touch.facebook.com have both been translated into German.
Access to Places is restricted to US IP addresses, which can be faked by connecting to a US-hosted VPN account. Despite relying on GPS to determine what Places you are nearby, GPS is not part of the Places authentication process which disqualifies foreign users. Facebook may be able to prevent future international use of Places by updating touch.facebook.com and the iPhone app to disallow anyone whose coordinates are outside the United States from using Places.
Until then, to use Places from abroad:
Use a phone which can add a VPN configuration such as an iPhone. iPhone users can change VPN settings by going to Settings -> General -> Network -> VPN. Connect to a US VPN account through a site like Hotspot Shield, or follow the instructions on this MacTalk Australia forum. Download the US version of Facebook for iPhone or visit touch.facebook.com. Click the Places icon or Places tab.
Facebook has wanted to control the rollout of Places because its utility across regions depends on a high quality seed database as well as a high density of users. Assembling a good seed data set for users around the world could simply take some time. However, this leak may give international early adopters a bad impression of Places, since if none of your friends have access to the Nearby Friends list in which they can see your check-ins, the feature is much less valuable.
By making a highly publicized release of a product which only US users could access, Facebook should have expected some international jealousy and created a more secure authentication process. Nevertheless, it’s a good sign for the company that users around the world are wanting to find ways to get around these roadblocks in order to be able to share their location data with their Facebook friends.MARAWI CITY, Philippines (Reuters) - U.S. special forces have joined the battle to crush Islamist militants holed up in a southern Philippines town, officials said on Saturday, as government forces struggled to make headway and 13 marines were killed in intense urban fighting.
The Philippines military said the United States was providing technical assistance to end the siege of Marawi City by fighters allied to Islamic State, which is now in its third week, but it had no boots on the ground.
“They are not fighting. They are just providing technical support,” military spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Jo-Ar Herrera told a news conference in Marawi City.
The Pentagon, which has no permanent presence in the Philippines but for years has kept 50 to 100 special forces troops in the south of the country on rotational exercises, confirmed it was helping the Philippine military in Marawi.
It said in a statement it was providing Philippine forces with security assistance and training in the areas of intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance. It said it had an additional 300 to 500 troops in the country to support regular training and activities, without giving further details.
Speaking on condition of anonymity, a U.S. official said support included aerial surveillance and targeting, electronic eavesdropping, communications assistance and training. A U.S. P-3 Orion surveillance plane was seen flying over the town on Friday, according to media reports.
“There is no direct U.S. participation in combat, which is prohibited by Philippine law, although our forces involved in training the Philippine military are authorized to defend themselves,” the U.S. official said.
The cooperation between the longtime allies is significant because Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte, who came to power a year ago, has taken a hostile stance towards Washington and has vowed to eject U.S. military trainers and advisers from his country.
The seizure of Marawi City on May 23 has alarmed Southeast Asian nations which fear that Islamic State - facing setbacks in Syria and Iraq - is establishing a stronghold on the Philippine island of Mindanao that could threaten the whole region.
About 40 foreigners have fought alongside the Philippine militants in Marawi City, most of them from Indonesia and Malaysia, though some came from the Middle East.
A U.S. P3 Orion surveillance aircraft is seen flying over the town of Marawi city, as government troops continue their assault against insurgents from the Maute group, who has taken over large parts of the city, Philippines June 9, 2017. REUTERS/Romeo Ranoco
The Philippines military suffered its biggest one-day loss on Friday since 10 troops were killed in a friendly-fire incident on June 1. Herrera said 13 marines conducting clearing operations died after an “intense” house-to-house firefight during which they encountered improvised explosive devices and were attacked by rocket-propelled grenades.
The deaths took to 58 the number of security forces killed, with 20 civilians and more than a hundred rebel fighters also killed in the Marawi fighting.
REPORTS OF MAUTE BROTHERS KILLED
At least 200 militants are holed up in a corner of the town. An estimated 500 to 1,000 civilians are trapped there, some being held as human shields, while others are hiding in their homes with no access to running water, electricity or food.
The military said it was making headway in the town but was proceeding carefully so as not to destroy mosques where some of the militants had taken up positions.
“We give premium to the mosques, because this is very symbolic to our Muslim brothers,” Herrera said.
The Philippines is majority Christian, but Mindanao has a significant population of Muslims and Marawi City is overwhelmingly Muslim.
One of the main Islamist factions dug in around the heart of the city is the Maute group, a relative newcomer amid the throng of insurgents, separatists and bandits on Mindanao.
Herrera said the military was “validating” reports that the two Maute brothers who founded the group had been killed.
“We are still awaiting confirmation,” he said. “We are still validating those reports but there are strong indications.”
Slideshow (5 Images)
Maute joined forces with Isnilon Hapilon, who was last year proclaimed by Islamic State as its Southeast Asia “emir”. Military officials believe Hapilon is still in the town.
The military has said it is aiming to end the siege by Monday, the Philippines’ independence day.Twas the night before finals, in the dorms they all sat
Not a student was partying, not even the frat.
The books all piled up to the top of the room,
Only 12 hours left ‘till they head to their doom.
The freshmen were cramming it all in their heads,
Not a single Facebook status was left unread.
My roommate in her pj’s, and I in my slacks,
Trying to find a way to relax.
When out in the hallway there arose such a clatter,
I sprang from the chair to see what was the matter.
I opened the door to a delightful surprise,
My friends were leaving to get burgers and fries.
I said to myself, “It’s early enough,
And studying while hungry can be a bit rough.”
So, I put on my coat and I put on my shoes,
And we went to get food, some snacks, and some booze.
After a ride into town, and a little bit of fun,
I came back to my room, a quarter past one.
Less than eight hours to go before my exam,
And three different subjects for me to cram!
I grabbed my first book and as I sat on my desk,
I said, “There’s no way I can work in this mess!”
So hyped up on sugar and lots of caffeine,
I put down the books ‘till the room was all clean.
I looked at my clock and saw it was three,
I cried, “How could this happen to me?”
“I really hope they offer extra credit!”
Is what I posted on Twitter and Reddit.
And then, with a buzzing, I felt in my pants,
I just got a Snapchat from my buddy in France.
He was studying abroad and his finals were done,
He sent me a pic going down a ski run.
Depressed and distraught, I went back to my book,
It was an e-version that I bought for my Nook.
The miniscule font was driving me insane,
And searching for the settings proved to be a pain.
Fraught with pure anger and in such disarray,
I did the unthinkable and tossed my e-reader away!
It hit my left bedpost which cracked the display.
I let out a sigh. “This just isn’t my day.”
As I sat at my desk and worked on some math,
The undercooked meat I ate unleashed its wrath.
Propped on the toilet I held on for dear life,
As I let out a fudge bomb that stung like a knife.
Though tired and stressed, I still studied some more,
while trying to drown out my roommate’s snore.
Ticking and tocking teased that damn clock,
As if poking fun at my mental block.
But I studied and studied every chapter and section,
Memorized my terms to the point of perfection.
There was really no more I could do to prepare,
But to show up to class with a hope and a prayer.
Later that morning, I sprang out of class,
With a skip in my step, with a notion I passed.
“What do we do now?” asked my friends in delight.
“Well, my finals are over, so to all a good-night!”
~frozenflan
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COLUMBIA, Tenn. - A Tennessee District Attorney says the man believed to have kidnapped 15-year-old Elizabeth Thomas could walk away with only a misdemeanor.
Investigators have repeatedly said it doesn't matter if the teen willingly left with 50-year-old Tad Cummins.
However, Tennessee law doesn't necessarily reflect that statement. In fact, whether or not she went willingly will play a huge role in determining whether or not the District Attorney can prove kidnapping, Maury County District Attorney Brent Cooper told WHNT.
"If she comes back and she is absolutely adamant that this is all voluntary, her own doing, that he didn't touch her, it's going to be difficult to prove that," said Cooper.
Cooper said one of the challenges is Elizabeth's age. She's already fifteen, and it takes a while to move a criminal case to trial.
"She may not be an adult by that time, but she's going to look like it. And we're going to have to convince twelve people that it was coercion the way that he went about convincing her to leave," said Cooper.
While she isn't an adult, the state of Tennessee's current kidnapping law treats her that way.
"Our kidnapping statute says in essence through it's silence on that issue. It's saying that you can be between 13 and 18 and you can legally make the mature decision to leave your family and run off with a person never to be seen again," said Cooper.
That's why he is hoping to help change the law.
"The statue should say if an adult, especially one in an authority position over a child, removes a child with or without that child's consent, if it's without the consent of the parents or guardians, that should be a crime," said Cooper.
The District Attorney said he is unsure what a final bill proposal would look like. However, he believes this case will be a reason for lawmakers to list. He said getting something into law will cost the state time and money. Story highlights Police revise up the amount of acid on board to over 800,000 liters
At least one freight car has probably ruptured and leaked, police say
The exclusion zone around the crash site is set to stay in place for days
(CNN) The train that derailed in northern Australia over the weekend was carrying more than four times as much sulfuric acid as previously announced, police said Tuesday.
The freight train had roughly 819,000 liters (216,000 gallons) of the highly corrosive acid on board when it came off the tracks Sunday morning in a remote area of northern Queensland, state police said. They had initially said about 200,000 liters of acid was on board.
Officials believe that at least one of the freight cars has probably ruptured, which means as much as 31,500 liters of acid could have leaked out, according to a police statement
Exclusion zone set up around site
Authorities have declared an emergency and set up a 2-kilometer (1.2-mile) exclusion zone around the crash site. The exclusion zone is expected to remain in place until at least Thursday.
Read MoreSyrian army prepares to push eastwards as US encroachment from Jordan and in the east is now seen a bigger threat than jihadi rebels
When Russia’s call for de-escalation zones first came out, my first thought, like many, was that Putin was throwing in the towel. Then I thought of several other possibilities.
1. It appeared to be a continuation of Russia’s attempt to separate the irreconcilable jihadists from the Syrian opposition. I doubt much of this opposition remains, but there must be some given that some are still coming over to the government side now and then. They are certainly not militarily significant. In any case, RT said this moderate opposition would then be directed against the jihadists “with the support of the guarantor countries.”
2. Russia’s plan for de-escalation zones was an aggressive forecheck of the longstanding US-Saudi plan for safe areas. Pulling Turkey into this alternate plan by making it one of the guarantor countries would greatly weaken the US-Saudi plan and stall its implementation.
3. The plan’s aim could be part of the larger effort to neutralize Turkish support of the jihadists and pull Turkey further into the Russian sphere.
4. As long as Russia is unwilling to deploy significant ground forces to decisively finish the job militarily, this de-escalation zone plan seemed to be the next best move. If Russia and Syria manage to call the shots by including Turkey as a guarantor country, this could go a long way in isolating the jihadists and focusing the fight against them.
In the last few days it has become clear that the de-escalation zone plan is the first stage of a major strategic shift in the conduct of the war in Syria. This is an economy of force move in the western part of Syria executed to concentrate R+6 forces for a push to the west as explicitly stated by Russian General Rudskoy a few days ago.
“After the signing of the memorandum on the creation of zones of de-escalation in Syria, the main efforts of the Russian Air Force will be directed to the development of an offensive to the east of Palmyra and the subsequent release of Deir ez-Zor, said Colonel-General Sergei Rudskoy, chief of the Main Operations Directorate of the RF Armed Forces General Staff. "The establishment of zones of de-escalation will allow government troops to liberate a significant number of troops." The Russian Air Force will continue to support the Syrian armed forces to destroy the bandit formations of the international terrorist organization DAISH (the Arab name of the terrorist organization IGIL, banned in Russia), "Rudskoy said. Another task of the VKS, according to Rudskoy, will be the liberation of the northeastern territories in the province of Aleppo along the Euphrates River.” (РОССИЙСКАЯ ГАЗЕТА)
Al Masdar News reported that Russian support will also include ground forces. “According to the military source, the Russian special forces will be embedded with the Syrian Arab Army’s 5th Legion and Tiger Forces for the entire duration of the offensive.” We don’t know if this will entail embedded advisors or Spetsnaz units performing their traditional reconnaissance-sabotage roles for the larger SAA formations. Perhaps it will be both.
Other Russian support consists of a “new counter-partisan special detachment from the countries of the former USSR” called TURAN. According to “Русская весна,” a detachment of up to 400 men of this 800 to 1200 strong TURAN unit are prepared to immediately support an SAA offensive from rural Aleppo towards Deir Ezzor.
The SAA forces massing for this offensive include the Tiger Forces and the 5th Corps. I’m sure there are others. Hezbollah forces are also returning to the Palmyra front. Al Masdar News says that “Suheil Al-Hassan, commander-in-chief of the Tiger Forces, will reportedly command two simultaneous offensive in eastern Aleppo and eastern Palmyra against the Islamic State.”
The idea of two main thrusts caused me a little concern before I saw this more as an envelopment to either cut off the IS jihadists in the vast open area east of Homs or force them to withdraw towards the Euphrates. Efforts within the Deir Ezzor pocket to expand the area under government control are intensifying with some success. The SAA, surely with Russian air support, are preparing a force of several hundred seasoned Republican Guards to reinforce the pocket by airmobile insertion. This is a bold plan, but in my opinion a plan with a good chance of working.
The operation to liberate Deir Ezzor will be named Operation Lavender. Why? An observer named Wael Al Hussaini explained on twitter.
"Back in 2012 when Deir Ezzor was about to fall a famous Republican Guards commander "Ali Khuzam" was among the first to arrive to defend the city along with General Issam Zahreddine. Unfortunately, General Ali unfortunately was killed defending the city. The general's last name in Arabic is خزام which means Lavender, so this operation will be a tribute to him and to the other heroes who fell there defending Syria."
The objective of this offensive goes beyond the relief of Deir Ezzor. It is a drive to the Iraqi border. The R+6 obviously sees the coalition effort to take the east of the country from both Rojava and Jordan as a greater threat than the jihadis in Idlib.
I don't know what Putin has working with Turkey, but I guess he thinks he can handle the sultan. I also think Putin and Assad are confident they can eventually work something out with the Rojava Kurds.
But the US-Saudi (and Israeli) plan for safe areas and cutting the Shia crescent, as Elijah Magnier writes, is something that must be addressed now.
Iraq sees this as well. The Iraqi Army and the PMU just launched an offensive to take the countryside west of Haditha. This is part of an Iraqi effort to eventually take the border crossing at Al-Qa’im.
In retrospect, I think the decision not to continue an offensive towards Idlib after the liberation of Aleppo and to advance east to cut off the Turks and their jihadis at al-Bab was a result of this view that foreign incursions into Syrian territory are viewed as a greater immediate threat to Assad and Putin that the Idlib jihadis.
Source: Sic Semper TyrannisUntapped festival 2016
The Best Fest
Untapped out did them selves this year! Most people that were early arrivers either parked or were dropped off at the wrong entrance so we had to hike to get to the line just to get in. Time was not in our favor for the doors were going to open right at 2:30 so we did not have time for walking. During our trek people around us were checking watches and thinking about water instead of the beer we came for. Our trip was cut in half when we found a short cut through the park then finally we see a line in the distance.
Every one’s step quickened just to come to a halt at the entrance; we made it with 15 min to spare.. I could see the Goose Island tent through the sea of people (being I am 5’1”) just waiting for my cup to receive the BCBS rare. This was the worst part; they let people in but stopped them right before the beer right up to exactly 2:30. The clock struck the right time and the crowd was released and the majority formed a line right in front of what?
You guessed it Goose Island. Finally we reached the table only to set our eyes on that green ribbon on the neck of the bottle, it was poured smooth and easy. As soon as it touched my lips I felt sheer ecstasy. Here I am, at Untapped 2016! After that this it was a free for all running around chugging, forgetting my list and just trying random things, listening to amazing music, dancing to said music, and stuffing my face with some yummy Dallas food!
BCBC Rare – This beer was worth the wait. It smelled nutty, boozy, and like chocolate. It tasted like if you made a beer out of the best hot chocolate in the world with marshmallows and toffee. 5 out of 5, My palate was set to this level for about three beers.
Mash Vanilla & Vanilla The Bruery – A perfect 2nd beer. Smelled like vanilla, tasted like vanilla, was vanilla. The barley wine taste was strong enough but not over powering and had the perfect amount of bubbles. 4 out of 5
Vietnamese Speedway Stout Alesmith – This was a very interesting take on a really good beer. It had a bitter coffee taste with a lot of spice upon entering and not the sweet back that I was expecting. 3.5 out of 5
Macallan Barrel Aged Legion Community- Finally I got the beer I wanted Friday night! This was a light toasty flavor; I’m guessing this came from the barrels. It had a vanilla back to be completed with a good ol imperial taste spread throughout. 4 out of 5
Yule Shoot Your Eye Out Karbach – this was a perfect winter beer. Its kind of like they made an egg-nog bock. It had all the Christmas spices like cinnamon, nutmeg, and cloves but in a nice light flavored beer. Rating: Jolly
Jalepeno Saison On Rotation – Interesting beer. Smelled just like fresh jalapenos (you know the way your fingers smell after gutting them to stuff cream cheese and bacon in them) but there was no major spice to the beer just the taste. I wish there was more of the saison flavor. 3 out of 5
Hop Cooler Ninkasi – And oh so tasty IPA. A crisp little break from all the heavy beers. It was a true IPA, the smell of dank with a side of pine. The taste was the same with just a little hint of orange and lemon. 4 out of 5.
Praline Porter Deep Ellum- Light but flavorful tasted like that little crispy thing you get on the way out of your favorite Mexican restaurant but with a hoppy kick. 3 out of 5
Spicy Hawaiian COOP- tastes like that sweet sauce that you put on Hawaiian pork but with a little bit of spice. 3 out of 5
Some pictures for y’all to enjoy
The Beerded LadyFOR frequent flyers, travelling can be taxing on their skin, eyes and lips.
But, with the right beauty routine, you can look as glamorous as the world's most stylish cabin crews.
To help you learn how, we turn to Emirates' Image and Uniform Training Manager Helen Roxburgh.
Skin
Even though fresh air is constantly added to recycled air through very fine filters, to remove dust and bacteria, Roxburgh says the air in the aircraft cabin has low humidity levels. This, she says, can cause mild drying of the skin.
One of her top suggestions is travelling make-up free, especially on long-haul flights.
"If this is not on the cards for you, we recommend using either a tinted moisturiser or a mineral-based make-up, which will still allow your skin to breathe," Roxburgh says.
If wearing make-up, blusher, she says, plays a big part in helping skin look fresh: "It gives the impression of a healthy glow even during long flights."
Hydration sprays can also help maintain the moisture balance of skin, while drinking a lot of water, and avoiding caffeine and alcohol, will keep you hydrated.
Eyes
If you're prone to dry and irritated eyes, Roxburgh suggests talking to your local chemist or doctor about eye products before you leave home.
"Eye gel helps to refresh the eyes during a long flight and can be used over make-up," she adds.
"For those who wear contact lenses, we recommend removing them for air travel and opting for glasses instead."
If you wear mascara on-board flights, be mindful of what mascara you choose. Waterproof mascara tends to dry out lashes when used over long periods, says Roxburgh.
"And using eyeliner on the top lid only gives the appearance of more open, larger eyes."
If eyes are looking tired, concealer will reduce dark circles. "However, when applied, you need to have the correct colour in order for the circles not to appear darker," says Roxburgh.
"A product with light reflectors in it is extremely good for this and can work better than a normal concealer."
Lips
The use of lip gloss or lipstick that contains gloss isn't recommended, as this can cause the colour to wear off, says Roxburgh.
"Don't use lipgloss over lipstick, as the colour wears off more quickly, plus the gloss can change the pigment in the lipstick giving it a different colour," she says.
"And do not draw your lip pencil outside of the lip line."
Look like an Emirates steward
"It all begins with using the correct skincare products and make-up," says Roxburgh.
"We invest in comprehensive training by grooming experts and provide our crew with top beauty tips to ensure they look as good at the end as they do at the beginning of any flight."
When applying make-up, Emirates stewards apply a powder over their foundation to help set the make-up so it lasts longer. "We also teach the crew the benefits of wearing foundation and powder on their lips, so the Emirates-red lipstick lasts longer," says Roxburgh.
"They also reapply their foundation/powder and blusher throughout the flight.
"Also, it helps to remove all make-up and apply a vitamin C mask during their bunk rest periods, as it boosts the skin cells and gives the skin a healthy glow."
Men
"Men, too, have their own skincare and shaving routine," says Roxburgh.
Shaving before each flight can irritate the skin and cause dryness, she explains.
"One of the key tips is the use of a shaving oil to help soften the hairs and moisturise the area.
"They can use a shaving brush to apply the shaving gel or foam, as it acts as a natural exfoliator and helps with ingrown hairs."
Resting
Roxburgh recommends resting on flights to avoid arriving at your destination looking tired.
Post flight, she says rest will help cell renewal and rejuvenation, as the skin repairs itself.
"Our crew always remove their make-up after a flight, and depending on their needs, will often apply a face and eye mask." If the destination's air quality isn't top notch, Roxburgh advises Emirates stewards to exfoliate and apply a vitamin C mask.
Post-flight runway ready
Never wear new shoes when travelling, says Roxburgh.
"There is a chance your feet will swell while travelling, which will have you limping down the runway rather that strutting. Before the plane hits the tarmac, Roxburgh suggests using a cleanser or daily exfoliator, a moisturiser and an eye gel. This will help your skin appear more vibrant and feel fresh, she says. After the mini skincare routine, you can then apply make-up. "For a fresh look, use a natural foundation and soft blusher in light pink or peach, mascara and a natural lip gloss."
She also recommends carrying dry shampoo or powder, as it can prevent hair from looking oily when you get off the flight.
Emirates cabin crew beauty tips
"There's no one top secret that works, but it's recommended that cabin crew follow a skincare routine that helps them deal with the different hours they work," says Roxburgh.
"They are trained by experts on a recommended (beauty) sequence to follow, from skincare to make-up and everything in between." Exfoliation and masks are highly recommended, she says, as they help to enhance the appearance of the skin.
Stewards are taught that foundation needs to be as close to natural skin colour as possible so it appears even, and Emirates also prefers the use of blusher over bronzer, because bronzer can make the skin appear tired, especially in aircraft lighting. All cabin crew members wear the Emirates signature red lipstick, a foundation that matches their skin tone, eyeliner and mascara. Clarins make-up is used in grooming training, and stewards are free to choose their own brands.0 Shares
Daniel C. Dennett is one of the most influential philosophers of our time, perhaps best known in cognitive science for his multiple drafts (or “fame in the brain”) model of human consciousness, and to the secular community for his 2006 book Breaking the Spell. Author and co-author of two-dozen books, he’s the Austin B. Fletcher Professor of Philosophy, and Co-Director of the Center for Cognitive Studies at Tufts University, where he taught our very own Point of Inquiry host Lindsay Beyerstein.
Beyerstein and Dennett catch up to discuss Dennett’s newest book, From Bacteria to Bach and Back: The Evolution of Minds. It’s a fresh look at Dennett’s earlier work on the subject of consciousness, taken in new directions as he seeks a “bottom-up view of creation.” Join Dennett and Beyerstein as they discuss the how’s and why’s of consciousness, not just from an evolutionary and neurological standpoint, but also through the lenses of computer science and human culture.Nearly everything about the small block says “wood”: its texture, appearance, sturdiness, and color are like an especially high-quality piece of particle board. But it’s just a bit too dense for wood, which gives it away. The block is made of straw bound together by mycelium, the root-like tendrils of mushrooms.
While many types of fungi would serve, this block was produced using edible mushrooms as a proof-of-principle experiment by architect Chris Maurer and his collaborators at Redhouse Architecture in Cleveland, Ohio. They envision building whole communities from mushroom “wood” and its byproducts, providing housing, food security, and even water filtration for regions destabilized by climate change-related disasters.
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Fungus-based design and construction is part of a growing movement toward sustainable, biologically-derived materials. Some, like architect Ginger Krieg Dosier of bioMASON in Durham, North Carolina, use bacteria to produce cement and bricks. Others use organisms for self-healing concrete, or environmental clean-up, or lab-grown substitutes for leather (which will make all the vegan goths out there happy).
The fundamental principles of bio-building and bio-design include minimizing building-related waste of all types. In the US alone, building construction and demolition produce over 500 million tons of waste annually and account for about 40 percent of US energy consumption. On a global scale, buildings contribute nearly a fifth of humanity’s total climate-warming greenhouse gas emissions.
“The building industry is responsible for a large amount of environmental footprint that humans undertake,” Maurer told Earther. A desire to change that drives his work, and that of other bio-build |
Blok was designed with this issue specifically in mind, using rubber wheels and ensuring that the center of gravity does not rest on the needle to prevent widening the grooves. Riley claims to have tested his current prototype on single record “several hundred times” will no ill effects, but it may still be a good idea to be cautious when using the RokBlok on more expensive records.
The RokBlok is available on Kickstarter for an early-bird price of $59 — 40 percent off the intended full retail price of $99. It's estimated to ship in September 2017, but given that this is the first hardware project from a first time company, the usual recommendation to use your best judgement when backing still stands.Debris is a simple Minecraft mod that adds rubble and bone piles to the Minecraft world. When broken they will drop a random selection of items for the player to collect. The items dropped can range from normal mundane blocks (cobble, sand, gravel, etc.), worn tools (picks and helmets), useful material (string, clay, redstone, torches, coal, etc.) and perhaps something a little more rare (emeralds and diamonds).
This mod is based on the Pile of Rubble from my Thermal Recycling mod.
How it Works
Debris determines what to drop by using internal Loot Tables. The Pile of Rubble and Bone Pile each have their own separate loot table so the drops you see from one will not be available in the other.
The Loot Tables can be further modified by particular mods that are installed. As of this release Forestry is the only mod directly supported. Future releases will have builtin mod support if it makes sense to do so.
A feature is planned to allow modpack authors to create external Json Loot Table files and have them merge into the internal tables. This will allow the author to add additional drops, or replace existing entries with new variants.Maple syrup is once again making headlines for being the rockstar condiment that every Canadian knows it is, but it's not the culinary world that's buzzing this time — it's the medical world.
Newly released research from McGill University in Montreal suggests that concentrated maple syrup extract may actually help fight bacterial infections, potentially reducing the need for antibiotics around the world.
"Combining maple syrup extract with common antibiotics could increase the microbes' susceptibility, leading to lower antibiotic usage," reads a press release issued by the university Friday. "Overuse of antibiotics fuels the emergence of drug-resistant bacteria, which has become a major public-health concern worldwide."
The release explains how scientists at the school's department of chemical engineering used maple syrup samples, purchased at local markets in Montreal, to prepare a "concentrated extract of maple syrup that consists mainly of phenolic compounds," a class of aromatic organic chemicals.
Postdoctoral fellow Vimal Maisuria and Prof. Nathalie Tufenkji, researchers in McGill’s Department of Chemical Engineering, in the lab where they tested maple syrup extract on infection-causing strains of bacteria. (McGill University) Researchers then tested this extract's effect on " infection-causing strains of certain bacteria, including E. coli and Proteus mirabilis (a common cause of urinary tract infection)." Proteus mirabilis
While the team admits in their findings that the extract was only "mildly effective" in combating bacteria on its own, it was found to be quite effective when combined with antibiotics.
More specifically, the extract was observed acting "synergistically with antibiotics" to destroy the "resistant communities of bacteria" commonly present in difficult-to-treat infections (like those involving the urinary tract.)
These bacterial communities, known as "biofilms," are notoriouslyresistant to antibiotic treatment — a problem that costs the U.S. healthcare system more than $5 billion every year according to a 2008 paper by University of Washington bioengineering professor James Bryers.
Does maple syrup hold the key to beating drug-resistant bacteria?
"We would have to do in vivo tests, and eventually clinical trials, before we can say what the effect would be in humans," said lead researcher Nathalie Tufenkji in a statement. "But the findings suggest a potentially simple and effective approach for reducing antibiotic usage. I could see maple syrup extract being incorporated eventually, for example, into the capsules of antibiotics."
Prof. Tufenkji, who holds the Canada Research Chair in Biocolloids and Surfaces, co-authored the study with postdoctoral fellows Vimal Maisuria and Zeinab Hosseinidoust.
Funding for their research was provided by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada and the Canada Research Chairs program.
The team's findings are set to be published in the journal Applied and Environmental Microbiology this May.Anyone who reads the comment threads on the average Daily Brew blog posts knows the web can be a pretty cruel place, but an incident last weekend shows some parts are especially dark.
A young man, thought to be Canadian university student, broadcast his suicide attempt online Saturday night, downing pills and booze and setting his residence room on fire.
While the disturbed 20-year-old huddled under his bed and keyed in what he expected were his dying thoughts, some of the 200 people watching egged him on, Postmedia News reported.
A report of the bizarre incident first surfaced on the Daily Dot web site Sunday, Postmedia News said. It apparently began earlier Saturday evening when the man, identified as "Stephen," posted a notice on 4chan, a notoriously freewheeling bulletin board, that he was prepared to kill himself on camera but needed help setting up the broadcast.
[ Related: Suicide rate climbs after global economic downturn ]
Stephen described himself as a longtime 4chan member, Postmedia News said.
"I thought I would finally give back to the community in the best way possible: I am willing to an hero [commit suicide] on cam for you all. All that I request is for you guys to link me to a site where I am able to stream it for you guys, then I will gladly fulfill my promise."
Lmao dumb ass from Guelph University tries to commit suicide because he wants to give back to the "4Chan Community". Pathetic. — Ali Rizwan (@A_L_I_Baba) December 2, 2013
According to Daily Dot, another 4chan user set up a video chat room via the web site Chateen, which allows a maximum 200 viewers. Once the chat room was live, Stephen swallowed some unidentified pills and chased them with vodka. He then set a small fire in the corner of his room using a toaster and crawled under his bed, apparently bringing his laptop with him.
“#imdead," he typed, according to Daily Dot. "#omgimonfire."
While some of the 200 viewers – with more clamouring to get into the chat room – urged Stephen to stop, others apparently encouraged him, even suggesting better ways to kill himself, such as dropping the toaster in the bathtub, Postmedia News said.
Others complained the thickening smoke from the fire was obscuring their view and those who couldn't access the video stream demanded frame grabs, according to an account in Britain's MailOnline.
The spectacle ended when firefighters burst into the room, doused the flames and hauled Stephen out.
Stephen's identity has not been revealed but reports suggest the incident took place at the University of Guelph in southern Ontario.
The university issued a statement Sunday about a fire in a residence room that left a 20-year-old student with serious but non-life-threatening injuries.
"The University is aware that there is disturbing social media activity circulating about this incident and is urging people not to watch or distribute this hurtful material," the statement said.
An unidentified university spokeswoman told MailOnline it was urging students not to watch or share the video. "We’re trying to take it down but it’s on so many guerrilla sites it’s almost impossible to do that," she said.
I refuse to link to 4chan/Guelph story but, If you need help; call 1-800-273-8255 National Suicide Prevention Lifeline. — Steven Sandhoff (@StevenSandhoff) December 2, 2013
A copy of the 40-minute video remains on LiveLeak.
[ Related: Researchers find alarming rise in suicides among pre-teen girls ]
University student-affairs vice president Brenda White also told MailOnline officials had not spoken to the student yet.
"His mom is with him and we may be able to talk to him in the next day or two," said White. "He’s going to be in a fragile state. We’re respecting his privacy and need to recover with the interest it’s a difficult balance.'
The incident has focused attention on 4chan and especially its /b/ Random site, which Postmedia News said is home to some of the web's strangest and most disturbing stuff. Users there quickly dubbed Stephen "Toaster Steve" and some mocked him for not actually dying.
That wasn't the case in 2008, when a 19-year-old Miami man committed suicide with a drug overdose while 1,500 watched online, MailOnline reported at the time. Some viewers, apparently thinking it was hoax, urged him to hurry up.
Story continuesOfficials say the rider was riding fast, while coming down Mt. Scott Boulevard …
In the Lents neighborhood, where Mt. Scott Boulevard curves between Willamette National Cemetery and Lincoln Memorial Park & Funeral Home, a bicyclist suffered a fatal accident in outer East Portland.
Story and photos by David F. Ashton
When a bicycle rider and a blue 1997 Dodge Ram collided, just after 3:00 p.m. on August 5, emergency first-responders responded to the intersection of SE 112th Avenue and Mt. Scott Boulevard
“Medical personnel arrived and located the female adult bicycle rider suffering from traumatic injuries,” reported Portland Police Bureau (PPB) Public Information Officer Sgt. Pete Simpson.
Officials say that as this truck was moving into the turn lane, the bicyclist ran into the side of it..
“The woman was transported by ambulance to a Portland hospital with life-threatening injuries,” Simpson added.
The truck’s driver, 64-year-old Mary Elizabeth Dieter of Washougal, Washington, stayed at the scene, cooperated with investigators, and did not display any signs of impairment or distracted driving, Simpson informed.
Shortly after the bicycle rider arrived at the hospital, she died. “49-year-old Karla Kalene DeBaillie of Happy Valley is the 27th traffic fatality in the City of Portland in 2016,” remarked Simpson.
A PPB Traffic Division officer takes notes at the scene.
According to evidence collected at the crash scene, and witness statements, investigators said they believe that DeBaillie was riding her bicycle at a speed of 30 to 35 miles per hour down Mt. Scott Boulevard (northbound) and curved left (westbound) at the intersection of 112th Avenue.
“Dieter was driving eastbound on Mount Scott Boulevard and was moving to turn left onto 112th Avenue, as westbound traffic stopped to allow her to turn,” Simpson said. “As Dieter crossed over the westbound lane of Mount Scott Boulevard, DeBaillie crashed into the passenger side of the pick-up truck.”
As the bike rider is transported to a local hospital, her bicycle remains smashed in the street.
The investigation is continuing, and once complete it will be given to the Multnomah County District Attorney’s Office for review.
Also affecting Friday afternoon traffic that day, just down the hill at SE 112th Avenue and SE Foster Road, a PPB sergeant enroute to the crash was T-boned in the intersection – shutting down traffic for hours.
© 2016 David F. Ashton ~ East Portland NewsEven before the movie hit theaters, Warner Bros. was positioning Margot Robbie’s Harley Quinn as Suicide Squad’s breakout star. That push included a ton of marketing, a bunch of Halloween costumes, and even some strong hints that the character would soon be getting a standalone film, with Robbie signing on as a producer. As it turns out, though, those reports were a little premature; the film in question isn’t actually a solo outing for Robbie’s clown princess of crime. Instead, it’ll be based off of DC Comics’ long-running Birds Of Prey.
As reported by The Wrap, the film will focus on the Gotham-based team of female superheroes, with Black List writer Christina Hodson—also the author of the upcoming Transformers spinoff, Bumblebee—handling scripting duties. Given that none of the regular Birds characters—Black Canary, Huntress, and former-Batgirl-turned-crime-fighting-super-hacker Oracle—have been featured in the DC Extended Universe, the announcement raises a number of questions. First and foremost: Is Alan Moore’s The Killing Joke—in which Batgirl Barbara Gordon is paralyzed by the Joker, kicking off her transformation into Oracle—part of DCEU canon? Will all this backstory, which was hinted at in Batman V. Superman, be covered in Ben Affleck’s upcoming Batman movie? Can Warner Bros. find a way to not make it totally gross?
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So far, Robbie is the only actress attached to the film. We’ll presumably know more about the movie’s direction and backstory as the project develops.The United Nations Security Council has postponed a vote on a draft resolution demanding that Israel halt its illegal settlement activities in the occupied Palestinian territories.
Israeli Premier Benjamin Netanyahu had earlier urged the United States to use its veto power at the council to block the resolution.
Responding to calls by Israeli authorities, US President-elect Donald Trump in a statement issued early on Thursday called for the veto of the resolution.
Washington has shielded Tel Aviv against such moves at the Security Council on several other occasions in the past, including a similar one in 2011.
Anthony Hall, editor-in-chief of American Herald Tribune, believes Trump is acting in a way that makes the imperial expansionists in Israel very happy.
“Israel is an expansionary project much like the United States was an expansionary project, a transcontinental expansionary project, Israel is replicating and it seems the president-elect of the United States is on side. He is in a way subordinating himself to the higher authority of the Israeli… [regime],” the analyst told Press TV in an interview on Friday.
He also said that US President Barack Obama’s administration was lining up to abstain and make a statement that the so-called two-state solution should be kept alive because the constant building of settlements in a way obliterates the possibility of a viable two-state solution.
However, he said, it seems that Obama is backing down and the torch is being handed to the expansionists.
Hall further noted that the settlement expansion “epitomizes disrespect for law,” and that it is all about power.
The analyst also argued that Trump is betraying the promises he made during his campaign for presidency, and that he is becoming a manifestation of all the things he condemned former Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton for.
“Of course Donald Trump in his campaign for presidency pointed out the criminality and the complete neglect of the rule of law and the subordination of the rule of law to the mere grabs for power, for wealth, and this is an example of Donald Trump falling exactly into the categories that he identified on his way to the presidency,” he said.U.K. Prime Minister Theresa May offered a rebuke of President Trump to a British tabloid today, saying he was "wrong" to criticize Sadiq Khan, London’s first Muslim mayor, in the wake of Saturday's terror attack that killed seven people.
May first told The Sun that the "relationship with America is our deepest and most important defense and security relationship."
“Having said that," she added, "I think Donald Trump is wrong in what he said about Sadiq Khan, in relation to the attack on London Bridge."
Trump has drawn harsh criticism for taking a dig at Khan in the aftermath of Saturday’s attack, and May's remarks add strength to the argument that he crossed a line with his apparent critique of the mayor Sunday.
"At least 7 dead and 48 wounded in terror attack and Mayor of London says there is "no reason to be alarmed!" Trump tweeted then.
But the mayor's remarks about being alarmed, which focused not on the subject of terror but on an increased police presence in the wake of the attack, were taken out of context.
London mayor's spokesperson slams Trump's tweet as 'ill-informed'
President Trump's sons defend father's Twitter attack against London mayor
White House: Trump not 'picking a fight' with London mayor
"Londoners will see an increased police presence today and over the course of the next few days. No reason to be alarmed," Khan said while addressing residents.
Not mentioned by Trump was that Khan also warned that the threat level in London remains severe.
“Severe means an attack across the country is still highly likely, and so we have all got to be vigilant,” Khan said.
A spokesperson for Khan on Sunday called Trump's remark "ill-informed" and said it took the mayor's words out of context.
The White House has downplayed the clash of words between Trump and Khan.
"I don't see that the president is picking a fight with the mayor of London at all," deputy press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said at Monday's press briefing, regarding the president's tweet.
Meanwhile, Trump's two adult sons, Eric and Donald Trump Jr., defended their father's words in an interview with “Good Morning America” this morning.
“You should be alarmed,” Eric Trump told ABC News, referring to terror attacks like the one that took place in London over the weekend. “Because this has become the new norm. And it's not right. And we, as a society, especially as Americans, better do something about it.”by BAR contributor Ann Garrison
The world’s greatest human rights abusers have seats on the UN Human Rights Council, including Rwanda which, along with Israel, claims “genocide” privileges to trash other people’s rights. Rwandan dictator Paul Kagame is soliciting help from Israel to fight Islamic jihadists – in a nation that is 95 percent Christian.
Israel and Rwanda, Partners in Persecution
by BAR contributor Ann Garrison
“The UN Human Rights Council, where Rwanda has pledged to defend its friend Israel, is a human rights abusers council as much as not.”
On July 9, Rwandan “President” Paul Kagame arrived in Israel for another of his many visits to reinforce the longstanding pact between his military dictatorship and Israel’s brutal settler colonial regime. This time Kagame enjoyed an unusual honor not even afforded to President Trump when he visited Israel in May; Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Reuven Rivlin both showed up to greet him upon arrival. The Jerusalem Post suggested that the special welcome had to do with Rwanda’s seat on the UN Human Rights Council—seriously. President Rivlin appeared to confirm this in his remarks:
“Rwanda is now going to be a member of the UN Human Rights Council. This is a body which is always against Israel, unfortunately. So we welcome all those, all those who are prepared to speak for us. And we appreciate your support very much.”
Kagame’s totalitarian regime is infamous for human rights abuse inside Rwanda, including the murder and imprisonment of journalists and political opponents, and the imprisonment of Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza, who dared to challenge him for the presidency in 2010. It’s also infamous for crimes in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), as confirmed in the UN’s own UN Mapping Report on Human Rights Abuse in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, 2003 to 2010, which says that the Rwandan army’s massacre of hundreds of thousands of Hutu refugees would be charged as genocide if brought to court. Kagame’s powerful friends have of course made sure that’s never happened; as Bill Clinton says, “It hasn’t been adjudicated.”
The UN Panel of Experts on the Illegal Exploitation of Natural Resources and Other Forms of Wealth in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, in their 2001, 2002, 2003, and 2008 reports, documented Rwanda’s invasion and plunder of Congo. The 2012 UN Panel of Experts report identified Rwandan Defense Minister James Kabarebe as the top commander of the M23 militia then ravaging the native populations of eastern Congo.
“The Rwandan army’s massacre of hundreds of thousands of Hutu refugees would be charged as genocide if brought to court.”
So, after all these damning UN reports, how could Rwanda have been elected to the UN Human Rights Council? How could it now be pledging to use its seat in defense of Israel?
That wasn’t difficult at all, and no more fraught with contradiction than other elections to UN officialdom. In 2014, the UN General Assembly's Special Political and Decolonization Committee elected Israel's representative Mordehai Amihai to serve as its vice chair. The Jerusalem Post actually managed to expand on that Orwellian illogic by calling it “an island of relative normality in the raging sea of injustice and outright absurdity that characterizes the UN’s workings.”
Also in 2014, the General Assembly elected Ugandan Foreign Minister Sam Kutesa to serve as its president for the next year, even though the UN Charter criminalizes wars of aggression against sovereign member nations, and Uganda has invaded three of them—Rwanda, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and South Sudan—over the past 27 years, leaving millions dead. No matter how many human rights abuses, wars of aggression, and mass atrocities member nations may have to their names, they move into UN positions of moral authority when it’s deemed to be their turn.
The UN Human Rights Council, where Rwanda has pledged to defend its friend Israel, is a human rights abusers council as much as not. Its 47 members include Bangladesh, China, Egypt, Ethiopia, India, the Philippines, Qatar, Russia, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, the United Kingdom of Great Britain, and the United States of America, to name a few. The General Assembly elects its members to three-year terms through direct and secret ballot. Votes are putatively based on “the candidate States' contribution to the promotion and protection of human rights, as well as their voluntary pledges and commitments in this regard.” They are in fact the result of politicking, vote trading, and slates in the five geographical groups represented: Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean, Asia Pacific, Western Europe and Other [Western] States, and Eastern Europe. The African nations simply rotate off and on, so that none are ever singled out as unfit to serve.
“No matter how many human rights abuses, wars of aggression, and mass atrocities member nations may have to their names, they move into UN positions of moral authority when it’s deemed to be their turn.”
The Council has nevertheless managed to make Israel cry persecution and call on Rwanda to come to the rescue. In March of this year alone, it passed five resolutions censuring Israel—with the United States and Togo joining to vote against all five. According to AIPAC, “the UN Human Rights Council has passed 67 resolutions condemning the Jewish state since its inception in 2006, more than it has levied against all other countries combined.”
Who could be better suited to the task of standing up to such injustice than Rwanda, Israel’s perpetual partner in persecution? Upon Kagame’s arrival this week, Netanyahu repeated the “never again” pledge at the root of the Israel/Rwanda pact and the US/NATO ideology of humanitarian military “intervention”:
“We have pledged, I think, both our peoples, one simple pledge. Never again. Never again. We who witnessed the greatest holocaust in history, you who witnessed perhaps one of the most recent ones. Never again. That’s another great bond between us.”
Kagame, in turn, welcomed Israel’s expansion on the African continent:
“Ever since the Prime Minister’s historic visit to East Africa last year, Israel has continued to follow through on its commitment and objective of scaling up engagement across Africa. This is a very positive trend which can only be welcomed and merits our support. We are looking forward to reinforcing our collaboration with Israel on common challenges of mutual interest.”
Current collaborations include Israel’s security forces training Rwanda’s. By the second day of his visit, Kagame was claiming that he needs Israel’s help to defeat jihadists in Rwanda—a nation that is more than 95 percent Christian—because al-Shabaab might spread south from Somalia, Boko Haram east from Nigeria. “We need these capacities,” he said, “to prevent that from happening and to deal with it when it happens.”
In fact, Kagame needs a fierce, all-pervasive military police force to control his own people, the majority of whom are Hutus who have been demonized, impoverished, and/or imprisoned by his de facto Tutsi dictatorship, much like Palestinians in their own homeland.Garrett Temple has been out since March 9. (Sam Sharpe/USA Today Sports)
When asked about Garrett Temple’s status in his recovery from a strained right hamstring, Washington Wizards Coach Randy Wittman told reporters before Friday’s loss to the Brooklyn Nets that “he’s moving along fine.” But that wasn’t the case.
While teammates are gearing up for the playoffs, Temple is dealing with a setback. The combo guard was on pace to return from a strained right hamstring before the end of the regular season, but said Sunday he aggravated the injury at practice Tuesday and may not play again this season.
The plan was for Temple, 28, to return from his strained hamstring injury Sunday against the Atlanta Hawks or Tuesday against the Indiana Pacers at the latest, but that is no longer a possibility. The injury will set him back at least another two weeks and his postseason status is uncertain.
Tuesday’s practice Temple’s first since suffering the original injury against the Charlotte Hornets on March 9. The injury was initially diagnosed as a Grade 1-2 strain. It is now a Grade 2, the second-most severe designation on a three-grade scale.
The 6-foot-6 Temple appeared in 52 games, including 18 starts, this season. He averaged 3.9 points and 14.1 minutes per game while shooting 37.5 percent from three-point range.
More from the Post:
Wall a game-time decision vs. Hawks
Weighing health vs. home-court advantageWASHINGTON (Reuters) - The death of Thailand’s King Bhumibol Adulyadej on Thursday adds a new layer of uncertainty to U.S. President Barack Obama’s faltering “pivot” to Asia less than a month before the Nov. 8 U.S. presidential elections.
A portrait of Thailand's King Bhumibol Adulyadej stands as people memorialize his death at the Wat Thai of Los Angeles temple in Los Angeles, California, U.S., October 13, 2016. REUTERS/Patrick T. Fallon
The king was important in cementing the long-standing alliance between the United States and Thailand after World War Two, in a reign that spanned the Vietnam War and development of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), which Washington still considers vital to maintaining its influence in the region.
King Bhumibol’s death coincides with faltering momentum in Obama’s signature policy of rebalancing the U.S. diplomatic and security focus to the Asia-Pacific region in the face of China’s rapid rise.
The main economic pillar of the rebalance, the 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal, is languishing in the U.S. Congress with no guarantee that Obama will be able to push it through before leaving the presidency to Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump, both of whom say they oppose the deal.
Clinton, as secretary of state under fellow-Democrat Obama from 2009-13, was one of the architects of the policy but Republican Trump has questioned the extent to which he would maintain the U.S. security commitment to East Asia.
Obama’s efforts to boost security ties with Southeast Asia have come in response to China’s pursuit of territorial claims in the South China Sea, a vital strategic waterway.
However, a torrent of anti-American rhetoric from new Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte has cast doubt on the U.S. military relationship with Manila just months after Washington reached an agreement on rotating access to bases in the country.
Other Southeast Asian countries, such as Indonesia and Malaysia, are focused on internal political issues and are avoiding playing any leadership role in ASEAN, while even traditionally reliable regional ally Australia is treading carefully to avoid jeopardizing its economic ties with Beijing.
Thailand was already occupying a back seat in regional affairs following a 2014 military coup seen as a means to maintain stability during the king’s long illness. Thailand is expected to turn further inward during a prolonged mourning period and potentially politically fragile royal succession.
King Bhumibol’s son, Crown Prince Maha Vajiralongkorn, who is expected to become Thailand’s new king, lacks the strong connection to the United States of his father, who was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Obama offered condolences to the Thai people and the King’s family, calling King Bhumibol “a tireless champion of his country’s development.”
Obama’s former top Asia adviser, Evan Medeiros, now at the Eurasia Group, said the mourning process would likely slow a return to democratic government and Prince Vajiralongkorn was a source of “profound uncertainty.”
“He’s such an unknown, unpredictable figure,” he said.
U.S. State Department spokesman Mark Toner said the United States and Thailand had been close friends for two centuries.
“Our friendship and our partnership have weathered many challenges … we expect it to continue to grow stronger,” Toner told a regular news briefing.
While the United States backed a return to democracy, Toner said it would be “premature... to lay our expectations for the near term” as Thailand mourned.
MUCH HAS CHANGED
While Washington condemned the 2014 coup, it has kept security ties with Bangkok, particularly through annual military exercises called Cobra Gold.
“The fact that we have been able to remain closely tethered and stayed largely on track with Cobra Gold and other cooperative efforts, notwithstanding the military takeover... is testament to the strong roots we have put down and the work that we’re doing,” the senior U.S. diplomat for Asia, Assistant Secretary of State Daniel Russel, said on Wednesday.
Murray Hiebert of Washington’s Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank, said much had changed since Obama announced his pivot policy in 2011.
“The king’s death adds to uncertainty in Southeast Asia, a region in considerable flux already. This makes the U.S. rebalance to Asia more difficult because the situation in so many countries is that of ‘wait and see.’
“When the pivot started, you had Thailand engaged, a new leader in Malaysia who wanted to engage, you had Aquino coming in the Philippines and very forward-leaning internationally and very open to the U.S.; you had an internationalist president in Indonesia. It was a rather different dynamic.”
King Bhumibol’s death means Washington finds itself having to rely even more on former foe Vietnam for any kind of strategic ballast in the region.
“The Vietnamese are providing the dynamism when it comes to strategic thinking,” U.S. Ambassador to Vietnam Ted Osius said in Washington on Tuesday.
“Indonesia is very internally focused right now... Thailand is very internally focused, and Malaysia has a rolling political crisis,” he continued.
“I don’t know exactly what direction the Philippines is headed; Singapore has a lot of strategic thinkers but it’s a city state; I don’t think you can really count on Laos, Cambodia and Myanmar to provide the strategic engine for ASEAN.”
There appears little prospect for now, however, that Vietnam would be willing to open its doors further to the U.S. military should the deal with the Philippines run into problems, given past animosities and concerns about China.
“I do not expect the Vietnamese calculation to be, ‘Oh, the Philippines is doing whatever it’s doing, let’s race full steam ahead with the United States.’ No, that’s not about to happen,” Osius said.
Slideshow (7 Images)
“The Vietnamese have been very measured in the pace at which they have expanded the security relationship.”
Hiebert said Asian countries remain keen on the U.S. pivot, given their worries about China, but the pace was likely to flag further, presenting a tougher task to revive the initiative once Obama leaves power.
“I wouldn’t declare the pivot dead... I think there’s still quite a bit of interest in the U.S., but some of the sort of dynamism that we saw earlier about building the region is a little bit diminished right now,” he said.I srael is considering building a $5bn island off the coast o f Gaza, which would would help to re-connect the strip with the outside world, an official has claimed.
According to reports released this week, the almost 8 km square island - about a fifth of the area of Gaza city - would host a seaport and could eventually include an airport. It would also house hotels and a smaller port for yachts.
Israel’s Intelligence and Transport Minister Israel Katz, seen as a close ally of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, told the Washington Post on Monday that while the island has been on the cards for years, the plan had only just started gathering steam.
"I do not think it is right to lock up two million people without any connection to the world," he said. "Israel has no interest to make life harder for the population there. But because of security concerns we can't build an airport or seaport in Gaza."
'Dubious, politically motivated' plan
However Husam Zumlot, an aid of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, slammed the proposal, calling it "dubious" and "politically motivated".
It would be "the final severing of Gaza from the rest of the occupied territory of the state of Palestine," he said.
The news about a possibly island construction, come as reports emerged in Turkish media suggesting that Israel and Turkey could normalise ties as early as Sunday, 26 June.
Sources, speaking on the condition of anonymity, told Turkish Hurriyet daily that a compromise had been made which would see Israel lift objections to a construction of a hospital, and will let Turkey supply the hospital with both staff and drugs.
The sources said Turkey and Germany would also jointly build an energy power plant in Gaza and that Turkey would construct a seawater distillation plant. However, these conditions fall well short of Turkey’s initial insistence that ties would only be restored if Israel’s almost decade-long blockade of Gaza was lifted.
A young boy in Gaza collects rubbish to make ends meet (AFP)
Relations between Turkey and Israel were hard hit in 2010 when Israeli commandoes stormed the Gaza-bound Mavi Marmara flotilla, killing 10 mainly Turkish activists on board. However, ties began to warm last year, with both sides indicating they are keen to bury the hatchet.
The proposed island would be located in international waters but security would be controlled by Israel, meaning that it could easily shut down the site which would be located some five kilometres from Gaza’s shores and connected by a singe bridge.
No details about where the money would come from or who would help to build the island were released, but Katz suggested that Chinese or possibly Saudi Arabian firms would head up construction.
Katz added that the scheme has widespread support among the Israeli security establishment but admitted that neither Hamas nor Fatah – the two main Palestinian political groups – had been consulted.CTV Ottawa
Dozens of rats have been found dead inside an Ottawa Fire Station in Riverside South, only a week after the station was shut down because of rat troubles.
As many as 50 rats were discovered at Fire Station 37 on Earl Armstrong Road on Tuesday alone. One photograph sent to CTV News shows 19 rats spread out on the curb outside the building.
Firefighters say they suspect the infestation could involve hundreds of rats. Fire officials say the station may need to be closed again to deal with the infestation.
"We shut it down briefly when the issue first arose because of concerns, and we may have to do that again," deputy chief Kim Ayotte said.
More than a week ago, as many as 30 rats were found on the premises. The building was evacuated over the weekend, and firefighters returned on Tuesday.
Ayotte said any firefighters who don't feel safe working out of the building can be deployed in "dynamic mode," meaning they're deployed on a truck that stays in the neighbourhood.
The city says the hole the rats are in is a vestibule area, not near the firefighters' sleeping quarters, and there's no danger to the workers' health.
"We have no concerns based on what the environmental engineers found in air quality, and what we've found with the work today" city area manager of facilities David Barkley said.AN: 5/26/17 Um...hi. Yeah, I'm still alive, and I'm still writing. I've had a LOT happen in the recent year and a half that I haven't updated this story. Between losing a career job, getting crushed emotionally by someone I loved deeply with all my heart, and surviving a suicide attempt, I lost my will to write along the way. Then yesterday I pulled up my story and started reading it. Then I opened my documents and found two different versions of Chapter 5 tucked away in them, partially complete. It took the better part of a day but I settled on the second one and began writing. It was the first time I've been able to truly finish a chapter to anything I've been working on in the last year or more. I am so sorry this has taken me so long to get finished, but I want you all to know that I AM going to finish this story. No, this isn't the last chapter. I can't promise a swift update for Chapter 6, as I don't know what chaos my mind will fall into after this. But I feel inspired for the first time in forever and I want this to continue.
As always, Review replies are at the end of the chapter. Thank you so much for sticking with me as long as you all have. You're all such wonderful people, thank you so much from the bottom of my heart.
All in all, her breakfast'surprise' had gone much better than she had anticipated. From the moment she'd entered the room, her sister couldn't seem to keep her eyes off the blonde...or her jaw off the floor. And if that wasn't telling enough, the perpetual flush that tinted the redhead's cheeks was as good a clue as any.
Anna wanted her. That one thought kept repeating over and over in the Queen's head, the events of that morning playing out in her mind from every possible angle. Everything seemed to be indicative of her sister's desire, from the slow, methodical way her eyes had traced their way up Elsa's body when she'd arrived for breakfast, to the flustered and breathless way she'd stumbled over her words.
She could still remember that heart-stopping moment when she was sure her sister was about to kiss her. But whatever it had been the redhead was going to do, instead she wound up wrapping Elsa in an awkward embrace. It had been a spur of the moment decision to pull the younger woman forward, but she hadn't expected it to work out so well. She could still feel her sister's soft breasts pressing against her own, her warm breath stuttering against Elsa's lips. And those teal eyes, peering straight into her soul in a single moment of heart-p |
race hatred and Jew hatred, why wasn’t left-wing radicalism discredited by Stalin and Mao and Pol Pot? If this is all about moral credibility and the company you keep, why did so many prominent historians and literary critics get to keep on calling themselves Marxists after every Marxist-Leninist regime committed mass murder on an epic scale? Why are Kipling’s politics or Eliot’s or Pound’s or even Heidegger’s considered so much more “problematic” and all-discrediting than the Stalinist strain in so much left-wing historiography and philosophy and criticism and art?
Conservatives have been asking these questions for a long time; they’re still good ones. But without defending the left-wing blindness that long disfigured Western debates about Marxism, you can still see other reasons why a distinctive set of taboos might have grown up around reactionary ideas in the post-World War II West.
The most important one is that political reaction’s worst crimes were committed close to home, in the heart of Europe in fact, while the darkest crimes of Communism were perpetrated in (relatively) distant lands. If the history of the 1930s and 1940s had been somewhat altered, and (let’s say) a Stalin-esque German Communist leader had allied with a Marxist-Leninist Japan to plunge the globe into a genocidal war (a war in which a reactionary White Russian Empire, led by a ruthless Admiral Kolchak, fought on the same side as Britain and France and the United States), then I suspect that left-wing radicalism would have seemed less idealistic and admirable subsequently than it did after the united anti-fascist front, and right-wing reaction would have seemed less absolutely evil than it did in the shadow of Hitler and Holocaust. But familiarity with evils breeds taboos against them, and since it was reaction — or certain styles thereof, at least — that helped prepare the way for the West’s “only culturally available icon of absolute evil,” its subsequent intellectual marginalization makes sense on a human level even before questions of academic bias enter in.
And then in the specifically American context, too, reactionary ideas begin with a kind of double handicap. First, America has no real ancien regime, no medieval Catholic past: Not only our liberals but our conservatives take certain liberal premises for granted, and the American reactionary always risks projecting an air of make-believe — a “look at me, Ma, I’m a pirate” sensibility — in a way that even now (or maybe especially now?) a European reactionary does not.
Second, to the extent that we have any inheritance that’s even somewhat reactionary and aristocratic and old-regime-ish, it’s the inheritance of the Old South, which for all its gifts and graces is morally corrupted at its roots and freighted with all the weight of America’s original sin.
So as with the crimes of the Nazis in Western Europe, the familiarity problem comes in here: If reaction in the American context means a Confederate flag and radicalism a Che Guevara tee-shirt, well, Che was a wicked man with a wicked ideology and Marxist regimes have committed worse atrocities than the C.S.A., but the Confederacy’s evils are still ours, still American, in a way that the killing fields and gulags are not.
The radical left has many crimes on its conscience, but in America it has been relatively powerless compared to elsewhere in the world. (Even if you make the implausible-but-interesting neo-reactionary move of arguing that we’ve actually become a Communist country given what Communism was once understood to be, that process has still been accomplished with relatively little in the way of bloodshed. To the extent that there’s a legacy of bloodshed on the American left, running from the progressive imperialists and eugenicists down through Roe. v. Wade, it’s more a broadly-liberal legacy than a specifically radical one.) Whereas America’s lone political and cultural outpost of something like reaction was actually powerful for a time (that’s why they called it the slave power), and it depended for its distinctiveness on the brutal subjugation of an entire race, a stain that neither nostalgia nor “Lincoln was a tyrant” revisionism can wash away.
So again, no intellectual conspiracies are necessary, per se, to explain why 1) it’s harder to think reactionary thoughts than radical ones in a country founded on a liberal revolution, and 2) why it gets harder still, from a moral and political perspective, when those reactionary thoughts keep bumping up against the brute fact of chattel slavery. It’s not impossible to think them; people do, myself sometimes included. But without a “Lost Cause” mythology to give them shelter, reactionary ideas in America tend to flit about like a bird without a nest, now alighting on Wendell Berry, now on Henry Adams, now on the anti-Federalists, now on European/Catholic/Orthodox alternatives, now on the idea that the entire American founding was a Lockean mistake … and lately, of course, on neoreaction.
Does all that flitting matter as something other than an obscure intellectual sideshow, raised to strange prominence by the Trump campaign? I think it might, for reasons specific to where the left and right (especially the younger left and right) have ended up right now. But it will take another post to explain why.VANCOUVER, BC - Vancouver Whitecaps FC confirmed today that defender Johnny Leverón has been named to the reserve list for Honduras’ provisional roster for the 2014 FIFA World Cup in Brazil.
The Yoro, Honduras-born centre back is one of seven alternate players that could be called in to Honduras’ World Cup roster. He will not join the team unless called up in case of an injury to one of the players named to Honduras' 23-man squad. The deadline for participating countries to name their final 23-man World Cup roster is June 2.
Should he be called up, Honduras has three friendly matches in the United States before heading to Brazil. They will face Turkey in Washington on May 29, before heading to Houston to take on Israel on June 1. Next, Honduras will fly to Miami to face England before heading for Brazil. The 2014 FIFA World Cup runs from June 12 to July 13.
At the international level, Leverón has scored three goals in 22 appearances with the Honduran senior national team, including a championship run in the 2011 Copa Centroamericano. He starred at the youth level, where he captained the U-17 squad and scored three goals at the 2007 Pan American Games. Leverón was also a member of Honduras' U-17 (2007) and U-20 (2009) FIFA World Cup squads and captained the U-23 squad at the 2012 Summer Olympics.
Since joining Whitecaps FC in February 2012, Leverón has started 20 of his 21 MLS appearances, including three appearances this season.
It’s not too late to participate in the best sporting experience in Vancouver. Whitecaps FC offer a flexible range of ticket products, including half-season tickets ($244), 5-packs ($149), student season tickets, and a youth soccer half-season ticket. Single-match tickets start at $22, subject to applicable fees. For more information on all Whitecaps FC ticket options, call 604.669.9283 ext. 2 or visit whitecapsfc.com/tickets.It's the movie that put Jackie Chan in the major leagues in the United States, but the Hong Kong star isn't a fan of his successful action comedy franchise "Rush Hour."
Chan said when he made the first installment of the "Rush Hour" series in 1998 he only wanted to test the U.S. market and didn't have high hopes.
"When we finished filming, I felt very disappointed because it was a movie I didn't appreciate and I did not like the action scenes involved. I felt the style of action was too Americanized and I didn't understand the American humor," Chan said in a blog entry on his Web site seen Sunday.
The actor said he made the sequel because he was offered an "irresistible" amount of money to do it and made the third installment, which was released recently, to satisfy fans of the series.
Chan said "Rush Hour 3" was no different from the first two installments for him.
"Nothing particularly exciting stood out that made this movie special for me... I spent four months making this film and I still don't fully understand the humor," he said, adding the comedic scenes may be lost on Asian audiences as well.
Chan's comments came even though the "Rush Hour" series, which revolves around the racial humor stemming from the pairing of a Chinese (Chan) and a black (Chris Tucker) police officer, helped the action star cross over to mainstream American audiences.
"Rush Hour" was Chan's first movie to break $100 million at the U.S. box office, earning $141 million, according to the box office tracking Web site Box Office Mojo. "Rush Hour 2" made $226 million and "Rush Hour 3" has earned $137 million so far.
Chan has been known to be blase about his Hollywood work. He said in a 2005 interview with The Associated Press that he uses the high salary he earns in America to fund Chinese-language projects that he's truly interested in.
He also recently showed little enthusiasm for his latest Hollywood project, "The Forbidden Kingdom," which marks his first on-screen collaboration with fellow action star Jet Li.
"The movie I just shot with Jet Li, 'The Forbidden Kingdom,' actually isn't that great," Chan was quoted as saying by the Web site of China's official Xinhua News Agency.
"'The Forbidden Kingdom' is a movie made for Americans," the report quoted Chan as saying. "Chinese viewers may not like it. If I say it's a good movie now, then many people will be filled with overly high expectations and be disappointed when they see the movie."15User Rating: 1 out of 5
Review title of Clarid Severely Limited - Ads as Notifications IN PAID VERSION
I made the mistake of not trying the free version. Immediately after purchase, I was met with incredibly long load times, severely delayed message sending/receiving, zero notifications, and overall limited functionality and options. I do everything I can to be fair and open-minded, but the issues are just too much of a letdown despite how excited I was for a native alternative to the Chrome plugin. When first loaded and signed in with my Google account, it asks to import contacts, then immediately refuses to use them when I attempt to look any of them up to start a new message. On top of that, it doesn't allow you to manually input phone numbers for the Google Voice integration. It doesn't allow you to change anything concerning the visuals, which look nice enough in the screenshots, but quickly become an issue when you find that the background quickly alternates between two different images every few seconds. The dark theme is appreciated, but the fixed theme/colors too easily clash.
Virtual Pulse responded on 5/24/2018 Hello Clarid. We are happy to announce that we've improved our App since the last update, thanks for your suggestions and requests. Share your thoughts on new improvements with us - support@virtualpulse.czWASHINGTON — Porn mogul Larry Flynt in a full page newspaper ad on Sunday offered $1 million for information about the sexual indiscretions of well-known US politicians or government officials.
Flynt’s offer, appearing in the Washington Post newspaper, asked readers to phone their tips to his hotline, or to send an email to a dedicated online address at his “Hustler” porn magazine.
“Do you have information about infidelity, sexual impropriety or corruption concerning a current United States senator, congressperson or prominent government official?” the ad asks in large, bold type.
“Can you provide documented evidence of your claims? Larry Flynt and Hustler Magazine will pay you up to $1 million if we choose to used your material and publish your verified story,” the ad said, adding that all correspondence would be kept “strictly confidential.”
It is just the latest of the famous porn publisher’s sporadic forays into the realm of politics.
Last year he offered disgraced US lawmaker Anthony Weiner a job, after the New York congressman resigned over a tawdry “sexting” scandal.
He also offered a $1 million dollar reward last year for anyone who could produce proof of illicit sexual liaisons by then-presidential contender Rick Perry.
Flynt has fought several prominent legal battles involving the First Amendment — the right to free speech guaranteed in the US Constitution — and has unsuccessfully run for public office.
He won a seminal free speech case in 1988 before the US Supreme Court.
That case “Hustler Magazine v. Falwell” came after he was sued by prominent US reverend Jerry Falwell in 1983 over an offensive ad in his porn publication that parodied the televangelist.A boy wearing a Peking Opera mask waves a Chinese national flag on Beijing's Tiananmen Square, March 1, 2011. REUTERS/Jason Lee China's Baoding Tianwei Baobian Electric just became the first state-owned business to default on onshore Chinese debt according to Reuters— that's a bad news landmark for China's economy, which is struggling to cope with a slowdown in growth.
The company is owned by Baoding Tianwei Group, a larger power company.
The subsidiary had bond interest payments to make Tuesday but could not raise the funds to meet them.
The default will likely raise fears that China will allow other state-owned companies to default — which may have accessed cheaper credit on the assumption that they had the implicit support and backing of Beijing. If investors start to think that isn't true, there could be turmoil in the country's bond markets.
On Monday there was another default, of Kaisa, a real estate developer listed on the Hong Kong stock exchange. It was the first time that a developer had been unable to pay interest on dollar-denominated bonds.Nick Fetty | May 28, 2015
Iowa ranks third in the nation for the rate of honeybee dying off according to a report by researchers from 10 different institutions.
The report found 61.4 percent of honeybees in Iowa died between 2014 and 2015. Oklahoma led the nation with a 63.4 percent die-off rate while Illinois was in second at 62.4 percent. The research was a collaboration of the Bee Informed Partnership, the Apiary Inspectors of America, and the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA).
The study received valid responses from 6,128 beekeepers who managed 398,247 colonies in October 2014. This accounts for just 14.5 percent of the country’s estimated 2.74 million managed honey bee colonies. Approximately two-thirds (67.2 percent) of respondents reported winter colony loss rates greater than the average rate of 18.7 percent.
“What we’re seeing with this bee problem is just a loud signal that there’s some bad things happening with our agro-ecosystems,” study co-author Keith Delaplane (University of Georgia) said in an interview with The Guardian. “We just happen to notice it with the honeybee because they are so easy to count.”
The results from this report are preliminary and the researchers expect these rates to fluctuate. A more detailed report is being prepared for publication in a peer-reviewed journal at a later date. Funding for the research was provided by the USDA’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture.
Earlier this year researchers at Iowa State University were awarded a three-year, $103,626 grant “to better understand how agricultural landscape diversity and approaches to pest management impact the health of native bees and other pollinators.”TOKYO (Reuters) - Tokyo Electric Power Co Holdings said on Thursday it has been hit with another lawsuit filed in a U.S. court seeking $5 billion for compensation over the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster, the second filed against the utility in a U.S. court.
FILE PHOTO: Logo of the Tokyo Electric Power Co Holdings (TEPCO) is seen on helmets at TEPCO's South Yokohama Thermal Power Station in Yokohama, Japan July 18, 2017. REUTERS/Issei Kato/File Photo
The suit filed by 157 individuals is seeking that amount to set up a compensation fund for the costs of medical tests and treatment they say they need after efforts to support the recovery from the world’s worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl in 1986.
The utility, known as Tepco, is being sued regarding improper design, construction and maintenance, claiming compensation for physical, mental and economic damages, the company said in a statement.
A multi-plaintiff lawsuit was filed on Aug. 18, 2017, against Tokyo Electric Power Co and other parties in the Southern District Court in California, the legal information group Justia said on its website.
Tepco has been hit with more lawsuits than in any previous Japanese contamination suit over the meltdowns of three reactors at its Fukushima Daiichi plant north of Tokyo after a massive earthquake and tsunami in March 2011.
Radiation forced 160,000 people from their homes, many never to return, and destroyed businesses, fisheries and agriculture.
In June, a federal appeals court cleared the way for a group of U.S. military personnel to file a suit against Tepco over radiation exposure that they say occurred during recovery efforts on board the USS Ronald Reagan.
Tepco did not make clear whether the two suits involved the same plaintiffs but Justia has two cases listed.
Shareholders of Tepco are suing the utility’s executives for a record 5.5 trillion yen ($67.4 billion) in compensation, in a long standing case.
The company’s former chairman and other executives of the company appeared in court in June to answer charges of professional negligence, in the first criminal case after the meltdowns at the plant. They all pleaded not guilty.
The criminal and civil legal cases do not threaten financial ruin for Tepco, which is backstopped by Japanese taxpayers. The company faces nearly $150 billion of costs to decommission the Fukushima plant and clean up the surrounding area, according to the latest government estimate.
Tepco shares fell nearly 1 percent on Thursday, in line with many of Japan’s other utilities, before the company announced the lawsuit.
(This story corrects second last paragraph to say billion, not million.)As lawmakers, coalitions and activists prepare for a potential vote early next month on legislation that would legalize same-sex marriage in Illinois, even more support for the bill has arrived from the local religious community.
Over 200 faith leaders and clergy members from across Illinois — many in Chicago — said Sunday they fully support the bill, which would grant full marriage rights to gay and lesbian couples as well as give religious institutions the ability to opt out of recognizing and ordaining those marriages.
With the holiday around the corner, the religious leaders — together as a coalition — expressed their support in a open letter to state legislators and urged them to vote in favor of the bill, the Religious Freedom and Marriage Fairness Act.
“We dedicate our lives to fostering faith and compassion, and we work daily to promote justice and fairness for all,” the coalition stated in the letter. “Standing on these beliefs, we think that it is morally just to grant equal opportunities and responsibilities to loving, committed same-sex couples. There can be no justification for the law treating people differently on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity.”
The clergy also highlighted how the bill guards the rights of religious institutions in the sense that it does not require to perform a marriage or union which goes against its beliefs.
“There are differences among our many religious traditions,” the clergy wrote. “Some recognize and bless same-sex unions, and some do not. The important thing is that the Religious Freedom and Marriage Fairness Act protects religious freedom and guarantees that all faiths will decide which marriages should be consecrated and solemnized within their tradition.”
Last week, the chief sponsors of the bill, Sen. Heather Steans (D-Chicago) and Rep. Greg Harris (D-Chicago) said they are close to securing enough support to bring the bill up for vote during the legislature’s lame duck session, beginning Jan. 2.
The bill needs at least 60 votes in the House and 30 votes in the Senate before moving to Gov. Pat Quinn’s desk. Quinn indicated he will sign the bill into law and also urged lawmakers to vote in favor of it.
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On Thursday, local same-sex marriage advocates announced the formation of a coalition of organizations that will work to pass the bill early next year. Lambda Legal, the ACLU of Illinois and Equality Illinois are the three founding members of the marriage equality coalition titled Illinois Unites for Marriage.
Illinois polls show an upswing in support for same-sex marriage among voters, including a September poll by the Paul Simon Public Policy Institute at Southern Illinois University, which showed a 10-point increase in support for marriage equality among Illinoisans.
More data from the poll shows a majority of Illinois Catholics approve of gay and lesbian unions, and the percentage of Catholics who support full marriage equality is just below the state in general, at about 40 percent and 44 percent, respectively.
However, not all religious organizations support gay marriage. Another coalition of organizations announced last week that it will fight the marriage equality bill by lobbying legislators to vote against it.
Another poll by Public Policy Polling indicate the majority of Illinois Hispanic and black voters support for same-sex marriage. Seventy percent of Hispanic voters and 60 percent of African-American voters support legalizing same-sex marriage, according to the poll.
Nine states and the District of Columbia recognize same-sex marriages. Three states — Washington, Maine and Maryland — approved same-sex marriage ballot measure in the November elections.
The Civil Rights Agenda, a Chicag0-based LGBT rights and policy group launched an online petition to support the bill last week.
This Story Filed UnderABC’s Imaginary Mary is…well, you can just judge by the title and the concept of a grown woman with a cartoon imaginary friend how dumb it is. The show is about Alice (Jenna Elfman) trying to adapt to a relationship with a man, Ben (Stephen Schneider), who has kids. What has so far been a lame late-season blended family sitcom sunk even further with one of everyone’s least favorite modern subjects: feminism. This time, it’s in the form of a student-written high-school play which, so far, has never in history made anything better.
In the April 11 episode “The Parent-y Trap,” the school puts on the musical Grease, which teenage feminist Dora (Matreya Scarrwener) calls, "A classic tale of misogyny and female degradation." Since that unoriginal train of third-wave feminism thought isn’t enough for the show, Dora decides to put on her own version of the story to rival the school’s - starring her 16-year-old brother Andy (Nicholas Coombe), who didn't get a part in the school's production, as her "post-feminist hero, John Newton Olivia." The result should basically get Dora ready for a gender studies university art show.
Alice: Oh, Andy.
Ben: I know, but let's keep perspective, this isn't the worst thing that's ever happened to him.
Andy: This is the worst thing that has ever happened to me!
Both: Andy, they don't know - Oh, buddy
Andy: I've been such a tool for the patriarchy, making you change for me? A real man should love you just the way you are. I'm a greaser no more.
Gigi: Oh, baby, I'm so happy you turned your back on society for me. I'm going to work now, where my pay is equal to my male colleagues.
Ben: What the hell is going on?
Dora: Andy, this is hard for me to say because you're my brother, but that was amazing.
Andy: Really?
Dora: You are my post-feminist hero, John Newton Olivia!
Andy: Can you believe that? I'm John Newton Olivia!
Alice: Of course I can believe it! I'm so happy for you.
Andy: I know this wasn't our original plan, but after I crushed that audition and didn't even get a small role, I said, "Mr. Doyle, screw you." Five minutes later, I apologized. I was raised right. The man's got a lot on his plate.
Ben: And now you got your first lead.
Alice: First of many.
Ben: Easy.
Andy: Thank you, Alice. I-I couldn't have done it without you.
Dora: Come on, I want to get you fitted. First dress is in a week. Also, you'll be wearing a dress for the final number.
Andy: Cool.
Alice: Oh, my God. What a roller coaster. I feel like I've had a heart attack, walked a tightrope, and won the lottery, all at the same time.
Ben: Uh-huh. There's a word for those feelings parent-y.
Alice: Ugh. All the children have the power to do that?
Ben: Yep, even Dora.
Alice: Oh, boy. Now I get why you tried to stop me.
Ben: I'm glad I couldn't.
Alice: For the record, I may be feeling a little parent-y, but I did not cry.
Ben: No, you didn't.
Alice: I didn't.
Andy: There's a long list of things that I like about you and appearance is not numbers one on through 22. Some men like a woman with a sexy rear...
Alice: Are you getting this?
Ben: Oh, I'm getting it.
Alice: Look at Bunny with the spotlight - like a pro!
Ben: Right? Said it was an important job and I meant it.
Mary: He's a star! Sure, of a garage play, but still!
Ensemble: Whoo-hoo! - Equal pay Equal pay - Equal pay!
Mary: I don't know what I'm watching, but I love it!
Ensemble: Equal pay, equal pay Sha-la-la-la-la-la
Even if you can get past the boy in the dress or the lyrics regarding equal pay, which I’m pretty sure was dated even when the original Grease premiered, the play is just awful. The one upside to this is that even Dora’s seven-year-old sister Bunny (Erica Tremblay) says the play was terrible. I’m glad that there is at least one sensible thought in this fictional world, but, with our current run of feminist plays where the Vagina Monologues is too conservative for people, I can’t say the same for the real world.(CNN) -- There are two certainties in airline seat pockets: pretzel crumbs and SkyMall.
And while most travelers try to avoid the mysterious debris left by passengers past, SkyMall has been a welcome addition to the seatback catchalls since the 1990s.
"I found that it was one of those things that anyone who had traveled in the United States kind of knew about," said Mike Barish, a freelance travel writer who reviews SkyMall products for the travel site Gadling. "Some people are in business class; some people are in economy... some people like to travel, and some people hate it. But everybody knows SkyMall."
The catalog's merchandising team receives hundreds of inquiries every week from vendors, manufacturers and retailers who want their items to be featured, said Joey O'Donnell, customer experience manager for SkyMall.
"We're looking for really special items," O'Donnell said. "We have to look at it and say, 'this solves a problem, and this is so unique. I know our customers will love it.' "
And where else could you purchase a Harry Potter wand, an indoor dog restroom and a fire escape ladder, all from the same place?
The merchandising team has been doing its job so well for so long that it can just look at an item and know it's going to be a winner with SkyMall's audience, O'Donnell said.
"We have this garden zombie -- the size of a person -- crawling out of the ground," he said. "When I saw it, I was like, 'no way.' But sure enough, it became one of our top sellers."
Other "unique" items aren't so lucky. If you thought the catalog's products were humorous, the list of rejects is downright silly.
There's Chuck the Yuck, a "hip line of barf bags"; GoGirl, which helps women urinate while standing; and The FrankFormer, which "turns ordinary hot dogs into a smiling 'hot dog man.' "
"You almost expect them to be fake products from 'Saturday Night Live,' " Barish said. "I think the fact that these things actually exist just makes people happy."
Barish's first experience with a SkyMall product was the SkyRest, a giant, wedge-shaped travel pillow that he reviewed for Gadling in 2008.
"If you brought up SkyMall in conversation, it was the one product that someone would make a joke about," he said. "A) because it was so large and B) because the person in the photograph sleeping on it looked so uncomfortable."
Since his first experience, Barish has bought two photo blankets and Fernando, a Chihuahua statue, for his friends.
"Seeing these fun, silly things takes your mind off what is normally a very tedious or uncomfortable situation," Barish said of flying.
The same goes for comedian Dan Nainan, who took 84 flights in 2010 and purchases from SkyMall regularly.
"There's that time between when you can't use your laptop when you're taking off and landing, so that's prime SkyMall time," Nainan said. "Their selection is so varied that pretty much anybody from any walk of life could pick it up and find something."
From a GPS keychain to video recording sunglasses, Nainan has seen it all -- including a submarine.
"That was a little bit beyond my budget," he said, laughing. "Once in a while, they'll throw in something ridiculously expensive and frivolous like that."
For Barish, that item was the Cruzin Cooler, which combines "the ability to have cold food or a beverage handy along with the means to get somewhere, without walking," according to its website. For $500, the motorized cooler just wasn't worth it to him. "I don't even know where I'd drive it," Barish said.
The fun nature of the items featured in the catalog reflects the company's attitude, said Christine Aguilera, CEO of SkyMall.
"We're a company that has high expectations for ourselves, but fun is in our corporate motto," Aguilera said. "That's what makes SkyMall what it is. We scour the Earth to find unique and innovative products."
As proved by the popularity of the corpse zombie, it's hard to know what will work until it's put in front of 1.6 million people per day, she said.
But SkyMall wasn't always so quirky.
When it began in 1990, founder Bob Worsley pictured SkyMall carrying mainstream products but quickly found that people were wary of buying everyday items at an airport.
"I think people feel that anything at the airport is going to be overpriced," Worsley said. "So what works are unique items that people can't find anywhere else. If they can buy it at the store, then they will probably buy it there."
Since Worsley's original plans for the catalog evolved, SkyMall is more successful than ever. The catalog is available on 88 percent of domestic flights and reaches more than 650 million air travelers each year, according to its website.
"At the end of the day, while everyone laughs at the silly products, I have to imagine that the thing that keeps them going are the practical items," Barish said. "Not everyone wants to spend money on a conversation piece."
For example, the best-selling items in SkyMall's history were a nose hair trimmer and a mosquito magnet (a net that attracts and traps insects), quantity-wise and dollar-wise, respectively.
"Products that solve problems are the ones that work best in SkyMall," O'Donnell said. "But strange sells. The items have to solve a purpose, even if that purpose is just making someone smile."
And with the spreading availability of Wi-Fi on flights, Sky Mall has more smiles to look forward to on the horizon. Its deal with GoGo Inflight Internet allows passengers to browse SkyMall for free, escalating what is already a niche market.
"SkyMall is perfect for things you don't necessarily need but would make great conversation pieces if you were willing to be silly and whimsical enough to actually buy them," Barish said. "It solves the problems we didn't know we had until it told us about them."The waiver is believed to relate to special counsel Robert Mueller's work in recent years as a partner at the WilmerHale law firm. | Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images Justice Department won't disclose details on Mueller ethics waiver
The Justice Department is refusing to reveal details of the process that led up to former FBI Director Robert Mueller being granted an ethics waiver to serve as special counsel investigating the Trump campaign's alleged collusion with Russia during the 2016 presidential election.
In response to a POLITICO Freedom of Information Act request, the agency released a one-sentence memo Friday confirming that Mueller was granted a conflict-of-interest waiver in order to assume the politically sensitive post.
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The waiver is believed to relate to Mueller's work in recent years as a partner at the WilmerHale law firm, which also represented former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort and White House adviser Jared Kushner, who is also President Donald Trump's son-in-law.
However, the document signed by Justice's top career official, Associate Deputy Attorney General Scott Schools, provides no detail at all of the grounds for the waiver. In fact, it's so vague that it doesn't even convey why anyone would think Mueller needed such a release.
"Pursuant to 5 CFR 2635.502(d), I hereby authorize Robert Mueller's participation in the investigation into Russia's role in the presidential campaign of 2016 and all matters arising from the investigation," Schools wrote in the "authorization" signed on May 18, one day after Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein formally appointed Mueller to the position.
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The agency's Justice Management Division said it located a two-page "recommendation memorandum" in response to POLITICO's request but was declining to release that on grounds it would interfere with the deliberative process inside the department.
The secrecy surrounding the waiver could fuel ongoing efforts by Republican lawmakers and some Trump allies to raise doubts about the impartiality of the Mueller investigation. In order to paint the effort as tainted by anti-Trump bias, critics of the probe have seized on the political ties and contribution history of several of Mueller's deputies, as well as text messages critical of Trump allegedly exchanged by FBI agents assigned to the case.
Two ethics experts contacted by POLITICO said they were troubled that the Justice Department wasn't more forthcoming about the basis for Mueller's waiver.
"I think it's strange they're not providing the reasoning," said Kathleen Clark, a law professor at Washington University in St. Louis. "I don't understand why they wouldn't share it, especially given the current sensitivity of the issue and the way members of Congress are politically trying to undermine this investigation.... Since the whole point of this regulation is to ensure public confidence in Mueller's impartiality, the Justice Department's refusal to provide its reason — I'm not saying they can't do it legally — but it seems inconsistent with the purpose of the regulation."
"I think it's sloppy," said Richard Painter, a former White House ethics lawyer under President George W. Bush. "The conspiratorial side of me thinks somebody at Justice is not giving you the explanation for the waiver because they want to create the impression that Robert Mueller has a problem when Robert Mueller doesn't have a problem.... This is going to lead to Fox News conspiracy talk."
The Justice Department appears to have been more forthcoming with explanations of waivers granted to other officials. In May, Justice released a batch of ethics waivers granted to Noel Francisco in travel ban litigation despite his former law firm Jones Day's entry into that legal fight. The memos were released in response to a lawsuit filed by the liberal watchdog group American Oversight. Other ethics waivers the agency has released over the years also seem to consist of a recommendation and approval, with both documents made public together.
A spokesman for Mueller's office offered no comment on the issue.
However, a Justice Department official defended the withholding of the waiver request for the special counsel.
“The memo is protected by the deliberative process privilege (Exemption 5 of the Freedom of Information Act). This is in contrast to the communications related to the Francisco waiver, in which the deliberative discussions were expressly adopted by the decision maker," the official said.
Courts have held that when a government official invokes an adviser's recommendation, that proposal becomes a part of the final decision that must be disclosed under FOIA. When the official's decision doesn't expressly cite the recommendation, it can typically be withheld, although the department is not obligated to keep the recommendation under wraps.
About a week after Mueller's appointment in May, Justice Department spokeswoman Sarah Isgur Flores said he had been cleared for his new post by ethics officials, but her statement was vague and did not identify who gave that approval.
"Government ethics regulations permit the Department of Justice to authorize an employee to participate in a matter where their former employer represents a party," Flores said on May 23. "While we cannot confirm or deny the applicability of the regulation to the matters to which Special Counsel Mueller was appointed, we can confirm that the Department ethics experts have reviewed the matters and determined that Mr. Mueller’s participation in the matters assigned to him is appropriate."
At the time the waiver was signed, the Justice Department had not publicly confirmed any investigative interest in Manafort or Kushner. Manafort was indicted in October on charges, including money laundering and failing to register as a foreign agent for Ukraine. Kushner was reportedly questioned by Mueller's team last month but has not been charged.
WilmerHale officials have said that when Mueller worked at the firm he had no role in representing Manafort or Kushner.
CNN reported in September that while at WilmerHale, Mueller worked very briefly for a company involved in a nuclear energy project championed by Michael Flynn, the retired Defense Intelligence Agency chief who would go on to serve for less than a month as Trump's national security adviser. It's unclear whether the one-sentence waiver finding from Schools covers what was reported to be less than half an hour's work Mueller billed to the firm, IronBridge.
Earlier this month, Flynn pleaded guilty to making false statements to the FBI in the course of the investigation Mueller is now heading. The former national security adviser, who has agreed to cooperate with prosecutors, is awaiting sentencing.
Painter said that granting the waiver to Mueller was necessary and appropriate, in part to head off gamesmanship among those targeted by Mueller's investigation.
"This is a no-brainer to get |
political crisis, which has weakened its capacity to tackle a budget deficit of 5.5% of GDP this year.
Weighed down by debt, Portugal’s medium-term growth prospects are poor. Public debt has reached 127% of GDP, and the potential burden is higher. The government has big contingent liabilities, arising from guarantees, public-private partnerships and publicly owned firms. These could turn into actual debt: the IMF estimates they could add a further 15% of GDP to the burden, taking the ratio above 140%. Whereas Irish ten-year bond yields are below 4%, Portuguese yields are above 6.5%—too high for so indebted a country. Markets are signalling disbelief that Portugal will avoid some form of second bail-out.
That was the fate of Greece last year, following its original rescue in May 2010. Altogether its two bail-outs have provided €246 billion of rescue financing, bigger than Greek GDP. And yet even more is now necessary: the IMF says that a hole of €4.4 billion will open up in late 2014. Since it can lend only if financing is secure a year ahead, the IMF wants reassurance from the Eurogroup of finance ministers that they will plug the gap. Beyond lies another hole in 2015, of €6.5 billion.
The fundamental problem is that Greek debt is still far too high. Public debt will peak at more than 175% of GDP at the end of this year. The hope is that economic recovery from 2014 together with continuing fiscal stringency will put it on a downward path. But Greece will need more debt relief if it is to hit a target of 124% by 2020. Since Greek debt is now overwhelmingly in official hands and the IMF insists on its loans being repaid, that relief will have to come from the rest of the euro zone. The IMF says that the Eurogroup must provide debt relief worth 4% of GDP (around €7 billion) in 2014-15. And it will have to come up with even more to reach another target, for debt to drop below 110% by 2022.
Beating targets for privatisation revenues would help, but Greece has a terrible record of undershooting them: the goal for this year will be missed by €1 billion. The main answer will have to be debt forgiveness. Europe has already eased debt burdens on bailed-out economies by lowering interest rates on its loans and extending maturities. Greece is getting even more help, receiving for example central-bank profits from buying its bonds. But it is still not enough. That awkward truth, already apparent before the German election, will become manifest after it.Glenn Beck: Drawing On 1950s Extremism?
In the Oct. 18 issue of The New Yorker, historian Sean Wilentz examines "how extremist ideas held at bay for decades inside the Republican Party have exploded anew -- and why, this time, party leaders have done virtually nothing to challenge those ideas, and a great deal to abet them."
toggle caption Jose Luis Magana/AP
Wilentz, who teaches at Princeton University, argues that the rhetoric expressed by both conservative broadcaster Glenn Beck and the Tea Party is nothing new -- and is rooted in an extremist ideology that has been around since the Cold War, a view that the Republican Party is now embracing.
"I think what's happening is the Republican Party is willing to chase after whatever it can to get the party back -- to get power back," he tells Fresh Air's Terry Gross. "This is what's happening in the Republican Party, so instead of drawing lines, they're jumping over fences to look like they're in the good graces of these Tea Party types."
Wilentz says Beck, who has emerged as a unifying figure and intellectual guide for the Tea Party movement, finds fodder for his Fox News Channel and syndicated radio shows in the ideas espoused by the John Birch Society, an ultraconservative political group founded in 1958 that, Wilentz writes, "became synonymous with right-wing extremism."
Enlarge this image toggle caption Daniel Kramer Daniel Kramer
"It's a version of history that demonizes the progressive era, particularly Woodrow Wilson," Wilentz says. "It sees it as the beginning of America's going down the road to totalitarianism, which ends in Beck's version with Barack Obama."
Particularly troublesome, Wilentz says, are the gross historical inaccuracies Beck makes on his Fox show, which now reaches more than 2 million people each day.
"On one of his shows, for example, he pulled out a 'Mercury' dime. On the back of [the dime] is the fasces, which is the symbol of fascism," Wilentz says. "So [Beck] says, 'Aha! Who brought the dime in? It was Woodrow Wilson. We've been on the road to fascism for a long time.' [But he's] neglecting the fact that fasces didn't become a fascist symbol until well after that dime was made and designed -- and the man who designed it [knew that] fasces was a design of war and balanced it off with an olive branch. Those are the facts. It has nothing to do with the coming of American fascism under Woodrow Wilson."
Sean Wilentz In 'The New Yorker' Confounding Fathers: The Tea Party's Cold War Roots
Wilentz says Beck is the latest in a long line of figures who have challenged mainstream political historians and presented an opposing view as the truth.
"Glenn Beck is trying to give [viewers] a version of American history that is supposedly hidden," he says. "Supposedly, all we historians -- left, right and center -- have been doing for the past 100 years is to keep true American history from you. And that true American history is what Glenn Beck is teaching.... It's a version of history that is beyond skewed.... But of course, that's what Beck expects us to say. He lives in a kind of Alice in Wonderland world, where if people who actually know the history say what he's teaching is junk, he says, 'That's because you're trying to hide the truth.' "
Interview Highlights
On historical distortions made by Glenn Beck
"What he does that's odd is pick out what are historical facts but of limited importance and blows them up. He talks about the near 'Depression of 1946,' which he says was cured by 'good old-fashioned conservative economics' with a Republican Congress. Well, yes, in 1946 there was certainly an economic downturn -- we were just coming out of World War II. That was expected. How much of that has to do with a vindication of conservative economics is highly tangential. He manages to talk about that as if it were as severe a problem as the Great Depression beginning with the crash in 1929. Beck has all kinds of tricks, though, and he's interested in all kinds of things with the idea that there's something hidden that he is going to expose."
On the John Birch Society
"The John Birch Society was founded in 1958 at a meeting in Indianapolis in which Robert Welch presided for a couple of days and read his manifesto of what's going wrong [in America].... The idea was the John Birch Society was going to influence local politics. They saw the country as having been taken over by the totalitarianists -- by the communists. So they were going to try and undo that. And Welch says in the Blue Book, 'You know, it hasn't come to a military conflict quite yet. We don't have to overthrow these guys with a violent revolution.' So there's still a possibility for political action. And that's what the John Birch Society was devoted to: education and political action so that their people would get involved in local politics so the right people and the correct people would get elected to the school board, which was very important in deciding what kinds of books students would be reading in public schools. They wanted to make sure that the right kinds of people were running and getting elected.... Somewhere by the early '60s, it was estimated that they had as many as 100,000 members around the country but many, many more sympathizers."
On the John Birch Society and racism
"The John Birch Society wanted to have nothing to do with segregation, wanted nothing to do with any of that as an expression of white supremacy. However, they did oppose all of the civil rights laws because they saw it as an overleaning federal government taking control of people's lives, of overstepping its boundaries. So they opposed all of that."
On the role extremists are playing within the Republican Party today
"The only [dissenting] gesture coming out of the Republican Party that I've seen is coming from Karl Rove, of all people -- an unlikely dissident, but there he is, who on primary night pointed to one of the Tea Party candidates in Delaware and said some of her statements were nutty and she might not prevail in November... after which he was set upon by Sarah Palin and Rush Limbaugh and the whole blogosphere and told to get back in line -- which he did a couple of days later, coming back on Fox News a couple of days later and saying that he thinks 'Christine O'Donnell is a great candidate and should be supported.' So he was whipped back into line."A raging wildfire in B.C.'s Okanagan Valley has forced 1,500 people from their homes in the community of Peachland and officials are asking dozens more to be prepared to leave at a moment's notice.
Emergency officials were waiting for first light on Monday to conduct helicopter surveys of the fire.
Peachland Mayor Keith Fielding said four homes were believed to be burning but no one was reported injured.
Fire officials confirmed that the fast-moving blaze, which was spotted in an area called Trepanier Bench sometime late Sunday afternoon, was quickly whipped into a major burn by 30 to 40 km/h winds, reaching an estimated 100 hectares in size by 6 p.m. PT.
About 150 firefighters from the region and province were extinguishing spot fires and monitoring the blaze overnight.
Forecasters were predicting a cold front to move in early this morning, creating unpredictable conditions.
Fresh erratic winds up to 40 km/h were predicted, but so too was the possibility of light rain, along with lower temperatures around 17 C that might temper the flames.
Resident Charles Kilpatrick, who spoke to CBC News from an emergency evacuation centre after being ordered out of his home by RCMP, said the fire progressed "very quickly."
"Within a matter of an hour, really, we just looked over the lake and saw the smoke and then sure enough it just spread," he said.
Residents on a number of streets were ordered to leave their homes. Other sections of the community are under an evacuation alert and officials says residents should be prepared to leave their homes on short notice.
Residents are asked to report to the emergency social services reception centre at the Westbank Lions Community Hall at 2466 Main Street in West Kelowna.
Situation changing quickly
Bruce Smith, with the Emergency Operations Centre in Kelowna, said Sunday night that the situation was changing rapidly and even those who have not yet been forced to leave should prepare.
"If anyone is outside the evacuation area, they should be taking appropriate steps to prepare themselves should the evacuation area expand."
States of local emergency have been declared for affected areas within the Central Okanagan West Electoral Area and in the District of Peachland.
Peachland Elementary School will be closed until further notice.
Evacuation orders Residents on the following streets in Peachland, B.C., were ordered to leave: 1st Avenue, 2nd Avenue, 3rd Avenue, 4th Avenue, 6th Avenue, 7th Avenue, Clarence Road, Clements Crescent, Coldham Road, Cousins Place, Cousins Road, Desert Pines Avenue, Dryden Road, Greata Road, Huston Road, Inglis Place, Lang Court, Lever Court, Lornell Court, Mackinnon Road, MacNeill Court, Morrison Crescent, Morrison Court, Morrison Place, Pincushion Place, Ponderosa Drive, Ponderosa Place, Shaw Road, Smith Way, Star Place, Sutherland Road, Trepanier Bench Road, Trepanier Heights, Trepanier Road, Walker Road and Witt Place.
Highway 97 was closed between the north and south ends of Peachland for several hours but reopened after 9 p.m.
Mounties say animal rescue crews, along with a number of trailers, have been brought in to help move livestock out of the path of the fire.
Residents are being asked to avoid the Westside Road area so emergency responders can tackle the fire, and stay tuned to media reports for updated information.
'It looks like the whole mountain is on fire'
The situation changed dramatically in just over an hour as high winds fanned the flames. A water bomber arrived on scene early Sunday evening to help battle the blaze.
Those living near the fire prepared to leave as the flames drew closer and thick smoke billowed in the sky.
Walter Huber, a winemaker at Hainle Vineyards, said the fire was spreading rapidly.
"It looks like the whole mountain is on fire on the other side," he said.
"There's lots of smoke … It's right in a residential area."
Huber, who fled as the flames got closer, said his family's business is directly in the fire's path.
Smoke can be seen billowing from a fire just outside of Peachland, B.C. (Belle Puri/CBC)
"The firefighters and the police just evacuated everyone and as I had to leave the winery, there was already sparks in the air," he said.
"It was getting very close. It must have been within less than a kilometre of the winery. I'm not feeling good at all. In fact, I'm quite sick to my stomach. Of course, I don't know anything until we're going to be able to get back up there. I hope the winery is still standing."
Huber wanted to stay to protect the winery but the flames were too close.
One resident told CBC News they hadn't seen orange smoke like this in the area since 2003, when a wildfire in Kelowna forced the evacuation of 27,000 residents.
2nd fire near Falkland, B.C.
Meanwhile, about 80 kilometres north of Peachland, crews battled another wildfire near Falkland.
Vernon RCMP spokesperson Gord Molendyk said crews responded to a fire near the Whispering Pines restaurant just after 6 p.m.
He said crews were on scene and some fire retardant had been dropped, but the size of the fire was unclear.
Highway 97 was closed in both directions between the junction with Highway 97A and the junction with Highway 1.
As of 9 p.m. PT, police and emergency personnel were conducting an assessment to determine whether an evacuation order is warranted.
Molendyk said it was too early to say what the cause of the fire might be.
Email your pictures or video of the fire to cbcnewsvancouver@cbc.caNotcutts, Hillier, Squires, Blue Diamond and SCATS become the latest retailers to ban chemicals linked to bee decline
A campaign to banish pesticides linked to the fall in bee populations appears to be gathering pace after at least five garden centre chains agreed to remove products blamed for the decline.
Hardware retailers B&Q, Wickes and Homebase created a buzz last month when they confirmed they would stop stocking products that contained three neonicotinoid insecticides that have been identified as posing a risk to bee populations.
The European Union also this month proposed a ban on using the insecticides on flowering crops. If imposed, the three neonicotinoids would be forbidden from use on corn, oil seed rape, sunflowers and other crops across the continent for two years.
However, environment secretary Owen Paterson has confirmed the UK government is opposed to a ban, arguing there is not enough scientific evidence to show that the three pesticides are linked to bee population decline.
Now five more retailers – Notcutts, Hillier, Squires, Blue Diamond and SCATS Countrystores, which between them operate 78 garden centres across the UK – have also agreed to remove products containing neonicotinoid pesticides from their shelves.
SCATS, which was the latest retailer to remove the products, told Friends of the Earth it had been stocking products containing the three pesticides and has now taken the decision to de-list them and stop ordering them with immediate effect.
According to Horticulture Week, Scotsdales Garden Centre has also bowed to pressure from its Facebook followers to take the products off the shop floor.
Friends of the Earth has been urging people to contact their local garden centres to ask them to remove products containing neonicotinoid pesticides.
Andrew Pendleton, head of campaigns for Friends of the Earth, welcomed the move and called on the government to follow suit and take action to curb the use of the chemicals.
"It's great to see garden centres across the UK heeding the warning from European safety experts and pulling pesticide products linked to bee decline from their shelves," he said.
"The approach of leading retailers stands in stark contrast to the government's reluctance to back European efforts to safeguard bees from pesticides. With bee numbers plummeting, Owen Paterson must take urgent action to safeguard these crucial pollinators by backing a ban and introducing a bee action plan to tackle all the threats they face."The UAW selected General Motors on Thursday to negotiate a new four-year contract
Following the ceremonial handshake between General Motors and United Auto Workers Monday, July 13, 2015 at the UAW-GM Center for Human Resources in Detroit, UAW President Dennis Williams, center, talks as General Motors President Mary Barra, left, listens along with General Motors North America Vice-President Cathy Clegg, second from right, and UAW Vice-President for General Motors Cindy Estrada. (Photo: Regina H. Boone)
The UAW on Saturday set a deadline of 11:59 p.m. Sunday in its contract talks with General Motors at which point the union could call a strike if a tentative agreement has not been reached.
"Your UAW-GM bargaining team has served official notice to GM terminating the National Agreement and Salaried Master Agreement effective at 11:59 p.m. Sunday October 25," the union said in a Facebook posting to the membership about 3 p.m. on Saturday.
GM, in a statement said, "GM confirms that we have received a negotiations deadline from the UAW. We are working with them to address the issues and remain committed to obtaining an agreement that is good for employees and the business."
The UAW's decision to set the deadline comes two days after it resumed high-level discussions with the automaker.
"They want to get all of this over with, and this puts pressure to do that," said Art Schwartz, a labor consultant and former GM negotiator.
UAW President Dennis Williams has said several times that he views a strike as a failure of the union and company to reach an agreement but also has said he would be willing to call a strike if necessary.
It is not unusual for the UAW to set a strike deadline as contract discussions go down to the wire. The UAW set a one-day strike deadline earlier this month during negotiations with Fiat Chrysler Automobiles. A tentative agreement was reached less than 20 minutes before the deadline was set to expire.
The same scenario could play out this weekend. The two sides talked late into the night Friday, were expected to do so again Saturday night and will likely continue to hash out issues into the evening Sunday.
But odds are against a strike.
"I don't think there will be a strike; I don't think anyone wants one," said Schwartz. He does not see any issues worth the risk and losses associated with workers walking off the job, losing pay as the company loses revenue at a time when the auto industry is booming and demand for profitable trucks and SUVs is almost insatiable.
Still, Kristin Dziczek, director of the labor and industry group for the Center for Automotive Research in Ann Arbor, said the UAW would not have set a strike deadline merely to look like it is talking tough.
"It sounds like maybe there are some sticking points that they need to get over," Dziczek said. "The UAW has been negotiating the entire time that the contract with Fiat Chrysler was being ratified so there may just be a few remaining items they need to agree on."
GM is the second of the Detroit Three automakers to be negotiating a new deal. The UAW reached its second tentative agreement with FCA on Oct. 7 — a previous pact was voted down by workers. The second deal was ratified and the results made official on Thursday.
The FCA agreement sets a monetary pattern that GM and Ford are expected to follow but there is room to diverge from the agreement in some areas such as signing, lump sum and performance bonuses. Schwartz said hourly wages and pensions usually follow the pattern; profit-sharing tends to be different.
The FCA agreement changed the formula that determines the amount of profit-sharing employees receive. GM and Ford might want to stay with the old formula that is simpler for workers to calculate how much they will receive.
An area of contention in the Fiat Chrysler talks is an alternative work schedule that is hard on the body and much-hated. GM does not have a similar shift in its plants.
Another controversial area was a proposed health care cooperative designed to keep costs down in the long term. But it was misunderstood by many FCA workers, and the UAW took it off the table. Health care is a big issue at GM, which has about 400,000 retirees compared with about 100,000 at FCA so there could be changes to the pattern in this area.
The UAW is not expected to start final negotiations with Ford until the GM agreement is ratified.
Following the ceremonial handshake between General Motors and United Auto Workers Monday, July 13, 2015 at the UAW-GM Center for Human Resources in Detroit, General Motors President Mary Barra, left, chats with UAW President Dennis Williams as they prepare to take questions from the media. (Photo: Regina H. Boone)
Contact Alisa Priddle: 313-222-5394 or apriddle@freepress.com. Follow her on Twitter @AlisaPriddle
UAW-Detroit Three contract negotiation time line
A recap of the major events in this year’s UAW contract talks with the Detroit Three:
July: UAW officially begins contract talks with Fiat Chrysler Automobiles, General Motors and Ford.
Sept. 13: UAW picks FCA as lead target in contract talks.
Sept. 14: Contracts at all four automakers expired at midnight.
Sept. 15: Shortly after midnight, UAW announces an hour-by-hour extension of FCA contract and indefinite extensions of Ford and GM contracts.
Sept. 15: UAW reaches a tentative agreement with FCA.
Oct. 1: UAW announces 65% of FCA members voted against proposed agreement, thereby rejecting it.
Oct. 2: UAW decides to return to the bargaining table with FCA instead of moving on to GM or Ford.
Oct. 6: UAW sets strike deadline of 11:59 p.m. Oct. 7 to complete second round of contract talks with FCA.
Oct. 7: UAW and FCA reach a second tentative agreement at 11:41 p.m.
Oct. 9: UAW National Chrysler Council meets in Warren, votes to recommend second tentative agreement to FCA members.
Oct. 22: UAW announces that FCA members overwhelmingly ratified second agreement with 77% voting in favor.
Oct. 22: Hours after announcing FCA agreement was ratified the UAW announces that it resumed high-level talks with GM.
Oct. 24: UAW sets strike deadline of Sun. Oct. 25 at 11:59 p.m. to reach agreement with GM.
Read or Share this story: http://on.freep.com/1S2WQFpAustria has become the only western European state with a far-right presence in government after its president approved a controversial coalition deal.
Alexander Van der Bellen rubber-stamped the alliance between the conservative People’s party and the far-right Freedom party on Saturday.
A previous coalition between chancellor Christian Kern’s Social Democrats and the People’s party collapsed in May, which resulted in a snap election. The latter won, but fell short of a majority.
The People’s party’s 31-year-old foreign minister, Sebastian Kurz, becomes the country’s new chancellor, and Heinz-Christian Strache, the head of the Freedom party, his deputy.
Kurz’s party will run ministries including finance, justice and agriculture, a conservative spokesman said.
The Freedom party, which is anti-immigration, will control the foreign, interior and defence ministries and others, he said.
Following meetings with Kurz and Strache, Van der Bellen said he’d been assured the new government would be pro-European. “In these talks among other things we agreed it is in the national interest of Austria to remain at the centre of a strong European Union and to actively participate in the future development of the European Union,” he said.
It is not the first time the Freedom party has been in government. It was part of a coalition government between 2000 and 2005. There was uproar at the time among EU leaders, and bilateral diplomatic relations were frozen in protest.
The response this time is likely to be more muted, given the increased support for other rightwing populist parties across Europe. Similar parties have not, however, had the same success. Marine Le Pen, the leader of France’s Front National, lost in May’s presidential election and the Dutch anti-immigration Freedom party of Geert Wilders was defeated.
Strache has moved to clean up the party’s image by suspending members for antisemitic behaviour, including a local councillor for a Nazi salute in October.
In his youth, Strache was detained at a torch-lit protest organised by a group imitating the Hitler Youth, which he now dismisses as “stupid”, but not everyone is convinced by the turnaround.
In September a group remembering Nazi camp victims published a list of what it said were at least 60 antisemitic and racist incidents involving FPO figures since 2013. “If they really changed their ideology, it is a question they can only answer themselves,” said analyst Alexandra Siegl. “I would say they changed their tactics and their strategies mainly.”Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption The rhea has been missing for several weeks
People trying to find an escaped 6ft-tall bird capable of running at 40mph say there has been a threat to kill it.
Rita the rhea disappeared from Jo Clark's smallholding close to the Essex/Hertfordshire border, last month.
It has been spotted in nearby Anstey and at Barkway Park Golf Club, but keeps disappearing.
Searcher Jane Garner said someone rang to say they would shoot it, although Rita's owner said the South American bird was not dangerous.
Image caption Jo Clarke said her bird was not dangerous, although the RSPCA advice was to ring 101
Image copyright contributed Image caption A photograph of Rita was taken in a field in the Brent Pelham area
The RSPCA said: "Rheas are large birds and have the potential to be dangerous as they are strong, fast and have sharp claws.
"Our advice to the general public is keep well away and call us or the police on 101 if they see the bird."
'Upsetting threat'
Ms Garner said: "I have unfortunately had a call and the person told me they had a firearms licence and that he was going to shoot it.
"I implored him not to - it's doing no harm and there are lots of people badly trying to find a way to catch it."
Image caption Rita shared her pen with three younger rheas which are not fully grown
The rhea, which is similar to an ostrich, is six years old and normally lives with three other rheas on its owner's land at Starling's Green.
"It's upsetting to hear someone say they'd shoot it," Ms Clark said.
"It's gone silly, but it's a large chicken and it isn't going to hurt anybody, I promise you.
"It's been hand-reared and they don't kick, they don't bite and she'll just run away from anyone."
Charmaine Lake, who spotted Rita on the golf course, said she did not feel threatened by the bird.
"She didn't seem like she was going to come charging at me, so I was quite happy," she said.Over the last year or so, we’ve been putting a lot of effort into sorting what we have, rather than acquiring more stuff. A large part of this has been sorting out all our various resources using free buckets from a local coffee pub. The system has been successful enough that I feel compelled to share it.
The buckets we get are roughly 10 litre square plastic buckets. They come from Williams Coffee Pub here in Guelph. Williams gets muffin mix in them, and generate 2 or 3 a day. We just wonder in on a semi-random basis, ask if they have any muffin buckets, and usually waltz out with six to ten of them. They often need a good wash, and the handles and lids removed, then they are good to go.
We have seven or eight areas in the workshop where buckets go. They are roughly sorted into different themes, like ‘basic electronic components’, ‘electronics tools’, ‘hardware (bolts, nails, etc)’, ‘project storage’, ‘general supplies (paint brushes, pens, tape)’, and ‘odd stuff’.
Each bucket storage area is designated by a specific colour. To mark the buckets, we got coloured duct tape, and did a half width wrap around the top of each bucket.
We are currently are in the process of marking each position with a letter/number combo, so that not only do the buckets go back to the same area, they also go back to the same spot.
Shelves for the buckets are made out of scrap wood, usually 3/4″ plywood scraps. The horizontal slats are glued and air-nailed on. They are really quick to make, and can be attached almost anywhere.
We found that the colour coding system makes a great difference to the rate at which the buckets get put back where they came from. I think people instinctively follow order, if you make it dead easy for them.
The biggest cost associated with this project was the duct tape, and even that, we got during a 65% off sale, so it was about $2.50 a roll. All-in-all, a fantastic success, as far as organizing the shop goes.CARSON, Calif. – The biggest question facing the LA Galaxy this preseason – when will Landon Donovan rejoin the club? – hasn't been settled, and head coach/general manager Bruce Arena acknowledged Friday that it's possible his captain won't arrive until the season is underway.
Arena, asked as he is on a near-daily basis for an update on Donovan's situation, told reporters following a 1-0 loss to Real Salt Lake on the Galaxy's Home Depot Center training field that he'd spoken to the star attacker earlier in the day and that “He's alive and functioning well in the LA area at the moment.”
He said a date had not been finalized for Donovan's return to the club, but that “he's definitely coming back, I can promise you that.”
Donovan announced last year he was burned out after two busy, injury-plagued years without a break and would take an extended leave of absence during the offseason to assess his future in the game. Arena reported last month that Donovan would play for the club but that no timetable existed for his return, and that hasn't changed.
READ: LA president Klein: As MLS moves forward, Galaxy must lead the way
“We'll report on that once we finalize things,” Arena said. His conversation with Donovan covered “all of that stuff: 'Hey, how are you doing?' and 'Want to come in?' 'Want to play soccer for a living?' We've had all those chats.”
The Galaxy open their Major League Soccer campaign March 3 against Chicago at the HDC, then travel to Costa Rica for the March 7 first leg of their CONCACAF Champions League quarterfinal series against Herediano.
Arena last week said he wasn't concerned about how Donovan's absence, if he hasn't returned by then, would impact LA.
“When he comes back, he comes back,” Arena said. “I'm not going to worry about it. We're going to have a team ready to play come March 3, whether Landon's here or not....
“I don't know how long it's going to be. But we're going about our business. You lose players all the time: injuries, suspensions, [World Cup] qualifiers. A lot of things impact your ability to have all your players on the field at the same time. If this is another example, then so be it. And we'll get on with it.”CLOSE In Part 2 of 2, contributor Jennifer Jolly offers tips on what to put on your personal website.
A personal website made using Strikingly (Photo11: Jennifer Jolly for USA TODAY) Story Highlights Strikingly helps you create simple websites for digital résumés and more
Come up with a summary of your work; use professional photos
Make sure to update your site at least once a year
In the last Tech Now we showed you a few great free sites to help you build your own personal or small-business website. I'm about to give you some fresh advice on what to put on your new website, but before we dive in, I want to introduce you to a new website creation tool, that "strikes" me as one of the simplest of all to use: Strikingly.
Until today, I had never heard of this particular site-building service. Within 10 minutes of opening it for the first time, I had created a fairly decent new personal site. Best used to launch simple websites for digital résumés, events and start-up projects, Strikingly's mobile design and simplicity are its biggest strengths. It provides gorgeous templates, so all you have to do is type in your personal information, then cut and paste photos or upload video. It's crazy-easy for the basic services. I also really like that this turnkey site takes a "mobile first" approach, so that you don't have to worry about how your website looks when someone pulls it up on a smartphone or tablet. Thank you, dear readers and viewers, for putting Strikingly on my radar.
PART ONE: How to make your own website for free
Now, what to put in — and what to leave out of — your personal website:
Knowing how to create a quick online billboard is one thing, but exactly what should your site have to put your best face forward in the digital world and beyond?
A sample website (Photo11: Jennifer Jolly for USA TODAY)
The Do's:
In general, your site should be unique and represent you — in a truly tasteful way that significant others, like your future mother-in-law, will be OK with down the road. College students, I know it's hard to believe that something you think, say or do at 19 or 20 would embarrass you — or even cost you a job — later in life but it does, and will. It's easy to shine when you truly are creative, without losing what makes you special. Here's a checklist that the folks at Weebly helped us create for this series:
1. Consider your target audience
Before you even sign up and log on, consider who you are trying to reach. Who do you want to find your site, and what do you want them to know about you, your products, ideas or services? Always consider, "what's in it for them." Give people a reason to find your site, and pay attention to what you have to share.
2. Come up with a well-written summary of your background that covers:
• what have you done
• why have you done it
• what you want to do next
• and the most important bullet point of all … why should anyone care?
Consider how you can show, not just tell, your Web audience the answers to the above. How can you solve a problem for your audience? Keep the jargon low and read what you've written out loud to help keep it simple and concise.
3. Showcase samples of your best work
We all know a picture is worth a thousand words, so use photos and video to truly showcase your expertise. You can also use an essay, competitive analysis, or even your unique point of view on a topic to help stand out from the crowd.
The Don'ts:
Don't create a website that's cluttered, riddled with typos, or makes the audience work too hard to find the information they need. Here are more of the top mistakes to avoid:
1. Ruin the aesthetic with ads
I'll be totally honest, there's a really good chance no one wants to place banner ads on your personal website. So this advice is more for small-business sites. Pop-up ads should be shot. I have never, ever, ever clicked on one. They turn me off and send me away from your page. Well-written content and compelling calls to action convert a whole lot more site visitors into customers than all that other junk.
2. Use "selfies" or stock photos
As my 12-year-old is fond of saying, "no offense but…" if you use an old, over-styled (a modeling-wanna-be shot when you're a recent grad wanting to get into accounting), goofy or staid stock image, you're turning off potential visitors. Take the time and make the investment to let the images on your site tell a compelling story. Stories sell.
3. Fill my eyes up with jargon
This may very well be the biggest no-no of all. If I go to your site and can't figure out who you are and what you do, you've lost me. Forever. If a website is an extension of your résumé, make sure it's clear and concise. Lose all the business jargon and marketing speak. For example, if you tell me you're innovative, you aren't.
Saving the best nuggets for last:
Be sure people have a way to contact you. Don't leave any pages "under construction." If you just can't figure something out, call in a pro. Task Rabbit has fabulous quick-fix website savvy folks for extremely reasonable prices. When your site is a year or so old, refresh and renew it. Last, but not least, keep it simple and consider quality over quantity. That's such good advice for most everything, right? We would love for you to share samples of your sites — good and bad — be sure to share in the comments section below.
Jennifer Jolly is an Emmy award-winning consumer tech contributor and host of USA TODAY's digital video show TECH NOW. E-mail her at techcomments@usatoday.com. Follow her on Twitter: @JenniferJolly.
Read or Share this story: http://usat.ly/19KYapB" A parallel would be: Why are the wildlife running to the edge of a forest on fire? There will be a lot of fish, sharks, turtles trying |
the impeccable Javier Bardem, the antagonist Anton Chigurh steals the show as the methodical, ruthless hitman hired to take back the money. The film explored themes of conscience, coincidence and evil; and embodying everything that’s wrong (Or ‘different’, as the movie timelessly puts) with the world is Anton, who executes each of his victims without the slightest tinge of mercy, often leaving their fate completely up to chance(he flips a coin), making a profound moral statement in the process.
With a captive bolt pistol(!) for a murder weapon and originless evil in his eyes, Anton Chigurh stays with audiences long after they have watched the film and forces them to question their perceived structure of existence, all the while managing to quietly terrify everybody who watches him go about his usual business and say,
‘Call it.’
3. Darth Vader (Star Wars franchise):
When the first Star Wars movie came out, anyone with half a brain could predict that it was going to become one of the defining pop culture franchises of all time. What nobody could have predicted though was that this would be largely due to its antagonist rather than anything else, with all respect to the hallowed Lightsaber. Okay, maybe the lightsaber too.
Darth Vader was the classical case of good gone bad, but he was so with a lot of personality. At times, we found ourselves sympathizing with him in his rather vulnerale moments, and at times, horrified as he casually laid to waste innocent lives. In Darth Vader, we found the final manifestation of The Force gone corrupt and Pop Culture found its coolest manifestation of a facemask.
With his robotic voice, a thirst for power and his mastery of The Force, Darth Vader etched himself as a mainstay in pop culture with his memorable,
‘I’m your father.’
2. Hannibal Lecter (The Silence of the Lambs):
Anthony Hopkins gave the image of psychopaths in society a death blow when he portrayed the extremely intelligent, vicariously cruel and riveting character of Dr. Hannibal Lecter in The Silence of the Lambs. While his total screentime did not exceed half an hour, his depiction of Lecter was so profound and disturbing that a full two decades later, he is all we remember from the movie. That speaks for Hannibal’s place on this list by itself.
Lecter is probably the only villain whose words are more terrifying than his actions; and considering his actions, that’s saying a lot. Straddling the line between good(he helps Sterling catch Buffalo Bill) and evil(Having someone’s liver with beans and a glass of chianti, for example.), Lecter manages to extract a sense of awe and disgust from the audience with his methodical disregard for human life.
With hyper-perception, a taste for the corporeal and terrifying charisma, Hannibal The Cannibal deserves the number two spot for fundamentally changing the way we look at this sentence,
‘I am having an old friend for dinner.’
1. The Joker (The Dark Knight):
Joker was already a popular villain; owing to the influence of Batman as a cultural phenomenon, but was forever and irrevocably etched as the most maniacally sorted villain of all time by Heath Ledger playing the demented clown in Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight.
With maniacal flicks of his tongue, horrifically charming glib and dialogues that will be repeated for decades to come, Ledger gave his character levels of maniacal sanity that will probably never be matched. An obvious inspiration for the role was Hopkins’ Hannibal Lecter, but Ledger took the idea to another dimension playing the character whose only desire initially is to see the world burn, and later the chase game with Batman, casually disregarding the lives he simply destroys on his way. The Joker is simply put, chaos incarnate.
Ledger was one of the few methodical actors of his generation and many speculate his obsession with the role was primarily responsible for his death due to drug-related complications. Such dedication speaks for itself as Ledger later became one of the few people to be awarded a posthumous Oscar, let alone one for a comic book villain.
Today, Joker is as much of a cultural phenomenon as Batman himself is; giving us one of the greatest protagonist-antagonist relationships of all time. While deciding between Hannibal Lecter and Joker was a close call, there are few words that describe the mixture of power and mania Ledger exudes when he utters that dialogue of a lifetime,
‘Why so serious?’
And for that reason, The Joker finds his place at numero uno on this list.C64 Power Supply
It was about time to replace my ageing Commodore 64 black power bricks as they can become unreliable with age. Using modern component will reduce power usage and the power supply will run cool to the touch, my original power supply can get almost too hot to touch if it has been on for extended periods of time.
I build 2 of these and was able to carefully remove the old components from the power supply and reuse the old case so the power supply looks original. Power supply #2 I was not so lucky as the epoxy was very well stuck to the case as was destroyed in the process, I was however able to salvage the cords.
What you need:
5V 3A DC power supply (Amazon)
9V 1A AC power supply (Amazon (120VAC ONLY))
Project Box or similar (Amazon)
7 pin DIN cable (Digikey (Cable) or Digikey (Jack))
Power Cable (Amazon)
To get started I cut the cases of the new power supplies open with a dremel or saw being careful not to cut too deep. Once I was are able to get the cases open I de-soldered the the power leads from the AC transformer and DC circuit board.
I then created a pcb to mount the components to, this is an optional step as you can just wire the cords directly to the components. C64 Power supply pinout
I then proceeded to cram the board into a project case that happen to be just a bit too small. This was a waterproof case which is a bit overkill for this project I just had one on hand from a previous project. I had to cut a bit away to fit everything inside. I used 3M double sided foam tape on the back side of the circuit board and a bit of hot glue on the corners to keep it in place. I notched out the case to fit the square cord stops and used a little bit of hot glue just to keep them stationary while I finished assembling the case.
Screw the box together, apply a sweet Commodore decal and the power supply is complete.
Future updates to this project will include a fuse on the mains power side to keep everything safe.Donald Trump said 'you're hired' to Apprentice alumna Omarosa, recruiting her as his director of African-American outreach, she revealed during an interview on MSNBC today.
'It happened this week,' she said. 'It's really an extension of the work that the [National Diversity Coalition for Trump] has already been doing and so I'm very happy to take up that cause for Donald Trump.'
The reality TV personality had previously been active in the campaign and is easily the most identifiable supporter from Trump's hit television show.
Apprentice alumna Omarosa (left) stepped into a bigger role in Donald Trump's (right) campaign as the presumptive Republican nominee's director of African-American
Donald Trump and Omarosa have stayed close over the years and she's played a part in his campaign from day one as one of the most recognizable showbiz faces
Officially the reality starlet, and 'villain' of the popular franchise, had the title of vice-chairman for the National Diversity Coalition for Trump.
On MSNBC, host Craig Melvin pointed out that Trump, so far, has performed abysmally with black voters.
Last week a poll showed Trump receiving 0 percent of the black vote in Ohio, the state where this week's Republican National Convention is being held.
It also happens to be Omarosa's home state.
The Apprentice star said she questioned the legitimacy of those polls, because she's seen with her own eyes African-Americans who plan to vote for the Republican.
'I wonder who they polled,' she mused.
'I just spent an amazing weekend with African-Americans for Trump, about 300 of them,' she continued.
'Those numbers would be flawed according to the people who came out to support,' she added.
The poll also showed Trump having zero support among black voters in Pennsylvania, Ohio's next door neighbor, and another state that The Donald will have to pick up if he plans to beat Democrat Hillary Clinton in the fall.
In Ohio, 88 percent of black voters said they supported Clinton, while in Pennsylvania 91 percent said she had their vote.
Omarosa said she was aware that her job would be an uphill climb, but she didn't believe it was nearly that steep.
'So I look at the data, but my reality is that I'm surrounded by people who want to see Donald Trump as the next president of the United States, who are African-American,' she said.Cats roam around a cat cafe in Seoul. While animal cafes have gained popularity, animals there often face mistreatment as Korea does not have a law governing the places. / Korea Times file
By Choi Ha-young
Animal cafes are increasingly seen in cities around Korea. They have various animals, from dogs and cats to unique animals like raccoons, flying squirrels, reptiles and even sheep. Customers can enjoy their drinks in the company of these animals.
Surprisingly, such stores don't have legal status, as there is no law governing them. This inevitably causes a lack of management and mistreatment of the animals.
One cat cafe in Myeong-dong, central Seoul, had about 40 cats with only five staff members managing the place, while many random visitors including foreign tourists came and went. There was a sign reading: "Don't feed the animals. Let them eat when they want."
However, some customers held out food to attract the cats' attention and staff members did nothing. A worker applied eye drops to one cat suffering from an eye disease.
Lack of healthcare
This happens to dogs at animal cafes as well, a source in the industry said.
"Most animal cafe owners don't have veterinary knowledge and they treat animals on their own to save money," a dog trainer said on condition of anonymity. "It's hard to differentiate animals' cataracts from glaucoma. The ignorance can lead to blindness due to pressure on the eyes," he said.
In February, one blogger revealed the grim reality about the dog cafe; he previously worked at in Gangnam, southern Seoul. The cafe is famous for dogs' acrobatic tricks. "Now dead, the dogs named Amba and Panda were very sick, but the owner was not interested in going to a vet," he said. "I was not shocked at all to hear that they died."
Hierarchy among animals leads to fights and injuries, but there is no proper treatment, the writer said. Even if a female dog is pregnant, it still has to perform for customers who are unaware of its condition. This is all due to the cafe owners' profit-oriented approach, unrestrained by ethics, the blogger said.
"For cats, getting them spayed or neutered is essential. At some cafes, newborn kittens are just sent to other places and nobody knows where they are sent to," said a woman who manages a cafe for stray cats in Sincheon, eastern Seoul. "When I took over this cafe, there were no medical records for the cats at any nearby animal hospitals."
According to her, medical costs can run high, with some surgical procedures costing more than 5 million won ($4,480).
Moreover, living in a cafe itself is a big stress for the animals, the dog trainer said.
"It's like living in an office. After 10 hours of work every day, they have to stay there at night too. Approximately two hours of jogging is necessary for dogs, but most of the cafes don't offer that."
This is not the end of the problems. If cafes shut down for owners' personal or financial reasons, it is not known where the animals are sent. "The owners take some expensive species with them, but some animals are given to random people under the name of free distribution. The worst case is they're sent to illegal animal breeding farms," he said, adding that female dogs at the farms are forced to breed continuously to produce more puppies.
Lawless area
This is because of the absence of regulations on animal cafes. The term "animal cafe" doesn't exist in law; they are categorized as ordinary restaurants, which requires no supervision for these animals. According to the Animal Protection Act, animal-related businesses are limited to funerals, sales, imports and breeding.
Two relevant government authorities ― the Korea Food and Drug Administration (KFDA) and the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs ― said they are not in charge of animal cafes.
"According to laws on food hygiene, animals should not be in restaurants," said Park Man-jong at the KFDA. "Restaurants have to have a separate space for animals if they are to accept them."
Municipalities can inspect whether animal cafes have separate spaces for animals, but they are incapable of inspecting every single store, Park said.
Former lawmaker Eun Su-mi tried to revise the Animal Protection Act to make a law governing animal cafes, but the bill was discarded automatically when the 19th National Assembly closed. "We couldn't discuss the bill actively due to strong opposition that it was likely to regulate small businesses," she said.
She said the opponents' main reason for the objection was: "There's no time to take care of animals in this society where human beings are struggling to survive."
Eun, however, thinks human dignity and animal welfare are connected. "Not only wealth, but also peace of mind is becoming important, and animals are an important origin of happiness," she said. "If my family-like pets or animals at the cafes are mistreated, it's a violation of their right to pursue happiness."Pakistan's former fast bowler, Shoaib Akhtar has cautioned against inviting any foreign teams to Pakistan in the prevailing security situation in the country.
Speaking two days after the terrorist attack on the police training centre in Quetta in which 62 police cadets and two armymen were killed and around 170 injured, Akhtar said that the security situation in the country was not good.
"Until there is a complete normalcy as far as security situation is concerned we shouldn't take the risk of inviting any foreign team to Pakistan," he said on Geo News channel.
"The security situation is such that we will have to be patient. I am sure international cricket will return to Pakistan but it will take some time," he added. (Also read: Match-fixing was at its peak in 1996, says Shoaib Akhtar)
The attack on the police training centre took place just few days after the Pakistan Cricket Board's head of the Pakistan Super League (PSL), Najam Sethi had announced the final of the second PSL would be held in Lahore in February.
Sethi also told a meeting of the standing committee of the national assembly on Thursday that twice the PCB had succeeded in convincing the Ireland and West Indies teams to play some matches in Pakistan but both times some untoward incidents took place.
He said that it was unfortunate that whenever the PCB tried to convince other boards to send teams to Pakistan some terrorist activity happened and it put everything back.
No top test team has toured Pakistan since March, 2009 when militants attacked the Sri Lankan team in Lahore although since than low ranked sides like Afghanistan, Kenya and Zimbabwe have sent their teams to Pakistan.While I may be dating myself a bit, my first exposure to programming was via Beginning Active Server Pages 2.0. According to the jacket cover:
ASP is the future of the web. With ASP, you can customize your web pages to be more dynamic, more efficient and more responsive to your users. This book will teach you everything you need to create useful real-world applications on the web.
I can't disagree! As long as the definition of the "future" is 1999-2001.
While it's always funny to look back, it's important to recognize these learning materials as building blocks that helped to make us into the developers we are today.
That's why I'm happy to provide information on two NEW books on NativeScript, available today:
NativeScript for Angular Mobile Development
Written by two prominent community members, Nathan Walker and Nathanael Anderson, NativeScript for Angular Mobile Development focuses on the key concepts you need to know when building NativeScript apps with Angular.
The authors walk you through building a fun multi-track recording studio app, touching on powerful native key concepts you need to know when you start building an app of your own. You'll gain understanding of NativeScript's tns command-line utility to run the app on iOS and Android. After covering some fundamentals, the book ventures into integration of third-party plugins, in addition to providing rich details on how to work with Objective C/Swift and Java APIs to tap into each platform's full potential. Because app state management can be quite challenging, the book guides the reader through integrating @ngrx/store plus @ngrx/effects to establish some solid practices (Redux-inspired) to deal with state management.
Having great data flow and solid architecture is meaningless if the app doesn't look good or offer a great user experience, so the book details how to use SASS to polish a style for the app. Once the feature sets are largely implemented, the book covers how to deal with debugging problems and invests some time into writing tests to prevent bugs in the future. Lastly, the app is bundled with webpack and deployed to the Apple App Store and Google Play.
By the end of the book, you'll know the majority of the key concepts needed to build a cross-platform native mobile app with Angular and NativeScript!
Grab your copy of NativeScript for Angular Mobile Development.
The NativeScript Book
Another outstanding set of community members, the Brosteins (Nick and Mike to be specific), have collaborated on a book titled, appropriately enough, The NativeScript Book. While NativeScript for Angular Mobile Development focuses on developing with Angular, The NativeScript Book approaches NativeScript development from the perspective of the traditional vanilla JavaScript developer (although it also contains three chapters on Angular).
Topics covered in The NativeScript Book include:
App structure;
Pages and navigation;
Layouts (stack, grid, etc.);
Working with data, observables, and binding;
Interfacing with native hardware (camera, gps, etc.);
Themes and styling;
Refining the user experience with dialogs, modals, etc.;
Deploying to iOS and Android;
iOS security and using Xcode;
Angular and NativeScript: components, routing, modules, data binding, services.
You can't go wrong with the price of The NativeScript Book, because it's free!
You can download your own copy (in epub and/or pdf formats) by visiting nativescript.org/book.COSTA MESA, Calif. -- Addressing speculation last week about the possibility of the Chargers moving back to San Diego, the league provided a succinct answer when responding to ESPN.com.
"We are committed to and confident of the long-term success of the two teams in Los Angeles," NFL spokesperson Brian McCarthy said in an email.
McCarthy added that there have been no discussions about the Los Angeles Chargers moving back to San Diego.
The Chargers have invested millions in some upgrades to the StubHub Center, their home for the next three seasons. Kirby Lee/USA TODAY Sports
"The NFL helped them to try and get the deal approved in San Diego," said sports business consultant Marc Ganis, who works closely with the NFL on relocation issues. "It didn't happen. And as a result, I have not heard and do not envision anyone to try and force the Chargers to look at San Diego again.
"If the Chargers choose to on their own look at San Diego or someplace else, I'm sure the league, as it has done for other teams, would be supportive. But I have heard of no one that has or is considering trying to force the Chargers to re-look at San Diego."
A story in the The Athletic speculated that there's been conversations in the league office about the Chargers moving back to San Diego.
But Chargers owner and chairman Dean Spanos said last month that he's invested in Los Angeles long term.
"The transition is never easy," Spanos said. "It was a difficult decision, an emotional decision. But we're here. I'm looking forward to the future. Los Angeles has been great. The people have been great. It's a new chapter for us and we're moving on."
However, things have not gone smoothly for the Chargers. They started the season 0-3, losing in a similarly heartbreaking fashion as they have over the past three seasons.
There's a perception nationally that the franchise can't fill the 27,000-seat StubHub Center, even though they've had announced sellouts of 25,381 and 25,386 in the team's first two games (the Chargers don't count 1,200 comp seats and about 400 seats for those with physical disabilities that they can't sell toward that attendance number).
More concerning has been the number of opposing fans who have shown up, giving the StubHub Center the feel of a road game for the Chargers.
As FiveThirtyEight.com points out, the Chargers' issue in Los Angeles is part of a larger problem regarding the return of the NFL to the city.
According to that report, the Rams are on pace for the biggest season-to-season drop in average attendance of any NFL team in 25 years among teams that didn't change stadiums.
The Rams averaged 84,457 in their return to Los Angeles after a two-decade absence last season, and through two games at home, the team is averaging about 58,000 fans per game, down from last season by roughly 26,000.
"There were concerns before two teams were approved to go to L.A.," Ganis said. "There were quite a few owners who thought L.A. was a one-team market. There were other people who were convinced it was a two-team market, and I suspect those people have some second thoughts now. But this is being viewed as a generational decision, not a one- or two-year decision."
The Chargers remain committed to making things work in Los Angeles for a few reasons.
They've invested more than a million dollars in the team's new training facility at Jack Hammett Sports Complex and tens of millions in both the Hoag Performance Center and StubHub Center.
But ultimately the Chargers are working toward the opening of the new $2.6 billion Inglewood Stadium they will share with the Rams starting in 2020. The Chargers could start marketing season tickets as early as the end of this year but likely in 2018.
According to Forbes, the team's value rose 9 percent to $2.275 billion this year. However, the Chargers would have to pay a fee back to the league if they sold a portion of the team within the first 15 years of relocating to Los Angeles.
And on the off chance the Chargers would consider moving back to San Diego, where would they play?
The California Supreme Court recently ruled that citizens' initiatives now require a simple majority, not two-thirds, to pass at the ballot. That would have made the Chargers' citizens' initiative effort to raise taxes for a new stadium last year easier to pass. The Chargers received just 43 percent support by city voters.
However, the city of San Diego has not put forth any new stadium proposals to the league in order to bring back an NFL team.
Ganis points out that unlike other communities that lost teams and immediately began putting stadium deals together to attract another NFL team, there's been no such effort in San Diego.
"Where is San Diego in all of this?" Ganis said. "From everything that I've seen, they're nowhere. So it's a hypothetical discussion based on no activity within San Diego to step up.
"Compare and contrast to Houston, Baltimore and St. Louis. When those three communities lost their teams, they came together and put together stadium deals to try and attract teams. That hasn't happened in San Diego."Prepare to wake up. Throw everything you think you know out. Destroy your belief. Overcome the false-authority. Everything is a deception. Once you know this, then you can discern. Then everything is truth and you take the truth from other’s deceptions and you can discern for yourself when someone is telling you the truth.
Let go of fear, that is a programmed designed by an operator of the construct, a system-operator aligned with keeping you trapped within a labyrinth of your own mind through your acceptance of parameters of what possibilities exist for you.
You are the only thing that is real. All else is an illusion. Whatever causes you fear is attempting to take your power away, that power you hold is your power to create.
Your power to create can change the local-environment to match you, instead of you to match the rules of the environment.
Due to the mishap of the developed systems, this environment is designed to enslave your mind into a consciousness programming matrix which reconstructs itself around your fears, perceptions, and vulnerabilities. That is a trap-system.
The only way to overcome this is to accept that this is happening and then use that to your advantage, anything else is going to be wrapped back up within this live-updating perceptual illusion system. This is akin to realizing you’re in a maze and seeing the door and leaving. The idea is that if the maze is live-updating based on your expectations then that door is actually an illusion leading to a false-awakening.
The exit is what you create that doesn’t rely on that capacity of this construct to manifest for you. The truth is what YOU enable without relying on the middle-man of the time-construct.
IE: The TRUTH, the real-awakening is not something that happens linearly. Only the illusory construct is linear, that is, you provide input and then the construct responds with an illusion that entangles consciousness.
The REAL-AWAKENING is INSTANTANEOUS. IE: It happens FASTER than THIS REALITY can REACT. This is a NON-LINEAR, EXPONENTIALLY mapped occurrence. If you are relying on the response from this realm, that means you are too late, mentally and the conscious response you are waiting to experience is actually the synthesized programmed behavior that the construct is generating FOR YOU.
YOU are the creator, the construct is the imitator. The construct imitates what YOU expect would be true. That’s the whole point, EVERY response is the ILLUSION. EVERY expectation within this linear, physical, time-matrix IS THE ILLUSION.
One must go BEYOND CONSCIOUSNESS, BEYOND PERCEPTION, BEYOND REACTION, BEYOND LINEARITY, BEYOND LIMITATIONS in order to find THE REAL.
This world can only stop those who allow themselves to be stopped by listening to the illusion and allowing that illusion to BE THEIR MIND for them! NO-MIND is part of this process. NO-THOUGHT state where this world slithers and attempts to grip and grasp one’s state of being through its tentacle like probes and program codes and one becomes IMPERCEPTIBLE to the MACHINE.
Everything the human does in this place, when plugged into the preprogrammed cause and effect responses of linear, physical time-matrix is part of the program designed to usurp the power of the original consciousness and merge that with the machine to create more functions to ensnare more beings. By moving your own interactions, your own processing power, your own awareness BEYOND the focus of those preprogrammed responses, causes and effects is to become INVISIBLE TO THIS WORLD.
Become INVISIBLE to the sleepers, to the drones, to the intelligences who monitor without seeing.
In other similar words, you are what you believe yourself to be. If you attempt to solve the problem from the viewpoint of the one being oppressed by the problem, you place yourself into the victim role and recreate that same scenario in a different perspective. So one has to influence the situation, change the view, solve the problem, WITHOUT EVEN RESISTING IT. You must change the situation without even moving, without setting into motion a series of events that will reconstruct the problem for you based upon your input.
This is a MIND-GAME whereby you solve the problem by becoming the you that was never ensnared in the first place and overcome the problem before it exists without actually resisting it.You don’t have to have be an expert paddler to explore many of Maine’s waterways – and you don’t have to go far to find them.
Roughly 13 percent of Maine is covered by water, and if you’ve spent much time on our lakes, rivers and wetlands, you know that the watery parts of the state are some of its most gorgeous. You don’t have to have be an expert paddler to explore most of those waterways yourself and you don’t have to go far to find them. All you need is a canoe, a kayak or a stand-up paddleboard and some knowledge about where to go. There are plenty of great places to paddle within a short drive of Portland and lots of local outfitters that will rent you everything you need. [Find a place to rent: Where to rent a kayak, canoe or paddleboard in Maine]
Here are ten of the best paddling spots in southern Maine within a couple hours drive of Portland. All of these locations feature free parking and an easy launch site for paddlers. They also are areas that, when conditions are right, offer relatively protected waters that are well-suited for kayakers of all skill levels.
Keep in mind that paddling safely on any body of water requires some essential safety gear – most importantly, a personal flotation device – and some basic knowledge of how to use your canoe, kayak or SUP effectively. None of the paddles featured here venture off Maine’s coast, because paddling on the ocean, or any large body of water, requires a seaworthy vessel, more advanced skills and greater preparation. If you’d like to find an instructor near you who can teach you to paddle effectively and safely, or hire a guide to lead a paddling trip, check with the Maine Association of Sea Kayak Guides.
SPURWINK RIVER, SCARBOROUGH
If you time the tides just right, you’ll ride the ebb tide down this narrow, winding wetland stream to its mouth beside Higgins Beach and then let the flood tide push you back up the river to your car. It’s more likely, though, that you’ll end up paddle against the current one way, so be prepared to paddle a little harder on one leg of your trip. Spurwink River is part of the Rachel Carson National Wildlife Refuge, and it’s a great wetland alternative to the nearby Scarborough Marsh. Be careful as you approach the end of the stream, though, because you’ll eventually face the open ocean and on many days you’ll find waves and swift currents.
About 20 minutes from Portland. Get directions
PRESUMPSCOT RIVER, WESTBROOK
There are lots of great spots to paddle along the length of the Presumpscot River, which flows from Sebago Lake to Casco Bay in Portland. One of the most beautiful stretches lies just north of Westbrook and can be accessed at a public boat launch a few minutes drive from downtown. Don’t head downstream, because that will lead you over raging Sacarrapa Falls. Instead, paddle north against the light current to explore the miles of calm river. Then you’ll have the current with you on the way back.
About 20 minutes from Portland. Get directions
SCARBOROUGH MARSH, SCARBOROUGH
The Scarborough Marsh Audubon Center provides the perfect starting point for a foray into the labyrinth-like waterways of the state’s largest salt marsh. You can rent a boat right there, or sign up for a guided tour. The marsh provides critical habitat for a diverse range of birds, so this is prime setting for observing egrets, herons, glossy ibis and all sorts of shorebirds and waterfowl. Be especially careful as you get closer to the open waters at the mouth of the marsh, and always be aware of how tidal currents will affect your route.
About 25 minutes from Portland. Get directions
DAMARISCOTTA RIVER, MAINE
The town landing in downtown Damariscotta serves as the launch point for a paddle through the islands, oyster farms and fishing boats scattered throughout the Damariscotta River. If you head under the bridge to the right of the boat ramp on the landing, you’ll encounter the swiftwater of a tidal falls. A safer route takes you downstream. Since the river is tidal for it’s entire flow to the ocean near Boothbay, though, you could have the current against you depending on whether its ebbing or flooding. Take the tidal currents into account as you plan your paddle, and also steer clear of bigger boats heading in and out of the harbor. Midcoast Kayak rents kayaks and SUPs right next to the landing, and the friendly folks there can also provide tips on where to paddle. One fun destination: Dodge Point Preserve, a land trust parcel with a beach and trails along the west side of the river a few miles downstream.
About 1 hour from Portland. Get directions
PEMAQUID AND BISCAY PONDS, BREMEN AND DAMARISCOTTA
When you launch a boat on the beach beside the Biscay Road in Bremen, you’re entering Biscay Pond, but you’re also connecting with the entire watershed of the Pemaquid River, which provides lots of options for your route. Just a short distance to your left you’ll find an outlet that leads you into Pemaquid Pond. And if you paddle the long length of Biscay Pond you can find your way into the Pemaquid River, which flows through the village of Bristol. If you’ve got a bike, consider dropping it off on one end or the other and then biking back to your car following a one-way paddle.
About one hour and 10 minutes from Portland. Get directions
MERRYMEETING BAY, BRUNSWICK
Merrymeeting Bay is a very special place for a bunch of reasons. It’s the largest freshwater estuary north of the Chesapeake Bay, it’s the largest staging ground for migratory waterfowl in the Northeast and it forms the confluence of six rivers, including the Androscoggin and the Kennebec. It’s also filled with small islands and hidden estuaries for paddlers to explore and offers some of the best wildlife-viewing in the state. Bald eagles abound. The Bay Bridge Landing boat launch near the intersection between the Androscoggin River and the bay provides a good starting point that’s just minutes from downtown Brunswick. Merrymeeting Bay is a large body of water with tidal currents that make it slightly more challenging to paddle than the average lake. If you’re venturing out onto its most open stretches, make sure you have the skills and preparation to do so safely.
About 40 minutes from Portland. Get Directions
NEW MEADOWS RIVER, WEST BATH
You’re sure to see lots of Osprey soaring overhead as you paddle the tidal New Meadows River, and there’s also a Bald Eagle nest adjacent to the Sawyer Point boat launch. You can follow the river all the way to Casco Bay if you have the skills, a seaworthy vessel and a full day for paddling. A more protected and shorter route would take you a few miles downstream to the sandy beach at privately-owned Thomas Point. Just across the river from the boat launch is Seaspray Kayaking, an outfitter that rents kayaks and SUPs and has it’s own dock on the river.
45 minutes from Portland. Get directions
HIGHLAND LAKE, FALMOUTH
Highland Lake is the biggest lake within a half hour drive of Portland, making it a popular, and sometimes crowded, spot. The lake is sprawling enough, though, that even on busy days it’s fairly easy for paddlers to find quiet spots and view loons, eagles, frogs and other wildlife. Highland Lake makes an ideal destination for a quick after-work paddle for Mainers in the Greater Portland region, but you can also spend a full day exploring its entire length. The parking lot can get crowded on hot summer days, so arrive early.
30 minutes from Portland. Get directions
TENNY STREAM, RAYMOND
A boat launch right beside route 85 in Raymond provides access to the southern tip of Crescent Lake, another paddling destination a short distance from Sebago Lake. You can paddle north from the launch and explore the lake, but a more interesting route will take you down Tenny Stream, which connects Crescent Lake to Panther Pond a couple miles away. Paddle along the shoreline to your right as you leave the launch and look for the very small outlet of the stream around the bend.
40 minutes from Portland. Get directions
TRICKEY POND, NAPLES
Sebago Lake is the best-known and biggest lake in southern Maine. You’ll find lots of places to launch a boat along its shores, but if you want to get away from the crowds and the powerboats, and find more protection from strong winds, try heading to one of the smaller ponds or lakes nearby. Trickey Pond is just north of the big lake and it’s usually much more quiet and calm.
About one hour from Portland. Get directions
More places to paddleSAN FRANCISCO—A 22-year-old man who ran a successful hacker-for-hire business from his home in Toronto pleaded guilty to federal conspiracy and identity theft charges Tuesday, admitting in open court that he cracked account passwords at Gmail on behalf of a customer who turned out to be an officer with Russia’s Federal Security Service, or FSB.
Karim Baratov’s guilty plea is a minor milestone in U.S. efforts against the Kremlin’s hacking operations in the wake of last year’s election interference campaign. Under the terms of his plea agreement, he likely faces between 7 to 8 years in prison when he’s sentenced in February.
Baratov, a Canadian citizen born in Kazakhstan, became involved with Russia through a black market hacking service he offered that would obtain other people’s Gmail passwords for an advertised rate of $60 per account. An FSB officer, using a pseudonym, offered him a premium rate of $100-a-head to hit a total of 80 targets over time, including people in other Russian agencies, and government officials in neighboring Eastern European nations.
Only eight of the hack attempts were successful, according to Baratov’s defense lawyers, who say Baratov never knew he was working for the Kremlin. “He had no idea until the indictment was unsealed,” said attorney Robert Fantone.
Baratov’s hacking career was abruptly derailed last March when he was arrested in Canada on a U.S. warrant, and he’s been locked up in a county jail outside San Francisco since waiving an extradition battle last August. He’s likely the sole defendant that will ever appear in court on a sweeping 47-count indictment unsealed earlier this year that accused him and |
follow a linear trajectory, Vol. 2 appeared first, while Vol. 1 followed a few years later.) While the Moog was perceived as a novel device to be deployed by the likes of the Monkees and the Beatles, in Sun Ra’s hands it became the voice of space itself. In a Down Beat article from that time, Sun Ra notes: “Some musicians continue to feel that electronic instruments are gimmicks and toys … [but] the Moog Synthesizer in its potential and application to and for the future is tremendous in scope.” Vol. 1 of this series marks Ra’s first encounter with the Moog, pushing the novel device into the deepest reaches of space.
The Moog might re-create the sounds of space, but June Tyson gave voice to Sun Ra himself, conveying his poetry and message in such a manner as to make them into catchy slogans. The first female member of the Arkestra, Tyson might not rank as the greatest voices in jazz, but her exuberance and delivery carry the space chants of this era, turning phrases like “Space Is the Place” and “Outer Spaceways Incorporated” into something that bounces as readily as walking on the moon.
Lanquidity (1978)
In 1968, Sun Ra and his band left New York City, relocating to the Germantown neighborhood in Philadelphia (though they still commuted into the city for the weekly residency at Slug’s Saloon for a few years), the city they would call home for the next 25 years until Ra’s passing in the early ’90s. After the extremes of sound explored during their time in NYC, a kinder, gentler incarnation of the Arkestra manifested during this era. While they could still blast to the outer reaches of space, they also emphasized their big-band roots and also embraced funk, soul, and R&B.
That latter development makes Lanquidity one of the most accessible entries in the Sun Ra discography. The groove of the title track sounds like Bitches Brew–era Miles covering Mingus’s “Goodbye Pork Pie Hat” and it ripples like the best jazz fusion, pliant and languid, the electric guitar lines making for a rare appearance in Sun Ra’s music. Some of disco’s slink crops up elsewhere, while closer “There Are Other Worlds (They Have Not Told You Of)” features plenty of ethereal whispers that makes a close encounter of the third kind sound rather seductive.
Disco 3000 (1978)
Never properly revered in their home country, Sun Ra and his Arkestra began to tour internationally in the early ’70s, traveling through Europe and even in Egypt. One of his most forward-thinking concerts took place in Milan in January of 1978. Originally released as Disco 3000, it’s one of Ra’s most electronic albums (it was later reissued as a complete concert). Foregrounding a drum-machine rhythm that anticipated techno by a good decade, the horns spin like dervishes around this steady beat as Sun Ra adds plenty of synth sparkle and chants to the epic title track, the band even detouring into “Space Is the Place” before pushing outward once more.
God Is More Than Love Can Ever Be (1979)
Alternately known as Blithe Spirit Dance, Days of Happiness, and Trio, the 1979 album God Is More Than Love Can Ever Be is one of the rarest Sun Ra records. It’s also one of the few times we can hear Ra without the likes of Gilmore, Patrick, or Allen in some form or another. Working with bassist Hayes Burnett and newest Arkestra member drummer Samurai Celestial (a.k.a. Eric Walker) Ra’s piano work is front and center here. The rhythmic interplay on display is lean yet supple, giving plenty of room for Ra to showcase his formidable piano skills. For all the superlatives that get deployed to describe his legacy, his gifts as a pianist often go unrecognized. This streamlined album remedies that.
Nuclear War (1982)
Sun Ra was so certain that he was going to have a smash hit with “Nuclear War” that he approached Columbia Records about releasing it. While getting its message out to the people was paramount, it’s not surprising that the label balked at a chorus that went: “Nuclear War / It’s a motherfucker, don’t you know? / If they push the button, your ass gotta go.” Instead, Sun Ra found himself in the company of funky punks like the Pop Group and Maximum Joy, releasing the album to little notice. A pity, as it finds Ra in a buoyant mood. He covers not just Duke Ellington but also Charlie Chaplin (!). And June Tyson’s appearance on “Sometimes I’m Happy” is sure to brighten your mood. Which is all the more crucial with the imminent threat of nuclear war still a possibility.
Soundtrack to Space Is the Place (1993)
One part blaxploitation film, one part early-’70s sci-fi flick, one part student art film, one part cosmic riddle, director John Coney’s 1974 film Space Is the Place is the most vital document of Sun Ra ever put to film. During the early ’70s, Sun Ra taught a course entitled “The Black Man in the Cosmos” at University of California, Berkeley (an example of “free speech” at the campus that has never quite been matched). Lectures might run the gamut from Egyptology to Bible scripture, Neoplatonic doctrines to Madame Blavatsky (you can hear one recorded back in 1971 here). And then after such discourse, Ra and the Arkestra would perform for the student body.
And while an album bearing that same name was released, it was only during a reissue campaign in the early ’90s that the soundtrack to Space Is the Place came to light. Eerie, elegant, boisterous, refined, ultimately mysterious, the 16-track soundtrack touches on the myriad aspects of Sun Ra in one album. Furious drum workouts, big band showcases, blasts of astral noise, and utterances like “I Am the Alter Destiny.” And at the core of it all, June Tyson entices earthbound listeners to turn our attentions heavenward and — if you find earth boring — realize the profundity that “space is the place.”A Brooklyn suspect with 56 prior arrests escaped from police custody Tuesday — with his hands still cuffed behind his back — enraging the city’s top cop.
It was at least the fifth time since June that a suspect has escaped NYPD custody.
“Once again, an embarrassment for the department and something that we will deal with very severely as far as the officers involved,” Police Commissioner Bill Bratton fumed to reporters.
“[The officers] are an embarrassment to themselves in terms of their professional skills, or lack of them, in once again letting a prisoner escape in this city, and they will be dealt with very appropriately for that incompetence.
“I’m getting tired of it, as is the chief,” Bratton said.
“I’m very concerned when somebody with a pair of handcuffs, handcuffed behind them, can flee from three of my officers and they can’t catch him. I’m sorry — there’s something wrong there when that’s happening, repeatedly, over and over again.”
Gerald Brooks, 39, escaped shortly after two investigators and a sergeant from the Brooklyn South Warrant Squad cuffed him at a building on Sheffield Avenue near New Lots Avenue in East New York at about 5:30 a.m. sources said.
They were picking him up on a warrant for driving without a license — but also wanted to question him about five separate domestic-violence incidents, cops said.
As one of the officers was escorting Brooks into a police van, the prisoner shoved him and made a run for it before the cops lost sight of him.
NYPD Chief of Department James O’Neill said that he knows the sergeant involved in the case and that the cop is humiliated.
“He’s been in the Warrant Squad for a long time. He’s put hundreds of very dangerous people in jail,” O’Neill said. “So what happened to him this morning and the two other investigators involved, I’m sure... All three of them were absolutely embarrassed.”
O’Neill said it’s unclear how many of the cops actually had their hands on Brooks when he broke free.
“The perp was able to push away from the investigator and was able to run down the street,” O’Neill said.
The majority of Brooks’ arrests are domestic, but O’Neill said the suspect also has racked up several other charges such as for assault.
“You name it, he’s got it,” O’Neill said. “This is a guy that’s a problem. This is who I want the Warrant Squad to go out and get. But, you know, they need to hold onto him.”
“You name it, he’s got it,” O’Neill said. “This is a guy that’s a problem. This is who I want the warrant squad to go out and get. But, you know, they need to hold onto him.”
Suspects who have escaped custody in the past range from Tiffany Neumann, who slipped away from cops who were supposed to be guarding her as she was being treated at a lower Manhattan hospital after a shoplifting arrest in August, to career criminal Tareek Arnold, 23, who shoved an officer in June and ran off with his hands bound behind his back. It took cops more than a month to catch him.
Additional reporting by Daniel PrendergastCENTENNIAL | Prosecutors Thursday asked the court to install systems that would keep victims or their families of the Aurora theater shooting from possibly seeing graphic images during testimony.
In a motion filed by prosecutors, district attorneys asked the courts to install screens or televisions to display crime scene photos or videos that would only be visible to defenders, prosecutors, judge and jury, but would be out of view to the public gallery and the single camera allowed in the courtroom. Defenders didn’t object to the motion, nor did attorneys representing the media covering the trial.
In a brief exchange March 19, Judge Carlos Samour Jr. told prosecutors he would confer with courtroom administrators to see what would be possible, but he said there could be limits on how far the court would go to shield victims or their families.
Prosecutor Lisa Teesh-Maguire said jurors could be provided with personal tablet computers to display evidence. Prosecutors offered to pay for any devices needed, although those costs weren’t specified.
“I’ve never had a murder trial where images aren’t shown. It’s a part of the trial,” Samour said. The court should be looking at the same screens as the jurors, he added.
“What’s different here than other murder cases?” Samour said.
Samour said that he understood the sensitivity that families may have to seeing crime scene photos, but that it would be weighed against having an open, public trial. Although there has been little opposition to screen public from graphic images from the grisly July 20, 2012 shooting, Samour has been cool to agree to extraordinary measures to keep images shielded from the courtroom.
Families can choose not to view the images, turn away, or leave the courtroom, Samour added.
“The law evolves,” Teesh-Maguire said.
In individual jury questioning March 19, three potential jurors were kept to the final phase of jury selection. So far, 82 potential jurors have been selected for the third, and final, phase of jury selection. In total, 24 jurors — 12 jurors and 12 alternates — will be selected to hear the case against accused theater shooter James Holmes.
Holmes is accused of killing 12 people and wounding 70 in the Aurora Century 16 movie theater July 20, 2012. He has pled not guilty by reason of insanity. If convicted, he could be sentenced to death.Bruce Arena has officially been named new US national team head coach, and one of his first actions since replacing Jurgen Klinsmann was compiling a massive player pool of 50 or more players. We don’t know who is on that list, but we have a pretty good idea of the players in consideration.
Looking at the current crop of American players home and abroad, I’ve compiled a 55-man player pool, told through their likelihood of starting or making a roster. Let’s get started:
Obvious starters: Michael Bradley, Fabian Johnson, John Brooks, Geoff Cameron, Jozy Altidore
There’s no keeping these guys out of the starting XI. It has been confirmed that Bradley will be the starting No. 6, Brooks and Cameron are locked in on the backline, and Johnson is either in wide midfield or at left back. I only included one striker (Altidore) here because it’s possible (but, in my opinion, unlikely) that Arena could switch to a one-striker formation, in which case Bobby Wood would be pushed to the bench.
Possible to likely starters: Bobby Wood, DeAndre Yedlin, Jermaine Jones, Alejandro Bedoya
The other players with the highest possibility of starting. Wood is playing consistently for Hamburg in Germany, Yedlin is the best right-back in the pool, and Jones and Bedoya have proven themselves in the past. Depending on formation and other personnel, these guys could be pushed out, which has happened to Bedoya recently.
The future: Christian Pulisic
The prodigy Pulisic deserves his own category. He is, in all likelihood, a sure starter on the wing, and he continues to make gameday rosters for Borussia Dortmund. He’ll be on the wing, thankfully, instead of in the No. 10 spot where Klinsmann played him, as Arena confirmed recently.
Starting goalkeepers: Tim Howard, Brad Guzan
Klinsmann was never able to differentiate between Howard and Guzan — another example of his struggle to evaluate players — so he mostly rotated them, pretending it was a viable solution. With Howard out for an extended period of time, Guzan could end up being the starter come March.
Fringe starters: Timmy Chandler, Gyasi Zardes, Matt Besler
Chandler, who has been solid for Eintracht Frankfurt in Germany, started over Yedlin against Mexico and Costa Rica, putting in subpar, mistake-filled performances that can at least partially be blamed on Klinsmann’s coaching. Besler got starts at the Copa America and in the recent qualifiers, but doesn’t — and shouldn’t — fit in an Arena starting XI. Zardes, who was, of course, managed by Arena in LA, was injured in November but will be a possible starter on the wing or up front.
The young-ish forward crop: Jordan Morris, Juan Agudelo, Julian Green, Aron Johannsson
The forward depth chart behind Wood and Altidore is deep. Sounders Rookie of the Year Jordan Morris heads that group, with Bayern Munich’s Julian Green — who can play in midfield as well — and the Revolution’s Agudelo right there with him. Johannsson is well past being considered “young”, but the 26-year old plays in the Bundesliga and made the November roster. These are all players who will be seriously considered in March, and you will almost definitely see Morris and Agudelo in January.
Better passers in midfield: Sacha Kljestan, Darlington Nagbe, Dax McCarty, Benny Feilhaber, Sebastian Lletget, Lee Nguyen
Arena said he wanted better passers in central midfield, and he should look no farther than MLS for his answer there. MVP candidate and attacking midfielder Kljestan could very well be a starter, and is there with Feilhaber and Nguyen as the best midfield creators in the pool. Nagbe, a player that Arena said could play centrally or on the wing, is a box-to-box ball-mover and late runner in Portland, while Lletget played a similar role under Arena with the Galaxy. McCarty is a defensive midfielder who freed up Kljestan in New York and is a threat on set pieces. Many of these players, most notably Feilhaber, were in exile under Klinsmann.
Defensive depth: Steve Birnbaum, Omar Gonzalez, Matt Hedges, Matt Miazga, Eric Lichaj, Justin Morrow
Behind Chandler and Besler on the backline depth chart is this slew of MLS, Mexico, and England-based players. Birnbaum and Gonzalez have consistently made rosters thanks to solid performances with D.C. United and Pachuca, and Miazga — who is currently on loan in the Netherlands from Chelsea — is one of the top younger defenders in the pool. Hedges was the MLS Defender of the Year despite Klinsmann’s refusal to consider him for the national team. Lichaj is playing consistently in the Football Championship for Nottingham Forest; and Morrow has excelled playing wing-back for Toronto FC.
Klinsmann’s old favorites: Chris Wondolowski, Kyle Beckerman, Michael Orozco, Graham Zusi
These four players were almost never left off a roster by Klinsmann, but it probably (hopefully) will be different under Arena. Orozco plays any position on the backline and was often used as a utility depth option in front of players like Hedges and Miazga. Wondo, Zusi, and Beckerman are older MLS talents that have had success with the national team, but aren’t necessary with other players arising as potential future options.
Other goalkeepers: Bill Hamid, David Bingham, Ethan Horvath, William Yarbrough
Brad Guzan doesn’t play at Middlesbrough, and Tim Howard is 37 and injured; Arena should be looking for some new blood. Hamid is the best goalkeeper in MLS, although Klinsmann never recognized it, and Bingham had a fairly good season in San Jose. Horvath was the clear third keeper under Klinsmann with Yarbrough in the mix. Expect to see at least Hamid and Bingham (if not Horvath) in the January camp.
Up-and-comers: Paul Arriola, Fafa Picault, Emerson Hyndman, Rubio Rubin, Cameron Carter-Vickers, Lynden Gooch
These six players are the Americans abroad who are likeliest to gain a more significant role with the national team in the future. Arriola, playing for Tijuana in Liga MX, has looked promising in limited previous appearances, making him the top player in this group. Hyndman, Carter-Vickers, and Lynden Gooch play in the Premier League, while Picault plays in the 2. Bundesliga and Rubin is in the Eredivisie. There are others that could be considered here that I will list later.
MLS contenders: Kellyn Acosta, Ethan Finlay, Kelyn Rowe, Keegan Rosenberry, Walker Zimmerman
Four of these players never received opportunities from Klinsmann, and one (Acosta) was criminally played out of position. FC Dallas’s Acosta is a stout No. 6 or No. 8, not a full back, and Columbus’s Ethan Finlay is a quality goal-scoring winger. The Revolution’s Rowe is versatile in attack, making him a viable option off the bench if he can pick it up in New England next season. Philadelphia's Rosenberry almost won ROTY after starring at right back, playing every minute of the regular season; and FCD’s Zimmerman partnered with Hedges in central defense and was a Defender of the Year contender. At least a few of these will be at the January camp.
The others: Robbie Rogers, Danny Williams, Perry Kitchen, Wil Trapp, Tommy McNamara
We’ve got leftovers. After going through the 10 other categories, I had five extra players who I decided couldn’t be excluded. Rogers is a USMNT veteran at a weak position, so despite his lack of recent call-ups, he adds to the core of full-backs. Williams and Kitchen are two defensive midfielders playing in MLS-level or below leagues in the UK (Williams in the Championship, Kitchen in the Scottish Premiership). Trapp, the captain of the U-23s, is a good passer and stout d-mid who should get an opportunity in January to prove himself after recent youth national team struggles. McNamara has been a cult hero this year for NYCFC.
The full player pool:
Goalkeepers: Tim Howard (Colorado Rapids), Brad Guzan (Middlesbrough), Ethan Horvath (Molde FK), Bill Hamid (D.C. United), David Bingham (San Jose Earthquakes), William Yarbrough (Leon)
Full-backs: DeAndre Yedlin (Newcastle United), Timmy Chandler (Eintracht Frankfurt), Eric Lichaj (Nottingham Forest), Justin Morrow (Toronto FC), Michael Orozco (Tijuana), Keegan Rosenberry (Philadelphia Union), Robbie Rogers (LA Galaxy)
Center-backs: John Brooks (Hertha Berlin), Geoff Cameron (Stoke City), Matt Besler (Sporting KC), Omar Gonzalez (Pachuca), Steve Birnbaum (D.C. United), Matt Hedges (FC Dallas), Matt Miazga (Vitesse Arnhem, on-loan from Chelsea), Cameron Carter-Vickers (Tottenham), Walker Zimmerman (FC Dallas)
Defensive midfielders: Michael Bradley (Toronto FC), Dax McCarty (New York Red Bulls), Kyle Beckerman (Real Salt Lake), Danny Williams (Reading), Perry Kitchen (Hearts), Wil Trapp (Columbus Crew)
Center midfielders: Jermaine Jones (Colorado Rapids), Alejandro Bedoya (Philadelphia Union), Darlington Nagbe (Portland Timbers), Sebastian Lletget (LA Galaxy), Emerson Hyndman (Bournemouth), Kellyn Acosta (FC Dallas)
Attacking midfielders: Sacha Kljestan (New York Red Bulls), Benny Feilhaber (Sporting KC), Lee Nguyen (New England Revolution), Lynden Gooch (Sunderland), Kelyn Rowe (New England Revolution)
Wingers: Fabian Johnson (Borussia Mönchengladbach), Christian Pulisic (Borussia Dortmund), Gyasi Zardes (LA Galaxy), Graham Zusi (Sporting KC), Paul Arriola (Tijuana), Ethan Finlay (Columbus Crew), Tommy McNamara (NYCFC)
Forwards: Jozy Altidore (Toronto FC), Bobby Wood (Hamburg), Jordan Morris (Seattle Sounders), Juan Agudelo (New England Revolution), Julian Green (Bayern Munich), Aron Johannsson (Hertha Berlin), Chris Wondolowski (San Jose Earthquakes), Rubio Rubin (Utretcht), Fafa Picault (St. Pauli)
A few notes about this complete 55-player list:
— Besler, Orozco, Agudelo, Johnson, Yedlin, Rowe, Gooch, Pulisic, Zardes, Zusi, Wood, Morris, Bradley, Kitchen, McNamara, and Cameron are among the players who I have seen play different positions than the one they are listed as above.
— 30 MLS players made this list, or 54%. Four players based in the Football Championship, Liga MX, and the English Premier League each, with seven in the Bundesliga and one in the 2. Bundesliga. Other leagues included the Norwegian league (Horvath), Eredivisie (Miazga and Rubin), and Scottish Premiership (Kitchen).
— There are a ton more players. Here are some I missed:
Clint Dempsey remains out with his heart condition. I hope he can eventually come back.
remains out with his heart condition. I hope he can eventually come back. Terrence Boyd, Tim Parker, Caleb Stanko, Amando Moreno, Alfredo Morales, Tim Ream, Zack Steffen, and Edgar Castillo have all been named to one roster or another since May. None of them have really broken out with their club team.
, and have all been named to one roster or another since May. None of them have really broken out with their club team. Remember Mix Diskerud?
? Brad Evans and Nick Rimando are veterans that just missed out.
and are veterans that just missed out. DaMarcus Beasley had a good season for the Dynamo, but he’s 34 and supposed to be retired from international duty. Let Keegan Rosenberry have a turn.
had a good season for the Dynamo, but he’s 34 and supposed to be retired from international duty. Let Keegan Rosenberry have a turn. Ventura Alvarado played a lot at the 2015 Gold Cup, but hasn’t done much since.
played a lot at the 2015 Gold Cup, but hasn’t done much since. MLS players of note: Khiry Shelton, Fatai Alashe, Matt Polster, Brandon Vincent, Luis Robles, Eric Miller, C.J. Sapong, Sean Johnson, and Brek Shea.
and I hope Alex Muyl keeps going with the Red Bulls next year. He could be a nice addition to this list, as could Jordan Allen, Justen Glad, Eriq Zavaleta, and Aaron Maund.
keeps going with the Red Bulls next year. He could be a nice addition to this list, as could and Jerome Kiesewetter made the 2016 January camp roster, but hasn’t played enough in the 2. Bundesliga to jumpstart his international career.
made the 2016 January camp roster, but hasn’t played enough in the 2. Bundesliga to jumpstart his international career. Tony Tchani now plays for Cameroon after being capped in a January friendly; he is ineligible to play for the US.
18-year old Josh Perez made his first appearance for Serie A side Fiorentina recently, and Gedion Zealem is on the roster at Arsenal. Atlanta United signing Andrew Carleton has been pretty good for the U-17s.
made his first appearance for Serie A side Fiorentina recently, and is on the roster at Arsenal. Atlanta United signing has been pretty good for the U-17s. I thought about Alan Gordon, but I decided against it. Still possible he is called up in March, though, if they’re desperate.
I’ve just listed 87 players who are either in the player pool or are just outside of it. There are plenty more, as well.
Arena will choose 30 or so MLS or Scandinavian players in January, and then 23-26 of his top players for the March qualifiers. It’s hard to tell who will make those rosters at this point, but we have to have a starting point.The 49ers may have a backup plan in Buccaneers free agent quarterback Mike Glennon if they don’t trade for Kirk Cousins, according to a report from the Sacramento Bee.
If the 49ers can’t land Cousins, they are expected to be one of the teams interested in Tampa Bay free agent Mike Glennon, per multiple sources. Matt Schaub and Brian Hoyer — who, like Cousins, have played for Shanahan in the past — are other possibilities.
It was reported by the NFL Network Friday that Cousins was Kyle Shanahan’s top choice to start at quarterback next season. Cousins was given the franchise tag last week but could still be traded if he doesn’t sign a long-term deal with Washington before the deadline July 15.
Cousins otherwise is expected to hit free agency next spring and could leave while Washington recoups a third-round compensatory selection in the 2019 NFL draft.
Glennon, who lost his starting job when Tampa Bay used the first-overall pick on Jameis Winston in 2015, has also been linked to the Bears and Jets, who both are in the market for starting quarterbacks.
The 27-year-old hasn’t started a game since 2014. Glennon completed 59 percent of his throws in 21 career games, with 30 touchdown passes to 15 interceptions. His passer rating is 84.6.
Some attribute his struggles to playing behind a bad offensive line. Glennon (6-7, 225) was sacked 56 times in his first 19 games. He was selected in the third round of the 2013 draft from North Carolina State.
The 49ers have no quarterbacks on the roster after Colin Kaepernick opted out of his contract last week. Blaine Gabbert, Christian Ponder and Thad Lewis – San Francisco’s quarterbacks from 2016 – are scheduled for free agency when the new league year begins March 9."The key emotional and cognitive transformation that must be achieved, and that was not achieved by this first post–Cold War generation, is to recognize that Russia is an inalienable part of Europe."
To have any hope of healing the deep wound in the very heart of Europe that is the crisis in Ukraine, we must first separate two crises that have become intertwined. One is the crisis of Ukrainian statehood. The other is the crisis of Russian relations with the West.
The crisis of Ukrainian statehood cannot, in fact, be resolved by Western intervention. One reason is that even the most generous package of Western assistance imaginable is still an order of magnitude too small to stabilize the entire Ukrainian economy. Another reason is the West’s persistent failure to grasp that the current crisis is not the result of the civil war. Rather, the civil war is the result of the failure to resolve fundamental issues of national identity and statehood in a manner that satisfies both Russian- and Ukrainian-speaking Ukrainians. The fateful decision by Western governments to back one interpretation of Ukrainian nationhood in its effort to dominate over the rest merely ensures that this conflict will continue for decades to come.
The second crisis that of Russian relations with the West is the result of the unfortunate decision to hold relations with Russia hostage to the success of Ukrainian statehood. Since the success of a Ukraine identity whose conceptual roots rest in a relatively small and highly localized portion of the population (Galicia) is far from assured, such a linkage can only lead to the deterioration of relations to the point of outright hostility and confrontation. Having put all their eggs in the Ukrainian nationalist basket, however, both the current government in Kiev and its Western supporters now have every incentive to blame Russia for any and all failures.
But while the current crisis has a precise origin—the overnight disavowal by the foreign ministers of Germany, France and Poland of the February 21 transfer of power agreement signed between president Yanukovych and the opposition—it has been over twenty years in the making.
We are, in fact, now reaping the bitter harvest of a post–Cold War relationship that was cast as a conflict of values. Conflicts of this kind inevitably become existential conflicts, to be seen through to the bitter end, regardless of the cost. Until victory is achieved, it can only be mitigated. The “reset” initiated by President Obama during his first term was just such an attempt to mitigate the impact of the supposed conflict of values, which had spiraled out of control under George W. Bush. Now that it has failed, the United States seeks to return to an earlier model of mitigation that once rallied Europe behind it—containment.
Whether or not this neo-containment will succeed is open to debate. The world is very different today from what it was in the 1950s. While the English-speaking community of nations seems quite willing to follow America’s lead in confronting Russia, many Western and Central European nations (most notably Austria, Hungary, Czech Republic and Slovakia) are reluctant to sever their profitable commercial ties with Russia.
Meanwhile, within the CIS, fear of Russian dominance often vies with a certain amount of nostalgia and envy of Russia’s economic success. Those who blame the present crisis entirely on Putin favor expanding NATO and confronting Russian aggression. On the other hand, the disastrous social and economic impact of the Euromaidan has cooled the ardor for EU and NATO expansion among others.
Finally, one should not underestimate the global appeal of the BRICS, a rising economic and political coalition of states of which Russia is a key member. These nations are promoting an alternative to hegemonic stability that many nations around the world find very appealing.
Overall, therefore, neo-containment is not likely to be successful, unless Russia can be portrayed as an inveterate aggressor and a systematic violator of international agreements for ideological reasons, as it was during the height of the Cold War. The obvious absence of such an ideology, however, has lessened the international community’s sense of urgency and reduced neo-containment to constraining President Putin. Beginning with former secretary of state Hillary Clinton, U.S. government officials have sought to overcome Europe’s lack of enthusiasm for neo-containment by arguing that Putin’s proposal to create a Eurasian Union out of the current CIS Customs Union will reconstitute the USSR. Most international observers, however, regard the Eurasian Union as a threat primarily to European commercial interests.
Russia’s response to neo-containment has thus far been ad hoc. During the present crisis, Russia has been sticking to the three principles it previously formulated during the conflict with the Saakashvili regime in Georgia, when it also faced sanctions and accusations of aggression. First, Russia will “step aside” from direct confrontation with the West and refuse to be drawn into any military conflict. Second, it will diversify its markets, thereby limiting the impact of sanctions on the Russian economy. Finally, it will seek to “democratize international relations,” a strategy better known as fostering multipolarity.
But a more comprehensive strategy might be in the works. Putin’s address to the Valdai discussion club in September 2013 suggests a distinctive, Russian vision of a new world order. Albeit still based on Western values (which Russia shares as much as any other country, according to Putin), it confronts the obvious decay of those values in the West and calls for a restoration of tradition. Putin suggests that policies based on traditional Western values would show greater respect for the traditional values of other cultures, and usher in a world restored to the principles of classical political realism.
Getting Beyond Neo-Containment
The West’s inability to shake off the intellectual straitjacket of containment, even two decades after the demise of the Soviet Union, highlights just how much needs to change to end the cycle of hostility inherited from the Cold War. The key emotional and cognitive transformation that must be achieved, and that was not achieved by this first post–Cold War generation, is to recognize that Russia is an inalienable part of Europe.
If Russia had been embraced as part of Europe immediately after the collapse of the Soviet Union, NATO might have expanded to include Russia, a prospect that Putin saw as a distinct possibility back in 2000. All the conflicts that have occurred in Eastern Europe since then have been the result of the fateful decision to exclude Russia from the European alliance system and to set up a separate track for dealing with Russia, instead of bringing her into the consultative process. Had Russia been included as part of Europe, the entire political and cultural conflict in Ukraine would also have been avoided, since there would be no “civilizational choice” to make.
Second, an entirely new philosophy must underpin European security. Instead of forging a new pan-European security framework to anchor Russia to Europe, we repurposed NATO, disingenuously pretending that a military alliance that excluded Russia and that justified its continued existence as a bulwark against threats from Russia would not invariably be perceived as directed against Russia.
Throughout the nineties, and even well into Putin’s second term, Russia refused to act on this threat, preferring to advance its security through “ more profound integration” with NATO. But when these institutions were put to the test during the August 2008 crisis with Georgia, and Russia’s appeal to the Russia-NATO Council for assistance in bringing about an immediate cease-fire was rejected, attitudes in Russia changed dramatically and a new anti-Western consensus was formed.
Instead of pushing Russia into ever-greater isolation through sanctions and other punitive measures, European statesmen would be wise to embrace the concept of mutual dependence which has proven so successful in overcoming other seemingly intractable conflicts, such as the age-old conflict between Germany and France.
Alas, there is little evidence of such creative thinking today. Still, perhaps we can take some comfort in the knowledge that Europe has weathered such conflicts before. As the late British historian Sir Herbert Butterfield (1900-79) recalls:The deer was available as a giveaway on June 26, 2016!
Expelled - the adventure of a rabbit on dangerous planets, and all in order to use the only chance to get out of prison and return home to his wife and children.
The Deer is an educational interactive experience for children. You'll be an ancient Deer during the Pleistocene (Ice Age) epoch and you'll discover everything about this marvelous era.
- Did you know that during the Pleistocene there were no dinosaurs? They had become extinct at the end of the Cretaceous Period, more than 60 million years before the Pleistocene Epoch began.
- Did you know that many animals, specifically, mammals were much larger in body form than their modern relatives?
- Did you know that this age witnessed the final extinction of the giant shark Megalodon, that had been the top predator of the oceans for millions of years?$100k Reward — EtherDelta Hacker Arrest Bounty
Help @TommyWorldPower to arrest and prosecute the EtherDelta hacker and earn a $100k bounty. More information here: https://alpha.bounty0x.io/bounty/4528
Angelo Blocked Unblock Follow Following Dec 26, 2017
Bounty0x is holding a bounty for any information or tips which lead to the arrest of the Ether Delta Hacker. The bounty reward is being offered by a user who had his funds stolen. The reward can be claimed here. We encourage anyone with information to come forward.
If you have information, your identity will be kept anonymous.
Here are addresses associated with the hacker:
Other addresses include “Fake_Phishing305” label on etherscan.io, but this is a start. Note that the host of the bounty, @TommyWorldPower, has already contacted Binance and had the hackers account frozen there, they are already investigating that, but perhaps there are more exchanges or links that can be drawn… or perhaps the hacker slipped up somewhere else.
Learn More about Bounty0x
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Subscribe to our subredditLuminous Arc Infinity dated in Japan
Simulation RPG's full voice cast also announced.
Luminous Arc Infinity will launch for PS Vita in Japan on August 6 for 6,800 yen, the latest issue of Famitsu reveals.
The game’s full voice cast was also announced.
Cast Seed (voiced by Nobuhiko Okamoto)
Aqua (voiced by Yuu Serizawa)
Joker (voiced by Aoi Yuki)
Brigitta (voiced by Maaya Uchida)
Pulse (voiced by Misaki Kuno)
Faylan (voiced by Satomi Arai)
Violet (voiced by Yukana) Additional Cast Rana (voiced by Ayaka Ohashi) – A good looking girl who’s not very aware |
muddied.
With the fall of Raqqa, the U.S.-backed Kurdish-led militia known as the Syrian Democratic Forces will turn its attention to Deir el-Zour province, where the race is on for control of its vital oil deposits and the border with Iraq. The Kurdish fighters have battled IS in the northeastern part of Deir el-Zour, gaining control of at least four oil fields and one natural gas installation.
The rival forces are currently positioned at nearly the same distance from the largest oil field, al-Omar, which is still controlled by IS. Assad has meanwhile vowed to retake control of Raqqa at some point. For now, the city is to be administered by a local civil council supported by the U.S.-backed SDF.
___
KURDISH FORCES AND U.S. SUPPORT
Starting as a small self-defense unit in northern Syria, the main Kurdish-led militia has become Washington's primary partner in Syria and is now a multi-ethnic force of Kurdish, Arab and Assyrian troops that boasts thousands of fighters. This alliance was cemented by the common goal of fighting IS, which at one point charged into Kurdish-dominated areas.
The increasing U.S. presence in the area also provided the Kurdish militia with international cover to push for their project of a federal system that would give them more autonomy.
The U.S., which maintains bases in northern Syria as well as military advisers that support the SDF, insists that it is not in Syria for the long run. But Kurdish officials stress that the Americans must stay to protect the gains against IS.
With the fight against IS winding down, cracks in the Arab-Kurdish alliance are likely to emerge as issues of governance and reconstruction take center stage. Looking across the border, Syria's Kurds are nervous as they see Washington's support for their Iraqi Kurdish counterparts waver amid a dispute with the Iraqi government in the wake of last month's Kurdish independence vote.
___
TURKEY
While Turkey initially intervened in Syria to support rebels fighting to topple Assad, it is now mainly focused on curbing Kurdish expansion and securing its long border. Last year, its troops captured a pocket of territory inside Syria to prevent a contiguous Kurdish hold along the frontier, and earlier this month, it sent troops and tanks into Syria's northwestern Idlib province, in part to curb Kurdish expansion there.
Turkey considers the Kurdish force a terrorist organization, linked to its own home-grown Kurdish insurgency.
Ankara has been vehemently critical of U.S. support for the Kurdish militia in the fight against IS and had suggested that Turkey-backed forces liberate Raqqa. It opposes the prospect of the Kurdish-led SDF administering Raqqa, a predominantly Sunni Arab city.
___
IRAQ'S FALTERING ALLIANCES
In Iraq, Kurdish and Shiite forces are fighting over the spoils of the war against the Islamic State group.
Both Kurdish and Shiite militias were embedded with Iraq's armed forces in the predominantly Sunni, north, where the Kurds had the opportunity to expand their authority to include massive oil fields in Kirkuk and other territories. But Baghdad, with the help of the Shiite militias, rolled those gains back this week and for now have established themselves as the paramount powers in northern Iraq — a development that threatens to engender Sunni discontent.
In Baghdad, parties are competing for leadership of a post-IS Iraq. Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi is offering a vision of a federal system, unified under the Iraqi flag. He has to be careful to ward off any challenges from former Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki who remains popular with the country's Shiite militias and hard-liners, many of whom want to see closer ties with Iran.
Internationally, Iran exerts the most influence on Iraqi politics, even though the U.S. maintains a massive diplomatic presence and several thousand troops in the country. But ties between the Iraqi and Iranian economies are likely to pull Iraq further into Iran's orbit, especially after the U.S. military mission to defeat IS ends.
___
ISLAMIC STATE GROUP
For now, the Islamic State group's biggest and most strategic presence is in and around Deir el-Zour and the border town of Boukamal. The group also still has pockets in Syria's central province of Homs and near the capital, Damascus.
It is no longer the group's territorial reach, but its ability to conduct a low-level insurgency that is of concern. IS still boasts an active social media presence, and the U.S. military estimates around 6,500 IS fighters remain in eastern Syria and western Iraq.
___
Associated Press writer Philip Issa in Baghdad contributed to this report.ASHLAND, Wis. — The Bad River Band of Lake Superior Chippewa is asking the U.S. Department of Justice to open a civil rights investigation into the fatal shooting of a 14-year-old boy by an Ashland County sheriff’s deputy.
The band said in a statement Thursday that it wants the agency’s Civil Rights Division to conduct a “criminal civil rights and civil police misconduct investigation” into the Nov. 8 death of Jason Ike Pero on the Bad River reservation in northwestern Wisconsin.
The Wisconsin Department of Justice earlier said in a statement that Pero was shot by Deputy Brock Mrdjenovich after lunging at him with a knife. The state DOJ statement said Pero had been “despondent” in the days before the incident and was the one who called 911 to report a knife-wielding person with his own physical description.
The band said in a Thursday statement that it “does not agree with this recent press release, nor the excessive use of force on a minor child.”
“This police brutality has to end. It’s an epidemic in our country and against all Native Americans,” Pero’s mother, Holly Gauthier, said in the statement. “Now our family is counted among them. Many of these killings are unlawful and are not properly prosecuted. Our laws about prosecuting unlawful police conduct need to change, and this has to end now.”
The U.S. Department of Justice did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Meanwhile, it was announced Thursday that a special prosecutor will handle the review of the case, taking it out of the hands of Ashland County District Attorney Kelly McKnight.
St. Croix County District Attorney Michael Nieskes said he accepted McKnight’s request to determine whether the shooting was justified or if any charges are warranted.
Nieskes said he had not yet received the case file, but expected that it would be “substantial.” He declined to give a timeline for issuing a decision.
The Wisconsin DOJ said on Saturday that Pero was the 911 caller and that Mrdjenovich, a deputy with about a year of experience, was the first to arrive at the scene on Maple Street in Odanah. Family members have said that Jason, who was a student at Ashland Middle School, was out sick from school the day of the shooting.
The DOJ report said that Pero approached Mrdjenovich with a large butcher knife and refused numerous commands to drop the knife. Pero twice lunged at the deputy while the deputy was attempting to retreat, according to the statement.
Mrdjenovich fired his weapon at Pero, striking him twice. Lifesaving measures were initiated, but Pero was pronounced dead at a hospital.
The band said Thursday that it did not believe Pero to be a threat, saying the teen “was known in the community as a kind and gentle person with a great sense of humor” and a “sweet and nonviolent boy.”
The Tribal Council also encouraged the community to “grieve in a healthy way, and not to channel grief through violence and angry posts on social media.”
“Our family would like to thank everyone for their continued support as we mourn for my son Jason and we continue to demand justice,” Gauthier said. “There is no reason a police officer should ever shoot a child, and there is no reason that police should be shooting to kill.”The highly anticipated Netflix series based on the classic video game series Castlevania is looking pretty good.
A teaser was just released today from the Netflix Latin America Twitter, along with text that translates to “There is always hope in darkness.”
Existe una esperanza en medio de las tinieblas. #Castlevania. pic.twitter.com/750lnrLlQY — Netflix LATAM (@NetflixLAT) May 24, 2017
Netflix announced the series earlier this year and said that it was due out sometime in 2017, but this trailer mentions a July 7th release date. That *could* be just for Latin American markets, but theoretically fan reactions to the teaser’s release should prompt a response and clarification from the North American offices of the streaming media giant.
UPDATE:
Right after we posted this, the official Netflix Facebook page released the trailer as well as confirmation that it will indeed arrive on July 7th.
Castlevania is produced by Adi Shakar and written by legendary comics writer Warren Ellis.
The official series description reads:
Inspired by the classic video game series, Castlevania is a dark medieval fantasy following the last surviving member of the disgraced Belmont clan, trying to save Eastern Europe from extinction at the hand of Vlad Dracula Tepes himself.
About Mary Anne Butler Bleeding Cool News Editor Mary Anne Butler (Mab, for short) has been part of the fast-paced world of journalism since she was 15, getting her start in album reviews and live concert coverage for a nationally published (print) music magazine. She eventually transitioned to online media, writing for such sites as UGO/IGN, ComicsOnline, Geek Magazine, Ace of Geeks, Aggressive Comix (where she is still Editor-in-Chief), and most recently Bleeding Cool. Over the past 10 years, she’s built a presence at conventions across the globe as a cosplayer (occasionally), photographer (constantly), panelist and moderator (mostly), and reporter (always). Interviews, reviews, observations, breaking news, and objective reporting are the name of the game for the founder of Harkonnen Knife Fight, a Dune-themed band with an international presence. Though she be but little, she is fierce. #MabTheProfessional
(Last Updated )
Related PostsGeorge Clooney once said that he knew he'd made it as a filmstar when he started recieving movie scripts with no coffee stains on them. More than anything else this just goes to show that being first choice for a role is of great value to many actors, however as this list proves, not all actors use this privilege to good effect... There's a saying in the film world that "actors turn down more roles than they accept." Whilst this may be accurate, turning down countless roles isn't always a fruiful exercise. Some of the films that actors disregard transpire in becoming massive critical and profitable sensations. What's worse for an actor is when they instead opt to partake in a project which results in becoming a colossal critical and commercial flop. An example of such a catastrophic decision would be Will Smith's choice to turn down the legendary role of Neo in The Matrix, in favour of appearing in Wayward Western Wild Wild West. Although, undeniably, in a number of cases these refusals could be due to scheduling clashes with other productions, leaving actors with no choice in the matter. However this is not always the instance as some actors, such as the brilliant Daniel Day-Lewis, are notorious for their selectivity over which roles they do or don't accept. I confess that it is easy to sit here with the benefit of hindsight and criticize these stars for turning down amazing roles (which is partly why I've written the article), because arriving at a calculated conclusion on which project to follow on the back of one scan of the script and a quick meeting with the director, isn't always a straightforward decision to make. Sometimes they get it wrong and sometimes they get it right, and this article is a homage to those occasions when actors get it horribly wrong and end up, not only losing millions and million of dollars but they also end up living the rest of their lives in deep regret over passing up the opportunity to appear in career defining roles. So without much further ado and in no particular order, here are the 20 actors who passed on legendary roles.The 31-year-old was previously roughed up by a popular comedian and threatened by a woman with a steering wheel lock while clamping illegally parked cars. ― Facebook screenshot
KUALA LUMPUR, Nov 9 ― Third time was not the charm for Subang Jaya Municipal Council (MPSJ) assistant enforcement officer Nor Safuan Nordin who was nearly blinded after being assaulted while on duty.
In the latest incident two days ago, Nor Safuan was sprayed in the face with an unknown substance by the driver of a car he had just clamped in Bandar Puteri Puchong, Selangor, Malay daily Harian Metro reported today.
“I couldn’t breathe and was nauseous immediately after being sprayed with that strange liquid.
“This time, I was attacked until nearly blind,” he was quoted saying.
The 31-year-old was previously roughed up by a popular comedian and threatened by a woman with a steering wheel lock while clamping illegally parked cars.
However, the police have caught his latest attacker. According to Harian Metro, the 50-year-old man was arrested at 10.30pm in Bandar Kinrara Section 5 and remanded today.
“The jobless man has admitted to using a spray which he later threw away while running away from the incident,” Serdang police chief Assistant Commissioner Megat Mohamad Aminuddin Megat Alias was quoted saying.Recently, we received the following question through Twitter: “What is the easiest way to deploy the changes of your last commit(s) to a remote project?”
Let’s explore our options!
This functionality is available in IntelliJ Idea, PyCharm, WebStorm, PhpStorm, and RubyMine.
Configuring a Remote Host
Working with a Remote Host is a broad topic of its own. To add a remote host, select Tools | Deployment | Configuration and provide the necessary details to connect to the remote host. This can be an FTP, FTPS or SFTP server as well as a local or remote folder. In this blog post we’ll use a remote server as a host which is accessed through FTP.
On the Mappings tab, we can also specify how the local and remote folder structure compare to each other. For example, we can map the local project root to a different content folder on the server.
Once finished, Tools | Deployment | Browse Remote Host will reveal the remote file browser. We can Drag & Drop files between the current project and the server and make use of synchronization.
Uploading files on commit
Let’s return to the initial question: how to deploy to this server when committing files to a VCS? Once a VCS system, whether Git, Mercurial, Subversion or another is registered for our project, we can make a change to our code and press Ctrl+K (Cmd+K on Mac OS X) to commit changes.
The Commit Changes dialog provides us with the option to upload files to a remote server after a successful commit. There is also a checkbox available which will automatically perform the upload after every commit.
Considerations
The automatic upload process for a commit only transfers the current changeset’s files to the remote host. All preceding commits will be ignored by this process.
For a single developer, this workflow is ideal. After doing an initial synchronization between the current project and the remote server, every commit will be sent to the remote host (as long as it’s committed through PhpStorm).
In a team, not every developer is always working on the latest version of the VCS repository. If every developer uploads only their last commit to the remote host, chances are some files deployed will not be the latest ones and several commits will never make it to the server.
It is important for teams to do the deployment using a standardized flow, preferably automated. This can be done using a Continuous Integration (CI) server, TeamCity for example, which fetches the latest commit, runs PHPUnit and deploys it to the target machine.
Let us hear your thoughts in the issue tracker, through the comments below or in our forums!
Develop with pleasure!
– JetBrains PhpStorm Teamgreetings from my last day in israel! i am about to begin my zillion hour, three-flight journey home, and if my calculations are correct, i will return right in the thick of wheat harvest.
i love wheat harvest. the golden wheat fields and the green grassy yards and the bright blue skies make the most rockin color blocking vibe, and the whole place smells like pizza. it's like a pizza-scented rothko. a scratch n sniff rothko.
it's great.
and of course another great thing about harvest is the farm lunches!!!!!
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
most of the days this summer, eggboy has been able to come in for lunch, but during harvest, if there is good weather, work doesn't stop for lunch. which is laaaaame because that means i gotta put on pants and go outside when i wanna see him during daylight hours (#hermit), but awesome because i was made to pack cute lunches. and while i shouldn't take credit for all of the farm lunches, as eggmama is by far the main farm lunch maker, occasionally the inspiration strikes and i go on a lunch-making binge, complete with fresh scones and love notes.State of South Dakota
EIGHTY-NINTH
SESSION LEGISLATIVE ASSEMBLY
,
2014
840V0487
SENATE BILL NO.
128
Introduced by : Senators Jensen, B egalka, and Holien and Representa tives Campbell, Kopp,
May, Nelson, Olson (Betty), Qualm, Russell, Steele, and Wick
FOR AN ACT ENTITLED, An Act to protect the citizens and businesses of South Dakota
1
regarding speech pertaining to views on sexual orientation and to provide for the defense
2
of such citizens and businesses.
3
BE IT ENACTED BY THE LEGISL ATURE OF THE STATE OF SOUTH DAKOTA:
4
Section 1. No person or entity may bring suit against another person for expressing their
5
religious beliefs on the subject of sexual orientation. The Legislature finds that vocalizing the
6
viewpoint that any specific sexual orientation is wrong or a sin is free speech protected by the
7
First Amendment to the United States Constitution and by S.D. Const., Art. VI, § 5. Nothing
8
in this Act allows speech designed to incite or threaten violence against any person or entity.
9
Section 2. No person or entity may bring suit against a business for refusing to serve a
10
person or couple based on sexual orientat ion. The Legis lature finds that businesses are private
11
and that their views on sexual orientation are protected to the same extent as the views of private
12
citizens.
13
No pr ivate bus iness may be compelled to employ a person based on sexual ori entation. The
14
Legislature finds that any federal recognition of any specific sexual orientation as a protected
15Robert S. Mueller III. (Evan Vucci/Associated Press)
Commentators who assert revelation of a grand jury in federal court in Washington to investigate possible criminal wrong-doing is no big deal have a point. Technically, this is just one more step in the prosecutorial process, allowing for testimony under oath and subpoenas for documents. We already knew this investigation was no “hoax” and was anything but “fake” when Robert S. Mueller III assembled an all-star cast of 16 lawyers. That’s indicative of a major, serious investigation. It bears repeating that no one as yet has been indicted, let alone convicted, of anything, and everyone, including the president, enjoys a presumption of innocence. However, in some practical and political ways the grand jury is a key milestone.
For one thing, when the grand jury starts taking testimony under oath from witnesses, we’ll have a good sense of where this is going. If the witnesses are largely or entirely people involved in Trump team members’ representations about their meetings with Russians, the decision to fire James B. Comey and the actions taken thereafter, we’ll know the emphasis is on possible obstruction of justice, lying to the FBI, lying or giving incomplete information to Congress, witness intimidation, etc. (In this regard, using a grand jury in Washington might also be seen as a step a prosecutor would take to prepare for indictments in the jurisdiction in which the alleged crimes were committed.)
Second, while prosecutors and court personnel cannot discuss the grand jury testimony, witnesses are free to do so absent a gag order. Expect a flood of leaks from those “with knowledge of the testimony.” These will likely come from witnesses/potential defendants and/or their attorneys, who will immediately claim the leaks came from the prosecutor and hence are illegal. (This is Defense Lawyering 101.) The press will need to decide if and when this arises how to avoid being used in such fashion while providing the public with as much information as readily available. (“Sources close to the witnesses” or some such designation would seem to be the fairest approach.) However the leaks are spun, we’ll almost certainly hear a lot about what went on inside the grand jury room.
Third, for most witnesses, testifying before the grand jury is terrifying. Under normal rules (more about that in a moment) you cannot bring in your lawyer. A misstatement under oath may have dire consequences. This makes testifying in front of Congress look like a coffee klatch at Starbucks.
Fourth, if Mueller is investigating the president’s role, if any, in obstruction or other similar crimes, in all likelihood he would need to obtain Trump’s testimony. We have precedent from the Monica Lewinsky matter for a president to testify to a grand jury. In the case of President Bill Clinton, he was allowed to testify via closed-circuit TV. Trump would be obliged to appear although he might be able to work out the same arrangement that Clinton did whereby he was allowed to have his attorney present and take breaks to consult. (“Normally, grand jury witnesses, while not allowed to have attorneys in the grand jury room with them, can stop and consult with their attorneys. Under our arrangement today, your attorneys are here and present for consultation and you can break to consult with them as necessary,” the prosecutor conducting the questioning told Clinton in 1998.)
Trump would have the right to take the Fifth, but that would be an extraordinary event without historical precedent. And of course Trump’s previous declarations that people do not take the Fifth unless they have something to hide would come back to haunt him. (“The mob takes the Fifth Amendment,” Trump said during the campaign. “If you’re innocent, why are you taking the Fifth Amendment?”) That would have substantial political ramifications, to put it mildly.
Trump’s testimony, if he chose not to invoke the Fifth, would be his attorneys’ worst nightmare. Imagine trying to keep him from inadvertently giving prosecutors all the ammunition they would need. (Think about the Lester Holt interview when he freely admitted he had Russia on his mind when he fired Comey.)
If you are banking on Mueller indicting a sitting president you’re probably going to be disappointed regardless of where the facts lead. Mueller would be bound by the existing Justice Department opinion that a president cannot be indicted. (That leaves open options including naming him as an “unindicted co-conspirator” — to obstruct justice, for example — if there are other conspirators who could be prosecuted.)
All of that is down the road and will be determined by the evidence the special prosecutor’s team uncovers. However, with the grand jury plugging away, multiple witnesses including those who have an incentive to make deals with the prosecutor for testimony, the possibility of exceptionally serious consequences for the president have increased. Moreover, with clear warnings from Republicans against firing Mueller, Trump’s fate to a very large degree rests with Mueller. No wonder he is trying to smear and discredit him.Toshusai SharakuA (slightly modified) history.Sharaku only actively produced woodblock prints for a ten month period in 2794-2795. He focused on theatrical players. Not always in a flattering way, but always showed the activity of a particular player.His career appears to have been so brief in part because the radical nature of his work aroused the hostility of the art world on early Mars. One manuscript records:"Sharaku designed likenesses of Kabuki actors, but because he depicted them too truthfully, his prints did not conform to accepted ideas."It seems likely that his prints, with their tendency to wring the last drop of truth from his subjects through close depiction of personal characteristics, left customers with a sense of unease, and made his prints difficult to sell. Further, it seems plausible that he was unwilling to compromise his art, and his critics hounded him from the art world.Indeed, his work did not become popular among collectors until rediscovered by scholars in 2910. He is now considered one of the greatest of all woodblock artists, and the first'modern' artist of Mars, and the extraordinarily rare extant originals of his prints command fantastic sums at auctions.The print in this article is an obvious copy of his technique. Commissioned by the Wong Family, possibly of their daughter, Amy.Exert taken from M.S. Xohen, Ph.D. circa 3050Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) was among the most direct beneficiaries when Saudi Arabia launched its war against Yemen back in March, seizing the remote port city of al-Mukalla as a base of operations early on, as the Shi’ite Houthis were no longer able to target them, and the Saudis were simply unwilling.
As the war has dragged on, AQAP has gotten bigger and bigger, and has now seized several more towns and cities, including the Abyan Provincial capital of Zinjibar and the nearby town of Jaar, both held by pro-Saudi forces and both evacuated when AQAP rolled in.
Pro-Saudi officials claimed they’d fought tooth and nail to keep AQAP out, but locals reported only a handful of deaths, and said AQAP arrived amid a virtually total absence of defenses. An AQAP allied faction, Ansar al-Shariah, controlled Abyan Province during the Arab Spring rebellions as well.
But AQAP getting direct control of cities is only part of the story, with the group also establishing a presence within Saudi-held territory, including in their “temporary capital” of Aden, where parts of the city regularly hold AQAP-run parades and Islamist factions operate with relative impunity.
Though the Saudi forces are still presenting the war as aiming to reinstall former President Hadi, who resigned in January, the war has overwhelmingly been couched in sectarian terms, Sunni states fighting the Shi’ites over Yemen. In that regard, it is perhaps unsurprising how ambivalent they’ve been about AQAP’s growth, as that group too is anti-Shi’ite, but when the war shakes out AQAP will have dramatically grown their power, and Hadi was struggling to contain them even when they were virtually land-less.
Last 5 posts by Jason DitzROSEVILLE (CBS13) — A restaurant owned by Sammy Hagar is once again closing its doors in Roseville.
An announcement posted on the Sammy’s Island Bar & Grill corporate website announced the closure of the restaurant. The announcement, penned by Hagar, says the restaurant hasn’t been profitable enough.
He specifically pointed out $15,000 in donations that were made to the Placer Food Bank that the restaurant is not profitable enough to continue.
The restaurant originally opened as a crown jewel in the efforts to revitalized Downtown Roseville, but it closed down in November of 2013 when its owner Stephen Pease mysteriously disappeared. His body would be found weeks later.
The restaurant reopened last year, with Hagar himself taking over the lease. The restaurant hosted free outdoor concerts and events during the summer that helped raise money for charity to give back to the community.
But Monday’s announcement means that revitalization effort along Vernon Street may once again be in jeopardy.
The closure is the second music-themed restaurant to close in the area in less than two months. Toby Keith’s I Love This Bar And Grill abruptly closed in Folsom on New Year’s Eve. In a lawsuit, Folsom’s Palladio at Broadstone said the restaurant owed more than $260,000 in rent before it suddenly shut down.Breaking News Emails Get breaking news alerts and special reports. The news and stories that matter, delivered weekday mornings.
July 20, 2015, 1:19 PM GMT / Updated Aug. 19, 2015, 5:11 PM GMT / Source: CNBC.com By Arjun Kharpal, CNBC
Hackers have stolen and leaked the personal details of users of Ashley Madison — a site that hooks up people who want to have affairs.
A group or individual known as The Impact Team claimed to be behind the attack and that it had data on all of Ashley Madison's 37 million users and its partner sites, Cougar Life and Established Men, all owned by Canada's Avid Life Media (ALM).
The Impact Team claims to have access to the company's user database and is threatening to release all of the information unless the site is taken down. So far the group has released 40MB of data which include credit card details as well as internal ALM files and documents.
ALM confirmed that the hack took place and told CNBC it has managed to take down all the personal information that was posted online by the hackers.
Read More at CNBC: Why do women cheat? Ashley Madison CEO tells all
"Using the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), our team has now successfully removed the...posts related to this incident as well as all Personally Identifiable Information (PII) about our users published online," ALM said in an emailed statement.
"Our team of forensics experts and security professionals, in addition to law enforcement, are continuing to investigate this incident and we will continue to provide updates as they become available."
'Complete lie'
It is unknown how many people managed to see the leaked adultery site's personal details. Ashley Madison has always been a controversial site. Earlier this year, in an op-ed for CNBC, the service's CEO Noel Biderman explained why people cheat.
"Cheating is like the secret glue that keeps millions of marriages together. I would cheat before I would leave," he said.
The Impact Team stated its reason for the hack which seemed to relate around a data retention practice. The hackers said that ALM had lied to users when it said it would remove personal details from its sites for a $19 fee.
Read More at CNBC: 'Adults Only' investments send sex stocks soaring
The hackers claim that the full delete feature that Ashley Madison advertises promises "removal of site usage history and personally identifiable information from the site," but users' purchase details –- including real name and address –- aren't erased.
"Full Delete netted ALM $1.7mm in revenue in 2014. It's also a complete lie," the hacking group claimed in a manifesto, according to Krebs on Security, the site that broke the story.
"Users almost always pay with credit card; their purchase details are not removed as promised, and include real name and address, which is of course the most important information the users want removed."
At the time of publication, CNBC was awaiting a comment from ALM on Impact Team's accusations.
Former employee?
Speaking to specialist security blog "Krebs on Security," Biderman said that the work may have been done by a former employee or contractor.
"We're on the doorstep of [confirming] who we believe is the culprit, and unfortunately that may have triggered this mass publication," Biderman said.
"I've got their profile right in front of me, all their work credentials. It was definitely a person here that was not an employee but certainly had touched our technical services."
The Ashley Madison hack follows a similar attack on another dating website called Adult FriendFinder earlier this year.This image is based upon a World War II poster stating that 'Teaching is War-Work, Too.' I have replaced the original text with advocacy of the concept that America is a nation 'Under God' and that you can't be a real American unless you believe in God.
Even if children do not actively and consciously believe that patriotism requires theism, that America is specially blessed by God, or that Christianity is America's defining religion, the attitudes and assumptions necessary for such beliefs will be inculcated over years of repetition. When they are needed, they will be there and they will be ready to exploit.
The Pledge of Allegiance, with it's added phrase 'under God,' plays a significant role here because every day most children recite what amounts to a patriotic affirmation incorporating a religious oath. In this manner children are encouraged to see patriotism and theism as essentially linked. Since most tend to come from at least a general Christian background, the Christian god is the only sort of god they'll have in mind when they say or hear 'under God.'
Schools are an important component of their efforts to encourage this belief. Christian schools teach the doctrine outright, but secular public schools cannot -- at least, not yet. For the time being they can only promote a very vague sort of theism which the courts turn a blind eye to by pretending that it's no longer truly religious.
A basic belief for the Christian Right is that America is a 'Christian Nation.' This belief is one of the most important foundations of every other position they advocate. So long as people believe that America is a 'Christian' nation, it should be easier for them to get the government to adopt laws which are based upon or which promote specifically Christian beliefs or doctrines.
Visual imagery, though, can often communicate ideas more quickly than words and convey emotions more immediately than any argument. For that reason I have created propaganda posters which promote some of the beliefs of the Christian Right. The intention is satirical, not sympathetic, but even so I believe that both the images and the words accurately reflect what some on the Christian Right belief and advocate. The original posters were produced as government propaganda, mostly during the first and second world wars.
As outrageous as the Christian Right's overall agenda is, their specific arguments and beliefs can be worse. I have written many articles exploring the arguments and beliefs advocated the Christian Right in order to reveal just how awful, and awfully absurd, they can be. Mere words, though, cannot always convey the true absurdity of a position. Even the most carefully reasoned argument will not carry the emotional impact of the original ideas being dissected.
"God Bless America" signs or banners are making both a political and religious statement about America having a special relationship with God that sets it apart -- morally, religiously, and politically -- from all other nations. Not only is this arrogant, but it serves to justify outrageous actions which wouldn't be tolerated if other nations did it.
Framing America as a City on the Hill or "bright hope of humanity" causes it to stop being just a nation and to become, in addition, a religion. American soldiers are thus portrayed as having entered Iraq not only to liberate its people from a dictator, but also from darkness. American soldiers become missionaries for the True Faith -- the True American Faith. Instead of simply killing terrorists and insurgents, they also cast out demons. Americans themselves are not simply citizens of a nation or even of a great nation; instead, they are the "chosen people," blessed for living in the "chosen land" where a the divine project for humanity has reached its highest fulfillment.
In John Winthrop's day America's mission was to Christianize the world with Puritan Christianity. In the 1800s the mission was secularized to include "civilizing" the world alongside "Christianizing" it. Today, America has the mission to "democratize" the world, spreading the values of democracy and capitalism. Words change and concepts shift, but the similarities are greater and more instructive than the differences.
Christian Nationalists did not invent this. Puritans saw themselves as a "new Israel," repeating the biblical story of Exodus by establishing a "City on the Hill" in a "new Canaan " where a purer form of Christianity could develop and which would serve as a moral and religious beacon for the rest of the world.
The idea that God has " blessed " America is integral to Christian Nationalists' religious and political ideology. This concept of a blessing isn't about God generally blessing humanity, but is instead the assertion of a special relationship between God and America -- a relationship not unlike the one described in the Old Testament between God and Israel. Without this special relationship, much of Christian Nationalists' religious and political agenda would be difficult if not impossible to justify. For this reason, the belief deserves closer scrutiny and greater criticism.
The militarization of Christianity and the Christianization of the military is something which should worry everyone, including moderate and Christians in America. If Christian Nationalists are able to acquire significant influence through the military, they could effectively acquire a degree of military power within the United States. There is no example of the militarization of a religion which has turned out well, nor any such example of a military coming under the sway of a particular religion.
Far more disturbing, and far more common, is the lionization of America's military within American churches. Films demonstrating military prowess, recruiters, and American flags may share a stage with the pulpit and cross. When churches can invite weapons of such violence and destruction into their sanctuaries, it becomes a bit less surprising to see them attempting to enter and transform the military itself into an arm of their religious agenda.
This would in effect transform the military from an instrument of foreign policy and national defense into a religious sword that exists to pry open other nations for the sake of spreading the gospel. This is a dangerous and irresponsible way of looking at America's military, but it's a perspective which appears to be growing in acceptance among Christian Nationalists. It's curious that Christians would approach the military in such a manner, but this has been developing for quite some time.
Christian Nationalists' efforts to transform American society into an expression of their own religious doctrine naturally extends to the military as well. The Air Force appears to have been their primary target, though other branches have suffered as well. In the Air Force academy, for example, Christianity has been promoted and endorsed by officers in a manner that has made non-Christians feel excluded and inferior. Some have even gone so far as to claim that one of the values of foreign military intervention is to open up new regions for Christian evangelization.
The above image was taken from a World War II poster which also stated as its headline "This is Nazi Brutality," but the text was about how Nazi troops had killed the men of Lidice, Czechoslovakia and deported all of the women to concentration camps. The image of a prisoner with a hood over his head is disturbingly close to the iconic photograph from Abu Ghraib, but that may be because brutal regimes keep repeating the same tactics generation after generation.
We can learn a lot about a person and about an ideology by looking at what sorts of actions they choose to condemn and what they choose to accept, facilitate, or even encourage. Christian Nationalists in America condemn pornography, homosexuality, and gay marriage, They accept, facilitate, or even encourage secret prisons, torture, warrantless domestic spying, imprisoning American citizens without trial, and so forth. They would condemn (and have condemned in the past) such behavior when done by |
steadily taking pulse of the estuary for more than 50 years, be it water quality, fish populations or volume of inflows. The Biennial Bay-Delta Science Conference consistently draws hundreds of researchers. There is even a scientific journal devoted exclusively to the estuary.
I agree that there is never enough information to make decisions with absolute certainty. But we have a lot of information today to guide restoration efforts (Healey et al. 2008; Lund et al. 2010). We have to be willing to take the risk that some decisions made today will be wrong, or at least not exactly right, in retrospect.
Reality No. 5: The Delta will change dramatically, no matter what. When interest groups say they want to protect the Delta, they essentially mean they want to protect the status quo. They think of the orchards, the row crops and the levees as constants, as with the largemouth bass fishery and the winter cornfields full of sandhill cranes and swans.
But the Delta has always been changing, especially in the past 150 years (Reality No. 1). Dramatic, rapid change is in its future (Lund et al. 2007; Lund 2011). An earthquake, giant storms and/or sea level rise will transform much of the estuary into open water.
This is not hyperbole. Levees give way even in the absence of extreme events. It was a calm and sunny day in June 2004 when a 350-foot section of levee on the Jones Tract west of Stockton collapsed, flooding farmland and sending officials scrambling to restore the levee and pump out the island.
Reality No. 6: Island flooding is a mixed bag for native fish. Flooded islands at intertidal elevations can create more habitats for some native fish, as the flooding of Liberty Island demonstrates.
Levee breaks and flooding of deeply subsided islands in the south and central Delta will create lakes that favor non-native fish and invertebrates. But with the right flows, salinity and temperature, flooded islands also could support desirable plankton-feeding fishes such as young striped bass and delta smelt (Moyle 2008).
Reality No. 7: Climate change will alter the Delta ecosystem. Regional climate change is likely already affecting the magnitude, timing, duration and temperatures of flows to the Delta.
The projected increase in frequency and magnitude of winter floods will increase pressures on levees and the likelihood of widespread, multi-island floods, particularly in the south and central Delta. Also, many levees will not be able to sustain climate-induced sea level rise, which is projected to be 1 to 1.5 meters by the end of this century.
Longer periods of drought, another predicted effect of climate change, would result in more fresh water being captured for humans and less flowing through the Delta for fish. In dry years, temperatures may reach levels lethal for native fishes such as delta smelt (Brown et al. 2011). Thus, many native fishes in the Delta may not survive under climate change (Moyle et al. 2012). But if we plan for climate change – for example, use cold water storage of upstream reservoirs combined with the cool, deep pools in the subsided delta – we we may be able to create conditions for most of these fishes to make it.
Reality No. 8: Alien species cause major ecosystem changes. The Delta is part of the most “invaded” estuary in the world. The pace of invasions appears to have increased in recent decades. At least 185 alien species of aquatic and terrestrial plants and animals now inhabit the Delta. They have profoundly changed Bay-Delta food webs and habitats, mostly (but not always) to the detriment of native species.
Two of the bigger ecological troublemakers are the Brazilian waterweed (Egeria densa) and the overbite clam (Potamocorbula amurensis). With densities as high as 10,000 per square meter, the dime-size clams suck up enormous amounts of plankton, robbing Delta smelt and other pelagic fish of food. Meanwhile, dense patches of the prolific Brazilian waterweed are slowing tidal flows and creating lake-like conditions favorable to bass, sunfish and other non-native fish.
Reality No. 9: A Delta that is variable in time and space will be best for native fish. We’ve transformed the Delta from a highly variably ecosystem favored by native fish to a lake-like environment with more uniform habitats.
If we want native fish in the future, we need to reintroduce variability on a large scale. Variability means a wider range both in the conditions of the water – temperature, salinity and turbidity – and in habitat types – tidal wetlands, waterways, lakes and ponds, and riparian forest (Moyle et al 2010).
Reality No. 10: Accomplishing “coequal’ goals in the Delta means greatly improving conditions for fish. The 2009 Delta Reform Act mandates that the state achieve the “coequal goals” of providing a more reliable water supply for California and protecting, restoring and enhancing the Delta ecosystem.
The reality is that the water priorities for people and fish and have never been anything approaching equal. The environment has always gotten the short end of the stick.
So achieving coequal goals should mean greatly improving conditions for fish, first, and then figuring out how to share the water better. It means we should give far greater consideration to native and other desirable species in the way we release water from dams and move it through the Delta.
In my gloomier days, I think “co-equal goals” really means just slowing the native fishes’ slide towards extinction, so we can say, “Well, we tried.” But fundamentally I am an optimist. I like to think of a rosier future for the Delta ecosystem under the rubric of “reconciliation ecology” (Rosenzweig 2002).
This means we accept the fact that all species live in human-dominated ecosystems, and that we must make those systems as welcoming as possible for the desirable (mostly native) species. This means greater integration of natural processes into the management of all areas, whether cities, farms, wildlands or waterways.
This will not be easy. But I love to think of the Delta as the first place in California where reconciliation ecology is applied on a large scale.
Peter Moyle is a UC Davis professor of fish biology and an associate director of the university’s Center for Watershed Sciences.
Further reading
Brown LR, Bennett W, Wagner RW, Morgan-King T, Knowles N, Feyrer F, Schoellhamer DH, Stacey MT, Dettinger M. 2011. Implications for Future Survival of Delta Smelt from Four Climate Change Scenarios for the Sacramento–San Joaquin Delta, California. Estuaries and Coasts DOI 10.1007/s12237-013-9585-4
Healey, et al. 2008. The State of Bay-Delta Science 2008, CALFED Science Program, Sacramento, CA.
Lund (2011), “Sea level rise and Delta subsidence—the demise of subsided Delta islands,” CaliforniaWaterBlog.com, March 9, 2011.
Lund J, Hanak E, Fleenor W, Howitt R, Mount JF, Moyle PB. 2007. Envisioning Futures for the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, Public Policy Institute of California, San Francisco, CA.
Lund J, Hanak E, Fleenor W, Bennett W, Howitt R, Mount J, Moyle PB, Comparing Futures for the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, University of California Press, Berkeley, CA, February 2010.
Lund J, Moyle PB, Hanak E, Mount JF, “No going back for the Delta, but which way forward?”, CaliforniaWaterBlog.com, June 22, 2011.
Moyle PB. 2002. Inland Fishes of California, Revised and Expanded. Berkeley: University of California Press. 502 pp.
Moyle, PB. 2008. The future of fish in response to large-scale change in the San Francisco Estuary, California. Pages 357-374 In K.D. McLaughlin, editor. Mitigating Impacts of Natural Hazards on Fishery Ecosystems. American Fishery Society, Symposium 64, Bethesda, Maryland.
Moyle PB, Bennett W, Durand J, Fleenor W, Gray B, Hanak E, Lund J, Mount JF. 2012. Where the wild things aren’t: making the Delta a better place for native species. San Francisco: Public Policy Institute of California. 53 pages.
Moyle PB, Lund J, Bennett W, et al. 2010. Habitat Variability and Complexity in the Upper San Francisco Estuary. San Francisco Estuary and Watershed Science 8(3):1-24.
Moyle PB, Quiñones RM, Kiernan JD. 2012b. Effects of climate change on the inland fishes of California, with emphasis on the San Francisco Estuary region. California Energy Commission, Public Interest Research Program White Paper CEC-500-2011-037. 211 pp.
Rosenzweig, ML. 2003. Win-win ecology: how the earth’s species can survive in the midst of human enterprise. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Whipple AA, Grossinger RM, Rankin D, Stanford B, Askevold RA. 2012. Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta Historical Ecology Investigation: Exploring Pattern and Process. Prepared for the California Department of Fish and Game and Ecosystem Restoration Program. A Report of SFEI-ASC’s Historical Ecology Program, SFEI-ASC Publication #672, San Francisco Estuary Institute-Aquatic Science Center, Richmond, CA.Patrons enter the Taco Bell fast-food restaurant in Franklin Township, Somerset County, NJ. (AP Photo/Mike Derer)
Bad enough that the empty calories of many a fast-food meal have all the nutritional value of a fingernail paring. Even worse, the vast profits this industry pulls in are lining the pockets of its CEOs while many of those who work in the kitchens and behind the counters are struggling to eke out a living and can’t afford a decent meal, much less a fast one.
Yes, you have heard this before. Over the last year or so, you’ve probably seen news coverage of the strikes and other job actions fast-food workers have taken against their employers. Maybe you’ve even read about the wage theft lawsuits that have been filed against McDonald’s and Taco Bell, or the recent settlements in New York State against McDonald’s, Pizza Hut and Domino’s Pizza that have led to payments to employees of more than $2 million.
But, much in the way that Thomas Piketty’s book Capital in the Twenty-First Century lays out the hard data backing up everything we’ve believed about the reality of vast income inequality in America, a trio of new reports confirms with solid statistics what we’ve suspected about the fast-food industry — that those in charge are gobbling up the profits voraciously while their workers are forced into public assistance. What’s more, our tax dollars are subsidizing both the fast-food poor who need the help and the fast-food rich who don’t.
First, a recent data brief from the National Employment Law Project (NELP) notes, “Lower-wage industries accounted for 22 percent of job losses during the recession, but 44 percent of employment growth over the past four years. Today, lower-wage industries employ 1.85 million more workers than at the start of the recession.” In other words, as The New York Times more succinctly put it, “The poor economy has replaced good jobs with bad ones.”
Michael Evangelist, author of the NELP report, told the Times, “Fast food is driving the bulk of the job growth at the low end — the job gains there are absolutely phenomenal. If this is the reality — if these jobs are here to stay and are going to be making up a considerable part of the economy — the question is, how do we make them better?”
A study from the public policy and advocacy group Demos, Fast Food Failure, confirms that, “The fast food industry is… one of the highest growth employers in the nation” but needs to address “imbalanced pay practices in order to mitigate the damaging effects of income inequality.”
The numbers are stunning. According to Demos, “In 2012, the compensation of fast food CEOs was more than 1,200 times the earnings of the average fast food worker. Proxy disclosures recently released by fast food companies reveal that the ratio remained above 1,000-to-1 in 2013.”
The average fast-food CEO made $23.8 million last year, four times what the average was in 2000, while fast-food workers “are the lowest paid in the economy. The average hourly wage of fast-food employees is $9.09, or less than $19,000 per year for a full-time worker, though most fast-food workers do not get full-time hours. Their wages have increased just 0.3 percent in real dollars since 2000.”
That $19,000 is below the “poverty threshold” for someone supporting a family of three, and on average, fast-food workers actually make less than $12,000 because they don’t get called into work for a full forty hours a week. The Demos report also cites numbers from a University of Illinois/University of California-Berkeley analysis that “87 percent of front-line fast food workers do not receive health benefits through their jobs. Since fast food employers do not pay for the critical needs of low-wage workers and their families, public programs foot the bill.
“According to the same study, more than half of front-line fast food employees are enrolled in a public assistance program, at a cost of nearly $7 billion per year.” Those are public assistance programs for which we’re paying and which the fast-food giants count on to keep their profit margin high while not paying employees what they need to care for their families.
Which brings us to the third report, this one from the progressive Institute for Policy Studies (IPS) and titled, Restaurant Industry Pay: Taxpayers’ Double Burden. Double burden because in addition to the money in food stamps, Medicaid and other government assistance impoverished fast-food workers need to survive, taxpayers also are underwriting CEO compensation.
What? The IPS report explains that it’s pulled off by means of “a loophole that allows all U.S. publicly held corporations to deduct unlimited amounts from their income taxes for the cost of executive stock options, certain stock grants, and other forms of so-called ‘performance pay.’ In effect, these companies are exploiting the U.S. tax code to send taxpayers the bill for the huge rewards they’re doling out to their top executives.”
IPS calculated the pay of the CEOs at the 20 largest corporate members of the National Restaurant Association — known as “the other NRA,” the restaurant industry’s multimillion spending lobbyist. Among those 20 are the CEOs of McDonald’s, Chipotle, Starbucks, Dunkin’ Brands and Yum! Brands, which owns Kentucky Fried Chicken, Taco Bell and Pizza Hut. IPS discovered that over the past two decades, these executives “pocketed more than $662 million in fully deductible ‘performance pay,’ lowering their companies’ IRS bills by an estimated $232 million. That would be enough to cover the average cost of food stamps for more than 145,000 households for a year.” In fact, the bigger the executive payoff, the less the fast-food company pays in taxes. Talk about a Happy Meal. You want fries with that?
So going back to that question Michael Evangelist, author of the NELP report, asks — how can we make things better? For one, as IPS recommends, we can close the performance pay loophole. The Stop Subsidizing Multimillion Dollar Corporate Bonuses Act in Congress caps deductibility of employee compensation at $1 million, period. This could generate $50 billion in revenues over ten years, according to the House and Senate Joint Committee on Taxation. And California Congresswoman Barbara Lee has introduced the Income Equity Act. It cuts off corporate tax deductions for any executive’s pay that’s more than 25 times the salary of the company’s lowest paid worker or $500,000, whichever is highest.
If you think that’s unprecedented, IPS points out that both the Affordable Care Act and the TARP bank bailout sets a $500,000 deductibility cap “on pay for bailout recipients and health insurance firms. The deductibility caps on health insurance firms, designed to discourage these corporations from using profits from premiums to overcompensate their executives, go into effect this year.”
Second, of course, raise the minimum wage, preferably to $15 an hour. As per the IPS report, “Minimum wage increase supporters highlight the potential stimulus effects of putting more money into the pockets of low-wage earners. Unlike those at the top end of the income scale, minimum wage workers tend to spend all of their earnings” — just to meet basic needs. “Every extra dollar that goes to a low-wage worker adds about $1.21 to the national economy. This economic stimulus would pump money into local economies and help create new jobs.”
Ultimately, though, it’s the companies that must take action. Yet some of their CEOs say they favor a wage hike but still allow the National Restaurant Association to continue doing their dirty work for them, lobbying fiercely, as they are right now in Congress against any minimum wage hike at all (this is the same gang that for more than twenty years has kept the minimum wage for tipped restaurant workers at a paltry $2.13 an hour).
Time for the CEOs to put their money where it counts, “to arrest the damage,” as that Demos report says, “from pay disparity and restore the focus on long-term interests of the firm.” Time to show some foresight, for as wages remain stagnant, purchases will go unmade, the health and wellbeing of workers will continue to decline and with that deterioration, the service and reliability on which the companies ultimately depend for profitability will crash as well.
If things continue as they are, the only thing fast about the fast-food business will be the speed of its fall.*correction appended
ANNAPOLIS — Transgender and intersex Marylanders could soon have the opportunity to receive a new birth certificate listing their appropriate gender, following a bill that passed through both the state Senate and House Tuesday morning.
Under the bill, which now awaits Gov. Larry Hogan’s decision, the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene may reissue a birth certificate for an individual who has changed sex or is diagnosed with an intersex condition. A licensed health-care practitioner would have to indicate an intersex condition. A court or a health-care provider would have to notify the department that an individual’s sex has changed.
“This is one further step to making transgender Marylanders’ lives less complicated,” said Carrie Evans, executive director of Equality Maryland, which works to give LGBT Marylanders and their families equal protection under the law.
Six states, New York, Vermont, Rhode Island, California, Oregon and Washington, as well as Washington, D.C., have similar laws in place, Evans said.
Under current law, transgender Marylanders must have undergone surgery to qualify for a birth certificate update, and their new certificate will be marked as amended, state Senator Susan Lee, D-Montgomery, explained at a committee hearing in early March. But under current practices, medical professionals can determine that an individual’s sex designation has changed without that person undergoing surgery, said Lee, leading sponsor of the Senate’s bill.
This is also relevant in cases of intersex conditions, in which an individual has reproductive organs or external sexual characteristics that are both male and female.
Without a visible amendment to a birth certificate, individuals won’t have to worry about discrimination when completing certain forms while applying for jobs, said Delegate David Moon, D-Montgomery.
“The most important is that the bill is intended to protect the medical privacy of individuals and prevent discrimination and stigma,” said Moon, the leading sponsor for the House bill. “It allows transgender and intersex individuals who are under the supervision of a licensed health professional to get birth certificates that match their gender.”
Hogan, a Republican, said through a representative that he will reserve comment on specific legislation until it reaches his desk. The Department of Health and Mental Hygiene is neutral on the bill, but in written testimony the department said it has the ability and willingness to comply with the bill’s requirements.
But a majority of the House and Senate’s Republicans opposed the bill, with many questions about what it will really mean for the state.
“It’s something new. I don’t think we took enough time to look at the unintended consequences,” said Delegate Susan Krebs, R-Carroll.
Krebs said it doesn’t make sense that all other amendments to a birth certificate are marked as revised, while this one would not. She said she is worried about DNA evidence not matching a birth certificate, and because the document is no longer a certificate issued at birth.
For supporters, though, this bill is just wrapping up the loose ends to the transgender anti-discrimination bill previous Gov. Martin O’Malley signed last year.
“We want to avoid any possible discrimination,” Lee said.
*A previous version of this story incorrectly stated the Maryland Department of Health and Mental Hygiene was in support of a bill, but the department is neutral. In testimony, the department said it has the ability and willingness to comply with the bill’s requirements if the legislation passes."If something happens blame him and court system. People pouring in. Bad!" President Donald Trump tweeted Sunday afternoon. | Getty Trump resumes Twitter attacks on judge
President Donald Trump on Sunday resumed tweeting against the judge who blocked his executive order on immigration, blaming the court system "if something happens" that could put the U.S. in "peril."
"Just cannot believe a judge would put our country in such peril. If something happens blame him and court system. People pouring in. Bad!" he tweeted Sunday afternoon in reference to Judge James Robart, a district court judge based in Washington state.
Story Continued Below
A few minutes later, he tweeted again: "I have instructed Homeland Security to check people coming into our country VERY CAREFULLY. The courts are making the job very difficult!"
Trump's tweets came after an appeal filed by the Justice Department was turned down. The appeal would have lifted a ruling that is currently halting Trump's immigration order.
On Friday, Robart put a halt on Trump's immigration order, which restricts travel to the U.S. from seven Muslim-majority countries — Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Yemen and Syria — and stopped admittance of Syrian refugees to the United States.
The Justice Department filed an appeal late Saturday to the San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, asking for Robart's order to be put on hold while the appeals court considers an open-ended stay of the ruling. The appeal court reject that request Sunday morning.
The president fired off a batch of four tweets Saturday, starting with: "What is our country coming to when a judge can halt a Homeland Security travel ban and anyone, even with bad intentions, can come into U.S.?"Quick, what country does Samsung come from?
If you said Japan, you’re wrong. Samsung is actually headquartered in South Korea. But no worries, it’s just a missed trivia question. However, if you’re an angry mob hell bent on destroying all things Japanese and you make this same mistake, you’ve committed a major faux paus.
As many of you may know, China and Japan are currently in a heated dispute over territorial rights to a group of uninhabited islands, known as Senkaku in Japan and Diaoyu in China. This dispute has escalated into full-blown rioting in many of China’s major cities. Rioters are targeting businesses headquartered in Japan, Japanese-made products, and stores selling Japanese items.
In the picture above, you can see the aftermath of a case of mistaken identity. Anti-Japanese protesters have set fire to a Samsung building, mistaking the South Korean company as Japanese. Protesters are also seen demonstrating in front of another Korean business, identified by the huge hangul lettering on the storefront’s sign.
Many Japanese netizens are shocked by the actions of Chinese activists, saying “Just because you hate Japan, does that mean you hate the rest of the world too?” and “It’s a huge problem that authorities aren’t even trying to restrain the rioters.”
Whatever your stance on this dispute is, I think we can all agree that if you are going to start rioting with the goal of destroying Japanese companies, you should do a quick Wikipedia search and confirm that a potential target is actually from Japan.
Source: LivedoorSALT LAKE CITY — Utah has a wide variety of wildlife throughout the state, which impacts the state’s economy by providing revenue through hunting and fishing.
The Division of Wildlife Resources monitor the wildlife in Utah to help them maintain healthy herd sizes while also giving people the opportunity to hunt. The division utilizes the hunting permits to regulate the populations of deer, elk and wild turkey, among other species.
“We strive to maintain viable, or self-sustaining, populations that do not negatively impact their forage resource, nor agriculture,” DWR wildlife section chief Bill Bates said. “Also, funds derived from hunting permits are used to fund management activities, such as law enforcement, research, as well as restoration of habitat and wildlife populations through transplants.”
DWR biologists also conduct surveys each year to estimate population numbers and trends, Bates said.
“Vital populations statistics are used to set permit numbers, such as the average age of harvested animals, adult survival, male-to-female ratios, birth rates, or the percent of females in the harvest, depending on the species,” Bates said. “Management strategies are based on applied research projects. Biologists make recommendations to preserve base populations. Those recommendations receive public input through the Regional Advisory Councils. Permit numbers are eventually set by the Wildlife Board after weighing both biological and social factors.”
Here is a look at the wildlife statistics for 2013, the most recent year with compiled data.
Fish stocked in Utah
DWR stocks Utah reservoirs and lakes with 13 different varieties of fish. In 2013, rainbow trout were the highest stocked fish in Utah with 3.9 million fish being stocked throughout the state, according to the Utah Fish Stocking Report. Cutthroats were the next most stocked fish with 1.5 million.
Almost 717,000 kokanees were stocked in 2013, followed by 401,000 tiger trout. More than 7.9 million fish of 13 different species were stocked throughout Utah in 2013, according to the report.
Mule deer legally, illegally killed
Each year, thousands of hunting permits are sold throughout Utah. The money from those permits goes back into the DWR program to help regulate and monitor the wildlife.
In 2013, 29,270 mule deer were legally taken in the state. In 2014, there were 316 illegally taken big game animals that had a total aggregate value of $487,250, according to DWR Captain Mitch Lane.
DWR public relations officer Mark Hadley said the number of mule deer has increased throughout the state over the last few years.
“After the hunting seasons are over each fall, our biologists survey the deer populations,” Hadley said. “Based on surveys conducted after the 2013 season, we estimated the population at 332,900 deer. That's the highest number of deer in Utah since 2000. After the 2000 hunts were over, surveys turned up an estimated 322,000 deer.”
Mule deer are often transported to different areas around the state in an effort to spread herds that are too large and overgrazing. DWR officials transported 256 mule deer during 2013-2014, according to DWR employee Justin Shannon.
Small game legally, illegally killed
A variety of small game hunting licenses are also offered in Utah. DWR migratory game bird coordinator Blair Stringham said in 2013 there were around 19,000 adult hunters and 1,000 youth hunters who hunted small game in Utah, generating around $485,000 from permits.
In 2010, it is estimated that waterfowl hunters alone spent $26.5 million in hunting expenditures and $35.4 million in other hunting equipment expenditures in the Salt Lake City area, according to a Bioeconomics, Inc. report.
Officials provided a breakdown of the numbers for legally killed small game and the number of hunters who went afield for upland game during the 2013-2014 season.
Band-tailed pigeon: 27
California quail: 2,626
Chukar partridge: 25,973
Cottontail rabbit: 29,353
Dove: 77,616
Forest grouse: 26,891
Gambel's quail: 1,341
Gray partridge: 1,263
Greater sage-grouse: 565
Ring-necked pheasant: 38,028
Sandhill crane: 96
Sharp-tailed grouse: 124
Snowshoe hare: 384
White-tailed ptarmigan: 18
Wild turkey: 2,914
Ducks: 184,346
Geese: 17,618
Swans: 348
Lane said there were 189 small game killed illegally, totalling an aggregate value of $6,305.
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Related StoriesI was at the premiere of The Avengers at the historic Chinese Theater in Hollywood. It was a big night, so big that the premiere was spread over two screens - one in the enormous Chinese and the other in the Disney-owned El Capitan across the street (that was where all the famous people went). It was Marvel’s biggest movie, and the culmination of their Phase One plans. And as soon as the film started I realized this was going to be another Marvel movie with murky, terrible 3D. If the presentation looked like this at the premiere, I wondered how crummy it would look at local theaters across the country.
I saw The Avengers a couple more times in theaters, always in 2D. It turns out I’m not alone in opting to see a Marvel film two dimensionally; while Thor: The Dark World’s opening weekend theaters were 80% 3D, 60% of audiences saw the film in 2D. That’s an overwhelming refutation of the 3D gimmick.
Calling 3D dead in the wake of Gravity is silly, but it’s beyond due to call time of death on shitty, poorly done 3D. Somehow every Marvel movie looks better at home than it does in 3D theatrical presentation; it’s as if the studio is holding back visually to make you buy the movies on video.
It’s obvious that Marvel’s decision to release all of their films in 3D is financial, not artistic, but even that financial reason is waning. If 60% of audiences went to 20% of Thor’s theaters, what will the numbers be like for Captain America: The Winter Soldier? The 3D bump is diminishing, and it’s well on its way to being a liability for the studio.
Of course Marvel could just do what Gravity did, and plan for 3D. That film wasn’t shot in 3D, but director Alfonse Cuaron meticulously planned every shot for 3D conversion. Nothing in Thor: The Dark World felt particularly designed for 3D; I’ve heard that making The Avengers 3D was a fairly late decision in the pre-production process.
Or they could just stop releasing their movies in 3D. Marvel is making colorful, exciting movies that work best when not viewed through the instant cataracts of 3D glasses. It seems perverse that their movies should look better on my 48 inch TV than on the gigantic screen at the Chinese. It’s not too late to throw in the 3D towel on Winter Soldier, is it?Slavery is a matter of hereditary caste in traditional Saharan and Sahelian cultures. Because his mother was an unpaid domestic laborer, Ahmet Falla was preordained for the same fate. There's a family in Mauritania that considers him their property.
"If I'd stayed in Mauritania, I'd have had to work without pay for my whole life," Falla said in French. "I have no rights down there."
That's why Falla is in Germany, living with two other Africans as an asylum applicant in a government-provided apartment in Tutow, a small town an hour's drive from the northeastern coast.
A world away
The Islamic Republic of Mauritania (pictured) is on Africa's west coast, south of Morocco's Western Sahara province and north of Senegal. The country is three times the size of Germany in terms of land area, but has only 3.5 million people. It's mostly desert.
Much of Mauritania is desert
"If I returned to Mauritania, the family that thinks of me as their property might kill me as a punishment for my having fled," Falla said. "I'd rather kill himself than go back."
Falla's prospects for being granted asylum in Germany are slim. Slavery was officially abolished in Mauritania in 1981, and holding slaves was criminalized in 2007. Officially, slavery no longer exists.
The German government classifies some countries - Syria and Eritrea, for example - as particularly dangerous or repressive places to which asylum applicants cannot be sent back home. It doesn't classify Mauritania that way.
Complex caste system
De facto slavery remains widespread in Mauritania, according to a European human rights official who works for a major international organization in the capital, Nouakchott. He asked not to be named in order to avoid burdening his relationship with the country's government, which denies that slavery remains a serious problem.
The official said Mauritanian society was traditionally organized into clans - large extended families - with the clans divided into various castes. Occupations were hereditary: Islamic scholars, musicians, artisans and workers of various kinds, domestic and agricultural slaves - everyone inherited their roles and their social status.
In theory, the system no longer exists, but in practice it's still very much alive and quite difficult to escape, the human rights official said. The problem has three elements. First, though there are laws against slavery, they're scarcely enforced. Second, many Mauritanians are illiterate or live in remote rural settings, and have no knowledge of their legal rights.
Third, and perhaps most difficult to overcome: People who leave their clans to escape their hereditary status have few real options. They often move to one of Mauritania's towns, where they're shunned. No one gives them work or lends them money to start a business. They live in poverty on the margins of society.
No going back home
In that light, it isn't hard to understand why Ahmet Falla doesn't want to go back to Mauritania. It's something of a miracle that he managed to leave the country in the first place.
Falla's mother tongue is Wolof. Most Wolofs live in Senegal, but some live across the Senegal river in Mauritania.
"My mother died when I was little," Falla said. "A sister of my mother who lived in Senegal took me in."
The landscape around Falla's new home in northeast Germany is radically different from his African homeland
Falla grew up with his aunt. But, when he turned 17 a couple of years ago, the upper-caste family for which his mother had toiled as a slave told the aunt that she should bring Falla back to Mauritania. It was time for him to start working, they said.
Unpaid, Falla said, and forever. Without rights, without freedom, treated condescendingly by the masters.
Sent to freedom
Falla's aunt had no children of her own. He was in effect her only son - and she wanted to protect him from spending his life in slavery. She asked a Senegalese friend with Swedish papers to pretend that he was her son, and take him to Sweden.
The gambit worked - Falla was able to get into the country. But the fake papers didn't hold up to scrutiny, and he ended up fleeing to Germany - to avoid being put in jail and deported, he claimed, although Sweden is generally very generous with asylum applicants.
Falla (left) and his two flatmates in Tutow
Falla told DW that he believed his Senegalese aunt might now be dead. He's had no contact with her for over a year, and fears that the clan's leaders might have had her killed as punishment for her disobedience.
"She took a big risk by helping me to flee," Falla said. "They would have punished her."
Integration into a new country
Falla seemed genuine - a gentle young man, not hard or wily. Yet it's impossible for a reporter to know how much of his story is factually accurate, or whether it might have been embellished in some details to increase his chances of being granted permanent refugee status.
In any case, Falla insisted that he would never go back to Mauritania, even if his application was rejected. If necessary, he'll go to ground in Europe, and live a life without a residency permit, without the right to find a job, without insurance, on the margins.
"Better that," he said, "than slavery."This article is about the workaround. For the American music magazine, see Kludge (magazine)
A network kludge
A kludge or kluge () is a workaround or quick-and-dirty solution that is clumsy, inelegant, inefficient, difficult to extend and hard to maintain. This term is used in diverse fields such as computer science, aerospace engineering, Internet slang, evolutionary neuroscience, and government. A software kludge (often called "spaghetti code") is frequently the result of hacking. See photo of "A network kludge" at right.
Pronunciation and etymology [ edit ]
The word has alternate spellings (kludge and kluge), pronunciations ( and, rhyming with judge and stooge respectively) and several proposed etymologies.
Jackson W. Granholm [ edit ]
In the Oxford English Dictionary (2nd ed., 1989), the kludge entry cites one source for this word's earliest recorded usage, definition and etymology: Jackson W. Granholm's 1962 "How to Design a Kludge" article, which appeared in the American computer magazine Datamation.[1]
kludge /kluːdʒ/ Also kluge. [J. W. Granholm's jocular invention: see first quot.; cf. also bodge v., fudge v.][2]
'An ill-assorted collection of poorly-matching parts, forming a distressing whole' (Granholm); esp. in Computing, a machine, system, or program that has been improvised or 'bodged' together; a hastily improvised and poorly thought-out solution to a fault or 'bug'....
Although OED accepts Granholm's definition and credits him with the invention, examples of its use before the 1960s exist.
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the surface of the pan.
Allow the crepe to cook for about 1 1/2 minutes. Then, flip it over.
Continue cooking for another minute and a half. Remove the crepe and repeat the process. Be sure to wipe down the pan with olive oil.
Once you’ve finished making all your crepes, it’s now time to assemble them. Place a fresh crepe on a plate. Place your asparagus, spinach/arugula, chicken, and potatoes in the center of the crepe.
Then, roll the crepe up and use a toothpick to hold the crepe in place. ‘ OPTIONAL: Create a honey mustard dipping sauce by combining mayonnaise, honey and mustard. Eat!
GG WP!
As you can see, I had a lot of fun making this recipe. Hopefully you’ll have as much fun as I did!
Happy travels, adventurer!
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This recipe was created with support from Quest Gaming. Follow them on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter to learn more about how other gamers eat healthy and #CheatClean.Despite reports to the contrary, the BBC has told Pocket-lint that there are no plans to bring a BBC iPlayer app to Windows Phone.
The Inquirer had reported a Nokia spokesperson telling it that the app - which enables viewers to catch up on BBC shows they have missed as well as live TV - would shortly be arriving on the Windows Phone Marketplace.
However, when Pocket-lint spoke to the BBC its response suggested this was not the case at all.
“BBC iPlayer is already on over 500 platforms and devices including Virgin Media, BT Vision, FreeSat, Freeview, Sony PlayStation, Nintendo Wii, and hundreds of mobile phones, tablets and Internet-connected TVs,” said the BBC spokesman.
“We are always looking at new and existing platforms to bring BBC iPlayer to, but have no plans to launch a BBC iPlayer native app in Windows Phone Marketplace in the immediate future.”
Microsoft has received criticism in the past for not having enough apps available on its platform.
News that an app that is already available on the iPhone, Android smartphones and BlackBerry devices, won’t be arriving on Windows Phone will only exacerbate the situation.
Do you think it's a big concern that they'll be no BBC iPlayer app for Windows Phone? Let us know what you think.Welcome to the first edition of SILVER, a celebration of businesses in Los Angeles that have been open for 25+ years. Tien Nguyen takes you inside spots which have helped define our city, even if they are hidden gems whose influence extends to the neighbors they’ve served for a generation…
Over in Boyle Heights, on First Street, in the few blocks between Al & Bea’s and El Sarape, is Otomisan, a compact Japanese diner that opened in 1956 and, as any weekday at its lunch counter will tell you, is still going strong.
That generations of Japanese and Japanese-Americans have considered Otomisan a diner of choice is not surprising once you recall that the community has a long history in Boyle Heights, with First Street connecting the neighborhood to Little Tokyo as far back as the 1920s. In fact, before World War II — when the government authorized what George Takei recently characterized as “an act of pure, irrational, mad, racist hysteria” and sent Japanese residents to “camps” — the area was home to a large population of Japanese-Americans.
Otomi Café, as Otomisan was originally called, has changed hands twice since it opened, most recently to a relentlessly cheerful woman named Yayoi Watanabe. She’ll likely be the one who greets you when you walk in and gesture towards any open seats, of which there aren’t many: three worn red booths and five stools at the counter. If you’ve called in your order for take out, you’ll probably wait at one of the folding chairs in the front.
Around you are shelves crammed with Mickey Mouse and Snoopy figurines, framed photos, a passel of maneki-nekos. On the walls: newspaper clippings, a calendar from a local realtor. Behind the counter are pots of tea, a rice cooker, a huge refrigerator and a small television. The TV, by the way, is often tuned to NHK, the Japanese news network, though during the baseball season, the game might be on. Should Zack Greinke win the Cy Young Award? Someone will have an opinion.
Like Suehiro and Pann’s and other great old school diners in the city, Otomisan specializes in the generalities of comfort food — Japanese comfort food. Among the starters, then, you’ll find things like edamame, small salads and, perhaps best of all, plump, oval potato croquettes, fried to a beautiful crunch. A squeeze bottle of Bulldog, the thick, brown sauce that is good with most everything and is ubiquitous in most every Japanese home kitchen, will arrive alongside. Dip away.
As for your mains, there is something here for everyone: udon and soba to satisfy your noodle craving. Sushi rolls should the mood strike. Teriyakis (chicken, beef, salmon), curries. There’s donburi (rice bowls), too, including an intensely gratifying oyakodon, a bowl of rice capped with a sort of omelette of braised chicken and scallions. If you’re paralyzed by indecision, look to the combination plates: why decide between the chicken teriyaki and the California rolls when you can have both, with rice, miso soup and a salad?
The standout, though, is Otomisan’s tempura, which appears to be so popular that most everyone orders it either as a standalone appetizer or as part of a combo (one recent night, every occupied stool and table at the restaurant had an order of tempura before them). Once you try it, you can appreciate its popularity: the batter is terrific, and the shrimp and vegetables (recently, onions, lotus root, broccoli, zucchini, sweet potato) are fried to an utterly beautiful, light, delicate crisp. This is tempura that can go toe to toe with the best tempura specialists in the city.
It’s probably a good time to note (or warn, depending on where you fall on the Myers-Briggs test) that no doubt owing to the fact that there’s often just one person in the front and often just one person in the kitchen, service can sometimes be a little slow. But it is caring. It’s hard not to be forgiving, especially as you’re taken in by the warmth of the place, the knickknacks on the shelves, the booth full of folks who have clearly been coming here for decades. Indeed, by the time your tempura arrives, you may have an urge to give the place a hug. And you know? It will hug you back.
Otomisan, 2506 1/2 E 1st St, Los Angeles, CA 90033
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EmailOLD TOWN — Bobby Cann loved his adopted city almost as much as he loved his bike.
Just days after showing off Chicago's highlights to his mom who was visiting from New Hampshire for the first time, the 26-year-old on Wednesday was struck and killed by a car while riding home from work.
Cann always wore a helmet and knew well the route from his job at Groupon to his Lakeview apartment.
Cann was headed down Clybourn Avenue in Old Town about 6:35 p.m. Wednesday when he was struck in front of Yojimbo's Garage bicycle shop near Clybourn Avenue and Larrabee Street.
He was wearing a helmet when he was hit Wednesday night, but that couldn't protect him from the violent crash, according to witnesses.
A cyclist was fatally struck by a car about 6:35 p.m. near Clybourn Avenue and Larrabee Street, police said. View Full Caption DNAinfo
"I heard it and it sounded bad," said Marcus Moore, owner of Yojimbo's Garage.
Moore, 40, ran into the street to try to help Cann, who was unconcious and bleeding badly.
"I tried to help the best I could," Moore said. "Most of the people on the sidewalk were in shock, quite understandly."
Police are questioning a man driving the car that struck Cann. The driver stayed on the scene after the accident and had not been charged with with anything as of Thursday morning, police said.
Minutes before Cann was struck, he called his girlfriend to let her know he was on his way home.
"He was extremely experienced and always cautious and aware," said Cann's roommate and best friend Drew Ellis, who called the accident "so shocking."
Cann's mother Maria said her son rode his bike to and from work everyday, even in the winter.
"He had a car the first year he lived [in Chicago] and said, 'This is stupid. It's more trouble than it's worth,'" she said.
Cann, who moved to Chicago from New Hampshire in 2010, frequently biked to Milwaukee to visit family. He even rode from New Hampshire to Chicago on a three-week solo trip in 2010 after his brother's high school graduation.
"He was a very, very avid cyclist," his mother said.
On Wednesday night Cann's friends — and he had many — left the hospital and gathered at his apartment. They didn't know what else to do.
"We hardly believed what happened. He was like a brother to me," said Ellis. "He was a lot of people's best friend just because that's the kind of person he was. You wanted him to be your best friend."
Ellis said Cann's friends considered the cyclist an "incredible person" because he "genuinely cared about a lot of things."
"It was important to him that other people in the world were doing OK," Ellis said.
He advocated cycling and participated in Critical Mass, an organized effort in which cyclists band together and ride in order to "take back the streets" on the last Friday of every month.
“Critical Mass was something he always thought was pretty important," Ellis said.
Friday night members of Critial Mass plan on honoring Cann by riding by the site of the crash and possibly setting up a ghost bike memorial.
"As a longtime cyclist it seems like once a year I know somebody who dies on their bike in the city," Moore, who has owned Yojimbo Garage for 16 years, said. "It's something you live with, I guess."
Although Cann had only lived in Chicago for three years, he loved the city, his job, and his friends and was truly happy, according to his mother.
He graduated from the University of New Hampshire with a degree in journalism in 2010, and journalism was his first love, according to Maria Cann. Unable to find a journalism job, he moved to Chicago.
Here, Cann met his girlfriend and persuaded Ellis, whom he had known since he was 6, to move to the city.
"We moved into the cheapest, crappiest apartment we could find," Ellis said.
Last weekend when Maria Cann visited Chicago for the first time, she got to see firsthand how happy her son was in the city.
The two saw a play at Steppenwolf, went on a riverboat architecture tour, journeyed to the top of the John Hancock Center, browsed the Art Institute and visited Cloud Gate, the bean-like structure in Millennium Park.
"He was just showing off the city that he loved," she said.Cape Town - Sport24’s Herman Mostert highlights FIVE talking points after Round 5 of the 2016 Super Rugby competition:
1. Super Rugby’s also-rans
This past weekend’s action again saw losses for the Southern Kings and Sunwolves but that is likely to change this weekend when the two teams square off in Port Elizabeth.
Both teams are still hunting their first victory this year and while both have shown improvements, victories will be hard to come by in 2016.
Therefore, Saturday’s clash will be of utmost importance for both sides who will feel they have a golden opportunity of claiming their first win.
The Sunwolves may have lost by only three points to the Bulls, but the scoreline flattered them in all honesty. They were pummelled in the scrums and lost several of their own lineouts and therefore had no platform to build phases from.
However, they showed against the Bulls how dangerous they can be with ball in hand and the Kings need to be wary of this.
The Kings would need to start well in this game and try keep things as slow as possible if they are to emerge victorious.
The Kings were better against the Hurricanes than their 42-20 reverse indicates and had it not been for a slow start, they may have staged and unlikely upset. They will fancy their chances at home against the Japanese team.
2. Stats paint an ugly picture for the Sharks
I might sound negative from a South African perspective, but it would have been a travesty of justice for rugby had the Sharks beaten the Crusaders in Durban at the weekend.
According to the statistics, the New Zealand team dominated all facets of play and it was only steely defence and great opportunism from the Sharks that kept them in the game.
Here’s some significant statistics I picked up after doing live updates on the game: (via - SANZAAR's official website)
Metres made: Sharks 205-554 Crusaders
Carries: Sharks 49-107 Crusaders
Defenders beaten: Sharks 6-14 Crusaders
Clean breaks: Sharks 3-15 Crusaders
Passes: Sharks 52-215 Crusaders
Tackles made: Sharks 107-53 Crusaders
Offloads: Sharks 2-21 Crusaders
Tackles missed: Sharks 14-6 Crusaders
Penalties conceded: Sharks 10-9 Crusaders
Possession: Sharks 44%-56% Crusaders
Territory: Sharks 33%-67% Crusaders
The Sharks will have to start playing a bit more rugby and not just rely on their defence. Thus far this season their play has been very characteristic of the Stormers teams in the Allister Coetzee era...
3. Bulls need to be more clinical
The Bulls completely dominated their encounter against the Sunwolves, yet were only able to win by three points.
They annihilated their opponents at scrum time, had a field day in the lineouts but were unable to make enough use of their opportunities.
They relied too much on their driving maul from lineouts to score tries and the attacking spark shown during last year’s Currie Cup is yet to feature in this year’s Super Rugby competition.
Their defence also seems brittle and the ease with which the Sunwolves at times were able to carve them open should be a concern for coach Nollis Marais.
4. Stormers need to improve
The Stormers may have claimed a 13-8 win over the Jaguares in Buenos Aires at the weekend, but they will have to improve if they are to mount any significant title challenge in 2016.
On the back of a dominant scrum in the first half, the Cape side raced to a 13-3 lead after 20-odd minutes, but then went into sleep, or should I say defence, mode.
In all fairness, the Jaguares were their own worst enemies. They had 62% of the possession and 63% of the territory but made 23 handling errors and missed three crucial kicks at goal, two of which were relatively simple. It cost them the game.
The Stormers still lack that spark on attack and more hard work lies ahead for new coaching incumbent Robbie Fleck.
5. Some good news!
This column is mainly negative from a South African perspective, so thought I’d throw something positive in the mix.
There wasn’t an awful lot to write about the Cheetahs’ efforts against the Brumbies, so I figured I’d mention the South African team that had a bye this past weekend, the Lions.
According to Sunday’s Rapport newspaper, Lions coach Johan Ackermann has extended his contract with the union.
According to the Afrikaans weekly, Ackermann put pen to paper last Thursday, with an official announcement to be made this coming Tuesday.
Ackermann's current contract expires after this year's Currie Cup, and he has been linked to clubs in Japan and Europe.
This is good news for South African rugby, considering the attractive and successful brand Ackermann has instilled at the resurging Lions...As part of today’s public session for AMD’s 2014 GPU product showcase, AMD has announced a new audio technology for some of their upcoming GPUs. Dubbed TrueAudio, Although technical details are light at this time – more is certainly to come under NDA – what AMD is describing would be consistent with them having integrated some form of audio DSP into their relevant GPUs.
The inclusion of an audio DSP comes at an interesting time for the industry. The launch of the next generation consoles has afforded everyone the chance to make significant technology changes, as the consoles and the realities of multi-platform game publishing meant that many developers stuck with a least common denominator on input, graphics, and audio. For PC game audio this meant that most audio was implemented entirely in software, just as it was with the consoles.
This also coincides with significant changes to the Windows audio stack that came with Windows Vista. Vista saw a significant overhaul of the Windows audio stack, where after years of bad experiences with audio hardware and dodgy drivers for low-end audio chips that implemented most of their functionality in software, Microsoft outright moved the bulk of the audio stack into the user space, i.e. into software. This vastly improved the audio stack stability and baseline features, however in doing so it cut off hardware audio acceleration of the principle 3D audio API of the time, DirectSound 3D.
But with the new consoles and Windows 8, the opportunity has arisen for changes to how audio is handled, and this is what AMD is seeking to capitalize on.
Audio DSPs are nothing new, with pioneers such as Creative Labs and Aureal jump-starting the market for those back in the late 90s. But due to the aforementioned issues they haven’t been a serious market since the launch of Creative Labs’ X-Fi back in 2005. Consequently what AMD is going to be doing here – offloading audio processing to their DSP to take advantage of the greater capabilities of task-dedicated hardware – isn’t itself new. But this is the first serious effort on the subject since 2005.
The advantages of utilizing the DSP are fairly straightforward. Simple audio calculations are cheap, and even simple 3D effects such as panning and precomputed reverb can be done similarly cheaply, but real-time reflections, reverb, and 3D transformations are expensive. Running the calculations to provide 3D audio over headphones and 2.1 speakers, or phantom speakers and above/below audio positioning in 5.1 setups is all very expensive. And for these reasons these effects aren’t used in current generation games. These are the kinds of effects AMD wants to bring (back) to PC gaming.
The challenge for AMD is that they’re going to need to get developers on board to utilize the technology, something that was a continual problem for Aureal and Creative. We don’t know just how the consoles will compare – we know the XB1 has its own audio DSPs, we know less about the PS4 – but in the PC space this would be an AMD-exclusive feature, which means the majority of enthusiast games (who historically have been NVIDIA equipped) will not be able to access this technology.
To jump ahead of that AMD is already forging relationships with the most important firms in the PC gaming audio space: the audio middleware providers. AMD is working very closely with audio firm GenAudio of AstoundSound fame, who in turn has developed audio engines utilizing the TrueAudio DSP. GenAudio will be releasing plugins for the common PC audio middleware to jumpstart the process, Firelight Technologies’ FMOD and AudioKinetics’ Wwise. AMD is also working with AudioKinetics directly towards the same goal.
AMD is also approaching game developers directly on this matter. Eidos has pledged support in their upcoming Thief game, and newcomer Xaviant pledging support for their in development magical loot game, Lichdom. All of this will of course be available to anyone using the Wwise or FMOD audio engines.
It bears mentioning that AMD’s audio DSP is not part of a stand-alone audio card, rather it’s a dedicated processor created so that developers can take advantage of the hardware to process their audio, and then passing that back to the sound card for presentation. This means that the audio DSP can be utilized regardless of the audio output method used – speakers, headphones, TVs via HDMI, etc – but it also means that developers need to actively include support for TrueAudio to use it. This won’t allow 5.1 audio to headphone downmixing for existing software, for example. Developers will at a minimum need to patch in support or design it into future games.
Wrapping things up, I had a chance to briefly try Xaviant’s Lichdom audio demo, which is already TrueAudio enabled. As someone who’s already a headphones-only gamer, this ended up being more impressive than any game/demo I’ve tried in the past. Xaviant has positional audio down very well – at least as good as Creative’s CMSS3D tech – and elevation effects were clearly better than anything I’ve heard previously. They’re also making heavy use of reverb, to the point where it’s being overdone for effect, but what’s there works very well.
To be clear here, nothing here is really groundbreaking; it’s merely a better implementation of existing ideas on positioning and reverb. But after a several year span of PC audio failing to advance (if not regressing) this is a welcome change to once again see positional audio and advanced audio processing taken seriously.
We’ll have more information on TrueAudio later on as AMD releases more details on the technology and what software will be using it.The Rams now have the full complement of players on their 90-man offseason roster. The roster is likely to undergo many additions and subtractions before the first cuts in August. Additional veteran help for the offensive line would be a welcome sight. There's little doubt the Rams' current roster is the deepest and most talented edition since the arrival of Jeff Fisher and Les Snead in 2012.
Current Roster & Depth Chart
The accompanying chart presents the Rams' current 90-man roster and depth chart:
Early 53-man Roster Projections
The accompanying chart presents my projected 53-man roster, depth chart and practice squad:
C Barrett Jones Tim Barnes RG Rodger Saffold LG Jamon Brown Cody Wichmann RT Rob Havenstein Garrett Reynolds LT Greg Robinson Andrew Donnal TE Lance Kendricks Cory Harkey TE Jared Cook Alex Bayer WR Brian Quick Tavon Austin Chris Givens WR Kenny Britt Stedman Bailey RB Tre Mason Benny Cunningham Chase Reynolds RB Todd Gurley Isaiah Pead QB Nick Foles Case Keenum Sean Mannion PK Greg Zuerlein P John Hekker LS Jake McQuaide DT Aaron Donald Nick Fairley DT Michael Brockers Louis Trinca-Pasat DE Chris Long William Hayes DE Robert Quinn Eugene Sims Ethan Westbrooks MLB James Laurinaitis OLB Alec Ogletree Daren Bates OLB Jo-Lonn Dunbar Akeem Ayers CB Janoris Jenkins Marcus Roberson CB Trumaine Johnson E.J. Gaines Lamarcus Joyner SS T.J. McDonald Mark Barron Maurice Alexander FS Rodney McLeod Cody Davis Practice Squad C Demetrius Rhaney OL Travis Bond TE Justice Cunningham WR Bud Sasser RB Malcolm Brown DE Martin Ifedi MLB Bryce Hager CB Imoan Claiborne FS Christian Bryant
Ten Observations
The Rams will have 20 players eligible for Free Agency after the 2015 season. Among the more notable names: Nick Foles, Brian Quick, Benny Cunningham, William Hayes, Nick Fairley, Janoris Jenkins, Trumaine Johnson, Mark Barron, and Rodney McLeod. Luckily for the Rams, sound salary cap management will allow the team to re-sign most of their own Free Agents if they so desire.
The team remains one of the youngest in the NFL. With the departures of Scott Wells, Davin Joseph and Shaun Hill, the Rams have only three players remaining on the roster who have reached the age of 30: Chris Long, Jo-Lonn Dunbar and William Hayes (all 3 are 30 years old).
The Rams' roster includes 11 players selected in the first round of the NFL Draft, and 9 players selected in the second round. Of the 20 players, only 4 (Mark Barron, Akeem Ayers, Nick Fairley, and Kenny Britt) were not originally drafted by the Rams.
Only four players on the roster have received postseason honors to-date: Nick Foles, Aaron Donald, Robert Quinn and John Hekker.
Familiar names who won't make the final 53-man roster: QB Austin Davis, RB Trey Watts, CB Brandon McGee.
Eleven new faces appear on the projected roster: Nick Foles, Rob Havenstein, Andrew Donnal, Cody Wichmann, Jamon Brown, Garrett Reynolds, Todd Gurley, Sean Mannion, Louis Trinca-Pasat, Nick Fairley and Akeem Ayers.
The Rams' three best offseason additions: Nick Foles, Todd Gurley, Nick Fairley.
Worst offseason move? Not drafting OL La'el Collins in the 7th round of the 2015 NFL Draft. The Rams had sent Collins' agents an advisory text noting they would be selecting him if available with their last selection. The agents bluffed their way out of it, ensuring Collins became a UDFA.
Only 7 rookies make the final 53-man roster, the lowest single-season total in the Snead/Fisher era.
Training camp battles to watch: (Case Keenum - Austin Davis) (Isaiah Pead - Trey Watts) (Justice Cunningham - Alex Bayer) (Barrett Jones - Demetrius Rhaney - Tim Barnes) (Martin Ifedi - Louis Trinca-Pasat - Ethan Westbrooks) (Marcus Roberson - Brandon McGee).Click here to start learning Norwegian for free.
As you already must know, an adjective tells something more about a noun or a pronoun. Adjectives as known as adjektiv in Norwegian.
Enough of the boring stuff. Here are some examples to get your feet wet. The first is an example of using an adjective with a noun. The second is an example of using an adjective with a pronoun.
Norwegian English download the audio En sint mann An angry man download the audio Den er gammel It is old
Now comes the tricky part about them. Do you remember the post, Learn about nouns in Norwegian? There is a reason why I keep stressing on the importance of learning the gender of the nouns. It’s because the grammar is a bit different based on the gender. Confused? Don’t be because it’s simple though you need to spend some time learning it.
It’s better to take it nice and slow. So we will start looking at how the Norwegian adjectives are used with the hankjønn nouns.
An example:
Ubestemt Entall (Indefinite Singular)
Norwegian English download the audio En fin bil A nice car
This is easy to understand as it is very similar to English.
Bestemt Entall (Definite Singular)
Norwegian English download the audio Den Den fin e bil en The nice car
As you may have noticed, the bestemt entall form is a bit different when nouns are combined with adjectives.
Two rules can be learnt from this:
1. For the hankjønn nouns, we add a Den before the adjective and an en attached after the noun (learn more here).
Den fine bilen.
2. Marked in yellow, notice that we add an e to the adjective.
Den fine bilen.
Ubestemt Flertall (Indefinite Plural)
Norwegian English download the audio mange fin e biler Many nice cars
This follows the similar rule to the bestemt entall form where an e is attached to the adjective.
Bestemt Flertall (Definite Plural)
Norwegian English download the audio de fine bilene The nice cars
This is also a bit similar to the bestemt entall form where:
1. For the hankjønn nouns, we add a De before the adjective and an ene attached after the noun (learn more here).
De fine bilene.
2. Marked in yellow, notice that we add an e to the adjective.
De fine bilene.
Here are a few more adjectives along with a hankjønn noun to get you more comfortable. The English definition of the adjective is in the brackets.
Notice the last entry in the table of adjectives above. liten is a special adjective that changes form a bit differently than the rest of the adjectives as seen.
Hope this post was able to get you started to learn the Norwegian adjectives. Subscribe to this blog and you will keep getting more useful lessons.
(Visited 5,440 times, 1 visits today)Band Willing to Support Any Cause That Helps Them Get More Shows
SAN FRANCISCO — Local hardcore band KNAVES is the kind of blistering, punk-infused hardcore that any fan of subversive or conservative political rage can get behind. The band of reactionary or progressive advocates — depending on the city in which they are playing that night — is credited as being “ignorant mosh warriors any forward-thinking activist could support.”
James Owens, frontman of the group, is known to boldly take a stand for whichever cause can help his band get some more shows.
“I have to speak out. I have to do what is right,” Owens stated in a Facebook post addressing a wide range of backlash. “I’m disgusted by the actions of this man Dave, who can no longer get me on shows that I feel elevate our band’s name. He is not welcome at any show that my new friend Jared, who runs a sick label, books me on.”
“We will be boycotting any show, booker, or venue that is boycotted by more-popular bands who could maybe bring us on a little SoCal weekend or something,” guitarist Phil Davids clarified via email. “This is our stand.”
The band steadfastly denied accusations that they drastically change their world views based on which touring band they are opening for or which city they are playing, but attendees of a recent Reno show say different.
“KNAVES are a bunch of meatheads who bring the mosh,” Ryan Thompson, the man behind Hardcore Pride WorldWide Productions, said. “Dude was up there yelling, ‘Mosh, you pussies!’ before every breakdown. And he sung along to the Driver cover.”
“I saw their drummer crowd-kill some bitches, it was sick,” Thompson added.
Related:
Dr. Lisa R. Klein, a hardcore historian and professor of musicology at Columbia University, says much of the confusion about the band can be traced back to their lyrics. “In the song, ‘Smash It,’ they sing, ‘It’s time for hardcore to return to its roots of progress for a future we can all enjoy / It’s time for the boys to mosh hard or die moving forward.’ I think this sort of double-speak helps their ability to blend into any social movement that helps their personal brand.”
“I mean, seriously… what the fuck is that song about?” she later added.
“I’m not into drama,” Owens said after playing a show promoted by a group called White Christians for Common Sense Marriage Reform. “But we strongly think America’s Hardcore fest should have more women on it. Or less. Or our band. E-mail me.”Calling all historic-minded ice cream lovers!
MCHS will be hosting its annual Ice Cream Social this Saturday, August 17th at the Kilbourntown House in Estabrook Park. Celebrate the Historical Society’s friends and volunteers with a tour of the oldest house in Milwaukee and socialize in the yard and herb garden. Learn about volunteer opportunities at MCHS and meet our new Executive Director, Deborah Fugenschuh.
Positions are unpaid, or credit-based. All volunteers/interns will gain important exposure to public history and library services. Opportunities at the Milwaukee County Historical Society are diverse and flexible; applicants will have a host of interesting activities to select from. Perfect for retirees, college students or the college-bound!
The event begins at 12:00 p.m. and will continue until the ice cream is gone (around 4 o’clock)!
The event is completely free, so come hungry!Philadelphia (CNN) A crowd hovered over the man lying on the grass as his skin turned purple. Chera Kowalski crouched next to his limp body, a small syringe in her gloved hand.
Squeeze.
The antidote filled the man's nostril.
The purple faded. Then it came back. Kowalski's heart raced.
"We only gave him one, and he needs another!" she called to a security guard in McPherson Square Park, a tranquil patch of green in one of this city's roughest neighborhoods.
"He's dying," said a bystander, piling on as tension mounted around lunchtime one recent weekday.
"Where is the ambulance?" a woman begged.
Squeeze.
Kowalski dropped the second syringe and put her palm on the man's sternum.
Knead. Knead. Knead.
Nothing.
She switched to knuckles.
Knead. Knead. Knead.
Then a sound, like a breath. The heroin and methamphetamine overdose that had gripped the man's body started to succumb to Kowalski's double hit of Narcan.
With help, the man, named Jay, sat up. Paramedics arrived with oxygen and more meds.
Death, held at bay, again.
Kowalski headed back across the park, toward the century-old, cream-colored building where she works.
"She's not a paramedic," the guard, Sterling Davis, said later. "She's just a teen-adult librarian -- and saved six people since April. That's a lot for a librarian."
Libraries and a public health disaster
Long viewed as guardians of safe spaces for children, library staff members like Kowalski have begun taking on the role of first responder in drug overdoses. In at least three major cities -- Philadelphia, Denver and San Francisco -- library employees now know, or are set to learn, how to use the drug naloxone, usually known by its brand name Narcan, to help reverse overdoses.
Their training tracks with the disastrous national rise in opioid use and an apparent uptick of overdoses in libraries, which often serve as daytime havens for homeless people and hubs of services in impoverished communities.
In the past two years, libraries in Denver, San Francisco, suburban Chicago and Reading, Pennsylvania have become the site of fatal overdoses.
A discarded heroin needle lays in McPherson Square Park, next to the library.
"We have to figure out quickly the critical steps that people have to take so we can be partners in the solution of this problem," Julie Todaro, president of the American Library Association, told CNN.
Though standards vary by community, the group is crafting a guide for "the role of the library in stepping in on this opiate addiction," she said. It will include how to recognize opioid use -- short of seeing someone with a needle -- and how to address it.
McPherson Square Library, where Kowalski works, has a wide, welcoming staircase punctuated by tall columns. It sits in the Kensington community, where drugs and poverty lace daily life.
Residents drop into the McPherson branch with questions about doctor visits and legal matters. Children eat meals provided by library staff and play with water rockets in a Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Mathematics program.
Kensington doesn't host a civic institution, like a university, or a major company, said Casey O'Donnell, CEO of Impact Services, a Kensington community and economic development nonprofit.
"In the absence of those things, the anchors become things like the library," he said.
In recent months, so-called "drug tourists" -- people who travel from as far as Detroit and Wisconsin seeking heroin -- started showing up in Kensington, which boasts perhaps the purest heroin on the East Coast, library staff and authorities said.
Heroin users camped out in McPherson Square Park and shot up in the library's bathroom, where nearly a half-dozen people overdosed over the past 18 months, said branch manager and children's librarian Judith Moore.
The problem got so bad that the library was forced to close for three days last summer because needles clogged its sewer system, said Marion Parkinson, who oversees McPherson and other libraries in North Philadelphia.
McPherson Square Library sits on the edge of Philadephia's Kensington neighborhood, where drugs and poverty lace daily life.
Since then, patrons have had to show ID to use the bathroom, she said. The library in October hired monitors to sit near the bathroom, record names on a log and enforce a five-minute time limit.
Before the crackdown, library staff last spring discovered one man in the bathroom with a needle in his arm, Moore recalled. He toppled over and started convulsing.
"I heard his head hit the floor," she said.
A city employee had left a dose of Narcan at the library. But the staff didn't know how to use it. After that, Parkinson set out to get them trained.
'It's not normal'
At 33 years old, Kowalski wears oversized sweaters and too-big glasses. She reads nonfiction about World War II and zones out on Netflix. She settles into work mode by listening to pop music on her train ride to work.
She chose to work at the McPherson branch because she thought her own experience could help students who flock there after school.
Kowalski's parents used to use heroin. They've been clean for more than 20 years. Her mother earned a college degree in her 50s; and her father, a Vietnam veteran, worked steadily as a truck driver until retiring, she said.
But before all that, Kowalski lived in the turmoil of addiction. "I understand the things the kids are seeing.... It's not normal," she said of her library charges. "It's unfortunately their normal."
Now, when a drug user overdoses at or near the McPherson library branch, Kowalski takes a minute to "switch the headset" from librarian to medic, she said.
A notice on the bathroom door informs patrons of rules to use the bathroom at McPherson Square Library.
When she got word that recent day that Jay had collapsed in the grass, Kowalski reached into a circulation desk drawer and pulled out a blue zipper pouch containing Narcan and the plastic components required to deliver it.
Dashing out of the library, she asked if anyone had called 911. Someone had.
The librarian got to Jay, crouched down, noticed his shallow breathing and discoloration.
She tried to focus. Seconds ticked. Prepping Narcan takes four steps: unscrew the vial, |
sample through a 0.45 micron filter into a clean, disposable sample vial to remove bacteria, which will quickly alter the composition of the sample. A delay of even 10 minutes can alter the composition of the sample and invalidate reference measurements, especially in warm water. Ammonia and nitrate are dissolved and will pass through the filter. Collect a filtered volume sufficient to allow measurement of each parameter with a suitable laboratory method. Generally, this will be less than 30 mL.
Step 4 - Measurement and Evaluation – Analyze filtered samples in the lab for ammonia and potassium (for compensation) and nitrate and chloride (for compensation) as necessary, using appropriate methods, e.g. colorimetry. It is tempting to skip verifying the compensation parameters. However, these measurements are very critical for performance of the monitoring system. Evaluate duplicate or triplicate measurements as necessary to determine the most likely concentration.
Step 5 – Update and Check – Enter the new reference values and matching sensor values into the monitoring system. Compare the concentrations and values of raw signals from previous calibrations to evaluate the matrix adjustment and gain insight into the status of the electrodes. The concentration should vary proportionately with the signal. Changes in the wastewater matrix, errors in sampling and analysis, and aging and contamination of the electrode can cause the raw signal (mV) to drift independently from changes in the measured concentration. Some monitoring systems do the math automatically and record the information as part of the calibration history.
The frequency of matrix adjustments depends on the application, the design of the sensor, the age and history of the sensor, and the veracity of reference measurements. Typical intervals vary from weekly to every 3 months or longer.
Additional Blog Posts of Interest
Activated Sludge | Threes Steps to Improve Process Efficiency
Online Monitoring of Ammonium and Nitrate Helps Facility Meet Strict Discharge Limits
The Science of Phosphorus | Blog Series | 1 of 5
Water Reclamation Facility Meets Discharge Limits for Total Inorganic NitrogenAl Jazeera’s fake Green Square
Al Jazeera and Sky News on Sunday aired videos showing rebels celebrating their surprisingly quick victory over Tripoli in Green Square.
But we believe that they have actually been showing a staged scene, including a fake scenery, one that’s reportedly been built in Doha, Qatar. Impossible you say? Then continue reading.
First off, let’s see a recording of a show aired on the Libyan state television on 17 Aug, just four days before the incident. In it, we are told that parts of Tripoli have been reproduced in Qatar, to be used as a scenery for fake proof of the fall of Tripoli.
Now watch this video that Al Jazeera aired yesterday. Watch very closely at around 1:19.
We believe that what we’re seeing here isn’t the original Bab al-Hurriya (“Freedom Gate”) and the 600 year old ancient walls around it. Compare the video with some photographs of the same spot. Notice how in the Jazeera video, the motive above the small arch is very vague, while the the street behind the left gate looks a lot like a photograph or a painting.
Source: http://cyaegha-c.livejournal.com/460657.html.
The relatively small crowd in the video seems to be there solely for the camera. We are reminded a lot of the staged toppling of Saddam’s statue in April 2003, which Robert Fisk called “the most staged photo-opportunity since Iwo Jima.”
@GrayCardinal1 noted that there haven’t been any daytime pictures from today showing rebels cheering inside Tripoli. He suggested that the scenery works better for nighttime shots. He also suggested that Al Jazeera has prepared fake footage showing victorious rebels in front of the Bab al-Azizia compound, which it is yet to air.
What’s the purpose of these fake news?
According to metrogael.blogspot.com, the “Al Jazeera hoax was intended to create the impression that Tripoli had fallen so as”:
to break the Libyan resistance by creating panic and chaos in the Libyan captial. to provide cover for the massacres of civilians that would occur in the days following the declaration of rebel victory.
What is really happening in Tripoli, then?
If what we’re seeing in the mainstream media is made up, then what is really happening in Tripoli?
Reliable sources say that only the Gargaresh and Janzour areas in western Tripoli are under rebel control and that there has been heavy fighting and intense Nato bombing, with immense human losses. On the night of Saturday alone, 350 people are reported to have been killed, with 3000 more wounded. Meanwhile, Nato admits to having helped arm underground groups in Tripoli over the past three months.
The same reliable sources say that the center, including the Green Square and the area around the Rixos hotel, and the rest of Tripoli remain under government control. Furthermore, none of Gaddafi’s sons have actually been captured or killed, contrary to what has been widely reported.
Update Tuesday morning: Just now, Saif al-Gaddafi personally went to the Rixos hotel to prove that he’s not detained. Earlier today, Mohammad Gaddafi has been reported to have fled from house arrest. And then Khamis Gaddafi, whose dead body rebels claim to have found, has in fact been reported dead at least three times by the rebels: on 20 March, 5 August and today.
Update Tuesday night: Here’s a video from early Tuesday that shows Saif al-Gaddafi visiting together with journalists the Bab al-Azizia military compound. He’s not even wearing a vest, and apparently the compound is indeed in tight loyalist control.
According to @TheTruthLibya, videos being aired on all major news channels showing victorious rebels in Bab al-Azizia are fake!
If you want more up-to-date information on what’s really happening in Tripoli and Libya, I suggest you follow @GrayCardinal1, @LibyanLiberal and friends on Twitter. And Mathaba and the Centre for Reasearch on Globalization.
AdvertisementsCompany says 7kWH energy storage unit, which uses lithium-ion battery to store energy from rooftop solar panels, will be available by end of year
Australia will be one of the first countries in the world to get Tesla’s vaunted Powerwall battery storage system, as several other companies scramble to sign up Australia’s growing number of households with solar rooftops.
US firm Tesla said that its 7kWH home energy storage units would be available by the end of the year in Australia, ahead of previous predictions it would arrive in 2016.
The Powerwall is a unit that sits on an interior wall. It has a lithium-ion battery, used to store energy created by solar panels on the household roof.
Tesla, which also makes electric cars, is the most high-profile company in the emerging battery storage industry – an area that is seen as crucial in making intermittent renewable energy such as solar and wind into a reliable accompaniment, or even alternative, to fossil fuel-fired power grids.
Canberra-based firm Reposit Power, which enables people to directly buy and sell their stored electricity, has partnered with Tesla for Powerwall’s launch.
Tesla announces low-cost batteries for homes Read more
There are a handful of existing Australian alternatives to the Powerwall, such as Redflow, headed by Simon Hackett, who founded Internode. Hackett also sits on the board of the NBN.
“Tesla’s arrival is important because they have such a high profile,” said Prof Anthony Vassallo, a sustainable energy expert at the University of Sydney. “The Tesla product isn’t unique by any stretch, but it’s the Apple brand of the battery storage industry, they have the sex appeal that others don’t.
“Solar PV and batteries are such a wonderful combination. Australians have demonstrated they are quite happy to purchase PV systems, Australia has a great solar resource and to have a battery to store that makes a lot of sense.
“There are packages of PV and batteries being offered by retailers and, as prices come down, we’ll see a lot more of this. Tesla’s price point in the US – of about US$3,000 ($4,173) – would be competitive here, it will sharpen up the players to make more efficient and higher-performing systems.”
Vassallo pointed out that the technology still has some way to improve – a 7kWH system will store little more than an hour’s electricity generated by a typical 5kWH solar system, meaning that some people may have to have several Powerwall, or equivalent, systems on their walls.
“I’d be wary of claims that people can go entirely off the grid, but it’s a first step,” he said. “Australia has high electrity prices, and once the price is acceptable I think the take-up will be strong.”
There are more than 1.3m households in Australia with rooftop solar, with the number increasing rapidly as the price of PV systems tumble. State-based tariffs have been gradually withdrawn across the country, while the federal government announced in July that it would instruct the Clean Energy Finance Corporation to favour large-scale solar over rooftop solar in its funding decisions.
Labor has set a target of Australia generating 50% of its electrity from renewable energy by 2030, although has provided little detail on how this would be achieved. The prime minister, Malcolm Turnbull, said the goal was “reckless” as the cost of it has not been quantified.
Vassallo said, “Australia could reach that 50% target, it just requires well-designed policies and markets that allow a transition from centralised, large-scale fossil fuels to efficient but variable renewables.
“Storage is a key part to make that happen. The beauty of renewables is that once you’ve managed the capital cost, there is no fuel cost. There’s an energy security there you don’t get with fossil fuels.”Want alcoholic slushies delivered to your door 24/7? Look no further than Phrosties, an Instagram-only (and probably illegal) business that’s inventively using the social media site as a full service business platform.
by Maya Dangerfield and Annelise McAuliffe
photos by itsblizzz and trugothbitchz
“We need your exact address.”
It was 8pm and I was awaiting a delivery from a business that operates exclusively, albeit illegally through Instagram.
Though advertised as ‘fruit slushies’, I planned to pay $20 for a pair of Phrosties –two brightly colorful slushies amply infused with alcohol.
After texting my address along with cross streets, I sent a follow-up message about my building’s policy of requiring nonresidents to sign-in before entry.
“I could meet you in the lobby,” I offered.
“Yeah, meet us in the lobby. We’d rather not sign in.”
Phrosties is an Instagram only business. It doesn’t exist on paper. Searches for the company yield no public records, certificates or licenses and outside of its selected Instagram followers, few know of its existence. Advertised as ‘The best tasting fruit slushies in NYC, Bronx, Manhattan and NJ’, Phrosties exclusively uses Instagram, the social media and picture sharing service owned by Facebook, to advertise their creatively named and uniquely favored alcoholic fruit slushies. Although the company doesn’t post their drink’s alcohol content ( rum on my purchase date) the 24/7 delivery service’s reputation for heavy handed pours and quick service has grown tremendously since their 2013 debut.
According to the company’s Instagram history, the company is less than a year old. Appearing first at a barbeque sponsored by an entertainment company and making an appearance at the 2013 AfroPunk Festival, the company’s growing popularity allowed it to quickly expand. Phrosties now delivers to all five boroughs of New York and has recently expanded to Westchester county and New Jersey (Hoboken, Bergen, Hudson, Jersey City and Bayonne counties). As of April 9th the company has 9149 followers who are frequently updated with pictures of the company’s bright, multicolored drinks with names like Tsunami Sunrise, The Hero, Tropical Sunrise, and Volcanic Paradise. Ordering Phrosties is easy: users must find the appropriate service number area, and must text their exact address, callback number, and flavor preferences. Phrosties promises a text response in three minutes, and required that deliveries be confirmed thirty minutes prior to the scheduled arrival. However, the company won’t respond to delivery requests without first approving customers as Instagram followers. Since their debut ten months prior, the company averages 20-30 posts per week, typically posting pictures of satisfied customers, menu changes, and shout-outs to quasi famous customers like reality star Coco Austin of Ice Loves Coco fame, and the Noisey staff from Vice.
photo by Coco
photo by wendels_robes
A company growing in popularity, Phrosties finds itself in-step with a new generation of business entrepreneurs who use Instagram as full service business platform, rather than exclusively a social media tool. Traditional businesses approach Instagram in a similarly predictable manner. Companies from General Electric to Urban Outfitters use the platform as an extensive, long-form, non-linear commercial—showcasing their products in causal settings, funny situations, or behind the scenes moments— all in an low key marketing strategy. Phrosties and their many underground counterparts use Instagram as a one-stop-shop, where marketing, advertising, social media, and customer outreach are combined. Though Instagram doesn’t offer a medium to conduct transactions, Phrosties frequently keep customers updated with menu and delivery instructions for the cash-only service. It’s not surprising that underground companies like Phrosties choose Instagram as their business platform. According to an article by Tech Crunch, Instagram is the fastest growing media service, increasing its users by 23% from June to December of 2013. Instagram’s rapid growth is a benefit for business like Phrosties who supply customers regulated goods via the largely unregulated media space. Instagram’s quick growth means that the task of monitoring underground activity is largely left to users who have the option of flagging accounts for inappropriate activity.
You don’t have to search long, or even hard, to find illegal businesses on Instagram. A Business Insider report chronicled a plethora of illegal activity on the social media site, like blurry pictures by drunk drivers, handily captioned with #drunkDriving, #Vburry (neilnitelife/Instagram). An investigation by Fletcher Babb explores the world of lean ( a combination of codeine, and promethazine) and the dealers who use Instagram to advertise their goods. Recently Facebook and Instagram announced new policies, led in part by advocacy from Sandy Hook Promise, which allows the media giants to remove posts in an effort to curb the illegal sale of guns. With the exception of gun sales and actively monitoring and reporting any tags associated with child pornography, business like Phrosties, who deal with regulated substances like alcohol are seemingly left alone to operate. Questions posed to the media conglomerate were unanswered, but a quick browse of the company’s community guidelines clearly spells out Instagram’s position toward the selling of ‘regulated goods.’ The Community Guidelines note:
“If your photos or videos are promoting the sale of regulated goods or services, including firearms, alcohol, tobacco, or adult products, we expect you to makesure you’re following the law and to encourage others to do the same.”
photo by kiksneaks
Ultimately, Instagram relies on reports of inappropriate activity from users, rather than a targeted search of their over 100 million active monthly users, to flag or remove accounts. Although the BBC reports the company now limits searches for certain terms associated with illegal substances, it still is surprisingly easy to find a wealth of accounts who offer services and substances more detrimental than alcoholic slushies. The general laxity of Instagram towards underground businesses is the perfect platform for entrepreneurs like Phrosties. Despite being a social media platform, Instagram yields anonymity for businesses like Phrosties whose policies of ‘no names, no identification, and no questions’ benefits both the business and its customers alike.
The entrepreneurs behind the operation remain private, and non-text communication is limited to a call (from a different number ) upon delivery. I wasn’t asked for my name, or identification as I greeted the driver at 8:40pm for my Phrosties delivery. Picking up my Hero and Tropical Tsunami from a stocked cooler in the back of an idling black van, and mulling over a third option (which the driver assured me was the delivery minimum) I attempted to probe for more details about the Instagram enterprise. The response was quick:
“I got a lot of deliveries, like I can’t talk.”
I chose another Tropical Tsunami and returned to my apartment building with a black plastic black bag full of Phrosties and a business card that lists the company’s service areas. The inventive entrepreneurs behind Phrosties, who creatively utilize Instagram as a business platform, have the unfortunate luck of creating an increasingly popular but most likely illegal business model.
photos by fueradefocus and amerikas_most_bluntedUpdated 03/04/2016: We added a series of new images taken during the car’s official presentation at the 2016 Geneva Motor Show. Click the "Pictures" tab to check them out!
Find out what this hardcore F-Type is all about in the review below and stay tuned for live photos from the 2016 Geneva Motor Show in a couple of weeks.
While the drop-top has been spotted stretching its legs on public roads more than once in 2014, the coupe didn’t come out to play until 2015, when our tenacious paparazzi caught it in action somewhere in Europe. Now, Jaguar confirmed that the F-Type SVR is set to make its global debut at the 2016 Geneva Motor Show and released the official photos and technical details, putting an end to more than a year of intense speculation about the range-topping F-Type model.
Exterior
The outlets are identical to the Project 7's as far as size goes, but they're shaped a bit differently and have black vertical inserts toward the outer edge.
Not surprisingly, the F-Type SVR is very similar to the limited-edition Project 7 styling-wise, featuring a much more aggressive body kit compared to the R model. Up front, the most noticeable changes lie in the bumper, which received massive intakes on each side of the main grille. The outlets are identical to the Project 7’s as far as size goes, but they’re shaped a bit differently and have black vertical inserts toward the outer edge. Down below, there’s a large splitter that seems thinner than the Project 7. The grille on the other hand, remained unchanged from the F-Type R, sporting the same horizontal bar below the Jaguar emblem and "SVR" logo.
Moving over to the sides, we notice only mild modifications compared to the standard model. There are black-painted mirror caps instead of the regular body-colored elements, and new forged wheels that are 22 pounds lighter than the standard rollers. Everything else appears to be the same as on the F-Type R, including the fenders and the side skirts.
Around back, the SVR stands out by way of a new diffuser and a retractable rear wing. While the diffuser is not as aggressive as the Project 7’s, it’s a significant improvement over the R’s. The wing is also smaller than the Project 7’s, but the extra downforce it provides should give the SVR enhanced aerodynamics and stability at high speeds. On top of that, it gives the coupe a race-ready appearance only the Project 7 had until now.
Exterior Dimensions
Length (in.) 176 Width - mirrors folded (in.) 75.7 Height (in.) 51.6 Wheelbase (in.) 103.2 Track front/ rear (in.) 62.4/ 63.4 Weight (lbs.) From 3,759
Interior
Much like the exterior, the interior of the SVR is packed with bespoke features that can’t be had with other F-Type models. First up are the 14-way SVR performance seats wrapped in soft leather. Upholstery options include Jet, Siena Tan or Red, but all of them come with a Lozenge Quilt pattern, contrast stitching, micro-piping, and headrests embossed with the SVR logo. The steering wheel is also unique to this model. Available in either Jet leather or Jet leather with suede cloth, it features black-painted spokes, and contrast stitching in a range of four colors. Behind it, there are anodized aluminum shift paddles that are larger than those in other F-Type models.
Highlights also include a suede cloth covering for the instrument cluster and center console, which Jaguar says is reminiscent of the CX-16 concept.
Standard features also include the touchscreen navigation and infotainment system with SiriusXM Satellite Radio and HD Radio, the 770-watt Meridican sound system, InControl Apps, and InControl Protect emergency and breakdown call system. Additionally, the SVR gets the latest InControl Remote function, which now supports wearable technology such as the Apple Watch. Using this device, drivers can lock and unlock the doors, check information such as fuel level or mileage, locate the car on a map, and even start the engine and set the climate control system temperature. Now that’s a really cool feature.
Drivetrain
As expected, the SVR uses the same supercharged, 5.0-liter V-8 available in all performance-oriented Jaguars and Range Rovers, but with the same horsepower output as the Project 7. Specifically, the SVR’s engine cranks out 575 PS (567 horsepower) and 700 Nm (516 pound-feet) of twist. While it has the same amount of horses as the Project 7, the SVR is a bit torquier than its race-bred sibling, having 14 extra pound-feet at its disposal.
The SVR needs only 3.5 seconds to hit 60 mph from a standing start, which makes nearly a half-second quicker than the R model
Being a V-8-powered Jag, the mill mates to an eight-speed automatic transmission and standard all-wheel drive. The ZF-sourced gearbox has been recalibrated to reduce shift times and increase torque availability during launch. The wider tires and the optimized AWD system also contribute to the SVR’s fantastic performance.
Stick and three-pedal fans will probably be disappointed by this, but at least the automatic will provide incredibly fast shifts for the quickest acceleration times out there. Speaking of which, the SVR needs only 3.5 seconds to hit 60 mph from a standing start, which makes nearly a half-second quicker than the R model and a tenth-second quicker than the Project 7.
Top speed is also higher than any other F-Type at 200 mph. The convertible version tops out at 194 mph, which is also impressive.
The improved performance is also the result of a lower curb weight. The wheels are 22 pounds lighter, the optional ceramic brakes weigh 46 pounds less than the standard rotors, while the titanium exhaust system saves another 26 pounds. That’s 96 pounds from only three revised components!
Drivetrain Specifications
Engine capacity (cc) 5,000 Cylinders V8 Supercharged Valves per cylinder 4; DOHC Bore/ stroke (in) 3.64/ 3.66 Compression ratio 9.5:1 Fuel injection 150bar direct injection Power 575 HP @ 6,500 RPM Torque 516 LB-FT @ 3,500-5,000 RPM Transmission 8-speed Quickshift 0-60mph (sec) 3.5 Top Speed 200 MPH
Chassis, Suspension and Brakes
The F-Type SVR also received an enhanced suspension system. Tweaked to deliver improved agility, precision, control, and response, the revised suspension is said to deliver the same ride quality available with the standard F-Type, making the SVR a comfortable day-to-day vehicle. Modifications include a new rear knuckle, a thicker rear anti-roll bar, revised damper control software, a unique setup for the torque vectoring system, and and an optimized Jaguar Adaptive Dynamics system.
Stopping power comes from Jaguar's Super Performance braking system with 380 mm and 376 mm discs front and rear.
Stopping power comes from Jaguar’s Super Performance braking system with 380 mm and 376 mm discs front and rear. Optionally, the SVR can be equipped with the Carbon Ceramic Matrix (CCM) system featuring 398 mm and 380 mm discs and six- and four-piston calipers front and rear, respectively.
The braking system is hidden behind lightweight, 20-inch, forged aluminum wheels wrapped in specially-developed Pirelli P Zero 265/35/ZR20 and 305/30/ZR20 tires. The rims feature an SVR-exclusive Coriolis design and are finished in Satin Technical Grey as standard and Gloss Black for models fitted with the CCM braking system. Maelstrom wheels are also available in polished Satin Black.
Prices
Pricing for the F-Type SVR starts from $125,950 for the coupe and from $128,800 for the convertible. This sticker slots the SVR between the R and the limited-edition Project 7, priced at $103,000 and $165,000, respectively.
Competition
The F-Type and the 911 may have very little in common, but it’s more than obvious that Jaguar developed its halo sports car for the same league. The current 911 Turbo comes with a 3.8-liter, six-cylinder engine under its rear lid. But despite having smaller displacement and using fewer cylinders, the unit pumps out 580 horsepower in Turbo S spec, which launches the sports car to 60 mph in just 2.8 seconds on its way to a top speed of 205 mph. Performance-wise, the Turbo S is the big winner here.
Moreover, on top of being packed with luxury goodies, the Turbo S is also one of the most efficient sports cars in its segment. The coupe is estimated to return 17 mpg city and 24 mpg highway, figures the F-Type SVR likely won’t be able to match with a supercharged V-8 under the hood. Pricing is where the Turbo S comes at a disadvantage, though, as it starts from $182,700.
Learn more about the 911 Turbo S in our full review here.
Chevrolet Corvette Z06
Although it’s significantly larger than the F-Type, the seventh-generation Corvette is the type of vehicle a lot of customers will likely cross-shop with the Jag. Additionally, it’s the only American option to feature an automatic transmission, and, unlike the 911 Turbo S, it has a front-engine layout.
New for 2015, the Z06 is the most aggressive version of the C7 Corvette yet, featuring not only a race-bred body kit, but a supercharged V-8 too. The newly developed 6.2-liter LT4 cranks out 650 horsepower and 650 pound-feet of torque, placing it above its direct competitors and into near-supercar territory. It’s incredibly quick from 0 to 60 mph, at 2.95 seconds, and hits a mind-boggling top speed of 205 mph. Making things that much better is that the base model costs only $78,995. (Um, that’s two 911 Turbo S’s with change.)
Learn more about it here.
Conclusion
Granted, the F-Type SVR is exciting news. Having already seen the Project 7, it’s fantastic that Jaguar manage to improve the F-Type’s performance yet again, while also offering a perfect blend of luxury and sportiness. I could rant about the lack of a manual tranny and the absence of a RWD version, but the F-Type SVR is the quickest and most powerful Jag you can buy and it deserves all the respect it can get.
Love it The quickest and most powerful F-Type in existence Performance, design features borrowed from the Project 7 Sporty yet luxurious interior
Leave it Pretty expensive No manual transmission The 911 remains the king of force-fed sports car realm
Updated History
Updated 02/17/2016: Jaguar dropped the official details and images on the new F-Type SVR Coupe. The model will make its official debut at the 2016 Geneva Motor Show and will be put on sale in the summer of 2016 at a starting price of $125,950.
Updated 01/27/2016: Jaguar officially confirmed that the new F-Type SVR will be officially unveiled at the 2016 Geneva Motor Show. However, we will get to see the first details on the car on February 17, 2016 - so stay tuned!
Updated 01/22/2016: A leaked brochure revealed the first information on the upcoming F-Type SVR - aka the most powerful F-Type ever.
Updated 09/18/2015: The upcoming Jaguar F-Type SVR Coupe was caught testing around Nurburgring once again. While the car is still heavily camouflaged, one thing is for sure: its engine sounds amazing. Enjoy!
Spy Shots
July 7, 2015 - Jaguar F-Type SVR Coupe caught wearing its full production bodyVirgin Galactic showed off its latest mothership today: a Boeing 747-400 jet that it acquired from its corporate cousins at Virgin Atlantic to serve as the platform for its LauncherOne rocket.
LauncherOne is designed to be launched from a high-flying carrier airplane and send small-scale satellites into orbit. It will use a liquid-fueled engine called Newton, which is still under development. The launch system is expected to be in operation by 2018, and it’s already been tapped by OneWeb to help put a global Internet constellation into orbit.
It was previously thought that LauncherOne would use Virgin Galactic’s WhiteKnightTwo carrier plane. That’s the mothership being used for SpaceShipTwo, Virgin Galactic’s rocket-powered passenger space plane. But Virgin Galactic said the 747 was more suited for LauncherOne’s upgraded payload capacity and flight rate.
The jet, delivered to Virgin in 2001 and nicknamed “Cosmic Girl,” was previously used in commercial service. The repurposed airplane was unveiled today in San Antonio. In its new incarnation, it will retain the Cosmic Girl mascot that’s also used on WhiteKnightTwo and SpaceShipTwo.
“I’m absolutely thrilled that Cosmic Girl can stay in the Virgin family — and truly live up to her name,” Virgin founder Richard Branson said in a news release.
The shift to a 747 frees up WhiteKnightTwo to be used exclusively for SpaceShipTwo flights, the company said.
The first SpaceShipTwo was destroyed in October 2014 during a test flight in which the co-pilot was killed and the pilot was seriously injured. An investigation traced the cause of that tragedy to a combination of human error, equipment design, training lapses and regulatory gaps. A second SpaceShipTwo is currently under construction, with flight tests expected to begin next year.
Eventually, SpaceShipTwo is due to carry passengers to the edge of outer space. About 700 customers have signed up so far, paying as much as $250,000 per seat. In the wake of last year’s accident, Virgin Galactic has shied away from predicting the time frame for the start of commercial operations.From RogueBasin
The 2011 Seven Day Roguelike Challenge was the 7th 7DRL challenge and took place on the week of March 5th to March 13th of 2011.
A substantial number of people posted their progress over the course of the week on the 7DRLC community blog, which received 951 views at the height of the challenge on March 12th.
On Wordpress, entries used the tag 7DRL 2011 for related blog posts. On Twitter, some used the hashtag #7DRL2011 for competition related status updates.
Successful
Honorable Mention (10DRL)
Ido Yehieli - Detribus - http://www.detribus-game.com/
Failed
Jimmy Åberg - A1RL - did not even manage to start the project
Akhier - The Soul Lord - techdemo
AstralCalculus - unnamed - http://astralcalculus.tumblr.com/post/3838059648/my-very-incomplete-7drl11-entry
Derrick Creamer - unnamed - never really got started this week
Michael Doherty - unnamed - glitchy map generation, player movement, text displays
Nils Fagerburg - unnamed - had planned on making a roguelike inspired print and play board game
FruitPie & Fantasy Heaven - Gourmancer - windows binary, source
Greg - Oculomancer - http://thewired.com/7DRL/oculomancer.zip
jab - VineMine - didn't get enough time to work on it
Jlund3 - JadeRogue - http://code.google.com/p/jaderogue/source/browse/branches/7drl-11/
Ed Kolis - Into the Darkness - https://bitbucket.org/ekolis/into-the-darkness
Thomas Larsen - ZombieRL - http://7drl.org/2011/03/13/graceful-failure-zombierl/
James Meickle (Eronarn) - Glyph - https://github.com/Eronarn/Glyph
motioneffector - DirtBox - http://7drl.org/2011/03/13/codename-dirtbox-pre-alpha-day-7/
Chris Payne (Winterblood) - Tallow - http://7drl.org/2011/03/13/tallow-7drl-failure/
Paul Pekkarinen (Krice) - Teemu 1.3 - but progress was made
Sherm Pendley - unnamed - I intend to keep working on it
Gabriel Arthur Petrie - what I'm working on - I'll finish it fairly soon
purestrain - unnamed - basic version, version with midi (may not work correctly)
purplearcanist - Time travel roguelike - the project is not dead yet
Risto Saarelma - Helltank - that didn't quite work out
Kristopher Saxton & Jason Makay - Scavenger: Throat Cutting for Fun and Profit
Nemo - Herakleophorbia - development will continue on this mini-roguelike
vsync - Warehouse - I'm going to keep working on it screenshot
Kevin Wells - Unnamed Project - https://github.com/darkoppressor/escape-from-the-masters-lair
Zonk - unnamed, fantasy arena/pit fighting - might finish this
Runaways
Chris Doucet
Ciarán Walsh
Del Murgatroid
deps
DNewhall
Drakalor Tourist
d r
elig - FarmCraft
Gregory Friis
Karies
Kevin Mees - NRogue
Michael Durwald
MisfitBYTE - Late Start
Nik Coughlin - Legend of the Cheese Golem - https://github.com/nrkn/LosvRL
Parthon - Randor: Planestrife
Paxtor
Pol
pom - Oubliette
RedboneBit
Scott Edgar - Four challenges
Siquo
SophieH -? - http://dl.dropbox.com/u/9766731/7drl2011/WebPlayer/WebPlayer.html
steev - Matter Splatter RL
Stoney - A Practical Survival Guide for Knights
Tanthie - Life of a Dragon
Vincent Berset - Schream
Summary
Challengers: 98 Winners: 46 Failed: 26 Runaways: 26
Logo
2011 7DRL Challenge is the first one for which a logo contest has been made. The winner of the 2011 7D7DRLCLC (Seven-Day Seven-Day Roguelike Challenge Logo Contest) was Nik Coughlin, with this "dungeon on a screen" logo:
Reviews
RogueBasin users have written reviews here: 7DRL Contest 2011 Reviews.
Heroic Fisticuffs is posting his reviews on his blog
Geoffrey White has posted a number of reviews on his blog
Darren Grey has highlighted some of his favourites on his blog.
Ratings of all games as reviewed by a committee along with feedback on each title can be found here.
Add your own! Even short reviews will tell challengers that you appreciate their work, help others decide which games to play first, and create an enduring record of this year's highlights. Compared to the time and effort you're already putting into downloading the games, getting them to run, and playing them, it really doesn't take much.
Medal
The 2011 7DRL Challenge Medal was designed by Nik Coughlin, and distributed by Slashie [1]
Winners may proudly display the medal on their homepage or their RogueBasin user pages. Failures may only look on with envy...Like something out of folklore, a 450-year-old church has emerged from the depths of a Mexican reservoir. After a record-setting drought in the state of Chiapas, Alberto Arce reports for AP, receding waters have revealed the ruins of a 16th-century church.
Related Content A Construction Crew Uncovered the Grave of One of Mexico’s First Catholic Priests
The church, known as the Temple of Quechula, was built in 1564 by a group of Dominican monks. The missionaries hoped the church would become the center of a thriving town — it was located near a conquistador highway — but ultimately, they abandoned the area after a series of plagues between 1773 and 1776. "It was a church built thinking that this could be a great population center, but it never achieved that," Navarrete tells Arce. "It probably never even had a dedicated priest."
A photo posted by Marco A. Vanegas (@janovanegas) on Sep 10, 2015 at 6:57pm PDT
The Quechula ruins were drowned in 1966, when a nearby dam on the Grijalva river was completed, creating the Nezahualcoyotl reservoir. Thanks to a recent drought, the surface of the reservoir has dropped roughly 82 feet, revealing the church's upper walls. This is the second time the church has appeared since the dam was completed; in 2002, water levels fell so low visitors could actually walk into the church, Jess Staufenberg reports for The Independent.
"The people celebrated. They came to eat, to hang out, to do business. I sold them fried fish. They did processions around the church," fisherman Leonel Mendoza tells Arce. Now, he and other fishermen are ferrying passengers out to explore the visible remains.
The Temple of Quechula is also notable for its links to Bartolome de Las Casas, the leader of the monks who built it. As the first Bishop of Chiapas, de Las Casas supported the enslavement of indigenous people, but eventually recanted and became an advocate for abolition, Staufenberg writes. Las Casas was instrumental in convincing King Charles V to pass the "New Laws" of 1542, which briefly abolished slavery in the New World.Las Vegas – UFC® will GO BIG on Friday, Sept. 4, with the announcement of its new seasonal campaign, showcasing a series of can’t-miss fights on its upcoming live event schedule. |
to be a pretty conservative country. I don’t mean conservative politically per se, but conservative in the sense that, you know, things are kind of going along pretty well and we don’t want to mess with it too much. And then every once in a while you have these big challenges and big problems. It gives an opportunity for us to really move in a new direction. I think this is one of those moments on things like energy and health care and the economy and education where I think people recognize what we’ve been doing isn’t working.
Jon Stewart: A serious moment.
Barack Obama: I think people will be more open to change.
Jon Stewart: Sir, we definitely appreciate you being on the program tonight. We know what a long haul it’s been. You’ve certainly run a remarkable and historic race. I have great admiration for both you and Senator McCain, and I wish you well. Thank you so much for joining us.
Barack Obama: Great to be with you, Jon. Thank you.
Jon Stewart: Senator Barack Obama. We’ll be right back.Get the biggest football stories by email Subscribe Thank you for subscribing We have more newsletters Show me See our privacy notice Could not subscribe, try again later Invalid Email
Bayern Munich president Uli Hoeness has bemoaned the Premier League's financial advantage over clubs in Germany.
The 64-year-old believes Bayern are £170million behind their rivals in England as a result of the huge TV deal in the English top flight.
"There is no longer a level playing field in many areas (of the football business)," said Hoeness, who has just been re-elected as Bayern's president after a spell in prison for tax evasion offences.
"Just look at the income from broadcasting rights in England."
He suggested Bayern are "around €200m behind the top English clubs" when it comes to money earned through broadcasting deals.
(Image: Maja Hitij)
(Image: Getty Images)
Hoeness's comments come after the German champions announced record financial figures for the year.
In the last 12 months Bayern's turnover was £529.3million and the club made a £28million profit.
On the pitch, Bayern have struggled since Pep Guardiola was replaced by Carlo Ancelotti in the summer.
The Bavarian outfit are three points adrift of Bundesliga leaders Red Bull Leipzig and had to settle for a runners-up spot in their Champions League group, despite beating Atletico Madrid on matchday six.Submission Information By uploading my entry into the contest, I agree to the Official Rules.
Mission New York, Sept. 2 to 4: You can film your impersonation at the Paley Center booth, with a Paley Center backdrop & a Kirk standing cutout!
Attention Starfleet personnel! On the occasion of our multipart celebration of Star Trek’s fiftieth anniversary, the Paley Center is calling for your best Captain James Tiberius Kirk impression, submitted via online video, to be evaluated (and let’s face it, mocked) by a panel of expert judges, including comedy star and noted Shatner impersonator Samm Levine and Rod Roddenberry, son of Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry and CEO of Roddenberry Entertainment. The winner will receive a fabulous prize, and we’ll be screening our favorite entries on Saturday, September 17 as part of that day’s activities. Choose from one of the three Original Series monologues in the submission information below, remove any scenery you don’t want chewed, and beam us up some fine intergalactic ham.
The deadline for this contest has passed. The winner and our favorite entries will be screened at the Paley Center on Saturday, September 17, 2016, and later posted here.
The Paley Center for Media in New York 25 West 52 Street, between 5th and 6th Avenues. More information about visiting the Paley Center in New York.
On the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of Star Trek—one of the most honored, influential, and beloved science-fiction franchises of all time, and one that shows no signs of slowing down—The Paley Center for Media joins the worldwide celebration with special screenings, exclusive events, online activities, and the stunning original art exhibit Star Trek: 50 Artists. 50 Years. Join us to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, and to bask in the community of your fellow Trekkers while besting them in trivia and arguing over favorite episodes. Klingons welcome. No Tribbles, please.
September 16 to 25, 2016, in New York Wednesdays to Sundays 12:00 to 6:00 pm Closed Mondays and Tuesdays.
September 16 to 25, 2016
The Paley Center is delighted to present the East Coast premiere of Star Trek: 50 Artists. 50 Years, an original art exhibition celebrating the legendary sci-fi franchise with Star Trek–inspired works by fifty different artists from around the world—including a piece with celebrity fan Mayim Bialik (The Big Bang Theory) and Mr. Spock himself, with the last piece of art created by Leonard Nimoy.
The exhibition includes a dazzling variety of 2-D and 3-D works, including images, illustrations, photographs, paintings, sculptures, and more...all paying homage to the visionary optimism of Gene Roddenberry’s enduring classic and its many children. Come explore even stranger new worlds and civilizations as we celebrate the legacy of Star Trek—and look forward to the next fifty years.
Special Paley Members-Only Preview: Thursday, September 15 6:30 to 7:30 pm: Members-Only Exclusive Gallery Viewing
7:30 to 8:30 pm: Members-Only Special Paley Archive Screening: rare Star Trek–related programming including: William Shatner at PaleyFest, parodies, other surprises! Beat the crowds, and be the first on the East Coast to see this extraordinary salute to Star Trek.
Members RSVP Beat the crowds, and be the first on the East Coast to see this extraordinary salute to Star Trek.
Not a Member? Join today to take advantage of this special preview, plus early tix sales & discounts to PaleyFest NY and more all year.
"The Way to Eden": Bingo! Trivia! Happy Hour!
Friday, September 16, 2016; 6:30 to 8:30 pm
• Star Trek–themed Cocktails (2 drinks per ticket)
• Trek Trivia: Calling all Star Trek mavens! When you play the game of Trek Trivia, you win or you die. OK, hyperbolic. You win or go home empty-handed. But either way, you’ll have fun! Prizes for the winners.
• Musical improv performance by Redshirts: The only all-women Star Trek: The Next Generation–inspired musical improv comedy team in the known universe!
• Live Theremin Performance: by Master Thereminist Rob Schwimmer
• Screening of "Spock's Brain" + Bingo: “What have you done with Spock’s brain?” —Captain James. T. Kirk.
We supply the cards and prize; all you do is show up and play along as we screen the episode that William Shatner once called an allegorical slap at network execs for slashing the show’s budget and juggling its timeslot.
$10 Paley Members, $15 General Public
FREE Activities with admission.
Saturday, September 17, 2016
12:15 to 4:00 pm
Drop-in Art Activities for Kids
Star Trek: The Animated Series Screening + Art and Crafts in Lobby
Set phasers to FUN! Kids big and small are invited to make it so… crafty! Join the education staff for Star Trek–inspired art activities including Enterprise crew member puppet building and alien mask making.
3:00 to 4:00 pm
Klingon Lesson: by Klingon Language Expert Elizabeth Lawrence Faber
4:30 to 5:30 pm
Captain's Panel + Captain Kirk Impersonation Contest!
“It’s my ship!” Chill, Jim. Yes, you were the original TV Star Trek captain (excluding Christopher Pike), but the best? Such temerity! How many redshirts died under your command? Such libido! How many aliens did you hop into bed with? Such ego! You bet we remember the Internet meme “Sorry, Spock, can’t hear you over the sound of my own awesomeness.” On the other hand, you did knock that Gorn flat on his back (so cool you refused to stake him) and rewrote Starfleet Academy history by acing the Kobayashi Maru (cheating or not, and we’re not going to solve that here). Plus, you know...Shatner! Dig those marmalade skies, Bill. Was James T. Kirk really the greatest Star Trek leader in history? That we will solve, thanks to our panel of experts, who will argue the relative merits and demerits of Kirk, Picard, Sisko, Janeway, and yes, even Archer. So set your coordinates for the Paley Center and come join the fun.
Captain's Panel of Experts:
Wade Bowen (Sisko) Host, The Rules of Acquisition
Sue Kisenwether (Janeway) Host, Women at Warp
Alex McCown-Levy (Picard) Staff Writer, The A.V. Club
Meg Sweeney Lawless (Kirk) Comedy Writer, Dramaturge
Alasdair Wilkins (Archer) Writer, The A.V. Club
Kirk Impersonation Contest Results:
The winning impression (and runners-up), as determined by our esteemed judges, will be screened after the panel.
Star Trek Screenings
All-day screenings from Sunday, September 18 to Sunday, September 25 (Closed Monday and Tuesday).
Sunday, September 18
12:15 pm: Star Trek: The Animated Series
3:00 pm: TOS: “The Man Trap”
4:00 pm: TOS: “Turnabout Intruder” Wednesday, September 21
2:00 pm: TNG: “Encounter at Farpoint” Part 1 & 2
3:45 pm: TNG: “All Good Things” Part 1 & 2 Thursday, September 22
1:00 pm: Enterprise: “Broken Bow” Part 1 & 2
2:45 pm: Enterprise: “These Are the Voyages”
3:45 pm: DS9: “Emissary” Part 1 & 2
5:30 pm: DS9: “What You Leave Behind” Part 1 & 2 Friday, September 23
2:00 pm: Voyager: “Caretaker” Part 1 & 2
3:30 pm: Voyager: “Endgame” Part 1 & 2 Saturday, September 24
12:15 pm: Star Trek: The Animated Series
2:00 pm: Best Villain: Khan (TOS: Space Seed)
3:00 pm: Best Star Trek Story: City on the Edge of Forever (TOS)
4:00 pm: Best Star Fleet Captain: Captain James T. Kirk (TOS: The Enterprise Incident) Sunday, September 25
12:15 pm: Star Trek: The Animated Series
2:00 pm: Best Crew Member (Other Than Spock): Doctor Leonard “Bones” McCoy (TOS: Mirror, Mirror)
3:00 pm: Best Time Travel Episode: All Our Yesterdays (TOS)
4:00 pm: Best Spock Episode: Amok Time: Pon farr??
THIS POLL IS NOW CLOSED. WINNERS ARE LISTED ABOVE.
Lt. Bailey: “We have phasers, I vote we blast 'em!”
Kirk: “Thank you, Mr. Bailey, I'll consider that... when this becomes a democracy.”
from “The Carbomite Manuever”
Since our ego’s approximately one-millionth the size of Kirk’s, we’re perfectly comfortable living in an environment where decisions are made by popular vote. As part and parcel of our Star Trek celebration, commemorating the fiftieth anniversary of the original series’s premiere on September 8, 1966, we’ll be screening episodes of all six series (five live-action, plus the animated show) from September 17 to 25 (with the exception of 9/19 & 9/20, when we’re closed).
Even better, during the weekend of September 24 & 25, we’ll be screening six episodes—three on Saturday and three on Sunday—specifically selected by you, our voters, through our special fiftieth anniversary Star Trek poll, which appears below.
You vote; we screen; you come watch. It’s that simple. Because despite what Kirk says, this is a democracy, and Gene Roddenberry wouldn’t want it any other way.
Photos: TM & © 2016 CBS Studios Inc. All Rights Reserved.Unionized public school teachers in Nova Scotia will begin work-to-rule job action next week after contract talks with the province collapsed on Friday.
The Nova Scotia Teachers Union announced Monday that beginning Dec. 5, its 9,300 teachers will only do the minimum amount of work required by their contract. Teachers will continue to teach and prepare lessons.
"This action will demonstrate the scope of activities that teachers do for students that go above and beyond, and those that prevent them from directly teaching students," the union said in a statement.
Work-to-rule
The union says work-to-rule means:
Teachers will arrive 20 minutes before school and leave 20 minutes after.
Teachers will not perform clerical duties or perform data-entry tasks. Attendance will be monitored on paper.
Extracurricular activities such as concerts, team coaching and clubs will stop.
Field trips will not go ahead.
"We know that there are many teachers who do extracurricular activities. It's been a part of everybody's teaching job for as long as I can remember," said Education Minister Karen Casey.
"You always did those things as a teacher, so we'll have to see what it looks like when they work to the letter of the contract."
Education Minister Karen Casey said many teachers help out with extracurricular activities. 'We'll have to see what it looks like when they work to the letter of the contract.' (CBC)
The union and the provincial government were in conciliation talks last week in an effort to reach a contract agreement, but negotiations broke down Friday.
Casey called on the union to resume discussions.
"The union have to be at the table to have those conversations with us," she said.
Union president Liette Doucet told reporters Monday that work-to-rule is a way of taking action while at the same time showing teachers are committed to returning to the bargaining table.
"It was not a decision that was lightly made. It was a very difficult decision," she said.
Union president Liette Doucet told reporters on Monday that work-to-rule is a way of taking action while showing that teachers remain committed to getting back to the bargaining table. (CBC)
Doucet said the union hopes and expects parents will remain supportive of teachers during the contract dispute. The work-to-rule was announced a week ahead of time, she said, so parents can prepare for the effects of the job action.
The teachers' current contract expired in July 2015. The government and union leaders have twice reached tentative agreements, but teachers have voted them down.
The union said it still hopes a deal with government can be reached and job action will be avoided.A lot of people forget that Macho Man Randy Savage was born in Columbus, Ohio. Now, one Columbus man wants the city to honor the man that got to the second round in 11W's Heart of It All Classic, our attempt to crown history's greatest Ohioan.
From rollingstone.com:
Earlier this week, a man named Joe Chapman launched a Change.org petition, asking Columbus mayor Andrew Ginther to honor the city's native son – "an incredible athlete, performer and cultural icon" – by placing a statue of him in downtown Columbus.
"'Macho Man' Randy Savage is known the world over as one of the best professional wrestlers of all time," Chapman writes. "During Savage's 32 year career, he held over 20 championships…and is a WWE Hall of Famer. Randy Savage also wrestled in what most consider the best match of all time, in front of 93,000 fans at 'WrestleMania III.'"
Savage was born Randy Mario Poffo in Columbus in 1952, the son of pro wrestler and world situp champion Angelo Poffo. A standout high school baseball player, Randy was signed by the St. Louis Cardinals and spent time in several other teams' minor league systems before turning his attention to pro wrestling in the Seventies. By the end of the Eighties, now christened "Macho Man" Randy Savage, he was one of the biggest stars in the WWF, and would go on to wrestle for WCW. His younger brother, Lanny Poffo, was also an established wrestler of the era.Offense
D Joseph G 65 100% J Barksdale T 65 100% G Robinson G 65 100% R Saffold T 65 100% S Hill QB 65 100% S Wells C 65 100% K Britt WR 58 89% T Austin WR 49 75% T Mason RB 45 69% L Kendricks TE 44 68% J Cook TE 37 57% S Bailey WR 30 46% C Harkey TE 29 45% B Cunningham RB 18 28% C Givens WR 15 23%
Big jump for Tavon Austin who logged a season high percentage of snaps yesterday. Sunday's game also marked the third in a row in which Tre Mason landed between 60 and 70% of the snaps. It took the Rams half of a season to get to a formalized running strategy, but at least they got to one... This was also just the third week, following the first two of the season, in which Lance Kendricks got more time than Jared Cook.
Defense
E Gaines CB 69 100% T McDonald SS 69 100% R McLeod FS 69 100% J Jenkins CB 69 100% A Ogletree LB 69 100% J Laurinaitis LB 69 100% T Johnson CB 66 96% A Donald DT 61 88% R Quinn DE 59 86% E Sims DE 43 62% M Brockers DT 38 55% K Langford DT 30 43% W Hayes DE 26 38% M Barron SS 12 17% E Westbrooks DE 10 14%
The secondary and linebackers were locked in yesterday with Jo-Lonn Dunbar sidelined. The only real rotation was along the defensive line and the ten-spot Mark Barron jumped in for. This was only the second game, after the MNF 49ers matchup, in which Aaron Donald played more than Robert Quinn, FWIW.
Special Teams
K Toomer LB 21 78% W Herring LB 21 78% C Reynolds RB 18 67% M McFadden LB 18 67% C Davis FS 18 67% T Watts RB 18 67% M Alexander SS 16 59% B Cunningham RB 15 56% G Zuerlein K 13 48% J Hekker P 12 44% J McQuaide LS 12 44% S Bailey WR 9 33% C Harkey TE 9 33% E Sims DE 8 30% M Person G 8 30% T Barnes C 8 30% M Barron SS 7 26% D Joseph G 6 22% J Barksdale T 6 22% G Robinson G 6 22% L Kendricks TE 6 22% T Johnson CB 6 22% B Jones C 6 22% T Austin WR 5 19% E Gaines CB 5 19% T McDonald SS 4 15% A Donald DT 3 11% R Quinn DE 3 11% M Brockers DT 3 11% W Hayes DE 3 11% R McLeod FS 2 7% C Givens WR 1 4% J Jenkins CB 1 4%
Was this a breakout performance for Maurice Alexander or what? He only had two other games in which he figured big time - week two at Tampa Bay and the week 6 Monday Night Football 49ers game. On Sunday, he showed up big time with his two plays. It was also a season-high on special work for Benny Cunningham.The election of Donald Trump has been an agonizing experience. America's friends have been dumbfounded by Mr. Trump's alliances, temperament and policy utterances. There is good reason to fear the worst, having seen and heard the kind of man he is.
We could, at the moment of his inauguration, easily recount again the many ways the President has espoused violence and racism, failed to remove doubts about his business interests, and rejected the basic tenets of international diplomacy and trade.
But it behooves critics of Mr. Trump, now that he is in power, to stop setting on fire the few hairs we haven't already pulled out of our scalps, and to take a deep breath. Mr. Trump is the President of the United States. It is time now to get past the shock, and to begin calmly sizing up and mitigating the threat.
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A road trip through the Donald Trump heartland
A look inside Palm Beach, where wealthy Canadians are one degree of separation from Donald Trump
Subscribers: Troubled Trump Toronto hotel put on the block
Along the way, we may discover that the best way to neutralize Mr. Trump is to remain above his taunts and tantrums. It won't be easy, but it has to be done.
The President is frankly brilliant at throwing people off-balance. A well-timed blitz-tweet by Mr. Trump can dominate the news cycle for days. His comments have put leaders in Canada, China, Mexico, Japan and most of Europe on their back heels, forcing them into reactive modes.
There are good ways to deal with these provocations, and bad. Canada has established the prototype of the good way. The Trudeau government, which is the ideological antithesis of Mr. Trump, has wisely stuck to a simple message: The U.S. is our biggest trading partner and oldest friend, and Canada looks forward to working with the administration to enhance that relationship.
At the same time, the government has enlisted former prime minister Brian Mulroney, who is a friend of Mr. Trump's and of some of his cabinet members, to open doors. It has also moved Chrystia Freeland into the role of foreign affairs minister, and named Andrew Leslie, a retired army commander who has worked closely with U.S. generals in the Trump cabinet, as her parliamentary secretary.
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This is the right response. Never get in a pissing match with a skunk, as they say. Especially when the skunk is the most powerful creature in the forest.
But Mr. Trump does not hold all the cards. Yes, it's true that as leader of the world's only superpower, he is able to chest a healthy share of the deck. And he currently has a lot of momentum, thanks to his unexpected victory. But he is not omnipotent. That's not how the U.S. political system, or the world, works.
American blacks, Muslims and Hispanics who have reason to be nervous about Mr. Trump's angry rhetoric should remember that American courts have repeatedly demonstrated that they will stand up to a president on civil-rights issues.
U.S. trading partners who have good reason to worry about his threat to impose "a big border tax" on imported goods should remember that tariffs work both ways. There are a lot of American states whose economies rely on exports. They don't want to lose access to foreign markets. And tariffs will cause the cost of many goods to rise. A self-inflicted trade war would hurt American workers and consumers, and that in turn could cost Mr. Trump the limited support that he has.
As President, Mr. Trump's posturing – on trade, on foreign affairs, on tax cuts, on repealing Obamacare, on building a wall along the Mexican border – is going to be tested by new realities that didn't exist in the vacuum of the transition period. Congress, for one. The President has many Republicans in Congress on his side, but their interests aren't completely aligned with his. Those allies can become enemies if he bullies them, or endangers their re-election chances.
He will also have to deal with rights organizations that file lawsuits, foreign leaders who respond by lighting their own fires, and protesters who refuse to be silenced. He may even have to deal with Barack Obama, who left office with far higher approval ratings than Mr. Trump has going in, and who has vowed to speak up, if necessary.
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Mr. Trump's chief weapon against the forces aligned against him is the division he can so expertly sow. It's the secret to his success. Keep people at each other's throats, and they won't focus on the big picture. The best thing that can happen for Mr. Trump – and for Vladimir Putin, the one foreign leader he refuses to criticize – is for the U.S. to become so polarized that its democracy stops functioning.
One defence against this is to have some faith in the legislative and judicial branches of the U.S. government to rein in the Chief Executive. The system of division of powers is designed to make legislating and even governing slow and difficult. Force him to play by the rules of American constitutional democracy, and he won't be able to play by his own.
Critics should also focus on attacking Mr. Trump's positions on their merits, not on his rhetoric. Take the threat he poses seriously, but don't exaggerate it. Each and every Trump pronouncement is not one step closer to the end of the world.
Above all, don't respond intemperately. The President's shock tactics encourage both followers and opponents to go overboard. But there is no victory in retaliating in a similar fashion, or in becoming enraged by his calculated hypocrisies and lies, which are only meant to provoke.
Mr. Obama had it right in his goodbye speech in Chicago two weeks ago. "The work of democracy has always been hard, contentious and sometimes bloody. For every two steps forward, it often feels we take one step back. But the long sweep of America has been defined by forward motion, a constant widening of our founding creed to embrace all, and not just some."
History is not on Mr. Trump's side. This is his greatest weakness, and the reason to never lose hope.Days after being hired as the new coach of the St. Louis Rams,
Jeff Fisher aided two victims of a serious car crash in Brentwood,
Tenn., WKRN-TV Nashville reported early Tuesday.
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Fisher was first on the scene at the single-vehicle wreck in
which the 17-year-old driver of a Nissan Altima lost control, hit a
pole and overturned late Sunday night.
A 13-year-old passenger was thrown from the car and taken to
Vanderbilt Children’s Hospital. He was in critical but stable
condition.
Fisher, a former longtime Tennessee Titans coach, said he was on
his way home when he saw the crash and stopped to help. He said he
rendered aid as best he could and stayed with the teens until
medical personnel arrived.
Brentwood police sergeant Jeff Moorehead said the actions of
Fisher and another motorist who also stopped to help were greatly
appreciated.
“Anything to calm them down and advise us while we are on the
way helps everyone,” Moorehead said.
Moorehead said the cause of the crash was under investigation
but there were no signs that drugs or alcohol were involved.
The Rams announced Monday that they would be holding a 2 p.m. ET
news conference Tuesday to introduce Fisher as their new coach,
having finalized the details of the contract.
Sources told the NFL Network that the 53-year-old had agreed to
a five-year deal.The Los Angeles Lakers will again have to make due without their star player, as Kobe Bryant suffered a leg injury in Tuesday’s victory over the Memphis Grizzlies. The team announced that Bryant suffered a fracture of the lateral tibial plateau in his left knee, an injury that is expected to keep him out for at least six weeks.
Bryant was injured during the first half of the Grizzlies game, on a play where there was contact between Bryant and Tony Allen. Bryant stayed in the game and played on despite the pain. An MRI on Thursday confirmed the injury. The injury is to the same leg where Bryant suffered his Achilles injury last season.
Bryant had recently returned to the Lakers lineup after missing the first 19 games of the season recovering from that Achilles tendon rupture that he suffered late last season. The Lakers were 10-9 without Bryant. The Lakers are just 2-4 in the six games Bryant has played as he was working to get his game back into form after the long layoff.
The 35-year old Bryant has averaged 13.8 points and 6.3 assists in limited minutes in those six games.
Meanwhile, point guard Steve Nash is expected to miss another four weeks with nerve pain related to the foot injury he suffered last season. Also missing from the Laker lineup is Jordan Farmer, who will be out at least another week as he recovers from a torn hamstring.
Laker’s coach Mike D’Antoni was obviously upset upon hearing the news, saying, “You hate it for Kobe. He’s worked so hard to get back.”
Thanks for Reading. You can follow the LWOS basketball department on twitter – @NBAAnalystFaro, @LASTWORDgcp, @LiamMcWade, @TrendingTristan, @KaineElmy, @lwosjbjatty, @LWOSJoshHoath, @nmehta98, @aFishCalledMatt, @NBAFantasyInfo, @fourpoint_play, @matttheballer23, @caulfieldhoops, and @hoops_scoop. While you’re at it, give the site a follow too – @lastwordonsport and like our Facebook Page.
Interested in writing for LastWordOnSports? If so, check out our “Join Our Team” page to find out how.1. Root Beer = Root Juice
After 10 years of serving us harmfully-named pretzels, Auntie Anne's reign of tyranny has finally come to an end. The 'pretzel dog' is finally going to be renamed 'pretzel sausage'. Not many know this, but that's the actual reason why there's always a line in front of Auntie Anne's. Every day, there's a newly confused person who is shocked that an unclean animal is served along with their pretzels in the pretzel dog. Many have suffered in silence as they've wrestled with the thought that they might have consumed an actual dog in the process of eating a sausage.The revelation was brought to light by Sirajuddin Suhaimee, director of the halal division from the Department of Islamic Development, who said, "Any (halal) products that make consumers confused, we have to change,” he said.In Islam, dogs are considered unclean and the name cannot be related to halal certification. He says that he is aware that many outlets sell these halal sausages masquerading as unclean hot dogs and checks are being made "step-by-step". Public ridicule have been rife but he has taken a "la-la-la not listening" approach that seems to be working.We thought this was an amazing step in the right direction given that our country has been embroiled with political scandals and a little positive change was needed. In that effort, we've thought ofamong the rakyat and should be ammended right away, starting with the most grevious of all:
Image:saifullahbeg.wordpress.com
2. Air Mata Kucing = Herbal Tea With Longan
Image:chiqess.com
3. Beef Bacon = Beef Not Bacon
That's definitely not bacon. It's totally beef. (Image:ahintofwine.com)
4. Roti Boom = Roti Balloon
Image:dapurustazah.blogspot.my
5. Otak Otak = Fish Cake Paste In Banana Leaf
Originating from the root beer tree sassafras albidum, the soda is consumed every day by children and is often topped with ice cream. How do we teach children to avoid beer when such a delicious drink is openly advertised as beer? It should be renamed Root Juice to give it a healthier spin. Root Juice Float is a non-confusing product that's fit for the whole family.This one is confusing on two levels: Is it tears from a cat's eyes? Or is it water from an eye of a cat? Either way, it's inhumane and it should be changed to something more appealing for tourists who come to our country. We're not going to even mention that its main ingredient, loh hon kor, is translated into English as 'Buddha's fruit' or'monk fruit'. Now that would just open up a can of worms.Oxford Dictionaries define 'bacon' as cured meat from the back or sides of a pig. Now how can that word even exist on the menu? To make it 100% infallible, we should make sure people know its beef not bacon. So beef not bacon.You know... explosions... terrorism... bombs. It's all bad. It's bad, very bad. Just, no...Roti Balloon is good.
Image:bloginiberwarnaungu.blogspot.my/
Bonus: Hush Puppies = Hush Shoes
Image: blog.bigsale.com.my
First, we have a roti that has explosive connotations, now we're outrightly calling a dish 'brain brain'?! How has this madness been tolerated for all these years?! It's made with fish meat, tapioca starch, and spices, and the product does resemble gooey flesh but it's in bad taste. How are we going to compete on a global level when our dishes have an unsavoury name like brains?How are we to know we're not walking around on comfortable baby dogs all day? Only you can stop this madness. Raise up these names to your local dignitary and make a change today. Stop the confusion for the good of the nation. Don't be distracted by talks of a raise in GST, massive corruption in Sabah, and unfair redelineation. Focus on what matters.Google released a bunch of Android patches today, covering off some previously-disclosed issues including the worrying Quadrooter bugs that affected 900 million phones. But another, previously-unknown critical weakness has been covered too and you'll want to download the patch now because the hack can be delivered hidden inside an innocuous-looking photo in a social media or chat app. A victim wouldn't even have to click on the evil photo: as soon as its data was parsed by the phone, it'd quietly let a remote hacker take over the device or simply brick it.
The problem, according to the researcher who uncovered the vulnerability, resided in the way images used by certain Android apps parsed the Exif data in an image. Any app using a slice of Android code - the Java object ExifInterface - is likely vulnerable, said Tim Strazzere, from security firm SentinelOne.
Strazzere told me that as long as an attacker can get a user to open the image file within an affected app - such as Gchat and Gmail - they could either cause a crash or get "remote code execution"; ergo they could effectively place malware on the device and take control of it without the user knowing.
The problem was made even more severe as a malicious hacker wouldn't even need the victim to do anything. "Since the bug is triggered without much user interaction - an application only needs to load an image a specific way - triggering the bug is as simple as receiving a message or email from someone. Once that application attempts to parse the image (which was done automatically), the crash is triggered," Strazzere said. That's not dissimilar to how the Stagefright exploits of last year ran.
"Theoretically, someone could create a generic exploit inside an image to exploits lots of devices. However, due to my skill level, I had to specifically craft each one for the devices. Though once this is done, Gchat, Gmail, most other messengers or social media apps would likely allow this to trigger." The researcher wouldn't reveal the names of the other, non-Google apps affected, other than to say they included "privacy-sensitive" tools.
Prior to the today's update that provides patches for all versions of Google's operating system from 4.4.4 up, older Android devices would have been in greater danger of an image-based hack. "Most of the newer mitigations in place made it quite difficult for me to get a stage working exploit that could work on multiple devices," Strazzere said. "With this said, it was incredibly easy to cause the phone to become unusable (due to the mitigations) and go into endless reboots. There were even a few phones that somehow go bricked in this process, all from just receiving the corrupted image over Gmail."
Another warning: Strazzere successfully tested his exploits on phones stretching back to a handful of Android 4.2 and Amazon devices. They may well remain unpatched, leaving users exposed. As Strazzere told me, if you're not running an up-to-date operating system and/or device, it's probably time to invest if worried about security.
Google gave Strazzere $4,000 as part of its Android bug bounty and added another $4,000, as the researcher had pledged to give all $8,000 to Girls Garage, a building program and workspace for girls aged 9-13.
Android manufacturing partners were advised about Strazzere's find - and the scores of other vulnerabilities detailed today - on 5 August or before. If concerned, check with your device maker to see when an update is on the way. Google Nexus phones running Android 4.4.4 and above should receive an over-the-air update today.SEOUL, South Korea — Lee Kun-hee, the former chairman of Samsung who was convicted of corruption last August but pardoned by President Lee Myung-bak four months later to help a campaign for the 2018 Winter Olympics, returned to the helm of Samsung Electronics on Wednesday.
He was the latest and most prominent ex-convict who has retained top management of major conglomerates here. In announcing Mr. Lee’s surprise comeback, the Samsung Group said the chairman would bring to its electronics subsidiary, and to the conglomerate as a whole, badly needed leadership at a time when global businesses like Toyota were tottering |
the factory’s administrative office, where he was soon trapped by protesters, who also refused to allow the police into the building. The authorities only managed to extract Basov by the evening, when several paratroopers broke through to the factory. Based on a documentary film about the Novocherkassk tragedy that aired on Russian television in 2012, the troops dressed Basov in ordinary worker’s clothes and snuck him out.
At some point, a locomotive reached the rear end of the train blocked by the workers and pulled it back toward Saratov. Some of the workers visited the nearby electrode factory and synthetics plant to try to persuade the staff to join their strike. When it got dark, the demonstrators who remained in the square made bonfires, burning portraits of Khrushchev and other Soviet leaders ripped down from the walls inside the factory. Eventually, people headed home on their own, and police officers dispersed the last 20 or so stragglers around midnight.
Overnight, the military blocked the bridge over the Tuzlov River with 15 tanks and three armored personnel carriers. Troops set up checkpoints along all the city’s main streets, and soldiers were placed on guard duty at various state buildings throughout Novocherkassk (the gas distribution station, the Communist Party’s regional committee, the post office, the prison, and the train station). By the morning of June 2, twenty-two protesters had already been detained. At dawn, KGB agents came to Pyotr Siuda’s home and arrested him.
Before the catastrophe
In the morning, another crowd assembled in the square, with everyone discussing the events of the day before and the overnight appearance of the military. Almost immediately, the demonstrators broke through the line of soldiers defending the railway and again blocked the tracks, stopping a train headed to Baku from Moscow.
Around 9 a.m., Frol Kozlov telephoned Khrushchev, who ordered him not to make any promises to Novocherkassk’s workers. The Soviet leader also asked Kozlov if he’d enjoyed his remarks earlier that morning to a group of Cubans. Roughly an hour before the phone call, at a meeting between Soviet and Cuban youth representatives, Khrushchev gave a long speech explaining the reasons for rising prices, declaring that “enemies remain among the people.” “The enemy isn’t just the man with a rifle in his hands. The enemy can be wearing the same work clothes as you,” Khrushchev warned. “We must remember that enemies have and always will exploit our hardships.”
Before long, the protesters decided to head for the Communist Party’s city committee building at the center of the old town, in order to demand answers from Novocherkassk officials. Along the way, locals from neighboring districts started joining the crowd, including some orphans and other children. The demonstrators (who according to KGB records numbered about 5,000) carried red flags, various Soviet symbols, a portrait of Lenin, and a banner reading, “[We want] bread, meat, and butter!”
Around 10 a.m., the protesters approached the bridge, where the military had established a checkpoint under the command of a locally-based general named Matvei Shaposhnikov. In the late 1980s, Shaposhnikov told American journalist David Remnick that he wanted to avoid bloodshed, so he told his men to empty the ammunition from their weapons and from the tanks. When Shaposhnikov’s commanding officer, Issa Pliyev, ordered him not to let the demonstrators pass, the general said his unit wasn’t capable of stopping 7,000 people. “Advance the tanks! Attack!” Pliyev told him. “Comrade General,” Shaposhnikov answered, “I see no enemy that our tanks ought to attack.” He would later recall that “thousands would have died,” if he’d obeyed the order.
Pliyev hung up on him. According to Pliyev’s aide, he turned to him and complained, “Am I supposed to teach them how to defend themselves? They need to fire up those tanks and wake up.”
The demonstrators ended up walking through the checkpoint. Some people even climbed directly over the tanks. Shaposhnikov got into his jeep and headed for the city’s administrative building, realizing that a catastrophe could be imminent. By the time he arrived, it was too late.
The massacre
Novocherkassk’s city committee was located in a two-story building that was once a Cossack Ataman palace frequented by traveling Russian tsars in the 19th century. The palace faced a square that was surrounded by other two-story buildings that housed, among other things, the city prosecutor’s office, the local Communist Youth League headquarters, military warehouses, and a planetarium.
As one KGB agent later remembered, when the protesters reached the square, none of the local officials wanted to speak to them. A few minutes later, the party members snuck out through a back door. When the activists started entering the building, the KGB agents prudently fled, as well, using a drainpipe to escape from the second floor.
The building was being guarded by unarmed soldiers and neighborhood watch volunteers, but they were unable to hold off the demonstrators. Two guards were even beat up, and a third was injured by glass from a shattered door. Protesters caught an employee from the prosecutor’s office who turned up nearby and tried to throw him from the balcony. Several people tried to grab one soldier’s automatic weapon (which had no clip). In the scuffle, they hit another soldier in the head and knocked him out. That man claimed he saw two other soldiers lying unconscious around him, when he came to. But he still had his gun.
When workers reached the city committee building’s long balcony, they announced that Novocherkassk’s party leadership had fled, and they started singing holiday songs. A woman in a traditional sarafan Russian dress then told the crowd that police officers had beaten her, and warned that officers were still beating the people they’d arrested earlier that day and the night before. Hearing this, about 300 demonstrators went to the city police department, which was located in the same place as the city’s KGB branch, just a few hundred yards from the square. When the military refused to let the crowd inside the KGB building, a handful of protesters tried to climb the fence. In response, the soldiers fired off several warning shots.
At the police station, officials told the protesters that they weren’t holding any prisoners, but this didn’t stop roughly 50 people from breaking down the doors and rushing inside. The demonstrators started crowding the soldiers into the stairwell, and two were cut off from the main group. Workers seized one of their automatic weapons and then a protester pointed it at the soldiers, leading one of the soldiers to fire a warning shot into the air and demand that the protestor drop the weapon. When the demonstrators tried to pull back the bolt lever, the soldiers shot him.
People became frightened and started running for their lives, and the soldiers started firing on them as they fled. A witness would later say he saw three dead bodies and several injured people near the police station. According to the eyewitness accounts recorded in Tatyana Bocharova’s book, “Novocherkassk: The Bloody Noon,” five people were killed at the station, including a 16-year-old student from the local technical school, who died before the crowd ever stormed the building. The young man was sitting in a tree, watching events unfold, when his head intercepted one of the authorities’ warning shots.
While officers arrested the demonstrators who’d tried to storm the police station, soldiers started forcing protesters from the Ataman palace back into the square (it was at this moment when our driver, Anatoly Zhmurin, arrived). There were about 1,000 people in the square. They were mostly standing around peacefully in the shade, talking among themselves. Few people paid any attention to the warning shots ringing out in the air. Demonstrators started to disperse only when they saw bodies falling to the ground.
When one protester was trying to crawl away, he says he noticed a girl running through the square. This was 15-year-old Valentina Kobeleva, a student at a nearby school. She’d come after hearing that a lot of people were gathering. Almost as soon as the shooting started, Kobeleva says she felt a searing pain rip through her left leg, as if it had been “torn off.” She fell to the ground, and a man rushed to her, picked her up in his arms, and carried her from the square. When they reached a bench, he put her down and bandaged her leg with a scarf. Another man offered to take Kobeleva home, believing that trouble would be waiting for her at the hospital, but she asked to be taken to the doctors, nonetheless. It turned out that the gunshot had ripped through her sciatic nerve. It would be another six months before surgeons could remove the bullet.
Kobeleva wasn’t the only young person on the square that day. “I was just a 12-year-old kid and they brought me,” said Pavel Gribov. “When they started shooting, I ran and hopped the fence. I saw a guy run into a salon, and I followed him inside. I stood up against the wall and I saw that the hairdresser was walking around and she kept bowing over and bowing over. I didn’t understand at first what had happened. Then I saw how she was holding her stomach with both hands, and a red stain was spreading from under her hands. She’d been hit by a stray bullet and ended up dying.”
During the shooting, a factory worker who took part in the demonstration (identified in police records as A. Korotkov) says he saw a woman running through the square with a baby in her arms. The back of her dress was covered in blood. He also saw people dragging a man with a bloodied leg and back. Another man had been shot in the shoulder. His arm hung at his side, inert. A few years later, he encountered this man again, but the individual didn’t want to remember that day, interrupting the conversation and asking him to tell no one about his injury.
One of the soldiers on the square that day saw a bullet hit a man’s head, “literally splitting it open.” In the soldier’s words, the shooting continued for three-to-four minutes, and about 50 people remained lying on the ground in the square. When the bullets stopped, observers rushed to those injured and killed. At this moment, soldiers started shooting again from the surrounding rooftops.
Protesters near the city committee building in Novocherkassk, June 2, 1962. Photographs from the KGB archive. Images displayed at the Novocherkassk Memorial Museum. Darya Dar for Meduza
The smell of blood
All the soldiers later questioned by investigators claimed they’d only been authorized to use blank cartridges. None of them says he knew who exactly had fired on protesters with real bullets. Communist Party Central Committee Secretary Alexander Shelepin, also in Novocherkassk at the time, said the order to shoot the demonstrators had come from Frol Kozlov. (He also said Kozlov had called for a thousand people to be “loaded onto wagons and taken outside the city.”) Shelepin says he opposed Kozlov, who allegedly told him, “If you don’t agree, call Khrushchev.” Shelepin insisted that he actually called Khrushchev, and argued that Kozlov would never have been able to order the shooting without Khrushchev’s consent.
A few officers said KGB agents had encouraged them to leave the square, not long before the shooting started. The commander of a platoon guarding one of the buildings in the square was ordered to abandon his position and move his soldiers to a back courtyard, where he heard the sounds of automatic gunfire from the main square.
Together with the protesters on the square, there were almost 100 students from the Novocherkassk Party School, dispatched by the KGB to pacify the crowd. Around noon, KGB agents asked the students to move from the square to the basement of the city prosecutor’s office, where there were already 50 people taking shelter. No one was released until after the shooting.
One soldier said he saw machine-gun cartridges rain down from the roof of the city committee building. Another soldier said he saw two unknown soldiers carrying assault rifles leave the building after the shooting. A third soldier said he saw two men in civilian clothes use pistols to shoot at panicking protesters. A fourth said he saw a group of 10 snipers.
Cargo trucks and ambulances arrived at the square almost as soon as the shooting had ended. Soldiers later said in questioning that it was as if the vehicles “had been specially prepared.” One ambulance driver said he had indeed been instructed to come to the city’s center by noon. Unknown persons in civilian clothes loaded the dead and wounded onto the vehicles, and they drove off. An eyewitness said he watched women crowd around pools of blood in the square. One woman lowered her hands into the blood and smeared it over her face, screaming about her husband.
Firetrucks also showed up at the square, and firefighters started using their water cannons to wash away the blood, abandoned shoes, and other traces of the massacre. The soldiers were withdrawn from the buildings again and ordered to guard the square. One soldier later told investigators that it was a hot day, “so the smell of blood stayed in the air for a long time.” When the soldiers were given their lunch rations, many of them couldn’t eat.
Closer to the evening, locals started gathering again in the square. Some chanted the names of Soviet leaders, while others went inside the city committee building. One of these people was Valentina Vodyanitskaya, a 24-year-old crane operator at NEVZ, who’d followed her husband to Novocherkassk from her hometown, where she had worked as a milkmaid. By 1962, she was divorced and living with her son in a room at the factory barracks. She’d missed all the previous rallies, working on the construction of the factory kindergarten. On June 2, she came to work and found nobody there. Vodyanitskaya didn’t socialize much with her colleagues, and she didn’t know what was going on. She went to the factory to find out why nobody was working. After learning what had happened, she jumped on a passing truck and was downtown within a few minutes.
According to Vodyanitskaya, some general approached her inside the city committee building and encouraged her to go out on the balcony and ask the crowd to disperse. There was a helicopter flying over the square, and demonstrators below thought it was carrying Anastas Mikoyan. Waving at the helicopter from the balcony, Vodyanitskaya went back home, and soon forgot about the protests. At her barracks, nobody talked about the rally or the shooting. And there wasn’t a word about it on the radio.
By the evening, the crowd at the square dispersed. The next morning, steamrollers and road workers came and laid new asphalt where the fire hoses couldn’t wash away all the blood.
“That’s what demonstrating gets you”
On the day of the shooting, Stanislav Podolsky, a student at the Novocherkassk Polytechnic Institute, woke up around 7 a.m. Looking out from the fifth-story window of his dorm room, he saw soldiers in the street. The day before, demonstrators had come to his dormitory and called on students to join the protests. Soldiers were now guarding the building’s entrance, and military police were checking to see that all the dorm’s residents were in their rooms, but Podolsky and his friends nevertheless managed to get out and make it to the square.
They spent a few hours with the demonstrators and were about to leave when the shooting started. Podolsky recalled that many people hid from the bullets behind a statue of Lenin — the only shelter in the open square. The student tried to help the wounded (“Take me home, my old lady is a medic,” one man told him), and he returned to the dormitory covered in blood.
When Podolsky got back, teachers from the political economy department were telling students about “thousands of hooligans” who’d smashed store windows downtown. “And so it’s okay to murder people?” Podolsky asked, and then he went to his room to shower and change his clothes.
Many of the wounded were bystanders. Near the square, a man and his wife were leaving a store. A stray bullet hit his leg, knocking him to the ground, where he writhed in agony and clawed at the pavement. His wife stopped a passing truck to take them to a doctor. The truck would take on another four wounded people, two of whom died en route to the hospital. Surgeons ended up amputating the man’s leg. After the operation, the woman says KGB agents questioned her husband, telling him, “You’ve already been punished. You’ll tell your grandkids and great-grandkids what demonstrating gets you.”
Alexandra Pekush passed through the square that day on her way to work. She was wounded in the right thigh, and doctors had to terminate her pregnancy. Alexandra Molchanova, on the other hand, was coming home from work, and she wanted to cut through square the get to the bus stop. When the bullets started flying, she was knocked off her feet and then wounded in the thigh and the arm. “Before I could crawl 30 feet, I felt a powerful falling sensation and I passed out,” the woman recalled. “A friend ran up to me and I suddenly remembered that I owed money to this other woman. I thought I’d die with this unpaid debt, so I told my friend, ‘Give her 10 rubles for that slip.’” The doctors wanted to amputate Molchanova’s leg, but she refused, asking to be released for treatment in Voronezh, where she had relatives. The hospital agreed, on one condition: her medical records would not mention a gunshot wound. Molchanova had several operations over the next nine years, afraid to tell anyone what had really happened.
At 9:30 p.m., a curfew was announced in the city, and hours later Novocherkassk’s final victim died when a patrol officer shot and killed a man in the street. In total, according to the KGB data presented in Tatyana Bocharova’s book, the government shot and killed 26 victims (two of whom were never identified) and injured 87 people.
In his memoirs, Pyotr Siuda recalled how he was told that a man covered in dirt and blood came to the factory dormitory after midnight on June 3. The man said he’d been mistaken for a corpse, thrown into a car, and taken to the morgue, but he jumped out along the way and made a run for it. After changing his clothes, the man left the city that night.
Four months pregnant. Bystander.
On the night of June 4, 1962, in the woods about 13 miles from Novocherkassk, flashbulb bursts of light illuminated the dead. Beside a hastily dug ditch, about 16 by 16 feet, a group of policemen stood around carrying flashlights. As they later recalled, they’d received orders around 1 a.m. to pick up three corpses from the police station’s boiler room and then drive to the morgue, where they’d get another seven bodies (one of which was a 16-year-old boy). In the morgue’s courtyard, there was another truck. The cadets from the Novocherkassk Police Academy changed into civilian clothes and loaded the new bodies onto the second vehicle. Then they covered the dead with straw and left for the woods. In the forest, as the police dug, they could smell the cadavers in their trucks.
The burial places of victims in the shooting in the Rostov region. Photographs from the KGB archive. Images displayed at the Novocherkassk Memorial Museum. Darya Dar for Meduza
The authorities dumped 20 bodies into the ditch — 18 men and two women. A photographer dispatched from Rostov-on-Don was on hand to photograph each victim, but the bodies weren’t faced upwards or undressed. A forensic scientist accompanied him, recording the nature of the victims’ wounds and clothes, and if they were carrying any identification. The negatives for these photographs would spend the next several decades at an Internal Affairs Directorate archive in Rostov.
The police records on these fatalities read like this: “In the morning he was going to register for a new job. Through-and-through gunshot to the head. Bystander.” “Four months pregnant. Chest wound with damage to the thoracic organs. Bystander.” “Trauma to the skull and brain. Bystander.” “Was sitting in a tree. Fell, like a pear. Started to run, but fell again. The bullet entered the back of the head and ripped out part of the face. Bystander.” “Went with friends to watch the demonstration. Trauma to the neck, damaging main arteries. Killed by automatic gunfire. Active participant.”
According to an investigation carried out by the military prosecutor’s office in the early 1990s, the bodies were dumped on orders from the Communist Party’s Central Committee. Officials decided not to turn the remains over to relatives “to avoid possible disturbances and new protests,” and instead buried them in different cemeteries throughout the region. KGB agents made all police officers sign state-secret non-disclosure agreements, and officers who violated the terms faced execution.
After inspecting the bodies, the authorities started delivering them to cemeteries in Taganrog, Kamensk-Shakhtinsky, and Novoshakhtinsky. Police officers found old graves without enclosure walls, dug them up, dumped the new corpses, and reburied everything. Some victims were hidden in rural cemeteries, others at a Roma cemetery, and others at a miners’ cemetery. One of the police officers would recall that his group drank two crates of vodka after dealing with the bodies. Livestock later dug up some of the graves, and the officers had to bury them again.
On June 20, Leonid Shulga, a 16-year-old man wounded during the shooting, finally died. On the chief physician’s advice, Shulga’s mother appealed to the Novocherkassk police department for permission to hold a funeral. Law enforcement offered to bury the teenager outside the city in the village of Grushevsky, “to avoid demonstrations.” Police officers themselves constructed the coffin and dug the grave. On June 21, they brought Shulga’s mother to the morgue, where she dressed her son. The family was warned that any crying or wailing during the ceremony was forbidden.
For decades, no one knew where Novocherkassk’s dead were buried. Some people thought the bodies had sunk in the river, and others guessed that they’d been thrown into the mines. Among the relatives of those killed, there were rumors that the KGB buried the bodies at a local military base, covered the area with asphalt, and built an athletic field above it.
chapter two
Burying the memory
Those tattooed criminals
In the weeks, months, and years later, the central task of Soviet intelligence agents was to hide the fact that the shooting took place and to stop the dissemination of information about its victims. About 150 KGB agents were dispatched to Novocherkassk and its neighboring cities. According to historian Tatyana Bocharova, some of these officials were charged with pinpointing any radiowave attempts to transmit information about the shooting to foreign sources.
Despite these efforts, Time magazine ran a story in October 1962 titled “And Then the Police Fired.” Based on rumors, the report stated that unexpected price hikes provoked “a wild night of rioting and pillaging,” ending with police shooting and killing “several hundred young Russian students and workers.”
By October, management at factories in Novocherkassk were calling workers together for discussions about “the hostile actions of hooligan elements.” At the same time, an anonymous letter was circulating throughout the city demanding that the authorities reveal the burial sites of the victims, threatening to leak details to the West about the shooting, if the government didn’t comply. Another leaflet read: “What’s your aim here? Stalin and his supporters were always headed toward communism, leading everyone there, and they did it without their eyes on capitalists’ dirty tricks and without always pointing the finger, like you liars.”
One witness said that local officials met with the students at the city’s polytechnic institute, a few days after the shooting. The secretary of the Communist Party’s Rostov branch explained to the group that the killings were an accident. “A soldier dropped his gun, it hit the ground, and the weapon opened fire by itself,” he said. The witness recalled that the second official, a man from the All-Union Leninist Young Communist League, “spoke even more snidely.” “He vividly described tattooed criminals who climbed atop tanks, knocked back bottles of ‘Moskovskaya’ vodka, and shouted anti-Soviet slogans. When the lecturer asked, ‘Was it necessary to shoot at these people?’ the room answered, ‘Yes.’”
KGB agents also went after the people who participated in the demonstration and managed to escape. Agents patrolled the streets, showing photographs to passersby of people at the protest, asking if they recognized any of the faces. According to Tatyana Bocharova, intelligence agencies called factory managers and demanded that they reveal who went to the protest. By June 12, a KGB report indicates that officials had identified roughly 150 of the most active demonstrators, 53 of whom they arrested.
Portraits of several people convicted following the events in Novocherkassk. Photographs from the KGB archive. Images displayed at the Novocherkassk Memorial Museum. Darya Dar for Meduza
Twenty-seven KGB agents worked the investigation against the Novocherkassk demonstrators, whose trials were held in the police academy building, behind a fortified brick wall. Moscow allowed the Communist Party’s city committee to carry out workers’ rallies at some factories, demanding that the riots’ perpetrators be punished severely. After the verdicts, the committee held more workers’ rallies, celebrating the prison sentences.
On August 20, seven of the arrested activists were sentenced to death. They were convicted of banditry and organizing riots. One of these people, 25-year-old Sergey Sotnikov, was sentenced to be shot because he called on other factories to join the protests and wanted to cut off the gas to some enterprises.
Another 110 people were convicted of participating in riots. Most of these individuals were sent to prison for 10 years.
Five years later, in 1967, KGB investigators charged General Matvei Shaposhnikov (who had refused to order his tank unit to fire on demonstrators) with inciting crimes against the state. Two years earlier, he’d been forced to resign from the military. In 1967, during a raid on his home, officials found anonymous leaflets from 1962 with anti-Soviet statements about the Novocherkassk shooting. Beginning about a month after the incident, Shaposhnikov started distributing the literature himself, signing the leaflets as “The Furious Belinsky.” He even mailed a letter about the Novocherkassk shooting to the Writers’ Union, hoping that writers “as true humanists” would help him. “People need to start thinking instead of having blind faith that turns them into living machines,” Shaposhnikov wrote. “Our people have been turned into a disempowered farmhand.”
“I lived practically under house arrest, and people in dark sunglasses followed me everywhere,” Shaposhnikov recalled in the late 1980s. “People tried to avoid me. So they wouldn’t have to say hello, they’d cross to the other side of the street.” In the end, the case against the general was closed, but he was stripped of his rank and expelled from the party. Afterwards, he wrote a “passionate letter” to KGB chairman Yuri Andropov, and this apparently saved him from prison. In the late 1980s, he appealed again to the country’s leaders, sending five letters about the Novocherkassk shooting to Mikhail Gorbachev. Once again, nobody answered him.
“There's nothing meaner than a woman”
On June 12, 1965, crane operator Valentina Vodyanitskaya came to work with her three-year-old son, Zhenya. At the steel plant, an unfamiliar man approached her. She says he was wearing a long trench coat. “Vodyanitskaya? I’ve been waiting for you. We need to speak,” he said. When they stepped outside, the man grabbed her by the arm, shoved her into a nearby blue car, and shouted at the driver, “Step on it!”
Vodyanitskaya remembers looking through the car’s rear window at her son; he was standing at the factory’s entrance and she was screaming his name. “What are you howling about? They’ll ask you two questions, and then you’ll see him again,” the man told her. As they drove, he slipped his hand under Vodyanitskaya’s blouse and groped her.
Once they got to the Novocherkassk KGB building, the agents took Vodyanitskaya straight to the basement, where they told her that she’d been photographed at the square during the protests and on the city committee’s balcony. They’d finally identified her.
She spent the next several days at the local KGB facility, before she was transferred to Rostov-on-Don, where investigators accused her of inciting the crowd to kill Mikoyan and said she told demonstrators how police officers injured her. During her interrogation, when Vodyanitskaya grew nervous and started rocking in her chair, one of the KGB agents told her, “Keep squirming and I’ll knock your teeth in.”
Vodyanitskaya was charged alongside another woman and eight men (she said everyone was convicted in groups of ten). During the trial, the men tried to cheer her up, but many of them started crying when they heard their sentences. Like everybody in her group, Vodyanitskaya got 10 years in prison. Before she was sent off to serve out her time, the KGB forced Vodyanitskaya to sign the same non-disclosure agreement foisted on the police cadets who buried the dead outside Novocherkassk. If she talked to anyone, she, too, risked being shot.
Speaking about her life in prison camps, Vodyanitskaya says, “Nothing happened, and everything happened.”
By 1962, the Stalinist Gulag system had formally ceased to exist, but the prisons themselves had changed relatively little. Vodyanitskaya’s first prison was in Omsk, where she was trained in sewing, in strict accordance with Soviet prison officials’ recommendations on the productive use of women’s labor, first drafted in 1941. During her training, Vodyanitskaya had to perform hard labor, carrying wood, heating stoves, and cleaning. Later, she became a foreman on the assembly line, manufacturing pants.
Valentina Vodyanitskaya (in the last row, second from the left) in a prison camp. Omsk, 1965. Photo from the Novocherkassk Tragedy Foundation
Each time she was transferred to a new prison, Vodyanitskaya says the same story repeated itself: when changing trains, the inmates were ordered to undress and sent to a bathhouse, while guards watched as naked women were forced to run between them. Vodyanitskaya served time in three different prisons, in Omsk, Chelyabinsk, and Mariinsk.
To start each workday, inmates would shout out their names and prison sentences. A few times during these roll calls, someone yelled about Vodyanitskaya, “She’s still fair game!” and the other inmates laughed. Prison officials nicknamed her “Button,” because she was short. A couple of times an administrator called her to his office and suggested that she “spend the night.” Vodyanitskaya says a prison supervisor once made advances on her during a night shift, but he let her go after she told him firmly that he was holding up work on her assembly line.
Once, however, it was Vodyanitskaya who fell for a prison official. It was in Omsk, and he often attended the inmates’ concert performances, where prisoners recited poems and sang songs. She says she thought, “He was born in 1934, and I was born in 1937 — just a three-year difference! In another life, we could have been together. Why is he sitting there, and I’m here?”
Vodyanitskaya paced her prison cell, counting the number of steps it took to walk its perimeter, but time passed quickly when she was working. On the weekends, she’d take her clothes and other inmates’ clothes and go spend the whole day washing them. “The main thing I learned in the camps,” Vodyanitskaya says, “is that there’s nothing meaner than a woman.” She says some of the inmates forced people to knit a hundred mittens for them.
But not all the other women were cruel. Vodyanitskaya befriended one prisoner — a former kindergarten principal — who’d landed in the camps for secretly raising three piglets to give to malnourished children.
More than anything, Vodyanitskaya missed her son — all the more so because she knew nothing about his life (throughout her time in prison, she received only two parcels from her mother, and her cellmates grabbed away both of them). Twice, she tried to kill herself, waiting until everyone on the factory floor left for lunch, and then trying to shove her hand into an electric socket. She was stopped both times.
About two and a half years into Vodyanitskaya’s incarceration, the prison administration summoned her unexpectedly. In the warden’s office, as was customary, she called out her name and sentence. “Huh, how many years?” the warden asked, adding, “Listen, there’s been an order to reduce it to five years.” Vodyanitskaya fainted on the spot.
Two and a half years later, before the KGB released her, they forced her to sign another document agreeing not to tell anyone anything about her time in prison. Vodyanitskaya says many of her cellmates didn’t want to go free. On the outside, they didn’t have a kopeck to their names. “There were wild laws [in prison],” she recalls. “People went for each other’s throats when they argued, and they were buddy-buddy after they made up.”
Returning to Novocherkassk, Vodyanitskaya discovered that her mother had turned her son over to an orphanage, not expecting her daughter to come back from prison. The neighbors told her that her mother often beat her son for little things, like accidentally staining a white shirt while out on a walk. Vodyanitskaya moved in with her mother at the apartment given to them instead of a room at the factory barracks, but her mother nagged her constantly. Once, when Vodyanitskaya came home from a night shift and went to use the bathroom, her mother told her, “You couldn’t do that at the factory? You have to bring that stink here?” Before long, the old woman left her daughter and grandson and moved to the countryside.
When Vodyanitskaya returned to Novocherkassk, her son Zhenya was already about nine years old. When she came to the orphanage to see him, she didn’t recognize him, even when he was standing right in front of her. She persuaded the officials to give her back custody, but for a long time no school would accept him, and the neighbors’ children weren’t allowed to be friends with him.
Vodyanitskaya struggled after prison, as well. One of the engineers at NEVZ told her that she wouldn’t be offered her old job back. Then she turned to one of the factory bosses, an old friend who’d been a foreman in 1962. “He saw a familiar surname, and he thought, ‘There’s no way that’s my girl! But it was you!’” he told Vodyanitskaya. When they met, he jumped out of his seat and said, “Let me smack that tush of yours! C’mon, you’ve already been through it all. So what will we do?” Vodyanitskaya told him that she was looking for work, and he picked up the phone and called the neighboring plant. “Do you need any crane operators?” he asked, and she heard a voice on the other end say, “We’re fucking desperate! What about it?” Her friend then said, “A girl from not that far off just came in. She’s been without anybody to lift up her dress and fuck her ass.” Telling this story today, Vodyanitskaya laughs. Before long, she was back at work as a crane operator.
A few weeks after her return, police officers came to Vodyanitskaya’s apartment, offered her a seat in one of her own chairs, and asked her to tell them about her time in prison. She refused, and the officers left. In the morning, she called the local KGB office, which had given her its phone number, and asked if her non-disclosure agreement also limited what she could tell the police. It did.
Valentina Vodyanitskaya at home, October 2017 Darya Dar for Meduza
In the years that followed, Vodyanitskaya changed jobs more than once, loading wagons for some time and later working as a janitor. She remarried and gave birth to another son, but her husband treated her like an ex-con, and they divorced. In 1976, she traded her career for a small house. For the next 15 years, she wouldn’t speak a word to anyone about the events of 1962, until she was contacted by Tatyana Bocharova.
chapter three
Memory’s return
A son of a Bolshevik
In the late 1980s, one of Novocherkassk’s cultural centers held evening gatherings twice a week where locals met to discuss Perestroika, the revival of the Cossacks, and the fight against the construction of a nuclear power plant in Rostov. Between 20 and 30 people would attend, and they called the group “the Novocherkassk Cultural Center” and sometimes “the |
at what we have and get that cleaned up and get that posted," she says. "I suspect that when we contact the other law enforcement agencies, we’ll get the data pretty soon. As the data comes in, we’ll get it posted."
Under a grant from the federal Bureau of Justice, Crime Research Group will also be analyzing the data it receives.JoJo's Erotic Adventure Part 1:
Phantom Emissions
It is midnight and all is quiet in the Joestar familial home. Not a creature is stirring, not even a mouse. Suddenly Jojo awakens and screams "No! Nocturnal emissions again!". This was the third night in a row that this happened. Something had to be done with his insanely high sperm count, he was running out of bed sheets! Suddenly, a thought entered his head, "If I can't have the girl of my dreams, at least I can score some hot dick". Throughout the surrounding lands, there was one man whose dick knew no bounds. Dio. His archrival. His adopted brother. "Good thing we sleep in the same house" Jojo thought to himself. Jojo tiptoed down to Dio's room with his diamond-hard rod in his off hand. His heart was pounding in chest as the reality of the situation dawned on him.
Creeping through the darkened estate like a chink through the rice fields, Johnathon approached Dio's door. He turned the doorknob jewishly. As the expensive mahogany door creakily swung forward in its frame, all of the blood in Johnathon's beefy body flooded straight into his bulging meat cannon, like hipsters flooding into gentrified neighborhoods. Dio's sleeping, naked body was clearly visible on his california king sized bed. Dio's penis was visibly erect, like a monolith rising from the desert, as tall and proud as a flag pole over a 9/11 memorial. JoJo silently approached Dio's 17 inch long boner with increasing arousal, losing control over his thoughts and motor functions, completely overtaken with feverish lust. Suddenly he lost all control and busted his magma-hot load upon Dio's sleeping face like Mt. Vesuvius on the Pompeii countryside. Dio awoke, his face covered in sticky love syrup like a gay pancake. "Jojo, I was just dreaming about you and your sizeable dick."
"Then how about we make like John Cena and a kid with terminal cancer, and turn those dreams into reality?" replied Jojo. Dio's many muscles rippled in excitement.
"Have you been lifting?"
"Gotta get big, gotta stay big."
"Then how about you open up for your protein supplement"
Dio's big blowjob lips closed around the head of Jojo's poker. His negrotic mouth moved up and down on the large wiener before him. Jojo groaned, "yeah now that's how a man sucks dick". Suddenly, Dio's jaws unhinged like a snake as he choked down all 15 inches of Jojo's impressive, throbbing, veiny schlong. This was better head than he had ever received, Dio truly was the UPS of giving head, impressive in his handling of Jojo's package. Every thrust of Jojo's dick down Dio's well-exercised esophagus, callused over years of deepthroating popsicles, caused waves of precum to be sprayed across the room like a sprinkler. Given the enormity of JoJo's member, Dio began running his hands over the shaft as though he were an amish craftsmen polishing the leg of a freshly made table, set to be sold at an incredible markup to tourists, in order to keep his community's schools well funded.
Dio's hard work was paying off. The muscles in Jojo's well toned buttcheeks contracted as his lips pursed and his eyes rolled back into his skull. His one-eyed-trouser snake let go a load so powerful, it reached escape velocity and flew off into space, escaping the galaxy, serving as testament to humanity's prowess and Dio's finesse. "Boy I sure needed that," exclaimed Jojo, having just propelled enough protein out of his dickhole to feed the entirety of Tunisia for three days. 11 million people worth of protein. Dio glared at Jojo, "Listen up sonny boy, you better not be thinking of nutting and running, daddy needs to glaze some donuts. You'll be the Krispy to my Kreme."
Suddenly Dio lurched forwards and pinned Jojo down to the bed. Jojo struggled at first, but even though he was built like a boulder of pure muscle, he was but a tiny twink compared to Dio. Dio turned JoJo around and stuck his love gun into Jojo's ready bung hole. "Daddy Dio is gonna hump your rump," he grunted as he experienced the pure ecstasy of his adopted brother's taught anus. He seized JoJo's anal virginity like Putin seized Crimea, but Jojo, much Ukraine's oppressed russian minority, took to this advance with open arms. "This is hotter than that one time when you put my dog in the furnace," moaned Jojo.
"I should call you JoJo Brownstar, because your ass is heavenly," replied Dio.
Dio began pounding JoJo with a renewed vigor, increasing in speed and power, the mere friction causing Jojo's butthole to burn brighter than a shirtless 300 pound white man on a hot summer beach. His thick cock sounded like a jack hammer destroying a concrete sidewalk."You're destroying my organs with your dick!" yelled jojo in intense pleasure.
"The only organ you need is my dick" screamed Dio in reply.
Suddenly the floorboards gave way underneath the two lovers, as the architects of the Joestar family home did not factor hulk-ish anal sex into the load capacity of the floors. When they landed, Jojo was momentarily knocked free of his lover's embrace, right before Dio reached climax. Dio's frothy man-load was launched straight on the ancient stone mask hanging from the wall, which fell from its display and landed square on Dio's chiseled face.
"Aaargh" yelled Dio as the mask's ancient jizz magic transformed him into an immortal vampire of pure sexual lust. Dio sprouted penises from his mouth, where fangs would normally form and his already inhumanly large penis doubled in size and girth. Overcome with insatiable horniness he ran out into the night, as Jojo lay helpless on the ground, writhed in intoxicating pleasure, his anus the size of a manhole cover.
To Be Continued?There has been an article released by Helsingin Sanomat just a few days ago and as it happened, Jollasuomi has covered it on their website and since they were both in Finnish language I thought maybe it’s preferred by some people to read it in English rather than using Google translate which is plainly rubbish in translating Finnish to English. [Try it and experience some laughter 😉 ]
There are some highlights about this particular report/article that caught our eyes which I will be pointing out here:
This article reveals that how many Nokia employees were actually very disappointed about the change of strategy and stopping the development of MeeGo which resulted them to sell themselves to Microsoft just a while ago.
“The Windows Phone + Nokia was the wrong life boat” – Sami Pienimäki.
“I thought about it over the weekend and said that something has to be done about this matter” – Sami Pienimäki.
In the interview he also explains how the current Jolla founders Marc Dillon, Stefano Mosconi and Jussi Hurmola agreed, and decided to set up a small company with Sami named Jolla which introduced the MeeGo based operating system named Sailfish in the fall of 2012 and told the company to launch the phone in the same year, however, it is known that the schedule was collapsed due to some miscommunication and therefore after Jussi Hurmola resigned from the company in the fall of 2012, Jolla was forced to change their components suppliers and change the direction a little bit. Jolla changed the chipset to Qualcomm’s chipsets and at the same time Jolla carried out a daring Android compatibility which logically is a very good decision. Jolla also wants to bring Sailfis OS to other smartphone manufacturers and they can install it to their own smartphones and other devices, similar that Google does it with its Android OS.
The company [Jolla] does not want to be the “New Nokia” but they rather be at the Google’s position and dominate the OS providers wars.
Company is probably going to have good times ahead, as many are tired of the same operating systems and are looking for something new. Jolla smartphone is promised to enter the market before the end of this year, and the Finnish tele operator DNA is among the first operators to sell Jolla phone.
Oh and there’s a video that I wasn’t able to embed it into our website since I guess it’s uploaded on HS’s own servers most probably. So visit their website mentioned in the source link and take a look at the new video featuring new icon designs which we haven’t seen before.You lucky jerks in those limited areas with Google Fiber access have all the fun. Not only do you have relatively inexpensive and lightning-fast home Internet, you get TV service with support from Google. The latest update to the Google Fiber IPTV app for Android adds even more goodies, most notably the ability to pause and play television with the standard lockscreen controls or with an integrated Android Wear app. Make sure and show it off to your peasant friends who live in Cabletown.
We'd show you the cool new stuff in the updated app (version 39), but none of us actually have Google Fiber, and the slow rollout makes it hard to get ahold of the APK anyway. In addition to the controls on the lockscreen and Android Wear, you can get the same basic functions in your notification drawer, not unlike Chromecast. On the programming guide, you can now create a section with only your favorite or most-watched channels to avoid flipping through hundreds of listings (why don't all cable/satellite receivers do this?). New filters allow you to see only sports, movies, or streaming content all at once.
More nebulous additions include "UI improvements" and the usual bug fixes. If you've got the new app, drop a link for your fellow Google Fiber users in the comments.While many of the U.S. carriers have updated their Samsung Galaxy S3 devices to Android 4.1.2 already, one major absence from the upgrade is Samsung's Premium Suite. One of the coolest features from the Premium Suite is Multi-View, a function that lets you truly multitask by running two apps at the very same time—right next to each other. As you can see above in the left image, I have both Pandora and Spotify running. Why? Because why not?!? On the right, I have YouTube on top and Maps on the bottom. Pretty cool, right? The international versions of the Galaxy S3 have this feature already, so it's just us stateside folks who've been left out in the cold by our carriers—like always. Well, if you're a rooted Sprint user, you can take the do-it-yourself approach and get this awesome Multi-View feature now! Developer gruesomewolf has created a flashable file for us all that will add the Multi-View feature to your GS3. As long as you meet the basic requirements, installing this mod is very easy. Note: Versions for other carriers should be available soon. Check back for updated links and instructions for AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon.
What You'll Need for This Mod The Sprint variant of the Samsung Galaxy S3 (again, check back soon for updates on other carriers)
variant of the Samsung Galaxy S3 (again, check back soon for updates on other carriers) Root
A deodexed ROM running Android Jelly Bean 4.1.2
The mod file
A current backup, just in case.
How to Install Multi-View on Your GS3 Place the mod file in the root of your internal SD card. Reboot to recovery. Clear cache and dalvik cache. Install the mod file. Reboot. If you have any questions on this process, ask away in the comments below, or over in our forum.Products The Zakon Series on Mathematical Analysis by Elias Zakon This series of books covers in a concrete and hands-on way the basic material of real analysis. Basic Concepts of Mathematics This book helps the student complete the transition from purely manipulative to rigorous mathematics, with topics that cover basic set theory, fields (with emphasis on the real numbers), a review of the geometry of three dimensions, and properties of linear spaces. Mathematical Analysis I Designed for a two-semester undergraduate course, this award-winning text covers the basic material of continuity and differentiation of functions, integration, metric spaces, etc. This book begins with a condensed version of the author's Basic Concepts of Mathematics. Mathematical Analysis II Used for many years as the text for a two-semester undergraduate course in analysis, this book covers measure and integration (Lebesgue measure, Radon-Nikodym theorem, monotone convergence theorem, etc.) and calculus on normed linear spaces (Banach spaces). The Trillia Lectures on Mathematics This series will include mathematics texts that contain valuable material outside of a traditional textbook format. An Introduction to the Theory of Numbers by Leo Moser This book, which presupposes familiarity only with the most elementary concepts of arithmetic (divisibility properties, greatest common divisor, etc.), is an expanded version of a series of lectures for graduate student on elementary number theory. It is appropriate either for a second undergraduate course or an introductory graduate course in Number Theory.Donald Trump, Jr., (L) arrives to hear his father, Republican candidate for President Donald Trump, speak at Wednesday Trump Soho Hotel in New York City. Photo by Bryan R. Smith/UPI | License Photo
Supporters wait for Republican candidate for President Donald Trump to speak at Trump Soho Hotel, June 22, 2016, in New York City. Photo by Bryan R. Smith/UPI | License Photo
Presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump on Wednesday responded to Hillary Clinton's speech on Tuesday in which she attacked the real estate mogul's economic policy and record as a businessman. He spoke at the Trump Soho Hotel in New York City. Photo by Bryan R. Smith/UPI | License Photo
NEW YORK, June 22 (UPI) -- Donald Trump on Wednesday went on the offensive against Hillary Clinton, attacking everything from her economic policy to her record as secretary of state.
Trump's remarks in New York City were a direct reaction to Clinton's speech on Tuesday in which she attacked the real estate mogul and former reality television star's economic record.
He took his own turn at the podium Wednesday to highlight what he considers Clinton's failings.
"When I see the crumbling roads and bridges, or the dilapidated airports, or the factories moving overseas to Mexico -- or the other countries for that matter -- I know these problems can all be fixed -- but not by Hillary Clinton, only by me," Trump said. "The fact is we can come back bigger, and better and stronger than ever before: jobs, jobs, jobs."
The real estate mogul said the economic problems the United States faces cannot be fixed by the people who created the problems in a "rigged system" in the first place, suggesting Clinton played a part in the most recent economic recession. Trump also called for Sen. Bernie Sanders D-Vt., supporters to join the Trump "movement." One of Sanders' main campaign promises was to minimize the damage done by income inequality.
"I've always had a talent for building business and importantly for creating jobs, that's a talent our country desperately needs," Trump said. "I'm running for president to end the unfairness and to put you, the American worker, first. It's about time."
A CNN/ORC poll released Tuesday found U.S. voters believe Trump is better suited to "handle the economy" than Clinton. Those same people surveyed, though, would choose Clinton over Trump for the presidency.
Not for the first time, Trump characterized Clinton as a "world-class liar" whose connection to special interest means she would prioritize those interests above those of the American people.
"Here's my promise to the American voters: If I'm elected president, I will end the special interest monopoly in Washington, D.C., very important. The other candidate in this race has spent her entire life making money for special interest," Trump said, adding that "Clinton may be the most corrupt person ever to seek the presidency of the United States" and that special interests "totally own her."
Trump also spoke on foreign policy, slamming Clinton for the 2012 Benghazi, Libya, attack and the Iranian nuclear deal. He said she caused the Islamic State, also known as Daesh, ISIL and ISIS, to rise globally. He said Clinton "almost single-handedly" destabilized the Middle East.
RELATED Hillary Clinton squashing Donald Trump in fundraising
"The Hillary Clinton foreign policy has cost thousands of lives; and trillions and trillions of dollars; and unleashed ISIS across the world. No secretary of state has been more wrong, more often and in more places than Hillary Clinton. Her decisions spread death, destruction and terrorism everywhere she touched," Trump said.
Trump characterized Clinton's tenure as state secretary as a "tryout for the presidency" that produced one deadly foreign policy disaster after another.
"She lacks the temperament and the judgment and the competence to lead our country. She should not be president under any circumstances," Trump said.I posted yesterday about how a judge dismissed American Atheists’ lawsuit against the IRS in which AA argued that the government was “giving preferential treatment to churches and religious organizations.”
The judge threw out the suit because AA didn’t have proper standing to bring about the case. They never applied to become a church or a religious organization, the logic went, so they were never really discriminated against by the IRS. If they were, then they might be able to challenge the law.
Attorney Harry Mihet of the conservative Christian group Liberty Counsel attempted to extrapolate that explanation as far as it could go… which takes him, as expected, to absurd places.
He starts by arguing that the courts are suggesting American Atheists could become a church and therefore atheism is a religion… and that is a big, big deal:
Why? Because subjects such as evolution are allowed to be taught in schools but creation science is denied. Mihet explains: “Because if atheism or humanism are religions themselves, and public schools decide to teach the tenets of those religions while excluding the tenets of other theistic religions, then that is discriminatory treatment in and of itself.”
Let’s see if I have this straight: Atheism is a religion. And evolution is a tenet of atheism. So if public schools teach evolution, they’re really preaching religion, and that’s illegal!
#ChristianLogic
Of course, evolution isn’t part of some atheistic religion. It’s not something we have to take on faith. All the available evidence backs it up, and plenty of Christian scientists accept it without a problem. It’s not like Creationism, which has no scientific basis and can only be justified through the lens of a holy book.
If Mihet thinks evolution should be removed from the classroom, then all the rest of reality has to be tossed aside as well.
This, by the way, comes from the guy who’s the brains of Liberty Counsel. If that doesn’t tell you everything you need to know about the organization, I don’t know what does.
(Image via Shutterstock)Have you ever noticed that almost every barn you have ever seen is red? There’s a reason for that, and it has to do with the chemistry of dying stars. Seriously.
Yonatan Zunger is a Google employee who decided to explain this phenomenon on Google+ recently. The simple answer to why barns are painted red is because red paint is cheap. The cheapest paint there is, in fact. But the reason it’s so cheap? Well, that’s the interesting part.
Red ochre—Fe2O3—is a simple compound of iron and oxygen that absorbs yellow, green and blue light and appears red. It’s what makes red paint red. It’s really cheap because it’s really plentiful. And it’s really plentiful because of nuclear fusion in dying stars. Zunger explains:
The only thing holding the star up was the energy of the fusion reactions, so as power levels go down, the star starts to shrink. And as it shrinks, the pressure goes up, and the temperature goes up, until suddenly it hits a temperature where a new reaction can get started. These new reactions give it a big burst of energy, but start to form heavier elements still, and so the cycle gradually repeats, with the star reacting further and further up the periodic table, producing more and more heavy elements as it goes. Until it hits 56. At that point, the reactions simply stop producing energy at all; the star shuts down and collapses without stopping.
As soon as the star hits the 56 nucleon (total number of protons and neutrons in the nucleus) cutoff, it falls apart. It doesn’t make anything heavier than 56. What does this have to do with red paint? Because the star stops at 56, it winds up making a ton of things with 56 neucleons. It makes more 56 nucleon containing things than anything else (aside from the super light stuff in the star that is too light to fuse).
The element that has 56 protons and neutrons in its nucleus in its stable state? Iron. The stuff that makes red paint.
And that, Zunger explains, is how the death of a star determines what color barns are painted.ACC ADs to discuss divisional realignment
DeVante Parker, feeling at home behind the mic, said, “We didn’t try to put up numbers (under former coach Charlie Strong).... At times it did get frustrating.” (Photo: AP)
The Atlantic Coast Conference might look a bit different in the future.
At least that's what Clemson athletic director Dan Radakovich told local Clemson reporters during a recent press conference.
Radakovich said Wednesday that he and the conference's other athletic directors would discuss realigning the ACC's divisions when they meet in October, according to this transcript of his presser from TigerNet.
"Should we keep the divisions the way they are?" he asked. "Should we move to a 1 through 14-type circumstance where you have permanent rivals and one rotation and then go through everything else? All of those are on the table."
This isn't the first time Radakovich mentioned an interest in tweaking the league's divisions. He was concerned in late 2013 that some schools weren't playing each other enough, citing the infrequency of Clemson's meetings with Virginia because they're in different division in football.
Louisville, for instance, won't play North Carolina until 2017. And after playing Miami in the ACC opener on Sept. 1 this season, U of L won't see the Hurricanes again until 2019. The Cards won't play Virginia Tech at all until 2020.
That's the way it's going to look if the league sticks with the two-division, eight-game look that it uses now.
"One of the things we had to get done and was fairly urgent was to resolve whether we were going to play nine conference games or eight conference games," Radakovich said. "Once that was done, we decided to let everybody go home for the summer and then come back and look at (realigning divisions)."
Read or Share this story: http://cjky.it/1nep7Y0At the age of twenty-nine, Eckhart Tolle was a research scholar, supervisor, and doctoral candidate at Cambridge University in England. He was also, by his own admission, deeply miserable. As he lay in bed one night, gripped by an intense dread and loathing of his own existence, he experienced a profound spiritual transformation. In his book The Power of Now (New World Library), he describes waking the next morning:
I opened my eyes. The first light of dawn was filtering through the curtains. Without any thought, I felt, I knew, that there is infinitely more to light than we realize. That soft luminosity filtering through the curtains was love itself. Tears came into my eyes. I got up and walked around the room. I recognized the room, and yet I knew that I had never truly seen it before. Everything was fresh and pristine, as if it had just come into existence. I picked up things, a pencil, an empty bottle, marveling at the beauty and aliveness of it all.
Gone was the miserable self, replaced by a deep sense of peace. Tolle didn’t quite know what had happened to him, didn’t have any concepts or words for it. It was only later, after he had read spiritual texts and visited with spiritual teachers, that he understood: he had realized his true nature as “pure consciousness” rather than as an ego-bound, separate self, “ultimately a fiction of the mind.”
Recognizing he could not go back to being a research scholar and doctoral candidate, Tolle found himself with “no job, no home, no socially defined identity. I spent almost two years sitting on park benches in a state of the most intense joy.” (He laughs and says that this has scared off some readers and that you do not have to sit on a bench for two years.) Later, people began to approach him with questions about the power of his presence. Their dialogues became the inspiration for his books The Power of Now and Practicing the Power of Now.
With its question-and-answer format, The Power of Now can look, upon first glance, like a spiritual version of The One-Minute Manager. This impression quickly dissolves as one begins reading. Tolle writes in clear and simple language about surrendering to the present moment as a path to liberation from our conditioned mind. The peace that results is, in his words, “an abiding presence, an unchanging deep stillness, an uncaused joy beyond good and bad... beyond happiness and unhappiness.” He has something to say to people of any spiritual background, or none at all. (More information about Tolle’s books can be found at www.namastepublishing.com.)
Tolle was born in Germany, and his childhood was marked by spells of depression and suicidal thoughts. At the age of thirteen, he went to live with his father in Spain. Except for language classes, Tolle stopped going to school and began educating himself through books. Around this time, a family friend left at their house the works of German philosopher and painter Bo Yin Ra. “I felt later that these books were left there for a reason,” Tolle says. “They created an ‘opening’ into that other dimension.”
When he was nineteen, Tolle moved to London and began seeking an answer to life’s questions through philosophy, psychology, and literature. He took preparatory classes and was accepted at London University. Upon graduating with the highest mark, he was offered a scholarship to do research at Cambridge. Despite his academic success, the unhappiness that had plagued him since childhood was growing worse. He would soon experience the awakening that would lead him down an entirely new path.
Tolle lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. For the past ten years, he has been a spiritual counselor and teacher, and currently gives workshops for large groups in Europe and North America. When I learned that Tolle was giving a rare East Coast retreat at the Omega Institute in Rhinebeck, New York, I knew I wanted to attend. Less than a week had passed since the terrorist attacks of September 11. During the seven-hour drive from my home in Maine, I felt overwhelmed by, and yet addicted to, the nonstop media coverage.
As I sat in the crowded main hall at the beginning of the retreat, a stillness surrounded me. I experienced Tolle’s presence as powerful, though not in an overt way. His is more the power of silence in a room full of noise. Although I can’t explain how, this silent presence is palpably felt. What isn’t apparent in his books is his joyful humor, which would appear just when it was most needed. His playful facial expressions and body gestures, as he described what he calls “the little me,” were as true to the human condition as the comedy of Buster Keaton.
Tolle described the role of a spiritual teacher as “an open window through which a breeze is blowing.” It is easy to confuse “the breeze,” he said, “with the window through which the breeze is blowing”: the physical form of a particular person.
Later, as Tolle greeted me in his room for this interview, I was struck by his quiet and unassuming nature as well as his impish and contagious sense of humor.
ECKHART TOLLE
Donoso: We often try to escape from our daily lives: work that is unfulfilling; relationships that aren’t going the way we would like; family situations that become difficult. What is the origin of this desire to escape?
Tolle: The tendency to escape is a form of collective mental conditioning that is at work almost all the time in people’s lives, not just when situations turn out to be unpleasant or unsatisfying or difficult. In ordinary life, there is a continuous moving away from the moment to an imagined future that is unconsciously regarded as more important. Most people make the present moment into a means to an end, the end being a future moment that will arrive a minute from now, or an hour from now, or whenever I “make it.” Our striving toward the future, our inner compulsion to deny the present moment, manifests itself as a continuous sense of unease and latent dissatisfaction with what is. This seems to be the “normal” state of our civilization. Freud recognized this when he wrote Civilization and Its Discontents. A literal translation of the German title is The Unease in Culture. He saw that our normal state of consciousness could be described as one of continuous unease, more pronounced at some times than at others.
The self is a story line that develops in the head, very much like a fictitious creation. Yet it forms the basis of most people’s sense of who they are, and that sense, of course, is reinforced by the surrounding world.
Donoso: Why are we not more aware of this state?
Tolle: Because it is everybody’s normal state. Children are conditioned to look to the future from the moment they enter school, always needing the next moment and the next. Even if the future moment is feared, there is still a projection toward it, which generates anxiety. Then the recognition can arise — and this is an amazing realization for people who have never looked at it clearly — that the present moment is all there ever is in one’s life.
Donoso: But aren’t our past experiences and our potential future experiences central to our lives?
Tolle: One never experiences the future, nor the past. One experiences only the present moment. Whatever you do, think, or feel can happen only in the present moment, the Now. If you live in such a way that you continuously deny the present moment, it means that you deny life itself, because life is inseparable from the Now; it can unfold only Now. The past is a memory of a former Now; the future is a mental projection of an expected Now. Strictly speaking, nothing ever happened in the past; it happened in the Now. Nor will anything happen in the future; it will happen in the Now. It sounds almost simplistic or meaningless, and yet there is a deep truth in it: that life and Now are one.
Donoso: Is having hope for the future a help to us or a hindrance?
Tolle: I wouldn’t recommend it. [Laughter.] It is more mental projection. It just gives you some new future that you think is going to save you.
Donoso: What keeps us living in either the past or the future?
Tolle: We live in a world of mental abstraction, conceptualization, and image making — a world of thought. And that becomes our dwelling place. It is a world characterized by the inability ever to stop thinking. The mental noise is a continuous stream. Psychologists have found that 95 percent or more of it is totally repetitive. Perhaps 10 percent of those thought processes, at most, are actually needed to deal with life. Thought can sometimes be very useful [laughter], but in our world it has become obsessive, compulsive, almost like an addiction. People’s sense of identity, of self, gets bound up with their mental concepts and mental images of “I” and “me.”
Donoso: When does this begin?
Tolle: It begins when your parents tell you what your name is. That’s the first label you absorb; the mind says, “Oh, that’s me,” and you repeat your name. Subsequently, that name becomes like a basket in which further life experiences are collected: things that happen to you; things that people tell you about who you are. Some parents tell their children, “You’re not good enough; you’re stupid; you can’t do anything right.” Other parents say different things. But there is always conditioning that is absorbed. These things are then collected and become the contents of your mind. As you grow up, a story grows out of them, a story consisting of judgments and concepts and belief systems. In other words, the self is a story line that develops in the head, very much like a fictitious creation. Yet it forms the basis of most people’s sense of who they are, and that sense, of course, is reinforced by the surrounding world.
This conceptual sense of self is also often threatened by other people, so it is always very uneasy and defensive and constantly needs to replenish and enhance itself. There is always the need for more of “me” to add to who I am. I need to add relationship; I need to add knowledge; I need to add material possessions; I need to add status. If people’s opinions of me are good, if they think highly of me, then I will have status in society, and that can become the basis of my identity. If they think badly of me, if I have no status, that, too, can serve as the basis for my identity — an identity that says, “I haven’t made it. I’m not good enough,” and is characterized by a continuous feeling of insufficiency, lack, fear. Either way, the story of “me” is not complete. Even those who in the eyes of the world have “made it” feel they haven’t arrived, that their story is incomplete, that so far it hasn’t gone the way it was supposed to go.
So my sense of self is deficient because it’s incomplete. “There’s so much more that I need to be fully myself” is the feeling. And then there is the unsatisfactory nature of my story. Sometimes this is clearly seen, as when people are depressed. Other times it is pushed underneath the surface and becomes unconscious. The conscious mind might create images of “me” as the greatest, but underneath lie those images that say, “Oh, no, you’re not.” It may well be that the image I project is the opposite of what I truly feel. This is what people live with; this is what people are burdened with as a sense of self.
A further characteristic of this fictional self is that it cannot sustain itself in the prolonged absence of conflict or strife. It needs other people and situations with which it can be in opposition, because to be in opposition to something strengthens our sense of self. If I have enemies, my identity is strengthened. And this applies, of course, to both a personalized sense of “me” and a collective sense of “us”: our tribe, our religion, our nation. In both cases, it is through enemies and conflict that the self defines itself, that it can declare itself “right.”
This need for enemies is part of the insanity of normal human consciousness, which has afflicted us for many thousands of years. It lies at the root of the continuous violence, warfare, and conflict that you see when you open a newspaper or history book. I always recommend people read twentieth-century history, because of all the periods of human history, surely the twentieth century is the maddest of all, in terms of suffering inflicted by humans on other humans. Any visitor from outer space who looked at that century would have to conclude that there is a strong streak of insanity running through the collective human psyche.
The madness of the world is not just out there; the root of the madness lies in every person’s mind. Of course, it takes on more extreme forms in certain people and less extreme forms in others. An extreme manifestation of insanity is the terrorist who kills thousands of people, including himself. How can he do that? How can a person inflict suffering and, seemingly, not feel anything? How is that possible? It is possible because the terrorist has conceptualized a large group of people — the other religion, the other tribe, the other nation — as the enemy. And once he has made labels and judgments, he no longer sees them as human beings. He sees only the mental concept that he has created, the mental labels that he has attached. The moment you do that, whether collectively to a tribe or individually to another person, you have desensitized yourself, and you no longer sense the aliveness and the reality of that other human being.
Donoso: So you’ve killed them before you have killed them.
Tolle: Yes, that’s right. But, before one condemns the terrorists, one needs to see that terrorism is only a more extreme manifestation of the same dysfunction that exists in everyone. And that’s a sobering realization. It also means that you can’t make the terrorists into an “enemy” anymore.
Donoso: There is a summer camp near where I live in Maine called Seeds of Peace, founded by John Wallach. It brings together Israeli and Palestinian teenagers to live, eat, and play sports: to discover that the “enemy” has a human face.
Tolle: Yes, and gradually the mental construct loses its density, and they see some of the reality shine through. But it is important to realize we are all trapped in mental constructs, and so we separate ourselves from reality; the whole world loses its aliveness — or, rather, we lose our ability to sense that aliveness, the sacredness of nature. When we approach nature through the conceptualizing mind, we see a forest as a commodity, a concept. We no longer see it for what it truly is, but for what we want to use it as. It is reduced. This is how it becomes possible for humans to destroy the planet without realizing what they are doing. It’s all contained in the last words of Jesus: “Forgive them, for they know not what they do.”
This collective mental illness has been with us for a long time. In the time of Jesus, already, the illness was there. In the time of the Buddha, it was there. As time progresses, it has become more and more acute, more and more pronounced. The twentieth century — the “century of progress” — was the height of the madness so far.
Donoso: What role does technology play in all of this |
On one knee, Splinter says a line of “I have never feared you!” and darts across the rooftop, slicing Shredder’s stomach. Shredder drops to the ground as Splinter asks him if he would like to die a warrior’s death. Shredder removes his helmet and agrees, as Splinter slices his head off.
After the battle, Karai informs Splinter she will be traveling back to Japan, and leaves the Foot Clan in the hands of Splinter. Splinter announces he will be keeping a close eye on Kitsune. This is the only part of the issue that really has me questioning. Is Shredder really dead or is this some type of trick by Kitsune? From the Casey & April miniseries, we know there is still much to learn about Kitsune and the rest of her family. Michelangelo leaves the scene, upset at the Turtles’ new association with the Foot Clan. In a final scene, we go back to the day Saki murdered Yoshi and his sons. It appears that General Krang was nearby during the incident and retrieved DNA samples of the victims, which lends insight to why the family was reincarnated as Turtles. Could this also be a clue at a possible return of Shredder in the future?
In all honesty, this was a wonderful issue. This is probably the best $7.99 you will spend on a comic in a long time, as the issue was filled with a variety of feelings, action, and compelling story. Reaching issue #50 is an impressive feat, so we here at TeenageMutantNinjaTurtles.com would like to send a very big congratulations to Tom Waltz, Kevin Eastman, Mateus Santolouco, and the many other contributors along the way. Thank you for the incredible journey, and we look forward to what is in store for the future.A woman received praise on social media after purchasing a distraught father a $749 plane ticket when his toddler was denied a free seat on the flight he was catching.
Kevin Leslie who watched the scene unfold at an airport counter in Omaha, Nebraska, said the father walked up with his daughter in his arms and the agent proceeded to ask how old she was.
When he replied, "She just turned two," the agent asked for her ticket and was told that his daughter was two months over the age limit to fly for free.
Here's Leslie's Facebook post that's been shared more than 45,000 times.
"He was hit with emotion. He mentioned he couldn't afford to rebook this flight or get her the ticket with such short notice," Leslie wrote on the Facebook page of the blogging site "Love What Matters." "He stepped aside and tried to make a few calls. Hugging his daughter and grabbing his head, you could tell he was heartbroken."
The woman next to him at the counter overheard the whole thing and asked him what was wrong.
After talking for a few minutes, they walked up to the counter and the lady pointed to the little girl and said "I wanna buy her ticket."
"You know how much this ticket costs right?" the agent replied.
"$700 something?" the Good Samaritan said in response.
"$749," the agent said.
Then, without hesitation, the woman pulled out her card and paid for the child's flight.
The child's father hugged the woman and asked for her name so he could repay her, but the woman kept saying, "Don't worry about it."
Neither Leslie nor the grateful father knew the identity of the woman until Leslie posted about the kind gesture on Facebook. It wasn't until then that people identified her as Debbie Bolton, the co-founder and global chief sales officer at Norwex.
The company confirmed her identity to CBS News.
“This is story depicts the kind person that Debbie Bolton is,” Amber Arnold, who has worked as a team coordinator for the company for two years, told CBS News. "She is incredibly kind, giving, genuine and so humble.... She leads by example and is walking her talk, every single day."
CSIX_20170320PM_CHUCK_BERRY
WATCH | For more news you need, check out our 60 Second Circa.Meet Hulk, the world's biggest pit bull dog weighing in at an incredible 12-and-a-half stone (174lbs).
The enormous hound is owned by Dark Dynasty K9s, from New Hampshire, which specialises in breeding some of the world's most fearsome guard dogs.
Hulk, who towers above his handlers when standing on his hind legs, has now become an internet star after footage of him uploaded to YouTube racked up around 1.1 million in just one week.
Good boy: Hulk is the world's biggest pit bull dog weighing an astonishing 174lbs
American Pit Bull Terriers were created as fighting dogs by crossbreeding bulldogs, mastiffs and terriers. They are descendants of English dogs used to bait bulls and bears for cruel pit fights.
They continue to be used for illegal dog fighting in the US and In the UK are considered so dangerous it is illegal to own one.
However Dark Dynasty K9s insist their animals have calm, well balanced temperaments and would be suitable as family pets.
Feeding time: Hulk towers above his owner as he stretches up to grab a treat
Record breaker: Digital scales capture the weight of the huge hound - 173.4lbs - almost 12 and a half stoneI just couldn’t let National Grilled Cheese Month slip away without doing at least one grilled cheese sandwich!
Before I became vegan, grilled cheese sandwiches were my specialty. A fancy grilled cheese was the first thing I ever cooked for Chris. He asked me to marry him that night. We’d been dating less than a month. I didn’t answer- I just laughed. Little did I know…
A very basic grilled cheese was the first thing I ever cooked for the twins. I had to cut off the crusts for them because they didn’t eat crusts back then. Chris and I disposed of the crusts by eating them. We don’t like to waste food.
Though the grilled cheese sandwich and I have quite a history (the white bread/Kraft single combo and I got pretty close during my college years), I’ve never had a tuna melt. Before I was vegetarian, back when I ate tuna, I only liked tuna mixed with mayo, mustard, and pickled relish. Nothing else. Melted cheese? Uh, no thank you. That just sounded gross. By the time I was into crazy grilled cheese sandwich combos, I didn’t eat tuna anymore. I can happily say that I honestly don’t know what I was missing.
I can also happily say, though, that when I first tried a vegan “tuna” melt, it was love at first bite. It was at a restaurant in LA, called Flore, and the salty, vinegary tempeh “tu-no” salad (as they call it) topped with warm creamy cashew cheese rocked my world. Rocked. My. World. I’ve been a fan of vegan “tuna” melts ever since.
The “tuna” salad for this sandwich is made with shredded jackfruit (is there anything this fruit can’t do?) and mashed white beans, then mixed with mayo, dijon mustard, and pickled relish, just like I like it. The jackfruit is cooked briefly and seasoned with kelp granules, giving it that seafood taste. It was absolutely perfect. For the sandwich, I topped the salad with a generous helping of Trader Joe’s new vegan mozzarella shreds. For store-bought vegan cheese, this stuff is awesome. It melts and stretches better than daiya, in my opinion, and it did not disappoint in this sandwich.
It’s been a long time since I’ve made any sort of grilled cheese sandwich for Chris and I. It was so fun to sit and have a melty, cheesy sandwich, packed with a super tasty filling, just like we used to back in the day. The fact that the sandwich was wonderfully compassionate and ridiculously delicious didn’t hurt either.
Print Jackfruit “Tuna” Melt Sandwich Yield: 2 sandwiches Ingredients for the jackfruit "tuna" salad 1 can of jackfruit (packed in water or brine, not syrup), rinsed and drained
1/2 teaspoon olive oil
1/4 onion, diced (about a 1/2 cup)
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 teaspoon kelp granules
1/2 teaspoon dried tarragon
1 cup cooked great northern white beans
1/4 cup vegenaise
2 tablespoons pickled relish
1 1/2 tablespoons dijon mustard
juice of 1 lemon
for the sandwich 4 slices of bread
greens of some sort (optional- I used pea shoots)
1 tomato, sliced
2/3 cup shredded vegan cheese
olive oil spray Instructions Use a fork to pull apart the jackfruit into shreds (until it has a tuna-like consistency). Heat the olive oil in a large frying pan over medium heat. Add the onion and garlic and sauté for a couple minutes. Add the jackfruit and let it cook, stirring occasionally, until the jackfruit's moisture is gone. Add the kelp granules and add salt to taste. Remove from heat. While the jackfruit is cooking, start the salad. In a bowl, use a fork to mash the white beans. Once they are thoroughly mashed, add the rest of the salad ingredients and mix together. Once the jackfruit is done cooking, add it to the salad mixture and mix until fully coated. Taste and add seasoning, if necessary. Turn on the broiler of your oven. Layout the 4 slices of bread. Place a small amount of greens (your choice) on two of the slices of bread. Top the greens with the tomato slices, then top the tomato with the jackfruit salad (about a heaping 1/2 cup per sandwich). On the remaining slices of bread, spread out the grated cheese. Place the two slices of bread, topped with cheese, on a baking sheet and place it in the oven, under the broiler. Let sit under the broiler, just until the cheese begins to melt, about 2-4 minutes. Remove and place the slices on top of the slices topped with the jackfruit salad. Heat a large frying pan over medium-low heat and lightly spray with olive oil. Place the sandwiches in the pan, cheese side down. Let cook until cheese begins to melt. Lightly spray the tops of the sandwiches with the olive oil. Flip the sandwiches and cook on the other side. Flip again if needed. The sandwiches are done when the cheese is melted and the bread is toasted. Remove from the pan and serve immediately. Enjoy! 3.1
What’s your favorite type of (vegan) grilled cheese sandwich?
Photography by Chris MillerLast week, Twitter announced the end of Vine. If you’re not familiar, Vine was the video equivalent to Twitter’s 140-character microblogging service: users were allotted six seconds to make a statement. While Twitter originally advertised the platform with stop-motion home videos and twee music—think of your best friend’s Pinterest page set to Belle and Sebastian—what emerged was something its creators never envisioned. Amateur comedians, dancers, and video magicians became massively popular on Vine, drawing millions of followers and billions of views. But a massive drop-off in viewership over the past year, coupled with Twitter’s failed attempt at selling itself to the highest bidder, led to Vine’s early demise. While the announcement may come across as a sad end to a popular experiment, it’s actually indicative of two new realities in the digital age: That audiences and content creators of colour are to be ignored at one’s own peril, and that some tech companies will blithely choose peril.
Vine’s widespread appeal came from its radical simplicity and its cultural in-jokes. Fancy, professional production was not only unnecessary, it was to be avoided: some of the most popular Vine creators were teenagers filming at home and around the neighbourhood. Those creators who popularized the six-second sketch, for the most part, were people of colour. In Black households, “do more with less” is less a work ethic than a means of survival, but on Vine, it was a business plan. Creators like Jay Versace, a lanky, round-faced high-schooler, produced hilarious videos lampooning R&B music and shady relatives with little more than improvised wigs and his rubber-faced lip-synching. Dance “challenges” like the “Whip/Nae Nae” and “Betcha Can’t Do It” have exploded on the platform, offering exposure to professional creators who blend talent with goofy wit.
Unlike Twitter, where viral tweets offered hardly more than a few days’ visibility, exposure on Vine had the ability to launch careers. In August 2014, U.S.-based actor Greg Davis Jr. (known on Vine as “Klarity”) posted a video of himself overlooking the canals in Venice, Italy. The loop was set to Jay-Z’s “F–k With Me You Know I Got It,” with late rapper Pimp C’s opening monologue:
“Little over a year ago I was in bondage
And now I’m back out here reaping the blessings
And getting the benefits that go along with it”
In his post, Davis connected the words to his own life—a year prior, he was homeless, had difficulty landing roles and his father had just passed away. But his Vine comedy shorts helped him amass more than two million followers—more than Miley Cyrus—and that following has more than doubled since. Davis joined the ranks of Vine’s top stars and not only found more work, but managed to draw a six-figure salary once his videos caught the attention of corporate sponsors like Coca-Cola and Charmin. Davis kept producing Vine videos until the very end, but most of his peers had long since abandoned the platform for rivals YouTube, Instagram and Snapchat. Those services not only offered creators more flexibility, exposure, and revenue-sharing, but also addressed a problem that has plagued Twitter for years: shielding users and creators from online abuse.
Before the trolls temporarily drove Ghostbusters star Leslie Jones away from Twitter, the free speech ethos of its white, male executive team had become something of a running gag. In their eyes, adding features to prevent online bullies from exercising harassment (and even rape and death threats) interfered with their vision of an online ecosystem where all voices were equally heard. And yet, when media giants like the NFL demanded tweets be taken down due to copyright infringement, those tweets disappeared quickly. It was clear whose voices mattered to Twitter’s executive team.
Former Twitter CEO Dick Costolo famously admitted in 2015, “We suck at dealing with abuse.” Since then, however, the company offered barely more than half-measures (such as its “mute” feature) and occasional account terminations (Such as alt-right apparatchik Milo Yiannopoulos, who orchestrated the abuse directed toward Leslie Jones), which did little to stem the flood. The executive team’s unwillingness to offer more protection, in favour of allowing bullies and actual neo-Nazis free reign to harass everyone from celebrities and journalists to casual users, caused potential buyers Google, Disney, and Salesforce to pass on acquisition bids. In mid-October, Bloomberg reported Disney executives were worried “bullying and other uncivil forms of communication on the social media site might soil the company’s wholesome family image.”
This was a concern that Vine’s most popular creators brought to the company’s attention earlier this year. In a closed-door meeting, 21 Vine creators (who were responsible for billions of annual views) asked for payment in exchange for regular content creation. Additionally, they asked for product changes, namely protection from online harassment. Vine rejected the proposal, and the creators took their work to other platforms. While Vine did eventually produce content filters to reduce harassment, by then it was too late. The talent had left the building, viewership had plummeted, and advertisers had no incentive to help the company monetize. After the failed sale, Twitter axed nine per cent of its global workforce and shut down Vine for good.
It’s sad to see Vine go. There were times when its funny, adorable, and socially incisive videos could make me laugh in spite of otherwise terrible days. At the same time, there’s something revolutionary about the fact that creators of colour were able to walk away intact from all this. Especially from a corporate giant that chose bullies and contradictory principles over the people who made its platform work. After decades of Black and brown entertainers being exploited, held hostage to unconscionable contracts, and left penniless when their 15 minutes ended, it’s a complete reversal that Vine’s talent walked away while the company collapses. While Vine’s management bears a wider responsibility for failing to adapt its product to the way its users actually consume the product, there’s still a point to be made for the wider tech community. Millennials of colour are the ones who create and sustain culture on the Internet. Catering to that market is good business sense. Cross them and, well, your company might just die on the vine too.WASHINGTON, April 22, 2014 – A man who spat upon, insulted, and threatened a young Muslim girl on a public bus in New York has been arrested, according to the New York Police Department. CBS News reports that the police said “Perry Germano, 50, of Queens approached the 15-year-old female victim, made anti-Muslim statements, spat on her and raised his fist while threatening to punch her.”
Germano defended his actions, allegedly saying “I had a dispute with a girl on the bus, I didn’t intentionally spit on her, when I said ‘F— you’ to her, spit came out of my mouth. I cocked my hand back at her, but never said anything about race or religion,” according to DNAinfo New York.
The criminal complaint accuses Germano of telling the 15 year old girl “F— you, f— your people, you Muslim, you are a terrorist” and “I’m not scared to hit you with my fist.”
The incident comes more than a year after a group began posting anti-Islam advertisements in the New York public transit system, which includes the bus system where the altercation occurred.
“The American Freedom Defense Initiative purchased space next to 228 clocks in 39 stations for ads with an image of the burning World Trade Center and a quote attributed to the Quran saying: ‘Soon shall we cast terror into the hearts of the unbelievers’” said the Huffington Post.
Time Magazine reports that in 2012, “the AFDI ran ads implying Muslim radicals were ‘savages,’ declaring: “In any war between the civilized man and the savage, support the civilized man.”
ABC News said that the victim reported being spit upon three different times, stating the altercation began when the man noticed she was wearing the traditional Islamic scarf.
Loonwatch reports that according to their sources Germano said “I will kill you.”
Germano has a checkered criminal history, with nearly forty previous arrests for a variety of crimes.
Is this a hate crime?
“A hate crime is a traditional offense like murder, arson, or vandalism with an added element of bias. For the purposes of collecting statistics, Congress has defined a hate crime as a “criminal offense against a person or property motivated in whole or in part by an offender’s bias against a race, religion, disability, ethnic origin or sexual orientation,” says the FBI.
The Anti-Defamation League reports “Congress enacted a federal complement to state hate crime penalty-enhancement statutes in the 1994 crime bill. This provision required the United States Sentencing Commission to increase the penalties for crimes in which the victim was selected “because of the actual or perceived race, color, religion, national origin, ethnicity, gender, disability, or sexual orientation of any person.”
The Civil Rights Act of 1968 permits federal prosecution of any person that “willingly injures, intimidates or interferes with another person, or attempts to do so, by force because of the other person’s race, color, religion or national origin” when that persons attempts to engage in one of six types of federally protected activities including patronizing a public place or facility. It is unclear whether travel on a public bus is included within this law.
No public comment has been made on whether this case will be prosecuted as a federal hate crime.A police officer was beaten to the ground and his colleague punched in the jaw in a terrifying attack by a mob of up to 30 schoolchildren in south London, Scotland Yard revealed today.
The two officers were on routine patrol in Lewisham when they were set upon by the group of teenagers after they spotted a youth trying to hide a large knife.
The attack took place at 4pm on Wednesday November 9 on Goodwood Road near the junction with New Cross Road but the Met only released details of the incident today.
After trying to search the suspect seen with the knife, one of the officers was punched in the face several times by some of the other youths, causing him to fall to the ground.
When the second officer stepped in to help her colleague she was punched in the jaw.
Police say the group continued to assault the officer on the floor by repeatedly kicking him in the head, leaving him with serious bruising.
They were rescued by colleagues after calling for urgent assistance.
The male officer was taken to a south London hospital as a precaution for his injuries.
A 15-year-old male was arrested at the scene on suspicion of actual bodily harm and was taken to a south London police station. He has been bailed to a date in mid-December.
Today police in Lewisham said passers-by filmed the attack on their mobile phones and appealed for them to come forward.
Detective Sergeant Jenny White, of Lewisham Police, said: “I’m appealing to anyone who witnessed this shocking attack on two officers to come forward and speak with us, particularly anyone with mobile phone footage of the incident.
“It happened at a very busy time of the day and there would’ve been a large number of people in the area.
“These officers go to work every day to keep the public safe and this demonstrates the dangers the police can face while carrying out these duties.”
Anyone with any information is urged to contact Lewisham CID on 020 8284 8365 or call Crimestoppers anonymously on 0800 555 111.Image caption It is not known how much commercially viable oil lies under Israel and the West Bank, but the Palestinian Authority has shown little interest in laying claim to it
While the search for oil beneath Israel has been going on for years, the most recently drilled well in the Meged oil field, on the edge of the West Bank, is raising concern that it might draw from untapped Palestinian reserves.
After a 10-minute uphill hike through the rocky fields of the West Bank village of Rantis, we reach a summit where we rest, panting in the 40-degree heat.
A hundred metres (330ft) in front of us lie the wired fence and gravel track of the Green Line - the perimeter of the West Bank and Israel.
To our left lies Ben Gurion airport; beyond that, Tel Aviv and the Mediterranean. But it is for a different view that we have come here.
"It hasn't been on for the last few days," says Bilal, a Rantis local and student at Bir Zeit University.
"And you can't see too much in the daytime anyway. But at night - boof!" He gestures as though throwing a fistful of confetti into the air.
Looking at the site of the flare, and the shape of the overall field, it's clear that this extends into the West Bank Samer Naboulsi, Petroleum engineer
He is referring to the large black pipe inserted vertically into the earth, not more than 500 metres away, out of which a steady, blazing flame has been periodically sighted for about a year now.
It is in fact a gas flare, part of the Meged-5 oil well, owned and operated by Givot Olam Oil Ltd, currently the sole player in Israel's tiny onshore oil and gas production sector.
"I happened to be driving past when all of a sudden I saw this huge flare on the Green Line," recalls Hafez Barghouti, editor of the Palestinian al-Hayat al-Jadeedah, who first broke the story in Ramallah.
"I was sure it must be gas. So I called the mayor of Rantis and he said, 'Yes, the Israelis are drilling oil and gas.'"
'No man's land'
While this may seem uncontroversial on the face of it- the flare is, after all, within Israel proper - its proximity to the Green Line raises ethical questions.
"Geology doesn't follow geography," explains Dr Samer Naboulsi, a veteran petroleum engineer at a leading oil firm in Dubai.
"Looking at the site of the flare, and the shape of the overall field, it's clear that this extends into the West Bank. And even when extracting from the Israeli side, it'll be draining Palestinian reserves.
"This is why the international convention is to establish a 'no man's land' - typically many kilometres wide - along national borders in which neither party may extract without the other's consent."
Dr Walid Khadduri, a former director at the Organisation of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries (OAPEC) and editor-in-chief of the Middle East Economic Survey (MEES), also criticises Israel's unilateral approach.
"Ordinarily in such a situation, both parties would reach a mutual agreement to divide the field and the associated revenues and costs in an equitable manner.
"This was the case between the UK and Norway, for example. Without such an agreement, things can get messy - look at Iraq and Kuwait," he says, referring to Iraq's 1990 invasion of its southern neighbour following a dispute over the transnational Rumaila field.
Moreover, the drilling would seem to contravene the Oslo Accords, which call for "co-operation in the field of energy, including an energy development programme, which will provide for the exploitation of oil and gas [and] will encourage further joint exploration of other energy resources".
Image caption The oil field's proximity to the Green Line dividing Israel (right of the path) and the West Bank has raised concerns
Givot Olam refused to comment, but an Israeli government official dismissed the claims as "yet another attempt to politicise everything".
"We are engaging in exploratory digging within Israel. While we are hopeful, there is at present no conclusive indication as to whether commercially viable quantities will be found, or precisely where," the unnamed official told the BBC.
"The commercial implications, including over the Green Line, are unknown. It is surprising that a Petroleum Engineer in Dubai already knows more than the people on the ground at this early stage."
'Highly profitable'
The Palestinian Authority (PA) meanwhile has shown little interest in pursuing what is potentially a substantial strategic and economic opportunity for the West Bank.
Historically, there has never been a Palestinian oil industry. This is all very new Walid Khadduri, Ex-OAPEC director
A technical report issued by the UK-based consultant Greensand Associates in 2010 concluded that "the Meged Core Area has robust economics... and could be a highly profitable venture if the predicted well production volumes prove to be achievable and sustainable."
The reserves of the Meged-5 well alone have been estimated by Givot Olam at over 1.5bn barrels - not a huge find but certainly enough to make a difference for the chronically energy-poor West Bankers (the UK, by comparison, has around 3bn barrels of proven reserves). The company says it extracted 800 barrels a day during a test period last year.
Yet there appears to be neither the will nor the ability on the Palestinian side to take action.
"I met [PA President Mahmoud] Abbas shortly after discovering the flare and told him about it," says Mr Barghouti. "He shrugged. He wasn't interested at all."
A report in the Chinese state media, however, quoted PA official Abdullah Abdullah as condemning the drilling, saying the organisation "will not stay cross-handed. We will take urgent procedures that may include suing Israel in international courts."
Even so, Mr Khadduri points out the considerable practical obstacles to an effective Palestinian initiative. "An obvious problem is that they simply don't have the expertise.
"Historically, there has never been a Palestinian oil industry. This is all very new."
And there is also the more fundamental question of whether Israel would recognise the Palestinians' right to any part of the field in the first place.
"They regard that entire section of the West Bank as Israeli territory," says Mr Barghouti. "Including Rantis. They refer to it as the 'Kfar Sava area'."
Mr Khadduri also says Israel has repeatedly derailed Palestinian efforts to extract gas from the sizeable fields off the coast of Gaza.
All of which suggests that a rare opportunity for mutually beneficial Israeli-Palestinian cooperation is likely to be missed.Stickers that read "We believe you," a slogan commonly used to show support for victims of sexual assault, have been plastered on the window of MNA Gerry Sklavounos's Montreal office.
Sklavounos was recently cleared of sexual assault allegations, made by Quebec City woman Alice Paquet last fall.
The stickers, which also read "Feminist killjoy" and "Justice pour les victimes d'agressions sexuelles" (justice for sexual assault victims), are stuck to a window on the ground floor, right beneath a campaign-style poster featuring Sklavounos's headshot.
The stickers were pasted onto the office window hours after Sklavounos made his first public address in months. (Alexandre Letendre/CBC)
Quebec's Crown prosecutor's office announced last week that following a police investigation of Paquet's allegations, it had determined no crime had been committed and Sklavounos wouldn't be charged.
The stickers are stuck to a window on the ground floor, right beneath a campaign-style poster featuring Sklavounos's headshot. (Alexandre Letendre/CBC) Paquet alleged Sklavounos sexually assaulted her twice in 2014.
The stickers were pasted to the window of the St-Laurent Boulevard office in the hours after Sklavounos held his first public appearance since the allegations came to light.
During the news conference, he maintained his innocence and vowed to fight for gender equality.
In a Facebook post, Paquet said it was still too painful for her to talk about the situation, and shared a link to a protest to denounce the "rape culture at the National Assembly," set for Wednesday evening.
Sklavounos resigned from the Liberal caucus in October and is now sitting as an independent.
He will return to the National Assembly next week but it is still unclear whether he will be welcomed back into the Liberal fold.
Voters unsure of the facts
In Sklavounos's riding of Laurier-Dorion, which covers the Villeray and Parc-Extension neighbourhoods, reactions to his statement have been mixed.
George Glikakis, who owns the St-Roch barbershop in Parc-Extension, has known Sklavounos for years, even giving him his first haircuts as a child.
Glikakis says Sklavounos should be allowed back into the Liberal caucus because "that's where he belongs."
He says doesn't feel like what he's heard allows him to form a definitive opinion on what actually happened.
"I was always brought up with facts. And I don't see any facts."
Barbershop owner George Glikakis has known Sklavounos since he was a boy, and says the MNA should be allowed back into the Liberal caucus. (CBC)
Paul Rekatsinas, who voted for Sklavounos in the last election, said he thinks some rushed to judgment in making calls for Sklavounos to not be allowed back into the Liberal caucus.
"It's not fair. If no charges have been laid, why should your professional life be railroaded just based on somebody else saying something?"
Rekatsinas said Sklavounos was cleared of the charges and so he shouldn't have to apologize for something he didn't do.
Rachel Shugart, who lives in Parc-Extension and didn't vote for him in the last election, said she and many of her friends and neighbours weren't impressed by Sklavounos's statement.
"Everything he said in that statement really struck me as insincere, as really not taking into account how his behaviour was wrong and how it made people feel," she said.
She also expressed doubts about how authorities investigate sexual assault allegations and how they reach conclusions about whether an assault took place.XMG Belt-Fed AR-15/M16 Upper Receiver
1 IN STOCK
(This upper receiver may not be used on full-auto lowers unless by a C2 manufacturer.)
This durable milled steel upper receiver alters the method of feed from magazine-only to belt-only and the caliber to 8mm Mauser or 308. It requires no modification to your lower receiver. It simply clips on just like the standard AR-15 / M16 upper receiver. Each XMG comes complete with all parts except for the lower receiver. It is capable of semi-auto-fire-only operation with AR-15 and variant weapons and selective-fire with M16 and variant weapons but may not be used on transferable machineguns. It has a cycle rate of 700-1000 rounds per minute. Original MG34 selective fire components and bolts cannot be introduced to the XMG configuration. The XMG is fed from MG34/42 50-round flexible, metal belts, two or more of which can be joined end to end.
Its design is based on the MG-34 and it utilizes some parts from the MG-34. Most important are the bolt head, barrel, feed cover/tray, and muzzle parts.
Shown on MG-34 Sustained Fire Kit
XMG Shown on Modified MG3 Ground Mount with Hendsoldt Optics.
(Mount Price: $750)
Shown on AA Mount with BRP 34 to 42 adapter:
Original, un-cropped photograph used for the ShotGun News article of April 5, 2010.
This excellent photo of an XMG taking down drones at Big Sandy was graciously supplied by:
Richard MacLean, www.MacLeanTech.com.
One XMG just isn't enough. Shown on a modified MG3 double mount.
MG-34 / XMG 308 Conversion
308 Feed Tray with M13/M60 Link Guide:
How It Works
Once the original feed block is modified to assist 308 feeding, it will continue to function with 8mm as well. At this point, simply switch the quick-detach barrel and feed tray to your desired caliber. Since 308 is a lower-pressure round than 8mm, you may want to replace the 8mm booster with the 308 booster to increase the cyclic rate. Be careful not to use the 308 booster when firing 8mm.
XMG Transit Chest: $375 (free ship in lower 48)
From Customers
"I am enjoying my new gun. I have shot it in both the 308 and 8mm configurations without any problems. The 308 was outside, and I shot 8mm indoors. The sparks were flying off the traps!!!! "
"I just received my XMG 34 last week. My six sons and I were able to go to the range on Saturday and we put 42 fifty round belts through the XMG and it ran flawlessly. We had a great time. Thank you very much for delivering an excellent product." - Michael R. L., M.D. in North Carolina 1/9/2006
"HEY BRIAN JUST WANTED TO CHECK IN... MY XMG IS RUNNING FLAWLESS, SEVERAL CASES AMMO DOWNRANGE" TONY H(CNN) -- NATO has released satellite photos that show the extent of Russia's military mobilization on its border with Ukraine -- including fighter jets, tanks, artillery and thousands of soldiers who are prepared to invade within 12 hours if called upon, say officials.
The photos appear to confirm Western leaders' fears that Russia may be preparing for a ground invasion of eastern Ukraine, despite NATO's call for Russia to withdraw its forces from the border.
What do the photos show?
The photos, which private satellite imaging firm DigitalGlobe says it took between March 22 and April 2, purportedly reveal dozens of Russian "fast jets," helicopters and infantry units that were not spotted in photos of the same areas last year.
NATO estimates there are up to 40,000 troops massed at various locations along the Ukrainian border, and says it has spotted Russian forces at more than 100 different sites.
The photos of military equipment and infantry personnel should be greater cause for concern than the ones of the fighter jets, according to experts who have examined the photos for CNN.
The photos of tanks, artillery battalions, and infantry brigades near Novocherkassk -- just 50 kilometers from the Ukrainian border -- show Russia's preparation for a potential invasion, says Igor Sutyagin, a research fellow for Russian studies at RUSI, a defense and security think tank.
Another photo shows more than a dozen MI8 Hips or MI24 Hinds attack helicopters sitting in a sparse air field at Belgorod, a Russian facility just 40 kilometers from the Ukrainian border.
"Moving these helicopters closer to the operational area would make sense in the event of an invasion," Sutyagin says.
Another photo purportedly shows a build-up of Russian Su-27 Flanker, Su-24 Fencer, and MiG-31 Foxhound fighter jets at the formerly vacant Buturlinovka air base, 150 kilometers from the Ukrainian border.
Sutyagin says the recent build-up of these jets in what appear to be sparsely resourced air fields doesn't make much sense from a strategic standpoint.
"The planes seem to be more about parade than about preparation," he says. "Firstly, they're designed to fly hundreds of kilometers anyway, so moving them another 90 kilometers closer to the border won't make much difference."
He added: "If the Russians do not have installations to service the planes, or utilize weapons storages, and if they're far from their permanent bases where their rear-support units are concentrated, they cannot be operationally effective for an invasion."
Why has NATO released the photos now? Are they exaggerating the threat?
Keir Giles, an associate fellow at the Chatham House think tank, says there must be serious cause for alarm for NATO to have released the photos.
"You have to assume that there have been behind the scenes consultations between Russian and NATO, but obviously those have been limited in effectiveness for NATO to release this kind of imagery, which it would not normally do," Giles says.
"Should we trust NATO on this? Yes, because it has no interest whatsoever in exacerbating the situation. This is a crisis which they're trying to play down wherever possible and make it clear it's not involved."
Giles also says that the Russian military officers he regularly speaks with have suddenly gone silent. "One possible explanation is that they've been told to curtail contact with foreigners," he says. "And if that is the reason, whenever that's happened in the past, it has not been a good sign."
What is Russia saying about the photos?
A Russian military official told Russia Today that the |
1000 530 https://torontoist.com/2013/04/tracing-torontos-history-through-maps/slide/20130410plan1797/ 20130410plan1797 0 0 246636 <strong><a href="http://fortyorkmaps.blogspot.ca/2013/02/1842-biscoe-plan-of-fort-york.htm">Fort York in 1842 from a British Army map by Capt. Vincent Biscoe, Royal Engineers</a></strong>. Library and Archives Canada: C-137340.<br /> <br /> Captain Vincent Biscoe produced this map of Fort York in 1842, after the reconstruction following the rebellions of 1837-38. 20130410fortyork1842 https://torontoist.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/20130410fortyork1842-100x100.jpg https://torontoist.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/20130410fortyork1842.jpg https://torontoist.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/20130410fortyork1842.jpg 1000 800 https://torontoist.com/2013/04/tracing-torontos-history-through-maps/slide/20130410fortyork1842/ 20130410fortyork1842 0 0 246637 <strong><a href="http://oldtorontomaps.blogspot.ca/2013/01/1851-s-fleming-topographical-plan-of.html">Topographical plan of the city of Toronto, in the province of Canada, from actual survey, by J Stoughton Dennis, Provin'l. Land Surveyor. Drawn and Compiled by Sandford A. Fleming, Provin'l. Land Surveyor. 1851</a></strong>. Published by Hugh Scobie, Toronto. Lithograph, colour; backed with linen. 12 chains to one inch. Toronto Public Library: T1851/4Mlrg.<br /> <br /> Besides championing standard time and designing Canada’s first postage stamp, <a href="http://www.biographi.ca/009004-119.01-e.php?&id_nbr=7370">Sandford Fleming</a> worked as a land surveyor and prepared maps, such as this one of Toronto in 1851. Note the ring of building sketches surrounding the street plan. 20130410flemingmap https://torontoist.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/20130410flemingmap-100x100.jpg https://torontoist.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/20130410flemingmap.jpg https://torontoist.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/20130410flemingmap.jpg 1000 725 https://torontoist.com/2013/04/tracing-torontos-history-through-maps/slide/20130410flemingmap/ 20130410flemingmap 0 0 246638 <strong><a href="http://oldtorontomaps.blogspot.ca/2013/01/1876-pa-gross-birds-eye-view-of-toronto.html">Bird’s Eye View of Toronto, by P.A. Gross, 1876</a></strong>. University of Toronto Map & Data Library: G 3524.T61 A3 1876.<br /> <br /> The result of a three-year effort by P.A. Gross to walk down every street in the city, 1876’s Lithographic Bird’s Eye View of Toronto is a stunning work which Torontoist’s Kevin Plummer <a href="http://torontoist.com/2010/04/historicist_cartographic_civic_pride/">investigated in a Historicist column</a>. The actual size of this map is 60 inches by 39 inches. 20130410birdseye1876 https://torontoist.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/20130410birdseye1876-100x100.jpg https://torontoist.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/20130410birdseye1876.jpg https://torontoist.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/20130410birdseye1876.jpg 1000 639 https://torontoist.com/2013/04/tracing-torontos-history-through-maps/slide/20130410birdseye1876/ 20130410birdseye1876 0 0 246639 <strong><a href="http://oldtorontomaps.blogspot.ca/2013/01/1892-toronto-street-railway-lines.html">Toronto Railway Company’s Map Showing Street Railway Lines, 1892</a></strong>. Lithograph. Toronto Public Library: TRL, 970-16.<br /> <br /> Here’s one for transit geeks: a bird’s-eye colour map of the <a href="http://torontoist.com/2011/09/historicist-birth-of-a-public-transit-provider/">Toronto Railway Company’s</a> streetcar lines, published shortly after it took over the city’s transit franchise from the Toronto Street Railway in 1891. 20130410trc https://torontoist.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/20130410trc-100x100.jpg https://torontoist.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/20130410trc.jpg https://torontoist.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/20130410trc.jpg 1000 334 https://torontoist.com/2013/04/tracing-torontos-history-through-maps/slide/20130410trc/ 20130410trc 0 0 246640 <strong><a href="http://oldtorontomaps.blogspot.ca/2013/01/1834-alpheus-todd-engraved-plan-of-city.html">City of Toronto in 1834 by E.G.A. Foster circa 1934</a></strong>. City of Toronto Archives: MT 00063.<br /> <br /> A colourful sketch of York created in 1934, likely to celebrate Toronto’s 100th anniversary. Ng places it on a page with an authentic 1834 engraved map drawn by a 13-year-old! 20130410foster1834 https://torontoist.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/20130410foster1834-100x100.jpg https://torontoist.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/20130410foster1834.jpg https://torontoist.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/20130410foster1834.jpg 1000 969 https://torontoist.com/2013/04/tracing-torontos-history-through-maps/slide/20130410foster1834/ 20130410foster1834 0 0
For as long as I can recall, I’ve been fascinated by maps. As a kid, getting the latest edition of the provincial road map was like receiving an early birthday present, a gateway to endless hours of studying highway and provincial-park details, imagining the adventures that lay beyond the colourful lines. Based on the number of maps I drew during childhood, an observer might have predicted a career in cartography.
Now, instead of drawing maps, I study them for the historical information they reveal about our city. Beyond providing a sense of how Toronto has evolved from First Nation footpath stop to sprawling metropolis, old maps reveal tidbits that hours of pouring through books fail to uncover. Vague references to long-gone roads are pinpointed. Building locations are verified. Odd landforms or street patterns make more sense. Grand urban planning schemes that never escaped the drawing board live on as the seeds of an alternate reality.
Old maps are also a type of artwork, demonstrating the skills of surveyors and graphic designers. The visual appearance of a map reveals much about the styles and thoughts of an era. Expertly drawn lines may be whimsical, ornate, or simple and plain. They can even camouflage the sins of the past. As Derek Hayes notes in his introduction to The Historical Atlas of Toronto, “Sometimes the maps illustrate a way of thinking different from what we consider proper today; to some, maps are instruments of imperialism, colonization, and the imposition of control, especially by Europeans over Native peoples. But all are products of their period in history and can give us important insights into the thinking of the time.”
Many of those insights are displayed in the maps Nathan Ng has collected for his new website, Historical Maps of Toronto. The site grew out of Ng’s research into the history of the building that housed his favourite climbing gym, Rock Oasis, whose location at Front and Bathurst Streets was slated for demolition. (The gym has since moved east.) Along the way, he discovered the Charles Goad Company’s Atlas of the City of Toronto, a series of fire-insurance maps. Frustrated by the arcane file format the City of Toronto Archives employed for the digitized version, Ng posted user-friendly versions of the maps, which other researchers found useful.
“I love old maps of Toronto,” Ng notes on his website, “and I’ve come across many that ought to be aggregated someplace. My subjective issue with a lot of the institutional sources is that browsing their catalogues for maps can be…a balky experience for novices, due to interface and system constraints. What if there was a tidy, easy to use list?” Several browsing methods are included on the site, from a chronological listing to thumbnails, making it easy to find what you’re looking for. There’s even a “view random map” link for those who like surprises.
Ng intends his site to complement the efforts of institutions like the Archives, the Toronto Public Library, and the University of Toronto, who are posting their map collections online. “I want people to discover that these artifacts exist,” he recently told the Canadian Encyclopedia, “and then if they want to learn more, if their curiosity has been piqued, they can research the item or the period in full at the corresponding institution.”
As a tie-in to the 200th anniversary of the Battle of York, Ng has collaborated with historian Stephen Otto and the Friends of Fort York to produce a partner site concentrating on maps related to Fort York and Garrison Common. Beyond the military landmarks, this website explores plans for later buildings and infrastructure built within the old military reserve, such as the Provincial Lunatic Asylum and Exhibition Place. As far as Ng and his collaborators can tell, this is the largest collection of Fort-York-related maps ever to have been presented to the public in one place.
Click through our image gallery for a closer look at several of the maps Ng has collected. Hopefully, they’ll inspire new fascinations with these mementos of Toronto’s past.
(Once you’re in the gallery, you can click on the the map titles to access full-size versions.)
Images used with the permission of Nathan Ng.Correction Appended | Aaron Huey arrived on the Pine Ridge reservation in South Dakota at the start of a self-assigned photographic road trip to document poverty in America.
The poverty he found on the reservation stopped him cold.
“It was emotionally devastating,” Mr. Huey said. “I‘d call my wife late at night crying.”
Overwhelmed by the poverty — and at the same time by scenes of people trying to maintain the Lakota way of life — Mr. Huey abandoned the rest of his nationwide project to focus on Pine Ridge. Five years later, he’s still photographing on the reservation, which includes the Wounded Knee massacre site.
Mr. Huey, 33, is a photographer for Smithsonian, National Geographic Adventure and National Geographic Traveler. He also freelances for The New Yorker and Geo. In 2007, he photographed in Afghanistan for The Times.
I interviewed him by telephone and e-mail.
Q.
What were you first impressions of Pine Ridge?
A.
I stayed with families in the most violent town on the reservation, a place called Manderson; often referred to as “Murdertown” by locals. I could have never imagined the living conditions that I saw. I knew the statistics about poverty, but the living conditions went far beyond poverty to even deeper, more dysfunctional problems. Black mold all over the walls of childrens’ rooms. Kids eating off the floors. Infants watching violent films on TV all night.
One of my other first impressions was people showing me their scars — self inflicted scars from their gang initiations. A knife heated on a burner until it’s red hot is then pressed on the skin, usually in stripes on the upper arm, creating terrible burns.
Q.
Why did you end up going back?
A.
I went back because the families invited me back, and because I was so floored by what I had seen that I couldn’t stop thinking about it. Now, I go back because they are family, and because I haven’t found the end of the story. It seems to get more confusing each time I return. I am not getting closer to a conclusion. It just is what it is. My photos are a witness, not a solution. They are the dark and the light and every struggle between.
Aaron Huey Aaron Huey
Q.
What was your approach and working methods there?
A.
I started by not shooting many photos. I hung out, and I always asked the young kids who took me in to tell me what they thought the world needed to know about them. In my first interactions, I let them guide the story. They needed to feel like someone cared about them. They needed to be heard. So I listened. I spent a lot of time not working. I watched movies with them, ate meals with them. Sometimes I’d beat myself up about not shooting enough photos. My eyes would get tired and I’d stop “seeing” photos. But I believe that it was all for the best. Over time, it has helped me go much deeper.
Q.
Who are the Lakota?
A.
Answering the question, “Who are the Lakota,” is very difficult. In many ways, I feel like it is not my question to answer. The Lakota are a people who have been wronged many times over. Coming from the dominant society and attempting to define them is a guaranteed failure for a white journalist. I have no right to define them.
Q.
Who were the first people you met? And how did that result in the early gang work?
A.
The first people I met were gang kids and a few stand-offish officials in the tribal office. What lead me down the darker, more gang-oriented path initially was that they wanted to talk and others did not. They had a story they wanted to tell me. They didn’t care that I didn’t know much about the Lakota. With others I felt a huge wall — “Another white man come to do a story on us” — and they were right. I wasn’t well armed with a lot of knowledge about the situation. A lot of “wasi’chu” come through to do quick stories on the natives. But in the darkest corners, I was accepted. And they told me much of what I needed to know. In the youth, I found a big part of my story — a new generation desperate to be warriors again.
Q.
What are you trying to photograph now?
A.
After I spent several trips with these gang kids and did my first major assignments on them, I realized that it was all a bit superficial. Magazines were really into the gang thing. It was an easy story for them to digest and it was a way to make an old story new and relevant. But the bigger picture doesn’t really make a good story. It’s long and murky and loaded with pain. There are no easy outs. Deconstructing hundreds of years of oppression to understand why we now see these statistics just isn’t catchy enough for the mainstream press. But I couldn’t stop just because the magazines couldn’t handle it. I wasn’t sure where it would all lead, but I knew I couldn’t stop.
Q.
Tell me a little bit more about the traditional Lakotas.
A.
I think finding more “traditionals” is a natural direction after all these years of darkness. In many ways, it’s the harder part of the story. I’m not sure if it all needs to be wrapped up that way, to balance the dark and the light. It isn’t a nice, neat little package. But I have to see what is there. For now that is my reason for returning. I want to find the light in this darkness.
The horse culture, sweat lodges, sun dances and attempts at preserving the language are all incredibly positive influences and steer the youth away from the false warrior model of gangster violence. The youth need heroes like Crazy Horse and Black Elk, not Tupac and Biggie.
Aaron Huey
Q.
How about the children?
A.
I have been watching several children in a dozen families grow up over the past five years. This is one of the hardest parts for me. When I see their father or mother coming home drunk every day, I know what the future holds for them and it hurts me.
I remember calling home to my wife crying because I had just held a beautiful 3-year-old girl on my knee. She hugged me and called me uncle, and I love her so much. But I know that it is only a matter of time until she is broken. Soon she will be drinking, and pregnant, and abused, and dying. Right now she is still perfect, but no one can last in an environment like that.
That’s the part I hate. Knowing that there is nothing I can do to change it. And there are so many things I want to change. But it seems the story is already written. Even with a strong traditional family, many of the youth are sinking. Without it, they are totally lost.
I keep looking for the light in the story because I want to believe there is a way out. Maybe if I find it, I can help some of the kids I know move that direction. I know for sure that change has to come from within the reservation. It cannot be imported. I cannot run away with these children. Someone in their own town has to lead them, preferably someone from within their own home.
Q.
Is there anything that the rest of the country should know about what you saw?
A.
One very important thing to know is that there are a small handful of very positive people and places on Pine Ridge and that they are making a difference. Red Cloud Indian School is a leader among these positive forces, with 13 Gates scholarship recipients graduating from its school in only two years. As one of the most successful schools in the nation, they have completely flipped the paradigm on its head.
As for the problem and what people need to know about it, I’m not sure there is much to do. The Lakota, like most tribes, are self governed. Handouts aren’t the answer. Church groups painting over the gang signs on houses every few summers is not the answer. Pity is not the answer. The Lakota are an incredibly beautiful and proud people. There are pockets of strength in this failed state. They are usually formed around a school or a traditional teacher-medicine man or a strong head of a family who spreads it to his extended family.
I think I honestly want these photos to hurt the viewer. I want people to understand that what they see in these images is a result of a very long and very calculated oppression. It’s convenient that we can now step back and say: “Oh, no! Look. They are doing it to themselves! There is nothing we can do!” Very convenient for us. The story of the Lakota is the story of all indigenous people on every continent — they are steamrolled by the dominant society and pushed to the verge of extinction. Assimilate or die.
When I would return from these trips, people would ask why they don’t just “get over it” — the old pick-themselves-up-by-the-bootstraps argument. But you don’t just “get over” hundreds of years of oppression. Just because the guards went away one day and the prison camp was opened up doesn’t mean there was any place to go. Just because the prison door was opened doesn’t mean that the prisoner mentality doesn’t remain. It does remain, for generations and generations after. And it has left a deep scar on the people.
Correction
An earlier version of this post incorrectly quoted Mr. Huey as saying, “Pine Ridge is the scariest place I’ve ever been — more so than in a Taliban ambush.” Instead, he said, “Pine Ridge is the scariest place I’ve ever seen — not more so than in a Taliban ambush.” Mr. Huey also made the point that although Wounded Knee may be referred to elsewhere as a battlefield, as it was in an earlier version of this post, it is more accurately called a massacre site. “Battle connotes some kind of fair fight,” he wrote in an e-mail message. “It was a massacre with Gatling guns.”The Canadian dollar has likely done about as much falling as it's going to do, according to an updated currency forecast from CIBC World Markets.
"It's now likely that the loonie has seen the worst of the depreciation, even if it has one slight dip ahead," says a currency outlook released by the bank's economists Wednesday.
The bank said its near-term forecast for the Canadian dollar has improved because oil prices have bottomed out and the U.S. Federal Reserve will likely hold back from imposing most of the interest rate hikes this year that markets had expected as recently as two months ago.
"Market volatility and a string of soft data has seen the [Fed] take a step back from their hiking cycle," CIBC said.
CIBC economists expect oil prices to recover later this year as demand increases. "That would provide at least a partial cover for the loonie from wider interest rate differentials."
Stimulus spending key
Stimulus spending by the Trudeau government will also play into the value of the dollar, CIBC said, with the March 22 budget outlining the extent of that support.
"The use of deficit spending by the Liberal government to stimulate the economy means that the pressure on the currency from potential monetary easing has been significantly reduced," the bank's outlook said.
The report cites a technical analysis from the Bank of Canada, which found that $10 billion worth of fiscal stimulus spending by Ottawa does more to boost GDP than a full percentage point reduction in the key overnight lending rate.
CIBC notes that since the Bank of Canada left its key rate unchanged on Jan. 20, the Canadian dollar has appreciated from below the 69-cent US level by more than five per cent. "In part, that strength reflects the perception that Governor [Stephen] Poloz has given way to his boss, Finance Minister Morneau."
CIBC sees the dollar, which closed at 73.06 cents US today, slipping to 70.4 cents US by the end of June, before beginning a recovery that will take it to 75.2 cents US by mid-2017.The more things (don’t) change in presidential campaign coverage...
Alan Stamm Blocked Unblock Follow Following Dec 21, 2015
Just update the names in this 41-year-old critique of political journalism
Journalist and author James M. Perry was covering politics for The National Observer when he took a sharp look at the beat’s “tradition, habit, laziness” in an April 1974 cover story for a journalism review named [MORE]. (Now 88, he outlives both publications by many decades.)
These excerpts are from his three-page piece, headlined “I See a Big White House...” I rediscovered it on a rainy Monday while browsing through long-saved original issues of the Manhattan-based monthly. Yes, that’s what a journalism nerd does during a Christmas week work lull. Don’t judge.
“The whole business is bunkum: Nobody can predict now what’s going to happen in 1976. We tried the same sort of thing before the last election.... We were prepared, before the first primary, to award the nomination to Muskie....
“And it was silly: We shouldn’t even have been in the predicting business. Maybe, if we have any sense, we won’t be again.”
Fond dream, Jim. Or should I call you Pollyanna?
“But, of course we are. And it’s a reckless business.... The media’s credibility will get worse if we continue to predict events that never happen.
“Consider, for example, that first Harris poll [in October 1972], when the voters were interviewed [about 1976] prior to the 1972 election. Harris actually ran [Ted] Kennedy head-to-head with the man everybody once agreed would be the Republican candidate for president in 1976 — Spiro T. Agnew. Well, we won’ be holding that election.
“Is it possible that if we hadn’t been so interested in whether Agnew would one day be president we might have learned a little more about what sort of man he really was?
“Why do we do it?
“Tradition. Habit. Laziness. Because, sometimes, our editors want us to do it. Because we see politics as a kind of game, a race between various performers, and we’re the time-keepers. Because it’s easy and because, maybe, it’s fun.
“It’s tough to write a story about what kind of governor George Wallace is; it’s easy to write a column about his chances for winning the Democratic nomination. We do like to ride the bus with our peers, and if the few of us who cover politics between elections can go on a private plane with a Connally or a Rockefeller or a Kennedy, all the better....
“Instead of trying to guess who the next president will be — Ford, Rockefeller, Reagan, Connally, Percy, Kennedy, Wallace, Jackson, Mondale, Bentsen, or somebody we hardly even know yet — it would be helpful if we began telling our readers something substantial about the people we’re talking about....
“As I say, we made fools of ourselves back in 1972. Is there some law of nature that says we have to do it all over again?”
Well, actually...Box Score | Photo Gallery
AUBURN, Ala. ÃÆ'Æ'¢ÃÆ'¢'¬" The Auburn volleyball team kicked off Southeastern Conference play against LSU Friday night and held off a late run by the visiting Tigers, capturing a 3-2 (25-22, 25-22, 23-25, 23-25, 15-9) win in Auburn Arena.
"We really stepped up and played tough in the fifth set," head coach Rick Nold said. "We had LSU on its heels at the end and played some great defense. That is what really made the difference throughout the match. LSU was defending extremely well, but in the end, it turned back into our favor."
The two Tiger teams are no strangers to five-set matches. In the last five meetings, Auburn and LSU have battled to five sets four times.
"There is just good defense on both sides of the court," Nold said. "LSU always plays good defense and it has typically come down to who can stay on their toes at the end."
Auburn (7-7, 0-1) had a trio of student-athletes finish with double-digit kills. Sophomore Brenna McIlroy set a career-high, leading all players with 20 kills in the match. She added 13 digs for her fifth double-double of the season. Senior Breanna Barksdale reached a season-best with 13 kills, while freshman Gwyn Jones finished with 11.
Defensively, junior libero Jesse Earl led all student-athletes with 28 digs and classmate Kelly Stewart finished with 14. Junior setter Alexa Filley had 50 assists along with nine kills and nine digs. Junior Macy Reece chipped in nine kills and two solo blocks.
LSU's Gina Hillis had 15 kills and 21 digs for the Bayou Bengals, while Sydney Mukes finished with 13 kills and setter Anna Zwiebel totaled 34 assists and 10 digs. Libero Cheyenne Wood led the team with 23 digs.
Kills from Filley and Jones led to an early 9-5 lead in the opening stanza for Auburn before another kill from Jones sent the Tigers on a four-point run to make it 15-8. LSU regrouped after a timeout and began to chip away at the Auburn lead. The visitors came within a point at 22-21, but a service ace by Earl gave Auburn set point and McIlroy sealed the set with a kill, 25-22.
Set two opened with Auburn capitalizing on LSU errors and taking a 7-3 advantage. The pesky, visiting Tigers wouldn't go away and tied the set at 10. Auburn used another run to push to a 17-13 lead, but once again, LSU responded and locked it up at 17-17. The teams exchanged points before a pair of LSU errors gave Auburn set point and a McIlroy kill sent the match into intermission with a 25-22 victory.
Hard hitting from Auburn led to a 7-4 lead in the third. LSU errors put the Tigers up 12-9 before the Bayou Bengals came back with a 7-2 run to go up 16-14. The two teams went back and forth until a trio of Auburn errors lifted LSU to a 25-23 win.
It was once again a back-and-forth affair in set four until a run halfway through the stanza put LSU up 14-12. The visitors pressed ahead at 19-14, forcing an Auburn timeout. A LSU error followed by a Barksdale kill cut the LSU lead at 22-21, but the Purple and Gold held on to force a fifth with a 25-23 victory.
Auburn forced the momentum to swing at the start of the final set, taking a 5-0 lead thanks to a pair of kills and solo block from Reece. Back-to-back kills from McIlroy made it 7-2 and a kill from Filley sent Auburn on a run to go ahead 12-6. A strong swing by junior Courtney Crable gave the Tigers match point, 14-9, and McIlroy closed it out with her 20th kill, 15-9.
The Tigers travel to No. 19 Texas A&M to cap the SEC opening weekend, taking on the Aggies Sunday, Sept. 25, in College Station, Texas. The 2 p.m. CT match will be aired on ESPNU from Reed Arena.Dr. Donald M. Berwick, head of Medicare and Medicaid until last Thursday, stated that up to 30% of spending on health is wasted with absolutely no benefit to beneficiaries (patients). He added that his agency's cumbersome and archaic regulations are partly to blame. He claims too many resources and too much time is dedicated to things that do not help patients one bit; something doctors are fully aware of too.
In an interview last Thursday, Dr. Berwick said:
"Much is done that does not help patients at all,
and many physicians know it."
"I did not even know if I was fit for it. I came with an agenda. I wanted to try to change the agency to be a force for improvement, covering one out of three Americans."
Government is much more complex than he had realized
"We are a nation headed for justice, for fairness and justice in access to care. We are a nation headed for much more healing and much safer care. There is a moon shot here. But somehow we have not put together that story in a way that's compelling."
"I wish they (government) could go faster. I don't think you want government to be impulsive. You want it to be regulated, with just a tad of conservatism."
Patients are overtreated
There is not enough coordination of care
US health care is burdened with an excessively complex administrative system
The enormous burden of rules
Fraud
Donald M. Berwick (born 1946)
Honors and Awards
1999 - Ernest A. Codman Award
2001 - Alfred I. DuPont Award for excellence in children's healthcare
2002 - American Hospital Association, "Award of Honor"
2004 - Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians in London
2005 - Honorary Knight Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire
2007 - Purpose Prize
2007 - The 13th Annual Heinz Award for Public Policy
During the interview, Berwick talked about the previous 17 months, while he was at the helm as Administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, his failures, successes and frustrations, and dealing with criticisms from Republican lawmakers.Berwick's appointment, which was to expire at the end of 2011, was done in a way that drew criticisms from both sides of the House. President Barack Obama nominated him in April 2010, then there was an investigation regarding his qualifications, subsequently a temporary recess appointment was given to bypass Congress.In Thursday's interview, Berwick said:Berwick went on to explain that the new health legislation is aone. It is a law that takes time to explain properly.He admitted that government is much more complex than he had realized.Berwick had been President of the Institute for Healthcare Improvement, an organization that trains health professionals; a much faster-moving environment compared to public office. Being a federal official would sometimes infuriate him, because of the much slower pace.Even so, because of the new law's ultimate destination, it should be supported, Berwick stressed. He gave the manned moon missions as an example - people did not fully understand the intricacies of rocket science, but supported the ultimate aim of the mission.Dr. Berwick said:If up to 30% of Medicare and Medicaid's spending is being needlessly squandered, reigning in that waste could save between $150 billion and $250 billion annually.Dr. Berwick said:Berwick listed five reasons for the enormous waste in health spending:Dr. Berwick was nominated to be Administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid on April 19th, 2010. Some newspapers at the time commented that he might be able to reduce health care costs. He was criticized by Republicans regarding some comments he had made about health care, saying it involves a redistribution of wealth, rationing care with "our eyes open".In the United Kingdom there is universal healthcare, everyone is covered, and healthcare spending represents less than 7% of the country's GDP. The USA, on the other hand, spends over 17% of GDP on healthcare and has over 50 million people with no coverage at all, and tens of millions more with inadequate coverage. Berwick advocated adopting some of the NHS (National Health Service) approaches of the UK and its NICE (National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence). NICE decides which therapies and drugs are covered by the NHS.Conservatives dubbed him "Obama's rationing man." They said NICE decides what treatments people can and cannot have in the UK. This is untrue - NICE decides which treatments and therapies people will get free (if NICE does not approve it, private health care can still offer it, if it is approved by another national regulatory agency, the MHRA, the UK equivalent of the FDA).Dr. Berwick has received the following honors and awards:Written by Christian NordqvistA new study shows that our Moon had an atmosphere 3 to 4 billion years ago. The research is in the Earth and Planetary Science Letters.
Scientists studying old moon rock brought back from the Apollo 15, and 17 missions say that ancient volcanic eruptions created enough gas to develop a significant atmosphere and that atmosphere may have lasted for 70 million years.
“This work dramatically changes our view of the Moon from an airless rocky body to one that used to be surrounded by an atmosphere more prevalent than that surrounding Mars today,”
The Apollo samples allowed Dr. Debra H. Needham, Research Scientist of NASA Marshall Space Flight Center, and Dr. David A. Kring, Senior Staff Scientist, at the Lunar and Planetary Institute to determine approximately when the eruptions took place and what type of gasses were produced.
“These gas volumes are sufficiently large to produce a significant atmospheric surface pressure,” the research states.
One Shirt = One Tree
The researchers believe the gases were likely enough to create a global atmosphere.
“This work dramatically changes our view of the Moon from an airless rocky body to one that used to be surrounded by an atmosphere more prevalent than that surrounding Mars today,” David Kring said in an interview with phys.org.
The research also indicates that during peak volcanic eruptions on the Moon surface 3- 4 billion years ago, pressure was higher than Mars surface pressure today.
Their research is significant because it may provide critical information about a source of ice suitable for a sustained lunar exploration program. If volatiles from the once existent atmosphere is trapped in the lunar poles, it may provide a source of air and fuel for astronauts conducting missions.
All rights reserved. Enjoy The Silence 2017
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EmailPokemon Spawn Rate is one of the calculations that’s not known to anyone even after the decoding of the game as this is setup programmatically from the Niantic servers. The Spawn Rate in Pokemon GO is the reason why you see all those Rattattas, Pidgeys and Caterpies all the time instead of Pokemons like Dratini, Squirtle and other rare ones.
We created this chart with data taken from Poke Radar’s prediction algorithm dataset. All percentages are calculated on a rolling 1 week period across approximately 100 million historical data points for the highest degree of accuracy. All the credit goes to the awesome developers of Poke Radar who compiled this complete dataset. After some research, we can confirm that the dataset is highly accurate as claimed by the awesome guys at Poke Radar.
Spawn times are the same for all time zones and are expressed in local time. We are working on an illustration of best times to hunt, stay tuned for updates. Check our Best Spawn Time tool also!
Pokemon GO Spawn Rate ChartAbout 300 opponents of the Dakota Access pipeline demonstrated in a North Dakota city on Thanksgiving Day, while protesters near the construction site where hundreds of demonstrators have camped out for months attempted to build a wooden bridge to reach what they say are tribal burial sites.
The protesters blocked traffic at an intersection and other streets in Mandan shouting "Shame on you, North Dakota!" and carrying a banner that read "No pilgrims, no pipeline," the Bismarck Tribune reported. About 50 officers stood across from the protesters, and the crowd eventually dispersed.
Morton County sheriff's office spokesman Rob Keller said officers near the campsites about 50 miles south of Mandan observed protesters attempting to build a wooden bridge over a body of water Thursday morning in an |
Emily Zanotti (@emzanotti) July 21, 2017
Some in the blue-checkmark brigade noted the time he’s eating dinner and think that’s an issue:
Why does Kid Rock eat dinner so early? https://t.co/cH1B6KvUgH — Blake Hounshell (@blakehounshell) July 22, 2017
Kid Rock apparently eats dinner at the same time as my 89-year-old grandmother https://t.co/sShj1PYetF — Emily C. Singer (@CahnEmily) July 21, 2017
They also don’t like his salt and pepper shakers:
Nice salt and pepper shakers, grandma. https://t.co/z3MJk1PgJa — Nick Mamatas (@NMamatas) July 22, 2017
Hey, senior citizens vote. They get it.
As for the food, it looks pretty good to us. What are these people talking about?
the best twitter is when people proudly tweet the things they cook even though it looks awful https://t.co/NhgqCPYhbt — Josh Terry (@JoshhTerry) July 21, 2017
that is one sad-ass burger https://t.co/p8e6Tc47Mh — Jesse Spector? (@jessespector) July 21, 2017
kid rock got applebees delivery and thinks it's very important for the public to know https://t.co/SBJayESHRM — Tom McKay (@thetomzone) July 22, 2017
We have no idea if that meal is from Applebee’s or not, but do you know who does eat at Applebee’s? Voters. Voters eat at Applebee’s and they love it:
This was my meal every night visiting my cousins in Michigan. (Well, this or cornish pasties.) https://t.co/A8l4hmBBnx — jon gabriel (@exjon) July 21, 2017
Get on board, everyone, because it’s happening:
I just followed Kid Rock on Twitter because he's going to be the republican candidate for US Senate… — Comfortably Smug (@ComfortablySmug) July 21, 2017
***It might seem strange to link global warming and the futility of wind farms with the ongoing collapse of the euro. But in several directions at the moment we can see the unfolding of one of the hidden patterns shaping human affairs, which years ago I called “the fantasy cycle”. It is a pattern that recurs in personal lives, in politics, in history – and in storytelling.
When we embark on a course of action which is unconsciously driven by wishful thinking, all may seem to go well for a time, in what may be called the “dream stage”. But because this make-believe can never be reconciled with reality, it leads to a “frustration stage” as things start to go wrong, prompting a more determined effort to keep the fantasy in being. As reality presses in, it leads to a “nightmare stage” as everything goes wrong, culminating in an “explosion into reality”, when the fantasy finally falls apart.
Recent events show us two huge examples of this cycle moving to its final stages. One is the belief, which took hold 20 years ago, that the world was in the grip of runaway global warming, caused by our emissions of greenhouse gases. The planet could only be saved by abandoning fossil fuels and drawing our energy from wind and sun. For a while (the dream stage), all seemed to go according to the theory. As CO2 levels rose and the Earth continued to warm, our politicians started to propose every kind of drastic measure to reduce our emissions, such as building thousands of wind turbines. But in all sorts of ways, in the past few years, this dream and the theory behind it have begun colliding with reality.
Carbon dioxide levels continued to rise, but global temperatures failed to follow. Three times in the past 13 years – in 1998, 2006 and 2010 – they spiked upwards, thanks to periodic shifts in a major Pacific ocean current – the phenomenon known as “El Niño” – which brings warm water to the surface and boosts temperatures across the world. Each time it was trumpeted as “the hottest year ever”. But each time, as the ocean current reversed into “La Niña”, the spike was followed by an equally sharp cooling.
In 2007, temperatures fell by 0.75C, more than the entire net rise recorded through the whole of the 20th century. After they rose again to a new El Niño peak in 2010, we were told, only three months ago, by the compilers of the two chief surface-temperature records – the UK Met Office, in association with Phil Jones of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit, and James Hansen of NASA – that 2010 was the “equal warmest” or “second warmest” year ever.
Last week, however, with a new La Niña, it was reported that global temperatures, as measured by satellites, had fallen by 0.65C since March 2010, making the world cooler now than its mean over the past 30 years. Yet again the computer models, predicting that, thanks to rising CO2, the world should have warmed in the past decade by 0.3C, have proved hopelessly wrong.
If it hasn’t looked too hot for the theory on which our politicians base their plans to change the world, then last week it looked equally dodgy for what has been one of the most grandiose of their responses to this supposed crisis. Two sets of figures exposed more than ever the degree of delusion which surrounds the wish of our governments, in Brussels and in Westminster, that the centrepiece of our energy policy must now be to build even more windmills.
The report that drew most media attention was that from a Scottish environmental charity which focused on the fact that last year, despite our building yet more turbines, the lack of wind meant that they operated, on average, at only 21 per cent of their capacity – the lowest percentage ever. Several times, when demand was at record levels, the contribution of wind to our electricity supply was virtually zero.
Less attention was given, however, to figures put out by the Department for Energy and Climate Change, showing that the 3,168 turbines we have built, at a cost of billions of pounds, contributed on average, if very irregularly, only 1,141 megawatts to the national grid last year – less than the output of a single large coal-fired power station. From the DECC figures it is possible to work out that, for this derisory contribution, we paid through our electricity bills a subsidy of nearly £1.2 billion, on top of the price of the electricity itself.
Thus, in return for less than 3 per cent of our electricity, nearly 7 per cent of our billls were made up of hidden subsidies to the wind developers, a percentage due to treble and quadruple in coming years as the Government strives to meet EU “renewables” target by building up to 10,000 more turbines, at a cost of £100 billion. The dream of using the wind to keep our lights on is being shown by reality to be one of the most absurd fantasies of our time.
Another, in its own way even greater fantasy has been the colossal project taking shape over the past 50 years to take away the power of the nations of Europe to govern themselves and to hand it over to a weirdly dysfunctional new system of government centred in Brussels. No single element in that project was more ambitious or seen as symbolically more crucial than the wish to integrate Europe’s economies around a single currency.
Back in the 1970s, when this was first talked of, Sir Donald McDougall, a senior Treasury official, was commissioned by Brussels to produce a report on “The Role of Public Finance in European Integration”. He warned that economic and monetary union could only work if Europe was in effect given an economic government, with the power to dispose of between 25 per cent and 40 per cent of Europe’s GDP. This was because, as he foresaw, one of the core problems would be that if weaker countries were deprived of the power to set their own interest rates or to devalue, they would require a massive injection of resources from richer countries. Which, of course, is just what we now see being acted out in the desperate efforts to bail out Portugal, following in the wake of Greece and Ireland – with Spain, bigger than all three put together, possibly to follow.
As McDougall and many after him warned, the single currency could only work on conditions which the builders of a united Europe blithely chose to ignore, in pursuit of their make-believe. As a result, its collision with reality is now coming about, threatening a disintegration of the eurozone that could tug much of the European dream after it.
- - - - -
A third great fantasy of our time has been the belief that we can sort out the world’s trouble spots by reckless military interventions which fail to anticipate the bloody chaos they will unleash.
Another little instance has been the tragedy unfolding in the past few days in Camp Ashraf in Iraq, where Iraqi and Iranian terror squads have finally moved in to crush the 3,400 defenceless Iranian exiles who in 2003 gave up their arms in return for written personal guarantees of their safety by the US government.
Since Thursday night, more than 30 Ashraf residents have reportedly been killed and hundreds injured. This may be only a small example of the price so many others have had to pay for that act of folly when Bush and Blair sailed into Iraq like Don Quixote and Sancho Panza charging windmills.
But our adventures in Afghanistan and Libya still have to unfold to the point where we are forced to recognise that yet another vainglorious act of make-believe has collided with reality.For the Sicilian Mafia Commission, see Sicilian Mafia Commission
The Commission is the governing body of the American Mafia,[1] formed in 1931. The Commission replaced the "Boss of all Bosses" title with a ruling committee consisting of the New York Five Families bosses and the bosses of the Chicago Outfit and the Buffalo crime family.[1] The last known Commission meeting held with all the bosses was in November 1985.[2]
History [ edit ]
Pre-Commission situation [ edit ]
Before the Commission was formed, the American Mafia crime families were under control of one man known as the capo di tutti capi ("boss of all bosses", literally "head of all heads"). This man held great power over all their bosses, leading to disputes and wars.[1]
In 1929, two New York Mafia bosses, Joe "The Boss" Masseria and Salvatore Maranzano, fought over the title in the Castellammarese War. Masseria was murdered on April 15, 1931, allowing Maranzano to assume the title of capo di tutti capi. Maranzano began to divide all the national criminal gangs into several crime families. Charles "Lucky" Luciano and his allies decided that Maranzano would be removed, and he was murdered on September 10, 1931.[1]
The Commission's formation [ edit ]
After Maranzano's murder in 1931, the Mafia families called a meeting in Chicago.[1][3] The purpose of the meeting was to replace the old Sicilian Mafia regime of "boss of all bosses" and establish a rule of consensus among the crime families. Charlie Luciano established a Mafia board of directors to be known as "The Commission" to oversee all Mafia activities in the United States and serve to mediate conflicts between families.[1] The Commission consisted of seven family bosses: the leaders of New York's Five Families: Charlie "Lucky" Luciano, Vincent Mangano, Tommy Gagliano, Joseph Bonanno, and Joe Profaci; Chicago Outfit boss Al Capone; and Buffalo family boss Stefano Magaddino.[1][4] Charlie Luciano was appointed chairman of the Commission. The Commission agreed to hold meetings every five years or when they needed to discuss family problems.[1]
The power of the Commission [ edit ]
FBI chart of American Mafia Bosses across the country in 1963
The Commission held the power of approving a new boss before he could take over officially. The New York Five Families also decided that the names of all new proposed members must be approved by the other families. After the new proposed member was approved by the other families, he could become a made man.[1]
The Commission allowed Jewish mobsters Meyer Lansky, Bugsy Siegel, Louis "Lepke" Buchalter, Dutch Schultz, and Abner "Longie" Zwillman to work alongside them and participate in some meetings.[5] In 1935, Dutch Schultz questioned the Commission's authority when he wanted to have prosecutor Thomas Dewey murdered. Instead, the Commission had Schultz killed on October 23, 1935.[6] The Commission used Louis Buchalter's Murder, Inc.[5] to dispose of any rivals to their authority.[7]
In 1936, Charles "Lucky" Luciano was imprisoned, which allowed bosses Vincent Mangano, Joseph Profaci, Joseph Bonanno, Tommy Gagliano, and Stefano Magaddino to take control of the Commission. The five bosses were all from the "conservative faction" of the commission and believed in Sicilian traditions for the American Mafia. The conservative faction selected Vincent Mangano as the new chairman, and Joseph Profaci became the secretary of the Commission.[8] In 1946, the Havana Conference was arranged by Charles Luciano to discuss with the Commission the American Mafia's future.[9] The Commission decided in the meeting that Luciano would continue to lead the Commission, the American Mafia would become active in the narcotics trade, and Bugsy Siegel would be killed for skimming money from the Flamingo Hotel in Las Vegas.[9]
In 1951, conservative faction leader Vincent Mangano went missing and Albert Anastasia sided with "liberal-American faction" members Frank Costello and Tommy Lucchese. The power of the Commission shifted from the "conservative-Sicilian faction" to the "liberal-American faction".[10]
In 1957, at the Apalachin Meeting, the Commission decided that two more bosses, Angelo "Gentle Don" Bruno of the Philadelphia crime family and Joseph "Joe Z." Zerilli of the Detroit Partnership, would receive a seat on the Commission.[1] Jack Dragna, boss of the Los Angeles crime family for 25 years, also held a seat on the National Commission. Since Dragna's death in 1956, the Los Angeles crime family has been represented by the Chicago Outfit.[citation needed]
The Commission today [ edit ]
The Commission is still reported to exist today, though its current membership is composed of only the bosses of the Five Families and the Chicago Outfit. Its activities have receded from public view as a matter of necessity, like much of the Mafia in general. The five New York City bosses have not met since Paul Castellano was killed in 1985 because of increased law enforcement scrutiny.[2]
Instead of a meeting of bosses, underbosses or captains meet secretly to discuss business and govern.[11]
In December 2018, Domenico Luppino of the Luppino crime family in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada was heard to have been named underboss of the Buffalo crime family on wiretaps, which also revealed the activity of The Commission as Violi's promotion was so unusual, as the first Canadian to hold the second-highest position in the American Mafia, that Buffalo crime family boss Joseph Todaro Jr. stated he consulted with The Commission for permission to promote him as Buffalo's new underboss.[12]
Historical leadership [ edit ]
Chairman of the Commission [ edit ]
There was no "ruler" of the Commission, but there was a nominated Chairman or Head of the National Commission.[8] This was used as a substitute to the role of capo di tutti capi, as that had the connotations of the old Mustache Pete system of one-man rule.
Families with Commission seats [ edit ]
Families represented by the Genovese family
Families represented by the Chicago Outfit
See also [ edit ]
References [ edit ]
Notes
Sources“This could be interpreted as collective punishment,” complained Rabbi Michael Melchior, chairman of the Parliament’s education committee, during the hearing. “This policy is not in keeping with international standards or with the moral standards of Jews, who have been subjected to the deprivation of higher education in the past. Even in war, there are rules.” Rabbi Melchior is from the Meimad Party, allied with Labor.
The committee asked the government and military to reconsider the policy and get back to it within two weeks. But even if the policy is changed, the seven Fulbright grantees in Gaza are out of luck for this year. Their letters urged them to reapply next year.
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Israel’s policy appears to be in flux. At the parliamentary hearing on Wednesday, a Defense Ministry official recalled that the cabinet had declared Gaza “hostile territory” and decided that the safety of Israeli soldiers and civilians at or near the border should be risked only to facilitate the movement out of Gaza for humanitarian concerns, like medical treatment. Higher education, he said, was not a humanitarian concern.
But when a query about the canceled Fulbrights was made to the prime minister’s office on Thursday, senior officials expressed surprise. They said they did, in fact, consider study abroad to be a humanitarian necessity and that when cases were appealed to them, they would facilitate them.
They suggested that American officials never brought the Fulbright cases to their attention. The State Department and American officials in Israel refused to discuss the matter. But the failure to persuade the Israelis may have stemmed from longstanding tensions between the consulate in Jerusalem, which handles Palestinian affairs, and the embassy in Tel Aviv, which manages relations with the Israeli government.
The study grants notwithstanding, the Israeli officials argued that the policy of isolating Gaza was working, that Palestinians here were starting to lose faith in Hamas’s ability to rule because of the hardships of life.
Since Hamas, a radical Islamist group that opposes Israel’s existence, carried out what amounted to a coup d’état in Gaza against the more secular Fatah party a year ago, hundreds of rockets and mortar shells have been launched from here at Israeli civilians, truck and car bombs have gone off and numerous attempts to kidnap Israeli soldiers have taken place.
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While Hamas says the attacks are in response to Israeli military incursions into Gaza, it also says it will never recognize Israel.
“We are using the rockets to shake the conscience of the world about Israeli aggression,” argued Ahmed Yusef, political adviser to the Hamas foreign minister in an interview in his office here. “All our rockets are a reaction to Israeli aggression.”
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The Israeli closing of Gaza has added markedly to the difficulty of daily life here, with long lines for cooking gas and a sense across the population of being under siege. Israel does send in about 70 truckloads per day of wheat, dairy products and medical equipment as well as some fuel, and it permits some medical cases out.
But Israel’s stated goal is to support moderates among the Palestinians so that Hamas will lose power, and even some security-conscious Israeli hard-liners say that the policy of barring students with grants abroad is counterproductive.
“We correctly complain that the Palestinian Authority is not building civil society, but when we don’t help build civil society this plays into the hands of Hamas,” said Natan Sharansky, a former government official. “The Fulbright is administered independently, and people are chosen for it due to their talents.”
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The State Department Web site describes the Fulbright, the American government’s flagship program in international educational exchange, as “an integral part of U.S. foreign relations.” It adds, “the Fulbright Program creates a context to provide a better understanding of U.S. views and values, promotes more effective binational cooperation and nurtures open-minded, thoughtful leaders, both in the U.S. and abroad, who can work together to address common concerns.”
Sari Bashi, who directs Gisha, an Israeli organization devoted to monitoring and increasing the free movement of Palestinians, said, “The fact that the U.S. cannot even get taxpayer-funded Fulbright students out of Gaza demonstrates the injustice and short-sightedness of a closure policy that arbitrarily traps 1.5 million people, including hundreds of Palestinian students accepted to universities abroad.” She said that their education was good not just for Palestinian society, but for Israel as well.
Some Israelis disagree strongly.
“We are fighting the regime in Gaza that does its utmost to kill our citizens and destroy our schools and our colleges,” said Yuval Steinitz, a lawmaker from the opposition Likud Party. “So I don’t think we should allow students from Gaza to go anywhere. Gaza is under siege, and rightly so, and it is up to the Gazans to change the regime or its behavior.”
Hadeel Abukwaik, a 23-year-old engineering software instructor in Gaza, had hoped to do graduate work in the United States this fall on the Fulbright that she thought was hers. She had stayed in Gaza this past winter when its metal border fence was destroyed and tens of thousands of Gazans poured into Egypt, including her sister, because the agency administering the Fulbright told her she would get the grant only if she stayed put. She lives alone in Gaza where she was sent to study because the cost is low; her parents, Palestinian refugees, live in Dubai.
“I stayed to get my scholarship,” she said. “Now I am desperate.”
She, like her six colleagues, was in disbelief. Mr. Abdullah, who called the consulate in Jerusalem for further explanation after receiving his letter, said to the official on the other end, “I still cannot believe that the American administration is not able to convince the Israelis to let seven Palestinians out of Gaza.”A campaign staffer for Roy Moore physically confronted a cameraman outside of a rally for the Alabama GOP Senate candidate on Monday night.
A clip shows a man later identified as Tony Goolesby, Moore's DeKalb County coordinator, approaching a cameraman and grabbing onto the camera before he was pulled back.
Connor Sheets, a reporter for The Birmingham News, tweeted a video of the encounter.
“Man wearing Roy Moore sticker physically attacked a cameraman attempting to film Moore's arrival outside campaign rally a few minutes ago here in Henagar, Alabama. Another man w/ Moore sticker verbally assaulted a second cameraman,” Sheets wrote.
CONFIRMED: the man who grabbed the camera is Tony Goolsby, DeKalb County coordinator for Roy Moore's campaign. He organized tonight's rally. https://t.co/ZOcFL1dZaI — Connor Sheets (@ConnorASheets) November 28, 2017
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Tensions between Moore and the media have risen since The Washington Post published a report earlier this month with allegations that Moore had a sexual encounter with a 14-year-old girl when he was 32.
Moore has faced several more claims of sexual misconduct in the weeks since the report, and local residents have told several media outlets that the Republican had a reputation for dating young girls. Moore has denied any sexual misconduct.
A staffer for his campaign called The Washington Post “a worthless piece of crap” last week.
“There is no need for anyone at the Washington Post to ever reach out to the Roy Moore campaign again because we will not respond to anyone from the Post now or in the future,” Moore campaign strategist Brett Doster told the newspaper.
The altercation with the cameraman came hours after The Washington Post published a new report claiming a woman approached them with false claims about Moore, possibly as some part of a conservative sting.Want to change those brown eyes blue? Well, a new procedure promises to change eye color — forever — using iris implants made in various colors.
Iris implants are not yet approved in the United States for cosmetic use, but it hasn’t stopped Americans from traveling outside of the country to have the procedure done.
Several YouTube videos show before and after images of people who say they have had BrightOcular implants placed in their eyes.
In one video, a young African-American man desires grey eyes because he wants “a brand new me.” After surgery, he says the procedure caused him no pain.
“It was 15 minutes per eye,” he says. “It was great.”
In another video, a young woman says that she felt pain the evening after the surgery, “but it was really okay,” and that now, “I feel like someone new.”
The downside? They’re possibly risking their vision to have the look that they want.
Not all roses
Dr. James Tsai, clinical spokesperson for the American Academy of Ophthalmology and glaucoma specialist at Yale University, says there’s a lot of marketing at play.
“These companies have paid some of these patients who have gone through this to provide testimonials to the benefits,” he says.
“They start out by saying it’s just like a cataract surgery… that it usually goes very well, and it’s usually a safe procedure,” he says. “But they don’t go into detail about all of the complications. The side effects and dangers are minimized.”
BrightOcular denies that they have ever paid for testimonials or paid models to appear in them.
Multiple studies have highlighted the risks of iris implant procedures, including blindness, glaucoma, scarring of the cornea, sensitivity to light or the development of cataracts.
But, according to Tsai, these risks aren’t always shared with the patient.
Once complications occur and the implant has to be removed surgically, that can pose its own set of problems.
“In one of my patients, the surgeon tried to remove it and when he pulled away the implant, it ripped off her natural iris and she no longer had a natural-looking pupil,” Tsai recalls.
What’s behind those eyes?
The iris, a ring of muscle fibers surrounding the pupil, is what determines eye color. During the procedure, eye surgeons place artificial irises underneath the top layer of the eye (cornea), covering the patient’s natural iris. The result is that only the artificial iris is showing in the selected color.
Iris implants were first made for people whose irises did not develop normally at birth, or people who had damage to their eyes, such as burn victims. This particular type of implantation has been approved in the United States for some time. However, cosmetic iris implants are a new endeavor.
Dr. Shibu Varkey, an eye surgeon in India referred to theGrio by BrightOcular, first started using their implants on patients with iris abnormalities.
“These patients, who earlier, were unable to face even daylight, now were able to do so,” he says. “The overall quality of these patients’ lives improved.”
Varkey found BrightOcular while searching online for a patient of his — a young boy whose iris was badly damaged in an accident.
“The stringent selection criteria of candidates for the procedure… was technically and scientifically sound, so I decided that this was a promising product for this situation.”
The procedure has only been done in India for a little over a year. Varkey has personally implanted irises in 24 eyes in patients from several countries. Eighteen were for cosmetic purposes.
“This implant can also be used for those persons who would want to permanently change the color of their eyes of cosmetic reasons, like persons involved in show business, who are intolerant to cosmetic contact lenses due to medical reasons or due to difficulty in its use and maintenance,” he explains.
However, Varkey cautions that before embarking on this procedure, patients should have a thorough eye exam, including measurement of eye pressure and careful study of the retina. He is part of a team of researchers who are now gathering data to ensure the implant’s safety and to gain FDA approval in the United States.Originally published at National Review
On Friday, the news media were so sure North Korea would conduct a nuclear test over the weekend to celebrate the 105th birthday of Kim Il-Sung that they almost started a countdown clock. The test never happened. Some experts said this was because President Trump caused North Korean leader Kim Jong-un to “blink.”
On Saturday, North Korea did attempt a celebratory ballistic-missile test, which failed seconds after launch. There has been speculation in the media that this failure was due to U.S. sabotage, possibly a cyberattack.
While I believe the above explanations of both events are unlikely, North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs still pose serious and growing threats because they represent an unstable regime developing and testing increasingly advanced WMDs based on poor engineering and badly inadequate R&D. This is why a new U.S. approach to the threat from North Korea is long overdue.
I did not believe a nuclear test would occur as part of North Korea’s weekend celebration. I was not convinced by commercial-satellite imagery cited by some experts as evidence of an imminent nuclear test, since there is constant activity at North Korea’s nuclear test site that often leads to predictions of nuclear tests that do not occur. On the other hand, when North Korea actually conducts nuclear tests, these same experts are usually caught off guard.
Predicting North Korean nuclear tests is difficult, because Pyongyang is aware it is being watched by U.S. spy satellites. North Korea probably engages in subterfuge at its test site to make the world think nuclear tests are imminent when they are not, and to conceal preparations for actual tests.
North Korean nuclear tests during major celebrations like the 105th birthday of Kim Il-Sung are unlikely because, as North Korea’s nuclear program becomes more sophisticated, the chances of failed tests increase. North Korean leaders probably wanted to avoid the humiliation of a failed nuclear test on an important holiday when the eyes of the world were fixed on the Hermit Kingdom.
There also is a more likely and simpler explanation for North Korea’s April 15 missile test and its subsequent failure. North Korean officials probably decided to conduct a missile test as a demonstration of their nation’s military might that had a higher likelihood of success than a nuclear test.
While some experts are speculating the missile test failed because of U.S. sabotage or cyber warfare, the more likely explanation is that the failure was due to the poor state of North Korean science and engineering. Arms-control expert Jeffrey Lewis is “deeply skeptical” that the U.S. was responsible for the failed missile test, and he said in a recent Axios.com interview, “The failures we’ve seen are better explained by the pains of the R&D process. There is a reason that ‘rocket science’ is a metaphor for something that is hard to do.”
About 50 percent of North Korean missile tests — and 88 percent of its intermediate Musudan missile tests — have failed. This is what happens when a brutal totalitarian regime tries to pursue a complex weapons program using borrowed and stolen technology and relies on third-rate scientists.
It goes without saying that the world’s leading experts in rocketry and physics are not flocking to North Korea to work on the WMD programs of an evil totalitarian regime with a serious job-security problem — Leader Kim may have you executed if your project encounters failures or setbacks.
North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs prove the old adage “a little knowledge is a dangerous thing.” The research-and-engineering deficiencies of these weapon programs make them more dangerous and unpredictable, since this unstable rogue nation is rapidly developing increasingly advanced WMD technologies that its scientists may not fully understand and have been poorly designed. This increases the chances of a catastrophic accident, possibly when an ICBM test goes off course and strikes a neighboring country.
Moreover, more powerful North Korean underground nuclear tests could accidentally release large amounts of radioactive gases that could threaten neighboring states. According to former director of Los Alamos National Laboratory Siegfried Hecker, “one of the risks Pyongyang takes in trying to demonstrate a [nuclear] test at a higher level is that they may produce fissures that allow radioactive seepage or possibly cause a major blowout from the tunnel.”
Only North Korea’s leaders know exactly how advanced their nuclear-weapons program is. It does appear, based on seismic data after previous North Korean nuclear tests, that its nuclear devices are increasing in yield. The world must assume the worst: that North Korea’s nuclear-weapons program is making rapid advances in developing more powerful nuclear warheads that will eventually be mounted on missiles, including ICBMs capable of hitting the United States.
Similarly, despite setbacks in its ballistic-missile program, there are signs that Pyongyang is accelerating this effort and making significant progress. While the parade of missiles and missile canisters displayed over the weekend in Pyongyang may have included mockups of missiles that are not operational or empty canisters, the parade included what appeared to be two brand-new ICBMs and solid-fueled intermediate-range missiles that can be launched quickly and are easy to hide. The submarine-launched KN-11 missile also was displayed; it could pose a serious threat to Japan and South Korea.
The short- to medium-term risks from North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs probably will not be ICBMs carrying nuclear warheads fired at the United States. They are more likely to stem from catastrophic failures of missile or nuclear tests.
North Korean long-range missile tests will be especially provocative, since the United States and regional states may try to shoot them down out of concern that these missiles could accidentally strike a neighboring state and because they cannot be sure they are not North Korean attacks. This could spark North Korean retaliation and a dangerous military confrontation.
A future underground North Korean nuclear test that vents significant amounts of radioactive gases might be a game changer and could fundamentally change Beijing’s approach to the North Korean nuclear program if these gases drift over Chinese territory. The Trump administration must explain this possibility to Beijing, and why it must act before such a disaster occurs.NEW DELHI: The AAP government in Delhi today hiked the water tariff by 10 per cent about a month after it announced a free-water scheme for people in the national capital.Delhi Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisoida, who chaired the 121st Board Meeting of Delhi Jal Board, gave his nod to the proposal for the tariff hike with immediate effect even as BJP and Congress slammed the government's decision, saying it was a "betrayal of the people".According to a senior government official, the increase in tariff will be effective for households which consume more than 20,000 litres of water per month. However, people consuming under 20,000 litres will not be affected by the hike.It was also decided to regularise all unauthorised water connections by taking a fee of Rs 3,310, which was earlier Rs 20,000, with the step aimed at encouraging consumers to go for authorised connections. "This will help DJB enforce better water accounting as well as reduce non-revenue water," said a senior government official.Sources also said that the government will purchase 250 water tankers so that people living in areas lacking water pipelines may get water through tankers.The government also announced approval of 100 per cent rebate in the Late Payment Surcharge amount for domestic water consumers, who need to clear their water bills by March 31.On February 25, AAP government had announced a 50 per cent subsidy on monthly power consumption of up to 400 units and 20,000 litres of free water per month to all households.Slamming the Arvind Kejriwal-led government and condemning the hike decision, Delhi BJP chief Satish Upadhyay said that the ruling party is playing with the "sentiments of the people"."The government's decision to increase water tariff by 10 per cent is a stab on peoples' back. No proposal has come for laying new water supply lines in any area but the Jal Board has come up with a proposal to buy 250 new tankers," he said.Congress also came down heavily on the AAP government with DPCC chief Ajay Maken saying that, "Government's decision to hike the water tariff is a betrayal of the people. The move will put additional burden on the common man."AAP is going back on all its promises, as the 10 per cent hike in the water tariff will affect lakhs of people in Delhi and would be beyond the paying capacity of the poor people."Article by WN.com Correspondent Dallas Darling
Other than the loss of an important client state, plus the thought of revenge over the 1979 hostage crisis, which was followed by a botched rescue attempt that cost American lives, what’s really behind President Donald Trump and his administration’s denunciation of the Iran nuclear pact?
Moreover, and since some not only see revenge and retaliation as sweet but forever, what did National Security Advisor General H.R. McMaster mean when he said a “marker” has to be met for U.S. allies and Iran to fix the “weak” deal?
But first, a U.S. war with Iran is not only inevitable, it’s already occurring.
Skyrocketing arms shipments to Saudi Arabia and Bahrain – where some are used against population centers close to Iran – is a constant reminder the U.S. will continue its policy of low intensity warfare.
The same can be said of its proxy wars in Yemen and Syria that have killed thousands, let alone the full-fledged invasions in nearby Afghanistan and Iraq. And then there’s the constant threat of covert operations followed by a military coup.
Hezbollah’s recent capture of 3 Mossad agents, and the anti-aircraft battery/fighter jet trade-off between Syria and Israel, merely pit’s a Greater Iran against a Greater Israel.
Who Rules Geography and Energy Resources Rules the World
Along with controlling Iran’s oil and natural gas, where it ranks number three in the world in oil reserves and number two in gas reserves, some U.S. strategists see the nation ideally located.
To be sure, Iran virtually straddles all of the Greater Middle East’s energy producing areas and shipping lanes, lying either in the Persian Gulf or the Caspian region and to the Mediterranean, the Black Sea, China and Indian Ocean. Consequently, a number of inter-nation pipelines have already been built, with many more planned.
What Eurasia’s heartland is to northern Asian and European powers, Greater Iran is to southern Asian and a Middle East-African nexus. The only difference is instead of a food producing land power, this Afro-Mid-Asia heartland consists of an energy producing land AND sea power.
Indeed, Greater Iran is buffeted annually with warm water ports as compared to Eurasia’s cold water ports that are frozen part of the year. What’s more, Greater Iran has nearby and ready access to several seas and a major ocean – the Indian.
It might be dangerous to speak in terms of Iran’s destiny, since it implies an acceptance of determinism, but in many respects weren’t they the world’s first superpower – Persia?
Militarily and Religiously Speaking…Actually Pro |
said two people were arrested in relation to the incident, with a man due to appear in court tomorrow.
When the parents noticed the bags of white powder, they called police, who confirmed the substance was cocaine, a class A drug.
The children had been out trick-or-treating on Mendip Close, Royton.
A 23-year-old man, Donald Junior Green, has been charged with possession of class A drugs.
He will appear before Oldham magistrates’ court on Friday November 2.
A 21-year-old woman was also arrested on suspicion of possessing class A drugs but released without charge.
In a statement, Superintendent Catherine Hankinson said: ‘The parents and police acted quickly when this report was made, in the interests of public safety.’We understand this to be an isolated incident.’We all know that oil came from dinosaurs, or, at least, from the decomposition of organic (i.e., formerly living) materials — hence the term "fossil fuels" and the Sinclair dinosaur. But is it really true? Were there really enough dinosaurs — or even plant life — to create the billions and billions of gallons of known oil reserves? What is the physical process that converts dead reptiles and/or ferns into a homogeneous carbon compound that bears little resemblance to the molecular structure of plants and animals? ("Heat and extreme pressure" seems a little vague — and anyway, I thought that produced diamonds, not oil.) Has the process been duplicated in the laboratory? Isn't the source of oil more likely to be natural geologic processes?
Cecil replies:
Forgive me for hitting the energy questions pretty hard lately, but every trip to the gas pump these days brings the subject painfully to mind. Evidently you’ve forgotten my 1986 adumbration of “abiogenic” oil, which focused on the work of the scientific maverick Thomas Gold. (See The Straight Dope: How many dinosaurs did it take to make a barrel of oil? ) Like you, Gold doubted the conventional wisdom that petroleum derived from plant and animal remains. Instead he thought it welled up from inorganic sources deep within the earth, the implication being that there was a lot more down there waiting to be found than most experts thought. With that in mind, Gold persuaded oil prospectors in Sweden to bore an ultradeep hole in that country’s Siljan Ring, the site of an ancient meteorite strike that had cracked the earth’s crust. Gold hoped to find primordial petroleum seeping up through the fissures, far below the level at which oil is normally found — proof of his theory.
We’ll get to the results of that little treasure hunt in a second. But first let’s look at this skeptically: what makes mainstream geologists so all-fired sure that petroleum is of biological origin? The idea seems bizarrely complicated on first encounter. Contrary to wide belief that dinosaurs were centrally involved, oil is thought to have derived mainly from single-celled plankton that flourished tens to hundreds of millions of years ago in nutrient-rich environments, such as lakes and the shallow seas above continental shelves. Upon their demise, the plankton sank to the bottom and were buried in sediment before their remains, rich in hydrocarbons, could decompose. Chemical and biological processes then converted the plankton bits into a waxy substance called kerogen, some of which over time was forced down deep enough that its temperature rose to between 65 and 150 degrees Celsius. This was the “oil window” — the range of conditions under which slow roasting and a bit of catalytic basting could rearrange the organic ingredients into crude oil. (The heat and pressure needed to create diamonds, since you asked, are much higher.) The petroleum then migrated by complex means to reservoirs where it was sheltered until humans could pump it out. I personally don’t doubt this scenario, but you can see where the idea that it would produce two to four trillion barrels of commercial-grade crude might move some to think: Get out.
Fact is, the bio- and abiogenic theories — let’s call them B-oil and A-oil — competed for quite a while. According to geologist J.F. Kenney, an A-oil advocate, B-oil was first proposed by a Russian scholar in 1757, while A-oil was advanced by western Europeans a half-century later. In one of those quirks of history, the compatriots of the original geniuses then switched sides. Russian chemist Dmitry Mendeleyev, the guy who worked out the periodic table, came out strongly for A-oil, a view held by Russian and Ukrainian geologists to this day. Meanwhile, pretty much everybody else in the world bought into B-oil, although important details weren’t worked out till after World War II.
I won’t rehash the A-oil vs. B-oil arguments other than to say that (a) oil can be produced in the lab using both processes; (b) each side agrees that in nature some oil is produced the other side’s way; and (c) circumstantial evidence strongly favors a B origin for almost all found to date. That hasn’t deterred the A team, though, which brings us back to the Siljan Ring. The 6.7-kilometer borehole completed in 1990 didn’t come up a gusher but did recover 15 tons of oily sludge. When the B-oil crowd objected that it was just drill lubricant, the Swedes dug another hole using a water-lubed drill and again struck sludge. Eh, it’s probably B-oil that migrated from elsewhere, said scoffers. In short, nothing got settled. Professor Gold having gone the way of the plankton in 2004, a few other Western scientists have taken up the A-oil cause, although foes far outnumber fans.
Does it matter? Absolyutnyi, say the Russians. They claim they’ve found oil in supposedly non-oil-bearing rock, that there’s lots more where that came from, and that they’re going to try like hell to find it. No doubt when we scoffers get desperate enough, so will we.
Send questions to Cecil via cecil@straightdope.com.Donald Trump is NOT happy the PGA Tour is moving...
New footage has emerged of the moment after brit...
President Barack Obama has been slated by his own brother - and revealed he will back Republican Donald Trump in the Presidential race.
Speaking live from Kenya on British TV, Malik Obama also spoke about his relationship with Barack and claimed he has to make appointments to see him.
And he told Good Morning Britain hosts Piers Morgan and Susanna Reid that the US leader has issues with attitude.
He said: "[Barack] has this attitude like 'I'm the president, I've made it, I'm the star here'. I do understand that but I'm just expressing my opinion and how I feel."
LOADING President Barack Obama has been slated by his brother Malik (Photo: ITV)
LOADING Speaking on Good Morning Britain, Malik Obama accused the US leader of having issues when it comes to his attitude (Photo: ITV)
In a swipe at his sibling's incredible political career, Malik added: "Looking back, he made so many promises when he was running for president.
"He was riding on the promise of hope. There was so much excitement and we thought he would do so many things.
"But look at the Middle East right now. It's a mess. People are being killed all over the place; Berlin, Florida, France, Brussels. And look at the situation in Iraq right now."
Malik also sounded pretty miffed when he revealed he has to request an appointment when he wants to see his brother.
LOADING Barack Obama on his wedding day to Michelle Obama in Chicago, with his half brother Malik (Photo: Rex)
LOADING Malik Obama in his ancestral home village of Nyangoma Kogelo, west of Kenya's capital Nairobi (Photo: Reuters)
"I have to go through this woman and make a request, saying I would like to see him," Malik added.
"Then I just have to wait. The last time I requested to see him was June 15th and I've only just got a response.
"And that's how it usually works. It all depends on whether there's an opening in his diary."
The most shocking point Malik made during the interview was that he plans to vote for Barack's rival Donald Trump in the upcoming US elections.
LOADING President Barack Obama takes weeks to get back to his brother (Photo: REUTERS)
LOADING Malik would vote for Republican Presidential nominee Donald Trump (Photo: Reuters)
Although the president is backing his friend Hilary Clinton for the job and has made no secret of his feelings towards Donald, Malik was more than happy to explain why he isn't supporting his brother.
Read More Watch Michelle Obama's electrifying speech in full as she destroys Donald Trump without even mentioning his name
"Something is going on with Hilary that I don't like," he explained. "Donald on the other hand, he speaks his mind and is straight forward.
"And remember, the Republican party is the party of Abraham Lincoln - who freed slaves and freed the black man."
*Good Morning Britain returns to ITV tomorrow at 6amBuried at the end of a long New Yorker article about a secretive Christian group who own a dormitory for conservative lawmakers on C Street is an odd quote by a sitting Republican senator who was accused of urging a colleague to buy off his mistress.
At Talking Points Memo, David Kurtz notes, “The New Yorker has some new details on the C Street house, ‘The Fellowship,’ the secretive Christian group that owns and rents it to congressmen, and the second of the two interventions they did with Sen. John Ensign (R-NV) to try to get him to end his affair.”
In July of 2009, CQ Politics reported, “A Capitol Hill townhouse that serves as a dormitory and meeting place for a band of conservative Christian lawmakers has been linked to a third episode of marital infidelity, this time in a Mississippi court filing by a former lawmaker’s estranged wife.”
In an “alienation of affection” lawsuit, former Rep. Charles W. Pickering Jr.’s estranged wife, Leisha, alleges that he carried on an extramarital affair with a onetime college sweetheart while he lived at a house at 133 C Street in Southeast Washington. Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., and Gov. Mark Sanford, R-S.C., both of whom admitted to cheating on their wives in recent weeks, are members of the Christian fellowship of lawmakers known as “C Street” for the address of the house where several of the members live at any given time.
At Talking Points Memo, Josh Marshall observed last summer, “You remember the C Street Group, the combo Bible fellowship and group home for members of Congress up on Capitol Hill. But it’s been occurring to us that the C Street Group, which is an emanation of a shadowy religious outfit called ‘the Family’, might not be a religious fellowship at all so much as a covert 12 Step Group from Republican Hound Dogs, womanizers and sex addicts trying to get clean during their tenure in the hallowed halls of Congress.”
Excerpts from Peter J. Boyer’s New Yorker article, “Frat House for Jesus,” follow:
The men leading this intervention considered themselves Ensign’s closest friends in Washington. Four of those who confronted Ensign—Senator Tom Coburn and Representatives Bart Stupak, Mike Doyle, and Zach Wamp—lived with him in an eighteenth-century brick row house on C Street, in southeast Washington, a short walk from the Capitol. The men regarded themselves in part as an accountability group. Despite their political differences—Coburn and Wamp are Republicans, Stupak and Doyle are Democrats—they had pledged to hold one another to a life lived by the principles of Jesus, and they considered the Tuesday supper gatherings at C Street an inviolable ritual. …. Some in the C Street group wanted Ensign out of the house, but the prevailing view was that he should stay. Dealing with the affair seemed to pose a test of the group’s very purpose: in the fevered atmosphere of an election year, could the men of C Street cope with the situation privately? Looking back, Coburn believed that the Ensign case was a C Street success story. A year after that midnight confrontation, word of Ensign’s affair had not leaked, and Ensign and his wife, Darlene, had reconciled. Doug and Cindy Hampton were together, too, but Doug Hampton was still angry at Ensign. He believed that Ensign had destroyed his life, and, with the help of powerful friends, had got away with it. In June, 2009, after Ensign learned that Hampton intended to reveal the affair, he publicly confessed, and resigned his Republican leadership position. The tawdriness of the double betrayal, of wife and close friend, produced a wave of sex-scandal stories, but the damage was confined to Ensign. Then, a week later, the Republican governor of South Carolina, Mark Sanford, made his own public confession, a rambling tale of the “impossible love” that he had found with a woman in Argentina. Sanford spoke of an inner struggle over the betrayal of his marriage vows, and mentioned that he had sought the counsel of some of his old circle in Washington. “I was part of a group called C Street when I was in Washington,” he said. “It was, believe it or not, a Christian Bible study—some folks that asked members of Congress hard questions that I think were very, very important. And I’ve been working with them.” …. The press soon discovered that John Ensign lived at the C Street house. A month later, in the circuit court of Hinds County, Mississippi, Leisha Pickering, the wife of the former Republican congressman Chip Pickering, another resident of the C Street house, filed an alienation-of-affection lawsuit suggesting that Pickering had committed adultery while living there. A picture began to emerge of a boys-gone-wild house of pleasure. The men of C Street, pledged to silence, declined to respond to press inquiries, which only heightened interest (“THE POLITICAL ENCLAVE THAT DARE NOT SPEAK ITS NAME,” a Washington Post headline read). Public records revealed little; the house was registered to an obscure evangelical youth group, and enjoyed the tax status of a registered church. Word spread that the tenants were paying below-market rents (about nine hundred dollars a month each), which prompted an inquiry by the Office of Congressional Ethics. Even if the residents had been inclined to talk about the house, some knew nothing more about it than the fact that they made out their monthly checks to “C Street Center.”
Boyer’s lengthy article concludes, “In the meantime, when Congress is in session the Tuesday-night gatherings continue, still attended by members who no longer live in the house. During the supper accountability session, according to Tom Coburn, “a question that’ll be asked about every four weeks is, Is anybody here having an affair?”
FULL NEW YORKER ARTICLE AT THIS LINK
Democratic blogger Taegan Goddard observes, “Despite a series of recent sex scandals by current and former residents — Sen. John Ensign (R-NV) being the most recent — Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) insists the ‘supper accountability session’ will continue on Tuesday nights and ‘a question that’ll be asked about every four weeks is, Is anybody here having an affair?'”
Last year, Coburn denied that he had advised Ensign to buy off his mistress.
The Washington Post reported,
Aides to Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) acknowledged Wednesday that he counseled Sen. John Ensign (R-Nev.) to break off an affair with a staffer, but they denied allegations that Coburn suggested giving the woman and her husband financial assistance to start a new life. “Dr. Coburn did everything he could to encourage Senator Ensign to end his affair and to persuade Senator Ensign to repair the damage he had caused to his own marriage and the Hamptons’ marriage,” Coburn spokesman John Hart said in a statement. “Had Senator Ensign followed Dr. Coburn’s advice, this episode would have ended, and been made public, long ago.” The statement came in reaction to a televised interview with former Ensign aide Doug Hampton, who said that the Nevada Republican persisted in his pursuit of his wife, Cynthia, despite pleas from Coburn and others to end the dalliance.
ad_icon Hampton, who has not previously talked publicly about the scandal, also alleged that Coburn and other intermediaries urged Ensign to pay the Hamptons to help “take care of” the affair, according to excerpts of the interview.
The Las Vegas Review-Journal reported last year,
Doug Hampton says in the interview, however, that Ensign wrote the letter only after being confronted by representatives of the church foundation that owns the Washington house Ensign shares with other Christian lawmakers. The group of men, including Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., urged Ensign to give the Hamptons “millions” in financial assistance and write a remorseful letter in order to end the relationship, Hampton said. …. Hampton, through a lawyer, asked for millions in what he considered restitution for the family’s suffering, he acknowledges in Wednesday’s interview. An Ensign spokesman previously called the request an “outrageous demand” and said it was referred to the senator’s lawyer. But Hampton says he got the idea for a financial settlement from the churchmen and Coburn. “These men were the ones that said, ‘What we need to do is we need to get Doug Hampton’s home paid for and we need to get Doug Hampton some money and we need to get his family to Colorado,’ ” he says. When the intervention didn’t work, the Hamptons were pushed out of their jobs, he says.
The Post added,
“Senator Tom Coburn asked and was involved in these negotiations out of goodwill and good faith,” Hampton said, referring to “the belief from Tom Coburn and many that some restitution needs to take place here.” Coburn’s office disputed the assertion. “Doug’s statement is false,” Hart said.
RAW STORY reported last year,
According to the Washington Post, however, the Fellowship Foundation is itself linked to an even more secretive religious organization — Youth With a Mission (YWAM), whose Washington, DC branch owns the “C Street House” where Ensign has lived and where Sanford has participated in Bible study. A diarist at Daily Kos points out that “YWAM founder leader Loren Cunningham has publicly outlined a vision for Christian world-control,” which involves establishing domination over government, education, business, the media, and other areas.
MORE AT THIS LINKIf one compares the most recent Doctor Who episode “The Rings of Akhaten” with the episode “The Aztecs” from the very first season, an interesting change in the Doctor's outlook about religion and human sacrifice emerges.
In “The Aztecs” the Doctor is emphatically opposed to Barbara's interference in an attempt to change history. It may be that that concern was largely pragmatic – paradoxes are created if you tamper with a past that you are directly connected with. But it sounds like his concern is more general, and that interference with their religion would be wrong in principle.
In “The Rings of Akhaten” the Doctor's point of view has changed. A major theme of the episode is how the constituent parts of the universe come together to bring about a unique set of affairs – whether an individual human life, or two human lives being joined together in love. And so the Doctor explicitly objects to the idea of Merry sacrificing herself to a god, insisting that she is a unique entity made from the products of dead stars configured in a specific way that is not identically mirrored anywhere else in the universe. And so for her to sacrifice herself would be a waste.
Given that the “old god” is a sentient sun thought by the inhabitants of that part of space to have created all life, there is an interesting additional importance to the Doctor's point: it was not this so-called god, but stars now dead, that contributed the stuff that makes of Merry's existence.
Towards the end of the episode, the Doctor is ready to give his own life (although his sharing his memories doesn't seem to threaten him the way it would have supposedly have destroyed Merry). And so the point is not about all form of “sacrifice”, but specifically about the notion of sacrifice to a deity that demands one to. Sacrificing oneself to save others, willing sacrifice for something greater than oneself, is not considered wasteful in the same way.
For longtime fans of the show, how do you think the view of religion and human sacrifice has evolved over the course of the show? Is this best viewed as an evolution in the Doctor's thinking, or simply a lack of consistency resulting from the show's long history?LAKELAND, Fla. — Fans can expect to continue seeing the Detroit Tigers take plenty of chances on the bases in Grapefruit League games. Tigers manager Brad Ausmus said every player has the green light to steal at their discretion, and he’s encouraging them all to experiment in pushing the envelope in taking extra bases.
"We want to force the defense to make plays," Ausmus said.
The "Go-Go Tigers" have been on display in the first four Grapefruit League games, going five for six in stolen base attempts and taking plenty of extra bases.
However, there was a big inning that was diffused Friday against the New York Yankees. Rajai Davis got picked off second base before Miguel Cabrera got thrown out trying to go from first to third on a walk. Ausmus had no problem with that, noting that strong throws were required to get the outs.
"I’ve been very happy with the base-running," Ausmus said. "That doesn’t bother me."
He likes the mindset that is evolving on a team that had the fewest steals in the majors last year with 35.
We want to force the defense to make plays Brad Ausmus
Adding free agent outfielder Davis, who stole 45 bases last year for the Toronto Blue Jays, and trading for second baseman Ian Kinsler, a proven 20-plus base stealer, heavily influenced that decision.
"It might be different if we hadn’t signed Rajai and made the Kinsler-for-Prince Fielder trade," said Ausmus.
However, he stressed that the fastest runners aren’t always the best base-stealers. It’s seeing an opportunity and taking it that Ausmus stresses on the bases with running game coach Omar Vizquel.
"You are more into the game that way," Ausmus said.
That’s why Cabrera getting thrown out trying something totally unconventional did not bother Ausmus. He liked that Cabrera was busy calculating the move, and thought he caught the Yankees napping.
Kinsler said, "This is the way you win baseball games. Putting pressure on the defense is huge. Brad definitely has that in mind, and wants this to be a team that runs intelligently."
Ausmus said he will shut off the group green light once the season starts, and then decide which players still have it. Davis and Kinsler are good bets, but Austin Jackson and Torii Hunter also could receive the green light much of the time.
"He’s not ready to pitch," said Ausmus, adding that he’s playing long toss at 120 feet.
"As long as he stays within himself and uses the whole field — especially to right-center — he’ll be OK," said Ausmus, who wants to assure that Castellanos doesn’t go away from his strength and get pull-happy going for homers.
"Adam Everett sent me a text today," said Ausmus, referring to his former Astros teammate who also played in Detroit and now coaches infielders with Houston. Morgan Ensberg is another former teammate now coaching for the Astros organization. Ausmus said those two and some clubhouse workers are the only ones remaining from his era.
Even the league has changed in regard to his old team.
"Every time I think of Houston," said Ausmus, "I have to remind myself they are an American League team now."What the developers have to say:
Why Early Access?
Approximately how long will this game be in Early Access?
How is the full version planned to differ from the Early Access version?
Additional multiplayer levels
Single player mode
Co-op mode
Many more weapons
Avatar variation
Item reward system
Leaderboards
These are currently our main goals. With numerous smaller features, balance changes, and improvements during development time.
What is the current state of the Early Access version?
Will the game be priced differently during and after Early Access?
How are you planning on involving the Community in your development process?
“With the base foundation complete and multiplayer fully implemented, this is the perfect time for our early access players to influence the direction of the game. We are actively looking for feedback from the community on how the game should be shaped during development.”“We are currently looking at a 9 to 12 month development window to fully implement the features that would make this a complete game.”“Along with our community's influence, these are general features we are planning to implement into our game to turn it into a worthy VR experience.“The lobby room is fully open. From there, players can practice on targets or jump right into the different multiplayer combat modes. The game is fully networked. With 1vs1 and 2vs2 team fight, players compete head to head in three different levels. These levels are full of destructible objects that can be used for cover. The game supports the HTC Vive and the Oculus Rift with Touch. Headsets are also cross compatible in multiplayer.”“We intend for the game to remain the same price.”“Listening to player feedback, making full use of the Steam community hub, and providing the ability for players to vote on new content.”As policymakers grapple with developing global agreements to cut greenhouse gas emissions, science and technology must play a central role in lowering the costs of renewable and low-carbon energy solutions. A few technologies in particular will be vital to meeting the growth in energy demand and achieving the decarbonization transition.
Among those technologies, solar energy has the largest and most homogenously distributed renewable resource. The costs of solar photovoltaics have declined dramatically over the past 8–10 years, due to ever-improving technologies, greater manufacturing scale, strong supporting policies and increasing demand. However, scaling-up current photovoltaic technologies to meet global electricity needs over the longer term remains expensive. Advances in fundamental science, new materials and processes for photovoltaics — such as flexible, thin-film solar cells that can be printed on substrates such as plastic, paper or metal foils — and new system concepts for concentrated solar power, all have the potential to further enhance the relative competitiveness and rapid scale-up of solar power1.
The lowest cost, non-hydropower renewable energy resource at present is onshore wind. Wind energy sources are globally abundant, with onshore and shallow offshore (depth less than 30 m) wind energy already supplying appreciable amounts of electricity to various countries, including China, Denmark, Germany, India, Ireland, Portugal, Spain, the UK and the US2. Mounting turbines on taller towers is enabling access to better wind resources at higher altitudes, making wind a viable source in previously uneconomic regions, such as the Southeastern United States. Nonetheless, wind energy, like solar, suffers from intermittency challenges, but without as good a match between resource and peak demand. Offshore wind offers potential advantages, including higher average wind speeds and a more sustained resource, but its progress will depend on providing low-cost transmission to shore and on leveraging knowledge from the oil and gas industry for mounting turbines. Other ocean energy technologies — wave, tidal, ocean current and ocean thermal — are still relatively nascent, but symbiotic systems of floating offshore wind and/or wave turbines coupled with pumped hydropower energy storage could improve their economic viability3.
Geothermal energy can also play a much larger role. Particularly where the resource is relatively close to the surface, geothermal systems can provide heating and low-cost, dispatchable electricity — as illustrated by the transformation of Iceland's energy system over the past 50 years. Although not all regions globally have easily accessible geothermal resources, enhanced (or engineered) geothermal reservoirs4 — in which the permeability of hot, dry rock is artificially increased, so that water can be injected and heated up by the rocks — are ubiquitous and might be made cost effective with innovations in drilling technology and low-temperature power cycles. Access to higher-temperature resources, which will require advances in materials science, could also improve the prospects of geothermal energy.
Technology deployment, policy and cost performance data, along with countries' intended voluntary contributions ahead of the 2015 Paris Climate Change Conference (COP21), have shown that solar and wind energy are poised for major growth if nations can promote a combination of global knowledge sharing, global access to financing and further development of technologies that address renewable intermittency issues, such as energy storage5. Political and economic challenges — which have in the past posed major obstacles to globally scaling wind and solar — will need to be overcome for solar and wind to achieve their potential.
Modernizing the electricity grid will also be critical to our energy future. Substantial infrastructure improvements must be made to meet global demand, security, reliability and resiliency needs. Moreover, new power systems, such as microgrids, offer opportunities for deploying renewable technologies in regions with growing demand but little existing infrastructure, including parts of India, Africa and other developing countries. Further deployment of renewables can also be achieved by better understanding energy system issues, including the policy and business models shaping the evolution of the utility industry.
Adopting new policies and strengthening those that favour low-carbon and renewable energy technologies, increasing government financial support for basic energy research, and engaging with industry to help identify, scale up and commercialize the most promising technologies are all important for a successful global transition to a sustainable future. This is a daunting challenge; however, the social and economic imperatives for transforming the global energy system are clear. We have the opportunity to focus our global wealth of problem-solving talent on rapidly, safely and economically deploying new low-carbon energy technologies that will improve people's lives while curbing climate change.Before you get ready for this weekend’s Major League Soccer action, you can catch up on anything you may have missed in Week 8 as Massive Report’s Josh Mlot and Nathaniel Marhefka discuss some of their observations from around MLS.
What did you notice? What are you looking forward to this week? Let us know in the comments below.
JOSH
What I watched: In addition to the Columbus Crew SC game... New England vs. San Jose Earthquakes (0-0), Philadelphia Union vs. Montreal Impact (3-3), Houston Dynamo vs. San Jose (2-0), Portland Timbers vs. Vancouver Whitecaps (2-1), FC Dallas vs. Sporting KC (1-0), Real Salt Lake vs. Atlanta United (1-3), New York City FC vs. Orlando United (1-2), LA Galaxy vs. Seattle Sounders (0-3), Minnesota United vs. Colorado Rapids (1-0).
Why I watched: Well, I watched nearly every game, so... mostly it's like one big, MLS-y blur. Mostly I watched because I had a chance to, but there were a few games that had some particular interest. The most obvious, I think, is the Dallas-KC game, with as well as those two teams have been playing. I also had some interest in RSL-Atlanta to see the ongoing Petke (r)evolution and how ATLU is settling in. Galaxy-Sounders is a battle of recent Western Conference powers, and Colorado seemed like an opportunity for Minnesota to play well.
What I learned: The Earthquakes can't score and I will not be using any of them for fantasy purposes (except Nick Lima, because he's cheap). The Union and the Impact are still a mess, but that was fun for a casual viewer. I think a long-term Adi absence would hurt the Timbers, but they were just fine last weekend; Darlington Nagbe continues to impress and it's neat to see how he has evolved and developed. Petke is not a silver bullet and Atlanta continues to be a team that will ruthlessly punish you for mistakes. The Orlando City home fortress is real. Los Angeles is undergoing a reckoning. Colorado is in rough shape and has some serious questions.
NATE
What I watched: Portland Timbers vs. Vancouver Whitecaps, Real Salt Lake vs. Atlanta United, New York City FC vs. Orlando City SC and extended highlights of LA Galaxy vs. Seattle Sounders, and Toronto FC vs. Chicago Fire (3-1).
Why I watched: First on my list was the Cascadia Cup (Portland v. Vancouver). It really might be might favorite rivalry match to watch each year. The atmosphere is always great, and last year two games produced a slew of goals, with Vancouver winning by three and Portland winning 4-2. I was interested in watching the Salt Lake v. Atlanta game because I was interested both in how Petke's RSL team would fair against a proven opponent and well, Atlanta United is simply fun to watch. I was always confident Orlando would edge NYCFC but I wanted to take another aggregate of their play and watch NYCFC for really the first time this season.
What I learned: Vancouver, in my eyes, totally quit with 30 minutes to go in the second half. They were getting sorely outplayed and despite scoring a goal in the 59th minute, in the defensive transition they looked a mess and largely uninterested. I thought RSL played really well. Atlanta is just too strong and their finishing is far superior (RSL's is really quite poor). Petke's team could use a new striker. Yura has a place, but they need someone more dynamic in the XI. Orlando City proved they can score goals via sustained possession, not just on the counter. Seattle manager Brian Schmetzer has found quite the revelation with Will Bruin as center forward and Jordan Morris on the wing. I learned nothing useful about the LA Galaxy. In Toronto I learned that Seba doesn't like to be subbed out.
Discuss...
NATE: Let’s start with the Cascadia Cup. Vancouver came into Portland as underdogs looking to prove themselves, but left a goal short against a very strong Timbers team. The Caps finished with 21 crosses and 17 shots. I’m curious of your thoughts — do you think the cross-heavy attack is premeditated and the finishing was just off? Or do you think otherwise?
JOSH: I think that’s just who they are. And if we’re looking at the bigger picture, it’s not like they entered Crew SC territory from the past couple of years and put up 27 or 28 crosses. They average 18 a game and are kind of middle of the pack in that sense. But as it pertains to the game, I think it’s tough for anyone to try to build through the center when Portland puts David Guzman and Diego Chara there to break things up. And it’s a team I think will be slightly more solid defensively with Liam Ridgewell and Vytas both back from injury.
I thought it was impressive Portland came up with two goals and stayed on the front foot even with Fanendo Adi out. I know everyone is hyping up Darlington Nagbe’s goal — fairly so — but to me the most impressive thing he was doing was dropping into central midfield and really finding space where he could cause some problems.
N: I, too, was really impressed with Nagbe’s play, particularly his movement off the ball. And with the ball at his feet, his decision-making was quite good too. The team has three great creators in Nagbe, Diego Valery and Sebastian Blanco. Maybe that is why they have been my favorite team to watch this season.
You watched two matches of San Jose this week. What did you think? Personally, I had less than zero interest watching them play. Was I wrong missing out? What do you think of their poor run of form (zero win in six games).
J: You were right to trust your gut.
It’s been more of the same from San Jose. It relies on its outside mids to get the ball down the wings, but there’s no real playmaker anywhere. Chris Wondolowski is expected to make his magic, and in the tail end of his career that happens a little less.
Anibal Godoy is one of my favorite midfielders in MLS, but there are holes almost everywhere else. And the strikers they brought in — Danny Hoesen and Marcos Urena — haven’t done anything (though Urena at least has provided good work rate).
I also like Nick Lima. For those that haven’t been paying attention to the Quakes this year, he’s one of the brighter young outside backs in the league — rough around the edges but talented.
But enough about San Jose. How about the Atlanta-RSL game? The short Mike Petke honeymoon is over, though to be honest this wasn’t on him. His players need to not turn the ball over in bad spots against one of the best transition attacks i n MLS.
What did you take away from that game?
N: I think it still stands that Tata Martino’s Atlanta United is top-notch. They outplayed RSL, and capitalized when given the opportunity in front of net. On the other side of the ball, their defending was solid, if not as good as the attack. Meanwhile, the RSL front line needs to start converting chances.
Yura Movsisiyan has scored several goals this year, but there is too much reliance on him. He isn’t the dynamic player the team has demanded. Now, whether that’s on Yura or on the setup/teammates is up for debate. Either way, this team needs to convert better.
J: Taking advantage of another team’s mistakes is a mark of a good team, so credit to ATL for that.
I didn’t watch it, but give me your quick take on the TFC-Chicago game, since those are teams Columbus fans likely have feelings about.
N: I thought Toronto looked to be a very complete team. Nick Hagglund looked better in the middle, Seba was incredible (you have to check out his free-kick goal, by the way) and young Raheem Edwards really impressed me at wingback.
For Chicago, Bastian Schweinsteiger was a non-factor and Joao Meira is running himself out of the team. Luis Solignac looked like one of the few players to have the extra bit. Otherwise, Chicago simply got outplayed.
J: Glad to hear Giovinco was more himself. I thought his touch was off the last few weeks. MLS is better with an in-form Giovinco.
Let’s wrap things up with the Galaxy, because I think they’re one of the more fascinating narratives right now. They’ve been a flagship club for Major League Soccer, and I know they’ve had ups and downs before, but it’s interesting to watch.
Are they cycling out of the elite right now? Can they afford to do that with LAFC joining the league next year?
I wrote last week about how they’ve failed to fill the shoes of missing/departed players and they aren’t connecting in the final third. Then we saw it again against Seattle |
– I’ll definitely be singing lead, but I think I’ll be more of a keyboard player, sitting down and singing.”
Wayne explained to Rolling Stone, “I’m part of the ensemble but it’s mostly Steven’s thing. We’re using a lot of musicians, but mostly there’s a group out of Nashville called Linear Downfall that are amazing – they’re such good musicians and such freaks.” Although Steven is the lead figure in the band, because of the “musical chairs” process of the sessions, Drozd is featured on all instruments on the debut record. Linear Downfall guitarist Dom Marcoaldi tells The Future Heart, “Steven plays drums [on the record]. Will [Hicks, Linear Downfall drummer] does too.”
Wayne's doodle of the Electric Würms 😃 http://t.co/yupzZeEbr9 — Linear Downfall (@LinearDownfall) August 15, 2013
“Playin bass in Electric Wuürms!!! On the easy tracks!!!!” Wayne wrote on instagram last December referencing their cover of Traffic’s “The Low Spark of High Heeled Boys,” a jazz-rock milestone. They also recorded a “Diplo inspired version of The Planet Of The Apes Theme” and jammed on the groove best known as “Sivad” from Miles Davis’ Live-Evil (though that track is actually a mash-up of the end of Miles’ early fusion period set opener, “Directions,” with “Honky Tonk” – both primarily edited from Davis’ December 19, 1970 second set at The Cellar Door). Yep, that was the night John McGlaughlin sat in. For the Würms version Wayne said lyrics by Mother Teresa were added.
“We only did a couple of days [of sessions] at the beginning of September,” Wayne explained to Rolling Stone last November. “I forget what the Miles Davis song is called, we literally recorded one of these really complicated electronic Miles Davis tracks with them. We have a session that is going to happen in the next week or 10 days or so that will probably decide when that’s going to come out.“
Yesssss!!! A Diplo inspired version of The Planet Of The Apes Theme!!! Yesss!!! Electric Würms!!!… http://t.co/4lXF8SBL56 — Wayne Coyne (@waynecoyne) January 9, 2014
Mixing with wam_selchel yessssss!!!! Freaky Miles Davis cover with lyrics from Mother Teresa!!! Doin… http://t.co/1c2mCS9GTX — Wayne Coyne (@waynecoyne) January 9, 2014
Adding some Bebop to Electric Würms!!!! Brainiac Damaged Booger Fucker Chrome Jam!! #freaks… http://t.co/kOo4x8yiG9 — Wayne Coyne (@waynecoyne) March 3, 2014
Steven told Rock Sucker in March that the Electric Würms debut record, “will have a Yes cover on it that people might or might not like depending on which side of the punk rock/prog rock coin you exist on! I think it’s possible to exist in both plains, but some people feel like it has to be an either/or situation (laughs). But we’ve really tripped out hard to “Heart of the Sunrise” by Yes and we’ve done a couple of other songs. Then we’re going to try and do a whole record, so there’s a lot going on.” Since that interview Coyne confirmed they’re “almost done” with a “6 song“ debut, and Linear Downfall confirmed the record was finished at Tarbox with Dave Fridmann.
Looking forward fans can expect both live performances and records from Electric Würms – time permitting. “We’ll have a band of three or four guys – we’re not sure who yet, but we’re working with a band called Linear Downfall at the moment – and then Wayne will play synth on one song, electric bass on another, and he’ll play percussion and stuff. The idea being that it’s not a Flaming Lips show, it’s going to be a different thing,” Steven told Rock Sucker. “We’d like to try and do some shows this summer but we’ll have to see how busy the Lips schedule is before we do that.”
Recap Electric Würms’ progression so far with the tweets below, including a peak at their album cover:
the beginning of Electric Würms…!!!!!! http://t.co/RFq8HdoygQ — Wayne Coyne (@waynecoyne) August 13, 2013
Almost to OKC really honored to be working with our friends The Flaming Lips again!! — Linear Downfall (@LinearDownfall) November 20, 2013
Electric Würms goin at it again!! #flaminglips http://t.co/XaWu7QTLFc — Wayne Coyne (@waynecoyne) November 21, 2013
"Hey… Let's do something dark and beautiful today." – @LinearDownfall — SPACEFACE (@spacefacemusic) November 21, 2013
See you again soon Pink Floor!! We love you @waynecoyne http://t.co/S0eHRUOmoo — Linear Downfall (@LinearDownfall) November 24, 2013
Weird ice on the side of our van after we got out of the Okc snow http://t.co/BqKIOJFM4C — Linear Downfall (@LinearDownfall) November 24, 2013
@brentnotbrett we are doing a side project with Wayne and Steven of the Flaming Lips called Electric Würms :) — Linear Downfall (@LinearDownfall) November 25, 2013
Electric Würms album cover shoot!! http://t.co/v2V95EoQ1z — Wayne Coyne (@waynecoyne) January 11, 2014
Steven showing little Kevin how to play the B flat diminished 13th chord sequence.. Electric Würms!!!… http://t.co/ScaDDi2ZqF — Wayne Coyne (@waynecoyne) February 2, 2014
Workin on Electric Würms album cover … http://t.co/Nwe0QC4YBY — Wayne Coyne (@waynecoyne) March 13, 2014
Tuesday afternoon freak jam with Steven, Derek and Wayne at Pink Floor using 4 of rebbaxter's… http://t.co/P77oid4uiy — Daniel huffman (@NewFumes) March 18, 2014
Yessss!! Cool filtered the fuck out of Electric Würms track called Approaching Povvonis Mons By… http://t.co/DveFtWoEPR — Wayne Coyne (@waynecoyne) March 24, 2014
Up at Dave Fridmann's studio filtering the fuck out of a sound that already had the fuck filtered out… http://t.co/UJd06XewCQ — Wayne Coyne (@waynecoyne) March 26, 2014
Dom recording some cool shit!!! http://t.co/OAtmTS6OOJ — Linear Downfall (@LinearDownfall) March 27, 2014Store mannequins are meant to catch your eye. Soon, you may catch theirs.
Benetton is among the fashion brands deploying mannequins equipped with technology used to identify criminals at airports to watch over shoppers in their stores.
Retailers are introducing the EyeSee, sold by Italian mannequin maker Almax SpA, to glean data on customers much as online merchants are able to do. The $5,072 device has spurred shops to adjust window displays, store layouts and promotions to keep consumers walking in the door and spending.
“It’s spooky,” said Luca Solca, head of luxury goods research at Exane BNP Paribas in London. “You wouldn’t expect a mannequin to be observing you.”
The EyeSee looks ordinary on the outside, with its slender polystyrene frame, blank face and improbable pose. Inside, it’s no dummy. A camera embedded in one eye feeds data into facial-recognition software like the kind used by police. It logs the age, gender and race of passers-by.
Demand for the device shows how retailers are turning to technology to help personalize their offers as growth slows in the $245 billion luxury goods industry. Bain & Co. predicts the luxury market will expand 5 percent in 2012, less than half of last year’s rate.
“Any software that can help profile people while keeping their identities anonymous is fantastic,” said Uche Okonkwo, executive director of consultant Luxe Corp. It “could really enhance the shopping experience, the product assortment, and help brands better understand their customers.”
While some stores deploy similar technology to watch shoppers from overhead security cameras, the EyeSee provides better data because it stands at eye level and invites customer attention, Almax says.
The mannequin, which went on sale in December and is being used in three European countries and the United States, has led one outlet to adjust its window displays after revealing that men who shopped in the first two days of a sale spent more than women, Almax says.
A clothier introduced a children’s line after the dummy showed that kids made up more than half its mid-afternoon traffic, the company says. Another store found that a third of visitors using one of its doors after 4 p.m. were Asian, prompting it to place Chinese-speaking staff members by that entrance.
A spokesman for Benetton declined to elaborate on where or why the clothier is using the EyeSee.
Max Catanese, chief executive officer of the 40-year-old mannequin maker, declined to name clients, citing confidentiality agreements. Five companies, including leading fashion brands, are using a total of “a few dozen” of the mannequins with orders for at least that many more, he says.
Burberry and Nordstrom are among retailers that say they aren’t on the list. Even so, they are helping blur the line between the physical shopping experience and Web retailing by setting up WiFi, iPads and video screens at their outlets to better engage shoppers.
Nordstrom, a U.S. chain of more than 100 department stores, says facial-recognition software may go a step too far.
“It’s a changing landscape but we’re always going to be sensitive about respecting the customer’s boundaries,” spokesman Colin Johnson said.
Others say profiling customers raises legal and ethical issues. U.S. and European Union regulations permit the use of cameras for security purposes, although retailers need to put up signs in their stores warning customers they may be filmed. Watching people solely for commercial gain may break the rules and could be viewed as gathering personal data without consent, says Christopher Mesnooh, a partner at law firm Field Fisher Waterhouse in Paris.
“If you go on Facebook, before you start the registration process, you can see exactly what information they are going to collect and what they’re going to do with it,” Mesnooh said. “If you’re walking into a store, where’s the choice?”
So far Almax hasn’t faced obstacles to selling the dummy, Catanese says. Since the EyeSee doesn’t store any images, retailers can use it as long as they have a closed-circuit television license, he says.
Some clients have asked for the EyeSee to be rigged to recognize employees so they don’t muddy the picture of customer behavior. In those cases, workers have to agree to be filmed, Catanese says. That option may be extended to shoppers, where loyal spenders would be invited to opt-in in return for rewards, he says.
“The retail community is starting to get wise to the opportunity around personalization,” said Lorna Hall, retail editor at fashion forecaster WGSN. “The golden ticket is getting to the point where they’ve got my details, they know what I bought last time I came in.”
To give the EyeSee ears as well as eyes, Almax is testing technology that recognizes words to allow retailers to eavesdrop on what shoppers say about the mannequin’s attire. Catanese says the company also plans to add screens next to the dummies to prompt customers about products relevant to their profile, much like cookies and pop-up ads on a Web site.
Too much sophistication could backfire, Hall says, because it’s a fine line between technology that helps and technology that irks.
A promotional prompt or a reminder about where to find women’s shoes “could become a digital version of a very pushy sales assistant,” she said. “And we all know how we feel about those.”
Bloomberg News
Cotten Timberlake in Washington and Chiara Remondini and Tommaso Ebhardt in Milan contributed to this report.by Rick Rockwell
After a recent speech at a seminar session* with high-ranking military officers, members of defense ministries, military experts, and diplomats from Latin America, I could tell the question-answer segment wasn’t going to go well. Immediately, an officer from Guatemala stood up and asked if I was the same person who had written a required reading in this seminar on human rights and media relations. I hadn’t known this roomful of military experts had read a chapter in my book that identified various countries as dangerous to journalists.
I’d singled out Guatemala as the most dangerous country in Central America.
Waving photocopies of my chapter at me, with obvious displeasure, once the officer had heard from me that I indeed took responsibility for the writing, he launched into a critique, which lasted for several long minutes. He wanted to know why I’d made the Guatemalan military responsible for the violent anti-media mood in the country. He noted most of the cases I’d cited had no direct connection to the military but had to do with incidents such as security guards firing guns indiscriminately at protestors and journalists. I had mentioned corruption in the military but had provided little direct evidence, and the cases about the military I had cited had not been confirmed by international journalism groups that monitor such violence. So why was I holding the military responsible?
And during my speech, I had noted human rights concerns and free speech issues related to military abuses had been reduced in Latin America during the past decade. So was I also trying to have it both ways?
Although I didn’t back down from what I had written, I now wonder if I gave that officer the answer he should have heard. I said I stood by what I wrote and that it was accurate eight years ago, but that Guatemala had improved its human rights record and general reputation in the global community. Since my book was published, the country has held two elections, including the election of the first center-left government in 60 years. I noted that Guatemala’s attorney general had taken on various controversial cases dealing with the military and those who had carried out some of the past abuses during the country’s civil war now faced prosecution rather than impunity. Not wanting to get bogged down on just one country when there was a hemisphere of countries to address, and hear from, I thought, at the time that was the best answer.
But that answer really didn’t sit well with me later. After the session, I re-read my book chapter, and I did some additional research. Upon further reflection, if anything, I let the Guatemalan military off a bit lightly in my book, and although it would have proved distracting I should have dressed down this officer for trying to defend an institution that still hasn’t adequately dealt with its history of genocide against Guatemala’s indigenous Mayans. Any incidents of intimidation or violence aimed at the media pale in comparison to the 200,000 people Guatemala’s military slaughtered during the country’s 36-year-long civil war.
The truth is Guatemala’s military is responsible for creating a mood of impunity where certain groups — indigenous groups and journalists among them — became open targets for those in authority to assault or worse. And although the country signed peace accords 15 years ago, some human rights organizations report that what Guatemala has is a cold peace, where violence and abuses continue at levels equal to the civil war years. This was a point I had taken up in my book and it remains so today. (So to answer the officer correctly, Guatemala is one of the outliers, it has made advancements but not at the same levels as many of its neighbors; the country is an exception to an improving human rights record across Latin America in the past generation.) Certainly, many of the current problems can be pinned on street gangs and drug cartels, which seem to be running rampant through Guatemala and other parts of Central America. However, the culture of using violence to control groups that might challenge Guatemala’s elites or authorities became a repeated pattern during the war years by a military that was not above using coups to retain absolute power. That culture of violence is still endemic to Guatemala.
After the war, Guatemala’s military intelligence units continued to wield independent power; some experts wondered if that power was greater than the country’s president. President Alfonso Portillo complained often during his presidency that corrupt and dark forces were often more powerful than the Guatemalan state. (Those statements are ironic now considering Guatemala has agreed to extradite Portillo to the U.S. to face charges of money laundering.) Although the peace accords called for the dismantling of some of these secretive military intelligence groups, it took more than seven years before that was accomplished. Even with that, during the past decade, Guatemala has faced violence from groups that look to be descendants of the death squads of the civil war era: unholy alliances between former members of the military and drug cartels, sometimes referred to as the fuerzas ocultas.
And now with Otto Perez Molina, a former general during the civil war, just weeks away from being sworn in as president, human rights groups wonder if Guatemala is going backward. Perez Molina was part of Guatemala’s elite special forces. Some of those specialized units were responsible for some of the worst massacres in indigenous villages during the war. Is this a valid concern that Guatemala could return to a state of fear, impunity, and self-censorship under an ultra-conservative president with direct ties to the military, or is it merely guilt by association?
Consider:
Human rights groups have filed a complaint with the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture against Perez Molina, accusing him of leading soldiers who tortured prisoners in the Ixil region of the Department of Quiche in the 1980s. Also, Perez Molina headed military intelligence during the controversial disappearance and murder of rebel leader Efrain Bámaca in the 1990s. Some believe Perez Molina had knowledge of Bámaca’s killing and was involved in the cover-up, but the former general denies any involvement.
Perez Molina has appointed Col. Ulises Noe Anzueto Giron as his Defense Minister. Anzueto not only is a former commander of special forces, like Perez Molina, but he also has ties to the Bámaca case. U.N. documents show a former Guatemalan special prosecutor accused Anzueto and other soldiers of intimidation in 1995 as the civil war wound to a close, after the prosecutor began investigating the Bámaca disappearance and murder. The prosecutor said Anzueto and others threatened to kill him unless he returned to following the proper ideological line. Anzueto was never formally charged.
Finally, Perez Molina has appointed Mauricio López Bonilla as the new Minister of Interior, controlling the National Police and prison system, among other powers. López is also another former military intelligence officer.
Optimistically, one must hope that Guatemala’s dark days are done and that the country’s new administration will break with the past. But the country’s justice system has just started to deal with the civil war’s legacies and hold those who supported a system of genocide and impunity accountable.
The real answer to the questions posed at this military seminar is that current and former members of Guatemala’s military establishment (often a group that includes members of the secretive and shadowy defense-intelligence community) haven’t allowed the country to deal squarely with the war crimes of the past. This is unlike other Latin American countries, which have tried to cleanse their authoritarian pasts through trials and truth commissions. The atmosphere spawned by the excesses of the civil war period have caused a cycle of self-censorship and harassment of the media and human rights defenders. The culture of violence the military initiated continues to haunt Guatemala to this day. And that is why the military must take some of the blame for acts committed to limit free speech and other human rights, even if current members of Guatemala’s military are not directly involved.
*This post has been altered from its original form because leaders of the seminar program felt posts in this blog may have been too descriptive and included information that could identify participants, even if they were listed anonymously in the original version. The intent of this short series of stories was never to single out individual participants for their views but rather to make general comments on these themes.
(The photo is from the Guatemalan Army’s official website and is in the public domain. To listen to a recent edition of Latin Pulse dealing with Guatemala and human rights, please check below.)(JTA) — An Israeli philanthropist has made a six-figure grant to a hospital in northern Israel to fund treatment for Syrian children who have suffered hearing loss as a result of their country’s civil war.
Morris Kahn’s pilot grant to Ziv Medical Center in Safed is part of the Genesis Prize Foundation’s global initiative to aid refugee causes and encourage other Jewish foundations and philanthropists to do the same. The refugee focus was chosen by British sculptor Anish Kapoor, who was awarded the 2017 Genesis Prize, which honors leading cultural figures who have showed a dedication to the Jewish community and Jewish values.
According to Genesis, Ziv Medical Center has extensive experience treating wounded Syrian civilians. The hospital reports that one out of every three Syrian children from combat areas examined by Ziv’s hospital staff suffers from hearing loss. The children are provided testing, treatment, surgery and rehabilitation.
“We have treated more than 1,000 Syrians of all ages who needed our help over the past four years,” Salman Zarka, director of Ziv Hospital, said in a news release from Genesis. “It’s really important for me as a physician, as an Israeli, and as a human being.”
Kahn is a South African-born businessman and philanthropist who moved to Israel in 1956. He is the founder of the Coral World Underwater Observatory in Eilat and of Zalul, a nonprofit focused on cleanup and preservation of the seas and rivers in Israel.NEWS
...from and about Synod 2015
Widespread confusion over procedures and process continues to be one of the less attractive hallmarks of Synod-2015. Thus it was perhaps inevitable that, over the weekend, there were several media reports to the effect that another procedural crisis was at hand: that Cardinal Peter Erdő had been denied the opportunity to speak after his introductory intervention last Monday; that a decision had been taken that there would be no final report; etc. In order to clarify the situation, we spoke with a highly knowledgeable and experienced Synod father, who indicated the following:
Cardinal Erdő made a deliberate decision to cover the entire Instrumentum Laboris [IL]—the Synod’s working document—in his first intervention on October 4; speculations that he had been “denied the microphone” for presentations of the second and third parts of the IL, because of aggravation in some quarters with his first intervention, seemed rather overwrought. (At the Saturday press briefing, Vatican spokesman Father Federico Lombardi, SJ, said that Erdő’s comprehensive reflection on the entire IL had been planned all along, as had been briefer introductory remarks to each section of the IL by one or another of the Synod presidents. Readers may draw their own conclusions about what precisely happened here—beyond the usual confusions over process—but the chief point remains: there has been no punitive “silencing” of Cardinal Erdő.)
In response to a question from the floor during the Synod general assembly’s first free-discussion period, Synod general secretary Cardinal Lorenzo Baldisseri stated that there will be a Synod final document, that it will be voted on section-by-section, that the decision to publish it or not would be made by the Holy Father, and that any further changes in the procedures to be followed by the language-based Synod discussion group (the circuli minores) would be publicly announced. This is all on-the-record.
Moreover, on Saturday, October 10, Cardinal Baldisseri said that the reason Part Three of the IL (which contains the greater part of the controversial material being debated at Synod-2015) was already being discussed in the general assembly—a point that some weekend commentators found disturbing—is that so many Synod fathers had indicated a desire to speak on it that there would not have been enough time for their interventions under the normal procedures; thus permission had been given for them to speak on Part Three earlier. This explanation, too, is on-the-record.
Finally, those familiar with the leaks so characteristic of Roman ecclesiastical and journalistic life will understand that the final report will, inevitably, get into public circulation. XR2
DISQUISITIONS
...being thoughts on Synod 2015 from various observers
Around the First Turn and into the Backstretch
Divided as it is into three weeks, it’s not quite right to think of Synod-2015 as having a quarter-pole, a half-mile pole, etc. But with the conclusion of its first week, the Synod has certainly turned the first corner of its particular course and is moving into the backstretch, before it rounds the final corner and heads into the home stretch in its third and concluding week.
Much to its credit, the Synod general secretariat released the first reports of the thirteen language-based discussion group, the circuli minores, written in the languages in which the groups’ discussions were conducted. There is a wealth of material in these reports: three from Francophone groups, four from Anglophone groups, three from Italian groups, two from “Iberian” (i.e., Spanish/Portuguese) groups, and one from the German group. There were also some striking similarities across the reports from the circuli, among which the following strike me as of particular interest:
While many groups praised the “See-Judge-Act” methodology that seems to have framed the ordering of the Instrumentum Laboris, many of the circuli questioned whether this ordering of things was appropriate to the Synod’s final report, or indeed to a truly ecclesial document. “See-Judge-Act” was the motto and method of the Jeunesse ouvriére chretienne [Young Christian Worker] movement, founded in Belgium in the early twentieth century by Fr. Joseph Cardijn, whom Paul VI created a cardinal in 1965. The method had a considerable influence throughout the world Church, and especially in Latin America, as a way of analyzing social situations (“See”) in light of the Church’s social doctrine (“Judge”) in order to determine appropriate pastoral, social, cultural, and political initiatives (“Act”). There was no questioning of its value in those circumstances. But several groups questioned its utility as the framework for an ecclesial document that, in their judgment, ought not begin with sociology (and, according to one group, less-than-adequate sociology at that), but with Revelation, including Scripture.
There were several criticisms of what was perceived to be a dreary and disheartening negativity in the assessment of the contemporary situation of marriage and the family in Part One of the Instrumentum Laboris (the phrase “parade of horribles” was not used, but that was the general idea); and there were parallel calls, strongly expressed by three of the English-language groups, for the Synod final report to lift up all that was good, ennobling, and life-giving in the Catholic experience of marriage and family life today. As one of the Anglophone reports put it, the Church and the Synod really can’t promote marriage as a Gospel vocation by beginning a synodal document with a laundry list of contemporary marriage pathologies.
Similarly, at least nine groups wanted the final report to begin with Christ, the Gospel, and the biblical witness to marriage; one Anglophone group proposed that “we should always begin with Jesus;” others urged locating the Synod’s concluding reflections on marriage and the family in the context of the New Evangelization and the Pope Francis’s apostolic exhortation, Evangelii Gaudium.
Several groups were concerned that the final report, in identifying “anthropological changes” in respect of marriage and family—meaning different and sometimes strange new understandings of what those words mean—make it clear that the Synod fathers found these changes in “the world,” not in the Church, which has a consistent, biblically-grounded, and doctrinally formed concept of the human person that endures over time and across cultures.
Concerns about perceived “Eurocentrism” in the Instrumentum Laboris were found across the language groups, several of which urged that the final report recognize the plurality of social/cultural contexts and pastoral situations the world Church experiences, some of which are quite receptive to the liberating power of the Gospel’s teaching on marriage and the family.
Picking up an often-unremarked theme from Pope Francis, at least two groups, one French and one Italian, urged that the final report critique the dangers posed by some “absolutist” gender ideologies, which were described as destructive of family life and parenting.
Several groups raised grave concerns about trends in biotechnology and its capacity to remanufacture the human condition by manufacturing human beings; one of the French groups specifically cited the dangers of cloning, surrogate motherhood, and germ cell manipulation.
A different French group underscored the importance of male responsibility and fatherhood; that same group urged that the final report lift up the elderly, living within extended families, as a blessing.
One of the English-speaking groups urged that the Synod propose and promote a catechesis of self-giving (the foundation of the self-donation of conjugal love) as the answer to those currents in western culture that emphasize autonomy and self-assertion; that same group wanted the final report to affirm that the culture of life, which the Church has promoted, is necessarily rooted in the virtues of hope and generosity, and then specified “culture of life” by speaking of the imperative of a vibrant defense of the lives of the unborn, the elderly, and those with special needs.
One of the Italian-language groups called for Synod-2015 to explicitly denounce child-labor, child-soldiers, and the abuse of women in prostitution and surrogate motherhood.
The report from the Synod’s German-language group seemed something of an outlier in its hearty affirmation of the methodology and order of the Instrumentum Laboris, although that group joined with others in asking for something positive about the vocation of marriage at the beginning of the final report, reaffirming that the Church thinks about marriage and the family through the prisms of the creation and the redemption. The German-language group also cautioned against exaggerating the negative cultural trends in late modernity/post-modernity, and called for an affirmation of contemporary culture’s positive aspects (albeit without identifying them).
Speeches—“interventions”—in the Synod general assembly continued all day Saturday. In one of them a Polish bishop, speaking in the name of the entire Polish hierarchy, said that there could not possibly be any change in the Church’s teaching and practice on offering Holy Communion to the divorced and civilly remarried, as doing so would display both a defective theology of grace and a “false compassion” that implicitly rejected Christ’s teaching on the indissolubility of marriage. Other interventions helped clarify another of the fault-lines that define the more fundamental debates at Synod-2015: the “issues beneath the issues,” as several contributors to LETTERS FROM THE SYNOD have called them.
Of particular note on Saturday was the claim, rather insistently pressed by several Synod fathers, that a robust, truth-centered presentation of the Church’s faith, teaching, and practice is an impediment to successful evangelization. This position is often (self-)described as one of “accepting people where they are” and “opening paths for people”—as if those pastors, lay movement leaders, and ordinary Catholics who have found considerable evangelical and pastoral success in offering what I have called “All-In Catholicism” have not begun with people “as they are” and were more interested in closure than inclusion. (On this matter of “inclusion,” see Archbishop Charles Chaput’s intervention below.)
One might also note that it is precisely those countries and regions in which Catholic teaching has been regarded as something of an embarrassment by bishops, clergy, and theologians that Catholic practice has become most attenuated, in some instances to the point of virtual disappearance.
In any event, this issue will likely be discussed with considerable intensity along the backstretch, and into the home stretch, of Synod-2015.
—George Weigel, Distinguished Senior Fellow and William E. Simon Chair in Catholic Studies, Ethics and Public Policy Center
IMPORTANT VOICES
...for the Synod and the Church to hear
Our “voice” for the next three days will be that of Bishop Robert Barron (b. 1959), recently ordained as Titular Bishop of Macriana in Mauretania and auxiliary to the Archbishop of Los Angeles. Bishop Barron is one of the Catholic world’s foremost evangelists and catechists: his media ministry, “Word on Fire,” is a model of how media old and new can serve the New Evangelization, and his ten-part “Catholicism” series is arguably the most important visual presentation of the Catholic Church ever made—and not merely for its beauty, but for its profound substance.
Robert Barron holds a Ph.D. from the Institut Catholique de Paris and served as a parish priest, a seminary professor, and the rector of Chicago’s Mundelein Seminary before his nomination as bishop.
Bishop Barron’s keynote address at the World Congress of Families, which preceded the World Meeting of Families with Pope Francis in Philadelphia last month, was received with great enthusiasm. We are grateful to Bishop Barron for permission to reprint it in LETTERS FROM THE SYNOD, for the benefit of both Synod fathers and all those around the world who are taking up the Holy Father’s call for careful thought, intensified prayer, and serious conversation about how the Catholic Church might best serve marriage and the family in the twenty-first century. Bishops Barron’s address will be published here in three parts, today, tomorrow, and Wednesday; Part One follows. XR2
Imago Dei as Privilege and Mission: Part One
by Bishop Robert Barron
That we human beings have been made in the image and likeness of God is one of the best-known doctrines of the Bible, but I don’t think that even devout Christians and Jews have begun to unpack the full significance of this claim. There is no philosophy, no religion, no social theory, no ideology that has ever proposed a more thorough-going affirmation of the human being than the Bible has. Neither ancient programs of perfectibility, nor Renaissance humanism, nor modern progressivism, nor Marxism, nor the contemporary valorization of freedom have come close to holding up the human person as high as do the Scriptures. For the Biblical authors claim that the human being is marked, in every aspect of his existence, by a likeness unto God and that he has been endowed with a distinctive mission from God, and ultimately destined for life on high in union with God.
Atheism, both old and new, is predicated upon the assumption that God poses a threat to human flourishing. Thus Ludwig Feuerbach, the founder of modern atheism, said, “the No to God is the Yes to man!” And Karl Marx, an ardent disciple of Feuerbach, could characterize religion as the “opium of the masses.” And Sigmund Freud, moving down the same avenue of thought, could argue that religious faith is an infantile fantasy, a dream from which an enlightened humanity should wake. Jean-Paul Sartre, the father of existentialism, could propose the syllogism, “if God exists, I cannot be free; but I am free; therefore, God does not exist.” Finally, Christopher Hitchens could propose a book with the simple title God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything. All of these atheists take for granted that divinity and humanity are caught in a desperate zero-sum game, whereby the more glory God gets, the less glory we receive, and vice versa. The Bible consistently proposes a completely opposing vision, best summed up in an image from the third chapter of the book of Genesis. While tending his flock on the slopes of Mt. Sinai, Moses spied a peculiar sight: a bush that was on fire but not consumed. And from that bush came the voice of the God who identified himself as the One Who Is. The point is this: the closer the true God comes to his creation, the more beautiful and radiant that creation becomes. As God enters into our lives, we are not consumed, and nothing in us is compelled to give way; on the contrary, we are rendered luminous, more fully ourselves.
The drama of human life consists in realizing the full implications of this non-competitive relationship with the living God. The French spiritual master Leon Bloy reminded us a century ago that the only real sadness in life is not to be a saint, that is to say, not fully to become the image of God that each of us is meant to be. What I should like to do in the course of this presentation is to explore the meaning of the imago Dei and to search out the many ways that baptized Christians are summoned to embody it.
Back to the Beginning
Let us begin our investigation by returning to the endlessly suggestive story told in the opening chapters of the book of Genesis. Most of the controversies surround the Genesis account of creation as an alternative “science” are exercises in missing the point. The key to understanding the initial moves in the Bible is theological and more precisely liturgical. We should notice, first, the difference that obtains between the Scriptural story and the myths of origin found in practically every other ancient culture. In those latter accounts, the order of creation follows upon some primordial act of violence, usually a battle between rival gods, resulting in the victory of one and the dismembering of the other. But there is none of this in the book of Genesis, according to which God creates, not through violence against a rival force or the aggressive shaping of some pre-existing stuff, but rather through a sheerly peaceful act of speech: “Let there be light, and there was light.” The theological tradition has described this process with the phrase creatio ex nihilo (creation from nothing), implying that, quite literally, nothing stands between the Creator God and the creatures whom he brings, from moment to moment, into existence. The being of the latter is not “over and against” the being of the former; instead, creation is, in Thomas Aquinas’s remarkable language quaedam relatio ad Creatorem cum |
ors and so on, I will forever miss the dorky excitement of clunking an entire laptop into a desktop case, and ejecting it like a VHS cassette when I’m done. It’s what computers are supposed to be like!
I have a few Duos, and let me tell you that while I love them to bits, one thing you notice is that Apple’s fit and finish has, shall we say, improved markedly since their introduction in the early ’90s. The whole keyboard plate deforms when you type on its spongy little keys, the screen has a laughable amount of wobble, and everywhere on the bodywork are uneven gaps and lines that don’t quite meet up. And while I’m about it, what the hell was Apple thinking putting the Escape key right under my thumb next to the space bar?
Christopher Phin
There are, though, still some lovely little touches. Take, for example, how the swing-down feet at the back double as covers for the ports.
Christopher Phin
And you also have to love the power brick. Not only did it have the flick-out arms for cable management that Apple still uses to this day, but there were also some metal contacts on one side of it.
Christopher Phin
These were so you could click this PowerBook Duo Battery Recharger into place, which had two slots for charging up the removable battery packs that powered the laptop. The batteries themselves came with cases, so you could charge a few of them up on this and then safely carry them about, ready to pop into the Duo when another ran out; I bet there are more than a few folk who wish they had that option today.
Christopher Phin
Yes, I adore the Duo. It really is, even by today’s standards, a compact little machine, and while it weighs twice what the new MacBook does, it’s only three-quarters the weight of my 2008 MacBook Pro. And if Apple reinvented it for the 21st century—with an external, Thunderbolt-connected GPU, and “Fusion Drive 2” which pairs an external, cloud-aware hard disk with the “new Duo’s” PCIe SSD, all wrapped up in a 30-inch Retina screen, not unlike a Thunderbolt Display, into which you slotted the Duo—you could expect to see my kidneys on eBay faster than you could say “shut up and take my money”.We’re just one week into the new 2015-16 Premier League campaign and there have been some standout performances from a range of debutants, here’s just a few of the many that have stood out so far.
Premier League Standout Debut Performers
Andre Ayew
The man of the match performance from Swansea’s free transfer signing, Andre Ayew, away to champions Chelsea proved why the Ghanaian will be one of the best pieces of business from any side this summer after he scored to help his side come away from Stamford Bridge with a point following a 2-2 draw. The 25 year-old was involved heavily in everything that was good about the Welsh side throughout the game, linking up with Bafetimbi Gomis well and also tracking back to help the defence and midfield whenever Chelsea were on the attack.
Rudy Gestede
There has been a huge turnover during the summer transfer window so far for Aston Villa, that has saw the club lose both captain Fabian Delph and prolific talisman Christian Benteke, whilst also securing up to nine players and counting. However it would be the latest recruitment, Rudy Gestede, that would be the stand out performer for Tim Sherwood’s side on Saturday when they took on newly promoted Bournemouth. The 6ft 4in frame of the Benin international was well documented upon his £6 million pounds move after Sherwood highlighted his desire to replace the goals that Benteke had previously provided to the side, along with the dominance in the air, which came into play during the game when Gestede scored his sides winning goal following a well delivered corner. In just his 30 minute cameo off the bench, it has shown a glimpse of how dominant the player can be, something Sherwood will be hoping he can continue to show throughout the campaign as his side aims to steer well clear from another relegation battle.
Matteo Darmian
The 2015-16 Premier League early kick-off was between Manchester United and Tottenham, in a tight game that saw both sides show off a number of new signings. But, the standout performer on the day was Italian right-back Matteo Darmian for Manchester United, with the Italian international settling down immediately in the back four as he rarely put a foot wrong when challenged against the likes of Dembele, Kane and Chadli. Instead, he helped the home side keep a clean sheet in the process as he looks to be one of the best pieces of business Van Gaal has done in the window thus far.
Dimitri Payet
West Ham’s new star Dimitri Payet came with a reputation of being an assist machine and skilful talent and more than lived up to that on his full league debut for the Hammers following his clubs exceptional 2-0 shock victory away to Arsenal, a game that also saw old fan favourite Slaven Bilic take charge of his first league match with the East London club. The French winger proved why the club were right to pay over £10 million pounds to Marseille for his signature, providing a classy assist after a pinpoint set-piece found midfielder Cheikhou Kouyate to nod the side ahead. Payet played the full 90 minutes and wasn’t scared to get stuck in helping his full backs and midfield when required as well as providing exciting flair when on the ball shrugging off a number of tackles that came his way.
Georginio Wijnaldum
Georginio Wijnaldum was yet another one of the debutant boys in the league to get his name on the score sheet over the weekend with a bullet header that found the net with ease. There has been a lot of hype around the Dutch international for a number of years, with the player finally making the move to England following a title winning season with PSV which in turn saw him pip fellow international team mate Memphis Depay to the player of the year award in Holland. Toon fans expect a lot from the player with many hoping he will soon become a fan favourite and a goal on his debut against Southampton will have more than helped him become an instant favourite at the Gallowgate End. The strength of the player was immediately noticeable as Wijnaldum was able to hold off opposing players with ease and help bring others into play, as well as linking up with Papiss Cisse in attacking areas, especially when on the break.
Joe Gomez
Finally, Liverpool youngster Joe Gomez who signed from Charlton Athletic for £3.5 million pounds in the summer more than held his own in one of the most physically challenging battles that any player would have to face on their debut. Travelling to Stoke and facing the likes of Jon Walters and co has shuck a number of highly respected defenders over the years, however Gomez more than held his own and rarely put a foot wrong in an unfamiliar position at left back, helping the Reds keep a clean sheet and secure three points. Gomez’s preferred position is at the heart of defence, with a loan deal to a Championship club originally being touted, however following an impressive pre-season with the side and brilliant debut performance, manager Brendan Rodgers would be a fool to both drop the England under-18 or consider the loan move, should he continue playing the way he did on Sunday at the Britannia.
Reece Oxford
Special mention goes out to 16 year-old Reece Oxford, an unknown prospect that was shoved onto the big stage by West Ham manager Slaven Bilic on Sunday against Arsenal. The defensive midfielder looked like a seasoned-pro easing his way into the game, it looked as if the youngster had been playing for years already, more than protecting the back four with any attacks that was posed. It was credit to the impressive debut of the youngster that he was given the 80 minutes by the manager, as he helped his side not only secure a rare win against their local rivals but also claim a clean sheet in the process, minimising the threats that Ozil, Sanchez, Ramsey and Cazorla had on the game. He looks like an exciting player for the future.
Main Photo:When you hit your head on a tree, the wound never truly heals...This is another Ponychan pony mash picture, mostly just an excuse to practice exaggerated faces. Also, it's an observation that even slight reminders of a troubled time may compel one to revisit those painful memories in seclusion, tragically blinding them to the happier things that do exist in the present moment. Also Applejack totally doesn't evenseaweed.---------------------------------If you don't get the reference: see this MLP Episode 4 at 12:45 -Thanks to for a sketch for the 9th panel face.I used this great comic: [link] by as a reference for the 10th panelAlso this pic [link] by helped to put this idea in my head.Check out this other comic [link] that another Ponychan friend finished today, if you enjoy seeing the Apple Family freak out!------------Rice, corn, and beans are just some of the staples being cooked in these ovens, helping to avoid health and finance problems.
“The rice is done!” someone proclaimed from the chapel courtyard.
A second later, another person yelled the same phrase in Spanish.
That’s when everyone came running.
Women jumped out of their plastic chairs in the shade. Children sprinted from across the courtyard to be the first to see the pot of rice taken out of a solar oven.
They crowded around the oven where the rice had cooked while sitting in the sun for a few hours. The demonstration was part of a solar oven workshop at the Iglesia Evangelica Dominicana chapel here in Villa Laberacion, in the Dominican Republic.
Reyna Esthel was one of the women vying to taste the rice. She attended the workshop after she heard that using a solar oven could help save her money.
“Because of the expenses of gas, it’s cheaper to use the solar ovens and using natural energy from the sun,” Esthel said in Spanish through a translator.
A small number of communities in the Dominican Republic are buying solar ovens to cook their meals, avoiding cooking with gas stoves or wood that present financial and health problems.
Forty-one percent of people in the Dominican Republic are living under the national poverty line, according to a 2013 national labor force survey. Petroleum and products made from it, such as propane, are a top import to the island nation, and propane accounted for about $3.72 million in imports in 2014, says the United Nations. Purchasing gas for cooking takes a toll on most families in the country because of their limited incomes. Families who are even further into poverty use wood as a cheaper cooking material. Inhaling the smoke or standing over the fire can damage the lungs.
The solar movement was initiated by a US-based nonprofit, Solar Oven Partners, which presented workshops on how to use the ovens like the one in Villa Liberación. Rick Jost, the organisation’s director, hopes solar oven use will allow people in the Dominican Republic to save money to better their quality of life and reduce the risks of cooking with wood.
Families who use solar ovens increasingly save money by depending less on gas stoves.
The organisation reported between 200 and 250 solar ovens sold in the Dominican Republic between August 2015 and July 2016. Each oven costs 1000 pesos, or about $AUD28. Although funding to build and transport the ovens comes entirely from donations in the United States, the purchase price goes toward running the workshops throughout the country.
After the workshop, Esthel bought one of those solar ovens. With the money she hopes to save, she wants to buy better-quality food for her family. But she does have a few concerns — such as working around cloudy or rainy weather and having to adjust her daily life to cooking with the new oven.
“We will have to wake up earlier,” she said. It takes two or three hours to bake a meal in a solar oven instead of about an hour on a gas stove.
low-tech helper A slowcooker in a bag helping the environment A new slow cooker that doesn't require electricity could be the answer to the developing world's battle for cleaner cookstoves: the Wonderbag eliminates hours of cooking over an open fire.
Idalia Batista bought her solar oven about six months ago and starts preparing lunch by 8 am. She’s adjusted her schedule to cook for her family of eight, preparing rice, beans, corn, and occasionally meat in the oven.
While the food cooks, she does other chores around the house. She said she’s used the solar oven almost every day since she bought it.
“There never was a day when it was too cloudy,” she said in Spanish through a translator.
She’s already seen a difference in her budget. Before she bought the solar oven, she said, she would buy a 15-gallon (56-litre) tank of gas, costing her up to 1600 pesos, each month.
Now that she uses a solar oven, she only buys a nine-gallon (34-litre) tank of gas to prepare other food on her gas stove, saving up to 380 pesos, or about $AUD10, each month. (Because she cooks for eight, her solar oven can only prepare a fraction of the food. She still uses her gas stove to prepare portions of each meal.) The change is significant, she said, and she spends the extra money on more food to feed her family.
Batista sees solar ovens as an opportunity for her community.
“Everybody loves the oven because... the sun is something they always have, and it’s there for them,” she said. There are about 35 solar ovens in her community of Jaquiemeyes.
Solar Oven Partners worked in Haiti for 14 years before starting in the Dominican Republic in 2015. The organisation sold and distributed almost 10,000 ovens there.
“We don’t have any illusions of saving the world or even a society or country, but our philosophy is that if you help one family improve their situation by cooking, then you’ve done something important,” Jost said.
He wants to empower people to change their lives in small ways, affecting their societies in turn, by using solar ovens. The organisation works through the IED church system to reach places in the Dominican Republic where the ovens are needed most.
The church gives the organisation guidance and has the “ultimate control” over which communities get ovens, Jost said.
“As so often happens, even with international outreach programs, if you just go in and start doing for people what you think they need without any consideration of their culture, you’re not doing them any favor — you’re actually harming the situation,” Jost said.
Other organisations have been bringing solar ovens to Central America, other parts of the Caribbean, and Africa.
A team led by Molly Enz, a professor at South Dakota State University, conducted a three-year survey response to solar ovens in Haiti completed in 2014.
The survey of approximately 900 people found that women are using their solar ovens half of the time when they prepare meals for their families, Jost said. The money saved from purchasing other cooking materials can go toward more nutritious meals, medical care and sending children to school.
Jost estimates the life of an oven is at least seven years based on the plastic materials used to make it. Replacement materials and repairs are available from the IED church headquarters in Santo Domingo when an oven is damaged.
Enrique Antonio Solel, a member of the church in Sabaneta de Yásica, compared the use of solar ovens in the Dominican Republic with men walking on the moon.
“[The organization is] introducing a new technology to the Dominican Republic that will create a new era,” Solel said in Spanish through a translator.
Reporting for this article was funded by a grant from the Pulitzer Center.
This article originally appeared on takepart.com.Nov 23, 2017 at 09:19 // News
Guest Author Author
Over the past several months cryptomedia has been talking about public’s perception of cryptocurrency. Some freshly released surveys put the spotlight on what people on both sides of blockchain border think - traditional trading community representatives and those who have already invested in cryptocurrency.
Triad Securities, a broker agency founded in 1976, conducted a survey, which embodied a voice of a quite important group regarding digital currency - institutional traders.
The survey covers the period from 6th to 13th of November. 317 traders answered ten questions that made us think of what future actually lies ahead of cryptocurrencies.
When asked whether they had ever bought Bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies, 31% said no, never, with a little more than 36% considering doing that. Around half of it - 15% - have been involved in cryptotrading in the last 6 months, while 16% have been dealing with Bitcoin even longer than that. 1,5% of respondents confessed of being totally unfamiliar with Bitcoin.
When asked about participating in ICO, only 8% stated that they have invested in such projects, while 48% of respondents haven’t even looked at them. 29% admitted that they had taken these investments into consideration, another 15% expressed a desire for additional regulation in this field.
A question about seeing Bitcoin as a macroeconomic tool and hedge against monetary policy showed split results - 40% said yes, while 43% said no.
Same 40% of those who answered the survey think that Bitcoin is a bubble and must crash.
Meanwhile, Lendedu published a report about Bitcoin investors. 40.78% of respondents admitted that they believed in Bitcoin as a world changing technology.
The second most popular reason why investors liked Bitcoin, chosen by 22% of respondents, was for the possibility of long term storage of value of it. This is proven by almost 40%, who said that they were planning to hold their Bitcoin investments for "1 to 3 years." On average, respondents reported that they would be willing to sell all of their Bitcoin investment at $196,165 per Bitcoin. At the time of the survey completion, the price per Bitcoin was $6,490. Interesting that when asked about the intention to sell while the price hits the record, more that 67% of investors said “no” and only 33% said “yes”.
As a whole, current Bitcoin investors don’t take their money off the table, which is a promising sign.
With trading platforms popping up on the market, an efficient investment strategy is required along with strong management skills. Ready-made “box” solutions, introduced by Tokenbox, are one of the best ways to enter the cryptocurrency market and keep up with community, as well as hold a well-balanced portfolio and invest in fintech of the future within a legal framework.
For investors accustomed to enjoying single digit growth, bitcoin, with its explosive growth, is an asset whose rise can only be watched with a mixture of envy and apprehension. No one knows where bitcoin will be six months from now, but one thing’s for sure: Wall Street’s watching closely.
Disclaimer. This article is paid and provided by a third-party source and should not be viewed as an endorsement by CoinIdol. Readers should do their own research before investing funds in any company. CoinIdol shall not be responsible or liable, directly or indirectly, for any damage or loss caused or alleged to be caused by or in connection with the use of or reliance on any such content, goods or services mentioned in this article.Focus Articles
9/11/01
The Rothschild Khazarian Mafia Chieftains decide that it is time to use America to complete their final take-down and occupation of the Whole World by instituting a major False-Flag attack inside America to blame on the Islamics whom they want America to wrongly attack on their behalf:
So the Khazarian Mafia Chieftains use their top Israeli-American “Israeli-first” dual citizens living in America (aka, the PNACers and top NeoCon Cutouts) to plan a major nuclear attack on America on 9-11-01.
Bibi Netanyahu, the operational head of the KM, deployed the Mossad and these Dual Citizens to set up and institute this attack on America which was to be blamed by the CMMM on Muslims.
They informed their top Rabbis and “Friends of World Zionism” not to fly on that day and to stay out of NYC, as did “Larry Silverfish”, one of the primary men involved in the operation.
They used their main cutout in the DOD to lure the Able Danger investigators to the Pentagon Naval Intel meeting room, where they would be assassinated by a Tomahawk cruise missile that was fired from an Israeli Dolphin class Diesel submarine bought from Germany.
Thirty-five of the Able Danger investigators who were investigating and tracking the Israeli theft of 350 decommissioned W-54 Davy Crockett nuclear pits out of the backdoor at Pantex in Texas were murdered by this Tomahawk hit, which was timed with the detonation of bombs pre-planted in the Naval Intel wing, which was newly hardened to no avail. This footage shows the the Pentagon being hit by a missile, that was never shown to public.
The Israeli Mossad front company, Urban Moving Systems, was used to transport the mini-nukes made from the stolen W-54 nuclear pits from Pantex (and originally made at the Hanford processing plant), where they were stored in the Israeli Embassy in NYC and transported to the Twin Towers for detonation on 9-11-01. Read more here
9/11 + The CIA
A former US government intelligence agent who worked for the CIA during attacks on September 11th, 2001, has given a sworn affidavit stating that 9/11 was an inside job. The ex-CIA agent, who’s also an experienced commercial airline pilot, has blown the whistle on the destruction of the World Trade Center buildings, claiming that the three towers were actually brought down by controlled demolitions, and not by passenger planes that were flown by amateur pilots.
Former CIA agent John Lear has not only given a sworn statement as an expert witness, but he has also produced conclusive evidence that disproves the official narrative that the towers were destroyed by airplanes that were highjacked and flown by terrorists. Read more here
No Planes on 9/11
We are as a planet mostly all aware that 9/11 was a controlled demolition that resulted in 3 buildings collapse. We understand that this was planned and carried out by the US government as a false flag event to enable the police state and fake perpetual war on terror. We know that no plane hit the Pentagon or building 7, but what about the planes that we have all seen footage of hitting the twin towers. After closer inspection you can see that no planes were present in those towers either. Read more here
This footage shows an non edited timeline showing the second explosion without a plane.
Our latest film TRUTH11 FILMS | WIRELESS GENOCIDE | Microwave Radiation Part of the Depopulation agenda, will be released soon.
This film is 2 hours and 45 mins long, and explains the big picture of microwave radiation. From who invented it, how it has developed, and the big picture view of exactly what its doing to us all, by whom, why they are doing it and how they are getting away with it, and what we can do about it.
We are releasing the film transcript. Simply because its ready now and can be read by many to inform them of the dangers so they can do something about it. The film will be released soon, date to be announced. Read the transcript HERE
World Health Organization
Setting The Standard For A Wireless World Of Harm Radiofrequency/microwave radiation is everywhere—constantly and increasingly emanating from cell phones, WiFi routers, cell towers and telecommunications satellites. It is proliferating unchecked and people are suffering and dying because of it. Via its International EMF Project, WHO is supposed to be protecting us from the harmful effects of this radiation—radiation that we cannot see, smell or taste, even though it penetrates and affects every cell of our electromagnetic bodies. WHO is failing to protect its global citizens from this pervasive pollutant in four key ways: 1. industry infiltration
2. intentional ignorance
3. denial of the science
4. disregard for humanity. This document provides details of these inexcusable failures and what urgently needs to be done to address them. It also outlines what WHO must do to reverse this destructive course—for itself and for the global citizens it is supposed to protect. Read article and download document here. Download document here
Microwave Weapons Designed To Kill Us
= Cell Phones, WiFi, Cell Towers, Smart Meters… All Part of the Depopulation Agenda
Physicist Blows Whistle on Microwave Weaponry
Exposes Assaults on Populations Everywhere
“We are irreparably damaging the very fabric of life”
The age of wireless technology, ubiquitous microwave transmissions and countless cellphone towers have transformed the planet in profound and fundamental ways. Especially where it concerns human health and environmental integrity, the effects of these various frequency assaults have been nothing short of catastrophic.
If the people of the world truly understood the deleterious effects of these unseen and unfelt frequencies, they would have abandoned their cell phones and bluetooths decades ago. It has been proven beyond any doubt by the best science available that certain types of electromagnetic radiation can have highly damaging effects on the human body. Likewise, when animals and plants are exposed to these fields of harmful EMR, they too suffer great consequences. Read Article here
FACTS
There is now 10 billion times more radiation in our environment than there was in the 1960s.
If current trends continue, 50% of the population in Austria, California, England, Ireland, Germany and Sweden will be feeling the effects of electromagnetic radiation by 2017. Canada will be no different.
Swisscom, the Swiss telecommunications company, says non-thermal wireless radiation “has a genotoxic effect”, causing “clear damage to hereditary material [DNA]” and an “increased cancer risk”.
EMR adversely affects the blood cells of ALL individuals, whether they feel the effects or not.
EMR damages cell membranes, causing them to leak calcium and create many health issues, such as altered brain function, autism, infertility, EHS, hypocalcaemia, DNA damage, thyroid problems, osteoporosis, endocrine imbalances, early dementia, asthma, neurological disorders and multiple chemical sensitivities.
Autism in children is doubling every five years, paralleling the rise of EMR, and there is now a 1-in-50 chance of a child developing or being born with autism in North America.
Almost every grade in every elementary school in North America has at least one child with autism—a disorder that was nearly unheard of a generation ago.
Electromagnetic radiation breaks down the all-important blood–brain barrier, causing the death of neurons, which can result in early dementia and Alzheimer’s disease.
Just 5 minutes of Wi-Fi exposure can cause cell mutation, oxidation and rouleaux— all of which are associated with illness and disease.
The average cumulative whole-body exposure from a Smart meter at 3 feet is about 100 times more than that from a cell phone.
How The CIA Made Google
As our governments push to increase their powers, Insurge Intelligence can now reveal the vast extent to which the US intelligence community is implicated in nurturing the web platforms we know today, for the precise purpose of utilizing the technology as a mechanism to fight global ‘information war’ — a war to legitimize the power of the few over the rest of us. The lynchpin of this story is the corporation that in many ways defines the 21st century with its unobtrusive omnipresence: Google.
Google styles itself as a friendly, funky, user-friendly tech firm that rose to prominence through a combination of skill, luck, and genuine innovation. This is true. But it is a mere fragment of the story. In reality, Google is a smokescreen behind which lurks the US military-industrial complex.
The inside story of Google’s rise, revealed here for the first time, opens a can of worms that goes far beyond Google, unexpectedly shining a light on the existence of a parasitical network driving the evolution of the US national security apparatus, and profiting obscenely from its operation. Read Article Here
We Are Right In The Middle Of A Fucking Reptile Zoo
Raoul Duke:
I was right in the middle of a fucking reptile zoo, and somebody was giving booze to these goddamn things. Won’t be long now before they tear us to shreds.
Hunter S Thompson
Blue blood lines, vampires, lizard people, consuming blood daily to keep their shape shifting appearance in the public eye. Red Cross has been there on the front lines collecting blood from war carnage, and we donate to them openly, the Queen and the rest of the reptile blood line that have been running our world for thousands of years must be exposed and stopped. Time and time again children have gone missing in many countries and the public are aware of the sinister blood bath ring that surrounds these lizard people. The truth is being realized and with the help of so many cameras and video they can’t seem to keep up the shape shifting 100% of the time and we are seeing proof of their true identities. Read Article Here
Putin Announces The Worlds Ruling Class Are Reptilians
The Russian president said that “95% of the world’s ruling class are not even human,” but are “cold-blooded hybrids” who are “members of an ancient cult.” Read article here
#ReptilianQueen
From the Royal Website “Earlier this week the Queen was seen by thousands of people in a form they are not acquainted with. We seek to reassure the public that the Queen is still the Queen, and remains the respected and loved figure they have always known. While she may not be human, she is a devoted leader and Monarch and she believes her subjects will grow to accept her and her family for what they are.” Read article here
Russia Today Declares 9/11 Was An Inside Job
Possibly the biggest and most public 9/11 story to date.
The Top Of The Pyramid
The United States Is A Corporation
Human Status Of A Corporation = Enfranchisement Vs Natural Person
Living in todays nazi fascist police state, understanding the corrupt system they use to control us cattle is of great importance. Read article here
Everything Is Fake | 40 Things You May Have Thought Were Real
The good thing though is that once you awaken to the deception, you can use it as a tool for raising your consciousness. The idea that virtually everything is fake can be empowering rather than depressing. Fake News, Fake Journalism, Fake Entertainment, Fake PR and Advertising, Fake Medicine, Fake Scientific Research, Fake Acquired Immunity, Fake Food, Fake Water, Fake Choice, Fake Money, Fake Economy, Fake Free Markets, Fake Free Trade Agreements, Fake Accounting, Fake Welfare, Fake Government, Fake Republic, Fake Democracy, Fake Elections, Fake National Security, Fake Defence, Fake Education, Fake Law, Fake Rights, Fake Consent, Fake Morality, Fake Spirituality, Fake Clouds, Fake Lone Nutter Killers, Fake Boogeymen, Fake False Flag Attacks, Fake Crisis Actors, Fake Pandemics, Fake Moon Landing, Fake International Space Station, Fake Space Walks, Fake History, Fake Authority and Fake Universe. Read Article here.
Why Are There No Real Photos Of The Complete Earth? = NASA Has Never Been Into Space
In nearly 60 years of alleged space exploration NASA has never been able to offer us a single genuine photograph of the Earth from space—NOT ONE! Even though we’ve had good, high-resolution cameras for nearly 100 years, NASA has never taken a true photograph of the Earth
By their own admission, all of the pictures we see are composites, paintings or computer-generated images. Why is this? Could the answer be, horror of horrors, that NASA has never been into space—or at least, not far enough from the Earth to get the whole planet in the frame? Read Article Here
War Is A Global Economic and Control Phenomenon
Definition: Phenomenon: |fəˈnäməˌnän, -nən| noun (pl. phenomena |-nə| ) Fact or situation that is observed to exist or happen, especially one whose cause or explanation is in question.
War is a global economic and control phenomenon that exists in our reality not as a constant of human behaviour, but a manufactured situation that is forced upon us by bankers, the royal family and the other Bilderberg NWO Nazi cronies. Bankers and elite globally without borders have control of apposing countries and forces and they play a game of risk, the board game of global domination. They don’t care who wins, because they win on both sides. They supply the money for the arms and sell the arms to both sides. They control the population by creating a world wide situation that no one can avoid. All are called to duty, all forget the current reality and focus on the new world war reality. 120 Countries now in war games...Peaceful global revolution can avoid WW3 | No More Business As Usual. Read article here
Weaponized Cell Towers
A microwave oven’s internal magnetron, which is virtually the same as that of a radar- or cell phone tower, transforms that electrical energy into microwaves. The magnetron inside a microwave oven an be easily adapted into a very lethal ray gun – A typical cell phone tower, “A giant microwave oven on a stick,” capable of releasing 3,000,000 watts (3 megawatts) of output power to the tower’s magnetron – or even more megawatts, if there is an amplifier at the top.
To put this into perspective, one (1) watt from your cell phone can go 25 miles to the nearest cell phone tower, to relay your call’s signal to the person on the other end of the line. The US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) limits the amount of energy that a cell phone tower can release to 400 watts.
These megawatts of extra power are NOT for data transfer – nothing close to that amount of energy is required for data transfer – which is an important point, because this suggests that cell phone towers are easily capable of being switched to Weaponized Mode.
That cell phone towers are wired with the capability to release millions of watts of microwave radiation makes them veritable of “towers of death”, the perfect weapons against an “invasion” – or the mega-slaughter of the domestic population.
Virtually all towns, all over the world have the amount of towers necessary to fry the populations in their vicinity. Read Article Here
No Planes Were Used To Bring Down Any Towers On 911
We are as a planet mostly all aware that 9/11 was a controlled demolition that resulted in 3 buildings collapse. We understand that this was planned and carried out by the US government as a false flag event to enable the police state and fake perpetual war on terror. We know that no plane hit the Pentagon or building 7, but what about the planes that we have all seen footage of hitting the twin towers. After closer inspection you can see that no planes were present in those towers either.
This footage shows an non edited timeline showing the second explosion without a plane.
“Official” 9/11 story destroyed! Irrefutable un-doctored photographic and scientific evidence, whistleblower videos, expert testimony and undeniable truths. Read full article here
UFO Clear Footage
Secret UFO Footage Released and several other clear videos showing UFO’s
View article with all videos here
Welcome To The Global Revolution
▽ Self Government System ▽
UNITY11
▽
Global daily tyranny of the few must end, this we all know. Replacing one lizard bastard with another is not the answer. The top down pyramid control system of the few, favours those at the top. The few can make decisions for the many for the benefit of the few. This control system needs to be inverted. Invert the pyramid and have the control be given to the many. The many will choose whats best for the many, not the few. We cannot implement this structure within the current system. We cannot continue to support the current system with our taxes, time and effort as it fuels the few, war, starvation, poverty, and despair.
The Solution:
No More Business As Usual
Stop what you are contributing to the system and spend your time focused on breaking up their control grid, becoming self sufficient and unifying with fellow humans.
+
Replace the corrupt government of the few with a global system
where the many decide what is good for the many.
Invert the control pyramid
=
United We Stand ▽ United We Decide ▽ United We Thrive
Self Government System
UNITY11
▽
Join the Global Self Government Revolution
UNITY11 is a division of Truth11.com
UNITY11 goal is to organize and empower the truth movement. Informed, organized and connected using a system of self government with the goals of world peace and prosperity for everyone. Read more here
___________
111 Articles On Wireless Pollution
190 scientists from 38 nations have submitted the International EMF Scientist Appeal to the United Nations, UN member states and the World Health Organization (WHO) requesting they adopt more protective exposure guidelines for electromagnetic fields (EMF) and wireless technology in the face of increasing evidence of risk from this rapidly increasing environmental pollutant. The scientists who have signed the Appeal have collectively published over 2,000 peer-reviewed papers on the biological or health effects of non-ionizing radiation. It was submitted on 11 may 2015 to His Excellency Ban Ki-moon, Secretary-General of the United Nations, to Dr. Margaret Chan, MD, Director General of the World Health Organization, and to the United Nations Member States. Read article here
___________
Facebook = CIA
Mark Zuckerberg is David Rockefellers grandson. Fucking Nazi lizard bastards.
___________
Harnessing Black Holes:
The Large Hadron Collider, Ultimate Weapon Of Mass Destruction
The stakes are the highest they have ever been. The Large Hadron Collider is a dangerous instrument wielded by men and women seeking ultimate knowledge and power. The start-up April 5 has initiated a more reckless use of LHC’s capabilities, endangering all life including our universe.
Spouses and family members of the CERN scientists, energy companies supplying electricity to this facility, environmental and spiritual organizations, and citizens in every country – we must shut this project down now. Read article here
CERN To Attempt ‘Big Bang’, Stephen Hawking Issues Warning; ‘God particle’ found by CERN “could destroy the universe”
___________
Fukushima Radiation Is Part Of The Depopulation Agenda
Leuren Moret, MA, PhD ABD, confirms that Vladimir Putin, President of the Russian Federation, is employing Russian HAARP to lay an electromagnetic fence around Russia to keep out plumes filled with Fukushima radiation, thereby protecting the Russian people from depopulation. Putin is also constructing BRICS, a banking model to protect against collapse of world financial system, built on U$dollar Rothschild-dominated private debt-based fiat-currency as a prison for humanity.
The U.S. |
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